Human Exceptionalism: The Issue That Won't Go Away
As readers of Secondhand Smoke know, I disagree with the mainstream bioethics movement, animal liberationists, the philosophical beliefs of Darwinist materialism, transhumanists, and deep ecologists, and disagree with them profoundly. But there is one thing that I think it is fair to say that we do agree upon: The moral issue of the 21st Century is going to be whether being human, in and of itself, is sufficient to convey significant moral value. They say no. I say yes. And the policies and beliefs about which we vociferously disagree flow from our differences about this fundamental question.
It is no surprise, then, that the issue of human exceptionalism is coming quickly to the fore of intellectual discourse. Ryan T. Anderson, a junior fellow at First Things and assistant director of the Program on Bioethics and Human Dignity at the Witherspoon Institute, is on the case. Writing over at the First Things blog, Anderson discusses the recent Peter Singer contretemps about permitting research on monkeys (which I have also written about), and eventually gets to the important question of human exceptionalism, on behalf of which he makes a rational argument, writing: "Human experience itself reveals that human beings differ from other animals, not only in degree, but in kind. Some people may root this experience in religious belief, but the point does not depend on divine revelation.
The ability to search for and deliberate about truth, to express conclusions in propositional language, and to act freely on the basis of reason: Human beings possess these rational, personal capacities in virtue of the type of animal they are. These capacities do not belong to spirits that inhabit animals, centers of consciousness that are somehow associated with material bodies, nor 'ghosts in machines.' Rather, they belong to the human person--a rational, bodily, animal organism. And the basic human capacity for personal life--a capacity we possess from the moment we come into existence until the moment we pass away--provides the basis for our intrinsic dignity and profound worth. It's also what sets us apart from other animals."
Ryan also notes the disaster that would follow from society hearkening to Peter Singer's utilitarian siren song: "Singer's failure to recognize this common experience of the human difference--combined with his utilitarian mode of moral reasoning--means, finally, that he cannot defend the idea of human rights."
I am convinced that the future morality of society rests squarely on this issue. Thanks to Ryan T. Anderson for weighing in on this most important subject.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 1:43 PM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
Andersen says that ultimately Singer cannot defend human rights but it seems that you and others have pointed out that Singer goes further, in a project of desacralization by, and not only fails to hold human rights defensible but proscribes them in many cases. For instance regarding the abortion debate he and Naomi Wolf and others counsel that we accept that it is a baby in the womb but that doesn't mean for them that we shouldn't kill it. He writes, "Why- in the absence of religious beliefs about being made in the image of God, or having an immortal soul- should mere membership of the species Homo Sapiens be crucial to whether the life of a being may or may not be taken?" Singer is actively dismantling human rights.
As a utlitarian, Singer doesn't believe in rights. It all depends on whose interests are being served. His step was to go beyond those who restrict utilitarianism to human society, to claim that animals deserve equal interest in the equations. But utilitarianism leads to the strong using the weak, the majority using the minority, the most vulnerable losing even the right to life.
So, as Anderson says. Under Singer, there are no human rights and no animal rights. There are just interests being promoted.
Yes, it is just that that last statement by Andersen would seem to suggest that Peter Singer wants to support human rights but he can't given his philosophical presuppositions, but it seems that is too soft because Siger has no commitment to human rights because, as you say, he doesn't believe in them, and he also wants to convince others of his perspective and he also counsels transgressions of human rights according to his logic. So I think Singer is not just ineffectual or out of touch but actually inculcating destructive principles of actions.
Not to be unduly critical of Andersen though, who makes excellent points and articulates that the nature of Singer's approach is based on a failure to grasp the real difference. I like how he puts that. It asserts the validity of a phenomenological and reasonable awareness of the human difference and implies a myopia on Singer's part. Many today share the same myopia, as you know better than myself, I am convinced, and within that limitation find Singer's logic inexorable. Andersen seems to at least feint at evokig the numinous horror and the phenomenological awareness of what Singer is missing. He correctly logically points to the danger implicit in Singer's arguments but this can seem like an urging of irrationalism to people trapped in the same materialist framework as Singer and just because it may be shown to lead to what is now felt viscerally to varying degrees to be a horror does not seem to be enough to equip many to escape his logic. People can point to "sacred violence" and say that what is felt to be sacred may after all be just taboo and even a prop for injustice, as Singer's activism implies. I hope you don't mind me thinking out loud here based on the stimulation of your thread. The reporting side of the work you do is excellent in helping raise awareness and increase knowledge so that any drift will not be unknowingly but awareness of facts without an adequate framework to integrate them in a way that values life is limited in capacity. So you engage in the philsophical side too. What I wonder is how to evoke awareness of the value of human life in those who have lost it by the influence of pretentious philosophies.
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