The Engaged Thomist

The academic, philosophical level of the abortion debate is often unknown or inaccessible to the general public. Despite this, many pro-choice advocates would be happy to know that the vast majority of applied ethicists and philosophers in general believe that abortion, at least in the first-trimester, is morally permissible (see here: https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/4974?aos=26 and https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/4974 ). However, a fact that these same advocates would not be so thrilled about is the fact that most of these same philosophers and ethicists also think that infanticide is morally permissible for the same reasons that abortion is morally permissible (see here: https://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/files/infanticide2pdf ). This fact is borne out most famously by pro-choice philosopher Michael Tooley (see here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2264919 ). The primary basis for this conclusion is the fact that there are “no intrinsic differences betwee...

When I was in sixth grade, my close friend from Wisconsin introduced me to football. He had been a Packer fan his whole life and I had never been exposed to the sport before. He began by showing me highlights from Aaron Rogers 2014 MVP season (see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Av0hCIi0us ). I remember being amazed at the beauty of the plays and this experience was what initiated my obsession with football. I watched football very regularly from the seventh grade up and through high and I even tried to play football in high school. I say tried because while I was on the team, I was concussed early on and had to stop playing as a result. However, in eleventh grade, as I was becoming more committed to my faith, I reconsidered whether I should watch football and I concluded that I shouldn’t. My motivation for this decision was that it seemed that violence was an intrinsic aspect of the sport and so rendered the sport intrinsically disordered. This idea was also supported by new re...

My brother had an interesting argument against utilitarianism that I would like to share. It focuses on the fact that utilitarianism requires there to be some kind of calculus by which one can determine what will bring about the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. In this calculus, happiness is typically defined in terms of pleasure. Here lies the problem. Pleasure is a feeling or sensation that subjects can experience and so is a type of qualia. However, qualia cannot be quantified, by definition, otherwise they simply would not be qulia. This poses a significant threat to utilitarianism as many of its forms require that pleasure be quantifiable, but it simply cannot be. If successful, this argument should motivate most philosophers to abandon utilitarianism since reductive theories of mind are quite unpopular among contemporary philosophers and even more so among philosophers of mind. (see here: https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/5010 , https...