Exploring Ethical Dualism (Carolyn Suchy-Dicey)

I recently published a paper in Neuroethics called, "It Takes Two: Ethical Dualism in the Vegetative State." In this paper I explore the possibility of ethical dualism, a type of ethical pluralism that I think might help us to answer the problems raised by cases like that of vegetative patients, such as Terri Schiavo and Lauren Richardson. That is, numerous problems in ethics seem to arise when two of our ethical interests conflict: our interest in securing wellbeing for ourselves and others and our interest in respecting the intentions of others. In punishment, for example, these have long been taken to be mutually exclusive types of justification. In ethics, likewise, many theorists seem aligned with either an autonomy-centered or welfare-centered background. By introducing a dualist system I hope to have my cake and eat it; when a case satisfies the minimum conditions of potentially increasing or decreasing welfare, the rules of welfare-centered theories apply, but when a case also satisfies the condition of involving the intentional wishes of an autonomous agent (or a potentially autonomous agent, understood widely), then the rules of autonomy-centered theories also apply. Of course, the interesting cases are those when the two values are in conflict, and I do not yet have a system of solving these conflicts. I am interested in how viable others see this type of dualist picture (and pluralist programs in general). For those still in the dark, a sample application could be animal ethics: in the autonomy-centered approach we may have to refuse animals direct ethical treatment, but in the welfare-centered approach we may have to consider non-autonomous animals as ethically equivalent to autonomous humans. In my dualist approach, the first stage of welfare would apply to all beings that experience welfare, but a second, narrower level would also apply to those who experience autonomy. Thus, we could have both wide scope and special treatment. If you have any thoughts on this, please post them. This is a relatively new project to me, and I would be interested in working on it more. 

Comments

[Account Deleted]

There is basic need of revive the concept about persistent Vegetative state and minimally conscious state and their welfare depends for doing some thing for them. First important thing is to decide about consciousness of these patients.This field has still no visible development but this is now established that many of them may be conscious but due to loss of motor function they can not communicate so they are being treated as vegetable.

[Carolyn Suchy-Dicey]

I agree with this, Jawad, and in the paper I talk some about how I think our ethical intuitions lead us astray on these states because of the epistemic limitations. Steven Laureys, for one, works on the issues you mention and you may be interested in his work.