Off-campus UNL users: To download campus access dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your NU ID and password. When you are done browsing please remember to return to this page and log out.
Non-UNL users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this dissertation through interlibrary loan.
THE MORAL AUTHORITY OF A NATURAL RIGHT TO LIFE
Abstract
There is a shared conviction that human beings have a right to life. This dissertation shows (i)how the shared moral conviction that all human beings have a natural right to life may be analyzed according to two fundamentally distinct ways of viewing the role of moral judgments and intuitions in forming a social, moral theory; and (ii)that a great deal of confusion results about this right, i.e., about the strength of this right, who has it, and under what circumstances it is the fundamental justification for action (or inaction) some think it is, if the two underlying modes are not carefully distinguished. Illustrative examples showing this confusion are drawn from the conflict situations involving abortion. According to one view, which falls into the tradition of objectivism in ethics associated with rational intuitionism, morality is part of the nature of things; it is an authoritative order external to human thinking, purposes, or society. Moral intuitions are held to represent the apprehension of objective moral properties. On an alternative view, morality is a human creation, a device; it has no objective reality in the traditional sense and is grounded in individual human needs and ends. At the root of the view is an appreciation of the social role of morality and a commitment to a conception of the person suitable for constructing moral principles. The justification for the authority of a constructivist view has much to do with the notions of 'coherence' and 'considered judgments' as the result of 'reflective equilibrium'. Chapters I and II critically evaluate some ways of "connecting" humanness and natural rights which depend on the traditional view of moral objectivity. Chapters III and IV distinguish an alternative--namely, constructivism, according to which moral principles are 'reasonable' rather than 'true'. Judgments about natural rights affirm equal freedom and autonomy as fundamental elements of the conception of the person. The final chapter highlights some conclusions to be drawn with respect to issues in abortion dealing with rights conflicts. On the constructivist kind of view, the fetus is regarded as a different kind of thing (neither equal nor unequal) from the mother.
Subject Area
Philosophy
Recommended Citation
ATKINS, GAIL MOATS, "THE MORAL AUTHORITY OF A NATURAL RIGHT TO LIFE" (1981). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8118151.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8118151