Healthcare proxy

Here, my intention is to clear up some of these confusions and present a new picture of corrigibility that builds on these existing accounts to specify a goal that is more congruous with the original twenty fifteen desiderata and admits the kind of formal safety guarantees we need the concept to entail.

I argue that the fundamental concept underlying corrigibility is respect for authority, using the analogy of a healthcare proxy's relationship to a patient as an intuitive guide.

Defining the authority of humanity by designating its reserved powers, we can specify a goal that first and foremost restrains the agent from overstepping or interfering with this reserved human authority.

Subject to this restraint, the agent then pursues the second component of its goal, acting on the principal's behalf as the principal would judge best.

Suppose a dear friend of yours has been in an accident that leaves her temporarily incapacitated.

When you get to the hospital to see your friend, you're informed that she had previously signed a form granting you her power of attorney in such situations.

You are now your friend's healthcare proxy with both the authority and the responsibility to act on her behalf to represent her interests when presented by doctors with decisions about her treatment.

When a tough choice about her care arises, one with serious trade-offs and risks, how should you decide? How does a good healthcare proxy behave? Suggestively, legal parlance refers to the person granting the power of attorney as the principal and the one receiving it as the agent.

So dealing with it in advance is good.

So there are living wills for people with healthcare proxies.

A reference, uh, that I would give is Compassion and Choices.

Compassion and Choices.