The irreducibility of the personal perspective in ethics. A reply to Baccarini

Abstract

Elvio Baccarini has responded generously to my book Medical Ethics: Ordinary Concepts, Ordinary Lives (2008), but I would like to respond to three of his criticisms: first, about the role that theory ought to play in, and in relation to, moral experience; second, about my defence of a doctor’s right to conscientiously object to performing legal abortions; and third, to the reality of posthumous harm. Baccarini claims that I have overstated my claims, and drawn illegitimate metaphysical conclusions from people’s ordinary language. However, I argue that moral language is special precisely because of the way it expresses an irreducible personal perspective.