{"id":4475,"date":"2015-08-09T15:37:40","date_gmt":"2015-08-09T20:37:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/?p=4475"},"modified":"2015-08-09T15:40:10","modified_gmt":"2015-08-09T20:40:10","slug":"steven-pinker-on-the-moral-imperative-for-bioethics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/2015\/08\/09\/morality\/steven-pinker-on-the-moral-imperative-for-bioethics\/","title":{"rendered":"Steven Pinker on “The moral imperative for bioethics”"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to Steven Pinker<\/a> in The moral imperative for bioethics<\/em><\/a>, an opinion piece he recently wrote for the Boston Globe<\/em>,<\/p>\n

…the primary moral goal for today\u2019s bioethics can be summarized in a single sentence.\u00a0 Get out of the way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I would strengthen that\u00a0a bit to something like, “Stop the mental masturbation and climb back into the real world.”\u00a0 At some level Pinker is aware of the fact that bioethicists and other “experts” in morality are not nearly as useful to the rest of us as they think they are.\u00a0 He just doesn’t understand why.\u00a0 As a result he makes the mistake of conceding the objective relevance of\u00a0morality in solving problems germane to the field of biotechnology.\u00a0\u00a0The fundamental problem is that these people are chasing after\u00a0imaginary objects, things that aren’t real.\u00a0 They have bamboozled the rest of us into taking them seriously because we have been hoodwinked by\u00a0our emotional baggage just as effectively as they have.\u00a0 There is no premium on reality as far as evolution is concerned.\u00a0 There is a premium on survival.\u00a0\u00a0We perceive “good” and “evil” as real objects, not because they actually are real objects, but because our ancestors were more likely to pass on the relevant genes if they perceived these fantasies as real things.\u00a0 Bioethics is just one of the many artifacts of this delusion.<\/p>\n

Consider what the bioethicists are really claiming.\u00a0 They are saying that\u00a0mental impressions that exist because\u00a0they happened to improve the\u00a0evolutionary fitness of a species of advanced, highly social, bipedal apes correspond to real things, commonly referred to as “good” and “evil,”\u00a0that have some kind of an objective existence independent of the minds of those creatures.\u00a0 Not only that, but if one can but capture these objects, which happen to be extremely elusive and slippery, one can apply them to make decisions in the field of biotechnology, which didn’t exist when the mental equipment that gives rise to the impressions in question evolved.\u00a0 Consider these extracts from the online conversation:<\/p>\n

Carl Elliot<\/a>, at his blog, Fear and Loathing in Bioethics<\/a><\/em>,<\/p>\n

Forget Tuskegee. Forget Willowbrook and Holmesburg Prison. Pay no attention to the research subjects who died at Kano, Auckland Women’s Hospital or the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. Never mind about Jesse Gelsinger, Ellen Roche, Nicole Wan, Tracy Johnson or Dan Markingson. According to Steven Pinker, “we already have ample safeguards for the safety and informed consent of patients and research subjects.” \u00a0So bioethicists should just shut up about abuses and let smart people like him get on with their work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pinker:<\/p>\n

Indeed, biotechnology has moral implications that are nothing short of stupendous. But they are not the ones that worry the worriers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Julian Savulescu<\/a>\u00a0at the Practical Ethics<\/a><\/em> website:<\/p>\n

What we need is less obstruction of good and ethical research, as Pinker correctly observes, and more vigilance at picking up unethical research. This requires competent, professional and trained bioethicists and improvement of ethics review processes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Daniel K. Sokol<\/a>, also\u00a0at Practical Ethics<\/em>:<\/p>\n

The idea that research that has the potential to cause harm should be subject to ethical review should not be controversial in the 21st century. The words \u201cthis project has been reviewed and approved by the Research Ethics Committee\u201d offers some reassurance that the welfare of participants has been duly considered. The thought of biomedical research without ethical review is a frightening one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pinker:<\/p>\n

A truly ethical bioethics should not bog down research in red tape, moratoria, or threats of prosecution based on nebulous but sweeping principles such as \u201cdignity,\u201d \u201csacredness,\u201d or \u201csocial justice.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One imagines oneself in Bedlam<\/a>.\u00a0 These people are all trying to address what most people would agree is a real problem.\u00a0 They understand that most people don’t want to be victims of anything like the Tuskegee experiments.\u00a0 They also grasp the fact that most people would prefer to live longer, healthier lives.\u00a0 True, these, too, are merely subjective goals, whims if you will, but they are whims that most of us will agree with.\u00a0 The whims aren’t the problem.\u00a0 The problem is that we are trying to apply a useless tool to reach the goals; human moral emotions.\u00a0 We are trying to establish truths by consulting emotions to which no truth claims can possibly apply.\u00a0 Stuart Rennie got it right in spite of himself\u00a0in his attack on Pinker\u00a0at his Global Bioethics Blog<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

My first reaction was: how is this new bioethics skill taught? Should there be classes that teach it in a stepwise manner, i.e. where you first learn not to butt in, then how to just step a bit aside, followed by somewhat getting out of the way, and culminating in totally screwing off? What would the syllabus look like? Wouldn’t avoiding bioethics class altogether be a sign of success?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pinker, too, iterates to an entirely rational final sentence in his opinion piece:<\/p>\n

Biomedical research will always be closer to Sisyphus than a runaway train \u2014 and the last thing we need is a lobby of so-called ethicists helping to push the rock down the hill.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I, too, would prefer not to be a Tuskegee guinea pig.\u00a0 I, too, would like to live longer and be healthier.\u00a0 I simply believe that emotional predispositions that exist because they happen to have been successful in regulating the social interactions within and among small groups of hunter-gatherers millennia ago, are unlikely to be the best tools to achieve those ends.<\/p>\n

\"bedlam\"
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tTweet<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to Steven Pinker in The moral imperative for bioethics, an opinion piece he recently wrote for the Boston Globe, …the primary moral goal for today\u2019s bioethics can be summarized in a single sentence.\u00a0 Get out of the way. I would strengthen that\u00a0a bit to something like, “Stop the mental masturbation and climb back into … Continue reading “Steven Pinker on “The moral imperative for bioethics””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[303,110,48,105,6,28,5],"tags":[307,120],"class_list":["post-4475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioethics","category-ethics","category-evolution","category-evolutionary-psychology-2","category-good-and-evil","category-human-nature","category-morality","tag-bioethics","tag-morality-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwEq0-1ab","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4475"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4481,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4475\/revisions\/4481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}