The Multicultural Mystique is now available

... on Amazon. H.E. Baber argues that multiculturalism is illiberal, insofar as it imposes 'scripted' expectations on individuals based on unchosen traits (e.g. ethnicity), and limits their opportunities for self-creation and re-invention. See my old review of the book [draft] for more detail.

Abortion Vetoes

It's uncontroversial that women should not be forced to have abortions against their will. For one thing, this follows from a general right of veto against invasive medical procedures. But we may also think there is a second reason, namely that it would be a great harm to a prospective mother to kill her cherished "unborn child" (her "baby", as she thinks of it), and all her plans for their future together -- plans which may have taken on a central role in her life story and 'identity' as she conceives of it.

This second reason would also seem to apply to the prospective father, though perhaps in a slightly muted fashion. The father is not so intimately acquainted with his "unborn child" -- though if he has felt its kicks through its mothers belly, seen ultrasound images of its little fingers and toes, or even simply observed the growing bulge over the weeks and months of pregnancy, such experiences might conceivably nourish the initial blossoming of paternal love and attachment. I'm unsure how significant an effect this is likely to have, though. Perhaps the greater impact, for the father, is at the level of abstract knowledge: that there exists a particular little human organism that, if properly nourished and protected, will grow into his future son or daughter. It is easy to understand a prospective father investing a great deal of meaning and significance in this fact, and thus feeling harmed - even violated - if he is unable to protect his unborn child--if others terminate it against his will.

Does this then also justify granting a paternal right of veto against abortion? It is some reason in favour, at least, but it may be outweighed by considerations of the unhappy mother's bodily autonomy. What do you think?

Philosophers' Carnival #74

... is here, though a bit of a mixed bag. I liked Paul's post on 'Moral Commitment Problems', at least, and it looks like someone submitted my Open Access one too.

Why Suspend Judgment?

It's often suggested that on tough questions (e.g. any contentious philosophical issue), we should suspend judgment. Maybe I'm being silly here, but I can't help but wonder, 'why?' I'm more drawn to the thought that you should use your best judgment, rather than suspending it. I do agree it's important to take the limits of one's epistemic position into account. But the appropriate effect of it is not on the first-order content of your judgments (i.e. the credences you assign to propositions), but their robustness (i.e. how open likely you are to change your mind about it).

Contra the student skeptic (close relative to the notorious student relativist), there's nothing especially admirable about answering every philosophical question with "Who knows?" The philosophically mature skeptic would add, "But here are a couple of possible options...", which is certainly a huge improvement. Best of all, it seems to me, would be to further make a tentative judgment as to which of those options is best, and go from there. You can always change your mind later.

I guess suspending judgment is a way to 'play it safe', if it's more important to you to avoid being wrong than to actually get things right. But that seems a kind of intellectual cowardice. Better to actively seek the truth, and if you end up in the wrong place, just turn around and try again.

One complicating factor is that doxastic commitment (belief, credence, whatever) isn't strictly necessary for inquiry. Philosophers might do just as well to merely suppose that some claim is true (while they explore the implications), rather than strictly believing it. Maybe. I'm not sure I have a great grasp of the difference between tentative belief and well-motivated supposition, however. Any thoughts?

Evidence, Reasons and Normative Doubts

Follow-up to Introducing 'Merely Normative' Risk.

Andrew Sepielli (in correspondence) points out that empirical and normative hypotheses alike can fit into the following schema:

1. If hypothesis H obtains, then I have objective reason not to φ.
2. There is some non-zero subjective probability that H obtains.
3. Therefore, I have belief-relative reason not to φ.

One immediate problem is that subjective or 'belief-relative' reasons (the sorts of things that follow directly from one's arbitrary beliefs) have no normative significance. Practical rationality is instead a matter of evidence-relative reasons. So let's amend the schema slightly:

1. If hypothesis H obtains, then I have objective reason not to φ.
2. Given my evidence, there is some non-zero probability that H obtains.
3. Therefore, I have evidence-relative reason not to φ.

Premise (2) arguably only makes sense for contingent, empirical hypotheses. Since purely normative claims are non-contingent, there are not multiple possibilities compatible with our evidence. The necessary truths of a priori philosophy are entailed by anything whatsoever; a fortiori, they are entailed by our evidence. If type-F killing is morally permissible (in circumstances C), then it is necessarily so; there is no possibility that it be otherwise. I have sufficient evidence to appreciate this, since no evidence is required at all -- just the faculty of reason.

Admittedly, we're not perfectly rational, so one could hardly expect us to get all this right. But that is just to say that our (even practical) reasoning will often go astray. It is not to say that our failures of rationality are perfectly rational after all. Whether we should, rationally, oppose (say) the killing of fetuses with type-F mental faculties depends entirely on which view is more reasonable, and not any facts merely about our personal psychologies or subjective credences.

Or do you think we need to utilize an even more subjective conception of rationality? I have some sympathy for the idea that we need a notion of reasonableness or non-ideal rationality that we can more reliably follow. But how would this go, exactly?

Introducing 'Merely Normative' Risk

I expect to write a few posts on this topic, so here's a quick overview and introduction:

We should be wary of bringing about terrible outcomes, in face of empirical uncertainty. I assume it's terrible to kill innocent persons (i.e. conscious, rational beings with goals for the future). So if there was a 10% chance that fetuses had mature psychological capacities, that would - I take it - count as a decisive reason against getting an abortion (in typical circumstances). But what about merely normative uncertainty? Suppose we're sure that fetuses have minimal mental lives of type F, but we nonetheless grant a 10% chance that killing a type-F is as morally bad as killing a mature person. What weight should we grant this moral uncertainty in our practical reasoning? Here are three possible answers:

(I) Full weight: The two kinds of uncertainty are normatively equivalent.

(II) Some weight: Normative uncertainty should count for something, but not so much as a corresponding empirical risk.

(III) No weight: Merely normative risks have no place in practical reasoning.

The 'full weight' view has some bizarre implications. For example, if you think shooting a gun out the window has a 1% chance of killing someone, and allow a 1% chance that masturbation is as morally bad as killing someone, then - according to (I) - you should be indifferent between the two actions. (Helen suggests that this just goes to show you shouldn't grant even that much credence to the loony moral view. That seems a good response; I'll probably return to it later.)

I previously suggested that we should distinguish between probabilistic reasons - i.e. real reasons that derive from the modal fact, X, that some outcome Y is epistemically possible - and probabilities of reasons, i.e. the mere epistemic possibility that a certain fact Z even qualifies as a reason in the first place.

One may object: why can't the epistemic possibility of a normative proposition [Y] constitute a real reason? I'll explore this more in the next post: Evidence, Reasons and Normative Doubts.

Open Access Action

A while back I expressed my support for open access publishing, and quoted Laura Schroeter's suggestion that the editors of Philosophical Studies declare independence from Springer. Tomkow has since taken up the issue, and created a simple petition to the editors of Phil Studies.



I don't usually sign petitions, but this seems a worthy exception. (The philosophical community is sufficiently small and tight-knit that I can imagine this sort of thing actually making a difference.)

For any who're interested, I've also created an 'Open Access Philosophy' Facebook group. (Time we took advantage of what Clay Shirky calls 'ridiculously easy group formation'. It's easy enough, and who knows, some good may come of it.)

Update [7/24]: 100 members and counting -- join now!

The Foreign-Born Candidate

After all the smears and innuendo about Obama's being insufficiently "American", this (ht) is too ironic:

Senator McCain was born in 1936 in the Canal Zone to U.S. citizen parents. The Canal Zone was territory controlled by the United States, but it was not incorporated into the Union. As requested by Senator McCain's campaign, distinguished constitutional lawyers Laurence Tribe and Theodore Olson examined the law and issued a detailed opinion offering two reasons that Senator McCain was a natural born citizen. Neither is sound under current law. The Tribe-Olson Opinion suggests that the Canal Zone, then under exclusive U.S. jurisdiction, may have been covered by the Fourteenth Amendment's grant of citizenship to "all persons born ... in the United States." However, in the Insular Cases, the Supreme Court held that "unincorporated territories" were not part of the United States for constitutional purposes. Accordingly, many decisions hold that persons born in unincorporated territories are not Fourteenth Amendment citizens. The Tribe-Olson Opinion also suggests that Senator McCain obtained citizenship by statute. However, the only statute in effect in 1936 did not cover the Canal Zone. Recognizing the gap, in 1937, Congress passed a citizenship law applicable only to the Canal Zone, granting Senator McCain citizenship, but eleven months too late for him to be a citizen at birth. Because Senator John McCain was not a citizen at birth, he is not a "natural born Citizen" and thus is not "eligible to the Office of President" under the Constitution.

A silly law anyway, but there it is. Do you think anyone will make a fuss? Should they?

Is Sex Selection Desirable?

Here's an odd quote (ht) from an Australian bioethicist:

"I don't think we're seriously looking at a world of only girl children just yet, but I do think that when philosophers start talking about using medical technology to achieve things that aren't about health, so increasing people's IQ or life expectancy for example, you have to ask why we shouldn't all be girls," he said.

Why do you have to ask that?

"There are significant restrictions on the opportunities available to men around gestation, childbirth, and breastfeeding, which will be extremely difficult to overcome via social or technological mechanisms in the foreseeable future. Women also have longer life expectancies than men," he said.

Increased life expectancy would be nice, for sure. I'm not so sold on childbirth, etc., especially when you factor in the whole menstruation thing. (Sounds more like a net negative, if anything.) So it's not at all clear to me that being a particular sex is an advantage in the way that increased IQ, life expectancy, etc., are. (I would wish high IQ on my future children; I wouldn't wish any particular sex on them -- I'm sure they could do perfectly well with either.) Am I missing something?

Apart from intrinsic costs and benefits to selecting a particular sex for one's child, there's also the social milieu to consider. The more of one sex in the general population, the greater the benefit to being of the opposite sex (assuming we haven't also designed out heterosexuality). Some in China are just beginning to notice this.

Finally, apart from individual costs and benefits, we might consider the interests of humanity at large. See 'Gender as Cultural Specialization'. Even if women do better on average, the greater variability in men might make their extinction a notable loss to society at large (assuming the benefit of having more geniuses outweighs the costs of all those delinquents). What do you think?

Philosophers' Carnival #73

... is here. I found the post on 'How Special Relativity Thwarts Eternalism (And More)' especially interesting.

Inducing Desire Satisfactions

I take it a standard motivation for hedonism is something like the following argument:

We have many prima facie goals. But what they all have in common is that we will be pleased to achieve them. The things we want are the things that will make us happy. So, it seems that it's really happiness that is our ultimate goal, and our more particular ends are merely instrumental or implementations of this more general end.

The argument can be clarified further if restated in terms of desire: we want our desires to be satisfied, therefore what really matters to us to to achieve desire-satisfactions, and the particular things we now want are merely instrumental to the ultimate end of satisfying our desires in general. N.B. This implies that I could make you better off by inducing in you a strong desire to count blades of grass (and granting you access to a lawn).

The fallacy here derives from a kind of scopal ambiguity. It's true that we want our desires to be satisfied. That's tautological: we want to get what we want. But that latter 'what we want' should be understood de re rather than de dicto. We want to get those particular objects that we want. We do not merely want to have any old satisfied wants (e.g. induced desires that don't relate to our existing goals or values at all). Put formally:

(*) [Those X: WANT(i,X)] WANT(i,X)
"Of those things that I [now] want, I want them."
not
(#) WANT(i,[Those X: WANT(i,X)] X)
"I want that I get whatever things I [then] want."

Once we observe this distinction, hedonism and (#)-type desire satisfactionism lose much of their appeal. Why think that what matters most is happiness or desire-satisfactions in general? It's not what we actually care about, after all. (I'd rather struggle to achieve some of my philosophical and personal goals than be a satisfied grass-blade counter.) Why should our counterfactual concerns outweigh our actual ones?

(I could understand it if they were objectively more meritorious, perhaps, but the idea here is that their mere strength suffices to make them more important than our actual concerns. Satisfying particular preferences takes a back seat to promoting preference-satisfaction in general, including by means of inducing new preferences. Compare G.A Cohen's objection to utilitarianism, which is a more radical version of my complaint here, since he applies it even to objective values, and not just subjective ones.)

'Democracy' draft

I've just finished a very rough draft of my short paper: 'What is Democracy?' Here's the concluding summary:

This paper has explored the conditions under which a state might be described as truly 'ruled by the people'. We saw that the institution of majoritarian voting, even with universal suffrage, is insufficient, for this leaves open the possibility of rule by a sectarian majority faction. So we must move beyond formal institutions and consider also the informal political culture. Here I suggested two possible routes to fully-fledged democracy. The individualist route understands democracy as 'rule by (all) the people', which I argued may be realized in a deliberative-democratic society wherein citizens are receptive to being persuaded by each other as they trade arguments and opinions in the marketplace of ideas. The collectivist route, on the other hand, understands democracy as rule by 'the people' taken as a unified collective or 'public person'. Drawing on reductionist and constructivist understandings of personal identity, I suggested that this may be given a plausible, metaphysically non-extravagant reading, which merely requires a shareable and indeed widely-shared civic perspective to be driving the government. In either case, one ends up with a society that is 'ruled by the people' in a deeper and more philosophically interesting sense than could be achieved by looking at the formal institutions alone.

It could bear to be improved, so if you have time to read the whole thing, any feedback would be most welcome!

Ostriches (or: implicit confusion)

After describing how moral philosophers have expended reams of paper debating trolley problems, Hallq concludes: "The confusions of the man on the street [who couldn’t give a coherent rationale for his responses] don’t seem so bad, in comparison." But that strikes me as precisely backwards, for familiar Socratic reasons. The moral thinking of the folk is so deeply and thoroughly confused that they don't even realize how confused they are. When moral philosophers start sifting through the mess, identifying and modifying points of incoherence, they are becoming less, not more, confused.

Granted, doing philosophy may (at least at first) make one feel more confused, because one's previously implicit confusions are brought to the surface and made explicit. But the confusion was there all along, even prior to your becoming aware of it.

Open Thread: fundamental disagreements

Sometimes, when reading a blog, you may get the feeling that the blogger's posts are infused by a fundamentally misguided assumption. But such deep-rooted disagreements can't typically be raised within the scope of any particular post. So consider this open thread an invitation. Do you find yourself raising an eyebrow at some of my basic presuppositions? Any disagreements that run so deep you wouldn't even know where to start? Try here!

Change Congress open to donations

I previously wrote about the launch of Change Congress, and why it deserves our support. So, readers may be interested to learn that they're now accepting donations. (I just gave $25.)

Two Thoughts on Prominent Converts

Suppose that a founder (or other prominent adherent) of some philosophy theory X later comes to repudiate this theory. Does their conversion have epistemic significance for onlookers to the debate over X?

It's often treated as evidence against X. ("Even prominent X-theorist Jane now realizes that X is fundamentally flawed!") This may be understood against the background assumptions that people typically suffer from confirmation bias, and that motivated reasoning will be especially strong in case of a view that's become entrenched in one's sense of identity. Surely, we may think, it would take compelling reasons to overcome such strong biases and cause a prominent adherent to repudiate their theory. (Okay, that's not the only possible explanation, but it might be one of several that receives a significant credence boost, thus justifying a lower credence in X.)

On the other hand, the fact that Jane changed her mind is evidence that she is less biased and irrational than your average Joe. So maybe her views -- including her past views -- are worth taking pretty seriously. This might not lead you to think X more likely true, but you might at least look more carefully for other virtues of the theory that you'd previously overlooked. After all, if someone like Jane once believed it, it can't be completely idiotic. (Well, it could be, but we're talking about shifts in your balance of credence here.) So if you previously did think X completely idiotic, I guess it's conceivable that this might actually boost your credence in X ever so slightly!

I just found that curious. Either way, I don't expect it matters much in practice, as this kind of meta-evidence will typically be swamped by the first-order reasons for or against X.

Brain Damage and Physicalism

Ookla-fry writes:

If dualism were correct then brain damage wouldn't effect cognitive ability. Simple as that.

This is a surprisingly common misconception. (Neuroscience student K.L. Dickson makes similar claims here.) It arises from a simple confusion of necessary and sufficient conditions. Dualists claim that the physical brain does not metaphysically suffice for mentality (cf. zombies). But Ookla's claim simply doesn't follow from this -- we may still think that the brain plays an essential, but non-exhaustive, role in constituting our minds.

A typical physicalist view is that the mind just is the brain. A dualist view is that the mind arises from the brain (given appropriate background conditions). Nobody holds that the mind is nothing at all to do with the brain.

Philosophers' Carnival #72

... is here. See especially Tomkow's post on 'open access' publishing, an idea I've expressed support for here.