Various Ethics Scenarios

[KevinDW78]

A I am reading the textbook for my ethics class, it introduces the study of ethics by giving some examples of real-world situations. As I read them, I was trying to figure out what the Objectivist stance would be. These are the scenarios:

Baby Theresa

Theresa, an anencephalic infant was born "withut a brain" - the cerebrum and cerebellum, however there is a brainstem so autoatic functions such as heartbeat and breathing are possible. Of the 350 cases that survive birth, all die usually within a few days. Knowing that their baby could not survive and would never be conscious, the parents decided to donate their baby's organs, which would cause their baby to die immediately. Since Florida law does not allow the taking of organs from someone who is not dead, they were never allowed to do so, and baby Theresa died nine days later. The basic moral question - is it unethical to kill person A to save person B?

Jodie & Mary

Jodie and Mary were conjoined twins. If they did not undergo an operation to be seperated, they would only survive about six months. If they were seperated, one twin would survive and live a normal healthy life whereas the other would die almost immediately. The parents, who were Catholics, ecided to let nature take it's course. The doctors sought a court order to have the operation and won. The twins were seperated and Mary died despite the doctors knowingly futile effort to keep her alive as long as possible. The Candian courts argued that it was not the operation that killed Mary, but instead Mary's own physical weakness.

Tracy Latimer

Tracy Latimer was a 12 year old girl with cerebral palsy considered to have the mental capacity of a three month old infant and was constantly bedridden and in pain. Her father ethanized her by putting her in a pickup truck cab and running the exhaust from the truck into the cab. The father was eventually charged with murder. Tracy had no possibility of a "life" in any way other than biological existence.

So again I ask - what would Objectivist stances be in these cases?

[DavidOdden]

In the first case, the parents have the right to donate the organs. The law is in error, in mistakenly holding that an ancephalic humanoid is a person. The law should be changed. In the second case, we're being asked to accept a rigged hypothetical that presumes omniscience about the future. But if we assume that there really is no possibility of survival without the operation, and negligible chance of survival for one and death for the other in case of surgery (i.e. we can count on one and only one survivor), then the parents were not acting in the interest of the children to guarantee that both would die in 6 months. Thus the court acted properly. In the final case, Objectivism does not derive rights from a case-by-case assessment of whether a being can engage in rational mental exploits as their means of survival: rights are a simple principle applicable to all instances of the concept "man". OTOH, a rational legal system would not require actual informed consent from from e.g. people who brains didn't function in a way that even allowed consent. This is the only hard one, I would say.

[progressiveman1]

In the final case, Objectivism does not derive rights from a case-by-case assessment of whether a being can engage in rational mental exploits as their means of survival: rights are a simple principle applicable to all instances of the concept "man".

But isn't the ability to be rational required to be 'man'? Why is she considered to be 'man'?

[DavidOdden]

But isn't the ability to be rational required to be 'man'? Why is she considered to be 'man'?

Don't put the relationship between existence and consciousness in the wrong order. Definitions serve the purpose of economically encapsulating the identity of existents, so that we can retain the concept. The fact of a child failing one definition of "man" doesn't change the fact of whether the child is a "man". The child is a still a person, just one that has a problem with her brain that prevents her from acting rationally.

[KevinDW78]

So is it appropriate to quote Galt's Speech where Rand writes:

It is to a baby that the world appears as a blur of motion, without things that move—and the birth of his mind is the day when he grasps that the streak that keeps flickering past him is his mother and the whirl beyond her is a curtain, that the two are solid entities and neither can turn into the other, that they are what they are, that they exist. The day when he grasps that matter has no volition is the day when he grasps that he has—and this is his birth as a human being. The day when he grasps that the reflection he sees in a mirror is not a delusion, that it is real, but it is not himself, that the mirage he sees in a desert is not a delusion, that the air and the light rays that cause it are real, but it is not a city, it is a city's reflection—the day when he grasps that he is not a passive recipient of the sensations of any given moment, that his senses do not provide him with automatic knowledge in separate snatches independent of context, but only with the material of knowledge, which his mind must learn to integrate—the day when he grasps that his senses cannot deceive him, that physical objects cannot act without causes, that his organs of perception are physical and have no volition, no power to invent or to distort, that the evidence they give him is an absolute, but his mind must learn to understand it, his mind must discover the nature, the causes, the full context of his sensory material, his mind must identify the things that he perceives—that is the day of his birth as a thinker and scientist.

So if I follow correctly, unless or until a human being reaches this point, they would not be considered a "man" and therefore, would not be considered to be a volitional being, and therefore not possess the rights afforded to those who are?

[Greebo]

So is it appropriate to quote Galt's Speech where Rand writes:

So if I follow correctly, unless or until a human being reaches this point, they would not be considered a "man" and therefore, would not be considered to be a volitional being, and therefore not possess the rights afforded to those who are?

Right - which is why children aren't allowed the rights that their parents are.

[DavidOdden]

So if I follow correctly, unless or until a human being reaches this point, they would not be considered a "man" and therefore, would not be considered to be a volitional being, and therefore not possess the rights afforded to those who are?

I see your point -- it seems to imply that until that stage, the baby is not a person, it's an external fetus with no rights that can be disposed of like any other animal. I don't believe that is the point, and I don't think that in the preceding sentence where Galt says

A savage is a being who has not grasped that A is A and that reality is real. He has arrested his mind at the level of a baby's, at the state when a consciousness acquires its initial sensory perception and has not learned to distinguish solid objects

that Galt is also saying that savages are not people and thus can be treated as rightless natural resources. I think the phrase "birth as a human being" is rhetorical flair, and that in fact that day is the baby's "birth as a thinker and scientist".

[progressiveman1]

Don't put the relationship between existence and consciousness in the wrong order. Definitions serve the purpose of economically encapsulating the identity of existents, so that we can retain the concept. The fact of a child failing one definition of "man" doesn't change the fact of whether the child is a "man". The child is a still a person, just one that has a problem with her brain that prevents her from acting rationally.

But what is a 'man' in that sense? A being that is born out of a human?

[Zip]

The Latimer case is a mercy killing. Operating on the premise that Tracy Latimer is a human being isn't the cessation of the suffering of a human being in and of itself reason enough to acquit the father of a crime?

[KevinDW78]

I see your point -- it seems to imply that until that stage, the baby is not a person, it's an external fetus with no rights that can be disposed of like any other animal. I don't believe that is the point

So I guess my question is still - at what point does an infant become a volitional being with rights? When do rights begin?

[DavidOdden]

So I guess my question is still - at what point does an infant become a volitional being with rights? When do rights begin?

When the fetus becomes a person. People don't live inside other people. Note btw that an ancephalic monster (to use the traditional technical term) is such a deviation from the nature of mammal of any type that the fact of it being outside of another person still doesn't make it a person. There's a major difference between homo sapiens tissue that has a hole where a brain should be and literally no rational faculty, and a brain that is sufficiently scrambled that it's unlikely that the rational faculty can ever be exercised.

[KevinDW78]

When the fetus becomes a person.

When does a fetus become a "person"? Now it feels like this is an abortion issue lol.