The current debate over an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics is a great example of the kind of collision between fact and meaning that Raimond Gaita discusses in The Philosopher’s Dog.
In the article, academics Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva suggest that, if it is permissible to kill an unborn child, then the same arguments justify killing one that has been born. Various commentators have pointed out that the argument is not new. Giubilini and Minerva have offered a new name for the practice - ‘post-natal abortion’ – but not new arguments to justify it. The Irish Times asks for those who support abortion to challenge the logic of the post-natal abortion argument. On Mercator, Margaret Somerville points out that the arguments lead to a logical choice: we liberalise infanticide or tighten up on abortion. And, also on Mercator, Trevor Stammers makes a similar point with the term ‘antinatal infanticide’. Trevor warns that ideas have consequences.
Meanwhile, I’m pondering Gaita’s view that meaning co-exists with, and does not arise from, scientific knowledge.
…Linden and Masson [in a book about animal consciousness] are right to reject standards imposed on evidence that are not so much scientific as scientistic – that express a a quasi-superstitious belief that scientific knowledge is the prototype for all knowledge and that the method that achieves it should be the prototype for all rigourous enquiry.
Crass though it sometimes is, scientism is nonetheless a complex phenomenon. It rests on a variety of assumptions about what counts as objective knowledge and about when doubt can legitimately be put to rest. Some of these assumptions are relatively superficial and are little more than prejudices – that everything should be quantifiable or that in the absence of quantification there can be no real precision, for example. But some assumptions go deep and are deep. Linden and Masson share one of them with virtually everyone who studies animal behaviour – namely, that justification for the claims we make about ‘animal consciousness’ are a function of the kind of evidence we can bring to bear…
The second assumption [is] that factual knowledge is the prototype for all knowledge…
Later, he says:
Much of our understanding of human and animal behaviour cannot without serious distortion be abstracted from the realm of meaning into the realm of factual/scientific inquiry… understanding in the realm of meaning often proceeds by moving to more particular and discriminating descriptions than to more general ones as happens in the natural sciences.
Giubilini and Minerva rest their case on two points: on what we know about the cognitive capacity of a newborn infant, and on the meanings we ascribe (to ‘person’, to ‘rights’, to various life stages, to social cohesion, and so on). The first of these falls largely into the realm of factual/scientific inquiry. The second belongs to the realm of meaning. The Irish Times and Mercator accept the basic argument that a newborn infant does not differ in any way from that same infant just before it entered the birth canal. Where they differ from the academics is in what this logical reality means.
a newborn infant does not differ in any way from that same infant just before it entered the birth canal
Is that factually true ?
An unborn infant is inside, attached to, and dependent on the biological mother in a way in way the newborn infant isn’t.
Sometimes it depends on which facts one looks at and what significance one gives to them. Differences there can lead to marked differences in how one understands meaning.
God Bless
Quite right, Chris. I should have said ‘in any substantial way’. The infant’s support systems change, but it remains dependent once born. There is no change in its ‘humanness’.
You suggest that the facts we choose lead to our understanding of meaning. On the other hand, Gaita’s point, as I take it, is that meaning is not derived from facts. Instead, we choose facts to support the meaning to which we already ascribe. This infanticide debate supports that claim.
I should have said ‘in any substantial way’.
However, people have always seen birth as substantial. The key here seems to be that it’s not an either/or but a both/and. Birth is very significant but it doesn’t change the humanity of the one born. One the one hand the factors determining humanity are present before birth as after birth and on the other hand we are ALL dependent on others and modern hyper-individualism, high divorce rates and neo-liberal economics hinders our recognition of the crucial importance of community and family. Dependence does not prevent being human; in fact, it’s a key part of being human.
we choose facts to support the meaning to which we already ascribe
That sounds very radical.
So, the concept is, that people pick and emphasis whatever facts convenient to butress their preconceptions ? Or am I misunderstanding Gaita here ?
Or does he mean that our worldview influences how we interpret and weigh facts ?
God Bless
He is being very radical – but no, he isn’t saying – precisely – that people pick and emphasise facts to buttress their preconceptions.
What he is saying (as I understand it) is that an understanding of meaning is not produced from facts, but from a long process of inculturation. People see the facts that fit their preconceptions and simply cannot see the ones that don’t.
So what he means is that our worldviews influence what facts we are able to interpret and weigh.
People see the facts that fit their preconceptions and simply cannot see the ones that don’t.
That’s a very helpful insight.
John Noonan applied it to the development of Catholic opposition to slavery with his concept of the invisible sin – a sin so pervasive and socially accepted and ingrained for such a long time that it had become invisible and people couldn’t see it for the sin it was.
Of course, the slaves had a much clearer analysis !
The concept is quite Marxist – social location tends to affect how people see reality.
A current application would be how Catholics see contraception which is quite different between those who really struggle to make NFP work and for those for whom NFP works well in terms of ability to discern interfile times. And for celibate prelates who don’t have many children to feed, clothe and educate.
Another is how people perceive paying for insurance which includes contraception. From the employers/Bishops social location, their conscience ought to determine whether they ought to permit it or not. But from the employees social location the premiums are part of their wages so they ought to be the ones to permit it or not.
Gaita’s concept of friendship is helpful here.
Another is trying to see things from the others point of view – friendship and dialogue seem to be essential tools to advance that.
I think that John Paul II’s concept of the preferential option for the poor is a helpful signpost to which social locations ought to be be given greater weight in thinking about these matters.
God Bless
From amazon’s page for The Philosopher’s Dog: Friendships with Animals:
I think the key here is our ability to relate to, empathize with, put ourselves in the shoes of, the other.
To see God in the other.
Gaita’s emphasis on “the understanding of the heart”, “the generosity with which animals give themselves to us… and the grace they bring to our lives”, is a helpful one.
The same could be said of the unborn.
Just as Gaita’s book’s argument is enhanced by the cute dog on the cover, JP’s argument might be enhanced by a cuter smiling baby, easier to empathize with.
Cute has a way of neatly cutting through philosophical confusion.
God Bless
You’re quite right, Chris. Which is why I deliberately chose a crying baby.
Gaita is very strong on the difference between sentimentality and the ‘understanding of the heart’.
Sentimentality would say ‘we should not kill the cute’. The understanding of the heart says ‘we should respect all life’.
I think that sentimentality/cute can help us get to understanding of the heart by helping us emphasize with the other.
The pro-life movement, for example, use ultrasound scans to help people see the humanity of the unborn. They use lots of cute baby photos too.
God Bless
Empathy isn’t part of what Gaita means by understanding of the heart. One example Gaita gives is of those vegetarians who think eating animal meat is no different to eating human meat. He says that their actions show that this is just rhetoric and that they don’t actually mean it – and, in his view, their ‘understanding of the heart’, as shown by their actions, is truer to the meaning of the human/animal difference than their words.
Another example he discusses is what our attitude to rape tells us about the meaning of sex. Actually, that’s a particularly interesting example, and worth a separate post.
Is there any chance that Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva are Pro-lifers?? When I read it I thought it might just be some of the best satire since Swift. And their paper, which must make even the most ardent pro-choicer feel a flicker of discomfort, puts the anti-abortion case beautifully by running a reductio on the pro-choice case. Is this whole thing an ingeniousbit of reverse psychology???
Gaita’s use of story to make his point reminds me of the Church’s use of the stories in scripture to get meaning across.
God Bless
The second assumption [is] that factual knowledge is the prototype for all knowledge…
… If I replace the word “factual” with “empirical” or “scientific” etc then I see what he might mean. But what on earth or heaven is non-factual knowledge?
Gaita believes we have, as a cultural gift, some bone deep understandings that are part of what makes us human, and that cannot be dissected using scientific or empirical processes. This ‘non-factual knowledge’ includes concepts such as justice, love – where all the scientific explanations for their existence fail to satisfy – Gaita says because they are using the wrong tool and the wrong language.
One of his major themes is that there are two categories of impossibility. One type of impossible things – unicorns, people with wings, being in two places at once – lends itself to proof or disproof. It is factual or non factual. The other type of impossible is the categorically impossible; the kind of impossible that is simply nonsense – he gives the example of telling his small daughter that he has a pain in his pocket; she responds with disdain because she knows it is impossible (in the second sense) for a pocket to feel pain.
Gaita suggests that the impossibility of consigning our dead to a rubbish heap or numbering our children belongs to this second type of impossibility. The impossibility of these actions comes from the realm of meaning, and any rational argument is after the fact.
Why can’t we consign our dead to a rubbish heap or number our children ?
Some cultures leave their dead to be picked by vultures and some families quite happily number children: number one son, number two son etc.
If you had something that was causing you pain (eg an annoying electronic device), and you put it in your pocket, then you could say you had a pain in your pocket.
Justice is a factual concept : give each their due. Marxists are perfectly happy with scientific explanations for its presence or absence.
I’m pretty sure that natural selection could give a pretty strong argument for love as a survival enhancer.
God Bless
“Some cultures leave their dead…” That’s the point, Chris. The impossibility (and it would be impossible for me) lies in the realm of meaning. It is not a physical or factual impossibility.
Ahhh…. This line of thinking reminds me of the parable of the builders. A master and an apprentice work together. Their language has three words only. “nail” “hammer” “plank”. When the master wants a hammer he says “hammer” and the apprentice passes him a hammer, etc. — That is the sum of their linguistic activity. Toads favourite Austrian asks, what does the word hammer mean in this language?? Does it signify an object “hammer”? Or does it mean “pass me a hammer”? But their is no answer to that except the use the word is put to, ‘the meaning of a word is its use’. — So in this context Wittgenstein would argue their is no fact “behind” the surface level of masters call and apprentice response. That’s a bit of a sideline but the arguments on this thread sound a bit wittgenstein-esque
Gaita implies that Wittgenstein is one of his sources:
“Ludwig Wittgenstein… suggested that we should cease to look for a justification while at the same time refusing to concede that this is intellectual dereliction… [Wittgenstein's insight] proposes not an answer to scepticism, but its dissolution and with it the contrast between what is doubtful to purified reason and what as mere fact cannot be doubted by creatures like us.”
Infanticide is an impossibility of Gaita’s second type. That said, the culture could change.
If you had something that was causing you pain (eg an annoying electronic device), and you put it in your pocket, then you could say you had a pain in your pocket.
JP was making quite a subtle point about language and meaning. Beware of missing it by being to clever…
If I say I have a pain in my blog, I’m using the term with the same linguistic content as Chris, but with quite a different linguistic content to Gaita. My blog may contain a pain, but it cannot feel pain, not being endowed with the necessary nerves and neurons.
.
“The second assumption [is] that factual knowledge is the prototype for all knowledge…”
Toad is with Jerry on this. (Whereas, “non-factual” knowledge isn’t. The “true” facts!”)
And…
“…justification for the claims we make about ‘animal consciousness’ are a function of the kind of evidence we can bring to bear…”
..how can “justification” be a “function”? On second thoughts, I suppose he means, “…justifying the claims we make about ‘animal consciousness’ is a function of the kind of evidence we can bring to bear…”Needs a bit of editing. Thinks Toad.
Yep, the language is surprisingly slipshod. Wittgenstein would wince
It seems that Jerry and Toad cannot conceive of a knowledge that is not based on facts. Gaita would not be surprised.
Givre me one example of knowledge which has nothing to do with truth and I will desist. “Fact” in this sense means anything true, what ever type of truth that may be.
You’ve changed the word, though, Jerry. And by doing so, you are suggesting that facts and truth are not just synonomous, but interchangeable. Gaita would certainly claim that his realm of meaning gives knowledge that is true. But he also says that this knowledge is not derived from facts, and cannot be proven or disproven.
In another book I’ve been reading – “The $64 Tomato” – William Alexander works out the financial implications of his garden – how much he has spent on the garden over 20 years, and how this cost breaks down in one particular season during which he harvested 22 tomatoes. To the scales, he adds his herniated disk, his long evenings of hoeing and weeding, his unending battle with voracious insect and animal life. The facts suggest that gardening doesn’t make sense. The truth is that he gardens because he loves it.
The fact is he loves gardening, and fair enough it’s a lot of fun. The point that Toad and I are making is that “non-factual knowledge”, is a meaningless term, his choice of words is the problem here, I understand what he’s getting at.
Gaita would certainly claim that his realm of meaning gives knowledge that is true. But he also says that this knowledge is not derived from facts, and cannot be proven or disproven.
Yes. And I agree with him. But knowledge which is not derived from facts is not “non-factual knowledge”.
In fairness, he doesn’t use the term ‘non-factual’. He says ‘factual knowledge’, and you introduced ‘non-factual’ as a proposed opposite term. His proposed opposite is, indeed, kowledge that is not derived from facts. His examples of things we ‘know’ without needing (or being able to have) facts are stones feeling pain, spiders with rich inner lives, and dogs thinking about higher mathematics.
And of course, knowledge derived from ones feelings or dispositions, for example is derived from the fact that those dispositions are as they are.
But Gaita would say – and I’m inclined to agree with him – that you are using ‘fact’ in a different way here. Yes, it is a fact that I find it impossible to cook and eat animals I have made pets of. And, yes, that impossibility arises from the meaning I ascribe to the relationships I have with those animals. While the existence of the meaning is a fact, the meaning itself doesn’t arise from facts.
But wouldn’t our understanding that stones do not feel pain, spiders do not have rich inner lives, and dogs do not think about higher mathematics derive from the scientific facts which we know about the nature of stones, spiders, and dogs ?
And wouldn’t different cultures come to different conclusions about those things ?
In other words, we don’t know those things at all, we assume them from the facts we have to hand about how stones, spiders and dogs work.
God Bless
Modern man tends to think of knowledge as facts.
But scripture speaks of knowledge as deep, intimate, personal relationship eg between spouses or with God.
I’d suggest that is still based on the facts of one’s experience of love.
Or perhaps in Gaita’s case the facts of one’s intuition or one’s internal wiring or ones cultural conditioning.
God Bless
Getting drunk on Purim is a Jewish perspective on this.
http://www.theglobalday.com/why-get-drunk-on-purim/
God Bless
Gaita’s “realm of meaning” reminds me of Yehezkel Kaufmann’s “Meta Divine Realm”
http://cojs.org/cojswiki/Biblical_Religion_in_Context,_Christine_Hayes,_Open_Yale_Courses_%28Transcription%29,_2006.
One wonders if it is a concept with similar limitations ?
Gaita is certainly a very interesting chap, a movie was made of his childhood and he has written books with some great titles like “Why the War Was Wrong”, “Muslims and Multiculturalism” and “Gaza: Morality, Law and Politics”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raimond_Gaita
God Bless
Jerry,
Gaita points to Wisdom, or Understanding, or Lucidity as truths which are not factual.
A scriptural example is the kind of Truth found in Genesis 1-11, which is not factual.
Because it is not factual, it cannot be scientifically proven. But it can be understood, grasped intellectually, and used to shed helpful light on, and guidance for, life
God Bless
Genesis 1 -11 is factual, it contains plenty of facts, such as “god is the source af all that exists”. a fact. It contains spiritual truthes about the human condition, such as our flawed nature. Another fact
The point is it is impossible to think of a piece of knowledge that does not apprehend some fact. A fact about a feeling, a desire, a level of meaning, the viewpoint of a character in a novel, all knowledge reaches out to a truth, about which there is always a fact.
While the existence of the meaning is a fact, the meaning itself doesn’t arise from facts.
Good point
I think that such meaning DOES arise from facts, the facts which one’s senses convey to one of the nature of the pets one is reluctant to kill and eat.
Without those facts conveyed to one by one’s eyes, ears, nose, touch, one wouldn’t even be aware that there WERE any pets, let alone have any basis to form a relationship with them.
The materialist critic of philosophical hocus pocus is actually pretty sound.
God Bless
Sooo…. on a side note, but of interest since it relates to religion and society…
I just spent some time talking to a government call-centre, the lady I spoke to ended the call with goddbye and God bless.
NOW, I think that is rather sweet and I have no problem with it. BUT some people might make a real stink about that. I wonder if she might get in trouble one day?? (Not that she should)
Chris has only had it objected to by the odd Catholic and one apparant priest who insisted that only priests could bless !
The secular world has never objected to Chris blessing.
God Bless
one more off topic note. Jerry is humbled after reading what Chris said on BF. I really DID think those “10 year indulgences” etc, referred to ten years less in purgatory. Chris has made it sound much more reasonable.
Doesn’t quite pan out, though, Chris, since those cultures that do name pets and then eat them presumably also have eyes, ears, nose, and touch. But the meaning they ascribe to their pets is clearly not the same as the meaning I ascribe.
JP was that a reply to:
The materialist critic of philosophical hocus pocus is actually pretty sound.
?
wittgenstein was of course not a materialist, and he was the sharpest critic of philosophical hocus pocus who ever lived. Most of his admirers are materialists of course. But Wittgenstein believed in God profoundly, and rejected theology and metaphysics as rubbish. Nothing posted here has been “hocus pocus” to my mind, and nothing about rejecting hocus-pocus need make us materialists. I’m certainly not.
Yes, I was replying to Chris’s comment in which he raised the hocus pocus stuff; WordPress seems to have split my reply from the comment. Sigh.
I replied to a comment of yours JP, but it seems to have vanished??
Jerry, I have a comment of yours about this conversation not being hocus pocus. Is that the one that you can’t see?
Getting back to the point of this post, it seems to me that the ‘post natal abortion’ discussion relies on facts in a debate about a topic that takes its force from the realm of meaning.
Furthermore, the use of the term ‘abortion’ rather than ‘infanticide’ indicates – to me at least – that the authors are anxious about their own suggestions. (I liked Jerry’s idea that it was a Swiftian satire, but from what the editor of the Journal says, apparently not.)
Thoughts?
God knows! Did you edit your comment?
In the Hobbit, while Bilbo, Gandalf, and the Dwarves talk, the dark seeps into the room as evening comes on.
An american scientist claimed (as a spoof) to have invented a device to focus beams of “cold”.
“dark” and “cold” are meaningful words, but language can create the false impression that they are “things in themselves”. Dark can’t enter, and cold can’t be focussed, this is how Wittgenstein saw the use of words in metaphysics. His view of minds was perhaps even more subtle than Gaita. I was very struck years ago as a student by Wittgensteins remark about a maggot crawling toward food. Can you see it as anything other than “effort” and “intentionality”?? You can’t, viscerally, well, then, what else is a mind? “Mind” is a public act, not a hidden truth. — He says, wrongly I think. But if you see his point it is a bit mind bending.
Ah yes; ‘dark’ and ‘cold’ are names we give to an absence of a thing, rather than things in themselves. ‘Hate’ is perhaps a thing, but ‘indifference’ is the absence of interest and love. CS Lewis implies that ‘hell’ and ‘the damned’ are likewise not things in themselves, but rather absences.
Furthermore, the use of the term ‘abortion’ rather than ‘infanticide’ indicates – to me at least – that the authors are anxious about their own suggestions
In this case, I find myself in agreement with the most conservative Catholic comments. The argument (presuming it is sincere) strikes me as so sunk in moral darkness, that it really does make me wonder if purely secular morality can maintain its bearings. Yes, the preference for “abortion” over, say, “butchering a child”, does seem to imply insecurity.
Peter Singer would have euthanase the profoundly retarded, but given that “profoundly” is a subjective judgement, how badly do you have to do on your A-levels to be worth keeping alive?
Even arch-atheist C. Hitchens found being present at an abortion traumatic, and decided not to involve himself in the process again.
In terms of meaning it is, to me, about the collapse of meaning, forgetting what ethics is for in the first place.
Yes.
Prayer After Birth (Acknowledgements and Apologies to Louis MacNeice).
I am now born: please hear me,
Let not the debt collectors,
Or the rights protectors,
Or the seditious insurrectors come near me.
I am now born, comfort me,
Else I fear that the human-folk may:
With clever lies debase me,
With bad science un-race me,
And with strong drugs erase me.
I am now born: please bestow me,
Among the dancing grass, babbling brooks,
Swaying trees and singing rooks,
Undiminished bright light of grace and truth,
To restore me.
I am now born, with lullabies lull me,
With warm cuddles mull me,
With deep love sustain me, and,
With silence, not gainsay me.
.
“But Wittgenstein believed in God profoundly, and rejected theology and metaphysics as rubbish.”
Regarding Anscombe’s Catholicism, he said that he could never believe it himself. But he said it with a certain amount almost of regret, apparently.
Gaita, likewise, comments with nostalgic affection on his daughter’s childhood faith, and with regret on her later pantheism, which he saw as shallow and sentimental. Of his own belief, he says: ‘I would not have been able to say that I did [believe in God], rather than more simply that I didn’t… because I don’t think I understand what it means to believe in God, what kind of believing it is to believe in Him…
Religious claims are always made fully in the realm of meaning. Metaphysical claims about the God of the philosophers, on the other hand, are most clear-sightedly made when one sees the world from no place within it.”
Religious claims are always made fully in the realm of meaning
I dunno.
Isn’t “he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven” one of a bunch of facts in the creed ?
God Bless
Another good example: I do, indeed, agree that these are facts. But what would those who reject the meaning that you and I share – that Jesus is the son of God – say to your (and my) assertion that he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven?
Some Muslims agree that Jesus died and rose and most Muslims agree he ascended while few Muslims agree he was divine. So, yes, it’s possible separate out belief in those facts from believe in his divinity.
God Bless
My worlds cross again! A couple of days ago at work, I blogged about words English doesn’t have, linking to a post by Johnson that included the apposite, if coarse, term ‘flueknipper’. Flueknipping doesn’t benefit discussion.
I think there are two things going on in the ‘post natal abortion’ discussion.
1. A frank admission that killing before birth (at least in late stage pregnancy) is morally equivalent to infanticide.
2. A desire to legalise infanticide.
The mess we’re in now is that the pro-death crowd are accepting our arguments that they are killing innocent human life and are increasingly open and honest that they want to kill innocent human life. See Muldoon on the other thread.
That’s probably the beginning of the end. Whether it’s the end of bans on infanticide or the end of abortion remains to be seen.
God Bless
There is an interesting and topical application of facts to meaning on homosexuality here:
http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=17840
I do think there are situations in which new facts, or better understandings, or social changes invite us to reassess ancient wisdom which we have held for millennium. Although in this case, I’d probably start by questioning the stated “facts” and placing rather more emphasis on the wisdom in the tradition.
God Bless
Yes, Chris, good example. Is the Catholic position of ‘objectively disordered’ in the realm of meaning or the realm of facts? And likewise the writer’s position on the meaning of being a representative of ‘a minority variant in the human condition’?
It seems to me that Gaita’s insight helps us to understand why all the facts in the world don’t change minds – though time and living can.
The facts seem to be that sex is ordered to :-
1. Procreation (the sole pre-Vatican II understanding).
and
2. Unity and Love (added at Vatican II).
How one ascribes meaning to these two facts, in terms of for example homosexuality and contraception, seems to depend on the relative weights one gives to these two facts and to what extant on insists that the two ought not be separated.
Wittgenstein once proposed marriage to a woman on the condition that they have no children.
God Bless
.
Probably wise of Ludwig.
A baby Wittgenstein is a disconcerting concept.
“Isn’t “he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven” one of a bunch of facts in the creed?”
It’s an assertion.