Blog Archives

Acknowledgments for Liberation Biology

9/23/2012

A thorough review of the Acknowledgments chapter of Ronald Bailey's Liberation Biology requires that the LIBERTARIAN BIOETHICS BLOGger provide negative information regarding three entities: Reason magazine, the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, and Nick Schulz.

#1: I canceled my Reason magazine subscription in the distant past due to mockery of the plumbline libertarian position. #2: The Richard Lounsbery Foundation was listed as a "conservative" organization in a The Boston Phoenix review of college funding. #3: Nick Schulz is a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, generally recognized as a leading conservative/neoconservative "think tank."

Contrary to popular opinion, Acknowledgments chapters are important.

Libertarian Critique of Engelhardt 2

9/16/2012

Today the LIBERTARIAN BIOETHICS BLOGger finally read Sigrid Fry-Revere's 1992 article in the The Journal of Clinical Ethics titled "A Libertarian Critique of H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.'s The Foundations of Bioethics."

The good: Fry-Revere's discussion of the 'personhood' conundrum is intriguing. The bad: The author does not present a comprehensive libertarian bioethics theory. The ugly: The writer's critique of Engelhardt, Jr.'s book is valid but tedious.

The 'personhood' quandary will be the focus of the remainder of this post. Fry-Revere implicitly rejects Ayn Rand's objectivist bioethics theory by dismissing the potentiality argument utilized by Rand to assert that fetuses, infants, and the mentally retarded have rights while animals do not have rights. Incidentally, Engelhardt denies the plausibility of the potentiality argument and believes that marginal humans (fetuses, children, the mentally retarded, and animals) do not have rights. Fry-Revere reaches the same conclusion as Rand in the marginal humans debate by claiming that a being achieves 'personhood' when the being possesses "the minimum amount of mental equipment necessary" to exhibit reason "regardless of whether it is ever employed." The latter qualification maintains 'personhood' for the following groups possessing the appropriate reasoning tools: sleeping beings, stupid beings, and ill beings. Fry-Revere's 'personhood' principle is novel and impressive and persuasive. Do critics view her argument as a sophisticated variant of the potentiality argument? I can think of no other obvious objections, but I shall seek and report powerful contrary opinions.

Acknowledgments for Lives at Risk

9/9/2012

The acknowledgments provided by the authors for Lives at Risk: Single-Payer National Health Insurance Around the World are not comforting for the libertarian reader. Staff from the following five conservative "think tanks" are thanked: National Center for Policy Analysis, Manhattan Institute, Fraser Institute, Adam Smith Institute, and the Institute of Economic Affairs. The LIBERTARIAN BIOETHICS BLOGger will read on, however, for knowledge is gained when one absorbs correct OR incorrect theory.

Chapter 1 Principles of Biomedical Ethics Sixth Edition

9/3/2012

The first chapter of the sixth edition of Principles of Biomedical Ethics is a discussion of what the authors call moral norms. The following topics drew the interest of the LIBERTARIAN BIOETHICS BLOGger: common morality and choosing between conflicting moral norms. I will limit my comments to these two topics, for the remainder of the chapter is merely a summary of medical ethics.

The common morality is defined by the authors as "the set of norms shared by all person committed to morality." The authors describe the common morality as universal, normative, nonnormative, historical, and nonrelative. Hence, Beauchamp and Childress assert that their common morality theory is all things to all people. Objection #1 is the idea that a universal common morality somehow does not apply to persons not committed to morality. I strongly argue that a universal common morality must apply to each person regardless of each person's commitment to morality. Otherwise, the common morality does not apply to Stalin or Hitler or Lincoln. Objection #2 is the idea that the common morality consists of "norms about right and wrong human conduct that are so widely shared that they form a stable (although incomplete) social agreement." This sounds suspiciously like a common morality social contract theory, which is a major problem because plumbline libertarianism rejects the absurdly erroneous social contract theory. In addition, the authors implicitly endorse an appeal to authority (the "widely shared" concept), which is an obvious error of rational thinking. Objection #3 is the complete avoidance of the objective principle that actually underlies the common morality: self-ownership.

I close by commenting on the discussion by the authors regarding choosing between conflicting moral norms. Beauchamp and Childress provide 6 conditions that "must be met to justify infringing one prima facie norm to adhere to another." Objection #1 is that the authors object, in principle, to absolute norm(s). Yet, self-ownership is an absolute norm that underlies the common morality. This rejection of any absolute norm is the reason the authors's theory is so damn complicated, for non-absolute norms are perpetually in conflict. Objection #2 is that the six conditions can be interpreted subjectively. For example, one condition states that the "moral objective justifying the infringement has a realistic prospect of achievement." Because the word realistic cannot be objectively defined this particular condition is not helpful to resolve conflict in a non-arbitrary manner. Objection #3 is the fact that the six conditions remind this libertarian reader of nearly all anti-liberty arguments. Non-libertarians commonly profess support for liberty except in certain conditions or but not in certain conditions or only if certain conditions are applicable. Remedial Right Only theories of secession fall into this category, which is a category plumbline libertarians loathe.

Acknowledgments for Liberation Biology

Libertarian Critique of Engelhardt 2

Acknowledgments for Lives at Risk

Chapter 1 Principles of Biomedical Ethics Sixth Edition

LIBERTARIAN BIOETHICS BLOG

Author

Archives

Categories