This is an argument for granting the right to assisted suicide to a particular individual, as opposed to
an argument for an assisted suicide policy, as found in several countries in Europe and a couple American states, and which would provide access to assisted suicide to any Canadian who meets certain requirements.
I will adopt a narrative where the party criticizing this proof is the supreme court justices who voted to deny Sue Rodriguez's petition [see
decision]. Exactly the same argument works for the more-recent case of Gloria Taylor, who won her case for access to assisted suicide at the
British Columbia Supreme Court in 2012, and lost at the B.C. Court of Appeal in 2013). In Sue Rodriguez's particular case, no major party to the argument argued that the government would be doing
her harm by making assisted suicide legal for her (this is Assumption 7). Thus, the argument comes down to whether allowing Sue Rodriguez (S.R.) access to assisted suicide would have a negative effect of some sort (against other people - see Assumption 5; or abstract principles - see Assumption 4 and Assumption 6) that rivals the negative effect of denying her access.
The main goals of this argument are:
- To clarify the qualitative cost to S.R. of denying her access to legal assisted suicide.
- To more-precisely state the position that (1) exceeds any cost incurred if the Supreme Court were to grant her access. Or rather, that no such cost has been presented, and because of that she should have been granted access.
One major difference between this formal argument and informal, natural language arguments about assisted suicide cases (those that I've encountered) is the careful distinguishing between
- actions that individuals can do
- states of affairs that individuals want to achieve, which are achievable by their taking certain actions
- states of affairs that we try to prevent by criminalizing certain actions
The primitive symbols of the language of this proof only speak directly about criminalizing actions (sort
Actions). The language speaks indirectly about criminalizing states of affairs (sort
Propositions) via the defined predicate
‹Justifies criminalizing satisfaction of›; we can say that the law criminalizes a state of affairs if it criminalizes every action that can achieve that state of affairs. As an example, in many jurisdictions the law indirectly criminalizes any state of affairs
ψ in which a young person is high on crack cocaine (
I say young person just to concisely exclude people who are very near death, who I think should be allowed to use crack cocaine.). Suppose I want to justify that law, but without taking a moral stance on whether it is fundamentally wrong to use crack cocaine. Instead, I'll justify it in terms of the desired state of affairs
δ that no young person is at risk of becoming
addicted to crack cocaine. Then I must do two things:
- Argue that the only actions that can achieve ψ would falsify δ.
- Argue, or assert, the subjective position that the satisfaction of δ is more important than the satisfaction of ψ.
It is important to make these distinctions for this ethical issue for two reasons:
First, because it allows two people to disagree on part of the law while agreeing on a subjective moral position such as (2).
For example, it is conceivable that in the future a drug is invented that somehow counteracts the addictive properties of crack cocaine. In such a future, (1) is much easier to reject, and if I reject it then I can argue that δ does not justify criminalizing ψ while still agreeing with (2). In more detail, imagine such an anti-addiction drug is invented, a combination of it and crack cocaine is manufactured, and the combination drug has the property that it is more costly to separate its two component parts than it is to make crack cocaine from scratch. An action a involving the manufacturing and selling of the combination drug is sufficient to attain ψ, but arguably does not risk falsifying δ. In the language of this argument: a ∈ ‹actions sufficient for›(ψ) ∧ ¬Conflicts(a,δ).
Second, because it prevents one side of the argument from misrepresenting the opinion of the other side. In this example, it prevents supporters of the current law from misrepresenting the opinion of opponents as (being close to)
fundamentally favouring the falsifying of δ (likely leading to addictions), and it prevents opponents of the current law from misrepresenting the opinion of supporters as (being close to)
fundamentally favouring the impermissibility of ψ (that being high on crack cocaine is fundamentally wrong). Such
misrepresentation happens often in informal argumentation, even sometimes unintentionally!
For the argument below about S.R.'s case, «SueR request» has the role of ψ. Note that its description does not explicitly mention assisted suicide. The conjunction of the elements of sc-concerns has the role of δ. As in the previous paragraph, this prevents misrepresentation of the opinions of the two sides of the issue: The justices who voted against S.R. were not arguing that assisting the suicide of another person is fundamentally wrong/impermissible, and the justices who voted in favour of S.R. were not arguing that all people have a fundamental right to choose when they will die.
However, since I am arguing that the court ruled incorrectly, I must connect «SueR request» to the issue of assisted suicide. That is the purpose of ✓Lemma 1; it says that the only actions S.R. can take that achieve «SueR request» are ones that involve a physician giving her access to lethal drugs (defined by ‹assisted suicide actions for SueR›).
Let's next focus on the
goal sentence ✓Goal of this argument (the final sentence derived from the axioms and lemmas):
¬‹Justifies criminalizing satisfaction of›(sc-concerns,«SueR request»)
sc-concerns is a set of four propositions that were raised by the justices in the majority opinion as desirably-satisfied propositions that might be falsified if they rule in favour of
S.R. (
actually, they didn't argue this for the fourth one, «no regrettable legal assisted suicide for S.R.»; I include it because in most arguments about assisted suicide, where a policy is being considered as opposed to permission for one person, it is the concern that is given the most attention). The goal sentence says that those concerns are not enough to justify criminalizing the satisfaction of
«SueR request» (by criminalizing every action that can achieve
«SueR request»).
We need a principle of law/morality that connects ¬‹Justifies criminalizing satisfaction of›(sc-concerns,«SueR request») and the rest of the proof. This is the predicate ‹Reach of law limit› (← hover cursor to see definition, which will be discussed shortly). I've made it a predicate instead of an axiom to avoid having to posit that the principle holds generally. Instead it is only assumed for one instance, by Assumption 1. That said, I do accept the principle generally with some additional qualification. See the end of the criticism section at the bottom of this page for the improved version ‹Reach of law limit 2› with additional qualification.
You might think that the defining formula for ‹Reach of law limit› is surprisingly complicated. There is a simpler, but stronger principle (see definition of ‹Reach of law limit› for discussion of its weakness), that also suffices to derive ✓Goal. It says a set of concerns Δ does not justify criminalizing an action a if that action can accomplish a proposition ψ such that for each of the concerns δ, either a does not conflict with δ, or δ is not more important than ψ. I'll now explain why I am reluctant to use this simpler principle. The problem is that ψ is not adequately constrained by a. Consider the contrapositive: If the concerns Δ justify criminalizing an action a, then for every proposition ψ that a accomplishes, there must be a concern δ ∈ Δ such that a conflicts with δ and δ is more important than ψ. That consequent is too strong a requirement in some cases! Suppose we want to justify the criminalizing of an action that accomplishes something very good while unnecessarily accomplishing something bad. I'll use an example based on one given by Paul McNamara in a slightly different deontic logic context. We want to argue that it should be criminal to perform the action a of intentionally and unnecessarily breaking a person Timmy's fingers even if it is done while saving Timmy from a fire. The simpler-but-stronger principle that I am reluctant to use says that if we believe that (*) := "Timmy is saved and his fingers are broken" is more important than "Timmy's fingers are not broken", then we cannot consistently justify illegalizing a using just Timmy's desire δ to not have broken fingers. In contrast, with ‹Reach of law limit› we may consistently criminalize a and believe (*), under the reasonable assumption that it is possible to save Timmy without breaking his fingers.