Originally posted by ivanhoeI do think that every person has the right to come to their own conclusion about the value of any particular life. This is simply an implication of the general truth that people have the right to freedom of thought. So, if, hypothetically, I was a utilitarian, I would have the right (indeed, the obligation) to rank lives in terms of their value if the situation so demanded. Although I think utilitarianism is fundamentally flawed as meta-ethical theory, I do not begrudge anyone the right to think as a utilitarian. Hence, I do not begrudge anyone the right to think that lives can be ranked in terms of their value. Ipso facto, I do not begrudge anyone the right to think that some particular life is not worth living or protecting.
"I said that we should try to determine whether the patient would find her current life one worth living" bbarr
Yes, that's exactly what you said. That does imply that we (humans) have the right to decide whether a life has value yes or no and in case it has no value in our eyes we can end it !!
That's what it means. In case you do not agree wit ...[text shortened]... n please explain to me what you are trying to say about life having value in itself yes or no.
That said, I do not think that people should have the right to act on such determinations in all (or even many) cases. If a utilitarian comes to the conclusion that the sacrifice of another's life would maximize overall utility, I do not think that he thereby has the right to sacrifice that life. In fact, I would struggle against any such attempt if the subject of such a sacrifice would not consent.
So, I am distinguishing between the two different implications you conflated in your post. I agree that my position entails that people have the right to think whatever they will about the value of lives. I disagree that my position entails that people have the right to end a life whenever they think it proper (if the subject of such an act would not consent, then it would be murder).
Notice, however, that your position is just like mine in this respect. You also think that we have the right to decide whether a life has value. You just (apparently) happen to think that whenever someone comes to the conclusion that a life is not worth living then they are wrong. So you can't consistently object to my thesis merely because it involves attributing value to lives. Your position does the exact same thing, it just attributes value to all lives.
I think that a person has the right to end their life whenever they so choose, as long as their choice is informed. For their choice to be informed, for them truly to consent to death, I think they must be in their right mind. They have to be rational, have access to the facts, not be being deceived or coerced, etc. Notice that these provisos preclude allowing a mentally ill person to consent to their own death. It also precludes children from consenting to their own death. So these provisos are quite substantial.
The problems arise when we are dealing with cases where someone cannot directly consent to their own death yet we have reason to believe that had they full possession of their faculties they would consent to their own death. In such cases, I think that we have an obligation to try to determine whether they would find their life currently worth living, were they in full possession of their faculties.
The fundamental assumption I'm making is that lives are valuable purely in virtue of their being valued by the persons whose lives they are. It is my taking my life to be valuable, my conceiving of myself as a locus of value, that confers value upon my life. What this assumption denies, of course, is the claim that the value of lives has nothing to do with how a person conceives of himself and how he wants to live.
I have absolutely nothing to say about the Danish Freethinker movement, and I deny any essential connection with them. I'm in the Freethinker clan, not an adherent of a Danish political movement. I'll not respond to any objections to my position that are based upon identifying me with such a movement.
Originally posted by trekkieWell, in some situations the decision is easy, epitsemically speaking. Sometimes, however, we just don't have enough information to be confident in asserting that a subject would consent to death or refrain from giving consent. Sometimes we are faced with real dilemmas, and the best we can do is muddle through.
Yes, that is what i was talking about without saying it in so many words. IN other words there is NO answer to avoid these difficult situations.
"I have absolutely nothing to say about the Danish Freethinker movement, and I deny any essential connection with them." bbarr
Of course you mean the Dutch Freethinker movement ....
" ... I deny any essential (!) connection with them .....". Naughty, naughty, naughty ....
Do you also deny any connection with them ? I mean of course an ideological connection. You would say a philosophical connection .... Do you deny any connection ?
Originally posted by ivanhoeSorry about that, 'Danish' should have been 'Dutch'. For the record, I also deny any connection to any Danish Freethinker political movement.:0
"I have absolutely nothing to say about the Danish Freethinker movement, and I deny any essential connection with them." bbarr
Of course you mean the Dutch Freethinker movement ....
" ... I deny any essential (!) connection with them .....". Naughty, naughty, naughty ....
Do you also deny any connection with them ? I mean of course an ideological connection. You would say a philosophical connection .... Do you deny any connection ?
If you have objections to my thesis, then by all means present them. What I do with my avatar is none of your concern.
Originally posted by ivanhoeIvanhoe, I think you are making a mistake here in lumping all freehinkers together as if they acted as a single entity with singular opinions. We don't. The only truly unifying feature of freethinking is that we try our best not to allow any source to dogmatically dictate our opinions, but rather use our reason, compassion, and logical arguments to judge what we read and experience and learn, and lead us into our opinions and world view. These opinions and our world views are always subject to change, should new evidence come to light, or should we find or be pointed out a flaw in our reasoning. This is the ideal of freethinking that I think all freethinkers try to attain, and it does not include specific views and opinions on specific matters.
I guess I can say that I studied the way Freethinkers discuss the matters of euthanasia, because we went through that in my country, the Netherlands. This case that we are discussing in this thread, is about a woman who is maybe comatose or maybe not 100 % comatose, the experts do not agree on the situation this woman is in. Now bbarr is discussing this cas ...[text shortened]... ect is autonomous and that there is no moral entity that he has to obey beside himself ...
One such opinion you seem to atribute to us: "the ultimate political goal of the Freethinkers is to bring about a Right to Die for all or if you like a right for all to commit suicide....This situation is the ultimate result of the teachings of the Freethinkers that the human subject is autonomous and that there is no moral entity that he has to obey beside himself ..."
I for one should point out that while we are indeed autonomous, and should not hand our moral judgements over blindly to dogmatic teachings (or our interpretations of them), we most certainly are not the only moral entity that we have to obey. The society is full of moral entities that we need to deal with, and many, if not all of our moral decisions must take into account the effect of our actions on others, and the need to function as a society, which includes living together with people of widely varying world views. That there is no supernatural moral entity that we have to obey would be the opinion of most freethinkers.
As an example, "the right to die for all" would not be morally acceptable in my view, because suicide is an act that affects not only the one commiting it, but also people around him. My granmother's brother commited suicide in early adulthood, and it practically tore the family apart. My grandmother still cannot speak of the matter without crying, though it happened more than half a century ago.
Thus it can be seen that allowing the "right to die for all" would result in great suffering, and great suffering is what we want to avoid. One can argue against such absurdity by using reason, without having to base one's views on the dictates of an entity that quite many people don't believe exists in the first place. And for that very reason, solid reasoning is more effective means of fighting mistaken views than a simple "because God said so". If one cannot find reasonable arguments to back one's own views, then one must consider that one is mistaken in those views.
-Jarno
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Originally posted by ivanhoeWell, people who are really brain dead may as well be taken apart and used for transplants.
You probably heard of the Terri Schiavo case.
A disabled women who's suffering from brain damage has to be fed artificially by means of a tube.
Her husband asked a judge to remove the tube so she would die.
The tube was removed by court order.
On request of her parents and brother(s) and or sister(s) a state law was passed. A law that ga ...[text shortened]... r it is ok to let her die or to let her live ...
What are your thoughts about this case ?
If they are not brain dead it gets a bit more tricky.
One should make every effort to find out whether they want to live or die. If they cannot communicate then an independent and impartial assessor must try to work out whether they might rationally want to die if they could express their wish, taking into account any previous statements they may have made, whether they are likely to be in pain, etc.
The above presupposes that their are no issues with the uses of resources etc. In poorer countries I would expect such people to be let die more readily than in the USA and I would be ok with that.
"As an example, "the right to die for all" would not be morally acceptable in my view, because suicide is an act that affects not only the one commiting it, but also people around him. My granmother's brother commited suicide in early adulthood, and it practically tore the family apart. My grandmother still cannot speak of the matter without crying, though it happened more than half a century ago.
Thus it can be seen that allowing the "right to die for all" would result in great suffering, and great suffering is what we want to avoid. One can argue against such absurdity by using reason, without having to base one's views on the dictates of an entity that quite many people don't believe exists in the first place. And for that very reason, solid reasoning is more effective means of fighting mistaken views than a simple "because God said so". If one cannot find reasonable arguments to back one's own views, then one must consider that one is mistaken in those views."
-Jarno
I agree fully with you on this subject. You'd better prepare yourself for a discussion/debate on this subject with your Finnish freethinkers, because they will eventually get to that "right for all to dy" stadium .That's one of the reasons why I decided not to be a Freethinker anymore. In the beginning of the euthanasia discussion they will say that they will never consider such an approach and assure you there is no Slippery Slope. In my opinion the Dutch Freethinkers deceived the people time and time again. I once saw a discussion on BBC television about euthanasia. An official Dutch representative from the Nederlandse Vereniging voor Vrijwillige Euthanasie , the Dutch Organisation for Voluntary Euthanasia, took part in that discussion. The famous Slippery Slope Argument was being discussed. The discussion was about the necessary four criteria to perform euthanasia: The criteria of unbearable suffering, the voluntary written deathwish of the person in question, written while the patient was in possession of all his mental abilities, and the criterium of being a terminally ill patient. The Dutch representative confirmed that these were the necessary criteria in the Dutch discussion at that moment and that would remain that way in order to dismiss the argument of sceptical people in that discussion who claimed that there could be a Slippery Slope. No, the British people need not worrying about that. In fact in Holland at that time one of the criteria was allready swept aside, being the criterium of being a terminally ill patient. In the Netherlands that criterium vanished out of the discussion, because this was not fair towards people who were not terminally ill. They also had a right to die and that was being advocated also by that same man who was discussing euthanasia in this BBC debate and was reassuring the public that there was no slippery slope. He was misleading the public. The other criteria also disappeared in due time. I'v had my doubts about the Freethinker movement for quite some time. From the moment on that I described in another post when Hans van Mierlo stated that it was possible to kill somebody out of love. This happened years before this BBC incident. After this sad incident I knew for sure that I did not want to be a Freethinker anymore. I now can see how they are trying to realise their political agenda in US, France, UK and Germany. It will be very difficult for them in Germany because of the special history of the country. Euthanasia was and still is a part of the National Socialist ideology. Sixty years ago they, the National Socialists, presented this as a great accomplishment and privilege for the superior Germanistic race. They called it "Der Gnadentod".