Another way to bring out my contrast between 'Moral Roots and Alienating Aspirations' is to consider the practical significance of higher-order evidence.
Suppose it seems to you that you ought to phi, but you also think that your judgment in this case could well be biased or otherwise impaired. You believe that other people in similar circumstances to yours have turned out to be mistaken. Moreover, others you consider to be moral experts -- reliably more insightful than yourself -- are unanimous in insisting that you should not phi. What should you do?
Objectivists must allow that appearances can be misleading, and so higher-order evidence can undermine our first-order beliefs. In the above scenario, it looks like your all-things-considered judgment should be that the totality of reasons that exist weigh against phi-ing, even though you do not currently have access to all those reasons yourself. The reasons in your possession count in favour of phi-ing, but as a realist you acknowledge that there may be other reasons beyond your grasp, and the views of experts can give you some indication of what the totality of reasons really favours.
What of the 'rooted' conservative/subjectivist? Here it is less clear. There may still be some room for overriding your personal judgments, e.g. if they rest on some merely empirical or logical error, and so do not really reflect your core values. But if we accept the Vellemanian position that what fundamentally matters is making sense to oneself, then there seems something deeply problematic about acting on mere "meta-reasons", i.e. the abstract promise of reasons out there that you have not fully grasped. You can't really make sense of your action, because even though there is abstract evidence that you did what is for the best, you do not yourself possess the grounds for this judgment; you don't, in other words, understand why it is for the best. So it may seem that you acted for reasons that are not, in some vital sense, your own.
This practical difference marks a vivid distinction between the two metaethical views. Whether we act for the sake of making internal sense to ourselves, or to make the external world better, will influence our receptivity to meta-reasons, and hence what decisions we make.
I take this to count in favour of objectivism, since it seems clear that we should be receptive to meta-reasons. As Dan Moller writes in 'Meta-reasoning and Practical Deliberation' [pdf] (p.26):Failing to act on second-level reasoning means, by definition, acting on the basis of flawed deliberations when there is evidence of how improving those deliberations would affect the outcome. To return to the general [who is biased towards cowardice by the recent deaths of his friends], he presumably cares about discharging his duties as a soldier with integrity, so why shouldn’t he pursue every available opportunity to improve his decision-making? It is true that in that pursuit he may cut himself off from ultimate comprehension of the reasoning that leads to the conclusion to send in the troops, but accepting that limitation would in this circumstance express precisely a commitment to his deepest values and identity as a soldier, not any sort of compromise or abdication.
Isn't the alternative a bit solipsistic?
Friday, May 16, 2008
Acting on Meta-reasons
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Vaccination: Compulsion vs. Incentives
Thomas Pogge defends mandatory vaccination policies on the grounds that this is "the only way to overcome the collective action problem." It is not:
Let's distinguish two forms of regulation, reflecting the statist vs. Hayekian distinction. One option is to make the undesirable activity illegal. The alternative is to make it costly. More generally, we can regulate activities either by using the blunt instrument of the law, or else by the more subtle manipulation of market forces. I think the latter will often be preferable.
Let's suppose that $1000 is more than enough to counterbalance the public health costs of a non-vaccinated person. In that case, what possible reason could we have for denying people the right to opt out of getting vaccinated if they care so much that they're willing to pay this cost?
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Does Moral Reflection Do Any Good?
Eric Schwitzgebel raises the question. Moral philosophers are not, in general, any better behaved than "non-ethicists of similar social background." But presumably they engage in more moral reflection. Does this mean that moral reflection is behaviourally inert, a farcical waste of time? Here are a few of my favourite theories:
(1) My first thought was that this (at most) merely shows that moral reflection is inert at the margin. Other academics ("non-ethicists of similar social background") are still reflective people, and so presumably give a reasonable amount of thought to moral issues. So this common core of reflection might be very effective, compared to someone who engaged in no moral reflection whatsoever. But if moral reflection yields steeply diminishing returns, this could explain why the extra reflection of ethicists doesn't seem to have any additional effect.
(2) Roman Altshuler proposes a 'Hume-Strawson model':
Perhaps moral deliberation makes no difference to our behavior directly. But maybe it does make a difference to how we judge others. If moral reflection does structure our reactive attitudes, and the reactive attitudes of others does have some effect on our behavior, then moral deliberation is not entirely inert. It is simply that its effects on behavior occur through very indirect mechanisms.
(3) Brandon suggests something like the 'virtue theory' picture, whereby ethics is a distinctively practical skill rather than simply a matter of rational theorizing. (Cf. "the relation between physics and sports.") This would again make the effect of moral reflection very indirect. Having worked out what sort of person one ought to be, it's quite another matter to actually inculcate the right dispositions and habits, etc.
(4) Schwitzgebel's own suggestion is the 'bivalent view' that moral reflection affects our behaviour, in particular reducing conformity to prevailing social norms, but this is not always for the better (due to rationalization).
(5) Selection effects: maybe ethicists were disproportionately bad people to begin with!
Any other suggestions? Which (combination) of these do you give credence to?
Saturday, March 01, 2008
In Praise of Price Gouging
Matt Zwolinski has an interesting new paper on the ethics of price gouging. I'm certainly suspicious of blanket bans on allegedly 'exploitative' (but mutually beneficial) exchange. As Zwolinski argues (p.34):
Existing laws against price gouging either fail to provide clear guidance to sellers or fail to take account of all the morally significant reasons which could underlie a price increase, and it is difficult to see how laws could be reformed to avoid this dilemma. Furthermore, any legal prohibition of price gouging will create disincentives for individuals to engage in economic activity which helps those made vulnerable by emergencies. Because laws which prohibit price gouging thus harm vulnerable buyers and are unfair or unclear to sellers, they are immoral and should be repealed.
He further argues that price gouging is not impermissible per se, nor evidence of bad character, though particular instances of it might be. Whether it is permissible depends on whether there are legitimate reasons (i.e. besides greed) for raised prices -- whether this will increase market efficiency in allocating scarce goods, incentivize increased supply, etc. And whether the behaviour indicates bad character will presumably depend on whether the actor appreciates these impartial reasons, or is solely acting from greed.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Is Ignorance So Terrible?
Susan Jacoby laments:
nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it "not at all important" to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it "very important."
That leads us to the third and final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it's the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism -- a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation.
I'm not sure about this. Members of the intellectualist tribe may signal their cultural loyalties by affirming the great need for bilingualism, Shakespeare, learning a musical instrument, and knowledge of geography, history, astronomy and evolutionary theory. These are all fine things, and enriching in their own way, but I'm not convinced that any one of them is vital for ordinary people living ordinary lives. Why would it be "necessary" for average Joe to know the location of Iraq? He's not the one making decisions over there. Or, again, it's easy to poke fun at those who are ignorant of basic astronomical facts, but the intrinsic importance of this is less apparent than the symbolic effect -- drawing our attention to a cultural gap. (I'm reminded of the snob's favourite pastime: constructing lists of books that "every educated person must read".)
As Brandon says, we are all ignorant of a great many things. Moreover, "It is not a crime, or a sin, or a shame, or even a misfortune, to be ignorant of something. It is merely an opportunity." Now, I do think it is important to always recognize the opportunity for further knowledge as an opportunity. We should celebrate and value learning as such. But there are so many things to be learnt, we cannot hope to pursue every one of them. Further, some opportunities for learning will excite us more than others. So, given limited time and resources, it doesn't seem so inappropriate for one to simply disregard some fields as not one's concern. We ought to respect and value others' expertise in an area, of course, but that need not translate into any great desire on our own part to emulate them. There needn't be anything anti-intellectual about this.
I would say there are two broad cases in which the untroubled ignorance Jacoby laments is genuinely problematic. One is general anti-intellectualism, i.e. an attitude which positively denigrates learning, or at least does not recognize it as broadly desirable (an 'imperfect duty', if you will). Think of Huckabee boasting about how he 'majored in miracles, not math'.
The second case is when particular knowledge is required to inform one's decisions, but the "anti-rationalist" feels licensed to think and act from a position of ignorance instead. This is where worries about public policy debates come in. Many political partisans are simply 'bullshitters', in the Frankfurtian sense that they demonstrate a complete lack of concern for whether their claims are true. Others are dogmatists, so convinced of their own righteousness that, again, evidence and careful reasoning go out the window. This pollution of the public sphere is, I believe, the height of (common) evil (and it really is imperative that this be more widely recognized).
Private morality is not demanding, but politics is. Those who enter the public sphere, or seek to exert political influence, have an obligation to contribute constructively to the decision-making process. This holds especially for journalists, pundits and other "shapers" of public opinion, but even ordinary citizens have some obligation to become minimally informed before they vote. (Though it remains an open question whether ordinary people have any obligation to act as citizens in the first place. If one were to refrain from ever voting or influencing others by voicing a political opinion, one's personal ignorance might not matter in the slightest.)
Hursthouse on Moral Education
Rosalind Hursthouse writes of The Virtues Project:
unlike anything we philosophers have managed to produce, it is an extremely detailed and practical educational program and well worth our attention. Its admirable pedagogy makes it clear that the actual doing of the virtuous acts is not all there is to "helping children to develop the virtues," important as this is, and contains two features that any Aristotelian should find striking...
[1] from very early days, there is the application of the relevant [virtue] words to a variety of imagined as well as real instances, and the beginning of reflection, a detailed picture of how the training is bound up with thought and talk, where the talk centers around the use of virtue words in specific circumstances. All of this is consistent with, but provides a much-needed supplement to, philosophers' reflections...
[2] the pedagogy [stresses] looking for something to be praised by a virtue word in a child's action (or reaction) rather than for something to be condemned. But it is not, thereby, permissive. In fact, it is markedly strict, by contemporary standards, about "setting boundaries" and offers a number of techniques for doing so by, once again, emphasizing the virtues (and hence "Dos" rather than "Don'ts")... The idea is that, rather than making children think of themselves as bad and lacking in virtue, the way poor Huck Finn does, they are enabled to think of themselves as potentially good, as able to recognize and practice the virtues and find pleasure in doing so.
This is from Hursthouse's 'The Central Doctrine of the Mean', pp. 113-4. She concludes:
All very homey stuff, you may say. Well, yes. It is more impressive -- very impressive I thought myself -- when you read the books and see Popov handling questions, but still homey. But how could bringing up children correctly be anything other than a homey business? Moreover, it encapsulates what I have claimed in this chapter are two of the insights shrouded in the doctrine of the mean: it starts by training children, not to follow general rules but to recognize their central target in particular circumstances, and it develops their natural dispositions towards virtue.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Disability and Teen Pregnancy
Dominic Wilkinson offers an interesting argument from analogy:
The UK government announced this week a multi-million pound program to make contraception more easily available to young people and to reduce teenage pregnancies...
If they are effective, these measures will prevent the birth of a large number of children whose lives would have been worth living. Is it discriminatory to try to prevent the birth of children to teenage mothers? What message does this send to those children in the community who have been born to teenagers about how we value their lives? ... If we spend millions of pounds to try to prevent the birth of children like them, it might be seen to be expressing an attitude that we do not want them, or that we wish that they were not amongst us.
When we make decisions about which future persons will live – children to teenage parents, or children with disability, the types of objections cited above can be expressed. If we think that such objections are convincing, we should not try to prevent the birth of individuals with disability, nor children to teenage parents. If we think nevertheless that preventing teenage births is ethical, then this may give us some important insights into debates about disability.
Are there relevant differences which undermine the analogy? Disability is a feature of the potential child, whereas in preventing teenage pregnancies our focus is simply on a feature of the mother. (We would not think it desirable for her to become pregnant with any child, no matter its intrinsic features.) So this might be thought to explain why preventing the births of disabled individuals, but not teenage births, risks "sending the message" that the type of child in question is undesirable. What do you think?
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Reference and Preference
Ophelia Benson has got me thinking about the intersection of ethics and philosophy of language:
A face is shown... What makes it Muhammad's face? Nothing. The caption under the picture, that says 'depicting Muhammad preaching the Qur'ān in Mecca.' That's not much to go on. It could be a volley ball with eyes and a mouth drawn on it, that's just labeled 'Muhammad.' Yet apparently 180,000 people take its genuine faceness seriously enough to fret about its presence on Wikipedia.
When Muslims object to depictions of Muhammad, what exactly is the content of their desire? Suppose philosophers of language established that a causal theory of reference was correct, and historians somehow established that there was no causal chain of the appropriate sort connecting the prophet Muhammad to the picture in question. So it turns out that the face does not, as a matter of fact, depict Muhammad. Would that make the screaming masses happy? Do they really care about something so arcane as the reference facts? Or is it rather the appearance of obedience and acquiescence that they miss (and never mind that nobody's entirely sure just what it is they're acquiescing to)?
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Aid and Age
Here's a misleading headline for you: 'Treatment based on need not age':
"The BMA is against blanket bans based on age or other arbitrary factors. It is outrageous to suggest that just because someone is old that they would not have a right to be considered for treatment." ... Dr Calland's comments follow reports that in a survey of 870 doctors (carried out by Doctor magazine) one in three said that elderly patients should not be given free treatment if it were unlikely to do them good for long.
Dr. Calland's comments here seem kind of daft. Age is very obviously not an "arbitrary" factor. If resources are scarce, and we have to decide between investing in one patient to grant them an extra couple of years of quality life, or another patient who would gain several decades of quality life, isn't the latter clearly the greater need?
To generalize, I think it is much more important for a society to invest in their youth than in their elderly. This holds across sectors as well as within, e.g., the health sector. (Education should be a higher priority than hip replacements, etc.) It's unfortunate that such trade-offs need to be made, of course. Ideally, we should want everyone to be maximally well-off. But, failing that, we should do the most good that we can. And pretending that these trade-offs don't exist is not the way to achieve this.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
The Price of Meat
The NY Times has an interesting article on meat production. I was puzzled by the following, though:
Perhaps the best hope for change lies in consumers’ becoming aware of the true costs of industrial meat production. “When you look at environmental problems in the U.S.,” says Professor Eshel, “nearly all of them have their source in food production and in particular meat production. And factory farming is ‘optimal’ only as long as degrading waterways is free. If dumping this stuff becomes costly — even if it simply carries a non-zero price tag — the entire structure of food production will change dramatically.”
What does consumer awareness have to do with the price of
Friday, January 18, 2008
Widespread Discrimination
I previously endorsed the 'individualist' line that discrimination is bad insofar as (and for the reason that) it involves ignoring individuality and treating people as mere 'tokens of a type'. I didn't see any necessary reason to focus on historically oppressed groups here (except insofar as they are more commonly the targets of arbitrary discrimination); the same kind of wrongful disrespect is found in affirmative action, or in arbitrary discrimination based on eye colour or anything else.
But I've since come to realize that I was overlooking a key practical difference: the greater harm of widespread exclusion. Scanlon states the problem especially clearly in ch.2. of his manuscript on permissibility:
One thing that seems crucial to racial discrimination in particular is that the prejudicial judgments it involves are not just the idiosyncratic attitudes of a particular agent, but are widely shared in the society in question and commonly expressed and acted on in ways that have serious consequences. The petty likes and dislikes of other individuals may be something we just have to live with, but it is another matter when the view that members of a certain group are inferior, and not to be associated with, becomes widely held in a society, with the result that members of that group are denied access to important goods and opportunities. (p.34)
If someone is idiosyncratically prejudiced against some arbitrary characteristic of mine, that kind of sucks, but it isn't such a huge deal. I can always just go to someone else instead. But if the prejudice is widespread in society, each act of discrimination is increasingly harmful, because I have nowhere else to go. If one grocer won't serve me, that costs me a few minutes as I head to another store down the road. But if no grocers will serve me, I starve.
On this view, acts of discrimination are wrong "because of their consequences", and so this impermissibility does not depend on vicious intentions. Scanlon continues:
Once a practice of discrimination exists, decisions that deny important goods to members of the group discriminated against and do so without sufficient justification, are wrong even if they express no judgments of inferiority on the agent's part. They are wrong even if done simply out of laziness, or a desire to avoid offending others by going against established custom.
Note that this objection only applies to discrimination that is part of a system of "widespread denigration and exclusion". A curious upshot: in a largely non-racist society, the odd racist is perhaps not acting as terribly as we might imagine. (Unless there is a risk of their repugnant attitudes becoming more widely shared once again.)
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Handicapping Children
Is it permissible for deaf parents to intentionally bring it about (e.g. through genetic screening of embryos - but let's forget about the non-identity problem for now) that their children also be deaf? Laurence Thomas argues the negative:
Quite simply this is none other than a most heinous form of narcissism. The issue is not whether deaf people can have an enormously rich and meaningful life. Obviously they can. They can live a life so rich and meaningful that they are not mindful of their deafness. Indeed, it is impossible that a deaf person may succeed in ways that he would not have succeeded has he not been deaf... [But none of this changes] the fact that by and large hearing is an extraordinary asset. It is precisely because it is such an asset that we marvel at people like Geoff Herbert; for he flourished mightily without it. More accurately, he flourished mightily in spite of a considerable biological disadvantage. He has not shown that there is no difference between being deaf and having hearing. Not at all. Rather, what he has shown is that it is possible for a person to surmount that biological disadvantage with considerable majesty...
Just as there can be no excuse for treating the blind or the deaf as lesser human beings—as surely they are not, there can also be no excuse for turning this truth into what it is not, namely a license to ignore the reality of the difference between a body all of whose parts are functioning properly and one where this is not the case. To render a child deaf or blind at birth is to make it the case that a child is born with body parts that do not function properly. There is no amount of success on the part of any deaf or blind person that defeats this truth.
Does 'proper function' have any intrinsic normative significance, though? Suppose that, for whatever reason, deaf children could be expected to live better and more successful lives than children whose ears worked 'properly'. (Imagine some fantastical affliction that spreads via sound waves, and so affects only those who can hear. Or a world filled, inescapably, with the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard!) Deafness would then be an advantage, and presumably perfectly permissible to gift to one's children, no matter the subversion of biological proper functioning. Indeed, I'm tempted to say, of such a world, that it would be impermissible to intentionally bring one's children to be of able hearing!
It's tempting, then, to think that the morally relevant factor is simply the expected impact on the quality of the child's life (and the impact on others, if there are significant externalities). But here's a trouble case: what if the "disadvantage" is socially constructed, and only arises because others act unjustly? Imagine, for example, an interracial couple in a racist society. Because others in society are racist, dark-skinned children are at a considerable disadvantage. Does that mean it is impermissible for the couple to intentionally bring it about (through genetic screening, etc.) that their child be dark-skinned? (Maybe they think this will help their child 'belong' most fully to the black community, which the parents value so.)
Some deaf people want to claim that this is precisely their situation. Is it? If so, does it follow that it's permissible for them to have intentionally deaf children after all?
Saturday, December 15, 2007
"Protesting" Philosophy
Hmmm.
The work done on disability by most bioethicists breeds contempt for disabled people and fosters condescending, dismissive and patronizing responses to their testimonials and subjective accounts about their own lives. Imagine what it is like to be a disabled undergraduate or graduate student trying to endure a semester of lectures in which you are given the message that your life is not worth living and should be prevented, that you are deluding yourself about the quality of your own life and the extent of your misfortune. I often wonder why more feminist philosophers are not protesting the fact that this blatant bigotry and prejudice is being written and taught in their departments.
I really detest these sorts of politicized anti-academic complaints. For the sake of the truth, intellectuals must be free to pursue lines of inquiry that some may find offensive. We grant academic freedom because we recognize that this is important, and beneficial in the long run. So if you want to criticize academic work, you should appeal to truth-indicative considerations, i.e. evidence that the claim being made is false or groundless, not sanctimonious moralizing about how "offensive" it is to assert some claims (whether they be true or not).
In this case, surely nobody really denies that a disabled life may well be worth living. But it is an interesting philosophical question whether disabilities in future generations ought to be prevented (through genetic screening and the like). It's an important moral question, and one we should want to learn the truth about. Hence the need for free inquiry. Prima facie, I would think there's a reasonable case to be made for screening out disabilities. If that's true, it can hardly be "bigotry" or "prejudice" to say so. To bandy about such accusations just seems intellectually dishonest -- an attempt to use the moral high ground to bully one's interlocutors into submission without doing the hard work of actually arguing against their position. Most distasteful.
It's a strange mindset - and one which has no place in academia - that would have us respond to philosophical opponents with "protests" rather than counterarguments.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Blame vs. Forgiveness
Suppose we accept Scanlon's account of blame as a matter of responding to another's blameworthiness by downgrading your relationship with them. Forgiveness may then be understood as involving the same judgment of blameworthiness, but where one's response is to instead choose to restore the relationship. Is this always better? Scanlon ('Blame', p.49) follows Pamela Hieronymi in suggesting that forgiveness is only warranted "provided that the person who is to be forgiven acknowledges the wrongness of what she did and takes steps to reestablish her relations with the injured party on an acceptable footing." He continues:
The complete rejection of blame would amount to unconditional forgiveness... Assuming that one's relationship with a person has requirements that he or she can fall short of, the rejection of blame would either involve denying that the other person's actions can have meaning that impairs this relationship or denying that when this happens some adjustment in one's own attitudes is appropriate. The former involves an attitude of superiority toward the person in question (something like the attitude of a parent toward a very young child) and thus represents a failure to take that person seriously as a participant in the relationship. The latter involves adopting an attitude of inferiority that is demeaning to oneself.
Is this excessively stringent? What if one decides to "let it go" on instrumental grounds, say because the psychological or social costs of blame simply don't seem worth it? I assume Scanlon would be okay with this, since it need not involve either of the problematic denials mentioned above.
In class, Michael raised a really interesting comparison to Nagel's 'Concealment and Exposure' (see my past discussion), and especially the point that past conflicts may be tactfully ignored (i.e. not raised to common salience, even as both parties remain privately aware of it) for the sake of maintaining smooth social interactions in the present. But is this sort of superficial tact a reason not to genuinely blame, i.e. revise one's conception of the relationship, or simply not to publicly express one's blame?
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Blame and Disappointment
Scanlon suggests that to blame someone is to (negatively) revise one's relationship with that person due to judging that they are blameworthy, i.e. that "there is something about the person that impairs one's relationship with him or her" ('Blame', p.1). Given this close personal focus, Scanlon suggests that the positive correlate of blame is not praise, but gratitude. In class yesterday, Michael made the interesting suggestion that the negative correlate of gratitude, if that's what Scanlon wants to talk about, is more like disappointment than blame. In this post, I want to defend Scanlon's conception of blame, and clearly differentiate it from the broader category of disappointment.
First, note that we must distinguish the state of blame from censorious expressions of blame:
To modify one's expectations and intentions toward a person in the way I have described, in response to that person's deficient attitudes -- to conclude that one can no longer interact with that person as a friend -- is to blame that person in the sense I have in mind, whether or not one also feels resentful or indignant. One might just feel sad. (pp.14-15)
This can't be a sufficient condition as stated, for we may withdraw from another in response to their deficient attitudes without blaming them in any sense. Tristram suggests a nice contrast here between disrespect and low self-esteem. If a (supposed) friend is consistently disrespectful and inconsiderate, this is the sort of failing we consider blameworthy. But if another's low self-esteem makes them difficult or unpleasant to interact with, we may consider it a character flaw which justifies us in revising our attitudes towards them - it may reduce our desire to befriend them, say - but we wouldn't blame them for it. It is more like a case of brute difference in tastes or interests, a mere "drifting apart" that - although a response to "something about the person" - does not reflect any violation of the relationship on their part.
There was much discussion in class about the "reasonable expectations" that people may have of each other, and whether it is necessarily blameworthy to disappoint these. It seems clear that it is not, at least if your expectation is merely based upon general epistemic clues and not any kind of promise or other normative commitment on the part of the other person. But I don't think this is a problem for Scanlon's account; at least, I read him as being peculiarly concerned about the reasonable expectations that are internal to a relationship, deriving from its constitutive norms, and not just any old expectation that you might (however reasonably) have come by and hope not to have disappointed. Let me emphasize a key passage from p.14:
[T]he way in which a friendship can end when the parties drift apart [does not involve any] violation of the standards of friendship, and this is what differentiates [it] from the kind of impairment I am concerned with. Impairment of that kind occurs when one party, while standing in the relevant relation to another person, holds attitudes toward that person that are ruled out by the standards of that relationship, thus making it appropriate for the other party to have attitudes other than those that the relationship usually involves.
The answer to Tristram's objection, then, is that disrespect is a violation of the internal standards of friendship, whereas low self-esteem is not. The latter is still a flaw, to be sure, and one that may have the effect of impairing your relationship in some sense, but only in an 'external' or instrumental kind of way. It is not intrinsically antithetical to the norms of friendship in the way that disrespect is. This difference explains why the one flaw, but not the other, warrants the friend's blame. Both, though, may be disappointments.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Less Sensitivity, please
Ophelia Benson offers some apt remarks on hypersensitivity:
'As a Christian I am offended' - there's one of the worst, most repellent formulas in the discourse of complaint we have today - but boy is it popular. Variations of it were all over Nova's 'Judgment Day': one stalwart citizen of Dover after another talking about being offended. I think that was the first thing the awful Bill Buckingham said - 'I am personally offended by evolution because the Bible etc etc etc' - the 'personally' was a nice annoying touch. So you're 'personally' offended by reality, so what! The world doesn't revolve around you, so suck it up...
['Sensitivity' is] another one - it's like the mirror-image of 'offended.' It's what you're supposed to run to the closet and fetch when someone is offended - sensitivity. They're a co-dependent couple, those two words... But all the same, there is something very stomach-turning about the idea that a university is supposed to deploy 'sensitivity' about the organ of offendedness in godbothering students when planning its lectures on academic subjects.
It's so depressing how arbitrary subjective responses are presented in public discourse as though they were legitimate reasons ('Shut up! Shut up! You're making me feel bad! So do as I say!'). We've developed a disastrous social norm according to which anyone can win instant brownie points by claiming to be a "victim" -- and doubly so if their claim is made qua membership in some "community" ('As an X, I'm offended...'). Maybe the thought is that all communities are equal, so if one is feeling a bit hard done by, this must reflect some injustice, and certainly not any shortcoming on their part.
There's no more vicious character trait, we're taught, than being insufficiently "sensitive" to others' feelings. Manipulative liars are hunky dory - nobody cares about intellectual honesty - but the moment you make someone feel bad, social disapproval is sure to follow. Maybe this is legitimate when it comes to personal interactions: as private individuals, we should of course be considerate of others. But the public sphere should not be governed by the same norms.
It's vital for the progress of civilization that there be a space for open debate and unhindered intellectual inquiry into controversial issues. People won't always like what they hear, but that's an inevitable consequence of seeking the truth. A truth-seeking society cannot allow public discourse to be derailed by merely subjective complaints. Feeling offended is not a public reason that has any place in the discourse. It's a purely private fact about yourself (or your faction, if you're angling for the "community" bonus points) that has no claim on society at large.
The underlying problem, I suspect, is that our public culture has become so infected with subjectivist assumptions that people don't realize that there's a difference between desires and reasons. Sentiments are taken as given; no-one ever stops to question whether their reactive attitudes are warranted. Any kind of negative emotion is not just evidence, but constitutive, of suffering injustice. You're offended, therefore they're in the wrong. It's fucked up.
Social norms exert great influence over public behaviour. In recent times, they've been pressing us to become more sensitive to others' arbitrary feelings (and to cultivate our own feelings of victimhood). One gains instant sympathy by playing the victim, and others risk social censure if they don't play along. This is daft. A more sensible society would privilege the truth, placing great weight on intellectual honesty and warranted - rationally defensible - emotions. We have it backwards: unreasoned emotional appeals should lead us to roll our eyes, not roll over -- such coddling simply encourages the blithering idiots!
Of course, if it can be established that you've truly done bad, then that must be taken seriously. But merely making someone feel bad is insufficient. That's a fact about them, not you. If the feeling is unwarranted, then it's their problem, not yours. The quality of public discourse would, like, double overnight if everyone would just remember this. A just society seeks to give each their due -- a matter that calls for measured assessment, not pandering to whingers and whiners.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Critical Values
It is sometimes assumed, at least in popular discourse, that if different groups have different ways of doing things, they must all be equally good ("valid"). Consequently, if some way of doing things can be associated with one group in particular -- if it's categorizable as "Western", say, or "male" -- then there is no reason for anybody else to care about it. Each community has its own values and practices, immune from criticism or improvement. The only universal principle is that one must not judge others.
This is silly, though of course there are reasonable sentiments in the vicinity. One should not pre-judge others. (But that needn't disqualify considered judgment.) A practice should not be dismissed because it is non-Western, or whatever. That is no reason. (But that doesn't preclude there being other, legitimate reasons to criticize a practice that happens to be common among some minority group.) We should not force our views on others. (But such tolerance is perfectly consistent with vocal, reasoned disagreement / criticism.)
Note that it is not a priori that everyone is living equally well. It's entirely possible that some ways of life are better -- more conducive to human flourishing, "meaningfulness", and other important values -- than others. So it's worth trying to discern which are which. (Though of course we must go about this with the humility appropriate to fallible agents seeking facts that lie beyond our mere subjective opinions. And, epistemic virtues aside, there's no need to be a jerk about it.) As with anything else, the way to pursue this inquiry is through rational thought, and reasoned discussions with those who believe differently from us.
It is possible for us to learn from one other, if we are not afraid to voice our disagreements and discuss them reasonably. It would be a better world, I think, if this was more widely accepted. But if you disagree, do feel free to criticize and tell me why.
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Aggregate Impacts Matter
No Right Turn writes:
Demographers at Waikato University's Population Studies Centre say that unless New Zealanders start breeding more, New Zealand's fertility rate will slip below replacement level. And? I don't actually see why this would be a Bad Thing. Or why a growing population would be a Good Thing. Or indeed, why this should be any concern of government (or indeed anyone) at all.
Our fertility rate is an aggregate of people's individual reproductive choices. And those choices are fundamentally personal and the sole domain of the individuals concerned. It is no business of government how many kids I or anyone else has. It is no business of government whether any of us breed or not. Government simply has no legitimate interest in what goes on in our bedrooms, or in whether those activities result in children or not. It is simply None of Their Fucking Business.
That can't be right. It would clearly be a bad thing if the entire human race died out, for example. It's logically possible that the aggregate impact of individually permissible personal choices would have disastrous consequences for the world at large. If so, we have a legitimate interest in taking collective action to avert disaster or create a better world, and that's what politics is for. We all might reasonably agree to structure the general institutions of society so as to incentivize socially beneficial choices, e.g. to replenish the dwindling ranks of humanity. This can't plausibly be denied in principle.
In practice, of course, there are plenty of grounds for objection. For one, world population does not appear to be excessively low. So if some nations want to increase their local population, they should allow more immigration. (Cf. adoption.) And I assume NRT is worried about setting a bad precedent or 'slippery slope' for social conservatives to start meddling in personal lives in a more intrusive way. My point is just that as a matter of principle, our liberal individualism should not be so extreme as NRT's above. It's not really true that state interest in the individual sphere is absolutely illegitimate. Despite NRT's fears, we can draw a principled distinction between, say, saving the human race and persecuting gays. (Really.) The hard work is discerning the precise borderline. The absolutist can avoid this hard work, but only at the cost of being, well, you know, wrong.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Sex Divisions in Sports
Is there a principled reason why men and women compete separately in sports? Presumably it allows women to compete who wouldn't stand a chance otherwise. But there are many groups of people who don't stand a chance against the world's top athletes. We don't have a separate Olympic division to accommodate non-African sprinters, for example, in addition to non-male ones. So why is sex the relevant way to categorize people here?
(Disclaimer: I really don't know a thing about group differences in athletic performance, and don't care enough to fact-check. This post is based entirely on the stereotypes I've heard. If untrue, amend as appropriate. Or just imagine a possible world which is as described, and consider how our ethical principles would apply in such a case.)
Overweight people would be an even more obviously disadvantaged group, though perhaps the thought is that they could have become world-class athletes if they just tried hard enough, whereas it's just biologically impossible for women to match the most athletic men. That's surely false, though: I'm sure plenty of men are also such that their genetic makeup precludes their ever becoming the world's top athlete. But perhaps the lack of a Y-chromosome is just especially easy to detect. As genetic testing becomes easier, can we expect to see more divisions to accommodate other unathletic genetic groups? What about unchosen environmental impacts, e.g. poor childhood nutrition?
So it seems it isn't fairness/handicap considerations that are in play here after all. Women are not uniquely disadvantaged, so maybe the thought is just that they are unique, simpliciter -- i.e. that men are women are different kinds of beings, in some deep metaphysical sense. An obese white man may be practically incapable of attaining the ideal form of a (male) sprinter, but it is a norm that applies to him nonetheless, in virtue of the kind of being that he is. There is no corresponding failure, it might be thought, on the part of a female Olympic athlete. She has achieved peak fitness as it applies to the kind of being that she is, namely a female. That some men are faster yet is no more relevant to assessing her than is the greater speed of a cheetah.
I suspect this is the sort of picture that underlies our common practices, though the metaphysics seems awfully dubious. Feminists, especially, will be rightly suspicious of essentializing sex differences in such a way. But it does seem to be a more attractive view of elite sport, at least: the point is not just to have equally handicapped people compete for competition's sake. Rather, the competitors should exemplify the peak of athletic excellence, as it applies to the kind(s) of beings that we are (humans, I should think!).
Then again, perhaps there is a more pragmatic story to be told. Elite sports serve an aspiration function, and regardless of the metaphysical facts it's surely true that sex/gender plays a large role in the subjective self-conception of many people. For pragmatic purposes, it's good to have sporting divisions to accommodate the types of beings that we take ourselves to be. So for this reason, it's good to accommodate female athletes, given our contingent cultural circumstances, even though in the ideal post-feminist world there would be no point since solidarity and group identification would not break down along sexed lines.
Any other suggestions?
Monday, September 24, 2007
Against Dressing Up
Fashionable or fancy appearance has no intrinsic value. The only value is to make yourself look comparatively better than others. If everyone dressed up, no-one would be any better off than if all had stuck to casual attire. In fact, everyone would be worse off, because less comfortable, not to mention the wasted time and effort. It's a mere rat race, so those who put effort into their appearance impose externalities on those who don't (by making them look worse). That's obviously bad, and there is no general benefit to justify imposing this costly transfer of status. So, we may conclude, it is immoral to 'dress up', follow fashion, put much effort into your appearance, etc.
N.B. This complaint does not extend to basic hygiene, since that is a non-comparative value: a world full of smelly people really is worse, in a way that a world of unkempt people is not.
Possible objections: I see two ways one might rebut the claim of 'no general benefit' here:
1. Insist that mere appearance is a non-comparative value after all. (Apparently cosmetic surgery gives lasting satisfaction, unlike most luxury purchases which people soon adjust to. This at least suggests it isn't comparison to one's recently past self that one values here. But it may still be the comparison to other people.) I remain skeptical.
2. Appeal to status pluralism. If some people care more about appearances than others, then maybe those who care can obtain great subjective benefits while the rest of us don't much care about the imposed "cost" of looking worse in comparison. I'm sympathetic to this line of thought -- the only flaw is that it ignores the run-on consequences: other people think appearances matter even if we don't, and so may treat us worse, and we certainly care about that.
Absent any more convincing objections, we seem led to the conclusion that caring for appearances is indeed a mere 'rat race', or Prisoner's Dilemma, such that deliberators in the Original Position (behind the veil of ignorance) would make a collective agreement not to start down that track. Is there anything to stop me drawing the convenient conclusion that dressing up is not just tiresome, but unjust?
