Wednesday, April 21, 2004
imposition on freedoms?
Autonomy can be expressed as the capacity of a person to make decisions concerning their own welfare and preferences. In order for a person to experience the right to autonomy and warrant other people’s respect for it, one must fulfil three conditions. These are (i) existence – one cannot respect the desires of potential or non-existent people, (ii) development – one must be in a state of mind or maturity that can be considered able make rational decisions, and (iii) possession of preferences – if a person does not have preferences, then it is not possible neither to violate nor respect them.
In conceding that we have a right to autonomy we say that we have a right to life. This, Glover argues, cannot on its own account for the wrongness of killing, or rather, it cannot account for the right to live. The consequence of giving priority to autonomy would mean paternalism is entirely unjustified. If a person has an unalienable right to live based on personal preference, then that person also has a right to die, should he or she wish to do so. Therefore, autonomy would allow a single person or a whole tribe to die, should their right to autonomy be justified. However, in extreme cases like this, many people think that paternalism can be justified, and that these people should be prevented from dieing against their wishes. Another consequence is that a person would not be allowed to kill in self-defence, as this would be violating the assailant’s preference for life. Finally, because of the three conditions to autonomy, one would not be in the wrong were one to kill a being that were not yet mature enough to have a preference for life, such as an animal, foetus or an infant.
In adopting a utilitarian approach to the value of autonomy, autonomy is not valued for it’s own sake, but for the instrumental value autonomy has in satisfying a person’s preferences. Autonomy is valuable in increasing the amount of satisfied preferences, but on it’s own, has no intrinsic value. Paternalism is entirely justified in this view, as greater good can be achieved in overriding autonomy in some cases. This does not, however, mean that utilitarians do not respect autonomy, as it is one of the most valuable tools in satisfying a large number of preferences.
In justifying the beri beri experiment, a utilitarian would say that greater good was achieved at the cost of some lives. Even when Fletcher knew almost certainly that the inmates were contracting the disease due to the white rice, he acted correctly in continuing the experiment. Thanks to the experiment, we are now able to prevent death by beri beri. Perhaps it is also worth noting that as the inmates were normally fed white rice, giving some of them brown rice and preventing their death is in fact increasing the amount of satisfied lives by a significant amount. Many of the inmates died, but many more would have died had the experiment not taken place. Even if a utilitarian were to take into consideration autonomy as having instrumental value, it could be argued that it would not be going against the principle entirely to proceed with the experiment. After all, one cannot override the preferences of a person that is not in a mental state fit enough to make decisions, so therefore the beri beri subjects preference for existence can not be entirely valid as they were insane, and therefore not entitled the right to autonomy.
fon @ 3:39 AM link to post * *