The Subjective And Provincial Fallacies

Of The Schiavo Starvation Advocates

Do you remember the original Star Trek series’ episode about the grunps? Captain Kirk and crew are taken captive on a planet of children and adolescents who despise and fear the Enterprise personnel whom they call “grunps”. Kirk and crew are bewildered when they learn the children plan to execute them.

I was reminded of that episode during the last weeks of Terri Schiavo’s life as numerous people have said things like, “You idiots need to leave that family (I suppose meaning Michael Schiavo) alone. I would never want to live that way, suffering like a vegetable year after year. I would want someone to end my suffering for me.”

This statement manifests two logical fallacies simultaneously, no insignificant accomplishment in irrationality.

First, it reflects the classical logical fallacy of our age: the SUBJECTIVE FALLACY. The subjective fallacy is to believe that truth is determined by one’s own feelings, predispositions and wishes. In this sense, the statement about not wanting to be a vegetable is the opposite of ethics, the purpose of which is to guide our choices so that we will not merely follow our feelings and impulses.

Secondly, the statement by the starvation advocates reflects the PROVINCIAL FALLACY, which is a particular form of the OVER-GENERALIZATION FALLACY. The Provincial Fallacy is to believe that my feelings, thoughts, and experiences are normative, i.e., that they apply to everyone. One who falls to the Provincial Fallacy thinks no one else’s experiences and thoughts is different than one’s own, or if they are different, they are not worthy of consideration.

The difficulty with those who fall to this fallacy related to Terri Schiavo’s murder is that a lot of people have different standards for when their own lives are worth living. And this is true regarding merely needing water and nourishment to stay alive. A lot of Americans clearly would not want to live that way. But there are also a lot of us who would want to live that way and to receive the therapy that was denied Terri that could improve the quality of life.

Many Americans would not want to live even if their mind worked perfectly well, but they were completely paralyzed and unable to communicate. What is sad about this is that if those people also commit the Subjective and Provincial Fallacies, they would have us kill off one of the greatest minds and most inspiring people of our age. That person is Stephen Hawking, who powerfully describes on his web site the final stages of his deterioration from disease.

Before the operation, my speech had been getting more slurred, so that only a few people who knew me well, could understand me. But at least I could communicate. I wrote scientific papers by dictating to a secretary, and I gave seminars through an interpreter, who repeated my words more clearly.

However, the tracheostomy operation removed my ability to speak altogether. For a time, the only way I could communicate was to spell out words letter by letter, by raising my eyebrows when someone pointed to the right letter on a spelling card. It is pretty difficult to carry on a conversation like that, let alone write a scientific paper.

Should we have killed Stephen Hawking at that point? What if a caretaker and lawyer argued that Hawking raising his eyebrows was merely the natural facial ticks of someone in his vegetative condition? Then we could have legitimately killed him?

Sure, some people would not want to live almost completely paralyzed. But does their personal preference warrant killing Stephen Hawking?

Other people would not want to live if paralyzed from the neck down, even if they could talk. But would that preference of theirs legitimize having starved Christopher Reeves to death?

There are other conditions under which various people would not want to live.

You hear people, especially athletic and outdoor enthusiasts, say they would not want to live as a paraplegic confined to a wheel chair. Still others say they would not want to live as a schizophrenic or with Down’s Syndrome, mental retardation, or with a birth defect like spinal bifuda that requires numerous surgeries and hospitalizations.

For all types of birth defects, the Romans practiced “exposing” such children. They would take a “defective” child and leave her outside the town on a hillside for the wolves and birds to eat—alive. As horrific as such a death would be, it would be humane in how quickly the exposed child’s suffering ended as opposed to having to starve to death like Terri Schiavo.

In China today, this is what is done with thousands upon thousands of children who happen to be female. And history is replete with cultures and nations who thought that people of another race or culture did not possess enough quality as human beings to continue to live. Today radical Islam includes homosexuals, adulterers and other behavioral groups in that “not worth living” category.

In Western culture, many people don’t want to have to face life with a debilitating disease that makes them bedridden. Which is a problem because all of us who live long enough will eventually suffer from some disability. And there are many people who say they would just prefer not to have to become elderly and decrepit. Different people find it intolerable to think of having to live after the age of 65, or 50, or 40, or even 30.

Which brings us back to Star Trek and the “Grunps”. Kirk, Spock, et. al. discover that this planet has some sort of disease that causes people at adulthood to become homicidally enraged and insane, attacking and killing others. So, to protect themselves, the children started killing their own members as they reached adulthood. And the name “grunps” was a contraction of “grown ups”, the despised and feared class of persons.

One argument for the starvation advocates who believe old age itself is the loss of a sufficient quality of life to warrant continued existence: it would instantly solve the financial crises in social security and Medicare! We could just starve to death anyone over 65, and “voilla”, Social Security and Medicare funding problems are instantly resolved! Which actually is fantastic . . . unless your 65^th birthday is this month.

The problem is that when you make “quality of life” the criterion for when it is moral to “end a person’s life” (a euphamism for “kill”), one person’s subjective standard for what is a sufficient quality of life is just as legitimate as any other person’s standard. The reason this is a practical problem as well as a moral atrocity is that the person’s setting the standard may not be either you or those who agree with you, but rather those who believe for one reason or another that it is you who does not possess a sufficient quality of life to warrant maintaining it. Then you can find out first hand how “painless” is starving and thirsting to death.

Don Crawford is a radio talk show host in Austin, TX.