The Supposed Sin of Defying Nature: Part Two

By Russell Blackford

 

Betterhumans    1/26/2005 In part one of this column, I followed John Stuart Mill in attempting to demolish simple arguments that there is something wrong with "defying nature" or "interfering with nature's processes."

I then introduced a more sophisticated analysis by Richard Norman, who believes that human beings need to make choices and shape their lives against a quite extensive background of conditions that are seen as not open to choice. These background conditions generally include basic understandings of sex, procreation, nurturing, maturing, aging, death, the necessity of work and the existence of illness and pain in our world.

If technology is used to alter facts relating to these, such as by allowing for conception and birth without sex, or by promising us biological immortality, many people will feel that their sense of leading meaningful lives is threatened, suggests Norman. They are likely to express this sense by claiming that "nature" is being interfered with—here, "nature" is equated with whatever is seen in their particular culture as basic background conditions to human life.

Let's explore this line of reasoning further and look at an extension of the theory. We'll see how arguments that something's unnatural are really expressions of fear, and how responses should be adjusted accordingly.

Threatening the background

In his recent book on bioethical issues, Stephen Holland emphasizes that background conditions to choice are culturally specific constructs based on natural facts. For Holland, the appeal to nature is away of expressing hostility when a culture's very basic and general understandings are threatened—and he believes that such expressions of hostility are rational.

Threats to basic background conditions might include a threat to the "natural connection between sex and procreation"; no one (so Holland says) would want the emergence of a future society in which "all fertilization takes place without sex." Although he believes that there is utilitarian benefit in current reproductive technologies, he thinks that Norman is too quick to conclude that complaints about interfering with nature are unjustified.

Similarly, Holland explains the unease about genetic enhancement by saying that it threatens basic background conditions for choices and achievement in parenting. According to Holland, "we" feel threatened by the prospect that too much of a technological guarantee of our children's endowments would make parental nurturing seem meaningless. Fears about human reproductive cloning are similarly explained as threatening because cloning combines the separation of sex from procreation with technological control of children's endowments.

Holland concedes that not all threats to basic background conditions will be perceived, or perceived for long, as unacceptable. Where we can see a real need for some new technology, we are likely to accept it, perhaps after initial doubts. We are unlikely to oppose a particular technology where to do so seems cruel or heartless, or once the technology becomes familiar to us, in which case it is accommodated into our sense of the background conditions, or they are adjusted.

Holland's theory has some explanatory power. It can, for example, be used to explain the widespread opposition to homosexual acts. First, they violate what many conservative heterosexuals perceive as an eternal verity about the relationship between sex and procreation. Second, it may be difficult for conservative heterosexuals to see much utilitarian value in homosexual acts, or to understand the cruelty of laws that forbid homosexuality—it is difficult for many heterosexuals to understand, really understand, how anyone could find pleasure in acts that fill them with repugnance. Third, although homosexual acts have happened for countless millennia, they are still unfamiliar to many people.

Evaluating the theory

The theory obviously rings true for Holland as an explanation of some of his own yuck factor responses. It also rings true for me, in the sense that I can readily imagine how it could explain the yuck factor phenomenon, or part of it. Furthermore, the theory seems a good explanation of why some people feel threatened by minority sexual practices, such as homosexuality, and also by technological innovations that alter human biology, or involve procreation without sex.

The hypothesis can also be tested. The theory predicts at least some resistance to any new technology that seems likely to have a powerful impact on the basic conditions of human life even for the better. This is a strength, as the prediction is consistent with historical experience.

The theory also suggests why some people find emerging technologies threatening, even though they may not be affected directly. And it suggests plausible circumstances in which powerful new technologies (or unpopular practices) will gain acceptance.

In short, the theory gives a coherent and plausible explanation of why arguments against defying nature take the forms they do, why they are applied in ways that initially seem inconsistent, why they persist and why some powerful technological innovations get accepted more easily than others.

Norman seems to have made a valuable contribution to our understanding of memetics—of how ideas survive and reproduce themselves. At the very least, the theory is worth accepting for the sake of argument.

Unreasonable behavior

None of this, however, entails that the behavior described and predicted by the theory is rational behavior. Holland believes that people are behaving rationally when they express their hostility to an actual or predicted innovation by claiming it is "against nature." But this is a very doubtful claim.

Even if the theory is true, people who oppose certain practices or technologies for their supposed defiance of nature do not usually understand their own psychological motivations. That is, few of these people would, if challenged, justify their responses by enunciating something like Norman's theory. This alone suggests a sense in which claims that something defies nature are not usually rational. Such claims are essentially expressions of fear, not articulations of rational arguments.

But could a rational argument based on the theory be put against, say, homosexual acts, gay marriage, human reproductive cloning, genetic enhancement or biological immortality? What might such a sophisticated "defying nature" argument look like, if directed at a particular innovation or practice? Here is an example:

Premise 1: It is morally wrong to threaten any of the basic background conditions for people's choices in our culture.

Premise 2: The connection between sexual acts and procreation is one of the background conditions.

Premise 3: To commit a homosexual act is to threaten the connection between sexual acts and procreation.

Conclusion 1: To commit a homosexual act is to threaten one of the background conditions. (This follows from Premise 2 and 3.)

Conclusion 2: To commit a homosexual act is morally wrong. (This follows from Premise 1 and Conclusion 1.)

As formulated, this argument is logically valid. Accordingly, its conclusions are true as long as its premises are true, and the various expressions used in the argument are used in the same way throughout (otherwise it fails because of equivocation).

However, all three premises are highly controversial. Premise 1 cannot be accepted as it stands, if only because many background conditions in various societies should be threatened. Threatening a background condition may unsettle people, but it is not necessarily disastrous. Some background conditions actually distort cultures and their moral assumptions in highly undesirable ways. A good example is the belief in many cultures that women are intellectually inferior to men. If something such as Premise 1 is to be accepted, it will need to be narrowed in a way that makes it far more plausible, but how exactly? Perhaps we should confine it to conditions that are matters of fact, not false belief, and perhaps to facts that are widely relied upon by people. But these might be very difficult to "threaten" (as required by Premise 3). I am not sure how Premise 1 could be reworded to make the argument a better one.

Furthermore, in the argument given, Premise 2 is true in our own culture only if interpreted loosely. There is a connection between sex and procreation, but it is a very loose one in any culture that uses both the contraceptive pill and IVF. If the premise is interpreted loosely enough to be true, then the rather tenuous connection that it asserts does not seem to be threatened in any way by the fact that there are homosexual acts going on. Thus Premise 2 and Premise 3 cannot simultaneously be true if the same terms are used in the same way.

I feel that it is going to be very difficult to find any case where an argument with this structure is rationally compelling. Premise 1 needs to be qualified, even though this threatens to undermine the whole argument. Meanwhile, one of the other premises is always likely to be false, or else the premises cannot be stated truthfully and simultaneously, without equivocation. Those pesky premises just won't sit still.

However, let's try a more high-tech example.

The case of cloning

Perhaps the argument's failures, as outlined above, are case specific. Let's give the benefit of the doubt and try another example, an argument against human reproductive cloning. Such an argument would be as follows:

Premise 1: It is morally wrong to threaten any of the background conditions.

Premise 2: That sex is necessary for procreation is one of the background conditions.

Premise 3: Human reproductive cloning threatens the situation that sex is necessary for procreation.

Conclusion 1: Human reproductive cloning threatens one of the background conditions.

Conclusion 2: Human reproductive cloning is morally wrong.

Here, Premise 2 seems to be false. I'm sure that most people plan their lives against the belief that sex is usually necessary for procreation, but I am not sure that anyone in our culture believes anymore that it is always necessary. So how can the latter be a basic background condition for choice? After all, we now have such technologies as IVF, not to mention AID—whether with sterile, clinical methods or the proverbial turkey baster. For Premise 2 to be true, it surely needs to be rephrased considerably—perhaps along the lines that the following is now a background condition for choice in our culture: "Sex is usually necessary for procreation and the alternatives are likely to be difficult and expensive."

Reworded in this way, Premise 2 is probably true, and the background condition that it now states is a reasonable one for people to accept and rely upon in making choices and planning their lives. But it is not likely to be threatened by reproductive cloning, so if we reword Premise 2, we make Premise 3 false. Those premises still won't sit still!

Encouraging acceptance, avoiding dread

I invite you to try for yourself to come up with workable arguments against particular emerging technologies, using premises about basic background conditions for choice. I am quite certain you will meet with intractable problems.

However, I concede this much: The theory of background conditions confirms that there is a limit to human psychological adaptability. Accordingly, there is a limit to how much we can reasonably expect individuals to adapt to if rapid and sweeping changes are made to the basic circumstances in which they, personally, made their life plans. Thus there may be good reasons not to support technological changes which would be that dramatic—and, as I've hinted at elsewhere, there may be reasons not to frighten people with gung-ho predictions of imminent, sudden, total change, even if it seems beneficial.

But this can't normally ground an argument against particular practices or technologies. For example, the fact that some people are engaging in homosexual acts doesn't pull the rug out from under anyone's individual choice to lead a more conventional lifestyle. This choice remains viable and meaningful, even in a society that actually provides a system of gay marriage. Again, if some people used reproductive cloning to conceive children, it would not undermine the plans of couples who'd had kids in the usual way. Nor would those who'd used cloning find that their children's nurturance was a meaningless activity.

Holland worries about the possibility that people in the distant future may routinely procreate without sex, but why is this a problem? The change would surely not come as much of a shock to the people of the time, as long as it happened fairly gradually. Nor does the likelihood that future societies will be very different from current ones, with different sets of basic, widely-understood background conditions, cause any disadvantage to those of us who are alive today. Such change is something that we can be confident will happen, but so what? It's something that we'd now be wise to accept as one of the basic background conditions to our lives.

The analysis in this two-part column suggests that it will, to say the least, be very difficult to mount a good argument against any practice on the ground that it "defies nature." Indeed, claims that some new technology is a sin against nature, or its processes, should be treated as expressions of fear, not as rational arguments. The theory developed by Norman and elaborated by Holland does not rehabilitate the idea of nature's inviolability. It does, however, offer useful insight into why the idea lingers on, vampire-like, and how we might best respond.