Institutions, Beliefs and Ethics: Eugenics as a Case Study

Stephen Kershnar September 13, 2020 at 9:06 AM

ALLEN BUCHANAN’S INCOMPLETE ARGUMENT

Here is Buchanan’s argument.

(1) The intellectual case for coercive negative eugenics went poorly because it involved bad empirical work and a misunderstanding of rights.

(2) The intellectual case for coercive negative eugenics would have been gone better were there more attention paid to institutional factors explored via social moral epistemology.

(3) If (1) and (2), then philosophers should use social moral epistemology.

However, I did not see an argument – whether conceptual or empirical – for (2). Did I miss it? Without such an argument, his conclusion is unsupported.

If the argument is that we will avoid errors such as (a) biased-and-self-serving experts, (b) conflicts of interest, and (c) non-experts posing as experts if we make thinking and publishing depend more on collective academic wisdom on class, genetics, and race, and the errors they pose, I don’t see why this will make us less prone to error.

Buchanan’s negative comments on the biological reality of race, Bell Curve, and intergroup differences in criminality and IQ tell us what he wants the collective academic wisdom to screen out or vet extra closely.

An opponent might want collective academic wisdom to screen out or vet extra closely communism, socialism, and restrictions on civil liberties. That is, social moral epistemology operates on multiple levels.

(1) Social moral epistemological practices should provide extra tight vetting of likely dangerous and biased research.

(2) Such practices should assess what lines of research are likely dangerous and biased research.

(3) Such practices should assess whether such practices are better at assessing (1) and (2) than the way such research is currently assessed.

There is no contradiction here, but, again, Buchanan has not argued for (3).

Replies

Pat D September 14, 2020 at 11:15 AM

Steve, thanks for this. Here is how I read AB's paper.

Basic premise: coercive negative eugenics (CNE) is morally wrong.

What went wrong with societies that allowed CNE to occur?

1. Individualistic argument: CNE was 'justified' on utilitarian grounds without any consideration of individual rights.

2. Socio-political argument: Rights were in fact taken into consideration, but mistakenly discounted for bogus reasons advanced by bogus experts

2.1 Questions of moral status and moral expertise - and more basically, of justice - cannot be resolved on an individualistic basis.

2.2 Per AB, social moral epistemology is a sociopolitical responsive way to address these questions.

I agree with 2.1. I am not persuaded by 2.2. For one thing, who accorded so-called ethicists any authority or expertise in deciding these questions? It would seem to require not only dialogue across institutional disciplines, but also across cultures with respect to both institutions and everyday life.

Stephen Kershnar September 14, 2020 at 3:08 PM

Pat:

Great point.

In addition, I wonder how general your analysis is. Here is what you think is true.

“2.1 Questions of moral status and moral expertise - and more basically, of justice - cannot be resolved on an individualistic basis.”

Is this unique to these questions or is true of all academic issues?

Currently, philosophers (and economists, lawyers, physicians, etc.) often write and think about their arguments individually and then present or publish them in a dialogue with others. This includes blog posts, books, classes, informal discussions, journal articles, panel discussions, and public lectures.

Question. Does Buchanan suggest we do something other than the above procedure?

Horn #1: Yes. If yes, it is hard to see what the other procedure is. His few concrete suggestions seem to be a way of doing the above sort of things with minor revisions.

Plus, I do not see that he provides a reason to think that social moral epistemology has or would work better than the above procedure.

Horn #2: No. If no, then I do not see the importance of calling minor revisions to the above procedure by a new name: social moral epistemology.

Best,

Steve K

Pat D September 15, 2020 at 9:54 AM

Steve, these are all good points.

Not that I agree with AB or the "conventional" view of ethics, what do you make of AB's characterizing the conventional view in this way: "The study of relationships between social institutions and moral reasoning and motivation is thought to lie outside the domain of ethics, within the purview of social science [p. 36]"?

Stephen Kershnar September 16, 2020 at 8:09 AM

Pat:

I also do not agree with AB on the relationship between social institutions and moral reasoning lying outside the domain of ethics. Here are some ways they relate to one another.

1. Justification. Social institutions or what justifies them (for example, promise) determine morality or justice. See contractarianism. This is true in Hobbes, Locke, and a contractualist interpretation of Rawls.

2. Causation. Social institutions causally affect the morally correct outcome. See Bentham (all rights are legal), Finnis (law as a means of coordination), and Richard Posner (laws affect efficiency).

3. Different Justification. Social institutions have a different justification than actions within them. See, for example, John Rawls on the justification of the institution of punishment (utilitarian) and the justification of actions within the institution (retributivism).

4. Expression. Social institutions should express certain ideas. Consider the notion that the criminal law should express our condemnation of wrongdoing or rule-violating. See, for example, Joel Feinberg and Thad Metz.

I do not see what is new about this claim. Perhaps I am missing it.

Best,
Steve K

Stephen Kershnar September 13, 2020 at 9:07 AM

COERCION IS WHAT’S WRONG WITH NEGATIVE COERCIVE EUGENICS

The moral problem with negative coercive eugenics is the coercion. If we are going to have incentives for avoiding accidents and encouraging education and healthy choices, then the same argument would support incentives for eugenics, if the cost-benefit analysis for it is as strong as for the former things.

Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray argue that for whites, IQ out-predicts socio-economic status in predicting criminality, education, out-of-wedlock births, welfare, etc. Nathan Cofnas argues that the black-white IQ gap has been fairly constant for the last few decades once children are screened out.

A declining average IQ likely has significant costs in terms of freedom, wealth, and well-being.

Note I have not addressed whether the gap is 100% environment-caused and, if it is, whether it can be changed by anything in our current toolbox of policies.

Assuming that we should not have a libertarian government, and I think we should, it is hard to see what the argument in principle is against using subsidies or the tax system to provide incentives as a means of bringing about a future generation with a higher IQ or less psychological problems (for example, psychopathy or schizophrenia).

Perhaps such incentives would not pass a cost-benefit test, although it is hard to see why this would be so.

Stephen Kershnar September 13, 2020 at 9:10 AM

THE MORAL STATUS OF STERILIZING THE SEVERELY COGNITIVELY DISABLED

Consider this argument.

(1) We may prevent severely cognitively disabled (retarded) individuals from consenting to many things.

Consider, for example, donating organs, entering into contracts, giving valid consent to sex with ordinary adults or surgery, volunteering for medical experimentation, etc.

(2) If (1), then we may prevent them from reproducing.

This is particularly true if the disabled guardians validly consent to sterilization and if their children would be likely to be very cognitively disabled or the disabled parent could not care for them.

(3) If we may prevent them from reproducing, then we may do so via the least restrictive alternative.

What is the objection to this?

The fact, if it is a fact, that Carrie Buck was not cognitively disabled (if I remember correctly, Stephen Jay Gould claimed this) or that Oliver Wendell Holmes was sloppy reasoner both here and elsewhere is beside the point.

Replies

David H September 17, 2020 at 5:28 PM

Steve

Half of the things on the list (1) involve inducing pathologies in the cognitively impaired. If that is wrongmaking feature playing a factor in the prohibitions, then you can't get so quickly infer that we can stop them from reproducing (2) as that involves inducing a pathology (sterilization).

We probably agree that it is best if the mentally incompetent don't reproduce, both the incompetent who are immature and thus temporarily incompetent for certain tasks like parenthood and those who are impaired and permanently incompetent. I take it that you wouldn't advocate sterilizing adolescents who just reached puberty and are too immature and incompetent to become parents, even if the sterilization is reversible, so why sterilize those who will be permanently incompetent? Is your only reason not to sterilize the immature is that they will become mature and capable of consenting to reproduce and able to raise their children or at least cope well with the pregnancy prior to putting the child under someone else's care?

Given what you say about least restrictive alternative, would you agree that we should first try nudging, "chaperoning," same sex socializing, and perhaps contraception to keep the incompetent from reproducing even though none are as effective as sterilization? How do you weigh less restrictive against less effective? Given that alternatives to sterilization are less effective, will you opt for forced sterilization or just take the risk with the less restrictive alternatives? I think given that sterilization involves a loss of bodily integrity and damage to a healthy body to prevent what may be a healthy child or a valuable unhealthy child that could be raised fully by relatives or raised partially by the the incompetent parent with coaching and assistance from family or others, or put up for adoption, then doctors shouldn't engage in coercive sterilization.

Stephen Kershnar September 20, 2020 at 9:52 PM

IN DEFENSE OF STERILIZING THE SEVERELY COGNITIVELY DISABLED AND MAKING ADOLESCENTS TEMPORARILY INFERTILE

David:

I am not sure I agree that there is something prima facie wrong with inducing pathologies, even if we are talking about prima facie wrongness.

I am guessing that you do not think it is wrong - even prima facie wrong - for a physician to transfer a kidney from a mother to her daughter if this were necessary to save the latter's life.

I do favor making teenagers, who are otherwise likely to get pregnant, temporarily infertile - if they consent and it is significantly unhealthy - via IUD or depo provera shot to protect them against unwanted pregnancy. I would be surprised if you disagree with this.

The reasons to sterilize the severely cognitively disabled are threefold.

(1) They cannot validly consent to become pregnant.

(2) They will be incompetent parents.

(3) If there is a significant chance that they would give birth to a severely cognitively disabled infant (and I do not know whether this is true), this is a good reason to prevent the conception.

Here are the arguments you might give to oppose this.

(A) Even given (1)-(3), the severely cognitively disabled have a right to reproduce or not be infertile.

It is hard to see how this might be the case given that we give them a wide range of medical treatment without their valid consent. Consider, for example, life-saving surgery.

(B) It would maximize the good if the severely cognitively disabled were to have children even if (1)-(3) are true.

This is implausible.

(C) Sterilization is neither right-infringing nor morally good, but is degrading, demeaning, exploiting, objectifying, or something along these lines.

It is hard to see how this argument is plausible if we control their lives - often against their will - in a wide range of areas including medical treatment.

I conclude that there is nothing wrong with sterilizing the severely cognitively disabled and would be surprised if you disagreed.

Best,

Steve K

Stephen Kershnar September 20, 2020 at 10:03 PM

LESSENING BODY INTEGRITY IS NOT A BASIC WRONG-MAKER

David:

You ask the following.

"How do you weigh less restrictive against less effective? Given that alternatives to sterilization are less effective, will you opt for forced sterilization or just take the risk with the less restrictive alternatives?"

I view the least restrictive alternative as a cost-benefit analysis with interference with the liberty of an autonomous being as a significant cost.

You note the following.

"I think given that sterilization involves a loss of bodily integrity and damage to a healthy body to prevent what may be a healthy child or a valuable unhealthy child that could be raised fully by relatives or raised partially by the the incompetent parent with coaching and assistance from family or others, or put up for adoption, then doctors shouldn't engage in coercive sterilization."

Interesting points but

(1) There is no reason to value body integrity per se.

The wrongness of disrupting body integrity has to be filled out via a wrong-making in terms of right-infringement, bad results, bad attitude, and so on.

(2) Even if it were wrong to lessen body integrity, it would be a minor wrong.

Consider, for example, removing tonsils or wisdom teeth, lasik surgery, Tommy John surgery, and so on. If you respond that this restores a desired function, then the question is whether this function has a normative feature and then apply the "yes" answer to this case.

(3) Even if it were a significant moral wrong, it is overridden by the suffering brought to the severely cognitively disabled woman via unwanted pregnancy-related suffering.

In any case, your claim about 24/7 babysitting, coaching, and parenting. Perhaps this is the least restrictive alternative, although I doubt it. If sterilization were the least restrictive alternative, then your argument will revert to the body-integrity wrong-maker. I suspect we both would be critical of such an argument.

Best,

Steve K

Stephen Kershnar September 13, 2020 at 9:07 AM

COERCION IS WHAT’S WRONG WITH NEGATIVE COERCIVE EUGENICS

The moral problem with negative coercive eugenics is the coercion. If we are going to have incentives for avoiding accidents and encouraging education and healthy choices, then the same argument would support incentives for eugenics, if the cost-benefit analysis for it is as strong as for the former things.

Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray argue that for whites, IQ out-predicts socio-economic status in predicting criminality, education, out-of-wedlock births, welfare, etc. Nathan Cofnas argues that the black-white IQ gap has been fairly constant for the last few decades once children are screened out.

A declining average IQ likely has significant costs in terms of freedom, wealth, and well-being.

Note I have not addressed whether the gap is 100% environment-caused and, if it is, whether it can be changed by anything in our current toolbox of policies.

Assuming that we should not have a libertarian government, and I think we should, it is hard to see what the argument in principle is against using subsidies or the tax system to provide incentives as a means of bringing about a future generation with a higher IQ or less psychological problems (for example, psychopathy or schizophrenia).

Perhaps such incentives would not pass a cost-benefit test, although it is hard to see why this would be so.

Stephen Kershnar September 13, 2020 at 9:10 AM

THE MORAL STATUS OF STERILIZING THE SEVERELY COGNITIVELY DISABLED

Consider this argument.

(1) We may prevent severely cognitively disabled (retarded) individuals from consenting to many things.

Consider, for example, donating organs, entering into contracts, giving valid consent to sex with ordinary adults or surgery, volunteering for medical experimentation, etc.

(2) If (1), then we may prevent them from reproducing.

This is particularly true if the disabled guardians validly consent to sterilization and if their children would be likely to be very cognitively disabled or the disabled parent could not care for them.

(3) If we may prevent them from reproducing, then we may do so via the least restrictive alternative.

What is the objection to this?

The fact, if it is a fact, that Carrie Buck was not cognitively disabled (if I remember correctly, Stephen Jay Gould claimed this) or that Oliver Wendell Holmes was sloppy reasoner both here and elsewhere is beside the point.

Replies

David H September 17, 2020 at 5:28 PM

Steve

Half of the things on the list (1) involve inducing pathologies in the cognitively impaired. If that is wrongmaking feature playing a factor in the prohibitions, then you can't get so quickly infer that we can stop them from reproducing (2) as that involves inducing a pathology (sterilization).

We probably agree that it is best if the mentally incompetent don't reproduce, both the incompetent who are immature and thus temporarily incompetent for certain tasks like parenthood and those who are impaired and permanently incompetent. I take it that you wouldn't advocate sterilizing adolescents who just reached puberty and are too immature and incompetent to become parents, even if the sterilization is reversible, so why sterilize those who will be permanently incompetent? Is your only reason not to sterilize the immature is that they will become mature and capable of consenting to reproduce and able to raise their children or at least cope well with the pregnancy prior to putting the child under someone else's care?

Given what you say about least restrictive alternative, would you agree that we should first try nudging, "chaperoning," same sex socializing, and perhaps contraception to keep the incompetent from reproducing even though none are as effective as sterilization? How do you weigh less restrictive against less effective? Given that alternatives to sterilization are less effective, will you opt for forced sterilization or just take the risk with the less restrictive alternatives? I think given that sterilization involves a loss of bodily integrity and damage to a healthy body to prevent what may be a healthy child or a valuable unhealthy child that could be raised fully by relatives or raised partially by the the incompetent parent with coaching and assistance from family or others, or put up for adoption, then doctors shouldn't engage in coercive sterilization.
 

Stephen Kershnar September 20, 2020 at 9:52 PM

IN DEFENSE OF STERILIZING THE SEVERELY COGNITIVELY DISABLED AND MAKING ADOLESCENTS TEMPORARILY INFERTILE

David:

I am not sure I agree that there is something prima facie wrong with inducing pathologies, even if we are talking about prima facie wrongness.

I am guessing that you do not think it is wrong - even prima facie wrong - for a physician to transfer a kidney from a mother to her daughter if this were necessary to save the latter's life.

I do favor making teenagers, who are otherwise likely to get pregnant, temporarily infertile - if they consent and it is significantly unhealthy - via IUD or depo provera shot to protect them against unwanted pregnancy. I would be surprised if you disagree with this.

The reasons to sterilize the severely cognitively disabled are threefold.

(1) They cannot validly consent to become pregnant.

(2) They will be incompetent parents.

(3) If there is a significant chance that they would give birth to a severely cognitively disabled infant (and I do not know whether this is true), this is a good reason to prevent the conception.

Here are the arguments you might give to oppose this.

(A) Even given (1)-(3), the severely cognitively disabled have a right to reproduce or not be infertile.

It is hard to see how this might be the case given that we give them a wide range of medical treatment without their valid consent. Consider, for example, life-saving surgery.

(B) It would maximize the good if the severely cognitively disabled were to have children even if (1)-(3) are true.

This is implausible.

(C) Sterilization is neither right-infringing nor morally good, but is degrading, demeaning, exploiting, objectifying, or something along these lines.

It is hard to see how this argument is plausible if we control their lives - often against their will - in a wide range of areas including medical treatment.

I conclude that there is nothing wrong with sterilizing the severely cognitively disabled and would be surprised if you disagreed.

Best,

Steve K

Stephen Kershnar September 20, 2020 at 10:03 PM

LESSENING BODY INTEGRITY IS NOT A BASIC WRONG-MAKER

David:

You ask the following.

"How do you weigh less restrictive against less effective? Given that alternatives to sterilization are less effective, will you opt for forced sterilization or just take the risk with the less restrictive alternatives?"

I view the least restrictive alternative as a cost-benefit analysis with interference with the liberty of an autonomous being as a significant cost.

You note the following.

"I think given that sterilization involves a loss of bodily integrity and damage to a healthy body to prevent what may be a healthy child or a valuable unhealthy child that could be raised fully by relatives or raised partially by the the incompetent parent with coaching and assistance from family or others, or put up for adoption, then doctors shouldn't engage in coercive sterilization."

Interesting points but

(1) There is no reason to value body integrity per se.

The wrongness of disrupting body integrity has to be filled out via a wrong-making in terms of right-infringement, bad results, bad attitude, and so on.

(2) Even if it were wrong to lessen body integrity, it would be a minor wrong.

Consider, for example, removing tonsils or wisdom teeth, lasik surgery, Tommy John surgery, and so on. If you respond that this restores a desired function, then the question is whether this function has a normative feature and then apply the "yes" answer to this case.

(3) Even if it were a significant moral wrong, it is overridden by the suffering brought to the severely cognitively disabled woman via unwanted pregnancy-related suffering.

In any case, your claim about 24/7 babysitting, coaching, and parenting. Perhaps this is the least restrictive alternative, although I doubt it. If sterilization were the least restrictive alternative, then your argument will revert to the body-integrity wrong-maker. I suspect we both would be critical of such an argument.

Best,

Steve K

Stephen Kershnar September 13, 2020 at 9:13 AM

EUGENICS AND GUN CONTROL

What poses a bigger threat to bring about democide, genocide, or other large-scale atrocities? Gun control or incentive-based eugenics?

I am curious as to how my Romanell colleagues would answer this question and how the answer relates to Buchanan’s social moral epistemology.

Best.

Replies

Phil Reed September 19, 2020 at 9:18 AM

Steve, I don't understand this question. Can you rephrase it? I'm tripped up in part by "threat to bring about." How would gun control or incentive-based eugenics cause genocide or other large-scale atrocities?

Stephen Kershnar September 20, 2020 at 10:08 PM

SOCIAL MORAL EPISTEMOLOGY AND AREAS OF SPECIAL CONCERN

Phil:

My concern is that social moral epistemology requires special vetting of articles that support, in some way, dangerous movements.

If gun control is a dangerous movement, then it should - via social moral epistemology - get extra close vetting. My guess is that Buchanan thinks that sterilizing the severely cognitively disabled is such a threat and gun control is not. I suspect this is mistaken.

More important, social moral epistemology has to apply to domains to determine whether it should be tightly applied.

That was my point, however, unclearly stated.

Best,

Steve K

Phil Reed September 21, 2020 at 12:36 PM

I see. I think that Buchanan wouldn't shy away from saying that SME is deeply political.

David H September 17, 2020 at 5:50 PM

Division of Labor:

Instead of abandoning conventional ethics, why not a greater division of labor in which the right people are asked the right questions? I think it is better to “put ethics in its place” than turn all ethicists into PPE or PPBE (B for biology) Renaissance men or more likely, dilletantes in many fields. Maybe I am advocating that we don’t follow Buchanan’s recommendation of blurring the ethics/political philosophy boundary because I am lazy, but a more charitable read is that I am busy with important conventional ethics work, and I think also that it is not necessary, especially as long as there are people in political philosophy and social epistemology doing the work about how institutions corrupt moral character and principles. There are also the fields of moral psychology and X phi that engage in something like Buchanan’s social moral epistemology. I really don’t see the need to be an ethicist who states the obvious that “the virtue of sympathy may not function properly in an individual if he believes that Blacks and Jews are not truly humans, and whether one believes members of these groups are humans may b strongly influenced by the character of the institutions that help shaped one’s beliefs” (p. 32).

Replies

Phil Reed September 19, 2020 at 1:26 PM

This is a good point. Charitably, Buchanan is saying that ethics should focus less on the conventional stuff and more on the SME. Less charitably, he seems to think that real ethics cannot happen without SME, and that seems unconvincing. I don't understand why we can't have both. I think SME is important, but I agree with you that we don't need all ethicists to be engaged in the social science stuff.

Phil Reed September 19, 2020 at 1:26 PM

It is striking that he doesn't mention x-phi or moral psychology, which has been engaged in some of this social and institutional stuff for a long time.

Phil Reed September 19, 2020 at 1:40 PM

Even the Ethics of Belief, as a subdiscipline in philosophy or ethics, has been around for a long time. Buchanan does not mention that lots of people have been interested in this and wrote about it.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-belief/

Buchanan is not mentioned in the bibliography.

Phil Reed September 19, 2020 at 1:42 PM

To be fair, I guess social moral epistemology is not the same as the ethics of belief, but they are, I think, related.

Stephen Kershnar September 20, 2020 at 10:24 PM

AGAINST A DISTINCT ETHICS OF BELIEF

Phil:

I am curious about the ethics of belief.

Consider the case in which a dirty middle-aged man has sexual fantasies that involve adultery, age-different sex, rape, or sleaziness. Further imagine the fantasy focuses on real people and those people do not consent.

(1) Are such fantasies intrinsically wrong? What is the wrong-maker?

(2) Are such fantasies intrinsically bad if, as I think, it does not lessen anyone's well-being?

There is no right-infringement and in many cases the fantasy benefits the fanticizer and harms no one (Pareto improvement) and is thus a net well-being promotion.

Perhaps you don't think it is intrinsically wrong or bad. In such a case, I don't see how it is different in extrinsic wrongness or badness than any other act. Under such an analysis, most of these fantasies will not be wrong or bad.

In short, why think there is an ethics of belief?

Best,

Steve K

Phil Reed September 21, 2020 at 12:39 PM

My view is that such fantasies are wrong in virtue of harming the character of the person whose fantasies they are.

Regarding the ethics of belief, my understanding is that it's pretty broad to encompass any norms involving belief-formation.

David H September 17, 2020 at 5:51 PM

Defense of Conventional Ethics:

I think there is plenty of work for conventional ethicists to do without their engaging in moral social epistemology that explains the presence and effects of false beliefs that “plays a role in disabling the moral virtues and distorting the interpretation and application of moral principles (p. 24). For example, the best defenses of abortion by the likes of McMahan, Thomson, Kamm and Boonin would probably NOT have benefitted from a greater familiarity with: the institutions involved with abortion; the motives, interests, and psychology of abortion advocates and opponents; the reasons why women want to abort; the history of abortion law; strategies for preventing the spreading of falsehoods about the character, situation, options and motivation of pregnant women; the societal institutions and cultural trends that undermine the virtues of sympathy for pregnant women; the opportunities for political alliances to promote justice for pregnant women; the biology of abortion; the relative advantages of protecting abortion rights via state or federal government, statutory, constitutional, or common law about abortion; the political rather than moral interests of pro-life politicians that motivate their strategic positions; the misogynistic assumptions or hypocrisy of pro-lifers and so forth. What FMK, JT, JM and DB do is argue against what they consider the best views held by their colleagues past and present; moreover, they are aware of the views of their students and they are aware of the “commonsense” or popular abortion views of the public because they have students, neighbors and read the papers and watch the news etc. Perhaps I am being uncharitable and others issues like just war, the prevention of negative coercive eugenics, and racism benefit more from social moral epistemology

Replies

Phil Reed September 19, 2020 at 1:28 PM

If Buchanan wants ethics to do more SME, I’m fine with this. I don’t think ethics has to be construed narrowly. What I don’t understand is throwing “conventional philosophical ethics” under the bus. If one wishes to say that ethics more narrowly construed involves engaging in how we ought to live, then SME is something different. Getting beliefs right is important, it’s just not what normative ethics is, traditionally construed.

David H September 17, 2020 at 5:51 PM

Plenty of Eugenics Autopsy work for Conventional Ethics:

I actually think the conventional ethicist doing an autopsy of negative eugenics can contribute a lot about the nature of overrides of rights, what the right to bodily integrity is in general and what it looks like in the incompetent, whether medicine has an internal morality that would prohibit inducing pathologies (sterility) when this isn’t done to prevent a literal pathology; what is the nature of moral status that eugenics disregarded – scalar, kind based, which kind (species, persons, healthy), threshold-based etc.; the relative merits of deterrence of future crime vs. preventive eugenics-based attack on future criminals; the morality of keeping the incompetent (immature or injured) from reproducing via nudges, “chaperones”, separation, contraception etc. rather than coercive sterilizations etc. They can engage in such concerns and let the political and social philosophers and moral psychologists instruct us about how institutions, ideologies, vested interests, and practices operate in ways that might corrupt moral character and distort moral reasoning

Replies

Pat D September 18, 2020 at 10:30 AM

David,

I think that your first sentence – “the conventional ethicist doing an autopsy of negative eugenics can contribute a lot about the nature of overrides of rights” – correctly identifies (and counters) AB’s primary diagnosis. It raises two questions for me.

1. What is conventional ethics?

Per AB, the conventional ethical consensus considers the “chief failing of those who advocated coercive negative eugenics [CNE] was that they abandoned rights-based morality in favor of consequentialism…In slogan form, the take-home message is thought to be: ‘More Kant, less Bentham!’” He implies that “conventional” ethics includes consequentialist and deontological accounts. He does not include virtue ethics, as you seem to do in your defense of conventional ethics above. Would you consider Alasdair MacIntyre’s virtue-based critique of conventional ethics to fall within or outside the fold of conventional ethics?

2. Just what is AB’s diagnosis?

It has something to do with the difference between (a) asserting individual rights – albeit based on moral principles as you are doing in this post and (b) allowing for a social (expert) justification for overriding individual rights.

If we take the US response to the Covid 19 pandemic as an alternate example to CNE, American individualism has played a significant role in our remaining an epicenter of the pandemic while social solidarity has played a significant role in bringing the pandemic under much better control in Europe. AB’s diagnosis does not get at the problem of the origination or incommensurability of the values of individualism or social solidarity. It seems to me that critics like Bernard Williams and Alasdair MacIntyre – each for different reasons – render more cogent diagnoses of the “conflicts of modernity” than either AB or conventional (consequentialist/deontological) ethics.

David H September 18, 2020 at 12:24 PM

Pat

The Williams/MacIntrye angle is an interesting alternative approach to characterizing contemporary ethics and its limitations. I haven't read or thought about the Williams book on Ethics and the limits of Philosophy or MacIntyre's After Virtue (and never read his whose Justice, Which Rationality book) since I was a graduate student two decades ago. Is the Williams book that I mentioned the source of the ideas of Williams that you are referring to? But the little I remember about what they said about the unlikelihood of moral consensus in a pluralistic society, the lack of shared social practices (and thick ethics?) that once provided an embedding of our moral talk and apparatus, does seem to throw light on our predicament and the poor prospects of moral convergence. But I don't have a large enough or historically informed picture of the contemporary moral landscape to thoughtfully contribute on these matters. How to engage in ethics in such a pluralistic or fragmented society with so many different historical traditions does seem to be the largest question.

All I can do in my ventures into bioethical debates is hope to discover others' deepest moral commitments and try to argue that they should thus consequently hold position x rather than position y. I believe that many people are not aware of their deepest moral commitments and the conventional ethicist's exercise in obtaining reflective equilibrium of cases and principle often through the thought experiments that Buchanan dismisses - which are the bread and butter for Kamm, Thomson and McMahan - can sometimes serve well to elicit people's deepest moral commitments.(I also try to convince my bioethical interlocuters that the facts about personal identity favor certain moral views more than others when dealing with bioethical issues at the margins of life.) So I am inclined to plow ahead and do what people like Kamm, McMahan, Boonin and Thomson do when discussing issues like abortion. Maybe other issues like distributive justice, just war, racism, genetic enhancements require far more collaborative work that blurs the lines of disciplines as Buchanan envisions. I really didn't recognize conventional ethics as sketched by Buchanan, nor think the remedy was for applied ethicists to become political philosophers and social epistemologists rather that just recognize that those fields had contributions to make to improving and preserving ethical conduct. I take it that moral psychology and moral X phi do some of the things that Buchanan envisions in his 2007 article.

Pat D September 18, 2020 at 3:30 PM

David,

I am sympathetic to all that you are saying here, including your relating ethics to (what I would call) a philosophical anthropology. That is the Williams book I was referring to. I am more familiar with MacIntyre, who engages Williams' critique in his 2016 book, "Ethics in the conflicts of modernity."

David H September 17, 2020 at 5:52 PM

False Dilemma:

I am sympathetic to what Steve wrote above the two horns. Buchanan is working with a caricature of conventional ethics and this leads him to a false dilemma. He writes “By the conventional view of ethics I mean…First, ethics is a critical, evaluative enterprise; its aim is to determine what is right and wrong, not to describe or explain what people think is right or wrong…Finally ethical reasoning is an conceived in an individualistic, nonsocial way (p. 35) When ethicists put forth their principles of right and wrong, they contrast them with the alternatives held by other people, they anticipate counterexamples that other people will make, they incorporate actual responses from their audiences, colleagues, students and the existing literature which written by OTHERS, and articles often offer accounts of why others will favor alternatives to their preferred view. So conventional ethics doesn’t seem as isolated or explanation-less as Buchanan implies. Even when Buchanan wrote his article that was published in 2007 there were robust fields of x phi and moral psychology influencing ethicists so it doesn’t seem accurate to state “The task of the applied ethicist is to evaluate the premises of ethical arguments and determine whether their conclusions follow, independently of the ways in which the social practices and institutions influence the quality of moral reasoning and the operation of the moral sentiments that help motivate moral action.” (35-36).

Replies

Phil Reed September 19, 2020 at 1:29 PM

Virtue ethics in particular has long conceived ethical reasoning as deeply social.

David H September 17, 2020 at 5:52 PM

Moral Status.

Buchanan’s defense a threshold account of moral status in his Beyond Humanity book so I wonder how that will be compatible with cognitively impaired human beings having the same rights as those who are not so impaired. There’s a tension between Threshold accounts of moral status and rights one has in virtue of being human. Does he have the resources to combat negative eugenics that takes the form of forced fertilization when accepting the neutering of non-human animals of comparable cognitive abilities?

David H September 17, 2020 at 5:52 PM

Rights Overrides and Utilitarianism:

I found it interesting that Buchanan’s autopsy revealed that that a corruption of rights theories rather than crude utilitarian thinking played a role in the coercive eugenics. Still, insomuch as rights theories allow overrides, when these are not minimizing rights violations type of overrides, then the blame seems to still be favoring utilitarianism. Moreover, the preemptive attack model (pp. 32-33) didn’t seem to be a rights base preemptive attack but a cost/benefits decision. Assuming the point wasn’t just to stop future crime by Homes’ “imbeciles”, it seems that preventing the free riders, parasites, and lack of contributors was not right based as there was no right to not to have to support unfortunates that was under threat. So it was the costs of the less useful, not that they were violating the rights of others not to support them that was motivating the eugenics.

David H September 17, 2020 at 5:53 PM

The Ethics of Believing and Epistemic Deference:

It wasn’t clear to me why it was unethical to hold certain beliefs about genetic causation when they weren’t clearly falsified by the best science of the day? Buchanan makes it seem that the eugenicists were mostly sloppy thinkers who should have known better and points to cases of alleged imbeciles who turn out to be honor students? Ironically, if there is a need for a renewed concern today with the ethics of belief, it is the shoddy science of social constructivists (disability as a mere difference without dysfunction and transgender claims of assigned sex and choosing sex), not the sloppy science of the genetic determinists. (Perhaps the list of mistaken epistemic deference should include racism as systemic and bias as implicit etc. but I am less familiar with the latter controversies than the sex and disability claims.) Actually, the problem today is not really epistemic deference to false experts but an unwillingness (should we call it “epistemic cowardice” or “electronic prudence”?) to tangle with the falsehoods promoted by the woke claiming expertise about disability, sex, and diversity.

Phil Reed September 19, 2020 at 1:30 PM

Ethics vs. Political Philosophy

Buchanan claims that his emphasis on ethics tacking toward social moral epistemology “renders the common distinction between ethics and social and political philosophy highly problematic” (23).

What philosophers are highly invested in the distinction between ethics and political philosophy? Who thinks that a sharp border can be drawn between them?

I had a professor in graduate school who always said that political philosophy is just ethics for 2 or more people.

Phil Reed September 19, 2020 at 1:30 PM

NCE and rights-based moral thinking

Buchanan claims to argue that “Rights-based moral thinking played a prominent role in the justification of negative coercive eugenics” (25). While the term “a prominent role” might allow him some wiggle room, I don’t think he argues any such thing in the second section of the paper. Instead, what he actually argues is that the justification for NCE is _compatible with_ rights-based morality. For example, in section 2B he argues that people who defended NCE believed that “in a public health crisis of catastrophic proportions, individual rights must give way” (28). This is an empty way of rights based morality playing a “prominent role.”

Phil Reed September 19, 2020 at 1:32 PM

Frames

Buchanan says that there are three frames for the justification of NCE that were not really utilitarian and were compatible with rights-based morality. I don’t find any of these frames convincing. My aim is to elaborate a little more on David's comment "Rights Overrides" above.

The Emergency Exceptionalism Frame. Buchanan says that eugencists believed they were in extreme, catastrophic circumstances that justified the infringement of rights. He insists this is not an abandonment of rights. I fail to see why this isn’t a prioritizing of utility over rights. Rights-based morality is compatible with extreme circumstances that permit rights infringements. Fine, but that’s ultimately a utiltiarian argument. Eugenicists were “too quick to believe that they were in extreme circumstances” (28). Indeed! They were so quick to cast “undesirables” as a catastrophe it’s almost as if we might question whether they take rights infringements seriously.

Phil Reed September 19, 2020 at 1:32 PM

The Collective Preventive Self-Defense Frame. Buchanan says that eugenicists acted on the basis of collective self-defense. I wish he had provided more evidence that they actually used this justification. He provided only one quotation which seemed ambiguous to me. It’s hard to imagine that eugenicists felt that Carrie Buck’s potential reproduction was an existential threat. As Buchanan says “the image here is of a life and death struggle against an evil adversary” (32). Really?

To the extent that Buchanan says this justification is closely related to the emergency exceptionalism frame, I have some doubts about the extent to which eugenicists believed that they really were in a catastrophe. I guess that they _claimed_ that unintelligent people breeding was a catastrophe and an emergency, but whether this was merely a rationalization is an open question that Buchanan never considers.

Phil Reed September 19, 2020 at 1:34 PM

The Moral Status Judgment Frame. Here’s my paraphrase of this discussion. Brock and others: we might have prevented eugenic evils if we protected the rights of individuals. Buchanan: that’s flawed! the eugenicists still believed in rights, they just denied that the people they maimed and killed had any rights!

Harvey Berman September 19, 2020 at 3:35 PM

I took the notion of “conventional ethics” to be a straw man. Buchanan did not define what he meant and used it merely to dismiss ethicists and what he viewed as their posturing.

Harvey Berman September 19, 2020 at 3:35 PM

Phil Reed captures what caught my attention in Buchanan’s paper: The “eugenicists still believed in rights, they just denied that the people they maimed and killed had any rights!”

In my mind the German physicians believed in rights, but only to those who deserved and merited those rights, not to Slavs, Gypsies, Jews, persons with disabilities, criminals, pickpockets, the underclass, the insane, etc, all of whom they considered as members of inferior races. But I also wonder if the German physicians believed it was the right thing to do, to deny rights to those they believed to be inferior.

Harvey Berman September 19, 2020 at 3:36 PM

What attracted my interest in Buchanan’s paper, and the reason O submitted it was to benefit from your commentary: I was interested in the power of belief, particularly when that belief is incorporated into a national ideology, National Socialism. I was looking to — well, it seems like I was looking to explain the nature of evil, but not really — I was looking for an explanation (and I thought Buchanan was offering one) for how German physicians, many of whom had PhDs in philosophy, could justify (to themselves?) subjecting individuals to high altitudes, low temperatures, phenol injections, typhus and surgery without anesthetics. Eugenic thinking — a so-called science — was part of the zeitgeist in western europe (not to ignore the US and Canada; Mackenzie King, Canada’s first Prime Minister declared Canada to be “white man’s country.”) And I wonder if believing in eugenics allowed individuals to deceive themselves into what they knew was wrong? Yet, I see no evidence that they thought this was wrong.

Replies

Stephen Kershnar September 20, 2020 at 10:14 PM

Harvey:

You say the following.

"Eugenic thinking — a so-called science — was part of the zeitgeist in western europe (not to ignore the US and Canada; Mackenzie King, Canada’s first Prime Minister declared Canada to be “white man’s country.”) And I wonder if believing in eugenics allowed individuals to deceive themselves into what they knew was wrong? Yet, I see no evidence that they thought this was wrong."

(1) What, if anything, is wrong with incentive-based non-coercive eugenics with competent individuals?

(2) What, if anything, is wrong with sterilizing the severely cognitively disabled?

Neither has much relation to killing or experimenting with fully competent Jews, Roma, etc.

Best,

Steve K

Harvey Berman September 19, 2020 at 3:36 PM

So, I thought while reading Buchanan, perhaps believing something overrides moral thinking.

In a new biography, “Mengele,” there are no signs he felt contrition or even hesitation for his twins studies and the harm he inflicted. The experimentation were of his own interest, not imposed on him by a higher authority, nothing he was required to do unlike the physicians who conducted the Tuskegee experiments on syphilis: but no different than the Tuskegee physicians, the German physicians thought they were doing good works.

Replies

Harvey Berman September 19, 2020 at 9:37 PM

I am replying here to ask a question. As i understand it, there is one explanation as to why Tuskegee physicians were able to keep on with their project is that they thought it was for the public good. I wonder if anyone on this blog has heard of this or if they know of another explanation.

Harvey Berman September 19, 2020 at 3:38 PM

My longer-term interest in Buchanan was in trying to extend the role played by belief in nullifying ideas about the moral standing of individuals when it comes to abortion, physician-assisted suicide, persons with disability.

Stephen Kershnar September 20, 2020 at 10:33 PM

DILEMMA: DOES SME JUSTIFY ITSELF?

Does SME have to justify the use of SME?

(1) Horn #1: Yes. If so, then SME might be unjustified if, as I suspect, SME would not work well because it would in actual practice degenerate into stultifying PC vetting.

(2) Horn #2: No. This makes no sense given the justification of SME in terms of various dangers and SME as a way to prevent it.

Best,

Steve K