Earlier this year, I did a podcast interview with Kevin Allen, who runs a very fine feature on Ancient Faith Radio called The Illumined Heart. It mostly dealt with human exceptionalism, and it has now been abridged (with my permission) into a written Q and A in Salvo magazine. From the interview:
KA: What is “human exceptionalism,” and how does it relate to bioethics?
WJS: It’s a term that I may have coined [Me: I think I then said, but have tried to popularize], and it refers to the sheer moral importance of believing in the unique value of human beings. We seem to be entering an era in which humanity is viewed as irrelevant by many very powerful political and cultural forces. Does human life have intrinsic moral value simply and merely because it is human life? Our answer to this question will tell us all we need to know about what sort of society we’ll be looking at in the next couple of years. If the answer is “yes,” then we can create a bioethics that stands for the sanctity and equality of all human life. If the answer is “no,” then we need to ask an additional question: What is the attribute that confers moral value?
KA: How are people answering this second question?
WJS: Well, Princeton professor Peter Singer, who is the world’s foremost proponent of infanticide, insists that what actually matters is having sufficient cognitive capacity or being self-aware over time—that sort of thing. Thus, fetuses and embryos are not people, nor are newborn infants. People such as Terri Schiavo, who have lost these capacities, are also deemed nonpersons. You can now find advocacy in the literature of bioethics to either remove the right to life from so-called nonpersons or use them as natural resources—for organ harvesting or in experimentation. Once you accept the premise that being human is not what gives you value, then you’ve thrown universal human rights out the window. If you do not accept the concept of human exceptionalism—the innate value of human life—then you are letting those in power decide who has value. Might is making right.
Read this blog and my other writings: Is any of that deniable? The quality of life ethic is distorting medicine throughout the West. Biological colonialism has the rich preying on the poor for their organs in the destitute world, while scientists and bioethicists are seriously considering eventually engaging in fetal farming. But with few exceptions, no one is connecting the dots on these matters. That is why I spend so much effort here.
I was speaking to what I knew to be a Christian audience, many, if not most, of whom would agree with me. And so I said:
These are very dark days that we are entering, which means that people must not only stand up for what is right in the public square, but when things become legal, they must continue to do what is right, regardless of its legality.
That’s where the rubber meets the road, isn’t it? What do you do when cloned embryonic stem cell research might relieve, say, your MS, but you believe that cloning is immoral and destroying embryonic life for instrumental purposes is immoral? If you are like my friend Mark Pickup, you say no. But many would say yes. And none of us know into which category we really fall until the time of testing.
October 13th, 2009 | 8:43 pm
All that “unique value” stuff. Gosh, Wesley, I must have missed your postings against warfare and capital punishment. Perhaps you can direct us to them.
October 13th, 2009 | 8:49 pm
I assume you think those things are wrong, HW. That means you are exceptional. Only humans have the capacity to judge right from wrong.
October 14th, 2009 | 10:54 am
You say: “Only humans have the capacity to judge right from wrong.” Since “right and wrong” are social constructs, the ability to distinguish between them is the result of social conditioning. It cannot be denied that concepts of right and wrong differ from one society to another. My dog is able to distinguish between what I have conditioned him to do (and not do)…. i.e., to judge the difference between what is “right” in my eyes and what is “wrong.”
You asked: “Does human life have intrinsic moral value simply and merely because it is human life?” I take it your answer to that question is “yes,” in which case I will repeat that I seem to have missed your postings against capital punishment and war.
October 14th, 2009 | 12:07 pm
Societies have different moral codes, but only humans have moral codes. Morality is part of our natures.
I don’t get into issues of war or the death penalty. But the DP, whether one agrees or not, is about punishing behavior, and indeed, its supporters insist that it supports the intrinsic value of human life by extracting the ultimate penalty for its taking. I see both sides of that issue.
There are no just wars. Alas, sometimes there are necessary ones.
October 14th, 2009 | 5:30 pm
HW, you think right and wrong are social constructs? Really? There is no society in human history that you can judge from objective criteria? Not the Aztecs and mass human sacrifice? Not slavery in the antebellum South? Not totalitarian countries, with mass murder and prison camps? Not oppressive dictatorships under Sharia law in the Middle East?
If right and wrong are social constructs, you have NO GROUNDS WHATSOEVER to make any moral judgment of any other person. Based on your other comments in this very thread, you think war and capital punishment are wrong. Well, what about societies that celebrate both? There have been plenty. Are they worse than our own?
October 14th, 2009 | 9:53 pm
SparkVark: Except smoking. Even relativists of the extreme kind think smoking is evil.
October 15th, 2009 | 12:38 pm
SparcVarc: The problem seems to be that you are proposing that right and wrong are absolutes, when they in fact reflect a given society’s norms. Among the Jivaros headhunting is normative behavior. What you consider oppressive dictatorships under Sharia law in the Middle East is obviously acceptable to millions of Saudis. It is also obvious that normative behavior evolves, since the majority of Americans once accepted slavery but eventually rejected the concept. In other words, there is no Right (with a capital “R”) and Wrong (with a capital “W”) except among theologians and the very, very religious.
October 15th, 2009 | 12:58 pm
Wesley: You say: “Societies have different moral codes, but only humans have moral codes.” I’m not quite sure what you mean.
You also say: “Morality is part of our natures.” That’s an interesting thought, however it presupposes that a so-called “state of nature” exists wherein the hypothesis can be tested. You also fail to define what you mean as morality. Do you mean simply the ability to differentiate between right and wrong in universal terms, irrespective of social environment? If that were the case, that is if there were a system of universal values innate in humankind, might we not expect to see uniformity of moral codes throughout the world?
No such uniformity exists. Thus what is “moral” is more likely the result of conditioning within a particular social environment.
By the way, you have yet to demonstrate that the ability to distinguish between “right” and “wrong”, or “acceptable” and “unacceptable” behavior is unique to humans.
October 15th, 2009 | 2:10 pm
So in your opinion slavery was never right or wrong as an absolute concept, but was “right” and became “wrong” when a certain number of people in the US decided against it? Would it become “right” again if it polled well enough? How big do you have to be to constitute a “society”? What if just one town decides to re-institute slavery? Does it become “right” within the city limits?
How about societies that are ruled by a small elite through fear? I don’t think many people in Stalin’s USSR thought “Yay Gulags!” on a regular basis, but that’s how their society worked. Was slave labor “right” or “wrong” for them?
I also find it interesting that you think that only “Theologians” have ethical first principles – is this to denigrate those who do? If you’re not a strict relativist, you must be one of those fundie types? It’s perfectly possible to be an atheist and have ethical first principles, even to be moralistic – George Orwell’s my favorite example here.
October 16th, 2009 | 4:29 pm
SparkVark: Thinking in absolutes is what characterizes theologians and “God-believers.” Among fundies of all stripes you will often hear the argument that morality is impossible without a deity (THEIR deity, naturally) and a set of universal moral laws (THEIR moral laws, of course). Nobody on this board has bothered to define “morality” either. Of course atheists are capable of having what you call “first principles.” However, one atheist’s “first principles” will differ from another atheist’s. The point is, there is no single set of universal values, nor any single universal moral code in the world. We behave as we are taught to behave within the parameters of our particular social groups or sub-groups.
As for “either/or”, I see little room for a middle ground. One either believes that values are universal or that they’re relative, rather like a light bulb that’s either on or off.
As for slavery, it was a phenomenon whose underlying cause was a particular value system. In the USA, its basis was the widespread belief that white folks were the superior race, and as such were entitled to enslave or kill other, so-called “inferior” races (such as Africans and Native Americans). In the USSR its basis was a belief among those in power that a person considered a danger to the state ought to be put to work in the salt mines, or whatever. These phenomena simply reflected the value systems of those in charge. I’m sure plantation owners felt far differently about slavery than did slaves, just as members of the Politburo felt differently about the Gulag than its inmates. But there was no intrinsic, universal rightness or wrongness in either; only value judgments based on people’s perspectives.
You will, of course, argue that the Nazis were inherently evil because they committed crimes against humanity. Fact is, there was no such thing as a “crime against humanity” until it was invented at Nuremberg in October, 1945. We were justified in executing the Nazi leadership simply by virtue of their having surrendered unconditionally, not because they were “evil” and we wanted to make examples of them. In fact, we perverted our own justice system by enacting an ex post facto law.
October 21st, 2009 | 12:31 pm
I know it’s not fair to you to comment so late, HW, but I was out of town. Suffice it to say that (to paraphrase Andrew Coyne), the mass-murder of the Nazis was not wrong because it was illegal, it was illegal because it was wrong.
I also find it fascinating that you will come on Wesley’s blog to criticize him, but are unwilling to make any moral criticism of anybody else whatsoever.
October 23rd, 2009 | 10:23 am
SparkVark:
You wrote: “I also find it fascinating that you will come on Wesley’s blog to criticize him, but are unwilling to make any moral criticism of anybody else whatsoever.”
I’m not sure who else you think I should be criticizing. It is, after all, Wesley’s blog. Those who stand upon a soap box and moralize must expect an occasional piece of overripe fruit to come sailing their way. Should I be throwing stuff at the audience as well?
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