What does “experience” mean, anyway? The only definition I can come up with, ultimately, is that an experience is something that you form memories of. In what sense can someone be experiencing something that they’re not remembering?
Physical trauma is physical trauma-if the mind doesn’t remember the event but the body does, how can you say the experience never happened?
Things that happen happen even if nobody remembers them later.
That said, if we put firmly aside the issue of things being done without consent, obvious the ability to induce targeted forgetfulness is a useful one.
I have to agree with Chronos. If I can’t remember it, then I didn’t experience it. That doesn’t mean the event itself didn’t happen, just that I was not present to experience it.
And the events that happen (including the initial event if non-consensual) can be wrong, even if the other person does not experience them. Use of my body without my consent is still wrong, even if I wasn’t aware of it occurring, same as any other wrong act is still wrong even if the other person doesn’t know it.
Still, it is my body, and I alone have the right to decide what happens to it. I get to decide if allowing my brain to process but not record this procedure is desirable. It’s up to you whether you find such to be unsettling or not.
I personally don’t. The only thing I’m concerned about is if there are unknown long term effects.
Contrary to the florid implications of the OP, Versed is not generally given alone as an anesthetic drug, during procedures in which the patient is howling in pain but doesn’t remember it afterwards.
It’s a benzodiazepine drug (in the same general class as Valium) which has sedative and hypnotic effects, making you sleepy and acting as a muscle relaxant. It’s typically used (during colonoscopies, for example) along with fentanyl or propofol, which do the lion’s share of pain-killing work.
*“Versed is often combined with Fentanyl, a powerful pain reliever, to provide “conscious sedation.” It is also known as “twilight sleep” or “monitored anesthesia care (MAC)”. This type of anesthesia does not require the patient to be on a ventilator during the procedure.
The two drugs, working together, provide pain relief, relaxation, and amnesia. The purpose is to prevent pain and anxiety during the procedure, and if there is any discomfort or stress, the patient is not likely to remember it.*
Bearing in mind that “discomfort” in the medical lexicon means “pain”, it is still in the best interest of conducting a safe and effective procedure that the patient is feeling minimal pain, whether or not he/she remembers it (you don’t want patients thrashing around and interfering with delicate proceedings).
Is torturing someone to death worse than killing them quickly? After all, they won’t remember it either way.
Obligatory humorous video concerning this subject: Eclair by Omeleto
Summary in the spoiler. Although it doesn’t work if she couldn’t remember, people are into weird things.
Blind date in a restaurant, the girl reveals she has a kink for rape role-play.
In my opinion, inducing amnesia and paralysis then committing rape is morally wrong because rape is non-consensual and morally wrong, ipso facto. It is doubly wrong if they did not consent to the amnesia and paralysis. Neither does amnesia nullify the physical harm done to the victim - rupturing of the hymen, conception, any bruises or physiological response despite the paralysis.
Regarding trauma and the theory of the mind, if the drug effectively blocks the formation of new memories then we need not worry about any mental trauma from the non-existent memories. There may be indirect trauma when the victim comes to and freaks out due to the unexpected blackout, and any effects.
I am generally OK with medical procedures because these are done with the consent of the patient. If consent is not available then we run into some morally grey situations, and doctors need to be careful to act in good faith.
~Max
The general question “Can an action that causes little pleasure and risks great harm, but ultimately produces no harm still be immoral?” is beyond the scope of consensus.
If you assign morality after-the-fact, the answer is no. Such an action will always be moral if it ultimately causes no harm.
If you assign morality in-the-moment, the answer will be yes. Such an action could be immoral, even if it ultimately causes no harm.
Insofar as this applies to raping a person already effected by drugs that induce amnesia and paralysis, I am of the opinion that the above question is precluded by persistent effects of the action such as breaking the hymen.
Depending on the drug, and I am not knowledgeable enough to say this with any certainty, there may be lasting harm from the physiological effects of stress. Even if a person is immobilized and has no memory, depending on the drug an act of rape can still activate their stress pathways which might have a lasting effect on the body. If for example, Joe the rapist drugged and raped the same person every week for years on end, nobody ever knows about it, then suddenly (while not being raped) the person drops dead from a heart attack.
~Max
Way I see it:
I didn’t really suffer, because I’m just my continuity and that’s been erased. Knowledge of that erasure is itself a trauma, but in this case it’s one I consent to, so OK.
HOWEVER
A temporary* but fully sentient person was made to feel torturous pain and anguish, and then erased from existence*. For my and the doctors’ convenience. And I don’t consider that ethical. It wouldn’t be ethical if we created a temporary clone of me, with my memories, to suffer my pain with some sort of pain-transfer machine, and then we destroyed it, would it? Why is it ethical if the “clone” is in the same body?
Well, if a doctor said:
“We have two options. One option will put you through horrific, god-awful gut-clenching pain. You’ll be screaming and begging me to kill you the whole time. But you won’t remember any of it, and your recovery will be shorter. Or, we can use this other method, where you won’t be aware at all during the procedure, but your recovery will be longer and moderately more painful.”
Which do you chose? I chose the second, hands down. Because even if I am not going to remember it, I don’t want to go through anything like that.
Well, I, personally, find the amnesia thing very creepy.
I have barretts esophagus, and I need endoscopies on a regular basis to monitor it.
My first one was done with Versed and Fentanyl. I suppose if I’d woken up “cleanly”, I might not have hated it as much as I did. But I felt like shit all day, and my memory didn’t function properly all day. It was creepy as hell.
So I did the next several endoscopies without sedation. It’s very unpleasant. It’s not very painful, but the urge to retch is overwhelming. Also the urge to burp. They want you to try not to do either, so your stomach stays still.
My most recent endoscopy required biopsies not only from the esophagus but from within the stomach. The surgeon insisted I be sedated. So I had Propofol, which is an even more potent amnesiac than Versed.
Now, most people like Propofol. I gather many people feel good when they wake up. I’m not that lucky. I felt like shit. Dizzy, and acutely depressed. At least the amnesia was clean – I have absolutely no memory from when they said “the drug might hurt a little, in the IV” to when they roused me for the last time in the recovery room. (I know I must have been roused prior to that, because I know that I spit out the ball gag (used to protect your teeth from the scope and vice versa) and I assume I put on my glasses.) So it wasn’t creepy. But I was left with a profound feeling of having been violated.
No, I don’t mean sexually. I mean that on some level, I was aware that a giant tube was shoved down my throat, and probably painfully (my throat was far more bruised than prior endoscopies) and a foreign object was rooting around in my belly.
I had all the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder for about a week.
So all you people who love Versed, I’m happy for you. Not me. Hate it hate it hate it.
I’m quite anxious about what I’m going to do for my next endoscopy. Hopefully, I can find a doctor who can catch my retching gut and do it without sedation.
See post #25.
When if ever does option #1 occur? Even if one believes that physicians are monsters who overlook (or even get off on) horrific patient pain, an endoscopic or surgical procedure on a screaming (or screaming and struggling) patient would be extremely difficult, so it’d be counterproductive to allow such a thing to occur.
Cast it as a hypothetical situation if you want, but let’s not pretend this is a realistic scenario.
Note also that general anesthesia is more risky than “twilight sedation”, so add an increased chance of death to option #2.
I’m giving a hypothetical situation, which I think was the intent of the OP. It seems awfully absolute to say, as Chronos did, that if he isn’t going to remember it, he doesn’t think it happened in any meaningful sense. I don’t buy the idea that the only experiences that matter are ones that we remember or that have a lasting effect on our psyche. Even if there’s literally no retention, it still happened. My self still went through it.
I didn’t say that it didn’t happen. No matter what sort of anaesthetic we’re talking about, it’s still true objective fact that a guy with a really sharp knife sliced open my belly and rooted around in my innards (or whatever procedure we’re talking about). I’m just saying that I didn’t experience it happening.
You are assuming that the clone is still a person and entitled to feelings and moral rights. It could be argued, for example in some philosophies of dualism, that the physical clone does not have a soul and therefore is not a person deserving of moral rights. In the case where the clone is in fact the same body, it could be argued that your soul has been severed from the body. It is implied in Chronos’s example that the soul has consented to this so long as the body is returned in good condition; moral rights over the body belong to the soul, not the body. Replace “soul” with “mind” if you wish.
I don’t necessarily believe in souls or dualism but this is the counterargument.
~Max
Some people justify this as follows:
My mind is my self.
My mind was temporarily severed from my body.
Therefore, my self was temporarily severed from my body.
~Max
Er, there’s no sensible way you can say that in the situation under discussion the ‘same-body-clone’ is soulless. There’s no discontinuity at all between the initial person and the ‘clone’; there’s more of a discontinuity between the initial person and the one after memory retention is allowed to resume.
Even if you were aware of it happening at the time, but no longer remember?
Wouldn’t a body be soulless if the drug severed the connection between soul and body? Such that stimuli of the body no longer translates into qualia for the soul. Hence for a period of time, the soul is missing qualia; therefore, there is a discontinuity between the body and the soul.
~Max