[Here is the sophistry: “Kant is wrong because he denies our position”. No real argument is provided against Kant’s position. The authors claim that “we are, so to speak, hardwired as social animals, given the responsibility to live and act well in light of the truth”, but these are empty words, since living and acting ‘well’ in light of ‘the truth’ can have, had and do have many meanings in various epochs and societies, and despite our ‘hardwired’ freedom we have produced and still produce societies where freedom is not respected. However, especially if we see in freedom the foundation of humanity, then we can not deny Kant’s position, we are obliged to agree that an embryo is only potentially human, although not a ‘fish’! Human nature as a nature of freedom, means that human nature is not a datum, therefore, we possess it to the degree of our freedom, and if freedom is identified with rational choice, then of course babies, embryos and Alzheimer patients, as well as blind followers of political parties, of their passions, etc., are not human. The authors adopt the freedom-and-rights argument, and seem to base all their thinking in the position that to be human (= free and rights-deserving) suffice to be potentially human, which is absurd.]
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George and Tollefsen are perfectly correct that the tradition of “natural law” is much more empirical than most of our scientists in contending that the natural capabilities given to members of our species alone — most of all, the capability to acquire and develop infinitely complex language — provide the real foundation of our dignity. Our natural gift of being able to break into the daylight of language or speech is at the core of all our personal qualities. This is why only human beings can be physicists, poets, patriots, political leaders, priests, preachers, and philosophers. Not only do so many of our scientists deny us our true dignity, but they also do it for no good reason. Our physicists, for example, can seemingly explain everything in the cosmos — everything, that is, but the strange, perverse, and genuinely wonderful behavior of the physicist.
