Are There Answers?

Abstract

The Question In an innovative discussion Jason Scott Robert and Francoise Baylis (2003) argue that “the creation of novel beings that are part human and part nonhuman animal is sufŽciently threatening to the social order that for many this is a sufŽcient reason to prohibit any crossing of species boundaries involving human beings.” The “hypothesis” they propose is that “the issue at the heart of the matter is the threat of moral confusion.” They also argue that we cannot resolve this moral confusion by turning to science and appealing to the notion of species identity. This is because “there is no one authoritative deŽnition of species.” Consequently, there is “no consensus on what exactly is being breached with the creation of interspecies beings.” So how are we supposed to go about answering this question about cross-species transgression? Curiously, this intriguing interdisciplinary discussion might say more about the intractable scale and complexity of bioethical inquiry in this domain than it does about the speciŽc question it sets out to address. It boldly raises all the right issues in all their interdisciplinary splendor. But at the same time it invites the question how this multiplicity of interdisciplinary premises and arguments is supposed to lead to an answer. Bioethical discussions of this sort seem to promise answers, even if they do not provide them; they raise questions that are presumed to have answers. Yet this particular discussion left me wondering whether there really are answers of the expected sort to be had. In this commentary I explore this methodological worry by discussing two of the article’s central themes: species identity and moral confusion.