How Do We Care for Future People? Implications of Buddhist and Jain concepts for Reproductive Ethics

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How Do We Care for Future People?Implications of
Buddhist and Jain concepts for Reproductive Ethics

• James J. Hughes Ph.D.
• Executive Director, Institute for Ethics and
  Emerging TechnologiesPublic Policy Studies,
  Trinity Collegedirector_at_ieet.orgieet.org

Jain Conference on Bioethics - Aug 24-25,
2012 Claremont Lincoln University
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Bioethics and Personhood

• Bioethics has attempted to define what a being of
  moral significance is by defining personhood
• Personhood debates in Bioethics
• Abortion, embryonic stem cell research,
  reproductive technology, prenatal screening
• Brain death, anencephaly
• Animal rights
• Neurodiversity, cognitive enhancement

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Ensoulment Views

• The Soul of Trans-Humanism By Ted Peters
  (2005)
• Varieties of Western Soul Views
• Substance Dualism
• Trichotomy
• Emergent Dualism
• Non-reductive Physicalism
• Theological Materialism
• Atheistic Materialism

Ted Peters
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Spirit Dualisms

• Substance Dualism
• Hindu atman, Jain jiva and the soul for most lay
  Christians
• Unchanging supernatural essence that exists
  before birth and after death
• Trichotomy
• Body, soul (mind/brain), spirit (supra-physical)
• Baptism replaces human spirit with divine spirit
• Emergent Dualism
• Soul emergent from the brain, but supraphysical
• Before the body, no soul

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Materialist Ideas of the Soul

• Non-reductive Physicalism
• Soul/Mind are physical but cannot be reduced to
  the brain
• No body, no soul
• Resurrection of the body necessary
• Theological Materialism
• Soul is a conscious, physical brains spiritual
  capacity
• Atheistic Materialism
• Soul is meaningless there is only
  consciousness and self-identity

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Locke on Personal Identity

• Bridge to atheist materialism
• God made thinking matter
• Theological materialist, but resurrected body
  will be of different matter
• Memory is bridge from life to resurrected body
• Subjective identity necessary for Judgment,
  accountability

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Self is Thinking, Memory, Identity

• to find wherein personal Identity consists, we
  must consider what Person stands for which, I
  think, is a thinking intelligent Being, that has
  reason and reflection, and can consider itself as
  itself, the same thinking thing in different
  times and places (Locke, 1689)

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Humes Empiricist Skepticism

• All cause-effects are perceptual illusions
• The continuity of the self is a perceptual
  illusion
• "a bundle or collection of different perceptions
  which succeed one another with an inconceivable
  rapidity and are in perpetual flux and movement"
  (Hume, 1739)

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Neuroscience and the Self

• No localization in the brain
• Many processes Senses, Proprioception,
  Awareness, Cognition
• Split brain
• Memory is narrative fiction
• Kahneman experiencing self vs. remembered self
• Thomas Metzinger
• Self-identity is fluid, selective

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Buddhist No Self

• Embracing the reality of the constantly changing
  and illusory nature of self is liberating
• We can, and must, use self concept while
  recognizing its emptiness

But Buddhists, like Jains, believe in
reincarnation, hence some kind of supernatural
dualism
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Do Animals Have Soul Stuff?

• For Abrahamic faith only humans have souls
• Like modern secular ethics, Buddhists and Jains
  see a moral continuity between animals and humans

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Karma and Analog Ensoulment

• The materialist move Equating ensoulment with
  neurology
• If jiva/ajiva is analog instead of binary so also
  is the karma of harming

If Buddhists and Jains equate ensoulment with
neurodevelopment they could adopt various stances
parallel to secular bioethics
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Personhood Debates

• Psychological characteristics that accumulate
  moral relevance
• Sentience, the capacity for pain (Gary Francione)
  
• Self-awareness, volition Wises Drawing the Line
• (1) desire
• (2) intentionally try to fulfill its own desires
• (3) possess a sense of self-sufficiency which
  includes self-awareness.
• The capacity for moral agency and autonomy (Kant,
  Engelhardt)

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Buddhist Fetal Personhood

• The five skandhas necessary for self illusion
• A body (rupa)
• Feeling (vedana)
• Cognition (samjña)
• Volition (samskara)
• Consciousness (vijñana)
• Clearly a fetus does not possess all these traits
  until late in pregnancy, or perhaps even after
  birth

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Transcending Humanness

• Abrahamic faiths static humanity, enhancement is
  sinful
• South Asian faiths humanity is a temporary stage
  on our evolution into the posthuman
• European Enlightenment humanity is a happy
  evolutionary accident which can be improved on
  science until we become more godlike

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Genetic Enhancement

• Obligations to ones own children to ensure their
  widest possible life options
• Procreative beneficence
• Buddhist and Jain obligation to use genetics to
  morally enhance our children

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Moral Enhancement

• The use of drugs, devices and gene therapy to
  suppress vices and addictions, and enhance
  capacities for self-control, compassion,
  spiritual experience, and rational discernment

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Obligation to Future Generations

• We are obliged to ensure future persons are more
  than merely sentient, but have the best chance at
  spiritual progress
• Nirvana, moksha, siddhas, arhats
• Virtue consequentialism

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Uplift Ethic

• For Abrahamic faiths human and animal nature are
  separate and fixed
• For non-anthropocentric bioethics we have
  obligations to animals, possibly even to
  improving their cognition
• For Buddhists and Jains we have obligations to
  animals, even to their spiritual well-being
• Duty to ensure better liberation chances for all
  future life?
• Duty to enhance existing animals?

If ensoulment is analog, this obligation may only
apply to higher mammals
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Posthuman Eschatology

• Jains and Buddhists shared the Hindu model of an
  beginningless and endless timeline, with cyclical
  multi-billion year universe life courses
  (kalachakras)
• We are in the era of declining dharma (Dusama)
  leading up to a future utopian era (Susama)
• Waiting for the next Mahapurusha
• Cakravartins, Tirthankaras and Buddhas

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Lakshanas of the MahaPurushas

• The major laksanas include
• Large bump on top of skull
• Golden skin
• Body covered in tight curled hair
• A tuft of hair between the eyebrows.
• A large, long tongue and forty teeth
• Long arms that reach to the knees
• Webbed fingers and toes
• A thousand-spoked wheel on the sole of each foot
• A glowing aura

Mahapurushas are clearly posthuman
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Summary

• Buddhism and Jainism connect with and illuminate
  contemporary bioethics around animal-human-posthum
  an evolutionary trajectory and moral continuity
• Buddhism and Jainism differ radically in how they
  connect with bioethical debates on personhood
• Liberal Buddhists and Jains could set aside
  literal interpretations of ensoulment and adopt a
  materialist, neuroscientific view that permits
  some abortion and distinguishes between animals

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Summary cont.

• Some secular bioethicists believe it is
  permissible to genetically enhance humans and
  animals, while Abrahamic faiths generally oppose
  it
• Jains and Buddhists would use virtue
  consequentialism to judge whether genetic
  enhancements give future generations maximal
  opportunity for spiritual growth, meaning not
  only that enhancement for health and cognitive
  ability might be obligatory, but also
  enhancement for moral and spiritual traits
• Jains and Buddhists are more open to the radical
  optimism of the Enlightenment that we may
  transcend our humanness

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