This is my reply to Margaret Somerville's reply to my
article about her book The Ethical Canary.
Anyone who interested in the full debate, which took place in the pages of Quadrant magazine, should also find
Professor Somerville's contribution, the citation for which can be found here:
http://quadrant.org.au/php/archive_details_list.php?article_id=1634.
Bioethics
versus Liberal Society: A Reply to Margaret Somerville
by
In defending her book, The Ethical Canary, and her general approach to bioethical issues (Quadrant, July-August 2001), Margaret Somerville protests my use of robust language such as "superstition" to describe certain of her views. She alleges, further, that advocates of scientific "progress" (the shudder quotes are hers) often employ the "device" of labeling opponents "irrational, hysterical or ignorant". In conclusion, she suggests that I have either failed to recognise arguments against my own ethical and political position or have undervalued those arguments, dismissing them unreflectively. Accordingly, so she says, it is "ironic" that I find an element of unfairness in the way she treats opponents. More generally, she characterises the differences between us as a contrast of my supposed "reductionism" and the "complexity" of her approach.
These are serious claims, and I must attempt some rebuttal of them in what follows. However, I believe that the most important difference in our worldviews is simply that I embrace, while she rejects, the liberal ideal of society.
My reply to The Ethical Canary, "Margaret Somerville and the Perils of Bioethics", does not contain either of the words "hysterical" and "ignorant". The word "irrational" appears once, in the very last sentence, where I suggest that many bioethicists hold positions that are "illiberal if not irrational". That, of course, is a statement about positions, not people, and my primary claim at this point of the article is about the inconsistency between those bioethical positions and liberal ideals. I have not accused Somerville, herself, of being irrational--though her attitude certainly appears illiberal--but further reflection has strengthened my opinion that aspects of her position cannot be sustained rationally.
According to Somerville, references to irrationality, etc., are a "device" used by opponents to further their wish that scientific progress be "unimpeded by any consideration of ethics". In the context of her Quadrant article, this allegation can have no relevance unless she thinks of me as such as opponent. Very well, but she is mistaken on two important counts. First, the reference to a "device" implies that I and others like me wish to dissemble our support for scientific progress. In my case, that is absurd. I have been open about my pro-science views and do not wish to conceal them (see, for example, my article, "The Left's Defection from Progress"; Quadrant, April 1999) .
Secondly, I doubt that any of Somerville's opponents wish the progress of science to be unimpeded by "any" ethical considerations (a charge made in both her article and The Ethical Canary). Only some psychopathic Frankenscientist of Somerville's imagination would hold such a view. To attribute it to real-world opponents is an offensive kind of hyperbole. The issue to be confronted by neo-Luddites such as Somerville is whether their particular ethical arguments (1) have any rational support and (2) are sufficiently impressive to trump liberal ideals such as freedom of intellectual inquiry. In my opinion, Somerville's main arguments fail on both counts, and I have expressed that opinion honestly.
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Somerville suggests that my reply to The Ethical Canary reveals an undesirable "reductionism", while her own approach has the virtue of "complexity". The accusation of reductionism is often made against those who are broadly in favour of scientific and technological progress. However, Somerville does not explain what is actually wrong with reductionism, and to this I now turn.
In his searching critique of human sociobiology, Vaulting Ambition (MIT Press, 1985), Philip Kitcher points out that a diversity of positions, not all of them intellectually unacceptable, may be referred to as "reductionist". Importantly, he argues that we should accept the position which he calls "physicalism", "the thesis that all things, processes, states and events are ultimately physical things, processes, states and events." Kitcher rejects the presence of any "vital force" or "vital substance" in biological processes. Thus zygotes are made up of "complicated combinations of molecules."
Surely this is correct. Vitalism is a discredited theory and no principled objection can be made to the ultimate reduction of biological systems and entities to their physical components.
For Kitcher, intellectually unacceptable forms of reductionism include any attempt to explain the behaviour of a zygote entirely in terms of its own physical properties, ignoring its complex interactions with the surrounding environment. Kitcher sees proponents of human sociobiology (or evolutionary psychology), such as E.O. Wilson, as exhibiting related forms of unacceptable reductionism. In attempting to explain social behaviour in terms of individuals and their genetic make-up, the sociobiologists (so Kitcher argues) ignore aspects of the way we interact with each other and our environments.
It is debatable whether or not Wilson is guilty of intellectually unacceptable reductionism. Be that as it may, Kitcher's argument shows that there are such kinds of reductionism, and these should be avoided. Reductionism is an intellectually unacceptable form of explanation whenever it singles out lower level properties or entities, while ignoring other properties, entities or interactions that are salient. In many cases, complex events defy reductionist explanation because the underlying interactions and properties are mind-bogglingly complex. For example, it would be futile attempting to explore the particular richness and complexity of a painting by Leonardo or a poem by W.B. Yeats using concepts from the field of molecular biology, though Leonardo and Yeats were undoubtedly composed of molecules.
However, nothing in my article, relies on such an unacceptable form of reductionism. As I made clear, we respond ethically to other people, to non-human animals, and to non-sentient things that are useful or beautiful by considering--or simply encountering--their "higher level" attributes. We respond, for example, to an animal's capacity for suffering or to the capacity of other people to make their own life plans. I have never proposed that these things be explained reductively, in terms of theoretical forces, properties or entities from the biological or physical sciences.
Like Kitcher, I do reject the position that living things or biological processes contain some kind of non-physical vital substance or force. In that sense only, my position could be called "reductionist", but it is not unacceptably so. On the contrary, if any serious thinker criticises me for it, that is to her discredit, not mine. In the current state of well-established biological theory, vitalist positions are not supported by reason, or by any other supposed "way of knowing". Any fear of acting unethically, based on a position akin to vitalism, might aptly be referred to as "irrational" or "superstitious".
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What about Somerville's position? She alleges that I misunderstand and misrepresent the arguments of The Ethical Canary, but her analysis shows no such thing. In defending her book, she describes her fundamental ethical position as follows: "I believe that respect for life itself, both human and non-human, in all its forms and expressions, is what gives life meaning." She complains that I was incorrect, in my reply, when I explained that her arguments do not rely on a premise such as: "life as a whole, or human life as a whole, provides a moral constraint on our actions." This, she now says, is precisely what she did intend in The Ethical Canary, adding, "respect for life, itself, provides a moral constraint on our actions."
Well, what are the facts? The difficulty for Somerville is that these various formulations, all of which she wishes to affirm, are not interchangeable. There are some important distinctions to be made. In my reply to The Ethical Canary, I attempted in this manner to distinguish what I thought she was not saying:
we can
conceive of life on Earth as a total ecological system with limits to its
resilience. In theory, some destructive acts could annihilate all life on our planet.
More plausibly, they could leave the cockroaches and bacteria in charge, but
render the Earth uninhabitable for human beings. No doubt Somerville would
obtain widespread agreement if she merely reminded us of this and proposed that
such disasters be avoided at almost any cost.
Such a conception of life on Earth is familiar. We might think of capital-L Life as a whole, as a total system--"Gaia", perhaps, or "Spaceship Earth"--and ponder how this totality could impose ethical limits on our actions. For example, we might caution against environmentally disastrous practices that could upset the overall ecological balance. I will call this "the Spaceship Earth Argument".
In itself, the Spaceship Earth Argument would not provide us with guidance on bioethical questions, such as the ethical permissibility of reproductive human cloning or of stem cell research involving the destruction of human embryos. The Ethical Canary does not argue that these practices would disrupt the biosphere, bringing environmental calamity to Spaceship Earth. Somerville does mention a version of the Spaceship Earth argument in her Quadrant article, but this is in a quite different context, and she does not claim that reproductive cloning or stem cell research would be calamitous in the way just described. I remain convinced that the argument has no serious role to play in The Ethical Canary. Moreover, there is nothing mistaken or "reductionist" about highlighting this.
In condemning both reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning for the purposes of stem cell research or "harvesting", Somerville uses premises of a different kind. She does not claim that these practices would damage the functioning of Spaceship Earth. The problems with the Spaceship Earth Argument can be seen if we attempt to use it to establish the moral status of a 100-cell embryo:
Premise 1: Capital-L Life should be given respect.
Premise 2: A 100-cell embryo is Capital-L Life.
Conclusion: A 100-cell embryo should be given respect.
This argument is logically valid, but it is deficient on at least two counts. For a start, the conclusion does not tell us what kind of respect is appropriate to a 100-cell embryo. For all we know at this point, one way of respecting the embryo might be to use it for the noble purpose of medical research. If we want to argue that such an entity should not be destroyed, we might try replacing the word "respect" throughout with "reverence". It might then be suggested that we should not destroy something that we are ethically required to revere. However, even if this move is successful, there remains the difficulty that Premise 2 is simply false: a 100-cell embryo may be an "expression" or a "form" of life, indeed of human life, but it is not identical with Capital-L Life. An embryo is simply not "Spaceship Earth", or "Gaia", or the totality of the biosphere.
It appears that Somerville has misunderstood my suggestion that she does not rely on Premise 1 above. That suggestion was correct, since she requires something far stronger, something along the lines of one her formulations: "respect for life itself, both human and non-human, in all its forms and expressions, is what gives life meaning". Indeed, mere references to respect cannot tell us the kind of moral constraint that we are required to recognise. For example, the autonomy of an adult human being and the vulnerability of a child must both be respected, but in very different ways (though it is unhelpful to say that one is "deeper" than the other). Bearing all this in mind, Somerville needs to develop arguments such as the following:
Premise 1A: Every form or expression of life (or of
human life) should be given reverence.
Premise 2A: A 100-cell embryo is a form or expression
of life (or of human life).
Conclusion: A 100-cell embryo should be given reverence.
Similarly, she might argue along the following lines against asexual forms of human reproduction:
Premise 1B: Every expression of human life should be
given reverence.
Premise 2B: Human sexual reproduction is an expression
of human life.
Conclusion: Human sexual reproduction should be given reverence.
From here, it is at least tenuously arguable that we should express our reverence for human sexual reproduction by not reproducing asexually. This would give an argument, of a kind, against reproductive cloning.
As I expressed it in my reply to The Ethical Canary, Somerville is committed the idea that "we should venerate every particle of human life, such as an individual zygote or embryo, as well as the process of sexual reproduction itself". She makes clear in her chapter on the ethics of human cloning, "Immortalizing Our Genetic Selves", that she favours a reverential attitude to life as an abstraction (which is different from earthly life as totality in the manner of Spaceship Earth), to individual human lives including insentient zygotes and blastocysts, and to the "transmission" of life, by which she seems to mean the process of sexual reproduction.
There may be some controversy about what counts as an "expression" of life, or of human life, in the arguments sketched above, but there is a considerably greater difficulty: propositions such as Premise 1A and Premise 1B simply have no rational considerations in their favour. When she wishes to support the fundamental reasoning involved in all of this, Somerville relies at one point on the authority of Emile Durkheim and of Paul Ricoeur, referring to the latter as putting forward a "religion of humanity". However, she has little to say as to why the rest of us should accept this "religion".
It is rhetorically appealing and, perhaps, emotionally satisfying to express a "deep respect for life" or to affirm a "religion of humanity". This makes it psychologically and tactically difficult to argue against such positions. The same applies to variations such as "If we wish our lives to be meaningful, we must give reverence to all forms and expressions of life". However, rhetorical appeal of this kind should not be mistaken for cogency. It is legitimate to keep asking what properties could all forms and manifestations of life (or even of human life) possess that command our respect, possibly our reverence?
Once that question is asked, it
cannot be answered by reference to ethically salient properties such as
sentience, self-consciousness, rationality, moral agency, autonomy, the ability
to formulate life plans, or any kind of inner experience, since it is clear
that 100-cell embryos, for example, possess no such properties. If Somerville
claims that the mere abstraction "life" or the property of being
alive (or of being alive and having human
In the upshot, propositions such as that we are ethically obliged to treat a 100-cell embryo with reverence cannot be given rational support. When we look for emergent, ethically salient properties possessed by the embryo, they elude us like a mirage. The idea that we should offer the insentient embryo reverence, or "deep respect" does not have the appearance of an ethical revelation; it looks more like a kind of idolatry, and certainly a reductio ad absurdum of Somerville's starting point, that we should revere every individual form or manifestation of life, or at least human life. There is no intellectually praiseworthy sort of complexity in this approach. Nor is there any unfairness, or any intellectually unacceptable kind of reductionism, involved in reaching such a harsh summation.
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If Somerville and others who share her views merely wished to be true to their beliefs by, say, refusing to teach in universities where stem cell research is carried out, I would not be troubled. Indeed, I would defend their entitlement to show their integrity and make their protest. However, in her book's chapter on cloning, "Immortalizing Our Genetic Selves", Somerville makes clear that she wants cloning for the purpose of obtaining stem cells to be prohibited. Thus her views may be used as a rationale to coerce others to abandon important biomedical research with the potential to save, prolong or enhance the quality of human lives.
Somerville's views are frightening because she wishes to impose them by law on those who disagree. In that sense, she rejects the liberal ideal of society. By contrast, Max Charlesworth's Bioethics in a Liberal Society (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993) provides a welcome balance. This is a concise and tightly-argued introduction to bioethical thinking that I commend without reservation. Charlesworth explains eloquently that many bioethical positions are in conflict with the liberal ideal of society, which is "based upon the principle of personal liberty":
to the
greatest degree possible, people should be free to make their own life-choices
and decisions for themselves and
as a corollary, the state, acting through the
law, should as far as possible opt out of the province of personal morality. In
other words, it is not the business of the state, or the law, to make us
virtuous, or to enforce personal morality, or to establish a common morality.
As
Charlesworth elaborates, a consequence of the liberal ideal is "that it is
possible to have a society without any substantive agreement or consensus on
basic moral and religious values." Consensus is not the ideal and people
should, instead, be free to pursue their own values and life plans with as
little restriction as possible. Somerville, by contrast, prefers to search for
an extensive social consensus on ethics and to impose this by law. Accordingly,
she is not content with the standard liberal presumptions that, in the absence
of powerful arguments to the contrary on a case by case basis, scientists
should be free to pursue whatever inquiries they personally choose, and people
more generally should be free to utilise available reproductive technologies.
Even within
the liberal framework, a strong case can sometimes be made against a particular
practice. As I stated in my reply to The
Ethical Canary, there is currently a strong case to discourage attempts at
reproductive cloning (though the best way may not be criminalisation). This
case relies, in particular, on serious concerns about the safety of the somatic
cell nuclear transfer technique, concerns that appear to increase as we learn
more about the results of cloning non-human animals. The possibility of genetic
malformation arising from nuclear transfer is significant and the malformations
are insidiously difficult to detect.
Somerville is not content with this kind of argument. Instead, she wishes to abandon the liberal framework. She expresses disdain for the vices, as she sees them, of "individualism", "libertarianism" and "leaving ethical issues up to the marketplace", appearing to disapprove of the familiar process whereby people's free choices to adopt new technologies tend to feed back into prevailing values and shape the development of society. Although, she acknowledges that we normally use a presumption of "yes but", requiring a good reason, based on "unreasonable risks", before we prohibit actions, she argues that this burden of proof should be reversed with new technology, "especially in the field of molecular biology, genetics and reproductive technologies". We should, she suggests, introduce a new rule of "no unless", so that everything in this field is forbidden unless we can specifically justify it.
What basis does Somerville have for such an authoritarian approach to public policy? First, she distinguishes the new biotechnologies because of their power to produce outcomes that could not occur naturally and to cause "major, irreversible damage on a global scale". However, the distinction between what can and cannot happen "naturally" is spurious. Many outcomes require human technological intervention and, in that sense, cannot be produced naturally. IVF, oral contraception, plastic containers, word processing, and supersonic powered flight are a few examples out of a myriad. This is not a reason to impose a prima facie prohibition on either the technologies themselves, or the research that led to them.
The reference to the power of the new technologies is more salient. Here, a version of the Spaceship Earth Argument may have a role to play within the framework of liberal ideals. There is some reason to be cautious, though not downright timid, about the uses of powerful technologies. If a particular technology is likely to create "major", "irreversible" and "global" damage we have a good reason to demand convincing safeguards before allowing it to be used. However, this argument obtains no grip on the facts when we consider the practices actually at stake. There is no reason to believe that any such catastrophic damage will be caused by cloning or stem cell research, any more than has been the case with oral contraceptives or IVF. Nor does Somerville make such an implausible assertion about these practices.
Secondly, Somerville makes clear that she is not thinking only of physical dangers to the planet. She rebukes me for ignoring the possibility of "metaphysical" damage, which she defines as damage to the "metaphysical reality" or the "human spirit". However, this step is highly problematic. It is difficult to find rational support for her concept of metaphysical damage. More importantly, arguments about metaphysical damage cannot be recognised within the framework of the liberal ideal of society. Within that framework, no set of metaphysical ideas can be privileged over rival views. To adapt Charlesworth's words, it is not the business of the state, or the law, to establish a common metaphysics.
Thus, if Somerville wishes to rely upon the concept of metaphysical damage she must step outside the liberal framework altogether, claiming that her ethical position is simply correct and should prevail over the liberal ideal of society. This, however, sows the wind and could reap a whirlwind. Many groups in our society are suspicious of the liberal framework and believe that their religious or moral views should prevail. A position analogous to Somerville's could be adopted by any group which claims, on some basis that it considers incontrovertible (some "way of knowing"), to possess an overriding religious or moral truth. Once the liberal ideal is abandoned, those groups are permitted to compete without restraint for control of our social practices.
There is no principled way to abandon the liberal ideal of society in the area of bioethics, while retaining it in other areas involving religious and moral controversy. If it is legitimate, in public policy decisions, to take into account concerns about "metaphysical damage", then the adherents of many other positions are equally capable of playing the trump card of "metaphysical damage". That way theocracy lies.
Once we allow concepts such as "metaphysical damage" into public policy, there is no longer a barrier to naked majoritarianism. If it is socially acceptable to pass laws that give expression to a particular metaphysical view, it only takes a change of public sentiment and political leadership to give legal effect to whatever worldview becomes dominant. For example, if the public sentiment came to be that homosexuality or interracial marriage was "metaphysically damaging", the liberal ideal of society would no longer function as a safeguard against the passage of bigoted laws prohibiting them.
Conversely, if, as I believe we
must, we consider it illegitimate to take into account concerns about
"metaphysical damage" in public policy decisions, there is no reason
to make an exception for Somerville and her allies.
Much of this should go without saying, but it
is no longer uncontroversial and it now needs to be defended explicitly. The
liberal ideal of society is under attack from many quarters, including, so it
seems, McGill University, where Somerville writes and teaches. Far from
misunderstanding the arguments against my political and ethical position, or
dismissing them without reflection, I understand them all too well. I have
reflected with considerable apprehension upon the relevant chapters of The Ethical Canary and their sobering
implications.
I respect and defend Margaret
Somerville's freedom to express her views on public policy, but the views
themselves are illiberal and dangerous. The danger is not merely that they
might impede significant medical research, though that is bad enough. More
importantly, they entail a rejection of the liberal ideals which enable people
with many different religious and moral views to pursue their own life plans in
modern pluralist societies. I will contest such views as Somerville's whenever
I encounter them.
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(My original article in reply to
Margaret Somerville's The Ethical Canary
appeared in the May 2001 issue of Quadrant
magazine.)