Practical Ethics

Is it Worth Living Longer?

Research recently published in Nature suggests that the drug rapamycin may have the potential to extend human life span by decades: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8139816.stm

If the life is of ‘positive’ value, it might seem obvious that the drug is worth taking. But not everyone would agree. The Hellenistic philosopher Epicurus famously argued that, since it marks the end of conscious life, ‘death nothing to us’. Fearing death makes as much sense as regretting you weren’t around for all that time before your birth.

Nice People Take Drugs (Too)

The drug and human rights charity *Release* recently launched an advertising campaign in which the slogan ‘Nice People Take Drugs’ was displayed on the sides of London buses. Their aim was to encourage society to face up to the reality that a huge proportion of the population does at least experiment with drugs and to combat the popular assumption, which underlies a good deal of political rhetoric and media coverage, that since drugs are simply ‘evil’ there is no point in seriously debating drug policy. Those ads are now being withdrawn by the company that booked the space, after advice from the Committee of Advertising Practice: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/09/nice-people-drugs-ads-pulled

Apparently, Release has been told that their strap-line would be more acceptable if it included the word ‘too’. This suggests that the CAP may have felt that the public would read the original claim as equivalent to ‘All those who take drugs are nice people’. But even adding the word ‘too’ may not be enough. For the new sentence might be read as: ‘All nice people take drugs, along with other things (such as holidays when they can, advice when they need it, offence when people are rude to them, etc.).’ Of course, no one would have understood either the new or the old sentence in these ways. But in fact, though it should be up to Release how they word their strap-line (the censorship charge they have made doesn’t seem far-fetched), adding ‘too’ does bring out more clearly what they want to say: that we should stop demonizing drug-takers and have an open, impartial, and well-informed debate.

Decimating Democracy?

Labour MP Shahid Malik has resigned as justice minister after claims about his expenses were published in the Daily Telegraph: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8051091.stm
Shortly before standing down, he claimed that the extensive media coverage of the expenses issue is in danger of ‘decimating democracy’.

There’s room for debate about whether Mr Malik is using the verb ‘to decimate’ properly. The word comes from the practice in ancient Rome of killing one in ten of a group of soldiers as a punishment for mutiny – not nine out of ten. But of course Mr Malik’s usage is now so common that it probably has to be accepted as part of standard English.

Contradicting Nature

Rubén Noé Coronado Jiménez is 25 and pregnant with twins. He is unusual in that he is a transsexual man, in the middle of hormone treatments and about to undergo a full operation to change his sex: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/30/transexual-man-pregnant-twins . The operation has, of course, been postponed while he and his female partner await the birth of their children.

Dr Josep-Luis Ballescà, a gynaecologist at the Clinical Hospital of Barcelona, has said that that the pregnancy is ‘not necessarily ethically acceptable: it is a contradiction.’

It’s hard to know quite what kind of contradiction Dr Ballescà has in mind. But it’s likely that part of what he means is that for a male to give birth goes against nature. And, if we assume that what is unnatural is morally wrong, we can draw the conclusion that Jiménez is acting wrongly. Either he should have had his children while still fully female, or he should have sought other means to have children, such as adoption.

The great C18 Scottish philosopher David Hume said that there is no word ‘more ambiguous and equivocal’ than ‘nature’ (Treatise 3.1.2.7). First, what’s natural can be contrasted with what is supernatural or miraculous. On the face of it, a man’s giving birth to a baby is a miracle, but of course on closer inspection we find that this pregnancy can be explained in purely naturalistic terms. Second, what is typical or usual can be called natural. Certainly what’s going on here is unusual. But why think that what is unusual is bad, regrettable, or wrong? Acts of very great heroism are unusual; but their being unusual if anything makes them more praiseworthy. Third, the natural can be contrasted with the artificial. Again, given the use of reproductive technology in this pregnancy, it could not be described as natural. But it would be hard to take seriously the idea that we should avoid the artificial. Most medical treatment would be forbidden, so it seems unlikely that it is that Dr Ballescà was thinking of.

It is most probable that behind Dr Ballescà’s remark lies a commitment to a kind of teleology: the idea that the world is to be understood in terms of certain purposes or goals, and that each being should seek to achieve the purposes specific to it. This form of naturalism is often tied to theology, and raises the question how we can know the purposes of God. There are certainly passages from the scriptures in various traditions which can be used to criticize Jiménez’s actions; but those passages themselves are open to different interpretations, often informed by other passages of scripture. We are anyway entitled to ask why God might have ascribed to women the role of giving birth. The obvious answer is to continue the species, and there seems no reason why men shouldn’t play the same valuable role.

Designer Babies and Slippery Slopes

Designer babies are in the news again. The LA Fertility Institutes, headed by a 1970s IVF pioneer, have offered the opportunity for potential parents to choose traits such as the eye and hair colour of their children: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7918296.stm

Unsurprisingly, slippery slope arguments have already begun to appear: http://www.theage.com.au/world/la-delivers-first-designerbaby-clinic-20090302-8meq.html Marcy Darnovsky, director of the Centre for Genetics and Society, has said: ‘The concern is that we'll be creating a society with new sorts of discrimination. Now it’s eye and hair colour. What happens if it’s height and intelligence?’

Slopes can be slippery in different ways, and they can be more or less slippery. The strongest form of slippery slope argument points to a logical implication: if you accept A (which you seem to think is good), then you must accept B (which presumably you think is bad). Pretty clearly, we don’t have an argument of that kind in the present case. There’s no logical inconsistency in  being in favour of parents’ being allowed to select certain traits of their children, while being against discrimination. Nor of course is the existence of selection itself inconsistent with the absence of discrimination.

A more common form of the argument appeals to the lack of a non-arbitrary stopping point. The idea is that you should not accept A because A might conceivably lead to B, and you could find no non-arbitrary place to draw the line between A and B. That doesn’t seem to be Darnovsky’s argument, however, since it wouldn’t be arbitrary to stop selection if it were clearly leading to discrimination, but to permit it up to that point.

The argument here is essentially an appeal to consequences. As stated, however, it is clearly too strong. The concern cannot plausibly that we will be creating a society with new forms of discrimination. Rather, the idea must be that trait-selection may lead to these new forms of discrimination. So we can imagine a world in which people whose parents haven’t selected for certain eye or hair colours are discriminated against, which we can certainly accept would be undesirable.

The main issue here is how likely it is that discrimination on grounds of eye or hair colour will arise. On the face of it, it looks rather unlikely. People’s tastes in eye and hair colour vary a lot, so not everyone would go for (say) blue-eyed and blond children. And these kinds of characteristics anyway do not at present seem to be the basis for any systematic discrimination.

But, the argument suggests, selection for eye and hair colour may lead to selection for height and intelligence, and these may provide the basis for new kinds of discrimination. Again, however, it’s not clear why trait-selection even of these characteristics would lead to new forms of discrimination. There may be discrimination against short people now, in which case trait-selection wouldn’t be creating anything new. And if there isn’t any, then it’s not clear why it should be created merely through there being more tall people around.

Appeals to slippery slopes often rely on the idea that things could get out of control. Once you’re on that slope, you’re just going to keep slipping down and there’s nothing you can do. But that doesn’t seem to be the case with trait-selection. If it does turn out to have consequences we’d prefer to avoid, then we can stop doing it. Fertility clinics do not operate in a legislative vacuum.

So there’s no strong argument here for preventing those few parents who want to choose the eye or hair colour of their children to get on with it. Even if there is a slope, it is not especially slippery -- we can get off at any time.

Achievement and the welfare of children

A report commissioned by the Children’s Society claims that the aggressive pursuit of individual achievement is damaging the interests of children in the UK: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7861762.stm The principal author is Lord Richard Layard, whose book *Happiness: Lessons from a New Science* (Allen Lane, 2005) is the best account of the last few decades of research on happiness.

Those who pursue individual achievement are often motivated by the thought that such achievement will advance their own personal well-being or ‘good’, and this thought finds support in much past and contemporary philosophy, according to which accomplishing something with your life in itself makes it a better life for you.

According to another view of well-being, this is a mistake. This view also has a long history, though it is currently less popular than at many times in the past. Rather ironically (since individualistic  ‘hedonistic’ lifestyles of parents are said to be partly responsible for the problems faced by today’s children), this view is called hedonism. (The ancient Greek word for ‘pleasure’ is hēdonē.)

Philosophical hedonists do not have to claim that the best life for you is one of sensual indulgence. Rather, the best life could be that which contains the greatest balance of enjoyment over any kind of suffering, and enjoyable activities could include all sorts of things – yes, sensual pleasures and achieving things, perhaps, but also spending time with your children or helping others.

Hedonism can also incorporate the idea that some kinds of enjoyment are ‘higher’ than others – helping others, for example, or listening to a late Beethoven sonata might be said to be qualitatively superior to an evening of beer and action movies. The main objection to it was stated most famously by Robert Nozick in his book *Anarchy, State, and Utopia* (Blackwell, 1974, 42-3): ‘Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain … Would you plug in? What else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the inside?’

One obvious thing that might seem to matter to us is genuine personal achievement: that we really accomplish something, rather than just think we have. But according to hedonism this can’t make a difference, if you enjoy your experiences on the machine as much as you would in the ‘real world’.

The jury is still out on hedonism, however, since the experience machine objection is no stronger than other ‘counter-intuitive’ thought experiments dreamed up as challenges to other independently plausible philosophical positions. Hedonists can make various points in an attempt to defuse the power of the example. First, most of the non-hedonic goods cited by anti-hedonists do tend to be things we enjoy. The anti-hedonists might be missing what really makes them worth having. Second, it is a well-known fact that trying to maximize enjoyment is often self-defeating. So aiming for goods such as achievement might actually produce more enjoyment than directly aiming at enjoyment itself. Again, perhaps the anti-hedonist is mistaking what is really good in itself in what we aim at. Third, we should remember that our values have evolved over time. It is easy to imagine how valuing personal achievement may have had ‘survival value’ in past societies. This does not debunk any claim personal achievement has to be being valuable, but it does force us to hold that claim up to the light. Fourth, would you really want to live a life of personal achievement which you didn’t enjoy at all? Fifth, unlike enjoyment, the significance of personal achievement can seem to disappear when we consider it from the ‘perspective of eternity’.  Sixth, personal achievement values doing over allowing. But this is a notoriously difficult idea to defend. Perhaps what matters is not what we do, but how well the history of the world as a whole goes. Finally, if personal achievement is plausibly to count as a value, we must have some kind of responsibility. Again, however, there are powerful arguments to the conclusion that our actions are the result of blind causal processes for which we cannot claim any personal credit.

None of these is a knock-down argument against the experience machine objection. But collectively they are enough to show that hedonism is still a live option. And if hedonists are right, then a single-minded focus on personal achievement may be harming not only children, but the achievers themselves, who might well be happier working less hard and living a more relaxed life with their partners and children.

Climate Change, Abortion, and Impersonality

We are surrounded by many ethical issues, and their complexity makes it tempting to treat each in isolation. But we need to remember that to justify any position requires reference to universal principles, and these principles may well have implications in other areas we find uncomfortable. It’s also the case that thinking about one topic can provide helpful angles on others.

Consider first climate change. European leaders have just announced a climate change pact (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/13/carbon-emissions-eu). One central concern of those advocating measures to slow down and ultimately stop climate change is the well-being of future generations. But, as Derek Parfit brought out especially clearly in his classic Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984, ch. 16), we have here a ‘non-identity problem’. Imagine that we allow the climate to change to the point that conditions on earth are significantly less conducive to human habitation than now. It might seem that future generations would be able to complain about our actions now. But in fact these individuals will exist only because of those actions. If we’d adopted different policies, then different individuals would have been born. The only complaint the future individuals might have would be if we had created conditions such that the value of their lives to them was lower than a life of no value at all – that is, a life which would have been better had it ended just as soon as it began. And even that doesn’t seem such a serious wrong, if the future individuals have the opportunity to end their lives in some not too painful a way.

But surely there is something wrong with damaging the environment so that the value of lives lived is much lower than that of lives that might have been lived? This suggests that an important element in ethics is impersonal. By harming the environment, we are doing something very wrong. But we are not wronging any particular persons. Our wrong consists in making the world – in terms of the quality of lives lived within it, independently of exactly who lives those lives – worse than it might have been.

Now consider abortion, which is condemned in the latest Instruction from the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dignitas Personae: http://www.usccb.org/comm/Dignitaspersonae/Dignitas_Personae.pdf  . The official Catholic view here is that a fetus, because it is a human being (which of course it is – a human being at the fetal stage), has the same dignity and moral status as any other human being. So abortion is on the same moral level as the murder of a child.

A common liberal view in our society is that abortion is entirely morally acceptable, while the murder of a child is very wrong. Here the liberal faces a serious problem which the Catholic does not: where to draw the line between a fetal human being and a young child at which moral status emerges. Liberals often claim that moral status develops gradually, but there is something unsatisfactory about this. What seems to make the murder of a young child wrong, as regards the child itself, is that it deprives the child of the rest of its life. But that is true of abortion. Indeed a murdered child may have had at least some valuable life before it is killed.

Ethical impersonality provides a way for liberals about abortion both to accept the Catholic view on moral status and to allow abortion while forbidding the murder of post-birth human beings. The moral wrong done to a fetus through abortion is indeed on roughly the same level as that done to a murdered post-birth human being. But it is very hard to say, from the impersonal point of view, whether either abortion or murder is wrong. We do not know what the optimum population level at any time is, so whether cutting short any particular life is, in itself, good or bad is unclear. But the effect of a murder on the overall level of well-being in the world is significantly greater than that of an abortion. Not only does it cause painful grief among relatives and friends of the murdered, but it increases fear and a sense of insecurity among many people. Murder on a large scale can even make life intolerable for just about everyone concerned, as recent events in the Congo have illustrated.

To Leak or Not to Leak?

Last Thursday, anti-terrorism police in the UK arrested the opposition minister for immigration, Damian Green (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/29/whitehall-damian-green-civil-servant). He is suspected by the police of ‘conspiracy to commit misconduct in public life’, having published documents leaked to him by a junior civil servant. That official was himself arrested on 19 November, and has been suspended from duty. We should expect that many other such officials are now asking themselves whether, if they come across some document which they believe is a matter of public interest, they should leak it.

The Morality of Suicide Bombing

Since the 1980s, the popularity of suicide attacks – primarily bombing – has grown rapidly. There are now hundreds every year. As I write, the BBC is reporting a suicide bombing which appears to have killed eight people in Pakistan: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7701435.stm The motivation of suicide bombers has been widely discussed by sociologists, historians, psychologists, and others. My topic, however, is not their motivation, but their moral status.

National Borders

An eight-year-old Iranian boy has been released after spending nearly two months in Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/sep/06/immigration.humanrights). Child M, as he’s known, has been given body searches and now, unsurprisingly, seems to have various physical and psychiatric problems. His case is an especially clear example of the effects of national borders, and border controls, on people’s lives.