1 M®sc The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol. 104 No. 11 £1.50 December, 1999
Portmeirion - a vision of an ideal environment for living? (See article on page 3)
THE WORK OF CLOUGH WILLIAMS ELLIS ii,br Russell 3 ANIMALS OCCUPY ZOO Leslie Jones 6 THE IDEA OF AN ETHICS OF BELIEF M.A.B. Degenhardt 9 DOCTOR ASSISTED DYING - LEGALLY INEVITABLE? Dr. Michael Irwin 13 SELF REALISATION AS A MEMBER OF SOCIETY Christopher Bratcher 17 VIEWPOINTS: P Vlachos, M. Lined, B. Smoker, E. Stockton, D. Rooum, R.G. Silson, C. Ormell, T.F. Evans 20 ETHICAL SOCIETY EVENTS 24 SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. Tel: 0171 242 8034 Fax: 0171 242 8036 website: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk email: [email protected]
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INTERNATIONAL ESSAY CONTEST On the 10th anniversary of almost universal adoption of the convention on the rights of child, the International Ilumanist and Ethical Union is launching a global essay competition on religion and children's rights. General category One Prize of £200. Youth category (applies to those born on, or after, 1 Jan. 1974) One Prize of £100. Essays must be previously unpublished and reach IHEU by 15 March 2000.
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Founded in 1793, the Society is a progressive movement whose aims are: the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism, the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life, and the advancement of research and education in relevant fields. We invite to membership all those who reject supernatural creeds and find themselves in sympathy with our views. At Conway Hall there are opportunities for participation in cultural activities including discussions, lectures, concerts and socials. The Sunday Evening Chamber Music Concerts founded in 1887 are renowned. We have a library on subjects of humanist concern. All members receive the Society's journal, Ethical Record, eleven times a year. Funerals and Memorial Meetings may be arranged. Please apply to the Admin. Secretary for membership, £18 p.a. Concessions £12 p.a. (Over 65, unwaged or full time student). 2 Ethical Record, December, 1999 THE WORK OF CLOUGH WILLIAMS ELLIS
Ivor Russell, Chairman of the Rationalist Press Association Illustrated Lecture to the Ethical Society, 17 October 1999
'The Human race has through the ages and here and there, thrown up unique and entirely exceptional individuals, who might almost be examples of a greatly improved race of humans that might yet evolve; though the quality of humanity would seem unlikely to improve significantly except to a geological time scale, if at all'.
Thus wrote Sir Clough Williams Ellis - the great architect, landscape architect, gardener, planner, developer, conservationist, soldier, author, lecturer and activist - in 1978 just before his death at the age of 94. It is an extract from an article entitled 'Last thoughts on God' which appeared in the April 1978 issue of the NewHumanist. Clough died an atheist and all his life had cheerfully and openly avowed his lack of the faith proclaimed by his ancestors. He knew that his qualities and talents were, if not unique, so uncommon as to set him apart from the mass of his fellows. With this realisation went a dedication to certain principles and practices which gave him a mission to demonstrate to the world the errors of its ways. This patrician did more to improve the potential for human well-being and happiness than comes the lot of most people who set out to order our lives. He did it with wit, grace, polemic, persuasion or satire as the occasion demanded but always tried to ease his opponents out of their prejudices or attitudes rather than bludgeon them with authority.
There is, however, outside specialist circles, a widespread failure to appreciate the merit of Clough's principles and practices and even when they are appreciated it is often at a superficial level which has the effect of minimising his worth or trivialising his achievement.
Clough Williams Ellis was born on 28 May 1893 in Northamptonshire. By the time he was 16 he was already absorbing the architectural delights to be found in rural England and beginning to enjoy the civilised life in London to be found in the privileged society open to him. He largely taught himself the history of his art, discovering in himself an inborn instinct for Architecture. It gave him from an early age the conviction that he knew best, mainly justified by his life's work in my view. He began working for clients in 1905 and won his first major commission in 1912 - Llangoed Hall and Estate Buildings on the River Wye.
The First World War interrupted his progress and he willingly joined the armed forces. He graduated into the Tank Corps. He was commissioned to write the war history of the Tank Corps which he did with his wife Amabel, the first of three books he wrote with her professional assistance. She was a Strachey who maintained her family's traditional involvement in literature and politics, writing over 40 books.
The experiences of the 1914-18 war enlarged his existing hopes for the future of England. In an article for the Manchester Guardian he wrote:
Anyone who cares for England must be interested in national planning, the provision of a comprehensive co-ordinated and compulsory development and conservation scheme for the country as a whole, urban and rural, public and private. The economic case for an orderly and far sightedly managed national estate is so overwhelming that one really need not speak of national pride or the need for beauty. Ethical Record, December, 1999 3 The Return of Greed and Corruption He was to be disappointed, for with peace came the return of the old influences: greed, corruption, lack of will and weak government. It was as though the bullets and bombs had been in vain. He picked up the threads of his practice which flourished. He became increasingly aware that to make an impact which would give voice to his concern, he would need to have control. Without control no vision could be realised or dream fulfilled. He would at least with control set an example.
As the 1920s developed, he saw the birth of ribbon development - the spread of London like tentacles grasping the countryside. In 1928 he wrote England and the Octopus, an angry polemic against mean building, heedless development and the exploitation of the populace by individuals or organisations for self-interest or temporary profit. It is a book still relevant over 70 years later. Meantime Clough had fallen in love with Portofino in Italy and vowed to build by his own efforts a beautiful place hopefully of equal merit. Hence his search for a site culminating in the discovery of a suitable one in the grounds of his ancestral home in North Wales. Here he could begin to practice what he preached. • Portmeirion Portmeirion, as he named it, took 50 years to build and has become world-famous. In my opinion what makes it special is a combination of factors; the shape and size of the site, the buildings introduced into the landscape, the preservation of the natural features plus the introduction of new planting, the addition of gardening features the colours introduced in a Wales hitherto lacking in colour, the introduction of sculpture and follies to add delight, and last but not least the absence of traffic and litter within the whole complex. From it you can enter a large wooded area now being enhanced as a superb garden to the North and drop down the south facing slope to the start of it all, the hotel developed from an original house.
It has lessons to be learnt about how to build, lessons that are still relevant and which render much of the comment about Portmeirion still being advanced by the medial trivial and uncomprehending. Because Clough fell in love with an Italian masterpiece, his desire to build a masterpiece of his own does not mean that his design has to result from or be based on or copy his Italian original. The description of Portmeirion as 'Italianate' is overdone and risks an under-evaluation of Clough's achievement. People think 'Oh this is like Italy' and can fail to appreciate that Portmeirion is much more Clough than Italy. Legend will insist that Clough modelled Portmeirion on Portofino but it is a false legend as Clough himself states in his final book of autobiography Round the World in Ninety Years.
Why do I think it important to try to correct this false legend? It is because as in every walk of life truth matters and accuracy is necessary because of the benefits accuracy can bring. The following observations do not depend on knowledge of th ings Ital ian.
Firstly the site. It is roughly a saucer shaped depression in the hillside above the coastline. Clough made the centre of the saucer (where an imaginary cup might sit) a village green.
Secondly the buildings are generally sited around the lip of the saucer in varying numbers and styles with the occasional building only above the tree line. The size of some of the buildings are deliberately scaled down to suit the size of the site of the vistas to be seen from the central village green. An overpowering building in size would have mined the effect. 4 Ethical Record, December, 1999 The exclusion of traffic gives the place a restfulness and repose which is almost inexplicable in words but which is 'felt' very quickly once you are in it. The other qualities I have mentioned above point to Clough's all-encompassing vision. Most developments today have several professionals involved who often do not contribute to any all encompassing vision and show how remarkable Clough's control was over all the necessary disciplines. It is equally remarkable that from the outset he had the vision which has largely become the reality.
Another architect had an all-encompassing vision in principle. Le Corbusier advocated his 'Radiant City' which has gone sour on us. Clough was pretty scornful about it and was not tempted into that modernism. Clough's work was a protest against the sterility that evolved from Le Corbusier's vision and against the sacrifice we are all making by unbridled use of the motor car which on grounds of economics, use of space, and tolerance of pollution is causing us stress and turmoil.
Portmeirion is not therefore a romantic folly alone but much more a demonstration of one man's unique vision. It demonstrates his belief that a humane environment depends more upon the grouping of building than their style. He was teased by contemporaries for introducing the mixture as never before into Portmeirion. But consider the position today. Technological variety is making it possible to build as we please and the imagination of architects is beginning to demonstrate once again what possibilities there are. But without some overall planning principles, we end up with the muddle that defeats good intentions. It is the mixture as never before without Clough's harmonising principle, and we are all the losers. Look around you at the chaos usually present at motorway junctions where mini-cities are arising which defeat the object of the motorways which cannot be afforded any more. The dead hand of uniformity is evident in the warehouse sheds, the fast food outlets and petrol stations, often imposing a design that will be uniform throughout the world. Can planning be radical enough to save us?
As the 1930s progressed the need for comprehensive planning control became even more pronounced. Unfortunately the bullets and bombs returned. The Nazi bombing of Guernica, the first of a civilian population, was followed by the Second World War in which Clough suffered the loss of a son. The antidote to that loss was - after the return of peace - the continuation of his life's work at Portmeirion. He also had the satisfaction of seeing the reforming Labour Government introduce the Town and Country Planning Act of 1946.
It has given much protection by the regulations of land use but is not yet tackling the very problems of harmonious grouping that he advocated. Neither is it yet trying to promote as much as it should developments which respect the geology, geography or history of a place. Clough had a way of crystallising his philosophy by crisp phrases. He preached that we should cherish the past, adorn the present and plan for the future. There are too many instances where we fail on all three counts and the planning process seems to fail to instill any vision. Clough also preaches that architecture should fulfil three purposes: firmness, commodity and delight. The first two are given proper attention but delight is left out of the equation not through lack of skills by architects but because they are not briefed widely enough. The potential for architectural skills being used to give delight is better than it has been for decades but until developers promote good architecture as being good business, then failure is tolerated. There are encouraging signs however from bold, innovative cities like Barcelona and Bilbao which are reverting to creating cities for the people's enjoyment and delight as well as mundane needs. Ethical Record, December, 1999 5 ANIMALS OCCUPY ZOO
0 judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts And men have lost their reason Julius Caesar
Leslie Jones considers the background to the disruption of a symposium at the Zoological Society and the issues that this raises
In 'Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope And Aims' (1904), Sir Francis Galion acknowledged that the identification of desirable moral characteristics is fraught with difficulties. Different sections of the community may admire particular qualities. And the definition of the good citizen is historically and culturally contingent. Galion used an amusing fable here to reinforce his point. This told of the fruitless efforts of animals in a zoo to agree on a system of absolute morality, binding for all species.
Similar difficulties prevent the varied elements in the human zoo from reaching a consensus. Witness the rancour at the annual conference of the Galion Institute, (formerly The Eugenics Society). Entitled 'Man And Society In The New Millennium', the conference was held in the Zoological Society (in Regents Park), on the 16 and 17 September, 1999.
One of the lecturers on the opening day of the conference was Richard Lynn (Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Ulster). His subject was 'Quality of Population: Scenarios for the New Eugenics'. In Dysgenics (1996), it may be recalled, Lynn endorsed the thesis of The Bell Curve that because natural selection no longer operates, 'the genetic quality of modem populations is deteriorating'. He also maintained that intelligence and conscientiousness are inversely correlated with fertility. The feckless and stupid are unwilling or unable to organise their own contraception, in his opinion.
Yet Lynn remains optimistic, despite this gloomy analysis. He believes that biotechnology will deliver a market driven eugenics and that selection for intelligence is imminent. In his lecture, he predicted sperm banks donated by people with high IQ, as advocated by Julian Huxley amongst others. He also envisaged the cloning* of highly intelligent or otherwise admirable individuals (in authoritarian societies, at least). And the extensive use of in vitro fertilisation in conjunction with pre implantation diagnosis, a genetic screening procedure which involves selecting embryos free of hereditary defects.
Arthur Jensen On day two of the Galion Conference, the keynote speaker should have been Arthur R Jensen (Emeritus Professor of Educational Psychology, Berkeley). Jensen was a post doctoral research student under Hans Eysenck, at the University of London. A convinced hereditarian, he is also an avowed disciple of Charles Spearman (1863- 1945). It was Spearman who introduced the concept of g into differential psychology. It (g) stands for the general mental ability which, according to Spearman, enters into every complex cognitive task.
* Note, however, that the objective of current research on human cloning is to replicate organs or skin tissue for transplants rather than grow complete babies.
6 Ethical Record, December 1999 Jensen is the leading authority on the testing of intelligence. To his opponents, however, he is the `world's most loathsome scientist', the 'Dr Strangelove of social science', who, despite his 'mild manner', dabbles 'in the unthinkable' (Daily Mail, 17 September, 1999). In 1969, Jensen polarised opinion with his article 'How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?', (Harvard Educational Review). This was a critical examination of the various attempts in the US to rectify the educational under performance of children from poor families. Head Start, a federally funded, pre school intervention programme established in 1964, (current annual expenditure over $2 billion), was the centrepiece of these endeavours.
Jensen pointed out that supporters of these compensatory initiatives had assumed a) that all normal children are born with the same basic capabilities, and b) that inequalities in educational attainment must therefore be due to adverse environmental and cultural factors. Contesting these assumptions, Jensen suggested that the heritability of 10, as evidenced by kinship correlations, might be as high as 70-80%. Nor did he exclude the possibility that the white-black difference in average IQ (100 for whites, compared to 85 for blacks) might be primarily genetic in origin. He implied that efforts to achieve equality of educational outcome, whether by compensatory programmes or by bussing, however worthy, were fundamentally flawed. Intelligence, he would later put it, is 'the one individual pupil characteristic over which schools can have little or no control' ('Spearman's g and the Problem of Educational Equality'). Jensen's research, not surprisingly, has been cited approvingly by the radical right. Yet he emphatically denies that it is wedded to a political agenda.
In recent years, Jensen's claim that intelligence is substantially heritable has been widely upheld by leading behavioural geneticists. Thomas Bouchard's work at Minnesota on monozygotic twins raised apart was a milestone in this context. These days, the bottom line for Jensen's opponents is that the causes of ethnic group differences in IQ must be different from the causes of the IQ differences between individuals. In his latest book The g Factor (1998), Jensen challenges this 'dual hypothesis', which he regards as the last stand of beleaguered environmentalism. In opposition to it, he proposes his 'default hypothesis', which states that the white- black average IQ difference is determined by the same environmental and genetic factors that account for within group variation, and in approximately the same ratios.
The Interruption On 17 September, 1999, Professor Jensen was due to deliver the final, keynote lecture of the Galton symposium, entitled `Galton's Legacy to Current Research on Intelligence'. His lecture could not be delivered, however. For when Glayde Whitney, scheduled as the penultimate speaker, began his talk on 'Reproductive Technology for a New Eugenics', he was interrupted by a group called 'People Against Eugenics'. The demonstrators unfurled a banner demanding 'Diversity not Discrimination'. After further chaotic scenes, the officials at London Zoo and the police decided that the Conference should not continue.
The precise timing of the protest was carefully chosen. For Whitney, who is a former, controversial President of the American Behavioural Genetics Association, has written a laudatory foreword to My Awakening by David Duke, which is publicised on the Internet. Duke was once the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. He is currently pursuing a career in mainstream, American politics. But his views have not changed appreciably since he appeared in white robes before burning crosses. My Awakening contains such revealing chapter titles as 'The Rising Tide Of Ethical Record, December, 1999 7 Colour', 'An Aryan Vision', 'Jewish Supremacism' and 'A Holocaust Inquiry'. The belief in racial equality is described therein as 'the modern scientific equivalent of believing that the earth is flat'. And the author expatiates on `...the Jewish role in leading the world to the edge of a racial apocalypse' (sic). Professor Whitney, it seems, considers My Awakening 'an academically excellent work of socio- biological-history...'. Issues Raised By The Events At The Galton Conference. Certain psychologists and behavioural geneticists believe that the ethnic and class differences in educational attainment/IQ (the existence of which is not disputed), reflect underlying genetic differences. They also believe that dysgenic reproduction is a serious social problem but that advances in biotechnology have finally given us the 'power to influence the quality of future humanity' (Gallon, Inquiries Into Human Faculty). Are they entitled to publicly state or publish views which some consider repellent? And how is the freedom of speech of those who espouse controversial theories on race and intelligence etc to be reconciled with their critics' right to protest against what they perceive as racism and elitism?
The warfare,between science and religion is a familiar theme. A proportion of the critics of genetic counselling and of research into gene therapy, cloning etc, proceed from the religious assumption that life is sacrosanct. They characterise all such interventions as 'meddling in human evolution'. What is new, however, is the emerging coalition between these right to life groups and politically motivated elements like 'People Against Eugenics'. The latter condemn research into the genetic basis of intelligence and the measurement of individual and group differences in intelligence. They also oppose pre-implantation testing (and other mainstream embryological methods), agreeing with the disability lobby that these procedures, because they involve selection, represent a new form of eugenics. Tom Shakespeare, the writer on genetics and disability, has even suggested that embryo screening could lead to 'genetic cleansing' (The Guardian, 20 November). And 'People Against Eugenics' criticised the IVF pioneer Robert Edwards for predicting that it will soon be a 'sin' to continue with a pregnancy, when the foetus is known to have a genetic defect.
There is unquestionably collusion between the media and the opponents of the so called 'new eugenics'. Both parties to this unholy alliance thrive on publicity and conflict. The journalists who attended the 1999 Gallon Conference may have been tipped off that a demonstration was planned. Certain newspapers, notably The Guardian (see 22 September, 'Science friction'), used material provided by 'People Against Eugenics' in their coverage of the demonstration. And photographs of symposium speakers, taken by the protestors, were published in several newspapers. Those who attended Colin Blakemore's lecture at Conway Hall in 1997, which was nearly broken up by animal rights campaigners, will need little convincing that violence is part of the repertoire of opponents of free speech.
There has been unanimous condemnation of the Galion Institute for allegedly making an impolitic even provocative choice of speakers (see Daily Mail, Searchlight, The Big Issue, The Guardian, and The Voice). The Voice, a journal read by the Afro-Caribbean community, described the Gallon Conference as, quite simply, a 'Racist Scientists' Meeting'. The conference's supposedly sinister agenda has played into the hands of all those who (for whatever reason) are opposed to genetic screening and counselling (sometimes the prelude to abortion), and to all research on the genetics of intelligence and criminal behaviour. 8 Ethical Record, December, 1999 The Human Fertilisation And Embryology Authority recently decided to consult the public (or more accurately the various worthy organisations which purport to speak on its behalf) on the ethical problems raised by pre implantation genetic diagnosis. The advances in genetics and embryology have produced a backlog of ethical and philosophical questions which urgently need to be debated. It is to be hoped that the small yet vociferous groups who take a partisan interest in these issues (i.e. the disability lobby, the political ideologues who pose as concerned citizens, and the Christian fundamentalists) will not be allowed to prevent this debate. • THE IDEA OF AN ETHICS OF BELIEF
M.A.B. Degenhardt Lecture to the Ethical Society, 10 October 1999
Talk of 'an ethics of belief' may initially sound odd. We normally think of ethics as being to do with how we ought to behave and with having the appropriate motives for such behaviour. The moral life is about doing the right things for the right reasons. However, beliefs are linked to the realm of the ethical at least in so far as they inform our motives for, and our understanding of, what we do. There are two possibilities for an ethics of belief. The first is a case of what I find it helpful to distinguish as an ethics of belief of content - an ethics of what we ought or ought not to believe. In such a case if the believer is to be morally disapproved, that is because the belief itself is morally disapproved. The second case is one where no judgment is being made on either the truth or the morality of the belief itself; rather someone is held culpable exclusively for the way in which they formed the belief or for how they continue to hold it. This I distinguish as an ethics of belief of manner.
There are at least two serious difficulties with the idea of an ethics of belief of content. The first involves an issue in philosophical psychology. Holding people morally accountable for what they believe only seems to make sense if we are free to choose what to believe. The problem with this is that typically, perhaps always, we find ourselves believing certain things and can do nothing to change this by a decision or act of will. (See Williams, 1979). It is not so problematic to propose that we can freely choose the kind and amount of care we take in forming and appraising our beliefs. This, as I shall discuss shortly, points to an ethics of belief of manner. The second difficulty is that any prescription as to what people ought or ought not to believe seems to be an intrusion into our personal autonomy, to threaten our right to think for ourselves. On the other hand we protect this autonomy when we urge people to think carefully - which again points to an ethics of belief of manner.
On the Manner of Forming and Holding Beliefs These difficulties may not be insuperable and the development of a sound ethics of belief of content may be a philosophical task waiting to be attempted. But it is understandable that the focus of philosophical discussion has been on the idea of an ethics of belief of manner, on the idea that the ways in which we form and hold our beliefs can be matters of ethical judgment and prescription. That will also be the focus of the rest of this talk.
The term 'The Ethics of Belief' was first used by the philosopher-scientist W.K. Clifford in 1877 as the title of a published lecture. He was using it, however,
Ethical Record, December; 1999 9 to express a very old idea: that we are morally obliged to try to get our beliefs right. In some form or another this idea has been inseparable from the history of philosophy at least since Socrates pestered the sophists to explain the grounds for their striking knowledge claims. Clifford's interest in the idea had a particular campaigning purpose: to discredit religion by bringing a charge of immorality against those who make a virtue of holding to religious faith whilst acknowledging the inadequacy of their evidence. (See Livingston, 1974). However, it is an idea with a much wider application and there was certainly nothing anti-religious about some versions of it. Locke, for example, proposed that God would not have given us rational powers of belief evaluation had he not intended us to use them. (Locke, 1975, IV, xvii, 29. pp. 687-688). Clifford's doctrine, its importance and the context of its origin are well set out in an article in this journal (Madigan, 1996) so I will concentrate on developing two themes: i) that in one respect Clifford goes badly wrong, and that Locke helps us put things right and ii) that while the tough demands of an ethics of belief are liable to deprive us of precious illusions that help give point and direction to our lives, they can also help us to fill the lacuna and tell us something about how to live.
Clifford gives us a nice simple statement of his central claim: 'it is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe on insufficient evidence'. (1947, p.75). He clearly means a moral wrong and he defends his position on consequentialist grounds. In general, harm is liable to follow if we act on beliefs for which we do not have satisfactory evidence. And even on trivial matters, if we let ourselves believe for unworthy reasons we risk becoming habitually credulous and more prone to go wrong on matters of moment. I have suggested elsewhere that this position would be strengthened by a deontological argument stressing that to believe regardless of evidence is to deny that capacity for reasoned judgment which is central to our nature as moral agents. (Degenhardt, 1999, pp. 335-337).
Here I want to take issue with Clifford's austerity as evidenced in the piece just quoted. He is aware that to ask that no one ever believe anything without adequate evidence is to ask a very great deal. His insistence on the point was perhaps natural given his acceptance of an all-or-nothing view of belief whereby we assent or do not assent, with no intermediate shades or degrees of commitment or confidence. The result is a doubly unrealistic position since i) we simply cannot check out all the beliefs that we hold and act on and ii) there just are matters regarding which we have to form some belief though we cannot achieve total confidence. Clifford would virtually restrict our believing to those cases where we can reasonably claim to know. But as well as being unrealistic these related mistakes prevent Clifford from developing an ethic of belief that is adequate to human needs - an ethic of belief that will guide us in those uncertain areas where knowledge is elusive and guidance is most called for.
John Locke's 'Most Concernment' On this aspect of the matter Locke gets off to a much better start, as is well brought out in Nicholas Wolterstorff's helpful study, John Locke and the Ethics of Belief (1996) - a work to which I am much indebted in what follows. Locke was motivated by a belief that the seventeenth century European culture that he inhabited was leaving people morally and politically adrift because the canon of doctrine that they sought to live by had become badly fractured. People needed help in thinking their way through the confusion. Anxious to provide this, Locke restricted the domain of his ethics of belief to matters that are of 'maximal concemment' to us - which for him were mainly matters of religious, moral and political obligation. This promises 10 Ethical Record, December, 1999 a more realistic ethics of belief, and a more helpful one. Well aware that on such matters of concernment it was rarely possible to be confident that our beliefs were adequately justified in the way Clifford later demanded, Locke attended to what Clifford overlooked: that we temper the confidence of our beliefs to the strength of their justification. Walterstorff points out that Locke was probably wrong if he thought that we could choose how confidently to embrace a particular belief (pp. 101-118). However we can, and should, educate ourselves and others to develop habits of caution, reasonableness and restraint in how we form and hold our beliefs. Locke also hoped that such caution in belief would promote tolerance and reasoned discourse between holders of opposed views in just those areas where beliefs are important but hard to settle. I will now try to draw together some positive conclusions from what I have said. It seems that there is indeed an ethics of belief of manner and that it requires us i) to take pains to try to get things right on matters of importance and ii) to hold beliefs with a confidence appropriate to the available evidence. This points to a further requirement, that we reflect carefully as to what matters most demand such careful inquiry. These, of course, are very general points and a full account would require working out details of how they are to be translated into concrete practice - by, for example, developing intellectual virtues such as perseverance, intellectual honesty and openness of mind. It would also require therapeutic diagnosis of the obstacles to a realised ethics of belief Two such obstacles at present are i) our tendency to rely uncritically on the claims of real or supposed experts whose pronouncements may be presented and taken to be more authoritative than they really are and, ii) a contrasting tendency to relativist or subjectivist scepticism about knowledge claims in general; for it becomes pointless, indeed absurd, to try to bring our beliefs closer to truth and knowledge if we really think there are no such things.
The Heroism of Unbelief I now turn to my second major theme, the high price that many be exacted by an ethics of belief. Charles Taylor links Clifford's lecture to the emergence of a new ideal, 'a kind of heroism of unbelief, the deep seated spiritual satisfaction of knowing that one has confronted the truth of things, however bleak and unconsoling' (Taylor, 1989, p. 404). The suggestion is that people have often embraced inadequately grounded but consoling and guiding beliefs about the nature of the universe, its creation and purpose, and our own place or point within this larger scheme - in other words have embraced very positive answers to 'meaning of life' questions. The heroism of unbelief consists in honestly accepting the accidental and purposeless nature of things and our own responsibility for how we decide to conduct ourselves, and in denying ourselves consolation in beliefs such as that of a benign and all powerful creator looking after us. Many people find all this quite exhilarating; others don't give the matter much attention; some find it hard to come to terms with and for a few it is literally unbearable. And of course not everyone finds that following the evidence where it leads, in obedience to the ethics of belief, does bring us to see our world as alien, pointless and without value.
However, the response is not uncommon and Taylor (pp. 18-19) records the findings of some psychiatrists that whereas once many patients were distressed that they could not meet what they took to be objective moral and spiritual demands on them, they now tend to be distressed at their inability to know if there really are any demands and purposes that they ought to live by. More generally, it can be said, the ethics of belief, combined with developments in science, makes it difficult not to find ourselves spiritually and morally adrift in a world without purpose, objective values or ultimate consolation in life. Apparently many of Clifford's contemporary Ethical Record, December, 1999 11 free-thinkers were worried that a general loss of religious belief might have such consequences - though not Clifford himself (Madigan, pp.14-16). For those for whom the felt loss is of religious consolation there is, I think, nothing to offer beyond spiritual satisfaction in the heroism of unbelief. For those for whom the fear is that the loss of religion will also involve the loss of sound moral guidance, then it is not at all clear that we cannot have rational moral beliefs without a religious foundation. Indeed it is hard to see how it could not be rational to embrace the ethics of belief itself, regardless of whatever religious beliefs one may or may not hold.
But now I want to argue that the ethics of belief gives pointers as to how we ought to live, pointers going beyond the matter of our belief-forming practices. Hitherto I have discussed the ethics of belief as a regulative ethic, requiring us to obey certain standards of rigor, honesty, restraint and caution in our belief forming. I want now to contend that if we work out the ethics of belief more completely, we find that it tells us quite a lot not only about how we ought to form and hold our beliefs but about the kind of people we should strive to be and the kind of culture and cultural institutions we should seek to maintain. I make three points:
1 I said earlier that trying to get our beliefs right requires the development of various intellectual virtues. I think that more is involved and that certain moral qualities are required if we would make our beliefs as well founded as possible. We need to cultivate a steadiness and disinterestedness of character if we are to see things as they are. Jane Austen's characters often go wrong in life because flaws in their moral nature cause them to misperceive themselves and their fellows. Hitler too is an illuminating case. It seems clear that his ghastly views were energetically researched and honestly held. Unfortunately the intellectual virtues displayed here counted for little when active in the company of such moral vices as spleen, hatred and lack of empathy. So the ethics of belief gives us one reason why we ought to try to be a certain kind of person, a person displaying a range of moral as well as intellectual qualities.
2 The exercise of mind in the pursuit of justified beliefs requires more than individual capacities for freedom of thought. It also requires educational, cultural and political institutions that enable and stimulate the free flow of ideas, questions and critique as well as the most rigorous thinking that we can manage. So the ethics of belief teaches us to ask a great deal of our various cultural institutions (universities, schools, broadcasting, political parties, the press, public libraries...) and to do what we can to ensure they meet such demands. It requires of us an informed cherishing of our cultural and educational institutions somewhat as other kinds of ethical consideration requires us to be concerned for the adequacy, improvement and proper functioning of our welfare services.
3 The demands of an ethics of belief cannot, in practice, be applied to all the beliefs we form. We must follow Locke and apply it to matters of 'most concernment'. But it is no easy matter to decide just which matters these are. On its own the ethics of belief will not tell us. There is no avoiding difficult reflections on the ultimate ends of human life; and we do not even know if such ends are there for us to discover or are something that we have to decide upon. This is no reason to by- pass such matters, as we tend to do in a culture where the pursuit of wisdom seems to take second place to the more or less indiscriminate pursuit of information. What does follow from the ethics of belief is that we ought to think about such questions, that we should. not allow ourselves to become preoccupied with immediate practicalities to the neglect of questions of ends and meaning. As individuals we 12 Ethical Record, December, 1999 should not only reflect on such questions, we should try to ensure that our cultural institutions stimulate and facilitate such reflection.
Added together, and elaborated in detail, these three points will hardly tell us all we want to know about how we should live. They certainly do not tell us the meaning of life. What I hope they do show is that reasoned reflection on the ethics of belief can generate some guiding ideas about how one should think about and conduct some parts of a human life. So if the ethics of belief may require us to face the bleak picture of a life bereft of meaning and value, it also shows us something of the possibility of using our rational powers to re-establish value and purpose in our lives. References Clifford, W.K. (1877) (1947) The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays (Watts & Co) Degenhardt, M. (1998) The Ethics of Belief and the Ethics of Teaching, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 32.3, pp. 333-344. Livingston, J.C. (1974) The Ethics of Belief: an Essay on the Victorian Conscience (Tallahassee, American Academy of Religion). Locke, J. (1700) (1975) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. Nidditch (Oxford, Oxford University Press). Madigan, Ti. (1996) The Virtues of 'The Ethics of Belief' W.K. Clifford's Continuing Relevance, Ethical Record, 101.10, pp. 12-19. Taylor, C. (1989) Sources of the Self (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Williams, B. (1979) Deciding to Believe, Problems of the Self (C.U.P.). Wolterstorff, N. (1966)John Locke and the Ethics of Belief (C.U.P.).
DOCTOR-ASSISTED DYING - LEGALLY INEVITABLE?
Dr. Michael Irwin, Vice-Chair of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society Lecture to the Ethical Society, 21 November 1999
The Voluntary Euthanasia Society was founded in Britain in 1935 - the first organisation of its kind in the world. Initially, its leaders were physicians (like Lord Moynihan, a famous surgeon at that time) and the clergy (for example, Canon Dick Shepherd from St. Martins-in-the-Fields). And, VES' first public meeting was held at BMA House on 10 December 1935. Of course if was not realised then that 10 December would have special significance when, after the Second World War, this date became the International Day for Human Rights; the basis of the debate for voluntary euthanasia is that this is a human rights issue, a matter of patient autonomy.
I fully support good palliative care and the hospice movement. It is not a question of palliative care or voluntary euthanasia. Unless one is fortunate enough, at the right age, to die suddenly (such as from a massive heart attack), we will all need palliative care when we develop our final illnesses. Home-based palliative care is now developing, because more people, including me, would prefer to die at home in familiar surroundings, rather than in a hospice. No one should receive voluntary euthanasia until all the alternatives of palliative care have been explained and perhaps tried.
The supporters of 'palliative care' and 'voluntary euthanasia' have much in common, such as thinking about 'compassion' and 'dying with dignity' for
Ethical Record, December, 1999 13 terminally-ill patients. I believe that palliative care is more effective if a patient had the option of physician-assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia (as we see today in Oregon). We must remember that even the best of palliative care cannot relieve all problems of severe pain at the end of life - unless a patient is kept in a drug-induced coma.
However, pain is not the only major problem which can occur among terminally-ill individuals - there can be the difficulty of severe breathlessness or being incontinent. Also, most people do not want their families and friends to see them slowly waste away, such as with terminal cancer. This is certainly my view - I would like my three daughters and their children to remember me as a fairly normal • person and not as a hopeless invalid, adversely affected by the ravages of cancer.
There are four stages of 'Doctor-Assisted Dying'. At present, one is legal, one is unofficially allowed, and the other two are performed but are illegal.
With a terminally-ill patient, a doctor can always withhold treatment, say by not giving antibiotics to a major stroke victim who develops pneumonia (this infection used to be called the 'old person's friend') or withdraw treatment. Some still call either of them 'passive euthanasia'. The great majority of doctors have no problem with these forms of doctor-assisted dying. During the Summer, the BMA issued 'Guidelines on Withholding and Withdrawing Life-prolonging Medical Treatment' which have greatly advanced this concept. Of importance in this BMA document was the statement that 'the classification of artificial nutrition and hydration as medical treatment is now established common law'.
The Living Will If someone has a living will (or an advance statement), then the medical team looking after a terminally-ill patient can much more easily decide when to withhold or withdraw treatment. Living wills allow one to set down in advance what treatments one would refuse or accept if unconscious or too ill or confused to make a decision at the time. Many individuals and organisations support living wills - for example, in the latest BMA guidelines, it is written that 'a valid advance refusal of treatment has the same legal authority as a contemporaneous refusal and legal action could be taken against a doctor who provides treatment in the face of a valid refusal'.
The second level of doctor-assisted dying involves the doctrine of 'double effect', under which doctors may give medications to relieve pain and suffering, even if the result is to shorten a patient's life, so long as this is not the intention. But who can really tell what is a doctor's intention? Many physicians give terminally-ill patients large dosages of sedatives or/and pain-killers (hopefully at the request of the patient) in order to hasten the dying process. This form of 'slow' euthanasia is unofficially allowed so long as the doctor uses standard drugs and tells nobody of the true intention. Doing this over a couple of days is permitted ('good medical practice'), whereas a single lethal injection could lead to a charge of murder.
Physician-assisted Suicide The third stage of doctor-assisted dying is to give a patient a supply of lethal drugs (' take only one pill every six hours; the whole bottle would kill you') or, as in Oregon, a prescription for a lethal substances which the terminally-ill patient can take at a time of personal choice - this is 'physician-assisted suicide'. The fourth level is to respond to an individual's request and give an injection of a lethal medication - this is voluntary euthanasia. Both of these procedures are still illegal. 14 • Ethical Record, December, 1999 At the time of the Tony Bland case (in 1993), Lord Browne-Wilkinson summed up the legal complexity by saying 'Flow can it be lawful to allow a patient to die slowly, although painlessly, over a period of weeks from lack of food but unlawful to produce his immediate death by a lethal injection?' To me, the difference between withholding or withdrawing medical treatment and giving someone a single injection is not an ethical problem (in both situations, the decision has been reached that it is time for someone to die) but an emotional problem for the medical team.
Before we start re-inventing the wheel in Britain about whether or not to change the law regarding legalising voluntary euthanasia, let us look at what is possible in the Netherlands, Oregon and Switzerland. If it works well there, why should it not be alright here?
The Death of George V From the experience in The Netherlands since 1981, we know that only a small number of patients will request and be given physician-assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia - around 4%. Around 90% of Dutch doctors approve of what is possible in their country. These procedures have been decriminalised for 18 years, and the Dutch parliament is expected to legalise them soon (when Parliament discussed the matter in 1993, the vote was 91 to 59 to let everything continue). Those who oppose the Dutch system will refer to the Remmelink Reports made in that country earlier in this decade and quote the number of non-voluntary euthanasia cases (about 900 a year, out of a total of 130,000 deaths) as proof that all is not right. I believe we have a higher percentage of such non-voluntary cases here. No one really knows. The best example this century was the manner in which Lord Dawson ended the life of George V in 1936 (with an intravenous injection of morphine and cocaine). At least the Dutch are being honest about what happens in their country. We should have a Remmelink-style report in this country to see how people really die - I believe there would be some surprises.
In Switzerland, since the late 1970s, physician-assisted suicide has been decriminalised, and about 120 terminally-ill people a year chose this way to die in that country.
Also, in Oregon, since 1997, physician-assisted suicide has been legalised. Annual reports are made by this state's Health Board. In 1998, because of strict guidelines, only 23 terminally-ill patients received a prescription for a lethal drug. The system is working well there and if any 'mistake' should happen, you can be sure that the whole world will quickly hear about it, because those groups who oppose the Oregon scheme are watching it very carefully.
What about medical support for voluntary euthanasia? The best recent survey to quote is one made in 1996 by the BMA News Review. This poll involved 750 GPs and hospital doctors and reveals a near 50/50 split on the matter of changing the law. When this BMA publication issued a press release on the results of the survey (on 30 August 1996), it quoted Dr. Stuart Homer, the chairman of the BMA medical ethics committee, as saying, 'If we genuinely believe that all the efforts of medicine have been exhausted it may well be that in a particular case euthanasia has to be considered - that is a matter for the doctor concerned and I would be the last person to say they had done the wrong thing'. In May 2000, the BMA is organising a national conference on physician-assisted suicide. Again, the Royal College of GPs and the Royal College of Physicians are making a two-year review of the subject. Ethical Record, December 1999 15 Slowly, and willingly, the British medical (and nursing) profession is moving in the right direction. The Source of the Opposition The opposition to a change in the law comes from certain religious groups, although many religious leaders support the idea of voluntary euthanasia (recently, the chairman of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society in Scotland was a retired Bishop of Edinburgh). However, why should those of a certain religious persuasion force their views on the majority who do not share those views (at least 85% of the population support the idea of voluntary euthanasia)?
The Hippocratic Oath, produced about 400 BC, is sometimes quoted as a reason not to allow voluntary euthanasia. However, if this oath were properly observed today, there would be no abortions, no operations for kidney stones, perhaps no female physicians; many drugs would not be prescribed because of their possible harmful side-effects.
The opposition also refers to the danger of abuse to the elderly and the disabled being quietly 'removed' if voluntary euthanasia were legalised. That danger exists now, when a single doctor can act on his own. If three physicians were involved, the possible problem of abuse would be minimal.
We know that terminally-ill doctors and nurses often receive professional help to 'speed up the dying process' from their friendly colleagues. This group has easy access to lethal drugs, either to help themselves or their colleagues. Unless similar assistance is given to one's patients, this could be a problem of 'double standards'. In any discussion of physician-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia, it is important to personalise the question. Most of us have seen relatives or friends dying slowly and with great difficulty, from illnesses such as widespread cancer, AIDS, or motor neurone disease. If we were to find ourselves in similar situations, would we like a compassionate doctor to respond to our request for a quick exit, after we had had our patience exhausted with palliative care? If the answer is positive, then we should support a change in the law.
SOUTH PLACE SUNDAY CONCERTS AT CONWAY HALL at 6.30 pm. Tickets £5
January 9 SCHIDLOF STRING QUARTET & NICHOLAS DANIEL (Oboe) MOZART: K 370, WOOLRICH: Oboe Quintet, SCHUBERT: D 810. January 16 GOULD PIANO TRIO BEETHOVEN: Op. 1 No.2, BEETHOVEN: Op.44, BEETHOVEN: Op.97 January 23 KATHERINE GOWERS (Violin) & CHARLES OWEN (Piano) BEETHOVEN: Op.23, PROKOFIEV: Op.80, FAURE: Op.13, SZYMANOWSKI: Op.28 January 30 DANEL STRING QUARTET BEETHOVEN: Op.18 No I, VAINBERG: String Quartet No.7, SHOSTAKOVICH: Op.73.
Season's programme from D. Morris, PO Box 17635, London N12 8WN (send S.A.E.)
16 Ethical Record, December, 1999 SELF REALISATION AS A MEMBER OF SOCIETY The ethical thought of F H Bradley
Christopher Bratcher Lecture-discussion to be given at the Ethical Society, 9 January 2000
The prevailing philosophical tendency in the second half of the CI9 was to build systems; primarily on Hegel's methodological base. The core of this was the dialectical process of argument, deployed by Marx. Very crudely (as Marxist readers, if any, may be at pains to point out), the dialectical method finds manifest flaws both in a position, and in a view put up as its apparent contrary, and then synthesises (subsumes) both in a further conception. For Hegelians, History (and every form of life) was progressing in the same synthetic manner, as facets of a self-developing, and self-revelatory, Reality. F H Bradley (1846-1924) was the most influential follower (and on his terms, developer) of Hegelianism in England'. This conception of the world as in progressive evolution, spoke to the Victorians' self-perception at the end of their century; and it may be timely to wryly reflect on it at the millennium. Awarded the Order of Merit, Bradley was 'widely considered to be the greatest English living philosopher' by the early C20.2 The development of analytic, and, later, 'ordinary language' philosophy in our century was largely a reaction against his way of doing philosophy. His early work, Ethical Studies, (pub 1876) is best understood as a part of his systematic views; but it can be profitably read in isolation, and as an intended demonstration of dialectical advance on both Kant (discussed at our last meeting) and Mill's utilitarianism (then the dominant conception of Ethics at Oxford). Bradley subsequently felt that the targets of his book were (in good Hegelian fashion) somewhat 'vieux jeu', and his criticisms overly robust'. Despite the book's influence, he would not let it be reprinted without revision. OUP did reprint it in 1927, and parts (particularly Essay V, 'My station and its duties') are anthologised. There is an admirable exposition of the book in Richard Norman's 'The Moral Philosophers', OUP 1998.
Both Cats and Humanism Detested Bradley's life' and non-philosophical opinions (at least) are scarcely imaginable today. One of twenty children of a fashionable (and domestically tyrannical) Evangelical preacher, (and older brother of A C Bradley, the well known Shakespearean scholar), he held a college fellowship without lecturing duties, terminable on marriage, that gave him college rooms. He constructed his own pistol range above them, and is said to have prowled the college grounds at night taking pot shots at his pet detestation, cats! He had a soldierly bearing, and would be fastidiously dressed, with a clipped beard in the high Edwardian manner (a colleague described him as a 'highly cultivated explorer'). A life-long martyr to kidney disease, he regularly wintered on the Riviera with an American socialite to whom he dedicated his works, who claimed to never have read a book in her life! Despite being a forthright supporter of freedom of opinion and artistic expression, he could not abide liberalism, pacifism, humanism, or notions of human equality. He regarded such notions as 'sentimental', 'degenerate' or 'disgusting'. But as we shall sec, his personal views, though a possible consequence, are not the inevitable conclusion to his thought. Bradley's opening chapter, 'Why should I be moral?', takes 'self-realisation' as the central concept of Ethics, and the aim of morality: I may say more of this, Ethical Record, December, 1999 17 when we meet. The next chapters criticise Mill and Kant. He has fun at the expense of Hedonism, the version of Utilitarianism that identifies the Good with maximal pleasure. He caricatures it as an inherently mistaken attempt to make a universal prescription out of equally misconceived attempts to judge what, in general, would most pleasure us personally'. (The obvious retort of the Utilitarian is that 'self- realisation' is a prime example of the sort of unsummable and ungeneraliseable abstract notion to which Bradley takes exception). He makes the familiar charge that Utilitarianism implies that the end justifies (or ignores) the means6: but the same charge could, in principle, be made against an Ethic of Self-realisation. The End of Ethics, for Bradley, is not the feeling of self-realisation, but objective realisation'. With that last shot, he leaves Utilitarianism. Bradley makes many of the criticisms I levelled (in the delivered lecture) against Kant's identification of Ethics with the achievement of a good will through the performance of duty: primarily, that very little is validated, or ruled out, by the test of whether it can be willed as a moral law without internal contradiction. A formal test of right and wrong thus becomes empty. Richard Norman neatly puts the contrast Bradley is making: Mill emphasises the aspect of the particular to the exclusion of the universal, and content to the exclusion of form, whereas Kant does just the reverse. Bradley puts the stage reached in his argument, thus: 'We have self- realisation left as the end, the self (as a moral ideal) so far being defined as neither a collection of particular feelings nor an abstract universal (i.e. duty)'. Bradley's Synthesis of Kant and Mill Bradley argues that the solution lies in elements of both: a conception neither subjective nor particular, nor abstract: a 'concrete universal', 'something superior to me, and yet here and now in and by me'. Whatever can this be? He tells us in ringing fashion: `...we have found the end, we have found self-realisation, duty and happiness in one - yes, we have found ourselves, when we have found (drum roll...) our station and its duties, our function as an organ in the social organism'. His case is that the individual, the man into whose essence his community with others does not enter, who does not include relation to others in his very being, is, we say, a fiction'. (Or, as Donne put it, 'No man is an island'). Says Bradley, `...man, so far as history can trace him back, is social; and if Mr Darwin's conjecture as to the development of man from a social animal be received, we must say that man has never been anything but social, and society never was made by individual men."In short, man is a social being; he is real only because he is social, and can realise himself only because it is as social that he realises himself'. 'He is one of a people, he was born in a family, he lives in a certain society, in a certain state'. (p173/4: Discuss?) So far, perhaps, so good, if one ignores Bradley's slides into the unacceptable end of social biology, in talk of 'the common heritage of his race'. However, he has little to say of social obligation, and, 'leaving out of sight the question of a society wider than the state, we must say that a man's life with its moral duties is in the main filled up by his system of wholes which the state is, and this... by its spirit, gives him the life which he does live, and ought to live.' Bradley has some decidedly (Baden-) Powellite views of those duties. We do not have to 'leave out of sight' the wider society, which is the heart of his conservatism. Bradley took on board thought provoking consequences from his view of morality as a process of evolution, but not teleology: the job of philosophy was 'to understand morals which exist, not to make them', nor 'to make the world moral'. 1 18 Ethical Record, December, 1999 set out some of his closing remarks to prompt discussion. 'The two problems of the best man and the best state are two sides of the one problem...' The notion that full-fledged moral ideas fell down from heaven is contrary to all the facts with which we are acquainted'. 'Morality is 'relative', but is none the less real. At every stage there is the solid fact of a world so far moralised'. 'A human being is nothing if he is not the son of his time; and he must (?) realise himself at that, or he will not do it at all."That to wish to be better than the world is, is to be already on the threshold of immorality' (!). Bradley opined that, having said 'farewell to visions of superhuman morality, to ideal societies... it is quite clear that if anybody wants to realise himself as a perfect man without trying to be a perfect member of his country and all his smaller communities, he makes what all sane persons would admit to be a great mistake.' Tony Blair (and Francis Fukayama) may well agree. Communitarianism, more fully articulated, with a Co-operative spin, after the First World War, by Bradley's fellow Anglo-Hegelian, John McMurray, and now by New Labour, has its roots here. I cannot expound Hegelian Idealism here; as Bradley Put it in his major work, Appearance and Reality, 'Reality is one. It must be single because plurality, taken as real, contradicts itself. Plurality implies relations, and, through its relations it unwillingly asserts always a superior unity'. The passage is quoted by Bertrand Russell in My Philosophical Development; in an essay 'Why I took to philosophy', in Portraits from Memory, Russell says: 'Hegel thought of the universe as a closely knit unity. His universe was like a jelly in that if you touched any part of it, the whole quivered; but it was unlike a jelly in that it could not be really cut up into parts. The appearance of consisting of parts, according to him, was a delusion. The only reality was the Absolute, which was his name for God. In this philosophy I found comfort for a time... (until the First World War)'. = Ray Monk; in his biography, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude. Bradley was similarly concerned in 1910 not to disconcert the 38 year old Bertrand Russell; his acute criticisms of the logical status of the constituents of things and 'types' in Russell's Principles of Mathematics, were accompanied with pleas that he would not give up philosophy for politics, as Russell was proposing to do: '...no one else will do your work in philosophy as far as human probability goes. And more than this I don't feel I have any right to say'. Pee-Richard Wollheim's 'FH Bradley', Pelican, 1959; for long, faille de nzieza, the most accessible account of his thought. Bradley puts up counter-examples to the Utilitarian position in a footnote to pl 10, which include: 'Is prostitution a good or bad thing? To prove that it is bad we must prove that it diminishes the surplus of pleasant sensations, and is this not a fair subject for argument?' Bradley's tone may be taken from his examination on p113 of Mill's classic argument for the desirability of general happiness, that each person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, is a good to the aggregate of all persons: 'If many pigs are fed at one trough, each desires his own food, and somehow as a consequence seems to desire the food of all; and by parity of reasoning, it should follow that each pig, desiring his own pleasure, desires also the pleasure of all.., but this scarcely seems conformable to experience' (or fair to Mill). By request, I will not 'do' Mill, as over,familiar to you. Equally, is not the 'end' of Utilitarianism, objective happiness, rather than the sensation (if there is a distinct one), that goes with it?
Ethical Record, December, 1999 19 VIEWPOINTS Conway Hall I agree wholeheartedly with the comments made by Peter Cadogan (ER, Nov 99) regarding the uniqueness and importance of the Conway Hall. As Barbara Smoker so aptly reminded us (ER, Oct 99) we quite literally hold the keys to - and responsibility for - one of the few places left in London allowing the widest range of peaceful, rational discussion and debate, and wider social activity: music, education, entertainment etc.
In the last TA years alone the Hall has hosted events by over 1200 organisations and individuals. The sheer variety is astounding: Where else in London would one find, for example, the 'Movement Against the Monarchy' meeting next to the 'Campaign Against Euro-Federalism'? Or communists and socialists sharing a cup of tea over a debate until the evening's Schubert recital begins? The Swiss Embassy's request for a piano recital next year sits on my desk next to the latest booking for 'No War But Class War'. Of course there have been meetings by some unpopular groups. I imagine 'Muslims Against Forced Marriages' would also be unpopular (to put it mildly) in certain parts of the world.
It would be most appropriate to have copies of Peter Cadogan's 1979 leaflet freely available to visitors of the Hall and to all members. An updated version reflecting the last 20 years could also be commissioned. Both could then be added to our web-site. Peter Vlachos (SPES Member and Conway Hall Lettings Manager) Sunday Concerts I feel that Barbara Smoker's diatribe against the concerts (ER, Oct 99) should receive a reply.
Firstly, may I say that I saw and heard Alfred Clements many times and knew personally many of his later associates, all dedicated chamber music lovers and SPES members who sought to relieve the dreariness of Sunday with something educative and enjoyable AND within reach of the poorest. The choice of chamber music - by its nature, composed to be performed in an intimate, domestic setting and therefore less concerned with religious creed or ritual - was merely incidental to the original concept of the concerts. The use of the word 'secular' in this connection on the SPES website is, in my view misleading.
I have been a member of this society for more than 60 years and on the concert committee for most of that time. It makes me sad to observe that through a whole series of misunderstandings the two sides have been polarised.
When George Hutchinson retired as Hon. Secretary of the concerts, at comparatively short notice, in 1987, the succeeding organisers were 'thrown in at the deep end', having only scanty knowledge of the general set-up. lt was inevitable that mistakes and misunderstandings occurred but the integrity of the officers was never in question. I, for one, would not be a party to any malpractice. All those concerned in running the series work extremely hard for months on end simply to foster a knowledge of music and give pleasure to music lovers. I cannot believe that an ethically motivated humanist could possibly find an ulterior motive behind the efforts of a group of volunteers in a demanding and time-consuming enterprise. Mary Lince - London 5W18 20 Ethical Record, December, 1999 Barbara Smoker writes:-
1 fully endorse Mary Linces description of the aims of the founders of the South Place Sunday Concerts and with her estimation of the excellent work given so devotedly over the years by those actively concerned with them - but perhaps it is inevitable that those members of a Society involved mainly in one of its subsidiary activities should be more devoted to that activity than to the wider aims of the Society.
There is no problem in that, of course, as long as they remain loyal to the Society itself; the problem arises when, unknown to the Society's governing body, they go to the Charities Commission and, in opposition to the General Committee's express wishes, set about officially turning the sub-committee into an autonomous organisation in order to take away the whole enterprise (including its goodwill, assets, and grants) from the body which founded it more than a century ago and which, throughout that time, has publicised it, built it up, and heavily subsidised it.
There is no reason, of course, why any members of SPSC should not form a new chamber music society with their friends - but why must they destroy ours at the same time? Barbara Smoker - Bromley, Kent
Origin of Moral Knowledge 'How do we know a priori that what God passes to us is worthwhile moral knowledge?' is an editorial question appearing in ER November 1999.
How indeed? Even granting the real existence of God - and I grant nothing of the sort - it is precisely because of believers not having such knowledge that claims as to infallibility in matters of morals are not credible - but they may, nonetheless, be credited by faith if that is the believer's ball game. This in no way invalidates my point it is not logically impossible to think that God is merely the necessary conduit of moral knowledge rather than its (metaphorical) embodiment and that, hence, the relevant point made in Norman's article (Utilitarianism, ER, October 1999) is not a sound one. Eric Stockton - Orkney
Egoism and Altruism Eric Stockton's letter (ER, Nov 99) may be right in substance about the difficulty of egoism as an ethical system, but his argument does not seem to work in detail. Two people co-operating to move a table which each wants to move, but neither can move alone, is a simple example. Most co-operative relationships are more complicated, but all may be characterised both as mutual aid and as mutual exploitation.
We agree that altruism/egoism is a false polarisation. All voluntary deeds are egoistic (in that they are done to satisfy the doer), but only some are altruistic (in that they benefit somebody else). The word 'selfish' is mostly used in adverse criticism of someone else's behaviour. If one accepts as an ethical precept that oneself should not be selfish, the discovery that one cannot avoid being selfish may lead to continual guilt feelings. Selfishness is recommended as an ethical precept, because it produces peace of mind. Donald Rooum - Stepney
Ethical Record, December, 1999 21 In the recent discussions of altruism (Selfishness as an Ethical Precept, D. Rooum, ER, Oct 99, Viewpoint, ER Nov 99) there has been no mention of either evolution or the logical restrictions imposed by its principles. One of the most basic of these is that a gene increases in frequency only when its effects improve the chances of its own survival. Even a 0.1% advantage - effectively unobservable - could completely replace one gene by another in a few thousand generations. It has also, contrary to older beliefs, become clear that natural selection relates to individuals and their gene systems rather than to their species as a whole.
There is increasing evidence that the general structure of human behaviour is based on genes: they learn only the details by precept and experience. Despite past popular and scientific belief to the contrary, humans are now thought to have more instinctive behaviour than any other species. This includes, for children only, an inherent knowledge of correct language structure. Adults lose this instinct and where parents use a language learnt, incompletely, as adults, their children instinctively correct, in their own speech, any parental errors.
Although altruism appears widespread, any individual who consistently gives, to other than close relatives, more than he receives is likely to leave fewer descendants*. Any genes producing absolute altruism would inherently tend to decrease in frequency.
The reality is that absolute altruism is an illusion. Closer examination, of behaviour typically seen as altruism, shows that, on average, it always produces a survival advantage for the individual or his or her genes. Actually giving one's life for another is the exception rather than the rule. Few, other than the mentally unbalanced deliberately seek death. Human examples are often suspect. Their agent is usually either brainwashed by cultural ideas of improved social status or is obeying externally imposed rules of behaviour.
Examples from nature provide a clearer picture. In nature mothers defend their young but only accidentally at the cost of their own lives: if the mother dies her young will usually die also. When only the young die the mother can usually produce more. Natural selection favours any behaviour that results, on average, despite some deaths, in an increased overall survival.
All life would still be single cells if cooperation, even at the cell level, had not implied some survival advantages. The closer the relationship the greater the genetic gain but any reciprocal action where both parties receive some advantage will also be favoured by natural selection. R.G. Silson - Tring, Herts *Giving, when discussing human altruism, may include giving money, time, labour, etc to non-relatives. It is not obvious that any of these acts diminishes the donor's reproductive rate. [Ed.]
Looking Forward in Meaning and Science It was good to read Ian Buxton's close critical commentary on my account of meaning (ER, July/Aug 1999). I have always thought that the main point of writing is to elicit intelligent feedback. Of course Buxton takes me to task for not being a good logical positivist, even though he sees correctly that my account of meaning has quite a lot in common with logical positivism. The point of communicating is to share our expectations of the world with others. These 'expectations of experience' are of course open to verification or falsification, though I hasten to point out that 22 Ethical Record, December, 1999 this vocabulary is too heavy to sound right in many sensitive linguistic contexts. If our utterances are not open to verification or falsification (or thcir sensitive equivalents), they can't a fortiori be raising any expectation of experience for our listeners or readers. That, in my book, is hot air.
Now Buxton asserts that the mere postulation of currently unobserved explanatory entities cannot guarantee their existence. He seems to think this is a truism. But hc has forgotten cases like BSE, where we do not know the agent, but the consensus of biologists is that there must be something that takes this role. In mathematics we know that a continuous variable which takes two equal positive values and is bounded in-between, must possess at least one local maximum in the interval. In the example I gave I used 'x' precisely to imply this kind of logic. Our awareness of mental discomfort varies with different attempts to explain a phenomenon, in this case the whole universe. There must be a potential explanation of sonic sort which minimises this discomfort. What I am saying is that we should look for it, rather than throwing obstacles down on the exploratory path.
Most of Buxton's points, though, are observations concerning my critical remarks about logical positivism. So where do I part company with Buxton and logical positivism? Chiefly because I am putting my emphasis on looking forward in science. I think the impasse in deep science during the 20th century shows that we need to give much more attention to science's dependence on prior possibility- exploration. People like Popper, Lakatos and Medawar began to emphasise the hypothetico-deductive method - that progress in science is dependent on the quality of our hypotheses - butl think we should push this principle further.
Empiricism began historically with a rejection of Aristotle's assumption that one could find the truth about things by armchair reasoning. The remedy was a form of science which would move forward by means of small experientially verified steps - in other words, secure piecemeal experimental and observational progress became the (modest) aim of science. The verification principle enshrines this approach completely. It tries thoroughly to secure step-by-step progress. It doesn't encourage looking forward in science, overtly because many ill-focused attempts at 'looking forward in science' have degenerated into fantasy (metaphysics), but probably mainly because rigorous 'looking forward in cartesian science' doesn't bear thinking about. (It reveals a world set in the rigor mortis of space-time.)
My theory of ordinary meaning has been formulated to be consistent with my view of extraordinary meaning i.e. scientific meaning. This is offered on my website (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/chrisormell) and in my forthcoming book After Descartes. If I am right, we can conceptualise a quite new post-cartesian end-game for science - one which secures freewill, moral authenticity, creativity and self-respect. We can't know that the world is like this (Aristotle was wrong), but we don't need to: conceptualising a rigorous (falsifiable) end-game hypothesis will do. Chris OrmeII - London SE3 Being Ninety Years Young The recent photograph of James Hemming with Jennifer Jeynes (ER Nov) took me quite by surprise. I have never had the pleasure of meeting the former but in view of his length of service, I would have expected a much more venerable figure. He looks relatively junior and sprightly and certainly neither senior nor decrepit. As to the other half - my conclusion was that the title of the picture should be Youth and Beauty - and it would be accurate if the terms were applied either way! T.F. Evans - Stone, Staffs Ethical Record, December, 1999 23 PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETY The Library, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC1R 4RL. Tel: 0171 242 8037/8034 Registered Charity No. 251396 Website address: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk email: [email protected]
DECEMBER 1999 Sunday 19 11.00 am TIME, THE CALENDAR & THE MILLENNIUM Peter L. Griffiths
3.00 pm ANTI-MILLENNIAL FESTIVITIES QUIZZES, REFRESHMENTS/MULLED WINE £2
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JANUARY 2000 Sunday 9 11.00 am SELF-REALISATION AS A MEMBER OF SOCIETY: The Ethical Thought of EH. Bradley Christopher Bratcher (printed in Dec. ER)
3.00 pm Friedrich NIETZSCHE - his life and work (video) 100th anniversary of his death in 1900
Tuesday 11 7.30 pm ETHICS WORKSHOP: EUTHANASIA Rick Lewis, Editor of Philosophy Now. Jointly with Philosophy for All.
Sunday 16 11.00 am THE ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE NEW SCIENCE OF • THE BRAIN. Rita Carter, author of Mapping the mind.
3.00 pm TOPICAL TOPICS IN SCIENCE. Bring your topics. With Mike Howgate.
Sunday 30 11.00 am ROBERT OWEN AND THE SECULAR MILLENNIUM. Edward Royle, distinguished freethought historian.
Sunday 23 t.b.c.
SOUTH PLACE SUNDAY CONCERTS AT CONWAY HALL at 6.30 pm. Tickets E5 (programme on ER p.16)
Published by the South Place Ethical Society, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, WC1R 4RL Printed by .I.G. Bryson (Printed Ltd. 156-162 High Road, London N2 9AS ISSN 0014 - 1690