Biotechnology and Human Destiny - Stephan Kampowski and Human... · 2018-05-13 · The goals of...

Corso FL2807 al Secondo Ciclo Prof. Stephan Kampowski

Pontificio Istituto Giovanni Paolo II Piazza S. Giovanni in Laterano, 4 00120 Città del Vaticano 06 698 95 539 [email protected] The slides will be available after the

lectures at: www.stephankampowski.com/corsi.html

Biotechnology and Human Destiny

Bibliography:

To be read for the exam:

Leon Kass, Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity. The Challenge for Bioethics, San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2002.

OR:

Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology, Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2001.


Bibliography:

Further recommended literature:

The President’s Council on Bioethics, Beyond Therapy. Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness, New York: Reagan, 2003.

Robert Spaemann, “On the Anthropology of the Encyclical Evangelium Vitae,” in: Pontifical Academy for Life (ed.), Evangelium Vitae: five years of confrontation with the society, Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2001, 437-451.

Jürgen Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2003.


Bibliography:

Further recommended literature:

Stephan Kampowski, A Greater Freedom: Biotechnology, Love, and Human Destiny. In Dialogue with Hans Jonas and Jürgen Habermas, Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2013.

Stephan Kampowski - Dino Moltisanti (eds.), Migliorare l’uomo? La sfida etica dell’enhancement, Siena: Cantagalli, 2011.


Outline:

1. Introduction: Goals, context, and method

2. The mystery of life. Reflections on the organism

3. Natural teleology

4. The technological ontology of modernity


Outline:

5. Biotechnology beyond therapy – general considerations:

a. The safety of the means

b. Justice in interpersonal relationships

c. The wisdom of the ends

d. The meaning of human activity

6. A hermeneutics of some of the particular promises of biotechnology

a. Better children

b. Ageless bodies

c. Higher performance

d. Happy souls


The goals of this course:

not a casuistry of individual cases but

a critical reflection on the ends of biotechnology and

a reflection on the phenomenon of life

Central theses:

One of the great dangers of biotechnology is that it substitutes moral action (praxis) by technical “making” (techne), self-possession by self-manipulation.

There is a danger of biotechnology undermining human self-understanding as moral and responsible agents and hence our capacity for interpersonal relationships and love.

1. Goals, Context and Method

Our mode of reflecting:

1. While it is important to distinguish between science and science-fiction,

it is legitimate to discuss the implications of a procedure not yet available to see whether it is desirable.

2. While it must be said that some of the techniques we will be discussing may be immoral already because they necessarily imply immoral means,

it is still useful to discuss whether the goals of these techniques are desirable.


What is biotechnology?

It is the application of technology to life: the processes and products that offer the potential to change and control the phenomenon of life.

Its possible objects are microbes, plants, animals, human beings.

It implies a technological attitude toward life.

Biotechnology is a type human empowerment to increase the human being’s power over nature, including human nature.


What is the goal of biotechnology?

to relieve the human condition (G. McKenny)

Which aspects of the human condition are most in need of relief ?

cancer, Alzheimer, mental illness, depression, loss of memory…

But how about stupidity or meanness?

Does the “relief ” only have to do with fighting evils?

Why not augment positive goods, such as beauty, intelligence, strength?


Biotechnology holds great promises.

But there are also great concerns:

Its meaning for human self-understanding (freedom and moral responsibility)

eugenics

government control of human behavior

terrorism


Which biotechnological procedures are in use already and which one’s are thinkable?

performance enhancing drugs, stimulants

cosmetic surgery

artificial procreation

genetic engineering

psychopharmaceutical drugs

nanotechnology (manipulation of matter on the atomic and molecular level)

cloning

cyborgs


Some of the questions we need to ask ourselves with respect to biotechnology:

What is life?

Is there such a thing as human nature? What does it mean to manipulate it?

What does it mean to be active as a human being?

What is health and is it the supreme good?


About health:

World Health Organization: “Health is the state of complete well-being on the physical, mental and social level.”

This definition is close to what the Greeks called eudaimonia.

It would be impossible to distinguish therapeutic from non-therapeutic biotechnological interventions.


About health:

Hans Georg Gadamer (The Enigma of Health): Health is an equilibrium.

Medical intervention aims at helping the body to regain a disturbed equilibrium.

It does not aim at happiness.

Health is a great good, but not the highest.

We need reasons to live that are greater than our own lives.


What is life?

Hans Jonas (1903-1993): we need a philosophy of the organism -

not as a secondary branch of philosophy,

but as a highroad to ontology.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976): What is being?

Heidegger: the way to arrive at being-as-such is to look at the only being for whom the question of being-as-such arises: human existence or Dasein.

Jonas: Heidegger has forgotten the body.


But Jonas follows Heidegger by using a “descending” ontology.

What being is, is revealed in the more complex rather than in the more simple, in the human being, rather than in the atom.

What is the method of the modern sciences?

Analysis.

To know what a thing is, you look at its constituent parts.

This method is not useful for the dealing with living beings.


Once you analyze a cat, it will no longer be a cat.

You can’t construct a cat by recombining its atoms.

Life is an original category.

Being manifests itself in the realm of the living.

Living beings are organisms.

The defining traits of organisms are

their metabolism

their teleological structure


Living beings need to make efforts to maintain themselves in being.

Their being is a task.

Their being is characterized by interests and goals.

What is the metabolism?

Sometimes it is thought of in analogy with the combustion process of machines.

Jonas: “A combustion theory of metabolism is entirely inadequate.”


The organism is characterized by a freedom unknown to a machine:

In the combustion process the fuel changes, while the machine ideally remains unchanged.

In the metabolic process what is changing is not only the fuel but the organism itself.

The nutrient substances become part of it.

Cells are continually dying and being renewed.

The metabolizing system is also the system that emerges from the process.


The living being is the process of its own becoming.

Metabolism means that there is both identity and constant change.

The principle of unity is the form or the “soul.”

The organism’s form, or soul, enjoys a certain independence from matter, i.e., from this matter of which it is currently composed, because

soon it will be composed of different matter.

The organism’s freedom with regards to its matter is unknown to any machine.


The ship of Theseus has no identity lo loose. Its identity is conferred

on it externally. It has not got any internal

principle of unity. Its change occurs to it from

external causes. The organism is the agent of its own

becoming (autopoiesis). has an inner principle of

unity.


The organism is subject to a necessity unknown to any machine

A machine can be and be inactive.

To be, an organism has to be active.

To live means to be under the necessity of being active: to metabolize.


Jonas: in the dialectics of freedom and necessity proper to the organism for the first time being presents itself in an emphatic way.

Only for living beings non-being is a true possibility.

Survival becomes a task and thus a concern.

Life means existence as concern.


Living beings are characterized by a transcendence and by a relationality.

Living beings, inasmuch as they make efforts to keep alive, are beings that have ends.

But they do not only make efforts to stay alive, they also aim at their own propagation.

They are fruitful beings.

3. Natural Teleology

Aristotle, On the Soul: “For any living thing that has reached its normal development … the most natural act is the production of another like itself.”

Living beings are beings with interests and goals.

These goals have effects on them, acting as final causes.


For Aristotle, final causality was the principal cause among the four causes, as it was for St. Thomas Aquinas: “The end is called the cause of causes” (Sth I, 5, 2).

When Aristotle speaks about God as the Unmoved Mover he does not have in mind a clock-maker.

Rather, God moves the world as the beloved moves the lover.

The living being’s efforts to keep itself in being and to propagate its like can be understood as expression of its desire to participate in the divine (On the Soul, II, 4).


Still in medieval times, the world was seen as filled with purposes.

All things, even inanimate ones, act for their proper ends.

The presence of all this meaningfulness in the cosmos served St. Thomas as the basis for his fifth way.

There needs to be a being that has put this purpose in them: God.

In this context, the highest form of knowledge possible is theoria, the contemplative union with the most worthy causes.


Today, final causes have fallen into disrepute.

Speaking of final causes in nature opens the charge of anthropomorphism.

It is scientific common sense that only human beings act for ends.

Nature itself does not have ends, and to read them into her is to speak unscientifically.

Our argument in favor of final causes:

to discuss the reasons why it was abandoned

to show what else we lose when we lose final causality


Hans Jonas: natural teleology was not abandoned because it was proven wrong.

The motive of its abandonment was simply that it appeared unproductive.

For Francis Bacon (1561-1626), knowing that the rain falls to water the field neither helps in producing nor in predicting rain.

It may even feed into human laziness and discourage a search for “true” causes.

Knowledge needs to be fruitful, i.e., productive.

Knowledge is power, i.e., power to produce.


Modernity: only a factum is a verum.

To know what a cosmic nebula is, is to be able to produce one in principle.

We can only know what we have made ourselves.


Science and technology now go hand in hand.

Knowledge has become practical.

There is no longer any need for natural teleology.

It is the scientist who establishes the goals.

Taking into consideration presumed ends present in things would only

obstruct the scientific process

be useless for getting results


Nature, once considered mater, is now looked at as matter and finally reduced to material.

To think of internal dynamics, goals or desires of things can only be a distraction.

It is the human being who imposes the ends.


But there is a price to pay for banning natural teleology.

The problem regards the scientists themselves and ultimately all human beings.

The ban on teleology will inevitably have to be extended to human beings, too.

To see goals intrinsic in nature is to speak anthropomorphically.

But human beings too belong to nature.

We are running the risk of becoming our own anthropomorphism (R. Spaemann).


We cannot limit teleology only to human beings.

We either admit it for at least the realm of all the living,

or, denying it to plants and animals, we must deny it also to human beings.

But why is teleology that important?

It is only the idea of finality that allows us to speak of something as an individual being.

Only a being that has ends can be said to be free.


Teleology and Individuality

For there to be unity in a thing, there has to be a principle of unity in the thing.

This is the form.

The form as principle of unity of a thing is at the same time an end.

The full realization of their form is a goal toward which things tend.


Organisms tend toward the full realization of their potentialities.

The end of a lion is to become everything that it means to be a lion.


Aristotle: “The ‘what’ and the ‘that for the sake of which’ are one” (Physics, II, 7).

It is the question of ends which decides the question of whether something is a substance or an aggregate.

If a being is a substance, a truly individual being, it will have ends, because its full development will itself be one of its ends.

From this it follows that only living beings are individuals in the strict sense.


A car exists for a purpose.

But the purposes which it serves are not its own, but they belong to the one who produced it or owns it.

Organisms, on the contrary, pursue their own ends from their own inner principle.

Every living being at least has the tendency to maintain itself in being and to reproduce.

Having this internal unity, organisms can affirm themselves against their surrounding.


Jonas: the primordial distinction between the living substance and the rest of the world, between internal and external, between self and not-self is the very first step of freedom.

A being deprived of ends cannot be distinguished from what surrounds it and would not have any capacity for its own initiative.


Teleology and Freedom:

Objection:

Ends like self-preservation and reproduction are pre-given.

Even if they play a role for a being’s individuality, they are not freely chosen.

The height of freedom would seem to be in the capacity to choose one’s ends, independent of any biological given.

We will be free only if we will be able to give our ends to ourselves.


The main problem with this concept of an undetermined freedom is the problem of the criteria for our choices.

Why would human freedom choose this rather than that?

People have the strangest desires.

If there is nothing given, there will be no criterion on which to base our judgment that one desire is better than another.

We’d have no criterion for saying that what we have chosen is good, better, or worse.


The terms “good,” “bad,” “better,” “worse,” presuppose a being for whom things are good, better or worse.

These terms presuppose a being endowed with a certain teleology.

If we understand freedom as freedom from nature, we cannot say that, all things being equal, it is better to live than to die or that it is better to hear than to be deaf.

In absence of given ends, there could be no rational justification of our choices.


One could say, “Well, what counts is not what is chosen, but how it is chosen.”

The ideal is that of “authenticity.”

This is the way of modern-day existentialism.

Sartre: “radical choice”

He gives the example of the young Frenchman confronted with a supposedly criteria-less alternative during World War II (cf. Existentialism is a Humanism):

join the French resistance army in the UK

stay with his mother who is attached to him.


Charles Taylor: Sartre’s example presupposes what it wants to deny.

The radical choice is not between helping his needful mother and taking an ice-cream.

Both options are about highly relevant issues.

The young Frenchman did not decide that these issues were important.

If there is indeed a dilemma, it exists only because the relevance of either option is not chosen but given.


But one can still be more radical than Sartre.

For Nietzsche, the will is enjoying itself in its own activity of willing.

It does not matter what it wants; it is important only that whatever it wants, it wants resolutely.

That there is no criterion for choosing is acknowledged and affirmed as such.

The strong man has learned to live without meaning.

A. Camus: the biggest problem of philosophy is why not to commit suicide.

Ultimately existentialism does lead to nihilism.


Another way of explaining our choices is by explaining them materialistically.

My choices and preferences cannot be justified by reference to a nature, but they can be explained positivistically in terms of neuronal processes or chemical reactions in my body.

It may be that someone in whom these processes occur in a different way has other preferences.


Jonas: materialism is a philosophical theory that is inconsistent with it itself.

It reduces thought to neuronal processes in the brain.

But as a theory, materialism is itself the product of thought.

The materialist would not want to say that his theory is simply the result of neuronal processes in his brain.


The materialist would claim a truth value for his theory.

But if his theory is true, then our thoughts have no relation to reality, to truth or falsehood.

“He is the Cretan calling all Cretans liars” (Jonas).

Further, anyone arguing for a theory does so for a purpose.

It is a performative contradiction to argue that there are no purposes.


Where there is pure absurdity or complete determination, there is no freedom.

For freedom to be possible, at least some ends need to be given.

A being for whom life is a good can, on the prior acceptance of this given, freely promote, cultivate, defend or heroically surrender this good.

It is much freer than a being for whom nothing is good, that has nothing to promote or defend, and that in the end is dead.

Interest is the distinctive sign of life and the condition of the possibility of freedom.


Cf. Hans Jonas, Philosophical Essays: From the Ancient Creed to Technological Man, Chicago, 1974.

The 16th and 17th centuries witnessed a technological revolution

Is it correct to speak of a revolution?

A revolution is a change that is

radical (it touches the foundations of what it changes)

comprehensive (it touches upon a vast field of life)

concentrated in time (violent)

4. The Technological Ontology of Modernity

The revolution has begun with human beings and their thought.

Prior to the technological revolution, there was the scientific revolution, which has changed the way in which we think.

The scientific revolution did not begin with practical and technological goals.

The modern science that began the revolution was cosmology, which does not lend itself easily to practical intents.

Modern technology is the belated effect of the scientific and metaphysical revolution with which the modern began.


The new concept of nature implies its manipulability.

It is not enough to observe nature. To know nature, one needs to manipulate it, using

the scientific method. The scientific method - is reductive: it is interested only in measurable

quantities. It claims to be objective and to prescind from the

subject. It requires repeatability It uses the experiment: “The secrets of nature

reveal themselves more readily under the vexations of art than when they go their own way” (F. Bacon, Novum Organum, 1620).


As a method of knowledge the scientific method suggests itself for use to practical ends.

To know a thing is to be able to imagine what we “can we do with it when we have it” (Th. Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651).

Technology is implied in the metaphysics of modern science and is practically present in the scientific procedures used.

Inasmuch as it presupposes a particular idea about nature, today’s global technology has a metaphysical side and is not only practical.


What are the theoretical beginnings of this revolution?

A sign of the changed attitude is the use of the word “new” as a recommendation.


Novelty had not always been thought of as a compliment.

In the ancient Greco-Roman world, the greatest recommendation for a proposal was its antiquity.

Antiquity confirmed the value of a conviction. The truth of a proposal has passed the test of

time. The widespread use of the tag “new” signals a

great change. Respect for the wisdom of the past has been

replaced by the suspicion of error and a mistrust toward authority.


The moderns are the older ones. We have learned from the errors of the past.

The modern age: the principle of innovation requires a constant rupture.

In the present one critiques the past.

The past needs to be overcome in view of further progress.


The transition from medieval to modern humanity:

Urbanization and the collapse of the feudal order

The rise of national monarchies

The expansion of trade

New information technologies (the invention of the printing press)

The discovery of the New World with previously unknown cultures (leading to skepticism)

The Protestant reformation

The cosmological discoveries (Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo)


The implications of the cosmological discoveries:

The homogeneity of all of nature throughout the whole universe

The absence of a solid architecture to explain the order of the universe

The probable infinity of the universe, which thus ceased to be an ordered “whole” or “cosmos”


The homogeneity of all of nature throughout the whole universe Suddenly there is no more essential difference

between the terrestrial and the celestial spheres, between terrestrial nature and stellar nature, between corruptible and incorruptible nature.

Any idea of natural order or hierarchy lost its most tangible support in the scheme of visible things.

The whole universe is governed by the same kind of laws.


The homogeneity of all of nature throughout the whole universe

The same laws that govern the motion of objects on earth govern the motion of the planets.

The laws of motion govern the orbiting of the planets.

One began to explain any kind of motion by referring to the action of forces.


Aristotelian physics: Locomotion is part of the more general

category of change. Every change stands in need of a cause. Rest is the natural state of a body. Inertia means that a body that is not moved by

an active principle remains at rest. Motion is not a cause but has a cause. Rest does not have a cause, but is its own

proper cause in absence of any active cause.


The conceptual revolution in kinetics (the science of motion) goes back to Galileo:

Locomotion is no longer understood as belonging to the category of change.

Rather locomotion is seen as a state equivalent to rest.

Locomotion is a state of a body just as rest is. What needs a cause is not locomotion but the

change from motion to rest or from rest to motion or the change of motion.

A body will continue to move as long as no external force interferes.


Change has two aspects: velocity and direction. The terms in which velocity and direction are

understood are space and time. Arithmetic is able to define every motion as a

quantity combined of space and time. Every increase or decrease of velocity and

every change of direction tells of the action of an added force.

Every change can be reduced to the concept of acceleration.

Motion can be resolved into its two simple components (space and time).


The result of this new conceptual scheme is

The “geometrization” of nature and

The “mathematization” of physics.

Every change in nature can be quantified.

The relation between cause and effect becomes a quantitative relation.

The metaphysical corollary of affirming the equivalence between cause and effect is the law of the conservation of mass.


The constancy of matter and energy is an indispensable axiom of modern science.

It implies the negation of any intervention by non-physical or spiritual causes on the physical order of causes.

It implies the negation of miracles. Even if miracles proceed from a cause, for

instance God’s will, they are not reconcilable with the new physics.

The new physics requires that every physical event is explained by physically quantifiable antecedents.


But it is not true that the spontaneous emergence of a substance or force ex nihilo, or an exceptional violation of the constancy laws would shatter the totality of the order of our experience.

The concept of a rule is compatible with the concept of an exception.

The conviction that miracles can never happen is an article of faith as is the conviction that they can indeed sometimes occur.


There is indeed a class of “miracles” of which each of us experiences constantly.

A miracle would already be constituted by an ordinary act of the human will that initiates an external change.

Such an act would initiate a new causal chain ex nihilo as far as physical antecedents are concerned.


To explain acts of the will with the help of the new metaphysics, one has resort to the most strenuous arguments, showing by the very fact the fideism of the new attitude.

Together with the causal efficacy of human ends final ends of any kind are excluded from the new universe.

Natural teleology shares with human goals some trans-material aspect.

That nature does not have any ends follows from the principle of quantitative equivalence in the relations of cause and effect.


Only the immediate antecedents determine the next step.

There is no tendency toward something, but only the transferal of mass and energy from one moment to the next.

It is not the future that draws but the past that pushes.

As there is only one kind of worldly matter so there is only one kind of law that governs the diffusion and change of bodies in space:

the basic laws of physics.

Here one speaks of pan-mechanism.


Nature is not the place to look for goals. Causal efficiency does not have any preferred

results. Nature is indifferent with respect to values. Nature cannot be frustrated because it does not

have anything that it seeks, it has no goal to which it aspires.

There is no “good” or “bad” in nature, but only whatever has to be and therefore is.

All formations in nature are in a certain sense “accidental” – necessary in terms of causal antecedents, but without intentional or terminal direction.


This conviction is now applied by Darwin to all forms of life, including human life.

The forms of life are the consequence of a history of mechanics.

Every new configuration is just a point of passage toward another configuration, without any guiding idea.

There is no emotion or internal motivation to give direction.

There is no tending toward that could miss its mark.

Nature is an automatism of indifferent forces.


There was no interest that disposed nature toward the rise of living beings.

What has no will nor reason and what is indifferent toward itself does not require any respect.

Reverential fear of nature is substituted by a disenchanted knowledge.

If nature does not sanction anything, it permits everything.

The human being cannot violate any immanent integrity.


Nature is not a norm.

A monstrosity is as natural as any “normal” growth.


The technological ontology of modernity is pan-mechanism.

All is explicable in terms of mechanics.

Today’s quantum physics is much more sophisticated.

Where pan-mechanism sees strict necessity, quantum physics sees random chance.

In neither case is change guided by any goal.


Why do we speak about this ontology in a course no biotechnology?

We have a moral sense. We are open to the evidence of the good.

At times, the new biotechnologies confront us with intricate questions that require serious study and acute attention and that are difficult to answer.

Very often, however, the main question to be asked is not at all whether this or that procedure is licit or not, but rather:

How is it psychologically and morally possible for someone to want to do certain things?


How come he or she does not see the evident evil in certain procedures, like research on embryos, cloning, the creation of chimeras?

What permits it is what we may call scientific abstraction:

This is when pan-mechanism does not remain a theoretical edifice but truly becomes the house we live in.

If persons really convince themselves that only what can be measured is true, then they may also “manage” to see life – including human life – simply as a brute fact, to be manipulated as any other material thing.


But life is not a brute fact.

A living being has goals and aims that it can accomplish or fail to accomplish.

A living being has an exteriority and an interiority.

Life is the being of the living (Aristotle).

A living being has its mode of existence inasmuch as it is interested in its existence and in its good existence (eu-zen).

Life is situated in the tension between living and living well.


With living beings, being itself has manifested itself for the first time in an emphatic sense (Jonas).

All this the new science cannot see, because it only sees measurable quantities.

If I do not look at the living as living, then there are no limits to what I might allow myself to do to living beings, human beings included.

Deliberate efforts are necessary to convince oneself of the brute facticity of life, inasmuch as this attitude is completely counter-intuitive.


But often the very scientists that negate goals and interests and that reduce life to a brute fact are themselves guided by strong interests

For us human beings mere curiosity, the interest in knowing for the sake of knowing, remains a strong motivation.

Furthermore, science is at the interest of technology, which is important for industrial production (money).

Furthermore, science at the service of “progress” is stylized as only goal worthy of the ultimate vocation of the human person (honor).


J. Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance: “In the end this concerns a choice that can no

longer be made on purely scientific grounds or basically on philosophical grounds.

The question is whether reason, or rationality, stands at the beginning of all things and is grounded in the basis of all things or not.

The question is whether reality originated on the basis of chance and necessity … and thus from what is irrational;

that is whether reason […is] a chance by-product of irrationality and floating in an ocean of irrationality, … or whether the principle that represents the fundamental conviction of Christian faith and of its philosophy remains true:

‘In principio erat Verbum’ – at the beginning of all things stands the creative power of reason.”

4.1: Responding to Technological Ontology

This question cannot be resolved on the level of the natural sciences.

A final proof of the Christian option cannot be given.

J. Ratzinger: “Can reason really renounce its claim to the priority of what is rational over the irrational, the claim that the Logos is at the ultimate origin of things, without abolishing itself ?”

No-one can give rational arguments to someone who negates the rationality of reason.


For Christianity, nature, the human being, God, ethos and religion are indissolubly connected.

Christianity is a religion that is oriented toward a rational vision of reality.

But reason is more than a mere mathematical reason; it is more than a technical rationality, which is simply a counting with consequences, a know-how.


For Christianity, the very Reason that has ordered the world rationally has willed it in creation and has shown compassion toward his creature in redemption.

The Creator is also the Redeemer.

The Logos is also Agape.

Love and reason coincide as the two pillars of reality: true reason is love and love is true reason.


J. Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity: Martin Heidegger distinguishes between

calculating thought and reflexive thought. Calculating thought is concerned about what can

be produced. Reflexive thought is concerned with meaning. Both types of thought are necessary. The danger of the success of calculating reason is

that it can lead to an inattentiveness, an “absence of thought” (cfr. also the thoughlessness of which H. Arendt speaks) – a flight from thinking about being.

Human beings stand in need of meaning. They cannot live only on the bread of the producible.

In the depth of their humanity, humans need the word, they need love and meaning.


Meaning does not derive from knowing. Meaning cannot be produced. Meaning is that which guides every type of

production. A self-made meaning is not a meaning. Meaning is the foundation on which we stand. Therefore it cannot be made but only received. The Christian faith understands our existence as a

response (Ant-wort) to the Word (Wort) that sustains all things.

Christian faith says yes to the meaning that we have not made but that we can only receive, and which has already been given us.

What is needed is welcoming it and entrusting ourselves to it.


Receiving precedes making.

To believe means to entrust oneself to what we cannot and must not produce – to the foundation of the world as meaning – which gives me the freedom to act.

A know-how – a capacity to produce – that is limited to what is measurable cannot ask itself the question of truth: the question of how things are in themselves.

It only asks itself about how things work for us.

The truth of things is substituted with the utility of things.


The human person’s access to the truth of being is expressed with the word “Amen”, which implies a notion of entrustment, faithfulness, firmness, solid foundation.

Human persons can base themselves only on the truth: a truth that is received and not self-made.

The meaningful foundation, the Logos, is truth also and precisely inasmuch as it is meaning.

The human way of relating with the truth of being is not knowing (Wissen) but understanding (Verstehen): understanding the meaning to which one has

entrusted oneself.


Understanding aims at the foundation that one has received as meaning.

Understanding does not stand in contradiction to faith, but is the fulfillment of faith.

Ultimately, it derives only from the faith.

It is an understanding (Verstehen) that goes beyond our comprehension (Begreifen):

We understand that we are comprised: the meaning encompasses us.


At the beginning of being there is the creative freedom that creates freedoms.

Freedom becomes the structural form of being.

The Christian faith is the option for the primacy of the Logos, the option for the primacy of creative meaningfulness that sustains all of reality.

This Primary Thought is not a neutral consciousness but freedom, creative love, person.

The faith is the option for the primacy of the particular over the universal.

The supreme is not the most universal, but the particular.

The Logos, whose thought is the world, is a person.

His thought does not only know but loves.


The Logos is creative because it is love.

Because it is love, the Logos does not only think his thought but releases his thought into the freedom of its own existence, he bestows on it its own being-in-itself: its proper act of existing.

If the meaning of everything, if the Being that comprehends all things is consciousness, freedom, and love, then the supreme principle of the world is not cosmic necessity but freedom.


Freedom is the necessary structure of the world.

A world created and willed under the risk of freedom and love cannot be only a mathematical reality.

It is the space of love and freedom. Then human action is not simply a knowing

how to produce, but a free response to a gift of love, to the gift of a meaning received.

The profound motivation of action: is not the fabrication of a product, but the expression of a meaning:

the sense of gratitude for a gift received.


What follows under point 5 is taken from: The President’s Council on Bioethics, Beyond Therapy. Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness, New York: Reagan, 2003. 5.1: Better Children Raising children: implies efforts guided by

some idea of what is good for the child But what is really good for the child? To be a child is to be on the way, to be not yet. Parents love their children as they are but do

everything to change them. They guide them to be able to do without their

guidance.

5. A Hermeneutics of the Promises of Biotechnology

How does one “improve” one’s children?

language

symbolic acts

praise and blame, reward and punishment

But there are limits given by nature itself. The natural endowment may be insufficient.

Already prior to the biotechnological age we’ve been using technological products to perfect the gifts of nature: vitamins, lenses, immunization…

5.1. Better Children

The goal till now has been to restore or protect health.

The new technologies open ways to improve on the natural endowments themselves through genetics or medicine: designer babies.


1953: Watson and Crick discover the structure of the DNA

2003: conclusion of the Human Genome Project: deciphering of the human DNA

There exist numerous studies trying to correlate phenotypical characteristics to the presence or absence of genetic indicators.

In theory this knowledge allows for three different ways of increasing genetic control: to eliminate the “defective” to select the “good” to reconstruct for the “best”


Eliminating the “defective”: prenatal diagnosis

Genetic screening by means of

amniocentesis (extraction of amniotic fluid from the amniotic sac)

chorionic villus sampling (CVS) (extraction of placental tissue)

Today one can identify a number of chromosomal abnormalities like Downs Syndrome.

There is no cure.

Upon the diagnosis there follows an abortion.


Preliminary observations:

The procedure is not useful to “enhance” one’s children.

The examinations involve the risks of infections, malformations, and spontaneous abortions.

One “cures” a sickness by eliminating the sick.

fundamental attitude: the admission to life is conditional

discrimination against those born with some anomalies

the baby as a product


Selecting the “good”: preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) embryo screening prior to

implantation depends on in-vitro

fertilization Twelve or more oocytes are

fertilized. At the stage of 8-10 cells one or two embryonic

cells (blastomeres) are extracted for chromosomal analysis and genetic screening.

Only embryos without indicators for anomalies are implanted.


Preliminary observations:

use for enhancement is thinkable

The practice IVF-PGD is still relatively recent.

The extraction of blastomeres can cause damage to the embryo.

The long term risks are still unknown.

The DNA depends on the parents and neither of them could have a desired trait.

The selection of the genotype does not guarantee the phenotype.


Reconstructing the “best”: genetic engineering

the dream of the designer baby

presupposition: one can individuate genetic “switches” for certain traits:

intelligence

memory

ambition

muscular force …

Once identified, these genes could be isolated, replicated and introduced into the embryo or gametes.


Preliminary observations: There is no genetic determinism. Genes are not

destiny. The phenotype is not entirely determined by the genotype.

Many characteristics are polygenic: they depend on several genes in different places.

Many genes are pleiotropic: they do not influence a single trait, but many. The effects of manipulating them can be manifold and not always desirable.

Inserting genes at the right places is very difficult. Inserting them in the host genome can activate harmful genes and deactivate useful ones.


Promises and motives:

healthy children

improving on the natural endowments of children

(self-declared) compassion

for individuals afflicted by disease

for families with children afflicted by disease

reducing the costs of medical care

hopes for the progress of humanity: elimination of genetically caused diseases


Critical considerations: Screening implies risks for the health of the

woman and the child. Pre-natal screening implies the willingness to

abort the child. Direct interventions into the germline (genetic

material that can be passed on to descendants) imply incalculable risks.

The security of the patient: not only of the mother but also of the child: the embryos that will be destroyed through

IVF the child that will be born


Critical considerations: What would happen if one day IVF-PGD

would be considered superior to natural procreation? There would be grave consequences for the

family and for society. The new technologies imply an attitude of

control. Only the perfect is good enough. Those considered “inferior” do not merit to

live. A diminished tolerance for those who are

“imperfect” Social constraint and tyranny of public

opinion


Critical considerations:

The question of equality

IVF-PGD is expensive.

There is the danger of a still greater separation between the rich and the poor.



The parent-child relationship:

Inequality will increase.

Education too has a great influence, but genetic selection or modification is different.

Genes are not destiny, but much havoc can be wrought by the parents’ expectations expressed in their genetic choices.

More than any other child, the IVP-PGD child or the genetically modified child will feel the pressure to correspond to his parents’ expectations.




His parents’ expectations are the reason he is allowed to live.

He is because his parents wanted such a child.

The burden of his parents’ expectations can obstruct his freedom to find his own way.

The parents’ attitude is no longer one of unconditional acceptance.

Rather acceptance is conditioned on the fulfillment of certain “quality standards.”




The child is no longer a gift born of his parents’ love but the product of their will.

To have “dignity” means “to be worthy of unconditional respect”

To make another’s being conditional on some qualities is a violation of his dignity.


Psychoactive substances and education

Parents can seek to improve their children’s capacities through practice.

reading literature

travels

Cultural activities


Parents seek to improve their children’s capacities at home and at school:

relation to authority

paying attention

coping with disappointment

taking on responsibility

practice self-mastery


Some psychoactive drugs are promising help

We know ever more about the relation between neurochemical processes in the brain and human behavior.

We can change human behavior.


For instance: Ritalin (Methylphenidate): a stimulant used to treat the so-called “Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder” (ADHD)

It has a calming effect, reducing impulsive behavior in children and adults.

Other effects: less tiredness, better concentration, less distraction, more physical force.


In children it does not seem to have any major side-effects and does not seem to be addictive.

Diagnosis of ADHD depends on subjective judgment

The symptoms that lead to this judgment exist in all children at some time.


There is no biological criterion or a physiological exam for ADHD

To diagnose someone with ADHD is analogous to diagnosing him with a fever.

These substances can improve performance also in absence of ADHD.


While for some children with grave problems this medication is a true blessing, there is the danger of over-prescription.

In the USA 4 million children are taking Ritalin or similar drugs on a daily basis.

Ritalin belongs to a class of stimulants that cause addiction in teenagers and adults.


Some questions to ask:

1. Safety:

A drug potent enough to influence the central nervous system can be potent enough to cause some major damage.

We don’t have long term data yet.

It seems little responsible to run health risks for non-therapeutic ends.


2. Raising children: the human context:

Children need to learn some difficult lessons.

Sometimes the learning is more important than the lesson.

The freedom of the child: these drugs modify the child’s behavior and allow educators to intervene directly on the brain should he or she not conform to social standards.

Common use: change of standards


2. Raising children: the human context:

Social conformism

the power to oppress natural inclinations and temperaments in the name of a better education will diminish differences among people.

Everyone will behave the same way.

There will be little tolerance for non-conformism.


3. The medicalization of education

There is the danger of substituting the language and method of education by the language and method of medicine.

The majority of restless and hyperactive children will one day learn to improve their behavior.

Psychoactive drugs aim directly at their behavior without passing through the process of learning.



Education aims mainly at the formation of character and not principally at the external act.

Hence what matters most is the process of learning.

Children whose good behavior is the result of drugs will perhaps never learn to possess themselves.

They may indeed think that self-possession is not necessary.



Whoever is using psychoactive drugs treats adolescent restlessness as a medical instead of a moral challenge,

depriving the child of an essential part of education.

Children may think of themselves as ruled by chemical impulses and not by moral decisions.

Treating key elements of our life as medical problems, we weaken our sense of responsibility and the sense of our mastery over our action.


Our bodies grow older. Our capacities decline.

Our life has an end.

The human dream: to overcome senescence and to challenge death

Not all organisms are senescent.

Scientists have had some great success with prolonging the lives of some animal species.

5.2. Ageless Bodies

What are some of the thinkable methods of prolonging life and how desirable would that really be?

Aging speaks to us of death: the final frontier of human dominion.

Human beings are “mortals.”

Science does not explicitly aim at immortality, but there is no natural point to stop.

Science treats aging as a disease.

5.2. Ageless Bodies

Reducing the causes of death among the young:

The 20th century has seen an enormous increase in the average life expectancy in the Western world.

In the US in 1900 it was 48 years from birth.

In the US in 1999 it was 78 years from birth.

5.2. Ageless Bodies

This was accomplished not by biotechnology but by rather more simple ways:

a basic public health system

better hygiene

immunization

discovery of penicillin

If in the US today no one died before the age of 50, the average life expectancy would increase only by 3.5 years.

5.2. Ageless Bodies

Is there a way of further prolonging the average life expectancy and also the maximum life expectancy?

Some possible measures to fight the effects of old age:

Muscle treatment: the loss of muscle mass (sarcopenia) is one of the most evident signs of senescence.

a possible remedy: growth hormone (somatotropin)

5.2. Ageless Bodies

Memory treatment:

Research against Alzheimer’s has shown some results, which could also be useful for people who do not have this disease.

Some stimulants, such as Ritalin, help memory in an indirect way.

In some animals (flies and mice) one has found a genetic switch to increase memory.

There may also be ways of slowing down aging as such.

5.2. Ageless Bodies

1. Calorie restriction

discovered in the 1930s: in many animals a reduction of the food intake to about 60% of the normal increases the life span and slows down the process of decline connected to aging (neurological activity, immune system)

In mice: increase of the life span of up to 50%

It often leads to infertility or reduced fertility.

The biological bases of this phenomenon are not yet well-understood.

5.2. Ageless Bodies

2. Genetic manipulation

Researchers have introduced modifications into individual genes of certain animals (worms and mice), which resulted into a doubling of the life-span.

infertility or reduced fertility

smaller stature

The study of progeria: a genetic condition that leads to an accelerated aging process

A future therapy may also decrease senescence in people not affected by the disease.

5.2. Ageless Bodies

3. The prevention of oxidant damages

There is scientific evidence that free oxygen radicals – oxygen molecules with an unpaired electron – which are the result of various functions of our body, are causing a gradual deterioration of cells and body tissue.

They possess important metabolic functions, but also obstruct protein synthesis.

Anti-oxidants like Vitamin C or E destroy many free radicals.

5.2. Ageless Bodies

3. The prevention of oxidant damages

The balance between anti-oxidants and free radicals seems to be related to the degeneration of cells and tissue.

Research demonstrated that synthetic anti-oxidant prolonged the life span of flies and mice.

5.2. Ageless Bodies

4. Telomere research

Telomeres are the final zone of the chromosome, protecting the end of each chromosome from deterioration and fusion with neighboring chromosomes.

With time they become shorter, so that cells cease to divide and die.

The length of the telomeres is related to the age of the cells.

The manipulation of telomeres promises to be a way to fight symptoms of aging.

5.2. Ageless Bodies

Considerations:

Who would not want to live longer?

We have many ideals and projects and would like to have more time for them.

Society may benefit from the wisdom of experience provided by its older members.

We may get a second, third or fourth chance in life to do something important.

If some life is good, more life is better.

If death is far away, the fear of death may decrease.

5.2. Ageless Bodies

Personal commitment:

Even if the gift of added time may be a good, perhaps the idea of having an infinite amount of time at our disposal is not.

All our activities are characterized by our knowing that our time is limited.

We are spending our lives, which implies a finite quantity.

The scarcity of a commodity adds to its value.

Jonas: Man is not blessed with the capacity to treasure what he has in superabundance.

5.2. Ageless Bodies

Personal commitment:

Our experience of spending our lives contributes to our sense of fulfillment and commitment.

Our commitment in our activities depends on our sense of spending ourselves in them.

A life without the sense of investing something precious in our activities may become a life that is less committed.

5.2. Ageless Bodies

Aspiration and urgency: The sense of “being spent” in the life cycle

contributes to the sense of urgency that is given in the face of death.

“Teach us to number our days, so we may learn the wisdom of the heart.”

We need to count our days to make them count.

It is the sense of finiteness that gives momentum to our lives.

Why not leave for tomorrow what could be done today if there is an infinite amount of “tomorrows”?

5.2. Ageless Bodies

Children and renewal:

There is a profound connection between death and birth.

The relation between increased longevity and reduce fertility is significant.

There may be a biological connection between aging and fertility.

They are also connected on the experiential level.

In the 20th century the increase in life expectancy was accompanied by a decrease in natality.

5.2. Ageless Bodies

Children and renewal:

Without the presentiment of our mortality there may be little desire for renewal.

The desire for children seems to decrease.

Children are a response to mortality.

People with little regard for the finiteness of life may be little inclined to receive children.

There seems to be a connection between the sense of finitude and dedication to procreation.

5.2. Ageless Bodies

The attitude toward death:

A person involved in the biotechnological fight against aging may be little prepared to accept death as something inevitable.

These technologies may turn death into something even more intolerable.

Death may always seem to be as something premature and fear of death resulting from accidents or sickness may increase.

Little tolerance for the process of dying: euthanasia

5.2. Ageless Bodies

Effects for society:

The relation between the generations

Family life and the relation between the generations are built around the life cycle.

The world is renewed with each new generation, which remains rooted in the experience and wisdom of the older generation.

The needfulness of the young and the elderly makes sure that there is always more or less one leader generation responsible for those who are coming and those who are leaving.

5.2. Ageless Bodies


The relation between the generations

If many generations remained in their maturity for a long time, the succession of the generations would be impeded.

Conflict between the generations

There would be no urgency to found a family or to be concerned about a career: there would be a legion of functionally immature “young adults.”

5.2. Ageless Bodies


Innovation and change

In economics or politics there would be little reason to retreat.

Older people have more experience and wisdom.

But it is generally also more difficult for them to adapt to new situations.

There would be little innovation.

The convictions formed at the beginning of our lives tend to remain.

5.2. Ageless Bodies


Innovation and change

After a little while we cease to see the world with new eyes. “Been there, done that”

Few surprises, hopes deluded, dreams uncompleted: diminished ambition, tiredness, cynicism

fewer births

conservative society

little initiative

5.2. Ageless Bodies

Final considerations:

Is aging really a disease?

Is the finitude of human life nothing but a problem to be resolved?

Is the goal of medicine to perfect us?

But the human being, even if healthy, is never a perfect being.

It is precisely our being imperfect, our never being completely satisfied in relation to reality that is the source of our highest aspirations and our greatest conquests.

5.2. Ageless Bodies

We seek higher performance in many activities.

Technology could help us to improve the capacities of our body and mind:

Drugs

Genetic modifications

Surgical interventions (including the implantation of technological devices into the body)

5.3. Higher Performance

A concrete field to be examined: athletic activity

Here the uneasiness about performance enhancing drugs (doping) is generally share.

Sport: A field of human commitment

where excellence is admired It is an activity that makes us reflect about our

bodily nature. It is a field of life in which we seek to preserve

the “dignity of the game” from biological and mechanical adulterations.


Even though life is not a game, there are many aspects that are essential to sports that are essential also to a human life well lived.

Aspiration, effort, conquest, excellence

To be a good athlete one needs to meet a number of requirements:

Natural endowments

Great aspiration

A good coach

Good equipment

Good luck


Therefore the modes of enhancing performance depend on various factors:

They depend on the athletes themselves: physical force, training, experience

They also regard external aid: the better coaches, better teammates.

They regard one’s equipment: for instance, a tennis racket made of graphite.

They also regard the enhancement of one’s body: a diet rich in proteins; vitamins; anabolic steroids, genetic modifications


How are these different modes of becoming better different from each other?

When are we speaking of “cheating” and who is cheated here?

Competitive running: the ancient Greeks ran barefoot.

Shoes constitute an enhancement, as do considerations of strategy or weight routines.

But how about the injection of synthetic genes to improve muscle strength?

If in the case of some modes of enhancement we feel uneasy, where does this uneasiness come from?


Equipment does not change the agent in a direct way (as do training or drugs), but only indirectly, in way that is open for all to see.

But the distinction between a better equipment, a better training program and better natural endowments is not always clear-cut.

There are therapeutic interventions like an artificial leg or technical implantations that allow the deaf to hear and the blind to see.


The most important way to improve performance is practice / exercise.

To practice means to be active; it implies an aspiration.

The activity that needs to be perfected is being perfected in its exercise.

The capacity to improve is itself improved through its use.

But no measure of exercise can overcome the unchangeable lack of natural endowment.

Here is the important difference between improvements obtained through exercise and improvements obtained through biotechnology.


Through the use of biotechnology the improvement of our performance becomes less intelligible.

The results are almost “magical”: the performance is no longer connected with a conscious activity and volitional efforts.

It implies the partial alienation of the athlete from his or her activity.

His or her identity is determined on the level of molecular manipulations and not on the experiential and moral level.


There is a crucial difference between changes in our bodies that

proceed from self-control and

those that simply happen.

There is a crucial difference between changes in our bodies that result from

putting our bodies to work and those that result from

working on our bodies.


The question of justice and equality

The player who uses technical aids will have an unjust advantage over others.

But: already our natural endowments are distributed in an unequal way.

Drugs and technology: could they be thought of as ways of introducing equality in a field that is naturally unequal?

Justice seems to be always limited by our mysterious natural endowments.


The question of justice and equality

How to determine excellence?

“The best that someone can be”?

or rather:

“The best absolutely speaking”?

The value of Paralympics

Justice in sports: all follow the same rules.

Some say: if one declared steroids legal the problem of justice would disappear.


The question of health

This would mean to force athletes to take certain substances.

A central concern with biotechnological means is this: the risk to health and the reality of side-effects.

Steroids: kidney tumors, high blood pressure, infertility

For many new means there is no sufficient data yet to evaluate the risks.

One needs to proceed with caution.


The question of health

To be an athlete must not imply the acceptance of a premature death or of a severe illness.

It is true that many athletic activities bring with them an intrinsic risk: boxing, football, skiing.

However, while the risks intrinsic to the activity cannot be avoided, the risks associated with drugs are completely superfluous.


The question of the human equilibrium

Substances that give one capacity can easily take away another.

The increased capacity to tolerate pain could lead to a decreased capacity to experience physical pleasure.

Isolating a human power can lead to a disequilibrium.

There is a risk of compromising the whole of human life for the sake of an isolated part.


The question of the meaning of human activity What does it mean to be active as a human

being in an excellent way? There is a relationship between the activity and

the agent: athletic performance depends on both the activity and the identity of the agent.

When it comes to running, what counts is not only the fastest time, but also who it is that does the running: a human being or a leopard.

It also matters how the activity is performed: running and not on roller blades.

To evaluate an excellence, one needs to look at all three aspects: what is being done, who does it, and how it is done.


The question of the meaning of human activity Human acts and acts of man: not all acts done

by persons are personal acts. We admire athletic performance as a human

activity that is proper to the athlete. Athletes who use steroids etc. obtain their

results too easily. Their activity is not truly and completely theirs. The act of running: it is accomplished in a

human way if it is done deliberately, consciously, with a free choice: the agent is aware of the end, of the means and of the mode.


Objection: also the decision to improve our bodies through drugs and genetic interventions is a matter of human choice.

Response: there is a difference on the experiential level between changes in our bodies that depend on intelligible and self-determining actions and those changes that are not of this kind.

The decision to take steroids is a rational choice to change oneself submitting oneself to means that operate their changes in us without us.

In contradistinction to a better training regiment, this is a calculated, willful act to sidestep the will.


A problem also resides in the false identification of what is human with what is rational and thus in the neglect of our bodiliness.

The body is a living body. Each of us also is his or her body.

Through discipline and training we make our natural physical endowments shine in excellent activities.

If we try to improve our bodies through chemical or genetic means, we do not honor our bodies and do not cultivate our individual endowments.

Rather we seek to give ourselves a different body.

We treat ourselves as if we were machines to be perfected.


The ironies of biotechnological enhancement: We risk to compromise our identity as beings

endowed with free will and choice. We are less at the root of our own identity. The goal of excellent performance in sports is

to show the excellent performance of our bodily existence.

By using technical means to improve our performance, we deride precisely this bodily excellence.

Instead of having desire for human perfection, we risk having a revolution against our human (bodily) condition as such.


Final considerations

To become what we desire to be, we must become the responsible and bodily agents of our own becoming.

To live authentically implies the acceptance of our limits and the cultivation of our gifts in performing excellent acts.

Otherwise we will pay the extreme price:

to obtain what we are looking for (or think we are looking for) ceasing to be ourselves.


The American Declaration of Independence speaks of an inalienable right of each person to the pursuit of happiness.

We all search for happiness. We want to live well.

It is our pursuit of happiness that makes us desire to have better children, ageless bodies, higher performances.

And yet there are people with wonderful children and perfect bodies who nonetheless feel miserable.

5.4. Happy Souls

Happiness seems to have something to do with the complex state of our psychic, moral and spiritual life.

There are obstacles to our happiness:

Illnesses of the brain and of the psyche

Sorrow

Guilt and remorse

Shame

Frustration of one’s aspirations

5.4. Happy Souls

Sometimes people seek to overcome these obstacle to happiness instead of seeking happiness in its positive fullness.

They look at these negative experiences in themselves, seeking to overcome these, instead of addressing their causes and roots.

5.4. Happy Souls

Macbeth asked the medical doctor to heal his wife of the memory of the evil acts she had committed.

MACBETH: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,

Raze out the written troubles of the brain

And with some sweet oblivious antidote

Cleanse the stuff ’d bosom of that perilous stuff

Which weighs upon the heart?

DOCTOR: Therein the patient must minister to himself.

5.4. Happy Souls

To administer the medicine to oneself is difficult.

What pains her is not simply a bad mood, the memory and the nightmares.

She feels bad, she has bad memories and nightmares, because she has committed murder.

The cure that would heal at the root is conversion and repentance.

In absence of these, people have tried to use external agents to drown the pain and lift up the spirit. Alcohol Euphoriants (like opium)

5.4. Happy Souls

Drugs to calm bad memories did not exist in previous times.

Drugs to lift the spirits and one’s self-esteem existed, but were little safe, little effective, full of negative side effects and illegal.

The neurosciences are now beginning to provide us with substances that act directly on the brain, numbing bad memories and lifting one’s mood (for instance selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors – SSRIs – like Prozac).

These agents haven’t been developed to create a synthetic happiness, but to combat depression and to prevent post-traumatic stress disorder.

5.4. Happy Souls

The result, however, is that our pursuit of happiness and our sense of life-satisfaction become ever more open to direct biotechnological interventions.

New psychotropic substances untie our feeling of happiness (or rather of satisfaction) from our actions and experiences in the world.

Why discipline our passions, refine our sentiments and cultivate the virtues if our aspiration to happiness can be fulfilled quickly, consistently and effectively through the intake of chemical substances?

5.4. Happy Souls

But is it true that our feelings of contentment, untied from our actions and our interpersonal relations, make us happy?

If we use substances to satisfy our desire to forget what torments us and to confront the world with greater tranquility, do we not frustrate great human aspirations?

In some ways these questions are with us for centuries.

There is alcohol, marihuana, cocaine and similar substances that offer temporary pleasures and mode of escaping from ourselves and from the world.

5.4. Happy Souls

The difference between these substances and the new possibilities offered by biotechnology are here:

The new substances are capable of altering the human psyche in a much more precise way and for much longer, obtaining the desired results while reducing side effects.

These substances can work on our memory and our mood.

But the fundamental question is this: What is a happy soul?

5.4. Happy Souls

Aristotle: the good is that which all desire. Happiness is the supreme good. Everyone is

striving for it. Augustine: all want to be happy. Everyone is agreed on the name, but there is a

great diversity with respect to the content. What is happiness?

Pleasure? Honor? Power? Riches? Virtue, wisdom, love?

5.4. Happy Souls

What are happy souls? Is happiness a state, that is, a sensation or

mood, or is it an activity? Is it the absence of suffering or the presence of a

certain fullness, a full flourishing of our humanity?

What is the relationship between being happy and being merely satisfied?

But even if we said, “Happiness consists in the satisfaction of all our desires”, we’d still have to ask about the nature of our desires.

What is it that we really want? What are our profoundest desires?

5.4. Happy Souls

The Stoics: I am happy when I have everything that I want.

My desire of things outside of my control leads me to unhappiness.

To be happy, I need to desire what I can have. I must will what happens. If someone cannot have what he wants, he

needs to want what he has. One needs to have small aspirations. But is it true that the one who has all his small

aspirations fulfilled is happier than the one who has big aspirations but does not manage to achieve them?

5.4. Happy Souls

Is it better to be a pig that is satisfied than to be Socrates unsatisfied?

How is our happiness connected to our friendships and our religious observance?

Are social bonds important or is happiness a solitary occupation?

Is happiness something that is momentary or is it something that we experience throughout our lives, i.e., is it a fulfilled life?

5.4. Happy Souls

What do we understand by “soul”?

Greek: psyche – we find it in “psychology” and “psychiatry”

The soul has something to do with the power to reason, the power of language, of comprehension, intuition, memory, imagination, desire, passion, sentiment.

Our happiness is connected to our personality and our identity.

We are not looking for a happiness that would make us lose our identity.

5.4. Happy Souls

To be able to be happy we need a stable identity.

The experience of a stable identity depends on our memory, that is, on our capacity to know who we are in relation to who we’ve been.

It is not enough to feel a present euphoria.

Robert Nozick proposes a thought experiment: “the experience machine”

It is important to be able to connect the present with the experiences and actions of the past on account of which we have become who we are.

5.4. Happy Souls

If a weak memory can limit our identity, an altered memory can distort our identity.

Perhaps we will feel better with altered memories, but it is not clear to whom we refer when we say “we”.

The central question is: what is the truth of things?

Sometimes we seek what seems to be happiness, but isn’t truly happiness.

There are desires that cause grave damage.

There is a counterfeit happiness.

Ignorance is not bliss.

5.4. Happy Souls

We desire to live in truth.

The two fundamental risks of substances that work directly on our memory and on our mood are these:

1. They risk compromising our capacity to form a strong and coherent personal identity.

2. They untie our emotional states and our memories from our acts and our experience.

They imperil our capacity to live and feel in truth and to confront our own imperfections and limits in a responsible way.

5.4. Happy Souls

Profound moral experiences such as anguish, restlessness, sorrow, guilt, remorse, are treated like illnesses to be cured.

Instead they are part of the fragility of a human life that is engaged in the pursuit of happiness and the love of others.

It is true: our emotions can deceive us and fail us in many ways.

There are people who suffer from debilitating memories of traumatic events; there are people who suffer from chronic depression.

For them these new substances are a great help.

5.4. Happy Souls

Nonetheless, it is important to investigate the possible uses and abuses of these substances.

Substances that can eradicate memories and alter our temperament and emotive state touch on the heart of who we are.

The pharmaceutical management of our mental life can seriously impede the pursuit of our true happiness.

5.4. Happy Souls

Research on the formation of long term memory:

Immediately after a new experience, there is a period of memory consolidation, during which some memories are impressed on the brain with a greater impact than others.

Strong emotional excitation is accompanied with the secretion of some stress hormones like cortisol or epinephrine (adrenaline).

The presence or absence of these hormones during the period of memory consolidation has a great impact on how strong and enduring a memory will be.

5.4. Happy Souls

Research on animals has shown that the presence of stress hormones improves the codification of memory in as much as these hormones activate the amygdala

The amygdala is the region of the brain inside the temporal lobe that has the form of an almond and controls the emotions.

5.4. Happy Souls

Experiments have shown that the memory of an experience can be reinforced if epinephrine is injected into the amygdala immediately afterwards.

On the other hand, a memory can be weakened if a beta-blocker is injected into the amygdala. (A beta-blocker suppresses the influence of epinephrine.)

Research on human beings has confirmed the crucial role of the amygdala in the consolidation of emotionally charged memories.

5.4. Happy Souls

Persons who have undergone damage to their amygdala do not have problems in remembering recent events of little significance.

But they do not seem to have a long term memory created by experiences that arouse the emotions.

A person whose amygdala is damaged can usually remember emotive experiences without repeating the original emotion.

Persons with damage to their amygdala have difficulties in learning to be afraid, because they do not remember scary events together with the appropriate emotions.

5.4. Happy Souls

If people experience events that are particularly shocking or violent, the secretion of stress hormones can be so intense that the memory’s system of codification becomes hyperactive.

The result is a consolidation of memory that is stronger and more persistent than normal and that arouses intense emotional responses when the events are recalled.

The injection of beta-blockers can suppress the effect of the augmented memory caused by emotional excitation.

5.4. Happy Souls

Taking a beta-blocker does not seem to have effects on how one remembers everyday events or information that is emotionally neutral.

But if it is administered at the moment of an experience that is of high emotional charge, the beta-blocker can suppress the augmentation of memory that is connected to the emotional excitation, without touching the immediate emotional response.

One could think of administering beta-blockers to survivors of traumatic events to reduce intrusive memories of these events.

5.4. Happy Souls

The research conducted by Roger Pitman in 2002 demonstrated that administering beta-blockers to victims of traumatic experiences lowered the incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

But the idea of administering beta-blockers to reduce PTSD is not unproblematic.

The primary function of the way in which our brain codifies memories of emotionally charged experiences would seem to be this:

to help us to remember important events for a longer period and more vividly than trivial events.

5.4. Happy Souls

These substances need to be administered during or shortly after the traumatic event.

At the moment or shortly after the painful experience we cannot know the full meaning of the experience yet.

How will the experience change the person?

Will the person be confronted with intolerable memories?

Or will she be able to integrate these memories in the narrative or her life?

5.4. Happy Souls

Rewriting our memories with pharmaceutical means, we may be able to alleviate some suffering, but we will risk falsifying our perception of the world and to undermine our true identity.

Without memory one would lose the sense of moral responsibility.

Alleviating or eliminating the psychic pain caused by certain memories might erode the responsibility we take for our actions.

5.4. Happy Souls

Without true memories justice would no longer be possible.

Without true memories forgiveness would no longer be possible.

Everything would simply be forgotten.

5.4. Happy Souls

The problem with biotechnology arises when it claims to propose an integral vision of the world.

We are faced with the alternative once formulated by Joseph Ratzinger:

“One can, on the one hand, regard only the mechanical, nature’s laws, as real, and consider all that is personal, love, giving, as pretty appearance, which, though psychologically useful, is ultimately unreal and untenable”.

Conclusion

“Next to this, according to the other alternative, things are just the opposite:

One can consider the personal as the real, the stronger and higher form of reality, which does not reduce the other realities, the biological and mechanical, to mere appearance, but absorbs them into itself, and thus opens to them a new dimension.”

For the former position Ratzinger can find “no other designation than the denial of humanity.”

Conclusion

We have sought to argue in favor of the latter stance, i.e., for the centrality of the personal dimension.

The use of our biotechnologies, with all their promises of enhancing the range of possibilities for our freedom, must thus never be to the detriment of the sphere of interpersonal relationships.

The greater freedom is the freedom for our destiny:

the freedom to be the responsible, benevolent, spontaneous authors of our own lives, capable of entering into relationships with others, living lives of communion and love.

Conclusion

Biotechnology and Human Destiny - Stephan Kampowski and Human... · 2018-05-13 · The goals of...

Documents

Transcript of Biotechnology and Human Destiny - Stephan Kampowski and Human... · 2018-05-13 · The goals of...