Abstract
In a near-future world of bionics and biotechnology, the main ethical and political issue will be the definition of who we are. Could biomedical enhancements transform us to such an extent that we would be other than human? Habermas argues that any genetic enhancement intervention that could potentially alter ‘human nature’ should be morally prohibited since it alters the child’s nature or the very essence that makes the child who he is. This practice also commits the child to a specific life project or, in any case, it puts specific restrictions on his freedom to choose a life of his own. Ultimately, genetic enhancement jeopardizes the very foundations of moral equality. I contend that Habermas’ argument is based either on a series of presuppositions that imply a gross misunderstanding of evolution or the relevant factual information cocerning the action we are about to morally assess is not empirically supported. Hence, the argument from human nature is based on a series of false or problematic assumptions, and, as such, it fails to play the normative role intended by Habermas.
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Notes
There are various dates for the completion of this project. On June 26, 2000 Bill Clinton, the President of the United States at that time, announced the completion of the first working draft of the entire human genome. The first publication of the initial working draft sequence came out in two special issues of the two scientific leading journals Science and Nature (Venter et al. 2001; Lander et al. 2000). However, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium declared the Human Genome Project completed only in April 2003.
As Bostrom and Ord note, the other major arguments in the genetic enhancement debate are: the argument from evolutionary adaptation, the argument from transition costs, the argument from risk, and the argument from person—affecting ethics (2006, pp. 665–672). If the argument from human nature fails to support the moral reprobation of genetic enhancement technologies, it certainly does not follow that we should pursue this course of action. Other arguments from this list could have significantly more weight in this debate. Moreover, the critique of the Argument from Human Nature does not commit the author to the view that genetic enhancement technologies are as benign as any other form of technologies. The author defends the view that the significance of those changes can be measured only in the light of the soundest biological and psychological sciences.
There are two approaches in the secondary literature on Habermas and bioethics. On the one hand, a number of bioethicists challenge his arguments focusing mainly [if not uniquely] on his 2003 publication (Bostrom 2005; Fenton 2006; Buchannan 2009a, 2012; Hayry 2012). On the other hand, critical and moral theorists emphasize that Habermas’ arguments are a continuation of his earlier work (including his meta-ethical work) and, as such, his book on human nature should not separated from the rest of his philosophical corpus (Edgar 2009). In this article, I follow the bioethics tradition and focus almost exclusively on Habermas’ The Future of Human Nature since this is the main book where he tackles the question of genetic enhancement and, as such, the arguments developed there should be self-sufficient.
There are slightly different formulations of this argument in the literature. Elizabeth Fenton thinks that the main reason for Habermas' rejection of genetic enhancement is human dignity. I personally think that there is more textual evidence for supporting the idea that genetic enhancement prevents one to fully accomplish oneself, hence it should be morally prohibited. On the second reason, I am in agreement with Fenton on the question of equality, autonomy, and freedom (See Fenton 2006, pp. 35–42, especially p. 37). This topic has been initially approached by Bernard Prusak (2005). The Cambridge of Quarterly Healthcare Ethics has also dedicated a special issue to Kant, Habermas, and bioethics. The issue is particularly informative (Hayry 2012; Herissone-Kelly 2012; Gurham 2012) even if none of the contributors approaches Habermas’ argument from an empirical perspective.
McDonald identifies a larger set of conditions for successfully being an ethical individual: the necessity of choosing seriously and inwardly; commitment to the belief that predications of good and evil of our actions have a truth-value; the necessity of choosing what one is actually doing, rather than just responding to a situation; actions are to be in accordance with rules; and these rules are universally applicable to moral agents (McDonald 2011).
Genetic enhancement disrupts a core intuition we hold about our lives, “namely, that we act and judge in persona proprie—that is, in our own voice speaking and no other” (Habermas 2003a, p. 55).
Habermas calls this “an unobstructed future of his own." In footnote 54, he also acknowledges that a similar claim also made by Joel Feinberg in the 'Open Future' Argument. Feinberg believes that children should possess “anticipatory autonomy rights" such that their future life options are respected and kept open. An impartial decision should not impose a specific life project onto child' future and “should send [the child] out into the adult world with as many open opportunities as possible, thus maximizing his chances for self-fulfillment" (Feinberg 1992, p. 84).
This is a similar line of reasoning to the one Shrader-Frechette defends against Leopold’s and Callicott’s land ethic. She notes, “Callicott’s ethics fails because: there is no biological coherent notion of “community” robust enough to ground either contemporary scientific theory in community ecology or environmental ethics. […]” (Shrader-Frechette 1996, p. 59). More specifically to the genetic enhancement debate, Powell & Buchannan have pursued this type of argument in a very convincing way (Powell & Buchannan 2011; Powell 2012).
I use here Mark Ereshefsky ‘s definition of essentialism. He labels this sort of essentialism either as kind essentialism (2007) or as traditional essentialism (2010). Kind essentialism or traditional essentialism has three tenets. “One tenet is that all and only the members of a kind have a common essence. A second tenet is that the essence of a kind is responsible for the traits typically associated with the members of that kind. Third, knowing a kind's essence helps us explain and predict those properties typically associated with a kind” (2007, section ‘The ontological status of species'). Two points are important here. It is crucial to recognize that not all forms of kind essentialism fall prey to the same critique that applies to Habermas. For a particularly sophisticated account of kind essentialism that overcomes some of the difficulties coming from an evolutionary biology perspective, see Oderberg (2007, especially chapter 9, “Species, biological and metaphysical”, pp. 201–240). Second, the textual evidence I provide supports the reading that Habermas’ implicit essentialist account is closer to a traditional form of essentialism as Ereshefsky understands it than to other forms of kind essentialism (including Oderberg’s version).
For a more detailed account of how this process of consensus is supposed to be reached, why it is not merely conventional, and also why it produces normative obligations (see, Habermas 1999).
In his reply to Nagel's argument, Habermas contends that it would be misleading to think that prenatal enhancements would “violate the moral rights of another person" to such an extent, that it would “force him to perform particular practices from which others are excused.” Genetic enhancement would be however a “harm to his own moral self-understanding" (Habermas 2003a, p. 81).
On the contrary, empirical evidence shows that genetic intra-specific variation is more important than intra-specific variation in morphology (Ridley 1993).
Okasha endorses such a conceptual argument against species essentialism. “Even if there were a species whose members all shared a set of characteristics, phenotypic or genotypic, not shared by the members of any other species, this would not make those characteristics essential to membership of the species. For if a member of the species produced an offspring, which lacked one of the characteristics, say because of a mutation, it would very likely be classed as con-specific with its parents.” (Okasha 2002, p. 197; see also, Ereshefsky 2010).
At a quick glance, the notion of a child being “programmed” occurs about twenty times throughout the book. The notion of “fixed demands or intentions”, or “determinism” occurs about eight times each. And, Habermas defends himself only once against genetic determinism.
Eric Parens makes a similar point by appealing to a distinction between weak versus strong understanding of the role of genes. The weak understanding amounts to conceding that when we claim, “her love for skydiving is genetic”, what we really mean is that “genes are a precondition for her skydiving […]. She could not dive out of airplanes were it not for her genes functioning just as they were […]” (Parens 2004, p. S17).
Recent research has shown that humans and some higher primates share at least one of the genes [FOXP2] that is highly correlated with spoken language (Marcus 2004, p. 33). However, this does not completely underscore the importance of genetic difference in influencing linguistic capacities, since we know that linguistic behavior is a complex multiple-gene pathway.
A very interesting argument that focuses “on the vulnerability of the subjects concerned” emerges in the field of animal ethics. This argument shows that “the massive vulnerability of animals to humans" should be enough to force us to reconsider the moral status of nonhuman animals. In this case, unlike in Habermas' model, the asymmetrical relations are significant for the way we should understand moral relations in general. See, Linzey (2009, pp. 35–36).
There are a few passages where Habermas deals with the questions relating to the moral consideration of non-human animals. In Reply to my critics (Habermas 1982), he proposes a theory of compassion towards natural entities. “The impulse to provide assistance to wounded and debased creatures, to have solidarity with them, the compassion for their torments, abhorrence of the naked instrumentalization of nature for purposes that are ours but not its, in short the intuitions which ethics of compassion place with undeniable right in the foreground, cannot be anthropocentrically blended out” (Ibid, p. 245) However, in the case on an ethics of compassion it is hard to define a clear criterion to designate for which living creatures we have to feel compassion. Moreover, how do we have to deal when a moral principle might be in conflict with our own needs? Given that the norm-conformative attitude toward external nature does not yield some normative validity, one is not obligated to be a vegetarian by compassion for animals, unless this person is committed to some other maxim. The limit of our obligations is reached when our vital interests conflict with those of animals.
There are at least two ways in which the notion of eugenics is used in reference to genetic modifications. Eugenic as in negative eugenics, refers to a case where a parent through PGD [preimplantation genetic diagnosis] aims to prevent his child from suffering some serious genetic disease. Eugenics, as in positive eugenics, refers to cases where the parents positively select for a more desirable trait. This is understood as enhancement, and this form of genetic intervention is the target of Habermas' moral argument.
There are bioconservatives who are in principle against sexual reproduction via IVF (Kass 1998).
However, critics could still point out that IVF is different in kind from genetic enhancement since the former involves non-identity preserving selection of one embryo against other embryos, whereas the latter involves genetic modifications realized on the same numeric embryo. We have some evidence that the absence of therapeutic reasons in cases of positive sex selection does not produce the psychological consequences Habermas assumes. However, we do not know at this point whether a genetic modification on the same numeric embryo would not have the psychological impact Habermas claims.
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to those who gave me valuable feedback on early presentations of this material, including Mark Bernstein, Dan Smith, Eric Meslin, Daniel Kelly and the Research Staff at the Hastings Center. I would also like to thank the anonymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions on a previous version of this paper.
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Morar, N. An Empirically Informed Critique of Habermas’ Argument from Human Nature . Sci Eng Ethics 21, 95–113 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-013-9509-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-013-9509-5