Here's a plausible alternative to the impairment principle:
(The harm principle): it's impermissible to cause a conscious person to have a significantly worse life than they otherwise would have, but permissible to prevent or refrain from bringing a conscious person into existence.
The harm principle explains why (2) is false. Permanent zombification prevents a conscious person from existing. Nobody is harmed by this. 40-year zombification deprives a person of the first 40 years of their life. That harms them.
FAP is wrong since it’s affecting a conscious being (albeit in the future), abortion is wrong to the extent a conscious being is killed.
If the non conscious fetus becomes a zombie, then no conscious being is affected and the grown fetus is outside of our moral universe. No moral wrong can be committed. Yet if the fetus is conscious when zombified, only then is a wrong committed.
Here's a plausible alternative to the impairment principle:
(The harm principle): it's impermissible to cause a conscious person to have a significantly worse life than they otherwise would have, but permissible to prevent or refrain from bringing a conscious person into existence.
The harm principle explains why (2) is false. Permanent zombification prevents a conscious person from existing. Nobody is harmed by this. 40-year zombification deprives a person of the first 40 years of their life. That harms them.
Good argument.
FAP is wrong since it’s affecting a conscious being (albeit in the future), abortion is wrong to the extent a conscious being is killed.
If the non conscious fetus becomes a zombie, then no conscious being is affected and the grown fetus is outside of our moral universe. No moral wrong can be committed. Yet if the fetus is conscious when zombified, only then is a wrong committed.