I have a friend and co-worker who is, among other things, a recovering lawyer (where is there a snare drum and hi-hat when you need it?). Writing about the recent Canadian Supreme Court ruling denying a patent on a genetically modified mouse, he tells me that “each ruling usually has a key paragraph upon which it turns.”
He was kind enough to cut through the 30,000+ word ruling for us and send the following key excerpt. It’s fascinating to see such a formal institution walk the line between the practical and the metaphysical. I think they did well.
163 It also is significant that the word “matter” captures but one aspect of a higher life form. As defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, supra, vol. IX, at p. 480, “matter” is a “[p]hysical or corporeal substance in general…, contradistinguished from immaterial or incorporeal substance (spirit, soul, mind), and from qualities, actions, or conditions”. “Matière” is defined by the Grand Robert de la langue française, supra, vol. 4, p. 1260, as “[TRANSLATION] “corporeal substance `that is perceptible in space and has mechanical mass'”. Although some in society may hold the view that higher life forms are mere “composition[s] of matter”, the phrase does not fit well with common understandings of human and animal life. Higher life forms are generally regarded as possessing qualities and characteristics that transcend the particular genetic material of which they are composed. A person whose genetic make-up is modified by radiation does not cease to be him or herself. Likewise, the same mouse would exist absent the injection of the oncogene into the fertilized egg cell; it simply would not be predisposed to cancer. The fact that it has this predisposition to cancer that makes it valuable to humans does not mean that the mouse, along with other animal life forms, can be defined solely with reference to the genetic matter of which it is composed. The fact that animal life forms have numerous unique qualities that transcend the particular matter of which they are composed makes it difficult to conceptualize higher life forms as mere “composition[s] of matter”. It is a phrase that seems inadequate as a description of a higher life form.
That’s one side of ‘lawyering’. Of course, another side is: “If the glove don’t fit, you don’t convict”
Wow. It looks like the Canadian Supreme Court believes in ghosts. Or spirits or souls or something extra-dimensional.
The fact that animal life forms have numerous unique qualities that transcend the particular matter of which they are composed makes it difficult to conceptualize higher life forms as mere “composition[s] of matter”. It is a phrase that seems inadequate as a description of a higher life form.
The more I read about the developments in brain science, the more it appears that our “numerous unique qualities” DON’T transcend the matter of which we are composed. Based on the many studies of brain morphology and pathological behavior, the brain seems to be sufficient in its complexity to account for all our fanciful “higher” life form. Of course brain science has a long way to go in coming to a conclusion on this.
If you don’t believe that the brain is necessary and sufficient, then you MUST believe in ghosts. The classical Greek view of the dichotomy of mind and body are implicit foundations of the very dictionary the Supreme Court uses as a document in coming to its ruling. Thus imperceptible to most, even athiests and agnostics have a large tendency to believe in a mystical netherworlds or a soul.
You may be right, they probably did well, based on what we know today. But it is funny that there is such a conventional wisdom of anti-metaphysical or spiritual thought in government and university culture, yet it underpins our society so fundamentally thanks to the Greeks.
This may sound like swill, I am still trying to synthesize my own understanding of the body/soul duality vs. brain/body unity in light of recent studies and practical, age-old understanding and experience. Very interesting, though.
You friend provides a great service. I would much rather have a parsed version with actual paragraph length quotes and highlights than a reporters version of a pundits synopsis.
Jonathon – I don’t know if your point covers the whole meaning of the Courts opposition to composition of matter. For instance, social activity and the individual subjective experience of life are qualities of higher life that – even if dependant on either the biology or cosmology in which they reside – justify recognition that these life forms are not patentable objects.
What is interesting is that, though it is not described as either divine or not, the court is allowing for a fairly undefined characterisitic of life to be protected and be recognized as uncommodified. There is a concurrent legal area being developed under the word liberty in our Charter of Rights section 7 which is defined as an autonomous personal zone of independent decision making into which the state cannot intrude.
When you add the two together – recognition of soemthing worthy in higher life and also individual autonomy – the Court can be seen to be working on a theory of the nature of a person which is quite elemental and interesting.