This Blog considers assisted suicide/euthanasia, bioethics, human cloning, biotechnology, radical environmentalism, and the dangers of animal rights/liberation. My views expressed here, as in my books and other writings, reflect my understanding that the philosophy of human exceptionalism is the bedrock of universal human rights. Or, to put it another way: human life matters. (The opinions expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of any organization with which I am affiliated.)
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posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 2:04 PM
4 Comments
I am a Senior Fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics at the Discovery Institute and the author of 12 books, including A Rat Is A Pig Is A Dog Is A Boy, which is relevant to the issues considered by this blog.
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4 Comments:
I sympathize with your desire to protect the weakest members of human society. Your strategy in this regard is based on the belief that human beings have intrinsic value simply and merely because they are human. But on the surface of things, this seems no more satisfactory as an explanation than saying "Einstein was smart simply and merely because he was Einstein" or, indeed, "White people have intrinsic value simply and merely because they are white." Surely there must be something about being human that justifies the ascription of intrinsic value, so that one should be able to say, "Being human is a sufficient condition for having intrinsic value because X."
In fact, you seem to offer two accounts of what X might be. One is the prudential justification that if we fail to ascribe intrinsic value to being human, nasty consequences are likely to follow, and the law of the jungle will prevail. This is an empirical matter and open to doubt: many will doubt that, for instance, allowing women to choose to have early-term abortions will necessarily have dire social consequences. Also, on this basis there seems to be no good reason for denying intrinsic value to many non-humans. (Why should requiring that elephants be treated always as ends and never simply as means undermine respectful treatment of humans?)
Your second account of X is that "We are moral and intellectual beings with the ability to create, civilize, project over time, and transcend." But isn't this in effect a personhood account of what underlies intrinsic value? Some humans do and some humans do not have these moral and intellectual faculties. If you want to ascribe intrinsic value to those humans who don't have these faculties, then (a) it's not clear why these faculties are important, and (b) there seems no reason not to ascribe intrinsic value to various, or even all, non-humans.
Further, what if we encounter Martians or members of other species who do have these faculties? Possibly at this very moment somewhere on another planet an alien counterpart of Wesley J. Smith is arguing for Zxxfhtian exceptionalism on the basis that Zxxfhtians have intrinsic value simply and merely because they are Zxxfhtian.
aeolus: Welcome to Secondhand Smoke. Thanks for commenting.
I have dealt with these issues extensively in my book Culture of Death and other venues. But allow me to say two things here: First, our special status is species based, not individually based, otherwise there can by definition be no such thing as universal human rights. I mean, if we have to earn our status each day by possessing the requisite capacities that those with the power to decide determine matters morally, then none of us is safe and we are reduced, as it were, to the jungle.
Secondly, however we might judge space aliens, that hypothetical is not germane to how we deal with human life today. Such issues are interesting, but I believe we must erect a firewall between humans and subjective evaluation of moral value, or again, the door is open to all kinds of oppression and exploitation.
As to the emperical issue of my worries, be it noted that New Jersey has already legalized cloned fetal farming through the ninth month of gestation and some of the most reputable bioethics journals have called for the harvesting of PVS patients for their organs and their use in medical experiments. In other words, we are already beginning down the path that leads to reducing the weakest humans into mere instrumentalities.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
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Here we go again. Actually these are the best of conversations on the value of humanity.
I'm going to refrain from my usual argument that human exceptionalism has to be backed up with some external theological framework and work from a simply secular argument.
One consideration is thinking of humanity as our own intellectual property that we have developed in society by blood sweat and tears. We should NOT dilute our "trademark" as humans by attempting to equate the rights of other species to ours and to negate the value of members of our species who have potential (embryos) or did have human value (PVS). Ultimate human value is extended to any human tissue.
You say, wait a second. That means the thousands of human skin cell sloughed off from me into the carpet, that has value! Well, no, except that all human tissue has the right not to be taken for property or experimentation. You can suck up my skin cells into the vacuum cleaner and you can even dump my carcass into an inferno if we run out of room in a cemetery, but you have no right to take parts of me without my consent and use them. My biological identity and privacy may be at stake. If accused of a crime or to prove identity in high security, my DNA may be checked according to lawful procedure. But no one should have the right to suck up that skin cell of mine and for some reason use that tissue and clone me (yes, I am that egotistic to think someone would want to). Actually I have signed up as an organ donor at death but that was my consent and I want my next to kin to determine that death and no one else.
And yes the Zxxfhtians are free to promote their own Zxxfhtian trademark among their own species and ecosystem. If we were to encounter them part of our discovery and confrontation would be how to respect each other's trademark value.
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