Fenton to Habermas and biocons: Human nature is not fixed

The November-December 2006 issue of The Hastings Center Report contains an important article by Elizabeth Fenton, entitled "Liberal Eugenics and Human Nature: Against Habermas", the thrust of which is to attack - and demolish - the distinction made by Habermas and other bioconconservative thinkers between the natural and the artificial.

While Fenton also makes reference to the views of George Annas and Francis Fukuyama, she concentrates on those of Jurgen Habermas, who has presented what she describes as a "subtle and complex" argument for the prohibition of so-called liberal eugenics.

In the context of this debate, liberal eugenics is the practice of parents selecting some of the genetic characteristics of their own children, within some limits. The usual limits that are proposed relate to the avoidance of harm to the children, though some philosophers and bioethicists also discuss other possible constraints that cannot easily be brought under that heading. For example, Nicholas Agar, who has defended liberal eugenics, opposes the (hypothetical) use of genetic technology to select the sexuality of children, not because this would be harmful to the children themselves but because of the possible social ramifications (e.g. for the position in society of homosexuals).

In any event, liberal eugenics would allow parents considerable scope to select their childrens' genetic potentialities. It stands in contrast to authoritarian eugenics: historical attempts by the state to control the distributions of genetic traits across an entire population.

As Fenton reconstructs Habermas' argument, it relies on the assumption that there is a fixed, and morally normative, human nature, which would be disrupted if parents could choose (some of) their children's genetic traits. In response, Fenton makes several telling points, that at the least require some more sophisticated reply from biocons like Habermas:

• First, we cannot look on human nature as something fixed and stable - it is open to modification, and possibly even to improvement. We cannot be sure that any set of identifiable core characteristics of humanity merits protection from change.
• Habermas is wrong to ground a concept of "human dignity" in the current concept of what it is to be human.
• The claim, made by Habermas, that liberal eugenics would fundamentally alter the relationship between parents and children is "overblown": on the one hand, there is an inherent inquality between parents and children in any event; and on the other - provided that they possess subjectivity similar to that of other human beings - genetically modified humans will be as well placed as the rest of us to claim political equality in their moral communities.
• It is difficult to draw a line between the natural and the artificial, and wherever the line is drawn it is not of moral significance. Something else needs to be relied on to make distinctions of good and bad.
• The concept of a fixed and normative human nature is at odds with liberal conceptions of autonomous agency and the value of individual freedoms.
• There is a contradiction in the claims by Habermas and other bioconservatives that liberal eugenics is intrinsically morally wrong, while at the same time they want its regulation or acceptance to be determined by a democratic process. The latter claim appears to undermine the former. (I add that if the criterion is harm rather than inherent moral wrongness, as any Millian liberal should argue, precisely the same problem arises: it is either harmful enough to require prohibition, or it isn't.)

Fenton does not attempt to argue that liberal eugenics is morally acceptable. She confines herself to the more modest point that, if it is morally wrong, its wrongness must consist in something other than its supposed unnaturalness. Even that, however, is an important point which can never be made, and given intellectual support, too often. Fenton is someone who gets it.

She concludes that there may be shared characteristics which separate human beings from our environment at a point in time, and that these may define us uniquely at the time ... and may be of moral significance. But there is no imperative to preserve them - they should not be granted intrinsic value or be protected from change. "For whatever they are," Fenton says, "they are open to change and improvement; to deny this is to deny humanity its most cherished freedom - the freedom to evolve."

Something a bit lighter

Over summer, I'm trying to get back into shape - instead of just complaining about being out of shape. Having bloated out to almost 190 pounds (sorry to those folks who think in kilograms), I've now managed to drop down to less than 180.

Fifteen years ago, my best weight was about 170 pounds, as in this pic - but I'm just not that heavily muscled now that I'm in my middle age (dammit) and not up to the sort of training I was then.

Grrrr, I probably need to get down to something more like a slim 165. Wish me luck people; that still doesn't sound easy. Maybe I need a sponsor or something.

The genetic fallacy fallacy

Richard Garner, in his interesting book Beyond Morality, discusses what he calls the genetic fallacy fallacy.

We all know the genetic fallacy, of course: the idea that a belief is not proved to be false simply because it was formed by a method that is unreliable. Thus, I may come to the conclusion that God exists and loves me, based on my wish that this were so and because I would be comforted by having a heavenly father to give me love for as long as I need it - and in all the circumstances of my life. Love from such a being might seem of far greater value to me than love from the merely mortal (and perhaps sometimes fickle) beings whom I encounter here on Earth. Perhaps, when things are going well for me, it does seem as if I am blessed with the love of such a powerful and benevolent being.

That is hardly a reliable way to reach any conclusions about the existence of a deity, much less about that deity's attitude to me. Yet, the fact that I may have reached my conclusions in such an unreliable way does not demonstrate that they are actually wrong. My beliefs might just happen to be true. They might even have some independent compelling justification ... perhaps something I'm not even aware of.

But that does not mean that the historical source of a belief is never relevant to whether we should accept it. In the absence of some independent evidence and argument in favour of a belief, surely we have less reason to accept it if we can give a debunking explanation of how someone came to adopt it. As Garner says, if someone's ability to form reliable beliefs on the subject concerned was impeded - e.g. "by drugs, madness, fear, or ignorance" - knowledge of the fact is going to affect the reliability of the person's testimony.

Much of the commonsense wisdom passed down through the centuries and millennia is, at least, the product of ignorance, and often of wishful thinking, or of our attraction to ideas that simply sound noble or "catchy" in some way. When we encounter ideas that are widely held, but with no evidentiary justification in sight and plenty of psychological explanation as to why the world might have looked the way it did to the people concerned, then we have every reason to be sceptical.

AJOB article on personhood

My article, "Differing Vulnerabilities: The Moral Significance of Lockean Personhood", has now appeared in the American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB - Neuroscience), as one of several responses to a major new article on neuroscience and personhood that appears in this issue of AJOB. My article is a (slightly qualified) defence of Locke's concept of personhood and its deployment in much contemporary work in practical ethics - as in the writings of Peter Singer, for example. By "Lockean personhood", I mean a cluster of related psychological properties that includes rationality, self-consciousness, and awareness of oneself in time (as a being with a past and a future).

I argue that what makes this cluster of properties so important is its relationship to certain kinds of vulnerability that we respond to sympathetically. Creatures that are sentient, but are not persons, cannot be vulnerable in these particular ways - e.g. they cannot experience having their hopes for the future shattered by misfortune, because they are unable to form such hopes. (Entities that are not even sentient most definitely cannot be vulnerable in such ways.)

Old folks' sex party - a lesson about prejudice and intolerance

Just received: a tabloid news story about a group of nine people - aged in their 70s, 80s, and 90s - who were booted out of a London nursing home for organising a wild, nude party (described by the paper as a sex party) in the home's recreation room. Apparently they were sprung by security staff at an early stage of the party, when the staff heard the sounds of rumba music. The party had only been going for about twenty minutes, but the participants were already naked and oiled.

A spokesperson for the nursing home is quoted in the story as saying that the incident might sound harmless or amusing, but that the home has strict standards and cannot tolerate such behaviour. Well, yes, it certainly does sound harmless - to me, at least - and merely amusing. And why, exactly, can such behaviour not be tolerated when it involves people in their late years?

More offensive than the spokesperson's words, though perhaps no less concerning, are the quoted remarks of an anonymous staffer who was involved in breaking up the party. This person is quoted as saying, "... they were all naked. Believe me, it was the scariest thing I've seen in my life." I doubt that this was what was meant: what, after all, is so scary about a bunch of old people with no clothes on? I doubt that they appeared especially frightening to the (presumably much younger and able-bodied) staffer. What the staffer felt was not fear, I expect, but some kind of repugnance or disgust.

Let's not mince words: what was intended was not "scary" but "ugly". Naked people of the age described are not menacing in any way, but younger people are likely to be repulsed by the sight. Or, come to think of it, maybe there is at least an itty bitty element of fear - the fear that old people are somehow not keeping in their place, but are acting just like adults in their more robust and vigorous years. How dare they? "Don't they understand", so the thought might go, "that their time has passed and that they are now merely tolerated by the rest of us?" Yes, something like that nasty thought may be involved. Uppity old people ...

The journalist's own language is packed with condescending language - "codgers", "geezers", and so on - that makes clear his scorn for these people, and that he confidently expects his readers to share it, and have a good laugh.

Before I go on, I should concede that I, too, may have found the sight ugly if I had been exposed to it. Like most men, I am "programmed" (by genes, by socialisation, whatever) to be sexually attracted to the radiance of youth, energy, and health, not to the wrinkled skin and sagging flesh that goes with old age. I'm not so hypocritical as to pretend otherwise. This blog entry is not going to be a forlorn plea that we alter our standards of sexual beauty.

No, but what about when I reach the sort of age that these nine people evidently are? Well, frankly, if I am still interested in sexual activities to the extent that they showed, and can take an interest in the bodies of other people of my own generation, I'll be very pleased. I feel happy for this gang of nine that they were still able to get a kick out of arranging some kind of naughty party among themselves. Yes, the sight might not have been aesthetically pleasing to me, but why the hell should that be the issue? What makes it okay for people, such as the anonymous staffer and the journalist writing it all up, to pour scorn on these individuals?

The fact is that the folks at the party were not hurting anybody. They weren't even inflicting the sight of their age-damaged bodies on the delicate aesthetic sensibilities of anyone younger. Instead, they were carrying on among themselves in a harmless way that was evidently giving them pleasure. Nothing bad need have come of it, but for the intolerant "standards" of the nursing home and the investigation by the security staff. If a group of young, or even middle-aged, adults had done something similar in one of their own homes, no one would have considered it worth reporting (we can be confident that it happens all the time - but so what?). Why does the fact that many of us would have found the sight unappealing suddenly open up a legitimate public space for moral outrage, or for mockery? Actually, it doesn't.

At the end of the day, I think this is just prejudice against old people, who are expected to know their (subservient) place in society, and perhaps to be thankful that we put up with them at all. When you think about it, that attitude is pretty ugly, in its own way. As far as I can see, the nine people concerned have nothing at all to be ashamed of: good for them that they were still up for some excitement. Those younger people who think it is okay to infantilise them, and jeer at them, are the ones who have plenty to be ashamed of. If many of us feel those ugly impulses to jeer and mock, I suggest we disown them; they are not worthy of us. It would be unreasonable to ask my readers to change their standards of sexual beauty - I've admitted to mine - but we don't have to let considerations of what we find sexually attractive drive us into prejudice and intolerance.

Meta-ethics and the human future

In my recent series of posts in which I've attacked the idea that morality is objective, I have not sought to deny that morality of some kind is inevitable for human societies. I think it is . I also think that much of its actual content is inevitable for us ... i.e., for human beings or any species much like us. In a sense, then, we might want to say that some of the basic content of morality is objectively justified, after all, because we would not want to do without it.

In that very weak sense, I could call myself an objectivist, though this is not how the words "objective" and so on tend to be used in meta-ethical debates. (Then again, much of the terminology in meta-ethics is not used with total consistently ... to say the least.)

It would be a weak sense of "objective", as Blake Stacey said in a response to my previous post on this site. On this picture, the justification for morality is a kind of pragmatic one, based on human needs, values, interests, etc. It is also a subjective justification - not in some extreme, nihilistic sense (it's not a matter of "Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law"), but just in the sense that justifications of morality are not independent of our needs, values, interests, etc.

Still, if someone wants to claim to be a moral objectivist, or a moral realist, meaning no more than all the above, then I have no substantive quarrel with them. The trouble is that a sense that morality is much more strongly objective seems to be assumed in (much) commonsense meta-ethical thinking, and of course naive religious meta-ethics typically claims that there is a grounding for morality in the will of a deity, which creates absolute standards of right and wrong. It is a trite observation that people with this naive divine-command theory often wield great political power.

I think that there are at least two sets of practical issues that arise out of all this, and affect how we might imagine the human, or post-human, future.

First, it seems that "our" needs, values, interests, etc., are somewhat indeterminate and contested, and this leads me to conclude that the detailed content of morality - as opposed to the broad outlines - will always be both (1) underdetermined by naturalistic facts about the universe (there may be no one perfect way to meet "our" needs, etc.) and (2) pluralistic (there is no single overriding value that morality gives expression to, but rather a range of values that human beings actually tend to have). I think that this recognition could have many practical implications. E.g., no one cultural system of moral norms may do a perfect job of meeting human needs, etc., but many may do some sort of reasonable job, judged against the contested - but largely agreed - values that we want to apply.

This seems to justify a certain kind of sophisticated moral relativism: we should not be too quick to condemn the moral codes of other cultures, which might be functioning reasonably well, however bizarre they look. At the same time, it allows that some moral systems may do a better job than others, when judged by standards with much inter-cultural acceptance. Thus, it refutes the naive relativism which insists that all cultures are equal.

More generally, a pragmatic and pluralistic approach to morality might lead to considerable revision of our traditional moral norms, and might guide us in what norms should be retained, invented, or rejected. Is this norm (we might ask) actually promoting our more fundamental values? If not, pitch it into the flames. Many inherited moral norms may not withstand scrutiny, once it is asked whether they are actually performing such functions as creating happiness and minimising suffering (I take it that these, at least, are widely-agreed values).

Here, I agree with Joshua Greene, who has written much in this area (including a PhD thesis that is expected to be published in 2008). Greene argues that the kind of meta-ethical approach I'm describing, and which he defends eloquently, will push us somewhat in the direction of utilitarianism. I don't think it pushes us quite as far in that direction as Greene thinks it does, but I certainly agree that it has practical implications for how we live our lives and what policies we support.

Phew, that's one set of issues.

Secondly, there's a question of what do we do about it, once we come to believe that morality is not as it seems.

It appears (at least to me) that naive thinking about morality typically involves an illusion: the illusion that, in a strongly objective sense which transcends human interests, there is right and wrong built into the framework of reality. Once we see through this illusion, how should we act (given whatever values, etc., we share)?

Should we try to revise our moral language, as Greene argues? How do we bring up kids - do we use the old, simpler language, or some new kind of language? Are we better off if most people continue to live under the illusion that morality is strongly objective? How easy or difficult is it to shake them free of it? (Perhaps, as Richard Joyce has argued, we evolved to have this illusion, which may have had some survival advantage; perhaps it takes a very special kind of abstract thinking to break the spell, even temporarily.)

It also hasn't escaped me that these questions are analogous to questions about the belief that one or more powerful supernatural beings are taking an interest in us. If this is a deeply-entrenched mistake, how urgent is the need to say so? What are the advantages and disadvantages?

My own bias is toward dispelling illusions, and to expecting that the advantages will outweigh the disadvantages. If we could live, and set policy, without illusions, I believe it would help us lead better lives (judged by values that are largely shared). For example, if we all saw things more clearly, much irrational rejection of biomedical technology might dissipate like the mist. However, I grant that it's not straightforward. There are huge issues here about the future of morality (and religion) - and about the future in general, if we try to plan it in accordance with our actual values, rather than in the thrall of ancient illusions.

I've just mapped out a research program for myself for years to come. Who wants to join me?

Nagel has this wrong - on moral objectivism

In his 1997 book, The Last Word, Thomas Nagel attempted to put a succinct case for the objectivist view of morality and value. This summarises, and attempts to reinforce, the position he had been developing since The Possibility of Altruism - back in the 1960s. Early on in the discussion, he concedes that "There is no moral analogue of the external world—a universe of moral facts that impinge on us causally."[i] But he wants to be able to support the claim that "while 'passions' are the source of some reasons, other passions or desires are themselves motivated and/or justified by reaaons that do not depend on still more basic desires."[ii] He wants to find objective support for moral claims (and not just in the sense that they are objectively the claims of such and such a moral system).

The core of his argument is as follows. First, there is a generality about practical judgments, in the sense that, if A has a reason to do something in circumstances C, then B has a reason to do the same thing in precisely the same salient (internal and external) circumstances. It does, indeed, seem to me that this is follows from any plausible account of what it is to have a reason. It would even follow from a Humean account (in which reasons are based on desires) that Nagel would reject: if A has the same desires, means, and beliefs as B, then A and B seem to have the same reasons to undertake the same actions.

Second, we have to choose whether or not to "transfer" to an impersonal standpoint the values that concern us from the personal standpoint. I.e. we might have a system of values from our own perspective, while recognising that everyone else does, too, in which case all of our reasons derive from our individual interests, desires, and atachments (call this an agent-relative perspective) . Alternatively, we might each assign our own life and everyone else's an impersonal, objective value (an agent-neutral perspective).

Thirdly, the agent-relative perspective amounts to, or entails, the claim that we are objectively worthless, and that in a sense it doesn’t matter what happens to us ... except to ourselves (and, I add, whoever is actually motivated to care about us; this is a point that Nagel glosses over, but which probably does not affect his argument's logic, as opposed to its rhetoric). However, fourth, such a judgment is (according to Nagel) highly unreasonable and implausible.

The conclusion, therefore, is that persons and their interests have some kind of objective worth. It then becomes a matter of building an ethical system that best gives expression to this (supposed) insight.[iv]

It looks like all this could be packaged as a formally valid argument, although I've been finding that it's not a trivial task. Still, the idea is clear enough. If I get out of the way of a truck because I want to save my life, someone like me will do the same thing in the same circumstances. If I justify my action by saying that my life is objectively valuable, it will be very difficult for me to deny that the other person's life is also objectively valuable. If I recognise that, then I have an objective foundation for an ethical system. Recognising that other people's lives are objectively valuable - not just valuable to them - I then have a good reason not only to understand why they get out of the way of trucks, but also to help them do so, to refrain from driving trucks at them ... and so on.

There's an obvious problem here, though: normally, if I see a truck coming at me, I simply react out of fear. I don't stop to wonder whether my life is of some kind of objective worth. Our evolutionary ancestors, when confronted with the equivalent of a truck (perhaps a charging Brontotherium) doubtless reacted similarly. In situations such as this, creatures like us don't rely on deliberation about objective worth; we just scamper for cover. To adapt a memorable phrase from Bernard Williams, thinking about whether my life is of sufficient objective worth to merit saving is one thought too many. It's true, no doubt, that moral systems typically enjoin us to treat other people as having some sort of worth that is to be respected, but we are talking here about whether anything like that already exists outside of moral systems and somehow provides a foundation for them. We are talking about objective worth in a very strong, pre-moral sense. (I can think of all sorts of reasons why a workable moral system might tell us to treat each other as if we all had some inherent value to be preserved, but that is entirely beside the point.)

To get the argument to work, Nagel has to support a claim to this effect: It is not true that I and my interests are objectively of no value. To derive the conclusion he wants, he has to feed this in as a premise, but it needs some support of its own because it is exactly the sort of thing that his opponents (like me, for example) are likely to deny.

So, how does he support the claim? Simply by saying how unreasonable the claim being negated sounds, and appealing to our intuitions. But clearly that won't work. Speaking from inside a moral system into which he has been socialised, Nagel may well feel uncomfortable with the thought that human lives are of no objective moral value, but this debate is not about what sort of value or "worth" is somehow assigned to us by a moral system that we already accept. We are trying to see whether our value is somehow built into objective reality, logically prior to moral systems, and giving them support. Once we get as far as making that impoprtant distinction, there seems to be no reason at all to think that any of us have that kind of objective value or worth. Indeed, it is difficult to give the idea any coherent meaning.

Far from seeming unreasonable, the claim that Nagel wants to deny appears to be self-evidently true.

Even if an omnipotent deity placed a value on my life, it would not help Nagel's argument. To help Nagel along, we would have to be able to show that this divine being would actually be making an error - and not just proving less than all-benevolent or something like that - if it failed to do so. That, in turn, would require showing that my life has some metaphysically-grounded value, independently of whether or not the deity actually valued it! Invoking supernatural beings does not advance things at all, not that the atheistic Nagel makes any attempt to do so.

The fact is that we do not normally even think about the question of whether our lives have objective value, or worth, in the strong sense under discussion. We may sometimes speak about people having "moral worth", if we have internalised a moral system that uses such terminology, but once we step outside of all moral systems and ask what this "worth" really amounts to, then it is dificult to see that it refers to anything that actually exists independently of our invention.

None of this is to deny that we can find some sort of basis for morality, but it will have to use the contingent facts of our nature (including our social nature) and our experience. It may be a far less solid basis than Nagel would like, and what it actually supports in the way of a normative system might be more pluralistic, contradictory, and ramshackle than we ordinarily expect morality to be. I welcome this, because it seems like an intellectual strength if we can account for morality's complications and discontents, as well as its existence. It may mean that some of the ways people tend to think about morality - as something objective, consistent, and absolute - are wrong, but so be it. Indeed, that explains a great deal; it's another welcome result.

[i] Thomas Nagel, The Last Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997): 101.
[ii] Nagel, The Last Word: 102.
[iii] Nagel, The Last Word: 106-122.
[iv] Nagel, The Last Word: 121-22.

All you lurkers ...

According to various sources, this is National Delurking Week. I assume that the "national" here refers to the United States, but the internet knows no national borders, so we'll ignore that bit.

I have no idea how many people ever actually read this blog, but I'm sure some of you are out there somewhere. Feel free - and encouraged - to put up your hand and say "hello" if you seldom or never post, and you're actually reading this. (I sure hope someone will respond, or I'll be feeling very lonely.)

Evolution in action

I was looking at some pics I'd taken in Second Life over time. It's remarkable how my avatar has gradually become more realistic-looking by incremental progression since a few months ago.

Whether either of the SL pics bears any resemblance to the real me, in the middle for comparison with the old one underneath and the new one on top, is another question entirely. In that respect, I've cheerfully progressed from cruelly recognisable self-caricature to (perhaps less recognisable) super-optimistic idealisation.

I'm bored with the anti-Dawkins backlash

Since the publication last year of Richard Dawkins' new book, The God Delusion, I've been aware of a mounting backlash against Dawkins, whose views have not merely been challenged on their merits (which of course is open to anyone to do in a free society), but typically dismissed for showing a lack of arcane theological knowledge that is really of little relevance to debates about either the truth or the social usefulness of religion. Worse, many attacks on Dawkins have become quite personal, reading his words in distorted, uncharitable ways to make him out to be, for example, a totalitarian monster who wants to prohibit parents teaching their religious beliefs to children, a philistine devotee of "scientism" (a word that has acquired so much baggage that its use in argument is now a signal that the person using it is some kind of irrationalist), or even the sort of mad scientist who would favour coercive experiments on human beings.

I've read most of Dawkins' work and I have a good enough sense of it to conclude with confidence that he is none of these things. Moreover, he is a lot more subtle than the clumsy readers who are currently attacking him.

What is especially annoying is watching other secular thinkers seeming to trip over each other in a terrified scramble to dissociate themselves from Dawkins.

I'm getting bored with this. Folks, a strong dose of hard-nosed rationalism is actually good for us all, so Dawkins deserves thanks for providing it. It's okay to criticise religion, even trenchantly. What's more, you can review a book that does so without running the risk of becoming an enemy of the people unless you condemn it.

Dawkins' books are best-sellers because he communicates brilliantly on topics that thinking people care about. The God Delusion is no exception. When the smoke clears, it will be apparent that this is an important book - sure, it may not make a terribly significant contribution to academic philosophy of religion (though I do not consider it negligible, even in that regard), but it has made a strong, clear, and thoughful contribution to public debate on immensely important issues to do with how religion should now be viewed, and what its future ought to be.

Its key message - that there is something horribly wrong, even creepy, about labeling a young child as, say, "Christian" or "Muslim" - is surely correct. Young children are in no better position to understand, and agree to, bodies of religious doctrine than to understand economic or political doctrine, but no one would point to some three year old and say, "Hey, look at that little libertarian girl" or "... at that Keynesian boy" or "... that Marxist kid."