"I'm dying, but I'm choosing to suffer less… to put myself through less physical and emotional pain and my family as well.” Brittany Maynard, 29.

Euthanasia

"I'm dying, but I'm choosing to suffer less… to put myself through less physical and emotional pain and my family as well.”

Brittany Maynard, 29

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Do you think active, informed euthanasia is

immoral?

It is always

immoral.

It is sometimes immoral.

It is always morally ok.

What is an example of morally acceptable euthanasia?

Brittany Maynard

29 year old, newly-married, well-adjusted

Stage 4 cancer ❊ Glioblastoma brain tumour

Symptoms❊ Persistent headaches,

seizures, vomiting, trouble thinking & speaking, changes in mood or personality, loss of memory

“Euthanasia is morally acceptable”

Since I have the right to live, then I have the right to die.

Since I have the right to X, then I have the right to not-X.

Since I have the right to feed my children, then I have the right to starve them.

???

???

“Euthanasia is morally wrong”

She didn’t choose to be born, thus she doesn’t have the right to choose to die.

1. I have the right to destroy X only if I created X.

2. I didn’t create my life.

3. Therefore, I don’t have the right to destroy my life.

“Euthanasia is morally wrong”

“Doctors shouldn’t help cause irreversible harm.”

Social convention forbids doctors from causing irreversible harm

It is immoral for doctors to cause irreversible harm

Is convention right? Question begging?

Velleman’s argument

Value of being a person outweighs value of experiences

Popular view

Is life worth living?

What is the quality of life?

Do I have worth?

What is my worth?

Good vs bad experiences

Respecting one’s dignity

Velleman’s

Dignity, not pleasure/pain

“That’s what I miss in so many discussions of euthanasia and assisted suicide: a sense of something in each of us that is larger than any of us, something that makes human life more than just an exchange of costs for benefits, more than just a job or a trip to the mall.

I miss the sense of a value in us that makes a claim on us — a value that we must live up to.”

Argument from Dignity

1. All persons are intrinsically valuable in virtue of their dignity, and morally ought to live up to it.

2. Euthanasia on the sole basis of relieving pain violates the dignity of persons.

3. Therefore, all persons morally ought to reject euthanasia on the sole basis of relieving pain.

E.g. of feeling worthless

Life isn’t just about pleasure

& pain

Life is worth living

You have worth

Life isn’t worth living

You are worthless

“A person’s good has only hypothetical or conditional value, which depends on the value of the person himself.”

A prominent defense of euthanasia

Right to live doesn’t mean duty to live

Right to live implies right to die

“If a patient decides to die, he is waiving his right to live. By waiving his right, he releases others (perhaps a specific other person) from a duty not to kill him.”

Velleman’s reply

“This can’t be right. It portrays morality as protecting a person’s options without protecting the person himself.

…how can morality treat the person as worth protecting only for the sake of protecting one of his options? If he doesn’t already merit protection, how can they?”

Life is worth living

You have worth

Life isn’t worth living

You are worthless

“A person’s good has only hypothetical or conditional value, which depends on the value of the person himself.”

A philosophical tour of The Death

Penalty

Steven Judy

Mike Royko:

‘The small crowd that gathered outside the prison to protest the execution of Steven Judy softly sang: “We shall overcome.”

But it didn’t seem quite the same hearing it sung out of concern for someone who, on finding a woman with a flat tire, raped and murdered her and drowned her three small children, then said that he hadn’t been “losing any sleep” over his crimes.’

Steven Judy

Fatal gang-rape in New Delhi

23 year-old physiotherapy student

Assaulted and brutally raped on bus alleged by all 6 men

Attackers threw her off the moving bus

She died in Singapore during medical treatment

Attackers tried to conceal evidence

Is it moral to punish such criminals by death?

Death Penalty: The moral landscape

Is the death penalty morally justified?

Never?

Sometimes

Is the death penalty ever justified?

The case for the death penalty

Rehabilitation Restitution

The case for the death penalty

Backward

looking:

Desert

Forward looking:

Deterrence

Getting away scot-free

Suppose someone raped and killed several others, and has no remorse.

He escapes to faraway asteroid, impossible to have human contact.

Enjoys life on asteroid.

Too evil to be reformed.

No one else will be deterred by what happens to him.

Is the escaped serial rapist & murdered rightly unpunished?

He cannot be punished. BUT…

Analysis

Restitution

Deterrence

Rehabilitation

Retribution

Why should he be punished?

‘He deserves punishment’

What is desert?

What is deserved simply as a result of intentional action

Applies only to moral agents❊ Requires moral responsibility

Proportionality requirement❊ ‘An eye for an eye’

Kant

Desert

Justice & retribution

Not revenge❊ Revenge is based on

anger, etc. It is personal.❊ Desert is dispassionately

determined. It is impersonal.

“Retributive punishment is the defeat of the wrongdoer at the hands of the victim (either directly or indirectly through an agent of the victim's, e.g., the state) that symbolizes the correct relative value of wrongdoer and victim.

It is a symbol that is conceptually required to reaffirm a victim's equal worth in the face of a challenge to it.”

Murphy and Hampton, 1988

Desert as moral restitution

Restoring what you ought not have taken

Need not be literal restoration❊ E.g. Money of dead victim❊ Could be symbolic

Some clarifications

“2 wrongs don’t make 1 right.”❊ Rules out all punishment?❊ Kidnapper

“Doesn’t make anything better.”❊ Criterion for ‘better’?❊ Twin-Earth scenario?

An eye for an eye

Problematic

Reckless driver who caused fatal accident should be killed by reckless driving?

Murder of another person and his children should also have his children killed?