Dissention in the Ranks: Part II

The ninth question addressed is really the crux of the issue:

Q. Governor Sebelius says that she is personally opposed to abortion, but she supports the law protecting the right of others to choose an abortion. Why is this not a morally acceptable position?

A. Freedom of choice is not an absolute value. All of our laws limit our choices. I am not free to drive while intoxicated or to take another’s property or to assault someone else. My freedom ends when I infringe on the more basic rights of another. On a similarly grave moral issue 150 years ago, Stephen Douglas, in his famous debates with the future President Abraham Lincoln, attempted to craft his position as not favoring slavery but of the right of people in new states and territories, such as Kansas, to choose to sanction slavery. Being pro-choice on a fundamental matter of human rights was not a morally coherent argument in the 1850s, nor is it today. No one has the right to choose to enslave another human being, just as no one has the right to kill another human being. No law or public policy has the authority to give legal protection to such an injustice.

In addition to this response, it is appropriate to link the condemnation of abortion to the natural law. Since the unborn child is a human being instilled with a soul from the moment of his conception, to kill the child is to commit the crime of murder. Thus, abortion would be condemned by the natural law. Unfortunately, the government has not yet made this connection, primarily because the legal system continues to argue that the unborn child is not yet a person, and thus in not entitled to have his life protected by the legal system. However, since the condemnation of abortion is a necessary conclusion from the natural law's condemnation of murder, it is compulsory for civic leaders to work to ban or at least limit abortion. This is not an imposition of religion upon others, or the establishment of a religion, but a recognition that abortion is fundamentally the grave evil of murder.

In the end, "personally opposed, but..." is merely saying "I wouldn't do it, but I don't think that it is wrong."

Dissention in the Ranks

As some of you may have read, His Grace Joseph Naumann, the Archbishop of Kansas City, recently remonstrated Governor Sebelius for her longstanding advocacy for open access to abortion in Kansas. A summary of the Archbishops first public letter to Governor Sebelius can be found here.

For those of you who are not familiar with some of the complications to the abortion debate in Kansas, I will give you a brief background on some of the issues.

Recently, the Attorney General, Paul Morrison, resigned when information surfaced that he had had an affair with a staff member of the previous Attorney General Phil Kline (purportedly to gain information on the pending investigation of George Tiller, who is a notorious late term abortionist and was a financial backer of Morrison). Tiller was investigated by a grand jury convened by the citizens of Kansas (although a grand jury probably cannot be convened in such a way in many states, Kansas allows citizens to call for the formation of grand juries in an attempt to work around government corruption). Due to some shady appointments of members of the grand jury, Tiller escaped indictment, but was later indicted by Morrison for 19 misdemeanors. Needless to say, the upper echelon of pro-choicers in Kansas have been shady at best in their attempts to expand the so called right to abortion. I am not quite sure why Kansas attracts such radical abortionists. The Midwest is usually more moderate than the coasts, but on this issue, it seems like the extreme has taken root in the Great Plains.

The governor and the Archbishop have had run ins before. Sebelius was going to hold a party at a Catholic Church after her inauguration parade. However, when the Archbishop found out about it, he forbid it.

Governor Sebelius has supported removing any obstacle to receiving abortions during her entire political career. Following the Archbishop's initial article in the diocesan news paper The Leaven, the Archbishop released a second column responding to some of the negative feedback that he received.

The complaints were reduced to 15 main questions. I will try to summarize these questions by indicating their main groupings.

1) Why are you censuring Sebelius as opposed to the others who hold similar positions?
2-4) Practical questions on the reception of the Eucharist.
5) What does scandal mean?
6-13) Conflicts between the Church and state.
14) Has a bishop done something like this before?
15) Why does the Church have moral authority if its members sin?

The first question could have come from both those agreeing with the Archbishop and those who oppose him. Those who are in support of him might think that he did not go far enough in only condemning Sebelius, while those who oppose him might wonder why he condemns Sebelius if others are not punished for the same position. The Archbishop's response more than adequately addresses each of these concerns.

The second section of questions explains the Church's teaching on when one is fit to receive Communion, and why the Archbishop has given a public directive for Sebelius to refrain from receiving.

The third section is a simple definition, clarifying the distinction between the common meaning of scandal and what the sin of scandal involves.

The most important part of the fourth section is the clarification that Sebelius' duty to the state does not release here from her moral obligations, and further that it is not enough to be personally opposed to abortion (especially when one goes on to further propagate it). “Concerning choices that are intrinsically evil, Catholics may not promote or even remain indifferent to them.”

The fifth section notes precedent for such a pastoral action.

The sixth section dismisses the attack as it is given as ad hominem. It is quite possible to move beyond this response to note the divine origin of the Church, and the divine guidance of the Church. Even though the Church is composed of fallible members, she draws her strength from her head, Jesus Christ.

Opposition is so Divisive...

Why bother with such philosophical conundrums as the square of opposition, you ask? If you can't distinguish one thing from another, then you can't come to know what a thing is. We come to know things by making distinctions. Although our senses are directed toward particulars, our intellect works with universals. Often, when we first establish a universal, we have discovered a genus that is a bit broader than is helpful in the case at hand. Properly, specific differences are used to distinguish between the members of a genus; however, in practice we are often forced to use properties of the species to distinguish one from another rather than the specific difference (which is most formally what separates one species from another).

When we go on to speak of the differences between things, and especially bring qualities into the conversation, it becomes necessary to judge what kind of opposition is represented in our predications. Mistaking contraries for a contradiction will over simplify the consideration, since intermediaries lie between contraries, while contradictions admit of no intermediaries. Thus, knowing the kind of opposition can make all the difference.

Opposition

One of the fundamental parts of philosophy is the four forms of opposition in predication. These have traditionally been expressed in the square of opposition. The following diagram is courtesy of The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy.
The vowels A,E,I, and O are used as abbreviations for the four kinds of predications. A is the universal affirmative: all S are P. E is the universal negative: no S is P. I is the particular affirmative: some S is P. O is the particular negative: some S is not P. These kinds of predications form four kinds of oppositions. I won't uses these vowel abbreviations in what follows, but I may use them in future posts. S and P stand for subject and predicate, respectively.

The first kind of opposition is that of contraries: all S is P, no S is P. Only one of the contraries can be true at a given time. It is not possible for all S to be P and for no S to be P at the same time and in the same respect. However, it is possible for them to both be false. If some S is P and some other S is not P then neither of the contraries is true. It can both be false that all coffee is served black and that no coffee is served black; however, if all coffee is served black, then it is false to say that no coffee is served black.

Additionally, intermediates exist between the extremes of any genus. In this way, black and white are opposed. Between the extremes lies numerous intermediates. The extremes cannot be exactly reduced to the first meaning of contrary given above, viz., contrary predications. Rather, what they are is contrary.

The second kind of opposition is that of contradictories. Two sets of contradictories exist in the diagram above. The first is the opposition between all S is P and some S is not P. The second is the opposition between no S is P and some S is P.In each of these oppositions, one of the predications must be true and the other must be false. If it is true that some coffee is served black, then it cannot be true that no coffee is served black.

The third kind of opposition is the subcontrary. Both of these can be true at the same time. It is possible for some S to be P and for some other S to not be P. The same S cannot both be P and not P, but the group of subjects can be varied. If it is true that some coffee is served black, it can also be true that some coffee is not served black.

The fourth kind of opposition is that of subalternates. The subalternates are true if the universal predication is true, but the universal predication is not necessarily true if the particular is true. However, if the particular is false, then the universal must likewise be false. Thus, if it is false to say that some coffee is served black then it is also false to say that all coffee is served black.

The Meaning of Death

The medical community is yet again perplexed by the meaning of death. Since ultimately death is not something tangible (it is the separation of the immaterial soul from the body), medical ethicists look for tangible signs to define life and death. The prevailing medical opinion for some time now has been that brain function equates to life. This is in part based upon the supposition that thinking and determining one's own actions are fundamentally what life consists in, and the further reduction of these functions to their material principle, viz., the brain. Thus, when the brain stops functioning, the man stops living or at least stops really being a man (n.b. the use of the term vegetable for one who still is capable of some signs of life without tangible evidence of higher brain functioning). Without going into why the medical community has accepted this definition of life and death, we will consider some of its consequences.

From time to time, individuals have returned to consciousness after being declared dead. The most recent occurrence to catch my attention looks like it may have occurred last weekend. The news story can be found here or here, but for convenience I will summarize it for you. An elderly woman suffered a pair of heart attacks. Her heart stopped for two prolonged periods, and for 17 hours she showed no discernible brain activity. The doctors declared her to be dead, and removed all life support equipment except a ventilator (because they were hoping that the family would consent to donate her organs). Rigor mortis had already begun, but 10 minutes after the life support equipment had been removed, the woman regained consciousness.

A similar event took place a few months ago. A man was declared brain dead, and four months later, when his families were saying their last good-byes, the man responded to pressure on a finger nail and a pocket knife scraped across his foot.

Without further complicating these events by saying that they are singular acts of divine intervention, which they could in fact be, it is worth considering the simpler case first. In the end, it is easy enough to say that men are alive when we see them moving around under their own power or doing some other activity associated with life, but putting our finger on when a man is dead can be pretty challenging.

The difficulty arises because death results from the removal of the first act from the composite, while we notice life because of the second act of the composite. What do I mean by this, you say? Aristotle in the De Anima defines the soul as the "first act of the natural organized body having life potentially." Thus, a body is living when it has some sort of soul joined to it. This is true of men, animals, and plants. A living thing is more than just a material principle. Nevertheless, the body with a soul joined to it is still in potency to other acts. Among these other acts are growth, local motion, and reasoning. These second acts are what other men can see and then judge the composite to be living. Nevertheless, the lack of these acts does not necessarily mean that there is no composite, and thus that the man is dead. The dead man is not capable of any of these second acts, but the living man is at least in potency to them. The observer is only able to see that the potency was there by seeing the act that the potency was ordered to. However, the potency must be prior to the act in at least one of the four senses of prior. Therefore, it is possible for a man to be alive without showing any outward signs of life (2nd acts).

Apprenticeships?

Having earned a couple of college diplomas now, I am increasingly struck by the oddity of the current university system. Now you might ask, "what other systems are there," but we will leave that question alone for now. The current question on my mind, is what has happened to apprenticeships? Practical skills are best learned from one who has been working on the skill for many years. The practice of apprenticeships still remains for some occupations but often under different names. Recent law school graduates generally begin their careers as legal clerks. In this position, they work under established layers and judges providing research and helping to craft arguments for cases that the established lawyers are litigating. In this way, the new lawyer moves beyond speculative knowledge of jurisprudence to the more practical role of being a lawyer (which was probably also addressed at length in law school).

Some more practical fields have also retained apprenticeships. I have spent several months in a couple of temporary jobs working with meat cutters. At least in the stores that I worked, the meat cutters retained the three ranks of apprentice, journeyman, and master. The term master was replaced by manager, while the positions of apprentice and journeyman appear to have been retained even in name.

So...where does this leave us? There has been a push to turn many professions that were once developed in the apprenticeship model into college degrees. I am not really sure why this has been happening, although this trend seems to have a correlation to another interesting trend. According to the US Census bureau, between 1950 and 2000 the percentage of the U.S. population that has achieved at least a bachelor's degree has increased from approximately 5% to approximately 25%. While 25% is still a fairly small percentage of the population, it remains interesting that in this period of time a five fold increase (percentage wise) has occurred in the U.S. Additionally, the modern university system greatly predates 1950. I am not quite sure what has happened in the past 60 years to precipitate such an increase.

Along with the increasing role of college education in the lives of Americans has come an increase in the diversity of degrees offered. Diversity is good, right? Haven't we all been taught that since we entered the school system? In this case, I have to wonder. Many jobs that have functioned well without being connected to university degrees are now heading away from apprenticeship models and into mass educational systems. A few degrees or programs that catch my attention are a master's degree in landscape studies, a master's degree in activism, and an entire college within a well known university dedicated to agriculture. Now, I don't want to belittle these occupations (well...I might be interested in belittling activism, it is from a college in San Francisco after all), but college just doesn't seem like the place to study these pursuits. Before I get a bunch of angry farmers and landscape artists after me saying that I want to deny them the opportunity to get an education, we need to look at this issue a bit more closely. I am not saying that I don't think that any of you shouldn't go to college, or wouldn't do perfectly well there. What I am saying is that I don't think that anyone should think that you need a degree to be qualified to do your job. It wouldn't surprise me at all if many of the people with these degrees are rather unqualified farmers and landscape artists. Degrees don't equate to knowledge and education. Apparently, even dogs are getting degrees these days. There is certainly a role for people dedicated to studying the empirical sciences that underlie farming and landscape work, but a lot can be learned from those who have been farming and landscaping for many years. Maybe good apprenticeships are still out there for these jobs, but this is still an alarming trend.

Final Cause

Others might call this a mission statement, but why be common when you can be philosophical? We'll have no mission statements here. I'll leave those to the schools and to the motivational speakers.

Since the final cause is the first in the order of intention, I thought it might be worth musing about what my plans are for this blog. While I make no guarantees about what the blog will actually be like when it gains a bit more actuality, my intention, which will invariably result in a myriad of topics, is to try to bring clarity and cohesion to the thoughts that go milling about my head. Be forewarned! This is a long and winding road into the unknown. Where are Virgil and Beatrice when we need them?