Ethox Seminar - The end of family authority? The strange case of digital advance directives
Michiel De Proost, Postdoctoral Researcher, Ghent University, and Caroline Miles Scholar, Ethox Centre
Tuesday, 24 June 2025, 10.30am to 12pm
This will be a hybrid seminar in the Richard Doll Building Lecture Theatre (Old Road Campus), or on Zoom (see joining link below).
Abstract
While digital advance directives, such as the P4 system, have been presented as promising alternatives to surrogate decision-making, these systems have also faced criticism for being potentially misguided and even unethical. In this presentation, I critically examine two objections to the dominant emphasis on the loss of autonomous choice, with the aim of re-evaluating the philosophical foundations of digital advance directives through the lens of family ethics. First, I analyse how the debate surrounding digital advance directives is misleading in its focus on proxy decision-making as merely a matter of reproducing preferences. This narrow conception of autonomy overlooks the fact that such decisions often involve shared agency and familial responsibility. Second, I argue that the current literature largely ignores issues of social and epistemic injustice—concerns that cannot be dismissed in the ethical evaluation of these technologies. The presentation concludes by addressing a potential objection: that incorporating a family ethics perspective might reinforce irrational preferences for maintaining the status quo.