Ethics and The Pragmatic
Temperament: A Discussion Review of Martin Benjamin, Philosophy and This Actual World |
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James D. Wallace |
In Philosophy and This Actual World, Martin Benjamin defends the thesis that knowledge, including practical knowledge, is a social phenomenon, the creation of human beings in their active commerce with the world. Philosophy has tended to conceive of knowledge as something whose basics are somehow given to us by the world, we being passive in the reception of this knowledge. Benjamin weaves together cogent criticisms of this Cartesian influence in philosophy, drawing upon the writings of the classical pragmatists, Wittgenstein, and contemporary philosophers influenced by them. Among the large philosophical topics discussed are skepticism, realism, the mind-body problem, and freedom of the will. Although these matters are complex and difficult, Benjamin offers explanations that render the basic ideas transparent. Philosophy and This Actual World is the work of an able philosopher who is a master teacher, and it should be accessible to the intelligent general reader.
Nearly four chapters, almost half of the book, are devoted to topics in practical philosophy--the study of our knowledge of how things are properly done. All practical knowledge, including moral knowledge, is conceived as the collective creation of human beings. Since many people are very deeply committed to the notion that ethical standards of right conduct are unchanging norms that exist independently of us and our activities, the pragmatic view Benjamin defends is a very hard sell. The case for the view can be summarized in this way: Practical knowledge, including moral knowledge, our resource for solving problems about how properly to do things, is hugely complicated. The world, including the social world, is continually changing, so we are often confronted with unprecedented practical problems--problems for which our existing practical knowledge has no ready solution. We must adapt and extend our know-how to resolve such problems, and this sometimes involves altering moral norms. Thus morality, a part of practical knowledge, is also a moving, changing thing --a response to changes that are often unpredictable. How then could there be unchanging correct practical norms somehow established ahead of time? Even if there were such norms, how would we recognize them amid all the alternatives that exist in moral philosophy and in various human communities? The pragmatist's idea that all practical knowledge, including moral knowledge, is the precipitate of long human experience with ever-changing practical problems avoids the problems in trying to explain the source and authority of independently existing unchanging norms. It also can serve as the basis for understanding how we should try to resolve the difficult, unprecedented problems of life.
It is of considerable help in understanding the pragmatic approach to ethics to examine actual examples of discussions of concrete ethical problems. Benjamin devotes an entire chapter to the post-1960 controversy about determining when a person is dead.
The problem arose when the medical means were developed to sustain the respiration and heartbeat of comatose patients whose entire brains had ceased functioning. Relatively simply tests were discovered that showed beyond a doubt in many cases that the patient would never recover brain function, would never breathe spontaneously, and would never regain consciousness. Such patients might continue to breathe for a week or two with the aid of respirators and other mechanical aids. Such maintenance is very expensive, however, and seems of no use to the comatose patient. Further, the vital organs of such patients are highly desirable for transplantation, where the organs might aid another person's recovery.
A prestigious group of Harvard physicians recommended that those patients who were determined to have lost brain function permanently be declared dead--"brain dead"-- and that their bodies be treated as cadavers. The law in many jurisdictions came to recognize such patients as dead, so that it would not be homicide for a physician to discontinue costly mechanical support of the vital signs of such patients or to remove patients' vital organs needed elsewhere.
One worrisome objection to this development is that the accepted indicator of the end of a human being's life is the permanent cessation of heartbeat and respiration--"vital signs." The proponents of "brain death" are changing the idea of death, and their procedure seems an ad hoc semantic shuffle to obscure the fact that in order to save money and to supply other people with organs, we cause the deaths of certain severely damaged, helpless patients. Although the idea that patients who have permanently lost all brain function are dead is useful, this involves a change in our understanding of death that requires a rationale, a justification.
Benjamin's argument for accepting the idea that the "brain-dead" individual is indeed dead is based upon the idea that death is the ceasing to be of a human person. We are justified in holding that a person who is "brain dead" is really a dead person. The curtain has finally fallen on the drama that was that individual's life. The life has ended, and the person is no more. The life of a particular human being is conceived as a series of acts and experiences that require consciousness. Once consciousness is permanently lost, that person's human life is over; the person is dead.
An objector will say that what death is in a human being is a factual scientific question. Life and death are phenomena that occur with all organisms, not just human beings. Properly, we should examine death generally in all biological organisms, and base our conception of human death upon the results of such studies. A Presidential Commission was influenced by this notion when they proposed that the life of a human being consists in the integrated functioning of several organ systems, and the death of the organism is the permanent cessation of integrated functioning. Because the brain is the chief integrator of the rest of the organism's functioning in human beings, the Commission argued, the permanent loss of brain function is sufficient for the death of a human organism.
Benjamin might reply that what we are most concerned about in the deaths of ourselves and other human beings is that it is the end of the series of doings and experiences that make up our lives. The human being who is permanently deprived of consciousness is totally deprived of all future actions and experiences. That life is ended. Our many beliefs, concerns, and practices that are related to matters human life and death make most sense when we focus on this conception of life and death. The moral norms that protect human life are best understood as protecting the continuation of the career of a person as the protagonist in a drama. When the doings and experiences end permanently, the story--the life-- is ended. Thus death is not best conceived as a phenomenon to be described exclusively in the vocabulary of the life sciences. One must have a conception of death before one can investigate it scientifically. The notion of death and human concern with the phenomenon existed long before anything like modern science existed.
Another objection: The "vital signs" criterion of death is well established. An adequate justification for the proposed reconception of death requires more than just assertions that there are practical advantages to such a change. We need a convincing argument that brain-dead individuals really are dead--one that connects brain death with the real nature of death. Otherwise, we should stay with the old vital signs conception. I think that such an objection is based upon a misunderstanding of what has happened. The importance of heartbeat and respiration as signs of life was originally due to the fact that the only reliable way to determine that the doings and experiences of an individual had ceased permanently was to determine that the person's heartbeat and respiration had ceased permanently. Experience showed that the permanent cessation of consciousness and the permanent cessation of vital signs were invariably conjoined, and these became two central elements in our idea of death. The permanent loss of consciousness was established by the cessation of vital signs. The relatively recent discovery of the human being who is known with certainty to be irreversibly comatose but whose breathing and circulation are mechanically sustained indicates that the two phenomena are not constantly conjoined. This discovery of this unprecedented phenomenon forces us to make a decision. Whatever we decide, we alter somewhat our understanding of life and death. There is no way to retain unchanged our idea of death. The old idea of death as the simultaneous permanent cessation of consciousness and of vital signs is not an option any longer, because these phenomena are sundered in the case of the brain-dead patient whose vital signs are sustained. One might argue that the burden of proof lies entirely on those who propose the radical innovation of regarding certain breathing patients as dead, because the view that a breathing person is alive is well established. This is a mistake, however, because it is not well established that a person who is known to be irreversibly comatose but whose breathing is sustained is alive. This case is unprecedented, and however it is decided, our idea of death is changed. The issue is: Which change best comports with the rest of our beliefs, understanding, interests, concerns, and practices? Benjamin argues that taking those who are known to be irreversibly comatose to be dead comports better with these matters than the decision that such individuals are alive. I find this argument entirely convincing.
Benjamin's discussion of death illustrates nicely the pragmatic temperament in action. For the pragmatist, the idea that we can grasp the real nature of things by finding them already laid out for us in the world is naďve. The world does not classify its contents for us; we do the classifying according to schemes we devise. Our classifications are correct to the extent that they serve a wide variety of intellectual and practical concerns and purposes. As the world changes, we have to alter our systems of classification. Here is a rough paraphrase of an aphorism by Nelson Goodman: The world we know is the result of an ongoing collaboration between the world and ourselves.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign