I should note that I am not a True Believer on the Schiavo issue. I am, however, exceedingly confident that Peggy Noonan is a fool or a very nasty piece of work.
I don't think so. I think the language is fairly deliberately chosen. Women with unwanted pregnancies are thought of as a rather trashy sort among that crowd.
I think this poses an interesting issue in moral(-epistemic) psychology.
On the one hand: yes, it is undeniable that many many people on what they call the side of "life" here are being shockingly stupid in the pronouncements that they come out with. They don't even seem to be interested in getting the facts straight. And they appear to be constitutionally incapable of entertaining the autonomy-based considerations that any intelligent person can see are really important in a case like this. The appeal to "life" is skin-crawlingly stupid. And so on.
But some at least of these people are not suffering from low IQ, and some are not completely hopeless moral-political deliberators. (I think Peggy Noonan in particular is, speaking generally, an intelligent and articulate spokesperson for her views.)
So what's going on? Here are two possibilities that are not at all mutually exculsive:
1. What we have here is entrenched Frankfurtian bullshitting: bullshitting as ideology-mongering. That's what ideology-mongering does, isn't it? It leads you to go around making what to all appearances are assertions. But the assertions manifest no interest whatsoever in speaking the truth.
Are they really assertions? I say no. Bullshit is interesting in part because a bullshitter can fail to make assertions despite believing that she is making assertions. Frankfurt overlooked this species, but I would argue that it's the purest form of bullshit.
2. Our mistake lies in assuming that the relevant moral and epistemic virtues are context-invariant. Though I disagree with the thesis as a general claim about virtue, I think agree with my old grad school colleague John Doris that some issues with respect to which we assess people's characters require a fairly fine-grained specification of contextual parameters. (Are you out there, John? This is as good a place as any...)
Thus for example good-faith (but wrong, but wrong) deliberators may prove incapable of resisting the pull of "life"-cultural flimflammery. Yes, it's hard to explain the its attractions. But it isn't at all surprising that a good-faith and not otherwise discreditingly inept deliberator should have such a blindspot. (Berkeley and tar water, anyone? Smart liberals and tin-foil hatted Bush-hatred?)
cannot comprehend preferring death over biological life on a feeding tube?
me: Superman had a far worse condition, he could not breathe without help. He did have his mind.
Schiavo is most likely dead, has been dead. That is not the point.
If you believe she is worthless why not stand up and demand that she be put down like a faithful dog? Why starvation? It makes you feel good, like a 'free Tibet' sticker on a $40, 000 car. Pathetic.
You fruitcakes are the point. YOU would respond in a different way if Saddam or the guy in Florida who killed the 9 year old was made to go without water for two days.
Geez, I try to offer a philosophically substantive comment and then get immediately upstaged by abc's ravings.
Let me use this gripe comment to clarify one thing: I'm interested in the non-strategic aspect of the Republican's showboating. I agree with ogged's earlier post about their strategy. My question here is Fontana's: how could people like Peggy be so stupid? How can we even begin to make sense of the fact that -- strategy aside -- so many of these people seem sincere?
I'm not otherwise discussing the substance, beyond nodding to apostropher's comment (and that's why I'm not uncorking on the topic).
But not wanting to miss an opportunity to pick on Noonan, I'll mock this: "They remind me of what Winston Churchill said once when he became home secretary in charge of England's prisons. "
What, as opposed to the Home Secretary in charge of something else? Bad writing; no cookie.
I should also say that this: "So politically this is a struggle between many serious people who really mean it and one, just one, strange-o. And the few bearded and depressed-looking academics he's drawn to his side."
Is pretty creepy, in my view. Let's be sure to stigmatize someone in a perfectly understandable, and horrible, situation, as a "strange-o." And let's also make clear that rotten commie liberal wimps who like to kill people for the joy of killing are bearded and academics, and vice versa. Why, they're almost as untrustworthy and un-American as foreigners are.
Peggy Noonan's column made the rounds of the Catholic right blogsphere, known as St Blog's Parish. The sheer stupidity or disingenuousness of her piece and the reception of it is a cause for concern, as it reflects the present degraded state of the Catholic Right's grasp of reality.
I blogged about her column. She is a smart woman, I believe. So our only option is to believe that it is no burden on her conscience to lie or do evil for her cause. IMHO, there is always cause for concern when Catholics, of which I am one, cease to be bothered by the pangs of conscience, while in service of a righteous heavenly cause.
Ted, your 2 seems like the most common condition for your 1. The dynamic is interesting insofar as it seems that 2 can make people liable to 1, which makes them more 2, and so on. Add to that dynamic normal psychological reactions to disagreement like entrenchment, radicalization, and the like, and pretty soon you have us wondering why people who can (presumably) tie their shoes are talking crazy.
Just out of curiousity, should I believe that Peggy Noonan is smart? I haven't read much of her stuff, but whenever I do, I get the stupid-or-mandatious feeling in my stomach. I also read a hilarious review of her book on Reagan that didn't increase my esteem.
I agree with your point about the dynamic between (1) and (2) above. The question is then how to react if you're outside the dynamic trying to cope with it. Nothing we say can get immediate rhetorical traction. (E.g. anything we say about the present case will sound like a denial of "life.") So what can we do?
Rather than rail about stupidity and mendacity, I suggest that we firmly insist on our perspective. We are right, after all -- at least about the bullshitting absurdity of this "life" rhetoric and about the importance of the autonomy-based considerations guiding the husband's case. (Of course it's possible that we lack key information about the patient's earlier preferences.) And -- my main point -- it's not really so surprising that the other side should have gone off the rails as it has done.
There are, after all, points of engagement between our perspective and theirs. One irony of the case is that here we are insisting on the overriding value of an ideal -- autonomy -- that in other contexts we reject as overriding. In these other contexts, Republicans are the autonomy-worshippers. So the dialectic is familiar, and we can easily imagine a non-stupid (but wrong) argument on the other side.
In fact, if you set aside the bullshit there's a good debate to be had here. I've long admired David Velleman's papers arguing against simple-minded endorsement of doctor-assisted suicide for articulating the defensible kernel in the other side's perspective. He rightly denies (in a recent post on Left2Right, with links to those papers) that his argument can be used to defend the "pro-life" position in the present case. But there are legitimate issues here concerning how a court can determine a patient's preferences from off-hand comments and what it is for such comments and such a legal process to express the patient's autonomy.
So Ted has said everything here worth saying. I don't think Noonan is dumb, or a liar, but she is sloppy to the point of culpability here. Also, as she's not temperamentally inclined to believe in anything like the right to die, she's supressing the central aspect of Michael Schiavo's argument, namely, that he is trying to enable the exercise of his wife's autonomy.
Just to give my response to the Noonan piece, I think this sentence (and the section in which it was embedded) was over the line:
"She looks like one of those coma cases that wind up in the news because the patient, for no clear reason, snaps to and returns to life and says, "Is it 1983? Is there still McDonald's? Can I have a burger?"
Other than that, it was kind of unobjectionable by the standards of polemicizing. And you have to hand it to her as a polemicist: "strange-os and bearded depressed looking academics" now that's vivid.
I feel confident that Fontana and Ted, even if they are bearded, positively radiate bonhomie!
Ted, I have no good answer to the question of how to engage people like Noonan. Maybe we can come back to that. But you're right that there is a real debate here. Some parts of this interview with Robert George are maddening, but I don't think anyone would deny that this point is worth taking seriously.
What we must avoid, always and everywhere, is yielding to the temptation to regard some human lives, or the lives of human beings in certain conditions, as lebensunwerten Lebens, lives unworthy of life. Since the life of every human being has inherent worth and dignity, there is no valid category of lebensunwerten Lebens. Any society that supposes that there is such a category has deeply morally compromised itself ... Michael Schiavo's decision is that he considers Terri's quality of life to be so poor that he wants her to be dead. He claims that she would want that too, which I don't grant, but even if he's right about that, we should treat her like anyone else who wants to commit suicide. We rescue, we care. We affirm the inherent value of the life of every human being. Our governing principle should be always to care, never to kill.
In short: we shouldn't arrogate to ourselves the power to judge that some lives aren't worth living (and, the crux of the dispute), even our own lives. That's a slippery slope that does give me pause. But the more I think about what that entails, and the second part of what I quoted above, the more I think the more immediate and more scary slope is the one of government control over our life, death, and bodies.
But I'm just expressing intuitions here; I don't have a solid argument one way or the other; just competing fears.
I do, baa, I do, and I'm clean-shaven to boot. (Thus ends the speculation that I am John Doris.) I agree that "strange-o" is vivid, but it's a really terrible thing to say. I mean, Michael Schiavo might in fact be strange, or he might be acting on a noble and fine motivation, viz., acting out of respect for his wife's wishes.
Honestly, and I'm ashamed to admit this, the column made me hope--briefly-- for a moment when Peggy Noonan herself has to make such a choice, so that I can call her names after oversimplifying and misrepresenting her views. The reason I have a hard time ridding myself of the suspicion that this is deliberate manipulation is that the thought she seems not to get ("God, I hope I never end up like that, and I'd want to end life support if I did") is not an abstruse philosophical consideration; it's a thought that many of us have on seeing Terri Schiavo. Maybe it's not the end of the story, sure, but Noonan just gives it a quizzical look, chuckles, and moves on.
Ogged, I would have found that point completely unconvincing, but parts of it are expressed in German, so sign me up. Sorry, that's mean, and I mean to be mean to George, not you, but I find the line of thought troubling. There is no such thing as a life not worth living, even yours, even if you say so, and even if you look awfully reasonable while you're saying so. The platitude, if taken seriously, robs me of my power to make meaningful decisions about what gives my life meaning, what makes it worthwhile, what's valuable to me and what isn't. Just as taking me seriously sometimes means punishment, it also means not automatically seeing my rejection of my life as a pathology. What, it's just built in to competence that I can never find life too much trouble?
I know there are practical problems up the wazoo here. But George's thought isn't about them. It's about a very important judgment that I think I should be able to make and act on, and he thinks I shouldn't.
Yes, Labs, we agree completely on the matter of how we decide the autonomy/life question. But you're focusing on the implications of deprivation of autonomy, but what about the implications of judging some lives as not worth living?
The part of the Noonan piece which really bothered me was when she said, "The supporters of Terri Schiavo's right to continue living have fought for her heroically, through the courts and through the legislatures. They're still fighting. They really mean it. And they have memories.
On the other side of this debate, one would assume there is an equally well organized and passionate group of organizations deeply committed to removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. But that's not true. There's just about no one on the other side. Or rather there is one person, a disaffected husband who insists Terri once told him she didn't want to be kept alive by extraordinary measures. "
This is either quite extraneous, or is supposed to be an intutition pump for the idea that the outcomes of particular cases should be decided democratically, rather than just having the processes followed for deciding those outcomes be enacted democratically.
The question is rather this: Should we arrogate to ourselves the power to determine what it takes for someone to preserve her autonomy?
The question whether this patient's life is worth living is not relevant to this case. The relevant question is whether the patient herself would have regarded her current life as worth living.
I think a big part of the problem has been a failure to keep these questions separate. No one is determining whether the patient's life is worthless. The question is entirely: would she have preferred death -- i.e non-intervention -- to such a life?
The answer to that question isn't obvious. I can imagine that some might not want to reject the love of their parents under such circumstances.
But I agree that this assumes that the cessation of someone's life is not incompatible with the preservation of autonomy. One might wonder about that assumption. As George notes, we don't elsewhere deem suicide an expression of autonomy ("we rescue, we care"). So what makes this case different?
What makes it different is that in other cases -- where we rescue a would-be suicide -- our concern is for the person who we hope will emerge from the suicidal feelings (and yes, "choose life" -- sometimes "life" rhetoric is appropriate). But there is no such possible person in the present case. So there is no basis for the concern and no possibility of the relevant sort of rescue.
There is no possibility of rescuing this patient. Under such circumanstances, concern for her must be guided by our best effort to determine what she would have wanted. That she would have chosen death -- i.e. non-intervention -- in circumstances in which there is no possibility of recovery does not put her on the "side of death." In this context -- and using "life" in a deliberatively meaningful way, as in "leading a life," "looking foward to life," etc., i.e. not as mere biology -- choosing death (i.e. non-intervention) may well prove the only way to choose life.
The relevant question is whether the patient herself would have regarded her current life as worth living.
But isn't George's point that that question is "always and everywhere" out of bounds? As far as he's concerned, it's irrelevant whether I'm deciding for myself or for another; the decision itself--worth living or not--is not for us (humans) to make.
Slightly o/t, but is there some kind of Schiavo all-black-clothing thing going on today? I've seen a couple of Known Social Conservatives in my office wearing black. I'm afraid to ask.
The problem is, I wore all black today. Not to show solidarity; merely because my soul is a haunting and intriguing forest, and I wanted my clothing to project that reality to passers-by. But now I'm afraid of getting knowing glances from folks who, at the stroke of 5:30, are planning to cover their mouths with "LIFE" tape and march with "Terry's Brain Is As Functional As Mine" signs.
ogged, The second half of my previous comment was aimed at George's claim that this case is like suicide cases in which (as I completely concede) the judgment that one's life is not worth living carries no weight. I think his mistake is that he views this case as like a suicide in this respect. It isn't, for the reason I gave.
But I don't think the analogy with suicide is his reason; it's another instance that's easier to imagine and understand. The reason, in both instances, that he opposes death is that it's predicated on a judgment about the worth of life, and that's a judgment that he says we should never make.
march with "Terry's Brain Is As Functional As Mine" signs.
Might be true, too, in unintended fashion.
There seems to be some equivocation in the interview between phrases like "unfit to live" and "unworthy of life" (said of a person), and "worth living", said of a life.
Re 37: there was a review of Neil Young's soundtrack to Dead Man that said, in discussing the movie, of the main character that "the garden he must cultivate is death".
Seriously, baa? 1) It's not just the husband's testimony. 2) There's no medical, as opposed to public, controversy about whether she's cognizant. 3) There's nothing keeping the husband from divorcing her if he wants to remarry.
I haven't actually read the George interview apart from your quote, and unfortunately I don't have time to now. (Gotta pack for a cursed quasi-boycotted APA in SF that's also ruining my spring break.)
But why does George think that we must never act on the judgment "that life is not worth living"? I do think the rescue-rationale overrides such judgments, in the cases where we probably all agree with George. But if rescue is not possible, wherefore the prohibition?
I think there's a quibble on "life" in the background. I myself don't think there's any value in life-as-such at all, and I can't see how anyone could seriously think there is. (Why should life-as-such have value? Barring brute appeals to religion, it seems completely arbitrary. Can anyone say why I should feel guilty about killing the bacteria that I floss out of my gums each evening?) No, it's only life-as-taking-certain-forms that's valuable. Sometimes life is valuable merely insofar as it has the potential to take an appropriate form. But the patient in the present case lacks that potential.
Actually, what I find interesting (and -dare I say it- sensible) about Krauthammer's piece is not the aspersions cast against the husband, but the recognition that (with all due respect to the Schiavo family) the important result that should cme out of this is that if the people don't like the law, it should be changed for the future, not broken in the present.
Isn't the argument here not so much about life and death as it is about the specific time and manner of death? Noonan ends her column with the plea: "Issue whatever subpoena, call whatever witnesses, pass whatever emergency bill, but don't let this woman die."
But (to state the obvious) like all living things, Terri Schiavo is certain to die at some point. It seems like the decision to keep her connected to the feeding tube is not so much "choosing life" as it is a way of making sure that the cause of her death will not be starvation. Of course this would all be different if her state was not persistent, with no hope of recovery.
I suppose one could argue that she should be able to die of natural causes, but I'm not sure what natural causes are - aren't they just a kind of cardiac arrest?
(I tried posting this once, but the connection timed out. Apologies if it appears twice.)
For the record: A German Wolfson would have a hard time with that lebensunwerten Lebens ripped out of its genetive context and used to indicate plural. But we know what was meant, I think.
Is there not a massive distinction between choosing to end a life that, given the known facts, has no known sell by and one that, given the facts, cannot be prolonged without massive medical intervention and suffering?
The presumption of life argument, as tested by the bacteria flossing analogy, is obviously empty unless one appeals to something more than bare existence. It seems to me that if the question comes down to the mortal soul, then the dignity of that soul is the real test for the world of modern medecine. The Dogmas and tools of previous centuries just are not equipped to take that challenge on without some serious readjustment. Which is perfectly valid.
I guess all that means is that I am a progressive.
Here's what I take to be the core of K's sensible point:
"where there is no consensus among the loved ones, one's natural human sympathies suggest giving custody to the party committed to her staying alive and pledging to carry the burden themselves."
Krauthammer's discussion seems to me to boil down to:
1. it's very understandbale why someone would not want a feeding tube in this situation (conceding exatly the point that Noonan seems unwilling to countenace)
2. A living will would settle the matter, here all we have is inference.
3. How horrible that the nearest and dearest to a comatose, brain-damaged, whatever, person disagree on what should be done/what she would have wanted. What a nightmare!
4. The presumption that the spouse decides is reasonable, but is imperfect, and leads to not precisely intuitive results in this case.
5. The people applying the law here have been behaving honestly
6. If the law had been "can't let someone die without better evidence of the victim's will, or consensus of nearest/dearest" this would have been avoided. Let's make that the law for next time.
Sorry ogged, didn't mean to miss you there. No, it's not just the husband's evidence, but he's the prime mover. Remove him, and the whole thing falls apart. yes, he can divorce and remarry, but he might also want psychiological closure. We needn't believe he's a bad guy to think that his role is not ideal. I don't really know about the quality of the medical judgment on what she can know/feel. Stipulate as fact that she is permanently unconscious, and perhaps I would change my tune.
Ted, bacteria are bacteria, and humans are humans. I think George is concerned with the judgment that "this human life is not worth living." I don't like the implications either, but you guys see why he's troubled, right?
Stipulate as fact that she is permanently unconscious, and perhaps I would change my tune.
I am taking this as a fact. Does anyone have credible evidence that it's not?
I think part of Ted's point is that Terri Schiavo, while alive, does not have a life. I don't see the dignity inherent in the autonomic nervous system.
I should note that I am not a True Believer on the Schiavo issue. I am, however, exceedingly confident that Peggy Noonan is a fool or a very nasty piece of work.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 4:33 PM
I couldn't even get past the part where I was supposed to compare a woman's body to a gutter.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 4:48 PM
I couldn't even get past the part where I was supposed to compare a woman's body to a gutter.
You were supposed to compare a woman's body to a paper bag, which is merely located in a gutter. Much better!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 4:55 PM
I was thinking the paper bag was her womb.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 4:56 PM
That's probably an over-analysis.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 4:59 PM
I don't think so. I think the language is fairly deliberately chosen. Women with unwanted pregnancies are thought of as a rather trashy sort among that crowd.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 5:03 PM
Oh sure, but I think making the specific identifications of trash bag to womb and body to gutter might be too fine-grained.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 5:05 PM
That's probably an over-analysis.
I think it depends on the level of despicability we attribute to the metaphor-monger.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 5:06 PM
Ah. Ok.
I guess it's all pretty offensive, really.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 5:07 PM
Despicability, creativity, thoroughness, &more.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 5:07 PM
FL,
I think this poses an interesting issue in moral(-epistemic) psychology.
On the one hand: yes, it is undeniable that many many people on what they call the side of "life" here are being shockingly stupid in the pronouncements that they come out with. They don't even seem to be interested in getting the facts straight. And they appear to be constitutionally incapable of entertaining the autonomy-based considerations that any intelligent person can see are really important in a case like this. The appeal to "life" is skin-crawlingly stupid. And so on.
But some at least of these people are not suffering from low IQ, and some are not completely hopeless moral-political deliberators. (I think Peggy Noonan in particular is, speaking generally, an intelligent and articulate spokesperson for her views.)
So what's going on? Here are two possibilities that are not at all mutually exculsive:
1. What we have here is entrenched Frankfurtian bullshitting: bullshitting as ideology-mongering. That's what ideology-mongering does, isn't it? It leads you to go around making what to all appearances are assertions. But the assertions manifest no interest whatsoever in speaking the truth.
Are they really assertions? I say no. Bullshit is interesting in part because a bullshitter can fail to make assertions despite believing that she is making assertions. Frankfurt overlooked this species, but I would argue that it's the purest form of bullshit.
2. Our mistake lies in assuming that the relevant moral and epistemic virtues are context-invariant. Though I disagree with the thesis as a general claim about virtue, I think agree with my old grad school colleague John Doris that some issues with respect to which we assess people's characters require a fairly fine-grained specification of contextual parameters. (Are you out there, John? This is as good a place as any...)
Thus for example good-faith (but wrong, but wrong) deliberators may prove incapable of resisting the pull of "life"-cultural flimflammery. Yes, it's hard to explain the its attractions. But it isn't at all surprising that a good-faith and not otherwise discreditingly inept deliberator should have such a blindspot. (Berkeley and tar water, anyone? Smart liberals and tin-foil hatted Bush-hatred?)
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 5:14 PM
wanker said:
cannot comprehend preferring death over biological life on a feeding tube?
me: Superman had a far worse condition, he could not breathe without help. He did have his mind.
Schiavo is most likely dead, has been dead. That is not the point.
If you believe she is worthless why not stand up and demand that she be put down like a faithful dog? Why starvation? It makes you feel good, like a 'free Tibet' sticker on a $40, 000 car. Pathetic.
You fruitcakes are the point. YOU would respond in a different way if Saddam or the guy in Florida who killed the 9 year old was made to go without water for two days.
Posted by abc124 | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 5:37 PM
Hey, you agreed not to come back.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 5:38 PM
I was at the peace rally and got p.o.'d
Posted by abc | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 5:41 PM
Huh. And here I was hoping that was Wolfson goofing on us.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 5:41 PM
Ever watched somebody die from a terminal disease, abc? I have, more than once. They generally stop eating and drinking toward the end.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 5:45 PM
Geez, I try to offer a philosophically substantive comment and then get immediately upstaged by abc's ravings.
Let me use this gripe comment to clarify one thing: I'm interested in the non-strategic aspect of the Republican's showboating. I agree with ogged's earlier post about their strategy. My question here is Fontana's: how could people like Peggy be so stupid? How can we even begin to make sense of the fact that -- strategy aside -- so many of these people seem sincere?
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 6:13 PM
I'm not otherwise discussing the substance, beyond nodding to apostropher's comment (and that's why I'm not uncorking on the topic).
But not wanting to miss an opportunity to pick on Noonan, I'll mock this: "They remind me of what Winston Churchill said once when he became home secretary in charge of England's prisons. "
What, as opposed to the Home Secretary in charge of something else? Bad writing; no cookie.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 6:34 PM
I should also say that this: "So politically this is a struggle between many serious people who really mean it and one, just one, strange-o. And the few bearded and depressed-looking academics he's drawn to his side."
Is pretty creepy, in my view. Let's be sure to stigmatize someone in a perfectly understandable, and horrible, situation, as a "strange-o." And let's also make clear that rotten commie liberal wimps who like to kill people for the joy of killing are bearded and academics, and vice versa. Why, they're almost as untrustworthy and un-American as foreigners are.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 6:48 PM
Peggy Noonan's column made the rounds of the Catholic right blogsphere, known as St Blog's Parish. The sheer stupidity or disingenuousness of her piece and the reception of it is a cause for concern, as it reflects the present degraded state of the Catholic Right's grasp of reality.
I blogged about her column. She is a smart woman, I believe. So our only option is to believe that it is no burden on her conscience to lie or do evil for her cause. IMHO, there is always cause for concern when Catholics, of which I am one, cease to be bothered by the pangs of conscience, while in service of a righteous heavenly cause.
Posted by Ono | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 6:58 PM
Ted, your 2 seems like the most common condition for your 1. The dynamic is interesting insofar as it seems that 2 can make people liable to 1, which makes them more 2, and so on. Add to that dynamic normal psychological reactions to disagreement like entrenchment, radicalization, and the like, and pretty soon you have us wondering why people who can (presumably) tie their shoes are talking crazy.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 7:13 PM
Just out of curiousity, should I believe that Peggy Noonan is smart? I haven't read much of her stuff, but whenever I do, I get the stupid-or-mandatious feeling in my stomach. I also read a hilarious review of her book on Reagan that didn't increase my esteem.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 9:31 PM
I get the stupid-or-mandatious feeling in my stomach
I think you misspelled "bodacious".
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03-22-05 10:46 PM
Labs, I think the word you're looking for is "crazy."
Posted by peter snees | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 3:19 AM
FL, Try this column on Bush's inaugural. I at least don't think it's stupid or mendacious.
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 7:42 AM
Sorry to leave my insanity out in the open, but if I don't do this, I'll walk around all day wondering if Ted H thinks my spelling is terrible.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 7:53 AM
ogged,
I agree with your point about the dynamic between (1) and (2) above. The question is then how to react if you're outside the dynamic trying to cope with it. Nothing we say can get immediate rhetorical traction. (E.g. anything we say about the present case will sound like a denial of "life.") So what can we do?
Rather than rail about stupidity and mendacity, I suggest that we firmly insist on our perspective. We are right, after all -- at least about the bullshitting absurdity of this "life" rhetoric and about the importance of the autonomy-based considerations guiding the husband's case. (Of course it's possible that we lack key information about the patient's earlier preferences.) And -- my main point -- it's not really so surprising that the other side should have gone off the rails as it has done.
There are, after all, points of engagement between our perspective and theirs. One irony of the case is that here we are insisting on the overriding value of an ideal -- autonomy -- that in other contexts we reject as overriding. In these other contexts, Republicans are the autonomy-worshippers. So the dialectic is familiar, and we can easily imagine a non-stupid (but wrong) argument on the other side.
In fact, if you set aside the bullshit there's a good debate to be had here. I've long admired David Velleman's papers arguing against simple-minded endorsement of doctor-assisted suicide for articulating the defensible kernel in the other side's perspective. He rightly denies (in a recent post on Left2Right, with links to those papers) that his argument can be used to defend the "pro-life" position in the present case. But there are legitimate issues here concerning how a court can determine a patient's preferences from off-hand comments and what it is for such comments and such a legal process to express the patient's autonomy.
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 8:13 AM
So Ted has said everything here worth saying. I don't think Noonan is dumb, or a liar, but she is sloppy to the point of culpability here. Also, as she's not temperamentally inclined to believe in anything like the right to die, she's supressing the central aspect of Michael Schiavo's argument, namely, that he is trying to enable the exercise of his wife's autonomy.
Just to give my response to the Noonan piece, I think this sentence (and the section in which it was embedded) was over the line:
"She looks like one of those coma cases that wind up in the news because the patient, for no clear reason, snaps to and returns to life and says, "Is it 1983? Is there still McDonald's? Can I have a burger?"
Other than that, it was kind of unobjectionable by the standards of polemicizing. And you have to hand it to her as a polemicist: "strange-os and bearded depressed looking academics" now that's vivid.
I feel confident that Fontana and Ted, even if they are bearded, positively radiate bonhomie!
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 9:02 AM
Ted, I have no good answer to the question of how to engage people like Noonan. Maybe we can come back to that. But you're right that there is a real debate here. Some parts of this interview with Robert George are maddening, but I don't think anyone would deny that this point is worth taking seriously.
In short: we shouldn't arrogate to ourselves the power to judge that some lives aren't worth living (and, the crux of the dispute), even our own lives. That's a slippery slope that does give me pause. But the more I think about what that entails, and the second part of what I quoted above, the more I think the more immediate and more scary slope is the one of government control over our life, death, and bodies.
But I'm just expressing intuitions here; I don't have a solid argument one way or the other; just competing fears.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 9:42 AM
I do, baa, I do, and I'm clean-shaven to boot. (Thus ends the speculation that I am John Doris.) I agree that "strange-o" is vivid, but it's a really terrible thing to say. I mean, Michael Schiavo might in fact be strange, or he might be acting on a noble and fine motivation, viz., acting out of respect for his wife's wishes.
Honestly, and I'm ashamed to admit this, the column made me hope--briefly-- for a moment when Peggy Noonan herself has to make such a choice, so that I can call her names after oversimplifying and misrepresenting her views. The reason I have a hard time ridding myself of the suspicion that this is deliberate manipulation is that the thought she seems not to get ("God, I hope I never end up like that, and I'd want to end life support if I did") is not an abstruse philosophical consideration; it's a thought that many of us have on seeing Terri Schiavo. Maybe it's not the end of the story, sure, but Noonan just gives it a quizzical look, chuckles, and moves on.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 9:45 AM
Ogged, I would have found that point completely unconvincing, but parts of it are expressed in German, so sign me up. Sorry, that's mean, and I mean to be mean to George, not you, but I find the line of thought troubling. There is no such thing as a life not worth living, even yours, even if you say so, and even if you look awfully reasonable while you're saying so. The platitude, if taken seriously, robs me of my power to make meaningful decisions about what gives my life meaning, what makes it worthwhile, what's valuable to me and what isn't. Just as taking me seriously sometimes means punishment, it also means not automatically seeing my rejection of my life as a pathology. What, it's just built in to competence that I can never find life too much trouble?
I know there are practical problems up the wazoo here. But George's thought isn't about them. It's about a very important judgment that I think I should be able to make and act on, and he thinks I shouldn't.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 9:52 AM
Yes, Labs, we agree completely on the matter of how we decide the autonomy/life question. But you're focusing on the implications of deprivation of autonomy, but what about the implications of judging some lives as not worth living?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 9:58 AM
The part of the Noonan piece which really bothered me was when she said, "The supporters of Terri Schiavo's right to continue living have fought for her heroically, through the courts and through the legislatures. They're still fighting. They really mean it. And they have memories.
On the other side of this debate, one would assume there is an equally well organized and passionate group of organizations deeply committed to removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. But that's not true. There's just about no one on the other side. Or rather there is one person, a disaffected husband who insists Terri once told him she didn't want to be kept alive by extraordinary measures. "
This is either quite extraneous, or is supposed to be an intutition pump for the idea that the outcomes of particular cases should be decided democratically, rather than just having the processes followed for deciding those outcomes be enacted democratically.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 9:59 AM
ogged,
The question is rather this: Should we arrogate to ourselves the power to determine what it takes for someone to preserve her autonomy?
The question whether this patient's life is worth living is not relevant to this case. The relevant question is whether the patient herself would have regarded her current life as worth living.
I think a big part of the problem has been a failure to keep these questions separate. No one is determining whether the patient's life is worthless. The question is entirely: would she have preferred death -- i.e non-intervention -- to such a life?
The answer to that question isn't obvious. I can imagine that some might not want to reject the love of their parents under such circumstances.
But I agree that this assumes that the cessation of someone's life is not incompatible with the preservation of autonomy. One might wonder about that assumption. As George notes, we don't elsewhere deem suicide an expression of autonomy ("we rescue, we care"). So what makes this case different?
What makes it different is that in other cases -- where we rescue a would-be suicide -- our concern is for the person who we hope will emerge from the suicidal feelings (and yes, "choose life" -- sometimes "life" rhetoric is appropriate). But there is no such possible person in the present case. So there is no basis for the concern and no possibility of the relevant sort of rescue.
There is no possibility of rescuing this patient. Under such circumanstances, concern for her must be guided by our best effort to determine what she would have wanted. That she would have chosen death -- i.e. non-intervention -- in circumstances in which there is no possibility of recovery does not put her on the "side of death." In this context -- and using "life" in a deliberatively meaningful way, as in "leading a life," "looking foward to life," etc., i.e. not as mere biology -- choosing death (i.e. non-intervention) may well prove the only way to choose life.
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 10:29 AM
The relevant question is whether the patient herself would have regarded her current life as worth living.
But isn't George's point that that question is "always and everywhere" out of bounds? As far as he's concerned, it's irrelevant whether I'm deciding for myself or for another; the decision itself--worth living or not--is not for us (humans) to make.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 10:34 AM
Slightly o/t, but is there some kind of Schiavo all-black-clothing thing going on today? I've seen a couple of Known Social Conservatives in my office wearing black. I'm afraid to ask.
The problem is, I wore all black today. Not to show solidarity; merely because my soul is a haunting and intriguing forest, and I wanted my clothing to project that reality to passers-by. But now I'm afraid of getting knowing glances from folks who, at the stroke of 5:30, are planning to cover their mouths with "LIFE" tape and march with "Terry's Brain Is As Functional As Mine" signs.
The other possibility is that it's Holy Week.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 10:37 AM
Ted, if you get on TV and say "choosing death is the only way to choose life," the drinks are on me at every damned APA for the rest of our lives.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 10:40 AM
FL, Point me to a camera.
ogged, The second half of my previous comment was aimed at George's claim that this case is like suicide cases in which (as I completely concede) the judgment that one's life is not worth living carries no weight. I think his mistake is that he views this case as like a suicide in this respect. It isn't, for the reason I gave.
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 10:48 AM
But I don't think the analogy with suicide is his reason; it's another instance that's easier to imagine and understand. The reason, in both instances, that he opposes death is that it's predicated on a judgment about the worth of life, and that's a judgment that he says we should never make.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 10:52 AM
[redacted]
Posted by [redacted] | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 10:55 AM
march with "Terry's Brain Is As Functional As Mine" signs.
Might be true, too, in unintended fashion.
There seems to be some equivocation in the interview between phrases like "unfit to live" and "unworthy of life" (said of a person), and "worth living", said of a life.
Re 37: there was a review of Neil Young's soundtrack to Dead Man that said, in discussing the movie, of the main character that "the garden he must cultivate is death".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 10:56 AM
You know who's fairly sensible on this? Krauthammer.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 11:00 AM
Labs, the difference, according to George, is that those policies aren't based on a belief that some lives aren't worth living.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 11:02 AM
Commenting with a student in your office might be stupid.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 11:06 AM
Seriously, baa? 1) It's not just the husband's testimony. 2) There's no medical, as opposed to public, controversy about whether she's cognizant. 3) There's nothing keeping the husband from divorcing her if he wants to remarry.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 11:06 AM
ogged,
I haven't actually read the George interview apart from your quote, and unfortunately I don't have time to now. (Gotta pack for a cursed quasi-boycotted APA in SF that's also ruining my spring break.)
But why does George think that we must never act on the judgment "that life is not worth living"? I do think the rescue-rationale overrides such judgments, in the cases where we probably all agree with George. But if rescue is not possible, wherefore the prohibition?
I think there's a quibble on "life" in the background. I myself don't think there's any value in life-as-such at all, and I can't see how anyone could seriously think there is. (Why should life-as-such have value? Barring brute appeals to religion, it seems completely arbitrary. Can anyone say why I should feel guilty about killing the bacteria that I floss out of my gums each evening?) No, it's only life-as-taking-certain-forms that's valuable. Sometimes life is valuable merely insofar as it has the potential to take an appropriate form. But the patient in the present case lacks that potential.
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 11:18 AM
Actually, what I find interesting (and -dare I say it- sensible) about Krauthammer's piece is not the aspersions cast against the husband, but the recognition that (with all due respect to the Schiavo family) the important result that should cme out of this is that if the people don't like the law, it should be changed for the future, not broken in the present.
Posted by mike d | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 11:21 AM
Isn't the argument here not so much about life and death as it is about the specific time and manner of death? Noonan ends her column with the plea: "Issue whatever subpoena, call whatever witnesses, pass whatever emergency bill, but don't let this woman die."
But (to state the obvious) like all living things, Terri Schiavo is certain to die at some point. It seems like the decision to keep her connected to the feeding tube is not so much "choosing life" as it is a way of making sure that the cause of her death will not be starvation. Of course this would all be different if her state was not persistent, with no hope of recovery.
I suppose one could argue that she should be able to die of natural causes, but I'm not sure what natural causes are - aren't they just a kind of cardiac arrest?
(I tried posting this once, but the connection timed out. Apologies if it appears twice.)
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 11:22 AM
For the record: A German Wolfson would have a hard time with that lebensunwerten Lebens ripped out of its genetive context and used to indicate plural. But we know what was meant, I think.
Is there not a massive distinction between choosing to end a life that, given the known facts, has no known sell by and one that, given the facts, cannot be prolonged without massive medical intervention and suffering?
The presumption of life argument, as tested by the bacteria flossing analogy, is obviously empty unless one appeals to something more than bare existence. It seems to me that if the question comes down to the mortal soul, then the dignity of that soul is the real test for the world of modern medecine. The Dogmas and tools of previous centuries just are not equipped to take that challenge on without some serious readjustment. Which is perfectly valid.
I guess all that means is that I am a progressive.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 11:39 AM
You know who's fairly sensible on this? Krauthammer.
Shorter Krauthammer: In cases this difficult, we should always default to the side that agrees with me.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 12:10 PM
A line of argument which has stood the test of time. Have you no sense of tradition?
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 12:22 PM
Here's what I take to be the core of K's sensible point:
"where there is no consensus among the loved ones, one's natural human sympathies suggest giving custody to the party committed to her staying alive and pledging to carry the burden themselves."
Krauthammer's discussion seems to me to boil down to:
1. it's very understandbale why someone would not want a feeding tube in this situation (conceding exatly the point that Noonan seems unwilling to countenace)
2. A living will would settle the matter, here all we have is inference.
3. How horrible that the nearest and dearest to a comatose, brain-damaged, whatever, person disagree on what should be done/what she would have wanted. What a nightmare!
4. The presumption that the spouse decides is reasonable, but is imperfect, and leads to not precisely intuitive results in this case.
5. The people applying the law here have been behaving honestly
6. If the law had been "can't let someone die without better evidence of the victim's will, or consensus of nearest/dearest" this would have been avoided. Let's make that the law for next time.
7. Did I mention: "what a nightmare"
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 12:27 PM
Sorry ogged, didn't mean to miss you there. No, it's not just the husband's evidence, but he's the prime mover. Remove him, and the whole thing falls apart. yes, he can divorce and remarry, but he might also want psychiological closure. We needn't believe he's a bad guy to think that his role is not ideal. I don't really know about the quality of the medical judgment on what she can know/feel. Stipulate as fact that she is permanently unconscious, and perhaps I would change my tune.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 12:34 PM
Ted, bacteria are bacteria, and humans are humans. I think George is concerned with the judgment that "this human life is not worth living." I don't like the implications either, but you guys see why he's troubled, right?
Stipulate as fact that she is permanently unconscious, and perhaps I would change my tune.
I am taking this as a fact. Does anyone have credible evidence that it's not?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 2:15 PM
I think part of Ted's point is that Terri Schiavo, while alive, does not have a life. I don't see the dignity inherent in the autonomic nervous system.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 2:25 PM
What Ben said.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 2:29 PM
Ben W. nails it: she's alive, but without a life. She's alive, but she's not living (i.e. leading) a life.
See the first page of Wollheim's The Thread of Life for more on this distinction.
[Rushing off to the airport...]
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 03-23-05 3:34 PM