Louis_Schmier wrote:
> Paul, once again, let me take the devil's advocate position with the
> understanding I may agree with you. Here goes. Three
> questions. First, why do you draw the line where you do? Second, how do
you define
> "experiences>" And third, why is the place where you draw
> the line, with no scientific support or any other explicit reasoning
> expressed in this brief paragraph, any better (in all senses of the word)
> than the line drawn by someone else, that includes the fertilized
> ***human*** egg. It seems that, with all due respect, your position is
just as
> arbitrary as someone else's may be who take a different and contending
> one. Back in the mire of imprecise, "Oh, you know what I mean" words.
Preface:
What I was arguing for was not the exclusion of the fertilized egg from the
list of things towards which we have moral responsibility, but a criterion
for moral responsibility that happens to exclude that egg (an accidental
property). Were we to discover that the egg _does_ have experiences, it
would fall under my criterion, and my argument would still hold. I'm going
to assume that what you're emphasizing is not the difference between
criteria that do and do not include the fertilized egg (because that's not
something I was discussing in the first place), but rather the difference
between my criterion and one that depends upon a distinction between "human"
and "non-human".
Second question
The answers to the first and third of your questions will be essentially
the same, so I'll start with the second. We (human beings, or myself, at the
very least) have a phenomenology. It is like something to be me. I believe
that is not true for things like rocks. I don't think that's a very
controversial pair of claims. Surely there's nothing imprecise here. There's
no point in my putting forward a set of words meant to define the term
("experiences", or "phenomenology"), because any such set of words can be
picked apart, but at the same time, you DO know what I mean. Of course you
do. People have experiences. Rocks do not. Next question...
First and third questions:
[Before I answer, you need to know that the term "perverse" in ethics does
not have the derogatory connotation it has in everyday language. It refers
to conclusions that contradict normal moral sensibilities. There are
obviously going to be questions about what exactly constitutes a "normal
moral sensibility", but there are also a lot of non-controversial cases, and
if the argument holds with those, it's got something going for it. This is
ethics - black and white reasoning simply isn't going to work.]
I draw the line where I do because it makes intuitive sense and provides
what seem to me to be non-perverse moral directives. It also does not depend
on some essentialist definition.
Intuitive Sense
(of course, this section is entirely my personal opinion...) Take a living,
active adult human being, on one hand, and a rock on the other. Which do you
believe you have a moral responsibility towards? Which do you believe can
"be wronged"? Pretty easy questions, and of course ones that don't
distinguish between my criterion and the "human" criterion.
Now take that same living, active adult human being, on one hand, and
single fertilized "human" egg on the other. You've got to obliterate one or
the other. Reduce it to atoms. You cannot honestly tell me that this is a
difficult choice. I can believe that you might choose to regret the end
result, but I cannot believe that you could seriously entertain the other
option. My criterion predicts this. The essentialist one does not.
Now take that same living, active adult human being, on one hand, and a
different living, active adult human being on the other. You've got to
obliterate one or the other. _Now_ you have a difficult choice to make. My
criterion predicts this. So does the essentialist one, but that criterion
says that it will be no more difficult than the one in the immediately
preceding paragraph. If you tap dance hard enough around the truth, you
might make that case - but I can support my conclusion without the
tap-dancing. And if you _honestly_ believe you can feel the other way, then
I honestly believe you should be locked up as a dangerously deranged person.
Seriously. Right along with Eric Rudolph and the person who shot that doctor
in Albany, and the guy who killed those people in the pickup outside the
clinic (where was that one?).
Essentialist Definitions
With all due respect to the person who draws the line at "human", I believe
that my position is far less arbitrary, and that I have thought it through
far more than that person (at least typically). Remember that the person who
draws the line at "human" depends upon some definition of that word.
Definitions are in the eye of the beholder. The fact of having or not having
experiences is not. I may not be able to pin down which entities do or do
not have experiences, but the fact remains that some do and some do not. The
mere tag "human being" does not have that property. There is no essential
property of being human.
Perverse Moral Directives
When pressed in argument, some of those who argue for the "human" criterion
fall back to the notion of a "unique genetic code" (thus saving the
embarrassment of having to argue for human rights for the gametes, and even
for the non-reproduction-oriented cells of the body, while still clinging to
moral directives that make unprotected sex immoral - which of course is the
ultimate goal of that argument). But of course "having a unique genetic
code" and "being human" are not even remotely the same thing. The "unique
genetic code" criterion is going to cause serious ethical problems if and
when we begin cloning humans (no unique code, therefore no humans, therefore
both clone and original are suddenly outside of ethical protection and we
can kill 'em at will), and at the same time it already provides ridiculous
protection to things like mutated cells (they're suddenly separate,
independent "persons" with moral protection). I also feel that the
protection offered by this criterion to things like fetal tissue is a
perverse moral directive, but that's obviously more controversial. But the
alternative "human" criterion fails on even many of the easy cases (e.g.,
our responsibility towards an "infant" born a few years ago with essentially
no nervous system above the level of that required to keep the heart and
lungs working, or our responsibility towards cloned humans, or even our
responsibility towards animals, as in the massacre of the "Noah's Ark Animal
Shelter" animals a few years back).
That last (the question of our moral responsibility towards animals) is
probably the most dramatic illustration of the perverse directives of the
essentialist position. Surely you've noticed that when some animal torture
event makes the news these days, the talk show hosts do the "how strange
that people get upset at this but not at the destruction of human beings in
the fetal tissue labs!" stuff. The criterion they've set requires them to
hold that it's worse to destroy fetal tissue than it is to kill animals, and
by golly, they're going to stick with that line no matter how perverse they
appear (in this case, I _do_ mean the term "perverse" to have its normal
connotations). That's a sure sign of an ethical principle that's foundering
on the rocks.
------------------------
I do not believe that my position is necessarily the best position, or that
I've thought it through anywhere near enough to impose it on anyone else (I
haven't been writing my congressman about it, and you'll notice I'm not in
the news for bombing anyone over it). I'll bet that the book that Deb Brihl
mentioned contains an argument at least as convincing as any I could come up
with. On the other hand, because I've avoided the incorrect assumption that
there is an essence to being human, and at the same time avoided quite a few
perverse moral conclusions, I think my criterion is far better than the one
that gives us moral responsibility towards some ill-defined "human" group.
The best argument (and it's pretty damned good!) I can think of against my
position is the point that there may be some entities that presently do not
have a phenomenology but soon will. I'm thinking specifically of persons in
comas, but with good prognoses. Is it ethically right to "kill 'em quick
while it's still ethical"? Oops - there's a perverse moral conclusion for my
side. Still, I'm quite a few runs ahead in this game. I believe there's hope
for salvaging my criterion from this problem, while the essentialist
criterion looks hopelessly mired in the minor leagues.
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
