“Harmful” Choices and Subjectivity: Against an Externalist Approach to Capacity Assessments

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This article refers to:

Harmful Choices, the Case of C, and Decision-Making Competence

Notes

1 Although Pickering and colleagues make a distinction between ‘competence’ and ‘capacity,’ we use the term ‘capacity’ in this commentary as this represents the legal terminology in the Mental Capacity Act 2005. Commenting on whether such a distinction is necessary or appropriate, is unfortunately beyond the scope of this response, which focuses on the philosophical and practical challenges of determining ‘harmful’ choices.

Additional information

Funding

The authors’ work is funded by the “Balancing Best Interests in Health Care, Ethics and Law (BABEL)” Collaborative Award from the Wellcome Trust [209841/Z/17/Z]. The funding body played no role in the writing of the manuscript