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q: "Is it time to permit assisted dying?"

a: The time to permit assisted dying came long ago, and we're still to act on it.

John:

I concur. If suicide is not illegal, how can it be illegal to help someone who wants it? As Mary Warnock says, by making it against the law, we are saying that our judgment of the value of their life is superior to theirs. What arrogance!

Of course, like abortion for women in Northern Ireland, people in the UK who can afford it may go to Switzerland or wherever to have it done, so that it is effectively available only for the better off.

Made me think of an article I'd happened across a couple of months ago, which talks about this issue from an American pov. The author doesn't seem to be opposed to assisted dying, but does raise interesting questions about whether there is prejudice in the system: whether the able bodied are too quick to find a disabled person's desire to die understandable.

I believe every person has an absolute right to take their own life should they desire and freely decide to do so. I do not see terminal illness as by any means the only justifications for such a choice. Emotional pain can be just as unbearable as physical pain; the destructive potential of incapacity and dependence on self-esteem cannot be underestimated; the ability to adapt to major changes in circumstances is by no means universal: suicide may be the only practical and available way for some people to deal with the problem of life.

Assisting suicide is, however, a very different matter. I believe that, in some circumstances, helping someone we love to depart this world might be the greatest expression of our love for them. Before venturing down that road, however, we need to know for certain what the person who is expressing a wish to die really wants.

That may sound simple but it is very far from being simple and I would suggest that no-one intimately involved in the situation is capable of assessing the real needs of the person seeking to end their life. Indeed I would go further and suggest that such an assessment would need to be undertaken by two independent and suitably qualified mental health professionals. Such an assessment would not be possible under current ethical and legal constraints.

I am disappointed that Baroness Warnock did not raise this point because, unless it is recognised, any change in the law, indeed any failure to allow the courts to examine each and every case where there is any doubt on the matter, is totally morally reckless.

I know nothing about the specific case which prompted this thread and would not wish to discuss any aspect of it but, so readers may understand my reasoning, let me imagine a completely hypothetical case.

A young woman is totally paralysed in a car accident but has suffered no significant brain injury and is totally rational. She requires 24 hour care and her husband has had to give up work to look after her. She loves him deeply and sees the distress her situation causes him - he is totally devoted to her, attends to her every need, but she fears he is missing out on so much in life, she begins to doubt - is it duty or is it love, she wonders does he still really love her, she feels she might be a burden, she feels she is making two lives miserable, she asks him to help her die, he refuses, she pleads, he refuses and protests his love, she begs and begs and begs and eventually he concedes and helps her die.

The question I would ask was: did she want to die or did she want the reassurance that his love for her was so great, so all-encompassing, that he could not contemplate the possibility of her death, that his need to have her (in spite of her circumstances) was greater than her need to escape? Did she die thankful and appreciative or did she die with a hollow heart that the love and acceptance she craved had been denied her? Did the husband have peace knowing he had acted unselfishly and knowing his wife had achieved her true desire or is he troubled (or, worse, untroubled) at his acquiescence (maybe too readily) in a design that suited him all too well?

These are issues I believe could be teased out with appropriate professional guidance - but unless or until there is a framework for doing so we dare not contemplate any change in the law.

A Warning From Scripture : Heb 9:27
"And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment"

RevIanHall,

Could you please, please, please try to understand that to all but the dumbest faith heads, quoting scripture is not a valid substitute for arguments or other expressions of intelligent thinking.

Is it time to permit assisted dying? Only if Warnock can be the first one assisted. This "ethicist" has more deaths to her name than Himmler.

Peter Klaver

I have responded to you on the Reiss thread. Please note that the notorious Fundamentalist Brian McClinton has read my position accurately, and has noticed that my position is not anti-science, and that I am simply suggesting that providing some philosphical and historical arguments for Scientific Truth Claims may not be a bad idea.
Once more, I am sorry for the rant, and the appearance of arrogance but (a) you were condescending about the opinions of some bloggers who are trained scientists and for whom I have a lot of respect and (b) you made no effort to understand my position. You wanted to believe that I was anti-science, and attributed that position to me without any thought. That was very frustrating.
In fact I was simply trying to point out that "hard" empiricism and Scientific Realism are not compatible. Some of the posters seemed to confate the two positions, and that showed a lack of thought.

I hope you can accept my apology
GV

John

could you please answer my questions on the economy, this is my third time of asking. its on the page with your rant about the ABC, thanks. You, to the best of my knowledge, are a free market capitalist. I want to know why the free market has failed and if you agree with the French that we ethics in the finance industry...

I'm not sure about legalizing suicide, but i have been reading the story of how Jesus healed the paralytic man this week and was particularity impressed with the faith the paralyzed mans friends.

Portwyne

I do not take the view that I have the right to end my own life (or anyone else's), however your post on this topic is thoughtful, thorough, insightful, and obviously informed.

Your illustration of the (most disturbing) scenario relating to the young woman and her husband is well worth reflecting upon. In fact I don't think I have read a more incisive comment on this web-site.

The human heart? Who can know it?

Thankyou

Mgnbar- I'm sorry, I haven't seen your comment. Can you provide a link to it for me? You're right to say I am a free market capitalist, and I don't believe the markets 'failed' at all. To the contrary, it's government interference in the market at the root cause of most of our current problems (government-prompted lending via Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac to people who couldn't afford it, for one).

Hello Graham,

I find it difficult to accept your sorry for those bizarre posts you made, as on the Reiss thread you didn't address the issues put to you. It seemed mostly diversions instead. Including your assertions, echoed on this thread, that I had spoken condescendingly about other posters. I didn't mention anyone on this blog of course, I only addressed you directly. You mentioned Helio in it a couple of times. He just posted on the Reiss thread, not making any complaints about my posts. Endorsing my position instead.

As you say you respect Helio, and he agrees with me, why don't you answer the questions I put to you, as I asked before? What about the mathematics of QM, and how is that supposed to support your assertion of sensory perception being required for anything to be considered real? And what about the double standards, being doubtful about science and making requirements of it (sensory perception) to a very strange degree, while giving a free pass to e.g. the wild idea of a god no one has ever seen or heard?

"your assertion of sensory perception being required for anything to be considered real?"

Again, from a cursory glance, I am pretty sure that Graham did not assert that. In fact, I'm almost certain that he didn't.

Hello Bernards_Insight,

I saw your post on the Reiss thread. As I replied over there, we read Grahams posts in very different ways. I disagree with yours:

/blogs/ni/2008/10/science_and_belief_duel_or_due.html

But I think we can continue that debate on that thread rather than here. Post 8 seems to have been a bit of recipe for derailing this thread.
But then I also saw tonight that Graham had been making humongously off-topic posts to me all over the blog. Read e.g. this little piece of his pain on the thread about Rowan Williams new book:

/blogs/ni/2008/10/when_rowan_met_fyodor.html

I haven't read this blog very frequently the last few months. And not exchanged views with Graham that much before. Does he go into that sort of mode more often?

Ha, I've no idea. I'm a bit lost with all this to-ing and fro-ing, to be honest.

Peter Klaver
I have been trying to recapture your attention, so apologies to you and all if it looked as if I was trying to take threads off track.
As God is my witness (I don't say that lightly) I did not intend for that piece of pain to end up on the Dostoevsky thread. I usually type up my comments the night before, or before I leave for School, and post them at break or lunch. For reasons I don't understand, the site wouldn't allow me to post a long message, so I had to post it in bite size chunks. What ended up on the Rowan/Fyordor thread was the beginning of my message. I wondered where it went to. The multiple posts that day should be read as one long message. In future I'll just give up.

No, I've never lost my temper like this on W&T - but you obviously didn't read all my comments, misinterpreted comment 37 (which was a challenge to Les to state what his philosophical grounds for scientific inferences were (still waiting)) and then used this misinterpretation to make a massive assumption about my beliefs. Making assumptions about my worldview based on ONE post you then went on to criticise me for a view I don't hold to.Can you see why a person might feel a tad annoyed?

(You also didn't check up on Hawking - I did - and unless he's lying, he's a Positivist of some type.)

Now I wanted your attention, because I think we might have the basis for an interesting discussion.
Some of those criticisng Reiss where swinging Occam's Razor about(I know you weren't) in a naive manner. They seemed totally unaware that (and the idea that Russell settled this is uninformed) a thoroughgoing empiricism doesn't allow belief in Theoretical Entities. It does allow "operational acceptance" - you withhold belief or disbelief, and just use whatever constructs you find useful.
Now I find thoroughgoing empiricism totally unacceptable. I don't hold science to those standards. I believe as humans we can successfully infer to the best explanation. This works in the observable world - and I can't see any reason to believe that we are unable to infer from observed events to entities that are in principle unobservable.
Why are some people skeptical of my faith in such inferences (it's the same view you outlined I think)?
There's no non-circular way of defending them. They don't like metaphysics. They think the weirdness of the Quantum World shows that our observations are an unreliable guide to the unobservable world. There's no reason Natural Selection should equip us to make such inferences. They prefer the rigour of verifying every belief with measurements than the imaginative leaps that are involved in explanations.(In fact, I think empiricists want to be much too rigorous about our claims to knowledge). I don't think these objections have much force.
Deeper objections based on history and logic are given in questions 2a - 2c in post 84. They are further developed in the articles on post 87. I think good replies can be given to these objections (and the articles cited give replies). I only mention this as you asked why someone would think it unreasonable to infer to something like an electron.
To put my cards on the table I suppose that (a) I just find Inference to the Best Explanation too intuitive to abandon and (b) reading science as an outsider, I am somewhat in awe of what scientists have achieved. It's not so much the resulting tecnology that impresses me, but the patience and attention to detail. I could never develop these virtues. It's precisely because science is a HUMAN achievement that I value it so much, and I want to take as high a view of it as possible.
Ignore the wisecrack in question 1 in post 84. Shouldn't you hold to something like the De Broglie - Bohm interpretation if you are going to be consistent? Would you agree that the electron is indeed a particle? That it shouldn't just be treated "as if" it was a particle?

I hope that this clears the air a little, and I am sorry that that piece of pain popped up elsewhere.
(If you check with Helio, insults are usually taken as part of the fun in our exchanges, and never imply disprespect.)

Graham Veale

Oh, and your mastery of sums has my respect - I defer to your authority on all things mathematical.