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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  1. Gregory Pence on cloning
    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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).
    4. 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.
    5. Cloning creates the possibility of providing people in future generations with better genes than they would otherwise have.
    6. 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).
    7. Cloning would, if available, expand the range of reproductive options of homosexual couples.
  2. Leon Kass, “The Wisdom of Repugnance”
    1. 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.”
    2. notable preliminary passages:
      1. 18a.1: change in morality in last 25 years (since approximately 1972)?
      2. 18a.6: What does Kass mean by the “inherent procreative teleology of sexuality”?
      3. 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?
      4. 18a.7: What does Kass mean by “male and female [being] normatively complementary and generatively significant”?
      5. 18b.2: Is cloning really “an extension of . . . rootless and narcissistic self-re-creation”?
      6. 18c.6: What specific features of the circumstances of Brave New World alarm us? Do these follow from allowing cloning?
      7. 19c.1–5: benefits of cloning
      8. three perspectives on cloning:
        1. 20b.3–6: technological: cloning as a morally neutral technology, capable of being used for good or ill
        2. 20b.7–9: liberal: cloning as an enhancement of individuals’ reproductive rights
        3. 20c.1–3: meliorist: cloning as a way to make society, indeed the world, a better place 
      9. 20c.9: What does Kass mean in referring to “our given nature as embodied, gendered and engendering beings”?
      10. 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.”
      11. 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?
      12. 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?
    3. Kass’s first major objection
      1. several statements of this objection:
        1. 21c.2: “cloning threatens confusion of identity and individuality.”
        2. 22c.4: “concerns about . . . distinctive identity”
        3. 23a.8: “confusion of social identity and kinship ties”
        4. 23b.3: “Social identity and social ties of relationship and responsibility are widely connected to, and supported by, biological kinship.”
        5. 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?”
      2. 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)?
    4. Kass’s second major objection
      1. a couple of statements of it:
        1. 21c.3: “cloning represents a giant step” towards regarding procreation depersonally, as “manufacture” and “production.”
        2. 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.”
      2. 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.)
    5. Kass’s third major objection
      1. a couple of statements of it:
        1. 21c.4: “cloning . . . represents a form of despotism of the cloners over the cloned . . . (even in benevolent cases).”
        2. 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). 
      2. reply: Is cloning really like this? Must this be the attitude of parents who opt for cloning?
      3. 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).
      4. possible problems with this reply:
        1. 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.
        2. 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?
    6. 25c.6: Kass’s proposal to ban the cloning of humans 
    7. a related question: What about using cloning to create embryos for research and treatment of health problems?
      1. 25c.9–26a.1: Kass acknowledges such benefits.
      2. 26a.5: He claims, though, that we must reject cloning even for these purposes, to prevent it from being used for reproduction.
    8. 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?  
    9. concluding remarks on the notion of “the wisdom of repugnance”:
      1. 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. 
      2. 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.”
  3. other sources
    1. list
      1. The Economist, “The Great Cloning Debate”
      2. George Bush, speech on April 10, 2002
      3. American Society for Cell Biology (Nobel laureates) letter of April 10, 2002
      4. New York Times editorial of April 10, 2002
      5. Center for Genetics and Society letter of March 19, 2002
      6. Michael Kinsley, “My Life for Poetry”
    2. reproductive cloning, therapeutic cloning
      1. 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.  
      2. Reproductive cloning involves implanting an embryo made by cloning into a woman’s womb, leading to the birth of a baby.
      3. 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).
    3. Does cloning of either kind involve exploiting or destroying some human lives for the sake of others?
      1. 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. 
      2. 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.
      3. 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.
    4. Would either cloning of either kind lead to an egg market that would be exploitative of women?
      1. On the one hand, there would probably be financial incentives for women to endure painful egg-harvesting procedures.
      2. On the other hand, there seems to be no reason why such procedures would have to be compulsory.
    5. Is reproductive cloning safe and reliable enough to be legal?
      1. On the one hand, it is certainly not safe and reliable. It usually results in miscarriages and deformities.
      2. 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? 
    6. If it were legal and practical, would reproductive cloning lead to genetic engineering?
      1. On the one hand, it would result in greater awareness of the genes parents provide for their children.
      2. 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.”
    7. What are the potential benefits of therapeutic cloning?
      1. 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.)
      2. They could enable the growth of embryos with a known genotype, to facilitate the study of the genetic bases of cancers and other diseases.
    8. If therapeutic cloning were allowed, would a ban on reproductive cloning be unenforceable?
      1. 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.
      2. On the other hand, it is doubtful that a reproductive-cloning practice could be kept secret.
  4. Peter Singer and Helga Kuhse on letting handicapped babies die
    1. the case of Baby Doe
      1. She was born with Down’s syndrome and a blockage in her digestive system.
      2. Because of the first problem, the parents and doctors decided to let her die of the second problem. This was a very controversial decision.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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:
      1. 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.
      2. 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.
      3. 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.
    5. p. 127.8: “American doctors will start to disguise their inevitable judgments about quality of life . . .”
    6. 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.
    7. 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:
      1. 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.
      2. 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).
      3. Therefore, not all human life is equally valuable.
  5. Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”
    1. 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.
    2. p. 169.2: first assumption: “suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad.”
    3. 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.”
      1. Singer emphasizes how undemanding this principle is:
        1. It requires only preventing bad things, not bringing about good things.
        2. It requires action only when nothing of comparable moral significance would have to be sacrificed.
      2. 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’.
      3. But this principle (either in its original or in its qualified form) is also controversial in a couple of respects:
        1. 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).
        2. 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.
    4. first objection and reply 
      1. objection: Increasing private charity would take the pressure off of governments, which is where this kind of aid should really be coming from.
      2. 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.
    5. second objection and reply
      1. objection: Relieving famine only postpones it, and leads to more starvation in the future, as the population expands.
      2. 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.
    6. third objection and reply
      1. objection: How much are we supposed to give?
      2. 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.
  6. Jan Narveson on famine relief
    1. two arguments for famine relief (p. 180)
      1. 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.
      2. 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).
    2. refutation (alleged) of these arguments
      1. 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.
      2. The real question is whether they are morally equivalent: Granted that letting die is different from killing, is it any better than killing?
      3. 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.
      4. 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.”
      5. 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.”
  7. James Rachels on euthanasia
    1. Rachels’s two objections to utilitarianism:
      1. 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.)
      2. 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).
    2. 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.
    3. a utilitarian response to the argument Rachels defends:
      1. 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.
      2. 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.
  8. Richard Doerflinger, “Assisted Suicide: Pro-Choice or Anti-Life?”
    1. arguing against assisted suicide in two ways (pp. 195.9–196.1):
      1. with reference to autonomy (significant because autonomy is typically thought to be a value that supports assisted suicide)
      2. with reference to the concept of the slippery slope (claiming to show that proponents of assisted suicide haven’t adequately addressed this problem)
    2. autonomy
      1. p. 196.6: standardly appealed to in defense of assisted suicide, because the choice to die is ultimate in two senses:
        1. last (if decided in the affirmative)
        2. significant and life-affecting
      2. p. 197.5: True autonomy, however, involves eschewing any act or event that would permanently end and eliminate one’s freedom.
        1. objection (p. 197.9): Typically, people who choose assisted suicide would not have much freedom left if assisted suicide were denied them.
        2. reply (p. 198.3): Such patients can still make choices about coping, assessment of life, resolution of relationships, etc.
        3. further objection (not considered by Doerflinger): Why couldn’t a person do these things (cope, assess, resolve, etc.), and then choose assisted suicide?
      3. 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.”
      4. 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.
    3. slippery slope
      1. 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.
      2. standard factors cited as part of argument
      3. 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.
  9. Immanuel Kant on humans’ obligations to animals
    1. We have do not have direct duties to animals, since (lacking self-consciousness) they lack moral standing.
    2. 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.
  10.  Peter Singer, “All Animals Are Equal”
    1. 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.”
    2. p. 210.1: equality of consideration of interests vs. equality of treatment: advocating the former, not the latter.
    3. How do we justify equality of consideration of interests in general?
      1. 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.
      2. 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.
      3. We typically justify equal consideration of interests as a moral ideal that is independent of any factual investigation into equality of intelligence, etc.
    4. 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).
    5. practices that show humans’ speciesism
      1. eating meat; raising animals in ways that make meat-eating inexpensive
      2. vivisection
  11. dialogue between Peter Singer and Richard Posner—principal issues
    1.  appropriate scope of moral concern, or what it takes to have moral standing
      1. Singer (June 11): Any being capable of feeling pain thereby has moral standing.
      2. 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.
      3. 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.
    2. appropriate resolution of conflicts between moral intuitions and philosophical arguments
      1. Posner (June 12): “If . . . we have to choose between philosophy and . . . intuition . . . then it is philosophy that will have to go.”
      2. 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?
      3. Posner (June 13): “My view is that ethical argument is and should be powerless against tenacious moral instincts.”
      4. 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?
    3. appropriate means of changing the way people think it’s o.k. to treat animals
      1. 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
      2. 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.
      3. 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.
      4. Singer (June 13): People also claimed to be moved by the moral arguments in Animal Liberation.
      5. 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.
      6. 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.
      7. Posner (June 15): They used moral argument, but not in the style of academic moral philosophy.