Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2001 13:36:40 -0800 (PST)
From: Gary E Davis <gedavis1-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: HAB: The Species Of The Ethic ("l.e." paragraphs 42-44)


INTERFACE OF CULTURAL, PERSONAL, AND EXISTENTIAL-ONTIC (SELFNESS)
[42]
("Liberal Eugenics," section III, 4th para.)

"For ethical-political questions...," writes JH (41, end), "it is 'so
many cultures, so many customs'." But he poses this laterally (like
an x,y coordinate system), as if developmental-evolutionary levels of
understanding (pre-conventional....post-conventional) are not
relevant (z-axis), contrary to his own overt isomorphisms between
cognitive developmental stageness and stageness of "normative
structures" (CES, TCA, MCCA). Accordingly, post-conventional thinking
will be preferred by persons working in or toward this stage of
understanding because it affords more flexibility of understanding
and accomodates more complexity of understanding. 

The appeal of flexibility and complexity is, of course, always
relative to one's zone of proximal development; but *theorization* of
such appeal must be based on the nature of intelligent potential, not
a particular stage of development, i.e., based on the innate
*capacity* for stage transition, relative to where stage transition
can go--what I've called "learnability" (past postings).

JH: "The questions raised...by our attitude towards pre-personal
human life ...touch on...such intuitive self-descriptions as guide
our own identification as human beings - that is, our
self-understanding as members of the species."

It's "our attitude" is singular?, i.e., first person plural? One
would think that, given "so many cultures...," that there might be
plural attitudes. There are plural "intuitive self-descriptions," but
they allegedly guide a singular "our own identification," yet AS
plurals!: "as human beings." There is here a fundamental ambiguity
(if not ambivalence or even vertigo) between singularity and
plurality; is this ambiguity inherent to "the species"?  Certainly,
at present, it is only such a singularity-in-plurality that is
associated with "anthropological universality." But JH thinks
otherwise, apparently, that somehow a universal singularity or
singular universality is intuitive everywhere (one which is decidedly
non-ethical, in the sense of any political ethics, but "moral" in
some sense--beyond human rights--sustained by "the" ethics of the
species). He anticipates "the vision," singularly, that "different
cultures have of 'man'" that is "everywhere the same," as the same
"anthropological universality," presumably beyond
religio-metaphysicalist worldviews.

But the vision is not yet articulated, just anticipated. Meanwhile,
the current alarm in the face of chimeras is associated with
anticipation of the vision. A "giddyness" (bad translation?
"vertigo"? "nausea"?) pervades those feeling "revulsion" that "bears
witness" to "species boundaries which we naively assumed to be
unalterable." This "consists of the very uncertainty which invades"
not just those who are naively assuming boundaries, but which invades
"the" "identity of the species". Then, suddenly, the reader is
presented with a synaesthetic of (1) philosophical rhetoric ("the
very concept"), (2) universalist appeal ("we had of ourselves"), (3)
plurality ("as cultural members"), and (4) discursive claim ("of the
species of 'man'"): "The perceived, and dreaded, advances of genetic
engineering affect the very concept we had of ourselves as cultural
members of the species of 'man'."

JH: "Of course, these ideas also are plural. Cultural forms of life
are bound up with systems of interpretations" (43).  "Forms"! What is
the singularity of these forms? This singularity of the human,
expressing forms of life, is primordially different from the systems
of interpretation with which it is "bound up". Note that this is
different from speaking of *systems* bound up with the human. The
*human* is bound up with the systems. But is "bound up" the
fundamental situation (beyond religio-metaphysical systems)? What is
the reality of the relationship between human forms and systems of
interpretation? Bind? Bond? Constituting? Being constituted by?
Interdependence? Codependence? 

Anyway, relative to the cultural-evolutionary variabilities here
(including religious and metaphysicalist systems), we have, according
to JH, "for good reasons, ... the constitutional state which is
neutral." But "we have" not only this; we have these systems
"subordinated to the moral foundations of the constitutional state."
The moral is posed as governmental superordinance IRT religious and
metaphysicalist worldviews. 

The moral overrules religio-metaphysicalist-based conceptions of
"the" ethics of the species--"a morality presumed to be universally
accepted," i.e., "the abstract morality of reason proper to subjects
of human rights." But what is this morality *other than* the human
rights? It's an "abstract morality of reason presumed to be
universally accepted." It's an "autonomous morality" (44) sustained
by "a minimal ethical self-understanding of the species" that is "an
anthropological self-understanding of the species...consistent with
an autonomous morality" (44). 

JH: "As long as the one and the other are in harmony, the priority of
the just over the good is not problematical." But *this* statement is
problematical. What is anthropological universality that sustains the
harmony (and disharmony) and the evaluation of the relevance of the
just (i.e., in our case, the determination that pre-personal life has
rights)? If ethics-S sustains autonomous morality, is this sustaining
such that autonomous morality is not in a position to evaluate it's
own relationship to ethics-S?  In other words, is the "sustaining"
constitutive? What is the reality allowing for evaluation of whether
or not life is or is not "personal" or a subject of human rights?
There's a third option with harmony and disharmony; it's something
else--perhaps like saying:  It's not just a matter of x,y
coordinates; there's a z-axis. There is the fact that we are talking
about an ethics-S sustaining some autonomous morality other than
human rights with variable resonance and dissonance. Is harmony the
nature of the music, thereby enforcing itself IRT a possibly richer
song of the Earth?


Next: PROVOCATION OF THE  INTERFACE OF 3-FOLD NAIVETE AND GENETIC
INTERVENTION (48)
[4th from last para. of section III)

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