Steven Pinker on "The Stupidity of Dignity"

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

Birthday stuff

If life was the Illuminati or CryptNet, I would now be of the highest degree.

Got the usual call from John (he always remembers), and a surprise one from mrs_feltner. Didn't do much else yesterday, but had a small dinner tonight at Bombay House. Out of coffee and tandoori lamb, but the chai and tan. chicken was good, and afterwards people were in my place for the first time since July, perhaps. (Place is a lot more crowded after bringing boxes back from the house.) All the books lying around were good for starting little conversations, though, and lyceum borrowed Uncivil Liberties -- Calvin Trillin being a parental taste I haven't spread around my friends enough, along with Taste of America, and boco's got my Juuni Kokki.

I stayed up to 6am working on the wikip Transhumanism page,so today was pretty much dead between then and dinner time.

Unrelated: the state of the US electrical grid

Dubai construction craziness. I figure crappy outdoors + oil == build lots of indoors. An RPG.net thread discusses how much of that is underpaid near-slave labor.