it doesn’t matter - the patient still dies from cancer (and just to add, even if you take away the allegory I was using for capital, this isn’t hypothetical but very much real. To see someone die from metastasised cancer because they decided to go for alternative medicine very much influences how one understands how “benign” these practices are against society)
As long as it’s informed and well-understood, bodily autonomy should take precedence, as long as it’s not contagious. For example, Steve Jobs had the financial means to access any treatment, the intellectual capacity to understand them, I’m not sure. A family member hadn’t the financial means, Intellectual capacity but chose treatment for an aggressive form of cancer where survival rate is very low; they died. Identical twins developed lung cancer from cigarettes. One was diagnosed as their sibling who chose treatment died; the other decided to forego treatment, seeing their sibling rapidly robbed of any ability to enjoy any of their remaining time due to treatment. The sibling survived five years on and crossed several experiences off their bucket list, leaving friends and family with photos of them really enjoying hot air ballooning, hiking, camping, surfing. The last year was pretty wretched, but they had left behind a suitable insurance policy for burial and their children’s modest (not poverty level, middle middle class) upbringing, and with insurance and remaining bank account, was able to afford the best palliative care at home, including string opiates and marijuana. I just think the patient should have the right to choose, and counseling should be available to loved ones helping them to accept the patient’s wishes.
However we can have a systemic understanding rather than an idealist one of how a person comes to the their decisons and how they can act on them. We can have a scientific understanding of freedom rather than the liberal metaphysical conception.
We are dialectical matetialists; consciousness does not make the social being, it is the social being that makes the consciousness.
As long as it’s informed and well-understood, bodily autonomy should take precedence, as long as it’s not contagious. For example, Steve Jobs had the financial means to access any treatment, the intellectual capacity to understand them, I’m not sure. A family member hadn’t the financial means, Intellectual capacity but chose treatment for an aggressive form of cancer where survival rate is very low; they died. Identical twins developed lung cancer from cigarettes. One was diagnosed as their sibling who chose treatment died; the other decided to forego treatment, seeing their sibling rapidly robbed of any ability to enjoy any of their remaining time due to treatment. The sibling survived five years on and crossed several experiences off their bucket list, leaving friends and family with photos of them really enjoying hot air ballooning, hiking, camping, surfing. The last year was pretty wretched, but they had left behind a suitable insurance policy for burial and their children’s modest (not poverty level, middle middle class) upbringing, and with insurance and remaining bank account, was able to afford the best palliative care at home, including string opiates and marijuana. I just think the patient should have the right to choose, and counseling should be available to loved ones helping them to accept the patient’s wishes.
As for the rest of it, I largely agree.
This is a given.
However we can have a systemic understanding rather than an idealist one of how a person comes to the their decisons and how they can act on them. We can have a scientific understanding of freedom rather than the liberal metaphysical conception.
We are dialectical matetialists; consciousness does not make the social being, it is the social being that makes the consciousness.
I’m not seeing any disagreement.
Fair enough