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Volume 3 Number 27 October
21, 2005 |
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Deciding for self Autonomy is a basic moral right, but is far from
unrestricted As the country has been bludgeoned by one hurricane after another, some people are amazed at those residents of affected areas who declare their intention to "ride out the storm" in their homes, despite the obvious dangers. The wordsmith in me always cringes when I hear this. The decision to "ride out" a storm is usually one made by the master of a vessel who calculates that his chances of saving his ship are better at sea – where it can rise and fall with the waves and turn to head into the wind – rather than tied up in a port – where, not having any maneuverability, it can smash into other vessels or against the pier. If you are in a house, one firmly attached to a foundation, you may be "braving the storm," but you are not "riding it out." If your house rises and falls with the waves and begins to turn into the wind, you are in greater trouble than you ever imagined. Stationary objects should not – and do not – "ride out" anything. The quibbling over terminology notwithstanding, I find myself both these hardy (or foolhardy) people, while at the same time thinking that perhaps they would be better off to heed the warnings and get out. However, when push comes to shove, the decision, no matter how foolish or ill-advised, is theirs. Making decisions for oneself is basic to our human and moral rights. It stems from our right to autonomy and encompasses the notion that we can make the decisions that are important to us, for reasons that are important to us, whether other people agree with them or not. This is a liberty right. However, despite what some people would like to think, this right is not absolute. It is not unconstrained. I was mildly amused, as I'm
sure many other people were, by the video of the person whom Believing from the news story's promo and lead-in that I was about to see some "gnarly surfer dude" defying conventional authority, I was surprised, but not shocked, when it turned out to be an older gentlemen, not in the best of physical shape, who protested loudly that the order not to surf was a violation of his rights as an American and told anyone who would listen that surfing when you wanted was "what this country is all about." It's been a while since I studied revolutionary-era history, but I'm quite sure that surfing in the teeth of an approaching storm wasn't high on the agenda during the constitutional conventions. I think the Founders were worried about weightier matters. However, an encounter such as this always raises interesting issues. If I were an irreverent person, I might say that if the guy wants to surf in the teeth of a killer storm, and turn himself into "seagull chow" in the process, then why not let him? The herd does need thinning out, and there always seems to be a group willing to self-select for that noble aim. Who are we to interfere? Since I'm not irreverent, I won't say that, but would rather look at what would justify interference in this person's right to decide when and where to surf. The first thing that would constrain our right to make any given decision would be whether it was self-regarding or other-regarding. Does the decision affect the decision-maker and only the decision-maker, or does it have a potential to affect other people in significant ways? Once we determine that other people can possibly suffer from an act, different rules come into play. A very common way of expressing this is that my right to swing my fist in the air ends at the point where you nose begins. Swinging my fist is self-regarding, until it intersects your nose. At that point, it becomes other-regarding. Few of us act in a vacuum, and many of our actions have some effect on other people. This doesn't mean that all our actions are other-regarding. We need to determine if the effect is significant – and significant enough to constrain the proposed act. I don't have a formula for that, and it's usually something we need to work out in other ways. Assuming that we've determined the act is sufficiently self-regarding, a lot would also depend on the expected outcome. If there were the possibility of significant harm to the person contemplating the act, then we would want to make sure that the person was competent to make the decision and was, in fact, making an informed decision. We would want to make sure that the person understood the ramifications of his actions and was taking the risk willingly. We would also want to ensure that there was the possibility of some good to be achieved that would warrant the risk of significant harm. This gets us into a delicate balancing act. How high we set the bar for competence will depend on the magnitude of the potential harm and the certainty that the harm will occur. Also, the good to be achieved, if the act is successful, doesn't necessarily have to meet our standard of "good," as long as it is "good" to the person acting. At one end of the scale, is a minimal chance of minor harm. Suppose, the person has a 10 percent chance of getting a paper cut. Based on that, we'd have no justification to interfere in his decision and his goal in performing the act could be completely frivolous. Now suppose that there is a 100 percent chance of death from performing the act. In that case, we'd want to set the bar for competence very high and the goal of the proposed decision would have to be pretty substantial. So, if we were to see a person about to leap from a tall building, we'd be fairly well justified in restraining him, based solely on the certain outcome of a grave harm with no apparent good to be achieved from the act. Once you move away from those polar examples, it begins to get murky (as always). If someone is putting himself at grave risk of significant harm – and we have no way of immediately ascertaining his goal or his state of mind, then we would be justified in restraining him, at least until we can determine both. We would also want to ensure that the person understood the risks involved and had weighed not only the risks, but also the probability of success. This is what justifies fire personnel, for example, from stopping a homeowner from rushing back into the house in an attempt to rescue trapped family members. With no training or safety equipment and not thinking clearly, the would-be rescuer is almost certain to die with almost no chance of saving anyone. His decision is not only foolhardy, but also uninformed. Another factor that justifies constraint is public good. There might be some public good to be achieved (or public harm to be avoided) by limiting someone's freedom to act in a certain way. The immediate example that comes to mind is stopping someone from yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater – when there is no fire, of course. The avoidance of panic is a very worthwhile good that more than outweighs the thrill someone would achieve by yelling out such a false warning. All of these situations, of course, leave a wide area for disagreement over what constitutes justification, and what the effects of acting and restricting actions would be, as well as their various weights. However, that doesn't mean we can't reach some consensus in a lot of other areas. In the case of the The public good angle might also come into play. Even if a person is an experienced surfer and is competent to make a risky decision, allowing one person to do it might encourage others who are less competent to decide and less able to survive. So the public good of preventing mass tragedy might outweigh the surfer's mild inconvenience. But all constraints aside – and I realized I packed a lot into a short space and glossed over a lot of nuance and explanation – my point is that, except for the cases that would fall under the above categories, we do grant people a lot of leeway in making decisions that affect primarily themselves, even when the decisions may seem irrational to us. We don't (at least most of us don't) go around knocking cigarettes out of people's hands, nor do we block them from the drive-thru windows of the local junk food emporium. I am generally free to invest my money foolishly – and am somewhat adept at that. I can take my 401K money and use it to buy lottery tickets, if I were to get the notion. People may laugh at me, but I can do it if I want. In the same way, I can choose chemotherapy, despite my physician's recommendation for surgery – if it suits some purpose of mine or just my aversion to surgery. Or I can choose a risky and untested treatment. As long as I am competent to make that decision and my choice is informed, I am in control. More important, I'm ethically permitted to do it. If I don't violate my responsibilities to someone else, there is nothing ethically to stop me from acting on even my irrational desires. I've dealt with a lot of theory here that may seem disconnected to anything in particular, but I am leading up to something. Next time, I'll talk about deciding for others, which brings a while different set of ethical considerations. And these two things together will lead us somewhere that surprised even me when I first stumbled on the connection. So, don't worry. I do have a map – and I know how to get us out of this. I promise. So, stay tuned. |
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© Copyright 2005 Carlton Vogt |