Dead Wrong: The Ethics of Posthumous Harm

Description

It is possible for an act to wrongfully harm a person, even if the act takes place after the person is dead. David Boonin defends this view in Dead Wrong and explains the puzzle of posthumous harm. In doing so, he makes three central claims. First, that it is possible for an act to wrongfully harm a person while they are alive even if the act has no effect on that person's conscious experiences. Second, that if this is so, then frustrating a person's desires is one way to wrongfully harm a person. And third, that it is possible for an act to wrongfully harm a person even if the act takes place after the person is dead. Over the course of the book, Boonin introduces the significance of posthumous harm, deals with each of his three main claims in turn, responds to the objections that might be raised against the book's thesis, and examines some of the ethical implications for issues such as posthumous organ and gamete removal, posthumous publication of private documents, damage to graves and corpses, and posthumous punishment and restitution. Cover Dead Wrong: The Ethics of Posthumous Harm Copyright Dedication Preface Contents 1: Introduction 1.0 The Thesis of This Book 1.1 Why the Thesis Matters 1.2 Two Strategies for Defending the Thesis 1.3 The Posthumous Harm Argument 2: Unfelt Harm 2.0 Overview 2.1 The Case for Unfelt Harm 2.2 The Conflicting Perspectives Objection 2.3 The Risk Objection 2.4 The Status Quo Bias Objection 2.5 The Other Values Objection 2.6 The Useful Fiction Objection 2.7 The Equivocation Objection 3: From Unfelt Harm to Frustrated Desire 3.0 Overview 3.1 The Case for the Desire Satisfaction Principle 3.2 The Alternative Explanation Objection 3.3 The Extremeness Objection 3.4 The Changing Desires Objection 3.5 The Repaired Harm Objection 3.6 The Irrelevant Desires Objection 4: From Frustrated Desire to Posthumous Harm 4.0 Overview 4.1 The Case for Posthumous Harm 4.2 The No Subject Objection 4.3 The Backward Causation Objection 4.3.1 The Tenseless View and Future Realism 4.3.2 The Tenseless View and Future Non-Realism 4.3.3 The Tensed View and Future Realism 4.3.4 The Tensed View and Future Non-Realism 4.4 The Responsibility in Advance Objection 4.5 The Temporal Change Objection 4.6 The Causal Change Objection 4.7 The Epistemological Objection 4.8 The Timing Objection 4.9 The Determinism Objection 5: From Posthumous Harm to Posthumous Wrongs 5.0 Overview 5.1 The Posthumous Benefit Objection 5.2 The Antepartum Harm Objection 5.3 The Morally Irrelevant Harm Objection 5.4 The Practically Irrelevant Harm Objection 5.5 Implications 5.5.1 Harvesting Organs 5.5.2 Using Gametes 5.5.3 Posthumous Publication 5.5.4 Treatment of Corpses and Graves 5.5.5 Punishing the Dead 5.5.6 Benefiting the Dead 5.6 Concluding Remarks Works Cited Index