[The following is a response to the post entitled "We Hold These Opinions…" and is published in full with the permission of the author, Steve Freund. I do not yet know Steve, although I look forward to that possibility. I will be responding to Steve's comments in due time. For the time being, please enjoy. Again, while everyone is free to comment, please keep it civil. I reserve the right as moderator to censor comments that I deem lame, irrelevant, or just plain dumb. Thank you for your contribution, Steve. Please look forward to my response, which is in progress.]
Andrew,
First off, let me say that even though we may not see eye to eye on many issues, I truly admire your commitment and dedication in promoting those things that you consider to be of moral importance. I would expect nothing less from someone that has thought deeply about what they believe to be true and has therefore come to a conclusion that they understand to be logical and of significant social import. Thomas Jefferson once said "Every man has a commission to admonish, exhort, convince another of error." I strongly believe this is true and I also believe that anyone who doesn't at least subject their opinions to opposition is doing not only themselves a disfavor, but also all of society.
Moving on, I really enjoyed the first three quarters of your post (though I did have some minor, insignificant quibbles here and there). I also happen to be one of those people who suffers from an apparent addiction to "friendly debate". Likewise, I completely agree that one objective reality exists, and that anyone who denies this is being absurd.
However, as you can probably guess I didn't agree with the remaining quarter of what you had to say. For me, I think the problem starts when you write that "the inherent dignity of the human person" is an objective truth and a universal principle.
I'm not convinced that it constitutes an objective fact at all times and in all situations. Certainly we can agree that, on occasion, people may be required to look past "the inherent dignity of the human person" and make decisions based on still more important principles, such as self-preservation or protection of others in harms way.
If a man is coming at me with a knife, though I may have previously been able to look at that man and see the inherent dignity in his life, I have an even more important principle to uphold in my desire to remain alive. Therefore, I quite quickly and with moral certitude conclude that a man trying to kill me (or any innocent person for that matter) no longer deserves to be recognized as having an inherent dignity, or at least not one that outweighs my own self-preservation (or the preservation of the innocent). In short, we all understand that in certain situations the inherent dignity of one person can come in conflict with the inherent dignity of another, and we must use some other principle in order to decide what actions to take.
I believe this first discrepancy in your argument has presented itself because moral principles are not nearly as cut and dry as your description would make them seem. Morality isn't so simple as to be described by short statements such as "all humans posses an inherent dignity". You have to actually ask yourself "Why do people deserve to be regarded as having inherent dignity?" "Why is it wrong to kill a human?" "When, if ever, is it acceptable to kill?"
Regarding abortion, if the dignity of human life is so important, what happens to the dignity of the mother when her life is in jeopardy? Is abortion permitted in these situations? No matter how you answer that question, you must resort to some other moral principle in order to decide when human life is considered inherently valuable. If you say that abortion is permitted in these situations, then you are admitting that the inherent dignity of the mother outweighs the inherent dignity of the child. If you say that abortion is not permitted in these situations, then you are admitting that the inherent dignity of the child outweighs the inherent dignity of the mother. Either way, you are using some other principle to determine whose inherent dignity is most important. Inherent dignity cannot be the only deciding principle. What are these other principles?
When we start to look at these question in this light the picture becomes much less black and white. I realize that I may be oversimplifying your position and that you may object to my examples. You may possibly argue that the unborn have yet to do anything that would cause us to dismiss their inherent dignity or that they are helpless and so we must apply a different attitude towards them. And that is where my second objection comes in.
I am making an assumption here, but it seems as though you have an unstated major premise: that the definition of what constitutes "human life" is objective. To my knowledge, the definition of human life is far from objective, a condition that I believe your argument hinges on.
So again, we have to ask different questions. What constitutes a human? When does life begin? Intelligent, moral people can have honest disagreements as to the answers to these questions. To pretend that your position is not subjective is simply false. You have not yet proven that "life" is defined by an objective standard and I don't believe that this is even possible. I also see no objective reason to believe that the combination of a sperm and an egg somehow immediately requires us to recognize its inherent dignity.
Where does this leave us? I believe in order to properly evaluate these issues, we must take a step back and reanalyze where our moral principles come from and how we form them. From what I know about you and from how you have presented your argument, I have a suspicion that I know where you believe our moral principles come from. But that is probably a discussion for another time (of course, one I am willing to have and that I believe would further clarify why I disagree with you on this subject).
I'll stop for now, but if you feel like responding to this I'd be interested in knowing what your take is on two things: 1) Capital Punishment and 2) Abortion when faced with deformities such as anencephaly (if you don't know what that is, let me just warn you it is gruesome).
Respectfully,
Steve Freund
4 comments:
This is spoiling to be a brewhaha. Sounds like fun.
Let me jump in here and address Steve for a moment...
I actually believe that morality is fairly cut and dried. Here's why: morality is not about what society tells you is right, or what you believe or - God forbid - "feel" is right; it is not even about the arbitrary dictates of a church or deity. Whether you believe in God or not, morality arises at its most basic level from ontology.
Just a word of warning: don't get ahead of me thinking of objections. I'll get to them in due time.
Human dignity is inherent from an ontological ground. Whether you believe it is because we were created in the image and likeness of God, or because we are the single most evolved form of life on our planet, we are exceptional. We have the potential to transcend and transform the world around us. Immanuel Kant would explain it by saying that each human being is an end in himself, and can never primarily be a means to some other end. This should be so if for no other reason than it makes the world livable. Ask yourself if you could honestly live in a world where everyone was perpetually using everyone else, maneuvering them to some other goal. To me, at least, that world cannot exist, and if everything else I believe turns out to be nothing - which, for the record, it won't - then I will make the world of dignity in my own will, and in how I treat other people.
You're also absolutely right when you say that there are things that override considerations of dignity. I would argue that these things proceed rationally. For example, the man with a gun coming at me or a loved one, I can morally kill if necessary because by a volitional act, that man has chosen to violate my or another's dignity. I am obligated to try and stop him without killing him if I can, but if that is not possible, morality does not demand my murder. I would submit, additionally, that this volitional element creates a fundamental distinction between self defense from an attacker, and an abortion done to protect the life of the mother - there, you have a choice between two innocents, and I'll let our good host deal with you on that front.
Since this comment has gotten over-long, I am going to wrap up addressing the points in your final paragraph. First, I think that capital punishment may be valid under some circumstances, but it becomes less valid the more advanced a society becomes, since it becomes more possible to contain criminal elements without ending their lives. In my own thinking, I'm currently on the fence as to whether certain crimes should automatically carry a death penalty, or whether such a punishment should only be invocable after other options have failed. Second, anencephaly...I am familiar with it, unfortunately, and I would say that it does not matter whether we're talking about a missing brain, Down's syndrome, a cleft palate, or club feet; a deformity - even one that will result in the eventual or imminent death of the afflictee - does not undermine the fundamental dignity of the child as a human person. It is not for any other individual to decide that this child would be better off dead than in its current predicament, whatever that is. We are under no moral obligation to artificially prolong its life, certainly, but we cannot hasten its death, either. I do not believe that there is any justification for this sort of killing.
...And now, I look forward to Mr. Ellis' response as well.
The offspring of human beings are human beings. Preborn human beings who suffer from anencephaly deserve to be treated with the same respect and care that ANY other human being would receive.
I recommend a visit to Dachau conto anyone who doesn't comprehend where selective killing leads.
I'm not contradicting you on that, but I would say that a better example would be India.
The problem with the Nazis is that they have been so unsubtly wielded that the effect of their invocation is relatively weightless now. It makes me sad, but I try to follow Godwin's Law and throw the swastika card down sparingly.
Yeah...having lived in Germany for two years and having visited Dachau Camp and Buchenwald I tend to see Nazi parallels too easily.
But, selective killing usually leads a culture backwards toward barbarianism. Nazi-ism being just one modern example.
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