Lee's and George's second response

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October 19, 2006 8:39 AM

Silver Lining
A reply to Lee Silver.

By Patrick Lee & Robert P. George

We thank Professor Silver for his response . On the basis of this exchange, we are confident that readers will be able to judge whether Professor Silver’s claim that human embryos are something other than what we say they are, namely, human beings in the earliest stage of their natural development, can withstand scrutiny in light of the findings of modern embryological science.

Are Human Embryos Human Beings?
Silver claims that while many people believe that human embryos are human beings, what sets us apart is that we contend that this is a matter of scientific fact, rather than a proposition of faith. But we are scarcely set apart by this claim. On the contrary, our claim that the human being that is, say, you the reader, is the same determinate and enduring being — the same individual member of the species Homo sapiens — who at an earlier stage of his or her life was an adolescent, a child, an infant, a fetus, and an embryo, is a fact confirmed by contemporary embryology and attested to by the standard works in the field. (We mentioned several of these works in the essay to which Silver responds; he cites none in support of his position.) Terms such as human “adolescent,” “infant,” and “embryo” do not refer to beings of distinct kinds; rather, they refer to the same kind of being — a human being, an individual member of the species Homo sapiens — at different developmental stages. You were once an embryo, just as surely as you were once an adolescent, and before that a child. So that readers will be left in no doubt, let us quote a couple of the standard texts. Keith Moore and T.V.N. Persaud, in The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, perhaps the most widely used of the embryology texts, make the following unambiguous statement about the beginning of a new and distinct human individual: “Human development begins at fertilization when a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoon) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell — a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual” (p.16, emphasis supplied). Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Mueller, in their book Human Embryology and Teratology, say this: “Although life is a continuous process, fertilization (which, incidentally, is not a ‘moment’) is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte” (p. 8, emphasis supplied).

An even weaker point advanced by Silver is his complaint that we “have not budged” in our rejection of Ronald Bailey’s claim that embryos are analogous to skin cells or other somatic cells that can be used (it is assumed) in human cloning. People who recall our exchanges with Bailey on NRO know that our rejection of his proposed analogy has nothing to do with stubbornness. Rather, we showed by careful argumentation and the presentation of the relevant biological facts that somatic cells are analogous not to embryos — which are complete self-integrating organisms that are, as the standard scientific texts attest, new individuals of their species — but rather to gametes (sperm and egg) whose union can bring into existence a new and distinct individual in the embryonic stage of its development.

Parts and Wholes
Let us turn now to two key propositions in our argument that human embryos are human beings. Silver disputes these propositions. We said that human embryos are (embryonic) human beings because they are complete human organisms that “have an internal active disposition toward the mature stage of a human being.” Silver disputes this proposition. He claims that “we know that a single cell can separate from a 4- cell embryo and develop into a separate human baby (on rare natural occasions).” According to him, “Lee and George would argue that this cell has the ‘internal active disposition’ that makes it a human being.” But this would be inconsistent with our position that ES cells are not human beings because they lack such an active disposition to develop to maturity.

Silver here commits the error of confusing a part with a whole. When the cell is part of the whole multi-cellular organism, it lacks any disposition to develop on its own: for, if it is not split off, then it will continue to act in coordination with other cells along a trajectory toward the mature stage of development of the organism of which it is a part. If the splitting of the cell from the whole embryo results in a new embryo, this is a form of asexual reproduction, and an example of what evidently occurs in normal monozygotic twinning. So the fact that a single cell could be separated from a four-celled embryo and produce a second embryo is completely consistent with our position that embryonic-stem (ES) cells are not human beings because they lack this internal active disposition.

Developmental Trajectories
Silver then claims that “an internal active disposition” “is not a term that has any meaning in the context of cellular or molecular biology.” But this is mere bluster. The concept of a disposition or tendency is scarcely foreign to scientific contexts, where one speaks, for example, of the solubility of salt (sodium chloride) or of sugar (sucrose) and their variance in relation to temperature; for, solubility is a disposition, a tendency to do something in a given context. We added “internal” and “active” to distinguish it clearly from the (merely passive) capacity of something to be changed by being acted upon by an extrinsic agent. Thus, when biology books refer to the capacity for metabolism as being one of the marks of a living system, “capacity” refers to the same sort of thing we were referring to by the term “internal active disposition.” We could also have used the term “developmental trajectory” or “developmental program” to make the same point. An organism with a single developmental trajectory toward the mature stage of a human being is already a human being.

Moreover, dispositions or developmental trajectories in organisms have structural bases; that is, present in the organism are constituents and arrangements (organization) responsible for the active disposition or developmental trajectory. So, when Silver next claims, “If George and Lee want to claim otherwise [namely, that “internal active disposition” does have a meaning in the context of cellular and molecular biology] I’d like to know their perception of the molecular attributes that distinguish human being-cells from non-human-being, yet still fully viable and human cells” — we are happy to inform him. At the one-cell stage, comparing a zygote to, say, a stem cell, the one-celled embryo differs epigenetically from the stem cell (that is, while each has the complete genome there are differences in the activation or silencing of various genes).

But that is not all, for there are also differences with respect to several cytoplasmic factors. The embryo is such that, unlike a stem cell or any other somatic cell, its whole developmental program, both the epigenetic state of its DNA and various proteins and RNA factors in its cytoplasm (differences that are fully discernable at the molecular level) enable it to develop along a trajectory towards developmental maturity. At later stages of development, each of the cells of the embryo will differ from a separated stem cell or from other somatic cells — among other ways — in being modified by interaction with other cells within the embryo in such a manner as to contribute to homeostasis and the development of the organism as a whole. Therefore, “in the context of cellular and molecular biology,” a single-cell human being (i.e. a zygote) is distinct from any other viable human cell in terms of 1) its epigenetic state, 2) its pattern of gene activation, 3) its molecular composition, and 4) its subsequent pattern of development — all of which can be (and indeed are) easily determined by scientists without recourse to crystal balls, sacred texts, or articles of faith.

Are Embryonic Stem Cells Human Beings?
In an astonishingly misleading paragraph, Silver quotes from a quick summary given by a reporter from Science magazine about a meeting of scientists working on gene knockouts (a procedure in which, by a complicated process, a gene is deactivated — “knocked out” — in a mouse in order to discover what that gene’s normal function would be). Suspecting something fishy, we took the trouble to look. The scientists were examining how they could cooperate more effectively on an international level. In the past they had shared research data and materials in part by shipping mice that had been engineered with a certain gene knockout. Silver quotes the reporter summarizing their discussion as follows: “the participants agreed that it would be most economical to avoid trafficking in live mice and instead decided to maintain the knockouts as embryonic stem (ES) cells: clumps of tissue that can be frozen down and later grown up into full-fledged mice.” Professor Silver takes this as evidence that “[t]hose…who have worked only with early-stage mouse embryos” are more honest than scientists who work on human stem cells when speaking “about the relationship of embryos to stem cells.” In other words, Silver presents this quote as proof from authority that stem cells really are the moral equivalent of embryos (because they can somehow “by themselves” grow into embryos).

However, first, it is clear that the reporter is merely trying to summarize quickly the conclusions of a long meeting of stem-cell scientists; he is not attempting to select his words with exactitude, and much less is he addressing the issue in dispute between Professor Silver and ourselves. Silver is making much out of what is manifestly nothing more than a reporter’s shorthand manner of speaking. The article from Science is available online. We urge readers who are evaluating Silver’s arguments against our own to examine this article for themselves.

Moreover — and much more significantly — Silver fails to mention that the knockout procedure involves first knocking out a specific gene in mouse stem cells, then injecting those stem cells into an early mouse embryo, where the manipulated stem cells will be randomly incorporated into the body of the developing embryo. In some of the chimeric mice formed in this manner, the stem cells will contribute to the gonads, and therefore the germ cells produced by the mature animal will also lack the gene that was eliminated from the stem cells. In this case, by “back crossing” such “germ line deficient” mice (i.e., inter-breeding the male and female offspring of the mouse carrying the gene deletion), ultimately a mouse is produced that lacks the knocked out gene in all the cells of its body, and the phenotype that results from the loss of that gene’s action can be determined. The point the scientists were making was simply that it would be more economical and efficient to ship to other sites the manipulated stem cells rather than the mice with the gene knockouts, largely because many such knock-out mice are quite unhealthy, and therefore they are difficult to breed and expensive to maintain. When the scientists described the ES cells (or, more precisely, when the reporter recounted them as describing the ES cells as) “clumps of tissue that can be frozen down and later grown up into full-fledged mice,” it was understood — as part of the knockout procedure — that this later “growing up” process would involve injecting those ES cells into mouse embryos. Silver’s selective editing makes it appear that these scientists are asserting something they did not assert, and are speaking to an issue they did not address.

Professor Silver had argued in his book that aggregating mouse stem cells with mouse tetraploid embryos allowed the stem cells to develop “by themselves” into mature mice. We pointed out that the aggregation of the stem cells with tetraploid embryos (or embryo-like entities) does more than release an inner capacity in the stem cells. In fact, it generates a new and distinct organism, just as combining the nucleus of a somatic cell with an enucleated ovum (as in cloning) generates a new organism — in both cases, an embryonic member of the mouse (or other) species in question. In his reply, Silver now says the following:

Furthermore, as I wrote in my book, human ES cells have already been differentiated into placenta. This means that, in theory, the requirement for a second source of cells to reconstitute an embryo may be nullified, and ES cells — all by their lonesome — could develop into a fetus and human baby. This discussion was conveniently left out of Lee and George's review.

This is supposed to show that stem cells really are equivalent to embryos because they can “by themselves,” or “all by their lonesome,” develop into mature members of their species. However, this argument is dubious at best, given that there is no evidence that an embryo could be generated by recombining ES-cells that have been “differentiated into placenta” with an undifferentiated ES cell, and there is sound scientific evidence to suggest embryos cannot be generated in this manner. In fact, the second article Silver cites in his book on this subject is much more cautious in its conclusions than Silver himself is. The authors write;

The human equivalent to trophoblast stem cells has not yet been derived, and it is likely that different growth factors will be required for their propagation.[note omitted] Although, in our current studies, BMP4 efficiently induced differentiation of human ES cells to trophoblast, these trophoblast cells propagated poorly, even in the continued presence of bFGF and fibroblast feeder layers (data not shown), suggesting that additional growth factors are required for their long-term proliferation. (Ren-He Xu, et al., “BMP4 initiates human embryonic stem cell differentiation to trophoblast,” Nature Bioetechnology 20 (December 2002), 1261-1264, at 1263)

Moreover, as partly recounted in Silver’s book, and more fully in the scholarly articles to which Silver refers, the stem cells (in the experiment Silver cites) by no means develop into embryos and fetuses without extrinsic causes in the form of external manipulations. No one denies or has denied that one can manipulate factors found in early stem cells and combined those factors with stem cells in such a way as to generate a new embryo. But just as combining factors from an ovum and a somatic cell to generate a new individual member of a species in the embryonic stage does not show that an ovum or a somatic cell used in the process was somehow already an embryo or its equivalent, the combining and manipulating of factors found in early stem cells does not show that a stem cell is an embryo or its equivalent. The fact that one can combine A (a stem cell) with B (another cell that is produced by a significant manipulation of a stem cell) to produce C, does not in the least prove that A or B were identical with C all along.

A Thing Either Is or Is Not a Human Being
The second proposition of ours that Silver contests, is that a thing either is or is not a human being, that is, that each human being came to be at once, not gradually. Readers will recall that our view is entirely consistent with the biological fact that fertilization is a process. Our point is that a new human being does not “partially” exist as the process unfolds. Rather, a new human being is what the process, if it reaches completion, brings into existence. (If fertilization fails, it is not correct to say that a “partial” human was brought into being, or that a human was “partially” brought into being.) Silver notes that we provided several arguments defending our position, but mentions only one, namely, in his words, “that it is simply commonsensical to most people.” He then notes that common sense is often mistaken, as “many examples from science demonstrate.”

Here again, however, what Silver says is highly misleading. First, in Silver’s article in Science and Theology News, he did not just claim that we presuppose the proposition that a being either is a human being or is not; rather, he claimed that it was a “hidden theological premise.” He even went so far as to allege — preposterously — that we adopted this premise from a literal interpretation of Genesis, according to which humans are made in God’s image, and God is absolute, so just as there cannot be a partial God, so there cannot be a partial human. His charge was that we were covertly injecting our “fundamentalist” Christian beliefs into secular-sounding arguments.

Of course, we pointed out that the inference we supposedly made starting from a teaching in Genesis was patently fallacious (i.e., God cannot be partial, humans are made in God’s image, therefore there cannot be partial humans — by the same reasoning one could infer that we must be omniscient, eternal, perfect, and so on). We then pointed out that the idea that human beings come to be at once was part of common sense; the point was to show (along with other arguments) that it was not a premise we had to take from the Bible or Church teaching: Since it is a commonsense idea, it is absurd to suppose that all those who make use of it are covertly smuggling in a literal reading of Genesis. Further, we made a point of stating expressly that just because this idea is part of common sense “doesn’t by itself prove it, but does provide support for it.”

After having given four reasons showing that no one has to appeal, openly or covertly, to revelation in order to hold this position (that something either is or is not a human being), we then moved on to a different task, namely, providing philosophical support for this position. We presented two distinct philosophical arguments. Silver offers no reply at all to either of these arguments. His only attack, and that a weak one, is on the single argument that we expressly said “doesn’t by itself prove” the position we were defending, but merely “provides support for it.”

In his book and article, Silver claims that the assumption that a thing either is or is not some kind of thing must be a hidden theological premise. But he now admits that it might have been adopted from common sense. Moreover, he now even admits that “[i]t is not surprising that so many philosophers have also held this position,” though he adds that, “[t]wo millennia ago, in the absence of modern scientific knowledge and biomedical technology, Aristotle would certainly have convinced me of its veracity.” Thus, Silver has implicitly abandoned the claim that this view depends on covert “fundamentalist” theological premises. But Silver’s attempt to discredit this view by tying it to a philosophical approach that has allegedly been falsified by modern science is equally misleading. First, he ignores the fact that we cited (to show, earlier, that this position was not a hidden theological premise) contemporary as well as ancient philosophers. (We specifically mentioned David Wiggins, Roderick Chisholm, Peter Van Inwagen, and E.J. Lowe, all recent or contemporary analytic philosophers.) Moreover — even if one disagrees with them — no one is likely to accuse any of them of naively following an outmoded, two millennia-old philosophical approach. Further, neither of the two philosophical arguments we presented to defend the proposition at the heart of the debate — arguments ignored by Silver — were lifted from ancient sources.

Daunted by Darwin?
Silver does present an argument against our position that a human being either is or is not — i.e., that there is no entity that is somehow between a human being and a non-human creature. Here is his argument:

The most serious challenge, of course, came from Darwin, whose theory of natural selection suggests that in the evolution of pre-human apes into human beings, there was no first human being. Instead, there appears to have been a continuum of evolutionary forms in a process during which no child was significantly different from its parents. The scientific implication is that some "things" might be in-between non-human and human.

But this argument is fallacious. Darwin proposes at least a partial explanation of the emergence of new species (whether it is a sufficient or complete explanation is another question, which we need not settle here). The idea is that some species evolved from other species, and that the human species evolved from lower animal species, at least with respect to the organic aspect of the human being (whether that is all there is to human nature is another question, which, again, we need not settle in the context of the current debate). But this does not show that there must have been some creatures which were in between humans and non-humans — creatures that were neither human nor non-human. It only shows that certain non-human animals evolved gradually (or perhaps not so gradually — the point is disputed among evolutionary biologists) to become more and more like humans until, at least partly through genetic mutations, the human species (as a distinct and identifiable species) emerged. Nothing in the Darwinian account suggests that there is or was a species that was neither human nor non-human — a species that was “in between” human and non-human.

In other words, if species B evolved from species A though an accumulation of minute genetic changes, that does nothing to show that the last entity just before the last genetic change which (wholly or in part) produced the new species B, must have been something that was partially B. Rather, that last entity prior to B was a non-B that was in a great many respects like a B.

Moreover, the addition of a minute genetic change could be — whether wholly or in part — responsible for a radical change in the properties possessed by a new being. It is entirely possible that an accumulation of minute changes to a system could together give rise to entirely new, emergent properties. There are numerous examples in the field of biology where minute changes in a gene (even the alteration of a single nucleotide) radically alter what the gene does, either completely eliminating its function (null mutations) or producing an entirely new function for the same DNA sequence (neomorphic mutations). In such cases, well-understood molecular events (i.e., DNA mutations) can give rise to emergent properties at the level of whole organisms. Small changes in the timing of key developmental events or in the structural organization of the brain could also produce radical differences in morphology or neurological function between closely related species. In other words, Darwin’s theory asserts that humans are descended from non-human animal species; Darwin’s theory does not say that those non-humans were or could in some way have been “partial” humans.

Embryos and Disorganized Growths
Next, Silver presents what he calls “another scientific challenge for Lee and George”: “If a perfectly normal human embryo is grown in a laboratory incubator, it can develop without any discontinuity into a teratoma.” We (Lee and George) would have to hold, he says, that during its first week in a petri dish, it is a human being. “But no one believes that an embryo-generated teratoma is a human being, even though it can be kept alive as a unique, integrated organism.” And this presents us with the problem: “So when during the continuous life of this organism did the human being suddenly disappear?”

Here Silver’s claims are deeply confused, as standard works of teratology, like the one we cited by O’Rahilly and Mueller, make clear. Even granting — for the sake of argument — that Silver has described the phenomenon accurately, there simply are no valid grounds for regarding — as Silver does — a teratoma as a unitary functioning organism, as opposed to a disorganized growth. Teratomas (unlike embryos) are not individuals of the species in the earliest stage of their development towards organismal maturity. Rather, teratomas are masses of cells, often containing some degree of sub-organismal order or organization (for example, hair, teeth, limb primordia), but lacking organismal wholeness, or indeed any unitary order at the level of a whole organism.

Embryos do not, however, by normal development, turn into teratomas. A “perfectly normal human embryo” cannot “turn into” a teratoma without an intervening event — the death of the embryo — that causes a radical discontinuity between the two. An embryo that dies, leaving physical remains in the form of a teratoma, is a distinct case from an embryo that develops to the fetal stage. Embryos literally turn into fetuses, just as adolescents turn into adults. There is no discontinuity; merely normal development. That is why we cannot say of an embryo and a teratoma what we can say of an embryo, fetus, infant, child, adolescent, and adult, namely, that they are the same entity or being at different developmental stages.

Silver’s argument is an effort to make something of the fact that an event may occur that irreversibly destroys an embryo’s capacity for self-organization and internally-driven growth in the direction of developmental maturity, leaving only a disorganized mass — a teratoma. If this happens, a tumor-like structure lacking the organization and capacity for self-directed development towards maturity as a member of the species is the physical remains of what was, before its death, a complete organism — a living member of the species in the embryonic stage. The teratoma is not continuous with the embryo, since a radical discontinuity — embryonic death — has occurred.

To simply return Silver’s challenge in a somewhat more familiar context; when a patient in a hospital dies, would Silver assert that “a perfectly normal human” develops “without any discontinuity” into a corpse? If a meaningful distinction between a patient and a corpse cannot be drawn (as Silver’s analysis seems to suggest) because the transition between the two states is “continuous,” are we required to view living and dead human bodies as the same, simply because the former seamlessly gives rise to the latter? This is, of course, absurd. Medical science routinely addresses the question of when a patient passes from life to death and medical research into this question continues to define the molecular and cellular correlates of death with greater and greater accuracy. The question of “when during the continuous life of this organism did the human being cease to exist?” can (and is) readily addressed by medical research, and does not present a significant intellectual or scientific challenge to our position.

Spontaneous Embryo Loss — What is Lost?
At the end of Silver’s reply there is a serious mischaracterization or misunderstanding of our position that must be corrected. Silver, and others, had argued that human embryos are not worthy of the full moral respect due to a human being because a high percentage of embryos formed in natural pregnancies fail to implant or spontaneously abort. To this we have at times presented, as a preliminary note to a detailed argument, the following point: “It is worth noting first, as the standard embryology texts point out, that many of these unsuccessful pregnancies are really due to incomplete fertilizations. So in many cases, what is lost is not actually a human embryo” (from Robert George’s Personal Statement in the Report of the President’s Council on Bioethics, on Human Cloning and Human Dignity, p.305).

In both his book and his reply on NRO, Silver misunderstands this to mean that we hold that all defects in fertilization — that is, malfunctions of various sorts in the fertilization process — result in entities that lack the active disposition to, or the developmental trajectory toward, the mature stage of a human being, and so are not actually human embryos. But after making the above point in his personal statement in the Report of the President’s Council on Bioethics on cloning, George went on to say:

“To be a complete human organism (a human being), the entity must have the epigenetic primordia for a functioning brain and nervous system, though a chromosomal defect might only prevent development to maximum functioning (in which case it would be a human being, though handicapped) (emphasis added). If fertilization is not complete, then what is developing is not an organism with the active capacity to develop itself to the mature (even if handicapped) state of a human.”

So our point has always been only that in some instances of “defective fertilizations” what results will lack the program for or developmental trajectory toward the mature stage of a human being, and so is not a human embryo. An embryonic human may certainly have the basic program or disposition orienting it toward the mature stage, but also have defects that prevent the full actualization of that program, as is the case with trisomy 21 and anencephalic infants.

Moreover, in his book Silver presents this merely preliminary note as if it were our main reply to the objection about so-called “embryo-wastage.” Our main replies to that argument, however, have always been that, first, the objection is simply a non sequitur, in fact a form of the naturalistic fallacy — that because something does occur in “nature” with predictable frequency then it must be morally acceptable when deliberately caused by human agency. Second, we have observed that historically, and in some places even today, the infant mortality rate has been very high, and so if this objection were sound, it would show that infanticide in such cultures would be morally acceptable, which (we hope Professor Silver would agree) is absurd.

Put us to the Test
Finally, at both the beginning and the end of his article (and in his book) Professor Silver claims that we have presented a position — that a human embryo is a human being — that is unscientific because it is unfalsifiable (that we cannot conceive of an experiment that would falsify it). We had rebutted objections that monozygotic twinning or formation of chimeras proves that a human individual does not begin at fertilization by pointing out that the conclusion simply does not follow: If monozygotic twinning occurs, evidently a new individual comes to be with the splitting of the original embryo; or, if two embryos combine to form a chimera, evidently either one absorbs the cells of the other or the two cease to be in the formation of a new multi-cellular organism. In his book, Silver labels our reply a “rationalization” and triumphantly claims, “Indeed, they have never described a test that could falsify the theory, which is why this is a matter of faith, not science.”

But again Professor Silver has gone off the rails. The test of whether a group of cells constitutes a single organism is empirically verifiable or falsifiable: that test is whether the cells form a stable body and function as parts of a whole, self-developing, adaptive unit. Again, one need only consult the standard texts. There is no scientific debate about this. It is certainly not a theological dogma or a merely scientific-sounding concept we have concocted. On the contrary, it is the test that has been in general use for years for determining whether an individual (at any developmental stage) remains alive or has died. In the life cycle of embryos that split or combine, there is, indisputably, a whole set of complex, coordinated activities performed by each of these embryos as a whole from day 1 to the day on which twinning or combination occurs (which may be as late as day 9, or, very rarely, even slightly later). This is empirical verification that a developing, single organism exists during that time. So there is a test for verification of the presence or absence of a unitary organism, and we have in our writings applied that test in a straightforward and uncontroversial way to early embryos. Where monozygotic twinning or combination occurs, the embryos prior to those events have clearly passed that test (see Helen Pearson, “Your Destiny, From Day One,” Nature 418 (2002), pp. 14-15). On the other hand, the test also can be failed, and in fact sometime is: In some cases where one thinks there might be a human being at the embryonic stage of development, it turns out that what is present is a teratoma or a complete hydatidiform mole, as evidenced by the lack of self-organization and internally directed growth towards organismal maturity. Thus, the test of whether a unitary organism is present is verifiable or falsifiable. Professor Silver simply ignores the evidence indicating its verification in the coming to be of human embryos at fertilization or monozygotic twinning.

— Patrick Lee is professor of bioethics at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program at Princeton University.

Silver's first response

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October 19, 2006 8:14 AM

Human Issues

To the Editor

I thank my colleagues Patrick Lee and Robert George for the time and effort that they put into reading and critiquing my recently published book, Challenging Nature. Since I present a lengthy discussion of — and challenge to — their previously published views in the first half of my book, I was not surprised that they found much to criticize there. I am disappointed that they had nothing to say about the second half of my book, where I direct my fire at "New Age secularists [who] rail against genetically modified crops." I suspect that many NRO readers will find much to agree with in this portion of my writing (which elicited an enraged review in the American Scientist from the post-modern historian Nathaniel Comfort).

Before I respond to the main points of disagreement, I want readers to know that I wrote about leaders of the Catholic Church in the U.S. with the utmost respect. In describing my meeting with bishops who sit on the Committee on Science and Human Values of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, I wrote, “At the outset, I was impressed by their genuine inquisitiveness, their desire to understand the most recent advances in science, and their willingness to admit that important questions existed for which they had no answer.” As I have written, the thrust of my challenge to Lee and George was on scientific grounds, not theological ones.

Professors Lee and George think that human embryos are indisputably human beings. Millions of other people brought up in the Western religious tradition hold the same view, but what sets Lee and George apart is their claim that the “scientific facts” alone prove that human embryos are human beings. Lee and George have read and heard challenges to their claim by scientists, writers, theologians, and other academics. Most notable are the able arguments presented by Ron Bailey in a previous NRO debate. But Lee and George haven’t budged, and I doubt there is anything I can say or write that will ever make them budge. My perception of their attitude should make scientists suspicious because it suggests that Lee and George cannot conceive of an empirical experiment (with results that can be objectively verified) that would falsify their claim. If this is true, their claim is not a scientific one. If they’ve got an experiment, I’d like to hear the operational details.

Lee and George base their embryo-is-a-human-being claim mainly on two propositions. One is that a human embryo has an “internal active disposition for self-directed development toward the mature stage of a human.” Since we know that a single cell can separate from a four-cell embryo and develop into a separate human baby (on rare natural occasions), Lee and George would argue that this cell has the “internal active disposition” that makes it a human being. On the other hand, they argue that isolated embryonic stem (ES) cells are not human beings because they do not have this “internal active disposition.” But “internal active disposition” is not a term that has any meaning in the context of cellular or molecular biology. If George and Lee want to claim otherwise, I’d like to know their perception of the molecular attributes that distinguish human-being cells from non-human-being, yet still fully viable and human, cells.

Those of us who have worked only with early-stage mouse embryos (which are essentially identical in size and appearance to human embryos) don’t have the same qualms as colleagues in the human stem-cell field do when it comes to speaking honestly about the relationship of embryos to stem cells. In the summary of a meeting of mouse geneticists published in the journal Science, the reporter wrote, “the participants agreed that it would be most economical to avoid trafficking in live mice and instead decided to maintain the knockouts as embryonic stem (ES) cells: clumps of tissue that can be frozen down and later grown up into full-fledged mice” (Science 312: 1862-1866; June 30, 2006). Furthermore, as I wrote in my book, human ES cells have already been differentiated into placenta. This means that, in theory, the requirement for a second source of cells to reconstitute an embryo may be nullified, and ES cells — all by their lonesome — could develop into a fetus and human baby. This discussion was conveniently left out of Lee and George’s review. But, if theory becomes practice, and ES cells can be grown directly into a fetus, at what point during continuous development from a bunch of cells to a fetus does a human being instantly appear? Tell me what the molecular correlates are for such an event.

The second proposition that Lee and George use in their appeal to science has been simply stated on many occasions by Professor George: “a thing either is or is not a human being.” Lee and George provide several arguments in support of this proposition. One is that it is simply commonsensical to most people. I have no doubt that this observation is correct, but as many examples from science demonstrate, common sense is no predictor of truth. Furthermore, it is not surprising that so many philosophers have also held this position. Two millennia ago, in the absence of modern scientific knowledge and biomedical technology, Aristotle would certainly have convinced me of its veracity. Modern psychologists have evidence that normal human brains are hard-wired to categorize everything into distinct classes (including human beings and non-human beings).

Scientific knowledge challenges this instinct on many occasions. The most serious challenge, of course, came from Darwin, whose theory of natural selection suggests that in the evolution of pre-human apes into human beings, there was no first human being. Instead, there appears to have been a continuum of evolutionary forms in a process during which no child was significantly different from its parents. The scientific implication is that some “things” might be in-between non-human and human. An alternative suggested by Pope John Paul II is that while physical evolution was continuous, spiritual evolution was not. The pope specifically ruled out an appeal to science when he described this idea.

And here’s another scientific challenge for Lee and George. If a perfectly normal human embryo is grown in a laboratory incubator, it can develop without any discontinuity into a teratoma. According to Lee and George, during the first week in the petri dish, the embryo is a human being. But no one believes that an embryo-generated teratoma is a human being, even though it can be kept alive as a unique, integrated organism, and even though it is certainly not part of any other organism. So when during the continuous life of this organism did the human being suddenly disappear? Again, what molecular or cellular correlates would you expect to see at the moment of passing?

I would like to end this response with the telling of an episode that occurred while I was hiking through the jungle with my two sons and my wife in West Africa last summer. At what one point, my son walked past what looked like an eight-foot long yellow-greenish tree branch that had fallen onto the path. But the “branch” suddenly became animated and slithered off into the undergrowth. It was a snake of the Green Mamba species, our guide told us. “Is it dangerous?,” I asked. “It depends,” he said. “If the snake is able to deposit part of its spirit into the person, it will consume the person’s spirit and death will surely follow. However, if the snake’s spirit doesn’t make it across in the bite, the person will suffer no permanent harm.”

This was not a parable, it was cultural knowledge — an attempt by uneducated people to make sense out of the otherwise unexplainable observation that some people died while others recovered completely after a Green Mamba bite. I didn’t believe it, but I couldn’t disprove it. It failed to provide any predictions — it was not falsifiable and, therefore, it was not scientific.

Professor Lee and George have argued that embryos with wrong numbers of chromosomes are not really embryos because they do not have the capacity to develop into mature human beings. This is true for 90 percent of human embryos which have an extra copy of chromosome 21 (in particular), but ten percent do develop into human beings born with Down Syndrome. In these cases, according to Lee and George, we can tell in retrospect that the embryo must have been a human being as well.

Lee M. Silver
Princeton University
Princeton, N.J.

Editor's note: Come back to NRO tomorrow to Robert P. George and Patrick Lee's reply to Lee Silver's letter.

Fundamentalists? We?

source

October 3, 2006 12:00 AM

Fundamentalists? We?
Bad science, worse philosophy, and McCarthyite tactics in the human-embyro debate.

By Patrick Lee & Robert P. George

We have in many places argued for the humanity and fundamental dignity of human beings in the embryonic stage of development and all later stages. In defending embryonic human life, we have pointed out that every human adult was once an embryo, just as he or she was once an adolescent, and before that a child, and before that an infant, and before that a fetus. This is not a religious claim or a piece of metaphysical speculation. It is an empirical fact. The complete human organism — the whole living member of the species Homo sapiens — that is, for example, you the reader, is the same human individual that at an earlier point in his or her life was an adolescent, a child, an infant, a fetus, an embryo. From the embryonic stage forward, all you needed for your survival and continued growth towards adulthood along the continuum of human development was a suitable environment, adequate nutrition, and freedom from grave disease.

In short, we have argued — though it is fairer to say that we have pointed out, since the scientific facts are not in dispute — that human embryos do not differ in kind from (other) human beings; rather, they differ from other human beings merely in respect of their stage of development. Embryos, fetuses, infants, adolescents, and adults are not different kinds of being — the way a human, an elk, a spider, a cucumber, and an amoeba are different kinds of being. Embryos, fetuses, infants, adolescents, and adults are the same kind of being at different developmental stages.

Still, Lee Silver in “The Biotechnology Culture Clash,” published in Science and Theology News (July 18, 2006), and more fully in a new book entitled Challenging Nature, insists that our views about the humanity and dignity of the human embryo are grounded in religious beliefs. He accuses us of concocting a scientific sounding case against embryo-destructive research in an effort to impose our religious beliefs on others while evading the constitutional prohibition of laws respecting an establishment of religion.

So Now We’re Fundamentalist Theologians?
Silver says that the claim that human embryos are human beings at an early stage of development is “hidden theology.” This could mean two different things. First, as this claim is presented in the book, Silver asserts that we actually hold our position on the status of the human embryo on theological grounds. We are, he suggests, hiding this fact, manufacturing arguments that sound scientific, but are in reality merely a cover for our real, theological, and indeed, “fundamentalist” grounds.

To describe such a claim as an ad hominem argument is to exaggerate its standing. It is nothing more than ad hominem abuse. Silver knows that we are Catholics, and so he uses that fact to suggest that our real ground for believing that human embryos are human beings is Catholic doctrine. But here he has things exactly backwards. Our ground for believing that human embryos are human beings is the indisputable scientific fact that each human embryo is a complex, living, individual member of the human species. Although our claim does not rest on the authority of the Catholic Church, or any other religious body or tradition, we find the Church’s teaching against human embryo-killing credible precisely because it — unlike Silver’s contrary teaching — is in line with the embryological facts. If “fundamentalism” consists in obstinately clinging to a moral, religious, or political view in defiance of empirically demonstrable findings of science that falsify its premises, we are not the fundamentalists in this debate. It is Lee Silver himself who has fallen into a form of fundamentalism.

The biological fact that human embryos are human beings in the earliest stages of their natural development is, to say the least, inconvenient for Professor Silver. So he commits the very offense of which he accuses us and others who oppose his agenda. He hides his ideology under a veneer of science. But the veneer is easily pulled off and the truth exposed. Just examine any of the major embryology texts now in use in American medicine. What you will find is the teaching that a new human individual exists from the earliest embryonic stage forward. That individual is a complete, though, of course, developmentally immature, member of the human species, whose life — whether it lasts for nine minutes, nine days, nine years, or nine decades — is a human life.

The second thing Silver could mean by his “hidden theology” allegation is that our argument depends on an implicit theological premise, whether or not we are aware of it. In the bulk of his analysis, this seems to be Silver’s claim against us. It is a bold charge, and to support it, Silver would have to show that at least one of the premises of our argument is such that anyone asserting that premise must depend on religious faith for his presumed awareness of it. For example, if one could show that a person could advance a particular argument only if he presupposed that God is three persons in one being, or that God became man — propositions about the inner life of God or about his free choices, and so in principle not provable by reason unaided by faith — then it would follow that the argument depended on a theological premise. So, what religious dogma does Professor Silver find lurking in our premises? What is the unstated religiously dogmatic assumption of our argument? At what point are we “stealthy servants of God” (as Silver characterizes us on p. 116)? The hidden assumption, according to Silver, is the following: that a thing either is or is not a human being (though, curiously, on p. 83 Silver actually quotes Robert George openly asserting this supposedly “hidden” assumption).

According to Silver, “This assumption comes from an interpretation of Genesis by certain religious groups that strictly follow the Bible. Genesis 1:27 says, ‘God created man in His own image.’ And that is interpreted by some as meaning that God created man instantaneously. There can be no such thing as gradual creation because then you have partial man, and man would not be in the image of God. There is no such thing as a partial God. God is absolute.”

This is risible. First, the supposed theological argument grounding the key assumption does not even make sense. Formally, the argument would be: “God is not partial; humans are like God; therefore no humans are partial.” But by this argument pattern one could also conclude that humans must be uncreated, perfect, infinite, and eternal. Is it really likely that such nonsense would be the hidden inference bolstering our assertions?

Second, the idea that a thing either is or is not a human being is not a proposition about the inner life of God or about God’s free choices — propositions beyond the reach of reason unaided by faith. Why assume that a very straightforward proposition about human individuals is something knowable only by religious faith?

Third, many philosophers, both ancient and contemporary, some religious and some not religious (e.g., Aristotle, David Wiggins, Roderick Chisholm, Peter Van Inwagen, E. J. Lowe, and many others) have ably defended this proposition on philosophical grounds.

Fourth, this proposition is part of common sense (a fact that doesn’t by itself prove it, but does provide support for it). Most people believe that they persist through time, and so, by implication, that there is a profound difference between their becoming this or that (say, tall or tan), and their coming to be at all. If I am the same concrete being yesterday and today, then I exist completely at each time that I exist (though I constantly change by acquiring new qualities, changing in quantity, and so on). And if I exist wholly at each time that I exist, it follows that I came to be, that is, began to exist, at once and not gradually. Otherwise, during my coming to be I would exist partially, not wholly. Thus, as common sense would have it: there are degrees in various qualities and quantities, such as colors or sizes, but there are no degrees about whether an individual exists or not; either he exists (however developmentally immature or tiny) or he does not.

Finally, there are strong philosophical arguments in favor of this common sense view. The denial of it logically entails what is sometimes called “perdurantism,” or “the temporal parts view” — namely, that a person is only a series of events or experiences spread out in time, like a baseball game or a song. On this view, the temporal extent of a person is part of what he is, and at any one time he exists only partially, not fully. As a consequence, according to this view, “I today” and “I yesterday” refer not to the same concrete individual, but to different temporal phases of the whole series temporally extended.

Were You You Yesterday?
This view has several grave problems, two of which we will mention here. The first difficulty is that, according to this view, a human being (or any ultimate subject of existence) is the sum of time-slices suitably connected (say, by biological or psychological continuity). But what is a time-slice, and, how could time-slices give rise to a human organism’s (or any organism’s) extension through time? If the time-slice itself does not have temporal extent, then the addition of any number of time-slices to each other will not give rise to a temporally extended series — just as the addition of any number of unextended points will not produce an extended line. On the other hand, if the time-slice of a human being does have temporal extent, then no explanatory gain has been achieved by denying a persisting human being, since one will then (by necessity) have admitted that an individual as a whole can persist through at least some extent of time. But if one must admit persistence through time at one level, why not admit it at the level that common sense and explanatory practice seem to demand — that is, the lifetime of a human individual who persists through time?

A second problem with the temporal-parts view is that, in effect, it actually implies the complete denial of change. On the temporal-parts position, a particular object, such as a human being, is not wholly present at any given time. Rather, just as an object has spatial parts, so that at small portions of space only part of it is present, so (on the temporal parts view) each object has temporal parts. An object, for example an apple, has a part that is present at one time, say on Monday, and another part that is present at another time, say on Tuesday. The apple is composed of different temporal parts or stages. Thus, the apple is green at one temporal stage (Monday) and red at another temporal stage (Tuesday). But on this view it follows that in the strict sense there simply is no change. A flagpole that is green at one spatial part and red at another part does not involve any change; but by the same token, an apple that is green at one temporal part and red at another temporal part involves no change either. For real change to occur, the same subject must first be characterized in one way and then in another way.

But it is obvious that change does occur. Consequently, an object (a substance) is not just a series of events, but exists wholly at each time that it exists. When it comes to be, it must come to be at once (though, of course, once it comes into being it may, depending on the kind of substance it is, grow in size and proceed through various developmental phases towards maturity). Changes can precede this substantial coming to be, changes that dispose the future constituents of the substance more and more to that substantial change. For example, fertilization is a gradual process that results in the coming to be of a new organism. But the organism itself does not exist until the process is completed. Prior to the completion of this process it is not correct to say that the new organism partially exists. (It does not “partially exist” during the process.) When it comes into existence, it comes into existence as a whole organism. But the substantial change itself — the actual change from not existing to existing — must be at once.

Thus, both common sense and philosophical arguments provide strong support for the proposition that human beings cannot partially exist, that a human being either is or is not. It is ridiculous to claim — as Silver does — that this proposition is a hidden theological assumption. (Indeed, it would be ridiculous to classify it as a theological belief, as opposed to a philosophical one, even if it could be shown to be incorrect.)

Part and Whole: A Basic Distinction
In addition to claiming that our position is based on “hidden theology,” Silver presents an argument in the form of a reductio ad absurdum for his denial that early stage human embryos are embryonic human beings. He says: “Embryonic stem cells can develop into an actual person. So, based on the definition of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, embryonic stem cells are equivalent to embryos. Yet based on the molecular signals that you give the cells, the cells can change from embryonic to nonembryonic and back to embryonic. You can do this easily.” But the first sentence just quoted from Silver is simply false. Embryonic stem cells are functionally parts of a complete organism; they are not themselves complete human organisms. (When separated from the whole human organism, they are no longer functioning parts of that organism; they become mere cells — fundamentally different from whole, though immature, members of the human species.)

A human embryo — precisely because it is a complete member of the human species — can develop towards maturity, given a suitable environment and adequate nutrition. The embryo possesses the genetic and epigenetic primordia and the active disposition for self-directed growth towards the next more-mature stage. But this is not true of a stem cell or even of a mass of stem cells. Like somatic cells that might be used in cloning, they possess merely a passive capacity to be subjected to various techniques of asexual reproduction and so become parts of a new human organism.

Silver bases his claim that “embryonic stem cells are equivalent to embryos” on the fact that mouse embryos can be generated from embryonic mouse stem cells and have all of their genetic makeup, and cell lineage, derived from those initial stem cells. A tetraploid embryo-like entity known, though controversially, as a tetraploid “embryo” (“tetraploid” meaning that the entity has four sets of chromosomes rather than the normal two sets) is developmentally defective, so it can give rise only to trophoblastic cells (precursors of the placenta and associated tissues) and not to the cells of the “embryo proper.” When combined with mouse ES cells (ones that have a normal number of chromosomes), these can produce a chimeric mouse in which the cell lineage of its placenta and associated tissues is derived from the tetraploid entity (or “embryo”), and the cell lineage of the mature embryo (the “embryo proper”) is derived from the ES cells. From this, Silver infers that ES cells can by themselves develop into the mature stage of the animal (see his book, p. 140) — “by themselves” in the sense that the DNA in all of the mature embryo’s cells is identical to that in the ES cells.

Since it is often argued that human embryos are human beings because they can “by themselves” develop into mature humans, it follows — on Silver’s argument — that embryos and stem cells are (ontologically and morally) equivalent. But since it is absurd to think that ES cells are human beings, it also is absurd (Silver’s argument continues) to think human embryos are human beings.

This argument is a descendent of an earlier, similar argument that embryos are morally equivalent to somatic cells (such as skin cells) because somatic cells can produce mature human beings by way of cloning via somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). In SCNT the nucleus of a somatic cell is inserted into an enucleated ovum and they are caused to fuse by an electrical stimulus, the result (if all goes as planned) being a cloned embryo. It was argued (by Ronald Bailey, Peter Singer, and others) that since somatic cells are converted into embryos, and these grow into mature members of the relevant species, human embryos have no more exalted a status than ordinary somatic cells, such as skin cells. Some critics of this argument replied that the somatic cells cannot by themselves develop into mature humans, which is certainly true. The important point, though, is that the SCNT process makes use of the somatic cells to create entities of a different nature — using parts of human organisms (somatic cells) to make new complete human organisms at the embryonic stage of development.

Thus, in the context of SCNT cloning, somatic cells are analogous to sperm and oocytes (parts of whole organisms) rather than to embryos (which indeed are whole organisms). But Silver thinks production of a mature mouse by tetraploid complementation answers that reply: In this process, the more mature organism is derived directly from the ES cells, so the ES cells do (according to Silver) in some sense by themselves become whole embryos. He thinks this process shows that, just like embryos, ES cells also can develop into mature members of their species if they are just given a suitable environment.

Confusion over Tetraploid Complementation
However, this fundamentally misinterprets the results of tetraploid complementation. In addition, it repeats the mistake in the earlier argument. Tetraploid complementation does not show that the “entire embryo” can be derived from ES cells. The embryo (or embryo-like entity) generated from tetraploid complementation is a chimera, with parts derived from the original embryo that was induced to become tetraploid and parts derived from the ES cells. The placenta and other organs generated from the tetraploid cells are parts of the embryo. They are bodily organs that function only during embryonic life, but they are bodily organs none the less — analogous to baby teeth, which also function only during a portion of the animal-organism’s life cycle. The placenta is a vital organ of the embryo, and it is not directly made by the ES cells.

Moreover, in tetraploid complementation, the ES cells do not by themselves generate a mouse since they do not by internal self-direction develop into a mouse. So the ES cells are not mouse embryos or their equivalent, and never were. True, the mature mouse’s cell lineage is completely derived from the ES cells, but an analogous point is also true in SCNT cloning — the DNA of the mature mouse or sheep or other animal is identical to that of the donor somatic cell (although the cytoplasm from the enucleated ovum also has a determinative effect). The central point is that, just as in SCNT cloning, so here: the manipulation (in this case, the combining of the ES cells with the tetraploid entity or “embryo”) generates a new type of biological entity. This is demonstrated by the profoundly new type of behavior observed in the entity produced by the process or processes of tetraploid complementation. The manipulations involved do much more than merely release an inner capacity of the stem cells. The combining of the stem cells with the tetraploid embryo does not merely place these cells in an environment hospitable to the process of organismal development. Rather, it transforms them from functional parts to components of an actively developing whole organism. Or, more precisely expressed: the combining of the stem cells with the cells of the tetraploid embryo generates a new organism, an organism that is not a stem cell.

The tetraploid complementation procedure is simply a type of cloning. In the most common form of cloning — SCNT — a new organism is generated; it comes into being as an embryo which immediately begins actively developing itself into the more mature form of the whole organism it now is. Completely analogous to what occurs in tetraploid complementation, the new embryo in SCNT cloning has the same genetic code as the somatic cell. The combining of stem cells with a tetraploid embryo does to the mouse stem cells what fusing an enucleated ovum does to a somatic cell in SCNT, the procedure that generated Dolly the sheep and many other cloned mammals — namely, it produces a distinct, whole organism.

So a stem cell does not “become” an embryo (the way an embryo truly does become a fetus, an infant, a child, an adolescent, and an adult). Rather, many stem cells are used in a cloning process that, if successful, results in the production of a new and distinct organism. The proof that this results in an entirely new and distinct organism is that it has a radically different trajectory of growth.

Thus stem cells are not equivalent to embryos. They lack the defining feature of embryos, namely, the internal active disposition to develop themselves to the mature stage of the organism of the relevant species. If placed within an environment suitable for the development of human embryos, human stem cells do not do what embryos do. (The crucial fact that by themselves — that is, when not introduced into a pre-existing, albeit defective, tetraploid embryo — ES cells produce only disorganized masses of tissue, either embryoid bodies or teratomas, is conveniently ignored by Silver.) Only if human stem cells are joined with other factors so as to generate a distinct and whole organism in SCNT, or in the combining of stem cells with tetraploid embryo-like entities, does an embryo come to be.

Several passages in Silver’s book indicate that he regularly fails to see the significance of the distinction between a whole organism, on the one hand, and a tissue or part of an organism, on the other hand. Thus, he believes our argument is easily refuted by pointing out that a single human skin cell or a teratoma has the same genetic code as other (whole) members of the relevant species. But our argument has never been simply that human embryos are human beings because they have the full genetic code. Rather, we have always argued that their full genetic code, plus (and more importantly) their internal active disposition for self-directed development toward the mature stage of a human, show that they are what the standard embryology texts say they are, namely, distinct and whole (though immature) individuals of the human species.

Stem Cells Are Human Too?
Having assumed erroneously that one can convert a human stem cell into a human embryo and back again quite easily, Silver then says:

So then you can ask, ‘How many human beings are there in a dish of embryonic stem cells?’ If there are a million cells in the dish, and you separate all the cells, then you have a million human beings. But you can then put them back together to form a single organism. What happened to the 999,999 human beings? Robert George would say they all died.

He supposes that this is a decisive argument, but in truth it is a failure. The prospect of actually creating and then killing almost a million human embryos merely by separating cells is a figment of Silver’s imagination.

To the question, “How many human beings are there in a dish of embryonic stem cells” the answer is: none, for stem cells, like other somatic cells, are not human beings.

When Silver asserts next, “If there are a million cells in the dish, and you separate all the cells, then you have a million human beings,” this is simply incorrect. You must do much more than merely separate stem cells in order to generate embryos. Separating them will merely spread them apart. Like a somatic cell, a stem cell must be fused with something else that will transform it from a part into a whole in order to produce an embryo.

But suppose that a lab were successfully to produce a million clones from human embryonic stem cells. How many nascent human beings would you have? The answer is: a million. Of course, no one, to date, has managed to demonstrate success in cloning even a single human embryo, using the methods that succeeded (with much labor) in other mammals. The scenario Silver proposes (which involves producing a million clones in a short time) is not possible today, and perhaps will never be possible. It certainly cannot be “easily done.” Moreover, if tetraploid complementation were successfully performed on human stem cells, only one human organism would be generated from several stem cells, not one embryo per stem cell.

Conspiracy Theories
Silver’s errors in dealing with embryological science are nothing by comparison to the extraordinary charges he makes when he turns his attention to political matters. Silver claims to have uncovered an extremist right-wing conspiracy among academics and politicians. He asserts that there is a highly organized effort by “fundamentalists” to gain control over portions of our government and schools, in order to impose a narrow religion on all.

For example, Nigel Cameron is a Christian who claims to present pro-life arguments that can appeal to all people, whether religious or not. Silver first exposes Cameron’s Christianity, quoting from an article Cameron wrote extolling the merits of a theological understanding of medicine. Silver then says that Cameron is using “code words” to convey religious messages to Christians, codes that are not recognized as religious by unsuspecting seculars. He adds: “Cameron’s tactics are taken from the playbook of clever fundamentalists who feel impelled to instill their beliefs as soon as possible, not just in their own children, but in everyone else’s children as well” (p. 102). Again, Silver refers to pro-life intellectuals, including Robert George, as advocates of an ideology who put forth “scientific-sounding arguments to advance their case” (p. 112). He warns of the craftiness of fundamentalists who might lure scientists into arguing with each other: “And so fundamentalists often succeed in transforming a religious debate into a dispute among scientists”(p. 118). One must especially be careful to resist their secular-sounding slogans, which (again) are codes that usually only fundamentalists understand the true meaning of: “Theological terms and ideas are translated into secular-sounding code words and phrases. Sanctity is converted into dignity, the soul becomes life, and the biblical version of morality is presented as a secular bioethics” (p. 118).

Here Silver veers from bad science and even worse philosophy into sheer paranoia. He seems incapable of understanding that the issues about which he is writing are complex and difficult matters on which reasonable people can reasonably disagree. Instead, he assumes that anyone who does not share his opinions is a “fundamentalist” (or dupe of the “fundamentalists”) and is part of a sinister conspiracy to impose a theocracy.

Speaking of Robert George, Silver writes: “Almost certainly, George knows that his so-called ‘scientific evidence’ finds no acceptance among any secular, molecular, or modern developmental biology professor at any major research university” (p. 108). Yet a glance at any of the standard embryology textbooks rebuts this claim. See, for example, Bruce Carlson, Human Embryology and Developmental Biology (St. Louis: C.V. Mosby, 2004); William J. Larsen, Human Embryology, 3rd ed. (2001); Keith Moore and T.V.N. Persaud, The Developing Human, Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th ed. (2003); and Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Mueller, Human Embryology and Teratology, 3rd edition (2000).)

According to Silver, one should also be wary of conservative think tanks, since they are actually hot-beds of conspiracy: “Evangelical think tanks and lobbying groups proliferate with innocent-sounding names like the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, which is directed by the fundamentalist Nigel Cameron” (p. 118). (It would probably be useless to point out to Silver that Dr. Cameron is no fundamentalist, and does not direct the center in question.) Indeed, according to Silver, “The subterfuge is more subtle, but no less potent, in the academic realm. One particular secular-sounding word — natural — frequently infuses the arguments of diverse opponents of biotechnology” (p. 119). Here the entire philosophical tradition of “natural law” reasoning on ethics, whose roots predate Christianity by at least three centuries in the works of Aristotle, becomes a mere façade for the “fundamentalist” conspiracy.

In the end, Silver’s manner of arguing degenerates into a form of McCarthyism. He relentlessly uncovers the Christianity of various lawyers, political figures, writers, physicians, and academics, describing them as “stealthy servants of God.” On his list of Christian “fundamentalists” and individuals collaborating with them (some of whom are Jews) to impose Christian theological dogmas on the entire nation are: Johns Hopkins Medical School surgeon and President’s Council on Bioethics member Benjamin Carson, Oxford University legal philosopher John Finnis, Harvard Law School professor Mary Ann Glendon, Stanford University consulting professor and President’s Council on Bioethics member William Hurlbut, former President’s Council on Bioethics executive director Yuval Levin, and Johns Hopkins Medical School psychiatry professor and President’s Council on Bioethics member Paul McHugh. We wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Silver has a list of 205 card-carrying fundamentalists and their fellow-travelers. Perhaps he will ask others, “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Christian religion?”

Losing It Completely
Going from the ridiculous to the bizarre, Silver extends his conspiracy theory to his fellow scientists. As we have observed, he insists that human embryonic stem cells are the equivalent of embryos because they are (he supposes) capable of developing into human babies. Why hasn’t the public been made aware of this remarkable “fact”? Because, he says, scientists have deliberately kept the public in ignorance: “stem cell scientists know this fact, but they have succeeded in hiding it from the public at-large.” Oh, those stealthy servants of science! There they are, in full knowledge of a key fact about embryonic stem cells, but deliberately covering it up lest the unenlightened masses become alarmed and start slapping new restrictions on legitimate research.

One can be forgiven for savoring the irony here. If, as Silver claims, stem cell scientists have deliberately concealed what they believe to be the truth about embryonic stem cells — namely, that they are equivalent to embryos — then he has established that embryonic stem cell scientists cannot be trusted to be honest with their fellow citizens about facts that might be politically inconvenient. If, on the other hand, what Silver alleges about his fellow scientists is false, then his own credibility collapses.

Silver’s real problem is that the proposition that the human embryo from the zygote stage forward is a distinct, complete (though immature) human being, identical with the child or adolescent which later everyone will recognize as possessing basic rights — that this proposition is fully supported by arguments open to people of all faiths, or of no faith at all. He resorts to name calling (“fundamentalists”), ad hominem abuse, and McCarthyite tactics to distract attention from the scientific facts and their logical implications. Those implications are inescapable once we accept the moral principle that all human beings are entitled to equal concern and respect.

Contrary to what Silver imagines, the great threat to embryo-destructive research is not that “fundamentalists” will take control of the United States government; it is that citizens of every faith, or of none at all, will acquaint themselves with what modern embryology has revealed about human embryogenesis and development.

— Patrick Lee is professor of bioethics at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. . Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program at Princeton University.

E. T. Oakes, Reason and Pop Atheism

Reason and Pop Atheism
By Edward T. Oakes, S.J.

The publishing world, it seems, is just as prone to the fickleness of trends and fashions as is, well, the fashion industry. A few years ago, a whole spate of books came out on Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust, most of them flogging (surely not by coincidence) the same dead horse of papal perfidy. More recently, several books arguing for atheism have cropped up on the bestseller lists. I’ve looked at a few, and none of them struck me as even trying to get beyond that old dorm-room chestnut: “If God made the universe, who made God?” Gosh, thanks for bringing that up, Professor Bright. I had never really thought of that before—and now, horribile dictu, I’ve lost my faith!

Needless to say, our recent atheists, without exception, have to drag Darwin into the business. But—also without exception—they end up taking the implications of Darwinian biology so far that their arguments become self-consuming. I am thinking especially of the notion that cultural ideas are only “memes,” that is, self-replicating trends that catch on and take over a culture the way viruses do in the human body. One favorite example would be teenagers who wear baseball caps backwards: An impish adolescent somewhere gets the idea to wear his cap backwards, and soon every boy in the land is following suit.

The next step then is to claim that religion, too, is a meme, and a mighty destructive one at that, the Ebola virus of human civilization. The trouble is, if all ideas are but memes, then so is natural selection, whose cultural influence has its own bloody history to account for. On that, I recommend the reader get a hold of Richard Weikart’s From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, which carefully traces Darwin’s influence on a host of prominent intellectuals in Germany from 1860 to 1939, a genealogy of “memetic contagion” that made Nazi ideology so plausible to so many. (For a fuller review of this truly brilliant book, see my article “Darwin’s Graveyards” in the December 2006 issue of Books & Culture.”)

Tedious and self-consuming as these arguments are, their popularity—if one is to judge by the bestseller lists—did get me to thinking about atheism as a cultural phenomenon. As I always ask my class when I teach contemporary theology: If God exists, why are there atheists? Or rather, and to put more strongly: Since God exists, what makes atheism conceptually possible?

I let my students crack their noggins on that question for a while to prepare them to take up one of the texts in the course, The Discovery of God by the renowned French Jesuit Henri de Lubac, which deals directly with this issue of atheism as made possible by God.

Part of the problem is psychological: even the most knock-down arguments in mathematics fade in the brain after a while, like sand castles on the beach. For example, I would never presume to raise objections against Euclid’s plane geometry, but I’d be hard pressed to reproduce what I learned in sophomore high-school geometry after all these years.

But the problem goes much deeper than the vagaries of human memory. St. Anselm thought he had his own knock-down argument for the existence of God, which later went by the name of the Ontological Argument (which Thomas Aquinas held to be invalid). But however much Anselm was convinced of the argument, he never went so far as to place moral blame on those who rejected it, because for him there was a deeper reality behind the phenomenon of atheism. As he said in the Proslogion (the best translation is De Veritate):

Why this, O Lord, why this? Is the eye darkened by its own weakness, or blinded by your light?—Without doubt it is darkened in itself and blinded by you, obscured by its own littleness and overwhelmed by your immensity, contracted by its own narrowness and overcome by your greatness.

As I presume most people reading this site know, the First Vatican Council declared de fide that the existence of God can be proved by reason. At first glance, this seems paradoxical. For if God can be proved through rational demonstration, one would expect the council to adduce this marvelous proof and let it be judged on its own merits. And because of de Lubac’s critique of the “manual Thomism” of the Roman universities in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries (which placed heavy emphasis on rational proofs for God’s existence), one might also think that de Lubac would dismiss the sterile rationalism that some theologians claim lurks behind Vatican I.

But that is not his position at all. De Lubac quite openly asserts that “behind the apparent variations, the skeleton of the proof always remains the same. The proof is solid and eternal, as hard as steel. It is something more than one of reason’s inventions: it is reason itself.”

What happens then is that, once this proof is formulated in words, the learned make adaptations and modifications as they encounter objections. But these modifications are for de Lubac in no way part of the incontrovertible proof that he holds to be the common patrimony of mankind: the use of reason itself. Hence de Lubac’s confident conclusion:

All the objections brought against the various proofs for the existence of God are in vain; criticism can never invalidate them, for it can never get its teeth into the principle common to them all. On the contrary, that principle emerges more clearly as the elements with which the proofs are constructed are rearranged. . . . It forms part of the substance of the mind. It is not a path which the mind can be discouraged from pursuing to the end, or one from which it can turn away, afraid of having taken the wrong road. Path and mind are merged together. The mind itself is a moving path (de Lubac’s emphasis).

At first glance, de Lubac might seem to be elevating the place of reason here to such a height that he ends up conceding reason’s right to judge the things of God—the very procedure he found so objectionable in Descartes and Kant. That, however, is not his intent, which is why he so stresses the dynamism of reason. Augustine defined sin as “the heart turned in on itself,” the corollary of which for de Lubac would be: The Enlightenment (at least in its French and German versions) is reason turned in on itself.

What has always struck readers of the Continental Rationalists from Descartes to Kant is how all these Rationalists divide reason from desire (usually called by them, tellingly, the passions, meaning feelings that overwhelm us rather than longings that express our inmost nature). De Lubac, on the contrary, sees reason and desire as parts of the same whole, subsumed under the wider image of “heart,” encompassing them both. And because desire is inherently outward in its aim, thereby testifying to a deficiency in the self, the same holds true of reason. Precisely because we never start off in possession of the truth, we must go out in search of it, always desiring it on the way. And that dynamism aims, however unawares, at God. This is why Thomas Aquinas can say in De Veritate: “All knowing beings implicitly know God in everything they know.”

In other words, what all proofs are really reaching for is this common fund of inchoate awareness of the necessity of God already present whenever reason exercises its rational faculties. In one of his many footnotes, de Lubac quotes Maurice Blondel, who makes just this point: Proofs for the existence of God, Blondel says, “are not so much an invention as an inventory, not so much a revelation as an elucidation, a purification and a justification of the fundamental beliefs of humanity.”

That said, de Lubac refuses to countenance faulty reasoning just because an invalid argument is aiming for the same conclusion as do valid proofs. Believers’ faith might well be strong enough to slough off bad arguments for God’s existence, but that should be no excuse for sloth in reasoning: “Where belief in God is concerned, I cannot rest content with a doubtful argument, and an inconclusive proof is as repugnant to my moral sense as it is offensive to my intelligence.” And further: “Even in the most essential matters a sinner may reason better than a saint.” Rigor in reasoning is no sin; rightly realized, it testifies to faith’s underlying rationality.

But even in cases where, say, a Thomas Aquinas trumps a David Hume in the field of argument, the believer feels vaguely dissatisfied:

Why is it that the mind which has found God still retains, or constantly reverts to, the feeling of not having found him? … The temptation is to succumb to this scandal and to despair in proportion as one has formerly thought to have found him: a temptation to deny the light because the veil becomes opaque once again…. The temptation in this case is to underestimate the obstacles, to imagine that serenity is easily acquired, and to confuse the faint clarity of being with the divine light.

Just think what would happen, de Lubac asks, if rational proofs really did lead to certainty: Then we would mistake the proof for God; and, in the manner of the French “enlightened” philosophes, we would in effect end up building a temple, not to God, but to reason. But that is the very definition of reason’s sin, turning inward. We would then make reason the object of our worship, rather than God. (In the midst of the maelstrom of the French Revolution, some Jacobins actually built a “Temple to Reason.”)

But when we turn to God via our rational faculties, we simultaneously recognize both the underlying rationality of our faith in God and yet also reason’s insufficiency to grant us what we really long for: light itself in a dark world. That light, however, only comes from God, not reason. We are pilgrims, and reason is our viaticum —but it is only viaticum. The nourishment this food for the journey provides is salubrious (when the reasoning is correct), but it is not life itself, only the provisions for life, which only God can provide.

Edward T. Oakes, S.J., teaches theology at the University of St. Mary of the Lake.

BC Spring 2007 Philosophy Lecture Series

The Spring 2007 Philosophy Lecture Series is as follows:

** January 29, 5:00pm, Higgins 300: Our own colleague, Mary Troxell (Boston
College): "The Role of the Ideas in Schopenhauer's Metaphysics", with a
commentary by Prof. John Sallis (Boston College)

** February 9, 4:30pm, Higgins 300: Robert Bernasconi (Vanderbilt):
"The Policing of Race Mixing: When Racism Came under the Sway of Biopower."

** Feb 23, 4:30pm, Higgins 300: Claudia Barachi (New School
University): "On Friendship and the Polis"

** March 22, 7:00pm, Cushing 001 (note the change): Dr, Edmund Pelligrino,
(Chairperson Presidential Bioethics Commission): Annual LaBrecque Medical
Ethics Lecture: "Bioethics and Catholic Conscience"
-- followed by Seminar & luncheon, 12:00noon, March 23

** March 30, 4:30pm, Higgins 300: John Caputo (Syracuse University):
" Marion's Line: Overcoming Phenomenology's Neoplatonic Captivity"

** I Also Call Your Attention to: Our 8th Annual Graduate Student
Conference, "On Hegel,"
See website for information: http://fmwww.bc.edu/pl/grad/GradConf/Gradconf07/BC-PhilGrad.html

Medieval Philosophy and Theology

website

Aristotle's Hylomorphism

From Dr. Pakaluk:

Call for Abstracts

The University of Alaska Anchorage has funded a conference on Aristotle and Life occurring August 7-10, 2007. The conference is only open to 8 invited participants and will be a workshop style conference. Participants are expected to bring a draft of an unpublished paper to the conference. Every participant will also serve as commentator for another participant. Each paper will receive several hours of discussion and feedback. The final versions of the papers will be published as an anthology or as a special issue of a journal (conditional, of course, on editorial review).

The focus of the conference is on the application of Aristotle’s hylomorphic analysis to living things with a particular interest in human persons. The goal of the conference is to bring Aristotle’s analysis into the contemporary debate as a viable non-reductive materialist approach to persons and living things.

Those accepted to participate will be reimbursed for $500 of travel expenses. Participants can stay in University apartments (single bedroom units are reserved, doubles are available for an additional cost) from 8/6-8/12 for $50 per night. Lunches and snacks will be provided on the days that the conference convenes.

Additional recreational opportunities will be available for those who wish to join in the fun.

Deadline for submission is 2/28/07. Accepted applicants will be notified before 3/31/07.

Applicants should submit a 300-500 word abstract and CV to John Mouracade: afjmm2@uaa.alaska.edu.

Earlier today, when I was looking for more information about the workshop, I found Dr. Mouracade's page by doing a search for "University of Alaska Hylomorphism." I should have guessed that he is the one organizing this.

Francis Hutcheson, A Sytem of Morals

e-book through BC

See his definition of rights in Book II, Chapter 3.
Book III, Chapter 4: the motives to constitute civil government

(civil government necessary because of men's imperfection or depravity or both)

see also Johannes Althusius, Politica

Thomas Smith article

Aristotle on the Conditions for and Limits of the Common Good

Interview with Paolo Carozza

Benedict XVI on the Path to Peace (Part 1)

Paolo Carozza Comments on Pontiff's Message

SOUTH BEND, Indiana, JAN. 9, 2007 (Zenit.org).- On the World Day of Peace, Benedict XVI warned that the path to peace will be uncertain and wayward if it is not paved with a "true integral humanism."

According to Paolo Carozza, the words of Benedict XVI reaffirm what Pope John Paul II had said about peace being the fruit of relationships of justice and solidarity.

Carozza, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame and a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, shared with ZENIT how Benedict XVI's message for the World Day of Peace highlighted the role of principles such as the dignity of life, religious freedom and equality among all persons in working toward peace.

Part 2 of this interview will appear Wednesday.

Q: The title of Benedict XVI's message for the World Day of Peace, "The Human Person, the Heart of Peace," addresses the rights and dignity of the human person as the path to peace. In what ways does this confront the conventional wisdom of the international diplomatic community?

Carozza: There certainly is a sharp difference between this vision and an approach to peace based merely on the diplomatic, economic, and military relations between sovereign states that some approaches to international peace and security would emphasize. Nevertheless, there is an important sense in which Benedict XVI's point is not new, but in fact picks up and strengthens an understanding of the path to peace that has been present to a significant degree in global affairs at least since World War II.

The architects of the post-1945 international order were highly conscious of the relationship between outrages to the dignity of the human person and the tragedy of war, and that link can already be seen clearly in the Charter of the United Nations and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as the Pope himself recognizes in the message.

In fact, I would say that in much of the world the strong connection between peace and the rights and dignity of the person is now accepted as self-evident. One can see it in the way that the language and politics of human rights has permeated everything from international trade to post-conflict institution building to environmental protection.

Where Benedict XVI goes much further than the prevailing mentality is in his insistence that it is not enough to simply assert -- however correctly -- the link between peace and human dignity. To make that connection real and concrete, not just an abstract ideal or intuition of the truth, one needs to cultivate an adequate and objective understanding of what the human person is, and what human dignity requires.

Benedict XVI thus takes us back to what Mary Ann Glendon has referred to as the "unfinished business" of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: the question of its foundations. For 60 years the international community has largely proceeded to try to develop and realize human rights though positive law while prescinding from any sustained effort to reach common understandings of their underlying source and scope.

In short, the difference between the vision in Benedict XVI's message and the conventional wisdom of international affairs is not so much in the affirmation that the dignity and rights of the human person are the path to peace, but rather in the Pope's warning that that path will be uncertain, unstable and wayward without a "true integral humanism" that embraces the whole human person as a concrete, given reality -- without reduction, without manipulation, and without ideology.

Q: Natural law is a central theme in the Pope's message, and he sees it as a point of convergence among the various cultures and civilizations, rather than a peculiarly Western idea. Why is natural law an important component for peace?

Carozza: Perhaps the most eloquent answer to this question is not in the words of the Pope's message or in any explanation of it that we could give, but in the witness of his presence in Turkey and the way that in great simplicity he was able to bridge what seems to many an unfathomable chasm in human understanding. He did so by a profound appreciation for and firm focus on what is common to every human heart.

In that recognition of our common humanity lies the only path to a peace that is more than merely the absence of violent conflict. As John Paul II often emphasized and Benedict XVI reaffirms in this message, peace is the fruit of relationships of justice and solidarity, a mutual and genuine commitment to the good of one another. And that commitment only arises out of the mutual recognition of what we share -- the original needs and desires of every human heart.

Thus Benedict XVI stresses that the personal commitment that is required of us to renew the world in peace and justice can only be realized on the basis of "respect for the 'grammar' written on human hearts by the Creator."

Recognition of the natural law is essential not in the first instance as a set of moral rules or restraints, but simply as an acknowledgment of certain truths about every human being and of what is conducive to human flourishing because of the way that we have all been created.

Or to see it from the contrary perspective, one cannot build peace -- in the thick sense of relationships of justice and solidarity -- on the basis of false or weak and uncertain notions of what constitutes the fulfillment of the human heart. On the contrary, as the Pope points out, such relativism invites the victory of power over truth and freedom.

Q: It seems implicit that Benedict XVI's exhortations to reconsider and take seriously the role of reason require a major engagement with the natural law. Because the dialogue of cultures hinges on the acceptance of reason, how can the Church help other cultures, religions and societies engage the natural law tradition of inquiry?

Carozza: The Pope has written in his first encyclical, "Deus Caritas Est," that it is not the role of the Church to bring about justice in the world, but rather to help purify reason by fostering an openness of mind and will, and to liberate reason from its blind spots and self-limitation so that in seeking justice we are able to act more fully in accord with the nature of every human being.

This means first that the task of the Church is to present with clarity and reasonableness the wealth of her teaching, and to propose to the world the insights she has gained from her experience of humanity.

Benedict XVI's message for the World Day of Peace is itself a lucid example of this: It does not pretend to provide solutions -- let alone detailed blueprints -- about how to achieve peace and justice, but educates us by reminding us of the central importance of such principles as the gift of life, freedom of religion, the natural equality of all persons, the destiny of the created world, and so on.

It is up to us to be the bearers of these truths in our work and to generate thereby a culture of "authentic integral humanism" that is capable of transcending cultural divides.

The most important locus for engaging the natural law tradition and fostering a radical openness of reason, therefore, is above all in ourselves. Only if we are attentive first to the education of our own hearts and the purification of our own reason, can we act in the world with the clarity and certainty necessary to engage every person and every culture in a genuine dialogue about what is good for human persons.

Without that affection for the truth of one's own life, even the natural law can easily be reduced from the ground of cross-cultural understanding to a meaningless formalism or an imposition.

Q: The Pope stated: "Peace requires the establishment of a clear boundary between what is at man's disposal and what is not." Can you explain in more detail what he means by this? How can that boundary be established?

Carozza: In several places in this text Benedict XVI shows an acute concern that has consistently marked his thought and teaching more generally, both as Cardinal Ratzinger and since becoming Pope: If nothing is beyond the bounds of human possession and instrumentalization, then there is ultimately no possibility of safeguarding human dignity and freedom.

The phrase quoted in the question raises this preoccupation in the particular context of a discussion of "gift" and "life." Recognizing that our life is given, and not created by us to use as we will, is the first indispensable step toward protecting all human rights with consistency.

The boundary between what is ours to use and what is not, and thus the boundary between inviolable human rights and merely conventional norms, begins with the protection of human life in all the contexts where it is most vulnerable to being reduced to the measure of its material usefulness and disposed of at the will of the more powerful.

The Holy Father mentions, in particular, victims of armed conflict, terrorism and other forms of violence, as well as the "silent deaths" caused by hunger, abortion, euthanasia and experimentation on human embryos.

It is worth highlighting, too, that Benedict XVI explains the fundamental importance of religious freedom along the same lines. By existing beyond the boundaries of what is ours to possess and use, the relationship between the human person and a transcendent "other" is a keystone holding up the edifice of all other human rights.

[Wednesday: Building an Integral Humanism]

Benedict XVI on the Path to Peace (Part 2)

Paolo Carozza on Building an Integral Humanism

SOUTH BEND, Indiana, JAN. 10, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI's exhortation on the World Day of Peace to strengthen and clarify our reason, and not settle for weak or diluted anthropological visions, is essential to the challenge of building an integral humanism.

So says Paolo Carozza, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame and a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

He shared with ZENIT how Benedict XVI's message for the World Day of Peace stresses the dignity of the human person, the common good, true advocacy of human rights and the use of transcendent principles in developing international law.

Part 1 of this interview appeared Tuesday.

Q: The heart of the Pope's message seems to be that the path to peace is grounded in a proper anthropology of the human person, in which man is understood as having inherent dignity by virtue of being created in the "imago Dei," as well as a transcendent end. But are there forums in the international community where this "integral humanism" is taken seriously?

Carozza: By its own nature the ideal of integral humanism is one that always demands renewed personal commitment and deeper understanding about the good of human persons in new and different historical and cultural circumstances -- so in a certain sense it is never fully realized but always only in progress.

At the same time, all international fora and institutions were in some way created in response to real, tangible human needs -- for example, as responses to crises or out of a growing awareness of human interdependence and the necessity of coordinating activity for the common good.

Thus, at some level, they all contain within them an important degree of inherent concern for authentic human goods, even if it is always only imperfectly realized. It is important, therefore, always to seek and strengthen those good and constructive elements, while clearly working to resist or "prune" whatever is contrary to them.

This is often a difficult judgment to make because it requires us to steer a course that avoids both an uncritical acceptance of internationalism for its own sake and also an unreflective rejection of international institutions and processes in response to the fact that some of them are very unhealthy.

This is exactly why Benedict XVI's exhortation to strengthen and clarify our reason and not settle for weak or diluted anthropological visions is so essential to the challenge.

Ultimately, a consistent concern for integral humanism in international fora will only be present to the extent that there are individuals there who give it voice and take action consistently with it.

I am happy to say that in my experience of working in international law and institutions there are such persons, and it is always an encouragement and inspiration to encounter them, sometimes in most unexpected ways and places. But there is no doubt that the need is even greater, by far.

First, the world of global affairs desperately needs more people, especially young professionals whose reason and hearts are educated to appreciate the breadth and depth of the dignity of human persons, to dedicate themselves to constructing peace and justice in the world. Secondly, there is a great need for strengthened unity among the disparate individuals already present in these institutions, a unity of conscience and judgment.

In building up that integral humanism, we should not forget that it is not only intergovernmental institutions that are the relevant actors. There is enormous potential today for civil society organizations to contribute, or to undermine, the ideal.

For example, two of the international nongovernmental associations that I am most familiar with that do tremendous good in promoting true humanism today are the World Youth Alliance and the Association of Volunteers in International Service.

Q: In what ways does the vision of human rights advocated by Benedict XVI diverge from the conception of human rights espoused by many international organizations that the Pope says actually divests them of their authority as advocates for the rights of persons?

Carozza: The Pope's use of the word "authority" here is very interesting. Obviously he does not mean authority merely in the sense of the fact of being able to exercise power, or even in the technical juridical sense of having the legal warrant to make decisions and take action.

He refers to the moral authority that ultimately grounds and justifies those actions and exercises of power. And that kind of authority is founded in the common good, which is the total set of conditions allowing for individual persons and groups to reach their fulfillment more easily.

Where international institutions are in fact undermining the common good, they do not have the authority, in the fullest sense, to act or to expect our cooperation even though they might have the factual power and positive legal license to do so. This happens in the world today any time that organizations fail to respect and safeguard the basic rights of persons, to promote social well-being and development, or to foster the stability and security of a just order.

Although Benedict XVI does not say so directly, he knows well that there is one specific issue in particular that threatens to compromise the authority of a wide array of international organizations, and that is abortion.

It is no secret that there has been for some time a very intense and sustained effort on the part of powerful interests to advance access to abortion globally through the influence of international institutions, and that must be one of the prime examples of what Benedict XVI is implicitly referring to, especially in light of his prior, beautiful reminder that "life is a gift which is not completely at the disposal of the subject."

Q: The Pope's message included an exhortation to apply the principles of international law to new forms of conflict and violence, including terrorism. How might this be done? What contributions can the Church make to such a conversation?

Carozza: When existing international law no longer is completely adequate to address new realities and global concerns -- whether it is forms of conflict and violence, new technologies affecting human dignity, new ecological threats, or other problems -- the most reasonable response is not to discard international law, which is an essential tool for the realization of the universal common good generally, but to provoke its development and adaptation to those new circumstances.

One of the critical ways to do so is to recall and insist on the underlying fundamental principles that gave the law its direction and meaning, so that any new rules and practices still adhere to and respect the basic human goods that animated the prior legal order. That consistent insistence on transcendent principles is a tremendously important contribution that the Church makes to global debate.

With regard to the problems posed by contemporary forms of violence, for instance, Benedict XVI rightly points out certain requirements that must be maintained in any evolution of the rules of armed conflict and humanitarian law: that noncombatants be protected and not targeted; and that there must be clear ethical limits on methods of guaranteeing internal security -- such as, presumably, the prohibition on torture.

When these principles and similar ones are maintained with sufficient conviction and resolve, the freedom of international law to change in response to the demands of the common good is enhanced, not diminished.

Q: Significantly, the Pope makes reference to the growing competition for energy sources and its potential for international conflict and war. In what ways can an anthropology of integral humanism and Catholic social doctrine address this problem?

Carozza: The problem, of course, is generated by the multiplicity of interests in possessing and controlling scarce resources. While it is played out through highly complex dynamics in diplomatic, economic and military arenas, it is most fundamentally a problem of the human heart and its relationship to the goods of creation.

Without the growth of the virtue of solidarity, without an increased consciousness of the common destiny of all human persons, and without an education to the meaning and purpose of the things we possess and use, any resolution in the struggle to acquire energy resources or other scarce goods will be no more than a temporary truce, or the partial victory of one power or interest over another.

To generate a lasting solution, therefore, we must start with an adequate appreciation of the person, and of the common stewardship of mankind over the goods of creation, for the benefit of all. Catholic social doctrine is nothing other than this -- a distillation of "what is in accord with the nature of every human being" (as the Pope wrote in "Deus Caritas Est"), and thus an aid to the attainment of justice and peace.

Mark Murphy's latest book

Natural Law in Jurisprudence and Politics (published by Cambridge University Press)

his CV

Edited: a review of the book
I probably won't buy the book ($60+!), but I may have to check it out for the sake of being thorough.

See also:
V. Bradley Lewis
Can a Christian be a Democrat? or The Common Good and the Modern State
The Common Good in Classical Political Philosophy

Michael Waldstein: The Common Good in St. Thomas and John Paul II

SEP Natural Law Tradition in Ethics

Justice and righteousness

Are justice and righteousness synonyms?

righteousness is certainly linked to rectus (straight); and justice is the straightness of the will, with respect to others

How is righteousness understood within a scriptural context, or within Christian theology or the Tradition itself? What is its definition? And is Aquinas' conception of justice, particularly general or legal justice, really that alien to "righteousness"? (How are religion and general justice the same, and how are they different?)

What is the etymology of ius? Is the Greek dike closer to righteousness than iustitia, and if so, why? What is the etymology of justice or iustitia?

What about holiness and righteousness? Holiness and sacred? Is a contrast between sacred and profane necessary? Does the definition of sacred necessarily involve the notion of the profane? It would seem so. Something is sacred it if is set apart for God; it is used only for functions related to the divine.

But this is not the same contrast as between holy and sinfulness? If there is only one end, then one is either holy or one isn't. One is either holy or one is in the state of sin. (What is the actual opposite of holiness? Sinfulness? Or something else?) One who is holy is set upon God as the ultimate end, and orders everything towards Him; but is holiness therefore a synonym of righteousness?

Markets and Morality

Markets and Morality

Debating the Role of Self-Interest

By Father John Flynn

ROME, JAN. 8, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Economic issues figured prominently among the end-of-year summaries offered by the media and commentators. The Christmas frenzy always brings with it concerns over excessive consumerism, added to which were reflections about inequality and the need for greater opportunities for developing nations.

Among the many analyses of these issues a couple of recent books are of interest. The first is "The Moral Ecology of Markets: Assessing Claims about Markets and Justice," by economist and theologian Daniel Finn.

The market economy is criticized for many shortcomings, but amid this debate most economists prefer to concentrate on empirical analysis, leaving aside questions of moral judgments. Nevertheless, Finn observes, morality forms an ineluctable part of our daily lives.

One problem when it comes to debating the morality of economic issues is the great variety of positions. The starting points and assumptions vary widely, according to what part of the political spectrum people occupy. Finn hopes to achieve in his book a common framework in which to examine key issues related to the market economy.

He starts by arguing that an adequate analysis of markets, whether it be from a supportive or critical perspective, must include a consideration of the moral underpinnings. The most obvious starting point for this is to look at the concept of self-interest.

Defenders of markets, Finn explained, follow in the footsteps of Adam Smith, and claim that good results can arise from complex systems of human interaction even when the individuals are not intending to generate those good outcomes. Egoism and greed no doubt exist, but through the mediation of markets, self-interest can work for the good.

Saints or sinners?

The concept of self-interest is not without its critics, continues Finn. For example, a theory that makes no distinction between a Mother Teresa and a thief -- positing that both are acting to further their respective self-interests -- is deficient. A description of the world that cannot distinguish between vice and virtue, saint or sinner, martyr or murderer, is seriously lacking in the ability to describe life's realities.

Other critics of self-interest point to problems such as large inequalities in wealth, and insufficient protection for the weak as evidence of the limitations of a system based on the pursuit of self-interest. Critics respond, Finn observes, by arguing that it is wrong to blame the market for all the evils in our society, which can stem from a variety of causes and cultural factors.

But defenders of the market face greater difficulties in responding to the accusation that a system based on self-interest foments greed. Defenders of the market point to its role in promoting virtues such as hard work, initiative and creativity, but critics point out that the utilitarian habit of basing actions on self-interest tends to spread into all areas of life, eventually undermining the moral standards on which the market itself depends.

When it comes to economic tasks such as the allocation and distribution of resources the free market does indeed have many advantages, concludes Finn. But economic production is just part of our lives and the application of behavior based on self-interest in other areas can create problems.

Even within the economic realm, acting solely on self-interest can sometimes not be enough. Finn cites the case of a consumer faced with the option of choosing between two products, one cheaper than the other because it is produced in a sweatshop. Self-interest would lead the consumer to opt for the cheaper product, but if the producer has success in selling these goods, it could reinforce the existence of exploitative work conditions.

This leads Finn to conclude that it is wrong to automatically suppose that it is either always morally wrong or right to act out of self-interest. The moral evaluation of any action in the market depends on a series of factors related to the context and the results.

Similarly, when it comes to a judgment of the market itself, Finn points out that it is not a simple choice between a free market or a centralized planning system. In practice, markets exist within a complex system of boundaries, or "fences" as he terms them, regarding their operation. The decision as to where these fences should be placed varies widely from situation to situation. In addition, markets exist within a social, political and cultural context that cannot be ignored.

Economic theology

Another recently published book on the subject of markets is "Adam's Fallacy: A Guide to Economic Theology," by Duncan Foley, economics professor at the New School for Social Research.

Like Finn, this author examines in detail the concept of self-interest in relation to markets, albeit in a more historical and less rigorously analytical way. The Adam referred to by Foley is Adam Smith, author of the classic economic text, "The Wealth of Nations."

The fallacy, according to Foley, "lies in the idea that it is possible to separate an economic sphere of life, in which the pursuit of self-interest is guided by objective laws to a socially beneficent outcome, from the rest of social life, in which the pursuit of self-interest is morally problematic and has to be weighed against other ends."

In his analysis of how markets work, Foley admits that the concept of pursuing self-interest proposed by Smith has a lot of sense and realism, but to describe it as a positive good is another question, he argues. The bulk of the book is then devoted to a synthesis of economic ideas put forward by a number of economic thinkers in the last couple of centuries.

In concluding, Foley comments that Smith himself realized better than many subsequent economic thinkers the limits of self-interest and the market. In addition to defending the advantages of a market system, Smith also recognized the need for political institutions to channel and control the operations of capital.

Contemporary capitalism is a successful system for the creation of wealth, but, Foley maintains, it is not some sort of automatic process inherent in human nature. Economic institutions are fragile and contingent and need to be shaped and guided. In addition, understanding how an economy works does not mean we should subsume our moral judgment to the logic of the market. Economic development brings with it many changes for society and culture, but the mistake would be to accept all these changes as something inevitable.

Charity

In the spirit of looking to complement and shape the operation of a market system, the Catholic Church proposes the virtue of charity. Benedict XVI, in his encyclical "Deus Caritas Est," explained that: "Building a just social and civil order, wherein each person receives what is his or her due, is an essential task which every generation must take up anew" (No. 28).

This is essentially a political task, in which the Church does not play a direct role, the Pope said. Yet the Church can contribute to this effort. "She has to play her part through rational argument and she has to reawaken the spiritual energy without which justice, which always demands sacrifice, cannot prevail and prosper."

One of arguments put forward by the Church concerns the role of love. "There is no ordering of the state so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love," stated the Pontiff. "Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such." This is worth keeping in mind when looking at how markets work.

Music and order

Music as a type of making.

In music, order is imposed onto matter (progression of notes or sounds). This is not a form of naturalism--one is not replicating within the musical composition some order within nature. Still, can one chord be said to be better than another? Or is a tonal system better than an atonal system? Can there be order within an atonal system? Or is atonality an arbitrary restriction imposed by the mind, which goes against something else that is more proper to beauty?

How do notes amplify one another? Work with or harmonize?

What about rhythm? Do some combinations sound more pleasant than others? For a reason? What of harmony and dissonance? Tones and pitches? Can quantity be used to discover "natural" relationships between tones and values?

SCU Dept. of Philosophy News

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Robert Audi coming to SCU... I don't think SCU will switch away from analytic philosophy back towards the Catholic intellectual tradition any time soon...

Professor Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, will be giving a series entitled, "Emotion and Motivation, Obligation and Virtue," on Tuesdays, Jan. 9th, 16th, 23rd, and 30th, 4-5 pm, Bannan Engineering, Room 325. Co-sponsored by the Dept. of Philosophy & the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Supported in part by the Fagothey Fund. Questions: Contact Janis Davis, jldavis@scu.edu, or David DeCosse, ddecosse @scu.edu.

Paul Hurley, Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College, will be the Austin J. Fagothey Professor in Spring quarter 2007. Professor Hurley was in the Dept. of Philosophy at Pomona College from 1988 until 2006. He is a three-time teaching award recipient. His specialties are Ethics, Political Philosophy, and Philosophy of Law.