Appropriating Darwin

Transcription

1 Appropriating Darwin Dr. Dennis M. Weiss Presented at the conference Darwin s Reach: A Celebration of Darwin s Legacy Across Academic Disciplines, Hofstra University What am I that I am a human being? What is my place in nature, my place in the scheme of things? These two anthropological questions have perhaps been more fundamental to the development of western philosophy than any other questions. But more than philosophical questions, they are perhaps definitive of the human condition. As Ernst Cassirer notes in the opening pages of his Essay on Man, man is that creature who is constantly in search of himself a creature who in every moment of his existence must examine and scrutinize the conditions of his existence (6). In Making Gender Sherry Ortner argues that there are certain basic existential questions or structures which are apparent in all cultures, which humanity everywhere must cope with, and while the individual answers posed to these questions admit of great variability, the questions themselves have a certain constancy and regularity ( ). These are, Ortner suggests, factors built into the structure of the most generalized situation in which all human beings, in whatever culture, find themselves (25). One such question, Ortner suggests, is how to think about the confrontation between humanity and nature. The anthropological questions, what am I that I am a human being and what is my place in the scheme of things, are other such basic existential question. Both historically and crossculturally, people have been motivated to wonder about the human condition and their place in the cosmos. But as Ortner recognizes, the answers to these universal problems will vary enormously, both cross-culturally and historically. Ortner notes, While I do think there are such things as structures in the sense just discussed, large existential questions that all human beings everywhere must cope with, I also think that the linkage between such structures and any set of social categories is a culturally and politically constructed phenomenon (180). Indeed, as the philosophical anthropologist Helmuth Plessner notes in Laughing and Crying, Man is not a being who understands himself in the same way among all peoples and at all times; he is historically bound, precisely in his original, everyday understanding (18). 1

2 Recognizing then that these existential questions call forth answers which are historically, culturally, and politically bound, what are the forces that today shape our response to these fundamental issues. Well clearly in the context of a conference celebrating Darwin s reach and the anniversaries of Darwin s birth and the publication of the Origin, Darwin and evolutionary theory constitute one significant context shaping our response to these fundamental questions. Darwin is often nominated, along with Copernicus, for initiating one of the global revolutions in our understanding of ourselves and our place in nature, and has no doubt often been commented on in the past few days of this conference, we are still working through the implications of the Darwinian revolution. Today, though, we are being told that the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are being joined by an equally fundamental revolution that portends as significant an impact on our fundamental anthropological concerns. From various quarters comes the message that the development of genetics, robotics, information technology, and nanotechnology will lead to such significant changes in both our nature and place in the cosmos as to cause us to question whether we will continue to remain human. Issuing from a variety of perspectives and motivated by a crosssection of theoretical concerns, comes the claim that especially owing to technological developments human beings are on the cusp of profound change. Consider, for instance, two diametrically opposed figures in the current debate regarding the future of humanity, Gregory Stock and Francis Fukuyama. Stock begins his largely approving discussion of human germline engineering, Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future, by noting, We know that Homo sapiens is not the final word in primate evolution, but few have yet grasped that we are on the cusp of profound biological change, poised to transcend our current form and character on a journey to destinations of new imagination (2002, 1). While Fukuyama is best known for his critique of the posthuman, he agrees with Stock that we are on the cusp of profound change: we appear to be poised at the cusp of one of the most momentous periods of technological advance in history (2002a, 5). In Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies and What It Means to Be Human, Joel Garreau focuses on the future of human nature and explores the biggest change in tens of thousands of years in what it means to be human (2005, 3). Garreau s discussion focuses on robotics, information science, 2

3 nanotechnology, and genetics and ponders the question will human nature itself change? Will we soon pass some point where we are so altered by our imaginations and inventions as to be unrecognizable to Shakespeare or the writers of the ancient Greek plays? (2005, 21). Garreau s work draws on the notion of a coming Singularity, first popularized by Vernor Vinge and most recently the focus of Raymond Kurzweil s books The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Kurzweil argues, the primary political and philosophical issue of the next century will be the definition of who we are (1999, 2). In Liminal Lives: Imagining the Human at the Frontiers of Biomedicine, Susan Squire would seem to agree with Kurzweil, as she details how the foundational categories of human life have become subject to sweeping renegotiation under the impact of contemporary biomedicine and biotechnology (2). N. Katherine Hayles too suggests that technology has progressed to the point where it has the capability of fundamentally transforming the conditions of human life. So in thinking today about these basic anthropological questions, there seems to be widespread agreement that our situation is a complex one in which these fundamental questions must be approached anew. There is less agreement, though, in precisely how to do this. Is the human being soon to be obsolete or should we struggle to preserve the human essence? Are we entering a posthuman or postbiological age? If so, ought we to be fearful of these developments or should we embrace them as the next logical step in human evolution? Answers to these questions have developed along two general lines which I would like to call the liberal eugenics line and the bioconservative line. Liberal Eugenicists such as Nicholas Agar, John Harris, and Nick Bostrom typically argue that there is no stable, constant human nature, indeed that human nature is fundamentally malleable and provides no basis on which to reach normative decisions regarding the future of humanity. Culture and technology has outstripped biology and biological evolution and we should be encouraged to embrace our posthuman future and the future of enhancement. Bio-conservatives, on the other hand, such as Francis Fukuyama, Leon Kass, Jurgen Habermas, and George Annas maintain that a substantive human nature exists which provides a foundation to our moral lives and ought to set a limit to technological enhancements. These authors argue that our posthuman future is actually a dehumanized one in which our dignity and uniqueness as human beings is undermined in our pursuit of these technological visions. 3

4 Now obviously these positions as I have briefly described them are caricatures of much more complex and subtle positions. But for descriptive and analytic purposes they do capture important differences in what is a growing and already voluminous debate. And interestingly, despite the sometimes very sharp differences and disagreements among the participants in this debate, almost all of the participants in this debate assert their allegiance to the Darwinian tradition, each appropriating Darwin and evolutionary theory to their own ends. This is clear from even a cursory glance at the book titles, which include Enhancing Evolution, Radical Evolution, Designer Evolution. Let us return momentarily to Stock and Fukuyama. Stock argues that we must seize control of our evolutionary future, not to do so would be out of character for humanity (2). As he writes: The only constant in a future of rapid biological manipulation would be evolutionary change itself. What could unite us in this future would be our common participation in this fluid, self-directed process rather than any transitory similarities in form (183). For Stock, evolution becomes the constant amid the change. Fukuyama places his own account of human nature squarely in the tradition of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, arguing that evolution has programmed the human mind to behave in species-typical ways (143) and agreeing with Larry Arnhart that the results of contemporary Darwinian biology can be used to support many of Aristotle s claims about natural morality (139). The relevance to this debate of Darwin and evolutionary theory is further underscored when we recognize that many of the key questions that form the central part of this debate are questions and issues that have been at the core of debates over evolutionary theory almost since its founding 150 years or more ago. These questions and issues include the nature of genetic determinism, questions about progress and improvement of the species, whether we can refer to a hierarchy of species, what constitutes a species, whether human beings have a distinctive nature, whether that nature should be valorized, whether, as far as human beings are concerned, biological evolution for all intents and purposes, has ceased, to be replaced by cultural, selfdirected evolution. While recognizing that Darwin and evolutionary thought forms the backdrop to the conflict over liberal eugenics and bio-conservatives, there s a presumption I think that on the whole the thrust of the Darwinian tradition runs counter to the bio-conservative program and that evolutionary 4

5 thinking is ultimately more compatible with the liberal eugenicist program. After all, Darwinian thinking would seem to complicate several common elements of the bio-conservative position, including especially the claim that human beings are unique and special and that our nature ought to be preserved. And indeed critics of this position often have recourse to Darwin and the Darwinian tradition in their critique of these claims. And one can understand the intuitive appeal that the Darwinian tradition would have for the liberal eugenicist claim that human beings have changed and will continue to change. And yet I think that despite this intuitive appeal, the move from Darwin to liberal eugenics is not fully warranted and that in making that move the proponents of the liberal eugenics position commit some of same errors they diagnose in the bio-conservative arguments. It is to this claim that I would now like to turn and for the purposes of time and concision, I am going to focus specifically on the claims made by John Harris in his 2007 book Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People. There are several justifications for singling out Harris in this context. First, Harris has a long history of dealing with these bioethical views. His writings on bioethics and biotechnology go back at least until 1985, he s been a member of Britain s Human Genetics Commission, and he has previously written on cloning, genethics, and on the posthuman, including his book Wonderwoman and Superman: The Ethics of Human Biotechnology. His Enhancing Evolution is one of the more recent books in this genre, which besides setting forth his own views on these matters, takes on the bio-conservatives, including Kass, Sandel, and Habermas. More importantly, Harris views are some of the more temperate among the liberal eugenicists and transhumanists. He therefore offers us a more reasoned, developed, and principled account of the liberal eugenicist picture. And liberal eugenicist it is. Harris argues not only that human beings may enhance, but that we have a positive obligation to enhance. As he states in the opening pages of the book: this book defends human enhancement and argues that not only are enhancements permissible but that in some cases there is a positive moral duty to enhance (3). Harris framework is defined by his libertarian commitments and by the principle of harm, which forms the core of his defense of human enhancement. Again he is clear in this regard, writing: the overwhelming moral imperative for both therapy and enhancement is to prevent harm and confer benefit (58). 5

6 While this much is clear in Harris, unfortunately much else is not. Moreover, there are I think serious deficiencies in Harris s arguments in defense of enhancing evolution, several of which touch directly on the theme of this conference. Let me begin, in fact, with the title of Harris book, Enhancing Evolution, as this already points to one of the central ambiguities in Harris program: precisely what is it that is being enhanced? Harris libertarian framework and his reliance on the principle of harm would seem to suggest that the focus of his argument is the individual human being. And yet the title of the book implies that it is the evolutionary process itself which is in need of enhancement. Indeed, Harris basic point might be taken to be that we are moving into a new phase of evolution in which Darwinian evolution will be replaced by enhancement evolution. I will return momentarily to this notion of phases of evolution, but for now let me simply point out that at times the object of Harris analysis is the evolutionary process itself. Other times, though, the object seems to be the human species, as he argues that we may need a new and better human species. Sometimes it is the genome which seems to be his focus. He notes early in the book: In this book I hope to convince you that human enhancement is a good thing and that our genetic heritage is much in need of improvement (8). Sometimes Harris suggests that it is human nature or human destiny that is the object of his interest: this chapter attempts to place the argument in a tradition of thinking about attempts to shape human nature and to rethink the destiny of humankind (9). From these and other quotes, together with Harris philosophical commitments, it is simply not clear what the object of his analysis is: evolution, the human genome, human nature, the human species. This ambiguity is especially troubling in the context of discussions of improvement or betterment, for we don t know what is to be improved or made better. These ambiguities have already pointed to other serious issues in Harris account. References to a new phase of evolution, improving our genetic heritage, and the destiny of humankind, suggest that Harris is dealing with an unusual notion of evolution. That he places his account squarely in the Darwinian tradition is clear. He writes: Before Darwin, it might, not implausibly, have been asserted that an essential ingredient of our conception of ourselves was that we were created as human beings. Now we know we have evolved, like chimpanzees, in a seamless transition from our common ape 6

7 ancestor, but most of us seem to have adapted well to this dramatic change in Leibsein. The evidence is that human beings are fairly robust and well able to adapt to new conceptions of themselves and their place in the universe. The absorptions of Galileo and Copernicus no less than Darwin into our conceptions of ourselves and our place in the world throws doubt upon any conception of a given set of essential ingredients of our conceptions of ourselves. (154-55) We see here that Harris places his account in terms of the broad metaphysical implications of Copernicus and Darwin and questions about our conception of ourselves and our place in the world. And yet it is not clear what Harris conception of evolution is. He several times refers to interfering in the course of evolution, as in the following: This book is about the ethics of making available and accessing human enhancement, and about the moral and social impact of interventions in the natural lottery of life and in the course of evolution (31). He suggests that evolution represents progress and that enhancement evolution represents the fulfillment of human potential. Again to quote, If we wish humankind to achieve its potential (which has so far almost universally been assumed to be an inevitable part of evolutionary progress), this might require some deliberate changes (11). Still again, he writes: We will ignore the given world s attempts to improve upon itself through an evolutionary process of which (arguably) enhancement is a part (110). These and other passages seem to suggest that Harris enhancement evolution is the natural continuation of Darwinian evolution, that there is a course to evolution that enhancement evolution is fulfilling, that evolution in general is progressive and has led to improvement in the past, and that human beings have an evolutionary potential we have yet to fulfill. All of these assumptions are highly dubious, so much so that I won t argue the point here, though I am happy to address it if necessary. The precise relationship between Darwinian evolution and enhancement evolution is equally murky in Harris account. He argues this new process of evolutionary change will replace natural selection with deliberate selection, Darwinian evolution with enhancement evolution (4). Harris sets up a contrast between Darwinian evolution which he describes as passive, unconscious, random (emphasizing the metaphor of the genetic lottery), and over all poorly designed. This is contrasted with Enhancement Evolution which is described as active, 7

8 conscious, controlled, well-designed and deliberate. Once more I think we might ask what it means to suggest that we replace one kind of evolution with another kind of evolution. Harris seemingly implies that natural selection will cease for human beings as we will be so in control of our evolution as to transcend Darwinian evolution. And yet again it seems highly questionable to suggest that for homo sapiens, natural selection will simply stop. At the heart of Harris discussion are two metaphors, both of which are highly dubious. The first compares natural, Darwinian selection to a genetic lottery, genetic roulette, the natural lottery of life, with the implication that we can do better than this. As Harris writes, I hope that we will have the imagination, the power, and the courage to do better for ourselves and our descendants than the combination of chance, genes, and environment has done for us (16). Now I think there is something unusual in the claim that we are a product of chance, genes, and environment and yet we somehow have the skill and wherewithal to now control that process. Beyond this, however, I think this metaphor of the genetic lottery, commonly employed by both bioconservatives and liberal eugenicists alike, is a dubious one, surely calling attention to the chance nature of evolution but overly simplifying the process. Coming from Pennsylvania, I m shall we say naturally led to think about the Pennsylvania lottery where you have a series of perfectly identical balls being selected for entirely random reasons in a process witnessed by and designed by human beings to insure a completely random process, and one in which usually and unfortunately for those who purchase lottery tickets few winners and a bunch of losers. You have a definitive process guaranteeing a specific outcome with a clear standard by which to determine who wins and who loses. Does this bear any semblance to the process of natural selection? Not really. Genes are not lottery balls. The process of selecting lottery balls bears no resemblance to natural selection and descent by modification. There are no witnesses or designers and it is not clear that you could say of natural selection that we have clear winners and losers. There is change, certainly, and species evolve and sometimes of course die out, but the notion of winners and losers implies a standard by which to make that judgment and evolution provides none. All of this is to suggest that natural selection bears little resemblance to a genetic lottery. The metaphor itself, I believe, is crafted in such a way as to impose negative attitudes on natural evolution and make it that much easier to embrace enhancement evolution. We should be wary of being led astray by these metaphors. 8

9 The second metaphor is the metaphor of enhancement evolution itself, and a metaphor it is. Harris grafts on to a natural, biological process, evolution, a term enhancement that is drawn from a modern technological context, working to naturalize enhancement by underscoring its continuity to natural evolution and technologizing evolution by underscoring its continuity to technological patterns of enhancement. This naturalization of enhancement is the dominant metaphor and argument in Enhancing Evolution and it is I think the dominant argument in almost all accounts of liberal eugenics. That argument is most often presented as an argument from analogy meant to suggest that our current and future practices of enhancement are analogous to and as justified as older, familiar, and accepted practices and indeed are analogous to the very practices of evolution itself. The analogy to familiar and accepted practices is suggested in the following passage from Harris in which he is critiquing Kass: The claim that attempts to alter our nature through biotechnology are different from both medicine and education or child-rearing seems wholly implausible. Medicine uses technology and biotechnology; indeed, much of medicine is a part of technology, it is a technological genre. For the rest, what matters surely is the ethics of altering our nature, not the means we adopt. If it s right to alter our nature, we should choose the best and most reliable, not to mention the most efficient and economical, methods of so doing. (125) Harris compares medicine, education, and child-rearing to biotechnology, suggesting that as long as our ends are the same, the means we adopt don t matter. Now I think this claim that means don t matter is simply and straightforwardly wrong, but for the moment I wish to emphasize the manner in which Harris is working to naturalize biotechnological enhancements through the use of analogy. Beyond its comparison to more familiar practices, Harris argues that such enhancements are in fact continuous with the human evolutionary process. He writes: Our collective origin as human beings occurred, almost certainly, in Africa between 5 and 7 million years ago. Throughout the entire subsequent period we have been actively involved in enhancement, as well as passive or at least unwitting participants in an evolutionary process. Again: It is doubtful that there was ever a time in which we ape-descended persons were not 9

10 striving for enhancement, trying to do things better and to better ourselves (13). While Harris argues that those who find value in the natural or normal are misguided (21) and that what is natural is morally inert and progress dependent (35), in these passages he seemingly suggests that it is our nature to strive for enhancement which he further naturalizes by reading back into our evolutionary origins. We should note as well that these efforts to naturalize enhancement evolution undermine his claims that this is a new phase of evolution and that these are radically different forms of enhancement. It would seem that Harris wants to have his cake and eat it too: enhancement evolution is both more of the same and yet radically new. 10