<研究論文(原著論文)>なぜ胎児の死は悪くないのか: 時間相対的利益説と部分的福利主体説

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of why death in the earliest stages of life, such as the death of an embryo or fetus, is not bad. One of the prominent accounts of the badness of death is the Deprivation Account, which holds that death is bad for those who die because it deprives them of the good life they would have had if they had not died. However, this account has been criticized for its counterintuitive implication that death in the earliest stages of life is the worst death. Instead, Jeff McMahan has defended the Time-Relative Interest Account which could explain the intuition that death in the earliest stages of life is not so bad. Against this account, Ben Bradley has proposed the Partial Welfare Subject View, which purports to explain this intuition better. In this paper, with a close examination, I seek to answer the question of which of these two views is more plausible. My conclusion is that, contrary to Bradley's claim, the Time-Relative Interest Account is more plausible. This paper is divided into seven sections. The first section illustrates the Deprivation Account and its problem. The second and third sections are devoted to explaining the Time-Relative Interest Account and the Partial Welfare Subject View. The following three sections evaluate these two views from three different perspectives: the case for the central claim, extensional adequacy, and prudential importance. First, the fourth section points out that Bradley has not provided a sufficient case for the central claim of his view. The fifth section then attempts to address an objection to the Time-Relative Interest Account concerning a desideratum called extensional adequacy. Subsequently, the sixth section criticizes the Partial Welfare Subject View for failing to satisfy another desideratum called prudential importance. Finally, the seventh section concludes.