No matter how much James tries to distance his beliefs from the theist moral valuation of "embryos," there is no moral justification outside of one religious dogma or another. The hypothetical argument that a non-existent, potentially future conscious being did not give informed consent to not be born is just as nonsensical as arguing that, since we did not consent to being born, our parents had no right to proceed. Similarly, James' reductio ad absurdum that being killed while asleep is morally acceptable because we are not conscious at that moment is no better than a strawman.
That said, I highly respect James's research, though I am not impressed with his religious views. It's interesting how one can maintain research objectivity while holding such deep priors—he manages to a good extent, but not quite satisfactorily. One topic James, of course, will not touch is the gradually increasing dysgenics. See Michael Lynch’s 2016 paper, "Mutation and human exceptionalism: Our future genetic load": https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4788123/pdf/869.pdf
Widespread polygenic IVF selection would not only compensate for but reverse this trend, leading to increased human flourishing—rather than clinging to the most nonsensical taboo about the sanctity of a cell or a small cluster of cells. James’s use of inequality or oppressor-oppressed arguments makes his biased judgment even more apparent, and he employs his impressive cognitive abilities to verbally justify this—a perfect example of Stanovich's "My-Side Bias" that often afflicts people with higher cognitive abilities more rather than less, as they are capable of finding a larger number of arguments for their position, while skillfully dismissing arguments against. He ends by promising to ramp up his crusade against the progress of humanity; I hope he will inadvertently promote IVF polygenic selection while opposing it.
I completely agree with Jonathan's gradualist approach. Jonathan, you showed great restraint in response to James's statements, which essentially express his wish for your company to be banned. Hence, my brief opposition statement above.
Additionally: who is making the decision at the point of IVF selection? The only party present is the parents, who will be responsible for decades of raising and educating the child or children. Thus, raising a smarter, healthier, and more psychologically balanced child will be unquestionably more fulfilling than raising a dumber, sicker, and psychologically unbalanced one. Even knowing that they made the statistically best possible choice at the time may make them enjoy raising the child more.
This is the real moral issue, rather than attributing virtue to the preservation of every conceptus.
We're talking about preimplantation embryos for crying out loud! Not even abortion of an embryo in the first couple weeks. Before implantation.
Also not every religion is like this. In Judaism, a preimplantation embryo has zero moral value. It's like water. It acquires moral value gradually from implantation, so there is no problem with IVF.
James Lee must think that we are obligated to do medical interventions to save the day-old embryos that sometimes just fail to get implanted. He also must want to ban the IUD and the morning-after pill and so on. Again ultra-Orthodox Jewish women use IUD and morning-after pill and so on. So depends on your religion, I guess.
By the way, some branches of Christianity like Mormonism have the Jewish view as well and don't have a problem with IVF. I don't think Greek Orthodox mind IVF much in practice either. Isn't it mostly just Catholics and Evangelicals, and maybe a few other Protestant sects? Does the Church of England even support banning IVF these days?
James’s thought experiment (offered at ~37 minutes) is question-begging. To argue embryos have the same moral worth as adult humans, James imagines an adult male transported back in time to watch his parents decide not to implant the embryo that led to his existence. But this already assumes the conclusion James wants – that embryos are morally equivalent to adult humans.
Worse, James undercuts himself with his Back to the Future example. Marty McFly suffers when his parents make choices that prevent his conception, long before they are even married, let alone trying to conceive. If Marty’s suffering makes those choices immoral, then any action that prevents conception – choosing a different partner, delaying pregnancy, even abstaining – would be immoral. Yet James explicitly rejects that conclusion, though it follows directly from his reasoning.
I share some of James’s moral intuitions. But intuition is not argument, and so far I haven’t seen a serious argument that secures the conclusions James wants.
James arguments did not move me. Kantian Categorical Imperative arguments are to me quite fragile. James used the universal rule version of the argument. I find it weak because universal rules are almost impossible to state.
Take a simple example, the rule against murder. In the 10 commandments it rates 3 words in the English translations and 2 in the Hebrew. In the KJV it says "Do not kill", and some people take it as forbidding consumption of meat. It is not a good translation. NJPS translates the operative Hebrew as murder. I have seen good arguments that murder is too narrow a term and manslaughter would be more appropriate. But, let's say we accept the rule as being do not commit murder.
What is murder? It is "killing another human being with malice aforethought"
Can we apply that rule without elaboration? Not on your life. Does a soldier commit murder when he kills an enemy soldier? No. What about someone who kills a person who attacks him? No, that is self-defense. Is killing a fetus in utero murder? Not in many jurisdictions, the baby must be out of the womb. that has been changed by statute in many jurisdictions. What if the killer is acting under an insane delusion? or is a young child?
The problem is that the world is very complicated and universal rules are subject to almost infinite elaboration. Try reading this it is a textbook level summary of English law: https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=87445 It is only 7 pages, but your head will be spinning.
I agree with Ron Ron that James is engaged in a religious discussion. Many philosophers have held that Kant was restating protestant theology without a god in the foreground. My own view is that a belief in a moral order inherent in the nature of things is a belief in a deity. Thus, religions like Buddhism that believe in karma are not atheistic.
I am not much persuaded by Jonathon's use of Nietzsche. I view German philosophy as a toboggan ride to hell. Kant pushed off the top of the mountain. Nietzsche was in the high speed downhill, racing Marx to hell. After 1914, they got there.
However, I do agree with gradualism. I am glad that Usually Wash brought up implantation. It is a point missed by Catholics and James. mere formation of a zygote does not mean there will be an baby in the future. An embryo that does not implant does not create a pregnancy and will not live for very long. And about 30% of them don't. I do not see that a zygote has a greater moral status than the sperm and ova that join to create it.
I would also point out, that when embryos are frozen, they are dead. It is possible that if they are frozen with great care and defrosted also with great care they will live. But while they are frozen they are not alive at all. I do not see disposing of a frozen embryo as killing a living being.
For myself, when we conceived our second child we were 36 (both of us), i.e. geriatric, my wife underwent the procedure then used called amniocentesis. it could only detect some gross conditions like Down syndrome and neural tube defects. That was 40 years ago, Modern procedures are much less risky and much more informative.
We would have aborted if one of those defects had been detected. I don't feel bad about it.
Does James Lee think that we have a moral obligation to prevent the human body from spontaneously aborting Down Syndrome fetuses? According to his moral philosophy this saves a ton of human lives, yes?
He made a good point that just because something happens naturally doesn’t mean it is right. But I’m not sure he would bite a reversal test bullet that we should come up with a technological intervention to prevent women’s bodies from spontaneously miscarrying disabled fetuses.
I agree the naturalistic fallacy is a good point, but to make it really make sense he has to go and bite the bullet and save all of those "people" with Down syndrome that women's bodies spontaneously abort all the time.
I also feel that the inequality point is overdone. Just get the government to subsidize IVF so that everyone can afford it, like in Israel.
No matter how much James tries to distance his beliefs from the theist moral valuation of "embryos," there is no moral justification outside of one religious dogma or another. The hypothetical argument that a non-existent, potentially future conscious being did not give informed consent to not be born is just as nonsensical as arguing that, since we did not consent to being born, our parents had no right to proceed. Similarly, James' reductio ad absurdum that being killed while asleep is morally acceptable because we are not conscious at that moment is no better than a strawman.
That said, I highly respect James's research, though I am not impressed with his religious views. It's interesting how one can maintain research objectivity while holding such deep priors—he manages to a good extent, but not quite satisfactorily. One topic James, of course, will not touch is the gradually increasing dysgenics. See Michael Lynch’s 2016 paper, "Mutation and human exceptionalism: Our future genetic load": https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4788123/pdf/869.pdf
Widespread polygenic IVF selection would not only compensate for but reverse this trend, leading to increased human flourishing—rather than clinging to the most nonsensical taboo about the sanctity of a cell or a small cluster of cells. James’s use of inequality or oppressor-oppressed arguments makes his biased judgment even more apparent, and he employs his impressive cognitive abilities to verbally justify this—a perfect example of Stanovich's "My-Side Bias" that often afflicts people with higher cognitive abilities more rather than less, as they are capable of finding a larger number of arguments for their position, while skillfully dismissing arguments against. He ends by promising to ramp up his crusade against the progress of humanity; I hope he will inadvertently promote IVF polygenic selection while opposing it.
I completely agree with Jonathan's gradualist approach. Jonathan, you showed great restraint in response to James's statements, which essentially express his wish for your company to be banned. Hence, my brief opposition statement above.
Additionally: who is making the decision at the point of IVF selection? The only party present is the parents, who will be responsible for decades of raising and educating the child or children. Thus, raising a smarter, healthier, and more psychologically balanced child will be unquestionably more fulfilling than raising a dumber, sicker, and psychologically unbalanced one. Even knowing that they made the statistically best possible choice at the time may make them enjoy raising the child more.
This is the real moral issue, rather than attributing virtue to the preservation of every conceptus.
We're talking about preimplantation embryos for crying out loud! Not even abortion of an embryo in the first couple weeks. Before implantation.
Also not every religion is like this. In Judaism, a preimplantation embryo has zero moral value. It's like water. It acquires moral value gradually from implantation, so there is no problem with IVF.
James Lee must think that we are obligated to do medical interventions to save the day-old embryos that sometimes just fail to get implanted. He also must want to ban the IUD and the morning-after pill and so on. Again ultra-Orthodox Jewish women use IUD and morning-after pill and so on. So depends on your religion, I guess.
Agree; I mentioned a crusade.
By the way, some branches of Christianity like Mormonism have the Jewish view as well and don't have a problem with IVF. I don't think Greek Orthodox mind IVF much in practice either. Isn't it mostly just Catholics and Evangelicals, and maybe a few other Protestant sects? Does the Church of England even support banning IVF these days?
James’s thought experiment (offered at ~37 minutes) is question-begging. To argue embryos have the same moral worth as adult humans, James imagines an adult male transported back in time to watch his parents decide not to implant the embryo that led to his existence. But this already assumes the conclusion James wants – that embryos are morally equivalent to adult humans.
Worse, James undercuts himself with his Back to the Future example. Marty McFly suffers when his parents make choices that prevent his conception, long before they are even married, let alone trying to conceive. If Marty’s suffering makes those choices immoral, then any action that prevents conception – choosing a different partner, delaying pregnancy, even abstaining – would be immoral. Yet James explicitly rejects that conclusion, though it follows directly from his reasoning.
I share some of James’s moral intuitions. But intuition is not argument, and so far I haven’t seen a serious argument that secures the conclusions James wants.
James arguments did not move me. Kantian Categorical Imperative arguments are to me quite fragile. James used the universal rule version of the argument. I find it weak because universal rules are almost impossible to state.
Take a simple example, the rule against murder. In the 10 commandments it rates 3 words in the English translations and 2 in the Hebrew. In the KJV it says "Do not kill", and some people take it as forbidding consumption of meat. It is not a good translation. NJPS translates the operative Hebrew as murder. I have seen good arguments that murder is too narrow a term and manslaughter would be more appropriate. But, let's say we accept the rule as being do not commit murder.
What is murder? It is "killing another human being with malice aforethought"
Can we apply that rule without elaboration? Not on your life. Does a soldier commit murder when he kills an enemy soldier? No. What about someone who kills a person who attacks him? No, that is self-defense. Is killing a fetus in utero murder? Not in many jurisdictions, the baby must be out of the womb. that has been changed by statute in many jurisdictions. What if the killer is acting under an insane delusion? or is a young child?
The problem is that the world is very complicated and universal rules are subject to almost infinite elaboration. Try reading this it is a textbook level summary of English law: https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=87445 It is only 7 pages, but your head will be spinning.
I agree with Ron Ron that James is engaged in a religious discussion. Many philosophers have held that Kant was restating protestant theology without a god in the foreground. My own view is that a belief in a moral order inherent in the nature of things is a belief in a deity. Thus, religions like Buddhism that believe in karma are not atheistic.
I am not much persuaded by Jonathon's use of Nietzsche. I view German philosophy as a toboggan ride to hell. Kant pushed off the top of the mountain. Nietzsche was in the high speed downhill, racing Marx to hell. After 1914, they got there.
However, I do agree with gradualism. I am glad that Usually Wash brought up implantation. It is a point missed by Catholics and James. mere formation of a zygote does not mean there will be an baby in the future. An embryo that does not implant does not create a pregnancy and will not live for very long. And about 30% of them don't. I do not see that a zygote has a greater moral status than the sperm and ova that join to create it.
I would also point out, that when embryos are frozen, they are dead. It is possible that if they are frozen with great care and defrosted also with great care they will live. But while they are frozen they are not alive at all. I do not see disposing of a frozen embryo as killing a living being.
For myself, when we conceived our second child we were 36 (both of us), i.e. geriatric, my wife underwent the procedure then used called amniocentesis. it could only detect some gross conditions like Down syndrome and neural tube defects. That was 40 years ago, Modern procedures are much less risky and much more informative.
We would have aborted if one of those defects had been detected. I don't feel bad about it.
Does James Lee think that we have a moral obligation to prevent the human body from spontaneously aborting Down Syndrome fetuses? According to his moral philosophy this saves a ton of human lives, yes?
He made a good point that just because something happens naturally doesn’t mean it is right. But I’m not sure he would bite a reversal test bullet that we should come up with a technological intervention to prevent women’s bodies from spontaneously miscarrying disabled fetuses.
I agree the naturalistic fallacy is a good point, but to make it really make sense he has to go and bite the bullet and save all of those "people" with Down syndrome that women's bodies spontaneously abort all the time.
I also feel that the inequality point is overdone. Just get the government to subsidize IVF so that everyone can afford it, like in Israel.