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Response to Thought Experiment 55: Sustainable Development

6/24/2016

1 Comment

 
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​Ugh. I'm loath to add more attention to the man and book behind this week's thought experiment, but I believe I can dispatch with it quickly enough so let's get right to it. First, the thought experiment:

---------------------------------------------------
     The Green family realised that their success was exacting a high price. Their country farmhouse was their home as well as their business premises. But while their enterprise was creating a healthy profit, the vibrations caused by the heavy machinery used on site was slowly destroying the fabric of the building. If they carried on as they were, in five years the damage would make the building unsafe and they would be forced out. Nor were their profits sufficient to fund new premises or undertake the necessary repairs and structural improvements required.
     Mr. and Mrs. Green were determined to preserve their home for their children. And so they decided to slow production and thus the spread of the damage.
     Ten years later, the Greens passed away and the children inherited the family estate. The farmhouse, however, was falling to pieces. Builders came in, shook their heads and said it would cost £1 million to put it right. The youngest of the Greens, who had been the accountant for the business for many years, grimaced and buried his head in his hands.
     "If we had carried on at full production and not worried about the building, we would have had enough money to put this right five years ago. Now, after ten years of under-performance, we're broke."
     His parents had tried to protect his inheritance. In fact, they had destroyed it.

Source: The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg, 2001.

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 163.
---------------------------------------------------

As Baggini says in his discussion of this experiment, "This parable could be taken simply as a lesson about forward planning in business. But it is more interesting than that, for the tale can be seen as mirroring a serious dilemma of much wider concern: how do we respond to the environmental threats facing us today?"

Environmental threats are indeed a serious concern to face up to, but Bjorn Lomborg has not been the man to do so. In the extensive Wikipedia entry on his book The Skeptical Environmentalist, we learn that:

"Lomborg's main argument is that the vast majority of environmental problems—such as pollution, water shortages, deforestation, and species loss, as well as population growth, hunger, and AIDS—are area-specific and highly correlated with poverty. Therefore, challenges to human prosperity are essentially logistical matters, and can be solved largely through economic and social development."

I could argue vociferously against each of these points in turn, as well as that dreadful conclusion, but many others have already done so. In fact, a lot of criticisms against Lomborg's book have been chronicled in the wikipedia entry on it (as have the heaps of praise it received from business leaders and those connected to the oil and gas industry), but the most decisive critique is just about enough for the purposes of this blog post, so here it is:

"After the publication of The Skeptical Environmentalist, Lomborg was accused of scientific dishonesty. Several environmental scientists brought...complaints against Lomborg to the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD), a body under Denmark's Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation. ... The charges claimed that The Skeptical Environmentalist contained deliberately misleading data and flawed conclusions. On January 6, 2003, a mixed DCSD ruling was released, in which the Committees decided that The Skeptical Environmentalist was scientifically dishonest, but Lomborg was innocent of wrongdoing due to a lack of expertise in the relevant fields. ... The DCSD cited The Skeptical Environmentalist for:
  • Fabrication of data;
  • Selective discarding of unwanted results (selective citation);
  • Deliberately misleading use of statistical methods;
  • Distorted interpretation of conclusions;
  • Plagiarism;
  • Deliberate misinterpretation of others' results.

Lomborg formally complained about these accusations in detailed, point-by-point, exhaustive rebuttals, but eventually, "on March 12, 2004, the Committee formally decided not to act further on the complaints, reasoning that renewed scrutiny would, in all likelihood, result in the same conclusion."

So.......I don't really think we need to dwell on the details any longer, but perhaps something interesting can be said in general about Lomborg's flawed approach. The very subtitle of his book--Measuring the Real State of the World—hints at a problem. And so does a description of the man himself when trying to justify his authorship of this book:


"His research is an appropriate application of his expertise in cost-benefit analysis, a standard analytical tool in policy assessment. His advocates further note that many of the scientists and environmentalists who criticized the book are not themselves environmental policy experts or experienced in cost-benefit research."

During my MBA studies and following career in management consulting, I did a lot of cost-benefit analyses. CBAs are a useful tool in the carefully defined economic world of business transactions. But as I explained in my Patheos article An Atheist's Place in the Big Tent of Sacred Naturalism, economics (and therefore CBAs) break down at the limits of the natural world. Here's how:

"While I believe the world is a finite place, any supply of “widgets” becomes vanishingly small whenever those things are deemed irreplaceable and individual. The cost of replacing irreplaceable things in this world essentially runs to infinity, and these infinite values cause a breakdown in the use of classical economics. So to me, it’s not that economics shouldn’t be used where the world is full of intrinsic value—the limitations of economics can be used to show just precisely how high intrinsic value actually is. In the case of businessmen calculating the return on their investment while trying to use up natural resources, we might therefore speak “their language” and still hope to persuade them to set some things aside, to hold some things as sacred."

What this means with respect to Lomborg's shoddy book, is that its very subtitle--Measuring the Real State of the World—indicates a flaw right from the get go. You can't measure the cost or benefit of having a workable ecosystem in the "real world." It's essentially infinite. Right now, this is the only environment we've got so to tamper with it excessively is sheer madness. In the thought experiment, the Green family's descendants inherited a bill they could have paid had their ancestors merely kept working. In the real world, however, if we keep working the way we have been, our descendants won't inherit a bill they can't pay--they'll inherit a world they can't live in. That's a big existential difference.
1 Comment

Thought Experiment 55: Sustainable Development

6/20/2016

2 Comments

 
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Oh boy, this week's thought experiment is aimed right at my environmental wheelhouse. Having just typed it in, I'm already annoyed at some of the implications that are being made here, but read the thought experiment for yourself and then see what you think.

---------------------------------------------------
     The Green family realised that their success was exacting a high price. Their country farmhouse was their home as well as their business premises. But while their enterprise was creating a healthy profit, the vibrations caused by the heavy machinery used on site was slowly destroying the fabric of the building. If they carried on as they were, in five years the damage would make the building unsafe and they would be forced out. Nor were their profits sufficient to fund new premises or undertake the necessary repairs and structural improvements required.
     Mr. and Mrs. Green were determined to preserve their home for their children. And so they decided to slow production and thus the spread of the damage.
     Ten years later, the Greens passes away and the children inherited the family estate. The farmhouse, however, was falling to pieces. Builders came in, shook their heads and said it would cost £1 million to put it right. The youngest of the Greens, who had been the accountant for the business for many years, grimaced and buried his head in his hands.
     "If we had carried on at full production and not worried about the building, we would have had enough money to put this right five years ago. Now, after ten years of under-performance, we're broke."
     His parents had tried to protect his inheritance. In fact, they had destroyed it.


Source: The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg, 2001.

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 163.

---------------------------------------------------

So what does this little parable mean to you? Should we be charging ahead with worldwide production in the hopes it will give us enough cushion to fix the problems that are coming down the line? Or do you think such reasoning might just be tragically flawed? Let me know in the comments below. I'll be back on Friday with my own thoughts.
2 Comments

Response to Thought Experiment 54: The Elusive I

6/16/2016

0 Comments

 
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​
Aesop's Fable
​The Father, His Sons, and the Bundle of Sticks

To his sons, who fell out, father spake:

“This Bundle of Sticks you can’t break;
Take them singly, with ease.
You may break as you please;
So, dissension your strength will unmake.”


​Strength is in unity.

No, this short story in verse is not intended to be a comment on the EU-Brexit debate (but come on, remain!) — it's just an excellent reminder of the power that is possessed by things that are bundled together. How is that applicable to this week's thought experiment? Let's read it again now and then I'll explain.

---------------------------------------------------
     Here's something you can try at home. Or on the bus, for that matter. You can do it with your eyes closed or open, in a quiet room, or a noisy street. All you have to do is this: identify yourself.
     I don't mean stand up and say your name. I mean catch hold of that which is you, rather than just the things that you do or experience. To do this, focus your attention on yourself. Try to locate in your own consciousness the "I" that is you, the person who is feeling hot or cold, thinking your thoughts, hearing the sounds around you and so on. I'm not asking you to locate your feelings, sensations, and thoughts, but the person, the self, who is having them.
     It should be easy. After all, what is more certain in this world than that you exist? Even if everything around you is a dream or an illusion, you must exist to have the dream, to do the hallucinating. So if you turn your mind inwards and try to become aware only of yourself, it should not take long to find it. Go on. Have a go.
     Any luck?

Source: Book I of A Treatise on Human Nature by David Hume, 1739-40.

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 160.
---------------------------------------------------

I was quite excited when I first saw that this experiment was taken from David Hume. He's the Scottish philosopher who finished second in my Survival Rankings of the 60 Fittest Philosophers, and whose property I once visited in order to walk in his footsteps right around the time I was publishing a paper that proposed a metaphorical bridge across his famous is-ought divide — moral philosophy's greatest conundrum. Hume's writings have sparked many a deep reflection for me, but unfortunately (for this post anyway), I've already blogged extensively about his writings on the topic of personal identity. Oh well, it shouldn't hurt to recap and extend a bit.

By my count, this continually questioned topic of personal identity has cropped up in 11 of the 54 thought experiments I've covered so far. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Personal Identity, we can see a little bit of why this is the case. According to that essay: "There is no single problem of personal identity, but rather a wide range of questions that are at best loosely connected. There is no consensus or even a dominant view on this question [but] here are some of the main proposed answers (Olson 2007):
  • We are biological organisms (“animalism”: Snowdon 1990, 2014, van Inwagen 1990, Olson 1997, 2003).
  • We are material things “constituted by” organisms: a person made of the same matter as a certain animal, but they are different things because what it takes for them to persist is different (Baker 2000, Johnston 2007, Shoemaker 2011).
  • We are temporal parts of animals: each of us stands to an organism as the first set stands to a tennis match (Lewis 1976).
  • We are spatial parts of animals: brains, perhaps, or parts of brains (Campbell and McMahan 2010, Parfit 2012; Hudson 2001 argues that we are temporal parts of brains).
  • We are partless immaterial substances—souls—or compound things made up of an immaterial soul and a material body (Swinburne 1984).
  • We are collections of mental states or events: “bundles of perceptions”, as Hume said (see also Quinton 1962 and Campbell 2006).
  • There is nothing that we are: we don't really exist at all (Russell 1985, Wittgenstein 1922, Unger 1979).

I need to read more about these recent "animalism" proposals—they sound like they are related to my evolutionary worldview—but I also think Hume's "bundle theory" got a lot right when he used it to oppose Aristotle's, Descartes', and many other's concept of a single, immutable, immaterial soul as the eternal seat of our personal identity. As I wrote in my Response to Thought Experiment 38: I Am a Brain:

According to bundle theory, "an object consists of its properties and nothing more: thus neither can there be an object without properties nor can one even conceive of such an object; for example, bundle theory claims that thinking of an apple compels one also to think of its color, its shape, the fact that it is a kind of fruit, its cells, its taste, or at least one other of its properties. Thus, the theory asserts that the apple is no more than the collection of its properties." The clarity that bundle theory brings ... comes when you imagine taking away all the properties of an object one by one until all of them are gone. Once that is done, according to Hume, nothing of the object is left.

To make that even more relevant to this week's thought experiment, here are Hume's own words from A Treatise on Human Nature, where he applied his bundle theory to personal identity:

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions removed by death, and could I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate, after the dissolution of my body, I should be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is further requisite to make me a perfect nonentity. ... Suppose the mind to be reduc'd even below the life of an oyster. Suppose it to have only one perception, as of thirst or hunger. Consider it in that situation. Do you conceive any thing but merely that perception? Have you any notion of self or substance? If not, the addition of other perceptions can never give you that notion.

I really appreciate this paring back of personal identity to that of the simplest organisms. It's all the more remarkable coming from Hume since he did this more than 100 years before Darwin's theory of natural selection explained evolution. As we now know for certain, we have evolved from these simple organisms with singular perceptions though, so whatever notions we have about our own identity must be tied to theirs as well. For me, I'm persuaded that all of our identities and consciousnesses are mere accretions of perceptions, one stick at a time, until the united bundle of them gives a strong, almost unbreakable, illusion of an underlying unity. Watch any individual slowly lose their perceptual abilities one-by-one as they age toward the grave, however, and you see their personal identity snap away one twig at a time. Likewise, looking at the personal identity of non-human animals, if you take away just a few of the higher-order brain functions that we homo sapiens have evolved of late, then you aren't left with a soulless zombie, you just get another animal with a slightly smaller bundle of abilities, thoughts, and emotions. So, this bundle theory view of the self may take away some personal, religious notion of a lonely, individual, immortal "I", but in return it binds us together with all of the rest of life who are in the same boat as "we" are. Isn't that a much stronger concept to adhere to?
0 Comments

Thought Experiment 54: The Elusive I

6/14/2016

1 Comment

 
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Ah, like the song referenced in the picture above, this week's thought experiment is a classic. It's an oldie but goodie that might be a bit repetitive for some, but its undeniably important to the history of the genre too.

---------------------------------------------------
     Here's something you can try at home. Or on the bus, for that matter. You can do it with your eyes closed or open, in a quiet room, or a noisy street. All you have to do is this: identify yourself.
     I don't mean stand up and say your name. I mean catch hold of that which is you, rather than just the things that you do or experience. To do this, focus your attention on yourself. Try to locate in your own consciousness the "I" that is you, the person who is feeling hot or cold, thinking your thoughts, hearing the sounds around you and so on. I'm not asking you to locate your feelings, sensations, and thoughts, but the person, the self, who is having them.
     It should be easy. After all, what is more certain in this world than that you exist? Even if everything around you is a dream or an illusion, you must exist to have the dream, to do the hallucinating. So if you turn your mind inwards and try to become aware only of yourself, it should not take long to find it. Go on. Have a go.
     Any luck?

Source: Book I of A Treatise on Human Nature by David Hume, 1739-40.

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 160.

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What do you think? Any luck? How do you think about this concept of "I"? Someone like me will be back on Friday to answer.
1 Comment

Response to Thought Experiment 53: Double Trouble

6/11/2016

2 Comments

 
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Death may be all around us, and be so at all times, but because California and Canada just made assisted dying legal this week, it is a particularly appropriate time now to discuss the topic as part of this week's thought experiment. Voluntary euthanasia, as it is called in the field of philosophy, does not have a long history of debate. There are some cultural and religious reasons for this, but it is mainly due to that fact that it has only recently become an issue of widespread importance thanks to advances in medical technology. In fact, the long Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy entry on voluntary euthanasia states that "[it] has only been, for the most part, a phenomenon of the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty first century." What it lacks in age, however, the topic more than makes up for in detail. This is often the case for issues of applied ethics, and particularly within the thoroughly discussed domain of bioethics. I won't go through the rationale for each and every point of detail in this debate, but before I try to summarise them all and bring my own evolutionary philosophy perspective to the issue as a whole, let's look again at the thought experiment as it was written.

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     "Doctor, you've got to help me. I'm in terrible pain and I know I'm dying. Put me out of my misery. Kill me swiftly and painlessly now. I can't go on any longer."
     "Let me get this straight," replied Dr. Hyde. "Are you suggesting that I should, say, give you a very high dose of painkillers—20mg of morphine sulphate perhaps—a dose so high that you would soon lose consciousness and shortly afterwards die?"
     "Yes! Please be merciful," said the patient.
     "I'm afraid that's something I cannot do," replied Dr. Hyde. "However, I can see that you are in pain, so here's something I can do. In order to relieve your pain, I would need to give you a very high dose of painkillers, say 20mg of morphine sulphate, a dose so high, however, that you would soon lose consciousness and shortly afterwards die. How does that sound?"
     "Just like your first suggestion," replied the puzzled patient.
     "Oh, but there's every difference in the world!" replied the doctor. "My first suggestion was that I killed you, the second that I relieved your pain. I'm no murderer and euthanasia is illegal in our country."
     "But either way I'm out of my misery," protested the patient.
     "Yes," said the doctor. "But only one way spares mine."

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 157.
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In the title of this post—Double Trouble—we see a good indication that this particular framing of the euthanasia issue by Baggini was meant to bring up the doctrine of double effect, an idea which can be tackled easily, so let's do that first. That doctrine argues that: "sometimes it is permissible to cause a harm as a side effect (or “double effect”) of bringing about a good result even though it would not be permissible to cause such a harm as a means to bringing about the same good end." This idea originally came from Thomas Aquinas who used it to justify killing in self-defense, which Saint Augustine had earlier stated was wrong. (Ah, the battles those ancient theologian thinkers got into.) Supporters of this doctrine use it to claim there is a moral difference between intending to do something and merely foreseeing what your actions will bring. I, however, stand with the critics who see this as ludicrous. Any appeal to good intentions as an excuse for behaviour that brings about a morally bad outcome is only acceptable where the future result was unknown. The law makes this quite clear by also including definitions for reckless endangerment where "the accused person isn't required to intend the resulting or potential harm, but must have acted in a way that showed a disregard for the foreseeable consequences of the actions." Therefore, it is patently clear that if you foresee the consequences of your actions, and you perform them anyway, then you intended the consequences. In this thought experiment, Dr. Hyde foresees what his action will bring, verbally admits as much, and should be held accountable for it.

Now, with that little wrinkle of nuance smoothed out of the way, we are left with the larger issue of whether Dr. Hyde actually has anything to be held accountable for. Is there anything wrong with voluntary euthanasia? Why, in most countries, do we make the Dr. Hydes of the world try to invent twisted philosophical hoops for themselves to jump through?

As I mentioned above, this has been a thoroughly investigated topic with many practical details discussed on both sides of the issue. In the comments to my post on Monday, reader Lucy (a newly minted doctor of health psychology) shared an excellent article from the National Health Service (NHS) of Britain that summarised the arguments for and against euthanasia and assisted suicide. Assisted suicide is currently illegal in the UK, but organisations like the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of Scotland (VESS) are pressing hard to get this changed. They provide an excellent FAQ page about the issue. And philosopher Elizabeth Telfer did a nice job summing up the Philosophical approaches to the dilemma of death with dignity in a paper based on a talk she gave to VESS. If this is a pressing issue in your life, or the life of a loved one, I highly recommend reading those three links in their entirety. For the purposes of this short and general audience blog post, however, let me now try and distill the debate into a few sets of bullet points. First, to understand exactly what we are talking about here, note the rules that are in place for euthanasia where it has already been legalised. Then, the arguments for and against the case can be considered more clearly.

Conditions Required for Voluntary Euthanasia to be Allowed
  • The patient is suffering from a terminal illness
  • The discovery of a cure for that illness is unlikely during what time remains of the patient's life
  • Because of the illness, the patient is either suffering intolerable pain or only has a life that is unacceptably dependent on others or on technological life support
  • The patient has an enduring, voluntary, and competent wish to die
  • The patient is unable to end their own life without assistance

Arguments Against Allowing Voluntary Euthanasia
  • Only God has the right to end a human life
  • Assisting suicide would be a violation of fundamental medical ethics
  • Legalising voluntary euthanasia could lead down a slippery slope to non-voluntary euthanasia, which is tantamount to sanctioned murder
  • Alternative palliative treatments for the end of life are available
  • Individuals can be in error about whether their lives continue to be worth living
  • We can never be certain that a person's request to be helped to die is competent, enduring, and genuinely voluntary

​Arguments For Allowing Voluntary Euthanasia
  • People should have the right to control their own body and life
  • Any categorical "Respect for Persons" should also respect that these persons not be reduced to something less - animal, vegetable, or even machine
  • Suffering through intolerable pain or becoming unacceptably burdensome can reduce the well-being of an individual to the point that their life will no longer be worth living
  • Medical personnel have a duty to relieve suffering when they can
  • There are clear logical stops between voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia, and in practice, national studies carried out in the Netherlands from 1995 to 2010 have shown no evidence of a slippery slope arising while voluntary euthanasia has been legalised in that country.
  • In Oregon, where assisted suicide has been legal since 1997, an independent study from the Journal of Medical Ethics reported there was "no evidence of heightened risk [of being pressured into euthanasia] for the elderly, women, the uninsured, people with low educational status, the poor, the physically disabled or chronically ill, minors, people with psychiatric illnesses including depression, or racial or ethnic minorities, compared with background populations."
  • Euthanasia is already happening (particularly passive euthanasia where people are allowed to die by withholding further treatment), so it would be better to regulate the issue properly
  • There is no clear or morally helpful distinction between passive euthanasia (acts of omission which are accepted) and active euthanasia (acts of commission which are not)
  • Palliative care involves trial and error; even the best care may fail to relieve all pain and suffering
  • At least some patients can demonstrate competent, enduring, and voluntary requests for euthanasia—either during their illness or prior to it in the case of a "living will"
  • In March 2015, the largest ever poll on assisted dying showed that 82% of the public in the UK support giving terminally ill, mentally competent people the legal option of assistance to die with dignity

So how do we judge from among these arguments? Well, I'll dismiss the religious objection with the same respect that it gives for logic and reason and evidence. Does God ever do anything for us? Is he really the only thing that can kill us? Does that mean God=cancer? As for the rest of the objections, I believe they have already been expertly rebutted on a point by point basis. And yet, voluntary euthanasia is mostly illegal in the world. Why is that?

Obviously, religious fervour drives much of the rejection of logic from this issue. Even in the face of a strong, logical case for voluntary euthanasia, too many people will still say, "it's just wrong!" The best way to hasten the death of these faith-filled worldviews is to replace their unsupported ethical rules with a clear definition of what is actually wrong and right. This is where evolutionary ethics can help. Current secular justifications for voluntary euthanasia have come from the current camps of morality: utilitarianism and deontological rule-based systems. Each has its failures.

Utilitarianism easily finds instances where acting for "the greatest good" allows for voluntary euthanasia. But the problem is that the same utilitarian mathematics can find examples where involuntary euthanasia is allowed. We find this repugnant, and thus utilitarianism alone cannot be the guide.

So, we turn to deontological moral systems in search of a means to justify voluntary euthanasia while excluding non-voluntary euthanasia. But no single rule or set of rules about actions has ever been accepted as the basis for a system of ethics. The reason why is that every rule has its exception, which undermines any authority such rules would claim. Rules for actions look like: thou shalt not do so and so (the Commandments), or treat others as you would like to be treated (the Golden Rule), or treat others as they would like to be treated (the Platinum Rule), or act such that your action can be applied universally (Kant's Categorical Imperative). Philosophers have tried to make lists of rules using duties, rights, or negative rights for their basis, but all have been found wanting under certain imagined scenarios. Of course it would be nice if people had a list of simple moral rules to obediently follow; life would be so much easier. But unfortunately, life just isn't that easy.

In the system of evolutionary ethics I am trying to build, morality isn't based on rules for actions; morality is based on a universally necessary and sufficient consequence. Good is that which leads to the long-term survival of life. This outcome provides a universal principle to guide our actions. The exact specific actions are dependent upon the best available information for every specific situation.

How, then, might voluntary euthanasia be good for the long-term survival of life? By giving us control over our own death, it could help us avoid personal pain and suffering. Voluntary euthanasia, can take away worry from loved ones, and it can free resources for better use. It also allows us to lose some of the fear of death, which means death becomes less a topic we need to repress, and more one that can be looked at plainly in order to motivate better living. There are no slippery slopes in these considerations. With the proper safeguards in place, as listed above, there can be room for good people to make good decisions for the individuals being affected. Wouldn't it be better to live in a society that allows such good people to do that hard work, rather than treat everyone like children and imprison them within a restrictive set of laws that have no justification and lead to widespread suffering? I hope that situation changes before I need it, and I wish the same for you and yours.
2 Comments

Thought Experiment 53: Double Trouble

6/6/2016

2 Comments

 
Picture
Guten tag! I'm finally back and caught up after a few weeks of camping in Germany and I'm excited to get back to these philosophy posts. I feel refreshed and energised now with a slightly different outlook on life, but towards the end of my packed trip, even my abundantly energetic pup began to look like he wanted us to put him out of his tired misery. We didn't do that, of course, because we knew he'd bounce back, but let's look at this week's thought experiment and give some consideration about when such an action might be appropriate.

---------------------------------------------------

     "Doctor, you've got to help me. I'm in terrible pain and I know I'm dying. Put me out of my misery. Kill me swiftly and painlessly now. I can't go on any longer."
     "Let me get this straight," replied Dr. Hyde. "Are you suggesting that I should, say, give you a very high dose of painkillers—20mg of morphine sulphate perhaps—a dose so high that you would soon lose consciousness and shortly afterwards die?"
     "Yes! Please be merciful," said the patient.
     "I'm afraid that's something I cannot do," replied Dr. Hyde. "However, I can see that you are in pain, so here's something I can do. In order to relieve your pain, I would need to give you a very high dose of painkillers, say 20mg of morphine sulphate, a dose so high, however, that you would soon lose consciousness and shortly afterwards die. How does that sound?"
     "Just like your first suggestion," replied the puzzled patient.
     "Oh, but there's every difference in the world!" replied the doctor. "My first suggestion was that I killed you, the second that I relieved your pain. I'm no murderer and euthanasia is illegal in our country."
     "But either way I'm out of my misery," protested the patient.
     "Yes," said the doctor. "But only one way spares mine."


Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 157.

---------------------------------------------------

So, this thought experiment gives us the question of intentions vs. outcomes, and it also asks us to come to grips with whether euthanasia can be moral or not. Why do we put our pets down, when they can't tell us what they want, but we refuse to do the same for people who can express their thoughts to us directly? As before, I'll be back on Friday after I've considered this for a few days, but what do you think? Do you have any specific examples or issues you'd like to see addressed? Let me know in the comments below or via facebook, twitter, or a private message. It's good to be back and I'm looking forward to hearing from you!
2 Comments

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