October 3, 2005
Informed Consent and the Ick Factor
Wired News has a fascinating article on face transplants. It contains an interesting statement. Some doctors have suggested that the novelty of the surgery and the lack of certainty on what risks even are make informed consent impossible. I commented on Jonathan Ichikawa's post about this, pointing this out, wondering what they might have meant by that, and his response struck me as equally unusual. He thinks this is an attempt to make a philosophical argument out of an ick factor. Is that really what's going on? What does this statement about informed consent amount to? I have some thoughts, but I really wanted to see what people think about this without my suggesting anything.
Update: Comments are close. If you'd like to comment, do so on this post.
Posted by Jeremy at 8:33 PM | Comments (3)
May 27, 2005
Parental Love and Kantian Duties
In my last post, I argued that parental love is not really transparent according to Laurence Thomas' account of transparent love, though his more ultimate claim that transparency was supposed to give him is still correct. What got me initially looking into this is an excerpt he's posted from his forthcoming book The Family and the Political Self [Amazon link here for later on when it does have any informative content]. He gives transparent parental love as a counterexample to Kant's claim that your action X is morally significant only if you do X for the sake of duty rather than merely in accordance with duty. I disagree.
The argument is fairly straightforward, and much of it is familiar to anyone who knows of Michael Stocker's famous critique of Kant. The Stocker thesis is that Kant expects us to engage in every activity for the sake of mere duty, as if it's mere drudgery that we don't have any emotional or relational reason for doing. I shouldn't visit a friend in the hospital because I care for that friend. I should do it merely out of duty. When you put it that way, Kant sounds like an unfeeling jerk who thinks it's better to engage in mere action without the right sorts of motivation. I agreed with this critique until Bonnie Kent convinced me that the objection radically misunderstands Kant's claim. He isn't saying that we shouldn't go to the hospital to see loved ones because we love them but rather should do it out of duty robbed of emotional content. He's saying that doing so merely because of an emotional response is not acting in any morally commendable way. There's nothing morally special about going to the hospital when you want to be there anyway, because you want to be with your loved one. What's morally commendable is when you do it even in the cases when you aren't emotionally moved to do it. Kant isn't poo-pooing acting out of emotion. He's simply saying those aren't morally distinctive reasons. They may even be good actions, but they're not praiseworthy for moral reasons. Now Laurence comes in at this point in my reflections on Kant with this post taken from an excerpt of his forthcoming book manuscript. He argues for the Stocker point from the example of parental love. If I have parental love of the sort Laurence calls transparent (setting aside my criticism of that claim), then my love doesn't seem to be out of duty. It seems to be the sort of thing Kant wouldn't call a moral reason. Laurence then says that this deeply challenges Kantian morality, but I'm not sure how. Kant could say two things in response. First, he could say that this kind of love is simply not moral. That's not the sort of thing it is. This is in fact what Laurence seems to end up saying. He says morality is not person-specific but is rather impartial, whereas parental love is rightly person-specific. If Laurence is right, then this isn't a problem for Kant. Parental love of this sort is not moral, which is perfectly consistent with saying that it's not moral because it's not done for the sake of duty. It's not a counterexample to Kant's claim at all. It would need to be both moral and not done for the sake of duty to be a suitable counterexample. I think Laurence should agree with Bonnie Kent on this one. What's more is that Laurence has already said that parental love is rightly person-specific. This means that there is a moral reason for its being person-specific. So even though the parental love isn't itself the sort of thing Laurence calls moral, he wants to say that there are moral considerations that affect whether and how we should have this sort of love. This leads to the second claim I think Kant can make. He can say there's a moral reason for having this sort of parental love, and we should pursue that because it's the right thing to do. In normal moral development, we should seek to develop character traits that will lead us to have the kind of parental love Laurence says is transparent. I have questioned whether it's transparent, but there is indeed something that separates it from, e.g., romantic love. I would go so far as to say that we have a moral obligation to seek to develop the sort of character traits that will leave us psychologically positioned to love our children in such a way. This is something we ought to do for the sake of duty. Kant says that any action is morally good only if it's done for the sake of duty. What's morally good about loving one's children in the way Laurence calls transparent love is that it's the proper attitude to have in such a situation. The mere loving isn't what's morally good. It's a good thing to have true of oneself, but it's not a morally praiseworthy action. If I don't have that kind of love for my children, something has gone wrong, so it's definitely good if I have it. In fact, I have a duty to pursue having that kind of love. A given instance of expressing that love isn't moral, but what's moral is seeking to have that kind of love, and I should do that because it's the right kind of love to have. For most people this comes naturally, but that's because it doesn't take much to fulfill this duty for most people. For those who are constructed in a way that's less conducive to developing such feelings naturally, however, the moral duty will loom large. Someone who is autistic may actually be like that, with a diminished capacity to form relational bonds. For an autistic person anticipating parenthood, developing in one's abilities to form such relational attachment is paramount if Laurence is right that parental love of this sort is as important as he says it is. It's thus a duty to pursue. We just don't think about it because we don't think as much about the unusual case of someone who doesn't have these natural abilities. So in the end I don't think parental love as Laurence describes it is a counter-example to Kant's claim that moral action is only for the sake of duty. I think rather that Laurence's own account of what's going on with parental love confirms Kant's statement, as I read Kant.
Posted by Jeremy at 10:35 PM
Is Parental Love Transparent?
Laurence Thomas argues in Living Morally that parental love is transparent. He distinguishes between opaque and transparent love, borrowing the terms from philosophy of language. Opaque love "is love for a person under a certain description of that person, where the description makes reference to various attributes of the individual" (Living Morally, p.46). Transparent love is love that is not according to such a description.
It occurred to me as I was looking again at his account of parental love as transparent that I'm not sure he's technically correct. He defines transparent love as love for someone but not under some description. The reason for this is that parental love doesn't have any conditions other than that this is one's child. But isn't that still love for the person under some description?
It's true that this description couldn't fail to hold of this child once it does hold. If my child is my child, she will never cease to be my child. Of course, it's epistemically possible that one might find out that the baby one took home from the hospital is not one's own child due to baby-switching. If the discovery is too late to switch back, perhaps the love will still remain at the same level, but will it still be parental love if you discover that a child you have had for a week isn't really your biological child, and the real biological parent wants to switch back? I should point out that Laurence doesn't think parental love remains transparent, but he does think it's transparent from the outset and is in fact a paradigm case of transparent love. What I'm wondering with this example is whether this shows that any parent who would do this did not really have parental love as Laurence defines it.
Let me see if I can make my point clearer with possible worlds talk. World A is the actual world. World B is epistemically a duplicate of World A from my point of view up until two weeks after my child is born, but in World B the child my duplicate takes home from the hospital isn't his progeny. If he finds out three weeks later that this child had been switched with his in the hospital, he may well cease to love this child in a parental way and seek to switch them back, wanting his own child back. Now the only difference between me and this duplicate at the point just before he finds out is that his belief is false. If his love is thus not transparent, because of the ability to lose it by finding out that it is not his child, then why is mine transparent? It happens to be metaphysically impossible for me to find out such a thing, so it's strange to speak of what would happen were I to find such a thing out. Still, I'm intrinsically just like this guy, who might well upon finding out the truth cease to have what's distinctive of parental love. That means parental love is love for someone as that someone falls under a description, the description of being one's child.
Now I don't think this hurts Laurence's overall thesis. Metaphysically speaking, if she's my child then she will never lose that characteristic. This seems to be all Laurence needs for his overall thesis that parental love isn't like romantic love in being dependent on easily changeable features. Still, I don't think it's transparent according to his account of transparent love. I'm not even sure transparent love is humanly possible given how concept-laden our understanding of the world is, including our understanding of each other. I'm not even sure transparent love would be a good thing. Does it even make sense to love someone or something without some basis for love? Does it make sense to love someone or something when there's nothing about the object of one's love that one appreciates?
Posted by Jeremy at 10:32 PM | Comments (5)
March 29, 2005
Paradoxes of Desire Satisfactionism and Hedonism
(crossposted at Pea Soup)
Here's a fun paradox that came up in the intrinsic value seminar. Fred Feldman (*Pleasure and the Good Life*) and Chris Heathwood ("The Problem of Defective Desires," forthcoming in AJP) point out the following paradox for desire satisfaction theory, which seems to have been first suggested by Richard Kraut. People sometimes desire to be badly off. Desire satisfactionists say that A's desire to be badly off is satisfied iff A's desires are on the whole not satisfied. This leads to paradox, at least in certain cases. If having a desire satisfied is good for you, then satisfying the desire to be badly off makes you better off; and in some cases, the result will be that you are not badly off; which means that the desire is not satisfied after all, so you are badly off. Paradox. (For a clearer formulation of the paradox, read Chris' paper.)
Chris suggests in his paper that the paradox for desire satisfactionism flows merely from a paradox about desire. Paradox arises just from the desire to have one's desires frustrated � whether or not desire satisfactionism is the right theory of welfare. If you have a favorite way to resolve those paradoxes, the desire satisfactionist can just employ your solution and save his theory of welfare.
I�m not sure Chris is right about this. Consider the sometimes paradoxical desire to have one�s desires be, on the whole, mostly frustrated. Suppose that the solution to this paradox is to say that this is an impossible desire. If desire satisfaction were true, this would entail that it is also impossible to desire one�s life to go badly on the whole. (Or at least that desire could never be satisfied.) But that desire is not paradoxical, and it seems like it could be satisfied. So there�s a cost to desire satisfactionism here � it entails that certain desires are paradoxical or unsatisfyable, while other theories of welfare would not. (I realize this is a bit sketchy, but this is after all just a blog post. Feel free to hammer away with de re/de dicto distinctions and such in the comments.)
I think this sort of paradox creates problems for other theories of welfare too, including Feldman's "Truth-Adjusted Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism." (Feldman doesn't seem to endorse TAIAH in the end, but he seems sort of sympathetic to it.) Very roughly, the idea behind TAIAH is that pleasures are more valuable when taken in propositions that are true. (Better to be pleased that others like you when they actually do like you than when they hate you, etc.) Just to make the view sufficiently precise, let's suppose that pleasures taken in truths ("true pleasures") are twice as valuable as similar pleasures taken in falsehoods ("false pleasures"). Here�s a variant on one of Chris' examples. Suppose that A's life contains more pain than pleasure, so that his life has intrinsic value of �15 (pending what else happens). A then takes pleasure to degree 10 in the fact that he�s had a bad life. Call this pleasure P. Is P a true pleasure or a false pleasure? If it�s a true pleasure, then its intrinsic value is +20, which means A's life has intrinsic value of +5, which means P is not a true pleasure after all. If P is a false pleasure, then P has intrinsic value of +10, which means A's life has intrinsic value of �5, which means P was in fact a true pleasure. Paradox.
Posted by bbradley at 12:05 PM
March 24, 2005
Depression and Ecstasy Helmets
At the New Zealand philosophy group blog, currently titled Prior Knowledge (though that may change), Patrick Kerr presents an interesting example regarding the debate between hedonism about well-being (i.e. what's in our best interest reduces to how much pleasure we have and how little pain we have) and theories of well-being that insist that having our desires being met is at least part of our well-being (call these preference theories).
Typically, pleasure machines and Truman Show cases are generally pulled out to show that hedonism is wrong. It would be bad if you were completely deceived about everything going on in your life, thinking everything is good and enjoying it all yet being misled as to the awful or false nature of every relationship in your life, the complete insignificance of all the decisions you've made to do good in the world, etc. Someone who believes everything is good when it isn't is much worse off than someone who believes all is fine when it is fine. Most people who don't think well-being is limited to things about your mental states consider it to be better to know it's terrible than to be deceived into thinking it's great when it's awful, even though your mental states are such that you're very happy. Patrick's example is supposed to go the opposite direction.
Patrick says to consider the following cases:
Two highly sophisticated helmets are invented. One, the "depression helmet", when worn allows the person wearing it to go about their life as usual. However, it causes them to believe that all of their desires have been thwarted. The second helmet is called the "ecstasy helmet" and evokes in the subject a pathological optimism: they believe that they have everything in the world they could possibly want and more.
I thought I knew what was going on in this post, then I re-read it, and now I'm not so sure. I can interpret his language in three ways, none of which seems to fit exactly with how he puts it:
(1) The helmets transform the experiences, holding the desires constant. The ecstasy helmet makes me experience things that I consider good, even if bad things are happening. The depression helmet makes me experience things that are bad, even if good things are happening. This description seems to fit this one:
Would you rather actively fulfill all the desires you have in life, or at least see others fulfill them for you (but wear the depression helmet, so as to believe that the opposite is happening and hence be in utter anguish), or would you rather live what you would have called a worthless life, lying in bed all day like a heroin addict (but because you are wearing the ecstasy helmet you think you have everything that you desire, and because of this you are in utter bliss)?
(2) They transform my desires, holding my perceptual experiences constant. The ecstasy helmet makes me enjoy things I would not normally enjoy, and the depression helmet makes me loathe things I would normally enjoy.
This wasn't my first thought upon reading the post, but there's enough evidence against the first interpretation that this seemed worth thinking about. What counts most against it is that your desires would be fulfilled if you had the ecstasy helmet on, and Patrick wants to say that they're not but you think they are.
(3) The experiences are normal, and the desires are also unchanged, but the ecstasy helment makes me believe against all my evidence that my desires are satisfied when in fact they aren't, and the depression helmet makes me believe against all my evidence that my desires are unsatisfied when in fact they are satisfied.
Patrick's statement that the Ecstasy Helmet leads to a pathological optimism suggests version (3). With an Ecstasy Helmet Mark 3, I believe I have everything I could want and more, even though all my experiences give me enough empirical evidence to the contrary, and I really don't desire any of what I get. That would surely be pathological.
What counts against this is this statement of Patrick's, just before he gives the helmet examples: "Perhaps it follows that what a person would most prefer to happen, is for their own informed desires to be fulfilled in fact." If the example is a counterexample to this, it should involve informed beliefs, but the beliefs are exactly what are not informed in the Mark 3 helmets.
Since I don't know which Patrick meant, I'll record my thoughts on all three. I was assuming (1) in my first comment. Here is what I said:
It's interesting that if you're right it doesn't show hedonism to be correct, because then we'd have one case that moves us that way and the pleasure machine that moves us the other way. I think Richard is right to try to find a view that explains both responses, but what if in the end we can't do that? Which of these examples should take precedence?I think I'm going to bite the bullet on this anyway. If I'm trying to devote my life to helping people out, and I do so, then I think it's so good for me to have my life purpose met that it's still better for that to be the case with my being fooled into thinking I've completely failed than it is for me to be all happy and content thinking I'd succeeded when in fact I've completely hurt everyone and everything I've touched. It's terrible for me that I'm misled about this (which is true of both cases), but it's even worse that my life goal is not only failed but that I never know that, whereas it's not so bad that I simply never know that I've succeeded, because I have succeeded.
With (2), I'm less sure. If the experiences are held constant, and the desires are changed, I'm not as sure what to say. The helmet transforms my desires so that I falsely think my desires are being fulfilled (or not, depending on which helmet we're talking about). If my desires are transformed, it's strange to say the helmets make it so your desires aren't fulfilled. They are fulfilled. It's just that they're not the desires you would have otherwise had.
Even so, I think preference views do better than hedonism with this case. If my desires are changed so I like awful things, and awful things happen and I enjoy it, I think that's bad for me. If my desires are changed so I hate good things, and good things happen, that's also bad for me. In each case I'm conditioned to hate the good or to love the bad. In one case, I'm hating the bad in addition to hating the good. In the other, I'm loving the bad in addition to loving the good. Those seem equally bad to me, so the desire-altering doesn't seem better or worse in either case.
That means two things remain that I can use to decide which is worse for me (both are bad, so it seems weird to ask which is better for me). One is the mere mental state, either enjoyment or unhappiness. The other is the circumstances, either good or bad. Patrick seems to be saying (if this is the right interpretation) that the depression helmet case might be better overall but no better for me. The ecstasy helmet case is better for me, though worse overall.
I just can't accept that. What makes the ecstasy helmet case so bad is that the enjoyment is based on a lie. It's not based on a lie in the way the enjoyment of Ecstasy Helmet Mark 1 was, since I do know exactly what's gone on. Ecstasy Helmet Mark 2 is still based on a lie, because my desires were fashioned into what they are through a transformation against my will of what my desires would normally be into something that I would never have preferred if I had a choice. It just seems to me that it's bad to get what I want when what I want is not only terrible but not what I would want if I hadn't been altered, even if I would enjoy it. Therefore, it's better to get what I don't want given that it's what I would have wanted had I not been changed, even if I wouldn't enjoy it.
I'm having trouble imagining what (3) could possibly be like, if it's even possible. With an Ecstasy Helmet Mark 3, I believe I have everything I could want and more, despite my experiences providing enough empirical evidence to the contrary, and I don't want anything I have. It doesn't make for the best thought experiment if I can't imagine what it would be like or even be sure it's possible.
Even so, the pathology of having false beliefs that my desires are being met when they're not seems worse than the pathology of having false beliefs that my desires are not being met when they are. I'd much rather my desires be fulfilled even if I for some reason can't intellectually grasp that or enjoy the satisfaction of having achieved what I desire. I think that's better for me.
So in all three interpretations I don't see how this example should favor hedonism over a preference theory. If it did, it would just suggest to me that both hedonism and strict preference theories are inadequate, which I believe anyway. I don't think well-being can be reduced to pleasure and pain together with desire-fulfillment. The conjunction of concluding one example shows hedonism is false and concluding the other shows strict preference theories to be false is consistent with my own view.
Posted by Jeremy at 4:39 PM | TrackBack
January 13, 2005
I Ask The Big Questions
[ok, the following is kind of silly and juvenile, somewhat akin to some playground-type questions. But, I do think it brings up some interesting issues, especially about what value we should give to very visceral feelings of disgustingness. I thought I'd just note some hesitancy here, so that I don't have to break any irony within the post itself, which would make it less enjoyable.] My friend and colleague Dan Orr once asked me, 'If you had to choose, would you rather eat poo-flavored-chocolate or chocolate-flavored-poo?' First, I had to clarify some of the background conditions. Would the poo make me sick? No. Would it be human poo? Yes. Would the poo really taste like chocolate, and have the consistency and texture thereof? Yes. Would the real chocolate taste just like real poo, and look like real poo? Yes. Would the real chocolate make me sick? No (except for possible attendant nausea of course). Would the poo be yours? Maybe. Would the poo be like dark or milk chocolate? Just answer the question! The answer is obvious, and goes down easy. I'd eat the poo. Why?
Because it tastes like chocolate, and it won't make me sick, whereas the chocolate would taste like poo. But, maybe I was being hasty, maybe I, against all reason, should actually eat chocolate instead of eating poo. Let's call those who'd choose the scatological option poo-eaters, and the thesis that, in this circumstance one should choose poo 'POC', (for, 'poo over chocolate'). Call the chocolate eaters chocolate-eaters, and the thesis that one should choose chocolate over poo in this circumstance 'COP' (for 'chocolate over poo'). What can be said in defense of the chocolate eaters? In Defense of COP The chocolate-eater can truly declare that they've never eaten poo, which seems like a good thing. Also, while the poo-eater does indeed avoid having the qualia of eating poo, he or she does have to square with the fact that what they are chewing on is digested food that has passed through a human colon and anus. Surely this is all the argument the chocolate eater needs! Also, while the experience of eating the chocolate is no doubt disgusting, the chocolate-eater can just content themselves with the fact that it's really just chocolate, and this sensation will pass. But I don't think this line of argumentation is very effective. [note-the arguments for COP came from my wife Irem...yes, we've actually talked about this.] In Defense of POC The poo-eater can quite rightly declare that, while they are in fact eating poo, that all the relevant causal powers which undergird our disgust at eating poo for which we've evolved avoidance behavior for have been removed. Namely, its (I imagine) sickening taste, and potential to cause sickness. Once the relevant causal powers have been removed, any hesitancy to eat said poo (vs. the chocolate) is just irrational. Furthermore, the fact that the chocolate actually has more of the relevant causal powers of actual poo than this poo does should further disarm the chocolate eaters of their poo avoidance strategies. We can say still more by adverting to primary, secondary, and tertiary qualities. Primary qualities are qualities of objects that are had intrinsically, such as shape, number (of atoms, quarks), extension, motion, and so on (well, I'm a little dubious of calling them intrinsic. Maybe we should say that they are objective, mind-independent qualities abstracted away from their tertiary powers as well). Secondary qualities are powers of objects to cause certain sensations in observers, such as appearing green, hard, or tasting like crap. Tertiary qualities are powers of bodies to change the intrinsic/primary or secondary qualities of other bodies, such as a lit candle's power to melt wax, or some poo to cause some sickness in your body. Now, the poo in our example no longer has the secondary qualities/powers to cause sickening sensations, nor the tertiary powers to cause sickness. (Almost) all that remains of the original poo is its primary qualities. But what�s so bad about shape, number, and so on? I can't see the problem. Once again, the chocolate eaters, however, have to contend with undergoing a phenomenally indistinguishable experience from eating real poo, one I'd rather avoid. So, serve me up a plate of chocolate-flavored poo. I can't choose otherwise. What do you think? I'd be interested in a poll reaction. Also, can more be said for either POC or COP?
Posted by MarkSteen at 12:14 AM | Comments (46) | TrackBack
January 2, 2005
Posner: Condescending Moral Philosophers
Richard Posner has been posting at Brian Leiter's blog, making a couple fairly controversial claims. One is his fairly sophisticated moral relativism. Another is that he seems to think the average person should view moral philosophers as consdescending. I know little about Posner, so I can't evaluate whether the clearer statement of Posner's views by Jon Mandle at Crooked Timber comes from a misunderstanding of Posner's views (note his interesting claim that it's Posner rather than the moral philosopher who is condescending, which my relative ignorance of Posner also leaves me unable to evaluate). Still, it does seem to me even in my relative ignorance that Gerald Dworkin is the sort of person who would understand Posner completely, and the distinctions he makes in his Left2Right post do seem to undermine Posner's argument (if he's presented it accurately, which I would assume is the case).
I'm interested in the details here, but I don't feel like getting into them myself at the moment, which I would ideally at least summarize, so you'll have to read all those posts I linked to if you want more details before commenting. Here's what I'm interested in knowing, though. Does Posner really say what Mandle and Dworkin claim he's saying? In particular, does he really claim that every moral belief we have is held not by any rational reasons? Does he really believe that ethical reasoning is pointless? That claim seems to be refuted by the fact that people are sometimes convinced by reasons. In ethics courses, I've seen students convinced by arguments from papers I've assigned that argue for views that I myself don't even hold, but these students were convinced in class to change their view simply by hearing those arguments.
Update: John Turri at Fake Barn Country and Lindsay Beyerstein and Majikthese have more to say about Posner's posts.
Posted by Jeremy at 8:54 PM | TrackBack
December 22, 2004
Act vs. Rule
I'm writing this as someone who has never had a graduate-level course that systematically dealt with normative ethics, so maybe this is all well-tread ground, but since I'm going to be teaching a 300-level ethical theory course for the first time I need to work through some of my thoughts on some issues, and I'd like feedback on some of my initial thoughts on a few matters. The first one is that the act/rule distinction often used to protect ethical theories from standard objections is a complete mistake. One problem utilitarians face is that many counterexamples seem to show that utilitarianism gives the wrong result. Torturing one person excruciatingly for the sake of everyone else's happiness seems to be the right thing to do. Sliders had an episode that explored this. The town they ended up in had a creature living underground that fed on human beings, slowly killing them in a very painful way. It had an agreement with the townsfolk that if they would give it regular victims, it would produce a substance for them that would extend their life tremendously and give them excellent health for the rest of their lives. The town was peaceful and seemed like a utopia. The sliders arrived through the interdimensional gateway to discover that even they were affected by something that gave them such happiness that they weren't suspicious at all until they discovered someone missing. This example seemed to me to be exactly what critics of utilitarianism are getting at when they say it requires people to be used as a means to the end of the others, and even when it's only one person compared to a great many it seems to be a violation of that person's rights.
Another example is the famous race riot one in the ethics literature. I don't remember offhand who first produced it, but I've found it in most introductory ethics texts. To appease the mob, who will begin lyching people and rioting, the sheriff decides to save a lot of effort and just put an innocent man to death. Since all they know is that the rapist in question was black, they just find a black man and kill him. Utilitarians should say that this is the right thing to do, because it only costs one many his life and prevents much worse harm. Yet it just seems unjust and a violation of this man's rights. People standardly give such arguments against utilitarianism, and I've seen two sorts of responses. One is simply to bite the bullet and say that we really just have poor intuitions on these cases, and it really is the right thing to do to use that one person as a means to the greater end. Some utilitarians have done this. The other response is to revise the whole theory. It's not about what acts in particular lead to the best consequences in terms of happiness and unhappiness (or substitute your own intrinsic goods if you want to expand this to a more general consequentialism). The original theory put it that way, but what we really ought to do is look at which types of act will tend to produce good results. Killing innocent people tends to produce bad results, so we shouldn't do it. Torturing innocent people for the sake of others' happiness tends to produce bad results so we shouldn't do it. Then you come up with a whole list of rules and pick the ones that maximize happiness. It gets you out of the problems I've been talking about, because you now no longer get the counterintuitive result. I have two problems with this. First, it seems to do as much damage as it saves. Second, it isn't at all clear what this is supposed to look like, because rules turn out to operate on a continuum from very specific rules to more general rules. It causes as much damage at is saves for the very reasons that utilitarianism is supposed to do better than theories like Kant's when Kant's absolutism seems wrongheaded. Lying, for instance, seems generally wrong when it comes to hiding something you did wrong, deceiving someone for personal gain, or trying to make someone else look worse than they really are. On the other hand, it seems pretty clear to most people that lying is ok when the person being deceived is trying to harm someone, and a lie is the only way to protect the potential victim. Lying to Nazis hunting Jews during the Holocaust is a common example along these lines. Similar examples for breaking promises show up in all the introductory texts. If you promised someone to meet them at a certain time, but it turns out someone will die if you don't break that promise, you don't have any moral obligation to keep it. Utilitarians get the right result on these cases, mostly because they focus in on the act rather than the rule. Kant has an absolute rule against lying and breaking promises, but if you modify the view to make it not about the absolute rule but about evaluating whether a specific action will be universalizable, then you might well end up with a non-absolutist neo-Kantian who says lying or breaking promises is ok in such circumstances as the ones I gave. This comes from having an act-based Kantianism rather the rule-based one Kant himself developed. So it turns out that act-based ethical theories do better with some cases, even as rule-based ones do better with others. How will utilitarianism avoid the problems facing theories like Kant's if they make their rules so general as to include rules against lying and promise-keeping on the grounds that those actions tend to produce unhappiness? Similarly, how does the neo-Kantian avoid the problems with consequentialism if she drops the absolutism and then says to universalize particular actions to see if you would want everyone doing that action in only that kind of circumstance? The "means to end" restriction seems to prevent doing this in the cases of the racist mob and the torturing case, because both involve using someone as a means to an end. The problem seems to me to be that once you go to act-deontology you have to drop the means-to-end prohibition, since that's now got to be applied on a case-by-case basis. The only way out I can think of is recognize that rules can be very specific or more general. If you can resist making your rules too general, they avoid the absolutism of Kant. On the other hand, if you can resist making your rules too specific, they avoid the extremes of act-utilitarianism. Yet this seems to raise so many problems that I'm not even sure where to begin figuring out how to resolve them. Any time you get a difference of degree that makes a huge difference in a theory from extreme to extreme, just saying that we need a via media doesn't solve anything. Maybe the realm of normative ethics has done this and I'm just unfamiliar with the literature on this point, but we need to see how the theory will figure out where to settle on that continuum between very specific and very general rules. I'm skeptical whether there's one place that will solve all the problems of the two extremes. It may well be that settling somewhere will solve some of the problems but not others. I'd have to see this worked out in detail to have those doubts assuaged. Another problem is that I can't even think of how you would explicate such a view. How do you rigorously define how specific your rules need to be? Is there such a way? Putting in hard and fast rules about how general a moral statement needs to be just seems to me to move in the wrong direction in terms of capturing our moral intuitions, which is what many seem to see the process of ethical theorizing. Maybe some will insist that you can't get such a theory, but this seems to me to be giving up the very idea of having an ethical theory. If you're doing that as a way to move toward a virtue conception of ethics, that's fine, as long as you are admitting that your move will bring you into ground that will not involve a complete theory about why certain actions are right and wrong. Some virtue ethicists embrace this lack of theory, but others really worry about it (or at least should given that they think they have a theory). As far as I know, Linda Zagzebski is one of the few contemporary virtue ethicists to try to develop of genuine virtue theory that covers such things, but I haven't gotten far enough into her book to know if she succeeds. These are just thoughts I've had as a metaphysician having to teach this stuff without having had graduate courses that deal with it systematically, so I'd welcome comments from anyone more well-versed with the literature on how people who really do this stuff try to avoid the problems I've raised. I'd be very surprised if these problems have never come up in the literature. Either way, I welcome suggestions on how consequentialists or Kantians can still make use of the act-rule distinction to steer clear of counterexamples. I'm not arguing that the distinction isn't important, just that it doesn't seem to solve the problems it's supposed to solve.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:39 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
October 21, 2004
Death Revisited
A couple of months ago, I posted descriptions of the following two lives:
Baby. A three-week-old baby, Baby, dies in an accident. Had Baby not died then, he would have enjoyed a happy childhood and adolescence, gone to college, entered a PhD program in philosophy, become a professional philosopher, and lived an enjoyable life until dying at age 80.
Student. A 23-year-old philosophy graduate student, Student, dies in an accident after a happy childhood and adolescence. Had Student not died then, he would have become a professional philosopher and lived an enjoyable life until dying at age 80.
I asked for opinions about whose death was worse for him (and therefore who I should murder, but that was really beside the point). Lots of people responded, and the responses were all over the map. Many people thought Student's death was worse; many thought Baby's death was worse; some thought they were equally bad. I think the view that Baby's death is worse is the only plausible view, and at the risk of boring those who think this is obvious, I have some arguments.
First, take the view that the two deaths are equally bad. The only justification for this view is an Epicurean one: death is never bad for anyone, so both deaths are equally bad. People suggested a couple of reasons to think death isn't bad. First, some say that death isn't bad because the dead don't suffer, so death doesn't cause anything bad to happen. This is just to ignore the goods death prevents its victim from getting. Second, some say that you can't harm a dead person – only the living can be harmed. But this is beside the point. The question wasn’t whether Baby or Student would be harmed more after death – the question was whose death is a greater harm. Obviously there's more that can be said about Epicurus, but I find it hard to believe that anyone really believes the Epicurean view.
Several people said that Student's death is worse. Some may have thought this had something to do with personal identity – Baby is so young that he is not identical with the (counterfactual) future person who goes to college and such. I think this is false, but if it matters, just substitute a two-year-old or some other suitably young person so that the person who dies is clearly identical to the (counterfactual) future person who does all the good stuff.
The more common reason offered in favor of Student’s death being worse was the fact that Student's death frustrates many of Student's actual, deeply held desires and projects; this is not true of Baby's death. Having a desire frustrated is bad for a person; death is bad in this way for Student, but not for Baby; so Student's death is worse.
But this is to make the same mistake the Epicureans make: it ignores another way in which Baby's death is worse. Presumably, if desire frustrations are intrinsically bad, desire satisfactions are intrinsically good. (If not, tell me what is intrinsically good, and see if it makes a difference.) Baby is deprived of 23 more years of desire satisfactions than Student. So death takes 23 extra years of good stuff from Baby compared to Student. It also causes some extra bad stuff for Student, but there's no way that could be sufficient to outweigh those 23 years of goodness lost. (Of course, this is all given the fiction that some desire satisfaction theory of well-being is true.)
The argument that Baby's death is worse is straightforward. It starts with the claim that the overall value of an event for a person equals the intrinsic value of his actual life for him minus the intrinsic value his life would have had for him if that event hadn’t occurred. Call this claim C. (Feldman and Broome are among those who hold C or something like it.) C provides the most straightforward way to account not only for bad things caused by an event (like desire frustrations), but good things prevented by it (like desire satisfactions). Applying C to the cases, we first notice that had Baby and Student not died when they did, their lives would have been identical in value. So the worse death is suffered by the one whose actual life is less valuable. And it seems pretty obvious that Baby's life is less valuable than Student's, no matter what it is you think makes life worth living.
If you think Student's death is worse, you have two options: deny C, or say that Baby's actual life is more valuable than Student's. If you deny C, you have to put something else in its place. (Suggestions welcome.) That's what Jeff McMahan tries to do in The Ethics of Killing. In a later installment I'll talk about his view. If anyone can produce a plausible view that entails that Baby's life is better than Student's, I would like to hear it.
Posted by bbradley at 2:14 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
July 13, 2004
Help Me Choose a Murder Victim
OK, here's my contribution. I am curious what people think about something. (This is the topic of my paper for Andre's working papers group next friday.) Suppose I'm deciding whom to kill, and I want to inflict the most harmful death possible. How old should my victim be? It might help to focus on the following two cases:
Baby. A three-week-old baby, Baby, dies. Had Baby not died then, he would have enjoyed a happy childhood and adolescence, gone to college, entered a PhD program in philosophy, become a professional philosopher, and lived an enjoyable life until dying at age 80.
Student. A 23-year-old philosophy graduate student, Student, dies after a happy childhood and adolescence. Had Student not died then, he would have become a professional philosopher and lived an enjoyable life until dying at age 80.
Whose death would be worse for him? Maybe I'll post some of my thoughts later, but I don't want to poison people's initial reactions. This will help me figure out whether to cast my paper as defending common sense or objecting to it.
Posted by bbradley at 4:40 PM | Comments (40)
June 4, 2004
Sorites in the Senate
The Rough Woodsman presents a battle between Senator Rick Santorum and Senator Barbara Boxer over partial birth abortion. What struck me as hilarious in this exchange was that it's a classic example of a sorites series from one party with the usual resistance to engage in the discussion from the other.
Here's the transcript: Sen. Santorum: Once the baby is born, is completely separated from the mother, you will support that that baby has, in fact, the right to life and cannot be killed? You accept that; right? Sen. Boxer: I don't believe in killing any human being. That is absolutely correct. Nor do you, I am sure. Sen. Santorum: So you would accept the fact that once the baby is separated from the mother, that baby cannot be killed? Sen. Boxer: I support the right -- and I will repeat this, again, because I saw you ask the same question to another senator-- Sen. Santorum: All the person has to do is give me a straight answer, and then it will be very clear to everybody. Sen. Boxer: And what defines "separation"? Define "separation." You answer that question. You define it. Sen. Santorum: Well, let's define that. Okay, let's say the baby is completely separated. In other words, no part of the baby is inside of the mother. Sen. Boxer: You mean the baby has been birthed and is now in its mother's arms? That baby is a human being. Sen. Santorum: Well, I don't know if it's necessarily in its mother's arms. Let's say in the obstetrician's hands. Sen. Boxer: It takes a second, it takes a minute. I had two babies, and within seconds of their birth-- Sen. Santorum: We've had six. Sen. Boxer: Well, you didn't have any. Sen. Santorum: My wife and I had babies together. That's the way we do things in our family. Sen. Boxer: Your wife gave birth. I gave birth. I can tell you, I know when the baby was born. Sen. Santorum: Good! All I am asking you is, once the baby leaves the mother's birth canal and is through the vaginal orifice and is in the hands of the obstetrician, you would agree that you cannot abort, kill the baby? Sen. Boxer: I would say when the baby is born, the baby is born, and would then have every right of every other human being living in this country. And I don't know why this would even be a question, to be honest with you. Sen. Santorum: Because we are talking about a situation here where the baby is almost born. So I ask the question of the senator from California, if the baby was born except for the baby's foot, if the baby's foot was inside the mother but the rest of the baby was outside, could that baby be killed? Sen. Boxer: The baby is born when the baby is born. That is the answer to the question. Sen. Santorum: I am asking you to define for me what that is. Sen. Boxer: I don't think anybody but the senator from Pennsylvania has a question with it. I have never been troubled by this question. You give birth to a baby. The baby is there, and it is born. That is my answer to the question. Sen. Santorum: What we are talking about here with partial birth, as the senator from California knows, is a baby is in the process of being born-- Sen. Boxer: "The process of being born." This is why this conversation makes no sense, because to me it is obvious when a baby is born. To you it isn't obvious. Sen. Santorum: Maybe you can make it obvious to me. So what you are suggesting is if the baby's foot is still inside of the mother, that baby can then still be killed. Sen. Boxer: No, I am not suggesting that in any way! Sen. Santorum: I am asking. Sen. Boxer: I am absolutely not suggesting that. You asked me a question, in essence, when the baby is born. Sen. Santorum: I am asking you again. Can you answer that? Sen. Boxer: I will answer the question when the baby is born. The baby is born when the baby is outside the mother's body. The baby is born. Sen. Santorum: I am not going to put words in your mouth. Sen. Boxer: I hope not. Sen. Santorum: But, again, what you are suggesting is if the baby's toe is inside the mother, you can, in fact, kill that baby. Sen. Boxer: Absolutely not. Sen. Santorum: OK. So if the baby's toe is in, you can't kill the baby. How about if the baby's foot is in? Sen. Boxer: You are the one who is making these statements. Sen. Santorum: We are trying to draw a line here. Sen. Boxer: I am not answering these questions! I am not answering these questions! Both senators reveal some simple-mindedness in this debate. Boxer's position is a fairly bad version of a pro-choice view, i.e. that a fetus isn't a human being immediately before birth and then immediately upon birth is, with no acknowledgement of a process of birth during which the partial-birth abortion procedure would take place (either that or she's an epistemicist frustrated by the fact that explaining her position in the Senate wouldn't exactly be easy, but somehow that seems unlikely). She also doesn't seem aware of the distinction pro-choice philosophers created in the 1970s between being a human being and being a person. Santorum, on the other hand, doesn't seem to show any awareness of more sophisticated positions that could, if their holder were smarter than Boxer, avoid his argument (though admittedly they involve premises she doesn't seem to want to grant, e.g. that a newborn isn't a person either, that whether it's ok to kill something isn't dependent on personhood alone, etc.). How can someone be in the United States Senate as long as these two have and be as unfamiliar such basic arguments in the abortion debate as the points made by Judith Jarvis Thomson?
Posted by Jeremy at 12:59 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack