In page after page (roughly 189-200) Marquis engages in lengthy semantics that appears to mimic the kinds of arguments and questions that were launched in Plato's "The Republic," which of course was Socrates' style of questioning the validity of every conceivable argument and assertion. For example, Marquis uses esoteric language to flush out the wrongness of killing, per se:

"Since we do believe that it is wrong to kill defenseless little babies, it is important that a theory of the wrongness of killing easily account for this.

Personhood theories of the wrongness of killing, on the other hand, cannot straightforwardly account for the wrongness of killing infants and young children. Hence, such theories must add special ad hoc accounts of the wrongness of killing the young. The plausibility of such ad hoc theories seems to be a function of how desperately one wants such theories to work" (192).

Meanwhile, Marquis...
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