When Philosophy is Irrelevant

...He maintained that changing the means usually means changing the ends, and that consequently there could be no rational discussion of ends all by themselves...

...A desperate need...

...The closest Fukuyama comes to answering these questions is his discussion of what he calls "Factor X"—whatever it is about humans that forbids us to do to our species what we do to other species of animal (eat them, for example...

...But I cannot see that his and my familiarity with these issues makes us better equipped to serve on regulatory commissions than people who cannot be persuaded to take an interest in any of them, and who are left cold by questions about the ground of morality...

...But I doubt that they will be able to spell out their antecedent knowledge of what that nature is, or to recount the "rational discussion of human ends" by which they acquired that knowledge...

...In Part II, however, Fukuyama inserts some 70 pages of philosophy...

...Here we find chapters titled "Human Rights," "Human Nature" and "Human Dignity...

...They all have tastefully matched skin, eye and hair coloration...

...On some of them I am on the same side as Fukuyama, and on others not...

...One opens his book expecting either a Utopian or an apocalyptic vision of the future...

...But in fact he offers no predictions, only useful warnings and sensible counsel...

...Opponents of samesex marriage say that granting degenerates the right to marry is a senseless and reckless break with our traditional notions of what is natural and what is not...

...He did not think philosophy professors had any special expertise that would help us decide which right trumps which other right, any more than do evolutionary biologists or geneticists...

...The lines they draw will, like most other important political decisions, be the result of pragmatic, experimental, trialand-error compromises between competing moral intuitions...

...Nor do I see that Fukuyama's discussion of these philosophical issues has much to do with his sensible remarks at the conclusion of his book...

...All their children are brilliant, beautiful, tall, strong, neurosis-free, longlived, self-possessed, and masterful...

...One would expect him, therefore, to respond more clearly and forcefully than he actually does to his own questions: "So if human rights rest on a substantive concept of nature, what is that concept...

...That is why Dewey thought it would be as well to regard appeals to "human nature" as rhetorical flourishes we could safely dispense with...

...That term, like the term "degenerate," was put into circulation precisely to throw doubt on the contention that "they are people too...

...Dewey's point is illustrated by the debate about gay rights...

...Nor will it help them much to bear in mind that we want to protect "the full range of our complex, evolved natures against attempts at self-modification" made possible by advances in biotechnology, and that "we do not want to disrupt the unity or the continuity of human nature...

...Fukuyama believes Aristotle was right and Kant wrong about how to ground morality, but it is not clear that anybody except philosophy professors cares much about this, or that they should...

...In the first part, Fukuyama sketches various scenarios that might someday be enacted: For example, the very rich start paying genetic engineers to tweak their gametes...

...But those who think sodomy an abomination are not sure that there is anything more essential to being a human being than displaying a proper abhorrence of "unnatural acts...

...I suspect that he regards these chapters as making the book's distinctive contribution, but I find it hard to see what they are good for...

...In the third and final part, Fukuyama argues that government regulation is necessary to prevent such nightmares, and that any regulatory bodies we set up will have to adopt an experimental approach: "Once we agree in principle that we need a capability to draw red lines, it will not be a fruitful exercise to spend a lot of time arguing precisely where they should be placed...

...Really...

...Other scary scenarios he outlines center around the use of super-Prozacs and super-Ritalins to keep everybody nicely drugged, and optimally efficient, all the time...

...Fukuyama spends many pages explaining that Noam Chomsky is right and John Locke wrong about the nature of the mind, that John Searle is right and Daniel Dennett wrong about the "mystery of consciousness," that Alasdair MacIntyre is right and David Hume wrong about inferring ought-statements from is-statements, and so on...

...We can all agree with his final sentence: "True freedom means the freedom of political communities to protect the values they hold most dear, and it is that freedom that we need to exercise with regard to the biotechnology revolution today...

...Indeed, if one reads only Parts I and III of Our Posthuman Future one will get both a very intelligent, wellresearched and well-written account of the problems regulators will face, and some thoughtful advice about what they have to consider...

...But Fukuyama has not convinced me that the term "human nature" will play an important role in the debates that the regulatory commissions will conduct...

...That is my job...

...This doctrine of what Dewey called "the means-end continuum" amounts to a repudiation of both Aristotle's and Kant's ways of "grounding" morality...

...This is because I cannot see why he thinks philosophy is relevant to the work of the regulators, or why "there is a desperate need for philosophy to return to the pre-Kantian tradition that grounds rights and morality in nature...

...Few readers will disagree with those conclusions...

...As a philosophy professor, I of course have firm views on all those matters...

...Reviewed by Richard Rorty Professor of philosophy, Stanford University...

...He tries very hard to convince us that we must care, and that the language of human rights we habitually employ in political deliberation will be hollow unless tied in with an empirical, scientifically warranted account of human nature...

...author, "Achieving Our Country" Francis Fukuyama's title seems to promise a description of what things will be like now that biotechnology has made it possible to do what our ancestors could not...

...They are designer Übermenschen...

...Can it be defined in a way that does justice to everything that is known scientifically about human behavior...

...He says, plausibly, that "the language of rights has become, in the modern world, the only shared and widely intelligible vocabulary for talking about ultimate human goods or ends...

...It is all of these qualities coming together in a human whole that make up Factor X." That is well said, but I do not see how the regulators of the future will be enlightened by this point when they start trying to draw red lines...

...How will meditation on the complexity and interdependence of the various elements that come together m Factor X help us decide whether the conservatives are right, or whether we should try to remove the gay gene (if such there be) from the gene pool...

...Fukuyama has great faith in philosophy...

...Once those commissioners figure out where to draw some red lines, they will doubtless proclaim that they have drawn them where they did out of respect for human nature...

...Fukuyama says that "the only basis on which anyone can make an argument in favor of equal rights for gays is to argue that whatever their sexual orientation, they are people too in some other respect that is more essential than their sexuality...

...Dewey, by contrast, thought that every such hierarchy was a provisional expedient, to be adopted in an experimental spirit by informed public opinion...

...Factor X," he says, "cannot be reduced to the possession of moral choice, or reason, or language, or sociability, or sentience, or emotions, or consciousness, or any other quality that has been put forth as a ground for human dignity...

...The trouble with dragging "the continuity of human nature" into discussions of what to do is, as John Dewey noted, that conservatives can always be counted on to argue, with some credibility, that the changes proposed by liberals violate that continuity...

...As in other areas of regulation, many of these decisions will have to be made on a trial-and-error basis by administrative agencies, based on knowledge and experience not available to us at present...

...He identifies it with "the rational discussion of human ends," and he claims it "allows us to begin to establish a hierarchy of rights "He seems to think that being on the right side of current debates among philosophy professors will help one establish the correct hierarchy...