ethics by Pinker
Okay, the relevant documents are, first, Human Dignity and Bioethics: Essays Commissioned by the President’s Council on Bioethics. Then, a response by Stephen Pinker. Then, critiques of Pinker by Yuval Levin and our mutual friend Ross. Got all that?
Though he never quite admits it, Pinker is perhaps today’s most passionate advocate of the idea that the sciences and humanities form two cultures and that, like Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort, they are predestined to eternal enmity: one of them must destroy the other. And while, as Levin and Douthat point out, Pinker does get quite bizarrely exercised about religion — anyone unfamiliar with the dramatis personae of this whole affair would come away from Pinker’s essay convinced that Leon Kass is actually the Papal nuncio posted to Washington — it’s also literature, indeed any non-scientific use of language, that tends to confuse and frighten him.
Here’s an example. Pinker is exercised by the fact that Padre Kass and some of the the other monks and nuns of the Council think that human beings possess intrinsic dignity. Au contraire, says Pinker, finger held aloft, “Dignity can be harmful.” And why is that? Because “Every sashed and be-medaled despot reviewing his troops from a lofty platform seeks to command respect through ostentatious displays of dignity.” There you have it: Stephen Pinker actually thinks that the dignity assumed by tyrants is the same thing that Kass et al. are writing about. What a shock Pinker will receive when, someday, he opens a dictionary and discovers that some words have more than one meaning.
Or this: Pinker is deeply disturbed by Kass’s “disconcerting habit of treating fiction as fact.” Evidence: in his essay for the collection, Kass comments that the Greek gods lived “shallow and frivolous lives.” Obviously, the only possible explanation for such a comment is that Kass actually believes in the Greek gods! (This could be a problem when word gets back to the Vatican.) Then Pinker lands this haymaker: “Kass cites Brave New World five times in his Dignity essay.” There you have it: who would cite works of fiction as though they were potentially relevant to ethical reflection? Surely, only someone too dim to understand the difference between fiction and fact.
This is not the first time that literature has proved to be too much for Pinker. Ten years ago, in How the Mind Works, he worried mightily over the question of why human beings read stories. Hamlet for example — what’s up with that? Here’s the answer Pinker sweated out: “Fictional narratives supply us with a mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday and the outcomes of strategies we could deploy in them. What are the options if I were to suspect that my uncle killed my father, took his position, and married my mother?”
To this Jerry Fodor gave the best possible response: “Good question. Or what if it turns out that, having just used the ring that I got by kidnapping a dwarf to pay off the giants who built me my new castle, I should discover that it is the very ring that I need in order to continue to be immortal and rule the world? It’s important to think out the options betimes, because a thing like that could happen to anyone and you can never have too much insurance.”
Pinker wants scientists, like himself, to be the social arbiters of morals. How’s he doing so far?
OK it’s pretty square to object to a reference to greek gods. But come on, Brave New World is a piece of trash, and that stuff about the ice cream cone was really weird.
And besides making fun of Kass, Pinker makes some interesting and to my mind compelling arguments. Will you respond to them? Or are you content to just make fun of Pinker?
— 1658 · May 16, 02:20 AM · #
I like Pinker. I really do. I find him very interesting on a whole bunch of topics.
And yet, every time I read a political opinion piece he’s hammered out, I can’t help but recall, not Aldous, but that other famous Huxley, Thomas Henry. This is what he said in an even famouser (in-famous?) debate against Lord Bishop Wilberforce in 1860:
“A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for a grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man — a man of restless and versatile intellect — who, not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.”
Yeah, it’s kind of like that when I read Pinker’s opinion pieces.
— JA · May 16, 02:39 AM · #
Which arguments were those? People disagree about dignity, therefore it’s relative? Our beliefs in dignity are the result of our perceptual faculties, therefore it’s merely perceptual? Or was it the appeal to such concrete and utterly uncontroversial notions as autonomy, personhood, and respect to replace the supposedly discredited concept of dignity?
That essay was 80% mockery and insinuation, 20% intro-level philosophical analysis. I’m not saying the Kass crowd is perfect – they clearly aren’t – but Pinker certainly hasn’t managed to show where they’ve got things wrong.
— John · May 16, 05:03 AM · #
“Fictional narratives supply us with a mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday and the outcomes of strategies we could deploy in them. What are the options if I were to suspect that my uncle killed my father, took his position, and married my mother?”
What a complete doofus.
— Derannimer · May 16, 05:26 AM · #
Another relevant exhibit is a sharp exchange between Pinker and Kass in last July’s Commentary:
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/scientism-10917?page=all
— David · May 16, 01:03 PM · #
1658, you are mistaken. Brave New World is awesome. That is all.
— J Mann · May 16, 01:16 PM · #
what’s strange is that in pinker’s own work (which i generally admire a great deal) he frequently uses literary and pop culture allusions to illustrate concepts. for instance, he likes to explain patrilocal societies by talking about the James Caan character beating up his brother in law in the Godfather.
— gabriel · May 16, 02:14 PM · #
The wonders of the control-freak universe.
Control and its passions have indeed served humanity well. In no way an issue.
Its evil stepchild however, aspiring to the absolute, is blinded by rage against what lies beyond its grasp and stumbles over its own barricades.
Pinker as you describe him treats the scientific, experimental method of inquiry, a surgical instrument of knowledge, as a blunt universal for excluding the obdurately uncontrollable and limiting possibility to what lies within the range of its tunnel vision.
In a phrase, afraid of its own shadow.
— felix culpa · May 16, 02:43 PM · #
Maybe someone should just mail Pinker a copy of Frankenstein.
— Michael Simpson · May 16, 05:13 PM · #
Good question. Or what if it turns out that, having just used the ring that I got by kidnapping a dwarf to pay off the giants who built me my new castle, I should discover that it is the very ring that I need in order to continue to be immortal and rule the world? It’s important to think out the options betimes, because a thing like that could happen to anyone and you can never have too much insurance.
Haha, of course. No one has ever been in a situation in which they’re tempted to choose power over virtue. That would be utterly ludicrous.
— Consumatopia · May 16, 09:13 PM · #
Or was it the appeal to such concrete and utterly uncontroversial notions as autonomy, personhood, and respect to replace the supposedly discredited concept of dignity?
Philosophers have spent centuries going over systems of liberty, autonomy, rights, persons, etc. They basically have to start from scratch with dignity—all we have are crude notions that vary radically depending on time, place, and situation.
I tend to think that’s why bioethics philosophers are so excited about dignity—it gives them a bold new untested ground of their own to play with, where they can say basically whatever they want and there’s no possible way to refute it, because “dignity” can and has been used to justify pretty much every sort of moral claim, both good and evil.
I’m not convinced Pinker has all the answers, but he seems to be taking the dignity argument more seriously than Jacobs, Douthat, or Levin. I tend to expect better of all three of those names. If Pinker was only 20% substance, that’s a higher percentage than any of the rest of us have achieved today.
— Consumatopia · May 16, 09:37 PM · #
Consumatopia, it’s incorrect to suggest that dignity is a new concept with which philosophers “basically have to start from scratch.” Pico della Mirandola’s “Oration on the Dignity of Man” comes closer than anything else to being the defining text of the Renaissance. The humanism of the Renaissance — as it was manifested in art, literature, politics, and, yes, the beginnings of experimental science — centered on this very idea. And Pico understood himself to be drawing on a broad classical inheritance in formulating this idea. It has a very long and very powerful pedigree.
And if “‘dignity’ can and has been used to justify pretty much every sort of moral claim, both good and evil,” how does that distinguish it from the other terms you like better? It’s pretty obvious that catastrophic evil has been inflicted on whole nations in the name of “liberty,” for instance. Yet I don’t think it would therefore make sense to throw out the term or the idea.
— Alan Jacobs · May 16, 09:55 PM · #
Not to be reductionist or anything, but I think Pinker is just way out there on the Aspberger scale.
— horuscat · May 17, 02:44 AM · #
I’m with Prof. Jacobs in his response to Consumatopia, though I do agree that plenty needs to be done to shore up the notion of dignity if it’s going to do any really serious work for us. But for Pinker to complain about dignity talk and then say that it’s “respect for the person” that “ultimately matters” … well, that doesn’t seem to me to be much of a step forward.
— John · May 17, 03:34 AM · #
As usual I’m getting in way over my head here, but reading a line like this from Pico della Mirandola reminds me of something a transhumanist would say:
Reading this, then reading Kass’s essay “Defending Human Dignity” from the President’s Council, it’s hard to believe they’re talking about the same thing. Pico della Mirandola was concerned that we would make choices unworthy of the power granted to us. Kass’s solution is to take that power away.
— Consumatopia · May 17, 03:44 PM · #
I dunno. With all the content-free condemnations of Pinker’s essay, it’s getting a little frustrating.
As for the difference between dignity and personal autonomy, personal autonomy already has a rich and more importantly, proven track record insofar as things like requiring medical consent and so forth: they form the basis of workable liberal societies in which different ideas can safely conflict, and there are things like due process to mediate people’s differing interests.
“Dignity,” on the other hand, is essentially a concept that conservative bioethicists like because they can basically use it to condemn the behavior of people who are merely living their lives without having much of an effect on anyone (for instance, homosexuals are abusing their own dignity, people who get genetic treatments are abusing human dignity). You can’t do things like that with a concept like personal autonomy, because the idea of someone wanting to do something that violates their personal autonomy is absurd in almost every case. Only “dignity” allows people like Kass to burst into our living rooms and demand we stop licking ice cream cones in a way he doesn’t feel befits our stature.
The other thing conservatives hate about personal autonomy is that it forces them to have to do what they know they cannot: demonstrate that, say, zyogtes have anything about them relevant to the personal, conscious, or moral. Dignity is muddy enough that we can bizarrely declare that because zygotes are genetically human, “harming” them is like stabbing a voodoo doll, and thus demonstrating poor character and a dislike of humanity.
— Bad · May 17, 04:53 PM · #
In what ways, exactly, does Kass propose to “take away” our power to act unworthily of ourselves?
— John · May 17, 07:47 PM · #
“Pinker wants scientists, like himself, to be the social arbiters of morals. How’s he doing so far?”
Well if a scientist wants to be an arbiter of morality I should like to know how he’s going to get around the “is-ought” logical fallacy. David Hume would also like to know, same with Kant, and numerous others.
And since “Bad” is looking for demonstrations, let’s see him draw out a demonstrative proof for “personal autonomy”. The best he’s attempted so far is “I like it, so it’s true”. It other words, a just so story.
— Hippolytus · May 17, 08:34 PM · #
I don’t think Jacobs understands the last passage from Pinker which he ridicules. Pinker, an evolutionist, can see the benefit our hunter-gatherer ancestors obtained from gossiping around the campfire. They learned a lot. If such a proclivity is hard-wired in us, it’s reasonable to speculate that it fuels an appetite for all interesting stories, including fiction. What’s to ridicule, unless Jacobs is a flat-earther?
— Strother · May 17, 11:09 PM · #
“Every sashed and be-medaled despot reviewing his troops from a lofty platform seeks to command respect through ostentatious displays of dignity.”
For a scientist, Pinker is quite obtuse. This passage does not describe dignity. It describes authority. Two wildly divergent qualities.
— ajmalkov · May 17, 11:26 PM · #
In what ways, exactly, does Kass propose to “take away” our power to act unworthily of ourselves?
Slight misread there—he’s proposing to take away (or prevent the development of) power in general, because it has the potential for unworthy use. If you read Kass’s contribution to the PCBE essays, he seems to call for bans on quite a large variety of human transformations. Among the list of dignities Kass defends were
Chapter 7 by Charles Rubin is even more explicit in dismissing the sort of dignity offered by Bacon and Descartes, the dignity of human beings working towards transcendence.
— Consumatopia · May 18, 12:04 AM · #
First of all, props to Consumatopia for actually quoting Kass — though it’s illogical to say that because Kass gives a finite list of technologies he thinks are dangerous, therefore he disapproves of “power in general.” Couldn’t we all list technologies we think are dangerous?
Strother is not paying attention to me or Pinker. Sure, it’s reasonable to think that storytelling in general has an adaptive function. But Pinker goes way beyond that: he thinks (or thought in 1998) that the existence of any individual story can only be explained by its meeting some specific instrumental need. Look at what he wrote about Hamlet: to hear Pinker tell it, Hamlet couldn’t be relevant to anyone who doesn’t have an uncle. Thus Fodor’s joking response, invoking a story that has given many people great pleasure without being relevant to decisions they have to make. It’s very reasonable to imagine that storytelling and story-listening in general have an evolutionary function; it’s absurdly literal-minded to think that the existence of particular stories can be explained by invoking some purely hypothetical “application” of them. That there can be human pleasures, human interests, that have no adaptive function at all is apparently beyond Pinker’s ability to imagine.
— Alan Jacobs · May 18, 01:31 AM · #
So Kass doesnt believe in the Greek gods. Presumably though, Kass does believe in the Biblical god. So what’s the difference?
— uncle bunny · May 18, 04:09 AM · #
I haven’t read the essay carefully – I will try to tomorrow – but from what I recall of it, it’s not fair to read his criticisms of those technologies (which is obviously legitimate) as calls for them to be banned (which would be quite another thing). This seems to me to be a crucial distinction to bear in mind, and it’s what I was trying to get at with my comment.
By the way, one thing he clearly does do in that essay is try to distinguish the sense in which dignity is had “simply by virtue of being human” (these are my words) from the sense in which it can be taken away by things one does or has done to one – this was one of the supposed conflations that Pinker went to some lengths to mock the volume for.
— John · May 18, 05:35 AM · #
I should add that whether Kass is overly suspicious of biotechnology, while an interesting question, is not directly related to the usefulness of the idea of “human dignity.” for instance, you could think intrinsic human dignity the ground for human rights and support many of the technologies Kass dislikes, as long as you think they are congruent with human dignity. Maybe that would be the Pico della Mirandola view!
— Alan Jacobs · May 18, 12:25 PM · #
Having read the Kass essay now, I stand by the claim that it’s simply unfair to accuse him of wanting to “take away (or prevent the development of) power in general”, or “call[ing] for bans on quite a large variety of human transformations”. He does nothing of the sort; the entire essay is rather an exercise in conceptual analysis, an attempt to spell out what the notion of dignity is and why we (should) take it to be important. E.g.:
And “defending” dignity does not, of course, involve taking away the power to offend against it.
As to “dismissing … the dignity of human beings working toward transcendence”, I suppose a lot hinges on what we take that last word to mean. Here’s Kass’s closing paragraph:
This sure seems transcendent to me.
And finally, though this isn’t a point that has been brought up here, let me just emphasize that pretty much the entirety of Kass’s essay is devoted to working out the distinction between what he calls the “dignity of human being“ and the “dignity of being human“. This makes Pinker look sloppy and, to my mind, downright dishonest for saying something like this:
… and pretending that he’s caught the Council with their pants down. That the villain of his piece spends several thousand words addressing precisely this concern, and arguing that these two conceptions of dignity in fact require one another if either is to make sense, is apparently not good enough.
— John · May 18, 02:20 PM · #
Well, the particular technologies he finds abhorrent (enhancements to performance, extensions of lifespan, mitigation of aging, solutions to misery) actually seem fairly broad. And the rationales behind restricting those seem even more broad, so that you really could use them to stop any power whatsoever (Eastern religions might argue that attachment to sense objects of any sort results in losing “the dignity of living deliberately and self-consciously, mindful of the human life cycle and our finitude”).
But fair enough, I concede “power in general” is too broad.
for instance, you could think intrinsic human dignity the ground for human rights and support many of the technologies Kass dislikes, as long as you think they are congruent with human dignity. Maybe that would be the Pico della Mirandola view!
Well, it would not shock me to discover that I’ve misread Pico della Mirandola, but I don’t think even that would be his view—he seems to be exalting that we have transformative power, even the power to degrade ourselves as beasts! Pico della Mirandola is trying to figure out how we can act in a way that is worthy of the power we have been granted (the Spiderman view of Great Power). Kass is trying to determine which powers we should be trusted to have.
This is the core problem with talking about “dignity of human beings“ and the “dignity of being human“. These dignities not only refer to different things, they are relevant to different questions. One answers the question of how we should treat our fellow human beings. The other answers the question of how we as human beings should act. I guess some bioethicists try to use both dignities to answer the first question—but this a basic confusion brought on by the unfortunate linguistic quirk of us using the same word to refer to these two different concepts (originally both qualities thought to be possessed by the aristocracy).
To put it simply, it does not follow from the realization that some choices that I make are unworthy of my dignity as a human being with Free Will that I should have those choices taken away from me—that’s killing the patient to cure the disease. Even if the two dignities depend on each other, they aren’t interchangeable.
That’s not to say at all that it’s unreasonable to call for some powers to be limited. I clipped that list out of a longer list that included more straightforward violations of human dignity. In particular, it’s sensible to restrict my power to treat others in way inconsistent with their dignity. But if you limit my power in the name of my own dignity, you’re just not talking about Renaissance dignity. John, if you look at chapter 9 Charles Rubin is really explicit in dismissing, by name, the defenses of human dignity presented by Bacon, Descartes, and transhumanists. The contrast between the “transcendent” paragraph John cites and the Pico della Mirandola quote above cannot be any clearer, can it?
OTOH, I just typed “Oration on the Dignity of Man” into Google a couple of days ago so it’s highly possible I’m just getting all this wrong.
— Consumatopia · May 18, 04:02 PM · #
I agree that the notion of transcendence that Kass embraces is obviously very different from that of the transhumanists. As to Pico, I’d only say that the claim that we have been given the power to “fashion [ourselves] into whatever form [we] choose” is different from saying that there are no normative limits to the forms we ought to take on, and that the way he puts the distinction between “degrading yourself into the lower forms of life, the beasts” and being “reborn into the higher forms, the divine” certainly suggests that the latter is somehow to be preferred – and this sort of rebirth is similar to, though certainly not the same as, Kass’s talk of our “godliness”.
I also agree – who couldn’t? – that it’s perfectly clear that Kass is uncomfortable with all sorts of biomedical practices, and that he’s trying to ground this discomfort within the “dignity” rubric. But I still don’t see why you say this:
Nowhere in this essay, anyway, is there any talk of taking away our capacities to choose indignity, whether for ourselves or for others: rather, the immediate task is that of determining, given that we do have the power to act in all sorts of ways, how we should act. The specifically political question of whether we should be forbidden or restrained from offending against human dignity, which obviously suggests a lot of very delicate issues, is not under consideration here, though I would be interested to learn more of what Kass things about it.
As to the point about the dignity of human being and the dignity of being human, I really don’t understand what you’re saying here. The distinction between “how we should treat other human beings” and “how we as human beings should act” seems to me not to mark a difference; or rather, the first category is just a subclass of the second. Each suggests guidelines for the proper nature of both self- and other-directed behavior: e.g., if a certain way of being human is an especially good one, then I ought (all other things being equal!) both to strive for it myself and also to encourage and refrain from thwarting your efforts to do the same. Similarly, if there is a special sort of dignity that attaches to human being itself, then I ought (again, all other things being equal) not to offend against it in either my being or in yours. Kass’s argument, moreover, is that each of these sorts of dignity can only be made sense of in the light of the other: the nature of human being can only be understood when we consider the fullness of what it is to be human, and vice versa.
— John · May 18, 07:26 PM · #
I suppose if this were the President’s Council on Biological Aesthetics or something of the sort, then I might take seriously a claim that Kass is not defining a notion of dignity with the intention of banning people from degrading themselves. Am wrong in thinking that when bioethics philosophy usually gets down to the brass tacks of public policy recommendations, those recommendations primarily take the form of prohibitions on unethical biological practices? The end game here is not just “I ought not do this”, but “I ought to prohibit you from doing this”.
For example, in the first couple sentences:
It seems clear to me that Kass is defining dignity for the purpose of figuring out what should be permitted. I’m not even saying that the things Kass is leaning towards prohibiting are all that unreasonable to prohibit. It’s just that the sort of dignity he is working so hard to define comes with an asterisk that makes it unsuitable for exactly that purpose.
Each suggests guidelines for the proper nature of both self- and other-directed behavior: e.g., if a certain way of being human is an especially good one, then I ought (all other things being equal!) both to strive for it myself and also to encourage and refrain from thwarting your efforts to do the same.
I agree with this! I’m not sure even Pinker would disagree with this.
But if you conclude that a certain way of being human is especially bad, if certain choices are inconsistent with dignity, to what steps should you go to to point other people away from this undignified way? What should you do with those already making the wrong choice?
If you’re talking about the two kinds of dignity, and you haven’t made yourself clear on this question, you really haven’t done your job.
— Consumatopia · May 18, 09:25 PM · #
Well, at least in the case of embryonic stem cell research, that wasn’t so: the question at issue wasn’t whether the research would be permitted, but whether it would be (federally) funded. Obviously this will vary from case to case – the debate about assisted suicide, as you point out, has been different – but I think it’s worth recognizing that the underlying questions about (1) what human dignity is and (2) what is and isn’t dignified can be carried out, and in the case of Kass’s essay is being carried out, in ways that eschew the question of (3) the “steps we should go” to discourage, marginalize, or even outlaw undignified (for lack of a better word) behaviors.
— John · May 18, 09:53 PM · #
We cannot talk about what “human dignity is”. It’s just a badly formed concept. We can talk about what treat someone with dignity, we can talk about what it means to act with dignity, but to combine the “dignities” used in those into a single quality is absurd. These two separate qualities have implications for each other, but you must be explicit about how you arrive at those implications.
— Consumatopia · May 18, 10:09 PM · #
Again, I simply don’t understand what you’re saying here. To treat someone a certain way is always to act. To act is, very often, to treat someone a certain way. And what one does can violate (or respect, or be effectively neutral toward) one’s own dignity or that of another person: obviously these things can be accomplished in different ways, but there is no reason to think that the underlying notion of dignity will be essentially disjunctive. I agree that the notion may be lacking, or at least insufficient on its own to do really heavy lifting in bioethics, but the distinction you’re making here doesn’t seem to show that.
— John · May 18, 10:42 PM · #
To act is, very often, to treat someone a certain way.
“Very often” is not good enough.
We seemed to agree that just because an action is indignified for me does not mean that respecting my dignity requires you to prohibit that action. There is a huge gulf between those. To make the latter claim, you must explicitly explain how you got there from the former one. Blurring the distinction between the two separate meanings of “human dignity” threatens to allow you to bridge that gap illegitimately or unthinkingly—which I think the PCBE threatens to do.
there is no reason to think that the underlying notion of dignity will be essentially disjunctive.
There is every reasson to think they are two different qualities. They not only answer very different questions, but they apply to different entities. The respect given to all humans is universal, but whether my performance of an action is worthy of me depends on my capacities. For infants, pretty much no action can be undignified. But there are certainly a very large number of ways in which we could treat infants that violate the dignity of the human race. The meaning of human dignity depends on your reason for asking. There’s no way around that.
— Consumatopia · May 18, 11:09 PM · #
The qualities can be different without being unrelated. But we do agree about this:
As I’ve said, the question of what should and shouldn’t be prohibited is distinct from that of what is and isn’t dignified. And indeed, it may be that in certain cases the best way to respect your dignity is to allow you to act – “treat yourself”, perhaps – in an undignified way. But it’s worth emphasizing that there are also ways to offend against the dignity of others (e.g. assisted suicide, perhaps – though obviously there is controversy here!) that aren’t necessarily candidates for prohibition.
— John · May 18, 11:18 PM · #
Okay, hang on a minute: John, Consumatopia, you’re arguing with each other vigorously but courteously, and are using evidence to support your points. I think there have even been a couple of instances of conceding that the other fellow has a legitimate point. Keep this up and you’ll both be expelled from the blogosphere. You have been warned.
— Alan Jacobs · May 18, 11:38 PM · #
Got it, Prof. Jacobs. Don’t worry, it won’t happen again.
— John · May 18, 11:53 PM · #
Alan, I suspect it’s Kass, at least as much as Pinker, who is confused about the polysemy of “dignity,” since he seems to extend the concept so far as to view eating in the street as shameful.
If no less authority on the subject of dignity than Kass gets those confused, maybe the concept is hopeless?
Pinker’s Brahmins, dictators, Kass, and slightly less peculiar bioethicists talk about dignity. Given that their criteria for what things impact a person’s dignity but seem tangibly related to each other, on what basis do we say “there’s a clear concept of dignity here” and rule out the objectionable uses of the concept? Is it just a brute fact that one view about dignity is right, or is there some kind of argument that can be given? Perhaps it’s possible to answer those questions, but my sense (from knowing a bit about Kass, and a bit about other bioethicists, but not having read the volume in question) is that there haven’t been many serious attempts to answer them.
— Justin · May 19, 12:47 AM · #
Justin, you may be right about Kass being confused about dignity, but a quick point about the ice cream cone thing: first off, it’s not from his contribution to the PCBE volume, but rather (I think) from his (1997?) book about eating. Secondly, that particular quote actually doesn’t mention “dignity” at all, but rather “shame”, “civility”, “self-control”, etc. I do agree that that passage was more than a bit over the top, though. (It reads like Kass’s attempt to do one better than Allan Bloom on rock music.)
— John · May 19, 02:00 AM · #
I noticed that gap and hemmed and hawwed a bit over whether it needed dealt with. My thought was that if you’re talking about an action being shameful for a human because it’s characteristic of an animal, it’s reasonable to infer that the explanation of why that behavior is wrong in a human but not in an animal is that it offends the dignity of a human being to treat himself or be treated as an animal.
There’s probably other possible explanations. Perhaps we’re supposed to have a basic sense of what is shameful that can’t be explained in terms of other moral imperatives. So there are other readings of the passage, but I thought this was the most natural.
— Justin · May 19, 03:06 AM · #
One last note on this topic: for those who associate the concept of “human dignity” with religious conservatives, take a look at the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and note the frequency and centrality of the concept there.
— Alan Jacobs · May 19, 01:53 PM · #