Author: JenniferFitz

Book Review: Embryo

Embryo: A Defense of Human Life

by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen

Doubleday, 2008

ISBN 978-0-385-52282-3

(Available as an audiobook on audible.com.)

The truth is, I picked this book up because I am a Chris & Laurie Tollefsen fan. Yeah, yeah, their philosophy is good (who knew!), but what I really like is them. Their cooking, their conversation, their de-cluttered home – hard not to like people who excel you in every way, and have the courtesy not to point it out. Not that I wasn’t interested in the book, of course. But I don’t think I would have trudged to my local catholic bookstore and actually bought a copy without that personal connection.

Wow. Way worth it. Even if there is no hope whatsoever of any kind of culinary benefit to you for reading this book, you still ought to read it. Even if you aren’t pro-life. And in particular if you aren’t catholic, because it is not a book about catholic (or even theist) perspectives on the topic.

–> If you are catholic, you should read it so that you can speak intelligently to people who want to understand your position on the proper treatment of human embryos, but who aren’t particularly interested in arguments that begin ‘Well, the Pope says . . .’.

Why Philosophy? Philosophy*, as I understand it, is more or less the study of What People Think About Things. For example, how should I treat my fellow human beings, and why so? This is a philosophical question. It can be answered with respect to God, of course, but if you are person who doesn’t believe in God, you still may have an opinion on right and wrong behavior, and probably even some good reasons for your opinion. In this book, George & Tollefsen argue that human embryos deserve ‘full moral respect’ – that is, that they share certain fundamental human rights along with the rest of the species (that’s us). They lay out the reasons for their opinion chapter by chapter.

What’s in the book? And am I smart enough to read it?

The opening chapter, “What is at Stake in the Embryo Experimentation Debate” is a sort of presenting of the situation. It will help tremendously here and throughout the book if you have a passing awareness of the public debate on the topic, and a little bit of familiarity with philosophical terms. The text is eminently readable – very clear and precise, and with quick prose given the technical nature of the topic — but this is not Embryos & Philosophy for Dummies. (Someone please suggest a link for those who want to do the pre-req reading. If nothing else, reading the Secondhand Smoke blog for a few weeks might help.)

Likewise, the second chapter, which lays out the biology of embryonic development, really requires that you have completed high school biology and have some vague recollection of what you learned on the topic. If words like “RNA” and “meiosis” ring a bell, you’re good. Don’t worry if you can’t exactly define them just now; as you read your memory will be refreshed and it will make sense again. It may be a little bit of work to follow the detailed explanations, but you can do it.

After answering the question of ‘is it a little tiny human being?’ in the embryology chapter, George & Tollefsen move onto the philosophical question of what to do with those tiny beings in the remainder of the book. Topics covered include things you might not have known people doubted, such as “What is a person?” (Once a person always a person? Or does your personhood come and go according to this or that factor? It is a relevant question, and one that apparently folks have some interesting ideas about.)

And then, once they’ve established their reasons for thinking that not only are embryos human beings, but they are, in fact, human persons, the book proceeds with building the arguments for what rights persons have, and therefore how they ought to be treated by all the other people.

Who should, and should not, read this book?

This is an important and useful book, regardless of your opinions on the topic. If you beleive in the human rights of embryos, it will help crystallize your thinking and recognize why others may disagree. If you don’t beleive in such rights, it will help you understand the logic of people who do. So it is a book that facilitates the mutual understanding essential to any hope of finding common ground.

And it is particularly useful because it is not a religious book. You may, of course, have religious reasons for your opinions, but those reasons won’t make much sense to people who don’t share your religion. Embryo argues that respect for the rights of the human embryo is not the province of any particular religion, but is in the same category of fundamental human rights that people of any religion or no religion at all tend to agree on.

–> And here is an important caveat: This book assumes that you are not a Nazi. If you need someone to explain to you why people deserve the same rights regardless of race or religion, you need to get that explanation elsewhere.  This book assumes you already hold that view. Likewise, it assumes you understand the difference between people and animals.  If you think it is okay to eat people, or to do deadly medical experiments on them without their full informed consent, again, you need to look to some other work to understand why this is, in the view of the rest of us, not so.

I warn you of this, because George & Tollefsen really do hit a tremendous variety of arguments against their opinion, and deal with them respectfully and thoroughly. [Do you wonder, for example, whether you are really the person who inhabits your body, or if ‘you’ is something else? They address this possibility.] But these two particular views I mention above (not a nazi, people are not fodder for your whims) are assumed, and at times even central to their arguments.

For nearly all readers, this shouldn’t be a problem, I hope. But I am aware that ‘nearly all’ does leave out a select few.

**

In summary: Highly Recommended. Well written, thorough, examines the debate from every angle. The tone is charitable and friendly, at times even humorous. Deserves to become a standard work on the topic.

*I mention this because if you are like me, you may not really have that clear of an idea of what exactly it is philosophers do. I’m just starting to catch on. And it’s relevant to this book review, because you can’t really know what is in the book if you don’t understand what Philosophy means, or at least what it seems to mean in this context.

Slavery; Pens

Update:

Dr. Boli posted a direct link to the Medieval Manuscript Manual in the combox.  I haven’t tested it yet, but here it is: http://web.ceu.hu/medstud/manual/MMM/index.html

***

Separate topics.  First, here’s a link to a helpful on article on the history of slavery, over at Inside Catholic.  (Thank you to Mark Shea for the link.)  Sumarizes the christian (catholic) relationship with slavery over the centuries, starting with Exodus and ending in the 16th century.  Topic I’ve wanted to learn more about; most of the books in my local public library don’t really begin until the 16th century.  Hard to think clearly about a topic when you don’t know much of the context.

Can’t offer any critical analysis on the Inside Catholic article, what with it being my introduction to the topic.  Will of course remind the reader to read the combox with a grain of salt.

***

In other news, I made my first quill pen!  Woohoo!  Followed instructions found here and here.   Not nearly as hard as you would think.  I don’t say that I made a particularly good pen, nor that I write all that well (I’m no master of the ballpoint– expectations are low), but entirely doable.  And fun.

Used watercolor paper for the writing surface, what with there being a real shortage of parchmenters in my neighborhood.  (I do want to order some vellum just to see what it’s like, but have not done so yet.)  For ink we went with the something-suspended-in-egg-white method.  Didn’t have any soot lying around (will rectify that problem soon — Mr. Boy is eager to assist), so tried various substances from the spice cabinet.  And eventually discovered iodine will work in a pinch.

[Handy tip: if your experiments with various coloring agents lead to a lumpy mixture, use a tea ball to strain.]

Used craft feathers for my first attempt, and my trusty pocket knife as the cutting tool.   The kind of feathers you get for your YMCA projects — bright colors.  So my first ‘medieval’ quill is, um, purple.  Have some un-dyed feathers available for a more period look, but wanted to get the hang of the art before using them.   With any luck, will get to show off my handiwork at an SCA event here shortly.  Exciting.

Nice little online intro to the whole topic of medieval writing can be found at http://medstud.ceu.hu/ but then you have to search around to find the Medieval Manuscripts Manual in the Medieval Studies department’s publications.  Some weird feature that makes it so you can’t link directly.  Or I can’t, anyway.

***

Most educational element of making a real quill pen: you understand why letters were formed as they were.  Had gotten some calligraphy books from the library over the holidays, and learned to write an approximation of a caroline miniscule, using a steel fountain pen.  Had a bit of trouble with remembering to form the letters using multiple strokes.  Ah, but use a quill pen, you get it.  Pen just doesn’t want to toss around the same way a steel tip will tolerate.  Likewise, it isn’t a matter of ‘remembering’ to hold pen at proper angle, etc., but of not being able to do it any other way except the right way.  Those quills are good teachers.

Schedule will tentatively resume next week, topics may be a little disorderly until I catch up on the promised book reviews.  Tendons are not really better, but I think the pitiful amount of writing I do here isn’t going to be a problem.  We’ll see.  Meanwhile, please pray for the repose of the soul of Michael Dubruiel, and the consolation of his family.

Dark Night of the Tendons

Hands are still limping along here.  Finally got my review of Dark Night of the Soul posted over at the homeschooling blog, after multiple technical failures (and of course plenty of the other kinds of failures as well).

In the success column, yes I can confirm the rumor that I finally got to meet Mr. & Mrs. Curley this weekend.  Super nice folks.  Except that Jim pointed out I’d been rather quiet on the blog lately.  Ahem.  So I’ll just come out and solicit tendon prayers from readers who want to see me get back to the regular schedule anytime soon.  Meanwhile, chugging along on the sick-leave plan, the review of Embryo is up next, to be posted here.

Hiatus updates

–> For anyone who was excessively worried, cut it out.  Minor case of tendonitis.  Am laying off the archery and (mostly offline) writing binge that was December, and switching to catching up on some reading.  You know, of those paper things, what do you call them, books?  What people read when they aren’t surfing the internet.

But the hands really do need a break.  I am, as a result, setting aside the schedule for a little while.  Next post out, barring some surprise, will be a review of Robert George & Christopher Tollefsen’s Embryo: A Defense of Human Life.  (Which I have just finished reading, and highly recommend, but won’t be getting to the review for a little while.  Summary: It’s worth purchasing.)  And after that, The Relation of Church and State in the Middle Ages, published by Requiem Press and which is short, affordable, promises to be interesting, and is currently on order — so I haven’t any idea what I’m really getting, just that it looked like my kind of topic.  (And if you read here, probably yours, too.)

Over at the homeschooling blog I’ll be putting up my review of Dark Night of the Soul, followed, I hope, by a review of RP’s children’s book about the story of Our Lady of Victory, and another children’s book I picked up for the godchildren and read last week.

Not sure what else is in the pipeline.  Once DNS goes up I get to pick another Catholic Company book to review, but I haven’t looked to see what the current choices are.  Still a little ways away from that.  Oh and have a pile to work through thanks to my several relatives who sent book money for Christmas (thank you, relatives), so some of that will eventually get here.

Will let you know when things return to normalish at the blog.  Hope you are having a good year.

the hands have gone awol . . .

. . . I suspect a providential plot to force me to finish reading Dark Night of the Soul.  Your last Friday’s post is in progress (and halfway interesting– to me, at least), but no predictions on when I’ll have it up.  Will post an excuse on the other blog as needed.  If all else fails, have a good week.

Book, er, Podcast recommendation – Disability & Social Justice

It’s a quiet afternoon.  Big kids are at friends’ houses, the baby is napping, the house is all yours.  The kitchen could use some attention, but that’s never bothered you before.  What you need is to settle down in the recliner with a bag of chocolate chips and a philosophy podcast.

Specifically this one: Chris Tollefsen’s talk on Disability and Social Justice, given at Anselm College this fall.

Count me in the ranks of the philosophically ignorant.  Historically my efforts at studying the topic have been met with disaster.  (As certain of Dr. Tollefsen’s colleagues can attest, if they have not supressed the memory.)  And I’ll admit very plainly that there were bits of this talk where I just did my best to pay attention, and hope that sooner or later it would start making sense again.  Because I couldn’t follow all the references quickly enough — what I really needed was a transcript I could read slowly, but so far no luck searching the internet.  Have a tried contacting the author? Of course not.  That would be logical.  But next time I see him I’ll put in my request.  Honestly I hesitated to do so because I was concerned it would be either too difficult or not quite my thing, or both.   Didn’t want to bother a perfectly good philosopher just to satisfy my curiosity. But now I know better.   It was challenging for me to follow, but not too much to make it worth the effort.

So, if it isn’t too hard for me, it isn’t too hard for you, either.  Indeed since 80% of my readers are smarter than me, it should be a piece of cake for most of you, and the other one can manage at least as well as I did.  When it gets to a bit where you start to lose track of the ideas, just hang in there, because more good stuff is just around the corner.  Do allow a bit of time to listen, it is a fairly long talk.  And allow for some quiet, you need to be able to pay attention and think.

–> Handy tip:  The inaudibly asked questions (during the Q&A at the end) are all fairly long.  You can safely run your trash to the curb while you wait to hear Dr. Tollefsen’s reply, assuming your curb isn’t too far away.

So what’s in this podcast that makes it rate my monthly recommended reading (er, listening) post? If I understood him correctly (debatable point), his argument went something like this:

-Interdependence is normal for human beings.  The idea of ‘self-sufficiency’ cannot be applied to people in a meaningful way.

-We tend to think of government being a contract by and for citizens.  That is, people who are capable of consenting to their government and interacting with it.

-Not so.  Government exists to provide for the human needs that individuals and social groups (family, friends, church, etc.) are unable to provide themselves.  Think: protection from enemies, etc.

–> Government as a contract between citizens is a *form* of government, not the purpose of government.

-Understanding this gives us a more accurate way of addressing the needs of people who are disabled, who are dependent on others for care (for whatever reason), as well as those to whom the caregiving responsibilities fall.

Also in there: Why one of the legitimate roles of government is to provide a moral environment that promotes virtue.  (Answer: we are unable to do it for ourself.  We cannot individually create the environment in which we live, we need the cooperation of wider society).  And how this fits into the challenge of providing for the needs of caregivers and the cared-for.

Worth listening for: The comment on how providing for the needs of people with disabilities, caregivers, and others fits into the balance of providing for other legitimate demands on the government.  It’s quick and at the end, but provides some helpful perspective.

And much, much more.  Check it out.  Not just to see how badly I mangled a perfectly good philosophy lecture, but in order to enjoy the lecture itself.

Humor: How to Identify

In my goofing off I noticed a bit of discussion today about whether this weekend’s SNL was funny or  offensive.  Haven’t seen the episode, and have other more important internet laziness calling my attentions, so I won’t.  [Why would I want to watch something that a number of very sensible people tell me is objectionable, anyway?  When I could be reading more back-issues of Dr. Boli?  Pretty easy decision for me.]

All the same, as parents of an eight-year-old boy, the SuperHusband and I have had many opportunities to reflect on what does and does not constitute humor.  A few thoughts, not very well edited because my goofing-off time is coming to an end, and I want to just get the ideas out there today.  But here for you to ponder however confusedly, while I go make dinner and clean the house:

Humor is based on comparison. The comparison can come in many forms, but it is always there.  In a pun, it the similarity in sound between two words or phrases, combined with an apropos meaning given the context of the joke. (Why is the baker cruel? Because he whips the cream and beats the eggs.)  In slapstick humor, it is a comparison between what should have happened (walked through the door unharmed) and what did happen (a bucket of water fell on my head).   In satire, the comparison is built by taking what we know to be true about a person, and applying it in an extreme (play Sarah Palin as if she’s even flightier-sounding than she really is) or out of context (Bob Dole runs a daycare).

–> In order to understand a joke, one must be able to recognize the comparison.  This is why, say, philosophy jokes have a very limited audience.  They may be hilarious, but few audiences have the knowledge required in order to catch the comparison on which they hinge.  Usually, though, even when the audience doesn’t ‘get’ a joke (that would be me, listening to my peers tell philosophy jokes), they are merely puzzled, not offended.

So what distinguishes between a joke that is truly offensive, and one that really was funny, but the audience had no sense of humor?

Sore topics aren’t funny when the joke is told by the guilty party to the offended party.  Even if they are otherwise fair game. Double standard? No.  It’s a violation of the comparison rule.  It isn’t a joke if it is really happening, or likely to happen.

This poses a real problem for the modern satirist, as the things we joke about now seem to come true dreadfully quickly.  To review real quickly as we develop our main point, a couple of examples of possibly funny versus not funny, based not on teller, but on the premise that it isn’t a comparison if it is the literal truth:

Possibly funny: The CIA is going to subject captured enemy combatants  to Wheelock’s Latin in order to get them talk.    Not funny: ‘Jokes’ about actually torturing people, that are based on real torturers committing their real crimes on their real victims.

Possibly funny: Jokes about other species engaging in suicide.  Not funny: Most jokes about humans engaging in suicide.  (This used to be possibly funny, because it wasn’t true.  But now that large segments of the population have decided that suicide is acceptable — it isn’t — there are very few suicide jokes left.  None come to mind.  On the other hand, you can now joke about judges who declare people must stay alive until their natural death, since that is, sadly, now parody.  Hopefully only temporarily.)

So, getting back to our main issue: if I tell my eight-year-old, “Don’t touch my chocolate or I’m selling you to the salt mines”, it’s humor.  He knows I would never, ever, sell him to the salt mines.   But if I say, “Or no dessert for you,” it is not humor.  He knows that missing out on dessert is a very real possibility, based on his parents’ past behavior.

–> For this reason, parents who do sell their children to the salt mines have fewer humor options than average.  Virtue has its rewards.  Which leads to the next point:

Humor Depends on the Teller’s Credentials In most circles, one can safely tell accountant jokes, because there is very little anti-accountant persecution.  It is generally assumed the joke is well-meant poking of fun.  (Even though, in fact, most accountant jokes fall flat.  Not because accountants aren’t a lively bunch, full of interesting fodder for the satirist, but because the general public is woefully ignorant of the true esprit of the accountant, and tends to rely on the same tired and shallow assumptions decade in and decade out.  But lame humor is not necessarily offensive.  We’ll chuckle politely for you, or at least kind of twitch the lip a little to acknowledge you spoke.)

In contrast, when a group of people is subject to discrimination, hate, condescension, or other meanness in the wider society, it becomes necessary for the joke-teller to prove beyond all doubt that no derision is meant by the joke.  If this criteria can’t be meant, the joke is probably going to be received as offensive.  (This is a shame, because it deprives many innocent people of perfectly good humor.  But it is the reality all the same — our sins affect others more than we realize.)  So, for example, among southerners, humor about the idiosyncrasies of southern life is quite funny.  Told by a southerner to others? Still funny.  But told by damn Yankees people not from the south, the same jokes can be received as offensive, for there is a certain amount of cultural history that can leave one wondering whether the joke is meant as true humor, or as a veiled insult.

–> SNL treaded on dangerous ground, because they are part of a group known as the “mainstream media”.  And the mainstream media is notorious for producing all kinds of garbage that is offensive to people with disabilities (and thus to anyone with the ability to detect nonsense).  Therefore, if SNL meant to be genuinely funny, it had to prove beyond all doubt that it was not engaging in the same obnoxious blather that its colleagues churn out so regularly.

This phenomenon leads to a general rule, that one can only make fun of oneself and one’s own group.  This rule is not, however, strictly accurate. Both for the reason that a) it is possible to insult oneself and that b) it is possible to be a person of goodwill and good sense towards others.  So, even southern accountants can tell offensive southern accountant jokes (but not on this blog, I hope), and even non-southern, non-accountants can tell enjoyable southern accountant jokes.  (Don’t expect to see a compendium of such jokes published any time soon, however.)

All that said, certain groups of people have experienced such shoddy treatment at the hands of others that their sense of humor has been injured.   As it is not especially difficult to identify shoddy treatment present or past, it behooves others to be mindful of the lingering pain, and politely go find some other topic for one’s jokes.  Humor is part of the healing process, but humor inflicted from without is generally not the healing type.

What is especially egregious about the SNL fiasco?  Chances are the SNL writers didn’t even realize they were dealing with an easily-offended audience –> which is to say, with a group of people who has consistently received ill-treatment at the hands of wider society.

On the one hand, it’s a bizarre problem, given that eugenics movement and the ensuing marginalization of people with disabilities has been around for nearly a century and half now — plenty of time for an SNL writer to develop an awareness of the problem.  (And even, perhaps, to care enough about it to write some good satire on the topic.)  On the other hand, it proves the point: the whole complaint is that people with disabilities are marginalized in our society.   To the point that SNL doesn’t even know you’re there.  Let alone that you are mighty touchy just now.

–> Good humor requires you to know your topic.  Because humor depends on the comparison, an inaccurate comparison makes for poor humor.  Listen to a four-year-old try to tell a riddle. Very painful.  Poor child doesn’t quite know what a pun is yet, and therefore just tries for any random silly words that come to mind.  (Four-year-olds, on the other hand, understand slapstick quite well.)  And this same knowledge that makes for good humor is also what keeps you from being offensive, because you will know that you are dealing with a potentially sore topic.  The SNL writers offended because they tread on ground they didn’t know.

The good news is, this is knowable ground.  There are so many directions SNL could have taken the Paterson joke that would have been genuinely funny.  Funny in a way that resonated with the subject audience, and brought reality to tlhe attention of the general public.   Which is what good humor does.