Washington and Lee University, Spring 2002
Philosophy 101: Problems of Philosophy
Ben Eggleston—EgglestonB@wlu.edu
Class notes: applied ethics
The following notes correspond
roughly to what we cover, including at least a portion of what I put on the
board or the screen, in class. In places they may be more or less comprehensive than what we
actually cover in class, and should not be taken as a substitute for your own
observations and records of what goes on in class.
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-
Gregory Pence on cloning
-
Cloning cannot make a copy of a person that resembles the
original in all respects, but only genetically. Environmentally determined
differences (from the womb through growing up and so on) would cause the
clone to differ from the original.
-
Clones would be ordinary humans like the rest of us. They
would not be slaves or organ reservoirs, unless someone could think of a
good reason for treating them as such. But it is hard to think of a good
reason for treating them as such, since they would be fully functioning
persons like the rest of us.
- You can clone yourself, but you cannot copy yourself
in all respects (due to the extent to which environment, and not just
genetics, influences a person’s development).
- It would seem that the reproductive liberty ordinarily
accorded to people (freedom to have children or not, freedom to screen
for genetic defects or not, freedom to have multiple eggs implanted in
order to increase chances of viable fetuses, etc.) would include the
freedom to use cloning for reproductive purposes, for those individuals
who so choose.
- Cloning creates the possibility of providing people in
future generations with better genes than they would otherwise have.
- If we lived in future generations, rather than now, we
might well wish that people living now had chosen to provide us with
better genes. If this is so, then we might regard ourselves as under an
obligation to provide people in future generations
with better genes (to the extent that we are now able to do so).
- Cloning would, if available, expand the range of reproductive
options of homosexual couples.
-
Leon Kass, “The Wisdom of Repugnance”
- main idea of the article (at 20a.4): “In crucial cases . . . repugnance is the
emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason’s power fully
to articulate it.”
- notable preliminary passages:
- 18a.1: change in morality in last 25 years (since
approximately 1972)?
- 18a.6: What does Kass mean by the “inherent
procreative teleology of sexuality”?
- 18a.6: What does Kass mean by “sex ha[ving] no
intrinsic connection to generating babies”? What does he mean by
“babies . . . hav[ing] no necessary connection to sex”? Is he
right that the absence of the former implies the absence of the
latter?
- 18a.7: What does Kass mean by “male and female
[being] normatively complementary and generatively significant”?
- 18b.2: Is cloning really “an extension of . . .
rootless and narcissistic self-re-creation”?
- 18c.6: What specific features of the circumstances
of Brave New World alarm us? Do these follow from allowing
cloning?
- 19c.1–5: benefits of cloning
- three perspectives on cloning:
- 20b.3–6: technological: cloning as a morally
neutral technology, capable of being used for good or ill
- 20b.7–9: liberal: cloning as an enhancement
of individuals’ reproductive rights
- 20c.1–3: meliorist: cloning as a way to make
society, indeed the world, a better place
- 20c.9: What does Kass mean in referring to “our
given nature as embodied, gendered and engendering beings”?
- 21a.2: Kass’s statement of what the issue is: “Is
cloning a fulfillment of human begetting and belonging? Or is
cloning rather, as I contend, their pollution and perversion”?
Notice Kass’s rejection (just before this) of considerations such
as “motives and intentions, rights and freedoms, benefits and
harms, or even means and ends.”
- 22b.6: “any attempt to clone a human being
would constitute an unethical experiment upon the resulting
child-to-be.” But are all “experiments” with reproductive
technology and practices unethical? (Are mothers who choose to
deliver at home rather than in a hospital unethically
“experimenting,” or just exercising legitimate parental
rights?) If there are some ethical “experiments,” what makes
this “experiment” (cloning) an unethical one?
- 22c.3: “It is not at all clear to what
extent a clone will truly be a moral agent.” What does Kass
mean by “a moral agent”? Why could not a person made by
cloning be one?
- Kass’s first major objection
- several statements of this objection:
- 21c.2: “cloning threatens confusion of
identity and individuality.”
- 22c.4: “concerns about . . . distinctive
identity”
- 23a.8: “confusion of social identity and
kinship ties”
- 23b.3: “Social identity and social ties
of relationship and responsibility are widely connected to,
and supported by, biological kinship.”
- 23b.8: “What will father, grandfather,
aunt, cousin, sister mean? Who will bear what ties and what
burdens? What sort of social identity will someone have with
one whole side—‘father’s’ or
‘mother’s’—necessarily excluded?”
- reply: Would one whole side be excluded, just
in virtue of being a clone? Would one’s relationships be
made uncertain by one’s being a clone? Or are these
relationships socially determined (e.g., by how one is
raised)?
- Kass’s second major objection
- a couple of statements of it:
- 21c.3: “cloning represents a giant
step” towards regarding procreation depersonally, as
“manufacture” and “production.”
- 23c.7: With anything made “the artificer
stands above it, not as an equal but as a superior. . . .
Such an arrangement is profoundly dehumanizing, no matter
how good the product.”
- reply: Would it be dehumanizing to be a
clone of someone else? (Or is the dehumanization supposed to
be happening to someone else? Not altogether clear.)
- Kass’s third major objection
- a couple of statements of it:
- 21c.4: “cloning . . . represents a form
of despotism of the cloners over the cloned . . . (even in
benevolent cases).”
- 24a.4: “When a couple now chooses to
procreate, the partners are . . . saying yes not only to
having a child but also, tacitly, to having whatever child
this child turns out to be.” But “Cloning is inherently
despotic, for it seeks to make one’s children . . . after
one’s own image . . . and their future according to
one’s will” (24b.3).
- reply: Is cloning really like this? Must this
be the attitude of parents who opt for cloning?
- Kass anticipates that defenders of cloning
might reply by saying that it’s a matter of reproductive
freedom (24b.5). In reply to this, Kass distinguishes (1) a
“negative ‘right to reproduce’ ” without interference
from others from (2) a positive right to use any and all
possible means to reproduce in one’s chosen way (24c.5–6).
- possible problems with this reply:
- First, although Kass is right to say that our social
consensus that the first is an important right does not
entail a social commitment to regarding the second as a
valid right, too, he is wrong to imply that this means that
the second is not also a valid right.
- Second, Kass’s reasons for denying the
validity of the second right are not terribly convincing. He worries about “producing
children ectogenetically from sperm to term . . . and . . .
producing children whose entire genetic makeup will be the
product of parental eugenic planning and choice”
(24b.9–24c.1). But would this really happen? And, if it
did, would it be bad?
- 25c.6: Kass’s proposal to ban the cloning of
humans
- a related question: What about using cloning to create embryos for
research and treatment of health problems?
- 25c.9–26a.1: Kass acknowledges such
benefits.
- 26a.5: He claims, though, that we must
reject cloning even for these purposes, to prevent it from
being used for reproduction.
- 26c.7: Kass implies that if we allow cloning
to occur, then we are “deciding . . . [that] we shall be
slaves of unregulated progress . . . [instead of] remain[ing]
free human beings.” Is this right? How do we enslave ourselves
if we allow cloning to take place?
- concluding remarks on the notion of “the wisdom of
repugnance”:
- Kass is surely right to say that our inability to articulate
our discomfort with something does not show that our discomfort is
really groundless, or based on superstition, etc. Sometimes we
have inarticulable, but perfectly appropriate, reactions of
repugnance, admiration, etc.
- Kass is wrong to infer, from the fact that we have
some inarticulable but valid discomforts, that all of our
inarticulable discomforts are valid. Sometimes, inarticulable
reactions are groundless and in need of being reformed or
eliminated; so, we should not just uncritically accept, indeed
embrace, all of our inarticulable reactions as some special kind of
“wisdom.”
-
other sources
-
list
-
The Economist, “The Great Cloning Debate”
-
George Bush, speech on April 10, 2002
-
American Society for Cell Biology (Nobel laureates) letter
of April 10, 2002
-
New York Times editorial of April 10, 2002
-
Center for Genetics and Society letter of March 19, 2002
-
Michael Kinsley, “My Life for Poetry”
-
reproductive cloning, therapeutic
cloning
- Each begins with the use of cloning to make an
embryo. This involves taking an egg, removing its nucleus, and
inserting another nucleus (with different genetic material). Then
the egg develops, as usual, but with different genetic material from
what it originally had.
- Reproductive cloning involves implanting an embryo
made by cloning into a woman’s womb, leading to the birth of a
baby.
- Therapeutic cloning involves using an embryo made
by cloning for research (such as by using it to create cells, and
then stopping the development of the embryo and disposing of it).
-
Does cloning of either kind involve exploiting or destroying
some human lives for the sake of others?
- It does involve removing the nucleus from an egg,
and replacing it with the nucleus from another cell (such as skin or muscle).
So one might claim that the “original” person was never allowed
to develop. But cloning involves unfertilized eggs, with only half
the DNA needed to make a person, it is hard to see what “person”
was originally there.
- When research is done on embryos, they are
typically prevented from becoming fetuses and being born: typically,
they are destroyed. So this is what would happen to embryos made
from cloning, for research purposes. But this is already done to
embryos that no one is using (such as embryos left over from
in-vitro fertilization); cloning would just increase our supply of
them.
- Cloning done for reproductive purposes would not,
of course, involve making embryos with the expectation of destroying
them. But it might involve making several similar embryos, and then
implanting just one, just as in-vitro fertilization involves making
many and then disposing of the extras, or using them for research.
- Would either cloning of either kind lead to an egg
market that would be exploitative of women?
- On the one hand, there would probably be financial
incentives for women to endure painful egg-harvesting procedures.
- On the other hand, there seems to be no reason why
such procedures would have to be compulsory.
- Is reproductive cloning safe and reliable enough to be
legal?
- On the one hand, it is certainly not safe and
reliable. It usually results in miscarriages and deformities.
- On the other hand, it is not clear what the
implications of this should be for public policy. Do doctors and
prospective parents need to be legally barred from doing something
that has such a low success rate?
- If it were legal and practical, would reproductive
cloning lead to genetic engineering?
- On the one hand, it would result in greater
awareness of the genes parents provide for their children.
- On the other hand, cloning and genetic engineering
are separate technologies. One could ban the latter while permitting
cloning, saying, in effect, “You can copy any existing person, but
you cannot make a genetically new one—except, of course, by
uniting a sperm and an egg, either in intercourse or in a lab.”
- What are the potential benefits of therapeutic
cloning?
- They could enable the growth of embryos that are
genetically identical to a particular person, for the growth of
organs less likely to be rejected, etc. (This would not mean
creating a conscious person, then killing him or her; the embryo’s
development would halted much earlier.)
- They could enable the growth of embryos with a
known genotype, to facilitate the study of the genetic bases of
cancers and other diseases.
- If therapeutic cloning were allowed, would a ban on
reproductive cloning be unenforceable?
- On the one hand, those who would wish to engage in
reproductive cloning would surely have the opportunity to do so: the
supply of eggs needed for therapeutic cloning could easily be tapped
into for reproductive cloning.
- On the other hand, it is doubtful that a
reproductive-cloning practice could be kept secret.
- Peter Singer and Helga Kuhse on letting handicapped babies
die
- the case of Baby Doe
- She was born with Down’s syndrome and a blockage
in her digestive system.
- Because of the first problem, the parents and
doctors decided to let her die of the second problem. This was a
very controversial decision.
- p. 119.7: Not all human life is of equal value. This
appears, at this point, to be the big claim that Singer and Kuhse will
argue for.
- The Reagan administration’ Department of Health and
Human Services issued a rule that many took to imply that all human
lives are to be preserved as long as possible. Then, they revised the
rule, exempting certain cases, such as anencephaly and intracranial
bleeding.
- Singer and Kuhse argue that this shows that the
Department of Health and Human Services was admitting that not all human
life is of equal value, and must be preserved; rather, the exceptions
that HHS made to its earlier rule show that it regards certain lives as
deserving of legal protection. Singer and Kuhse’s reasons for this
interpretation of HHS’s decision to revise its earlier rule:
- HHS could not have meant that if a condition
cannot be cured, then it does not have to be treated. For HHS
would maintain, along with everyone, that someone suffering from
diabetes must not be denied insulin therapy, even though this does
not cure diabetes.
- HHS says that it only requires that “medically
beneficial” treatments be provided. Since the revised rule allows
parents and doctors to let certain children die, this must be
because what HHS means by “medically beneficial” has something
to do with the quality of a person’s life, or what kind of life
they might have awaiting them.
- HHS says that an infant cannot be denied treatment
because of an “unrelated” handicap, but it allows exactly this.
For example, it allows parents and doctors to let a child with
intracranial bleeding to die of something unrelated that goes
untreated. This, too, can be explained only on the hypothesis that,
in the end, the HHS rules are based on the realization that not all
lives are worth saving.
- p. 127.8: “American doctors will start to disguise
their inevitable judgments about quality of life . . .”
- One of Singer and Kuhse’s arguments (see part 4,
above) is that even HHS—which proclaims the value of all
life—implicitly accepts that some lives are more valuable than others,
due to differences in quality of life. A related argument is that such
quality-of-life distinctions are also implicit in the practice of
prenatal testing followed, sometimes, by abortion.
- So far, Singer and Kuhse’s arguments for their
thesis have sought to show that their thesis is implicit in other views
and practices, such as the HHS rules and the widespread use of abortion
to keep mothers from having children with certain conditions. But they
close their paper by giving another, more straightforward, argument:
- What make a human’s life more valuable than that
of, say, a cabbage, is that the human ha certain morally significant
capacities such as consciousness and rationality and so on.
- If two humans differ greatly in these capacities,
then it only makes sense to say that the life of the one who has
them is more valuable than the life of the one who lacks them
(largely or completely).
- Therefore, not all human life is equally valuable.
- Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”
- p. 168.9: “I shall argue that the way people in
relatively affluent countries react to a situation like that in Bengal
cannot be justified . . .”: helpfully clear statement of main point of
paper.
- p. 169.2: first assumption: “suffering and death
from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad.”
- p. 169.4: second assumption: “if it is in our power
to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing
anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.”
- Singer emphasizes how undemanding this principle
is:
- It requires only preventing bad things, not
bringing about good things.
- It requires action only when nothing of
comparable moral significance would have to be sacrificed.
- Actually, Singer is content to use an even less
demanding principle: “if it is in our power to prevent something
very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything
morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it” (p. 169.6).
Notice the differences: addition of ‘very’, elimination of
‘comparable’.
- But this principle (either in its original or in
its qualified form) is also controversial in a couple of respects:
- It denies that distance matters: it says that
one’s obligation to alleviate suffering on the other side of
the world is as great as one’s obligation to relieve it nearby
(assuming distance does not diminish effectiveness).
- It denies that others’ inaction excuses
one’s own inaction: it says that one has a duty to help, even
if others are shirking this same duty.
- first objection and reply
- objection: Increasing private charity would take
the pressure off of governments, which is where this kind of aid
should really be coming from.
- reply: No government is going to take action as
long as its citizens refuse to take action themselves. Individuals
only allow needless suffering if they refuse to help on the grounds
that their government ought to be helping instead.
- second objection and reply
- objection: Relieving famine only postpones it, and
leads to more starvation in the future, as the population expands.
- reply: This is not an objection to doing more to
relieve the crisis; it’s only a (perfectly sensible) bit of advice
as to how the crisis can be most effectively relieved.
- third objection and reply
- objection: How much are we supposed to give?
- reply: A lot more than we are. We’re giving so
much less than we ought to be giving that “Exactly how much?” is
an entirely academic question.
- Jan Narveson on famine relief
- two arguments for famine relief (p. 180)
- Killing people and letting them die are equally
bad. Therefore, because we have a duty not to kill people, we also
have a duty not to let them die.
- People have a positive right to be fed: not just a
right not to have their food taken away from them, but a right to
have food provided to them, if necessary. Therefore we have a duty
to provide it (if no one else will provide it).
- refutation (alleged) of these arguments
- Clearly killing and letting die are not logically
equivalent: not every case of killing is also, as a matter of logic,
a case of letting die. But this is not the real question.
- The real question is whether they are morally
equivalent: Granted that letting die is different from killing, is
it any better than killing?
- It is better, as shown by the fact that we
wouldn’t throw people in jail for letting people starve, though we
would throw someone in jail for actively starving someone else.
- p. 182.2: “Rather than insisting . . . that I
help someone for whose projects and purposes I have no sympathy
whatever, let us all agree to respect each other’s pursuits.”
- p. 184.8: “It is reasonable, then, to arrive at
a general understanding that we shall be ready to help when help is
urgent and giving it is not very onerous to us.”
- James Rachels on euthanasia
- Rachels’s two objections to utilitarianism:
- It does not take account of the moral importance
of things aside from increasing happiness and decreasing
unhappiness. (Notice that Rachels is here assuming that we are
talking about a hedonistic form of utilitarianism.
Utilitarians who deny hedonism, and subscribe to some other theory
of well-being, cannot be accused of valuing only happiness and
disvaluing only unhappiness.)
- Relatedly, it does not protect an individual’s
right to continue living no matter how unhappy he or she is (or,
stated generally enough to accommodate non-hedonistic utilitarians:
no matter how badly his or her life is going).
- The argument in favor of euthanasia that Rachels
defends remedies both of these defects by maintaining that euthanasia is
permissible when and only when it (1) is in the best interest of
everyone concerned and (2) violates no one’s rights.
- a utilitarian response to the argument Rachels
defends:
- Replacing happiness with best interests is no
improvement on utilitarianism per se, since hedonism is a
separate thesis from utilitarianism. One can replace ‘happiness’
with ‘best interests’ without departing from utilitarianism.
- Requiring euthanasia to be in the best interests
of everyone concerned is too strict—it implies that if a
single concerned party, such as one of the patient’s doctors,
disagrees with the decision, then it would be immoral for it to be
carried out.
- Richard Doerflinger, “Assisted Suicide: Pro-Choice or
Anti-Life?”
- arguing against assisted suicide in two ways (pp.
195.9–196.1):
- with reference to autonomy (significant because
autonomy is typically thought to be a value that supports
assisted suicide)
- with reference to the concept of the slippery
slope (claiming to show that proponents of assisted suicide
haven’t adequately addressed this problem)
- autonomy
- p. 196.6: standardly appealed to in defense of
assisted suicide, because the choice to die is ultimate in two
senses:
- last (if decided in the affirmative)
- significant and life-affecting
- p. 197.5: True autonomy, however, involves
eschewing any act or event that would permanently end and eliminate
one’s freedom.
- objection (p. 197.9): Typically, people who
choose assisted suicide would not have much freedom left if
assisted suicide were denied them.
- reply (p. 198.3): Such patients can still make
choices about coping, assessment of life, resolution of
relationships, etc.
- further objection (not considered by
Doerflinger): Why couldn’t a person do these things (cope,
assess, resolve, etc.), and then choose assisted suicide?
- pointedly stated summary (p. 198.4): “those who
seek to maximize free choice may with consistency reject the idea of
assisted suicide, instead facilitating all choices except
that one which cuts short all choices.”
- Doerflinger goes on to argue that some defenders
of assisted suicide who purport to defend it in terms of autonomy
actually do not place pre-eminent value on autonomy. But this is not
relevant to the argument made by those defenders of assisted suicide
who do place pre-eminent value on autonomy, which is
supposedly the argument that Doerflinger is considering.
- slippery slope
- p. 199.4: “The basic claim is that socially
accepted killing of innocent persons will interact with other social
factors to threaten lives that advocates of assisted suicide would
agree should be protected”: helpfully clear statement of the main
point of this section of his paper.
- standard factors cited as part of argument
- But where is the promised (p. 195.9) distinction
between two kinds of slippery-slope argument? It’s unclear whether
and how what Doerflinger provides here is any different from a
garden-variety slippery-slope argument.
- Immanuel Kant on humans’ obligations to animals
- We have do not have direct duties to animals,
since (lacking self-consciousness) they lack moral standing.
- But we do have indirect duties to animals:
duties to treat them in certain ways because of the duties that we have
to treat fellow humans in certain ways.
- Peter Singer, “All Animals Are Equal”
- p. 208.8: “I am urging that we extend to other
species the basic principle of equality that most of us recognise should
be extended to all members of our own species.”
- p. 210.1: equality of consideration of interests vs. equality of
treatment: advocating the former, not the latter.
- How do we justify equality of consideration of
interests in
general?
- Is it on the basis of some kind of actual equality
among individual humans? No: humans differ among themselves greatly
in terms of strength, intelligence, benevolence, etc.; and yet we
extent equal consideration of interests to all humans.
- Is it on the basis of some kind of actual equality
among races and sexes? No: defenders of equality are not prepared to
admit that if science were to show differences among the races or
sexes in intelligence (or whatever), then equal consideration of
interests could be
set aside.
- We typically justify equal consideration of
interests as a
moral ideal that is independent of any factual investigation into
equality of intelligence, etc.
- So equal consideration of interests is extended to
everything that has interests. But what things are these? Anything that
can experience suffering and enjoyment (p. 213.7).
- practices that show humans’ speciesism
- eating meat; raising animals in ways that make
meat-eating inexpensive
- vivisection
- dialogue between Peter Singer and Richard Posner—principal
issues
- appropriate scope of moral concern, or what it
takes to have moral standing
- Singer (June 11): Any being capable of feeling
pain thereby has moral standing.
- Posner (June 12): Moral concern appropriate begins
with oneself and radiates outward. It’s perfectly acceptable for
people to draw the line at a national boundary, or at a species
boundary.
- Singer (June 12): It’s totally unjustifiable to
think this way, either internationally (e.g., with respect to
foreign aid) or with respect to animals.
- appropriate resolution of conflicts between moral
intuitions and philosophical arguments
- Posner (June 12): “If . . . we have to choose
between philosophy and . . . intuition . . . then it is philosophy
that will have to go.”
- Singer (June 12): This way of thinking would
justify and sustain past racism, unequal rights for homosexuals,
etc. What is moral philosophy for if not to critique and help us
revise our moral intuitions?
- Posner (June 13): “My view is that ethical
argument is and should be powerless against tenacious moral
instincts.”
- Singer (June 13): What are the words ‘and should
be’ doing here? Doesn’t their use here signify that argument,
and not just brute psychological fact, is the ultimate authority in
ethics?
- appropriate means of changing the way people think
it’s o.k. to treat animals
- Posner (June 12): greater empathy with animals
(sensitivity to their suffering), greater awareness of facts about
how inexpensively (if such facts there be) animals’ suffering can
be eliminated
- Singer (June 12): These are great, but not enough,
and they don’t need to be enough: changing people’s morals
can and should work, too.
- Posner (June 13): Actually, these (especially
enlightening people as to the facts of some situation) work very
well, and are the main cause of moral reform.
- Singer (June 13): People also claimed to be moved
by the moral arguments in Animal Liberation.
- Posner (June 14): If you look at American history,
it’s clear that big changes have come about because of political
and material forces, not philosophical argument.
- Singer (June 14): But many of the people Posner
mentions, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Betty Friedan, changed
others’ minds with moral argument, not just factual
clarifications.
- Posner (June 15): They used moral argument, but
not in the style of academic moral philosophy.