Ethical Issues for a New Millennium John Howie, Editor Southern Illinois University Press Ethical Issues for a New Millennium ETHICAL ISSUES FOR A NEW MILLENNIUM The Wayne Leys Memorial Lectures Also of interest Ethical Issues in Contemporary Society Edited by John Howie and George Schedler Ethical Principles for Social Policy Edited by John Howie Ethical Principles and Practice Edited by John Howie Ethical Issues for a New Millennium Edited by John Howie Southern Illinois University Press Carbondale and Edwardsville Copyright © 2002 by the Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 05 04 03 02 4 3 2 1 Publication partially funded by a subvention grant from the Department of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ethical issues for a new millennium / edited by John Howie. p. cm. — (The Wayne Leys memorial lectures) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Ethical problems. I. Howie, John. II. Series. BJ1031 .E825 2002 170—dc21 2001049882 ISBN 0-8093-2442-3 (cloth : alk. paper) Printed on recycled paper. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. ∞ For Mark, Philip, and Stephen Contents Contributors ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction xiii John Howie 1. Human Rights: Some Current Issues 1 Beth J. Singer 2. After the Family Wage: A Postindustrial Thought Experiment 30 Nancy Fraser 3. Genetic Equality? Gender, Class, and Ability Differences 61 Mary B. Mahowald 4. What Is Environmental Ethics? 102 Max Oelschlaeger 5. What a Wonderful World! 137 Richard M. Zaner 6. Bang! Bang! You’re Dead? Rethinking Brain Death and Organ Transplantation in Japan and China 162 Carl B. Becker 7. Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism 192 Leonard Harris Index 211 Contributors eth J. Singer is a professor emerita at Brooklyn College. She is the author B of Pragmatism, Rights, and Democracy (1999), Operative Rights (1993), Ordinal Naturalism: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Justus Buchler (1983), and The Rational Society: A Critical Study of Santayana’s Social Thought (1970); and the coeditor of Antifoundationalism, Old and New (1992). A member of Phi Beta Kappa, she served as president of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (1986–1988) and received its Herbert W. Schneider Award for outstanding contributions to the field. Nancy Fraser is the Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Politics and Philosophy in the Graduate School of the New School of Social Research and the coeditor of the journal Constellations. She is the author of Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘Postsocialist’ Condition (1997) and Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (1989); the coauthor of Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange (1994); and the coeditor of Revaluing French Feminism: Critical Essays on Difference, Agency, and Culture (1992). Mary B. Mahowald is a professor in the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Genes, Women, Equality (2000), Women and Children in Health Care: An Unequal Majority (1996), and An Idealistic Pragmatism (1972); the coauthor of Disability, Difference, Dis- crimination: Perspectives on Justice in Bioethics and Public Policy (1998); the editor of Philosophy of Women: Classical to Current Concepts (3d ed., 1994); and the coeditor of Genetics in the Clinic: Ethical and Social Implications for Primary Care (2001). Max Oelschlaeger is the Frances B. McAllister Chair in Community, Cul- ture, and Environment at Northern Arizona University (Flagstaff). He is the author of Postmodern Environmental Ethics (1995), Caring for Creation (1994), and The Idea of Wilderness (1991), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; and the coauthor of Texas Land Ethics (1997). Among his recent honors are ix x Contributors the William C. Everhart Award for Conservation from Clemson University and the Outstanding Alumni Award from Southern Illinois University. Richard M. Zaner is the Ann Geddes Stahlman Professor of Medical Ethics, a professor of philosophy in the Department of Medicine, a professor of ethics in the Divinity School, and the director of the Center for Clinical and Research Ethics at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Troubled Voices: Stories of Ethics and Illness (1994), Ethics and the Clinical Encounter (1988), The Context of Self: A Phenomenological Inquiry Using Medicine as a Clue (1981), The Problem of Embodiment: Some Contributions to a Phenomenology of the Body (2d ed., 1971), and The Way of Phenomenology (1970). He has edited numerous other books and published many articles in professional journals and interdisciplinary studies. Carl B. Becker is a professor of philosophy at Kyoto University in Japan. He is the author of Breaking the Circle: Death and the Afterlife in Buddhism (1993) and Paranormal Experience and the Survival of Death (1993); the editor of Asian and Jungian Views of Ethics (1999); and the translator of Eiji Uehiro’s Practical Ethics for Our Time (1998). His other books on death and terminal care are published in Japanese and Chinese. In Japan, he has also served as a Fulbright lecturer at Osaka University and as a visiting professor of religions at Tsukuba University. Leonard Harris served as director of African-American Studies at Purdue University. His numerous publications reflect his central interest in social justice. Among these are Racism (1999), A Justification of Revolutionary Vio- lence (1970), Children in Chaos: A “Philosophy for Children’s Experience” (with Thomas Harper and Matthew Lipman, 1991), Philosophy Born of Struggle: An Anthology of Afro-American Philosophy from 1917 (2000), Exploitation and Exclusion: The Question of Race and Modern Capitalism (with Julia Maxted and Abebe Zegeye, 1991), and The Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem Renaissance and Beyond (with Alain LeRoy Locke, 1989). He is also an editor of the newsletter “Philosophy and the Black Experience” and a frequent contributor to philosophical journals. Acknowledgments t is indeed a pleasure to thank many persons who have assisted me and Iencouraged me, in difficult times, to collect and edit this group of Leys Lectures. The Wayne Leys Memorial Lecture Fund, under the management of the Southern Illinois University Foundation, with the help of the philosophy department, makes possible these lectures by outstanding philosophers. This is the fourth group of such lectures. They focus on the relation of ethical issues to contemporary and future social relations and environmental concerns. To the extent that these philosophers invite further reflection upon their chosen themes and prompt action from their readers, they provide a living memorial to our former colleague and friend, Wayne A. R. Leys. Heartfelt thanks go to Stephen Bagwell, an outstanding student in our graduate philosophy program. In spite of illness, he managed to bring the text into a format suitable for publication. Thanks are also due Loretta Koch, who enabled me to understand and to bring into order an especially troublesome batch of footnotes and references. To Kenneth Stikkers, chair of the philosophy department at Southern Illinois University, I must say that his encouragement came at a crucial moment in the project. Introduction he new millennium brings in its wake a new and more complex array Tof ethical issues for philosophers to ponder. These include ever-present conceptual problems underlying human rights, genetic equality, and genetic equity, a host of unforeseen issues almost literally sprouting from advances in genetics and newly formulated conceptions of death and its relevance to medical technology. Many of these are born of the biological revolution and the new possibilities of choice grounded in the expanding medical knowledge. But there are still wise ethicists who yet require from us an individual accounting for the choices we make lest we erode the moral sensitivity we have struggled to enliven. Still others whose prophetic voices cannot be overlooked insist upon the human right to rebel against governments or societies that would crush such a right or seek to deny its importance as a key to the self-governance indispensable for the moral character of humankind. For Beth J. Singer, to have a right means to have an “operative right” for which there is a correlative obligation of respect within the community. Operative rights are not limited to what the law will allow. Singer applies her operative rights to three current and continuing issues: abortion, hate speech, and language rights. Roe v Wade assures women of their constitutional right to abortion. But this constitutional right cannot be called an operative right, because too few physicians are adequately trained to perform abortions, and because antiabortion activist groups have fostered believable threats to doctors who perform abortions, to abortion clinic workers, and even to those who seek the services of such physicians and clinics. Singer asks: Can citizens have a right that they are afraid to exercise? The religious objection to abortion, widely proclaimed and likely to gain new life in the years ahead, is unconvincing in two regards. It is based on an effort to make the religious view prevail while at the same time denying the constitutional right of religious freedom