Voluntary Euthanasia

Thanks, Varrack! I will now rebut Con's case.C1. Life is ValuableSC1. Sanctity of LifeCon writes, "Human life ought to be preserved because it contains immanent goodness that cannot be replaced by any other thing." I have several objections.1. Con commits a bare assertion fallacy. What this means is that he asserts something as true without ever explaining why it's true. Con talks about the fact that all humans have dignity just by being alive, but he never gives a single reason as to why this is true.2. We would not say that a blank canvas is worth much money, yet we would probably agree that a Vermeer painting is worth more than I can possibly pay. The point here is that the canvas is not what is valuable, it is the painting that matters. Life is simply a canvas--it is what we do with it that adds meaning and color. If a person we locked in a 10x10 cell with no light or other human interaction, that is not a life worth living. Life therefore has instrumental good--and that is not to undermine that importance of that instrumental good. If used wrongly or abused outright, the instrument can lose its utility. But, ultimately, it is only an instrument just as the canvas is--the "painting" is what matters.3. Next, Pro asserts that life is an end in itself, and not a means. In other words, Pro rejects the claim that life is an instrument, tool, or road to the desired end, but rather that it is the destination in itself. Pro commits another bare assertion fallacy here, as he utterly fails to explain why this is the case.4. Pro commits an Appeal to Authority fallacy by name-dropping Kant. Merely saying that Kant argued X is not a sufficient argument. Pro must explain Kant's reasoning in order to warrant Kant's assertions within the text of the debate.5. Kant's theories are a form of deontological ethics, and require that we treat people always as ends in themselves. This produces a set of strict rules about how we can interact with people, including aboslute prohibitions on lying, stealing, cheating, etc. This creates a moral system with contradictory more imperatives (i.e. it violates the rule of noncontradiction, rendering it logically invalid.) "[D]eontological moral systems...provide no clear way to resolve conflicts between moral duties. A deontological moral system should include both a moral duty not to lie and one to keep others from harm, for example, but...how is a person to choose between those two moral duties? A popular response to this is to simply choose the 'lesser of two evils,' but that means relying on which of the two has the least evil consequences and, therefore, the moral choice is being made on a [utilitarian] rather than a deontological basis." [1]8. It does treat people as ends in themselves to respect their choices. About Kant's theories: "Ends-in-themselves are autonomous beings with their own agendas; failing to recognize their capacity to determine their own actions would be to thwart their freedom and undermine reason itself. When we reflect on alternative courses of action, means-to-ends, things like buildings, rocks, and trees, deserve no special status in our deliberations about what goals we should have and what means we use to achieve them." [2] So, it seems that (a) Kant's logic supports my interpretation of human dignity, and (b) it would demean an end-in-itself to deny it autonomy, including the choice to decide when to die.7. Cross-apply my arguments about human dignity here.SC2. Devaluation of LifePro argues that euthanasia downgrades the lives of the terminally ill, and is thus wrong.1. This point is predicated on the idea that life is sanctified. So, if I successfully refute SC1 than this point is taken out as well.2. The terminally ill are, quite bluntly, going to die anyway. Euthanasia thus does not send a signal that their lives are not worth living, rather, it simply accepts that they are going to die soon no matter what, and so allows them to die on their own terms. It would devalue life if we were killing people who were imminently about to die, but where life is already going to end, it is not demeaning to euthanize. There is no net loss.3. Euthanasia is not a diminution of life, but rather a celebration of human agency and life. Allowing people to pass away before they are incontinent, in pain, drugged up, etc. is actually a way of affirming their dignity, by allowing them to avoid conditions that make them feel less human or degraded. It allows them to die with their families nearby, of their own accord, and with their faculties intact. It is precisely because we value their quality of life that we empower them to choose when to die.C2. InterestsPro asserts: "Another problem with morally justifying euthanasia is that it is impossible to know whether death is the best interest of the patient or whether the patient is in the best position to properly assess him or herself."1. This doesn't seem to be much of an argument on the face of it. Every decision I make could be questioned with this line of reasoning. How do I know if I go out running today that I won't trip and fall and die? Humans are never perfectly positioned to know things of this sort, and so if we require perfect knowledge of what is in our best interests before we can act, then we will literally never act. We have to, therefore, content ourselves with the fact that there will always be a certain level of risk in the decisions we choose, but that shouldn't preclude us from being able to make those decisions. 2. The resolution specifically talks about "reliable" prognoses, so quack diagnoses are not something I have to defend. And, given the above, we need to look at what is most likely the case, rather than calling for perfect standards. So, what is the likelihood that a prognosis is accurate: "doctors got the prognosis right only about 20 percent of the time, and 63 percent of the time overestimated their patients' survival." [3] Also: "In the few studies that have investigated physicians' abilities to prognosticate death, doctors usually overestimate survival time by at least twice as much. There are many theories to explain this, chief among them that doctors tend to be overly optimistic with patients they've known and treated for a long time." [4] In other words, 83% of the time (or perhaps more), patients died at the time or SOONER than their doctors predicted. In which case, euthanasia would be in the patient's interests, because the patient's death is imminent. That puts the "interests" argument in favor of the Pro position in this debate, as in the vast majority of cases it is in the patient's interests.3. Cross-apply my arguments about reduced suffering, psychological stress, and insane medical bills here. Even if a terminally ill patient outlives the doctor's initial estimate, it may still be in there interests to be euthanized. 4. Con gives zero evidence that shows that doctors misdiagnose patients in volumes sufficient enough to merit an anti-euthanasia stance.5. Con also argues that people facing death cannot adequately asses themselves and make rational decisions. One solution to this is a living will or other kind of document that a person fills out when they are not ill and that describes what they would want their end-of-life care to entail, including whether and under what conditions euthanasia would be acceptable to them.6. It is also wrong to assume that people in adverse situations cannot make rational choices. Humans encounter stress all the time, and that stress can always be significant. Yet, we are still considered to be able to make rational decisions while stressed. A terminally ill patient still has the right to decide what treatments they want under the law, and unless Con believes that they truly are not rational, then his position would take away all of the rights, including their ability to manage their own finances and so forth.C3. Unethical SimilitudesFirstly, I just want to say that this whole contention rests on a flawed premise. Just because X is similar to Y, and Y is bad, does not mean that X is bad. For instance, lethal self-defense is similar to murder, but one is morally justifiable the other is not. SC1. Connection to SuicidePro claims that: "the only difference between assisted suicide and euthanasia is that the person who is helping with the death is a physician." This is obviously untrue. In the case of euthanasia, the patient is terminally ill and so is going to die anyway. Suicide is not okay because it ends a life that likely still has a whole future to live, but in euthanasia, the death is imminent. The tradeoff (losing a few months to prevent pain vs. losing possibly years) is significantly different.Moreover, Pro's only argument that suicide is wrong is the claim of the sanctity of life (and an ad populum fallacy). If that claim is undermined, then this point is really moot.SC2. EncouragementThe solution here is to simply regulate the practice. California has made it illegal, and so it seems feasible to do that in more cases. Either way, this seems like a manageable problem, and not one with enough weight to negate on its own.SC3. Slippery Slope1. Pro has only shown that a slippery slope is possible, not that it is likely or certain. Every moral decision that we make entails a risk of a slippery slope, but yet we still go ahead and make those calls. Pro needs to show that its likely for this to have any weight. We should focus on the here-and-now, and not on vague "what ifs..."2. Why slippery slope and not intense incline? Surely, slaveowners thought that emancipation was a slippery slope. One man's slippery slope is another's idea of progress. Pro has yet to show that the supposed outcomes are actually bad.SOURCES1 - http://tinyurl.com...2 - http://www.iep.utm.edu...3 - http://tinyurl.com...4 - http://tinyurl.com...Thus, I affirm. Over to Con...