Comments on Secondhand Smoke: Your 24/7 Seminar on Bioethics and the Importance of Being Human: Stephen Jay Gould on Human Exceptionalism

Wesley and mtraven:I like Gould's interpretation o...

2006-12-02T17:53:00.000-08:00

Wesley and mtraven:

I like Gould's interpretation of human exceptionalism, but I still prefer Ayn Rand's "humans are an end unto themselves" approach. I seriously recommend her novels ATLAS SHRUGGED and ANTHEM for a better look at her philosophy. I prefer ANTHEM myself, but they're both excellent.

aeolus: Indeed, that is what some commentators do ...

2006-12-02T08:34:00.000-08:00

aeolus: Indeed, that is what some commentators do say, and if we heed them, it is the end of universal human rights. My jaw often drops that some of the most liberal among us, would pursue such an illiberal course.

I disagree with the need for divine dispensation. Gould's point is a secular approach, and he saw the difference as being a true distinction. There are other approaches, which I think will be easier to post due to lenght. Moreover, what is the fundamental purpose of an ethical society? I always thought it was to provide universal human rights. If that is so, then our uniqueness must be presumed to be species-wide and we cannot cull the human herd based on "attributes" or capacities.

mtraven: That part of Gould seems to be saying tha...

2006-12-02T08:29:00.000-08:00

mtraven: That part of Gould seems to be saying that while he rejects that we are different in kind, the difference is quality is so great that it amounts to the same thing, which is why he then launches into the section I quoted. At least, that's my take.

Thanks for hanging out here. Your comments are always welcome.

I've had a look at the Gould piece and he seems to...

2006-12-02T00:45:00.000-08:00

I've had a look at the Gould piece and he seems to come down somewhere in the sensible middle: there is no one faculty that clearly sets us apart from other species (as Darwin pointed out, even moral sensibility is evident in incipient form in some other social species, and is selected for by evolution), but differences in quantity eventually amount to differences in quality.

But no one (not Peter Singer, not Tom Regan, not Gary Francione) denies that humans typically display exceptional qualities. In this (factual) sense, everyone believes in human exceptionalism. Still, "typically" does not mean "universally", and given that humans vary greatly in their faculties, it does not follow automatically that all are morally equal. (To say that all humans are members of a certain type or species is merely to restate the problem, not to resolve it.) The principle of universal human moral equality, then, must be based on relevant characteristics that all humans have in common with each other -- and that they inevitably have in common with some non-humans. So it seems to me that the only way to make sense of human exceptionalism in the moral sense is to posit divine dispensation for humans. The argument goes something like this:
There are no natural differences between all humans and all non-humans that could ground exceptional moral standing for all humans.
But all humans do have exceptional moral standing.
Therefore universal human moral exceptionalism arises from divine dispensation.

The Gould article is available here. Google is yo...

2006-12-01T23:19:00.000-08:00

The Gould article is available here. Google is your friend.

But I read it rather differently. You left out this text which occurs right before your excerpt:

For starters, the basic formulation of them vs. us, and the resulting search for a "golden barrier," represents a deep fallacy of human thought. We need not fear Darwin's correct conclusion that we differ from other animals only in degree. A sufficient difference in quantity translates to what we call difference in quality ipso facto.

I can't quite make out what Gould's point is, but it seems to be that humans are a distinct species by virtue of the fact that intermediate forms have died off. But the same is true for many other species. He's saying humans constitute a distinct group, but there is nothing special about that group, no "functional attribute marking our superiority". So this is not an argument for human exceptionalism at all. On the other hand he does allow that we have qualitiative differences. It seems very muddled to me.

BTW Wesley, since I usually only comment to disagree I should add that I mostly agree with your posts about PETA and gene patenting.