RT Article
T1 COUNTERFACTUAL REASONING IN SURROGATE DECISION MAKING – ANOTHER LOOK
JF Bioethics
VO 25
IS 5
SP 244
OP 249
A1 Johansson, Mats
A1 Broström, Linus
LA English
PB Wiley-Blackwell
YR 2011
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1781883114
AB Incompetent patients need to have someone else make decisions on their behalf. According to the Substituted Judgment Standard the surrogate decision maker ought to make the decision that the patient would have made, had he or she been competent. Objections have been raised against this traditional construal of the standard on the grounds that it involves flawed counterfactual reasoning, and amendments have been suggested within the framework of possible worlds semantics. The paper shows that while this approach may circumvent the alleged problem, the way it has so far been elaborated reflects insufficient understanding of the moral underpinnings of the idea of substituted judgment. Proper recognition of these moral underpinnings has potentially far-reaching implications for our normative assumptions about accuracy and objectivity in surrogate decision making.
K1 Incompetence
K1 surrogate decision making
K1 possible worlds semantics
K1 Counterfactuals
K1 substituted judgment
K1 proxy consent
DO 10.1111/j.1467-8519.2009.01768.x