Transcript Religion and science are compatible

Fukuyama Slide Show
CRTW 201
Dr. Fike
Our Objective
• The goal here is to summarize the rest of
the book, not to apply the elements,
though we will have time for some of that
at the end.
The Book’s Outline
• Part I: Pathways to the Future (1-6):
science
• Part II: Being Human (7-9): philosophy
• Part III: What To Do (10-12): politics
Chapter 6: Why We Should Worry
• Why SHOULD we worry?
• Answer: Because eugenics will expand
reproductive rights, not restrict them (87).
Objections to Eugenics
• Religion
• Utilitarian considerations
• Philosophical principles
The Religious Objection
• Religion’s starting premise: Human
beings are made in God’s image.
• Therefore, manipulating what God has
created amounts to the following:
– Violating God’s will
– Playing God
– Violating human dignity
Three Possible Orientations
• Religion > science (“many religious
conservatives damage their own cause by
allowing the abortion issue to trump all other
considerations in biomedical research” [90])
• Science > religion (“a widespread view that
religious conviction is tantamount to a kind of
irrational prejudice that stands in the way of
scientific progress” [89])
• Religion and science are compatible: I think that
F favors this relationship.
Abortion: The Key Issue for
Conservatives
• “As Charles Krauthammer has pointed out,
religious conservatives have focused on
the wrong issue with regard to stem cells.
They should not be worried about the
sources of these cells but about their
ultimate destiny” (91).
Utilitarian Concerns
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Economic considerations
Benefits
Costs
Long-term consequences
Physical costs
Gene interaction—law of unintended
consequences (“negative externalities”)
Philosophical Principles
• Political correctness
– Example: Harming children by aborting females.
– David Reimer (“today David Reimer is reportedly a happily
married man” [95])
– A genetic arms race
• Deference to nature: Since ecosystems are selfregulating, we should leave well enough alone and let
nature run its course.
• The family: A major obstacle to social justice
• Libertarian position: “…we should be skeptical of
libertarian arguments that say that as long as eugenic
choices are being made by individuals rather than by
states, we needn’t worry about possible bad
consequences” (99-100).
Fukuyama’s Major Assumptions
• “…fear that, in the end, biotechnology will
cause us in some way to lose our
humanity” (101).
• Rights, justice, and morality are all based
on human nature.
• Therefore, if genetic engineering alters
human nature, it will also alter rights,
justice, and morality.
What Ridley Would Say
• 297: The government is the problem, not the
solution; it should be restrained.
• Abortion: “But for a dependent, non-sentient
embryo, not being born is not necessarily the
same as being killed” (298).
• 298: Screening should be an individual choice.
• 299: Eugenics is okay as long as it is a private
choice. If we nationalize it, it will become
coercive.
• 300: The dangers of eugenics are
governmental, not scientific.
Part II
Being Human (Chapters 7-9): philosophy
Chapter 7
• Q@I: What is right, and where does it come from?
• Fukuyama’s answer:
Human rights (e.g., justice)
Human ends or purposes (e.g., to live a good life)
Human nature (???)
• If you want to understand whether humans have a right
to pursue genetic engineering, you first have to
understand human nature and the ends or purposes that
emanate from it.
Procreative Liberty
• Genetic engineering may be a “procreative
liberty” supported by “ethical individualism”
(107).
Where Rights Come From
• Religion: no consensus possible
• Nature: the “naturalistic fallacy” argues that
nature does not provide “justifiable basis for
rights, morality, or ethics,” that “human nature
gives us absolutely no guidance as to what
human values should be” (112).
• Man: “Human rights are, in other words,
whatever human beings say they are” (112)
In Favor of the Naturalistic Fallacy
• Hume: You cannot get to “ought” from “is.”
A fact about behavior does not imply a
moral imperative (a “should”).
• Even if we could derive “ought” from “is,”
the “is” might be undesirable.
Fukuyama’s Case Against the
Naturalistic Fallacy
• Basically, he believes that human rights do
rest upon human nature.
• He reasserts this relationship:
Human rights (e.g., justice)
Human ends or purposes (e.g., to live a
good life)
Human nature (???)
Chapter 8: Human Nature
• Definition: Human nature “is the sum of
the behavior and characteristics that are
typical of the human species, arising from
genetic rather than environmental factors”
(130).
Opposing View
• “…there are no true human universals that
can be traced to a common nature” (133).
• DNA “does not fully determine its
phenotype (the actual creature that
develops from the DNA)” (135).
• Learning accounts for a good deal of
human variation.
What IS Human Nature?
• In other words, what is it at birth?
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Cognition
Ability to learn language
Perception of time and color
“There are in fact what amount to innate ideas or,
more accurately, innate species-typical forms of
cognition, and species-typical emotional responses to
cognition” (141).
Moral universals like the Golden Rule of reciprocity
are not just learned behavior.
Parental drive to protect children
Conscience
Emotional responses
Question
• So Fukuyama wonders whether some of
these things will be changed if we use
genetic engineering.
Chapter 9: Human Dignity
• Factor X: The thing that underlies human
dignity.
• Q@I: “So what is Factor X, and where
does it come from?” (150).
• Kant’s answer: the capacity for moral
choice, which proceeds from free will
Why not use the power of genetic
manipulation?
• Answer: There would be a genetic overclass as
in Brave New World.
• 156: “…large genetic variations between
individuals will narrow and become clustered
within certain distinct social groups.”
• Fukuyama favors the “genetic lottery” because it
is “profoundly egalitarian” (156-57).
• But he admits that GE might also lead to greater
equality if it were used “to raise up the bottom” of
society” (159).
What Fukuyama Opposes
• Reductionism, the idea that everything can
be understood in terms of material causes.
• Example of why F thinks that this is
problematic: human sociability + language
 politics. But politics > human sociability
or language.
• Another example: Consciousness is more
than the biology of the brain; it is also a
matter of nonmaterial things.
Fukuyama’s Point
• 170: “It is this leap from parts to a whole that
ultimately has to constitute the basis for human
dignity....”
• 171: What gives us human dignity is the fact
that we are “complex wholes rather than the sum
of simple parts.”
• Factor X is thus “all of these qualities coming
together in a human whole”: moral choice,
reason, language, sociability, sentience,
emotions, and consciousness.
Fukuyama’s Fear
• He fears that biotechnology might “seek to make
us less complex” (172).
• Again, if you tinker with human nature (the
foundation), you might affect the things that
proceed from it:
Human rights (e.g., justice)
Human ends or purposes (e.g., to live a good life)
Human nature (???)
Part III
• What To Do
Chapter 10: The Political Control of
Biotechnology
• Thesis: “…countries must regulate the
development and use of technology politically,
setting up institutions that will discriminate
between those technological advances that
promote human flourishing, and those that pose
a threat to human dignity and well-being. These
regulatory institutions must first be empowered
to enforce these discriminations on a national
level, and must ultimately extend their reach
internationally” (182).
Chapter 11: How Biotechnology Is
Regulated Today
• “The regulatory regime for human biotechnology is much
less developed than for agricultural biotech…” (200).
• Examples of lack of regulation (201):
– Thalidomide scandal
– Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital scandal
– Tuskegee syphilis scandal
• Nuremberg Code: “medical experimentation could be
performed on a human subject only with the latter’s
consent” (202).
• Helsinki Declaration: “establishes a number of principles
governing experimentation on human subjects, including
informed consent” (202).
Chapter 11’s Conclusion
• “Despite variations in practice and
occasional lapses, the case of human
experimentation shows that the
international community is in fact able to
place effective limits on the way in which
scientific research is conducted, in ways
that balance the need for research against
respect for the dignity of research
subjects. This is an issue that will need to
be revisited frequently in the future” (202).
Chapter 12: Policies for the Future
• 206: Issues to consider:
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Preimplantation diagnosis and screening
Germ-line engineering
Chimeras using human genes
New psychotropic drugs
• 207: Might there be both moral and practical
reasons for reproductive cloning—like cloning a
child with leukemia so that the offspring could
provide bone marrow?
Fukuyama’s Position
• Therapy is okay.
• Enhancement is not.
Human Cloning
• 216: “It may be the case that regulations
concerning human cloning will have to
await the birth of a horribly deformed child
who is the product of an unsuccessful
cloning attempt.”
Again
• Fukuyama maintains that “much of our
political world rests on the existence of a
stable human ‘essence’ with which we are
endowed by nature, or rather, on the fact
that we believe such an essence exists”
(217).
His Conclusions on Page 218
• “…the posthuman world could be one that
is far more hierarchical and competitive
than the one that currently exists, and full
of social conflict as a result.”
• “We do not have to regard ourselves as
slaves to inevitable technological progress
when that progress does not serve human
needs.”