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First: my reactions to chapter 1; then, some response to Chris.

1. I was mildly disappointed at the way in which Gazzaniga approaches the actual ethical issues themselves. I have two general qualms, and I hope that they're not characteristic of the whole book. The first is his tendency to simply give his opinion without really fleshing out the reasons he settled on that opinion. The bulk of the chapter is devoted to fleshing out the problems, which I can appreciate, and while he was up front in the preface that he wouldn't always have answers, that isn't what's happening here. He's giving answers to the questions -- at least those posed so far -- but he makes almost no attempt to let the outsider see inside those answers. That may not be a problem is you already agree with his opinion, but it doesn't leave much room for debate. The second qualm is that he falls back a great deal on what he assumes to be common sense. When he says that "we all seem to be in general agreement," he implies that general agreement is sufficient to stand in the place of ethical analysis; when he says that something is "patently absurd," he assumes that we know why. But in dealing with the moral status of embryos, he's broaching a subject in which a great many people don't see how certain assumptions are "patently absurd," and it seems to me that there's no way out of the conflict until both sides of the dispute can agree on the basic terms.

2. Just about any ethical question, and particularly that of when to confer moral status, depends on a question that Gazzaniga hasn't yet addressed: that of what aspect of humanity warrants moral status. This is, at root, a question of value, and I don't see much consideration of value in Gazzaniga's analysis. It seems to me that this may be the result of the misperception that we all basically agree on what's important, and Gazzaniga may feel that he can leave the basic values unspoken on the assumption that we all know what they are. But, for example, with the potentiality argument, there may be the assumption that human value lies in, say, social value, such that the potential of an embryo to become a contributing part of society underlies the whole argument. The continuity argument may, for some, arise from seeing human value as a function of the soul, and telling such people that there is no evidence for a soul is less likely to change their minds than it is to convince them that humans aren't really worth so much after all. Without determining what makes humanity valuable -- and therefore, worth defending -- no ethical determination is possible.

3. There is a likely example of the naturalistic fallacy in chapter 1: it occurs when Gazzaniga writes, "So if we use IVF to create embryos and then implant only a select few, aren't we doing what nature does?" This seems intended to excuse IVF by saying that, because it happens in nature, it cannot be wrong. But nature is not an ethical construct -- the basic assumption of ethics is that we do not naturally act as we ought, and that we have to examine our conduct in order to determine the best way to behave. After all, nature gives us all sorts of examples of cannibalism, incest, infanticide, and so on, but we do not assume a priori their ethical worth.

4. Gazzaniga raises the interesting question of intent, but I think he deals with it too simplisitically. He assumes, for one thing, that intent is a widely accepted ethical foundation. That isn't true -- there are ethical thinkers and cultures who say that the ethical value of any given outcome is distinct from the intent that drove it, such that the accidental death of a person is just a bad as if that person had been murdered, judged in itself. Gazzaniga' reference to the legal system isn't terribly useful, I'd say, for the same reason that his appeal isn't terribly useful -- the legal system may have some significant ethical parallels, but it is not, itself, constructed to produce ethics. In the matter of conferring moral status, intent is problematic at least in that there are so many normal pregnancies which are, in fact, unintentional -- intent is only of so much use in pregnancy, and it not necessarily the normative state.

5. Getting to the crux of Gazzaniga's intent argument, he writes, "Does a clump of cells take on a different character if I have no intention ever to let it develop?" His answer, somewhat frustratingly, is simply, "I think not." But I think an analogy will illustrate that his answer isn't necessarily as obvious as it seems to be -- we assign characters based on intent all the time, and Gazzaniga hasn't yet offered a reason why we shouldn't premise ethical decisions on those characters. For example, imagine that an organization earmarks a certain sum of money to purchase medicines for sick people who might otherwise have no access to treatment. Now imagine that the president of the organization, who is totally within his legal rights, routes that money to another project -- for clarity's sake, let's say to the construction of a casino. It seems to me that most people would say that the change in plans is unethical -- if not acutely so, then at least generally. Nor does it seem likely to me that Gazzaniga would stick to his negation in were the point pressed -- after all, he has motioned towards the "greater good" argument that underlies a great deal of scientific research. Stem cell research stands to help a great many people -- I doubt that Gazzaniga would say that the intent to use stem cells to produce cancer treatments, say, is without ethical content.

GdR, under other circumstances, it wouldn't bother me that religion came up so quickly in this discussion. And I would be glad to discuss that topic on most occasions. I've discussed religion to no end on this forum, and would have continued to discuss it with the same regularity if my forays into that topic hadn't been met with criticism recently. If the others in this forum are willing to reopen that can of worms, that's fine by me, but it doesn't always seem to me that their posts are fully in line with what they claim to want for this forum.

(That, incidentally, is one reason that I was none too excited about the five nominations we were given to vote on. They all had very obvious inroads into religious debate, and I had thought it fairly unanimous that we wanted to take a break from religious topics. That doesn't seem to be the case.)

As it stands, I've provided at least five comments that would allow us to look at this topic from a secular point of view -- a point of view that I would think would seem particularly attractive to a community built around the idea of looking at books from a non-religious point of view. So we can bat around the minimal religious implications in this chapter all day if you guys would like, or we can move on and discuss it from the point of view of a secular ethics.

misterpessimistic: We want to talk about religion. I, for one, just do not want to hear arguments from theists. I had enough of that.

Sounds to me like what you're saying is that it's okay to talk about religion so long as nothing is said in its defense. I'm afraid I'm going to fall pretty far outside your criteria for acceptable conversation points. But if that's the way it is, fine by me. I won't object to the subject being raised, but neither will I stifle my opinion when it comes up. We're back to square one, really: if you guys don't like hearing my side of things, you're welcome to a) avoid the topic, b) ignore my posts, or c) ban me. I've played by the rules, and it's gotten us no where. If it turns out that the rules are, have opinion A, I'll leave it up to you guys to enforce those rules.

You are the minority here...remember that.

You know, as many times as you've reminded me, I still can't help but read that as a thinly veiled threat.

Are you reading the book we are? At least chapter 1 is ALL about religion infused with ethics!

The comment you're replying to is in reference to chapters 2-4. Having recently finished chapters 5 and 6, I can say the same about those. As for chapter 1, the issue comes up specifically on page 9. There's a reference on page 12 to the concept of "soul," after which I don't see another direct reference to religion anywhere in the chapter. Gazzaniga talks a great deal more about neuroscience, bioethics and the philosophical tradition of ethics, and I don't see why we shouldn't do the same. I'm desperately trying to talk about the subject matter from the viewpoint of a secular ethics, but so far I'm the only one who seems interested in doing so.

When an embryo becomes a human is ALL about religion Mad. You see that dont you?

No, I don't, and it doesn't seem to me that Gazzaniga assumes that much, either, at least not in the beginning. He says, on page 3, that "the rational world is waiting for resolution on this debate," which would suggest to me that he at least sees that there is an ethical quandry to be addressed. Your willingness, and the willingness of others in this forum to reduce the entire question to a difference between the religious and atheist worldviews seems to me very simplistic, and I think that you would do well to consider whether or not the zeal behind your disgust at religion hasn't prevented you from looking at the whole issue. But that's advice that I've give you in a number of fields of inquiry.

Nor does it seem to me that the problem at root in this chapter is really about "becoming human." That phrase has become an easy handle, a form of shorthand, for the question of how our ethical standards change in relation to natal development. We can dispense altogether with the question of whether or not an embryo is human and still find ourselves faced with the question of what is and is not ethical in dealing with conceived but unborn life.

Chris OConnor: Perhaps I need to make a detailed post somewhere on these forums about my personal vision for BookTalk, who we aim to attract, and then provide a description of our ultimate goals.

I, for one, would read it with interest. But it wouldn't change my opinion. And I would advise you to bear in mind that, whatever your personal vision may be, you're involved in a community, and the end result will always be influenced by those who are involved in this community. Ultimately, the only way to ensure that the result never deviates from your vision is to control who is and is not welcome in your community. Frankly, there are only two ways to get rid of someone like me, a) lose my respect altogether, or b) ban me. I can't say for the first, but the more you guys place a limit on what points of views are acceptable in discussions that you yourselves have started, the less worthy you seem of respect.

What seems most silly to me is that the lot of you bother to talk about religion at all. If, as Chris has stated, "BookTalk is for people that have already arrived at the conclusion that faith is not only irrational, but also downright dangerous," then why do you continually bring it up? If it's something that all of you already agree on, why is it the foremost topic in nearly every thread you post to the "history/politics/current events" forum? I don't really understand what you're all discussing if you're only saying what you've already assumed as the underlying conceit of the whole forum. And it seems to me that those threads which are about religion -- some of which are the most active threads in the forum -- would all die out after one or two responses were it not for the dissenting voices that come in and argue from the very viewpoint which you claim is antithetical to the spirit of BookTalk.

And for all that, I'm not asking you to modify your mission statement. If you guys are worried that the threads about religion -- which are increasingly making up the bulk of your daily post count -- are doomed to a brief period of "hear, hear," followed by a lapse into unending inactivity -- and I think you should be worried about just that -- then my advice is that you simply find something else to talk about. Chris has done a wonderful job of arranging BookTalk's subforums to allow for a very broad variety of topics, everything from astronomy to economics to art history to ethics. If it's your contention that all of these subjects are fully valid and worth engaging apart from religion, then prove it.

This whole argument is, from my point of view, ironic in the highest degree. Am I being blamed for attempting to look at the subject of neuroethics apart from religion? Am I being castigated for wanting to not debate the existence of God? Or am I merely being singled out for being the theist in the bunch? If a vocal atheist had posted that they were tired of seeing religion brought up in every topic, would they have gotten the same reception that I've received in this thread?

Most people with advanced degrees in the sciences don't believe in a personal god. Why not?

According to a fairly recent survey, that's true of those trained in the theoretical sciences, whereas the applied sciences show a higher percentage of religious believers. Not that I want to debate with you whether or not people in the sciences are more inclined to atheism.

I'm exhausted folks. I'm seriously tired of hearing the same old arguments for a god day in and day out.

The funny thing is, you're not hearing it here. I haven't attempted to argue a single one of you into religious belief. This entire thread has been dedicated to suppressing the attempt of one theist to look at ethics from a purely secular point of view. Way to win a convert, guys.