Ever since my cranky rant about Inception, the thought of the ambiguity of reality has been occurring while I have been engaged in quite a different series of reflections concerning my teaching of Medical Ethics, and it was not until I saw this article that I finally figured out why.
Missouri just passed a law that fills out their already rather robust procedures for “informed consent” prior to a woman undergoing an abortion. What makes Missouri’s law significant is that they legislate two separate claims to be true, and moreover, the law stipulates that these claims must appear on brochures handed out to women seeking an abortion. Here is what the law says:
The printed materials or informational video shall prominently display the following statement: "The life of each human being begins at conception. Abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being."
I still find it amazing (though at this point I shouldn’t) that state governments think it’s appropriate to simply legislate positions as though doing so makes them somehow more true or more authoritative. And I find it more amazing still that anyone thinks that such legislation amounts to anything more than an empty and meaningless gesture. We can legislate that Santa is real. We can legislate that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. We can legislate that human life begins at conception. Saying it, or in this case legislating it, don’t make it so. Something so obvious should scarcely need to be pointed out. Positions seeking admittance as truth, whether philosophical, theological, or scientific cannot be legislated by fiat.
And of course, as with any law, this one has loopholes. If these statements must be prominently displayed, fine. There’s nothing in the law, though, that says I can’t preface it with the statement “The state Senate, which has gone cuckoo bananas, has commanded me to inform you of the absolutely ridiculous notion that…” followed immediately by the two statements.
At any rate, I am less concerned with the legislative attempt at a coup and more concerned with what this implies about our notions of truth, statements, and facts. It is here that I finally figured out why I was thinking of Inception at the same time I was thinking of Medical Ethics. There is a deeper and more dangerous jeopardy of reality in something like this Missouri law than there is in ten Inceptions, and I began to be aware of this as I taught my Medical Ethics class this semester.
One of the state Senators sponsoring the bill, Jim Lembke, was careful to point out that these statements regarding human life and its beginnings are not religious. Rather, “It’s a scientific statement” he says.
Wait. What?? These are…scientific…statements? In what sense? Where is there anything the least bit scientific in them? It’s such a manifestly, breathtakingly false thing to say that he should have been laughed at, not quoted in the newspaper. When lunatics declare “I am Napoleon!” we don’t publish it with the headline “Napoleon is reborn!” This declaration from the Senator that these are scientific statements is rubbish. Gibberish. But it’s reported with the same weight and importance as the “opinions” of Aristotle and Augustine. After all, who’s to say which side is right?
This scares me more than Inception ever could. It suggests that trite things like truth, science, empirical evidence, logical support, and rational argument are not necessary to establish the worth of a given claim. Manifest falsehoods can simply be proclaimed by a state Senator and we simply shrug and say, “well, it’s one side anyway.” Except it’s not. It’s lunacy. If science means anything, and “statement” means anything, the claim that human life begins at conception is not a scientific statement.
The news article quoting the Senator continues by noting that this “sentiment” regarding the beginnings of human life has been debated for centuries. Sentiment? It’s a feeling now? I thought it was a scientific statement? Or at least a statement of some kind. Oh well. The journalist concludes however with an absolute whopper of a lie. A real humdinger. He says, “But scientists agree that when a sperm and egg unite, a living organism results.”
They do?! It does?!
Well, that’s newsworthy all by itself. Perhaps scientists agree that a fertilized ovum results from this union, but not a living organism. The egg isn’t an organism? The sperm isn’t an organism? They’re not already alive? If not, then it is not a living organism that results, it’s a zombie. Living things coming from dead things? Sounds unholy to me. If what he really wanted to say was that a new organism results, then I find it hard to see how we’re not back at square one with the original claim that a human life begins at conception. And I just don’t see how anyone can say scientists agree on that, or even why we should care if they did.
I’m picking on this journalist and his awful reporting because all three statements demonstrate the same issue: anything can be said without accountability or responsibility for its truth, falsity, or reasonableness. When a journalist can (a) report an obvious lie and (b) tell an even more obvious lie, we’re in serious trouble. It is as though logic, reason, facts, and evidence don’t exist or at least, are not necessary to say true things.
And this brings me to my reflections on Medical Ethics. I taught an awful class. I thought it would be easy. I thought it would be self-evident and simple. I was wrong. It was a class on the difference between an argument, an opinion, a belief, and the various modes of support for each. Critical reasoning 101. And it made nearly everyone quite upset. I’ve been puzzling over this; it disturbs me. I could not imagine how the rules of argument could engender anger in anyone. For me, they’re about as non-controversial as water or air. What’s there to get mad or confused about when detailing the structure of an argument? Why pitch a fit over the definition of an opinion? And why was this particular lecture making me think again and again of Inception?
I imagine that the answer is that my students were getting upset at the thought that their statements did not automatically possess seriousness, worth, and importance within the domain of reasoned discourse. I refused to accept their statements simply on condition that they asserted them. I instead asked them to adhere to rules of evidence, standards of empirical judgment, and laws of logic in formulating their positions. Moreover, I suspect that my insistence on these things must have seemed arbitrary to them within the context of what they see and hear every day. Why should they obey these things? Because some old-school professor says so? It is not stupidity at work here. It is not laziness. In fact, my students in this class are extremely bright, intellectually quick, and quite engaged. So what’s going on? My suspicion is that they are used to an environment in which there simply are no such standards of discourse. Global warming? That’s just a political debate and there are two sides depending on whether you’re a tree-hugging hippie or an unthinking corporate lackey. Gay marriage? Well, you know, whatever. Abortion. I have my opinion; you have yours. Who’s to say which is better? Truth is malleable, all statements are equal, and every position is reduced to an opinion even as we’re not quite sure anymore what counts as an opinion or why.
Who needs Inception when there is already such a profound jeopardy of sense taking place? The lack of regard for reasonable support or empirical evidence is troubling. More troubling still is the implication that all positions are equal insofar as they are asserted. On its face, this may appear to be simply another instance of relativism. But I don’t think so in this case. There are strong elements of relativism, to be sure, but I tend to think of this phenomenon as intellectual isolationism. As I reflect on my disastrous class, I want to say that my students fear the requirements of public reasonableness and accountability. They possess their own nexus of true beliefs, right claims, and reasonableness concerning the world and they’re quite unwilling to risk it in the public domain. It is as if, having grown certain of their world, they see no reason to risk it before others. In other words, it’s not a belief that all positions are equal (after all, many of my students are quite convinced that their beliefs are true), it’s a pathological aversion to vulnerability. I notice in this context that the tendency towards isolationism (not solipsism) seems to pair quite naturally with a kind of elitism that breeds disdain for the public forum. At the same time that there is strong resistance to public defense of one’s position, there’s an equally strong tendency to assert privileged access to truth or certainty. One is “in the know” or one is contemptuous of others who don’t think as they do because, well, they just do not have the “real” or “true” facts. And I see this elitism as the flip side of the sense of isolationism that I am articulating. Both embody a fear of public accountability and a pathological aversion to the risk that one may be wrong in the context of objective standards of evidence, reason, and logical structure.
As I imagine it, asking students to adhere to non-controversial standards of support and rationality is equivalent to a declaration of war upon their isolated nexus of true beliefs. It is a threat to their sense of self, and an arbitrary one at that, since it originates out of nowhere. When all around them are nonsense claims like those made by Senator Lembke and our inept journalist, it must seem absurd to consider that they might actually be wrong in some of the things that they think, or to consider that what they think is subject to a standard of reasonableness quite different from their intrinsic sense of coherence and unity of belief.
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