Nun at St. Joseph's Hospital rebuked over abortion to save woman Retrieved May 18, 2010 from the Arizona Republic http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/05/15/20100515phoenix-catholic-nun-abortion.html.
A clear, fair summary--remarkable in itself for the secular press in the U.S.--of the Catholic position against the deliberate and direct taking of one innocent human life even in order to save another. Human beings have inherent dignity and worth at all stages of life, from conception to natural death, and may not be treated as means to an end, even the end of saving another innocent life. We may choose to save one life rather than another, say if two people are drowning and we can only save one (as long as bad ulterior motives are not involved), but not to kill one individual in order to save another.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
The New Atlantis » On Bioethics in Public
The New Atlantis » On Bioethics in Public
Gilbert Meilaender on the President's Council on Bioethics in its golden age, 2002-2009, under its great chairmen, Leon Kass and then Edmund Pellegrino.
Gilbert Meilaender on the President's Council on Bioethics in its golden age, 2002-2009, under its great chairmen, Leon Kass and then Edmund Pellegrino.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Poetry and Social Security
Did you know that the Commissioner of Social Security, Michael Astrue, is also a fine poet of the New Formalist school--under the name A. M. Juster? Here is his epigraph for B. F. Skinner:
On the Death of B.F. Skinner
The headlines were unanimous
from Newsweek to Le Monde
no matter what the stimulus
B.F. did not respond.
retrieved from http://www.amjuster.com/
There's an interesting article on him/them in the new, newly artistic, literary, and aesthetically pleasing issue of First Things magazine.
On the Death of B.F. Skinner
The headlines were unanimous
from Newsweek to Le Monde
no matter what the stimulus
B.F. did not respond.
retrieved from http://www.amjuster.com/
There's an interesting article on him/them in the new, newly artistic, literary, and aesthetically pleasing issue of First Things magazine.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
What About the Children?
In a society that subordinates children's needs to adult freedoms, Mary Eberstadt's Home Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care, Behavioral Drugs, and Other Parent Substitutes should give anyone pause. It offers a compelling case that the large-scale absence of parents from their children's lives via day care, video games,empty homes for schoolkids to return to (and have sex in), and so forth have a devastating impact on children and young people. The adult response of pathologizing and medicating the kids, or interning them in prison-like private boarding schools, only compounds the problem. It reflects and reinforces adult denial of children's needs and suffering.
As Eberstadt points out, the kinds of critique she offers break a taboo and call down a ton of ideological abuse on the heads of those few who dare to make them--in academia these do not include scholars without secure employment! They are points and evidence that get brushed off as reactionary or sexist or unhelpfully guilt-inducing. Contrary to some reviews, this is not an attack on working mothers. Those many women who have no choice but to work full-time have no reason to feel guilt. But those parents--mothers and fathers both--who do have choice have reason to feel guilt and need to face the truth about the costs of their choices for their children.
Any one of the studies Eberstadt cites, could be questioned for its methodological flaws, and some links between adult behavior and child suffering are not as strong as others. But the cumulative effect of the arguments and evidence the author presents is powerful. It merits serious and open discussion instead of the usual dismissal and denunciation from most feminists and liberals.
The case is not just a matter of personal choices. Such cultural shifts are reflected and amplified in social policies. The normalizing of out-of-wedlock teen sex as reflected in much sex education; the assumption that mothers should (re)join the workforce as early as possible reflected in welfare reform; the assumption that women should adopt and adapt to the male model of subordinating family to work as reflected in so-called family-friendly policies that promote increased labor force participation of mothers (see Gilbert's excellent analysis,[[ASIN:0300164610 A Mother's Work: How Feminism, the Market, and Policy Shape Family Life]]--all these and related policies are redefining parenthood at the expense of children.
This book focuses on the toll on children of these cultural and policy shifts of the past half century. For a recent critique of the misguided project of treating both sexes as if they were essentially identical except for anatomical details and the social construction of gender--and of squeezing women into male norms of work and family, see Susan Pinker's excellent study, [[ASIN:0743284712 The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women and the Real Gender Gap]]. But this book is about children. It is a bold challenge to the taboo on discussing the extent and nature of children's needs for their parents.
As Eberstadt indicates, we need not a quick policy fix here and there, but a fundamental and honest re-assessment of our priorities in relation to children and young people--both personally and in the policy choices we make.
As Eberstadt points out, the kinds of critique she offers break a taboo and call down a ton of ideological abuse on the heads of those few who dare to make them--in academia these do not include scholars without secure employment! They are points and evidence that get brushed off as reactionary or sexist or unhelpfully guilt-inducing. Contrary to some reviews, this is not an attack on working mothers. Those many women who have no choice but to work full-time have no reason to feel guilt. But those parents--mothers and fathers both--who do have choice have reason to feel guilt and need to face the truth about the costs of their choices for their children.
Any one of the studies Eberstadt cites, could be questioned for its methodological flaws, and some links between adult behavior and child suffering are not as strong as others. But the cumulative effect of the arguments and evidence the author presents is powerful. It merits serious and open discussion instead of the usual dismissal and denunciation from most feminists and liberals.
The case is not just a matter of personal choices. Such cultural shifts are reflected and amplified in social policies. The normalizing of out-of-wedlock teen sex as reflected in much sex education; the assumption that mothers should (re)join the workforce as early as possible reflected in welfare reform; the assumption that women should adopt and adapt to the male model of subordinating family to work as reflected in so-called family-friendly policies that promote increased labor force participation of mothers (see Gilbert's excellent analysis,[[ASIN:0300164610 A Mother's Work: How Feminism, the Market, and Policy Shape Family Life]]--all these and related policies are redefining parenthood at the expense of children.
This book focuses on the toll on children of these cultural and policy shifts of the past half century. For a recent critique of the misguided project of treating both sexes as if they were essentially identical except for anatomical details and the social construction of gender--and of squeezing women into male norms of work and family, see Susan Pinker's excellent study, [[ASIN:0743284712 The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women and the Real Gender Gap]]. But this book is about children. It is a bold challenge to the taboo on discussing the extent and nature of children's needs for their parents.
As Eberstadt indicates, we need not a quick policy fix here and there, but a fundamental and honest re-assessment of our priorities in relation to children and young people--both personally and in the policy choices we make.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Fifty Years of the Pill: Two Perspectives
http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=what_the_pill_gave_birth_to
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/04/bitter-pill
Two radically different perspectives on the 50th anniversary of FDA approval of the contraceptive pill. One is mainly celebratory--though it acknowledges that the pill--widely available in Saudi Arabia--is no guarantor of women's liberation (as it used to be called 50 years ago--I remember!). Still it uses familiar terms like "furious [sic] socially conservative backlash" to forestall consideration of alternative viewpoints, which is tiresome. But she does acknowledge, more or less, the evil wrought by that racist, eugenicist champion of contraception, Margaret Sanger, as well as the opposition to the pill for decades by the authors of Our Bodies, Our Selves and the advocates of Black Power who saw it as a form of genocide (which suspicion was understandable in view of Sanger's position).
The other uses social science techniques to argue the following proposition, so contrary to received opinion:
With this essay, using the language and tools of modern social science, I will articulate the position that contraception is socially damaging. I will also demonstrate that contraception is in fact a sexist practice. Using straightforward microeconomic reasoning, I will unpack the behaviors engendered by artificial contraception. I will show that the contraceptive revolution has resulted in a massive redistribution of wealth and power from women and children to men.
So both pieces are interesting and go beyond the usual shouting past each other of these kinds of arguments.
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/04/bitter-pill
Two radically different perspectives on the 50th anniversary of FDA approval of the contraceptive pill. One is mainly celebratory--though it acknowledges that the pill--widely available in Saudi Arabia--is no guarantor of women's liberation (as it used to be called 50 years ago--I remember!). Still it uses familiar terms like "furious [sic] socially conservative backlash" to forestall consideration of alternative viewpoints, which is tiresome. But she does acknowledge, more or less, the evil wrought by that racist, eugenicist champion of contraception, Margaret Sanger, as well as the opposition to the pill for decades by the authors of Our Bodies, Our Selves and the advocates of Black Power who saw it as a form of genocide (which suspicion was understandable in view of Sanger's position).
The other uses social science techniques to argue the following proposition, so contrary to received opinion:
With this essay, using the language and tools of modern social science, I will articulate the position that contraception is socially damaging. I will also demonstrate that contraception is in fact a sexist practice. Using straightforward microeconomic reasoning, I will unpack the behaviors engendered by artificial contraception. I will show that the contraceptive revolution has resulted in a massive redistribution of wealth and power from women and children to men.
So both pieces are interesting and go beyond the usual shouting past each other of these kinds of arguments.
Monday, May 3, 2010
On Values Talk
Does it matter whether we say that our ethics derive from our values or that our values—assuming that the term is intelligible at all--derive from our ethical principles? Is it just a matter of definition and am I just splitting hairs?
No, it is not splitting hairs, but has profound implications, though these are not obvious, certainly not in everyday decision-making. And in terms of policy, look at Canada (see below).
Definitions matter because without verbal agreement there cannot be substantive disagreement. So here we seem to be talking past each other.
I see, as Nietzsche saw, how values talk combines both relativism and lust for power (the "dictatorship of relativism"), but not what it means. What for example are these "religious values" that cannot be taught? How are they different from the core values of social work which are clear, if unacknowledged expressions of the Judeo-Christian tradition? Indeed, the notion of the dignity and worth of the person is hard to conceive as making sense, in theory or practice, prior to that tradition of the human as imago Dei. Certainly it survives in a post-Christian world as a kind of pale shadow, but again as Nietzsche observed and as the last blood-soaked totalitarian century attested, in an attenuated form evacuated of rational justification.
For me the point is that principles cannot derive from anything else. They come first and cannot be proven or demonstrated. They are basic postulates from which everything else is derived. I think that is how the term is normally used in ethics--for example, Kant's duty-based (deontological) theory (from which social work ethics seems to derive its approach in most respects) starts from a single, self-evident principle of reason he calls the "categorical imperative." (There are serious problems with Kantian ethics, but that's another matter...maybe).
Is the claim of those for whom the NASW Code makes sense that values are in the same way undemonstrable absolutes from which duties can be derived? I don't think so, because values talk assumes that they are in some sense arbitrary choices of individuals or groups
The problem with values is that they do not clearly derive from any principle or reason or evidence. They have no basis in anything but will and power--as Nietzsche saw. Hence the notion of "clarifying values" instead of teaching the virtues or character formation as done in schools (and by parents) for millennia. The madness of this approach and its relation to power can be seen by what is going on in Canada, where the state requires that all children, whether in public or private, state or religious schools, be taught to distrust their parents' values. Really. The state as Uebermensch.
Hence the muddle Spano & Koenig get into in trying figure out the proper relation of "personal values" to the Code of Ethics.
From something I drafted a while back but don't think I used:
The plural use of “values” in its modern sense, according to Himmelfarb (2004), was first adopted by Nietzsche, who preferred it to the prevalent use of the term “virtues” precisely because of its implied relativism and non-universality. Its use in the social sciences seems to owe much to Weber and his dichotomy of fact and value—which if it confines facts to the domain of science, at the same time renders values arbitrary, having no ground in facts or evidence (or biology or natural law) (Bloom, 1987). Use of the term, then, appears to lay social work educators open to just such accusations as NAS makes, that CSWE is in the business of imposing opinions on programs and students in violation of the freedom of speech and conscience of faculty and students, and with the effect of restricting entry into the profession to those who (say they) hold those opinions. To the extent that our use of the term connotes, in the Nietzschean-Weberian way, that values are subjective and relative, to that extent their imposition on the profession’s members (whether students, faculty, or community practitioners) is liable to be taken as an arbitrary use of power.
No, it is not splitting hairs, but has profound implications, though these are not obvious, certainly not in everyday decision-making. And in terms of policy, look at Canada (see below).
Definitions matter because without verbal agreement there cannot be substantive disagreement. So here we seem to be talking past each other.
I see, as Nietzsche saw, how values talk combines both relativism and lust for power (the "dictatorship of relativism"), but not what it means. What for example are these "religious values" that cannot be taught? How are they different from the core values of social work which are clear, if unacknowledged expressions of the Judeo-Christian tradition? Indeed, the notion of the dignity and worth of the person is hard to conceive as making sense, in theory or practice, prior to that tradition of the human as imago Dei. Certainly it survives in a post-Christian world as a kind of pale shadow, but again as Nietzsche observed and as the last blood-soaked totalitarian century attested, in an attenuated form evacuated of rational justification.
For me the point is that principles cannot derive from anything else. They come first and cannot be proven or demonstrated. They are basic postulates from which everything else is derived. I think that is how the term is normally used in ethics--for example, Kant's duty-based (deontological) theory (from which social work ethics seems to derive its approach in most respects) starts from a single, self-evident principle of reason he calls the "categorical imperative." (There are serious problems with Kantian ethics, but that's another matter...maybe).
Is the claim of those for whom the NASW Code makes sense that values are in the same way undemonstrable absolutes from which duties can be derived? I don't think so, because values talk assumes that they are in some sense arbitrary choices of individuals or groups
The problem with values is that they do not clearly derive from any principle or reason or evidence. They have no basis in anything but will and power--as Nietzsche saw. Hence the notion of "clarifying values" instead of teaching the virtues or character formation as done in schools (and by parents) for millennia. The madness of this approach and its relation to power can be seen by what is going on in Canada, where the state requires that all children, whether in public or private, state or religious schools, be taught to distrust their parents' values. Really. The state as Uebermensch.
Hence the muddle Spano & Koenig get into in trying figure out the proper relation of "personal values" to the Code of Ethics.
From something I drafted a while back but don't think I used:
The plural use of “values” in its modern sense, according to Himmelfarb (2004), was first adopted by Nietzsche, who preferred it to the prevalent use of the term “virtues” precisely because of its implied relativism and non-universality. Its use in the social sciences seems to owe much to Weber and his dichotomy of fact and value—which if it confines facts to the domain of science, at the same time renders values arbitrary, having no ground in facts or evidence (or biology or natural law) (Bloom, 1987). Use of the term, then, appears to lay social work educators open to just such accusations as NAS makes, that CSWE is in the business of imposing opinions on programs and students in violation of the freedom of speech and conscience of faculty and students, and with the effect of restricting entry into the profession to those who (say they) hold those opinions. To the extent that our use of the term connotes, in the Nietzschean-Weberian way, that values are subjective and relative, to that extent their imposition on the profession’s members (whether students, faculty, or community practitioners) is liable to be taken as an arbitrary use of power.
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