Given the current organ shortage, a prevalent alternative to the altruism-based policy is a market-based solution: pay people for their organs. Receiving much popular and scholarly attention, a salient normative argument against neoliberal pressures is the preservation of human dignity. This article examines how advocates of both the altruistic status quo and market challengers reason and weigh the central normative concept of dignity, meant as inherent worth and/or rank. Key rhetorical strategies, including motivations and broader social visions, of the two (...) positions are analyzed and evaluated, and the separation of morally normative understandings of dignity from market encroachment is defended. (shrink)

Recent progress in neurosciences has improved our understanding of chronic disorders of consciousness. One example of this advancement is the emergence of the new diagnostic category of minimally conscious state (MCS). The central characteristic of MCS is impaired consciousness. Though the phenomenon now referred to as MCS pre-existed its inclusion in diagnostic classifications, the current medical ethical concepts mainly apply to patients with normal consciousness and to non-conscious patients. Accordingly, how we morally should stand with persons in minimally conscious state (...) remains unclear. In this paper, I examine whether the notion of human dignity could provide us with guidance with the moral difficulties MCS gives rise to. More precisely, I focus on the question of whether we are justified in holding that persons in minimally conscious state possess human dignity. (shrink)

Patients, doctors, and families faced with end of life decision-making face a myriad of interpretations about what constitutes a good, dignified death. For this reason, I argue that argumentation theorists can and should enter this fray in an effort to map the axiological modes of argumentation at play and offer a means for the creation of commonplaces that might make decision-making in this vein more productive and fulfilling for those involved.