The Ideal of Nature: Debates about Biotechnology and the Environment

231 Pages·2011·2.014 MB·English

by  Gregory E. Kaebnick

The Ideal of Nature
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Thomas H. Murray, Consulting Editor in Bioethics
The Ideal of Nature
Debates about Biotechnology and the Environment
Edited by
Gregory E. Kaebnick
Scholar and Editor, Hastings Center Report
The Hastings Center
Garrison, New York
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore
© 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2011
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The ideal of nature : debates about biotechnology and the environment /
edited by Gregory E. Kaebnick.
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8018-9888-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8018-9888-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Bioethics. 2. Biotechnology—Moral and ethical aspects.
3. Nature—Eff ect of human beings on. I. Kaebnick, Gregory E.
[DNLM: 1. Biotechnology—ethics—United States—Essays.
2. Genetic Engineering—ethics—United States—Essays. 3. Agricul-
ture—United States—Essays. 4. Bioethical Issues—United States—
Essays. 5. Nature—United States—Essays. 6. Public Policy—United
States—Essays. WB 60]
QH332.I337 2011
179'.1—dc22 2010042481
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Contents
List of Contributors vii
Preface ix
1 Disposing Nature or Disposing of It?: Refl ections on the
Instruction of Nature 1
Kate Soper
2 In Defense of Living Nature: Finding Common Ground in a
Medieval Tradition 17
Jean Porter
3 Nature as Absence: The Logic of Nature and Culture in
Social Contract Theory 29
Bruce Jennings
4 Human Nature without Theory 49
Gregory E. Kaebnick
5 Preserving the Distinction between Nature and Artifact 71
Eric Katz
6 Why “Nature” Has No Place in Environmental Philosophy 84
Steven Vogel
7 The Appeal to Nature 98
Bonnie Steinbock
8 Thinking Like a Mountain: Nature, Wilderness, and the
Virtue of Humility 114
Paul Lauritzen
vi Contents
9 He Did It on Hot Dogs and Beer: Natural Excellence in
Human Athletic Achievement 130
David Wasserman
10 Sport, Simulation, and EPO 149
Nicholas Agar
11 Commonsense Morality and the Idea of Nature:
What We Can Learn from Thinking about “Therapy” 168
William A. Galston
12 Rawls, Sports, and Liberal Legitimacy 179
Thomas H. Murray and Peter Murray
Index 201
Contributors
Nicholas Agar, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Head, Philosophy Programme,
Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
William Galston, Ph.D., Ezra Zilkha Chair, Governance Studies, The Brookings
Institution, Washington, D.C.
Bruce Jennings, M.A., Director of Bioethics, Center for Humans and Nature, New
York, New York
Gregory E. Kaebnick, Ph.D., Scholar and editor of the Hastings Center Report, The
Hastings Center, Garrison, New York
Eric Katz, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, Department of Humanities, Science,
Technology, and Society Program, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark,
New Jersey
Paul Lauritzen, M.A., Ph.D., Director, Program in Applied Ethics, Department of
Religious Studies, John Carroll University, University Heights, Ohio
Peter Murray, doctoral candidate, University at Albany– SUNY, Albany, New York
Thomas H. Murray, Ph.D., President, The Hastings Center, Garrison, New York
Jean Porter, Ph.D., John A. O’Brien Professor of Theological Ethics, Department
of Theology, Notre Dame University, Notre Dame, Indiana
Kate Soper, M.A., Professor Emerita, Institute for the Study of Eu ro pe an Trans-
formations, London Metropolitan University, London, United Kingdom
Bonnie Steinbock, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Philosophy, University at
Albany– SUNY, Albany, New York
viii Contributors
Steven Vogel, Ph.D., Brickman- Shannon Professor, Department of Philosophy
Denison University, Denison, Ohio
David Wasserman, J.D., M.A., Director of Research, Center for Ethics, Yeshiva
University, New York, New York
Preface
A wide swath of contemporary social debates features what might be called “ap-
peals to nature”— claims that nature or a natural state of aff airs possesses some
special value that should be weighed in moral decision- making and perhaps pro-
tected in public policy. These appeals are of a variety of kinds and involve many
diff erent understandings of what “nature” means. While none of them fi t easily
into the classical accounts of moral values in Western moral philosophy, they have
enduring power in everyday moral discussion and, recently, somewhat wider ac-
cep tance in the scholarly literature, giving them signifi cant clout in a range of
contemporary social debates.
Perhaps the most prominent of these debates is over what humans may do to
themselves and to others— from the kinds of relationships they may form with
each other to the biotechnological interventions by means of which they can ac-
tually change their own or their children’s bodies. Concerns about which hu-
man relationships are “natural” have a long history rooted chiefl y in religiously
oriented natural law traditions; however, a range of commentators have recently
developed concerns in a more expressly secular fashion about how biotechnology
might change the very categories of nature, including the category of human na-
ture. The President’s Council on Bioethics, formed by President Bush in August
2001 to address the ethical and policy ramifi cations of biomedical innovation,
argued against a variety of biotechnological alterations of human bodies and hu-
man practices on grounds that the changes would be “dehumanizing” (Presi-
dent’s Council on Bioethics, 2003). From a very diff erent po liti cal perspective, the
environmentalist Bill McKibben followed up his book The End of Nature with
Enough, which lamented that human ge ne tic engineering and other technologies
will bring about “the end of human nature” (McKibben, 2003). The communitar-
ian po liti cal phi los o pher Michael Sandel argues that the “deeper danger” in using
gene transfer technologies to enhance ourselves or our children is that doing so
represents “a Promethean impulse” to remake nature, including human nature,
that inappropriately elevates human willfulness and mastery (Sandel, 2007,