Choosing for others as Continuing a Life Story: The Problem of Personal Identity Revisited

See Dresser R. , “Life, Death, and Incompetent Patients: Conceptual Infirmities and Hidden Values in the Law,” Arizona Law Review, 28 (1986): 379–81; Dresser R.S. and Robertson J.A. , “Quality of Life and Non-Treatment Decisions for Incompetent Patients: A Critique of the Orthodox Approach,” Law, Medicine & Health Care, 17 (1989): 234–44; and Dresser R. , “Dworkin on Dementia: Elegant Theory, Questionable Policy,” Hastings Center Report, 25, no. 6 (1995): 32–38.

Dresser and Robertson , supra note 1, at 237.

See Schechtman M. , The Constitution of Selves (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).

Dresser and Robertson , supra note 1, at 237.

Schechtman , supra note 3, at 96.

The continuer view is much closer to Ronald Dworkin's position than to that of his main critic, Rebecca Dresser. See Dresser (1995), supra note 1. Dworkin's argument, based on a distinction between and ranking of “critical” and “experiential interests,” is eloquently presented in Dworkin R. , Life's Dominion: An Argument About Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993): at 179–217.

See White P. , “Appointing a Proxy Under the Best of Circumstances,” Utah Law Review, 3 (1992): 849–60.

Keniston K. , The Uncommitted: Alienated Youth in American Society (New York: Dell, 1965): at 163.

Id. at 164.

Schechtman , supra note 3, at 97.

Id. at 98.

See id. at chap. 5.

See Parfit D. , Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984): Pt. Three.

Wolf S. , “Self-Interest and Interest in Selves,” Ethics, 96 (1996): at 709.

Schechtman , supra note 3, at 157.

See id.

See Noggle R. , Review, “Marya Schechtman, The Constitution of Selves,” Ethics, 108 (1998): 802–05.

Schechtman , supra note 3, at 132.

Kuczewski M. , Fragmentation and Consensus: Communitarian and Casuist Bioethics (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1997): Chap. 5.

Id. at 134.

Id. at 135.

Id.

Id. at 137.

Id. at 134.

Schechtman , supra note 3, at 95.

Kuczewski , supra note 19, at 135.

Buchanan A. , “Advance Directives and the Personal Identity Problem,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 17 (1988): at 287.

Feinberg J. , “Harm and Self-Interest,” in Feinberg J. , Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980): at 62.

See Scanlon T. , “Value, Desire, and the Quality of Life,” in Nussbaum M. and Sen A. , eds., The Quality of Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993): 185–207.

Schechtman , supra note 3, at 95.

Spelman E. , “On Treating Persons as Persons,” Ethics, 88 (1978): 150–61.

Maryann Schechtman discusses these guidelines under the heading of the “Reality Constraint.” See Schechtman , supra note 3, at 119–30. This constraint requires that self-narratives cohere with what she calls “basic observational facts” and “interpretive facts.” Id. at 120. Among other things, “one's self-conception must cohere with what might be called the ‘objective’ account of her life—roughly the story that those around her would tell.” Id. at 95.

Spelman , supra note 31, at 154.

Feinberg J. , “The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations,” in Feinberg , supra note 28, at 174.

Id.

See Buchanan , supra note 27; and Buchanan A.E. and Brock D.W. , Deciding for Others: The Ethics of Surrogate Decision Making (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

See Buchanan , supra note 27, at 299.