My latest Forbes piece is now out, “Does Your Right To Life Include The Right To Die?

I discuss the revived debate over physician-assisted suicide, especially in the wake of Brittany Maynard’s decision to end her life following a diagnosis of terminal brain cancer. This issue is being debated in several state legislatures, including New Jersey and California, so we will be hearing much more about this in coming months.

I recognize that this is a controversial topic and that good physicians can disagree on this issue. Nonetheless, I believe this should be a legal option for patients, provided that there are appropriate safeguard to protect both the patient and the physician.

In my piece I cover three main subpoints:

1) Your life is your own.

2) The state has a legitimate (even vital) role to play in assisted suicide.

3) Physicians must not be required to participate

For more details, please read the full text of “Does Your Right To Life Include The Right To Die?

(Much of this material is drawn from the recent Philosophy In Action podcast by Diana and co-host Greg Perkins in their 1/18/2015 segment, “The Right To Die“.)

 

(Photo: Brittany Maynard by Allie Hoffman; Creative Commons Attribution – Share Alike)

Dec 052014
 

On Thursday’s episode of Philosophy in Action Radio, I discussed “Responsibility & Luck, Chapter Five” with listeners. The podcast of that episode is now available for streaming or downloading.

Remember, you can automatically download podcasts of Philosophy in Action Radio by subscribing to Philosophy in Action’s Podcast RSS Feed:


Podcast: Responsibility & Luck, Chapter Five

In Chapter Three of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle develops the outlines of a theory of moral responsibility. He argues that responsibility requires (1) control and (2) knowledge. What is the meaning of those conditions for moral responsibility? What do they require in practice? Are those conditions for moral responsibility sufficient? What gaps did Aristotle leave? What is required for a full and clear defense of moral responsibility for actions? I answered these questions and more in this discussion of Chapter Five of my book, Responsibility & Luck: A Defense of Praise and Blame.

Listen or Download:

Topics:

  • Moral responsibility
  • The control condition
  • The compatibilist challenge to the control condition
  • The epistemic condition
  • Voluntary ignorance and voluntary incapacity
  • The agency condition
  • What’s next

Links:

Remember the Tip Jar!

The mission of Philosophy in Action is to spread rational principles for real life… far and wide. That’s why the vast majority of my work is available to anyone, free of charge. I love doing the radio show, but each episode requires an investment of time, effort, and money to produce. So if you enjoy and value that work of mine, please contribute to the tip jar. I suggest $5 per episode or $20 per month, but any amount is appreciated. In return, contributors can request that I answer questions from the queue pronto, and regular contributors enjoy free access to premium content and other goodies.


About Philosophy in Action Radio

Philosophy in Action Radio focuses on the application of rational principles to the challenges of real life. It broadcasts live on most Sunday mornings and many Thursday evenings over the internet. For information on upcoming shows, visit the Episodes on Tap. For podcasts of past shows, visit the Show Archives.

Philosophy in Action's NewsletterPhilosophy in Action's Facebook PagePhilosophy in Action's Twitter StreamPhilosophy in Action's RSS FeedsPhilosophy in Action's Calendar


Activism Recap

 Posted by on 12 October 2014 at 7:00 pm  Uncategorized
Oct 122014
 

This week on We Stand FIRM, the blog of FIRM (Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine):

Follow FIRM on Facebook and Twitter.


This week on Politics without God, the blog of the Coalition for Secular Government:

Follow the Coalition for Secular Government on Facebook and Twitter.


This week on The Blog of The Objective Standard:

Follow The Objective Standard on Facebook and Twitter.

Marriage and Violence in the 1950s

 Posted by on 9 September 2014 at 10:00 am  Uncategorized
Sep 092014
 

This article — Lock up your wives! — which looks at “advice columns from decades past [to] provide a chilling glimpse into the horrors of marriage counselling before feminism is well worth reading. Here, I just want to highlight these two bits on domestic violence:

In March 1957, in the case of ‘Josh’ and ‘Elsa’, Elsa reported that Josh hit her after he came home late from an office party. In the course of her description of their relationship, Elsa tells the counsellor that when their daughter Sally was born: ‘Josh showed plainly his disappointment that the baby wasn’t a boy.’ ‘When the baby and I came home,’ she added, ‘I stayed in bed and let him prepare his own breakfast. He was outraged and yelled so furiously all the neighbours heard him.’ Elsa told the counsellor that she was absolutely miserable in her marriage: ‘When [Josh] abuses me in the presence of our children, when he humiliates me before the neighbours, I want to curl up and die. There is an ache deep in my chest, in my heart. I feel physically sick.’

The counsellor wrote that Elsa was ‘jolted and shocked when I told her she was partly at fault’. This wife needed to be convinced out of her own self-righteous understanding of the situation, the counsellor argued. ‘If she wanted a serene family life, she would have to learn to give Josh what he wanted from their marriage and thereby help him control his temper.’

Oh, but wait, it gets better:

Perhaps most disturbingly, ‘Can This Marriage Be Saved?’ counsellors minimised and ignored domestic violence, as in the case of Josh and Elsa. Wives would report incidences of physical aggression, but these were never headlined as the major complaint – they were submerged in the couple’s larger story. Popenoe introduced the September 1953 column, which featured ‘Sue’, a wife who showed up to the counsellor’s office with a ‘large purple bruise darken[ing] her cheekbone’, by referring to the husband’s complaints, rather than the wife’s: ‘Many a husband has to pay the penalty for his wife’s failure to get any real education in homemaking before she married, or to acquire such skills after the wedding, when she must have begun to realise that she needs them.’ (Again: the wife should have known that she wasn’t measuring up.) ‘In a canvas of more the 500 marriages made by the American Institute of Family Relations,’ Popenoe continues, ‘it was interesting to find how bitterly the average man resents a sloppy and slovenly wife – even when his own habits are not beyond criticism.’

In Sue’s case, the counsellor found that her husband ‘Jack’ needed to ‘master his temper’, a simple trick accomplished after ‘a single consultation proved to him that his temper was not “inherited” but represented a poor pattern established in his childhood’. But it was Sue who had the most work to do. She showed a lack of insight – she didn’t understand her husband. By refusing to have sex with him after he hit her, ‘she… touched off another almost inevitable explosion. Many husbands endeavour to make up for their misdeeds by such ardour, a fact of life that wise and loving wives accept.’ Sue had to systematise her housework in order to get good at it – a recommendation that reflected Popenoe’s professional roots in the efficiency-happy 1920s. The happy ending: Sue ‘spends 15 minutes every morning planning and writing down a list of daily tasks. Any specific request of Jack’s takes top position on the list. As she acquits each task, she checks it off the list. This means she finishes one job before she begins another.’

Indeed, how dare a wife refuse to have sex with her husband after he beats her?!? The nerve!

We’ve come a long way, baby, but not far enough… as the NFL’s serious (and perhaps dishonest) mishandling of the Ray Rice case proves.

Link-O-Rama

 Posted by on 8 August 2014 at 1:00 pm  Uncategorized
Aug 082014
 

Activism Recap

 Posted by on 18 May 2014 at 8:47 pm  Uncategorized
May 182014
 

This week on We Stand FIRM, the blog of FIRM (Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine):

Follow FIRM on Facebook and Twitter.


This week on The Blog of The Objective Standard:

Follow The Objective Standard on Facebook and Twitter.


This week on The Blog of Modern Paleo:

Follow Modern Paleo on Facebook and Twitter.

A Quick Report from Aiken

 Posted by on 18 February 2014 at 10:00 am  Horses, Personal, Sports, Uncategorized
Feb 182014
 

Dear Everyone,

As you might have been able to tell from my lack of blogging, I’ve been a bit busy here in Aiken. Mostly, I’m on my feet from sunrise to sunset — riding horses, mucking stalls, feeding horses, moving horses, stacking hay, and so on. Then we often have lesson video to review in the evenings. (That’s very helpful, but also time-consuming.) Also, Aiken was hit hard by the ice storm last week. We were covered in an inch of ice, and our power and water were out for 4 days. (It was a god-awful mess!) Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be able to resume regular blogging until after SnowCon 2014 in mid-March.

Anyway, here’s a bit of video of me jumping Lila and Maria that I meant to post eons ago, but I’ve just not found the time until now. These were lessons from early this month — February 8th. These few fences were the culmination of a lesson’s worth of work at getting the proper canter into a fence. Watching them again just now, I can see that I need to do even more to get Lila into a collected canter, and I think we’re doing significantly better now. Still, this quiet balance over fences was a huge achievement a mere 10 days ago!

On Lila:

On Maria:

I’ll try to post more video, and perhaps some pictures from the ice storm, soon. Overall, I’m a bit worn out — particularly after yesterday’s lesson with Eric over cross-country fences. However, I’m learning and progressing like crazy, and I can’t wait to see what the next two weeks will bring!

Love and Cuddles from Aiken,

Diana Hsieh

Activism Recap

 Posted by on 21 July 2013 at 2:00 pm  Uncategorized
Jul 212013
 

This week on We Stand FIRM, the blog of FIRM (Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine):

Follow FIRM on Facebook and Twitter.


This week on Politics without God, the blog of the Coalition for Secular Government:

Follow the Coalition for Secular Government on Facebook and Twitter.


This week on The Blog of The Objective Standard:

Follow The Objective Standard on Facebook and Twitter.


This week on The Blog of Modern Paleo:

Follow Modern Paleo on Facebook and Twitter.

 

Forbes has just published my latest OpEd, “4 Questions To Ask During The Upcoming ObamaCare Public Relations Blitz“.

Here is the opening:

The battle over ObamaCare will reignite soon, and the next front will be the war for public opinion. The American public remains deeply skeptical of the new law. Many Americans say they will not sign up for insurance in the new “exchanges” scheduled to open October 1, 2013. As a result, the Obama administration is preparing a high-profile public relations blitz to again sell the law to the public.

Here are 4 talking points ObamaCare advocates will attempt to promote — and 4 questions Americans should ask in response…

I cover 4 topics, including:

1) “Free” benefits

2) “Coverage”

3) “Rights”

4) “Reform”

Plus there’s a 5th bonus question at the end!

For more details, read the full text of “4 Questions To Ask During The Upcoming ObamaCare Public Relations Blitz“.

Activism Recap

 Posted by on 14 October 2012 at 11:00 pm  Uncategorized
Oct 142012
 

This week on We Stand FIRM, the blog of FIRM (Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine):

Follow FIRM on Facebook and Twitter.


This week on Politics without God, the blog of the Coalition for Secular Government:

Follow the Coalition for Secular Government on Facebook and Twitter.


This week on The Blog of The Objective Standard:

Follow The Objective Standard on Facebook and Twitter.


This week on The Blog of Modern Paleo:

Follow Modern Paleo on Facebook and Twitter.

Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha