Are Ethicists an Obstacle to Progress?

When people who don’t know me ask me what I do, I tell them I’m a philosopher. When they ask me what I specialise in, I tell them that I am mostly, even though I’ve never been entirely comfortable with that label, an ethicist. This used to be a good thing, or at least not a bad one, but things are changing. People like me are now increasingly being described as at best a nuisance, and at worst a threat to human well-being and possibly even survival.

In this vein, Steven Pinker, the well-known psychologist and bestselling author, has recently (1 August 2015) published an opinion piece in the Boston Globe, entitled “The moral imperative for bioethics,” in which he chides ethicists for hindering the progress of our species. According to Pinker, biotechnology could do amazing things for us if we only stopped hampering research by raising flimsy ethical concerns about it, which is not helpful at all. Scientific and technological progress is already slow enough as it is, and given the “vast increases in life, health, and flourishing” that biomedical research promises, every day we lose worrying about the ethics of the matter is one day too many. While biotechnological research is urgently needed to rid us of all sorts of terrible diseases, what we most certainly do not need are professional worriers who call themselves ethicists second-guessing every promising new development and thus stalling scientific and technological progress by throwing “nebulous but sweeping principles such as ‘dignity’, ‘sacredness’, or ‘social justice’” in its way. A true ethicist, Pinker decrees, would realize that there is in fact only one valid moral imperative they should promote and follow, namely to “get out of the way”.

For Pinker and others like him ethics is a luxury that we cannot afford. People are dying, people are suffering. The biotech industry is attempting to do something about it, working very hard to succeed, while the “so-called ethicists” are attempting to prevent this from happening. Humanity is painfully pushing a rock up a hill, while all that ethicists are doing is help push it back down again. For Pinker it is as simple as that. Except of course it is not. Surprising as it may be, it is in fact not the primary goal of us ethicists to make life difficult for those who want nothing but make the world a better place. Ethics is not about issuing “red tape, moratoria, or threats of prosecution” (although ethical reflection may occasionally give rise to all that). Instead, ethics is about making sure that we know what we are doing and why we are doing it, that the path we are following is really the path we want to be following and that the place where this path is likely to lead us is really the place where we want to end up being.

We all, naturally, want things to be better than they are, if that is possible. We all want progress. But just as nothing is ever better as such, but only ever in certain respects, there is no such thing as progress as such, or in the abstract. We are not sitting in an evolutionary elevator that has only two directions: up and down. Instead, there are many different ways of going up and going forward, many different ways of going down and backwards, and many different ways of going sideways, or around in circles, or of moving without any clear direction at all. Moreover, the ways that lead upwards in some way may also lead downwards in some other way. Things are usually more complex than we would like, and for this very reason also more complex than we may care to acknowledge. In order to progress, to step forward, you need to have a goal, or at least have made up your mind about a direction. Spending a thought or two on the reasons for choosing that particular goal or direction before you start running doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. And that is all we are doing when we are engaging in ethical reflection. The one question that ethicists keep asking is whether the things we do or propose to do are actually good for us, all things considered. Would we really prefer that this question be no longer asked?

It is highly naïve to assume that all biomedical research will necessarily benefit some of us, let alone humanity as a whole. What is powerful enough to save us is also powerful enough to harm us. To demand that such research not be regulated in any way because some of it might eventually help us find a cure for Alzheimer's and other diseases is like saying that politicians in government should be granted unlimited legislative, judiciary and executive power and not be checked in any way because some politicians might actually use that power for the good of the people: we just need to trust that they know best and that they want only what is best for us. But why should we believe that?

I suppose most people would agree that granting such unlimited powers to politicians would be a singularly bad idea, and that, even if scientists and biotech firms were generally smarter and more trustworthy than politicians, they are certainly not trustworthy enough that we could afford not putting any regulations and safeguards in place and thereby retaining some measure of control. Ethical reflection helps us determine the nature and extent of those necessary safeguards. Ideas such as human dignity, sacredness, and social justice may strike tough-minded empiricists like Pinker as decidedly airy-fairy and not worth serious consideration, but even though they are a bit airy-fairy, for many of us they do capture something that is both elusive and very real, a sense perhaps that living disease-free and surviving as long as possible is not all that matters, that sometimes more is at stake, that there are other dimensions of our life and experience that are important to us and for us, whatever they may be. Ethicists are the ones who try to figure out what those dimensions are and why they matter to us. They are not the professional doomsayers that some like to depict them as. Their role is more that of psychopomps who guide us from the present to the future, providing safe passage and making sure that we get there safe and sound.

Je suis un migrant

The migrants are coming. They want in. Europe is their Promised Land, a safe haven from war, hunger and persecution. They are desperate and brave, crossing oceans to get here. But the waves are not parting for them. Many drown. We watch them approach with trepidation. There are so many of them. A horde, a “swarm” of migrants, climbing over fences, hiding in lorries, sleeping on the streets, crowding into train stations, trying to break through our defences. But we don’t want them. We slam our doors into their faces. Hungary even considered building a wall to keep migrants out. Go away, we say, we have already given you lots of money, what more do you want? A life, they say. A future. But we do not care. Not much anyway. Our compassion is, before it can prompt us act, curtailed by our presumed self-interest and self-righteousness. We are worried about murderous Muslims sneaking in undetected. We are worried about limited resources that we would have to share with them. We are worried about so many strangers living in our country. But mostly we feel that they are coming for what is rightfully ours and that they have no right to it. After all, we tell ourselves, it is not our fault that their country lies in tatters. We have simply done a much better job of holding it all together. They should do the same rather than come here and make claims on the fruits of our hard work and good sense, which we alone deserve to consume because it is we who planted the trees from which they have sprung. 

Except, of course, we didn’t. Most of us have actually contributed very little, if anything, to the wealth, comfort, and peace that we have become used to enjoy as a matter of course. And what we have contributed we have been able to contribute only because we were fortunate enough to be born into a country where such a contribution was possible. We benefit from what others have done before us. It is largely the fruits of their labour that we eat. We are the lucky ones. None of us deserves what we have got, at least not more than those who had the misfortune of being born into the wrong area of the world. We are the lucky ones. If we deserve anything, we deserve it by virtue of being human, that is, by virtue of having certain human needs: which is in the first instance the need for food and safety, but then also for recognition and dignity. And we are all migrants. We have all come to the place where we live now at some time. Some came there when they were born, others later. It makes no difference. We don’t own our places. 

We should also keep in mind that the situation in which we find ourselves can change anytime. A war, an epidemic, a natural disaster, an economic crisis can easily take it all away from us. Soon it may be we who seek refuge in other parts of the world. We may not always remain the lucky ones. Let us hope the world will then not close its doors on us.

Why Do We Care About Doomsday?

In his book Death and the Afterlife (Oxford 2013), Samuel Scheffler speculates that the prospect of humanity’s imminent extinction shortly after our own death (“doomsday”) would affect us more than the knowledge of our own mortality currently does. If we knew that all human life would disappear from the face of the earth 30 days after we die, then this would render much of what we do today meaningless. We would react with ennui and despair, which, Scheffler believes, shows “the limits of egoism” or in other words that we not only care for things that do not directly affect us (we won’t, after all, be there to experience the end of humanity), but also that we actually care more for what happens to humanity than for what happens to ourselves as individuals (in the sense that we find the idea of all human life coming to an end in the foreseeable future more disturbing and more destructive of life’s meaning than the idea of our own certain death).

I don’t want to go into the details of the argument (which relies rather heavily on the plausibility of Scheffler’s prediction of certain reactions to hypothetical situations such as the doomsday scenario), nor the problems that it faces. John Danaher has already, as usual, done an excellent job at analysing the logical structure of the argument and also discussing some of the objections raised: http://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/meaning-value-and-collective-afterlife.html Suffice it to say that what I take to be the core of Scheffler’s “afterlife conjecture”, namely that we do care about the ongoing existence of humanity (what Scheffler calls the “collective afterlife”), rather persuasive. It may of course be difficult to predict how exactly we would react if we knew that the human world would definitely come to an end very soon after our death. Some people might despair, some might rediscover the value of human solidarity, some might feel licensed to live even more ruthlessly (freed of any concern for the well-being of future generations), some might remain largely unaffected and continue to enjoy their life, ignoring what they cannot change and what doesn’t directly affect them, and some might even positively welcome the eradication of human life as an opportunity for Mother Earth to heal her wounds or something to that effect. But I think whatever our reactions may be, it is pretty clear that few of us are entirely indifferent to the fate of humanity. We do care about the collective afterlife. The question is why.

Now it may be the case that when contemplating the doomsday scenario and feeling disturbed by it, we are actually suffering from a delusion that is similar to the one that Epicurus thought was responsible for our fear of death. Just as we may fear death mostly because we imagine ourselves being dead and somehow experiencing our own state of being dead (lying in our coffins, in the dark and cold, for all eternity), which of course we won’t, we may also fear doomsday because we imagine ourselves still being there when it occurs, and either being destroyed in the process or, perhaps even more disturbingly, being the sole survivor, the one who witnesses it all and is left all alone in an empty world. However, even though such a confusion may play a role here, I don’t think that is all there is to it. It seems to me that by emphasising the “limits of egoism” in the context of his afterlife conjecture, Scheffler really is on to something. We not only care for ourselves, for our loved ones, and perhaps for particular people that we happen to know. We also care for people in general. To a certain degree we tend to identify with humanity as a whole, tend to see ourselves in others. We tend to perceive humanity as a project that we all take part in. 

At least that is how I feel, and since I have no reason to think that I’m unique in this respect, I am assuming that many others share those feelings. When I look at my seven-year old son, I see myself in him, as I was when I was a boy, and it gives me comfort to think that he still has his whole life ahead of him, with all its opportunities, its rich fabric of experience, its joys and wonders. And although I’m aware that there will also be suffering, that there will be real losses and frustrations and disappointments, I cannot help feeling that on balance life is well worth living, an adventure well worth having, and that it is imperative that it continue (as Hans Jonas has argued in his 1979 book The Imperative of Responsibility). And it seems to me, when I look at my son, that in him I’m getting another opportunity at life, that he will be living life for me, that in him I will have a part in the future of the world. Now this feeling is not restricted to my son or my children in general. I also have it, though perhaps less poignantly, when I see other children at play, or lovers embracing, people chatting and laughing, students engaging with new ideas, and old couple walking along the street hand in hand, my dog chasing a ball, fully immersed in the sheer joy of running, of being alive. I identify with all of them, in the sense that I feel my own life extended in and through them. I feel that, in some way that I cannot fully understand, they are me. Even my dog. Or any other dog. Or other animal. So perhaps it is not humanity alone that we feel connected with and in whose survival we take an interest. Perhaps the project of humanity is itself part of an even larger project, the project of life. And if we imagine another doomsday scenario, one in which not only humanity vanished from the face of the earth, but all living creatures, so that not only the history of humanity came to an end, but the history of life itself, then we may find this even more disconcerting, even more destructive of meaning than if it were only humanity that came to an end. 

So why do we care about doomsday? I think it may be because we realize that with the extinction of humanity (or even more so life itself), we would die all over again, and this time for good.

Rape, Drunkenness and Consent, or Is Sex Intrinsically Harmful?

About a month ago (14 February 2015, p. 4) the British newspaper The Guardian published an article in which it was reported that three men had just been jailed for “raping a woman who admitted to being so drunk she did not know whether she had consented to sex.” An initial decision by the Crown Court to dismiss the charges was successfully appealed by the Crown Prosecution Service. Now they have been sentenced to six years each in prison. The woman whom they are alleged to have raped - and who in the article is consistently referred to as “the victim” - declares herself pleased with the decision. A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service praises her for the “tremendous courage” that she has shown after suffering such a “horrific ordeal”. But it is good to see, he says, that now finally “justice has been served”. The DI who led the police inquiry, agrees: “We hope this serves as a warning and reminder to everyone that before engaging in any kind of sexual activity you must be absolutely sure that the other person has the capacity to fully consent and does so.”

Now I don’t know anything about this case except what I have learned from this newspaper article. So perhaps there are aggravating circumstances that I am not aware of. But let us, for the sake of the argument, assume that the article relates all the facts of the case that were relevant to the verdict. In that case, what happened was this: the woman in question went to a bar, where she consumed “up to 12 shots of vodka”. She met the three men who were later convicted of raping her, and accompanied them (voluntarily) to a flat where she drank more vodka and repeatedly had sex with all three men over a 20-hour period. Her family reported her missing and when the police found her at the flat the next evening, she couldn’t remember anything. She admits that the sex she had with those men may have been entirely consensual. However, because she was drunk at the time, it was ruled that she did not really have the capacity to consent, from which it follows that the men had sex with her without her consent, which fulfils the legal definition of rape. Hence the criminal conviction.

There are various things that puzzle me about this case. The first is that the woman seems to be absolved of any blame or even responsibility for what happened in that flat. The three men alone are seen to be responsible. The woman is simply a “victim” of a crime. She didn’t do things; things were done to her. The director of public prosecutions commented: “It is not a crime to drink.” Well, no, it isn’t, but that doesn’t mean that you are not responsible for what you do after you’ve gotten yourself drunk. If I get drunk and then drive home in my car and cause an accident, then it is unlikely that I will be exonerated on the grounds that I was so severely drunk that I didn’t really know what I was doing and thus incapable of consenting to driving a car. And that is because it was my decision to get so terribly drunk in the first place. I should have known better.

It may of course be argued that the case in question is different because other agents are involved and those agents committed a crime. If I get drunk and you relieve me of my wallet, and that is only possible because I’m so drunk that I don’t really know what is happening to me, then this is still a crime and you should rightly be convicted of theft. True, but in the rape case things are different. Here the crime does not simply remain unaffected by the victim’s drunkenness (as in the theft case). Rather, it is the victim’s drunkenness that turns the deed into a crime. Had the victim been sober, then she wouldn’t have been a victim and no crime would have taken place. Now imagine that you had not simply taken my wallet from me, but that I had insisted, in my drunken state, that you take all the money in my wallet. If you then did what I asked you to, you would of course still have taken advantage of me. It was certainly not a very nice thing to do because you could and should have guessed that if I had been sober I wouldn’t have offered you my money. And if later, after sobering up, I asked you to return my money, then I think you should return it, and perhaps even be legally obliged to do so. But I don’t think that you should be sentenced to prison for theft. One may disagree with this, of course, and insist that what happened did amount to theft, but my guess is that this would be mostly because you clearly inflicted harm on me, and that harm exists independently of my inability to consent to your actions. But in the rape case there is no harm other than the harm that consists in, or results from, the woman’s inability to consent. I’m of course not talking about rape in general, but only about this particular case where, it appears, there was no violence and no coercion. No physical or other direct harm was inflicted on the woman. Nonetheless what happened to her was regarded as a “horrific ordeal”, apparently not because she suffered in any way or even minded much at the time, but solely because she was not capable of consenting to it. The odd thing about this view is that it seems to suggest that the sexual act is intrinsically harmful unless it is consensual.

Imagine that the three men didn’t have sex with her, but instead played tic tac toe with her all night because that is what they are into. The next day she cannot remember anything, and it emerges that she was too drunk at the time to be able to consent to playing tic tac toe. If she had been sober, she would never have agreed to play that particular game with those particular men. Clearly, the men took advantage of her. Yet it would probably not occur to us to demand that those men be imprisoned for what they did to her. Seizing the opportunity to play tic tac toe with somebody because they are too drunk to refuse would not be considered particularly blameworthy. Yet seizing the opportunity to have sex with someone because they are too drunk to refuse is considered to be a heinous crime, punishable by six years of imprisonment. I wonder why exactly that is.

It is not only that I find it a bit worrying to be officially reminded and warned that “before engaging in any kind of sexual activity you must be absolutely sure that the other person has the capacity to fully consent and does so”, because this makes sex an awfully complicated and serious affair, full of legal pitfalls. This does not only rule out any drunken sex, but also any light-hearted sex, any sex that is not self-conscious and wary, stifled by the fear that one may have to pay for a misinterpretation of the signs with serious jail time. It’s going to be hard to actually live by that rule and still enjoy sexual encounters with people one hasn’t known for a long time. And even then we will not always have the required certainty. Do we ever have the capacity to fully consent to sex? What exactly does that mean? And can we ever be absolutely sure that the other has that capacity? How exactly do we become sure of that? Simply by asking? Are you sure you want this? Are you really sure? Are you sure you’re sure? But the most interesting question is why the absolute certainty of full consent is deemed so terribly important when it comes to sex, and to sex only. What is it about sex that makes it so special, so unlike all other activities that we cannot do it with another human being unless we are absolutely sure that they really want it?

One more thing: the unacknowledged gender aspect of the whole case. Imagine everything had happened the exact same way, but with the victim being a man and the perpetrators being women. After 12 pints in a pub the man is taken to their flat by three women who take advantage of his intoxicated state and repeatedly have sex with him. The next morning he finds he cannot remember anything, but, reasoning that he had clearly been too drunk to give his consent, he sues the three women for rape and they all get convicted and sentenced to six years of prison. The public and the media applaud the decision, and everyone, including the man himself, is very pleased that justice has been served. How likely is that scenario? Not very, I should think. And that is not because men are any less likely to suffer and be traumatized when they are subjected to sexual violence. I think it’s rather because we find it very difficult to see the violence in this particular case when the main protagonist is a man. In fact, I don’t think we would accept that the man has been harmed at all by the sex he engaged in, despite his alleged inability to consent, and we would most certainly not think that he went through a “horrific ordeal”. But why would that be? Assuming I’m right about this, what  makes the two cases so different that they are evaluated so differently morally?

At the moment I can only guess that it has something to do with the way we view human male and female sexuality. Despite the fact that women want and enjoy sex just as much as men, we are for some reason assuming that for women the sexual act is intrinsically harmful,  so that they should only be subjected to it if they explicitly consent to it, while for men the sexual act is intrinsically not harmful, but on the contrary pleasurable, so that, since pleasure is good, explicit consent to the sexual act is not morally required.