In her important and well-known discussion “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion,” Mary Anne Warren regrets that “it is not possible to produce a satisfactory defense of a woman’s right to obtain an abortion without showing that the fetus is not a human being, in the morally relevant sense.” Unlike some more cautious philosophers, Warren thinks that we can definitively demonstrate that the fetus is not a person. In this paper, Warren’s argument is critically examined with a focus especially on the question of the foundation and the boundaries of the moral community. The fundamental thesis of the paper is that Warren’s approach is flawed for at least four reasons: (1) that being a person is not as obviously central to having full moral rights as Warren assumes, (2) that her exclusivism regarding moral status has dubious moral consequences independent of the abortion issue, (3) that it is not clear that a fetus is not a person, even on Warren’s own criteria, and (4) her criteria for personhood are themselves suspect.

The current advances in our exploration of Mars have made us think of the human species as a multiplanetary species. However, we have certain challenges before we can truly consider ourselves such a species, especially moral ones. Therefore, astrobioethics would be the right one to examine what it takes to consider ourselves a multiplanetary species. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the meaning and significance of being an inter- and multiplanetary species. To achieve this, a philosophical and critical analysis will be made, using as input aspects of biology, ethics and moral community. We conclude that to be a truly multiplanetary species, more than the technological aspects that allow us to reach other planets, a change at different levels will be needed.

Severe head injury or brain injury presents clinical neuroscientists with a unique challenge. Based on an objective assessment of cognitive and neurological function, it is sometimes hard to recognize our patients as members of our moral community (actually or potentially) but we treat them as if that were is the case, and, therefore, as if they need rescuing. Thus their existences as enigmata—beings who may or may not reveal themselves to us through social and personal function realized in conversations and relationships—are in doubt. However, the objective mode of assessing individuals and their mental functions needs to be bracketed here, as we reconnect with them and offer them our help in the restorative journey that they need to take. The journey has many tortuous paths comprising it, not the least of which is the existential question of whether the damaged human being with whom we are engaged actually can be restored to a meaningful life. A negative answer to that question can bring the whole process to an abrupt end. Neuroscience cannot answer some of these questions, as they are ethical. Is this a life worth living and are our commitments going to go the distance that must be traversed here. Therefore, this is an area where ethics take priority over neuroscience, and it is on our ethical response that everything else hinges. Understanding the light this throws on the nature of a human being takes us to the heart of the value of every human being and the nexus of mutuality that is the moral community.

Kant’s most canonical argument against suicide, the universal law argument, is widely dismissed. This paper attempts to save it, showing that a suicide maxim, universalized, undermines all bases for practical law, resisting both the non-negotiable value of free rational willing and the ordinary array of sensuous commitments that inform prudential incentives. Suicide therefore undermines moral law-governed community as a whole, threatening ‘savage disorder’. In pursuing this argument, I propose a non-teleological and non-theoretical nature – a ‘practical nature’ or moral law governed whole – the realization of which morality demands.