The list reproduced by Prof. Blanchard certainly is thought provoking. Give it a look. Let me also suggest it is flawed and shortsighted.
First, there are some questions on that list that cannot be answered by science. Has religion killed more people than Nazism? Well, how do we know what people's motivations are? A small example. Did Elizabeth I kill her sister Mary because Mary was a Catholic, or because Mary represented a threat to her power? Or are those the same thing? And how many people's deaths are the Nazis responsible for? How do we quantify the moral notion of "responsibility"? In this case, do we just count those who died in the Holocaust? How about every one who died in the European theater of war? Does that mean both soldiers and civilians, German and non-German? Would the Japanese have been aggressive without prodding from the Nazi regime? If not, are the Nazis responsible for the deaths at Hiroshima? These question suggest some judgment making prior to the scientific exercise, as we have to decide which data is in and which is out. For some of the questions posed in Ken's post that requires moral reasoning that is pre-scientific. Would society be better off if heroin and cocaine were legalized? This question cannot be answered by science, as "better off" is not a scientific category. Science can give us data, but only a moral creature can decide what "better off" means.
Finally, many of the questions posed by Mr. Pinker are based, it seems, on a utilitarian calculus (which, I point out, is a value laden position). "Would it be consistent with our moral principles to give parents the option of euthanizing newborns with birth defects that would consign them to a life of pain and disability?" First, one notices the euphemism of "euthanizing." What he means is killing newborn babies. Second, we notice that once again science can only help us so much here. How defective can a baby be before it is "too defective"? So much of what Pinker poses, about drugs, and prostitution, selling children, killing children, etc. is based on the notion that it is acceptable for some to be dehumanized (through drugs or the selling of human bodies or simply calling them "defective") as long as it makes the lives of the rest of us "better off." It is all for the greater good. Let me refer you again to my Harry Potter review, which directed you to this piece by Thomas Hibbs. Let me quote again his summation of J.K. Rowling's teaching on utilitarianism:
If it were not clear from the previous books, it is made palpable here — utilitarianism, which is subject to the self-interest and self-delusions of those who wield power and who thus determine what is the “greater good,” is a source of great evil.
It turns out that the powerful get to decide what "better off" means. Mr. Pinker at least hints that it is the scientists who should have that power. I dissent. I also suspect Mr. Pinker is being provocative for the the sake of being provocative. This strikes more as acting as an adolescent rather than acting as a scientist.
I agree with Prof. Blanchard that these questions are worth considering, although whether society as a whole should open up every question to debate is itself a question we might want to open up for debate. Maybe some questions should be regarded as settled by society, even if they are not by the philosophers. Let me suggest that a society in which it is an open question whether we should kill babies because we find them "defective" is not a healthy society.
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