He writes:
"My only concern is that it seems strange to me to protect non-sentient fetuses while allowing fully sentient adults to suffer. Not that I want to try to value one life over another, but if the scale came down to a fetus on one side, and a suffering adult on the other, I'd go with the adult everytime. If you disagree, then you seem like PETA to me."These three short sentences contain a number of separate issues, which I will try to separate and analyze.
First up is the issue of contradicting one's own ethical statement. He says that he doesn't want to try to value one life over another. This is indeed a statement of an ethical value. In the same sentence, however, he posits a valuation favorable to one side; this is based on two criteria for making that valuation: suffering; and sentience.
Next is the issue of the situation posited: a fetus on one side and suffering adult on the other side. This is called a False Dichotomy Fallacy, aka Black and White Fallacy, and other names too. The dichotomy being presented is said to represent the only two choices available, and that one is forced to choose between them. This is clearly not the case for embryonic stem cell exploitation.
Embryonic stem cells currently cause more problems than they solve, including rejection, tumors and cancer including death; Adult stem cells, aka induced Pluripotent Stem Cells or iPSC, already do far more than embryonic stem cells, far more safely. So there is a valid third choice available, one which actually eliminates the problems of embryonic stem cells. Moreover, there is no guarantee that embryonic stem cells will ever relieve the suffering of an adult, as the posit requires us to believe. So the situation (a) does not exist in the real world, and (b) will not exist in the real world.
The purpose of restricting a choice to a severe dichotomy is to attempt to force a choice between extremely abnormal selections, resulting in an abnormal, extreme choice. Example:
"You must rape someone; would you rather rape a German child or a Polish 90 year old?"If you choose either one, you can be identified as a rapist. The entire exercise is false. You can refuse to do either: the premise is false, you are not forced to rape and will not be.
Yet to top it off, a bullying technique can be used to induce you to make the choice. In our case, the choice is made by the advocate, and the threat attached:
"if you disagree with my choice then you are [fill in the pejorative]."
This is an attempt to force an emotional need to avoid the pejorative by going ahead and buying into the fallacy by making a selection. If it works, the advocate "wins", no matter which choice you make: either you agree or you are [fill in the pejorative].
Plus the second dichotomy is actually a false syllogism: If A, and if B, then C. C is true only if both A and B are true. Our case goes like this:
"If my dichotomy is true, and if you don't agree with my choice which is true, then you are [fill in the pejorative]."
But the dichotomy is false; so the choice is false; and the entire syllogism, including the conclusion, is false.
No one has to make the choice when faced with a False Dichotomy Fallacy. Making the choice is itself a fallacy by contributing to a false conclusion.
It is easy to fall into the trap of creating fallacies to support an agenda. This is especially true when the agenda has no other defense or rational foundation. The issue of embryonic stem cell exploitation is a case in point. Claiming that it will prevent suffering is scientism; it is not known to be a fact, it is conjecture, speculation. The same argument could be made for experimenting on twins by killing one for immediate analysis and observing the other - could this have produced a relief from suffering? We won't likely know, because it was declared unethical and outlawed; Mengele's research data stricken from further use.
But now there are no more scruples; such things are "ideology" and hamper science. This must not be allowed, even to the point of rewriting ethics itself. This is the point of observing the ethical destruction being wrought in the USA today. Scruples are restraints; without restraints what is possible? Will we like it? I'm guessing not.
7 comments:
There are 100's of scientific studies that have been done on AFA and our product StemEnhance. There are also 100's of scientific papers on Adult Stem Cell therapy. I have listed quite a few on my blog that you can read at http://www.phyl247.biz You can also find the book over at Amazon.com that Christian Drapeau wrote. It is called "The Stem Cell Theory of Renewal" Take a look if you would like to talk feel free to email or call me anytime 877-696-8581
Hi Stan, as an off-topic, see this recent survey on religious beliefs and atheism in U.S.:
http://b27.cc.trincoll.edu/weblogs/AmericanReligionSurvey-ARIS/reports/ARIS_Report_2008.pdf
Regarding your post and the ethical problems, I tend to consider life as an absolute value. In this sense, I'm against abortion or experimentation with fetuses.
I'm not sure if suffering and sentience are sufficient (and the only) criteria for support ethical values, because in an absolutist axiology, even if fetuses are non-sentient, they have a intrinsic value. So, in that framework, values are not limited to suffering or sentience.
For example, take the case of a masochist. Given that "he likes to suffer", it would be justified to cause him suffering?
Take the example of of a child that likes to have sex with an adult. The child is enyoying it, and the adult (if he's a paedophilic) too. But does it justify the adult's paedophilic behaviour? I don't think so.
Even when both of them are enjoying that activity (and not suffering), I consider it ummoral (and socially dangerous).
Granted, it's a debatable opinion and an open axiological question; but I see ethical relativism as potentially dangerous and destructive.
ZC, Thanks for your comment. One of the more insidious features of ethical relativism is that it frequently is applied to others in a disproportionate sense from applying it to oneself. Relativism is like building a house on jello.
Keep in mind, though, that my goal was not to postulate a situation like the above.
The goal was to simply find out why/how you value fetuses a certain way, adult humans another, Iraqi civilians another, death row inmates another, etc.
It just seems like lopsided outrage to me.
Martin, You are the one who said that you would value them differently, not me. My value is not differential as is yours. You seem to deliberately misunderstand that. But let me try again, in the plainest language I can muster.
Americans who deliberately murder Iraqi civilians are tried and punished. The USA did everything possible in a wartime endeavor including pinpoint bombing, in order to invoke surrender without civilian casualties. The USA did not intend to murder Iraqis. The USA intended to prevent Saddam from murdering Israelis with his WMDs, of which he stupidly refused to allow UN inspection. Saddam did use WMDs on the Kurds. Under Saddam, the war was inevitable. It was not against Iraqi civilians.
Death row inmates. The balance here is a guilty person who has forfeited his life by his own hand, vs. the innocent people he harmed. It's called justice. However the devaluation of the perpetrator is done by himself, not by me.
In both of these cases, society is fulfilling an obligation to protect its members, by force if necessary. Members who do harm must be decommisioned by whatever means, graduated in severity as possible, that is necessary. Otherwise civilization will be overrun by violent hordes, while the civil authorities cavil.
None of this requires valuing any human as less than human, or as worthy of death: the guilty do that for themselves.
A fetus does not do that: it is not guilty, and is in fact murdered for profit: to profit the adult.
A sick, suffering adult does not justify killing another innocent human in order to relieve the suffering.
Surely you can see the difference. I think that you can, but you really do want to make that life/death decision yourself.
Outrage? I felt angry that Saddam forced the civilized world to act; I was angry that he did it out of stupidity; I am angry that people murder other people and therefore forfeit their lives; I am angry that fetuses are murdered by the millions in this country - for the stupidity of birth control; I am angry that fetuses will be marketed and murdered for profit.
Am I angry that adults suffer? No, it is sad, very sad, even anguishing. But adults have suffered (and died) from time immemorial, it is not new, nor is it a cause for outrage. It is a cause for science, with scruples, to pursue solutions. Scruples were defined by civilized nations after the NAZI science under the likes of Mengele; now that is being abandoned right here at home in the USA; that is cause for outrage.
So you see, it is not valuation that is differential, it is the outrage. You are apparently outraged by the lack of differential valuation of certain categories of humans. That is not logical, unless differential valuation is your objective.
"In both of these cases, society is fulfilling an obligation to protect its members, by force if necessary."
But couldn't you see stem cell research as the same thing? Society has an obligation to protect its members from outrageous diseases. Alzheimer's is analogous to Saddam's weapons. The disease is stubborn and it must be decommissioned. Otherwise society will be overrun by violent diseases and further suffering caused by economic and health crises.
Why does it matter if it's a bomb or Alzheimer's? It's suffering either way, regardless of the medium by which it is delivered. And to rid society of either one results in loss of innocent lives, no?
Whoops, killed Iraqi civilians to rid the world of a greater evil.
Whoops, killed fetuses to rid the world of a greater evil.
Martin,
You continually conflate purposeful killing with non-purposeful killing.
Furthermore, the idea that the government is compelled by obligation to eradicate all disease is not valid. The only valid pursuit of government is to protect the citizen's liberty to pursue his own path to "happiness".
Government co-option of nanny functions for its citizens is an onerous feature of incipient social totalitarianism.
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