Violinist (thought Experiment) - Response

Response

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy posits that Thomson's thought experiment "is aimed at a popular anti-abortion argument that goes something like this: The fetus is an innocent person with a right to life. Abortion results in the death of a fetus. Therefore, abortion is morally wrong." It concludes that

The thought experiment is effective in distinguishing two concepts that had previously been run together: "right to life" and "right to what is needed to sustain life." The fetus and the violinist may each have the former, but it is not evident that either has the latter. The upshot is that even if the fetus has a right to life (which Thomson does not believe but allows for the sake of the argument), it may still be morally permissible to abort.

In Philippa Foot's "Killing and Letting Die", Thomson’s thought experiment is criticized. Foot attempts to discredit the suggested mirror-situation between the violinist and abortion by applying the concepts of negative and positive rights.

First, Foot posits a moral difference between killing and letting die:

…There are rights to noninterference, which form one class of rights; and there are also rights to goods or services, which are different. And corresponding to these two types of rights are, on the one hand, the duty not to interfere, called a 'negative duty', and on the other the duty to provide the goods or services, called a 'positive duty'.

The rights to noninterference constitute "negative rights" and the rights to goods or services constitute "positive rights".

Foot claims that "Typically, it takes more to justify an interference than to justify the withholding of goods or services…". In other words, ceteris paribus, a negative right holds greater moral weight than a positive right, and so it is harder to morally justify overriding a negative right than a positive right. Foot builds on this by specifying, "So if, in any circumstances, the right to noninterference is the only right that exists, or if it is the only right special circumstances have not overridden, then it may not be permissible to initiate a fatal sequence, but it may be permissible to withhold aid". Foot classifies initiating a fatal sequence as a morally objectionable act, while legitimizing the morality of not aiding.