Steven Pinker on "The Stupidity of Dignity"

[mindstalk]

http://www.tnr.com/story.html?id=d8731cf4-e87b-4d88-b7e7-f5059cd0bfbd

Long essay, but good, on bio-conservatives/theocons, Leon Kass et al, and the bankrupt idea of "human dignity".

Of course, institutional affiliation does not entail partiality, but, with three-quarters of the invited contributors having religious entanglements, one gets a sense that the fix is in. A deeper look confirms it.

Conspicuous by their absence are several fields of expertise that one might have thought would have something to offer any discussion of dignity and biomedicine. None of the contributors is a life scientist--or a psychologist, an anthropologist, a sociologist, or a historian.

Despite these exclusions, the volume finds room for seven essays that align their arguments with Judeo-Christian doctrine. We read passages that assume the divine authorship of the Bible, that accept the literal truth of the miracles narrated in Genesis (such as the notion that the biblical patriarchs lived up to 900 years),

[Kass] came to prominence in the 1970s with his moralistic condemnation of in vitro fertilization, then popularly known as "test-tube babies." As soon as the procedure became feasible, the country swiftly left Kass behind, and, for most people today, it is an ethical no-brainer. That did not stop Kass from subsequently assailing a broad swath of other medical practices as ethically troubling, including organ transplants, autopsies, contraception, antidepressants, even the dissection of cadavers.

"Would professional tennis players really enjoy playing 25 percent more games of tennis?" And, as empirical evidence that "mortality makes life matter," he notes that the Greek gods lived "shallow and frivolous lives"--an example of his disconcerting habit of treating fiction as fact. (Kass cites Brave New World five times in his Dignity essay.)

Kass has a problem not just with longevity and health but with the modern conception of freedom. There is a "mortal danger," he writes, in the notion "that a person has a right over his body, a right that allows him to do whatever he wants to do with it." He is troubled by cosmetic surgery, by gender reassignment, and by women who postpone motherhood or choose to remain single in their twenties.

For two decades, a group of intellectual activists, many of whom had jumped from the radical left to the radical right, has urged that we rethink the Enlightenment roots of the American social order. The recognition of a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and the mandate of government to secure these rights are too tepid, they argue, for a morally worthy society.

That's what's advising President Bush on bioethics issues... hey Jordan, ever have qualms about supporting the Republicans and trusting them to guard our values?

edit: In updating the Wikipedia page on transhumanism, I found linkies. The Ruth Macklin essay Pinker mentions, and the Human Dignity report. The first link also has lots of responses to her essay, most indignant, a few noting the disconnect between medical practice respecting the dignity of a particular patient and banning various techniques like cloning or IVF because they "affront human dignity" in some nebulous sense, with Macklin having had the latter in mind and the comment defending the former.

edit the second: discussion of commission members and contributors

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

From scum like Leon Kass to would be fascists like Francis Fukuyama, the US right (both the fundys and the neocons) fear technological change, especially anything remotely transhumanist. The fundys think it's ungodly and in a sense they are right, in that I'm fairly certain that increased longevity (and in fact even increased general health and quality of life [[1]]) will help kill off their faith, just as various transhuman technology have the (high) potential of destabilizing the current power structure and so the neocons oppose these technologies, because they fear losing their grip on power.

While I'm all in favor of such technologies for their own sake, the idea that they also might cause the fundys and the neocons to be left in the dustbin of history makes these technologies even more attractive.

[[1]] I'm fairly certain that the western european government sponsored health and social support programs are in part behind the continuing (and at this point, impressively precipitous) decline in religiosity in Western Europe, in large part because these programs make people feel safer and more secure and for many people religion is nothing more than a tool to banish or deal with chronic and unsolvable uncertainty.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think we share an idea that the social democracies have built their own god out of working state safety nets, more visible and reliable than God.

Hmm, I recalled the counterarguments made that European secularism may be due to state churches (false in France, I think) or weariness with religious conflict (Sweden? and harder to apply to Canada or Australia.) Recalled, then thought of the counter-counters which are in the parentheses.

[cleverthylacine]

I actually believe quite a bit in dignity generally, but I don't recognise what these people are calling "dignity" as dignity. (I don't see anything "dignified" about dying. Or depression. Or involuntary parenthood. Or being the child of an unhappy conscript parent.)

Life Liberty, and the persuit of happiness

[(Anonymous)]

I would like to pose the theory that the above rights are meaningless without the right to end ones life, should one choose to, in a dignified and painless manner!
We do not ask to be born, still less do we ask for the inevitable trials and tribulations to be endured during a lifetime!