Conceptual Compatibility and Transparency in Capacity Assessments.

Abstract

In “Harmful Choices, the case of C, and decision making competence,” Pickering et al. (2022) offer a thought-provoking interpretation of the relationship between harm and capacity assessments by analyzing the case of C. The authors propose what they call the Explanatory/Causal Account, in which “a person who is considering or has already made a decision which appears seriously harmful to that person should in some cases be judged incapable of making that decision because of the harmfulness of the decision” (38). The following commentary questions the compatibility of the Explanatory/Causal Account with notions of capacity, competence, and incompetence as defined by the authors, and then explores an important ethical implication of this potential incompatibility. The authors define capacity, competence, and incompetence as follows (emphasis mine; each term, when used as defined here, will be capitalized going forward):