Agency, Autonomy, and Euthanasia - George Mendz & David Kissane
Writing A Philosophy Paper: See How The Sausage Is Made
Your $5/mth gives you access to the How The Sausage is Made series, following my paper writing from the beginning research stage, which includes the notes I take throughout my reading, through the draft-writing, and on to completion of the final paper.
Before tackling Colburn’s short paper on palliative sedation, I thought I would look at this interesting paper by Gerge Mendz and David Kissane that came out in the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics in January 2021. Fair warning - I wasn’t so much a fan of this paper, and I’m hoping to use these notes - they are just my notes, after all - as an example of how I critically evaluate arguments that I might disagree with. You’ll notice that I ask questions, some of which don’t have obvious answers, or whose answers might be rather complicated. This is essentially mental preparation for how I might want to frame an issue when I write about it myself - what kinds of questions have I thought about while reading the paper on the first or second go-around that I might be interested in answering myself in a broader paper? This also helps me identify recurring questions and themes that keep showing up from paper to paper, which in turn allows me to better focus my own research question. Since I’d like to be able to contribute something novel to the literature, finding those recurring questions and themes is an incredibly important part of the research process.
On to the paper!
The aim of this paper is to show that three different ailments and a specific life-situation undermine the agency of an individual. Since Mendz and Kissane (hereafter M & K) hold that having agency is a necessary condition for autonomy, people with these conditions are, at the very least, autonomy-impaired. Since respect for autonomy is a frequent reason given to facilitate Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD) - which they refer to as euthanasia, an outdated and unnecesssarily loaded term - M & K think we have reasons to withhold MAiD from individuals who suffer from these conditions.
In short, M & K think that conditions that impair individual agency necessarily impair autonomy, and since respect for autonomy is a motivating reason for permitting individuals to pursue MAiD, at least some individuals should be prevented from seeking it.