Talk:Violinist (thought experiment)

With regard to the criticism of the original thought experiment, the following modification to the original scenario is proposed:

(Rather than have them break into your home to hook you up) -

You enjoy going to concerts, however you are aware that once there, there is a chance that you will be hooked up to the famous violinist.


 * A more accurate one would be this:

The Music Lovers Association has set up a system through which you can enter into a raffle to be hooked up to a famous violinist. In order to get people to participate, they provide free entertainment. You enjoy the entertainment, but you sabotage the raffle so that you don't get hooked up. One time, it doesn't work, or you decide to take a chance and not sabotage it. You are painlessly hooked up to the musician, and will stay that way for 9 months. At the end of those 9 months, deattachment surgery could be painful, but you are given the option of anesthesia. You can generally go about your everyday life while hooked up, and early deattachment may cause emotional and physical side affects to you. It will also involve not only deattaching the violinist, but mutilating him. The law assumes that rehabilitation will take 18 years, so you must house and feed him until then, but have the option of giving this responsibility to someone who wants it.

Under this more accurate analogy, you'd have to be both selfish and crazy to want to deattach him.

But that's beside the point. This article is about the original, and these deserve a "Proposed Improvements" section at most. Also, WP has a rule against original research. Junulo

POV Wars
This edit replaces the previous non-neutral material with more non-neutral material advocating the opposing viewpoint. Is this article the obscure place where the morality of abortion is being debated by editors? It shouldn't be.

I propose this article be merged with A_Defense_of_Abortion. Perhaps through the merge process, the POV on both sides can be made neutral, and more succinctly summarized. Comments? Blackworm (talk) 22:59, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Criticism section is misleading
The current Criticism seems dishonest. J.J. Thomson's Defense of Abortion actually goes into great detail with the violinist, and other examples (such as people seeds, the giant baby, the fevered brow, and the brothers fighting over chocolate), to incorporate voluntary hookups to other people (to be analogous to a wanted pregnancy going wrong, an unwanted pregnancy that occurred even with contraceptive use, etc). The criticism section does not give credit where credit is due by making it appear as though this particular violinist example was ALL Thomson had to say on the issue without realizing or acknowledging that most of those faults were addressed in the very same paper a page or two later in slightly altered violinist arguments and other thought problems. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.139.220.200 (talk) 14:24, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That's true that section is misleading and requires a willful ignoring of the rest of the paper (indeed, even the paragraph right after the violinist, wherein she mentions rape specifically). Casey J. Morris (talk) 23:44, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I tagged the criticism section as being unreferenced. It seems to be a synthesis of WP:OR and poorly understood readings of Thomspon. It should probably be deleted altogether, since Foote gets so much prominence. But I leave that to everyone.Bakaprod (talk) 19:53, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Abortion vs. Abortion in case of rape
Bakaprod's point is important. The article mischaracterizes the thought experiment entirely by leaving out the rape condition. This thought experiment applies ONLY to abortion in the case of rape. Depicting it as Thomson's argument in favor of all abortion is an unfair strawman, very unfair to a very careful philosopher. Thompson has a very different thought experiment for abortion in general, involving a hypothetical world in which people are born by attaching to furniture, and homeowners are responsible for preventing this via installing screens. My understanding of these experiments is from a philosophy class at U. Chicago, and I can cite course date and number if necessary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.168.27.221 (talk) 18:16, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Whiterussian1974 states: I STRONGLY disagree. This experiment works ONLY under the condition of forcible rape. The condition of "Music Lovers" burglarizing the person's domicile and forcibly performing the connective surgery is only analagous to Forcible Rape. Also, a mother isn't confined to bed for 9 months during a pregnancy. The first 2 trimesters allow great mobility and freedom. Only the final 3 months provide severe limitations on the person's freedom of action. Further, an abortion isn't performed by simply scratching one's nose (disconnection). A Dilation and Curtellage procedure would entail striking the Violinist's head repeatedly until his skulls was shattered and then sucking his brain from his skull. Another abortion method would include: forcing him into an acid bath until is flesh was dissolved from his bones. It would be more reasonable to say that the person could either choose to gain 20 lbs in order to say the's life, or use one of the murder and torture methods above if saving the life "Inconvenienced" the mother unduly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Whiterussian1974 (talk • contribs) 10:12, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Whiterussian1974, you should not have added this personal commentary into the article, and I have reverted those edits and added a comment on your user discussion page. I would suggest reading "What Wikipedia is not" to clarify why those sorts of additions are inappropriate. --76.115.3.200 (talk) 06:57, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Positive and Negative Rights
The last two paragraphs in the article (as of this writing) do not appear to be appropriate. The first of these paragraphs does not justify or argue for the misapplication, but instead simply states that it is misapplied, repeatedly. When read carefully, it only proves that Foot did not use the terms in the original sense and is therefore a red herring. Until an argument is made to show that positive and negative rights as defined by Foot cannot be given a Negative-Dominant character in this particular, this paragraph should be removed. Moreover, even should that argument be made it is unlikely that this paragraph would even be necessary, however that is not important to the issue of its immediate removal. Finally, the very last paragraph probably should be deleted because it is not necessary but rather a statement of irony. If abortion were illegal then the idea of positive and negative rights would form the "philosophical legal foundation for the defense against governmental intervention to" make abortion legal. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.220.15.253 (talk) 15:06, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Redirect
The A Defense of Abortion article is in much better shape than this one, and addresses the violinist and it's criticisms well - why not just redirect? 192.17.162.48 (talk) 21:41, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I propose a merge. 75.118.170.35 (talk) 19:06, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Most Strongly Oppose: this article is dedicated to a specific, well-known, and highly influential thought experiment, the mechanical structure of its account of events, and its consequences (e.g., its influence on Foot). Any issues related to either "attacking" or "defending" abortion belong somewhere else; and, in fact, the presence of any such debate would significantly mislead readers (due to the fact that this article specifically refers to the thought experiment itself, and the consequences of its creation).Lindsay658 (talk) 02:57, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Support. "Defending" abortion is the entire point of the thought experiment; the only way you could leave out "any issues related" to that would be to blank the article. It's only important because of its prominence in the Thompson paper, and that has its own article. This one is redundant. 99.16.199.122 (talk) 06:47, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Neutrality?
"You would be very generous to remain attached and in bed for nine months, but you are not morally obliged to do so."

This does not seem like a very neutral or objective statement. Whatever about abortion, if this happened in real life, am i the only one who would see it as immoral to detatch myself?
 * That seems like a quote. 75.118.170.35 (talk) 19:08, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, this is clearly not neutral, and is just making assumptions - should we remove it? Actually, having re-read the article, the line is a quote, which would mean that someone would have to re-write the whole section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.164.131.249 (talk) 17:17, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * As you point out yourself, it's a quote, and a highly relevant one at that. It does not detract from the neutrality of the article; nobody in their right mind should expect Thompson to be neutral here. 99.16.199.122 (talk) 06:45, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

A Defense of Abortion
As far as I can tell, this article and A Defense of Abortion have the exact same subject matter. Why do we have them as two different articles? 68.222.103.70 (talk) 14:59, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Support - but see REDIRECT discussion above (from 2009). The content is identical, but the connotation of the two titles are very different; that title implies a wider review than the title of this article does. If that is understood, would hope for concensus to merge under this (less ambiguous) title: Violinist (thought experiment)
 * Wragge (talk) 15:15, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Rebuttal to Foot's Argument
Removed section "Rebuttal to Foot's Argument"; none of the arguments were cited, the paragraphs contained no "citation needed" quotations, and history seemed to indicate that it was the original work of Wikipedia editors. Jemfinch (talk) 06:00, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

I am wondering if the Foot objection could use its own page; the article as it stands has more content about Foot's objection than the thought experiment. It is a good summary, so I am thinking that the Foot article could branch off on its own and that the section might be replaced with referrals to other objections to the violinist analogy--I know in the Defense of Abortion article there are many arguments cited as to whether the analogy is apt or not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.255.195.165 (talk) 02:08, 25 October 2011 (UTC)