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from Social Issues
The Dilemma Over "Moral Intuition"
and Its Relevance to Science
An enlightening article appeared in a recent issue of The Public Interest
(Winter 2000). In "Pedophilia and the Culture Wars," psychologist G.E. Zuriff
described the handling of the recent A.P.A. pedophilia-study uproar.
Dr. Zuriff asks: is pedophilia harmless, as long as the victims claim they
were not psychologically harmed? Or is there a moral intuition or principle at
work here which is essential to the discussion of harm--and one which psychology
ignores?
He sees a curious contradiction in the American Psychological Association's
action to stand with the article's congressional critics and denounce pedophilia.
Previously, the A.P.A. has usually played the role of social radical. This
denunciation of pedophilia radically reverses that role, he says, in which the
A.P.A. has previously led the assault on the primacy of the traditional nuclear
family.
This assault has been one in which "the Left has established an intellectual
alliance with the mental-health profession," with the two working together to
attack the traditional family by claiming it is "sexist, homophobic, racist, or
in some way oppressive to a group favored by the Left, and an alternative (e.g.,
the homosexual family) is proposed." This alternative is said to be more just and
equitable and in no way harmful, and to prove its claim, social scientists
undertake research studies of these new types of families.
The Concept of Disorder
Derives from a Moral Concept
But what remains unacknowledged is this reality: that the concept of
psychological adjustment is derived from moral notions of what constitute the
good life. The Left, he says, "proves its claim" through a framework of
utilitarian ethics which are thought to represent the scientific view, while
refusing to acknowledge this bias.
There is scant public recognition of the fact that "psychological studies do
not fully determine what is good," and thus the A.P.A. is able to justify the
rejection of a discussion of moral intuition or principle "time after time" in
its discussion of such issues as abortion, family forms, and age-of-consent
matters.
Interestingly, in its attempts to support favored causes, the A.P.A. sometimes
resorts to contradictory reasoning. In a court brief on age-of-consent laws
governing abortion, the A.P.A. argued that some 11-year-olds can give informed
consent (without need to consult their parents) when making the decision to have
an abortion. Yet when the pedophilia scandal drew public criticism, the A.P.A.
agreed that a child cannot give informed consent to have sex with an adult (even
though she can give consent to have an abortion).
Furthermore, to insist that a pedophile relationship would violate a child
because that child cannot freely consent, he says, is to move on into another
area--"to appeal to the kind or moral intuition, or principle, that the A.P.A.
has rejected time after time."
The psychological profession has already dismantled the traditional family by
debunking the building blocks of "heterosexuality, the necessity for two parents,
marriage, gendered division of labor, hierarchy of power, and biological
relatedness."
The pedophilia article offered an argument for dismantling one remaining
requirement--that the adult caregiver abstain from sex with the child he cares
for. But "the A.P.A. peered into this abyss and backed off," Dr. Zuriff notes.
"Why?"
Is the "Utilitarian Calculus"
Sufficient To Understand Disorder?
"At issue here," he explains, "is whether there are moral standards beyond the
utilitarian calculation of observable physical or psychological harm." But this
is a contentious subject because "whereas moral intuition is the foundation of
society for the traditionalists, it is mere patriarchal oppression for the Left."
And the A.P.A has been extremely reluctant to concede that moral principle should
play an important role in public policy--and to admit that no scientific research
study, uninformed by moral philosophy, can by itself, determine what is healthy
or good.
In an article in the April 1997 issue of The World and I ("Psychology's
Dis-Orientation"), Dr. Zuriff earlier argued that the question, "Does
homosexuality constitute a psychopathology?" is a social-cultural rather than a
scientific one. Science can reveal the causes and consequences of behavior, but
it cannot tell us whether the behavior or consequences are harmful or beneficial,
healthy or sick; that determination must inevitably be made in the form of a
social-moral value judgment.
Numerous other clinicians and researchers have made a similar observation.
The mental-health profession tends to misrepresent social science as a "neutral"
undertaking, they say, when in fact psychology is inevitably a moral enterprise.
Those researchers include Gary Greenberg, in his "Right Answers, Wrong Reasons:
Revisiting the Deletion of Homosexuality from the DSM," Review of General
Psychology, 1997 vol 1, no. 3, pp. 256-270 (to be discussed in a future
Bulletin), and Stuart Kirk and Herb Kutchins in their 1992 book, The Selling of
DSM: The Rhetoric of Science in Psychiatry.
Updated: 8 February 2008
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