I just stick around for the TYBC maymays <| sep |> why not also where the dragon people lived that oryx sadly killed ? <| sep |> Ok , so . lets just not give up a shorty again , please . <| sep |> As a forewarning , you should not read too much further into my comment if you do not have the emotional fortitude to deal with very difficult questions on very troubling topics , including selfharm , suicide , and state controlled media . What you are getting into is a very extensive topic in philosophy and ethics , which was prompted by the study of arguments for and against euthanasia . It sounds as though the court places a higher premium on right to selfownership than utilitarian ethics . There is nothing wrong with that . In fact , the ethical systems between rights theory and utilitarianism often cannot be rationally resolved . The conflict between the two schools of thought are libertarianism which places moral emphasis on one ' s own ownership of oneself as the derivation for further moral rights and paternalism which allows the state to interfere in one ' s autonomy on the justification that what is good is not always consistent with one ' s will . The two positions cannot be brought into logical equilibrium with each other . And therefore , you will have to always live with the possibility of courts ruling one way or the other . Some reading personally side with highly individualistic libertarianism that one even has the right to do anything to one ' s body even if it involves selfharm . I do not think it is up to others to impose their will upon an individual under any circumstance if it interferes with their selfownership . I can understand why utilitarians would feel opposed to this because there is an emotional impetus to weigh the harm one can do to oneself as interfering in harming others . However , I would argue that that is indirect , contextual and differed , meaning it has less moral weight than directly imposing one ' s will upon a subject . The comparison of suicide to homicide does not work here because homicide interferes with another ' s selfownership , whereas suicide interferes with one ' s own selfownership . It is also a slippery slope to imposing one ' s concept of harm upon another to prevent them from , let ' s say , getting a tattoo , using porn or having a drink . The same justification for paternalism can be used to outlaw all kinds of behavior that some individuals would consider harmful while others would not . Many propaganda campaigns and media censorship programs have been justified based upon a very loose interpretation of harm and best interests . In fact , Plato in his text , The Republic , might be the original philosopher to propose censorship for the good of the public on the basis that the state should promote moral good and interfere in the liberties of individuals , justifying itself through an appeal to the possibility for failures of individuals to act in their own best interests . It ' s not a society in which I want to live , personally . For a contemporary analog that might inspire some heated debate , the BBC has a long history of censoring media and interfering in the creative process to impose the will of the state upon individuals ' moral lives . This even culminated in the destruction of many original episodes of the Doctor Who series , which were considered to be promoting deviant behavior by a then ultraconservative polity . Do I think people should harm themselves ? No , absolutely not . I would never endorse that nor would I promote it . I think that if you want to harm yourself , you should seek help . But I do not have ownership over your moral decisions , and your freedom , at the end of the day , matters more than what I feel you should do . So I do not think it is ever right to impose treatment if the individual is capable of refusing . The possibility of mental condition does not give the state a paternalistic right to impose treatment upon an individual . Treatment is voluntary by nature because it is the decision of an individual to act in accordance with their right to selfownership . There is a possible resolution that treats the will of an individual as a general trend and small divergences from this general trend that are momentarily the result of a substance usage or frame of mind can be resolved with interference . The court , in this woman ' s case , would have to determine that she is in a sound frame of mind . They apparently swung both ways before committing to the soundness of her judgment in understanding that refusal of treatment would mean death . Merely desiring death does not make one ' s judgment unsound either , as this is based not upon one ' s desires , but rather upon one ' s conceptual understanding of the consequences of one ' s actions . An individual who is depressed understands the consequences of their actions . An individual who is cognitively impaired through being under the influence of a substance in the moment or by suffering from the results of a neurologically degenerative condition might not understand the consequences of their actions , and therefore might not be of sound mind . While anorexia is a condition that results in selfharm that is not necessarily in the control of the individual who has it , if the individual rationally refuses medication and treatment , then nothing can be said of it to restrict her . Anorexia does not imply that the individual is in an unsound state of mind . This differentiates it from , for instance , being intoxicated while depressed and acting in very poor judgment . In the later case , the temporallybroad version of libertarianism would interfere primarily because the libertarian would believe that the individual is acting against hisher own will since heshe is under the influence of a substance and a psychological condition that limits their freedom . The nontemporal interpretation of will would result in the libertarian concluding that heshe should not interfere because any moment is an act of will regardless if it deviates from the general trend of an individual ' s behavior . Regardless of which , in the case of anorexia , if the individual is of a rational mindset in general , then we cannot interfere according to the libertarian ethic as well as the right of selfownership . However , this is where the euthanasia debate comes into play . Even supposing that suicide is not a right , there is a distinction between killing and letting die . The individual is not killing herself , which is an active behavior . She is , rather , letting herself die through refusing action . This can allow us some nuanced distinction between malicious intent and benevolentneutral intent . Some philosophers have argued that there is no distinction . This gets a bit difficult because the same philosophers would not distinguish between positive and negative moral rights . Does the right to life , for instance , mean you have a right not to have others interfere in your continued life negative or a right to have food provided to you to sustain your life positive ? It ultimately goes into another very contentious debate . The individual is not committing suicide by refusing treatment any more than I am committing suicide by smoking a cigarette every now and then . Both might have nearcertain death at the end of the road , but one should be able to choose one ' s death even if one cannot necessarily choose to murder oneself in the instant . This would constitute one ' s existential liberty , which is fundamental to rights ascription . This is also consistent with utilitarian paternalism because the harm I would do by smoking every now and then , even if it results in my death , is not of the same category of harm done to others by committing suicide . It is much less . And so the court can still be paternalistic and rule in the same way that a libertarian court would , concluding that the anorexic woman has the right to refuse treatment . On the flip side , the utilitarian might argue that the indirect harm I am doing to others , even without intent , constitutes a morally salient reason for inhibiting my rights . This would depend upon weighing whether more psychological good comes from me smoking and from the general affairs of being able to choose how one approaches death as well as other liberties against the indirect harm of secondhand smoke and whatever else it contributes to . One would determine which state of affairs has higher net utility , banning smoking or permitting it . As you can see , the problem is very difficult and full of contradictions . It is moral grey areas and borderline cases like this that are most interesting to ethicists because they pose difficult questions without ready answers based in what we already know .