Killing and Letting Die: the Similarity Criterion

Asscher, Joachim

doi:10.1111/j.1468-5930.2007.00381.x

Cited by 8 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 4 publications

(3 reference statements)

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“…aspects (a), (b), (c), (d) and (f) also obtain in context E. 40 Arguably, these connotations or nuances of meaning and context are not factors extraneous to the issue of the killing / letting die distinction; they are partially constitutive of the meaning of those expressions in the context that is relevant to the debate about WLT and VAE (59). 41 Note that we do not claim that (a) through (f) exhaust the ethically relevant aspects unique to the clinical situation that might encompass contexts W and E.…”

Section: Negative Examples: the Tendency To Irrelevant Abstractionsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Getting Real About Killing and Allowing to Die: A Critical Discussion of the Literature

Stumpf

Rogalski

2021

bioethics

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The moral significance of the distinction between killing and allowing to die has played a key role in debates about euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. Since the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment is held as morally permissible in the medical community, it follows that if there is no morally significant difference between killing and allowing to die, then there is no morally significant difference between withdrawing life-sustaining treatment or administering a lethal injection to end a patient’s life. Consistency then requires that voluntary active euthanasia (VAE) is also morally permissible. The debates over whether the distinction is morally significant have carried on for decades with little hope of consensus. We begin by surveying the literature to identify common argumentative strategies used in defending or rejecting the distinction’s significance. We observe, based on our review, that many of these strategies operate in ways that are conceptually removed from the concrete clinical situation of physicians involved in practices that lead to patient death (by withdrawal of treatment or VAE). We conclude by arguing for a novel way of moving the debate forward indicated by our reading of the literature, namely, by paying careful attention to the moral experience of physicians involved in end-of-life interventions to understand how they experience these practices. Exploring physician experience can reveal how the distinction may or may not be useful for moral deliberation and can provide the needed context to theorize about the distinction in a more empirically informed and practically useful way.

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Section: Negative Examples: the Tendency To Irrelevant Abstractionsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Getting Real About Killing and Allowing to Die: A Critical Discussion of the Literature

Stumpf

Rogalski

2021

bioethics

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“…The distinction between active and passive benefits can be viewed as a special case of the distinction between 'doing' and 'allowing'. Many philosophers have debated the nature and validity of this distinction (Asscher 2007;Bennett 2003;Bradley and Stocker 2005). Studies in experimental philosophy have demonstrated that lay people distinguish between situations of 'doing harm' and 'allowing harm', and attribute greater compensatory responsibility to 'doing harm' cases than to 'allowing harm' cases (Barry et al 2014).…”

Section: Effects Of Activity On Ethical and Legal Judgmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consumer Judgment of Morally-Questionable Behaviors: The Relationship Between Ethical and Legal Judgments

Sobolev

Voege

2019

J Bus Ethics

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Consumers' engagement in morally-questionable behaviors poses a serious threat to firms. To further the understanding of consumers' behavior, this study explores the association and conflicts between their ethical and legal judgments. In addition, it examines the way consumers' judgments depend on their mind-sets and the legal liability criterion of action (activity). In two experiments, participants were asked to judge the ethicality and legality of consumers' morally-questionable behaviors. Behavior activity and participants' mind-sets were manipulated. The results show that consumers are more likely to judge a behavior to be legal when they consider it ethical than when they consider it unethical. Nevertheless, conflicts between ethical and legal judgments are prevalent. Furthermore, ethical judgments, legal judgments, and the occurrence of conflicts between them depend on activity and on consumers' mind-sets. Finally, consumers report uncertainty about the ethicality and legality of a wide range of morally-questionable behaviors. Thus, the results paint a picture of individuals who perceive the law to be often beyond their reach or in conflict with their ethical principles. They portray both ethical and legal judgments as dynamically-changing, subjective, and context-dependent. Theoretical contribution and business applications are discussed.

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“…A whole proposition cannot be true without its parts being true, but each part can be true without the whole being true. 3 Likewise, a whole property cannot be instantiated without its parts being instantiated, and a whole state of affairs cannot obtain without its parts obtaining.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…So the parts of a song, though abstract, seem nonetheless complete. 3 Sometimes propositions are said to have parts, or "constituents", of another sort. For example, the proposition that Papalymo is a bachelor might be said to have the individual Papalymo and the property of being a bachelor as parts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Significance of Value Additivity

Brown

2020

Erkenn

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Whether value is “additive,” that is, whether the value of a whole must equal the sum of the values of its parts, is widely thought to have significant implications in ethics. For example, additivity rules out “organic unities,” and is presupposed by “contrast arguments.” This paper reconsiders the significance of value additivity. The main thesis defended is that it is significant only for a certain class of “mereologies”, roughly, those in which both wholes and parts are “complete”, in the sense that they can exist independently. For example, value additivity is significant in the case of a mereology of material objects, but not in the case of a mereology of propositions.

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Killing and Letting Die: the Similarity Criterion

Cited by 8 publications

References 4 publications

Getting Real About Killing and Allowing to Die: A Critical Discussion of the Literature

Getting Real About Killing and Allowing to Die: A Critical Discussion of the Literature

Consumer Judgment of Morally-Questionable Behaviors: The Relationship Between Ethical and Legal Judgments

The Significance of Value Additivity

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