[PLUG-TALK] Shiavo case...

glen e. p. ropella gepr at tempusdictum.com
Thu Mar 31 00:26:57 UTC 2005


=><=><= "rs" == Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> writes:

rs>    Teri Schiavo died 15 years ago, but her brainstem has kept her
rs> breathing and alive since then. She's as alive as a turnip in the
rs> ground. I think the saddest part of this whole circus is that her
rs> parents (and, siblings, too) are in such deep denial for so long.

Just because I'm a cantankerous fool, I'd like to point out that we
really don't know enough about "life" and biology to claim anything
here.  We can't describe what it's like to "be human".  Hell, we can't
even describe base qualia like what it means to "see blue" or "taste
salty" with any kind of non-subjective hand-waving.

To go even further, we can't even define "life".  The best we can do
is revert back to "I can't define it; but, I know it when I see it."

So, for anyone who'd like to make these strong claims, I'd ask you to
back off a little bit and admit our ignorance.  The _best_ we can
w.r.t. to a case like the Shiavo's is to set standards for behavior
without putting our collective foot in our mouths.  We can adopt a
natural approach where we consider life, value, qualia (e.g. emotions)
are all _local_ phenomena and can't be generically regulated.  You
can't make a rule about how all humans "see blue" or "experience
life".  It's a local, non-global, particular, non-general, phenomenon.
And as such, any decisions or reason based on those local phenomena
must be made _locally_.

Now, for religious and practical reasons, we've made the rule that
right-to-die issues are case-by-case and decided by spouse, family,
legal guardian, etc.  And we seem somewhat fixated on marriage so that
the spouse is given alot of power.  Religious people want this to be
the case (and they regularly demand things like the preservation of
the "sanctity of marriage").  But, there's no reason we couldn't
change that to be a more network-based decision process.

I can imagine a law that requires arbitration between all nodes that
are 1-hop from Terry Shiavo.  That would include mom, dad, husband,
and children.  Perhaps it might even involve business partners.  But,
it would exclude grandparents, grandchildren, in-laws, etc.  The
context of the arbitration might be the state the person lived in, the
religion to which the person belonged, or even an ethics committee for
whatever industry she worked in.

In any case, jumping to "She's already dead!" or "God says it's the
husband's right to kill her!" is stepping outside the realm of
reasoned, respectful, consideration.... at least in a society that is
governed by laws rather than messages from the Dog Star.

-- 
glen e. p. ropella              =><=                           Hail Eris!
H: 503.630.4505                              http://www.ropella.net/~gepr
M: 971.219.3846                               http://www.tempusdictum.com




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