Big Media Werewolf: Neil in TAP

Neil the Ethical Werewolf savages Ramesh Ponnuru's 'Party of Death' in The American Prospect.

Comments

[Sanpete]

That Neil has the web name he does suggests he has a blog somewhere, or contributes to blogs somewhere, but I don't know where, so I'll post this here.

Neil's piece is very well written in most respects, but it seems disingenuous to me for him to present his views as though they are the common, common sense, or unproblematic views of ordinary people, liberals, or even the pro-choice. His arguments would more accurately be called "a" rather than "the" pro-choice position.

One issue that many ordinary folks, liberals and some pro-choice would have reservations about is his pragmatic approach to fixing moral boundaries such as what a person is. (This is especially evident in how he draws the line at birth.) Many people believe that such points are already inherent in an objective moral fabric of the world, and aren't open to our arranging as we see fit, as we do with the driving or voting age. I'll just mention one point that shows the importance of this issue. It is commonly argued that the mere reasonable possibility that a fetus is a person, morally speaking, is enough to act as though the fetus may be a person. Being a moral subjectivist, I happen to agree with what I take to be Neil's approach on this, but I don't see it as uncontroversial among ordinary people or liberals.

According to liberals and other ordinary people, the moral status of something depends on what mental capacities it has.

This too is controversial as applied here. It's true that most people have this intuition, but I don't think most people would agree that this is the sole or sufficient ground for determining what a person is. Common, substantial reservations grow around the mentally disabled, for example. This approach also invites a gradation of moral rights according to mental capacities, something Neil deals with only partially (no doubt for reasons of space). It also opens a huge challenge concerning animal rights, since many animals have more developed mental capacities than human babies do, but aren't accorded similar rights.

While I agree that birth is in some ways an advantageous place to draw the line of personhood, a strong case can also be made for viability (recognized as significant in Roe v. Wade), which is getting earlier and earlier when medical equipment is available, or even for a far later time when the capacities are presumably developed to a point beyond that of, say, monkeys (or dogs or dolphins).

It's in dealing with these problems that the draw of a position like Ponnuru's becomes more apparent.

Other points could be and often are raised in connection with Neil's arguments. I just give these as examples of how much more difficult the issues are than Neil suggests, even for the ordinary, liberal and pro-choice.

[Sanpete]

OK, found the link to Neil's blog. Pays to look in the margins ...

[Neil the Ethical Werewolf]

I think most people allow some degree of moral significance to species-membership (as your severe retardation cases suggest), but they dramatically overestimate the extent to which this drives their moral feelings. They look at humans and animals, notice that they regard these creatures differently, and ascribe the difference to the difference in species. In fact, most of the work is being done by the difference in the nature of their minds. So perhaps it'd be better to put a "mainly" between the "depends" and the "on".

[Joe]

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it ignores the inconstancy of consciousness. A viable human embryo will grow, we know this, from experience. It may survive or not. To put birth as its personhood-day is as arbitrary as saying you can kill someone who is asleep. Their mental state is not arguably better than a kitten here either. Should those who sleep less than me, have more rights?

Also, you can't argue, we know they will awake, we don't.

The question will always be, does an adult woman have more rights? This is a much more challenging ethical question, involving a certain level of circumstance based value judgement.

This wiki on Infanticide in history gives the whole abortion question a broader ethical context.

I don't care one iota if a woman decides to abort, but I'm not sure I can call it highly ethical behaviour either. It seems more like ruthless practicality, which again I'm not necessarily criticizing.

[Sanpete]

Neil, would this be an example of what you mean? I think many people have at least a glimmer of a sort of hybrid position, adopting elements of your view and Ponnuru's: the moral boundaries are species boundaries but the moral status of each species is fixed by its (maximal or typical) mental capacity. This would be the framework typically used in dealing with questions of eating meat, respecting the mentally disabled, according full moral status to babies, and so on. I suppose you could argue mental capacity is the "main" factor in that scheme.

But people aren't fully consistent about this. When abortion or stem cells come up, a different framework more like yours alone is likely to come to the fore for liberals, and sometimes even for some conservatives (like Orrin Hatch). I suppose one charitable way to read this is that the above scheme is defeated by an overriding factor, such as concern for other people, or that if mental capacity is extreme enough it overrides species, or something. My own view is that it's very hard for either liberals or conservatives to arrive at a fully consistent moral position on this issue that they're willing to even try to live by. We fudge. Maybe that's not so unusual in moral life.

[Sanpete]

Someone at Neil's website has pointed out Ponnuru's reply to Neil:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ODBlZjEwNTBhOWNjMjNmZTU5YWVjNWE5MGRhNjdiN2U=

Ponnuru seems to appreciate Neil's measured tone and careful argument, a rare enough virtue in dealing with this topic.