Sunday, February 3, 2013
Abortion, Animal Rights, and Levels of Consciousness
By Tom Kando
In 1973, the US Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion. Back then, the country was relatively rational. America was a modern, scientific, pragmatic country, not unlike Western Europe, Canada and a dozen other parts of the world. In the words of the Russian-American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, we had a sensate, materialistic, empiricist culture.
Since then, a sort of counter-revolution has gained momentum. Over the past few decades, church attendance has remained stable or according to some reports, increased. Creationism is as popular as ever. Nearly a century after the Scopes “Monkey” trial (1925), almost half the population continues to believe in it, and to reject evolution. Concern about climate change has declined a great deal since the 1990s (Gallup). Fewer people now accept the fact that man-made global warming has been scientifically proven. The number of pro-choice Americans is at an all-time low (Gallup). Clearly, America has become a less “scientific” and a more irrational, absolutist country. In Sorokin’s words, we have become a more ideational, faith-based culture based on belief rather than on fact.
Take abortion: I realize that this issue is a minefield, fraught with moral and logical pitfalls. For one thing, one’s position on abortion depends in part on whether one judges it pragmatically or morally. If one does the former, there is no argument. However, I will now try to look at the practice morally (a risky thing to do):
The pro-lifers’ criterion is an unprovable metaphysical one: The sacro-sanctity of the “human being,” who is defined as anything from the fertilized ovum onward. “Human being” is an abstract concept. Pro-lifers argue that within seconds of conception, we have a “human being.” But the reality is that the empirical characteristics of such a microscopic human being are nil.
The pro-choice position is more science-based, based on empirically observable knowledge. The main question in the abortion debate should be: what are we killing? The criterion should be: If we kill a conscious, sentient life, we do evil. The more conscious and sentient the organism is, the greater the evil.
Now, I don’t want to spout nonsense, for example implying that infanticide is less immoral than killing adults, because newborn babies’ minds are less developed. All people are created equal.
But consider inter-species differences. I am not a biologist, but I have dabbled in science and philosophy. A brilliant book on this subject is Teilhard de Chardin’s “The Phenomenon of Man.” He was a French philosopher and Jesuit priest who was also a professor of paleontology and geology and was one of the discoverers of Peking Man. He traces evolution from matter, to the emergence and expansion of life, the birth of thought and consciousness, what he calls the noosphere.
Another great book is Ernest Becker’s "The Birth and Death of Meaning." This Berkeley anthropologist distinguishes between four ascending levels of “reactivity:” The simplest level is the passive and automatic response to environmental stimuli. Simple life forms such as amoebas are capable of this. A higher level of reactivity is the conditioned response, which indicates learning. A dog’s Pavlovian reaction illustrates this. Even more sophisticated is the reaction of which chimps and other higher primates are capable, namely a response based on a Gestalt, i.e. a perception of configuration in the environment. Finally, at the highest level, there is symbolic interaction, - language. Only man is capable of this.
So what I am talking about are levels of consciousness. Organisms are on a continuum. Simple life forms are more dispensable than highly sentient and conscious ones. The moral issues involved in abortion are not unrelated to those of animal rights. The criterion for destroying life should be: The higher the level of consciousness and sentience of an organism is, the more evil it is to kill it. It is one thing to destroy bacteria, unicellular amoebas, even mosquitoes, but another to kill mammals, higher primates, great apes. It is hardly evil to mow grass and to pick cherries and tomatoes, but eating mammals is somewhat bad. Vegetarians are right.
A fertilized sperm/ovum is not a conscious, sentient organism, let alone a full-fledged human. The level of consciousness and sentience of an embryo is still very low. A fetus is more highly developed and capable of pain, after the first trimester.
Here, you get the nitty-gritty of abortion ethics. At what stage does abortion become murder? Thank God, there has been progress. Past civilizations have used post-natal infanticide as a form of birth control. But practices range from barbaric to acceptable. Strict pro-lifers now claim that US abortions have “murdered 56 million people since Roe v. Wade (1973).” That’s not true. Any reasonable discussion of the destruction of life - human or other - must be based on the empirical recognition that the higher the level of consciousness and sentience of a life is, the more immoral it is to kill it. leave comment here
10 comments:
Tom - Indeed you have entered a minefield. From my perspective there are a couple of fallacies in your logic. Ultimately, before Potter Stewart invented a "right" of privacy, there were some serious problems with what to do about abortion - which happened before Roe. However, no rational person can believe that the situation has been significantly improved after Roe. The absolute advocacy that some have for things like late term abortions, has fundamental negative consequences for larger issues in society.
Ultimately, from my perspective, I want two things that are not happening under the implementation of Roe. First, I want fathers to be be a part of the decision - they were involved at the start and anything we can do to keep them engaged will produce benefits for society. But second, ultimately, I want these complex moral and ethical decisions to be made between the woman and her doctor.
I am not sure why you bring up Scopes. Indeed more than half the population do not have confidence that the absolute theory of evolution is correct. There are so many holes Darwin that we should have a bit of pause about the predictive power of the theory. The scientific consensus on evolution is strong - about as strong as the scientific consensus on the flat earth was before Galileo.
The arrogance of the left claiming that scientific consensus and scientific surety are the same things is both annoying and inappropriate.
Ultimately neither the pro-choice nor the pro-life choice is scientifically based. Both are based on a set of assumptions that at this point rely on a set of values.
I like what Jonathan has to say. This is a minefield and decisions should be made by the families involved. The government can protect rights, but society is more than individuals and when you bring up the idea of consciousness, we need to think about social or cultural consciousness as well. It is consciousness of others and altruism that leads to the social mores that curb our baser instincts--like having free sex without any responsibility.
The problem with the Darwinists is that they have little to say about the social value of such norms and tend to focus on biological impulses. So far as I can tell most scientists are absent on the discussion of questions like "What makes people happy?" and "What is the best environment for raising people to have the highest consciousness?"
Tom - one other comment - The statement "man-made global warming has been scientifically proven." is simply false.
The Global Warming hypotheses are a set of correlations which in the minds of many have been raised to causality. But simply arguing that correlation and causality are the same is wrong. There is plenty of alternative data which suggests that there is no causality or that the causes of the changes in climate come from a different set of sources. There is also a lively debate about whether Darwin's conclusions have serious flaws.
In both the issue of whether Darwinian logic is correct or whether the curves first proposed by Al Gore and his allies are right one needs to ignore a lot of data that suggests a contrary result.
At this point both theories are an important base of scientific thought but neither has been "scientifically proven." The hysterical attempts by the left to brand anyone who disagrees with the conclusions offered by one side (even one which seemingly has such a high percentage of the scientific community on its side) sounds to me like what we might have heard from the scientific community when Galileo first came on the scene and argued that the earth was not flat.
Tom, that's a good categorization of the morality of abortion - from bacteria upward. Taking it one dicey step further, morality itself becomes suspect when God tells "his special people" it's OK to kill those of a different religion, or the state becomes militaristic and religion-like, arming people kill under the banner of Gott mit uns, or co-religionists define themselves as "saints" (presumably more important than "gentiles".)
Tom:
You've done an amazing analysis on abortion, and you've got great courage to present it in a cool, philosophical way. I'm happy to know that someone in our society takes the time to read and study philosophy!
Bravo for you! Hope you're not feeling too lonely out there.
Tom,
Brave souls like you are precious. I'd like to add to the discussion: Is bringing another life to the world a good thing or would having an abortion be the lesser of two evils sometimes? Only the potential mother can say. Also, considering the destruction of habitate caused by man (and climate change according to science), can it be ethical to add more humans (at the cost of ANY other beings) to earth? I find it arrogant to value human conception above all other life.
A society that over-focuses on the morality of abortion creates, yet again, a situation where women are made to suffer, so that men can feel better about themselves.
Abortion, whether moral or not, should be a woman's choice. Nobody has a right to tell her what to do with her own body. If she chooses to terminate a pregnancy, it is her right and privilege.
In (hopefully not too many) generations, civilized society will look back upon our era with amazement. Just as we look back on the Middle Ages with horror, when women were considered property, often less valuable than cattle.
As I expected ,many issues are being raised. Predictably, those who object to my sympathetic treatment of abortion are men. Figures.
I don’t know how to reply to Naida, except to say “yes,” and to Cheryl, except to say “thank you.”
As to Jonathan and Gordon: get fathers more involved in abortion? I suppose, but it depends... Families too? (Gordon) Hmm... which members? Aunt Mabel too? Ultimately, whose body are we taking about?
Alas (and you guys will hate this): the government also has to be involved, because only the government may pass laws, and laws are required to regulate values and behavior.
Evolution, global warming, the flat earth, left wing scientific hysteria:
Whereas creationism is as absurd a theory as the flat earth theory, evolution is still an excellent one, and it is still evolving (neo-Darwinism differs from original Darwinism). Let’s not retread familiar ground (the neolithic revolution 8,000 years ago, Cro Magnon 30,000 years ago, dinosaurs 100 million years ago, etc.).
That global warming exists and is man made is also a very good theory.
Science is neither left nor right. It seeks truth, or at least better theories (see Karl Popper). I don’t know any hysterical left-wing scientists, but I do know of many hysterical pro-life and anti-global warming ideologues such as Rush Limbaugh.
Yes, abortion is related to both facts and values, which is what I tried to grapple with.
P.S.
I just picked up the last two comments. Carol Anita is right, of course.
And so is anonymous, whom I urge to re-read my first few paragraphs, above. As I said: men’s attitudes are self-serving, because it is women’s bodies (and lives and well-being) that are at stake.
I hope that I am not one of those who “over-focus” on abortion’s moral aspects. I only address these aspects because they are inescapable, if only because we are being bombarded with them every day. I am firmly pro-choice, but I claim the right to opine even about things which I can never experience myself. Also, a rational discussion is more effective than pure rage, even though the latter is understandable, in view of the treatment of women in many parts of the world outside the West.
Only mammals? Many bird species are shown to be more intelligent than many mammal species. In some incidents, such as crows and members of the parrot and macaw family, are smarter than most mammal species. Seeing as birds evolved from dinosaurs and dinosaurs are themselves reptiles birds are thus reptiles/sauropsids. Seeing this birds'/reptiles' lives are every bit as important as those of mammals. Some non-avian species, families or orders of reptiles, such as crocodiles, are shown to have the intelligence of mice and rats. Not that I'm against humans eating animals, or even animals eating humans, but all sentient life is important and on an equal footing in the eyes of evolution and nature.
Anonymous:
Ouch! This is exactly the sort of impossibly difficult question which I was hoping to avoid and tiptoe around. To deal with it requires expertise in biology, ethics and metaphysics, and even with that, there is no solution to the problem, because no one has yet been able to synthesize the two languages - science and philosophy.
What I do (boldly and controversially), is to posit a hierarchy, with man at the top of the pyramid. Simply put: to kill a human being is worse than to kill an animal - any animal. While most of the world agrees with this common sense (all of the world’s laws show that), modern and relativistic people like you do not. And science doesn’t either, because science is not in the morality business. There is no place for my humanistic hierarchy in that framework.
As anonymous puts it so well, you can say that animals eating humans and humans eating animals are both on an equal footing, that all sentient life is on an equal footing, etc. Of course. But science is ONE language.
Now don’t misunderstand: I am not bringing religion into this, (or “soul,” or anything like that). But I am a humanist. In my post, I quote just two sources. For additional sources regarding man’s uniqueness and privileged status, see all of the world’s philosophers, from Plato to Sartre.
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