ABSTRACT
THE BIFURCATION OF MORALS We have been noticing that human beings are not loosely composed of two separate items. There is no perforation down the middle that reads ‘Tear here to detach body from mind’. Nor, as is also sometimes suggested, do they consist of only one of these items, the other having been thrown away. In observing this, we have noticed, too, the absence of another suggested perforation in these beings, one which would be marked ‘Tear here to detach reason from feeling’. In real life, we tend not to find that reason and feeling are separate items. They are interdependent aspects of a person, divisible only for thought. But attempts to separate these factors and set them at war have been extremely common. It is worth while to see how they are working now on some current issues that concern many of us. We might ask, then, What kinds of moral objections are there to interventions such as xenotransplantation, genetic engineering, and bio-engineering generally? In answering such questions, ethicists often like to divide moral arguments firmly into two sets, ones that point to dangerous consequences and ones that say the act itself is intrinsically wrong. But unless the two angles are brought together again at some point, this division can split the subject disastrously.
