Crucially, Bostrom adds that "transhumanists typically place emphasis on individual freedom and individual choice in the area of enhancement technologies. Humans differ widely in their conceptions of what their own perfection or improvement would consist in. Some want to develop in one direction, others in different directions, and some prefer to stay the way they are. It would ... be morally unacceptable for anybody to impose a single standard to which we would all have to conform. People should have the right to choose which enhancement technologies, if any, they want to use." This view is clearly consonant with Rawls' argument that in a liberal polity, reasonable persons will not use political power to repress comprehensive doctrines that are different from their own. A core transhumanist value is tolerance, and transhumanists clearly recognize that their fellow citizens adhere to other reasonable comprehensive doctrines.
And transhumanism certainly meets Rawls' third criterion for being a reasonable comprehensive doctrine since robust debate among its adherents shows that it is clearly not unchanging and is still evolving in light of what its adherents see as good and sufficient reasons
So if one accepts Rawls' arguments for how liberal societies must operate morally, transhumanism should be accommodated within the constitutional consensus of liberal democratic societies as a reasonable comprehensive doctrine.
But liberal concerns about majoritarian tyranny are far from being merely theoretical. Let's briefly consider some examples of how parts of what many of us would agree are "reasonable comprehensive doctrines" have been and are being repressed by democratic majorities.
For example, do we really want democratic majorities making and imposing ethical decisions about who people can marry; who can have children, and with whom they may enjoy sexual intimacy without the aim of bearing children? Consider the history of federal and state regulation in these areas. In 1800, abortion was legal in every state until the point of quickening in the womb. In the 1850's, the newly formed American Medical Association launched a campaign against abortion, in part, because abortion practitioners were competitors and, in part, because some feared that the Protestant majority was being outbred by Catholic immigrants. By 1910, abortion had been democratically criminalized in all but one state.
In 1873, Congress passed the Comstock Laws that outlawed "every obscene, lewd, or lascivious, and every filthy book, pamphlet, picture, paper, letter, writing, print, or other publication of an indecent character, and every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for preventing conception or producing abortion."[ix] The Comstock Laws authorized the U.S. Post Office to confiscate any publications providing advice on contraception and condoms shipped through the mail.
The first eugenics law was passed in Indiana in 1907 and eventually laws allowing the forced sterilization of "unfit" people were adopted by 30 states. Infamously, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld forced sterilization in the case of Buck v. Bell in 1927. By the 1960s, some 66,000 Americans had been forcibly neutered. In 1924, Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act that prohibited whites from marrying anyone with "a single drop of Negro blood." By the 1920s, democratically elected legislatures had made marriage between whites and blacks illegal in thirty-eight states.
In the last half of the 20th century, the U.S. Supreme Court finally stepped in to overrule democratically legislated state interference in the reproductive decisions of Americans. In 1965, the Court found unconstitutional the Connecticut law prohibiting use of birth control by married couples in Griswold v. Connecticut. In 1967, the Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia that, "Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the state," striking down the laws in the 16 states that still banned interracial marriage. In 1972, the Court voided in the case of Eisenstadt v. Baird a Massachusetts law prohibiting the sale of contraceptives to unmarried people. And of course, the Supreme Court found prohibitions on abortion unconstitutional in 1973 in Roe v. Wade.
Interestingly, the U.S. Supreme Court has never comprehensively struck down forcible sterilization laws, although in 1942 it did overrule Oklahoma's Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act in the case of Skinner v. Oklahoma on the grounds that it violated the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause because it did not apply to white collar crimes like embezzlement. The point is probably moot for now since the last forcible sterilization in the United States reportedly took place in Oregon in 1981.[x] The point is that when all of these legal restrictions on human sexual and reproductive decisions were enacted, they presumably reflected and comported with the views of the majority of citizens. It cannot be emphasized too strongly that these laws were overturned on constitutional grounds of protecting minority rights.
We are still engaged in fighting majoritarian tyranny in the struggle to establish gay civil rights. In 1981, Congress overturned a District of Columbia ordinance that would have decriminalized sodomy. In 1986, the same year a Gallup poll found that more than half of Americans considered homosexuality a sin, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Georgia's anti-sodomy law in Bowers v. Hardwick. The Baptist minister Jerry Falwell crowed that the Supreme Court "has issued a clear statement that perverted moral behavior is not accepted practice in this country." It was not until 2003 that the Supreme Court finally overturned Texas' same-sex anti-sodomy law in the case of Lawrence v. Texas.
As of January 1, 2009, thirty states had democratically adopted constitutional amendments explicitly barring the recognition of same-sex marriage, confining civil marriage to a legal union between a man and a woman. More than 40 states explicitly restrict marriage to two persons of the opposite sex. In addition, Florida categorically prohibits gay parents from adopting, and Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Utah, and North Dakota do so as a matter of practice. In 2006, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and Missouri were considering constitutional amendments or laws banning gay adoption. Arkansas, Nebraska, and Utah don't allow gay people to serve as foster parents.[xi]
The urge for democratically imposed restrictions on the use of reproductive technologies has not abated. Recall that the federal government imposed a moratorium in the 1970s on funding any research on in vitro fertilization techniques.[xii] In January, 1980, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), alarmed by the opening of the first IVF clinic in the United States, sent a letter to Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), who was then chairman of a health and scientific research subcommittee, urging him to convene hearings on the grounds that "prudence and our commitment to public participation in decision-making suggest that the test tube baby laboratory not become fully operational until we have had the opportunity to consider the matter in open congressional hearings."[xiii] Nine states, including New York, currently prohibit gestational surrogacy.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton rejected the recommendations from the NIH's Human Embryo Research Panel and prohibited federal funding of the creation of human embryos solely for research purposes.[xiv] This ban did not apply to research on spare embryos or privately funded research. In addition, in the wake of the announcement that Scottish researchers had cloned a sheep in 1997, President Clinton announced an immediate moratorium on any human cloning research. In 1998, Clinton urged Congress to ban human cloning experiments for at least five years.[xv] Today 13 states ban reproductive human cloning, and six outlaw therapeutic cloning.[xvi] The House of Representatives twice passed a bill that would have criminalized somatic cell nuclear transfer research and which would have criminalized any American who went abroad to take advantage of therapies developed using that technique—the penalty would have been 10 years in prison and $1 million in fines.
As noted above, democratically imposed restrictions on using advanced biotechnological techniques are not confined to the United States. For example, Britain established the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) in 1991 to regulate the use of embryos and gametes in infertility treatment and research. The HFEA has told couples that they could not select the sex of embryos to be implanted. Even now, parents wanting to use PGD to insure that their children will not be burdened with an inherited genetic disease must apply for permission from the HFEA. And the HFEA has banned paying women for providing eggs to be used in research. Crucially, the HFEA can regulate not just on the grounds of ensuring quality, safety, and efficacy, but also on ethical grounds.
Consider the case of the Whitaker family from Sheffield, England, to see just how perilous it is to allow a government agency to interfere in a family's reproductive decisions. In 2002, Michelle and Jayson Whitaker asked the HFEA for permission to use in vitro fertilization and PGD to produce a tissue-matched sibling for their son Charlie, who suffers from a rare anemia. That disease caused him to need a blood transfusion every three weeks. The HFEA refused, calling the procedure "unlawful and unethical," ruling that tissue matching is not a sufficient reason to attempt embryo selection.[xvii] Desperate, the Whitakers came to the United States, where PGD is still legal. In June 2003, Michelle Whitaker gave birth to James, whose umbilical cord stem cells are immunologically compatible with Charlie's. The stem cells were transplanted and, six years later, both boys are reported to be healthy. Please keep in mind that taking stem cells from James' umbilicus in no way endangered or harmed him.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
Warty|4.28.09 @ 3:08PM|#
You could have covered this in the hate crimes post...
|4.28.09 @ 3:13PM|#
Way to ruin the thread from the get-go, Warty. Is there anything you can't screw up?
|4.28.09 @ 3:16PM|#
People should not be forced to use medicines and technologies that they find morally objectionable.
Wow! How generous of you!
Christian Scientists would perhaps reject most of modern biotechnology outright; Jehovah's Witnesses might remain leery of treatments that they interpret to being akin to using blood products or blood transfusions; Roman Catholics might refuse to use regenerative treatments derived from human embryonic stem cells; and still others will wish to take the fullest advantage of all biomedical enhancements and treatments. In this way, a pluralistic society respects the reasonable comprehensive doctrines of their fellow citizens and enables social peace among moral strangers.
And Jews will have the option of not using technologies which were helped along by Dr Mengele's hypothermia experiments at Dachau. Everybody wins!
I'm curious: do Catholic embryos have the option of not being dismembered so that their stem cells can be extracted?
|4.28.09 @ 3:22PM|#
Birth and death are meaningless when viewed in separation from the persons who are being born and dying...yet transhumanists seem to have precious little concern for those people. Especially when they're in the way of hurrying along the Rapture, oops, I mean Singularity.
|4.28.09 @ 3:30PM|#
Unless such an individual happens to be hoarding the cells necessary for the advancement of transhumanist aspiration. In which case, get ready to be dismembered whether you like it or not.
So it would be morally unacceptable to demand that scientific research not be done in a way that is expected to cause harm to individuals? I don't see where Bostrom leaves room for that standard. And if you don't have that standard, we're off and running into Mengele territory (Godwin hounds be damned).
|4.28.09 @ 3:30PM|#
Someone's taken his hyperbole pills today. You masochists have fun with that.
|4.28.09 @ 3:38PM|#
Godwin hounds be damned
Cheeky, coming from someone who Godwin'd twice in 15 minutes.
|4.28.09 @ 3:38PM|#
Predictable. Bailey writes a 6,645 word essay decrying how transhumanists are being persecuted by not having their pet projects federally funded, and that anyone who has ethical problems with said pet projects must be anti-Enlightenment...and I'm the only one who has a problem with it.
JW Gacy|4.28.09 @ 3:39PM|#
crimethink, have you already forgotten what Dear Leader has taught us? Moral qualms are merely ideological opposition to Science. All hail.
|4.28.09 @ 3:44PM|#
Marc, I can't help it if Bailey and his coreligionists demand so much leeway in pursuing their aspirations that the atrocities of the past would be permitted under their regime.
And Godwin's Law doesn't mean what many people think it means...
[emphasis mine]
|4.28.09 @ 3:46PM|#
Bailey writes a 6,645 word essay
Well at least he didn't write another 21 words, then you'd be really pissed.
|4.28.09 @ 3:51PM|#
People should not be forced to
useprovide medicines and technologies that they find morally objectionable.Agree/Disagree?
|4.28.09 @ 3:52PM|#
THreadJack:
Anyone else see the SCOTUS Decision FCC v Fox that came out ? 5 - 4 in favor of the FCC BUT it's an interesting case with multiple concurrences and multiple dissents.
Thomas, while ruling for the FCC (Ruling that they had the authority to levy the fines in question) filed a separate concurrence suggests that the pervasiveness of the Internet, plus cable and satellite tv (and V-chips and other technologies available for same) means that maybe there's no longer a constitutional basis for the FCC to regulate anything anymore.
Kennedy, in a concurrence, explicitly states that he isn't ruling on the Constitutionality of the FCC
Gisnburg, in a dissent, also seems to be hinting that maybe the Pacifica decision should re-examined:
This turned out to be a pretty interesting decision, and it doesn't seem that far fetched to think that the FCC's days of censoring the airwaves MIGHT be numbered.
Warty|4.28.09 @ 4:00PM|#
This thread was doomed, Epi. I was just trying to extract some dick jokes out of it, but nooooooo you're too mature for that.
|4.28.09 @ 4:48PM|#
The rule does not make any statement about whether any particular reference or comparison to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis might be appropriate.
Understood.
And nevertheless: GOD-WIN. Godwin.
|4.28.09 @ 4:49PM|#
If the embryos do not consent, then they have to live with the consequences of decisions that formed them, not just obscure decisions about their birth method. They are not comparable at all.
The industrial process of genetic engineering may be ethical, but I'm not so sure about the research to get there, as there will be mistakes. Could it be done in such a manner as to ensure that no-one would have to live with the consequences? What would be the expense of doing so? Can a few - only a few - mistakes be lived with, written off as aceidents, we're very sorry, be lived with in order to benefit a great many people to some degree?
These seem to me to be the relevant questions.
|4.28.09 @ 6:22PM|#
Catholics might refuse to use regenerative treatments derived from human embryonic stem cells
Or, they might go ahead and make use of the treatments, and confess afterward. This is one of the more popular aspects of the Church: you can do bad stuff and then make it all better with a few Hail Marys.
|4.28.09 @ 6:30PM|#
There is nothing wrong with merely using technologies/treatments that have been developed by immoral means. Seriously, most of us in the US live on land that was stolen from the native inhabitants, who were forcibly moved and/or killed if they dared resist. There aren't many good and useful things in this world that don't bear the stain of blood upon them from sometime in history.
To go back to my death camp hypothermia experiment example, if there had been some medical breakthrough as a result of the experiments in which Jews (and Polish priests, everyone conveniently forgets) were held submerged in freezing water until they died, I don't think it would be unethical at all to make use of it. Acknowledging the fact that good things sometimes result from terrible actions doesn't justify the terrible deeds.
MaterialMonkee|4.28.09 @ 6:36PM|#
That is a damn well written bit of text
really excellent stuff
Its actually good to see a yank use the term liberalism correctly
"the dispute between liberalism and radical democracy has "to do with how one can reconcile equality with liberty, unity with diversity, or the right of the majority with the right of the minority. Liberals begin with the legal institutionalization of equal liberties, conceiving these as rights held by individual subjects. In their view, human rights enjoy normative priority over democracy, and the constitutional separation of powers has priority over the will of the democratic legislature"
That is what liberalism is all about
Social progress through rational application of science and reason with the utmost respect for the INDIVIDUAl
great stuff
|4.28.09 @ 6:36PM|#
I should add that Bailey's condescending faux-compromising pronouncement that Catholics don't have to use treatments developed from ESCR is a laughable attempt to change the subject and portray anyone who opposes ESCR as an ignorant Luddite.
Few Catholics have a problem with developing new and revolutionary medical treatments. What we have a problem with is destroying human life in order to get there. A Google search will probably reveal thousands of posts on H&R where I have said this, yet Bailey et al seem not to have gotten the memo. Strange for a community that welcomes debate and discourse, as Bailey claims of the transhumanist movement.
|4.28.09 @ 6:46PM|#
I keep finding more outrageous quotes in this article with every reading. It's almost a blessing:
Nonsense. There's a big difference between treating spina bifida in utero and tinkering with eye color. A good rule of thumb is, would it be ethical to perform this procedure on an unconscious adult? If the answer is no, you shouldn't be doing it to an embryo either.
anarch|4.28.09 @ 10:34PM|#
Must say, I appreciate crimethink's posts.
jtuf|4.28.09 @ 10:41PM|#
The future is now. Times of India reported on a topical cure for erectile disfunction that uses nanoparticles.
The Albert Eistein College of Medicine website also reports on nanoparticles used to fight microbes.
shut it|4.29.09 @ 7:57AM|#
Chicago Tom,
Get your own frakkin' site or shut the fuck up.
Mr. Rational|4.29.09 @ 11:58AM|#
Blah,Blah,Blah. The majority is always going to dictate to the minority, and human idiocy guarantees that the majority will dictate stupidity a large portion of the time.
|4.29.09 @ 12:47PM|#
The majority is always going to dictate to the minority,
Actually, historically (and currently) it is generally a minority dictating to the majority.
|4.29.09 @ 1:22PM|#
I don't know. I'm still torn on whether a doctor should be allowed to remove the organs from some patient who is a donor match for more than one life-saving transplant.
Letting 4 people die so 1 person can live just seems so... narcissistic.
|4.29.09 @ 1:25PM|#
B.T.W. We like to be referred to as Neo Humans, not transhumans. Please be sensitive to this.
Craig|4.29.09 @ 1:33PM|#
Or to summarize, left-liberals hope to use the tyranny of the majority to force us recalcitrant individualists to join the Borg, not realizing that it is much more likely to be the science-fearing masses who actually use democratic power to prevent any significant trans-humanistic progress at all.
|4.29.09 @ 1:40PM|#
What if a genetic mod became available which allowed me to control other people's minds?
Or if a therapy became available to increase the surface area of the cerebral cortex to give a large boost to perceptive ability, but it had a side effect that caused mental injuries in 0.001% of the people around me?
Should I be allowed to undergo these mods which would increase my relative chance of being successful in life?
|4.29.09 @ 1:42PM|#
What if I wanted to become sub-human?
civil servant|4.29.09 @ 4:09PM|#
Take a number.
stand in for civil servant |4.29.09 @ 11:09PM|#
Who says you're not already sub-human?
Btw, those examples would be clear acts of aggression towards others. Next!
|5.5.09 @ 6:31AM|#
Rawls argues, "reasonable persons will think it unreasonable to use political power, should they possess it, to repress comprehensive views that are not unreasonable though different from their own."
And what does 'unreasonable' mean? You could drive a truck through that statement. You could put people in jail for offensive speech, force people to go to conventional doctors, force children to go to public school, and ban flag burning under Rawl´s terms.
"Once we accept the fact that reasonable pluralism is a permanent condition of public culture under free institutions, the idea of the reasonable is more suitable as part of the basis of public justification for a constitutional regime than the idea of moral truth."
Yes, let´s chuck out moral principles and natural law out the window in favor of convenience. I´m assuming that because Rawls is speaking about free institutions he accepts that people can leave those institutions if they disagree with them strongly enough, either in the specific or as a general concept, or is that unreasonable opposition?
¨
"to do with how one can reconcile equality with liberty, unity with diversity, or the right of the majority with the right of the minority. Liberals begin with the legal institutionalization of equal liberties, conceiving these as rights held by individual subjects. In their view, human rights enjoy normative priority over democracy, and the constitutional separation of powers has priority over the will of the democratic legislature"
a) You can´t reconcile liberty with equality. Pick one.
b) Unity can be reconciled with diversity if you´re talking about skin color. If you´re talking about extremely different political views, i.e. Nazis and Zionists living in the same country, then the answer is no. Culture is a stickier subject and depends on what two cultures meet.
c) There are no rights of the majority. There are only the rights of the individual. Rights of the majority are the rights of the lynch mob.
d) The last part looks good on paper. Too bad it always ends up going to shit.
Democracy was never conceived to work beyond a small town, like a New England Town Meeting. A true republic was never conceived to work beyond perhaps a county or small state like Delaware. The US will either fragment or transition into a totalitarian state, democratic or otherwise. It´s too unwieldy, important checks on democratic inclinations have been undone, there is an ever increasing desire to centralize power, political culture has been eroded, and government is ever expanding.
Our current system sucks.
|5.6.09 @ 5:40PM|#
It still baffles me as to how many of America's intellegentsia will still blatantly showcase their ignorance of Nietszche's philosophy by making such comments regarding his only constructive positive philosophical idea.
|5.6.09 @ 5:45PM|#
I should learn to use the "preview" feature for submitting comments. It is Nietzsche not Nietszche. I apologize for the typo.
louboutinvips|3.29.10 @ 3:51AM|#
Take a number.
http://www.christianlouboutinvips.com
|10.27.10 @ 5:23PM|#
I'm a little confused. At one point, you note that crossing the posthuman barrier can be ethical because we can perfect the transition in animal testing first. Then a couple paragraphs later, when talking about a species war between Homo futuriens and Homo sapiens, you note that rights extend to individuals across species no matter "how brilliant or stupid." So can you explain why an ape or monkey -- by all accounts as intelligent as an infant or young child -- can be ethically enslaved, but Homo futuriens cannot ethically enslave Homo sapiens? It seems that you have conceded that membership to the species Homo sapiens is insufficient as a basis to receive liberal rights, but have conveniently set the species floor at your own species. I would love to hear how you justified seemingly arbitrary (and self-serving) rule.
nike shox|8.9.11 @ 3:33AM|#
is good