While I already passed on a link to Eugene Volokh’s recent
post on legislating morality, I now want to make a few comments.
First, I read The Volokh Conspiracy (VC) regularly as a consistent source of
good commentary and for links for me to pass on through my blog. While I find myself in agreement with, or
even molded by, what I read on VC, Eugene Volokh’s posts especially, I need now
to make some points of disagreement.
I am not sure Volokh is working with a healthy, let alone
accurate understanding of morality. To
be sure, anyone who claims that others are trying to “force their moral views
on them” does not work with an adequate understanding of morality, but I know Volokh doesn't reside in this camp.
Such a statement, however, suggests that we can look to
morals relatively when we know, or have reason to know, such a perspective is
untenable on many grounds. [If I get comments asking me to elaborate here, I will.]
The
suggestion that morals are relative or constructive to some time, place, or
people, for instance, puts in play the moral permissibility of atrocious human
behavior such as the Holocaust, slavery, or genocide. For their proof, moral relativists often cite our need
for tolerance and understanding, our “morally diverse” perspectives, and that
reasonable people oftentimes disagree on what they consider morally
acceptable. If only "need" were enough to justify something.
Where these claims risk becoming unclear is when someone
claims as fact that different cultures have different moral values or that those
different moral values, which each culture claims, are right unto themselves.
Both presuppose a sort of epistemic solipsism because each
says, for different reasons, we cannot understand or know with any certainty
the validity of moral claims.
While I can gather that Volokh does not necessarily lump
himself in this group, some of what he writes later gives support to a morally
relativist approach:
But all judgments
about when human beings acquire certain rights rest on unproven and unprovable
moral calls. . . Moreover, they all force one's
moral views on others.
In addition to flirting with moral relativism, he also displays skepticism
about what are actually verifiable fetological facts:
Now of course these judgments may be
informed by medical observations -- for instance, when the brain develops to a
certain level, or when something will end up naturally growing into a born
human without any further intervention -- or by pragmatic considerations, gut
feel, opinion polls, tradition, views about how precise and clear legal lines
should be, or whatever else. But ultimately these judgments rest not on the
scientific or social facts as such, but on moral judgment calls about how one
evaluates these facts. . . All of us draw lines in this field, whether at
conception, viability, birth, or whenever else. None of us can prove the
validity of those lines through science or through abstract logic.
These statements suggest that we do not know when life begins. This is absurd. Two living cells come together to produce a zygote; life was present from the beginning. The determinative question is when does human life begin. I would suggest we have more than adequate reason to place, if we must, the line that determines human life at conception since our medical technology is becoming increasingly sensative to detecting life. Also, that our definition of "viability" rests on the level of medical advancement, which isn't uniform even in our country.
The principle of charity, however, has me believe that the nature of a blog
post does not allow for the sort of thoroughness that would’ve made clear Mr.
Volokh’s statements.
If this topic interests you, I urge you to read Francis Beckwith’s paper, When You Come to a Fork In the Road, Take
It?” Abortion, Personhood, and the Jurisprudence of Neutrality. [PDF] There, he address fully the inadequacy of an approach like Professor Volokh's.
Link: The Volokh Conspiracy - -.