The Right Coast (Free subscription) | 05/27/2008
This critique by Stephen Pinker of Leon Kass and his use of dignity as a limit on science to improve the human condition seems right on target to me. I had written a post about it, but it was somehow...
PrawfsBlawg (Free subscription) | 07/04/2008
... Although I can understand why we might want to be prudent about the "unnatural," I am afraid Leon Kass is speaking in a foreign language as far as I am concerned.) So on Monday I go in for "revision" surgery on one of those hips. In keeping with my policy of using up every available holiday for surgery, the other hip will follow around Christmas or next summer. (When my sabbatical...
The Corner (Free subscription) | 07/02/2008
Dan Senor, across from the Citigroup Center, NY, NY. That's celebrity here on The Corner. Look! Is that...? Can it be...? Robby George? From Princeton!!! Is that Leon Kass in the flesh? Ohmygosh, Mark Levin takes cabs? Because that's where I first heard him!! Do you think Andy McCarthy would mind if I stopped him for an autograph? Do you know he works for National Review now???
Chicagoist (Free subscription) | 06/10/2008
In last month's edition of The New Republic an article by Steve Pinker quoted Leon Kass, chairman of the President's Council of Bioethics (which recently published a 555-page conservative tome called Human Dignity and Bioethics ), as saying of street food: "Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone--a catlike activity...
Overcoming Bias (Free subscription) | 06/08/2008
... opposition to strong AI or transhumanism?" in which case there's Sir Roger Penrose, Jaron Lanier, Leon Kass, and many others. None of these are good arguments - or I would have to accept them! - but at least they are painstakingly crafted arguments, and something like organized opposition.
Muss My Hair (Free subscription) | 05/29/2008
Leon Kass, head of President’s Council on Bioethics until 2005, feels public ice cream licking is disgusting and undignified. Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone–a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those [...]
The Right Coast (Free subscription) | 05/28/2008
Steven Pinker's provocative screed against "conservative bioethics" has got me thinking, though perhaps not in a very serious way. (hat tip to our own Professor Rappaport.) Pinker damagingly quotes Leon Kass on one affront to human dignity: Worst of all...
Reason Magazine - Hit & Run (Free subscription) | 05/26/2008
Those of us who have followed the thinking and career of Leon Kass, the former head of President Bush's Council on Bioethics, are puzzled that Kass' well-known distaste for eating ice cream cones in public has once again surfaced in the media. I suspect that Kass' strong views on consuming ice cream have returned to the public discourse because they are cited in a fascinating...
Musing's musings (Free subscription) | 05/27/2008
... come about on this report revolves around a quote that Steven Pinker attributes on page 4 to Leon Kass (University of Chicago, the American Enterprise Institute, and formerly a contributor to TNR), but which Pinker fails to source: [Kass] is troubled by cosmetic surgery, by gender reassignment, and by women who postpone motherhood or choose to remain single in their twenties....
Signal to Noise (Free subscription) | 05/24/2008
The man pictured here is Dr. Leon Kass, a bioethicist and the man President Bush appointed to head the President's Council of Bioethics. He and several others penned a questionable series of essays regarding the concept of human dignity in bioethics (when informed consent about experiments has worked so well over the decades post-World War [...]
Plunderbund (Free subscription) | 05/26/2008
... we should expect from this group given the people George Bush appointed to the council.People like Leon Kass who has argued that eating an ice cream cone in public is not only shameful and offensive but also, yes, an affront to “human dignity”. does a great job pointing out the flaws and the dangers of this report and this type of thinking.But there is a positive side to this whole...
The Point (Free subscription) | 05/20/2008
What I particularly noticed about that Steven Pinker piece is that he calls Leon Kass "pro-death." Wow, this scolding comes from a fellow who has spent plenty of time justifying the behavior of mothers who kill their infants. In fact,...
Siris (Free subscription) | 05/19/2008
Steven Pinker recently had a very poorly argued essay on the moral notion of human dignity. Given that the version he primarily had in view, that of Leon Kass, isn't exactly well argued itself, I'm not quite sure how he managed to maul the objection to it so badly, but perhaps it's a case of opponents beginning to reason too similarly to their opposition. He argues that there are three...
Secondhand Smoke (Free subscription) | 05/17/2008
In Marshall McLuhan's vast television wasteland that is getting vaster and more wasted with each passing year, there are a few shining examples of true excellence. Perhaps the best show on television today--and one of the best ever--is Battlestar Gallactica , a program that like the best science fiction explores the most meaningful issues of human existence and societal complexity. For those who don't...
