The Negative Effects of Neurointerventions: Confusing Constitution and Causation

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Notes

1 The relationship is also causal, we believe, in Birks and Buyx’s case of shrinking, and thereby killing, a person. The shrinking causes the person’s death rather than (partly) constituting it.

2 Note that there plausibly is some set of neurochemical states S such that producing those states is partly constitutive of Sexual Impoverishment. These are the neurochemical states on which valuable sexual desires supervene. But those who administer testosterone do not intend to eliminate those states. They intend only to eliminate the neurochemical states on which disvaluable sexual desires supervene.

3 See Fitzpatrick (cited in Birks and Buyx 2018) at 604–606.