What I think

Of course, this whole blog is what I think, so that isn’t a very good title. But in the comments to the post just below about the problem of radiation poisoning in the 25th century I have ended up in the position of more or less defending the Catholic party line on contraception, which is not precisely what I think. This runs the risk that I will go on exchanging comments at cross purposes in an unproductive way. And as what I think on this issue is one of those things that I have never been game to set down on virtual paper, it is probably overdue for me to write what I think.

The Orthodox position of the Churches of the East is self-consistent and logical within its postulates in rejecting all forms of birth control. It is also unworkable, and universally ignored, as the only traditionally Orthodox nation not in demographic free-fall that I can think of is Ethiopia.

Humanae vitae departs from this logical and traditional position of all historical Christian churches by allowing- hedged about with various caveats- the use of temporal barriers to conception. It rightly condemns strongly the ‘direct interruption of the generative process already begun’, as well as deliberate sterilization. However, this message is blurred because it condemns without making any distinction (‘Similarly excluded…’) the use of spatial barriers to conception.

I do not see any fundamental meaningful difference between a barrier method in time and a barrier method in space. I do not think the distinction drawn between them in Humanae vitae is very clear or particularly valid. If both forms of barrier method were lawful, hedged about with various caveats, then the line in the sand could be clearly drawn at conception and defended with vigour on the basis of the very clear commandment ‘thou shalt not kill’.

Is that clear? I am saying that it would be more logical, within the shared postulates of Judaeo-Christian-Islamic thought, to have made the compromise with modernity at such a point that a very clear distinction was made between grudgingly allowed methods such as natural family planning and condoms on the one hand and absolutely forbidden methods such as ‘the pill’ – which may interrupt the generative process already begun, even if such is not their main intent- on the other.

I am not entirely convinced that what I think is right, but all my doubts are in the direction of tradition, not away from it.

Fragments from the 25th Century

Far be it from me to grudge the Farseer and his entourage a warm welcome to K’toomba Dome, still less refrain from extending our legendary hospitality to the hundreds of pilgrims who have crossed many leagues of blasted post-apocalyptic wasteland to come here. Even without the infectious enthusiasm of these dusty, maimed fanatics, there are few among us who do not recognise the spiritual power of the Farseer, or respect his principled stand, for instance, against the Emperor’s war on the cannibal mutants. Yet, we should remember the darker side of what the Farseer stands for. All over the continent, at this very moment, thousands of men, women, children, and sentient quoll-people are suffering from radiation sickness. Many will die agonising deaths. Why? Because the Farseer forbids his followers from wearing lead-lined garments. Because of this irrational religious mania, a simple and effective safeguard against radiation is neglected, and countless wretched victims are condemned to a horrible existence. Vomiting, weakness, hair loss, bleeding, recurrent infections, anemia. It is an unspeakable and ghastly malady. Some will survive, only to be stricken down with cancers in later life. Many will not survive. Remember this, next week, when you see the joyous crowds of worshippers throwing garlands of flowers at the Farseer. Remember this.

* * *

[Our reporter caught up with Cassowary Jorj T’eepot, leader of the Farseer’s followers in the Blue Mountains and organiser of the Sacred Festivities. After making inquiries as to the Farseer’s health after his arduous journey from Wee Waa, and congratulating the Cassowary on his preparation for the Farseer’s visit, our reporter raised the contentious issue of the Faith’s anti-lead stance.]

Was the Farseer taken aback by the protests? I understand he looked rather bemused.

The protests? Oh, yes. Handing out lead loincloths to passers-by. Very childish, really. Actually, I don’t think he was taken aback. One might think that this sort of thing is only something that the Faithful have to put up with in a cosmopolitan, secular place like K’toomba Dome, but even in the sacred city of Wee Waa there are people who resent the Farseer’s condemnation of lead, there are protests from time to time.

I suppose it is not surprising that the Faith’s lead ban is resented, with the problem of radiation sickness.

Well, as you know, radioactivity is associated exclusively with the ruins of the ancients. The Faith teaches that the ruins of the ancients are cursed by God, and strictly forbids any of the Faithful to enter them. The signs of dangerous levels of radioactivity are very obvious- sickly plants, sand melted into glassy slag, twisted ruins, malformed animals covered with lesions...

But you can’t just expect people to stay out ancient ruins, can you? It goes against human nature. There is all sorts of neat loot in those places. You have to admit that whatever you say, people are still going to go into radioactive ruins. If they do, shouldn’t they be wearing lead clothing?

Well, there are a few problems with that. The first is that, as you know, lead is not 100% effective against radiation. People have ventured into ancient ruins wearing lead clothing and died from radiation sickness. The second is that, lead is itself toxic: there are illnesses associated with being exposed to lead. And most importantly, what lead clothing does is, it normalises entering radioactive zones. If it is seen as something that is safe, something that is fun, then there will be pressure for everyone to do it. Some of them will be exposed to unsafe levels of radiation. And radiation is not the only danger in the ruins: there are cannibal mutants, we hear of people coming across still-functioning killer robots with laser eyes, for example.

Let me pose you another question, Cassowary. What about the ‘innocents’? People who have never ventured into radioactive zones themselves but are exposed, say, when someone else in their dome goes into a ruin and comes out with an artifact that gives out radioactive rays of death? Wouldn’t lead clothing protect them in that situation?

I think, anyone untrustworthy enough to bring a radioactive artifact into a dome like that, they’re hardly going to tell the others in the dome that they should wear lead garments, will they? They’re not the sort of person who is going to be swayed by what you or the Farseer or anyone tells them about ethical conduct. In the old days- and I’m not saying that we should go back to the old ways, mind you- but in the old days, someone like that would have been staked out in the desert for the death toads.

But if everyone in the dome wore lead clothing as a matter of course, that wouldn’t be an issue, would it?

No, it wouldn’t. But there would be a much graver issue. It would show that no one in that dome trusted one another, that they didn’t think they could rely on each other. And a dome like that is not going to last. The next time that bandits attack, the next plague of flesh-eating locusts- a dome like that is going to fall.

Well… I’m afraid that’s all we have time for, Cassowary. I hope the Sacred Festivities go off without a hitch for you.

Thank you.

Once more, with thinking...

Just to reiterate my problem with Obama via another link.

Note that I am not at all inclined to wax Miltonic in an ad hominem way about it, like I did with Kerry.

That's because Obama's conclusions are perfectly valid deductions from certain premises. I think those premises are wrong, but I would not claim that they are self-evidently wrong. I can see how someone brought up with those premises, even an intelligent someone, could muddle along without cottoning on to the fact that they were wrong.

Kerry, the blackguard, claimed publicly to share similar premises to mine. From such premises no sane person can validly deduce 'pro-choice' conclusions.

Only a link. Just a link.

I will get back to you soon, good people.

In the meantime, here is a scary link.

Eat More Whales

I went out last week to pick up some hens to replace the ones that were taken by some wild beast earlier in the year. An email had gone around at work saying that they had 200 to find homes for. They had been part of an experiment on debeaking methods, trying to figure out the best way to stop them from pecking each other to death when three of them are packed into a cage the size of a hatbox. It was a good experiment- within the system- trying to make chicken culture more humane. Kind of like putting a band-aid on a cancer, as a wise man once said.
But, the experiment was over, and the birds were surplus to requirements, and it was needful to get rid of as many as could be gotten rid of to people who wanted them, before the others were sold to the chicken extract manufacturers.

They seem healthy enough. They all have a lot of feathers missing, so they don’t look so crash hot, and the claws on their feet are dreadfully long since they’ve spent their whole lives walking on wire cage. It was neat to watch them lift their feet really high as they walked upon the ground for the first time, and neat to see them peck at things in the earth for the first time, and discovering dirt baths for the first time, and generally starting to behave like chickens instead of like automaton drones. It was like they had just been born.

Time will pass, and we will doubtless discover the distinctive personalities of each of the five hens, and they will no longer be an undifferentiated mass of ragamuffins. For they are all different when you get to know them, just like rats and cats and elephants.
I will remember, of course, the shed full of hundreds like them packed into hat-box sized wire cages that we didn’t take away, and the nine billion (or is it nineteen billion? Ninety billion?) of their kind that we slaughter every year.

There aren’t many meals on a chicken. There are a lot more on a cow. It is much better to kill the occasional cow and share it around, rather than making continual hecatombs of chickens. I strongly suspect that there is not a lot of difference between what it is like to be a cow and what it is like to be a chicken: both can obviously feel pain, be happy or miserable, and have individual personalities.

Better yet, I thought as I was driving home with my cardboard box full of chickens, we should eat whales. There are many more meals on a whale than there are on a cow. Thousands and thousands and thousands of chickens worth. Sure, they are particularly sensitive and intelligent animals. But we wouldn’t bat an eyelid at letting a particularly sensitive and intelligent human die to save the lives of tens of thousands of epsilon semi-morons. At least, I hope we wouldn’t. Chickens have feelings too. Chickens can suffer. I think if you added up all the suffering and lost potential of the thousands of chickens you’d need to balance one whale, even if they are much dumber and less sensitive than the one whale, it could hardly be a contest. Besides, whales are the ultimate free-range animals. Up until the moment they catch and explosive harpoon in the guts, they live free in the open ocean, pursuing their mysterious cetacean social goals. They aren’t shut up in hatbox-sized cages or debeaked or nothing.

I’ve always been anti-whaling, and I still am, viscerally and sentimentally, but really, I don’t think we have a leg to stand on. We have frivolously and sentimentally promoted a few animals, like dolphins and dogs, to honorary human status, and expecting other cultures to do the same is the worst kind of cultural imperialism. We get understandably upset when them accursed foreigners complain about us eating those cute wittle-icky kangaroos. How can we complain about the cruelty of whaling when we subject innumerable other animals to miserable lives before knocking them off and devouring their corpses? As another wise man once said, first remove the stick from your eye, then go about removing the speck from the other guy’s eye.
When we embrace vegetarianism- which will, by the way, do more to curb global warming than closing down every coal-fired power station in the country*- we can go about pontificating to the Japanese about whaling. But until then? Much better to eat the gigantic happy animals, instead of the itty-bitty miserable ones.

* Statistic just made up by me. But almost certainly true. Research pending…

Old men staring out to sea

There is a Film Forensics about The Island; but I just saw it the other day and had to write something. Or, I saw it the other day and just had to write something.

I can’t remember the last movie I saw that started out with so much promise and then collapsed so completely. It was like The Matrix and the first of those crummy Matrix sequels had been combined into one movie. It was like Highlander and Highlander 2 had been combined into one movie. It was like the screenwriter had disappeared halfway through, and been replaced by his 15-year-old clone who liked to blow things up.

So my first suggestion for improving the movie would involve the following two steps:

(a) Cut it in half
(b) Throw the second half away

Two things bothered me, besides the long and tedious action sequences. The first was the economics of the cloning operation, and the second was the behaviour of the people involved in it.

Economics first: $5 million is just too much to pay if all you get is replacement organs, and them not on demand: who wants to wait in a coma for months or years while your replacement parts are grown? Androo hit the nail on the head: “If the technology is there for building adult bodies, it’s not so much of a leap to go further and have brain transplants. Why bother repairing the old host body, when you can just move your brain into a new body? Ickier, more memorable, and we have a chance at some interesting plot points to go with it. The clones have to be physically trained to match (or exceed) the capabilities of the originals, which is a better explanation of why they have to be conscious...”

Then the people: Of course, groups of people can easily be persuaded to do evil things to other people. You usually need to do two things: isolate your group of evildoers from outside norms of behaviour, and convince them that their target group is subhuman. In The Island, there are too many humans working with the clones, and they interact with them all the time and see them behaving like regular humans. They are allowed to treat them occasionally in dehumanising and cruel ways, but not as a matter of course, since that would spoil the product. And they do not live on an isolated company compound, but commute to normal homes in the outside world. I think, if under these circumstances none of them have had pangs of conscience, if none of them have squealed about what is going on, it can only mean the rest of the country shares their morality. It only makes sense that they would behave that way if everyone considers clones to be inhuman, whether they are conscious or not, and that the uplifting scene of clones wandering across the desert at the end will soon be followed by scenes of helicopters rounding them up and taking them back to the pens.

In my version, most of the black-shirted people wandering around managing the clones will be clones themselves, who believe the same backstory, but have been conditioned to believe they have an important role in managing the facility and will automatically be sent on to the Island after a given length of time. Among these will be a few humans, some of the very few who know the whole story. Upstairs, where the clones are processed, things will be as automated as possible, and most humans working there will be unaware that the products were ever conscious.

The first part of the film will therefore unfold almost exactly the same as before, except that, of course, there is no need for white-suited clones to know how to read. I expect black-suited clones will be able to read. Also, the sleazy mechanic will be played by Jet Li.

When Lincoln escapes into the upper part of the facility, he will not find bustling corridors full of medicos, but- after a bit of atmospheric wandering around looking at cool special effects- an operating theatre where remotely operated robodocs are operating on the football-player replacement clone. Everything is under control: there is no racing about trying to escape. Lincoln just sees the guy lying there, obviously the man who won the lottery. An unspeakable machine comes up and puts some tubes in. Another one puts in some more tubes. Some lights flash. Maybe something beeps. Another machine comes up and shaves a small spot on his head. Splot, a machine sticks a thick steel tube through his skull. Schlurp, we see his brain being pumped, grayish-pink and icky, through a transparent tube. He is shrinkwrapped, a few more tubes are attached, and then a door whooshes open and a couple of gowned figures come in to check dials and wheel him away.

Consumers don’t come to the facility. That would be bad. So there is no scene with a baby being handed to grateful parents.

Then, there is no stupid action scene when Lincoln and Jordon get away. The clones are smart. Androo, again, has it perfectly right: “Have them both with some notion that they’re escaping to somewhere incredibly dangerous: that the world is not only radioactive, but filled with hideous beasts, as they see on the videos. They dress in radiation suits, take fresh water, weapons, and other supplies, and are cunning about hiding.”

Now, if you were running a facility like this, where would you put it? A disused military base in an open democracy where there are things like a free press and an activist judiciary? Only if you are a Michael Moore-style fantasist and the government is in on the deal. No, when they get out of the facility, the clones are not in the Nevada desert. They are on a bleak street in a Chinese industrial city, tarted up to look a bit more like Blade Runner because it is after all 2042. As they wander down the street, totally lost and looking like dills in their radiation suits, we see that the ‘Medical Supply House’ they have escaped from is not the only one. No, this street is lined with them. They can’t tell, because they can’t read.

Since, for a brand new body, $5 million is not so much. Millions of people can pay that. There are hundreds of these places here in Chengdu, where labour is cheaper and regulations less strict than they are in Nevada.

We flash back to the excitingly CGI-rendered video conference (clients aren’t going to travel out to the middle of nowhere to listen to a sales talk, after all) where the evil scientist fills in the back story for the folks at home. Its not good for old geezers to be transported into a body that is bed-ridden and weak from just sitting there in a vegetative state, of course: so it has to be exercised, by the latest top of the range equipment which keeps it in tip-top condition. Our automatic equipment for exercising our vegetative clones is the best in the world, which is why our bodies command premium prices, etc., etc. Because, and this is why the guys who own this place are really evil, they don’t have to keep the clones conscious in order to make their product. It’s just cheaper that way. It’s all about the bottom line.

The clones are wandering down the street when Lincoln sees his old friend Jet Li. Jet Li drops his dinner, which he is carrying home, in surprise. Jet Li can fill the clones in on his version of the backstory back at his place.

Now, I have slightly reconsidered my first suggestion, which was to throw the second half of the movie away. Perhaps some essential part of The Island is the dichotomy between a cerebral, intelligent world that is a total fraud and a stupid world of ultrakinetic action that is reality. Instead, we will make sure that the hyperkinetic action sequences are justified by the only justification for hyperkinetic action sequences, that they be part of the Hong Kong action movie tradition.

So, there is some artificial plot device to stop the clones from contacting their owners right away. They are pursued by the police and by the mercenaries. Far fewer things are totally destroyed, since we have spent more of the special effects budget on booze. The police will actually collect the clones, bring them into the station- not to charge them with the murder of Jet Li, because he is alive in this version, and they’ve brought him into the station too, but because it is an authoritarian state where they can do what they like to simple-minded foreigners in weird costumes who run away and break things- and then they will be grabbed by the mercenaries, who have more impressive special effects than the police.

The clones will be tied up and spirited away, but we always thought the mercenary leader was going to turn out to be a good guy, and our suspicions are about to be confirmed: he has gotten a better offer and is being nice to the clones and taking them somewhere else. Meanwhile it will be revealed to the viewers at home that, going through proper channels, what the police were going to do is hush things up and disappear the clones quietly. The mercenary leader is taking the clone to Matt Damon of Team America: World Police, who is investigating dumping of cheap Chinese clones on the market. We are just starting to like the mercenary leader when he turns evil again and is shot by Matt Damon. Lincoln borrows Matt Damon’s mobile phone and calls his owner. His owner is mortified and nice, and immediately arranges for the two clones to be repatriated.

Lincoln and Jordon go to live with Ur-Lincoln, who lives on- dramatic music- an island! Yep, it’s a real nice private artificial island, either in Tampa Bay (like in that Alan Dean Foster book based on Navajo mythology), or part of The World in Dubai. (There will be nothing in this film to offend any geography pedants.)

We see the same police who were going to hush things up barging into the upper floors of the clone factory, now that it is no longer possible to hush things up.

We see the other clones owned by Americans being happily repatriated to a real swell holding facility in Nevada, until Team America:World Police can figure out what to do with them.

We see Lincoln and Jordon sitting on the beach happily drinking pina coladas.

We see the inert bodies of the evil scientist and the rest of his evil non-clone collaborators, and yes, that’s Jet Li there too, he was caught by the authorities as well- being processed on a conveyor belt. A robodoc much like the one we saw in use in their facility is dissecting them for organs. Splot. Schlurp. Buzz, whir.

Then we pan along that street in Chengdu again, past ‘Medical Supply House’ after ‘Medical Supply House’.

Everyone happy. Cue credits. Await diplomatic incident.

Well, that just about wraps it up for Dawkins

Given the historical preoccupations of this blog, I can’t very well leave Richard’s book without discussing what he has to say about abortion. This means that much of what I have to say will doubtless be tediously familiar to my readers. So you might want to come back next time, when I will have moved on from ‘The God Delusion’ to something else.
This also means that I have to start with an inordinately long quote. The quote begins after a brief discussion of the case of Paul Hill, who murdered Pensacola abortionist Dr John Britton and his bodyguard in 1994 and was subsequently murdered himself by the State of Florida.

Quoth Richard:

There are people who, because of their religious convictions, think abortion is murder and are prepared to kill in defense of embryos, which they chose to call ‘babies’. On the other side are equally sincere supporters of abortion, who either have different religious convictions, or no religion, coupled with well-thought-out consequentionalist morals. They too see themselves as idealists, providing a medical service for patients in need., who would otherwise go to dangerously incompetent back-street quacks. Both sides see the other side as murderers or advocates of murder. Both sides, by their own lights, are equally sincere.
A spokeswoman for another abortion clinic described Paul Hill as a dangerous psychopath. But people like him don’t think of themselves as dangerous psychopaths; they think of themselves as good, moral people, guided by God. Indeed, I don’t think Paul Hill was a psychopath. Just very religious. Dangerous, yes, but not a psychopath. Dangerously religious. By the lights of his religious faith, Hill was entirely right and moral to shoot Dr Britton. What was wrong with Hill was his religious faith itself. Michael Bray, too, when I met him, didn’t strike me as a psychopath. I actually quite liked him. I thought he was an honest and sincere man, quietly spoken and thoughtful, but his mind had unfortunately been captured by poisonous religious nonsense.
Strong opponents of abortion are almost all deeply religious. The sincere supporters of abortion, whether personally religious or not, are likely to follow a non-religious, consequentionalist moral philosophy, perhaps invoking Jeremy Bentham’s question, ‘Can they suffer?’ Paul Hill and Michael Bray saw no moral difference between killing an embryo and killing a doctor except that the embryo was, to them, a blamelessly innocent ‘baby’. The consequentionalist sees all the difference in the world. An early embryo has the sentience, as well as the semblance, of a tadpole. A doctor is a grown-up conscious being with hopes, loves, aspirations, fears, a massive store of humane knowledge, the capacity for deep emotion, very probably a devastated widow and orphaned children, perhaps elderly parents who dote on him.
Paul Hill cause real, deep, lasting suffering, to beings with nervous systems capable of suffering. His doctor victim did no such thing. Early embryos that have no nervous system most certainly do not suffer, And if late-aborted embryos with nervous systems suffer- though all suffering is deplorable- it is not because they are human that they suffer. There is no general reason to suppose that human embryos at any stage suffer more than cow or sheep embryos at the same developmental stage. And there is every reason to suppose that all embryos, whether human or not, suffer far less than adult cows or sheep in a slaughterhouse, especially a religious slaughterhouse where, for religious reasons, they must be fully conscious when their throats are ceremonially cut.

In the second part of this long quote, Richard tries to explain why in his ‘well-thought-out consequentionalist morals’, killing embryos (and foetuses) is okay, but killing Dr John Britton was not okay. In his case, how do these ‘well-thought-out consequentionalist morals’ distinguish between the two cases?

(1) Suffering of the Victim.
An embryo without a developed nervous system does not suffer, while a more grown human does. Richard does not take this argument very seriously, or else he would take much more care to distinguish between an early-aborted embryo and a late-aborted foetus with a developed nervous system. Instead of citing some experimental data on foetal suffering in animals and drawing a line at say, three months of gestation, where he can say, with Jeremy Bentham “No pasaron!”¹, he throws in an irrelevant statement that foetal suffering is, at any rate, less than that of sheep in halal or kosher slaughterhouses. This is a complete non sequitur as far as logic goes. Emotionally, it is a different story, and I have long felt that the anti-choice movement will never be taken seriously unless we also take a stand against the ghoulish ‘choice’ of so many to gorge themselves on the corpses of slain animals. But it has no logical connection with the ‘they can’t suffer, so it’s okay to kill them’ argument. It is just there to provoke people’s self-interest: ‘Gee, Professor Dawkins is implying that if I oppose abortion, I ought to give up eating meat. But I don’t want to do that…”
Conversely, let us now consider the suffering of Dr John Britton. Is it really the fact that he can suffer that is important? Say if, instead of laying in wait for him with a shotgun, Paul Hill had waited until he was deeply asleep and then painlessly administered a lethal injection? Would the State of Florida have said, ‘Oh, that’s allright then, you can go on your merry way’? As far as I know, Paul Hill was a pretty good shot and John Britton’s death was actually pretty instantaneous and painless. If I went to Pensacola and tried to shoot an abortionist, on the other hand, I’m sure I would only wing them and they would come good in the end, after a whole lot of immediate pain and months or years of agonising physio. Yet, Jeb Bush would not connive at my judicial murder for the attempted killing of a doctor. Why not? They will have suffered a damn sight more.
I submit that ‘Can they suffer?’ is the wrong question. It is irrelevant to proper consequentionalist morals, since you can murder someone without them suffering and we still- quite properly- think this is bad.

(2) Suffering of the Victim’s Friends.
Richard points out that John Britton had ‘…a devastated widow and orphaned children, perhaps elderly parents who dote on him.’ All of these people will obviously feel real suffering at his loss. But if this is the consequentionalist reason not to kill him, then what about people who have no friends? Is it more permissible to knock them off? I have seen this argument seriously advanced with respect to animals (e.g., C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain) but so far as I know, only facetiously with respect to humans (e. g., S. Abernethy, A Call for the Vivisection of Orphans). Does the argument that it was wrong to kill John Britton because people were sad about his death imply that if I were to distribute lurid details of his crimes beforehand to millions of members of my militant anti-abortion group², so that his continued existence caused them suffering and they were really happy about his death, then it would be okay? I think, probably, no.

(3) Loss of Potential.
Richard points out that John Britton had ‘…hopes, loves, aspirations, etc.’ What does this mean? It means that if he had not been killed, chances are he would be enjoying his retirement now. He might be writing really splendid novels, like Sheri S. Tepper. He might be out playing golf in the wonderful Pensacola sunshine. He could be travelling around the country in a campervan, or sitting in front of the TV doing Sudoku. These are all things he could have been doing that have been brutally and unfairly taken away from him . Chances are, he would have been doing something that pleased him and enriched the universe in some way. He is not; his life has been cut short with his potential unfulfilled, and that was why it was wrong to kill him.
That is also why it was wrong for him to kill those embryos and foetuses.

The only way that a consequentionalist defense of abortion can be maintained is to suddenly introduce an absolutist distinction: to make into an unbridgeable chasm the difference between an expressed hope and desire and a potential hope and desire. For, if those embryos John Britton killed had not been killed, they too might now be playing golf or sitting in front of the TV³. There is very nearly as good a probability that they would have gone on to do these things as there was that John Britton would go on to do them. The only difference is the difference between the seen and the unseen: we saw a great deal of John Britton’s potential unfold; we did not see the potential of those embryos and foetuses unfold, because their lives were brutally and unfairly taken away from them. The consequence of the killing of those human individuals is that they were denied the whole of the life that we other human individuals take for granted, and if ‘consequentionalist morals’ do not consider that as a valid consequence, I think they need another name.

Note that this discussion has not mentioned God. It has not mentioned religion. It has not even assumed the existence of an absolute morality. It is based purely on what we all, intuitively, understand to be so bad about premature death. To my mind, it is a well-thought-out consequentionalist morality eminently suitable for theist and atheist alike.

And I am now done with Richard’s book.

1: Assuming for the moment that Jeremy Bentham was Spanish, which he wasn’t.

2: I am not really the mastermind of a militant anti-abortion group with millions of members. This is a hypothetical.

3: Or robbing convenience stores, to pre-empt Marco pointing this out.

The Vehicle is not the Destination

Scene 1: A quote by 1960s geneticist Robert Sinsheimer, quoted in ‘Brave New Worlds’ by Bryan Appleyard.
The old eugenics was limited to a numerical enhancement of the best of our existing gene pool. The new eugenics would permit in principle the conversion of all the unfit to the highest genetic level ... it is a new horizon in the history of man. Some may smile and feel that this is but a new version of the old dream, the perfection of man. It is that, but it is something more. The old dreams of the cultural perfection of man were always sharply constrained by his inherent, inherited imperfections and limitations ... to foster his better traits and to curb his worse by cultural means alone has been, while clearly not impossible, in many instances most difficult ... we now glimpse another route – the chance to ease the internal strains and heal the internal flaws directly, to carry on and consciously perfect far beyond our present vision this remarkable product of two billion years of evolution.

Scene 2: A quote about that quote by Bryan Appleyard, in his book...
Both Sinsheimer and the NAS report took the view that biological control represented a logical extension of mankind’s glorious progress to complete mastery of nature. This progress is seen as the defining project of the species. In both quotations one feels that nothing else but science is of significance. All other human activity and achievements are reduced to a sideshow, for it is science that changes ‘man’s view of hismelf’, and it is science that can ‘ease the internal strains and heal the internal flaws’. If science alone can do all these things, it is difficult to know what else there is to be done and what possible historical status can be accorded to anybody who is not a scientist.

Scene 3: S’nshmra, the island of Flores, BCE 12,000
The old swimming was limited to the strength of one hobbit. With the new boats, we can in principle take any person, whether they are strong or weak, across the ocean to other places ... it is a new horizon in the history of hobbitkind. Some may smile and feel that this is but a new version of the old dream, the perfection of hobbitkind. It is that, but it is something more. The old dreams of the cultural perfection of swimming were always sharply constrained by our inherent, inherited imperfections and limitations ... to achieve the ability to cover miles of open ocean by training and practice alone has been, while clearly not impossible, in many instances most difficult ... we now glimpse another route – the chance to surpass the internal strains and internal flaws of the swimmer, to carry on and consciously perfect far beyond our present vision our remarkable capacity to travel not only on land, but in water.

Scene 3: P’plrda, the island of Flores, BCE 11,970
S’nshmra took the view that boatbuilding represented a logical extension of hobbitkind’s glorious progress to complete mastery of nature. This progress is seen as the defining project of the species. In her quotation one feels that nothing else but boatbuilding is of significance. All other hobbit activity and achievements are reduced to a sideshow, for it is boatbuilding that can ‘perfect hobbitkind’, that can ‘surpass the internal strains and internal flaws of the swimmer’. If boatbuilding alone can do all these things, it is difficult to know what else there is to be done and what possible historical status can be accorded to anybody who is not a boatbuilder.

Salvaging shreds of comfort

Marco has assured me that blogging is mandated by God, so I will not shirk my Divine mission.

I was going to write something, whichever way the House of Representatives vote on therapeutic cloning went, about how sometimes we silly muddle-headed voters get leaders who are better than we deserve: viz., Messrs Howard, Rudd, and Vaile all voting against the 'Let Scientists Go Crazy Ape Bonkers with their Drills and Sex' bill, while every poll I saw had the electorate solidly in favour of it.

But... I read this morning in Hansard my local M.P.'s contribution to the debate, which was a speech about how he is only a humble servant of his constituents, doing what they tell him. And he voted the way I told him. Woot!

So the planned theme of my post is shot to bits. And the LSGCABWTDAS bill has passed. But I feel kind of vindicated.

Pope to Blame

New Salisbury mayor Gordon Blake and shire councillors were unanimous today in placing blame for the deaths of lovable local larrikins Dan Mitchell and Gary Harris on Transport Minister Pope. Harris and Mitchell were killed early yesterday morning when their light utility was struck by a B-double at the intersection of Bringabong Rd. and the Dunnit highway.

‘Pope has blood on his hands,’ Mayor Blake told the media. ‘If there had been a stop sign at the intersection, Dan and Gary would still be alive today. Pope’s a bad man, with a callous disregard for human life. If there had been a stop sign, Dan and Gary would have stopped. Instead, they’re dead. Two innocent men who stopped off at the pub for a beer after work are dead, Mr Pope!’

Officer Eric Stubley, who was following Mr Mitchell’s vehicle in an attempt to encourage him to provide a breath sample shortly before the vehicle entered the intersection, joined in condemning Pope. ‘Er- it’s his fault, I guess, if you say so.’



And, as Google tells me today is World AIDS day, here are some statistics on contraceptive use in Africa. See if you can spot any correlation between condom use and Catholicism!

That eerie silence with a few chirping crickets...

...is the sound of me not saying anything about the 34:32 vote in favour of therapeutic cloning in the Senate, nor the mid-term elections in the United States. Nor- you may have noticed- about NaNoWriMo.

Chastened Dr Clam

Nato presents me with a fine discourse on humility, which I ignore. I proceed to get stuck into Jim Wallis for recognising that poverty is bad but not giving any serious thought to what courses of action are best suited to get rid of it. Then Marco kindly and gently points out that this is exactly what I tend to do about abortion. Curses!
It seems that the lowest rates of abortion in the world are in Western European countries characterised by extremely high rates of contraceptive use encouraged by universal public health care. (Note to self: find out if anyone in the United States has been game enough to suggest this lately). Prohibition per se does not seem to be very helpful. This seems to suggest: (1) as with so many other things, economic growth is what humanity needs, and abortion rates can be expected to fall as more folks have more stuff; (2) ideologists such as Dr Clam should remain ever aware that forwarding the aims of their meme-bundle in society at large may require entirely different courses of action than those mandated for those who share his meme-bundle. I am a humbler and a wiser Dr Clam this afternoon- thank you, gentlebeings!

A long, long, time ago...

...I was brought up in the same sort of liberal Christian orthodoxy that Jim Wallis is espousing. I have to admit that I haven't yet found his recent book, Nato, but I have skimmed two from the early eighties I found at the library. It is all wearily familiar and pretty much as I remember it from the guitar-playing nuns of my childhood. They never said anything about abortion. They said a lot about the evils of American militarism. They said a lot about the evils of poverty. They never said anything much about the evils of America's enemies, and they left me with the strong impression that poor people were poor just because the rich people were keeping all the money for themselves.

I am one of those 16% of people in the poll Jim Wallis talks about who would say abortion is the greatest moral crisis facing America. It is a wrong that is obviously wrong, it is symptomatic of a deep philosophical loss of bearings that separates our age from the earlier centuries of Western civilisation, and it is a wrong that is easy to fix. Poverty is also a wrong that is obviously wrong, but it is something that is non-trivial to fix, and the 'obvious' solutions to fixing it are not solutions that work. The empirical evidence seems to be that the best way to alleviate poverty worldwide, an outcome I fervently desire, is to eliminate artificial barriers to the movement of goods, services, and most of all, labour. At the moment, the people who are pushing for the removal of these barriers in the United States are overwhelmingly on the right-wing side of politics. So, if we accept Jim Wallis' vision of poverty reduction as the single overriding concern for Christian voters, voting for the Democrats is still daft.

You might notice in one of the Gospels, Nato- I can't remember which one- Judas says 'This is a waste of money: this perfume should have been sold and given to the poor' and Jesus says 'Don't sweat it. The poor will be with you always', and in the next chapter Judas goes off to betray Jesus? That synchronicity of events has seemed important to me ever since I noticed it. It still bugs me. I think Judas really believed Jesus was all about eliminating poverty and forwarding the historical praxis of liberation (like me, circa 1990, and like Jim) and that when he found out that the truth was something different, he couldn't handle it.

The One Thing

I will have a go at answering Dave's question about whether I am diminishing myself by being a single-issue voter. It is my self-description, so I have to wear it. But I will redefine what it means to suit my purposes at the moment. When I say I am a single-issue voter, is the single issue really 'abortion', or is it something larger? Remember, the most important thing about a person is their philosophy. Does holding a correct opinion about abortion necessarily indicate that an aspiring politician holds a philosophy that is consistent with my own? No. But, does holding an incorrect opinion about abortion necessarily indicate that an aspiring politician holds a philosophy that is inconsistent with my own? Yes.

I have recently been forcibly reminded of a minor flaw in my character- the extreme contempt with which I regard all arbitrary rules. For this reason I must necessarily believe in the existence of non-arbitrary rules. Are there philosophies that permit abortion and hold that there are non-arbitrary moral rules? Yes. Are these philosophies internally consistent and not inconsistent with our experimental observations of the universe? No. And since internal consistency and harmony with the results of observation are the two other things that I look for in a philosophy, there I must part company with the Sikhs and Dr Ahmadinejad et al. There are of course philosophies that are internally consistent and not contradicted by the universe which would allow abortion: the philosophies of moral relativism.

Which brings me to the Pope's speech at Regensburg. It is really about how a philosophy needs to be internally consistent and not inconsistent with observations of the universe, but that those two things are not enough. He was talking about how faith (that there are absolute rules) must be combined with reason (those rules have to make sense). These are the two things that need to be believed before anything else is possible. Science accepts these two things, without explicitly saying that is what it is doing. They are the assumptions you have to make before you can begin doing science. I don't think the Pope's philosophy is entirely internally consistent or in harmony with experimental evidence, but he is entirely correct to say that is how a philsophy ought to be. The bits of his speech that have caused all the trouble are where he is talking about religious philosophies that reject these as values. But he spent more time discussing the irreligious philosophies that reject the other half of the equation.
Quote number one from the Pope, on what happens when we reject absolute morality:

It is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by "science" and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective. The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective "conscience" becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical. In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.

Quote number two from the Pope, on what this rejection means to the relation between the West and Islam:

In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.

Which is sufficient unto the moment.

Chimerae and Whatnot

Just in case anyone should happen to come here from the New Scientist Short Sharp Science Blog, here are some relevant Accidental Blog posts on beginning-of-life issues...

In which I am saddened to find out about the Muslim position.

In which I first explicitly outline the consequentionalist argument against destruction of human embryos.

In which I present the consequentionalist argument in painful detail.

In which I make a pretentious statement of the consequentionalist argument.

In which I state my problems with the sort of thinking that I believe underlies statements like the 'One Woman Two Souls' blog entry.

Three Good Things

1: The Veto
I am very pleased that Bush has used his first veto in such a splendid way. There is no decent rationale for embryonic stem cell research, and the proponents of this research frequently stoop to the worst kind of emotional blackmail in their arguments. I have been repeatedly disappointed that bodies such as the Australian Academy of Science have made statements equating disapproval of this research with disapproval of science.

Q: In terms of therapeutic results obtained, have adult stem cells been more successful than embryonic stem cells?

A: Yes, certainly.

Q: In terms of our current understanding of biology, are there strong reasons to believe that adult stem cells will in almost all cases be more therapeutically useful than embryonic stem cells?

A: Yes, certainly.

Q: On the other hand, are embryonic stem cells more fundamentally interesting for developmental biologists?

A: Yes, certainly.

Q: And aren't all scientists primed by their training to argue with every fibre of their being that their research is incredibly important and should be funded?

A: Yes, certainly.

Q: And aren't people who are dying of horrible diseases and their relatives proverbially susceptible to shysters promising miracles?

A: Yes, certainly. Though I'm not sure I see your point.

Q: Now, would funding for embryonic stem cell research be extra funding in addition to what is already spent on medical research?

A: Yes, cer.. er, who are you kiddng? This is the Bush Administration you are talking about. Look at their appalling record of funding science!

Q: So, is funding embryonic stem cell research likely to take funds away from equally good (or better) research projects with equally good (or better) prospects for valuable therapeutic outcomes?

A: Yes, cer.. You mean, it might threaten my project? For the love of God, we must act now!

2: The Silence
I a very pleased that Bush has not come out with an even-handed condemnation of both parties in the most recent Arab-Israeli fracas. This is a significant advance on the attitude of U.S. Administrations in 2000, 1987, 1982, 1973, 1967, 1956 and 1948. I think since 2003 the U.S. has a much better intuitive understanding of Israel's position and the challenges it is facing. The process of bringing stability, democracy, and Happy Fun World^TM-nature of the Middle East can only begin when the Great Satan is willing to stand side by side with the Little Satan and say 'pish tosh' to the forces of Islamofascism. I suggest the following:

"Yes, our Litte Satanic pals are not perfect, but there is no moral equivalence between them and you mealy-mouthed murderers. For they are basically right, and good, and you are basically wrong, and bad. We will certainly press our pals to behave more ethically, and we will not fail to chastise them for their failings, but you we shall smite with a great smiting, yea and verily, until the echo of the rumour of the shadow of your presence on this earth is a forgotten memory and all your works have perished utterly, as if they had never been."

Or words to that effect.

3: The End.
On a much more local level, my University has seen the light and has agreed to knock the disgraceful degree programme in Homeopathic Medicine on the head. It will no longer be offered after this semester! Huzzah! [Prolonged cheering]

To be, that is the answer

This is only here because the text recognition thing is (temporarily, I hope) preventing me from posting comments on my own blog.

The article mentions the models, but doesn't describe them except in vague emotive terms, so I can't tell you which one I subscribe to! Put me down for whatever the Guatemalans are doing.

Quoth Marco: Let me try another tack. This other article Cupidity mentions four competing yet incompatible models for the economy of the baby "industry". Which do you subscribe to and how would the caliphate fit into a world with other models in play? Could desparate parent wannabe's travel there to buy a spare to make profit for the Mahdi? Could desparately poor parents sell their babies for cash they need to feed their macadamia nut habits? Could parents whose children are in the mujahideen's army change their mind and get them back? Could youngsters have unprotected sex with gay abandon because the fedayeen would foot the bills for any resulting children and forced sterilisations? What happens if the burden of dependants overwhelms the system? Or the opposite - if youngsters become risk averse and birth rate drops through the floor? What cracks first?

To answer your questions: Yes, yes, yes, and no. Remember, these are supposed to be good Muslims, or good members of traditional dhimmi religions with decent values. The burden of dependents won't become too great because they will be supported by the productive labour of the older generation of dependents- this is not quantitative, but it would definitely be an improvement on the situation where both the young unwanted underclass *and* the working-age unwanted underclass form a welfare burden on society.
The birth rate is unlikely to fall through the floor, because the prevailing ideology of the society is optimistic and philoprogentive- it is societies without such ideologies, overcome by mindless nihilism and despair, like Europe in the 3rd and 21st centuries, that suffer such calamities.

One step foward, two steps back

First, the good news. There is no stem cell debate. The whole thing is an exercise in barrow pushing and button pushing. This I learned recently when I was lucky enough to hear a talk by a chap named Graham Parker who is on the board of the journal ‘Stem Cell Research’ and works at a research hospital in Michigan.

*The more differentiated a stem cell is when you start messing around with it, the more effective it is. This is why we still need blood transfusions, and don’t culture haemotopoetic stem cells. Inner-cell-mass-derived (aka embryonic) stem cells are less differentiated than somatic (aka adult) stem cells and appear much more likely to turn into invasive cancers when you inject them into mice.

*Nobody has a clue how stem cells really work clinically. It does not look like they just move in and turn into the sort of cells that are around them. They do other weird things that nobody understands yet. No responsible government would license their use on a general basis.

*The chaps who first discovered inner-cell-mass-derived stem cells never claimed they had clinical uses. They still don’t. They are of fundamental importance in understanding developmental biology, which is important fundamental research and will eventually lead to all sorts of innovations- but they won’t involve injecting people with stem cells. 97+% of this fundamental research could be done with stem cells of the other mammals that we share so much of our DNA with.

So this is what I learned: Stem cells are not going to cure every known disease. ‘Adult’ stem cells are going to be better than ‘embryonic’ stem cells at curing stuff. There is never going to be any industrial scale production of inner-cell-mass-derived stem cells. There is not much point arguing about them, one way or another.

Second, the bad news. I sort of suspected this for a while, given that they adhere to the vitalist ‘ensoulment’ model that I have previously maligned, but Muslim scholars are not reliable on abortion.

Of the four main Sunni legal schools:
* The Hanbali allow abortion up to 40 days.
* The Shafi’i allow abortion up to 80 days, or sometimes 120.
* The Halafi- which are dominant in Central Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, and the former Ottoman Empire and include those pathetic liberal pansies, the Taliban- allow abortion up to 4 months after conception.
* Only the Maliki- dominant in North and West Africa, including about 25% of the world’s Muslims- show a glimmer of sense, saying that life begins at implantation.

The Shi’a of Iran, like their neighbours in Turkey and Central Asia, say ensoulment happens at 4 months – or sometimes 4 and a half. In fact, the abortion laws of Iran were ‘liberalised’ after the Islamic revolution. They were stricter under the Shah!

So there doesn’t seem to be any point in working towards a global caliphate. Depressed now.

Us and Them

I am absolutely alone in my essential ethical position, and therefore useless.
-Lord Acton

I am rather jealous that this discussion about religion, science, and absolute and relative morality has taken off on Marco’s blog. I am not so terribly fussed how the conclusion ‘we should all stick together’ is reached, so long as it is. What is much more important is where we draw the boundary between ‘we’ and ‘not we’, and how logically defensible that boundary is.

Historically, the philosophies of advanced societies have followed one of two paths:

(1) There is a ‘soul’ that distinguishes humans from animals, and makes them ‘we’; it may be pre-existing or may be created with each new human; it may enter the body at conception, or it may enter at some later date (e.g., Aquinas’ three months). Animals and pre-ensoulment entities that are genetically human are not ‘we’. This, as you will be well aware, was the historical position of Judaeo-Christian-Islamic culture.

(2) Everything has a ‘soul’- or, which amounts to the same thing, everything does not. There is no essential difference between humans and animals. Societies holding this position have usually held up vegetarianism as an ideal, even if it was not realised, and had a shading of moral responsibilities from big souls to little souls.

A problem with ethics in our culture is that our habitual, traditional, instinctive line between ‘we’ and ‘not we’ is essentially that of (1), as it was drawn by the philosophers of the High Middle Ages, but this line is not consistent with post-Judaeo-Christian-Islamic core axioms, which logically support (2).

Realisation that there is no essential difference between humans and animals, 5th Century BCE: ‘Gosh, we’d better be nice to animals.’

Realisation that there is no essential difference between humans and animals, 20th Century CE: ‘Hey, we can make soap out of people, too.’

Neolithic Metaphysics Revisited

Brent Howard, of Rydalmere, writes in El Pais de Murdoch:

David van Gend (Letters, 21/2) rails agaisnt the deliberate creation and killing of human embryos but offers no arguments. This process does not harm the embryos. Obviously, being created and then living, without consciousness, for a short period cannot be worse for an embryo than never existing at all. Even if we focus on embryos after their creation, they are not harmed by death. As eminent philosophers such as Michael Tooley and Derek Parfit have explained, unconscious embryos that have never had any desires or aspirations have no interest in ongoing life. The mere physical potential of the embryo does not impose any obligations upon others. We can uproot a sapling if we don’t want a tree, and John Howard’s potential to win another election doesn’t mean we must vote for him. We have no duties to embryos. Banning embryonic research that could help sick people is wrong.

If we have no duties to embryos- simply because all their capacity for suffering and joy, creation and destruction, lies in the future- than how can the potential existence of future generations impose any moral obligations on us?
It cannot. The particular comes before the general, and is the only reality. If the philosophers reject the moral obligation imposed by the embryo, which is actual in its potential, how much more must they reject the moral obligation imposed by those who are only potentially potential? It does not matter if we exhaust all fossil fuel resources: those future humans who might need them are only potential. It does not matter if we exterminate the last of the Surinamese swamp weasels. Their deaths are no more painful than their natural deaths would have been, and those future generations of swamp weasels were only potential: we have no duties to them.
These are only a few of the implications of the sophistry of those two philosophical gentleman. To reverence only the actual, and not the potential, is a religion for barbarians. It is appropriate for those who have no care for the past or the future, who are confident that each new day will bring a fresh hamlet to pillage to provide for all their needs. There is not only the moment. There is what a thing was, and what a thing will be, and these things should also inform our moral judgments.
One might argue: ‘Your fossil fuels, your Surinamese swamp weasels, those are things that are the common heritage of all humanity. I would not be so presumptuous as to judge that the rest of you should be deprived of their potential. But this embryo is mine, it belongs to me; its fate is mine to decide.’ This is a very old voice speaking. This is the voice of the Roman paterfamilias, with the acknowledged power of life and death over his children and his slaves.
But I say, no, that embryo is also part of the common heritage of all humanity. It does not belong to you, any more than the Surinamese swamp weasel belongs to the good burghers of Surinam. I will be diminished if I stand by while they clearfell the last stand of weasel swamp. I will be diminished if I stand by while that embryo is destroyed. I value it as a potential PhD student, as the potential drummer in the gurnge revival band responsible for the enigmatic concept album ‘Erklarungun der Kroten’, as the potential shopgirl who will smile- or scowl- at me at the checkout at Bi-Lo in 2025, even as the potential criminal whose wanton acts in a distant city will give me a momentary glow of Schadenfreude when I am a crusty old codger.
Destroying embryos that could grow up into any of those things, even if it could help sick people, is wrong.

[Editor’s note: The blogger had been re-reading Borges at the time this post was composed, which accounts for its almost unbearable pretentiousness. The previous post has no such excuses.]