Comes Now the Dread Humanzee?
Ronald Bailey | April 29, 2008, 6:43pm
The Scotsman has published a somewhat overwrought article about the possible creation of chimp/human hybrids. The Scotsman reports:
A LEADING scientist has warned a new species of "humanzee," created from breeding apes with humans, could become a reality unless the government acts to stop scientists experimenting.
In an interview with The Scotsman, Dr Calum MacKellar, director of research at the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, warned the controversial draft Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill did not prevent human sperm being inseminated into animals.
He said if a female chimpanzee was inseminated with human sperm the two species would be closely enough related that a hybrid could be born.
He said scientists could possibly try to develop the new species to fill the demand for organ donors.
Leading scientists say there is no reason why the two species could not breed, although they question why anyone would want to try such a technique.
Actually, such interbreeding might just work. Back in 1977, a researcher published results in the journal
Anatomical Record showing that human sperm could
penetrate gibbon eggs. But would it be wrong to breed such hybrids?
The Scotsman turns to some of the ethical considerations:
Professor Hugh McLachlan, professor of applied philosophy at Glasgow Caledonian University's School of Law and Applied Sciences, said although the idea was "troublesome", he could see no ethical objections to the creation of humanzees.
"Any species came to be what it is now because of all sorts of interaction in the past," he said.
"If it turns out in the future there was fertilisation between a human animal and a non-human animal, it's an idea that is troublesome, but in terms of what particular ethical principle is breached it's not clear to me.
"I share their squeamishness and unease, but I'm not sure that unease can be expressed in terms of an ethical principle."
I discussed some of the ethical issues involved with "uplifting" animals to human-level intelligence in my column "Humanizing Animals." Whole Scotsman article here.
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Fluffy | April 30, 2008, 8:41am | #
Your articles show that you are genuinely troubled about the "happy slave" scenario. However, you seem to have some difficulty explaining, in accordance with strict secular principles, why such scenarios are morally wrong.
This is not difficult at all.
It is very easy to argue that slavery is wrong, and from there to argue that slavery by deception is wrong, and from there to argue that slavery by deception
aided by debasing the brain of the slave to make it easier to deceive him is wrong.
Bailey runs into philosophical issues only when discussing the related issue of
happiness relative to our potential capacity to control our brain chemistry. It is, in fact, difficult to privilege one sort of "happy brain" above another. I don't see why this should trouble you, though, since it is a discussion that has nothing to do with your church, which has never regarded living human happiness as a component of ethics, since it utterly devalues everything about, you know, actual living.
The Church chose to defer to scientists who held that the fetus isn't alive until it moves in the womb - the basic priciple of protecting human life was there, but, misled by the scientific establishment, the Church assumed that the early-stage fetus wasn't human.
BZZZZT! Sorry, wrong.
I guess your Church membership doesn't prevent you from engaging in the most atrocious intellectual dishonesty possible.
If the Church is receiving its morality from God, it did not require the intermediary of "scientists" [as if the Church ever took advice from anything resembling a "scientist", ever, anyway] and the fact that the Church was able to be deceived by those naughty, naughty scientists on the issue of
murder means that we can pretty much disregard everything else it has ever said as potentially the result of deception and error as well.
Not to mention the fact that this makes your basic argument to begin this thread fucking unbelievably stupid as well. Apparently we should trust religion to give us answers to moral problems - but we can't trust religion to give us answers to moral problems, because they mistakes. Even though they have a direct pipeline to God. Sure, whatever.
If the Church ever changed its mind on any issue of any kind whatsoever, then it's no better a guide than those darn secularists, who sometimes argue among themselves.
With regard to the Inquisition (which everyone has come to expect in threads such as this one), the relevant comparison is between the behavior of Church tribunals during the hard-core era of "error has no rights" and the behavior of certain deistic, neopagan and atheist regimes which sought to purge their realms of dissent without the formalities of judicial trial or (in the case of the French Revolution) with trials which got cut off before the defense could put on its case.
BZZZT! Wrong again.
Since the Church has a direct pipeline to God to tell it what to do and what not to do, it doesn't get to sometimes fall into the error of making the mistakes the French Terror did or that Stalinist Russia did. For us to regard the Church as a body that can make moral recommendations to us on the basis of its continuing unique insights into a morality received from a deity, it has to have been
perfect. Always. Or it is nothing.
Mad Max | April 30, 2008, 9:24am | #
"For us to regard the Church as a body that can make moral recommendations to us on the basis of its continuing unique insights into a morality received from a deity, it has to have been perfect. Always. Or it is nothing."
I can understand holding one's own side to a high standard (which is why I'm kind of down on Catholic leaders when they slip up), but holding the *other* side to a higher standard than one's own isn't intellectually respectable.
To say that it's OK for secular philosophers, or even scientists, to make mistakes, but not for theists, is a useful way to define one's own side's mistakes away, while harping on the other's (and since the Bible itself records the leaders of Israel and the Church making mistakes and committing crimes [see: King David, Saint Peter, etc.], that means you can pre-emptively dismiss anything our side says - which was kind of the point, I suppose.
Let me note, not only does the Church rely on science, but most of the world today is operating under a calendar promulgated by a Pope, based on the investigations of the Church's astronomers. We call it the Gregorian calendar, and until the ACLU manages to purge the public square from theocratic influences by returning to the Julian calendar, it's the calendar we're going to keep using.
I am pleased that the Church insists on strict proof before convicting anyone of murder - if the scientific evidence is inadequate to show that there was a human death in the first place, then of course the defendant needs to be acquitted. With the progress of science, fewer guilty need escape when it comes to abortion.
In contrast to this "Quaker-Papist cant about the sanctity of human life" (as Leon Trotsky contemptuously put it), there's the attitude of certain modern secular philosophies to kill the enemies of the people and let Odin/FSM sort them out. That's not the approach I prefer, so I kind of like the presumption of innocence.
Respectfully, you might consider the possibility that you might not have correctly paraphrased the Church's teaching on infallibility:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P74.HTM
This charism doesn't apply to each and every concrete dispute, to the extent of knowing whether God wants us to buy yellow or purple drapes. We also teach a virtue known as humility which (though it's hard for me to exhibit on a blog) is just as valuable as upholding the proper teachign authority of the Pope and the bishops.
Fluffy | April 30, 2008, 9:55am | #
Max, stop being so disingenuous.
You argued that one reason religious revelation is a superior guide to ethics than the analysis provided by secular rationalists is because of the absence of doubt.
You reproached Bailey because he did not have easy answers ready at hand for novel ethical situations.
You reproached Bailey because secular philosophers squabble and change their minds.
That means that
you set the standard by which I am judging the Church.
If the Church makes mistakes, that means that relying on the Church
does not remove the element of doubt, because one must continually wonder whether any particular moral observation or utterance issued by the Church is one of those "regrettable mistakes".
If the Church makes mistakes based on shifting knowledge, then it too can not have ready answers to hand for novel situations - because the entire reason a situation would be novel would be a changing level of knowledge or capacity. If the Church can change its mind based on improved knowledge about the fetus, that means it may one day change its mind based on improved knowledge of genetics, or improved knowledge of neurochemistry.
If the Church changed its mind about anything, ever, that means that it to is subject to "squabbles".
So every quality of the Church's moral reasoning which
you presented as making it superior to secular analysis is exploded if the Church makes mistakes. Sorry.
I am pleased that the Church insists on strict proof before convicting anyone of murder - if the scientific evidence is inadequate to show that there was a human death in the first place, then of course the defendant needs to be acquitted. With the progress of science, fewer guilty need escape when it comes to abortion.
Nope, sorry.
The reason for due process and for the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" is epistemological. It is based on a primitive version of the scientific method, actually - the idea that one cannot know the facts of a matter until one has examined the available evidence in a dispassionate way.
This epistemological method is exactly what the Church rejects and you therefore cannot rely on it as a defense of its previous errors.
If you are getting your moral information directly from God, you have no need to regard people as innocent until proven guilty. You should already know. Unless it is your position that God would provide extremely specific information about a host of moral matters, but would just "forget" to tell you about the rule against aborting fetuses.
If the teachings of the Church are going to fail unless we have perfect scientific understanding, they are always going to fail.
Mad Max | April 30, 2008, 10:18am | #
"You argued that one reason religious revelation is a superior guide to ethics than the analysis provided by secular rationalists is because of the absence of doubt."
Hmmm . . . don't recall saying that.
I recall first mixing it up with Mr. Bailey in response to this article of his,
http://reason.com/news/show/125676.html
which was a detailed assault on the moral stance of the Church against human genetic manipulation, accusing the Church of being anti-science and conflating human genetic engineering with genetic engineering involving plants and lower animals.
The second-to-last paragraph of Bailey's article, in its entirety, said:
"Finally, any genetic manipulations that aim to create human beings with diminished mental and physical capacities must be fiercely and relentlessly opposed. On the other hand, research whose goal is to reduce human suffering and increase our capacities should be vigorously encouraged."
Bailey offered no insight into how, exactly, having scorned the Church's doubts and warnings, he was to come up with a philosophically-sound method of distinguishing between "bad" and "good" research. He certainly gave no reason, after all his rah-rah-science-the-Church-sux rhetoric, to explain why his commitment to a brave new world of genetically-modified humans automatically ruled out the creation of a special slave class, properly engineered to feel happy in their slavery.
"This epistemological method is exactly what the Church rejects "
Fluffy | April 30, 2008, 2:52pm | #
I didn't say the *Church* had done erroneous things, but that some of the leaders of the Church made errors on the order of assuming (before modern embryology) that an early-stage embryo wasn't alive. In the Middle Ages - people had an excuse for believing this - knowledge of early embryology was limited.
But, since the collective noun "church" has no means of expressing itself, there are no "church teachings" that aren't the product of church leaders or doctors of the church.
So if church leaders have been wrong, then attempting to follow church teachings means that you run the risk of following error.
Sorry, Fluffy, I acknowledged that *some* church leaders had been wrong about *some* things - but not on such a wide scale, or on such a wide range of issues, as your crowd.
And in methodological terms, this doesn't matter at all.
If some church teachings have been false, we cannot know at any moment in time if the church teaching we are relying on for our analysis is one of those wrong ones. That is, unless you assert for yourself the right to critically examine church teachings, keeping the ones you like and rejecting the ones you don't like - but that would make you some kind of Protestant, first of all, and would require you to do independent moral analysis, second of all, and independent moral analysis is the bogeyman you're complaining about, isn't it?
And by the way, it's kind of silly to assert that the Gregorian calendar indicates an interest in science. The Church was only interested in calendars because of its desire to account for feast days and to properly calculate the date of Easter. Saying that this particularist interest reveals a love of science is like saying that the Eucharist is evidence of a love of science, because communion wafers were produced by baking and the baking of bread involves biology, chemistry, structural engineering, botany, whatever.
Heck, while we're at it, burning people at the stake reveals a love of science, because it is evidence of an interest in the science of combustion!
