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Word of the Week: w/C 30/11/2015 - Hospice

29/11/2015

A home providing care and support to the sick or dying and their families. Originated as a lodging for travellers run by religious Organisations.

Image: cicelysaundersarchive.wordpress.com

The School's Philosophy Society, Ontos, was fortunate enough to receive a talk earlier this month from Joanne Fernandes, a hospice nurse at The Hospice of St Franics, Berkhamsted.

Ms Fernandes initially set out the purpose and origins of the Hospice movement including the story of Dame Cicely Saunders and the role of St. Francis' hospice within Berkhamsted. Her respect for Dame Saunders was evident as she stressed the range of intellectual disciplines that she embraced and experienced on the way to founding the hospice movement; a fantastic message for any young person setting out on their academic career to garner as many experiences as possible. She also stressed her emphasis on an holistic approach to death and the need to give everybody intrinsic value.

She moved on to set out the work of St Francis' dispelling the myth that hospices are merely places that people go to die. Indeed, 40% of patients go home from the hospice. She also stressed the holistic treatment of St Francis; not just about the patient but also their families especially in providing bereavement services and preparing families for the death of their relatives. The hospice also provides a teaching role supporting doctors and nurses and visiting schools. It aims to provide "The best of the biomedical with the care of the spirit".

She then moved on to address the debate around assisted dying and the Bill in the House of Lords last summer. She set out the various arguments for and against assisted dying that were put forwards in the House of Lords. The main question being should the autonomy of the individual trump all others? Or does society, and especially doctors and nurses, have the right to decline such requests? She set out extremely well the problem of rights and duties and the clash between autonomy and the implication this would have on healthcare professionals.

Ms Fernandes was a fantastic communicator, full of energy and conviction about the hospice movement balanced with a good understanding of the intellectual arguments surrounding this debate. She may have had a personal opinion about these issues but she did not give it away or try to sway pupils one way or another. Her talk reminded me of how lucky we are to have such passionate and educated nurses working in palliative care.

Word of the Week: w/c 23/11/16 - Teleological

22/11/2015

From the Greek word ‘telos’ meaning ‘end’ or ‘purpose’. Teleological arguments try to establish the existence of God by suggesting that the universe contains evidence of purpose which only God could be responsible for.

William Paley Image: Wikipedia Commons

Over the centuries that Philosophy has been going on a great number of people have wondered at the apparent design on the world and suggested that this must lead the to conclusion that there is a divine being responsible for it. Aquinas, Derham, Swinburne, Tennent and Behe have all had their part to play, but probably the most famous version (and I don’t really know why!) was by William Paley - a nineteenth century Natural Theologian.

Paley’s famous argument for the existence of God proceeds analogically, taking the idea of a watch, and making an analogy with the universe. Paley concludes that since the watch requires a watchmaker in order to exist, the universe must exist by virtue of some being capable of creating such a magnificent and intricately designed thing; God is the only suitable candidate for this.

Paley’s argument is a species of teleological argument. The word teleological is derived from the Greek word ‘telos’ meaning ‘end’ or ‘purpose’. Teleological arguments try to establish the existence of God by suggesting that the universe contains evidence of purpose which could only have been put there by God.

When we see certain effects in nature, it is reasonable to suppose that these effects have been produced by a particular type of cause. When we observe a snooker ball rolling along a table, for instance, it is usually reasonable to suppose that it has been caused to move by another ball or a snooker cue colliding with it, even if the cause itself was never seen (David Hume challenged this kind of thinking before Paley had even put pen to paper, but Paley seems unaware of his predecessor’s writing).

This type of argument is inductive: it proceeds from general premises to a specific conclusion. We know that complex objects having specific purposes are the product of intelligence, and teleological arguments apply this generalised fact to observable instances of complexity in the universe in order to establish that the universe was created by an intelligent being, i.e. God.

Image: Wikipedia.Commons

In Paley’s time, humans were discovering more and more about the natural world. As technology advanced that allowed us to observe objects at ever-smaller scales, and allowed us to cross oceans and continents to make new discoveries, we began to uncover the complex ways in which things in the natural world seem to fit various purposes. In particular, the minute details of living organisms (now visible through microscopes) could be seen to be working together in ways that allowed the creature’s body to perform all sorts of functions. Not only that, but they performed these functions in a mechanistic fashion: predictable movements were made, with predictable results.

This tendency toward predictability bore an uncanny resemblance to the operation of human machines. Paley’s was an age in which engineering was advancing apace: from the large scale steam-ships and suspension bridges to large scale industrial mass-production to the minute world of mechanised automata, machinery and mechanisation seemed the very key to human advancement. These machines were designed by human beings who had specific purposes in mind, and designed the machines in such a way as to satisfy those purposes, making use of mechanisms that would produce predictable results and thus reliable machines. It would therefore seem compelling to suggest that evidence of predictability in nature suggested the existence of a designer who had a purpose in mind when it created the universe.

This was therefore the context of the argument in which Paley declared that if, in crossing a heath, he had struck his foot against a stone, he would not have wondered how it came to be there. After all, stones are not complex. They do not (superficially, at least) bear any marks of having been designed. But had he come upon a watch instead, Paley would have felt sure that the object had been designed by an intelligent being, due to its complex, intricate and purposeful nature.

Paley then went on to argue that if all the hallmarks of design present in the watch, they must also be present in the natural world. Paley gave the example that “the hinges in the wings of an earwig, and the joints of its antennae, are as highly wrought, as if the creator had nothing else to finish.” The characteristics that denote carefulness of design in man-made objects are present in the universe.

Not only are the hallmark complexities of design present in nature, but in Paley’s words are more evident in nature than in the watch “to a degree which exceeds all computation”. Paley thus concludes that God possesses not only the characteristics of a human designer, but an infinite degree of care and attention to detail. Not only does Paley’s argument thus claim to establish the existence of any deity, but an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God.

Paley’s argument builds on Aquinas’ argument before his. For Aquinas, the universe shows evidence of God’s design because of regularity: in Aquinas’ terms, “bodies that lack knowledge … act for an end, and this is evident in their acting always, or nearly always in the same way, so as to obtain a result.” Paley’s argument depends on a similar thesis of regularity, but (in keeping with the time of his writings), he expands this to encompass ideas of complexity as well. An examination of the watch’s workings reveals complexity that explains why it works with regularity when it is in motion.

This means that Paley can anticipate his critics by pointing out that if the watch failed to keep time exactly, that would not nullify the evidence of design found in it. The high degree of complexity and the fact that this aims at a function, even if that function is not fully achieved, still counts as strong evidence of design. Therefore even if things in the world do not always function perfectly, such as potatoes being wiped out by blight, and animals going extinct this does not nullify the evidence of design to be found in the complexities of the potato plant’s biological workings. The greatness of designed complexity to be seen in nature points to God’s existence even if its intended function is not always achieved.

There are of course many who dismiss the Teleological argument as fanciful, overly positive about the purpose of the world and simply wrong. As Darwin proposed and Dawkins & Dennett would later argue, the world is not designed with a purpose in mind, rather it is that we perceive order and purpose when there is none. But if you want to learn about these criticisms you will have to wait for another word of the week...

Word of the Week: w/c 16/11/15 - Covenant

15/11/2015

Literally, a contract. In the Bible, an agreement between God and his people, in which God makes promises to his people and, usually, requires certain conduct from them. In the Old Testament, God made agreements with Noah, Abraham, and Moses.

Image: Pixabay

The story of Abraham and his descendants is found in the book of Genesis. We first meet him in Genesis chapter 11, although at this stage his name is Abram. There is very little detail about him apart from the fact that he was a shepherd and came from Ur in Mesopotamia - modern day Iraq - after which he and his family moved, with his father Terah, to Haran.

Abram and his family journeyed from Ur in modern-day Iraq to Israel via Syria

This was a polytheistic age, an age when people believed in and worshipped many gods. Yet within this atmosphere, Abram answers the call of God and it is because of this that he accepts and realises the reality of there being only one true God.

Abraham was the first person to recognise and worship the one God. And so, monotheism was born.

At the beginning of Genesis chapter 12, God asked Abram to leave his home and country and he makes Abram three promises: the promise of a relationship with God, numerous descendants and land (Genesis 12: 1-3).

"I will make you a great nation
And I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
And you will be a blessing
I will bless those who bless you,
And whoever curses you I will curse;
And all the peoples of the earth
Will be blessed through you"

Abraham and his family Image: Wikipedia

The only problem is that both Abram and his wife, Sarai (later called Sarah) are old people and childless. They will have to leave their homeland and they don't even know who this God is! They seem to be an almost impossible set of promises for God to keep. But the amazing fact about Abram is that he does what he is asked. Abram has to place his trust in this nameless God. Consequently, Abram has gone down in history as a man of tremendous faith. As a result of his obedience, God changes his name to Abraham, meaning father of the people, and they solemnly promise each other that God will give them a land, many descendents and special care. Abraham for his part promises that he will be obedient to God, worship him and circumcise his offspring as a sign of the covenant (a practice carried out by Jews to this day)

The important thing to learn here is the uniqueness of the Covenant relationship between God and Abraham. For the first time, we see the beginning of a 2-way relationship: God is doing something for Abraham, and Abraham is doing something for God. The blessings of God are passed on from one generation to another.

Word of the Week: w/c 09/11/15 - Viability

8/11/2015

The point at which a foetus could survive outside the womb independent from its mother.

When students are studying the Sanctity of Life and the issue of Abortion a question that is often asked by teachers and students is “when does life begin?”. This is a very thorny issue and the answer depends upon what one might define by the term "life". There is no doubt that an egg that has just been fertilised is alive, but many disagree that it is yet “a life” as it could not exist independently of its mother. This moment is called viability, and in the UK is a fundamental part of our law on Abortion. Yet many would argue that a foetus is a life before this point and so has rights either from conception or very early in its existence. Some would argue that this point in the development makes no difference to the foetus’ rights and they do not begin until birth. This post looks to examine a few of the points at which it could be argued that a foetus is “a life” and reasons for and against that point being accepted.

Image: Pixabay

Conception - day 1

Many religious ethicists, for example Roman Catholics, argue that the clearest and most logical point to say that life has begun is at the moment of conception when egg and sperm fuse together. This is when the complete genetic make-up of an individual is in place and thus a unique human has been made. The problem with choosing this moment is that the embryo is likely to never be born (1 in 5 embryos never even implant in the lining of the uterus) and arguably this is only a potential life at this stage. It is just a bundle or rapidly dividing cells with no sentience (ability to feel pleasure or pain) or autonomy.

Image: Wikipedia.en

Blastocyst - day 9

After five days the fertilised egg becomes a blastocyst becomes a cell with differentiated cells - cells that perform different functions - they have a cell wall and an inner cell mass that will become the embryo. By day 9 this blastocyst has become so specialised that it can no longer divide in two and become identical twins. Some therefore at this point argue that the life has begun as before this there could have been monozygotic twins. This is an interesting point in the pregnancy and is the reason why the Church of England argues that it is OK to carry out experiments on embryos before this day - but ultimately it could be argued it is still a potential life and not able to survive independently.

Image: Pixabay

Viability - approximately Week 22

Before week 22 the foetus has all of the organs and structures of the body formed - it is just a case of growing these further. However if the foetus was to be born or removed from the womb at this point it would not survive. The odds start to change at about week 22 there is a 10% chance of survival. This is clearly not much of a chance and would have to brought about with extreme neo-natal care - never-the-less this is the first chance that a foetus has to survive. The chances of survival increase day by day so that by week 25 50% of babies survive and it is 95% by week 35.

Whilst this is the reason why the law governing abortion was set at 24 weeks (unless there is a serious medical reason) it can be argued that at this stage the baby will require such intensive care that it should not be considered as a practical justification

Image: Pixabay

Birth - Weeks 38-42

Most pregnancies result in a natural birth at some point between 38 and 42 weeks. The baby simply becomes too big for the womb and has to be born. Babies that go this far into term have a very good chance of survival independently of their mother (>98%) and certainly most people have no problem with suggesting that they are alive at this point (interestingly Peter Singer has made the case that even when born a baby does not have the right to life as it has so much development still to complete and is still utterly dependent on a carer for its survival).

So?

When is a foetus a life? There are many more potential points that could be considered than I have discussed here - for example when the foundations of the nervous system have developed on day 20; on day 40 when brain waves can be detected; or in week 8 when all of the organs have been formed. The debate will of course continue to rage on.

A final thought is that students I teach are often surprised how developed the foetus is early on in the pregnancy - by week 24 and the point of viability the foetus has been essentially “complete” for 16 weeks. Many are not as happy with 24 weeks being the social abortion limit having learnt this information. I do not know when we should class a foetus as living and independent - but I do think that 24 weeks is too late. What do you think?

Word of the Week: w/C 30/11/2015 - Hospice

A home providing care and support to the sick or dying and their families. Originated as a lodging for travellers run by religious Organisations.

Word of the Week: w/c 23/11/16 - Teleological

From the Greek word ‘telos’ meaning ‘end’ or ‘purpose’. Teleological arguments try to establish the existence of God by suggesting that the universe contains evidence of purpose which only God could be responsible for.​

Word of the Week: w/c 16/11/15 - Covenant

Literally, a contract. In the Bible, an agreement between God and his people, in which God makes promises to his people and, usually, requires certain conduct from them. In the Old Testament, God made agreements with Noah, Abraham, and Moses.

Word of the Week: w/c 09/11/15 - Viability

The point at which a foetus could survive outside the womb independent from its mother.

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From the Greek word ‘telos’ meaning ‘end’ or ‘purpose’. Teleological arguments try to establish the existence of God by suggesting that the universe contains evidence of purpose which only God could be responsible for.