by: F.R. Duplantier
For most bioethicists, basic human rights are not inalienable, but must be earned by criteria they have created.
Unbeknownst to most Americans, a small but influential group of philosophers and health care policy makers are working energetically to transform our nation's medical practice and health care laws, reports author Wesley Smith in his new book, Culture of Death. They are turning away from the 'do no harm' model established by Hippocrates more than two thousand years ago, and toward a stark utilitarian system that would legitimize medical discrimination against -- and even, in some cases, the killing of -- the weakest and most defenseless people among us.
Smith attributes this new utilitarian approach to medicine in part to he culture of the times, in which objective truths are passé and the very concept of right and wrong is under assault. But the problem involves more than societal drift or some slow-motion cultural evolution. The challenges to medical ethics, he asserts, are purposefully promoted by a cadre of 'experts': moral philosophers, academics, lawyers, physicians, and other members of an emerging medical intelligentsia, known generally as 'bioethicists.'
Smith charges that the leaders of the bioethics movement generally reject what until now has been the core value of Western civilization: that all human beings possess equal moral worth. That denial leads bioethicists -- and, through them, us -- into very dark and dangerous places, he warns. Our culture is fast devolving into one in which killing is beneficent, suicide is rational, natural death is undignified, and caring properly and compassionately for people who are elderly, prematurely born, disabled, despairing, or dying is a burden that wastes emotional and financial resources.
Leading bioethicists see
othing special per se in being human, Smith observes. Individuals with sufficient cognitive qualifications to achieve membership in the moral community are often called 'persons,' who have moral rights. Those who fail this test, Smith remarks, are denigrated as nonpersons, who have little or no moral worth.
Smith emphasizes that he mainstream bioethics movement embraces dehumanizing ideas and health policies such as the following: intentional dehydration of cognitively disabled people as a matter of medical routine, Futile Care Theory protocols empowering physicians to refuse wanted end-of-life medical treatment; medical neglect based on age or state of health and disability, promoted in the name of an alleged need for health care rationing; euthanasia and assisted suicide redefined from crimes into 'medical treatment'; the elevation of some animals above some people in moral worth; attempts to redefine death to allow living human beings to be exploited as organ sources; using incapacitated people as subjects in nontherapeutic medical experimentation in violation of the Nuremberg Code; people stripped of their human right to life because they fail to 'earn' the status of personhood.
Smith argues that mainstream bioethics is moving us by policy creep toward an ethical abyss. He calls for heightened media scrutiny and public awareness of what bioethics is, what it generally stands for, why it is important, and the societal and individual consequences that will befall us if [this] 'new medicine' represents our future.
http://politickles.com/behindtheheadlines/2001/apr01/01-0422b.html
Never send a Utilitarian to do a Kantian's job. Not only is utilitarianism obviously flawed as a meta-ethical view, it leads to absurd results when driving public policy. The very notion of a 'right' is incompatible with utilitarianism, and hence the rights of persons aren't able to be accomodated within the utilitarian framework. Moral judgements ought not be made according to a cost-benefit analysis. Utilitarianism, however, takes cost-benefit analysis to be the only justifiable sort of moral deliberation.
Originally posted by bbarr
Never send a Utilitarian to do a Kantian's job. Not only is utilitarianism obviously flawed as a meta-ethical view, it leads to absurd results when driving public policy. The very notion of a 'right' is incompatible with utilitarianism, and hence the rights of persons aren't able to be accomodated within the utilitarian framework. Moral judgements ought ...[text shortened]... ism, however, takes cost-benefit analysis to be the only justifiable sort of moral deliberation.
Bbarr, can you give me the name of the philosopher whose theories you are advocating here on RHP. I want to know more about him or her.
Originally posted by bbarrforgive me if i seem ignorant but as a person who advocates for people with a disability i am quite interested in the posts that keep popping up regarding bioethics and eugenicism. could you please translate the above into laymans terms. I don't wish to offend you as i'm sure many people read your posts and understand them but i find some of the terminology and academia you use totally inaccessable. thank-you
Never send a Utilitarian to do a Kantian's job. Not only is utilitarianism obviously flawed as a meta-ethical view, it leads to absurd results when driving public policy. The very notion of a 'right' is incompatible with utilitarianism, and hence the rights of persons aren't able to be accomodated within the utilitarian framework. Moral judgements ought ...[text shortened]... ism, however, takes cost-benefit analysis to be the only justifiable sort of moral deliberation.
Joanna
Originally posted by ivanhoeIn the case of ethics, Bbarr is referring to the ideas of Immanuel Kant and Jeremy Bentham (Utilitarianism). John Stuart Mill was also a proponent of Utilitarian Theory. Bbarr doesn't advocate any single philosopher's ideas on RHP. In fact, his ideas are a synthesis of the ideas of dozens of thinkers and his own best judgement concerning what is most reasonable to believe. It would be interesting to know exactly which thinkers have influenced him the most though. Any favorite philosophers Bbarr?
Bbarr, can you give me the name of the philosopher whose theories you are advocating here on RHP. I want to know more about him or her.
Originally posted by wucky3Not to worry, wucky. Here's a rundown of the point I was making above:
forgive me if i seem ignorant but as a person who advocates for people with a disability i am quite interested in the posts that keep popping up regarding bioethics and eugenicism. could you please translate the above into laymans terms. I don't wish to offend you as i'm sure many people read your posts and understand them but i find some of the terminology and academia you use totally inaccessable. thank-you
Joanna
Utilitarianism is a meta-ethical view. This means that it deals primarily with questions concerning what makes particular acts morally right and others morally wrong (although it also deals with other questions, e.g., why are moral claims authoritative, what is the relationship between motivation and moral action, etc.).
Utilitarianism is also instance of a view that falls under the heading 'Consequentialist'. A view is consequentialist if and only if it maintains that the moral status of an act is determined by that act's consequences. Utilitarianism is a consequentialist view because it maintains that the moral status of an act is determined by the effects of that act on overall utility. The term 'utility' is used in different ways by different philosophers, although it always has something to do with well-being. So, different utiliatarian theories will take different views on which of an act's consequences are important for the determination of that act's moral status. Some, like Jeremy Bentham, thought that what was important was the maximization of pleasant sensations and the minimization of painful sensations. Others, like John Stuart Mill, thought that that there were different types of pleasant and painful sensations, and that some types were qualitatively different and more important morally than others. Still others, like Peter Singer, think that what is important is not just the occurance or absence of various sensations, but the ability of creatures to pursue their own interests, whatever those interests may be. This list is not exhaustive.
There are, in prinicple, as many different possible utilitarian views as there are views about what is valuable in the world. So, suppose that X is some valuable property (pleasant sensations, higher-order pleasure, preference satisfaction, etc.). A utilitarian view will be one according to which:
Of the acts available to an agent, a particular act A is morally right if and only if A results in the overall maximization of the presence of property X.
But since the only thing that matters, as far as a utilitarian is concerned, is the net presence of some property, there are no constraints placed upon the means in virtue of which that property is brought about. There can be no rights on a utilitarian view because there are no absolute prohibitions or obligations concerning how we are to treat one another. Any act could be justified if it happens to maximize the overall presence of property X.
So, suppose I'm a doctor and I've got five patients: 2 need kidney transplants, 1 needs a liver transplant, 1 needs a spleen transplant, and 1 needs a heart transplant. Suppose that I get a walk-in appointment from a generally disliked vagrant who happens to have robustly healthy organs of just the sort my other patients need. If Utilitarianism is correct, and if I can maximize overall utility by harvesting the organs of this vagrant and transplanting them into my other patients, then I would be obligated to do so. To put it bluntly, this result seems counter-intuitive. If you believe in rights at all, it seems obvious that harvesting the vagrant's organs is a violation of his autonomy and his right to live. Further, it doesn't seem like any of the patients have a claim on the vagrant's organs that would obligate him to donate. So this seems like a clear counter-example to Utilitarianism.
Bennett
Originally posted by BookwormWhat I owe to Kant is pretty obvious, so here's a short list of some contemporary philosophers (and their best works) who've had the greatest impact on my ethics:
In the case of ethics, Bbarr is referring to the ideas of Immanuel Kant and Jeremy Bentham (Utilitarianism). John Stuart Mill was also a proponent of Utilitarian Theory. Bbarr doesn't advocate any single philosopher's ideas on RHP. In ...[text shortened]... fluenced him the most though. Any favorite philosophers Bbarr?
David Gauthier: "Morals by Agreement"
Christine Korsgaard: "Sources of Normativity" and "Creating the Kingdom of Ends"
Thomas Scanlon: "What We Owe to Each Other"
John Rawls: "Theory of Justice"
Even though I most of my philosophical posts here at RHP are either directly about or in the general vicinity of ethics, my first loves are philosophy of mind and epistemology (because I entered philosophy from a previous concentration in cognitive psychology).
What about you, Bookworm, any favorite thinkers in ethics or other broadly philosophical fields?
Originally posted by bbarrthanks bbarr! i'm sure we all appreciate the time and effort you so often give on these posts.
Utilitarianism is also instance of a view that falls under the heading 'Consequentialist'. A view is consequentialist if and only if it maintains that the moral status of an act is determined by that act's consequences.
from what i can see reading this, utilitarianism is rather ls like mr spock saying, after sacrificing himself at the end of star trek 2, "the needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few". it certainly was both sensible and heroic justification of the principle in the movie.
however, your doctor example clearly shows the shortcomings of utilitarianism in its situation.
that makes me wonder if the circumstances determine the principle chosen? utilitarianism is good sometimes but not others?
perhaps spock's utilitarianism worked only because spock sacrificed himself and not another being which is what we were headed for in the medical office.
in friendship,
prad
Originally posted by ivanhoe
Bbarr, can you give me the name of the philosopher whose theories you are advocating here on RHP. I want to know more about him or her.
In case you overlooked my question: What I mean is for instance:
Who formulated the version of the concept of personhood that you are presenting here to us ?
Originally posted by ivanhoeI don't know who has explicity formulated it, Ivanhoe. Most philosophers who write on the subject use the conept of a person. Thomas Scanlon, in his paper "Contractualism and Utilitarianism" speaks pretty in depth on personhood. Thomas Nagel, in his book "The View From Nowhere" talks about a creature having to have a point of view, or there being 'something it is like' to be that creature, for it to have any interests at all. Peter Singer makes some nice arguments concerning the capacity to suffer as being necessary, but not sufficient for personhood. Just take a look around in the philosophical literature and you'll find treatments of the subject.
In case you overlooked my question: What I mean is for instance:
Who formulated the version of the concept of personhood that you are presenting here to us ?
Bbarr,
There are human beings in your theory that do NOT possess human rights, the non person human beings.
From the article mentioned in post 1 of this thread:
"For most bioethicists, basic human rights are not inalienable, but must be earned by criteria they have created."
Isn't this also true with the version of personhood that you are presenting here on RHP ?
Originally posted by ivanhoeYes, there are human organisms that, on my view, possess no rights. I've explained this at length elsewhere. But this doesn't mean that I think 'basic human rights' are inalienable. Rather, I don't think there ARE 'basic human rights', if what that means is that there are rights creatures have solely in virtue of being human. There are no basic human rights because the mere property of being a human organism is morally unimportant. It is being a person that matters. Only persons have rights, and the rights of persons ARE inalienable. Further, the rights of persons are not earned, as the author assumes. It is not as though a creature must perform some task before it gets to be a rights-holder. Rights are not things creatures deserve. Rights are things some creatures have just because they possess certain properties (e.g., the capacity to suffer, the capacity for self-awareness and rationality). Further, these properties are not things that philosophers have created. It simply makes no sense to say that philosophers created the capacity to suffer, or that they created self-awareness, or that they created rationality. Philosophers had no part in the creation of these properties, but they did recognize that these properties were morally important. Philosophers identified that these properties must make a difference in our treatment of creatures, but they did not create these properties (God did, presumably 😉 ).
Bbarr,
There are human beings in your theory that do NOT possess human rights, the non person human beings.
From the article mentioned in post 1 of this thread:
"For most bioethicists, basic human rights are not inalienable, bu ...[text shortened]... ersion of personhood that you are presenting here on RHP ?
In short, the author of the article you quote is completely uninformed about philosophical ethics, even though he does identify some of the harm that can be done when insane meta-thical views (like utilitarianism) drive public policy.
Originally posted by bbarr" .... even though he does identify some of the harm that can be done when insane meta-thical views (like utilitarianism) drive public policy."
Yes, there are human organisms that, on my view, possess no rights. I've explained this at length elsewhere. But this doesn't mean that I think 'basic human rights' are inalienable. Rather, I don't think there ARE 'basic human rights', if what that means is that there are rights creatures have solely in virtue of being human. There are no basic huma ...[text shortened]... e harm that can be done when insane meta-thical views (like utilitarianism) drive public policy.
What is the harm that you are referring to ?
Originally posted by ivanhoeI'm referring to the harm that results from making policy decisions based solely on cost-benefit analyses. You posted the article, Ivanhoe. Re-read it, and pay attention to the parts where a specifically utilitarian form of moral deliberation is at work.
" .... even though he does identify some of the harm that can be done when insane meta-thical views (like utilitarianism) drive public policy."
What is the harm that you are referring to ?