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    For practical purposes, a ruling on decisional capacity m... — Carmelics
    Home/Bioethics
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    For practical purposes, a ruling on decisional capacity must be all-or-nothing (bivalent), not a matter of degree.

    Bioethics
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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Decision-making authority cannot be partial — either a patient has final authority over a decision or someone else does.
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    • 2.If a patient has decisional capacity to make decision X, others must honor her choice even if they disagree.
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    • 3.If a patient lacks decisional capacity to make decision X, a guardian or surrogate must decide for her.
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    Reasons Against

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    • 1.Decisional capacity is constituted by multiple discrete cognitive functions (understanding, reasoning, appreciation, expression) that can each vary independently.
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    • 2.A bivalent ruling that collapses this multidimensional profile into yes/no destroys clinically actionable information needed to tailor supported decision-making interventions.
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    • 3.The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Art. 12) legally mandates supported decision-making that presupposes graduated, domain-specific capacity rather than binary substituted judgment.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.The argument from administrative convenience (P4) is a pragmatic consideration, not a conceptual truth about the nature of capacity itself.
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    • 2.Legal systems already accommodate graded authority structures—partial guardianship, conservatorship limited to specific domains, and advance directives—demonstrating that bivalence is a contingent institutional choice, not a logical necessity.
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    • 3.Faden and Beauchamp's autonomy framework distinguishes degrees of substantial autonomy, showing that honoring self-determination does not require treating it as an on/off property.
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    Topics

    BioethicsJustice & Punishment

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    Rights & Liberty2 linkedMoral Responsibility1 linked

    Related

    A bivalent ruling that collapses this multidimensional profile into yes/no destr...Decision-making authority cannot be partial — either a patient has final authori...Decisional capacity is constituted by multiple discrete cognitive functions (und...Faden and Beauchamp's autonomy framework distinguishes degrees of substantial au...
    +6 moreShow less
    If a patient has decisional capacity to make decision X, others must honor her c...If a patient lacks decisional capacity to make decision X, a guardian or surroga...Legal systems already accommodate graded authority structures—partial guardiansh...

    Similar

    A theory of decisional capacity should be rejected if it fails to be i...81%A theory of decisional capacity that significantly departs from this n...78%Any theory of decisional capacity in medicine must classify most ordin...78%Decision-making capacity requires appreciation of the nature and signi...76%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: decision-capacity
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    A third assumption that pervades contemporary work on decisional capacity is that for practical purposes, a ruling on capacity must be all-or-nothing: either the patient in question has decisional capacity or she lacks it. Of course, in many contexts there is an obvious sense in which we can speak meaningfully of “degrees” of capacity, for we are indeed measuring abilities that fall along a spectrum. However, in practice we need a judgment of a bivalent type. This is because we need to know who
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Art. 12) legally m...
    The argument from administrative convenience (P4) is a pragmatic consideration, ...
    To avoid potentially endless controversy and ensure smooth operation of the heal...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit