Theo-ethicist Calls for Scientists to Adopt Code of Ethics Tuesday, Feb 6 2007
bioethics 1:54 pm
I strongly support the idea that regulations and ethics agreements should be adopted as universally as possible in biotechnology, because the danger is very great. However, it bugs me when religious bioethicists use a secular tone to win other scientists over to their point of view. That’s what Dr. Nancy Jones has been doing lately, with a press release that appeared on Eurekalert:
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — The time is ripe for scientific organizations to adopt codes of ethics, according to a scientist and bioethicist from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in the current issue of Science and Engineering Ethics.
“Medical practice and human subject research is influenced by the Hippocratic tradition,” said Nancy L. Jones, Ph.D., “but no similar code of ethics has been formalized for the life and biomedical sciences. Like the Hippocratic oath, a code of ethics for the life sciences can provide a continual standard to shape the ethical practice of science.”
But Jones points to a more far reaching impact of scientific activities. “Scientific prowess claims to not only predict our future, cure, or destroy people, and control evolution, but more portentously reframe what it means to be human.”
Scientific prowess not only claims – it delivers. Religious bioethicists like the idea of using science to heal surface problems, but want the general cycle of life to remain as it is, eschewing human enhancement. Transhumanists like myself cautiously support enhancement. But unlike most transhumanists, I see a profound danger in all transhumanist technologies, and think that transhumanists should more often consider selective relinquishment, or at the very least, selective development which boosts safe applications while supressing unsafe applications.
Nancy Jones is part of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, the bioconservative answer to the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. In an article on the CBHD site, “Genetics, Biotechnology, and the Future”, Jones writes,
The genetics and genomics revolution has at its core information and techniques that can be used to change humanness itself as well as the concepts of what it means to be human. The age-old human fantasies of the mythical chimeras of the ancients, supernatural intelligence, wiping disease from human inheritance, designing a better human being, the fountain of youth, and even immortality now have biotechnical credence in the theoretical promises of genetics and genetic engineering. Not only can humanity’s collective genetic inheritance be shaped by selecting which embryos are allowed to develop via pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, but genetic engineering, the availability of the human embryo for experimentation, and combining genes from many species require only sufficient imagination to catalyze the designing of a new humanity.
Religious bioethicists are keenly aware of advances in biotechnology, because of the “yuck” factor, but few of them recognize that it is cybernetics that will impact us most profoundly in the coming decades, not biotechnology. For more on this, see John Smart’s insightful “Performance Limitations on Engineered Biological Systems” and Al Fin’s “Limitations to Biology”. For the most part, the future is nano, not bio. (Actually it’s cogno, but it’s better for more people to be thinking nano than bio, when considering 7+ year timeframes.)
Religious Bioethicist Calls for Scientists to Adopt Code of Ethics…
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How about this ethics code include the following:
Scientists agree not to molest choir boys and altar girls and not to not cover up for those who do. They agree to not try to by the silence of victims of sexual abuse.
Scientists agree not to try to bully politicians into halting medical research which they don’t even understand for superstitious reasons about cytoplasm containing immortal souls.
Scientist stop strong-arming local politician into turning council meetings into biblestudy sessions.
Scientists will stop all faith healing, selling prayer cloths, holy oil and sacred water to gullible people and telling them that God wants them to be rich but he just can not do it unless the “get their seed in the ground” by making a donation.
And by the way, the term “religious bioethicist” is redundant. The only people I have ever read who have an ethical problem with medical research to save lives and cure diseases are people who believe God is talking to them or who make their living by offering to “make the blind men to see and the lame to walk” and hence have an ulterior motive.
Sorry guys, the cat is out of the bag. There is no effective way to prevent the discovery of knowledge. Just like Kurzweil says, over restricting legitimate discovery under controled conditions with proper oversight will simply drive research underground or to unsavory regimes. Our civilization must educate everyone in ethics, not just researchers. With the power of technology, almost everyone will be researchers soon.
I prefer the bad stuff be found out by the good guys.
INDEED.
“A bioethicist.” Seriously- what is a bioethicist? Who employs them? What do they do when they go to work in the morning? Research ethical questions? How can you research an ethical question?
Good point Tom. You know something is off about a field when it has no systematic means of investigation and has produced no body of knowledge.
Good point D. That describes any field based on postmodern principles of “investigation”. Modern language study in particular, but ethnic studies and women’s studies as well.
Don’t go knocking bioethics just because some bioethicists are idiots. Remember that Transhumanism is a bioethical position. Anyone who takes a position for or against enhancement is an amatuer bioethicist.
“Anyone who takes a position for or against enhancement is an amatuer bioethicist.”
Amateur bioethicist? Then precisely what is a professional bioethicist? It seems not to be so much a “field” as a professional-sounding label that people stick on themselves. Ethics is obviously necessary in, say, the military, but nobody calls themselves a “military ethicist” as if that’s their profession.
Bioethics: –noun (used with a singular verb) a field of study concerned with the ethics and philosophical implications of certain biological and medical procedures, technologies, and treatments, as organ transplants, genetic engineering, and care of the terminally ill.
n. (used with a sing. verb)
The study of the ethical and moral implications of new biological discoveries and biomedical advances, as in the fields of genetic engineering and drug research.
Two of the more popular (i.e., wide-used) official definitions.
Ethics is not a SCIENCE, but rather an intellectual (more specifically, philosophical) DISCIPLINE.
As with most areas of/in ethics, it is “surrounded” (so to speak), and thus influenced by, particular positions in metaphysics/ontology, as well as epistemology. That is, many practicioners of bioethics (“bioethicists”) may (be argued to) come to **spurious** (if not, indeed, ridiculous) positions simply due to their limited metaphysical (including cosmological) presuppositions. Ms. Jones’ worldview would seem (especially from a transhumanist/Singularitarian perspective) to be so limited (or stunted), and thus her positions are (arguably) spurious…
> You know something is off about a field when it has no systematic means of investigation and has produced no body of knowledge.
There goes all of philosophy.
nt: What are your criteria for “body of knowledge”. You seem (to me at least) to be perilously close to **begging the hell out of the question(s)**!!!! If there is no systematic body of axiological/psychological/normative knowledge, the what the hell is Eli trying to study and analyze so as to incorporate some sort of (meta)axiological sensitivity/sensibility into a (F)AGI entity?!?!!!!!
Normative studies are disciplines; non-normative studies are (potentially) sciences. Unless you are that the former category is a null set (or conceptually vacuous, which amounts to the same thing), which you do seem to be doing, then how can you not grant that axiological/normative disciplines (such as ethics and jurisprudence) are, in their own (methodoical) way(s), systematic bodies of knowledge (certainly, systematic bodies of *concepts* at any rate…)
Correction: 5th line from bottom: Unless you are **arguing** or positing… (forgive me again, typing fast, but slower than brain…)
“As with most areas of/in ethics, it is “surrounded” (so to speak), and thus influenced by, particular positions in metaphysics/ontology, as well as epistemology.”
So it is philosophy, in which case this “Nancy Jones” is a damned liar trying to portray herself as a scientist.
“There goes all of philosophy.”
Indeed. For more on how philosophy is bunk, Google the Social Text parody paper. (In short, a physicist submitted a parody to a postmodernist journal, which then published it.)
Umm, Tom, I don’t think being able to spoof a journal on postmodernist literary deconstruction is quite the same as being able to spoof a journal on any non-postmodern subdiscipline in philosophy. Most of philosophy is pretty rigorous, just completely unempirical. Even if it were bunk, that doesn’t imply it’s easy to do, or easy to fake.
“Most of philosophy is pretty rigorous, just completely unempirical.”
Then why are there so many positions which completely contradict each other? How can two rigorous positions contradict each other?
Philosophy, in part, and when properly done, is what amounts to meta-science: It sets (though not necessarily in stone, except for fundamental logical protocols) the methodological boundaries for scientific *conjecture* (as in Popper’s *Conjuectures & Refutations*, a good book btw).
Normative philosophy is also reasonably rigorous. Unless one denies outright that there can be fundamental normative truths (a rather nihilistic position), and that systematic exposition and discussion of normative issues and controversies can generate, if not truths, then at verisimilitude, then one shouldn’t pooh-pooh normative disciplines whole-hog. Indeed, to do so is self-stulltifying, since we all both utilize normative concepts, make normative judgments, and advocate normative positions, protocols, institutions, etc.
But, to be sure, there is good “doing of ethics” and bad (more-or-less incompetent) “doing of ethics”…
“methodological boundaries for scientific *conjecture*”
We already have Bayes’ Theorem, which is essentially Popper with mathematical rigor. Why do we need a second version?
“Unless one denies outright that there can be fundamental normative truths”
I have seen no evidence whatsoever of “fundamental normative truths” (a fancy way, it seems, of saying “objective morality”). If you believe such truths exist, the onus is on you to provide evidence.
“systematic exposition and discussion of normative issues and controversies can generate, if not truths, then at verisimilitude,”
This is not only unsupported, but empirically false: philosophers have been at it for more than two thousand years and still haven’t agreed on any theory. Compare that to physics: sure, physicists disagree on stuff, but we can point to things like GR and Maxwell’s equations that represent real, verifiable progress.
But, Tom, I’d be interested (if only because I’m ALWAYS interested in what you have to say) to know what you have to say about (what amounts to what has been called [deriving from Kant] a sort of “transcendental argument”) to the effect that we cannot avoid normative concepts, and, more to the point, normative protocols and personal normative judgments (or evaluations, if you prefer…). They must have some epestimic status other than sheer gibberish. (And, again, WHAT, cognitively-epistemically, is Eli studying and trying to incorporate into an FAGI!?)
“we cannot avoid normative concepts”
Of course normative concepts exist; however, they only exist with reference to a given optimization process. If you diasgree, the onus is on you to show how such concepts can be derived from a vacuum.
Personally, I have the feeling that generally and in the long run, if it’s possible for us to do something technologically, we will. We’re just that kind of species.
Technological ability is morally neutral. The real question is whether as a species we have the ability to advance spiritually and morally to the point of having a widening scope of interest that comes to include the good of life on this planet as a whole. If enough of us come to that perspective fast enough, technological advancements will represent a plus. Otherwise, we’ll prove too morally stupid to live.
Well-said, both of you, Tom & Paul!
Tom: I concur. But even any given optimization process (or [meta]protocol[s]) must have some sort of overall goal or purpose (or a small set thereof). But if I understand your point, then both Aristotle (see Henry B. Veatch, *Rational Man*, LibertyPress reprint 2003, and John Cooper, *Reason & Human Good in Aristotle*) and good ol’ Ayn Rand would agree with you. Value(s) presuppose both a context and a goal or purpose (telos, entelechy). But how does one go about establishing a *social* optimization process, when you have myriad individuals competing/cooperating across spacetime. Here the insights of both F.A. Hayek (and Mises, too, for that matter) as well as Public Choice theory must come into play. And, since we are pell-mell fast approaching a world in which virtually all production—at least all necessary-for-subsistence production—will be accomplished by robotic/cybernated systems, we also need to closely examine the virtues (in terms of institional/process innovation and utility) of the reform proposals of Louis Kelso and his proteges such as Prof. Robert Ashford and Norm Kurland.
Let me ask you this, Tom: In terms of what optimization process(es) would you personally couch and subsequently try to elucidate or construct a body of ethics for human beings? I should, as always, be very interested in your answer.
Paul: You’re right. Humankind is *the* TECHNOLOGICAL species. That has been, and continues to be, our defining (or at least one of our defining) characteristic(s). And, as Bucky (Fuller) said, we (humankind) are in final exam for continuence in Universe as *MIND*. From the vantage point of 2007, we now have a window (of crisis/opportunity) of from 10 to at most 30 yrs within which to get our collective act together. And eithical-theoretic progress is being made. Let’s hope that applied ethics—and Nick Bostrom, among others, is a prime “player” here—will soon lead to (meta)institutional progress (i.e., progressive change/reform). There will soon be various bifurcation points which will tend/trend us toward a Global Police State which dwarfs even Orwell’s nightmarish vision(s), or toward a Global (meta)Eutopia of leisure and abundance for all humankind. The struggle is joined; welcome to the future…
“*social* optimization process, when you have myriad individuals competing/cooperating across spacetime.”
Society as a whole isn’t really a coherent optimization process; human-to-human bandwidth is too low for us to make decisions as a unified whole. Indeed, perhaps corruption is the inverse of social intelligence; very corrupt countries like Nigeria have no coherent goals at all, while a country like Britain is at least able to put together some kind of national policy that most people agree on.
“In terms of what optimization process(es) would you personally couch and subsequently try to elucidate or construct a body of ethics for human beings? I should, as always, be very interested in your answer.”
Ask Eliezer, he’s the one trying to build such an optimization process. There is no currently extant process that even resembles a human. We know humans act like optimization processes, because they can pursue long-term goals (even if those goals are never clearly stated). But a technical answer to your question would necessarily be FAI-complete, since if we could deconstruct a human into a formalized optimization process we could then build an AI that maximizes that processes’ utility.
Hello, all. Newcomer to this site here. Hopefully I’ll be welcome.
In reading this thread I am struck very much so by the recollections of several of the issues that were ‘discussed’ in the SF novel, “Gravity Dreams” by L.E. Modessit., Jr. The novel isn’t all that “hard” but it does describe a few functional post “MNT advent” societies (focusing on a particular, highly secular, MNT society) and delves into the philosophical implications of goals/’dreams’, as well as interaction with what can only be described as “FAI”. (The author uses the term, “NG” or ‘nanogod’).
I find the parallelisms there interesting, and thought I’d mention it.
Insofar as the ‘oversight’ of the proximity of cybernetic-integration (‘BMI’/'MMI’ or what-have-you :) ) by so-called religious bioethicists — an oxymoron rather than a redudancy in my opinion — I have to say that this is merely because it hasn’t hit the media yet.
As soon as it does, the same objections will develop. I have deeply religious friends whom I have discussed transhumanism under various guises with, and every single one of them would actively advocate the absolute banning of any sort of integration — biological or mechanical — with the human ‘blueprint’. They also have an adverse ‘gut-reaction’ to the concept of AI, empathetic or otherwise.
I once heard one make the argument that cyberization specifically would have to be forbidden for anyone to ever possess — because sooner or later some ‘cyborg’ would attempt to force it on others. When I pointed out the same logic applied to faith itself, well… the conversation ended. :)