In Portraits of American Philosophy, eight of America's most prominent philosophers offer autobiographical narratives that remind us that the life of a scholar is both a tale of personal struggle and an adventure in ideas.

In my contribution to this volume, I (BHS) comment on on the stultifying rhetoric of contemporary analytic moral theory as illustrated in Judith Jarvis Thomson's Tanner Lectures, with particular reference to Thomson's anxieties about the moral relativism exhibited by college freshman and to her efforts--quite strained, in my view, and inevitably unsuccessful--to demonstrate the existence of objective judgments in matters of morality and taste .

In her ground-breaking 1971 article, “A Defense of Abortion,” Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that even if one grants to the prolifer her most important premise—that the fetus is a person—the prolifer’s conclusion, the intrinsic wrongness of abortion, does not follow. However, in her 1995 article, “Abortion: Whose Right?,” Thomson employs Rawlsian liberalism to argue that even though the prolifer’s view of fetal personhood is not unreasonable, the prochoice advocate is not unreasonable in rejecting it. Thus, because we (...) should err on the side of liberty, the right to abortion is vindicated. In this article, I argue that Thomson’s latter reliance on Rawlsian thinking suggests a way of re-reading her earlier essay that casts doubt on whether she really grants the dominant prolife account of unborn human life. (shrink)

The famous ‘trolley problem’ began as a simple variation on an example given in passing by Philippa Foot , involving a runaway trolley that cannot be stopped but can be steered to a path of lesser harm. By switching from the perspective of the driver to that of a bystander, Judith Jarvis Thomson showed how the case raises difficulties for the normative theory Foot meant to be defending, and Thomson compounded the challenge with further variations that created (...) still more puzzles of broader interest. In recent years, her thought experiments have even been co-opted by psychologists engaged in the empirical study of moral judgment . Yet more than thirty years after launching the trolley problem, Thomson has now strikingly reversed course, retracting the very claim she had originally used to raise puzzles for Foot. I shall argue that this reversal is a mistake, leading to a needlessly counterintuitive, contrarian position about damage-control cases. Instead of overturning her earlier position, her new variations merely uncover a surprising insight about the conditions under which one may permissibly sacrifice another for a good end.1. The central case at issue is what Thomson now calls Bystander's Two Options: you are a bystander who sees a runaway trolley headed toward five innocent people who cannot move off the track; you cannot stop the trolley, but you have access to a switch that will divert it onto a side track where one innocent person is trapped. Is it permissible to throw the switch and divert the trolley toward lesser harm? The common answer, and Thomson's earlier one, is that it is: in cases like this, where there is a public threat and we can act on it so …. (shrink)

Judith Jarvis Thomson (1929-2020), philosophe américaine parmi les figures les plus marquantes dans l’étude de la normativité et de l’éthique, s’est éteinte ce 20 novembre à l’âge de 91 ans. Professeure émérite au MIT, sa carrière s’est étendue sur cinq décennies consacrées à la recherche, à l’enseignement et à la publication de plusieurs articles et ouvrages sur la nature des valeurs, des normes et des droits. Parmi ses ouvrages les plus importants, nous rappelons The Realm of Rights (1990), (...) Goodness and Advice (2001) et Normativity (2008). (shrink)

1. First there is an outline of the libertarian approach taken here. 2. On the assumption of personhood, it is explained how there need be no overall inflicted harm and no proactive killing with abortion and infanticide. This starts with an attached-adult analogy and transitions to dealing directly with the issues. Various well-known criticisms are answered throughout. 3. There is then a more-abstract explanation of how it is paradoxical to assume a duty to do more than avoid inflicting overall harm (...) and, instead, positively benefit. A putative counterexample is explained away. 4. A positive theory of intellectual personhood is defended in principle, but not made precise, which is sufficient to be practical. The greater moral value of intellectual-personhood is defended. An important putative reductio of the potential-personhood argument is refuted. 5. Several further criticisms that apply to both types of defences are answered. 6. Conclusion. (shrink)

Ethical deliberations are unfolding for potentially controversial organoid‐entities such as brain organoids and embryoids. Much of the ethical deliberation centers on the questionable moral status of such organoid‐entities. However, while such work is important and appropriate, ethical deliberations may become too exclusively rooted in moral status and potentially overshadow other relevant moral dilemmas. The ethical discussion on organoid models can benefit from insights brought forth by both Judith Jarvis Thomson and Don Marquis in how they attempted to advance (...) the abortion debate. To discuss other abortion ethical issues more fully, both Thomson and Marquis assumed differing moral status positions of the conceptus and followed lines of reasoning based on these moral status assumptions. We suggest a similar approach with controversial organoid‐entities like brain organoids and embryoids. To avoid overshadowing or overlooking other relevant ethical issues, ethicists ought to first assume an organoid‐entity moral status position (such as a high moral status or no moral status) and explore any possible arguments that may result from such a position. While we ought not to copy the content of Thomson and Marquis' arguments exactly for organoid‐entities, it is worthwhile to translate their arguments' overarching structures. This paper explores the relevant insights of Thomson and Marquis, how they can be translated into the organoid ethics debate, and what possible lines of inquiry may be worth exploring based on particular moral status assumptions. (shrink)

This Ideas and Opinions article revisits an argument from Judith Jarvis Thomson in her essay “A Defense of Abortion” that abortion can be an ethical choice even if we assume that fetuses have full moral personhood and moral rights. The authors examine the implications of laws that require a pregnant person to care for another with their body and what other impositions states may also require of citizens to care for others.

A familiar claim, meant as a challenge to moral knowledge, is that we can credibly accept putative moral facts just in case they explain natural facts. This paper critically addresses Elizabeth Tropman’s response to a version of that claim. Her response has interest partly because it falls within, and extends, an influential philosophical tradition – that of trying to expose (some) skeptical challenges as spurious or ill-conceived. Also, Tropman’s target is not just any version of the claim just mentioned. It (...) is Gilbert Harman’s classic version, according to which putative moral facts must earn credibility by explaining the formation of moral beliefs. This version has wide influence, and variations of it can arise in many areas. Tropman’s response is thus well worth attention. (shrink)

Philosophical reflection on death dates back to ancient times, but death remains a most profound and puzzling topic. Samantha Brennan and Robert Stainton have assembled a compelling selection of core readings from the philosophical literature on death. The views of ancient writers such as Plato, Epicurus, and Lucretius are set alongside the work of contemporary figures such as Thomas Nagel, John Perry, and Judith Jarvis Thomson. -/- Brennan and Stainton divide the anthology into three parts. Part I considers (...) questions about the nature of death and our knowledge of it. What does it mean to be dead? Is it possible to survive death? Is the end of life a mystery? Part II asks how we should view death. What (if anything) is so bad about dying? If death is nothingness, should it be feared or regretted? Part III examines ethical questions related to killing, particularly abortion, euthanasia and suicide. Is killing ever permissible? Under what conditions or circumstances? (shrink)

Judith Jarvis Thomson; Killing, Letting Die, and The Trolley Problem, The Monist, Volume 59, Issue 2, 1 April 1976, Pages 204–217, https://doi.org/10.5840/monis.

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 1976, given by Judith Jarvis Thomson, an American philosopher.

Moral theory should be simple: the moral theorist attends to ordinary human action to explain what makes some acts right and others wrong, and we need no microscope to observe a human act. Yet no moral theory that is simple captures all of the morally relevant facts. In a set of vivid examples, stories, and cases Judith Thomson shows just how wide an array of moral considerations bears on all but the simplest of problems. She is a philosophical analyst (...) of the highest caliber who can tease a multitude of implications out of the story of a mere bit of eavesdropping. She is also a master teller of tales which have a philosophical bite. Beyond these pleasures, however, she brings new depth of understanding to some of the most pressing moral issues of the moment, notably abortion. Thomson's essays determinedly confront the most difficult questions: What is it to have a moral right to life, or any other right? What is the relation between the infringement of such rights and restitution? How is rights theory to deal with the imposition of risk? (shrink)

1. Overview -/- 1.1 Main Divisions When, if ever, is it morally permissible to end the life of a human embryo or fetus, and why? As regards the first of these questions, there are extreme anti-abortion views, according to which abortion is prima facie seriously wrong from conception onwards – or at least shortly thereafter; there are extreme permissibility views, according to which abortion is always permissible in itself; and there are moderate views, according to which abortion is sometimes permissible, (...) and sometimes not. -/- Moderate views appeal to a variety of considerations in support of the view that abortion is sometimes justified, but these fall into four main categories. First, there are cases where the developing human is seriously defective in some way – perhaps such that it will not have a life that is worth living. Secondly, there are cases where continuation of pregnancy would involve serious risks to the life or health of the woman. Thirdly, there are moderate positions according to which the developing human initially does not have serious moral status, or a right to life, but acquires such status at some point before birth. Finally, it is often held that abortion is justified in the case of rape. -/- With the exception of the last consideration, moderate views assume that the moral status of the developing human is crucial with respect to the permissibility of abortion. Moreover, this is a natural assumption that was shared by all sides until the publication in 1971 of Judith Jarvis Thomson’s article “A Defense of Abortion,” in which she argued that abortion is permissible even if one assumes, for the sake of argument, that human embryos and fetuses have a right to life. Thus we have one of the great divides in the philosophical discussion of abortion: Is the moral status of the developing human generally decisive with regard to the moral permissibility of abortion or not? -/- 1.2 The Moral Status of the Developing Human: Thomson and Boonin Thomson’s article evoked many critical responses, along with some defenses, which I have described elsewhere (2013; “Thomson’s Attempt to Defend Abortion in General”). Crucial, however, is David Boonin’s defense (2003), which contains responses to all of the important objections directed against the attempt to show that one can defend abortion while granting that human embryos and fetuses have a right to life fully on a par with that of normal adult human beings. -/- Boonin’s impressive efforts notwithstanding, I do not think that this way of defending an extreme permissibility view is successful. The crucial issue is whether it is morally permissible intentionally to bring into existence an entity with a right to life in a situation where one knows that it will not survive without one’s assistance, and then to refrain from providing that assistance. An especially forceful way of arguing that this is not permissible is found in an article by Richard Langer (1993, 351-2), who argues that if this were permissible, it would follow not only that abortion was justified, but also that it is permissible to allow one’s children to die, some years after birth, simply because one no longer wishes to care for them. -/- 1.3 Moderate Views Moderate positions on abortion raise a number of issues that, for reasons of space, I cannot address here. Some of these depend on the issue of the moral status of the developing human, and defending a moderate view requires showing that both extreme anti-abortion and extreme moral permissibility views concerning the moral status of humans before birth are incorrect. I have argued elsewhere (1983, 285-302, and 2009, 59-63) that the prospects of doing this are not promising. -/- As regards permissibility in the case of rape, everything depends upon whether, as Thomson contends (1971), there is no obligation to be a good Samaritan, rather than merely a minimally decent one, and so no obligation for a woman to remain pregnant to save the life of a being that she was not responsible for bringing into existence. Finally, on the one hand, in cases where the woman will die if an abortion is not performed, virtually all moral philosophers, with the exception of those who embrace the moral view advanced by the Catholic Church in encyclicals by Pope Pius XI (1930) and Pope Paul VI (1968), agree that abortion is morally permissible, while, on the other hand, if the situation is one where there is only some risk that the woman will die if an abortion is not performed, or where the threat is not to the woman’s life, but only to her health, then the situation does seem clear-cut if one assumes that the embryo or fetus has a right to life. -/- 1.4 Extreme Anti-Abortion Views Very different arguments are offered for the view that abortion is in itself never permissible. First of all, in popular discussions, appeal is frequently made to the mere fact of membership in the biologically defined species Homo sapiens, but among those who are philosophically knowledgeable, this line of argument is almost invariably rejected, for reasons that I have set out elsewhere (Tooley, 2009, 21-35). -/- Secondly, appeal is also made to the idea that humans have immaterial minds, or souls – for example, by Stephen Schwartz (1990), J. P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae (2000), Norman Ford (2002), and Francis J. Beckwith, (2005). The postulation of immaterial minds or souls is, however, open to strong objections, since there is excellent evidence that human psychological powers have their categorical bases in neural structures, rather than in an immaterial substance (Tooley, 2009, 15-19). In addition, the postulation of an immaterial soul, conceived of along Thomistic lines, is on a collision course with biology, since such an immaterial soul is held to govern a human’s life processes and biological development. -/- Thirdly, there is the ‘substantial identity’ argument, advanced for example by Patrick Lee (2004), and which claims that an entity possesses a right to life by virtue of the type of substance it is. This view is exposed to a number of strong objections, however, among them the fact that it leads to the unacceptable consequence that a human that has suffered upper brain death still has a right to life (Tooley, 2009, 51-9). -/- The upshot is that most philosophers do not find any of the preceding three lines of argument for an extreme anti-abortion position promising. The focus, accordingly, has been elsewhere – namely, on arguments claiming that human embryos and fetuses have serious moral status, or a right to life, because they have the potentiality for developing those psychological capacities – for thought, self-consciousness, rationality, and so on – that seem clearly relevant to a being’s moral status. -/- In what follows, then, I shall confine my discussion to what seems to me the most crucial issue bearing upon the moral status of abortion, namely, that between, on the one hand, a potentiality account of moral status, and, on the other, the type of approach most commonly appealed to in support of an extreme permissibility position on abortion, namely, a personhood account of the right to life. -/- One of the earliest defenders of the view that potentialities give something a right to life was Jim Stone in his article, “Why Potentiality Matters,” where Stone argues for the conclusion, “we have a prima facie duty not to deprive them of the conscious goods which it is their nature to realize” (1987, 821). Stone’s discussion, however, attracted much less attention than an article published two years later by Don Marquis, entitled “Why Abortion is Immoral.” The latter is one of the most interesting articles on abortion, as well as one of the most discussed––and deservedly so. In what follows, then, I shall focus upon it. -/- My discussion is organized as follows. In section 2, I summarize Marquis’s account of the wrongness of killing. Then, in section 3, I set out an alternative account, one in which the concept of a neo-Lockean person is central. Sections 4, 5, and 6 are then devoted to criticisms of Marquis’s approach, all of which also support the alternative, rights-based, neo-Lockean personhood account. (shrink)

Goodness -- Goodness properties -- Expressivism -- Betterness relations -- Virtue/kind properties -- Correctness properties (acts) -- Correctness properties (mental states) -- Reasons-for (mental states) -- Reasons-for (acts) -- On some views about "ought" : relativism, dilemmas, means-ends -- On some views about "ought" : belief, outcomes, epistemic ought -- Directives -- Addendum 1: "Red" and "good" -- Addendum 2: Correctness -- Addendum 3: Reasons -- Addendum 4: Reasoning.

I There are a great many ways in which a thing can be good. What counts as a way of being good? I leave it to intuition. Let us allow that being a good dancer is being good in a way, and that so also is being a good carpenter. We might group these and similar ways of being good under the name activity goodness, since a good dancer is good at dancing and a good carpenter is good at carpentry. (...) Everything good at doing something D is good in a way, and for each activity D, being good at D-ing falls into the class of ways of being good which I call activity goodness. Again, let us allow that being a good hammer is being good in a way, and that so also is being a good butter knife. We might group these ways of being good under the name equipment goodness, since a good hammer is good for use in hammering nails and a good butter knife is good for use in buttering bread. Everything good for use in achieving a purpose P is good in a way, and for each purpose P, being good for use in achieving P falls into the class of ways of being good which I call equipment goodness. Again, let us allow that tasting good is being good in a way, and so also are looking good, sounding good, and so on. The class here is aesthetic goodness. Is all goodness goodness-in-a-way? Intuitively, the answer is yes: it seems right to think that everything is good only insofar as it is good in one or more ways. (shrink)

On April 2, 1987, Professor of Philosophy, Judith Jarvis Thomson of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, delivered the Georgetown Law Center’s seventh Annual Philip A. Hart Memorial Lecture: "The Decline of Cause." Judith Jarvis Thomson works in ethics and metaphysics. Her book, The Realm of Rights (Harvard University Press, 1990) is a study of the questions what it is to have a right, and which ones we have. An article entitled "Self-Defense" appeared in Philosophy and Public Affairs (...) (Fall 1991); another entitled "On some ways in which a thing can be good" appeared in Social Philosophy and Policy (Spring 1992). Her work in metaphysics has largely been on the ontology of events, and the identity across time of people and other physical objects. An article entitled "People and their bodies," which takes issue with views expressed by Derek Parfit in Part III of his Reasons and Persons, has recently appeared in a collection of essays (edited by Jonathan Dancy) written on topics dealt with in that book. She is currently working on the question what it is for one event to cause another. (shrink)

But what if in order to save 0nc’s life one has to ki]1 another person? In some cases that is obviously permissible. In a case I will call Villainous Aggrcssor, you are standing in :1 meadow, innocently minding your own business, and 21 truck suddenly heads toward you. You try to sidestep the truck, but it tums as you tum. Now you can sec the driver: he is a mam you know has long hated you. What to do? You cannot (...) outrun thc truck. Fortunately, this is not pure nightmare: you just happen to have em antitank gun with you, and can blow up the truck. Of course, if you do this you will kill thc driver, but that does not matter; it is morally permissible for you to blow up thc truck, driver and 211, in defense of your life. (shrink)

Do moral questions have objective answers? In this great debate, Gilbert Harman explains and argues for relativism, emotivism, and moral scepticism. In his view, moral disagreements are like disagreements about what to pay for a house; there are no correct answers ahead of time, except in relation to one or another moral framework. Independently, Judith Jarvis Thomson examines what she takes to be the case against moral objectivity, and rejects it; she argues that it is possible to find (...) out the correct answers to some moral questions. In her view, some moral disagreements are like disagreements about whether the house has a ghost. Harman and Thomson then reply to each other. This important, lively accessible exchange will be invaluable to all students of moral theory and meta-ethics. (shrink)