My first thought on reading the emerging discussion on David Brooks‘ column is: Obviously Brooks is thinking through the lens of a limited anthropology, but he’s an interlocutor worth engaging. Let’s pull apart some of what it says and see where it leads.
For example: the discussion concerns Dudley Clendinen, who is foregoing treatment for ALS because he would rather die than become “a conscious but motionless, mute, withered, incontinent mummy of my former self.” The comment by Brooks that has drawn a lot of attention is:
Life is not just breathing and existing as a self-enclosed skin bag. It’s doing the activities with others you were put on earth to do.
In making this comment, Brooks skips over an interesting question: can a person who is “conscious” but unable to move “do activities with others”?
Suppose your loved one were in this state. Would you leave him to rot alone in the hospital? Or organize all his family and friends to come in and talk to him, read, maybe just hold his hand and be present?
At an even more basic level, there’s prayer. As you know if you’ve spent any time with people whose physical capacities are radically diminished, prayer is a vital, life-sustaining human activity. And it is not something you do alone but something you “do with others” – three of them! No one is ever really “self-enclosed” unless he chooses to be.
So then: isn’t a society in which the default social expectation is to rally to people whose physical capacities are diminished going to be radically different from a society in which the default social expectation is that they should rid us of their troublesome selves? And is the way we deal with these issues in public policy contributing to a change in the default social expectation?
I actually think there is a real sense in which Brooks is right that when you can no longer “do things,” you are no longer alive. Life cannot be reduced to an ontological status. We just need to help people broaden their perspective on what counts as doing things.
[Addendum: This was poorly phrased. I can't do things while I'm asleep, but I'm still alive. I should have said that the ability to do things is a necessary part of an understanding of what human life is.]
How profoundly the Bible transforms our understanding of what it is to be human! And those who don’t receive the Bible can gain some measure of this wisdom at secondhand if we engage them in constructive conversation.
July 15th, 2011 | 3:28 pm
I think I agree with you, as long as you acknowledge that each individual is unique, and what might be a totally satisfying and productive life for Stephen Hawking could be absolute misery for someone who could not do so much in his mind as Hawking does. Certainly in the Catholic tradition, while suicide or euthanasia is never permitted, foregoing futile or burdensome (or even expensive) medical treatment is definitely permitted.
From the Catechism:
Of course, as much as possible should be done for the sick, the elderly, the disabled, and the dying to make sure they can still have lives that are worth living. But there is a limit to what can be done, and also resources are finite.
July 15th, 2011 | 3:30 pm
I wonder if Stephen Hawking weren’t able to communicate through through the technology others had developed to help him if some of the same people would consider him merely a “a self-enclosed skin bag.”?
Isn’t it the knowledge that no person is ever merely such a thing that drives our compassion and the development of treatments and technology to begin with?
July 15th, 2011 | 3:59 pm
David: My own ecclesiastical communion, the OPC, has not issued a formal statement on this issue, but our sister churches in the PCA have done so. While generally stressing the duty to preserve and increase life, it contains this statement, which seems relevant to this conversation:
“Christians of any age who have chronic incurable illnesses and a limited life expectancy may ethically refuse ‘heroic measures’ rather than briefly prolong a life which God is clearly drawing to a close.”
http://www.pcahistory.org/pca/2-378.html
I wonder how different our conversations about this topic would be if we thought more frequently about discerning how God sets a trajectory for the end of our lives.
Jack: That’s right on the money. Technology transforms our understanding of human capacity, but it’s also our understanding of human capacity that drives technology.
July 15th, 2011 | 4:01 pm
I wonder if Stephen Hawking weren’t able to communicate through through the technology others had developed to help him if some of the same people would consider him merely a “a self-enclosed skin bag.”?
I wonder, if we’d had this attitude toward the sick and the disabled for the past century or two, whether anyone would have bothered coming up with the technology to enable Stephen Hawking to talk?
July 16th, 2011 | 9:31 am
Thank you Mr. Forster for your penultimate sentence especially. “How profoundly the Bible transforms our understanding of what it is to be human!”
These controversies and confusions evaporate quickly when one ceases to consider one’s body as the sole property of oneself. What is repulsive (if sad) about the expiring Clendinen is the implacable selfishness masquerading as selflessness. Whatever trials he must face are finite and can be born without degrading the ineffable gift of being alive. Pain can be a blessing compared to oblivion, and miracle cures happen.
Easy for me to say? No, we are all going where Clendinen is going, facing our extinction with more and less difficulty than is his apportioned lot. It is selfish of him to place himself at the center of the drama of existence and insist his lack of suffering be the highest consideration, higher than even his daughter’s need for a father and her need to witness and comfort the infirm, as he was blessed with in the final days of his cousin — a blessing he now chiefly regards as undignified rather than the training in charity it was, expensively purchased on his behalf.
Some things are beyond our imagination, and the trials Clendinen faces escape my ken. For that fact alone I fall to my knees and pray for mercy and relief of pain and anxiety. One sympathizes best one can about the harrowing life ahead. But it is still a life, that life is not his possession, and he has obligations to his loved ones that come with an awful burden, a burden that must be shared with more than gallows humor and almost grotesquely sentimental displays of hollow affection.
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.” We face our demise and oblivion with courage or fear. We meet our end with the blessed virtue of Hope, or we meet it with despair. This is no time to blink, this is an opportunity, like Bl. John Paul’s, to demonstrate the reality of strength in infirmity and the eternally replenishing gift of Hope.
“Take courage,” said the figure. “It is I. Do not be afraid.”
And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water.”
He said, “Come.”
So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus.
July 16th, 2011 | 1:57 pm
It’s good to note that that passage was “poorly phrased,” but I think it’s still not clear what you mean. There are humans who can’t “do” anything at all in any normal sense. They’re in comas, and there’s no special reason to think that they will revive. As far as we know, they aren’t conscious. Are they therefore dead? (If the ability to do things is a “necessary part” of human life, and if they lack this necessary part, then it seems to follow that they aren’t alive [or, perhaps, that they aren't human].)
July 16th, 2011 | 8:51 pm
Wish nursing homes and hospice places would play the Gregorian chant at the bedside ( sung by holy monks – unsure if other types are out there ; ) one can feel as though one is in the abbey , almost touching heaven ; wonder if such an experience would transform the feeling of worthlessness that they and any other persons in similar sitautions might encounter !
July 18th, 2011 | 8:49 am
Hello, Michael Gorman,
You wrote:
For some interesting thoughts on what death really is, see the following:
http://www.christorchaos.com/Dr.PaulByrneonBrainDeath.html
Here is an excerpt:
You wrote:
The ability to do things is a huge and important part of human life, but does not define it.
July 18th, 2011 | 1:26 pm
King –
Quite possibly. Now, should Clendinen be legally obligated to recognize a lien on his body by another, perhaps supernatural, entity?
July 18th, 2011 | 1:32 pm
I am a T-9 complete paraplegic. I respect your opinion and your thoughtfulness for people with disabilities. But I disagree with Christians, who interpret the bible literally, over some of their damaging superstitions, including creationism/intelligent design. I am a strong supporter of embryonic stem-cell research. It holds enormous promise toward the cure of catastrophic illnesses and injuries. This medical science is being opposed by Christians who believe every embryo has a soul. This is pure ignorance and superstition. We can no longer afford to accept propositions without rational justification. Thomas Jefferson, in so many words, believed that ignorance is faith’s best friend and education its worst enemy.
July 18th, 2011 | 1:52 pm
Michael,
I should have known better than to raise this issue in a blog post where it can’t be given the careful attention it really deserves. And even if I could write a scholarly paper on the subject, I don’t claim to have a definition of “life” that is sufficiently airtight to resolve all philosophical debate and earn me the Templeton Prize. Suffice it to say that I agree people in comas are alive, but I don’t wish to see that become the basis for removing activity (as distinct from mere cognition) from its central place in our more general conception of what it means to be human.
July 18th, 2011 | 5:15 pm
Hello, Robert,
You wrote:
Regardless of whether the embryo has a soul, do you believe the embryo is a living human being? If it is, does it have the same rights as the rest of us? If it is not a living human being, then what is it? We know it is alive because in its natural environment (not frozen or something like that) it will grow, and its being the offspring of human parents indicates that it is human. So it seems to me it is a living human being.
If you agree that it is a living human being but do not believe it has the same rights and the same intrinsic worth as any other human being, why not? In so far as embryonic stem-cell research brings about the death of the embryo, why should we allow that when we wouldn’t allow research that brings about the death of other human beings?
Thanks
July 19th, 2011 | 7:46 am
I am a T-9 complete paraplegic. I respect your opinion and your thoughtfulness for people with disabilities. But I disagree with Christians, who interpret the bible literally, over some of their damaging superstitions, including creationism/intelligent design. I am a strong supporter of embryonic stem-cell research. It holds enormous promise toward the cure of catastrophic illnesses and injuries.
The history of science is a history of human rights violations justified by the idea that science must (must!) lead to a miracle cure, so therefore any lives we harm now will be “worth it” because it will (presumably) help lots of lives later on.
But this is not sound reasoning. Nor does the history of science bear this out. It is based on several cognitive biases – for instance, it requires that you minimize or downplay the harm done by ethical violations, while crediting every advance to “science”, as if humans hadn’t started solving problems or inventing things until the scientific method came along.
The history of mankind shows that technological progress without ethics leads to nightmare, and usually to collapse – and the way out of nightmare and collapse is through ethical progress.
Given the history of what was done to disabled people in the name of a “scientifically improved” society, quadriplegics have special reason to be concerned that science be restrained by ethics. Ethics is the only thing that protects all of us. The absence of ethics always, invariably equals dystopia.
July 19th, 2011 | 9:59 am
Right, harry. We don’t need to “go there” with the soul thing at all. The point is, it’s human, and defining “which” humans have rights has never ever ever ever resulted in anything good.
July 19th, 2011 | 2:05 pm
Ray Ingles wrote:
Why import the legal issue? Stewardship (as opposed to ownership) is a way of thinking, a doctrine for life, not a legal controversy 99% of the time. It’s a reminder the universe — with your body included — is not all about you.
There is an authoritarian, Kantian tendency to expand opinions into universal rules and then criticize the opinion based on its impractical universality. When a person says, “You must confess to Jesus Christ for your salvation,” he is not also automatically saying “You should be legally obligated to confess to Jesus Christ.” As Bl. John Paul said, “The church proposes. She imposes nothing.”
But the authoritarian frame of mind recognizes no distinction between proposing and imposing and is therefore confused by the proclamation of natural law. Does the physician tell a patient he should eat less and exercise more, or does he petition his legislature that everyone everywhere eat less and exercise more? Does the scientist legally obligate someone to obey the law of gravity, or does he simply announce its existence and its effect?
Now we may debate politically about the justice of transfat bans or the wisdom of putting up safety railings around the grand canyon, but neither of those debates are the same as the dialectic about justice (with an eye toward health) and wisdom (with an eye toward gravity). Related, for sure, but not identical. Similarly, a debate about the morality of suicide is not a legislative deliberation about man-made law.
The Christian disposition rather dismisses the artificial diversions of human regulations as infinitesimal against natural law, as if parliamentary decrees could outlaw sunrises and ocean tides. With that in mind, my inclination is to give unto Caesar, and to put not my trust in princes. Make your laws for or against suicide, murder, abortion, and “victimless” prostitution and drug use. But work them out in fear and trembling and recognize what far-reaching, unseen culpabilities you are volunteering upon yourself. How do your laws imperil another’s soul and thereby your own? How does your advocacy encourage evil under the false cover of “legality”? Either you believe you are answerable to the “supernatural” or you don’t. If you don’t, then “all is permitted” no matter what the state has concluded.
July 19th, 2011 | 5:44 pm
King –
You’d have to ask Greg Forster that question – he’s the one who specifically brought up “the way we deal with these issues in public policy”.
July 19th, 2011 | 5:46 pm
Blake –
No, no – it’s the history of Occam’s Razor. At least, that’s what you said the last time, and I asked you then:
Flesh that out. Two or three examples, with explanation of why Occam’s Razor was the determining factor.
July 19th, 2011 | 5:54 pm
For the record, I only mentioned public policy because Brooks’ column did. Brooks devotes most of his column to how our attitude towards death intersects with policy issues, particularly the debate over how to pay for health care. His column raised concerns among some critics that he was inviting an approach that values dollars over human life. I was trying to show how those kinds of concerns can be raised in a constructive way as part of a dialouge that takes Brooks seriously.
Clendinen should not be legally obligated to receive ALS treatment, nor should he be indirectly coerced into doing so by the way we structure public policy more broadly, nor should we create a culture in which Clendinen’s freedom to live in accordance with his conscience is, in general, disrespected.
The flip side of all that, though, is that others whose beliefs and preferences are different from his should not be legally obligated not to receive ALS treatment (as is already the case in places where a government health monopoly can deny you treatment and seeking treatment outside the monopoly is illegal), nor should they be indirectly coerced into not receiving it by the way we structure public policy more generally (as is already the case in a much lager number of places), nor should we create a culture in which the default social assumption is that it is Clendinen’s responsibility to rid us of his troublesome self (as is already the case in a few places where euthanasia has become acceptable).
July 20th, 2011 | 7:49 am
Blake –
The history of science is a history of human rights violations justified by the idea that science must (must!) lead to a miracle cure, so therefore any lives we harm now will be “worth it” because it will (presumably) help lots of lives later on.
No, no – it’s the history of Occam’s Razor. At least, that’s what you said the last time, and I asked you then:
Flesh that out. Two or three examples, with explanation of why Occam’s Razor was the determining factor.
The history of science and the history of Occam’s razor are one and the same, because Occam’s razor is one of the assumptions that has to be true in order for a scientific conclusion to be accurate.
As far as your question, every single time that we used Occam’s razor instead of ethical “err on the side of caution”, that is an example of science being responsible for human rights abuses.
Three examples?
1. In the abortion debate: the Occam’s Razor conclusion would be that a baby is not “conscious” until it reaches a certain point of “complexity”. The ethical conclusion would be to err on the side of caution – since we have no way of knowing when a baby becomes conscious.
2. disabled rights debate: every single human rights violation occurring today – from the use of electric shock collars on disabled kids in New York schools, to the inhumane ways we treat the cognitively disabled – even to our current quest to “cure” autism by finding a marker by which we can abort autistic people before they’re born – relies on the Occam’s Razor conclusion rather than the ethical conclusion.
3. using people/populations/the earth as live experiments: Every debate that relies on the construction “it should be assumed safe because it has not yet been proven unsafe” is an example of Occam’s razor doing harm (by exposing us to great risk).
This includes the gay marriage debate, where we are using the children of such “families” as experimental subjects – instead of the more ethical conclusion, where we would not assume that motherlessness or fatherlessness is harmless for a child until we actually have not only an absence of evidence, but actual evidence supporting the idea that somehow having a second father does something to offset the known harms and risks of motherhood.
This also includes the genetically engineered crop debate, where legitimate concerns are brushed aside. The ethical approach would be to keep GE crops apart from the rest of the ecosystem until we have evidence suggesting those concerns are ill-founded.
In all these and many more cases, the starting assumption is that a thing is permissable and safe even if there are legitimate concerns about human rights violations, environmental impact, or other major – even catastrophic – consequences – because the starting assumption, Occam’s razor-like, says that these concerns are not given any weight until they have evidence behind them – specifically, the only way to legitimize these concerns is to let the scientists have their way and if the predicted harm comes to pass, we know the concerns were legitimate (it’s rather like determining whether someone is a witch by throwing them in water, and if they float, they’re a witch).
We require Home Depot to perform impact analysis before it builds because it might accidentally kill an endangered species, but for some reason science gets a free pass on the impact analysis even when being wrong could be catastrophic. It’s almost as if we think the people (and nations) scientists want to experiment on are somehow not as important as a yellow-bellied sapsucker.
July 20th, 2011 | 3:24 pm
Hi, pentamom,
You wrote:
Nor we should “go there” with the “person” thing. Instead of insisting the Supreme Court declare that the child in the womb is a “legal person,” or that a human being is a “legal person” from conception, we need to insist that the Supreme Court acknowledge, not declare, that every human being is entitled to the protection of law. The difference is that if we play along with the Supreme Court’s false pretensions as though it actually has the authority to declare that some members of the human family are legal “persons,” then we have implicitly (and dishonestly) agreed that they have the authority to declare that other members of the human family are not legal persons.
The truth of the matter is that they simply do not have the authority to bestow the protection of law on any segment of humanity or to withdraw it. And they certainly can’t measure one’s “personhood” any better than they can tell if one has a “soul.”
Humanity preceded the state and brought it into existence. It is time for humanity to knock Caesar off his high horse and put him in his place, reminding him that it is not his to bestow or withdraw the inalienable rights of humanity; it is his only to protect them. That is, of course, because those rights are just that — inalienable — they didn’t come from the state, and the very reason humanity brought the state into being is to protect those rights.
We need a “Humanity Amendment” not Personhood amendments.
July 20th, 2011 | 10:34 pm
Thanks, Mr. Forster, for a forthright answer.
July 21st, 2011 | 9:03 am
Blake –
“That’s not even wrong.” – Wolfgang Pauli.
In some ways, ‘we have no way of knowing when a baby becomes conscious’. On the other hand, we can specify some times when we have a way of knowing a baby is not conscious (yet). E.g. – no brain, no consciousness.
Besides, you’re using Occam’s Razor anyway. How do you know sperm don’t carry the soul, for example?
Kind of a muddled reference to this, I guess? “But many parents insist that no other kind of treatment successfully curbs their severely autistic children from injuring themselves through actions such as intentionally hitting their heads or gouging their eyes.” (Or this:“This school has saved my daughter’s life,” said Marcia Shear of Long Island, whose 13-year-old daughter, Samantha, used to punch herself in the head so often that she detached both retinas.
Wait, what? Finding out the genetic causes of autism helps understand the disorder better, leading to more effective intervention and treatment!
Perhaps. It’s not an inevitable corollary of Ockham’s Razor, though. What of the argument that “this hasn’t been identified to cause problems before, therefore it must be safe”?
I suppose if you could identify an actual example of that being used in reality, it’d help. Your current example doesn’t work:
Other principles (such as personal liberty and parental autonomy) come into play in that situation. More, there is evidence regarding such families, and it shows… some differences, not a particularly strong effect.
You kind of have a point with “the genetically engineered crop debate, where legitimate concerns are brushed aside” – but you misidentify the culprit. If there are “legitimate concerns” then by definition Ockham’s Razor isn’t being applied appropriately. It only applies when picking between hypotheses that explain the existing evidence equally well.
You also can’t get away from Ockham’s Razor, anyway. Why else do you assume these words were written by a human being and not a branch being blown by the wind, or an angry ghost?
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