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.