I haven't kept up with the law on euthanasia and assisted suicide over the years. At the moment it is a Big Subject, because presumptive Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch is the author of a book on it. So I'm doing some catch-up research. Part of that is familiarizing myself with Vacco v. Quill, a 1997 decision by the Supreme Court that plays a big part in Gorsuch's book. The decision, and all six opinions, may be found here. Despite the proliferation of opinions, the judgment itself was unanimous -- all opinions aside from C.J. Rehnquist' for the court were concurrences. Here's a brief quote from the Rehnquist opinion. I promise to come back soon and say something judgmental about it. Please regard this post as a mere IOU. Anyway: the quote: "[W]e disagree with respondents' claim that the distinction between refusing lifesaving medical treatment and assisted suicide is 'arbitrary' and 'irrational.' ... Granted, in some case...
Posts
I'm thinking just now, for no good reason, of the book Arthur Lovejoy wrote, published by George Allen & Unwin Ltd. back in 1930, The Revolt Against Dualism. Although written as a historical inquiry, the point of the book is to lead us to a substantive philosophical conclusion: revolts against dualism have failed because they must fail, because dualism is an enduring fact about the world and our place therein. Efforts to deny that fact collapse. The book is, then, analogous to Lovejoy's better known work, The Great Chain of Being. In both cases, Lovejoy treats us to a chronological discussion of an idea that, in his view, has failed in fact because it of necessity must fail, and thus an idea we as a species would be wise to abandon. Chain discussed an idea in macro-chronological terms, as millennia passed. But Revolt was a very micro-chronological history. It focused on the 30 year period prior to publication. Anyway: if you're still reading at ...
Should I ever write a novel of contemporary life in the U.S. (a possibility asymptotically approaching zero with age and a growing sense of limits) I would include a scene in a book store, or at a book stand, or maybe along the stacks of a library. Somewhere where actual dead-tree books are found collected. In this scene, the protagonist would survey a number of the titles on a best sellers' shelf, and think sardonic thoughts about why these books had been successful. There would be one called " 'The Laxative Diet,' which recommends what that title would suggest it recommends." Its very existence would lead our protagonist to reflect, "Earlier centuries had the good fortune to be bloated, if at all, with fat ." And then his eyes would pass along to the next book. So now you're probably glad this book will remain unwritten, eh?
Assume a discussion between someone who believes in objective moral facts of some sort (however conceived) and someone who who believes that there are no such facts, and that as a consequence any first-order moral judgments are an error. The error theorist observes the vast differences between what different times and different places regard as right and wrong. He says there is an "argument from relativity," leading to a presumption against moral facts existing at all. The moral realist replies that one cannot make this inference. After all, there are people who believe in a hollow earth, or a flat earth. It does not follow that there are no geological facts, only that people are subject to small and large errors about them. To this an error theorist might reply -- oh wait, let's quote exact words here. "The argument from relativity has some force simply because the actual variations in the moral code are more readily explained by the hypothesis that they r...
There is, it turns out, no very firm divide between the plant and animal "kingdoms." One of the big differences is supposed to be mobility. Plants may move their leaves and flowers about over time, but they are rooted in one spot, and that one spot is where their nutrition comes from: right? Not necessarily. The BBC recently posted footage of a bramble crawling through a forest. Of course, it's time lapse footage, because the crawl is too slow for our unaided eyes to recognize it as such. But it is decidedly crawling. http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170314-time-lapse-footage-reveals-a-bramble-crawling Brambles re-root easily wherever their tips contact soil, or rotting tree trunk or the like, and that is part of the crawling process as displayed in this footage. This suggests a more philosophical question: can the bramble feel pain? Might it have some level of consciousness? Is it perhaps making decisions about where it should crawl? "Hey, the soil o...
Eric Voegelin was a political philosopher of some repute at the time of his death in 1985, but whose repute has fallen somewhat since. If one had to express Voegelin's views in one quick phrase, it would be, "gnosis is bad." Or, not so quickly, "Gnosticism is bad." Gnosticism in the relevant sense is a certainty about one's own rightness, usually coupled with a desire to create a heaven on earth. Bad stuff, that. Here is a great quote from EV: "[T]here has emerged a phenomenon unknown to antiquity that permeates our modern societies so completely that its ubiquity scarcely leaves us any room to see it at all: the prohibition of questioning. This is not a matter of resistance to analysis – that existed in antiquity as well. It does not involve those who cling to opinions by reason of tradition or emotion, or those who engage in debate in a naïve confidence in the rightness of their opinions and who take the offensive only when analysis unnerves t...
One of the benefits of my recent travels was that I picked up a copy of CANDID CHRONICLE, an advertiser-supported pro-marijuana weekly published in the form of a tabloid newspaper. This week's lead story was headlined, "The least sexy part of the cannabis industry," and it concerned laboratory testing. Consumers want their weed tested for many reasons: chief among them, to find out whether and how much pesticide it contains. The laboratories and the equipment used to do this work are, indeed, an un-sexy subject, but make for very lucrative markets. The article informed readers that they shouldn't rely on any lab that does not have ISO 17025 accreditation, an assurance of technical competence. A good thought. I will only add that since this isn't a singles' ad, the "ISO" doesn't stand for "in search of." It means "International Organization for Standards," even though that seems not to have the order of letters right. ...