DJ: It's not quite the same as deliberately killing though, is it?

PS: That is a different question. You asked me about the judgments about the equal value of human life. You pointed out that I challenged the view that all human life is of equal value. So what I'm saying is that even when we allow people to die by withdrawing life support, which is basically a judgment that their prolonged life is not of the same value as it would be in another case, as it would be with someone who is fully conscious and able to participate in the life of the community — although they might need to have exactly the same forms of life support, a respirator let us say — because they are conscious and participating we think that their life is worth more. The same person who is on a life support machine, but is in a persistent vegetative state and always will be because we can see how damaged their brain is, might live just as long.

For example, in the United States there have been people who have lived on life support for 40 years on respirators, but we don't think that their life is of value and, generally, we take them off. We don't have people in Britain who have been on respirators for 40 years, and we don't really have that in the US any more. That particular judgment that some human lives are not of the same value as others — that's what I'm saying is inevitable, and that is what I mean when I say that the door is already open.

Now, you then asked me the challenge, given man's inhumanity towards other men, which of course we have this terrible record of, wouldn't it better to never make that judgment? Well, as I already said, I don't think that we can really do that, unless we were to completely change our policies and try to keep everyone alive. Does it make a difference that I am suggesting that we should be able to actively kill rather than simply allow to die? I don't think that does make a crucial moral difference. Sometimes I think that it is actually kinder.

It sometimes happens in hospital where a very severely disabled baby is born and the family doesn't want it, no treatment is given and the baby may be allowed to die slowly because of some infection developing or may not be fed, and I think that is worse — in fact it is cruel. If you have decided that this baby should not live, then you should give the baby a humane end and make sure that the baby dies quickly.

NB: I agree in drawing a distinction between "biological life" and "biographical life". I'm not sure whether that phrase originated with you, Peter, but it's one you have adopted. Except, instead of talking about "biographical life" I prefer to talk about "responsible life". Some descriptions of what biographical life involves seem to me to be rather male and thrusting and bourgeois. For example, to have a biographical life you have to be able to launch and have "projects", whereas responsible life, for me, could encompass the severely handicapped child whose face lights up whenever Mozart's music is played. It is responsive in the sense of being able to respond to beauty or goodness in the world.

So I want to expand the concept of rationality here, or biography, to include those who can make an appropriate response to real values or goods in the world. They may not be clever or articulate, or capable of undertaking projects, but they can respond intuitively to goods in the world, not just to beauty, but justice, friendship, etc. I want to expand rationality to include the morally intuitive responses of the hindered human being.