I read the entire article. What irks me about these type of debates, between a lawyer and a philosopher of ethics, is that they center around creating a consistent ‘logical structure’ or trying to define the right types of preferences purely from reason.
The author uses lots of lawyer arguments that focus on rhetoric, but are nonsensical. She is ‘worse off’ in the sense that she would probably prefer to not be disabled. Rationalizing that society would take care of disabled people, for pay (freeing the family from a life of caregiving) only side-steps the issue that resources still need to be expended that could be used on something else.
I think they could debate forever, because there is no right answer. It’s a measurement question with a very flat optimization function. How do you measure the cost/benefit in such an incredibly high-dimensional and uncertain question?
Thankfully (hopefully), the real progress towards this solution is being worked on by bioengineers, not by these debates.
I read the entire article. What irks me about these type of debates, between a lawyer and a philosopher of ethics, is that they center around creating a consistent ‘logical structure’ or trying to define the right types of preferences purely from reason.
The author uses lots of lawyer arguments that focus on rhetoric, but are nonsensical. She is ‘worse off’ in the sense that she would probably prefer to not be disabled. Rationalizing that society would take care of disabled people, for pay (freeing the family from a life of caregiving) only side-steps the issue that resources still need to be expended that could be used on something else.
I think they could debate forever, because there is no right answer. It’s a measurement question with a very flat optimization function. How do you measure the cost/benefit in such an incredibly high-dimensional and uncertain question?
Thankfully (hopefully), the real progress towards this solution is being worked on by bioengineers, not by these debates.