Tag Archives: Ethics - Page 2

On Spontaneity and Hugging

Posted by on June 28, 2012 24 comments

Russell Blackford has flagged up an objection (here & here), which undoubtedly has force, against my hugging argument. Here’s my version of the objection.

Spontaneity, when employed kindly, is a good. If we overregulate social behaviour, then – by definition – this will lead to less spontaneity (and it will also have the effect of infantilizing people). The sort of cautionary principle I talk about is a form of self-overregulation, since its likely effect, if universalized, will be to undermine spontaneity, and, in a sense, pathologize forms of behaviour – such as hugging – that are themselves a good.

Okay, so let’s break down the argument to see if it flies (and I should say that I’m looking at my version of the argument here, not Russell’s, which might be a lot stronger, etc).

1. Is spontaneity, when employed kindly, a good? At first thought that seems an entirely plausible claim. But actually it disguises a lot of complexity. So, for example, maybe the claim is a counterfactual claim – a world with lots of spontaneity is better than a world with only a little spontaneity. Thing is, even if that’s true, it doesn’t show that spontaneity is good in and of itself, it merely shows that more often than not people get their spontaneous acts about right (and remember that it’s possible to employ spontaneity for kind reasons and get it wrong).

2. So is spontaneity good in and of itself? It’s quite hard to know what to make of this idea. Obviously there are large issues to do with how we want to define spontaneity (which I’m not going to get into). But I think I’d want to argue that it doesn’t make much sense to think about the value of spontaneity without focussing largely on outcomes. I don’t think it’s particularly counterintuitive to suppose that if a spontaneous act has a clearly bad outcome, then regardless of whether we think spontaneity if meritorious in and of itself, we’d judge the act as being unfortunate (albeit whether we thought the agent was culpable might depend on a lot of other factors).

3. If spontaneity is not good in and of itself (or not good enough), then the charge against overregulation must be that overall it reduces good outcomes. So, for example, in the case of my hugging argument, the charge would be that my self-overregulation leads to less good stuff (affection, warmth, intimacy) and perhaps more bad stuff (social wariness, nervousness, infantilization, etc). For that charge to be effective, then (1) it has to be empirically warranted; and (2) it has to trump other, at least partly non-consequentialist, moral concerns (particularly to do with the “rights” of individuals).

4. Is it empirically warranted – in other words, is it true that my cautionary principle if applied across the board would result in less good stuff and more bad stuff? Okay, so to recap, my cautionary principle, broadly speaking, holds that:

It is morally problematic to engage in physical contact that has a mild sexual dimension, and one should avoid in engaging in it, unless you have good reason to suppose that you have informed consent, which includes an awareness that the act has a sexual dimension (so de facto consent isn’t enough).

The first point to note is that in this context informed consent does not mean “no touching other people without asking first”, which is a ludicrous rule. It doesn’t mean this because informed consent can be implied. So the example I gave in my original posting was a couple who had been engaging in flirtatious behaviour, etc: in such a circumstance it is reasonable to suppose that de facto consent, which might merely be implied consent (e.g., through body language, etc), is informed consent vis-a-vis the sexual element of the physical contact.

It is also the case that informed consent can be implied by a couple’s shared history. Russell gives an example of a “treasured ex-girlfriend” at the end of his comment here.

And, of course, if physical contact is non-sexual – which might be the case in the sort of ritualistic setting Jean Kazez describes (though it might not be) – then there is (usually) no issue of informed consent over and above de facto consent. Moreover, this will generally be the case if a person is wired up in such a way that the the world is only minimally sexualized (because presumably they’re not going to experience a sexual frisson in the context of ostensibly non-sexual physical contact).

5. This all means that the set of physical acts where my cautionary principle might result in less good stuff and more bad stuff is far from being exhaustive of the set of all physical acts, which clearly lessens the force of the objection (but doesn’t by any means extinguish it).

6. Okay,let’s concede, for the sake of argument, the point that my sort of cautionary principle will result in less good stuff of a certain sort (affection, warmth, etc) and more bad stuff of a different sort (social wariness, infantilization, etc). Is that the end of the empirical argument? It isn’t, because if one is looking at consequences, one has to factor in that by no means everybody is comfortable with spontaneity, physical contact, familiarity, etc. This might be regrettable – in my view it is regrettable – but it isn’t trivial.

For these people, the knowledge that a cautionary principle is in play, together with its purported knock-on effect in terms of a decline of spontaneity, certain kinds of affection, etc., might be a relief. It might make them more likely to put themselves in potentially rewarding situations where they would otherwise fear – perhaps without justification (whether the fear is justified or not isn’t relevant from a strict consequentialist point of view) – they might be subject to unwanted physical contact (and don’t forget people can find it very difficult to say “No” – I find it difficult to say “No”.) For a certain subset of people, then, what would be the overregulation of social behaviour for most people, would be just the right amount of regulation.

This is not to claim that there is a balance here, but it is to claim it is necessary to weigh up the consequences of a decline of spontaneity, warmth, certain kinds of affection, etc, in both directions.

7. But let’s bite the bullet, and assume the consequentialist calculus comes out against my cautionary principle. Is this decisive?

Well, no it’s not, and it’s not decisive for one of the reasons that consequentialist arguments in general tend to run into trouble (and remember, we’re treating this as a consequentialist argument – see point 2). It isn’t clear that the “greater good” justifies potentially infringing on the “rights” of particular individuals. (I should say that I don’t like talk of “rights”, I can’t really make sense of it, but again for the sake of argument we’ll just go with it.)

In particular, it is at least arguable that people have rights against unwanted physical contact, regardless of what that means in consequentialist terms. So, for example, none of us are going to think that it’s okay to beat up on a person just in the case that it turns out that some large number of other people find it entertaining. (And yes, of course, there are layers and layers of complication here to do with the difference between act and rule utilitarianism, for example, and a lot of other things.) Likely, many of us won’t think this is justified even if the person being beaten up consents to their beating.

At the very least, then, there’s a tension between a concern with average outcomes and a concern with individual rights (and indeed there may be a tension between different sorts of individual rights).

In terms of my cautionary principle, then, there are two central issues (if we bite the bullet, and accept the consequentialist calculus comes out against the principle).

1. How careful do we need to be that we don’t infringe on people’s right not to be subject to unwanted physical contact (where the argument is that in the case of hugging de facto consent does not equate to informed consent)?

2. How do we resolve the tension between an interest in maximizing the good things in life (on average) and protecting individual “rights”?

I’ll leave those two questions for another time – or other people – because this has gotten too long and I’ve run out of steam. But just some very quick closing remarks. This issue is complex, and I’m largely making this stuff up as I go along (and yes, I’m sure that’s obvious). So it’s important to remember the position I’m arguing against here is my version of Russell’s objection. No doubt Russell’s take on his own position would be very, or at least somewhat, different, and I’m sure much better for it.

Moral Methods

Posted by on March 30, 2012 15 comments

Thanks to the budget cuts in education, I won’t be teaching this summer. On the plus side, this has encouraged me to write yet another short philosophy book, Moral Methods. As per tradition, I am making it available as a free PDF on this site. It is also available in the Kindle format in the US and the UK for the usual 99 cents (or the UK equivalent in fish and chips).

This concise reference work is intended to provide the reader with the basics of moral argumentation and specific tools that should prove useful in this process. There is no assumption that any specific moral view is correct (or incorrect) and no specific moral agenda is pushed in this work.  Rather, the intention behind this work is to assist people in making better moral arguments.  If a reader disagrees with a specific example, then an interesting exercise would be to consider a counter-argument against the conclusion presented in the example.

The book divides into three parts. The first provides a basic discussion of arguing about ethics in the context of moral issues. The second, which is the majority of the book, presents a variety of methods that should prove useful in moral argumentation.  The third part consists of short moral essays that provide additional examples of moral reasoning.

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Contraception, Once Again

Posted by on March 19, 2012 37 comments
English: Picture Of Ortho Tri-Cyclen oral cont...

Could this get you fired?

While wars rage on and the economy continues to limp along for the working class, considerable attention is still focused on contraception. On the one hand, this can be seen as a mere distraction from what should be regarded as more important matters. On the other hand, it can be regarded as a fundamental struggle over rights.

One key conservative talking point regarding contraception coverage is that the real issue is whether or not the state has the right to require health insurance providers to cover contraception. This, of course, falls under the more general issues of whether or not the state has the right to compel health insurance providers to cover anything at all. Naturally, this falls under the very general topic of the legitimate limit of the state’s compulsive powers.

Since I just wrapped up discussing John Locke in my Modern Philosophy class, my inclination is to say that the state’s legitimate purpose is the good of the people and it is limited in what it should do on the basis of the rights to life, liberty and property. As might be imagined, this general guide is not very helpful in this matter. After all, it can be effectively argued that compelling such coverage would be for the good of the people and it can also be effectively argued that doing so would be an imposition on the liberty of the providers.  As in most such cases, my inclination is to take the stock approach of weighing the good of the imposition against the badness of said imposition. For example, some people argue that the state should have the right to use its compulsive power to ensure that a person can only marry one other person (at a time) and that the other person must be of the opposite sex. In supporting such a view, the usual argument (apart from the appeals to religion and tradition) is that same sex marriage and polygamy are harmful to society. As such, the liberty to marry as one pleases must be taken away using the compulsive power of the state. Interestingly, many of the folks who are opposed to compelling  contraceptive coverage are in favor of using the compulsive power of the state in the domain of marriage. As such, they apparently do not have a principled objection against the state compelling people in regards to their moral beliefs. Rather, their view seems to be that as long as the state is compelling the right people, then such compulsion is fine. Of course, a person can be against contraception coverage and not be against, for example, the state using is compulsory power to impose a specific moral view in regards to marriage. In fact, one way to argue against the compulsion of contraceptive coverage is to argue against state compulsion in all matters other than those that involve harming others. So, for example, a person could be consistently against the state compelling a specific religious/ethical view of marriage and against the state compelling the coverage of contraception.

In regards to the matter of coverage, I am willing to accept (and in fact insist on) the principle that the burden of the proof is on the state in regards to compelling such coverage. That is, it is up to the state to show that such coverage should be compelled by law. This is a general principle that I accept, mainly on the assumption that there is a presumption in favor of liberty.

One standard way to argue for the legitimacy of state compulsion is to show that something is harmful (generally to others rather than just to oneself) and thus the state, under its legitimate role as protector of the life, liberty and property of the citizens, has the right to compel. This approach seems quite reasonable and is used to justify such things as the state compelling people to not murder, rape, or steal. As should be clear, this approach does not justify compelling coverage. After all, it is not preventing someone from wrongfully inflicting harm on another. Of course, this is a rather minimalist view of the state and one that only the most ardent libertarians seem to hold.

Another standard way to argue for the legitimacy of state compulsion is to show that compelling it creates a public good that warrants the imposition on liberty. For example, drafting people in times of war can be justified on the grounds that the public good requires such service. As another example, the compelled  paying of taxes to provide for roads, police, defense, fire departments, schools, bridges, and so on is justified on the grounds that this serves the general welfare and the common good. John Locke argues for the state using its power to serve the general good and, of course, American government is supposed to have a legitimate role in providing for the general welfare. In general, it seems fair to say that the idea that the state should compel people to act for the general good only seems odd when it is proposed that the state compel something that a person does not like (like contraceptive coverage). When the state is compelling people to do what someone wants, it generally seems perfectly reasonable to that person. However, it would be rather nice for folks to have a consistent general principle regarding under what conditions the state can compel (other than “in cases in which the state is doing what I want”).

As with all conflicts between liberty and the general good, one key part of the dispute is whether or not the imposition on liberty is warranted by the gain to the public good. For example, compelling me to pay my taxes is warranted by the fact that my contribution is needed for the general good.

In the case of contraceptive coverage, the argument rests on the assumption that preventative care should be covered (this is already a matter of law, but naturally can be challenged on moral grounds) for the general good. If this assumption is accepted, then the question that remains is factual: should contraception be considered preventative care? The experts at the bipartisan  Institute of Medicine have claimed that this is the case. Given their expertise, I am inclined to accept their opinion over that of non-experts. As such, it would seem that contraception should thus be covered.

Of course, it can be countered that the coverage preventative care should not be compelled by the state and that the insurance providers should be free to cover or not cover what they wish.

This does, of course, have a certain appeal. No doubt folks in all industries feel imposed on by the state compelling them in regards to what they can do or not do. For example, those in the food industry probably are not thrilled that the state imposes restrictions on what they can sell as meat and that they are required to divulge the contents of their products to the consumers. However, these compulsions are justified by an appeal to the common good. Likewise, the imposition of contraceptive coverage can be warranted on similar grounds. After all, such coverage is claimed to have numerous benefits for the people covered as well as the general public (such as lowering the number of unwanted pregnancies and all that entails).

It might be countered that the coverage of contraception violates the ethics of some employers (such as the Catholic Church) and thus contraceptive coverage is a very special case. In fact, Arizona is considering a bill that would seem to allow employers to fire employees for using contraception. In these cases, the argument is that this is a matter of religious liberty. As I have argued at length in other posts about this, I will not repeat my arguments here. I will, however, add that these cases are not clear cases of a cruel state imposing on the liberty a hapless church, insurance company or employer. Rather, there is also the rather important matter of the liberty of the employees and their rights.

There is, of course, a stock view that employees have no right to expect their employers to respect their rights or liberties as the state is supposed to respect them. On this view, our rights and liberties exist relative to the state and not relative to employers. However, I am inclined to follow Locke here and take the view that our rights are not merely against the state, but also against each other. As such, it is just as wrong for my employer to compel me in ways that violate my rights and liberty as it is for the state. At the very least, if the state lacks the right to compel them to provide coverage because they disagree, then they would seem to lack the right to compel their employees to conform to the ethics of their employer.

It might be countered that such rights are only for the powerful (churches and employers) and that the weaker folks (such as employees) must take it or leave it. That is, an employee who wants to work has to be willing to accept the moral imposition of his employer in this matter while his employer has a perfect right to not be imposed on in such a way by the state. If the employee doesn’t like that her employer  refuses to include coverage of contraception in the health care benefits, she can just go and find another job. If she cannot, then she will have to accept being unemployed or she must conform to the religion/morality of her employer.  This, of course, seems to be rather wrong. After all, it seems rather absurd to justify an imposition on liberty on the basis of an appeal to liberty. Of course, this is nothing new: in the pre-Civil War South people routinely argued that forcing the southern states to give up enslaving people would be a violation of their liberties.

In light of the above discussion, mandating the coverage of contraceptives does seem to be morally acceptable.

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Contraception, Again…

Posted by on March 16, 2012 31 comments
viagra is a commercial produced medicine conta...

Image via Wikipedia

It seems a bit odd arguing about contraception in 2012. After all, the matter seemed to have been large resolved some time ago.  While it is tempting to say that Contraception 2012 is a manufactured conflict, there do seem to be some points worth addressing in this context.

One talking point that has been presented by some folks, such as mainstream American media personality Rush Limbaugh, is that insurance coverage of contraception is the same thing as paying someone to have sex.

In the case of people who are prescribed contraceptives because of medical conditions (such as ovarian cysts), this is obviously not the case. In cases in which the person is simply using the contraception as contraception, she is still not being paid to have sex any more than the coverage of Viagra and comparable medicine for men is paying men to have sex. At most, what is being paid for is the means to have sex (Viagra) and the means to avoid getting pregnant (contraception). True, these are connected to sex, but covering either is not the same thing as paying people to have sex.

Another common talking point is that the plan to cover contraception will be “using people’s money” to pay for something they do not approve of.

One obvious reply to this is that for most folks insurance coverage is either paid for by the individual or as part of a benefit package for a job. Either way, the person is earning her coverage. To use an analogy, my insurance covered my quadriceps tendon repair (mostly). This was not using some other people’s money since I pay for my insurance. Likewise, if a woman get contraception covered by her insurance, she is paying for that (either directly or by getting benefits as part of her compensation).

It might be countered that some women get coverage from the state, so tax dollars could go to pay for birth control. Since some folks are against contraception or do not want to pay for it, this should not be done.

The stock reply to this is that our tax dollars are routinely used to pay for things that we might not want to pay for or that we might even oppose. For example, I’d rather not have my tax dollars pay for subsidies to corporations and I certainly don’t want to be paying for other dudes’ Viagra.  This is the way democracy works-provided that the spending is set up through due process, by agreeing to the legitimacy of the state we also give our consent to the spending-even for things we would rather not contribute to.

Naturally, it can be argued that we should not be required to pay for anything we oppose and this has considerable appeal (see Thoreau’s arguments about civil disobedience for an interesting look at this matter). However, if we adopt this principle for contraception, it must also apply across the board. So, for example, folks who are against war can insist that war should not be paid for using tax dollars and so on. It seems likely that for every proposed spending there will be a person who opposes it-thus the state should not spend money on anything. While this would solve the deficit problem, it would seem a rather absurd solution.

A third talking point is that contraception should not be covered because it does not treat a condition. This is most often brought up when defending the coverage of Viagra (which restores a natural function).

The easy reply to this is that some forms of contraception are used to treat medical conditions (such as ovarian cysts). As such, this use should be covered. But, of course, this would not warrant the coverage of contraception as contraception.

One reply worth considering is that the framing of the debate begs the question against women. After all, the claim is that anything that is covered must treat or prevent a harmful condition and this would exclude contraception (except in cases in which a women would be medically harmed by being pregnant). However, this framing tends to be simply assumed rather than being argued for, which is rather unfair to women in this regard. After all, the matter of pregnancy seems to be unique (and limited to women) and hence it seems questionable to insist that it must automatically fall under the framing in question. It can, of course, be argued that it does-but an argument is wanted here to show that is the case.

While some might be tempted to cast pregnancy as the harmful medical  condition that is being prevented by contraception, the idea of casting pregnancy as a harmful medical condition has rather limited appeal. After all, while pregnancy puts considerable strain on the woman, it seems rather difficult to cast it as an illness that needs to be prevented or treated as if it were comparable to measles or cancer.

A more fruitful line of approach is to argue that contraception provides medical control over a woman’s quality of life. That is, it enables her to chose whether to be pregnant or not. Doing this clearly falls under the domain of medicine and women do seem to have a legitimate claim to this right. After all, much of medicine deals with maintaining a desired quality of life and women would seem to have as much right to that as men.

Naturally, it might be countered that I am treating pregnancy as a disease (which would be some major rhetorical points against me). But this is not the case. All I am claiming is that given that pregnancy can be rather challenging for a woman and, of course, a child is a major consumer of resources a women has a legitimate right to use medical means to maintain her desired quality of life-just as a man has a legitimate right to use Viagra and its ilk to maintain his desired quality of life. Just as Viaga is covered as a quality of life drug, so should contraception.

A fourth, somewhat uncommon,  talking point is that contraception is on par with abortion, so covering contraception is covering abortion.

One stock reply is the obvious fact that contraception lowers the number of unwanted pregnancies and this lowers the number of abortions. As such, folks who are worried about abortion would seem to have a good reason to favor covering contraception.

Of course, some folks contend that contraception is like abortion in that it prevents a possible person from becoming an actual person. While this does have some philosophical interest, it would seem to entail that every moment I am not out and about impregnating women, I am engaged in acts comparable to abortion. After all, by not impregnating as many women as possible, I am preventing some possible people from becoming actual people. Put a bit less absurdly, if I am practicing abstinence, then I am effectively engaged in abortion since all those possible people will never become actualized.

It could be countered that this only applies to cases in which I am actually having sex (and presumably that I should only be having sex with a woman I am married to). That is, every time I have sex, there should be a roll of the dice to see whether or not the woman gets pregnant. Presumably if either of use chooses to use any method that lowers the probability of pregnancy, then this would be on par with attempting an abortion.  As such, the only acceptable family planning would be to decide to have sex only when one plans on a pregnancy since intentionally preventing it would be unacceptable. I would be interested in seeing some arguments for this that do not involve an appeal to theology.

 

 

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A Darwinian Approach to Moral Philosophy

Posted by on January 4, 2012 97 comments

This is a guest post by Professor Michael Ruse.

In 1986, in my Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to Philosophy, I laid out a Darwinian approach to ethics. I really have not changed my mind very much at all since then, and have repeatedly given shorter expositions of my position. As it happens, the Christian evangelicals seem to understand my thinking very well. Unsurprisingly, they don’t like it! To my astonishment, many of my fellow evolutionists and philosophical naturalists seem not to understand my thinking very well. Surprisingly, what they do understand, they don’t like either! So in the hope of advancing discussion, like me try one more time. I don’t mind so much being thought wrong, but it does irritate me a bit to be thought wrong for the wrong reasons.

I am a philosophical naturalist. By this I mean (or at least my meaning includes) being eager to accept the findings of science and to use them in my philosophizing as far as possible. So, I start my thinking about ethics by looking to Darwinian biology on human social behavior and I come away with the belief that ethics – meaning by this substantive or normative ethics (“What should I do?”) – is a product of natural selection (on individuals) to further reproductive success. Substantive ethics is an adaptation like eyes and noses and penises and vaginas. I should say that (and I am still at the level of science) I don’t think there is any need of external ethical principles (Mind of God, non-natural properties, Platonic Forms) to get this result. So ethics in a sense is different from say our knowledge about railway engines. Without existing independent railway engines, I don’t see that you could have a science of railway-engine-ology. I don’t think you need these external referents to get ethics. Ethics in this sense is not so much about the real world as it is about social relationships between fellow species members.

Now one more important empirical claim. Obviously in some sense I think that ethics is a bunch of emotions, if you like, and in the sense of not having external warrant is subjective. However, I think that phenomenologically, as one might say, ethical beliefs differ from other emotions in having a character of value and obligation. They are not simple emotions like “I like spinach.” They come across with moral fervor. “Murder is wrong. One ought not murder.” In other words, and I guess I am getting into philosophy here, I am not a non-cognitivist. I think ethical claims are perfectly meaningful. “Murder is wrong” means murder is wrong. It doesn’t mean “I don’t like murder, boo hoo, don’t you do or like it either.” I believe also – and I am pretty certain I got this from John Mackie way back when – that ethical claims have the appearance and meaning of being objective claims, in the sense of not just subjective emotions but about external standards.

Scientifically, I would say that there is good reason for this. If we thought it was all a matter of liking and disliking, ethics would break down rapidly. Why would I bother to risk my life for you if I knew that there was really no reason for it? But if I genuinely think that there is an objective moral norm demanding such risk-taking, I might well go along with it. Philosophically, and obviously we are starting to get into metaethics here, I think that the belief about objectivity is erroneous – so if this makes me what is known as an “error theorist,” I am that. I am on record as saying that ethics (meaning substantive ethics) is an illusion put in place by our genes to make us social cooperators. But notice I am not saying that ethics as such is an illusion – I very much don’t think this – rather I am saying that the belief that ethics is objective is an illusion. We “objectify” – and I think that rather ugly word did come from Mackie.

I should say, and I am not trying to weasel out of my position or qualify it to nothingness, I really don’t much like talking about “error” at this point. I don’t think “murder is wrong” is erroneous, nor do I think it subjective in every sense of the word. It is subjective in the sense that it doesn’t have an external referent – I am a moral non-realist – but it is not subjective in the sense of “I don’t like spinach.” There is an equivocation on the word “subjective.” In the collection of emotions that make up human nature, “I like spinach” is subjective, but “Murder is wrong” is absolute or objective or binding or whatever. It is not a matter of choice. I would say that we believe this because of our biology; but the point is that, as we think and act, morality is laid on us not decided by us. Of course, we may or may not decide to act morally, but that is another matter. Morality as such is not up for grabs or discussion. Only French existentialists at their most nutty have ever thought otherwise, and they didn’t really.

I realize that my position is simply not going to be acceptable to a lot of people, Christians particularly. They think that without external standards it is all phony. I cannot change that, but I can at least say that I understand where they are coming from and why their feelings that I am wrong are so strong. Ethics does come across as objective, in the sense of moral realism. It wouldn’t work if it didn’t! But I just don’t think it is objective in this sense, and that is all there is to it. Except it is not really all there is to it, because once you are in the ethical game, as one might say – a game that is thrust upon us as humans thanks to natural selection — then within the game you can perfectly well distinguish the binding or the objective from the subjective. Think cricket or baseball. Having won the toss, are you going to bat first? Playing in the American League, are you going to use a pinch hitter? But six balls to an over; three strikes and you are out — these are objective, binding.

Four final points. Am I an ethical relativist? Not in the sense of undergraduates who have just taken a couple of courses in sociology. Let me let you into a dirty, little, Ruse secret. I loathe relativism so much that that is the reason I became a philosopher of science rather than a student of ethics. I grew up as a Quaker and if nothing else it left me with a very strong feeling about the absolute nature of ethics. In the mists of distant time past, as a baby philosopher, the options in ethics were an unacceptable moral realism – non-natural properties or God or both – or an even-more-unacceptable logical positivism or some successor. The latter seemed to me and still seems to plunge one right into relativism – meaning a kind of subjectivism of the second kind I mentioned above, and that was completely wrong. So I moved away from ethics because I thought ultimately it was either false or morally pernicious. Now, thanks to my years in the history and philosophy of science, I think I have enough to go back profitably to ethics. I don’t think that one has to be a relativist here on earth given my position. In fact, the social nature of ethics, combined with the fact that we are all one species that was probably very small in number in the past hundred thousand years or so ago, suggests to me that today all humans share the same basic moral sense, qualified of course by cultural differences such as different beliefs about the nature of the world.

Having said this, I would not deny some form of intergalactic relativism. In the Descent of Man, Darwin wrote:

It may be well first to premise that I do not wish to maintain that any strictly social animal, if its intellectual faculties were to become as active and as highly developed as in man, would acquire exactly the same moral sense as ours. In the same manner as various animals have some sense of beauty, though they admire widely different objects, so they might have a sense of right and wrong, though led by it to follow widely different lines of conduct. If, for instance, to take an extreme case, men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering. Nevertheless the bee, or any other social animal, would in our supposed case gain, as it appears to me, some feeling of right and wrong, or a conscience.

I suspect that Darwin is right here – although I’d make things genetic rather than just rearing — but until we do encounter intelligent beings from outer space, I for one am not going to worry about this kind of relativism. Although it does seem to me relevant to my position inasmuch as it suggests that there can be no extra-human (that is extra-intelligent-being) moral norms because, if there are, how could such extra-terrestrials live and work and play in total ignorance of them? If moral norms are not recognizable and don’t have some kind of compulsion then I don’t know if they are still moral norms, at least not as generally understood. So that is certainly part of the reason why I am a moral non-realist.

Second, in telling you all about the way in which the genes deceive us for our own good, am I not giving the game away and won’t people now start to sin happily – a sort of Darwinian equivalent to what Nietzsche tells us all about? My own feeling is that, although philosophy may lead to skepticism, psychology makes it impossible to live that way. I am with David Hume on this. We are human beings and so, thank god, we are going to act like human beings.

I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours’ amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.

Here then I find myself absolutely and necessarily determined to live, and talk, and act like other people in the common affairs of life.

Third, talking of Hume, I don’t claim any particular originality in my position. I think I am arguing very much in the Humean tradition. The Humean tradition brought up to date by Charles Darwin. So notice that I am very keen on the is-ought distinction. I think there is a real difference between moral claims and scientific claims, and while the latter can be used to explain why we hold the former, they cannot be used to justify the former (which in the end have no justification in that sense). This sets me off from traditional Social Darwinism, from Herbert Spencer through Julian Huxley and on to Edward O. Wilson. They think that the progressive nature of the evolutionary process justifies promoting the welfare of humankind. I don’t think that evolution is progressive in that way and I am with Julian Huxley’s grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley, in thinking that you cannot go from the course of evolution to justifying moral action. (THH, like me, was pretty keen on Hume.)

As I said at the beginning, I blame myself for obviously not making my thinking clear. But there are days when I wonder if the hostility I encounter from those that I would think sympathetic stems, not so much from my thinking on ethics as such, but from the fact that, although no believer myself and certainly doing anything but relying on a deity in my moral philosophizing, openly I argue that a Christian can be a Darwinian. In particular, I think the kind of position I have just sketched should be welcomed by a Christian influenced by naturalism, and I am thinking here of course of Thomas Aquinas and the influence of Aristotle. As a Darwinian, I think we should do what is natural. As an Aristotelian, the Thomist thinks we should do what is natural. I see a meeting point here. It doesn’t incline me to be a Christian but I see how a Christian could start with my position and then put it in a theological context. But that is another story. I mention it only because I suspect it is here that the real opposition to my thinking resides.

Although I would say that wouldn’t I, because the other alternative is that I am both wrong and a rotten thinker to boot.

Michael Ruse is Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at The Florida State University.

Carpe Diem and the Longer Now

Posted by on January 1, 2012 2 comments

So here’s the thing: I like utilitarianism. No matter what I do, no matter what I read, I always find that I am stuck in a utility-shaped box. (Here’s one reason: it is hard for me to applaud moral convictions if they treat rights as inviolable, even when the future of the right itself is at stake.) But trapped in this box as I am, sometimes I put my ear to the wall and hear what people outside the box are doing. And the voices outside tell me that utilitarianism is alienating and overly demanding.

I’m going to argue that act-utilitarianism is only guilty of these things if fatalism is incorrect. If fatalism is right, then integrity is nothing more than the capacity to make sense of a world when we are possessed with limited information about the consequences of actions. If I am right, then integrity does not have any other role in moral deliberation.

~

Supposedly, one of the selling points of act-utilitarianism is that it requires us to treat people impartially, by forcing us to examine a situation from some third-person standpoint and apply the principle of utility in a disinterested way. But if it were possible to do a definitive ‘moral calculus’, then we would be left with no legitimate moral choices to make. Independent judgment would be supplanted with each click of the moral abacus. It is almost as if one would need to be a Machiavellian psychopath in order to remain so impartial.

One consequence of being robbed of legitimate moral alternatives is that you might be forced to do a lot of stuff you don’t want to do. For instance, it looks as though detachment from our integrity could force us to into the squalor of excessive altruism, where we must give away anything and everything we own and hold dear. Our mission would be to maximize utility by doing works in such a way that would keep our own happiness above some subsistence minimum, and improve the lot of people who are far away. Selfless asceticism would be the order of the day.

In short, it seems like act-utilitarianism is a sanctimonious schoolteacher, that not only overrides our capacity for independent moral judgment, but also obliges us to sacrifice almost all of our more immediate interests for interests that are more remote – the people of the future, and the people geographically distant.

The longer now is a harsh mistress.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Samuel Scheffler, Bernard Williams: here are some passionate critics who have argued against utility in the above-stated ways. And hey, they’re not wrong. The desire to protect oneself, one’s friends, and one’s family from harm cannot simply be laughed away. Nietzsche can always be called upon to provide a mendacious quote: “You utilitarians, you, too, love everything useful only as a vehicle for your inclinations; you, too, really find the noise of its wheels insufferable?”

Well, it’s pretty clear that at least one kind of act-utilitarianism has noisy wheels. One might argue that nearer goods must be considered to have equal value as farther goods; today is just as important as tomorrow. When stated as a piece of practical wisdom, this makes sense; grown-ups need to have what Bentham called a ‘firmness of mind’, meaning that they should be able to delay gratification in order to find the most happiness out of life. But a naive utilitarian might take this innocent piece of wisdom and twist it into a pure principle of moral conduct, and hence produce a major practical disaster.

Consider the sheer number of things you need to do in order to make far-away people happy. You need to clamp down on all possible unintended consequences of your actions, and spend the bulk of your time on altruistic projects. Now, consider the limited number of things you can do to make a small number of people happy who are closest to you. You can do your damnest to seize the day, but presumably, you can only do so much to make your friends and loved ones happy without making yourself miserable in the process. So, all things considered, it would seem as though the naive utilitarian has to insist that we all turn into slaves to worlds that are other than our own — the table is tilted in the favor of the greatest number. We would have to demand that we give up on today for the sake of the longer now.

But that’s not to say that the utilitarian has been reduced to such absurdities. Kurt Baier and Henry Sidgwick are two philosophers that have explicitly defended a form of short-term egoism, since individuals are better judges of their own desires. Maybe utilitarianism isn’t such an abusive schoolteacher after all.

Nietzscheans one and all.

Why does act-utilitarianism seem so onerous? Well, if you’ve ever taken an introductory ethics class, you’re going to hear some variation on the same story. First you’ll be presented with a variety of exotic and implausible scenarios, involving threats to the wellbeing of conspecifics that are caught in a deadly Rube Goldberg machine (involving trolleys, organ harvesting, fat potholers, ill-fated hobos, etc.) When the issue is act-utilitarianism, the choice will always come down to two options: either you kill one person, or a greater number of others will die. In the thought-experiment, you are possessed with the power to avert disaster, and are by hypothesis acquainted with perfect knowledge of the outcomes of your choices. You’ll then be asked about your intuitions about what counts as the right thing to do. Despite all the delicious variety of these philosophical horror stories, there is always one constant: they tell you that you are absolutely sure that certain consequences will follow if you perform this-or-that action. So, e.g., you know for sure that the trolley will kill the one and save the five, you know for sure that the forced transplant of the Hobo’s organs will save the souls in the waiting room (and that the police will never charge you with murder), and so on.

This all sounds pretty ghoulish. And here’s the upshot: it is not intuitively obvious that the right answer in each case is to kill the one to save the five. It seems as though there is a genuine moral choice to be made.

Yet when confronted with such thought-experiments, squadrons of undergraduates have moaned: ‘Life is not like this. Choices are not so clear. We do not know the consequences.’ Sophomores are in a privileged position to see what has gone wrong with academic moralizing, since they are able to view the state of play with fresh eyes. For it is a morally important fact about the human condition that we don’t know much about the future. By imagining ourselves in a perfect state of information, we alienate ourselves from our own moral condition.

Once you see the essential disconnect between yourself and your hypothetical actor in the thought-experiment, blinders ought to fall from your eyes. It is true that I may dislike pulling the switch to change the trolley’s track, but my moral feelings should not necessarily bear on the question of what my more perfect alternate would need to do. Our so-called ‘moral intuitions’ only make a difference to the actual morality of the matter on the assumption that our judgments can reliably track the intuitions of your theoretical alternate — assuming your alternate knows the things they know, right on down to the bone. But then, this assumption is a thing that needs to be argued for, not assumed.

While we know a lot about what human beings need, our most specific knowledge about what people want is limited to our friends and intimates. That knowledge makes the moral path all the more clear. When dealing with strangers, the range of moral options is much wider than the range of options at home; after all, people are diverse in temperament and knowledge, scowl and shoe size. Moral principles arise out of uncertainty about the best means of achieving the act-utilitarian goal. Strike out uncertainty about the situation, and the range of your moral choices whittle down to a nub.

So if we had perfect information, then there is no doubt that integrity should go by the boards. But then, that’s not the fault of act-utilitarianism. After all, if we knew everything about the past and the future, then any sense of conscious volition would be impossible. This is just what fatalism tells us: free will and the angst of moral choice are byproducts of limited information, and without a sense of volition the very idea of integrity could not even arise.

Perhaps all this fatalism sounds depressing. But here’s the thing — our limited information has bizarrely romantic implications for us, understood as the creatures we are. For if we truly are modest in our ability to know and process information, and the rest of the above holds, then it is absurd to say, as Nietzsche does, that “whatever is done from love always occurs beyond good and evil”. It is hard to conceive of a statement that could be more false. For whatever is done from love, from trust and familiarity, is the clearest expression of both good and evil.

~

Look. Trolley-style thought-experiments do not show us that act-utilitarianism is demanding. Rather, they show us that increased knowledge entails increased responsibility. Since we are the limited sorts of creatures that we are, we need integrity, personal judgment, and moral rules to help us navigate the wide world of moral choice. If the consequentialist is supposed to be worried about anything, the argument against them ought to be that we need the above-stated things for reasons other than as a salve to heal the gaps in what we know.

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Atheists, India and Australia

Posted by on December 19, 2011 42 comments

I’ve blogged elsewhere about a little trick that is embedded within the Morality Play interactive activity.

Very quickly, one of the questions asks whether there is a moral obligation to help a person who is in severe need.

You see a charity advertisement in a newspaper about a person in severe need in India/Australia. There is no state welfare available to this person, but you can help them at little cost to yourself. You have good reason to believe that any help you offer will make a difference. Are you morally obliged to help the person?

Half the people undertaking the activity are told that the person lives in India; the other half that the person lives in Australia. They are then asked to state whether they think we are “Strongly Obliged”, “Weakly Obliged” or “Not Obliged” to help the person.

After nearly 1000 responses, this is what the results are showing us.

The thing that has really caught my attention is the results for people who self-identify as Christians and atheists, respectively (more precisely, the atheist group self-identify as having “No Religion”, so they could be agnostics, or perhaps even deists of some sort, but for the sake of convenience, I’m going to call them atheists).

The headline news is that atheists are twice as likely as Christians to think we’re “Not Obliged” to help the person in need in India (currently, 43% as opposed to 21%).

I actually find that quite shocking. But perhaps even more shocking is the fact the atheist group are much less likely to respond that way when asked about the person in Australia. Here (only) 35% think we’re not morally obliged to help. There are two further points here: (1) this gap is four times as large as the average gap across all respondents (and it’s easily statistically significant – I checked!); and (2) if you look at the Christian group, in complete contrast to the atheist group, you find that they are more likely to think we’re not obliged to help the person in Australia.

My first reaction to these figures was to think I had messed up the programming somewhere. But I have double and triple-checked, and I’m almost certain that I haven’t. Plus, I’ve checked the numbers manually (so to speak); and the figures in the charts correctly add up to 100, so I think this really is what the numbers are saying.

My second reaction, of course, was to think about confounding variables and systematic biases. (Note to any stray new atheists reading this: I am fully aware of the dangers of a non-randomised, self-selecting sample, and that it is not possible to generalize these results, but the fact remains that these results are curious, and rather shocking, in and of themselves – we’re not talking about tiny numbers of people here).

So what’s going on? I don’t really know, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s possible there is some correlation between youth and irreligiosity specific to these activities (because they tend to get picked up by European schools and colleges), and that it might be that young people are less likely to think in terms of moral obligation than older people; it also seems possible that various stripes of moral nihilism might result in non-religious people denying that one is morally obliged to help others (even if they would in fact help others).

But the difference between the atheist response to the India and Australia conditions is… well, harder to explain (and, as I said, it’s a little disturbing). Anybody got any ideas?

Trolley Problem Question

Posted by on November 19, 2011 18 comments

This is just a quick curiosity thing, really. I’m working on another trolley problem activity for my Philosophy Experiments web site. (The original trolley problem activity is here.)

Anyway, I’ve been messing around with Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “Bystander at the Switch” scenario:

In that case you have been strolling by the trolley track, and you can see the situation at a glance: The driver saw the five on the track ahead, he stamped on the brakes, the brakes failed, so he fainted. What to do? Well, here is the switch, which you can throw, thereby turning the trolley yourself. Of course you will kill one if you do. But I should think you may turn it all the same.

I tend to agree that you may turn the trolley. But I’m curious about the legal situation here. If you turn the trolley, would you then be guilty of murder (i.e., in terms of the law)?

Judith Jarvis Thomson introduces the Bystander at the Switch scenario to illustrate the difference between “letting die” (i.e., if you just allow the trolley to continue so that it squashes the five workmen on the track) and “killing” (i.e., if you turn the trolley, thereby killing one person – albeit you save the lives of the five on the track).

So does something like the doctrine of double effect come into play here so that you wouldn’t be guilty of murder in this situation? Has this been established in case law or something?

Edit: Courtesy of John in the comments below, the legal defence has to do with “Necessity”. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_in_English_law

And John’s comment here: http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=3677#comment-39938

Practical Metaphysics: The Case of Freewill and Fatalism

Posted by on October 3, 2011 49 comments

Do humans act of their own free will, or is everything that people do merely the result of universal causation? Are free will and determinism compatible or incompatible? Does fate rule whether or not free will exists? These questions are metaphysical because neither science nor the techniques of formal logic can answer them once and for all. This is the first principle of practical metaphysics. The second is that it is necessary in life to adopt some metaphysical beliefs. The third is that some of these beliefs have practical consequences for one’s life. Free will conforms to the second principle, because everyone takes a stand on the question. However, not all metaphysical beliefs have practical consequences, so we must examine each case as it comes up.

Believing in the existence of free will clearly does have practical consequences. Believers are willing to accept responsibility for their actions. They think that their choices matter. The future is not a foregone conclusion. Praise and blame lose their grip if a person “cannot help” acting in a certain way. Another consequence is that such people will be less likely to blame others or circumstances for their own mistakes. Still another is that belief in free will supports an optimistic attitude. It makes sense of trying to do better, believing the future is open, and that it is actually possible to improve.

Does the belief in determinism have practical consequences? Perhaps. If it turns out that the truth of universal causation determines human actions, and if actions can be reduced to physical actions and chemical processes, then it is indeed true that all my actions will be determined in advance by antecedent causes. What difference would the truth of this assertion make to how I live my life? We are unable to know the entire antecedent universe. Whether or not it is true that the future is determined in advance, the future is opaque to us. We learn from experience what happens regularly in different circumstances, all things being equal. However, we cannot know if all things are equal in any particular case. Hence, we might be excused for thinking that a belief in metaphysical determinism makes no difference to the life of an agent.

Is this the whole story? Might it be possible to use a belief in determinism as a universal excuse for one’s actions? If my body and body chemistry move along with the universal causal nexus regardless of what I think, plan, feel or do, then what do my choices and reasons mean? Can I, therefore, abdicate my responsibility along with my free will by adopting a thorough-going metaphysical determinism? Or, does my ignorance of determining conditions make it impossible for me to give up my sense that I am responsible for my choices and actions?

If believing in determinism is a way to deny personal responsibility, then accepting it has practical consequences. It is an approach to life. Perhaps it would be better here to speak of the attitude of fatalism rather than universal determinism. With fatalism we can accept that we have to make choices, but believe that no matter what choices we make, our fate is sealed. Think of Somerset Maugham’s old story about the man who met the person of Death in Cairo, ran for his life to Samara, only to find Death waiting for him there, saying “When I saw you in Cairo, I thought you might be late for our our date in Samara, but here you are.” It was fate.

Fatalism is the view that what will be, will be, and nothing can change that. Might not taking on this view turn a person into a quietest who lives a still and passive life? Perhaps, if one believes in fate, one will not struggle against it. A clear literary example of this is described in Richard Adam’s epic rabbit adventure, Watership Down. At one point, Hazel and the other rabbits who are striking out to find a new home, run into a tribe of rabbits who live a well fed and pleasant life. However, they are taken for the pot one by one. All these rabbits know that one day they will be taken, but they do no know what that day will be. So they spend their time writing poetry and putting on tragic dramas, waiting quiescently for their individual ends. Hazel discovers what is going on and offers them a chance to escape. The ‘artistic’ rabbits turn down the offer by saying that their lives are their fate and they are resigned to it.

Perhaps there is another way, too, that belief in fate might affect one’s approach to life. There is a scene in Johnson’s “Rasselas” in which the hero meets a scientist who is weighed down by his conviction that he controls much of the weather and brings up the sun each morning from the top of his observatory. He is cured when he realizes that it is all a fantasy in his head. Finding out that something is not within one’s own power can be a relief. Responsibility is a heavy burden that can be laid down when one finds that the issue is out of one’s control. If we combine that with the idea of God’s providence, we have a source of consolation as well. I conclude that believing in free will or fatalism has practical consequences for the life of the believer, and thus falls within the subject matter of practical metaphysics.

Ethicists, Courtesy & Morals

Posted by on September 29, 2011 15 comments

For all their pondering on matters moral, ethicists are no better mannered than other philosophers, and they behave no better morally than other philosophers or other academics either. Or such, at least, are the conclusions suggested by the research of philosophers Eric Schwitzgebel (at the University of California, at Riverside) and Joshua Rust (of Stetson University, Florida).

On Ethicists’ courtesy at philosophy conferences as recently published in Philosophical Psychology‘, Schwitzgebel & Rust report on a study that suggests that audiences in ethics sessions do not behave any better than those attending seminars on other areas of philosophy. Not when it comes to talking audibly whilst a speaker is addressing the room and not when it comes to ‘allowing the door to slam shut while entering or exiting mid-session’. And though, appropriately enough “audiences in environmental ethics sessions … appear to leave behind less trash” generally speaking, the ethicists are just as likely to leave a mess as the epistemologists and metaphysicians.


The two previously co-authored ‘The Moral Behaviour of Ethicists: Peer Opinion’ (Mind, 2009), a paper that was widely reported and blogged upon. In the same the pair reported that a survey conducted at a philosophical conference suggested that most philosophers believed ethicists behaved no better than other philosophers or non-academics of a similar social background. Non-ethicists were also just about as likely to say that ethicists behaved worse than other philosophers, as they were to say that the experts on moral philosophy behaved any better.

A separate paper by Schwitzgebe published in Philosophical Psychology reported that within academic libraries, “compared to other philosophy books similar in age and popularity … relatively obscure, contemporary ethics books of the sort likely to be borrowed mainly by professors and advanced students of philosophy were actually about 50% more likely to be missing than non-ethics books” and “that classic (pre-1900) ethics books were about twice as likely to be missing.” This paper was titled “Do ethicists steal more books?” and the answer it seems is “Yes”.

Schwitzgebel & Rust now have a new (and “monstrously long”) paper in preparation titled the “The Self-Reported Moral Behavior of Ethics Professors.”. In the same they report on their survey of ethics professors, non-ethicist philosophers, and professors in other departments on eight ‘moral’ issues. These being “academic society membership, voting, staying in touch with one’s mother, vegetarianism, organ and blood donation, responsiveness to student emails, charitable giving, and honesty in responding to survey questionnaires” (some aspects of which the two were able to compare with behavioural results). Ethicists, it seems, express “somewhat more stringent normative attitudes on some issues, such as vegetarianism and charitable donation”. However, “on no issue did ethicists show significantly better behavior than the two comparison groups” The pair’s findings “on attitude-behavior consistency were mixed: Ethicists showed the strongest relationship between behavior and expressed moral attitude regarding voting but the weakest regarding charitable donation”.

Schwitzgebel says on his blog that this

“research raises questions about the extent to which studying ethics improves moral behavior. To the extent that practical effect is among one’s aims in studying (or as an administrator, in requiring) philosophy, I think there is reason for concern. I’m inclined to think that either philosophy should be justified differently, or we should work harder to try to figure out whether there is a *way* of studying philosophy that is more effective in changing moral behavior than the ordinary (21st century, Anglophone) way of studying philosophy is.”

It might, at least, give some pause for thought, possibly even comment…