Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
these technologies and their results are independent of, and generally
insensitive to, the telos of animals.
The use of the concept of telos with regard to human beings creates
difficulties for the obvious reason that the “plasticity” in human nature,
its rationality and sociality, dramatically overshadow the relatively
focused biological component. Rollin examines this plasticity and con-
cludes that “rationality and sociality are highly variegated in their instan-
tiation, and to attempt to create a descriptive account that does justice
to all of their differing manifestations would seem to be impossible. For
this reason, the notions of 'is' and 'ought' seem to be much more closely
connected in a teleological worldview than in a mechanistic one.”
Rollin's argument rests on this sharp distinction between biological or
animal telos and human telos. Animal telos functions as a basis for hus-
bandry and for a critique of current industrial practices. This extends to
humans, with regard to our principally biological functions. Thus, the
general practice of medicine and future possibilities of genetic therapy
are acceptable to Rollin, as they focus on the biology of the human telos.
But human telos, properly speaking, involves “rationality, sociality,
moral concern, and so forth,” issues about which no precise description
of “what we ought to strive for” can be provided. Here, we cannot
change what is without altering what ought to be. “Efficiency, produc-
tivity, wealth—none of these trump reason and autonomy, and thus the
Brave New World
scenario is deemed unacceptable.” That is, we should
never accept any form of genetic engineering that would alter these
central human concerns.
One implication of this distinction is that it would be allowable to
genetically alter an animal to change its (biological) telos and, in so
doing, make it more productive or more suited to an efficient environ-
ment. We could engineer a legless, blind chicken that would not suffer
if raised in a battery cage. But we ought not fundamentally alter the
human telos of a human being in any analogous way. Rollin argues
that the key unalterable elements in human beings are “traits in people
that would radically separate them from the companionship of other
humans,” such as immortality, living underwater, or abnormal size. Only
therapeutic interventions, including both somatic and (preferably)
genomic efforts, would be acceptable. Rollin is aware that there would
be difficulties at the boundaries between a human's biological telos (and
