Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill
Current Affairs, Ethics, Law, Medical May 23rd, 2008I have been trying to find an interesting angle on the recent law passed by the UK government. I am afraid I have not found anything particularly insightful! Both sides seem to be talking past each other. If I may paraphrase each side:
Religion: we respect human life and we should therefore not experiment on embryos.
Scientists: we should experiment on embryos to advance medicine because we respect human life.
This indicates a difference in their conceptions of “respect”. Without specifying this, saying we have respect from human life is ambiguous. It annoys me that most of the media coverage does not scratch the surface of this issue.
My own opinion has been expressed in my blog post – the Paragon of Animals. To base objects based on divisions between species is, almost by definition, arbitrary and transient (all life forms are our distant cousins and all species have a finite duration of existence).
Anti Citizen One
May 24th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Without adding to the extensive commentary we’ve both made on this at some point in the past – I am in full agreement that the debate if one could call it that is about two sides speaking past each other.
This isn’t so much a moral dilemma (though both sides curiously present it as such whilst maintaining the rectitude of their own beliefs) as a communicative problem and a clash between differing language games or dare I go so far as to say it “forms of life”.
As you sagely pointed out both sides claim to be acting in accordance with “respect” to human life, yet neither side has a fixed or common intepretation of the word.
If as philosophers (in the Wittgensteinian sense) we cannot criticize these differing language games but can only present them for what they are (which includes the implicit assumption that that of which we cannot speak but can show allows us therefore to highlight or point out the inconsistiencies or seeming nonsenses of an argument) I am sometimes filled with despair at ‘society’ ever getting it ‘right’.
Note- ‘getting it right’ as thoroughly subjective as the idea is, is meant here simply as universal agreement on a common cause of action. This may be utopian in ambition. And I will say no more about it.
An interesting Feyerabendian perspective – he distinguishes between participatory and observation questions.
If as a philosopher I am mere observer and cannot pass judgement – must I not also participate as a philosopher and allow criticism of my own implicit beliefs and judgements that arise through my participation in other language games?
Example: As a Catholic I have certain objections to instances of abortion. But as a Wittgensteinian I am aware that my objections have no reasonable or coherent grounds in the language games that others use in order to justify abortion.* And as a philosopher I should as far as possible keep my personal convictions under guard. How do I overcome this inherent split in my beliefs and my actions?
My proposition is that abortion is an issue that fundamentally concerns women more than men, and thus women should be the constituency that decides any legislative proposals. Why not hold a referendum with exclusively female suffrage?
*The mutual incoherence has been mentioned by me before – the differences between pro-life (as opposed pro-death) and pro-choice (as opposed anti-choice) themes. Neither position directly addresses the other on their own terms – but nonetheless (as with all arbitrary acts of binary splitting) still needs to construct an opposition by which to define themselves.