A natural problem
Baseball and steroids
George Will is a conservative, political philosopher (by training), and noted baseball fan. How these three worlds come together – if at all – arose in a recent interview in the Wall Street Journal. Among several choice comments, this one in particular was interesting:
Since coming to grips with steroids, the sport has “had to make some interesting distinctions,” he says. “What’s the difference between steroids and Tiger Woods getting Lasik? What’s the difference between eating spinach and eating amphetamines? Well, one thing enhances the natural functioning of the body, the other makes the body behave unnaturally. I know there is artificial clarity to that distinction, but it’s useful.”
This kind of reasoning comes up fairly often in the context of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, and the problem is the obsession with the idea of “natural functioning.” I think it’s worth questioning whether what’s “natural” has any inherent value, or whether we can really determine what is “natural” at all.
Will’s conception of natural implies some kind of measuring stick–a range of possible human functioning. But this approach tends to treat fickle fortune as if it weren’t natural. This is specious reasoning. Variations in the quality of eyesight are natural. Some people see well, some people don’t. That’s a timeless, natural occurrence.
Many other limitations are also natural. Human’s can’t fly, or move as fast as a car. They tend to be waylaid by disease without the intervention of medicine.
This all suggests that “natural” isn’t an inherently good thing. “Natural” defines a statistically regular set of circumstances about people, one that’s independent of what is good or bad. But medicine is, arguably, a morally good thing, as is the capacity to invent airplanes, cars, and other useful tools.
Will’s counterargument would be that sports themselves assign a value to certain natural traits. But this is also only half true. Much of baseball is played with specific equipment designed to counteract our natural flaws: we can’t catch a speeding ball with our bare hands, or hit a baseball with our bare arms. The problem isn’t that players should be banned from using something that helps carry them past their natural range of functioning, it’s that there should be explicit rules and guidelines restricting those aids.
If steroids are bad for baseball, it’s only because the sport chooses to arbitrarily exclude them. They aren’t bad independent of the judgment that baseball should be about strength, bats, balls, and gloves–and no other aid.
In addition to this kind of moral vacuity, “natural” is also an analytically vague concept. How do we know what “natural” really is?
Is it natural to be able to walk? Most of us would say yes, but people who use wheelchairs have challenged this concept. They say that referring to walking as “natural” implies that statistical normality (most people can’t walk) defines what is natural.
Let’s take that definition as the case: “natural” means statistical normality. If that’s true, then wouldn’t a weaker-than-usual baseball player who uses steroids be doing so in a “natural” way, that is, he would be enhancing the natural functioning of the body?
Will might say that what he means by making “the body behave unnaturally” is that the chemistry of steroids goes against our natural body chemistry. But that raises the question of whether we should decide natural functioning on the basis of inputs (what happens in our internal biology) or outputs (how we appear to function out in the world).
Using the word “natural” is intuitively appealing, but it’s not much more than that–intuitive. It doesn’t tell us anything useful about what we ought to be doing, and it’s not clear that people who use the word “natural” ever really mean the same thing.
-Sam
Related posts:
- Unequal advantage and baseball steroids
- Steroids and the dangers of sports
- Casey at the battaca
- The morality of brain enhancing drugs
ShareComments
One Response to “A natural problem”
Leave a Reply
[...] had a good post on the problems with George Will’s “naturalistic” argument against steroid use in baseball. I [...]