Robert P. George on Terri Schiavo on National Review: "it is a mistake to assume that people can make decisions in advance about whether to have themselves starved to death if they eventually find themselves disabled. That's why living wills have proven to be so often unreliable. One does not know how one will actually feel, or how one will feel about one's life and the prospect of death, or whether one will retain a desire to live despite a mental or physical disability, when one is not actually in that condition and when one is envisaging it from the perspective of more or less robust health."
Kausfiles cited this. Prof. George has a point, but it's true of many attempts to bind ourselves in the future. When Odysseus roped himself to the mast, he was making a commitment for the future. When Barry Bonds (presumably) took steroids, he was making a commitment, just like the bargain Faust made with the devil. Perhaps one of the marks of civilization, which may have evolved through religion, is our ability to conceive the future and to make commitments (the religious call them "covenants", the lawyers call them "contracts", the accountants talk of "current value"). In the discussion of Social Security on C-Span this morning, we're projecting the future not just 75 years, but forever. Did the Greeks or Shakespeare talk this way; the gods, honor, children, reputation were their visions of the future.
Certainly many minds change--GI's want out when they face going to Iraq, people want out of marriages, etc. etc. Prof. George is constucting a straw man, unlike a contract a living will can certainly be adjusted and updated along the way with no penalty.
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