Peter Singer on Voluntary Euthanasia

Source: http://web.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/phil%20115/Singer_on_Euthanasia.htm

Background information: Utilitarians and Rights 

Most utilitarians deny the existence of absolute natural rights. Singer is a utilitarian. In order to understand Singer’s position, it is necessary to understand how utilitarians can recognize rights.

To defend rights, utilitarians argue that some rules establishing basic claims and liberties promote greater happiness. In Chapter 5 of UTILITARIANISM, Mill puts it this way:

“To have a right, then, is, I conceive, to have something which society ought to defend me in the possession of. If the objector goes on to ask why it ought, I can give him no other reason than general utility.” He argues that we have important obligations to secure and promote the “essentials of human well-being.”

In the book ON LIBERTY, Mill tries to defend specific rights (i.e., general rules which society ought to establish and enforce). For example, we have LIBERTY RIGHTS (rights to non-interference with our choices), such as the liberty of expressing and publishing opinions, and the freedom to unite for any purpose not involving harm to others. These rights exist only for “human beings in the maturity of their faculties.”

Most importantly, Mill proposes “one very simple principle,” the right to do whatever we want, provided we do not directly harm others:

the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. . . . The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. (On Liberty, Chapter 1)

Singer calls this principle “the principle of respect for autonomy.”

Singer’s Thesis

Given the presence of appropriate legal safeguards, there are no paternalistic reasons that justify denying voluntarily euthanasia.

VOLUNTARY euthanasia is understood to be active euthanasia following the consent of the person killed. A PERSON is a self-conscious, rational agent.

Only persons have rights (and only persons can generate the principle of respect for autonomy). To have a right:

 “One must have the ability to desire that to which one has a right.”

First key principle of the argument: Persons can waive their rights “if one so chooses.”

Second key principle of the argument: If we endorse the principle of respect for autonomy, we will assist others to do as they choose.

Given these two key principles, a rational person with “an irreversible condition causing protracted physical or mental suffering” who chooses to waive the right to life should be assisted in ending his or her life.

Although killing a person is normally wrong, and worse than killing “any other kind of being” (e.g., killing a mosquito, which is not self-conscious), in the case of persons it is worse to deny voluntary euthanasia than to provide it. To prohibit voluntary euthanasia is to promote less happiness, for it promotes the continued suffering of a self-conscious being who desires to end that suffering but knows that it will continue (and who therefore suffers the added burden of fearing continued suffering).

He Considers and Rejects Three Problems With Permitting Voluntary Euthanasia

We can’t be “sure” that it was voluntary. (Perhaps the doctor is murdering the patient and merely saying that it was voluntary.) Singer’s response is to put safeguards in place, as we do with virtually every other policy we adopt.

There will be a small number of mistakes, cases where it would have been better NOT to perform euthanasia. Singer’s response is that, if we are concerned about the small number of harms that will occur in our pursuit of a large number of goods, then we must also reduce the speed limit, etc. With the speed limit, we accept the small number of harms for the greater good. So also with voluntary euthanasia.

Are we giving too much weight to individual freedom? What next, legalize heroin use? Singer’s response is that we must respect autonomy when the choice can be rationally based. Narcotics addiction is a bad candidate for something undertaken through rational choice. So there are SOME things a utilitarian will prohibit. It just isn’t clear that voluntary euthanasia is a candidate for something we must prohibit.