Clare Hewitt produced a splendid photographic project on assisted dying, euthanasia and such. As I am in favour of euthanasia, well voluntary euthanasia - well, we could discuss others - I was involved as a figure. I see that, fitting with the topic, I am made all the more woeful and aged than even I really am (I think).
In the UK, a House of Commons body has recently recommended that homeopathy no longer receive state support - for the perfectly good reason that there is no evidence that the theory behind homeopathy has any validity. However, it is recognized that it may have value as a placebo and hence helping some people to get well. One concern seems to be that patients ought not to be misled.
That, of course, leads to the paradoxical state of affairs. Placebos can work; but patients should be told that they are taking placebos - the desire for transparency and honesty - and that usually reduces their effectiveness.
I wonder how many ill patients would prefer to be informed and remain ill...or rather trivially deceived yet be made better? After all, how many patients worry about the theory behind prescriptions more than whether what is prescribed will make them better?
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
This title has an obvious paradoxical and logical (illogical?0 ring - but there are many paradoxes in our everyday lives, from the sayings of politicians to the rules and regulations that generate bizarre outcomes, because of their inflexibility, to simply the way in which we hold each other responsible as free agents, yet do we have any firm grip on what it is to be responsible? What counts as our being free?
Well, this introduction to paradoxes, covers the well-known logical and space/time paradoxes, but also ones of politics, religion, everday life - and even the meaning of life!
Dare I say, 'Every word is a gem'? Well, yes, but maybe not the order of those words.
With the inspiring and touching news of the assisted suicide by Sir Edward Downes and his wife, is it not time for further thought on the matter of assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia – and a change in the legislation?
This couple had to travel to Switzerland, instead of having their deaths in familiar surroundings, maybe with friends. This couple were lucky enough to have the knowledge and money at least to make use of the Swiss facilities. How unfair for others needing to embrace death, yet who lack of the wherewithal!
When lives have gone well, the need to embrace death is obviously very sad; but not as sad as spending a last few months or years in pain, distress, or hopelessness. Of course, some religious believers speak of the sanctity of human life – though we may note that that concern does not usually extend to giving up many luxuries to help the starving and the dispossessed. Some religious believers speak of not interfering with God’s ways – yet, as David Hume pointed out, they happily interfere with God’s ways when those ways are pointing to death.
Of course, what is often wheeled out is the slippery slope argument. If voluntary euthanasia is permitted, the slide will commence and we shall end up with many cases of people being persuaded to go for euthanasia, being pressurized into it – even into our accepting blatant involuntary euthanasia.
Were that sort of argument sound, then surely this one would also be sound. We should not permit voluntary sexual intercourse. In permitting it, we are giving the green light to people being persuaded against their true feelings into having sex, to date rapes and blatant violent rapes. Yet, no one seriously puts forward that argument. Why? Because they know that there is a clear distinction in many, many cases between someone voluntarily saying ‘yes’ to sex and someone not voluntarily saying ‘yes’. The slope is avoided through educating people about the importance of consent – and through the law.
We permit voluntary hairdressing. Do we, as a result, fear that people will slide into being frogmarched to the hairdressers?
We value people being allowed to flourish in their lives as best they can. A flourishing life – a full life – may often need to have regard to how death will come about. That is part of a flourishing life – and if people want to round off their lives in certain ways, instead of the ways of pain, indignity and hopelessness, then we ought not to interfere. It is a simple matter of the value of autonomy with regard to this most important matter. For more on this – well, modesty does not forbid – try my Humanism: a beginner’s guide.
Well, it depends what you want out of life. Truth or illusion - I am tempted to say.
Many argue that without God and without belief in God, the existence of the world is somehow mysterious. What is paradoxical about this claim is that many people who argue thus also say that God is mysterious. So, on this view, one mystery is replaced by another. Is that progress?
Many argue that without belief in God, there would be no sense of right and wrong, of what is morally good and bad. That is a frightening claim. Are such believers really saying that if they lacked belief in God, if God did not exist, then they would think it was perfectly all right to rape and pillage, torture and kill for the sheer fun of it? - that it would be okay for me to give well-argued essays low marks and poor essays high marks? If they are not saying that, then it shows they do not depend on belief in God for a sense of right and wrong. If they are saying that rape and pillage etc would be fine, if God does not exist or there is no godly belief, well it is best to steer clear of such people...
Hearing and seeing major philosophers from the past....
For some fine Bertrand Russell, interviewed - and note his troubles with sex and the States - towards the end of this linked part and then move to part 3, try Russell 2.
For Isaiah Berlin - and his stories about the great Maynard Keynes, Lydia Keynes and Wittgenstein, try Berlin.
More recently, following in the humanist tradition, there is Bernard Williams - after a long, long introduction, see/hear Bernard Williams (or BernNARD as he was introduced) and the following extracts. And for the living, note the eccentric genius (pity the sound is bad), Saul Kripke.
