Abstract
One of the first negative responses to any new technology is to claim that it is unnatural, and therefore, morally wrong or bad. Airplanes, wind turbines, cars, telephones and a host of now socially acceptable technological achievements have faced this objection. They eventually overcame the resistance barrier as a result of people adopting and becoming comfortable with them, and are now part of the status quo in many societies. Transgenic organisms, which have been around since the 1990s, are still undergoing the same objection, although it is still too early to determine if they will also gain general acceptance.
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Notes
- 1.
I would like to thank Gary Comstock for giving me the idea for this chapter.
- 2.
Some people would reject this philosophical analysis of the unnatural based on the claim that the “natural/unnatural distinction is one of which few practising scientists can make much sense” (Nuffield Council on Bioethics 1999, p. 15).
- 3.
Jan Deckers tries to defend the natural/unnatural argument by showing that there are still concerns that both adherents and critics have (Deckers, 2005). The problem is Deckers never establishes whether these concerns are rational ones to have. The mere fact that people feel a particular way, no matter how knowledgeable they are in a specific research area, is insufficient to establish a claim other than that they feel that way. What would have to be done is to argue that the feelings are justified, which requires a clearer definition of the natural.
- 4.
The reduction-of-life-to-its-chemical-components-is morally-wrong argument is a variation of this theme. Bernard Rollin does an excellent job formulating the strongest case for it, and then showing why it fails (Rollin 2006, pp. 138–41).
- 5.
If UIU actually was the Natural-is-Ethical Argument, one of whose premises is that natural objects/actions are morally good or right, the result of definition one would be that all human activity and the products of such activity would be morally right or good. In fact, it would be impossible for humans to ever do the wrong or evil thing because humans do not have the ability to violate the descriptive laws of nature. The Nazi’s eugenics programs on these grounds lose their status as moral atrocities and become morally good and right states of affairs. That cannot be correct.
- 6.
In Section 3.5.2, Comstock’s definition incorporating the idea of a telos is different from the one encountered here. Comstock’s definition deals with altering or changing an object’s telos, while Leiser’s leaves the telos unchanged and the object is used contrary to its telos.
- 7.
Henk Verhoog argues that each animal has a telos based on its needs as a result of evolutionary processes on its species (Verhoog 1992, pp. 274–6).
- 8.
The function of objects will be discussed in much greater depth in Chapter 4.
- 9.
The evolution position will be fully addressed later in this chapter.
- 10.
If we adopt this view, then God becomes responsible for all evil actions.
- 11.
It could also be the case that possessing the DNA essence of another thing is sufficient on its own grounds to make the object morally bad.
- 12.
Environment, at the very least, matters as well.
- 13.
Comstock rejects this version of the Unnaturalness Argument on the grounds that genes can be transferred without essence transfer, it is not proven that there are such things as essences, and “it is impossible to identify the essence of a thing simply by describing its genome without describing its environment” (Comstock 2000b, p. 191).
- 14.
This definition is sometimes called the “homeostatic property cluster view” (Robert and Baylis 2003, p. 3). I take it that John Searle’s cluster or family description of proper names is very similar to this view (See J.R. Searle’s “Proper Names” Mind 1958, 67:166–73).
- 15.
Even the characteristic of being resistant to glysophate in bacillus thurigensis is complex.
- 16.
If it was maintained that it was wrong to transfer the essential characteristics of a sufficient set of species characteristics to another organism, then the same problem that arose for the radical interpretation would arise here. Creating new organisms with those characteristics would be morally wrong or bad, even if it was not artificial.
- 17.
I am grateful to Richard B. Miller for his examples and helping me explicate his work in this area.
- 18.
Bernhard Glaeser argues that nature is a cultural concept whose meaning changes according the culture and situation. Nature is real, but its reality is one that has been molded by human feeling, perception and thought (Glaeser 1995, p. 146).
- 19.
I take Verhoog to hold a similar position on the definition of species (See Verhoog 1992).
- 20.
Michael W. Fox is a proponent of this argument and adds that changing the telos of a natural object is “playing God” (Fox 1999, p. 4).
- 21.
A thing cannot acquire an end through random generation. The design argument is based upon a global or local design argument, which implies a designer, which might be God, nature, human beings, or some intelligent entity. Unlike a designer, randomness cannot give an end to an object.
- 22.
Aquinas argues that the design of the universe, which necessarily implies at least one end, is an adequate indication that God exists (Aquinas 1989, pp. 12–14).
- 23.
Evolution does not design any species for any end. It does have an influence on what species survive in a particular environment. This very weak form of influence I will call design for the sake of developing this argument.
- 24.
The only way around this problem is if the end is self-evident. The fact that people disagree about what a thing’s end is, if such a telos exists, is sufficient evidence to prove that the end is not self-evident.
- 25.
Although the problem of evil argument seems to be decisive to prove that a God with infinite goodness, power, and knowledge does not exist.
- 26.
Additional difficulties with using evolution to establish naturalness will be addressed in greater detail in Section 3.6 of this chapter.
- 27.
A more in-depth development of teloi will be made in Chapter 4.
- 28.
“Non-sentience” as used here means not able to feel pleasure or pain. Sentience is being able to feel pleasure or pain.
- 29.
There is a tension between the definition that Comstock uses and that of Aristotle. Comstock refers to the end of the individual, while Artistotle’s refers to the end of groups. More precisely of groups of individuals, which seem to be divided along the lines of species boundaries, such as in the case of humans. In order to examine fully the issue of end, both types of end will be evaluated.
- 30.
There are no human transgenic organisms of the type of TO under discussion in this work. Of course, there are a large number of transgenic humans created through the old fashioned method of procreation.
- 31.
If human beings are created to be mindless servants or sources for organ donation, then there will be difficult ontological questions to answer, such as whether or not an engineered being has the end given to it by its engineer or if it has been harmed by not being allowed to have the end of non-engineered beings. The problem becomes more acute if the being is engineered to have a life worth living, according to how that is defined by Parfit, but never achieves the level of a full person. Since the almost human TO was never going to be a person in the first place and it has a life worth living, then is it morally wrong to create it?
- 32.
See Michael W. Fox, p. 7 for example.
- 33.
This definition can be found in Rollin (2006, p. 141).
- 34.
If illegitimately means unethically, then UIU with this definition becomes a tautology. Hence, I will only interpret the definition in ways that allow it to add something to the debate.
- 35.
See the articles by Michael Syvanen for an excellent introduction to the controversy.
- 36.
Richard Sherlock rejects the isolationist argument on much the same grounds in his excellent article examining genetic trespass and subtle definitions of the natural/unnatural (Sherlock 2002, p. 154).
- 37.
The issue of evolutionary arguments for and against transgenics will be addressed in much greater detail 3.6
- 38.
If it turns out macroevolution is the process critics are concerned about violating, then as long as researchers do not do that, then their activities are not illegitimate under this argument. See Chapter 4 for more information.
- 39.
Other types of transgenic organisms will prove more problematic than plants. Plants after all, do not have the capacity to feel pain or pleasure and certainly do not have rational thinking processes.
- 40.
It should not be thought that natural selection is a force in the same manner as gravity. Rather natural selection is an effect.
- 41.
Inclusive fitness is a combination of direct and indirect fitness. “Direct fitness is a measure of how many alleles, on average, a genotype contributes to the subsequent generation’s gene pool by reproducing. Indirect fitness is a measure of how many alleles identical to its own it helps to enter the gene pool” (Colby 1996, p. 6).
- 42.
The Playing God argument is a variant of this argument.
- 43.
The Rivermouth Action Group, Inc. claims that “corn (maize) which has been genetically modified to act as an insecticide … is hardly ‘substantially equivalent’ to conventional corn” (RAG 2003, p. 2).
- 44.
This is not to assert that the pollution which stimulated the change in the moths is morally neutral or good; merely that it was not morally wrong because it violated evolution in some way.
- 45.
Michael Antonio, a senior lecturer in molecular genetics at King's College Medical School, London, states that the findings are significant, although there are a number of inadequacies in the study (Vidal 2002, p. 1).
- 46.
Also see Jean-Claude Perez’s Planete Transgenique (Ed. L’espace blue: Paris, France, 1997).
- 47.
Michael Syvanen argues in a number of articles that horizontal gene transfer played a much greater role in evolution than previously thought. He maintains that organisms that can incorporate DNA from other species are fitter than those that cannot. Hence natural selection favors the former over the latter. See Syvanen’s “Conserved Regions in Mammalian ß-globins: Could They Arise by Cross Species Gene Exchange?”, “Cross-species Gene Transfer: Implications for a New Theory of Evolution,” “On the Occurrence of Horizontal Gene Transfer Among an Arbitrarily Chosen Group of 26 Genes,” and “Recent emergence of the modern genetic code: a proposal”
- 48.
Philip Davies uses a form of Abrupt Evolution argument to attempt to justify his claim that we should assume that each genetically engineered crop will have a significant impact on the environment until it is proven not to (Davies 2004, pp. 74–5).
- 49.
See also Rollin (1996, p. 35).
- 50.
I will argue in the Pro-Transgenic section that creating transgenic organisms could be the result of evolutionary mechanisms; hence, it does not violate evolution in any way.
- 51.
Although gravity is a cause and natural selection is an effect.
- 52.
Also see Fox (1999, pp. 4–5).
- 53.
Although this seems to be a matter of debate, with some on the anti-transgenic side claiming it is a coldly reasoned publicity ploy to make transgenic organisms more acceptable in the marketplace.
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Cooley, D.R. (2010). Are Transgenic Organisms, Biotechnology, and Technology Unnatural?. In: Technology, Transgenics and a Practical Moral Code. The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3021-4_3
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