Judgments of Incompetence and Their Moral Presuppositions

Abstract

As I read through Dr. Knight’s paper [3], wondering what useful thing I could possibly say to a person so experienced in the day-to-day decisions concerning competence, given my own near-complete inexperience, it strikes me that this inexperience itself may have some small advantage. At least I can approach the problems afresh, innocent of partisanship toward any of the positions that have already been marked concerning the way to approach the difficult decisions that must be made by physicians and by patients. I will not be a paternalist, nor an advocate of unfettered autonomy for the patient, nor do I have an initial bias toward any of the many positions between. My contribution will be one that philosophers out of their ignorance (celebrated since Socrates) are privileged to make: the raising of questions, but most especially of questions about questions that others are asking.