tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7907752.post4595290530043969895..comments2024-03-27T07:18:39.229-05:00Comments on In Medias Res: Does Repugnance Matter, or Not?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7907752.post-85667265825150178822015-08-13T23:00:06.987-05:002015-08-13T23:00:06.987-05:00Alan,
You speak of what "we" can do, bu...Alan,<br /><br /><i>You speak of what "we" can do, but of course the ability to keep a 20-week-old fetus alive is not universal.</i><br /><br />But wait--how did my "we," which was a nominative and generic pronoun, become tied to particular <i>instances</i> of said practices? If my language was unclear, allow me to clarify what I meant by re-writing slightly:<br /><br /><i>A century ago, human beings had no means to make certain that a baby born at six months wouldn't expire immediately; today, there are plenty of means by which human beings can make it all but certain that baby survives. In other words, a hundred years ago human beings were technologically incapable to vouchsafing the personhood of the fetus if it was born prematurely; now human beings are fully capable of it. With the change of that art thus comes a change in human moral perceptions and human moral responsibilities.</i><br /><br />In other words, I don't see why the fact that a technologically-enabled awareness has changed moral intuitions about an unborn baby is compromised by the terrible reality that such a technologically-enabled awareness will not be able to be acted upon in every place and by every mother and father. The shift in moral intuitions, and the changes in moral reflections which such expanded intuitions bring about, do not seem to me to be dependent upon "technological standards that obtain in a given place and moment"; rather, we are talking about technology opening a door that, as the awareness (the images, the stories, etc.) of that opening spreads, contributes to a change in how people think. In the wake of that change, the prevalence or lack thereof of particular occurrences of the technology behind the door opening are, I think, beside the point.<br /><br />(An analogy which may be silly, but which occurs to me off the top of my head: while I am by no means an expert in Swiss public opinion over the postwar decades, I assume that the people of Switzerland began to think about issues of security and war and peace very differently during the Cold War, as just about everyone did...<i>even though</i> the Swiss had no nuclear weapons themselves. Would we say that a Swiss citizen who felt morally motivated to get involved in Ban the Bomb marches in Western Europe in the 1980s was crazy? No, because we could understand why they might have thought about things differently, despite not dwelling in a country participating in the nuclear arms race. Damon is describing how our perceptions become different about abortion as the fetus develops. The fact that technology is a component in how human beings arrive at those perceptions does not, it seems to me, become unavailable for moral reflection in cases where such the practical use of technology is absent.)<br /><br /><i>There has to be a way to think about these living creatures and our responsibilities to them, if any, that isn't so radically dependent on circumstance--on what some philosophers call "accidentals."</i><br /><br />Which, again, suggests to me that your own understanding of the moral problem here is grounded in a rather absolute binary (fetus = living person possessing rights and dignity vs. fetus = biological matter of negligible worth), the determination of which would philosophically trump all "accidentals"...which I suppose would include all the varied, culturally (and, yes, technologically) constructed circumstances through which our visceral instincts come into play. <br /><br />I apologize if I'm pushing you in a way which may not at all reflect your considered views, but this really does seem to me to be the implication of your resistance to Damon's defense of making use of our own moral sentiments. Russell Arben Foxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03366800726360134194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7907752.post-4295713748368308352015-08-13T20:03:44.405-05:002015-08-13T20:03:44.405-05:00Well, first of all, damn me for trying to type on ...Well, first of all, damn me for trying to type on an iPhone. Among other things, I meant to type "living creature" (not "loving"). I postpone for another day the question of whether or when a fetus loves. <br /><br />You ask, "how can we <em>not</em> allow our moral judgments to recognize other actors, and to recognize the 'current state of a particular art'?" Here's how: You speak of what "we" can do, but of course the ability to keep a 20-week-old fetus alive is not universal. Right now it happens only in certain very wealthy and technologically advanced societies, and even in those only some people can take advantage of the state-of-the-art technology. If our moral intuitions and judgments are shaped by the technological standards that obtain in a given place and moment, <em>and</em> we assume the view that Damon and others take that certain moral responsibilities towards a fetus kick in at viability, then we have a situation where we are morally responsible for a wealthy white American woman's fetus but not at all responsible for the fetus of a poor woman in rural Tanzania. <br /><br />How might we get out of that profoundly uncomfortable, indeed intolerable, situation? By saying that we should extend our sympathies and our sense of responsibility to all fetuses according to whatever the current state of the art is, whether or not they can practically benefit from that art? But then it's not space but time that afflicts our thinking, because what if next week some medical team keeps an 18-week fetus alive outside the womb? And then next year? And the year after? <br /><br />No, this doesn't work at all: it gives us a constantly sliding scale that we can never adapt to and that has us putting one fetus on <em>this</em> side of an invisible line, another on <em>that</em> side of the line, for reasons that won't hold up to scrutiny. <br /><br />So I say this can't be the way to think about it. Pro-abortion or anti-, we're using the wrong categories here. There has to be a way to think about these living creatures and our responsibilities to them, if any, that isn't so radically dependent on circumstance — on what some philosophers call "accidentals." I don't know exactly how we <em>should</em> think about these things, but the gradualist/circumstantial approach is, it seems to me, a non-starter. Alan Jacobshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06777218862490842180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7907752.post-9762733402349821682015-08-13T17:02:54.655-05:002015-08-13T17:02:54.655-05:00Alan, thanks for the responses.
1) You're rig...Alan, thanks for the responses.<br /><br />1) You're right; the language of my post moved my claims through a door that you hadn't opened. My apologies.<br /><br />2) and 3) I think I would probably argue that, while I mostly agree with what you write here (especially your point about equity), that repugnance--and I lump this along with all visceral or moral or non-rational intuitions or feelings in general--is probably more than just a "pointer" to moral formation. This is the Heidegger and Gadamer in me thinking aloud, but it seems to me that such instincts (culturally or historically or socially constructed impressions, reactions, and prejudices, you might say) do not merely indicate the site where moral reflection and formation needs to take place, but in fact <i>initiate</i> it, because such moral thought makes use of and moves through perceptions and presumptions that are received bodily, temporally, and thus, often, instinctively. I suppose a more careful phenomenology might argue that "repugnance" is a different and less implicated type of feeling, but unless I can be clear on how visceral feelings differ in our heads from other pre-judgments, I think it ought to be allowed its place how we think about things.<br /><br />4) I find your sentences here--"nothing about the fetus itself changes as the technology changes. So this particular variety of squishiness gives us a situation in which our proper feelings about a particular loving creature are keyed not to any feature of the creature itself but rather to the current state of a particular art"--curious, and would like to understand them better. They seem, to me, to automatically grant (<i>instinctively</i> perhaps?) a certain kind of binary absolutism: the fetus, completely apart from any other actor, is "a particular loving creature," or it isn't, or it becomes one, which I suppose would mean that before the point of becoming it wasn't. I can see that argument, as I can understand the whole life-begins-at-conception anti-abortion argument. But when we are talking about birth, a process that mothers and other humans possess the technology to interfere with (and that technology has existed in one form or another for thousands of years), how can we <i>not</i> allow our moral judgments to recognize other actors, and to recognize the "current state of a particular art"? A century ago, there was no means to make certain that a baby born at six months wouldn't expire immediately; today, there are plenty of means to make all but certain that baby survives. In other words, a hundred years ago we were technologically incapable to vouchsafing the personhood (the "loving creature") of the fetus if it was born prematurely; now we are fully capable of it. With the change of that art comes a change in our moral perceptions and our moral responsibilities. If anything, it seems to me that Damon's sort of squishiness has expanded our moral sensitivities, not put limits upon them. But perhaps I am looking at your question all wrong. Am I?Russell Arben Foxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03366800726360134194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7907752.post-58909779803243361192015-08-13T15:49:13.620-05:002015-08-13T15:49:13.620-05:00Russell, just a few brief notes:
1) I would enco...Russell, just a few brief notes: <br /><br />1) I would encourage you not to draw too many conclusions about my own position, since I took the pleasurable course of critiquing Damon's position without offering one of my own. <br /><br />2) Repugnance matters, it counts for something, but I don't think it's possible to construct a general account of <em>how much</em> it matters — especially since what people find repugnant will be relative to their moral formation, which can vary a lot. Since we would all agree that some people feel inappropriate repugnance, while others fail to feel it when they should, repugnance as such isn't going to help us much. Repugnance is mainly interesting as a pointer to moral formation. <br /><br />3) Ditto squishiness. How much is not enough? How much is too much? I'd prefer, in any case, to think in terms of <em>equity</em>, that key Aristotelian virtue that we need to have because every law is deficient because of its necessary generality. (Nichomachaean Ethics Book V.) <br /><br />4) One thing I don't understand about Damon's position is how his feelings of repugnance are supposed to be related to other guiding concepts he invokes, especially viability and pain-capability. Are those supposed to guide our repugnance? If we should shy away from the aborting of a viable fetus but not from the aborting of a non-viable one, then our repugnance will be moving all the time because of improvements in medical technology. And yet nothing about the fetus itself changes as the technology changes. So this particular variety of squishiness gives us a situation in which our proper feelings about a particular loving creature are keyed not to any feature sof the creature itself but rather to the current state of a particular art. This seems all wrong to me. Alan Jacobshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06777218862490842180noreply@blogger.com