Fukuyama Slide Show

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Fukuyama Slide Show

• CRTW 201
• Dr. Fike

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Our Objective

• The goal here is to summarize the rest of the
  book, not to apply the elements, though we will
  have time for some of that at the end.

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The Books Outline

• Part I Pathways to the Future (1-6) science
• Part II Being Human (7-9) philosophy
• Part III What To Do (10-12) politics

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Chapter 6 Why We Should Worry

• Why SHOULD we worry?
• Answer Because eugenics will expand
  reproductive rights, not restrict them (87).

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Objections to Eugenics

• Religion
• Utilitarian considerations
• Philosophical principles

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The Religious Objection

• Religions starting premise Human beings are
  made in Gods image.
• Therefore, manipulating what God has created
  amounts to the following
• Violating Gods will
• Playing God
• Violating human dignity

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Three Possible Orientations

• Religion gt science (many religious conservatives
  damage their own cause by allowing the abortion
  issue to trump all other considerations in
  biomedical research 90)
• Science gt religion (a widespread view that
  religious conviction is tantamount to a kind of
  irrational prejudice that stands in the way of
  scientific progress 89)
• Religion and science are compatible I think
  that F favors this relationship.

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Abortion The Key Issue for Conservatives

• As Charles Krauthammer has pointed out,
  religious conservatives have focused on the wrong
  issue with regard to stem cells. They should not
  be worried about the sources of these cells but
  about their ultimate destiny (91).

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Utilitarian Concerns

• Economic considerations
• Benefits
• Costs
• Long-term consequences
• Physical costs
• Gene interactionlaw of unintended consequences
  (negative externalities)

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Philosophical Principles

• Political correctness
• Example Harming children by aborting females.
• David Reimer (today David Reimer is reportedly a
  happily married man 95)
• A genetic arms race
• Deference to nature Since ecosystems are
  self-regulating, we should leave well enough
  alone and let nature run its course.
• The family A major obstacle to social justice
• Libertarian position we should be skeptical
  of libertarian arguments that say that as long as
  eugenic choices are being made by individuals
  rather than by states, we neednt worry about
  possible bad consequences (99-100).

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Fukuyamas Major Assumptions

• fear that, in the end, biotechnology will cause
  us in some way to lose our humanity (101).
• Rights, justice, and morality are all based on
  human nature.
• Therefore, if genetic engineering alters human
  nature, it will also alter rights, justice, and
  morality.

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What Ridley Would Say

• 297 The government is the problem, not the
  solution it should be restrained.
• Abortion But for a dependent, non-sentient
  embryo, not being born is not necessarily the
  same as being killed (298).
• 298 Screening should be an individual choice.
• 299 Eugenics is okay as long as it is a private
  choice. If we nationalize it, it will become
  coercive.
• 300 The dangers of eugenics are governmental,
  not scientific.

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Part II

• Being Human (Chapters 7-9) philosophy

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Chapter 7

• Q_at_I What is right, and where does it come from?
• Fukuyamas answer
• Human rights (e.g., justice)
• Human ends or purposes (e.g., to live a good
  life)
• Human nature (???)
• If you want to understand whether humans have a
  right to pursue genetic engineering, you first
  have to understand human nature and the ends or
  purposes that emanate from it.

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Procreative Liberty

• Genetic engineering may be a procreative
  liberty supported by ethical individualism
  (107).

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Where Rights Come From

• Religion no consensus possible
• Nature the naturalistic fallacy argues that
  nature does not provide justifiable basis for
  rights, morality, or ethics, that human nature
  gives us absolutely no guidance as to what human
  values should be (112).
• Man Human rights are, in other words, whatever
  human beings say they are (112)

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In Favor of the Naturalistic Fallacy

• Hume You cannot get to ought from is. A
  fact about behavior does not imply a moral
  imperative (a should).
• Even if we could derive ought from is, the
  is might be undesirable.

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Fukuyamas Case Against the Naturalistic Fallacy

• Basically, he believes that human rights do rest
  upon human nature.
• He reasserts this relationship
• Human rights (e.g., justice)
• Human ends or purposes (e.g., to live a good
  life)
• Human nature (???)

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Chapter 8 Human Nature

• Definition Human nature is the sum of the
  behavior and characteristics that are typical of
  the human species, arising from genetic rather
  than environmental factors (130).

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Opposing View

• there are no true human universals that can be
  traced to a common nature (133).
• DNA does not fully determine its phenotype (the
  actual creature that develops from the DNA)
  (135).
• Learning accounts for a good deal of human
  variation.

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What IS Human Nature?

• In other words, what is it at birth?
• Cognition
• Ability to learn language
• Perception of time and color
• There are in fact what amount to innate ideas
  or, more accurately, innate species-typical forms
  of cognition, and species-typical emotional
  responses to cognition (141).
• Moral universals like the Golden Rule of
  reciprocity are not just learned behavior.
• Parental drive to protect children
• Conscience
• Emotional responses

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Question

• So Fukuyama wonders whether some of these things
  will be changed if we use genetic engineering.

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Chapter 9 Human Dignity

• Factor X The thing that underlies human
  dignity.
• Q_at_I So what is Factor X, and where does it
  come from? (150).
• Kants answer the capacity for moral choice,
  which proceeds from free will

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Why not use the power of genetic manipulation?

• Answer There would be a genetic overclass as in
  Brave New World.
• 156 large genetic variations between
  individuals will narrow and become clustered
  within certain distinct social groups.
• Fukuyama favors the genetic lottery because it
  is profoundly egalitarian (156-57).
• But he admits that GE might also lead to greater
  equality if it were used to raise up the bottom
  of society (159).

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What Fukuyama Opposes

• Reductionism, the idea that everything can be
  understood in terms of material causes.
• Example of why F thinks that this is problematic
  human sociability language ? politics. But
  politics gt human sociability or language.
• Another example Consciousness is more than the
  biology of the brain it is also a matter of
  nonmaterial things.

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Fukuyamas Point

• 170 It is this leap from parts to a whole that
  ultimately has to constitute the basis for human
  dignity....
• 171 What gives us human dignity is the fact
  that we are complex wholes rather than the sum
  of simple parts.
• Factor X is thus all of these qualities coming
  together in a human whole moral choice,
  reason, language, sociability, sentience,
  emotions, and consciousness.

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Fukuyamas Fear

• He fears that biotechnology might seek to make
  us less complex (172).
• Again, if you tinker with human nature (the
  foundation), you might affect the things that
  proceed from it
• Human rights (e.g., justice)
• Human ends or purposes (e.g., to live a good
  life)
• Human nature (???)

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Part III

• What To Do

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Chapter 10 The Political Control of
Biotechnology

• Thesis countries must regulate the
  development and use of technology politically,
  setting up institutions that will discriminate
  between those technological advances that promote
  human flourishing, and those that pose a threat
  to human dignity and well-being. These
  regulatory institutions must first be empowered
  to enforce these discriminations on a national
  level, and must ultimately extend their reach
  internationally (182).

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Chapter 11 How Biotechnology Is Regulated Today

• The regulatory regime for human biotechnology is
  much less developed than for agricultural
  biotech (200).
• Examples of lack of regulation (201)
• Thalidomide scandal
• Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital scandal
• Tuskegee syphilis scandal
• Nuremberg Code medical experimentation could
  be performed on a human subject only with the
  latters consent (202).
• Helsinki Declaration establishes a number of
  principles governing experimentation on human
  subjects, including informed consent (202).

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Chapter 11s Conclusion

• Despite variations in practice and occasional
  lapses, the case of human experimentation shows
  that the international community is in fact able
  to place effective limits on the way in which
  scientific research is conducted, in ways that
  balance the need for research against respect for
  the dignity of research subjects. This is an
  issue that will need to be revisited frequently
  in the future (202).

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Chapter 12 Policies for the Future

• 206 Issues to consider
• Preimplantation diagnosis and screening
• Germ-line engineering
• Chimeras using human genes
• New psychotropic drugs
• 207 Might there be both moral and practical
  reasons for reproductive cloninglike cloning a
  child with leukemia so that the offspring could
  provide bone marrow?

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Fukuyamas Position

• Therapy is okay.
• Enhancement is not.

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Human Cloning

• 216 It may be the case that regulations
  concerning human cloning will have to await the
  birth of a horribly deformed child who is the
  product of an unsuccessful cloning attempt.

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Again

• Fukuyama maintains that much of our political
  world rests on the existence of a stable human
  essence with which we are endowed by nature, or
  rather, on the fact that we believe such an
  essence exists (217).

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His Conclusions on Page 218

• the posthuman world could be one that is far
  more hierarchical and competitive than the one
  that currently exists, and full of social
  conflict as a result.
• We do not have to regard ourselves as slaves to
  inevitable technological progress when that
  progress does not serve human needs.