tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post7551307305209511572..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: Samesex ReproductionDale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-21030654258250698952014-01-01T22:44:23.498-08:002014-01-01T22:44:23.498-08:00You should read more carefully.
Presumably Taylo...You should read more carefully. <br /><br />Presumably Taylor regards normalizing therapeutic outcomes as continuous with our intuitions about basic healthcare more generally already, even if a novel or imagined technique were to enable the normalization in a particular case. <br /><br />And, no, I don't find this is more interesting than the things I talked about at greater length in responding to Taylor. The distinction is, after all, a bioethical commonplace. <br /><br />Of course, in this piece I pointed out that all such norms are contingent over the longer term on expectations, customs, norms, and technical/infrastructural affordances. This calls that bioethical commonplace into question and responds to what you say I ignored, if you like.<br /><br />You speak of "the line" that transhumanism crosses -- but there is no permanent line "nature" draws and there are no actually-existing transhumanist therapies that cross "the line." Health-qua-norm matters to me less than questions of safety, access, equitable distribution of costs, risks, and benefits, and the scene of informed, nonduressed consent to the enterprise. <br /><br />My own focus has been to insist on the point that there is no neutral vantage from which to describe a non-normalizing prosthetic intervention as always-only a "correction" or "enhancement," of always-only a "defect" or "disability." And that point very much includes your own confident declarations about knowing what genes, traits, capacities are "better than their own." Better for what? According to whom? <br /><br />You may want to pretend that "nature" is whatever is customary now, and then invest those parochial customs with sacredness or perfection, but it remains true nonetheless that the customary has been otherwise in times past, might be otherwise in times present, and will be otherwise in times to come.<br /><br />Prenatal care and basic nutrition radically changes infant and child mortality, anti-inflammatories transform expectations of adult mortality associated with heart disease, anaesthetic and pain killers change quality of life profoundly -- these are not in-born to human species-being, though they have become normalized for many members of the human species. <br /><br />Who knows what might become normal, and hence natural next? Are you a transhumanist if you are anesthetized before a root canal? Transhumanists have an interest in answering yes -- because to pretend healthcare is enhancement they can lend the coloration of legitimacy to their techno-immortalizing and techno-superhumanizing fancies. <br /><br />You should think deeply about whether your objections to Taylor actually abet the techno-transcendental faith-based transhumanist pseudo-science you claim otherwise to abhor.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-5206885329425171672014-01-01T19:41:15.968-08:002014-01-01T19:41:15.968-08:00You ignored my point about Rebecca Taylor. Don'...You ignored my point about Rebecca Taylor. Don't you think it is interesting that she only opposes "enhancement" but not germline genetic engineering to fix defects? She feels "enhancement" is where medicine crosses the line into transhumanism, but I think it is enhancement itself to enable people to pass on genes that are better than their own.John Howardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15367755435877853172noreply@blogger.com