Transcript Moral and Social Philosophy (2)

Moral and Social Philosophy (2)
(MSP2)
Wednesday Lectures.
Tutor: Howard Taylor.
x4508
[email protected]
Web page:FAITH AND THE MODERN WORLD
http://www.howardtaylor.net
MSP 2 Wednesday Classes.
Tutor: Rev Howard Taylor(University Chaplain)
Also teaches here:
– 1/3 of MSP 1, 1/3 of MSP 3.
– ‘Philosophy of Science and Religion’ - (School of Management and Languages).
– Takes Sunday Campus service. 11.30am Chaplaincy. Term time only.
Previously:
– Parish Minister in West of Scotland - 17 years.
– Visiting lecturer `International Christian College’ a University in
Shanghai.
– Author of several small books/booklets.
– 16 years in Malawi, Africa.
• Minister.
• Theology lecturer
• African Language teacher.
• Maths and Physics lecturer: University of Malawi.
– Degrees from: Nottingham, Edinburgh and Aberdeen.
• Married with three grown up sons and four grandsons and two
granddaughters.
MSP2 (Wednesday Classes)
Three main subjects:
1. Introduction to Human Bioethics.
2. Challenges to Morality:
– Genetic Determinism and Sociobiology.
– Logical Positivism
3. Can the concepts of `Human Rights and
Equality’ be a basis for moral decisions?
• The tutor does his best to be fair to all views
- religious and non-religious.
• However in the interests of honesty he will
explain what he believes.
• Although the tutor has his own religious
convictions, the assessment of essays and
tutorials will not be affected by a student's
own different convictions.
• Knowledge of the subject and good argument
are all important for assessment.
• Holding the same beliefs as, or different
beliefs from, the tutor will not be relevant
for module assessment.
An Introduction to some issues
in Human Bioethics.
Relevant to this discussion is the nature of the ‘soul’ or
‘self’.
I discuss the self or soul’s nature and mystery in other
modules - also in Power Point format.
Briefly, those who favour giving science freedom to advance in
genetic technology emphasise the potential huge medical
benefits, and those opposed emphasise the sanctity of life at its
earliest stage and fear the ‘slippery slope’ into eugenics
(attempts to produce the perfect ‘race’ and the dangers of
discrimination against the ‘imperfect’.) practised by the Nazis.
Embryonic Stem Cell Research.
Abortion is not used to obtain these embryos.
Only ‘no-use’ In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) embryos are used for
research. (They would otherwise be discarded.)
Many ova are removed from the womb and fertilised. Only one or
two are returned to the womb.
The remainder are either discarded or available for experiments.
However in October 2005 ways were found to change the
embryo so it would not be viable and therefore could not
grow into a human and so be another self. It would then be
harvested for stem cells. Or secondly the one harvested
could still be re-implanted - even though one stem cell had
been removed and stored for future use.
See article: Technical fixes may not solve Embryo Stem Cell ethical
problems. By Donald Bruce.
What is IVF?
Use of artificial techniques to join an ovum with
sperm outside (in vitro) woman's body to help
infertile couples to have a children of their own.
The basic technique of IVF involves removing
ova from a woman's ovaries, fertilising them in
the laboratory, and then inserting them into her
uterus.
The first ‘test-tube baby’, Mary Louise Brown,
was born in England in 1978.
Human Reproduction and differentiation.
Male sperm and female ovum combine to form new embryo.
The nucleus of this new embryo is a new DNA code which is
derived from both mother and father.
For the first 14 days this embryo divides and multiplies but is
not a miniature human being. It is more like a ‘recipe’. Each cell
has the same DNA code.
Each cell has the potential to form any part of the body.
At 14 days, the cells ‘differentiate’.
Different parts of the code in each cell are switched off and so
each cell now ‘knows’ what part of the body it is to form.
What differentiates a skin cell (say) from a heart cell (say) is
the parts of the code that are switched off.
At this stage of ‘differentiation’ (a great mystery) we have the
beginnings of a human being in miniature.
Reproductive Cloning - not used for humans yet.
A cell is removed from the skin (say) of a mature person and
its DNA is put in the nucleus of a new cell (the cell’s own DNA
nucleus having been removed.)
An electric current or chemical is used to fuse the new
nucleus with the egg which is ‘tricked’ into accepting it.
This mature differentiated skin DNA then undifferentiates
(how this happens is a mystery). New egg is put in the womb.
So now we have an egg with a DNA derived not from a loving
relation between male and female but from one person’s skin
(say). This is the ethical problem of reproductive cloning.
Baby will be a clone or twin of the life that gave cells of skin.
This process was used to produce ‘Dolly’ the sheep - which
died early of old age related illnesses.
Reproductive cloning of humans is dangerous and illegal.
Therapeutic Cloning.
(Legal in UK but each case needs special permission)
Same procedure as above - but the new cell is only allowed to
divide and grow up to 14 days - ie still in a pre-differentiated state.
In the 14 days stem cells are ‘harvested’ and cultured. Being
undifferentiated, they can be used indefinitely as (1) a source of
tissue for any part of the donor’s body or (2) for researching
causes of, and cures for, diseases.
The stem cells have the same DNA code as the donor and
therefore there is no danger of rejection of the implanted
tissue.
These stem cells are not embryos - detached from the embryo’s
outer layer, they have no potential to grow into babies.
For 14 days the embryo, before being killed, is a source of
stem cells.
Hybrid Embryos (Animal and human) are
in more use animal cells implanted with
human DNA. These are in potentially
more plentiful supply than human cells.
•See handout: Hybrid.doc
Ethical issues with therapeutic cloning involve:
(1) enormous health benefits to be gained.
(2) the status of this undifferentiated embryo - soon to be discarded.
Is it human?; deserving of some respect but not as a ‘human’?;
deserving no respect?
Those who deny that it is human say that the pre-differentiated embryo
can still be induced to form twins - so it is not one ‘self’.
Opponents say there is no need to use an artificially produced embryos to
get stem cells. They are present in the blood and bone marrow of an
adult.
Response: ‘yes’ but the embryonic stem cells are more flexible and easier
to work with. Potential results from embryonic stem cells are greater
than stem cells taken from mature bone marrow.
Embryo and Genetic Screening.
Should parents know in advance of any potential or certain
genetic disease in their unborn baby?
A childhood disease, or for example, late onset
Huntingdon's or Alzheimer's.
Would you like to know about your future?
If you were told you had a genetic disease should you
have children?
If you already have children should you tell them?
Should your insurance company have the right to know?
What about information on government data bases and
identity cards?
Embryo Screening and Abortion.
At present abortion for a diagnosed serious
disease is allowed up to birth.
What counts as serious?
Slippery slope. Cleft pallet.
What about people with genetic defects we
know? Should they have been killed in the
womb?
Jessica.
PGD: Pre-implantation genetic
diagnosis.
Diagnosis of genetic diseases in the embryo
before it is implanted back into the womb.
PND: Pre Natal Diagnosis.
Diagnosis of potential genetic diseases before
birth through extracting fluid from the mother’s
womb.
This may lead to advice re possible abortion.
PGD is a technique that has been used in the UK for a
number of years. Since the introduction of PGD thousands
of children world wide have been born free from lifethreatening conditions, such as cystic fibrosis or
haemophilia, which otherwise would have severely
threatened the quality of life. (Suzi Leather, Chair, Human
Fertilisation and Embryology Authority - HFEA.
November 2005)
My comment. Actually the embryos showing signs of
disease have not been cured but killed. Then a new one
(another physical being) has been born free from that
disease.
Saviour Siblings.
(28th April 2005 - Law Lord’s back couple’s plea to create
designer baby to cure son.)
Parents have a sick or dying child. A tissue match from a
compatible child might cure him/her.
Several eggs taken from mother’s womb (some may have been
left over from previous IVF) and a match is sought and found.
The match must be compatible but not contain the defective gene
of the sick child. The other eggs are discarded.
Will the new child feel it was chosen just for its ‘spare parts’? Will
it be happy or unhappy that it was born to save another, rather
than born only for the normal reasons? Is the new child there as a
commodity?
Surely its own attitude of self-giving or resentment will determine
the answer as to how it develops as a human being.
Designer babies - a Post-Human Future?
If embryos can be selected for qualities that could help a sibling,
what about other qualities such as: Gender, intelligence, height,
athletic ability?
What about future science removing some of our feelings, e.g.:
phobias, guilt feelings, feelings of horror at genetic engineering,
revulsion that we are no longer human?
The powerful could engineer happy and content slaves who do
not regret the loss of an earlier humanity.
Possibilities like these are taken very seriously by some
academics especially Dr. Nick Bostrom of Oxford Uni who
favours a post human future as long as the science is guided
morally. (I asked him: Who guides the morality?) Other big
names in this ‘transhumanism’ are Lee Silver, Joseph Fletcher,
Linus Pauling, and James Rachels). See also: Couples may get
chance to design the 'ideal' IVF baby.
A Christian Perspective.
Should humans play God?
All medical techniques involve interference with the course of a
decaying physical nature. Maybe (being in the image of God)
we are meant to be creative?
However God, in creating creatures in His image for love and
fellowship did not clone Himself!
Christian theology cannot give all the answers to the difficult
ethical questions. However we can say certain things about our
humanity.
Image of God.
Relationship.
Reproduction should be from a loving committed relationship
between a man and woman.
A Christian Perspective continued.
Our humanity is not an accident.
It is God’s purpose that we be human not
post-human.
The image of God is best seen in Christ who is
‘the Image of the Invisible God’.(Colossians
1:15)
Christ’s identity with us goes back to his
conception in the womb of Mary.
John the Baptist was ‘filled with the Spirit, even
from his mother's womb.’ (Luke 1:15).
A Christian Perspective Continued.
A few verses from Psalm 139.
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my
mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully
made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in
secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes
saw my unformed substance.
It is the exposition of these great facts of theology that should
enable doctors and geneticists to have the perspective they
need to make the ethical judgements they face.
Christian theology cannot determine all that is right and wrong
in biotechnology but it can give the basis needed to make
difficult decisions.
What about Genetic engineering and human identity?
See handouts:
• A Godless world finds identity in biology. (Times 20th
January 2004).
• We should fear the disturbing future where man becomes
superman. (Times 12th October 2004)
We briefly refer to the book:
‘Our Posthuman Future’ by Francis Fukuyama.
The book’s subject is the biotechnology revolution - its
promises and dangers.
With developing techniques for genetic engineering and
perhaps designer babies, we face the questions:
•What is it to be human?
•How do we differentiate between right and wrong?
Fukuyama considers the following approaches to
the answers:
a. religion (we learn from God our true nature),
b. natural law (what we discern from nature),
c. positivism (customs and rules of society made by us).
He dismisses positivism, skirts round religion
and so chooses natural law.
Francis Fukuyama’s ‘Our Posthuman Future’ continued.
From nature Fukuyama believes we can discern a ‘factor X’
that uniquely is the essence of humanity:
It consists of a combination of: language, emotions, and
the ability for abstract reasoning.
He concludes that any biotechnology must not interfere
with these characteristics of our species. If they do they
will have produced a ‘non-human’ being.
Even if he is right that these qualities do constitute true
humanity, he does not say why they should be valued. Why
should humanity be valued?
As philosophers since Hume realised one cannot get an
‘ought’ from an ‘is’ or ‘are’.
The statement: ‘This is what people ought to be’ does not
follow from the statement: ‘this is what people are’.
Watch DVD on Biotechnology.
Challenges to Morality.
1. Scientism and Genetic Determinism.
• Read Handout entitled: `What is Scientism?’
• Especially note the consequences for moral
thinking which come from the quotations from
Bertrand Russell and the Los Angeles judge.
• Our question is not: `Do Genes affect our
behaviour?’ - Of course they do! The question
is rather: `Could genes and other physical
factors provide the complete explanation of why
we behave as we do or is there, in addition,
genuine free will?
Read Handout: `Moral credit where it is due’
by Janet Daley in the Daily Telegraph.
– If genes entirely determine our bad behaviour,
do they also determine:
• our good behaviour?
• our opinions about the difference between
good & bad?
• (How could we tell that my genes produce better
behaviour than your genes? What standard could we
use to determine what `better’ means?)
• the decisions that law makers make?
• the decisions law enforcers make about other
people?
Sociobiology.
• A fairly new theory, defined by Edward O. Wilson (one of its
main proponents) as the systematic study of the biological
basis of all social behaviour. (Sociobiology: the New Synthesis,
1975 page 3.) It states that genetics and evolution are the main
factors responsible, not only our existence, but also for our
behaviour and sense of right and wrong.
– In his book Consilience Wilson expounds this.
• See my critical review (published in the journal: Philosophia
Christi). The review is also on my web pages.
• Sometimes supporters of Sociobiology say we actually
exist for the benefit and propagation of our genes.
– (E.g.: Richard Dawkins’ book: The Selfish Gene and quotations
from Dawkins and Wilson - next slide.)
We are machines built by DNA whose purpose is to make more
copies of the same DNA … Flowers are for the same thing as
everything else in the living kingdoms, for spreading ‘copy me’
programmes about, written in DNA language. This is EXACTLY
what we are for. We are machines for propagating DNA, and the
propagation of DNA is a self sustaining process. It is every living
objects’ sole reason for living. (Richard Dawkins: ‘The Ultraviolet
Garden’, Royal Institution Christmas Lecture No. 4, 1991)
The individual organism is only the vehicle (of genes), part of an
elaborate device to preserve and spread them with the least
possible biochemical perturbation .. The organism is only DNA’s
way of making more DNA. (E. O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New
Synthesis, Harvard University Press, 1975, p. 3.)
(I owe these quotations to Denis Alexander’s ‘Rebuilding the Matrix’ p. 274)
See handout ‘A New Religion’ by David Stove.
• Critics say Sociobiology:
– threatens our motivation to change the
world for the better.
– turns genes into new kinds of ‘gods’ for
whose purpose we live!
• A long article, available on request, is:
– Against Sociobiology - by Tom Bethell
(Senior Editor of the American Spectator)
Read handout: ALL IN THE GENES ? by physics
professor Russell Stannard.
• The theory of evolution and survival of the fittest
possibly could be used to explain some forms of
altruism - in humans and animals.
• However there are other kinds of altruism that
could not have come from `survival of the fittest.’
• How can the altruism, that has no physical
survival value, be explained?
• My question:
• Suppose our sense of morality could, one day, be
explained completely by our biological make up, does that
mean that there is no such thing as intrinsic good and
intrinsic evil, so that cruelty (say) is not in itself evil - its
just that we don’t like it?
Before we move on to consider
Positivism we consider some
words of Bertrand Russell in
his Introduction to his History
of Western Philosophy.
All definite knowledge belongs to science; all dogma as to
what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But
between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, ..
this No Man's Land is philosophy. Almost all the questions
of most interest to speculative minds are such as science
cannot answer, and the confident answers of theologians no
longer seem convincing .... …(The questions are:) Is the world
divided into mind and matter, and, if so what is mind and what is matter?
Is mind subject to matter, or is it possessed of independent powers? Has
the universe any unity or purpose? Is it evolving towards some goal? Are
there really laws of nature, or do we believe in them only because of our
innate love of order? Is man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump
of impure carbon and water impotently crawling on a small unimportant
planet? Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is he perhaps both at once?
Is there a way of living that is noble and another that is base, or are all
ways of living merely futile? If there is a way of living that is noble. In what
does it consist, and how shall we achieve it? Must the good be eternal in
order to deserve to be valued, or is it worth seeking even if the universe is
inexorably moving towards death? … To such questions no answer
can be found in the laboratory. …. The studying of these
questions, if not the answering of them, is the business
of philosophy.
A further look at Bertrand Russell’s questions
that he says cannot be answered from science.
(1) Questions in blue raise fundamental
mysteries.
• Is the world divided into mind and
matter, or are mind and physical brain
identical?
– If the mind is not merely physical matter,
what is it?
– And what is physical matter? (Quantum
mechanics and String theory expose the
inherent mystery)
A further look at Bertrand Russell’s questions
that he says cannot be answered from science. (2)
• Does nature have a purpose?
– If there is a purpose, can this purpose be
understood from within nature or does it imply a
transcendent reality for which it exists?
– Do good and evil exist as objective realities or
are they just the product of the way we, as
individuals or societies, have developed?
– For example:
• Is cruelty to children evil in itself (intrinsically evil) or
is it just that we don’t like it?
• Are courage and kindness good in themselves
(intrinsically good), or is it just that we like them?
Here is a statement attributed to Russell:
– "Whatever knowledge is attainable must be
obtainable by scientific method. What science
cannot discover mankind cannot know".
– Think about that statement.
– Why is it illegitimate to make such a
statement?
– Here is the answer:
– The statement itself cannot be proved from
science.
• Therefore, if it is true we can't know that it is true!
– In other words it refutes itself.
Challenges to Morality.
2. Logical Positivism
First what is meant by ‘Positivism’?
Francis Bacon (17th C) and Comte (19th C)
• We should not ask metaphysical questions re First
Causes, etc
– The original `matter’ from which the universe is formed is
inexplicable.
– We will never find an explanation for its existence.
• We should assume that the ultimate matter of the
universe is `positive’ ie:
– Its origin and purpose are not susceptible to philosophy and
reason so the universe must simply be accepted and
scientifically examined as it is.
The mystery of existence and Positivism.
• Metaphysical enquiries asking such
questions as `Why is there matter and
energy? or What is the purpose of it all? are
beyond us,
– Therefore we should only think about what
science can reveal by experiment..
• If God exists why does He exist? Was He
created?
– Whether or not God exists we are face to face
with the mystery:Why does anything exist at
all?
Positivism says: Don’t Even bother to ask. These
things are beyond us. Just accept things as they
are and let science get on with its job.
However can we really avoid these
questions that science cannot answer?
Scientists and philosophers can’t help
thinking about these things:
Stephen Hawking:`Why does the universe go to
all the bother of existing?’
JJC Smart (atheist philosopher): Why should
anything exist at all? - it is for me a matter of
the deepest awe.
The most beautiful and deepest experience a man
can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the
underlying principle of religion as well as of all
serious endeavour in art and in science.... He who
never had this experience seems to me, if not dead,
then at least blind.
The sense that behind anything that can be
experienced there is a something that our mind
cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity
reaches us only indirectly and as feeble reflection,
this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious.
To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to
attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere
image of the lofty structure of all that there is.
Albert Einstein (Speech to the German League of Human Rights (Berlin
1932).
Also in our lead up to Logical Positivism we
mention David Hume. (18th Century)
• Only two forms of knowledge:
• Knowledge from
Logic/Mathematics
• Knowledge from Sense Experience
eg scientific experiment.
–Everything else meaningless.
Early 20th Century: Vienna Circle and British
Atheist philosopher A.J. Ayer (author of the
book Language Truth and Logic).
revived and developed Hume’s views.
Logical Positivism (a form of atheism) was
the result.
It is based on its Verification Principle
which says that:
If we cannot imagine an experiment to
verify or falsify a statement then that
statement is meaningless.
Logical Positivism continued
• From the Verification Principle it
follows that:
–Statements about morality are not
false they are meaningless.
• The statement: ‘Stealing is
morally wrong’ has no objective
meaning - it is just an expression
of how I feel.
• This leads to:
Emotivism: Moral propositions are
really expressions of one's own likes
and dislikes.
`X is right' only reveals something
about the person who utters the
statement - the state of his
emotions - he approves of X.
‘X is right’ is a claim about the
psychology of the speaker not
about the real moral value of X.
Logical Positivism continued
• `The jug is red', or `The door squeaks or
`the pig is smelly' or `the man is clever', all these statements can be verified or
falsified by experiment and therefore have
meaning.
• `The painting is good' cannot be verified
or falsified by experiment, neither can
`Stealing is evil'
– Therefore both are meaningless statements.
• Problems with Logical Positivism.
– Does this verification principle make
sense?
• If an insane person feels right about
committing a murder does that mean that
there was nothing wrong with it?
• Or if someone committed a murder so that no
one knew there had been a murder so that the
only person to have any feeling about the
murder was the murderer himself - does that
mean that there was nothing wrong with the
murder?
Logical Positivism concluded.
• The main problem with Logical Positivism:
– It refutes itself.
• The Verification Principle itself cannot be
verified or falsified by scientific experiment.
• Therefore if it is true it is meaningless - which
is nonsense.
– Thus almost all philosophers now recognise
that Logical Positivism (which had a major
influence on 20th C philosophy) cannot be right.
– Even A. J. Ayer himself came to realise that.
Can the concepts of
–Human Rights
–and Equality
be the foundations upon which a
just and moral society is built?
===============
But first we consider the traditional view of
the ultimate source of justice and morality
and how it relates to a nation’s laws.
Traditional view of a nation’s source of its
sense of justice and the right ordering of
society:
Goodness is the character of God
shown, not primarily in a list of rules, but
in His deeply personal dealings with us.
– For a Christian the Bible is the account
of this.
– For a Christian this goodness is
focussed in the Person of Christ in
whom God comes face to face with us.
At the heart of that goodness is the selfgiving love of God.
We are called to love as He loves us.
From this comes our duties of respect
for justice and the dignity of our
fellow human beings and all creation.
In our yet imperfect world God knows we still
need laws so, He gives them to us.(E.g..10
Commandments)
The Source of Goodness - Old and New.
God - His goodness and
laws.
The Concept of Human
Rights replaces God.
• Laws of the State as far as • As in a religion people are
possible are in harmony
reluctant to challenge this
with that goodness and
new ‘god’.
Law of God
– Government legislation is
– State legislation gives
certain rights in certain
contexts.
• E.g. the ‘right’ of way at
a crossroads.
• But such a ‘right’ is not
a fundamental human
right.
subject to ‘Human Rights’
legislation. (European
Court of Justice in
Luxembourg).
– Where there is conflict
between this Court and
UK Government, ‘Human
Rights’ has the final say.
Background to the modern revival of the
concept of Human Rights.
– Some governments treat their citizens
terribly:
– Dictatorships - fear of losing control
• Imprisonment without trial, torture, killings,
disappearances, genocide.
– 1961 ‘Amnesty International’ was founded
to campaign for the release of prisoners of
conscience.
• I.e. prisoners who had committed no crime, nor
advocated violence but were in prison for their
political or religious beliefs.
• it was not until the rise and fall of Nazi
Germany that the idea of rights--human
rights--came truly into its own.
– The laws authorising the dispossession and
extermination of Jews and other minorities,
the laws permitting arbitrary police search
and seizure, the laws condoning
imprisonment, torture, and execution without
public trial--these and similar obscenities
brought home the realisation that certain
actions are wrong, no matter what; human
beings are entitled to simple respect at least.
(Taken from an Encyclopaedia Britannica article)
Some milestones in the recent history of Human Rights:
• The Charter of the United Nations (1945) begins by
reaffirming a "faith in fundamental human rights, in the
dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights
of men and women and of nations large and small."
• In 1950, the Council of Europe agreed to the European
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and
Fundamental Freedoms. This led to the creation of the
European Commission of Human Rights and the European
Court of Human Rights.
• Later the European Court of Justice was set up. It has
authority over national governments if it believes their
actions or legislation contravenes Human Rights.
NB MSP students will not be examined on their knowledge of the
history or detailed contents of these conventions, charters - etc.
The above is for background information only. What matters for the
exam is an understanding of the philosophical questions that arise
from the concept of ‘Rights’
Narrow & Broad Interpretations of Human
Rights.(1)
• Narrow: Human Rights are relevant
only to such things as
`imprisonment without trial’, a ‘fair
trial’, government sponsored
torture, persecution on the grounds
of beliefs etc.
Narrow & Broad Interpretations of Human
Rights.(2)
• An example of a Broad Interpretation of
‘Rights’: Christmas period 2000. Some Perthshire
parents demanded their children’s ‘right’ to privacy
and successfully asked the Council to forbid the taking
of photos during school nativity plays. Other parents
who wanted the ‘right’ to photograph a significant
event in their child’s life were disappointed.
– Does the concept of human rights give any help in
settling disputes such as this?
– Does Human Rights mean ‘human desires’?
• No, but people will try to say that their desires
are their rights!
• How will the courts decide?
– This is one of the main problems of the concept.
Further back in history (in America):
Thomas Jefferson (3rd President of USA) said Americans
are a "free people claiming their rights as derived
from the laws of nature and not as the gift of their
Chief Magistrate."
This gave poetic eloquence to the plain prose of the 17th
century in the Declaration of Independence proclaimed by
the 13 American Colonies on July 4, 1776: "We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
In the first quotation above ‘rights’ derive from nature itself. (By
the way what does that mean?)
The second quotation says that our rights derive from God.
Neither says ‘rights’ derive from a government or nation state.
The idea of human rights as natural rights was not
without its detractors.
Because they were conceived in essentially
absolutist terms --"inalienable," "unalterable,"
"eternal"--, natural rights were found increasingly
to come into conflict with one another.
(what if my ‘right’ to do something impinges on your ‘rights’?)
Also the doctrine of natural rights came under
powerful philosophical attack.
For example, David Hume (18th C sceptical
philosopher) said the concept belonged to
metaphysics - ie could not be verified by science
and therefore was invalid.
(Taken from an Encyclopaedia Britannica article)
• Some of the most basic questions have yet to
receive conclusive answers.
• Whether human rights are to be validated by intuition,
or custom, or a particular sociological theory.
• whether they are to be understood as irrevocable or
partially revocable;
• whether they are to be broad or limited in number and
content
– Issues such as these are matters of ongoing
debate.
– Most assertions of human rights are qualified by
the limitation that the rights of any particular
individual or group are restricted as much as is
necessary to secure the comparable rights of
others. (Taken from an Encyclopaedia Britannica article)
Some Complications and difficulties:
• What is the difference between a desire and a right?
• Is there a right to do as we wish with our bodies in
private?
– Does what I do in private affect society at large now or in the future? Some theories of human
society say it may do.
• Abortion - whose right - mother's or the unborn?
• When does the right to freedom of speech:
– breach the right of someone to be protected from
what he regards as offensive?
– propagate evil and harm society.
• Does not a mere list of rights, trying to describe the dignity
of a person in terms of needs/wants depersonalise
him/her?
These dilemmas are faced in the following
articles from the Times and Sunday Times:
• Handout `Fundamentalism and Human
Rights.
• Handout: Cleaning up in court: the flood of
legal action set to engulf Britain.
• Handout: Human rights - by Cardinal Basil
Hume
Criticism of the concept of Human Rights by Lesslie
Newbigin in his book: ‘Foolishness to the Greeks’
especially:
The Right to … the pursuit of happiness.
• But what is true happiness ?
– If we can’t ask the Question:
• “What is the purpose of man’s existence?”
• then happiness is whatever each person
defines it as.
– Without belief in heaven or hell the pursuit of
happiness is carried out in the few short
uncertain years before death.
– Often leading to a hectic search for happiness
leading to great anxiety
Criticism, (continued) of the concept of Human
Rights by Leslie Newbigin especially:
The Right to … the pursuit of happiness.
• If everyone claims the right to life,
liberty & happiness
– who is under obligation to honour this
claim ?
• Middle Ages - there were reciprocal
rights & duties.
– Rights & duties went hand in hand and
both were finite.
Criticism, (continued) of the concept of Human
Rights by Leslie Newbigin especially:
The Right to … the pursuit of happiness.
• But quest for happiness is infinite (we are
always wanting more from life)
- who has the infinite duty to honour the
infinite claims?
- The answer is perceived to be the nation
state.
- Demands on the state are without limit.
- Nation state has taken the place of God
as the source to which many look for
happiness.
Criticism (continued) of the concept of Human
Rights by Leslie Newbigin especially:
The Right to … the pursuit of happiness.
 Should I claim my ‘wants’ as ‘rights’? Or
should it be my ‘needs’ that are my `rights’?
 My wants may be (and often are)
irrational;
 I can (and often do) want things that
would not in the end bring me lasting
happiness.
 My real needs - what I need to reach my
true end - may be different from the
wants I feel.
Criticism (continued) of the concept of Human
Rights by Leslie Newbigin especially:
The Right to … the pursuit of happiness.
 The political left usually desire to provide
for our needs, whereas the political right
want to allow us to make up our own
minds and therefore be governed by our
wants.
 The argument of the political left
assumes that need creates a right that
has priority over the wants of those who
wish to pursue personal happiness in the
way they choose.
Criticism continued of the concept of Human
Rights by Leslie Newbigin especially:
The Right to … the pursuit of happiness.
• Difficulties immediately appear:
– ‘Needs’ can be accorded priority over ‘wants’
only if there is some socially accepted
view of the goal of human existence.
 in other words, a socially accepted
doctrine of the nature and destiny of the
human being.
 Such a socially accepted doctrine is
excluded by the dogma of pluralism that
controls post-Enlightenment society.
Lesslie Newbigin on Equality
 We are all equal in our basic need for survival; this is the
need we share with the animals.
 But to be human means to need other things -respect,
honour, love.
 These needs, social rather than merely biological, call
precisely for differentiation rather than for equality.
 There are different kinds of respect, honour, and love we
owe to teachers, colleagues, parents, friends, wife,
husband, children.
 It is this kind of differentiated respect, honour, and love
that makes life human.
 An undifferentiated acknowledgement of the basic
biological needs of a human being does not.
 And these things - respect, honour, and love - cannot be
claimed as rights.
Is the word `rights' the right word?
If `yes' address the problems and answer them.
If `no' provide another way of expressing the
belief in correct treatment of one-another.
• Alternative way of expressing the belief in
correct treatment of one-another
Duty. We have duties to one another:
What God values and loves I must value and
love.
Whereas each person demanding ‘rights’
tends to separate us into rival isolated
individuals; each person having a ‘duty’ to
others unites us in relationships.
The previous question continued:
Is the word `rights' the right word?
If `yes' address the problems and answer them.
If `no' provide another way of expressing the
belief in correct treatment of one-another.
The concept of human rights has
been useful in challenging cruel
governments about their behaviour
but can it really be the basis of:
moral decision making?
Government policy making?
A Message from the Bible:
For our sake God Himself
surrendered His rights and
entered our suffering and death so
as to forgive us and lift us up to
Him.
Christ did not count His equality
with God something to hold on to
but He surrendered it for us:
(An actual text is in the next slide):
The Text from the Bible:
Phil 2:3-11 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain
conceit, but in humility consider others better than
yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your
own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ
Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not
consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a
servant, being made in human likeness. And being
found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself
and became obedient to death-- even death on a
cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest
place and gave him the name that is above every
name …
Now to some quotations:
John Witte
The modern cultivation of human rights in the West began in
Jnr is
earnest in the 1940's when both Christianity and the
Director,
Enlightenment seemed incapable of delivering on their
Center
for In the middle of the twentieth century, there was no
promises.
the
second coming of Christ promised by Christians, no heavenly
Interdiscip
city of reason promised by enlightened libertarians, no
linary
withering away of the state promised by enlightened socialists.
Instead,
Study
of there was world war, gulags, and the Holocaust - a vile
and evil at
fascism and irrationalism to which Christianity and the
Religion
Enlightenment seemed to have no cogent response or effective
Emory
deterrent.
University
•The modern
human rights movement was thus born out of
(2000)
desperation in the aftermath of World War II. It was an attempt
to find a world faith to fill a spiritual void. It was an attempt to
harvest from the traditions of Christianity and the
Enlightenment the rudimentary elements of a new faith and a
new law that would unite a badly broken world order.
•John Witte, Jr*, The Spirit of the Laws, the Laws of the Spirit, in Stackhouse &
Browning (eds), God and Globalization, Vol.2
Oliver O'Donovan
is Professor of
'What
effect does this
Moral
and Pastoral
Theology,
Oxford It dissolves its
justice?
… have upon the conception of
unity and coherence by replacing
it with a plurality of 'rights'. The language of subjective
rights (i.e. rights which adhere to a particular subject)
has, of course, a perfectly appropriate and necessary
place within a discourse founded on law… What is
distinctive about the modern conception of rights,
however, is that subjective rights are taken to be
original, not derived. The fundamental reality is a
plurality of competing, unreconciled rights, and the task
of law is to harmonise them… The right is a primitive
endowment of power with which the subject first
engages in society, not an enhancement which accrues
to the subject from an ordered and politically formed
society.'
•Oliver O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations
Summary of a Christian Judge’s view*:
The Judge was Jeremy
Cooke at the Sept 2002
Oxford Conference on
to
legislation
Human
Rights.
• Our sense of morality should give rise
enacted by governments. E.g. our sense that it is wrong to
steal will give rise to laws forbidding stealing.
• Laws also regulate how we should behave in certain
contexts so as to preserve an ordered society. Such
legislation will give certain people rights in certain
contexts.
– For example at a crossroads law gives some the right of way.
– However this is not a fundamental human right which gives
rise to a law. It is the result of a law for a particular situation.
• Rights should occur in the context of the law of the land
but not be considered as the source of morality itself.
• However some European governments (eg UK) have
reversed this and given the European Human Rights
Convention preference over the legislation of parliaments.
The world found nothing sacred in the
abstract nakedness of being human. And in
view of objective political conditions, it is
hard to say how the concepts of man upon
which human rights are based - that he is
created in the image of God (in the American
formula), or that he is the representative of
mankind, or that he harbours within himself
the sacred demands of natural law (in the
French formula) - could have helped to find
a solution to the problem. The survivors of
the extermination camps …. could see… that
the abstract nakedness of being nothing but
human was their greatest danger.
•Hannah Arendt*, The Origins of Totalitarianism
• Human dignity is the foundation for nurturing
and protecting human rights. It is rooted in the
vision of the 'fullness of life' promised in the
incarnation of Jesus Christ and his identification
with all humankind. We must be reminded that
human dignity is something persons have, not
something they must earn or be granted. Dignity
is not a quality bestowed on others by the family,
by society, or by a government. Rather, dignity is
a reality as a consequence of God's good creation
and never-ending love. This reality requires
acknowledgement and respect.
• Robert A. Evans, Human Rights in a Global Context
Contemporary moral experience …. has a paradoxical character. For each
of us is taught to see himself or herself as an autonomous moral agent;
but each of us also becomes engaged by … manipulative relationships
with others. Seeking to protect the autonomy that we have learned to
prize, we aspire ourselves not to be manipulated by others; ... we find no
way open to us to do so except by directing towards others those very
manipulative modes of relationship which each of us aspires to resist
in our own case. The incoherence of our attitudes arises from the
incoherent conceptual scheme which we have inherited. Once we have
understood this, it is possible to understand also the key place that the
concept of rights has in the distinctively modern moral scheme……the
culture of bureaucratic individualism results in ... political debates being
between individualism which makes its claims in terms of rights and
forms of bureaucratic organisation which make their claims in terms
of utility. But if the concept of rights and that of utility are a matching
pair of incommensurable fictions, it will be the case that the moral idiom
employed can at best provide a semblance of rationality for the modern
political process, but not its reality. The mock rationality of the debate
conceals the arbitrariness of the will and power at work in its resolution.
(Alister MacIntyre, After Virtue)
What would it mean to come to a genuine, unforced international
consensus on human rights? I suppose it would be something like what
Rawls describes in his Political Liberalism as an 'overlapping
consensus'. That is, different groups, countries, religious
communities, civilizations, while holding incompatible
fundamental views on theology, metaphysics, human nature, etc.,
would come to an agreement on certain norms that ought to
govern human behaviour. Each would have its own way of
justifying this from out of its profound background conception. We
would agree on the norms, while disagreeing on why they were the
right norms. And we would be content to live in this consensus,
undisturbed by the differences of profound underlying belief….
Is this kind of consensus possible? Perhaps because of my optimistic
nature, I believe that it is. But we have to confess at the outset that it
is not entirely clear around what the consensus would form, and
we are only beginning to discern the obstacles we would have to
overcome on the way there.
Charles Taylor, Conditions of an Unforced Consensus on Human Rights
Handout: Human Rights and
Justice - Roger Scruton.
Rights and Equality - a Christian alternative:
Sometimes we are called to
surrender our rights and make
sacrifices in order that we might help
others.
The Biblical injunction to me is not to
claim equality but to count others as
deserving of greater honour.
However the kind of honour and love
we give and receive is different for
different people.
Rights and Equality - a Christian alternative
- concluded:
A good society is one where we honour
one another in ways appropriate to our
relationships of being.
I give a different love and a different honour
to different persons depending on whether the
person is my parent, child, grandparent,
teacher, pupil, colleague, employer, employee,
spouse, or friend.
In these relationships we find our true human
destiny and happiness.