Dennett’s razor
Myths about the sanctity of life, or of consciousness, cut both ways. They may be useful in erecting barriers (against euthanasia, against capital punishment, against abortion, against eating meat) to impress the unimaginative, but at the price of offensive hypocrisy or ridiculous self-deception among the more enlightened.
Absolutist barriers, like the Maginot Line, seldom do the work they were designed for…. Surely it would be better to try to foster an appreciation for the nonabsolutist, nonintrinsic, nondichotomized grounds for moral concern that can co-exist with our increasing knowledge of the inner workings of that most amazing machine, the brain. The moral arguments on both sides of the issues of capital punishment, abortion, eating meat, and experimenting on nonhuman animals, for instance, are raised to a higher, more appropriate standard when we explicitly jettison the myths…. — Daniel Dennett.
Discuss, if you are so inclined.
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April 20th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
So in your view if I believe in the sanctity of human life I am offensively hypocritical and ridiculously self-deceived?
April 20th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
Hi Ed,
Thanks for posting.
It’s not my view, it’s Daniel Dennett’s. And the fact that it riled me a bit was why I posted it in the first place.
I think he’s on the wrong track here, and his hard-line mindset is leading him astray. Even if you, a priori, reject the concept of sanctity as meaningless, that doesn’t necessarily leave one in a moral vacuum when it comes to the value of life. You can just as easily state that valuing (rather than sanctifying) life, or human life, is an axiom of your moral system. It seems a reasonable place to start, and it’s where secular humanism starts, rather than ends. It doesn’t have to be hypocrisy and self-deception.
This is exactly the kind of discussion I was hoping to provoke.
April 20th, 2006 at 7:29 pm
Thank you Joshua,
I just happened across this page today Googling. Reading that statement provoked me. I was just about ready to dig in with both heals on this one.
I suppose you’re right on the sanctity versus value issue. If one does not believe in a Creator, that doesn’t mean they must outright devalue human life in general. It may harder, however, in that case to value all human life the same, e.g. determining those who contribute more to society or to you personally as having a higher value. This view doesn’t appall me as much as it saddens me for those who hold it, because I believe it cheapens everyone’s value in their eyes, including their own when they can’t live up to what constitutes a valuable human. Any of us could be at the mercy of another human being at some point in our lives due to becoming disabled and no longer able to contribute. I just hope if and when that occurs for me, the one(s) I am at the mercy of value the santity of human life.