logicBomb

long term cortisol sensitivity (post traumatic stress) is one common consequence of painful neonatal procedures. as for mental issues, well its all to do w/ perception, isnt it. my perception is that an ideology i revile is behind the vandalism of my naturally perfected anatomy -- in a manner specifically intended to impact on my emotional & sexual autonomy. anyway, why glad?

kicking this thread back into life with a paper from the 'Journal of Medical Ethics' (2005;31:463-469) A covenant with the status quo? Male circumcision and the new BMA guidance to doctors M Fox and M Thomson This article offers a critique of the recently revised BMA guidance on routine neonatal male circumcision and seeks to challenge the assumptions underpinning the guidance which construe this procedure as a matter of parental choice. Our aim is to problematise continued professional willingness to tolerate the non-therapeutic, non-consensual excision of healthy tissue, arguing that in this context both professional guidance and law are uncharacteristically tolerant of risks inflicted on young children, given the absence of clear medical benefits. By interrogating historical medical explanations for this practice, which continue to surface in contemporary justifications of non-consensual male circumcision, we demonstrate how circumcision has long existed as a procedure in need of a justification. We conclude that it is ethically inappropriate to subject children—male or female—to the acknowledged risks of circumcision and contend that there is no compelling legal authority for the common view that male circumcision is lawful. basically, male circumcision is not justifiable. any comments?

if a wild dog eats a little baby, is that immoral? in my ethical system, experience, culture & reason enable me to empathise with little babies. i personally cld not rape a little baby, however good it might feel. the reason is that i can imagine how it wld feel for the baby, & whatever motivation there was to do it wld be outweighed by my internalizing of the baby's experience. the fact that babies do get raped is the consequence of a failure of empathy, not a failure of ethical reasoning. the key ethic in my system is that a person 'should' empathise & value empathy. the most grevious ethical failing in my system is to raise children w/out showing them, therefore teaching them, empathy. ethics & moral accountability are semantic twins, i think. the consequences of a comet striking earth may be bad, but that does not make astrophysics a branch of ethics.

so if i told you i am an existentialist in the sense that whatever meaning i descry in existence is a product of my own contemplation of it, & that my ontology is guided by likelihood not belief, & suggests i am a product of (probably) a big bang, stellar evolution, biological evolution & so on, then what kind of metaphysics is that, that it has any impact on ethics. therefore i root my ethical enquiry in empathy because it is a phenomenon & not a principle. empathy is the subjective experience of the projected emotional state of another experiencing subject. empathising is easy to do but, like animism, can be naive & innapropriate. experience, culture & reason direct & refine empathy/animism in certain ways, but do not change its fundamental nature or operation, which is that causing distress to another subject is subjectively experienced as distressing. there is no objective principle of what is right or wrong in my ethics. if it feels good, do it. if it feels bad, refrain. it's a culture, not a science. an act that is known to cause distress (now or later) to another is 'wrong' in the sense that it feels wrong to commit. if a person rapes or murders with no understanding that it is 'wrong', then it isn't 'wrong'. this is the reason why in some countries the death penalty is not applied to people below a certain age or iq.

thanx for that. i will delve deeper at leasure. just hav to say i remain so far unmoved in my own personal conclusions, tho i can see they may not be best suited to the pragmatic concerns of medicos & bureaucrats & whatnot. interesting how you describe xtian ethics as 'original' virtue ethics. howso? i tend to view levantine monotheism as the proto-existential late neolithic underpinnings of civic law -- in other words quite worldly. otoh, the self negation that is fundamental to buddhist thought fits much closer to my valorizing of a 'functional empathy' operating in human affairs. it seems to be the inverse of self aggrandizing xtian virtue & the goal of eternal life in heaven. have you read 'the sea of fertility' by yukio mishima?. it has a fascinating & lengthy discussion of buddhist ethical thought & its application to korean jurisprudence. also just wondering about this, which seems to be the nub of yr post... ...normatively... i am unable to conjure up an objective (euclidean?) ethics merely becos one is required for some purpose or another. i have difficulty w/ this whole idea that something is wrong becos it 'just is'. pedophilia & terrorism can both be seen as beneficial in certain lights, & i think a realistic ethical system must be able to deal w/ such ideas. otherwise its just a dogma. what zactly distinguishes 'metaethics' from plain 'ethics'?

i guess 'deontological theory' is what i have thought of as objective ethics, or 'morality'. in my reading i've been convinced that all objective ethics, such as the 10 (is it?) commandments, exhibit the naturalistic fallacy. i use the term 'morality' to refer to such formalized quasi ethical coda. yr 'consequentialism' is what i call situational ethics, which is essentially relativistic. insofar as situational ethics are sensitive to reasoning about 'consequences' there is an element of objectivity, but the context & significance of consequences are subjective. i generally refute all claims to objectivity in ethical decision making & subscribe to a truly subjective theory of ethics parallelling feyerabend's 'anarchistic theory of knowledge'. my theory of ethics is founded in empathy, which i consider to be a form of piajetian animism, or rather, a form of tautological anthropomorphism. despite its essential subjectivity, empathy is a learned skill & in many ways a collective phenomenon. further, the effective operation of empathy is augmented by knowledge & insight, & so it is sensitive to the same kind of objective reasoning about consequences over which utilitarian philosophy claims a monopoly. punishment aside, empathy is the only possible motive to do 'the right thing'. such a motive is completely absent from yr formulae. to me this is the dirty secret of utilitarianism, & the reason why it is so bloodless & clinical a philosophy. ================================ i think there are some problems w/ yr 4 principles... the 'Principle of Autonomy' is surely -- an individual is self-governing -- since self government is necessary for individuality. there is a fifth Principle of Empathy - that the Principles of Beneficence & Non-maleficence be applied as if the role of benefactor/non-malefactor is reversed with that of beneficiary/non-maleficiary. the fifth Principle is aimed at keeping yr benefactors & non-malefactors honest. cheers

there are preputioplasties that resolve these complaints and conserve the foreskin. the reason they are not better known is becos the history of circ has confused its cultural value w/ its medical value. noone needs to get their foreskin removed for medical reasons unless the tissue of the foreskin itself is affected by some untreatable pathology.

sorry, i meant BJU (british jrnl of urology, they did a special issue on circ in ~2000)

when yr a child, yr nervous system is very plastic. yr body remembers yr circumcision, even if you don't. for example, many studies demonstrate cortisol sensitivity in infants subjected to neonatal trauma, including heel pricks. one thing that interests me, as a neurobiologist, is the fate of the sensory cortex mapped to the prepuce following circumcision. my knowledge of biology & psychology, such as it is (graduate level neurobiology & ethology) indicates to me that neonatal circumcision must have significant affect on the adult. also the fact that circumcision is practiced for so many reasons suggests to me that it must. what is worth knowing is: what is this affect, & is it desirable?. it intrigues me that the most intensive conflicts on the planet right now are between nations of circumcisers. & yet many people attempted foreskin reconstruction to escape nazi persecution, so obviously its not simple in that regard. it's infants who are in the sights' date=' & it's circumcision of infants & children that concerns me. if adults want it, then fine. i think this is the smoking gun. america has the hiv highest infection rate in the western world, & the highest (by far) circumcision rate. there are many reasons why circumcised men might be more sucseptible to HIV infection. one is that dulled sensation in the penis predisposes a person to explore alternative erotic techniques such as anal intercourse. another is that the tight skin of the circumcised penis is more likely to suffer abrasion in masturbation & intercourse. another factor is that, like the oral mucosa, the foreskin secretes leucozymes, which are natures defence against infection. i wld like to supply refs for these claims, but i dont have time right now. they aren't hard to find anyway. see the BUJ index.

a lot of research is being shopped around all the time. just google circumcision +aids. it doesnt make any difference whether the bogeyman is aids, balanitis or masturbation, doctors dont have the prerogative to perform radical disfiguring surgery on children as a prophylactic measure. in other words, if baby girls had one breast removed at birth, the risk of breast cancer wld be halved, so why dont we do that? only for those who belong to the tradition that says it is...

i'm scratchy at the moment (i just sold my house & gave away my cat). altho i suspect yr comment may have been more upsetting to me than mine to you, you have my sincere apology. i'm friendly, honest. =o> this is a key question. most experts agree (heheh) that morality is relative, but the growing global problem of social friction between progressive & fundamentalist, moslem & nudist, christian & punk is going to be a major challenge for humanity. my own personal ethics are humeian, w/ a sense of empathy at their core. i believe individuals have inalienable rights, including the right to physical integrity. becos i'm an empathist, i also think that people embedded in a strong cultural tradition have a right to protect & foster their culture. the upshot of this is that i think any change to the traditions of jews & moslems should be motivated from within. there are some practising jews who want to do away w/ circumcision, & they are the people who shld be questioning its role in judaism. otoh, when technocrats assume the right to promote routine infant circumcision as a public health measure i feel sick to my stomach. as far as i am concerned, if circumcision proved to be 100% effective as protection from HIV, there wld still be no case for waiving the required consent before amputating a body part.

i was going to say something humourous, but why. if yr trying to be funny, its lame, & if yr serious, its pathetic.

i just wanted to add an apology to Sezzybaby if she's still about. im sorry men have been such a disappointment. i think this is probably an aspect of this thread that is overlooked: that reproductive technology as a solution to infertility is one thing, while reproductive technology as a solution to social problems is another. i dont think women necessarily need to be able to cohabit with men if they want to have children, but i do think they need to be able to coexist. ...if only becos they may have a male child.

im not convinced by this distinction. normative values of water temperature are 'good' becos they fall within the quantitative range that supports life. have you read robert persig? thats my point. it makes no sense, but it is a crucial form of explanation. functional anatomy can't be studied without teleology, & without it, evolutionary science reduces to cladistics. in an important sense, nature does have a goal in mind, just as an evolutionary algorithm has an optimum solution that theoretically exists but is unknown.