PHILOS 341 Lecture Notes - Slippery Slope, Paternalism
Recap from 1/31
Criteria in determining moral status of physician assisted suicide
1. Does the act cause a loss or provide a benefit to the patient?
2. Does the patient make an informed choice to end his/her life?
Slippery slope argument against euthanasia
1. Features
a. Empirical prediction of undesirable consequences
a.i. This was lead to a Diminished respect for life. As soon as society starts to
see a life that “is not worth living” then someone could easily just die
a.ii. We might start adopting policies that at first would be unheard of but
now policies we don’t think twice about. We might gradually erode the
safeguards that we have set up so people don’t die right away with
euthanasia.
a.iii. How much convincing a slippery slope argument has to do with how
confident we are with our empirical predictions?
b. Consequentialist reasoning (if we have 2 options, the option you should does the
least amount of harm and if 1 option does cause a slippery slope then you should
choose the other side)
Notes 2/2
Argument: Lets suppose someone elects to die, and furthermore they make and infallible
(correct) choice, still that person may have been better off never getting that choice in the first
place, and once they have this choice they may be better off just living.
- Even presenting that person a choice is morally wrong
Kantian Arguments against Euthanasia
- Autonomy:
oKantian: the capacity for self-determination. Paternalism is completely
unacceptable when you use it among adults because it shows a disrespect for
our dignity as persons and our ability to reason.
oPopular: “effective options”
- Dignity: we mean something that involves a supreme value of human life. In fact, a
supreme value of rational life. “Human life has a dignity to it that puts it past any
market value or market price.” The value of human life is absolute. The dignity of
the human being has its grounding in the autonomy of the person. Each and every
person by virtue of their humanity has dignity thanks to the autonomy that person
presents. Kant you can’t lose your dignity simply because you lost the capacity to
feed yourself. (Pg 92)
oKantian: supreme value of human life / absolute
oPopular: This form of dignity is threated by the deterioration of the body.
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
Slippery slope argument against euthanasia: features, empirical prediction of undesirable consequences a. i. This was lead to a diminished respect for life. As soon as society starts to see a life that is not worth living then someone could easily just die a. ii. We might start adopting policies that at first would be unheard of but now policies we don"t think twice about. We might gradually erode the safeguards that we have set up so people don"t die right away with euthanasia. a. iii. Even presenting that person a choice is morally wrong. Paternalism is completely unacceptable when you use it among adults because it shows a disrespect for our dignity as persons and our ability to reason: popular: effective options . Dignity: we mean something that involves a supreme value of human life. In fact, a supreme value of rational life.
