ELEPHANT TO PLATT, KENNETH, ALL: I will turn to other species shortly in an attempt to meet Kenneth's concerns head on with a suggestion about the moral value of persons. But first: some bald statements just cry out for a good old-fashioned philosophical counter-example! Such as: > PLATT: > I see no moral difference between saving the patient or killing the > germ. They are both sides of the same coin. ELEPHANT: Three examples throw doubt on this claim. 1. We often require the Germ to live, in a laboratory, in order to extract information with which to save the patient(s). This is not entirely besides the point, because it does mean that saving patients and killing germs are not the same thing. You will now qualify your claim and say that saving patients and killing germs *in patients* is the same thing. My other two points address this. 2. Geriatric palliative care. You can argue that the 'disease' in question is just Old Age, but in fact the old tend to die of perfectly identifiable disease processes, and that includes germs, cancers etc. It's generally agreed that we should try to save the patient, but it is also agreed that saving the patient does not equate with doing everything you can under all circumstances to keep biological processes continuing at the expense of all 'Quality of Life'. 'Saving the patient' turns out to be a complex concept, because being a human being is not just being a functioning heart, or even a pattern of brain-waves (anticipating the ecg point). It turns out that 'human being' is, surprise surprise, a Moral Concept. Being a 'person' is more than being having functioning internal organs. For this reason, a doctor does not save the human being by treating their body as if he has the right to do whatever he damm well pleases with it, in the name of fighting off all those germs. There is a duty of care, but there is also a duty of respect. When the respect is removed, you are dehumanising the patient, and that is the very opposite of 'saving' the patient. Doctors who continue trying to kill off every germ beyond the point were the patient himself would wished to have lived are not 'saving the patient'. They are completely dehumanising and discounting the patient, and treating the body instead. 3. Imagine a disease which medical science can triumph over, but only very, very slowly. You can think of this in terms of a race to develop a cure, while the victim lies prone in his bed and suffers, ventilors keeping him alive, for fully fourty years. In the end we discover the cure and he walks. This same situation exists if we think of ourselves as always having had the cure, but a cure which is a very, very slow one. Like antibiotic treatments for tuberculosis only fourty times worse. Now in this case the imperative to save the biological life of the patient and the imperative to kill the germ are the same. But is the patient just his biological life? No. In which case, it looks as if the imperative to kill the germ equates to the imperative to keep the poor victim alive and in great pain throughout the majority of his life: is that 'saving the patient'? It rather looks like the opposite to me. It looks like treating the patient as a medical experiment, treating him less respectfully that you would your dog. 'Cure a success: patient tried to kill himself'. Certainly it is not giving 'Quality of Life' to anyone but the successful doctors. I think all these examples show that 'saving the patient' and 'killing the germ' are not as near the same as makes no difference. There is a difference, and it has to do with the difference between 'saving the patient' and preserving a biological pattern. It is only biological patterns which germs attack - officious doctors can do violence to more valuable patterns: and my name for those higher patterns is 'the patient'. That's why doctors owe their (oath of) allegiance to the life of the patient, and not to the death of germs. One way of ensuring that Doctors treat the patient and not the disease is to take out something called a 'living will'. The other is to educate doctors into a respect for persons. But luckily, most doctors are already well ahead of Platt on this one. I suspect that a lot of Kenneth Van Oost's concerns have to do with this moral importance of the 'person' - he may correct me on this. Besides the approach to germs, 2 more of Kenneth's points seem to have something to with this. First, there is the worry that valuing 'intellect' means devaluing persons who don't have 'intellect' the way Prisig does - Lila comes to mind. Kenneth was accusing (Platt's account of) MOQ of being right wing, but he didn't mean free market! He meant 'Social Darwinist' or worse: the idea that some human beings are just more valuable than others, and that their interests should always triumph. I think that's a point we need to think about, because it sure doesn't look like morality the way most people understand it. It looks like might is right. The way to address it is to point out that the meaning of 'intellect' is being stretched in quite alot of directions here. There's no denying that Prisig is an intellectual and that Lila isn't. But it isn't true to say that Lila has no intellect: anybody who can conceptualize has intellect. Well now, what is it that constitutes the higher level: intellectualism or intellect? There's a big difference. If intellectualism is the higher level, then Lila is grouped with other beings that have social value as their highest level of value, like, say, termites. But if intellect is the higher level of value, not intellectualism, it turns out that Lila is a morally valuable as Prisig is. She is on the same level. This is the way it out to turn out, in my veiw. Perhaps, indeed, the moral value of 'persons' or 'intellects', does a lot to address Kenneths concerns about MOQ and other species in the animal Kingdom too. Because in point of fact we treat cats and dogs as conceptualizers: as intellects. We rely on them to recognise different human beings as different, and this requires that they have, in effect, a concept of you. A dog responds to his owner's command, but not to the same command given by a stranger. Perhaps we have first hand experience of a dogs 'personhood' that goes further. These are beings with an interior world. They are intellects. That, I think, is what gives them the value they trully have, and it is what separates them from germs. I'm really quite chuffed about this idea for reading the "intellectual" level as the level of "intellect" rather than as the level of "intellectualism", because it seems to me that it addresses quite alot of the concerns I've had about the level. It seems to me that Prisig treats this higher level as a kind of political program - the sort of political progam that can be a protagonist in world history, for example. But intellectualism just can't be that sort of program, I have argued, because intellectuals can (and in fact do) hold an infinite number of opinions about what is best, intellectually speaking. In contrast, placing value on 'intellects' seems to underpin a comparatively clear political and moral program: respect for persons - treating the human person as the highest good in medicine, law, sexual relations et al. There is even a familiar ring to this moral imperative: do not treat persons as if they were means only, treat them as ends in themselves. I guess the "intellectualism" interpretation would treat persons as being, ultimately, only means to the continuation of thought. That does seem cart-before-horse. Perhaps some remarks about the pragmatic unity intellectual theory and personal practice are needful? Later. Kenneth, I have found your posting inspiring. Platt and I may now argue about whether or not my suggestion might resemble what Prisig means. But I'm tempted to say straightaway: Prisigian or not, this looks like a very High Quality veiw. Shall we call it 'true' then? ttfn Puzzled Elephant MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at: http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
