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Embryo Therapy: The Philosopher’s Role in Ethical Debate

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Ethics in Reproductive Medicine

Abstract

In the 1950s moral philosophy was generally supposed to have nothing whatever to contribute to actual moral or ethical debate. The task of philosophy was held to be the analysis of the language of morals, such words as “good”, “duty”, “ought” and “right” (or I suppose their opposites, though these did not get much of an innings). It was thought to be enough for philosophers to explain that such words were hidden imperatives, or were the expressions of feelings, so that people who used the words might know what they were doing in using them. For a philosopher to claim to know what to apply the words to, how to distinguish as ordinary people had to between what actually was right and wrong would have been intrusive. He had no more authority to do such a thing than a mathematician or indeed a bank-manager.

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© 1992 Springer-Verlag London Limited

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Warnock, M. (1992). Embryo Therapy: The Philosopher’s Role in Ethical Debate. In: Bromham, D.R., Dalton, M.E., Jackson, J.C., Millican, P.J.R. (eds) Ethics in Reproductive Medicine. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-1895-4_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-1895-4_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-1897-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-1895-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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