Limits of Governance

Jason Kuznicki writes of Nozick:

"What persons may and may not do to one another limits what they may do through the apparatus of a state, or to do to establish such an apparatus."

Perfect. It's succinct, crystal-clear, and altogether principled. Indeed, it's virtually the whole of libertarianism in a single sentence--so much so that I doubt if many non-libertarians would ever agree with it. To my non-libertarian readers: Do you accept Nozick's claim? Or do you find that agents of the state may do more than ordinary individuals acting in the state of nature?

It isn't clear to me what Nozick is claiming here. Well, presumably he begins with a notion of natural rights, understood as side-constraints on the actions permissible for an individual, and then claims that the state must likewise respect these rights. But this argument doesn't even get off the ground for those of us who share Bentham's suspicion that natural rights are "nonsense on stilts".

So let us instead take a broader interpretation, where we are simply concerned with what is morally permissible (as determined by the true moral theory: some form of consequentialism). His claim no longer makes much sense. It is either trivially true, or patently false. For once we reject absolutism, the question of "what persons may and may not do to one another" will be influenced by situational factors (e.g. what the consequences of performing a particular action would be). And if one is acting through the apparatus of the state, then one is in a different situation than one would be in the state of nature.

Now, this factor will influence what it is morally permissible for the person in that situation to do. The "all things considered" conclusion yielded by our moral theory will take this factor into account. On this interpretation, Nozick's claim is trivially true: of course what government agents may do is going to be limited by what they may do. It's tautological.

Alternatively, the claim might be that what individuals may do in different situations limits what they may do in this situation. And this claim, if we reject absolutism, is quite obviously false. The right thing to do will depend, in part, on your situation and circumstances. You cannot say in advance that the limits appropriate in some situation can generalize to all others. That's absolutism, which - as has already been said - we reject.

So, speaking as one of Jason's "non-libertarian readers", my reply is that Nozick's claim doesn't make any sense once divorced from his absolutist libertarian framework. Nor does it make sense to ask whether we non-absolutists "accept" it. I'd accept the trivially-true reading, of course, and reject the trivially-false one. But either way, it's trivial.

P.S. I use the term "absolutism" to refer to the view that moral facts are determined by act types and are not sensitive to situational factors such as what the consequences of a particular act would be. For example, Kant was an absolutist, holding that lying was always wrong, no matter the circumstances. Constraining Rights theorists are absolutists in that they hold that violating a right is always wrong, no matter the circumstances. The opposite of absolutism is not "relativism", but simply taking circumstances into account, as in consequentialism. The utilitarian, for example, can hold that a particular action is "objectively wrong", though it might have been right in different circumstances, if that would have maximized happiness or human well-being.

Moral Goals vs. Side-Constraints

On the typical libertarian view, rights act as side-constraints on what a person may do. If an option open to you would involve violating someone's rights, then you should simply exclude that option from consideration. Rights serve to limit what is morally permissible. One might call this the 'deontological' interpretation of rights. As my name hints, there is an alternative, 'consequentialist', interpretation, according to which rights function as goals rather than constraints. The idea would be to try to minimize violations of people's rights. On this view, rights serve to inform rather than limit our moral decisions: they can tell us what to do, rather than merely what not to do. Further, it avoids absolutism: it might be moral to violate one person's rights in order to protect the rights of many other people.

I don't really understand why anyone would adopt the side-constraints view. It doesn't make sense to me. Perhaps the idea is grounded in the notion that some things (e.g. homicide) are really really bad and so ought not to be done (cf. Nozick). But then, as Cohen asks, "if such sacrifice and violation are so horrendous, why should we not be concerned to minimize their occurrence?"

The agent-relativity of deontological moralities leaves them at risk of being collectively self-defeating, as Derek Parfit has shown. According to such a morality M, our moral ("M-given") aims will vary from person to person. Perhaps each individual has an obligation to look after their family, and avoid violating others' rights themselves. We need not be so concerned about other people's families, or avoiding rights-violations committed by other people. This gives rise to a "prisoner's dilemma", whereby each of two people must independently decide between (1) meeting some of their own M-given aims; or (2) enabling more of the other person's M-given aims to be met.

(Perhaps both agents are currently on track to violate lots of rights. However, each can choose either to enable themselves to avoid some violations, or else enable the other to avoid even more violations.)

The agent-relative morality M tells us to choose option #1. But if everyone chose thusly, their M-given aims would be worse achieved than if everybody had instead chosen #2. (Each individual commits more rights-violations than they otherwise would have.) M is thus collectively self-defeating: if everyone follows it successfully, they each do worse, even by its own standards. And, as Parfit notes, "If there is any assumption on which it is clearest that a moral theory should not be self-defeating, it is the assumption that it is universally followed"!

I suppose the deontologist would respond that we have fundamentally misunderstood their morality. They do not have the agent-relative aim to minimize their own rights-violations. They do not understand rights as a sort of "goal" at all. Rather, as previously mentioned, they serve as side-constraints. If they further deny that we should have the moral aim of meeting these constraints, then they could dodge the above argument by denying that we have any "M-given aims" at all. Such talk of "aims" serves to illicitly smuggle in consequentialist premises which the deontologist would not accept. Or so one might argue. (I'm not entirely sure that it makes sense to deny that we have moral aims. It sounds very odd to me, at least.)

Perhaps, at the end of the day, all we can do is appeal to brute intuitions. It's just obvious that rights are not absolute. If the universe would be destroyed unless we sacrificed someone, isn't it quite clear that we ought to perform the sacrifice? Their death would be tragic, of course. But the death of billions would be even more tragic.

Understanding rights as side-constraints rather than goals is another case of prizing the merely formal over what has genuine substantive worth. Indeed, it seems to me that the very notion of rights is somewhat fetishistic. They lead one to value the (non-)performance of actions above actual human welfare. But the important aspect of a murder is the fact that a person died, not that someone else performed a rights-violating action. The moral status of an action does not alter its value, independently of facts about human welfare. It's the latter that really matter. It's not intrinsically worse to be killed by a person than by "natural causes". Either way, you've been harmed, and that's the tragedy.

How To Get Read

Matt Carter has some valuable* advice for all the ambitious young bloggers out there. He's got a scientific proof, lower case roman variables, and everything**. Go, read, and learn how to get read.***, ****

* (Don't sue! I never said what sort of value it has, did I.)
** (may contain peanut traces.)
*** (I don't like how those words are spelt the same. The latter should be 'red', or else the former 'reed' or maybe 'reid'. But they all look wrong! *sigh* Stupid English.)
**** (I can't stop the footnotes!***** Damn you, Dr Pretorius, for leading me unto temptation...)
***** (Okay, I'm gonna stop now.)

"Idiotic" beliefs

What does it mean to judge a belief as "idiotic"? Surely not that every believer is ipso facto an idiot. That would be far too strong. Perhaps it means that they are idiots in the respect that they hold that belief (allowing that this may be outweighed by insight or intelligence in other respects). Or perhaps it's just a general disparagement of the belief in question, and doesn't really have any clear meaning (or implications about believers) at all?

Take as an example Young-Earth Creationism, or perhaps astrology. (If you believe in one of these, then pick the other. I'm hoping that nobody believes both!) These strike me as prime examples of idiotic beliefs. Does it imply anything about the people who believe them? Should we say that anybody who believes in astrology is, as a person, idiotic in that respect? (I guess I'm inclined towards an affirmative answer, but I'd like to hear what others think.)

Love The Sinner

Don't take this the wrong way, but there are some interesting formal similarities between atheists and Christians, which make our mutual incomprehension all the more puzzling. For example, amidst the Kleiman kerfuffle, P.Z. Myers remarked:

One thing that really annoys me is the conflation of religion with religious people. It's a common and dishonest defense of religion to claim that any criticism of dogma and superstition is an attack on 90% of the people on the planet — it's like ducking and hiding behind 5.5 billion people and making the argument from authority and the argument from popularity all at once.

Now, I entirely agree with P.Z. on this point. But it's interesting to note the (formal) parallel with that Christian favourite: "love the sinner, hate the sin." For us militant atheists, it becomes something more like "love the religious, hate the religion." This parallel raises some interesting challenges for both sides.

Firstly, it makes one wonder why Christians are so prone to the conflation. If the sinner/sin distinction is so important and familiar to them, why do they have so much trouble recognizing it when they're on the receiving end? Very puzzling.

As for atheists, well, it really should give us pause. We can't stand that "love the sinner" nonsense -- we typically think it's an insincere excuse from homophobes who don't want to admit their bigotry. Or, even if sincere, how can you genuinely respect (let alone "love") a person when you reject a central aspect of their "personal identity" (in the pop-psychological, not philosophical, sense)?

The difficulty here is that for some people, their religion is as centrally important in their lives as their sexuality. So if we hold that disrespecting homosexuality means disrespecting gay people, then aren't we also committed to holding that disrespecting Christianity means disrespecting Christians? I can't see any relevant formal difference that would allow me to deny this implication. But note that this applies not just to Christianity, but any beliefs that an individual cares deeply about. Astrology and other "new age" rubbish springs to mind - as do political ideologies like communism, Nazism, etc.

This presents us with four options. (1) We could try to have more respect for all the idiotic and pernicious belief systems in the world. I'm not too tempted by this one, you can probably tell. (2) We could deny that anyone is being disrespected after all. This would force us to respond more favourably towards (sincere) usages of the "love the sinner" slogan. (3) We could judge that the "disrespect" involved, though real, is justified (in both cases) by its role in public dialogue about values. This has similar practical implications to #2 above. (4) We could deny the parallel on substantive (rather than formal) grounds. That is, looking at the actual content of the claims being made, it happens that our position is justified and theirs isn't.

So... which is the best option?

Philosophers of Qualia

Enwe asks: "Imagine there is a PhD student who will write a dissertation about qualia and asks you, as his supervisor, what he should read. What would you suggest?" She mentions Chalmers, Dennett, and Dretske, to begin with. Note that Enwe has a friend about to begin a dissertation on just this topic, so it would be very helpful if you could head on over and add any further suggestions.

Individual Human Life

Maverick Philosopher writes:

When does an individual human life begin? The answer to this question is easy: at conception. For if an individual human life begins at some time t after conception, then what existed before t would have to be either not an individual or not human or not alive. And the absurdity of that ought to be self-evident.

But note that the existence of identical twins demonstrates that an individual human life can begin after conception. In such cases, two human individuals can be traced back to a single zygote. As such, those two individuals cannot be numerically identical to the zygote, or else - by the transitivity of identity - they would be numerically identical to each other, which they are not. (They are two individuals, not just one.) We must conclude that at least one of the twins (or, less arbitrarily, both of them) began their "individual human life" at a point in time after the zygote/embryo split in two, and thus after conception.

It technically does not follow that what existed before was "either not an individual or not human or not alive". Perhaps what existed before was a different individual human life. (Cf. Parfit's dividing person thought experiment.)

But, technicalities aside, I take it that BV means to be responding to someone who denies that the zygote is an "individual human life". From this claim, it does trivially follow that the zygote must be "either not an individual or not human or not alive". I'm not sure why this is self-evidently absurd, however. It depends upon what we mean by "human". As used in this context, someone might speak of "human beings" in a sense that goes beyond the mere biological classification of an organism that contains the appropriate genetic material.

I don't think it's absurd to deny that zygotes are human beings. One might see the zygote's relation to a human being as similar to that of a caterpillar to a butterfly. The one develops into the other, but we can still recognize that they are distinct entities. (Even if they share a single revolution around the circle of life, their distinct forms might justify treating the different parts of the life-cycle as a different kind of entity.) For example, here's a simple argument for the zygote/human-being distinction:

1. An essential feature of a human being is that it has a brain.
2. A zygote does not have a brain.
3. Therefore, a zygote is not a human being.

Of course, none of this addresses the "real question", which BV recognizes is the question of when an individual becomes a person in the morally-relevant sense. Nevertheless, examining and (hopefully) clarifying even minor questions can be an enjoyable and worthwhile activity, as I'm sure BV would agree.

P.S. See also Infanticide & Abortion and Abortion's Common Ground.

The Ethics of Gratuitous Amputation

Suppose that a person wants one of his perfectly well-functioning limbs to be amputated, for no (other, instrumental) reason. He just has an intrinsic, inexplicable desire to be rid of it. Should surgeons accede to the request? That's the question raised in this fascinating article:

[Australian philosophers] Neil Levy and Tim Bayne argue that patients obsessed with having a limb amputated should be able to have it safely removed by a surgeon, as long as they are deemed sane.

"As long as no other effective treatment for their disorder is available, surgeons ought to be allowed to accede to their requests," the pair wrote in the Journal of Applied Philosophy.

Dr Levy, of the University of Melbourne's Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, said some patients suffered so severely from the rare condition - known as Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) - they tried to remove the limb themselves.

"There's cases of people using chainsaws or shotguns and there's been deaths, not surprisingly," Dr Levy said in an interview.
...
To reinforce their case, Dr Levy and Dr Bayne, of Macquarie University's philosophy department, relate the example of a Scottish surgeon's patient who said his life had been transformed for the better by his amputation.

Dr Levy said he believed such operations were less of a problem than cosmetic surgery like breast enlargement.

"Cosmetic surgery reinforces norms of appearance that are of themselves, undesirable - the idea that women have to be sexually attractive and if they're not, they're not valuable," he said. "Amputation surgery flies in the face of our norms of attractiveness. I think it's less problematic."

Well, it is less problematic in that sense, for sure. But it is more problematic in the sense that it involves deliberately disabling a person. It will make them less able to perform various actions. And that is, in general, exactly the opposite of what we ought to be aiming at. On the other hand, enabling people has predominantly instrumental value, in that it helps them achieve what they want out of life. So if what someone really, truly, wants is to lose their arm, then perhaps we ought to help them achieve that end. This conclusion is supported by the libertarian values of self-ownership and neutralism, but I wonder if the substantive autonomist might see it as self-undermining in the same way that selling oneself into slavery would be (though perhaps not quite so bad).

I think what it comes down to is how much they care about the amputation, as compared to how serious a (detrimental) impact it would have on their life. If the person does not have an accurate understanding of how severely the loss of their limb would impair them, then we have good paternalistic grounds to deny their request. But if they have made an informed decision, concluding that getting rid of the unwanted limb is more important to them, then I think we have to support that.

There are also good utilitarian reasons to allow the procedure to be done safely, as with abortion, if the alternative is that many would attempt it themselves in an unsafe environment (cf. Levy's mention of "chainsaws"). If this is reinforced with testimony from past amputees who are happy with their choice, then all the better, I suppose.

The requirement of "sanity" is a tricky one. One is tempted to think that anybody who wants to amputate a perfectly good limb is, ipso facto, irrational. "But the people I'm talking about are rational people, they're not insane in any way. They've just got this one, very strange, belief." (Quote from Dr. Levy.)

The article also quotes Dr Quinn, the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons' executive director of surgical affairs, as suggesting that "to remove a normal limb because somebody thinks it would be a good thing is unethical and we wouldn't do it." But he doesn't give any reason why it's unethical. Perhaps that was due to space constraints, I don't know. But one would hope that those who get to decide such matters have something more than blind prejudice to support their position.

Update: A better, more thorough, article on the issue is here. It offers a bit more by way of explaining the condition:

Past research has suggested this rare condition may be because they believe their body part is diseased or ugly, because the notion of becoming an amputee sexually excites them, or because of a mismatch between their body and their image of it... Levy says it's unclear exactly what causes BIID, although it may be the result of a cortical misalignment between how the brain "sees" the limb and what's really there. He says in the case of so-called "phantom limbs", people who lose a limb may experience the sensation that it's still there. This is because the way the limb is represented in the brain hasn't caught up with the physical change. But amputee wannabes may have the limb but not the cortical representation.

Conservatives Wanted

My experimental meme seems to be spreading nicely -- many thanks to all who have joined in. (It has even found its way to France!) I'm especially fortunate in that cognitive scientist Chris of Mixing Memory has kindly volunteered to keep track of the data and analyse the results. (Apparently there are already some interesting correlations beginning to show up, but I won't say more until more data is in.) Anyway, Chris wrote to me with two suggestions:

First, you might try advertising it among women bloggers, or finding a way to encourage women bloggers to do the meme. So far, only 32% of the respondents are female. Second, you might want to try to advertise it in places that more conservative/right wing bloggers will notice it. So far, the average left/right score is -4.41 (the average libertarian/authoritarian is also far to the libertarian side, at -5.77), with a standard deviation small enough to mean that almost all of the area under the curve is in the negative end (i.e., the left end). Conservatives just haven't picked up the meme. It makes correlating the two surveys difficult, because the range of the data is so restricted.

The gender imbalance is being worked on - Cleis of Sappho's Breathing has been extremely helpful, taking the experiment herself and tagging a handful of other female bloggers to continue it.

But we really do need more conservatives (especially female conservatives, as I expect Cleis' bunch are all liberal feminists) and right-wingers generally. If you are a right-wing blogger, please do consider taking the surveys, and nominating some other right-wingers to pick up the meme from you. If you're not right-wing yourself, but you know some bloggers who are, you might consider contacting them and encouraging them to take part. (You can click the envelope icon below to very easily "email this post" to someone appropriate.)

Thanks again to everyone who has chipped in!

Curious

There was sudden burst of Google searches for the Philosophers' Carnival about 4 or 5 hours ago. Does anybody know why? (Was it mentioned in passing on some radio station or something?)
Update: Apparently it was mentioned on CNN!