Doing, Allowing, and Imposing

‘Utilitarianism for animals: deontology for people’ and the doing/allowing distinction

“…This includes protection against causal imposition (where the behaviour of others intrudes on what belongs to me, making substantial changes to what belongs to me without my consent). This means that for my body and other resources to genuinely belong to me there need to be constraints against doing harm (Woollard, 2013 , 2015 ).…”

“…Protection against normative imposition requires permissions to allow harm. (Woollard, 2013 , 2015 ).…”

“…So, on this view, the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing is best understood as a principle governing the interactions of these three morally relevant factors: the authority of the potential victim over their body; the authority of the agent over their body and the good of creatures. But, aside from a short footnote (Woollard, 2015 , footnote 17, p 108), my earlier work defending the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing focuses on cases in which both the agent and the potential victim(s) of harm are people. What happens when we consider the ethics of our interactions with N-P&N–H-animals?…”

“…We need to look at the details of a proposed defence of the DDA. I focus on my own defence of the DDA (Woollard, 2015 ). However, my discussion has wider significance.…”

Expanded terminal sedation: dangerous waters

“…However, if ETS extends to patients with a prognosis exceeding 2 weeks, then the deprivation of nutrition/hydration will undoubtedly directly hasten/cause death. It is true that withholding artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH) constitutes a ‘passive’ practice similar to not performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation; however, when the nutrition/hydration is foregone secondary to the ‘active’ process of administering sedatives in ETS, it is difficult to maintain that the practice as a whole is passive rather than active (although I acknowledge that metaphysical theories of causation are paramount here) 4. Can a doctor truly claim that he is prescribing permanent deep sedation for greater than 2 weeks, in the knowledge that the patient will, therefore, certainly die from starvation/dehydration, while at the same time claiming that he does not directly intend death and that it is instead a merely foreseen but unavoidable bad consequence?…”