Sophists Running the Academy

You’ve no doubt heard the expressing “lunatics running the asylum.” Well, The Telegraph reports that a new article,

published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born.

Ethicists are, of course, philosophers. At least in name. Some of us resent it when intellectual degenerates like Savulescu, Giubilini, and Minerva wear the label. It dishonors the profession.

One might take umbrage with that harsh assessment, claiming that these noble academics are, after all, on a quest for truth. No, no! According to Prof. Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics, this is not about truth:

While accepting that many people would disagree with their arguments, he wrote: “The goal of the Journal of Medical Ethics is not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view. It is to present well reasoned argument based on widely accepted premises.”

In other words, it’s sophistry, not ethics. Thank you, Professor, for your admission. And your capitalizing the word Truth, was that a Freudian slip? Some of us acknowledge that Truth is a Person — the one you apparently disregard in your quest for well reasoned arguments based upon widely accepted premises.

You are no philosopher, you sophist. And you are a danger to humanity, for Ideas [still] Have Consequences.