Richard Dawkins has recently claimed that a woman pregnant with a
foetus with Down’s syndrome is morally obliged to have an abortion. Set aside for one moment whether or not he is right about this; and indeed whether or not he is right that God does not exist, or that religion is a form of child abuse. Even if all of Dawkin’s
ex cathedra pronouncements about morality and metaphysics were correct a crucial problem would still remain: his arguments are terrible.
1. Dawkins says that his starting point is a morality grounded in ‘a desire to increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering’. This view is known as ‘utilitarianism’. First year philosophy students are often attracted to it until they learn about what seem to be pretty straightforward counterexamples, e.g. situations in which you would increase human happiness by killing one person and sharing her organs among give people needing organ donations, or by hanging an innocent man to calm a rioting crowd. Dawkins shows no awareness of these difficulties with the crude moral starting point he signs up to.
2. After saying that his position is grounded in a commitment to utilitarianism, he concludes in his summary that ‘what I was saying simply follows logically from the ordinary pro-choice stance that most us, I presume, espouse.’ There are two problems with this:
A. The argument he gives in his conclusion is completely different from the argument he gives prior to his conclusion (this is perhaps the comment I write most on my undergraduate students’ philosophy essays),
B. He is confusing what is permissible (i.e. what morality gives us the option of doing) with what is obligatory (i.e. what morality demands that we do). It doesn’t follow from a woman’s having a right to choose that she ought to choose the option that minimises human suffering.
3. After having stated in the original tweet that it would be immoral for a woman not to abort, in his extended piece he claims that all he meant to say was what she ought to do if she shares his ‘personal morality’. In now becomes horribly unclear whether Dakwins is talking about ethics – what ought to be done – or just saying what he would do if he were in a similar situation. His talk of his opponents being ’emotional’ rather than ‘logical’ (a word he throws around so much that it ceases to have any meaning) would suggest that he is accusing his opponents of being objectively wrong in some sense, but then his reference of his own ‘personal morality’ (whatever that means) would suggest that he’s not meaning to say anything objective at all. It’s all a bit of a muddle.
If one of my students handed in work like this, they might perhaps scrape a D for effort.
There are a group of people who are paid by the state to spend roughly a third of their working life writing and researching ‘the Big Questions’ of ethics and philosophy. They’re called ‘philosophy lecturers’; a slightly misleading title as teaching is only one part of the job. Of course nobody is an authority on these difficult and controversial matters. However, there are skills which make public debate concerning them intelligent and informed, rather than crude and ill-thought out. Trained philosophers have the capacity to rigorously analyse arguments, and to tease out subtle implications. They have an understanding of logical fallacies: flaws in reasoning to which human beings are especially prone, but which can be avoided if one is careful. Academic philosophers spend many years reading a broad range of historical and contemporary human thought on their area of focus, and are able to draw on this in presenting their case.
I don’t want to sound bitter, but it’s frustrating when the crude stabs at philosophy by scientists like Dawkins and Hawking are taken seriously, whilst our most respected philosophers are given very little voice (although I’d be the first to admit that this is partly the fault of philosophers failing to reach out enough beyond academia). I am certainly not suggesting that only those with a philosophy PhD should be allowed to have opinions on ethical or philosophical questions. But if tax payers are going to pay a group of people to spend an awful lot of time thinking, reading and writing about ‘the Big Questions’, we might as well have our discussion of these matters informed at least to some extent by what they have to say.
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Conscience and Consciousness 
Well, in regards to this fight back against certain scientists who feel that they have the academic high-ground to comment on matters beyond their discipline, in particular the certain individuals who feel that their discipline now makes philosophy redundant; you know I support your argument from my comments to your last post. I even started a blog of my own, because of the careless, uninformed opinions of these highly visible scientists.
However, just for the sake of balance, I will counter argue this post by ‘imaginatively’ paraphrasing another scientist I am ‘fond’ of (you can imagine a Manchester accent if you wish):
– Science, indeed only physics, can provide all the answers. Physics is like shining a well-engineered light in the darkness to see what is there, whereas philosophy can only speculate what is in the darkness (such is my understanding of philosophy).
Complex ethical and moral issues can only be answered by science and to disagree is to be irrational, appealing to superstition.
We humans are nothing but Turing machines (Hard problem solved. Actually didn’t know there was one. Don’t do philosophy, like I don’t do homeopathy) and whether a foetus with Down’s syndrome should be aborted or not, is an issue that can be only answered with science, especially physics. Why what else is there?
That’s why I’m off to CERN to collide and smash subatomic particles, and we’ll see what light will be revealed in doing so on this particular ethical dilemma. And, only when the results born of this experiment are accepted and published in a peer-review journal, will we have a definitive answer. So no need for philosophers, thank you. –
It is difficult to imbue text with sarcastic intonation, so the disclaimer for potential internet miscommunication is, that this is a JOKE. But, it’s absurdity only highlights the absurdity pregnant in the genuine statements it comes from.
Just a joke, pretty much like when geneticists write books, informed with only rudimentary Sunday-school ideas, on theology…or tweet on ethical/moral issues with messages infused with an ugly eugenics underbelly.
lol
Well, modern physicists are not even intelligent enough to explain the physical phenomena (which is why there are so many absurd theories masquerading as science), why bother about what they preach about morality, metaphysics or philosophy etc.
Unfortunately, the entire discipline of science has turned itself into a stupid religion preaching and spreading all the weird notions in the name of science. And the worst part is that modern ‘educated’ society blindly swears upon everything that is endorsed as science by the top scientists.
One suggestion to Philip Goff: I can see how good you are in terms of critical analysis and logical deduction. But I am rather intrigued by your statement that you want to change our view on matter like how Einstein radically changed our view of space-time. But Einstein had only mislead (of course not consciously!) the world with his absurd theory of relativity. Don’t just believe in what the physicists preach as science.