03 June 2008

The Role of Flaw

John Lunstroth

I received notice of a paper yesterday from SSRN that has a humorous title, The Rule of Flaw, and is about biology and law. I thought it might be pertinent, but the author is unclear on so many concepts he uses that although he may be making an interesting point, his work needs serious comment and editing before it would be useful as a reference. It is useful though, inasmuch as it illustrates some of the difficulties in making sense of the material I will be addressing from time to time. The problems, at least the ones I will address, are clearest at the metaphysical level: what objects [e.g., science, health, the individual, the community, the polis, morals, laws] exist? how do they exist? how do we know and talk about them [e.g., science, law, politics, sociology]? what kinds of causality [biochemical determinism, individual responsibility, social determinism] are at play? what does it mean to say about something that it is alive? does life necessarily imply a set of values? what is the relationship between those values and law? morality? justice? what is the relationship between natural law and the laws of nature? what role does history play in the ways we understand and articulate the answers to the foregoing questions? what role do the answers and considerations to the foregoing questions play in political philosophy, and in discourse about health and the individual? The author of the article writes in the context of those questions without ever quite addressing them. Among other things, he mistakes ontological problems for epistemological ones and because of that fundamental shift has no way to recognize how history of science interacts with history of law and social order. He has no tools with which to manage the idea of science.

The paper does have a good, if mistaken, quote though:

The rule of law, in its historical genesis meant a commitment to rationality, derived from premises of human nature. The paradigm for human nature today is not God or metaphysics, but the life sciences. If law is to be rational, it must have as its foundation those principles of rationality derived from the life sciences, e.g., law must become a life science.
[end of post]


[second part of post here - for full post page]


No comments: