Abstract
A letter to all the invited participants in the Fifteenth International Wittgenstein Symposium, the cancellation of which this volume commemorates, from the then chairman of the Austrian Wittgenstein Society Dr. Adolf Hübner, explains the grounds for cancellation.
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Notes
Letter from Dr. Adolf Hübner, Chairman, ALWS, dated at Kirchberg April 26, 1991, and circulated to all invited speakers including this writer.
For an attempt to argue these objections to “dignity of man despising theses” see for example Alison Davis ‘Informed Dissent: the View of a Disabled Woman’, The Journal of Medical Ethics 12 (1986), 75–76, and her ‘The Status of Anencephalic Babies: Should Their Bodies Be Used as Donor Banks?’, The Journal of Medical Ethics 14 (1988), 150-153.
So far as I am aware, none of the philosophers to which all these worthy groups of righteous citizens took exception were in any way answering the first question in the negative.
Some apparently decent deaf people do in fact which their children to be deaf like them and resist therapies to improve the hearing of their children. They suggest that there is a distinctive deaf culture which is in some sense better than that available to those with hearing. Perhaps the test here is whether or not we would feel a deaf parent justified in deliberately deafening a healthy child in order to ensure that it had secured to it the benefits of deaf culture. Would we accept that this was a morally neutral piece of ‘medical’ intervention (perhaps like male circumcision — if that is morally neutral?) or rather a deliberate disabling or mutilating act?
This is of course Derek Parfit’s example, see his ‘Rights, Interests and Possible People’ in S. Gorovitz, ed., Moral Problems in Medicine, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1976. See also my discussion of this and related issues in my Wonderwoman & Superman: Ethics & Human Biotechnology, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992, Chapter 3.
This is because insertion of two or three embryos maximises the chances of one successful pregnancy and hence one live birth and inserting no more than three minimises the chances of multiple pregnancy which would probably decrease the chances of getting even one live birth.
See my discussion of the difference between harming and wronging in my Wonder-woman & Superman: The Ethics of Human Biotechnology, Oxford 1992, Chapter 4.
This goes for relatively minor conditions like the loss of a finger or deafness and also for disfiguring conditions right through to major disability like paraplegia.
See my more detailed account of the relationship between harming and wronging in my Wonderwoman & Superman, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992, Chapter 4.
Who should of course include us all.
Davis (1988), 150.
See my The Value of Life, Routledge, London 1985 & 1990, Ch.1., and my ‘Not All Babies Should Be Kept Alive as Long as Possible’ in Raanan Gillon and Anne Lloyd, eds., Principles of Health Care Ethics, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester 1993.
See Harris (1985) and (1992).
There is Judith Thomson’s famous article but it is unpersuasive on the subject of self-defence because it does not adequately show why the foetus is not entitled to defend itself as vigorously as the mother. See Judith Jarvis Thomson, ‘A Defence of Abortion’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 1 (1971).
Unattractive particularly to women though of course not indefensible on that ground alone. There are other grounds for rejecting it however. See my The Value of Life, Chapter 1.
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, bk.II, ch.27, Oxford University Press, London 1964.
See Harris (1985) and (1992).
I personally find the views of anyone who would sacrifice the life of a mother to save the life of a foetus simply repugnant and more so when the foetus will be unlikely to survive to term let alone long after birth. However I would never consider denying such a person the right to express such views.
A rather different point often confused with the alternative formulation.
The damage must of course leave me with sufficient brain function for self-consciousness — see note 11 above.
and even animals for that matter.
Although of course even embarrassments of this magnitude do not of themselves demonstrate the error of a position to which they attach.
Presumably the objectors to the Wittgenstein Symposium would also, if they could, have denied the British Parliament the opportunity to debate the Human Fertilization & Embryology Bill.
I am grateful to Mary Lobjoit and Charles Erin for helpful comments.
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Harris, J. (1998). Should we Attempt to Eradicate Disability?. In: Morscher, E., Neumaier, O., Simons, P. (eds) Applied Ethics in a Troubled World. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 73. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5186-3_6
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