Human Dignity and Bioethics

66 | Robert P. Kraynak
man is not only a complex machine but also the master of “the machine”
who is free to modify “the machine” according to a new vision
of man. The implication is that Skinner has his own version of
freedom and dignity which presupposes an essential difference between
humans and animals and which even exaggerates man’s dignity
by loosening all limits: man is now seen as the sovereign master of
nature—the being who creates himself and invents his own moral
law. While Skinner understands the term “good” as the survival of
the species as well as pleasure and non-aggression, he also suggests
that “good” and “bad” are malleable according to the conditioning of
behavioral engineers. Thus, human dignity still resides in something
unique to man, but that unique capacity is not the “inner agent” of
the rational soul obeying a higher moral law. Rather, it lies in man’s
freedom to experiment on man for whatever purposes might be posited
by the “conditioners” and “reinforcers.” 5 It is remarkable to read
in Skinner’s work the wild oscillation between the exaggerated debasement
of man (how like a dog!) which implies robotic behavior
and the exaggerated glorification of man (how like the master of the
universe!) which implies a “super-soul” capable of autonomous selfcreation.
A similar pattern can be found in Daniel Dennett, who is famous
for promoting modern science over religion by using the popular
metaphor of “cranes” and “skyhooks”: cranes are explanations that
use scientific materialism, while skyhooks resort to miracles or nonmaterial
causes to explain things. In Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Dennett
claims that the greatest “crane” of all is Darwinian evolution,
which can be used to explain everything—the origins of the universe,
the origins of life from non-life, the evolution of living species
from prior species, and the evolution of man, including man’s genetic
makeup and cultural life (the “genes and memes” of humanity). Darwin’s
central idea, according to Dennett, is that the well-designed
universe we inhabit actually arose from the opposite of design—from
the mindless, purposeless, directionless forces of evolution, which
provides “a scheme for creating Design out of Chaos without the
aide of Mind.” 6
Darwin’s scheme, of course, is natural selection, which Dennett
explains in mathematical terms as an “algorithm”—a system for sorting
out options using a simple mechanical rule repeated an indefinite