The Moral Philosophy Of Moral Knowledge

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Philosophers Moral Expertise: Useful Applications
QUALIFIED moral philosophers do indeed (to a limited extent) possess a level of moral expertise. This applies to any individuals who have devoted exhaustive time to specific subjects; in hopes to solve the problems faced by the world as a whole (the main focus here will be associated with medicine). Especially when compared to individuals who do not concern themselves with the practice of philosophy and therefore, lack such expertise knowledge. The expertise emphasized, leads to basic morals that prompt answers to ethically controversial subjects. Furthermore, through expertise philosophical approaches, acceptance of a wide variety of proposals, pertaining to what is moral and immoral can be attained. Philosophers do have favored moral expertise when attempting to propose resolutions to medical controversies (examples: abortion and human subjects-embryos).
In short, David Archard bases his claim, that moral philosophers should not be moral experts, on common-sense morality. (Archard) For this sole reason, the response to Archard, by John-Stewart Gordon, should be more convincing. To state this reasoning, I will elucidate briefly on what exactly Archard and Gordon claim. Archard believes that moral philosophers should not expect non-philosophers to defer due solely to their putative expertise. (Archard) For this expertise alone, is insufficient to make claims in accordance to morality. Archard provides four claims to better support his stance, of which will not be discussed in detail here. A brief description pulled from Gordon’s essay nicely displayed these claims, “Archard makes against the four proposed arguments in the debate, that is to say the idea of extreme disagreement a...

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...very abortion is prohibited by the principles of justice and non-maleficence. (Finnis pg. 17) Said another way, those who believe in abortion disregard justice and support the doing of evil on to human beings, specifically embryos (I use the word embryo to provide proper diction, but keep in mind, whenever I use this term I am specifying an unborn baby/human being). Said this way, the word abortion is nothing far from the world murder in meaning. Of course, any pro-abortionist would expectantly refute this. An embryo is nothing more than an accumulation of cells to those who support the procedure. There is some truth to this statement, but at the same time, this statement is arbitrary. No matter what is thought of an embryo, an embryo has untapped potential, or rather, the capacity for attaining what is needed to be considered a human being (Finnis put it this way).

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