Abstract
Logico-empiricist philosophy of biology is a case of wrongful life. After conceiving philosophy of biology logical empiricism did almost everything to prevent it from becoming a healthy subdiscipline of the philosophy of science. Right from its birth logico-empiricist philosophy of biology was a defective child and it has remained so until the late sixties when antipositivistic tort-for-wrongful-life thinking together with other developments set a new philosophical stage for biology.
If one decides not to abort a fetus, if one decides not to kill it, one must take care not to injure the future person it may become. [...] This moral obligation to refrain from actions that will injure the fetus likely in the future to become a person has been explored in the law under the rubric of tort for wrongful life (Engelhardt (1986), p. 220)
Previous versions of this paper were read in spring 1996 at a workshop on “German American Interaction in Scientific Philosophy in the post-1933 Period” at the University of Pittsburgh, and, in February 1997, at the Indiana University at Bloomington. I am grateful for conversations and suggestions from these audiences. My special thanks go to Wes and particularly to Merrilee Salmon for many helpful comments and for suggestions that could not be realized yet in this paper. In addition to that Merrilee helped to bring the paper somewhat away from the “German-English” (cf. p. 201) of the original version.
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Wolters, G. (1999). Wrongful Life: Logico-Empiricist Philosophy of Biology. In: Galavotti, M.C., Pagnini, A. (eds) Experience, Reality, and Scientific Explanation. The Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 61. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9191-1_9
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