Force-Feeding and Selective Paternalism

Judge Allows Military to Force-Feed Guantánamo Detainee. The judge insists that "The court simply cannot let Mr. Dhiab die."  This despite the fact that Dhiab has autonomously (and, in the circumstances, I would think entirely rationally) chosen to go on a hunger strike, and obviously does not consent to be violently force-fed by his captors.

This naturally raises the question: Does the U.S. legal system no longer recognize an individual's right to refuse invasive medical treatment? Or is there simply an exception for when their death would be embarrassing to the administration?  After all, there are surely much clearer and stronger reasons for paternalistic intervention in ordinary cases of, e.g., patients refusing life-saving blood transfusions on religious grounds.  Or is a blood transfusion more invasive than violently shoving a feeding tube up a captive's nose and down his throat? Perhaps it's thought that the captive has "more to lose" -- his life of confinement without trial in this famous military resort being so much more desirable than the future that your average Jehovah's Witness could ever hope for? One wonders.

Fittingness and Normativity

My old post on 'Reasons-Talk and Fitting Attitudes' [along with my PQ paper] sets out the basic case for taking fittingness (or fitting reasons, in contrast to either value or value-based reasons) as our sole normative primitive.  My follow-up post on  state-given "reasons" explains how the fittingness view accommodates the datum that it's more important to (say) prevent the world from exploding than it is to possess fitting attitudes.  This importance claim is itself a first-order normative claim that can be understood in terms of fitting attitudes: it's appropriate to prefer, and to care more about, saving the world over having true beliefs (say).

So that addresses one kind of worry that one might have about the normative force of fittingness claims. However, Helen recently drew my attention to another interesting worry in this vein.  One might worry that fittingness relations themselves are too "thin", "weak", or lacking in normative "substance" or force.  That's fine for the normativity of beliefs and other attitudes, since getting those "right" isn't all that big a deal.  But to account for the sheer atrociousness of gratuitous torture, say, using the same kind of metaphysical relation that accounts for the inappropriateness of believing grass to be purple, just seems awfully weak and unsatisfying.

Non-Normative Epistemology?

I've previously cited epistemic nihilism as an example of an intellectual black hole -- a view that rational agents must reject in order to preserve their capacity for rationality.  But the normative nihilist might seek to avoid this implication by offering up a non-normative account of rationality (and epistemology more broadly). One could just stipulate a certain extensional account of "rationality" -- perhaps consisting in conformity to norms of parsimony, logical validity, certain inductive/abductive norms, etc. -- without requiring these norms to be backed by irreducibly normative properties, or to give rise to categorical "oughts".  This modest nihilist says, in effect, "Here are my recommendations if you wish to join me in the game of truth-seeking.  But if truth is not your goal, I have no grounds on which to criticize you."

My main concern about this move is that it isn't clear how the nihilist can consistently regard her own preferred epistemic norms as more truth-conducive than any others (at least so far as non-deductive norms are concerned). I've previously noted that anti-skepticism requires us to regard some possible worlds as (a priori) objectively more likely than others, and that to explain rational induction (e.g. the projectability of "green" but not "grue") requires positing objective structure (something empiricist-inclined nihilists may also regard as unacceptably mysterious or metaphysically "queer"). If all possible epistemic norms are metaphysically on a par, as the epistemic nihilist seems committed to, then why regard any particular set of norms as more likely to lead to truth than any other?

Moving to York (UK)

Happily, Helen and I will be joining the wonderful philosophy department at the University of York, starting in September. We're really looking forward to being part of such a large and active research community--and the department's strengths in both philosophy of mind and ethics make it an especially good fit for the two of us.  (The city itself is none too shabby, either!)

Over the summer, we will both be presenting at the AAP conference in Canberra, and then Helen will be presenting at the Barnard-Columbia Perception Workshop in New York.  So, busy times ahead, but they should prove philosophically rewarding!