John Derbyshire Resorts to Straw Man Arguments Against Human Exceptionalism
John Derbyshire has responded in The Corner to my First Things blog entry chastising him for rejecting human exceptionalism along with his faith. He has every right to do so, of course. But he doesn't have the right to mischaracterize my arguments. He claims I grant humans a special place because we are "chosen and gifted by God." I never wrote any such thing--ever. My position is entirely secularly based. Read my piece and Derbyshire's disengenuous response and you will see that I am right.
Here are my core arguments in defense of human exceptionalism from the First Things entry, which, of course, were not intended to be complete: "What I think Derbyshire lost along with his faith is the realization that human beings are much more than the mere sum of our parts and functions. We, unlike any other species, have taken a bold step outside the Darwinian realm of genetic impulse, instinct, and reflex. We are moral and intellectual beings with the ability to create, civilize, project over time, and transcend.
...
"Recognizing our special status is essential, in my view, to the creation of a better world. Take, for example, our moral impulse to prevent cruelty to animals. This is certainly not genetically determined. Indeed, it seems to me that preventing cruelty to animals is distinctly un-evolutionary--in the purely materialistic sense of that term. Why should we even concern ourselves with what happens to other species so long as it does not harm us? Elephants care very much whether a lion tries to kill one of the herd's calves but are quite indifferent when the same lion rends the zebra. It takes a special and exceptional species to care enough about 'the other' that we will sometimes even protect them from human harm when it makes our own lives more difficult. (For example, California sea lions are protected in law despite the fact that they compete fiercely against us in exploiting the salmon fishery.)
...
"The idea that we are just part of nature and nothing to celebrate is gaining traction in these nihilistic times. But beyond the esoteric, there are practical reasons to reject Derbyshire's perspective. The way we act often depends on how we perceive ourselves. If we are nothing special, Jefferson's assertion that all men are created equal--by which he means we have equal moral worth--becomes essentially untenable. Indeed, if we are nothing special, we are thrust back into a purely materialistic Darwinian world of tooth and claw, where might makes right. And that opens the door to all the evils that have plagued human history. Indeed, understanding that there is such a thing as evil action proves we are special in the known universe. Thankfully, one need not have faith to understand that."
Not a word about God. Loss of faith should not also mean the loss of intellectual honesty.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:02 AM
50 Comments
50 Comments:
I would say that we do have specialness, and that our specialness comes from having developed mechanisms for adaptation that are more responsive to the environment and more favorable to the survival and comfort of the individual than evolution is. I don't see that protecting the California Sea Lion is special, unless you mean the "Special" as in "Special Education."
It is special in that no other species would work to protect another species that is in competition with it for food. Thanks for writing.
Mr. Smith's "special" human quality is simply another way of saying diferent. Humans have the power to make moral judgments self-consciously in a way that no other creature does. That is a difference, but not "special". It's a part of a long continuum of development.
Other animals make moral judgments, too, and do evil actions. There are a number of studies I can cite which illustrate the moral capacities of other primates.
The idea that we protect sea lions for a special, altruistic reason is not obvious. Another factor is that animals protect that which they are bonded to. A dog will protect his human master because of a bond. Humans have a greater ability to create powerful abstract bonds with Nature itself; though more so with other mammals than with mosquitoes, for example.
Plus, we find many things beautiful which leads us to admire and protect them.
Even as a Christian, I'm afraid I'm going to mostly agree with your opposition, Wesley.
We don't get that far in relying on biology for human exceptionalism unless we draw on an underlying value that we truly believe
1) There is a Creator God
2) In some measure, we are Imago Dei - the human species made in the image of God, though this may be subject to wide interpretation.
I think then that your opposition from a secular / atheist or agnostic viewpoint would indicate that our values come either from a strong sense of self - interest though with higher reason we move from immediate gratification to higher goals in the Maslow scale as our reason "gives" us a sense of spiritual enlightenment as we decipher the universe.
The Sea Lion protection example is good. But can be interpreted either as self-interest in the larger sense of protecting the environmental balance will rebound to our good, or to strong "conditioning" that is we are educated and legislated to act in that direction whether or not it is good for us. I think that is Clay's point that if we are "stupid" evolutionally speaking to do it we will pay for it by the laws of the universe which he believes are NOT personal, spiritual, redemptive or even moral. Consider our pet dogs - they can exhibit not only moral behavior among their own species but with us. They may seem to exhibit external guilt for disobeying us but is that moral sense or conditioning that we have instituted and has grown to be a symbiotic interspecies relationship.
As for me, then, belief in God is essential for human exceptionalism, though non-theistic modern moral systems deriving from our "primitive beliefs" will still serve mankind best by promoting the brotherhood of man and our special responsibilities to each other and the world.
Some people need God for human exceptionalism. I don't. Nor do others. It strikes me that for whatever cause, we have stepped out of the Darwinian forest, and achieved exceptional qualities that render us the only truly moral animal in the known universe. I disagree that animals can act evilly. When a cat tosses a baby bird around before dispatching it, that ain't evil. That is instinct. If I tortured a helpless animal like that, it would be evil and a blot on my humanity.
What about chimps lying?
There was a documented case where a chimp was taught sign language. It ate aa banana and its handler asked the chimp what happened to it. To which the chimp made up another story, hence telling a fib.
Maybe the chimp -
was being creative and playful - it takes a lot of human development to separate when one SHOULD be truthful and when one can tell "stories" to each other and to yourself.
was being deconstructionist - in the chimp's metanarrative I'm sure there was sufficient rationalization to descrbe the banana and the outcome of the behavior to the banana and the perspectives of the banana to the subject and the narrator and the audience to the extent one can make a relativistic conclusion that WE can say WE REALLY know what happened to the banana.
Of course you may be right in which case SIGN language is SIN language.
"I heard YOU in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked (and ate the FRUIT!!), so I hid...she gave me the FRUIT so I ate.. the snake lied to me and I ate the FRUIT"
Gen 3:10,11,12
Was the FRUIT a banana??!!!
I don't think Derb read what Mr. Smith wrote. His response seems canned.
Mr. Smith’s argument is not biological but behavioral. Human exceptionalism is obvious. Those who disagree must work at rationalizing away the obvious. What animals have invented machines? Where do we find animal statues? Which species of animal make the best clothes? Any animal suicide bombers? Is Koko a Libertarian?
Of course, exceptionalism means difference. Exceptionalism also means a significant difference, differnce of kind rather than degree.
Robert B “interprets” the argument to save sea lions as a result of self preservation or conditioning. He seems unaware of the simple fact that the preservation of the sea lion is an argument. There are those who have not been conditioned (despite living in the same country and attending the same schools) who argue against efforts to protect the sea lion. Of course, their argument is that “self preservation” and protection of resources (fish) against competition.
Our strong sense of self interest gives us both abortion and neonatal intensive care units. Self interest explains everything and nothing.
As Clay says, our specialness derives in the mechanisms (both tools and language) humans have derived to promote our perceived self interest.
Perhaps Baboons would want to be pro-choice or to spare a premature infant (definitely a Darwinian prerogative!) but they lack the tools unless they find certain berries are abortifacients or are lucky enough to be in a zoo and are grateful in their own way to veterinarians' intervention.
But does language go beyond just expressing facts and preferences, does it create morality? More on that in another post.
The lying ape was a good example of ape sin, but there are better ones that have nothing to do with human contact.
It has been observed in foraging chimps that the group separates, spreads out, in a forest to search for food. When they find a fruit tree or some other food, they give a call and the rest of the group comes running.
But one chimp comes across a fruit tree that has fruit especially prized by chimps. Very tasty. What does he do? He runs off away from it and gives the food call. The other chimps run off to his call while he runs back to the fruit tree and starts gorging himself and hoarding his find.
That, my friends is pure, premeditated sin.
What's more the other chimps know it when they see it.
They have an innate sense of justice, too. But that's another story.
It is very difficult to distinguish between God’s love for everything in his creation from bacteria to fly to cobra to man. We have naturally wanted to insist that God loves man more than other created things, but this is more bias than fact.
It is Scriptural, though. “Are you not worth more a sparrow?”
We can only form a true sense of our likeness to God through the experience of God and what wisdom we gain through prayer.
Thus far, I have found there are four ways to experience the direct manifestation of God. As the Spirit, the Father, Jesus (the son is an inoperative principle or concept at this point) and as the Trinity. (There are countless other manifestations of Grace, but they are not the same as the face to face, soul to Creator experiences.)
The direct experience of the Spirit lifts one into a vision of the whole of nature, of creation as perfect and loved in every living thing. Man is not seen as anything separate or more special than a worm. This experience of God lacks further identity or personification and has often been the basis for Hindu and Buddhist thought since it is oceanic and impersonal (it seems).
The direct experience of the Father (as Jesus himself expressed it and I have experienced) is intensely personal. God is understood as Father and he bestows his personal affection on his creature offspring, man. He loves his human child absolutely and unconditionally. This is also the I Am That I Am experience of God.
The direct experience of Jesus is different, too. There is a frightening sense of one’s own putrid corruption (“Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”) while there is the ego destroying humiliation of reckoning God’s mercy and purity that stoops to intercourse with such a bag of scum which results in ineffable joy of salvation from self.
The direct experience of the Trinity is a vision or revelation which makes it possible to understand how God can be one and three. You see how it is.
This is pretty much all that we know of God. All the rest is speculation, analogy, metaphor, and theology. We build lots of pretty things out of our encounters with God, but they are all provisional or tend to be that. Some doctrines and dogmas we create are wise and some don’t stand the test of time and reason after a few millennia or so.
My experience is that men would much rather talk about God and invent squabbles, minutiae, debates, codes, creeds, organizations, and systems than spend all that time actually learning to know God through prayer. Prayer seems passive and undynamic, whereas preaching, teaching, defending, speculating, proselytizing, doing good deeds and good things for God seems much more active, satisfying, and powerful.
Derbyshire questions God’s nature because he’s never encountered it face to face. But a lot of believers fail to further question God’s nature and their own because they think they’ve discovered all they need of it for this lifetime. Their defense is the argument from numbers and tradition, not experience.
Most believers never come to realize just how self-deluding Christians can become out of piety and credulous submission to religious authority, or from spiritual pride.
The question is: who can you trust? The Church is trustworthy in some respects, but not all. The individual is an interpreter of his own experience and easily deluded. It is only God who is trustworthy, but discernment, ahh, there’s the rub.
Exactly so, Mark.
Communication is the key to determining intent and thus expressing social justice. A wide variety of animals and man can punish just for the behavior itself, but to execute any sort of fairness in punishment and rewards, intent is the key and communication is the clue. Actually this is the same details - monkey lies about fruit - but here the premeditated "sin" in a native social situation is clearly evident.
My sole claim for human exceptionalism then is that only man can express that he should be measured not only by the standards of his fellow species but by an absolute moral standard. One can construct such standards by reason and attempt to enforce them, but as Socrates says, skeptics can only promote it as a "noble lie" that a society MUST follow these laws. Believers, not skeptics, can accept that there is an eternal standard and judgment beyond sentient beings.
REGARDING:
"It is very difficult to distinguish between God’s love for everything in his creation from bacteria to fly to cobra to man..."
Whoa, Mark.
I think we're getting ahead of those who in rejecting theism must therefore, as I stated previously, believe the laws of the universe are NOT personal, spiritual, redemptive or even moral. They may experienced all of the common gifts we believe God gives man - a conscience, a spirit, a brain - and reject anything of the first 2 as conditioning and emotional reaction.
Being deceptive is not necessarily a sin. A sin requires that the sinner is aware of the moral rule. Ought has no place in the ape world. The ape has no awareness of any moral rules or laws and no awareness of whether or not he should reveal the truth.
A long-time admirer of Derb, it is only with reluctance that I let astonishment -- to say at the kindest -- compel me to rebut an error of logic that he, so very uncharacteristically, makes on the Corner at National Review Online.
He categorises your claim, Mr. Smith, that humanity is special by virtue of their moral sense as being tautological. He then says "People don't normally assert tautologies in argument." Both of these are so wrong, and so obviously wrong, that I cannot think of them being comfortable to a man so pleasingly rational as Mr. Derbyshire.
Of the second, take just this one illustration from nearly (but not quite) the belittlingest Darwin apologist: "... the theory of genetic selection ... is logically a tautology and there can be no sane doubt as to the reality of the process." George C. Williams, Adaptation and Natural Selection, (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1968) 109.
Of the first, your, Mr. Smith's, claim is that, P1: Humanity possesses the moral sense, P2: No other biological creature possesses the moral sense C: Humanity is special. Whatever faults this may, or may not, have, tautology is not among them. What, then, is the cause of the mistaken claim that it is?
The answer, I believe, is that Mr. Derbyshire has evolved himself into being a Biological Reductionist. For him, any faculty or capacity of an organism must be biologically determined else it does not exist; and any biologically developed faculties or capacities (recalling here that for Mr. Derbyshire in his current state of belief, this means all faculties or capacities) must be exclusively materialist in scope and meaning.
(By the bye, I see that I am here been echoing, unwittingly but not displeasingly, Blake's There is no Natural Religion.)
I, however, -- and I believe that this is your argument, Mr. Smith -- find the Biological Reductivist position to be non-logical: to be, in fact, a doctrine of Faith. Consider this. A certain animal emits a sound at a certain frequency that its prey cannot hear. In time, a young prey is born that possesses, by random mutation, the auditory faculty to hear the sound its predators emit. Accodringly, it eludes its predators and mates, and thus, in time, that entire prey species hears the previously unheard sound. So, the sound -- the energy frequency -- was there all along, it is just that the prey (indeed, perhaps the entire world) was unable to perceive it. The prey, now able to hear that frequency, is, we may say, special.
And so, mutatis mutandis, for the moral sense. Humanity has a faculty -- for all that it matters, developed by an evolutionary mechanism configured to the rigourous specifications of a Darwinian as mean-spirited as Richard Dawkins -- that is able to perceive good and evil, and this no other organism (as far as we know) does. Humanity is special. Q.E.D.
This, then, is why Biological Reductionism is Faith, not Reason ... and most certainly not Science. I almost fear that Mr. Derbyshire -- perhaps with the flush of enthusiasm common to conversions at their early stages -- has the idea that if a faculty is developed by natural selection then it cannot be attributed to God. But surely this is merely the blindness of the doctrinaire. Mr. Derbyshire writes books, and that very well indeed. And they are his creation, though they are written by pen or by quill; by computer or by dictation; or, indeed, in some future time, by thought alone via some as-yet-univented wireless device. The particular means by which God created us -- and having created us brought us to our current capacities -- are a matter indifferent. God chose, perhaps, natural selction. Perhaps He did not; for we are not (or, not all of us are) Fundamentalist Darwinists. But whatever the means, He is the Author.
This from a reader:
"I am always surprised when scientists and others insist that there is no such thing as human exceptionalism, citing "science" as the reason. They erroneously link human exceptionalism to religion and refuse to see what is right in front of their eyes. We are the only species that genetically engineer other species. We take genes form one and insert them into another. Eventually, we will genetically engineer ourselves and take the evolution of our species into our own hands (and we will do so at the scientists' urging). If that doesn't make us "exceptional", I don't know what does.
"
Is Derb's Mysterianism faith? Not exactly. Logic alone makes his Theism necessary. Any other premise leads to self-contradiction.
I don't think Derb is selling biological reductionism. My take is that he uses biology to illustrate that certain arguments about human specialness simply don't stand up to scrutiny.
I don't have a problem with the idea that our nature includes instincts which leads us to moral judgment which is critical and self-aware; that we are different in degree from other animals but not in kind.
But it seems that that idea is hard for believers to accept for some reason.
My other point is that revelation is essential to certainty about moral absolutes and eternal verities. We may have arrived at apreciation of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful through biology, but that mind which perceives is God's gift of himself, his reason, to his creatures.
You can reduce Love to a biological instinct, but where did biology or the universe get it from? It couldn't manufacture something it did not have anymore more than the sun can produce Light without electrons.
Materialist reduction always leads to a contradiction in terms. That's not where Derb is going with his musings.
I simply see him as a theist without revelation.
Mr. Smith,
I guess what your emailer considers "exceptional" I find considerably insignificant. We have reason and are able to do things other animals can't. Big deal, that's nice, and good for us, but it doesn't mean anything in particular.
A spider spins its own web. A hermit crab finds its own house. Animals and plants do things with the life and abilities they have. So do we.
Yes, we are clever but what does that prove? Nothing except we are a bit more more clever than a rose or a frog.
In fact, if you travel that road of exceptionalism, then we have to distinguish between really clever people and really inert and dumb ones. Then we start to judge someone's value according to IQ and accomplishment if exceptionalism is determined by who is cleverest.
You don't want to go down that road, I hope.
Mark: Some bioethicists DO want to go down that road. It's called personhood theory, about which I am constantly warning. These same bioethicists often believe that being human is not intrinsicly meaningful. Hence, in my view, without human exceptionalism and its corolary that human life is intrinsicly morally meaningful, we can walk down the road to oppression and exploitation. Not wanting to do that, moving past "survival of the fittest" is just one of the things that makes human beings exceptional. Thanks for writing.
Exceptionalism implies a difference of kind rather than degrees. Mark confuses differences of degree (IQ) with differences of kind (reason versus spider webs). I guess Mark is engaging is a little playful hyperbole but he illustrates my point.
What is the IQ of a rose or a frog?
We all know why this is a silly question.
Mr. Smith,
I am not in disagreement with you about the value of human life. And I agree that we are going down the road of oppression and exploitation. My point is that we can't get to the sacredness of human life without special revelation.
I don't expect anyone at this point to see that human life is intrinsically better than a dog's life apart from either the fear or knowledge of God.
I have that Faith which is not wish fulfillment, self-delusion, or blind hope. I am guessing that you have positive certainty of God, too. Much of the world and even Christians and Jews do not have that Faith which is the assurance of things unseen.
Thus we see religion relying on doctrine to argue for itself in a world that is materialistic and unable to prevail as a moral standard now.
But doctrine does not suffice. Original Sin, the Fall, does not explain or condition anymore. The doctrine of Atonement does not resonate as the reason that God incarnates as a limited human.
We are thrown back to a revelation of a risen Jesus as the reason for our hope; and that is a possibility that only the broken hearted can entertain.
It was true 2000 years ago. Without revelation, humans are lost.
That is what we should be arguing, I think, rather than anything else.
Mr. Gale, I already made a point about the dfference between degree and kind. I don't quite understand why the idea that God can love my dog as he loves me is a disappointment. I consider it an exaltation of his entire Creation. That it is all One to Him, and entirely perfect and loved in every animated atom.
Mark: Well, that plays right into the hands of those who say that unless you can prove God exists, we are just meat on the hoof, it seems to me. And if we are just meat on the hoof, then, there really are no limits and no reason not to oppress those who get in the way of utilitarian impulses.
I think we can all agree that we are moral beings. We are creative beings. We transcendent beings, at least in the way we have risen above the purely natural world of instinct and, indeed, have moved beyond the purposelessness, and mere natural selection. We CONSCIOUSLY alter the environment, with intentionality.
Look at dogs, as just one example. Why are they so wonderful? Because we made them that way. They did not evolve. If you will pardon an allusion that drives some people nuts, they were intelligently designed--by US. This means we have extraordinary capacities. We are unique. We are astonishing. And because we are conscious, we alone have duties to others, even beyond or own species.
That may be due to God. It may not be. But it is what is. And that is what matters, it seems to me. Who we ARE. Not how we got here, which cannot be proven either way.
Thanks for writing.
Mark,
You have only made assertions with-out evidence. To date, no one seriously claims that roses have any kind of sense knowledge; no claims that frogs have any intellectual knowledge. As for God, I’m rather comforted by the fact that he loves the birds, flowers and fishes. But that’s not the argument that Mr. Smith or anyone else has made for human exceptionalism.
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I am confused by your position.
You are defending human exceptionalism mostly on the basis of human intellectual faculties. From your First Things post:
"We, unlike any other species, have taken a bold step outside the Darwinian realm of genetic impulse, instinct, and reflex. We are moral and intellectual beings with the ability to create, civilize, project over time, and transcend."
Yet this blog seems mostly devoted to issues revolving around blastocytes and people like Terry Schiavo who have nothing resembling a human mind. All they have in common with fully-functioning humans is their genome.
So, what is it? Is it the genes or the mind that makes us human and exceptional and deserving of a special moral standing?
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mtraven: It isn't a matter of either, or. It is all part of a whole.
Human exceptionalism seems self evident to me. It is also the fundamental principle we must follow if we are ever to truly achieve universal human rights and act in ways that are moral, ethical, and altruistic.
This means that HUMAN life is what matters morally. But if we say it is only those humans who actually exhibit the extraordinary capacities, then we open the door to the worst oppression against those who haven't yet achieved the capacities, never do, or who lose them. This would mean we had to earn our right to life each day by continuing to exhibit capacities. It would also open the door to a further hierarchy of human worth by permitting gradations of rights for those with greater or lesser capacitied.
Hence, human exceptionalism should be considered a matter of species distinction, not individual measurement. That permits us to judge human life objectively as having intrinsic value, rather than objectively based on current capabilities.
So both are involved. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? It really doesn't matter.
Thanks for asking.
Weak, very weak.
I'm willing to grant some form of human exceptionalism -- humans are radically different from other animals, that seems self-evident to me (and I've defended this on another blog that is sniping at you).
But slipping back into some vague holistic definition of "human" allows you to dodge all the hard issues of what exactly does qualify as a human being. How about all the excess embryos produced in IVF clinics that are frozen or discarded? Do we owe them full human rights?
Bioethics should be about analyzing these hard questions, not retreating from them.
Mr. Smith,
You're right. If we don't know or experience God in a way that justifies our naive sense that we are worth more than a sparrow, then the world is happy to reduce us to meat on the hoof.
Pagan Rome was filled with people who thought man was superior to other animals, but that put no real brake on their decadence and slide to depravity and weakness.
To the individual, life was precious (his own). To society, life was cheap. Present day China is not a lot different than this.
I simply don't see how moral arguments have much force anymore in America.
I was just reading the Supreme Court hearing on the Partial birth abortion case.
It was mind numbingly pedantic, legalistic, and academic. They might as well have been talking about proper and improper methods for cutting one's hair and if the government had a right regulate it.
That we live in a nation that willfully murders 1.3 million unborn children every year -- well, it fairly well proves that for the majority, God hasn't been proven to exist in a meaningful or compelling way.
If we can't convince our fellows about the tangibility of real human creatures in a woman's womb having value and meaning, life, being and personhood, how in the world can we convince anyone else that man is more than a clever monkey in a larger scheme of things?
I hardly am in retreat. It isn't hard to define what is human life. That is a simple matter of biology.
I know bioethicists want to make this hard, after all, it is what philospohers do. But their "ambiguity" is dangerous to equal rights.
Where do we draw the lines? That is an interesting issue, not whether a life is human. For me, the bottom line is that no human life should be treated as an object and instrumentality, no matter how nascent or impaired.
I went to the WEB site that Mtraven pointed out. It never ceases to amaze me how desperate some people are to reduce humans to just another animal in the forest. So we have some anectodal reports that dolphins have saved humans from sharks. Why, that means we are not special! Or a gorilla loved that kitten. Not special!
Why knock humans off the pedestal of exceptionalism? I think it is a return to nature worship, in a way. And it opens the door to doing many things to the weakest among us that could not otherwise be done. Plus, there seems to be this naive idea that if we see ourselves as just part of nature, we will treat nature better. But I submit for your consideration, that "treating nature better" is a action that is founded in exceptionalism. After all, the elephant will ruin the environment without one thought that he might be making life tough on the field mouse.
"I went to the WEB site that Mtraven pointed out. It never ceases to amaze me how desperate some people are to reduce humans to just another animal in the forest."
As the author of that post, I'll just repeat my main point since you managed to miss it. You assert that humans are exceptional, but don't actually offer any evidence. Of course humans have unique characteristics (other wise we couldn't be distinguished at all from other species), but the claim that those unique traits raise us above other life is a claim that needs some actual evidence.
In other words, I'm not reducing anyone to anything. If you think a difference actually raises humans "above" in some objectively meaningful sense, it falls to you to actually present your evidence, not repeat your rhetoric.
Indeed, it falls to you to actually present an argument that it would be an insult to be on the level with the rest of the animal kingdom.
You must be speaking Swahili if you can't see the evidence I have presented--merely in this exchange for goodness sake! No other known species in the universe can do what you and I are doing in this small blog interaction.
Deconstructionism is fine, but if you don't see our capacities, our creativity, our ability to think abstractly, our ability to transcend nature, indeed, to have learned how in some cases to mold nature itself to our will rather than being forced to react to it, the ability to simply appreciate beauty, perhaps even to change the weather because of our activities, to create law, to understand mercy, etc. upon etc., well, then there is no use in going further. We might as well just say that all life is ultimately made up of carbon molecules and hence, we have no greater value that a thorn bush.
I mean, name one other species that could create dogs.
This is getting to be quite a conversation.
Let's see if I can find a consensus however broad. Perhaps everyone can accept "human exceptionalism" in the sense that even after finding fault with our species or rather that all species are equivalent in worth and some can match certain qualities, we would all still want to humans than any other species.
This is quite similar to "American exceptionalism". People living here can believe all cultures equivalent and many nations not only match but exceed us in certain qualities, but we wouldn't really want to be in any nation on God's green earth.
The problems comes in developing a coherent philosphy based on a non-theistic "human exceptionalism". Just like developing our foreign and domestic policies if we are at all skeptical that our way of life and our history has been guided by God's hand. Stay with me, I'm not going any farther down that road in this discussion.
Back to non-theistic "human exceptionalism". How do we define the species? Why do we limit or grant rights at the "margins"? If we consider ourselves special by reason, then we will limit by reason (cost benefit analysis) If we consider ourselves special by moral "soul" developed by
evolution, then we will limit by soul (relationality / personhood) and seek even to expand ourselves to another evolutional stage (transhumanism). Only if we limit ourselves by a universe by moral principles we might consider ourselves judged. This is theism - but it could be Icarus burning up his wings, a Hindu and his karma, a Hawaiian and his taboo, a Haitian and his voodoo, etc, etc.
Certainly we must apply reason and our sense of "do good by our own bootstrap" morality and even our sense that our actions, individually and collectively, may have a "immortality" in the impact it has on mankind. But does that get us to "belief" that humans are really special in more than own eyes?
Well, these are all important issues that I think require much thought and contemplation. But as to your last question, we are the only species that would even consider such a question, aren't we? I mean, unless there are advanced race space aliens about which we know nothing, what other species would even understand the concept of exceptionalism, much less figure out whether to apply it.
I also note that many who deny exceptionalism are those most insistent that we act in exceptional ways, denying our own benefit to help other species or "the planet." For reasons that are beyond me, they don't seem to want to grant us special status, but do wish to impose upon us exceptional duties.
Exceptionalism can best be understood as a meaningful difference between human and brute animals. Everyone seems to agree to the obvious, humans and other creatures on the earth are different. So, the main question is whether or not the difference is meaningful. Meaningful is best defined as an important qualitative difference. Intellection (abstraction, reasoning) is certainly a qualitative difference but is it important.
Accepting this qualitative difference is consequential. Consider the issues concerning sex and race. We found the differences merely quantitative and meaningless. Can we say the same about men and apes? Should apes vote? Should apes attend integrated schools? Should apes be segregated in zoos? I know that this is rhetoric but Wes has provided plenty of evidence. Can one honestly answer these questions and persist in a belief that there are no meaningful differences?
I agree with Wes. If you support animal protection and welfare then, as a protector and benefactor you have tacitly acknowledged a place above animals.
Robert seems to confuse exceptional with special. Pointing out that human beings are exceptional doesn’t necessarily lead to the belief every human being is special (dignity). However, I do think that human exceptionalism can be rationally defended and help in our understanding of human dignity. Yet, I agree that rationality can only carry us so far before degenerating into illogical rationalism. Either you see the difference between killing a mosquito and a baby or you don’t.
Or even a chimpanzee, for that matter. Thanks for your input, g gale.
It would appear that theists don't need theism for their exceptionalism, but Derbyshire needs evolution - and a gradual, darwinian style instead of the punctuated equilibrium style at that - to reject it.
His argument (if I understand it) is that BECAUSE there was a gradual accrual of "humanity", the intermediate stages couldn't be exceptions - only more or less of the things we consider human - reasoning, music, speech are simply bigger in us like feathers are larger in some birds. They were there but smaller in our evolutionary less developed ancestors.
Yet I wonder how he handles the eugenicist's point - if humanity isn't an exception, could or even should better humans eliminate the worse or lesser ones?
If not, why not? You would want your grandchildren to have better genes than you have...
But to argue his point, if we aren't exceptional because we have human souls, saying we are exceptional because we care or can appreciate music isn't really different than saying birds are exceptional because they have feathers and we don't.
The things you point to in order to argue exceptionalism are divine or at least angelic or spiritual traits. Not material or somatic.
If it comes down to we have a certain brain structure rendering us capable of the things you cite, that feature is to us what feathers are to birds so we are not exceptional. But if mind transcends brain, mind didn't evolve like Derbyshire suggests. It is Prometheus' fire stolen from Vulcan's forge, not a random collection of mutations which (I don't believe) could create a brain capable of housing or interfacing with it.
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People can argue philosophical questions about "human exceptionalism," "God," or whatever, but the simple truth is if we don't keep an eye on what the utilitarians are proposing, which is the wholesale killing of a entire class of people based on their disabilities, then we are playing right into their hands in thinking the opposition to bioethics is based on "relgion."
It isn't; it is based on the belief people's civil rights and dignity are being violated, all in the name of "compassion," "relief from suffering," and other such rot.
We are actually debating the old debate over eugenics, which was discredited in the twentieth century, but it now rears its ugly head because it plays into the desire of the health care establishment to cut costs.
Health care is a right, not a privilege. Never lose sight of that.
The philosophical debate over human exceptionalism is ultimately pointless.
I think this debate about exceptionalism is somewhat pointless. It ought to be obvious that humans are radically different from other animals in many ways. The real question is how they are different and what that implies scientifically and morally.
Language-using minds are what make humans different, but minds are not magical -- they are products of evolution like any other. The mental realm is vast, and foreign to other animals, but we have evolved ourselves into it just as birds have evolved themselves into the air.
We seem to have trouble understanding our own mental nature. Conversations like this are an example of mind trying to characterize itself, and mostly failing.
I would agree, mtraven, except that many people who deny human exceptionalism wish to use their beliefs to radically change the ethics and morals that govern respect for human life. Thus, the issue becomes quite crucial.
Thanks for your contribution.
Whales routinely carry on conversations around the world. Does that make them as exceptional as humans?
Josh: I don't think that whale language rises to the level of grammar, complexity, and representational capacity of human language. As far as I know this is true of all non-human animal communication systems.
I do believe that there is nothing supernatural about human exceptionalism though, and these facilities evolved like any other natural capability, if that makes you feel better. Unlike Mr. Smith, I don't think we are "outside of the Darwinian realm", whatever that means.
We are certainly NOW outside the Darwinian realm. We have been manipulating tools and adapting environments for several thousands of years. Yes it used to be that climates and microbes forced changes in us, now we force changes in the microbes and environment (unless global warming has the last laugh on us).
We have manipulated other species for hundreds of years. Earlier versions of eugenics were primitive in changing our genetic future, but we are on the threshhold of a whole new paradigm.
But that still begs the question of if we have control of own species what do we want to become if we have no consensus of what we are now??
mtraven: "Grammar revealed in whale's song". Nuff said.
Robert: What do you mean "We are certainly NOW outside the Darwinian realm."
In order for natural selection to operate on a population, you require that more offspring be born than survive to reproduce, and that the mortality have a heritable component. For sexual selection you simply require that individuals choose mates based on heritable characteristics.
Infant mortality remains significant in all human populations, and it's readily demonstrable that genetics is one component of that mortality (size at birth, for instance, is a strong predictor of mortality and is also highly heritable). Despite more accepting social attitudes, people tend to choose mates who are from their own ethnic groups and who share various genetic traits (look at research on MHC similarities between mates).
Darwinian selection certainly operates on humans. That we use tools no more moves us beyond Darwinian evolution than it moves ravens, otters or other primates beyond Darwinian evolution. That we modify our environment no more moves us beyond evolution than it does for beavers or earthworms.
I agree with mtraven that humans are distinct in various ways. The claim that this is "exceptional" is, at best, ambiguous. Every species is distinct from other species, that's definitional. By what objective standard do we assert that certain differences are "exceptional"? Why would differences in our moral sense or our conversational ability carry implications for the moral status of human life?
The logic may have been advanced somewhere, but certainly not here.
The traditional defense is that God breathed life into Adam, setting Adam apart morally from other life. But Wesley Smith apparently doesn't rely on that line of reasoning, so I'd be interested to hear the non-theistic argument presented.
What I'm looking for is not a catalog of differences (though it would be nice if the differences cited actually were differences), but an explanation of why the differences would imply anything about the moral status of humanity.
For instance, Wes writes that "It is special in that no other species would work to protect another species that is in competition with it for food." Set aside that that isn't really true. Why does that make human life morally distinct from all other life?
Josh:
Thanks for the pointer to the very interesting work on whale language. But according to the article,
"these songs don't meet the linguistic rigor necessary for a true language." Obviously this is an emerging area of research, so who knows what whales really can say to each other?
But let's say hypothetically that we eventually find that whales have a language that is similar in power to human language, and they have constructed a linguistic culture that is similar to an oral human culture. My feeling in that case would be: that whales have achieved personhood and they are then just as exceptional as humans and deserve similar moral consideration. (I use language as a synecdoche for personhood since it seems the most distinguishing and salient property of personhood, more so than things like tool use.) So insteaed of human exceptionalism we'd have talking-mammal exceptionalism.
The point is, I think, that personhood is not a hard and fast biological property but a condition we bestow on creatures that are enough like us, for some similarity metric. There seems to be some disagreement about the metric -- I'm using language and similar mental abilities; the theistic and crypto-theists here seem to prefer fgenetic similarity so they can call a blastocyte a person, for reasosns I can't quite understand.
But I think I agree with them that personhood and morality are in a realm that somehow transcends nature, while still firmly embedded in it. In my case, this does not involve any supernatural entity bestowing souls. It's more a process of emergence; there's some point at which evolved minds achieve enough complexity that they become persons. My guess is that whales may be on this evolutionary path but are not there yet, whereas we primates have made the transition.
To risk beating a dead blastocyst, the argument of us theists and cryptotheists is not just the sentimentality of the potential life or the diminished life but that each human life has inherent worth and should not be extinguished on the scales of mere utility or measured by intelligence alone. To give Wesley his due, while most of the above presumes a Creator granting such worth, there is more. The final refuge of the cryptotheist is the law - our civil rights enshrined in our constitution, regulations and customs. Limitation by "personhood" and control by genetic manipulation ultimately ranks human beings and turns them into commodities. What happens to natural children in civil disputes is family law, not always perfect now perhaps messy in our society. What happens even now to IVF children, is first the "chain of title" before social considerations.
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