European-American Life

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

PLUMBERS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY?

By Tom Kando

(This was originally written and posted on July 22, 2008. I no longer feel this way. I now feel that Physicians for Social Responsibility is a fine and legitimate organization).
 
On July 22, 2008, Public Radio once again had something about the group, Physicians for Social Responsibility. I had commented about this annoying group several times before, for example in an interview with the Fort Wayne (Indiana) Journal Gazette in October 2005. Let me restate the gist of my sentiments about this:

Where is it written that physicians (for example the aggravating Dr. Helen Caldicott) have more expertise than others in political and moral matters? For years, some professions and celebrities (e.g. George Clooney, Sean Penn, Madonna) have been lecturing the rest of us about foreign policy and morality. Don’t get me wrong - I, too, abhor war, the Darfur genocide, etc. But what gives physicians, actors and other celebrities a more privileged moral status than, say, plumbers or truck drivers? Why not have a group called Plumbers for Social Responsibility? I suppose some professions can make a legitimate claim to exceptional moral expertise. These might include my own profession - Sociologists - and probably even more so the Historians. In fact, college professors in many other fields might have a plausible claim to a higher and better informed moral compass than the rest of us (although I would exclude professors of computer science, engineering, etc.). And of course, the clergy is the ultimate expert on sin and virtue, i.e. on morality, right?
So I suppose there is an argument to be made that some groups have the right to lecture everyone else about the (im)morality of war, evil American foreign policy, George W. Bush, etc., but why would physicians have special moral expertise? After all, they include both Albert Schweitzer and Joseph Mengele.
Doctors are no more expert in political values than are, say, plumbers. So, wouldn’t it be just as logical to create an organization called Plumbers for social responsibility?


 © Tom Kando 2014

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5 comments:

  1. i so agree with this. If actors would stick to acting, doctors would stick to doctoring and politicians to social responsibility, everything would be a lot clearer.
    July 23, 2008

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  2. Sociologists and Historians having a higher claim to moral expertise – you have got to be kidding me! With all this post modern, revisionist, relativistic, gender bending, leftist, morally vacuous, multicultural pandering crap polluting social science academia, sociologists and anyone else with a recent social science degree are so brainwashed and biased they are the last people on earth to be thought of as having moral expertise. In fact the Comp Science and Engineering disciplines, based on fact and scientific principles, are the true claimants to truth, light, and therefore moral expertise.
    July 31, 2008

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  3. I love it! I got some comments. Brian's comment is especially lively. So he doesn't agree. Well, being disagreed with sure beats being ignored.
    As to the substance of our disagreement: much of what I say is tongue in cheek. I agree with Brian that sociologists and most other academicians are extremely biased. What I was getting at, though, is that there are (1) professions that deal with objective facts (engineers build bridges, etc.)and(2) professions whose specialty has to do with VALUES and with HUMAN CONDUCT (which cannot be separated from values). Religion deals with good and evil, and social "scientists" (they are not truly scientists, but that's a different issue) have to make professional judgments as to whether something that people do is GOOD or BAD. Of course, engineers have the right to make moral judgments,and their judgements may be better than those of sociologists or priests.
    Look: I'll be the last one to say that social scientists have better values than engineers, or whoever. I was just reminding everyone of the traditional dichotomy between fact-oriented and judgment-oriented fields - which exists, for better or worse.
    If you want to argue that the "objective" sciences are in a better position to make better moral judgments, that's great. You may be right.
    But how about my main point - that plumbers are morally just as qualified as doctors?
    July 31, 2008

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  4. As to your last point - that plumbers are morally just as qualified as doctors - I will defer to your wife's answer: ‘well..duh!’
    August 1, 2008

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  5. wasn't his wife but his sister
    August 10, 2008

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