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Please return the enclosed form with your check as soon as possible and do you part to keep ILN solvent In this issue The exchange between Professors Fogelin and Schwartz not only marks the first appearance of these two contri- butors (to both of whom: Welcome!) but also deals with an important issue in logical criticism: the question of logical neutrality. We think you'll find the exchange illuminating. We also wish to welcome for the first time Professors Hoagland and Roblin, and to thank Trudy Govier for her continuing support! We also wish to thank Ms. Kate Parr for her able handling of the "Textbook Contents" section of this number. Writing up those reports is a somewhat tedious task, but we're convinced that it represents a useful service for our readers, many of whom must select texts and need an idea of what is covered in them. Note, finally, that this number includes the Examples Supplement for Volume IV .• 2 articles Charitable Reconstruction and Logical Neutrality Robert Fogelin Dartmouth College A number of years ago, at a colloquium held at Carnegie- Mellon University on the teaching of logic, Thomas Schwartz offered an analysis of one aspect of the anti- abortion argume~t that struck me as both fascinating and w~o~g .. At the time I lack~d the wit to articulate my ~ISgl':lngS, but now that t~IS analysis has found its way Into hiS text, ~he Art of Logical Reasoning [11, I have had the opportunity to examine it in detail and I think that I now know what I should have said then. I'm sure that ~c~wartz will have something to say in reply to my cri- tiCisms, and an exchange on these matters may be of interest to readers of this newsletter. In the discussion that interests me, Schwartz asks whether it is possible to produce an adequate recon- struction connecting the following premise and conclusion: (P1) Normally a human fetus has the status S [that of a living creature, a full-fledged human being. a person, a possessor of the right to life, or whatnot). (C) Normally it is wrong to abort a human fetus. (p. 232) (To his credit, Schwartz acknowledges the solecism in- volved in speaking of aborting a fetus rather than a pregnancy. I n the same way, missions are aborted, not space rockets.) In the present discussion the status Sis notatissue and this explains Schwartz's casual specification of it. Nor is ~nything made of the occurrence of the word "normally" In both the premise and the conclusion. Schwartz's point and it is remarkable if true, is that this argument can b~ shown to fail without attacking either the specification of the state S or the reference to normality. Schwartz begins his analysis in a way that has now beco.":le standard in elementary informal logic texts: he s~eClfles formally a~equat~ premises which, together With the stated premise, validly establish the conclusion. He suggests the two following suppressed premises: (P2) It is wrong deliberately to bring about the death of anything that has status 5. (P3) Deliberately to abort a fetus, normally, is deliberately to bring about its death. (p. 233) Given these two suppressed premises, the argument is, of course, valid in form, but the argument still lacks force because (P2) is subject to standard criticisms. Without going into any of this in detail, such criticisms force a modification of (P2) to (P2'): (P2') It is wrong deliberately to bring about the death of anything that has the status 5, is innocent, is non- threatening. and whose future life (if not terminated) is likely to be worthwhile for itself. (p. 233) These qualifications to (P2) force us to add a further suppressed premise (P4) that will bring the human fetus under the qualifications in (P2'). Thus the entire argument, so far reconstructed, looks like,this: (Pl) Normally, a human fetus has the status 5. (P2') It is wrong deliberately to bring about the death of anything that has the status 5, is innocent, is non- threatening. and whose future life (if not terminated) is likely to be worthwhile for itself. (P3) Deliberately to abort a fetus, normally, is deliberately to bring about its death. (P4) Normally, a humaA fetus is innocent and non- threatening and has a future life that (if not ter- minated) is likely to be worthwhile for itself. (C) Normally, it is wrong deliberately to abort a human fetus. (pp. 233-34) (Actually, a misprint slips into the text at this point, for it reads: "(C) Normally a human fetus is innocent and non- threatening," an accidental repetition of the first line in the text of (P4).) So far so good, but the argument takes a curious turn when Schwartz offers Judy Thomson's strapped-on violin player as counter-example to (P2'). (I ncidentally, he mistakenly refers to (P2) where he means (P2').) (P2) runs afoul of the following counter-example, which we owe the philosopher) udith Thomson": A society of music lovers kidnaps you in the night, drugs you unconscious, and spirits you to a hospital, where you awake the next day strapped to a bed and attached by catheters to a distinguished violinist, afflicted with kidney failure, who will die forthwith unless he can use your kidneys. The hospital administrator apologizes for your situation, in which he had no hand, and assures you the music lovers will be punished. But he cannot release you, he says, because that would bring about the violinist's death, and the violinist is a full-fledged living human person with a right to life (in my jargon, he has the status 5), and he is innocent and nonthreatening and is certain to have a worthwhile future life if you stay put But you will be confortable, the administrator promises, and the situation will be terminated as soon as the violinist's kidneys recover-in about nine months. Although it would be decent of you to stay and save the violinist's life, it seems you have every right to leave, to unplug yourself from the violinist, thereby deliberately (if somewhat regretfully) bringing about his death. We avoid this counter-example to (P2'), while pre- serving validity by restricting (P2') to human fetuses: 3 (P2") it is wrong deliberately to bring about the death of any human fetus that has the status 5, is innocent, is nonthreatening, and whose future life (if not ter- minated) is likely to be worthwhile for itself. But (P2") fails the test of Sufficient Generality. Among creatures that have the status 5 and are innocent, etc., there is no evident relevant difference between human fetuses (if, indeed, human fetuses belong to this class) and nonfetuses- no difference that would explain why it is-wrong to bring about the death of human fetuses but not, s.ay, adult humans; if anything, it is the other way around. To sum up: One cannot argue from (P1) to (C). The neces- s.ary linking premises are unacceptable. Even granting that human fetuses are full-fledged living human pers.ons with the right to life (or whatever), it does not follow that it normally is wrong to abort them. (p. 234) ·'A Defense of Abortion," Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1971). This article has become a clas.sic. Two features of this analysis should arouse our suspicions. First it ends with a logical haymaker-the invocation of the Test of Sufficient Generality-that seems somehow too quick and easy given the complexity of the issues. Second, Schwartz derives a very strong negative conclusion from his argument, i.e., that one cannot argue from (P1) to (C) since the necessary linking premises are unacceptable. later on he puts his claim this way. " ... opponents of abortion cannot show that abortion is immoral by showing that fetuses have the status S-that they are living or human or persons or possessors of the right to life or whatever." (p. 238) To see what goes wrong in Schwartz's treatment of this argument, we can first notice that, toward the end, the standard pattern of reconstruction is dropped for no apparent reason. The Thomson counter-example represents a challenge to (P2) even as modified to (P2'). The standard procedure is to extract the underlying principle of the counter-example and then add it as a further qualification to the threatened principle, in this case (P2'). This, of course, disrupts the validity of the argument, so a further validity-restoring premise is needed. (Alternatively, the conclusion can be weakened. The occurrence of the word "normally" in the conclusion of Schwartz's argument makes it somewhat, though not perfectly, elastic.) Just as modifying (P2) to (P2') called forth the additional premise (P4), a modification of (P2') to (P2") will be backed by an additional premise (PS). The question, of course, is whether these manoeuvres can be carrid out successfully. It is not part of my present purposes to enter into this substantive issue-and in a moment I shall argue that it is of crucial importance to distinguish substantive from logical issues-but it is at least generally clear how a defender of this anti-abortion argument might proceed. The basic feature anti-abortion argument might proceed. The basic feature of the Thompson counter-example is that a person is forcefully and doing, makes her responsible for maintaining another person's life. A parallel case with fetuses would arise if a group of mobsters, seeking to increase their progeny without overly inconveniencing their gun-molls, forcefully implanted fertilized eggs in the wombs of unwilling other women. (Pregnancy caused by rape is not altogether remote from this fanciful case.) To simplify, and to withdraw from the substantive debate, let us say that a fetus who (that) is sustained under the circumstances Thomson has described has the Thomson trait. We now alter (P2") to include a reference to the non-possession of the Thomson trait. We then add a new premise (PS) that says, in fact truly, for a charitable reconstruction. My second charge is systematically more important By casting his discussion in terms of connecting links between premises and a conclusion, it may seem that the issues are all purely logical. As he knows, some of them are and some of them are not. The decision whether to accept or reject a counter-example, e.g., Thomson's, is extra-logical. More to the point, decisions concerning what comparisons are relevant or what cases are to be considered like cases are also extra-logical. Sidgwick's Principle of Justice and its descendant, Schwartz's Sufficient Generality Test, are impotent unless backed by substantive principles that specify their domain of application. When they seem to generate substantive conclusions, we can be sure that other principles are at work, and we have a right to know what they are. When these substantive principles are simply slipped past us in the guise of a canon of logical criticism, we can say that the prinCiple of Logical Neutrality has been violated. Notes [1] New York, Random House, , 980. All page citations are in the text. • Logic and Substance A Reply to Fogelin Thomas Schwartz University of Texas, Austin Fogelin errs less in disagreeing with me than in sup- posing that we disagree. What he attacks is not so much my reconstruction of the abortion argument as the as- sumption that such reconstructions are, like Cartesian first principles, not open to revision, even in principle. What he attacks is not so much my criticism of the abortion argument as the assumption that such criticisms are, like those found in mechanical formal-logic texts, purely logical rather than substantive. Far from having affirmed either assumption, I expressly denied both. Who has been uncharitable? When he is not attacking straw Schwartzes, Fogelin nicely illuminates two issues fundamental to informal logic: First, to what extent can one separate logical criticism of arguments from substantive criticism? Second, to what extent can one separate the criticism of argu- ments from their reconstruction? 5 1 Fogelin suggests that the following modification of (P2') might block Judith Thomson's violinist counter- example: It is wrong deliberately to terminate the life of anything that lacks the Thompson trait but has the status S, is innocent, is nonthreatening, and whose future life (if not terminated) is likely to be worthwhile for itself. To preserve validity, we must add this premise: Normally, a human fetus lacks the Thompson trait The Thompson trait, says Fogelin, is the "basic feature of the Thompson counter-example," which "is that a person is forcefully [forcibly?] and against her will placed in a position which, through none of her own doing, makes her responsible for maintaining another person's life." This maneuver accomplishes nothing. Force is not essential tothe violinist counter-example, so the italicized qualification in Fogelin's modification of (P2') does not block that counter-example. To see why, let us alter the example by supposing that you allowed yourself to be connected to the violinist, although without agreeing to remain connected, and that your disconnecting yourself would not make the violinist worse off in any way than he would have been had you not been connected to him if the first place: he would incur no additional pain, op- portunity costs, or any such thing. Surely, then, you are not obligated to remain connected. You began an act of pure charity whose discontinuance would merely and cost- lessly reinstate the status quo ante, for which (we may suppose) you had no responsibility. 2 Fogelin says I did not "extract the underlying principle of the counter-example and add it as a further qualifica- tion to ... (P2')." But in the first place, I did extract the "underlying principle" (Art of Logical Reasoning, pp. 239-40). In the counter-example, I said, two persons, Wand F, are related as follows: (j) F is temporarily using Ws body to support F's life. (ii) W had no obligation to let F begin using W's body to suport F's life .. (iii) If W stops letting Fuse W's body to support Fs life (thereby bringing about F's death), that will not make F any worse off than F would have been had F never begun using W's body to support F's life. If the violinist example is morally analogous to normal abortion situations, then (j)-(jii) exhaust the essential features of that example, and the" underlying principle" is this: (UP,) Normally, when (iHiii) hold, W has the right to terminate W's support of Fs life. If the violinist example is not morally analogous to normal abortion situations, then there is a fourth essential feature: (iv) It is not the case that Wand F are a pregnant woman and her fetus. and the" underlying principle" is rather the following: (UP2) Normally, if (iHiv) hold, then W has the right to terminate W's support of F's life.