Thomson's Views On Abortion

. In Thomson’s violinist example, you wake up and your body is hooked up to a famous violinist. You were knocked out and kidnapped the night before. The violinist you are now hooked up to has a fatal kidney disease and you are being used to keep him alive. You alone have the right blood type to keep him alive, and to do so you need to stay hooked up for nine months. In these nine months, you are bedridden and will constantly be attached to this man. This example is used to paint the picture of a raped woman and raises the question of whether or not she should have to keep the child. Thomson argues that while it would be a “great kindness”, you do not have to accede to it. Thomson argues that abortion is moral because you do not hold a “special
Thomas Nagel describes what he says to be only one important aspect of the evaluation of sex—sexual perversions. Thomas Nagel’s definition of sexual perversion says that it is a perversion if it is an unnatural sexual desire. A natural sexual interaction requires that both people are aware of themselves and the other person as parts of the mutual experience. To not be a sexual perversion, one must sense the other person and the other person must sense you. The two must be aware of each other and interact with each other. Four conditions must be met for a sexual act to not be considered a sexual perversion; you must sense the other, the other must sense you, you must sense the other sensing you, and the other must sense you sensing them. Because of Thomas Nagel’s definition of natural and unnatural, we can infer that watching pornography would be a sexual perversion. The two participants (watcher and entertainer) do not see each other and are not aware of one another’s desire. The watcher must sense the entertainer, and while the watcher sees the entertainer, Thomas Nagel defines sensing the other person as not merely noticing them (as in the case of watching porn). The entertainer does not sense the watcher at all because the entertainer was pre recorded. So, the watcher would not be able to sense the entertainer’s sensing of himself or herself because the entertainer is not capable of such. Finally, the entertainer would not be able to sense the watcher sensing them. I
There are many ways to interpret this. I believe to accurately pick an interpretation, one should examine two ways; one where the statement is inconsistent but can be made to sound consistent, and one where the claim is inconsistent and the person is confused and is contradicting themselves. I feel it is easy to see inconsistency in the two statements for both examinations. In the first analysis, this person could mean that their initial rage and anger would cause them to act out and kill the murderer, but on a normal basis (with time to think about the circumstance, and the victim may or may not being a loved one) they would be against the death penalty. I believe this interpretation can create some consistency between the claims and what the person is truly trying to say. This person could be saying that because it is a loved one, they would react differently than they would to a murderer that they have no connections to. It could be said that they are only speaking of their initial reaction, but in normal cases, they would be against the death of a murderer. Here we have inconsistency, but we can see where and how the person comes about their conclusion. In the second examination, this person can also be said to be confused because of the contradicting statements. The difference is that the person is struggling to see the similarity in that in both cases, the murderer is dying. The person is arguing here that they would rather murder the murderer than let the