E2.0: Sir Harold Kroto: Issues on Science vs. Religion

This is the 20th in a new series of weekend posts taken from the presentations at the Salk Institute’s “Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0.”. I have placed an index of essays in this series in an introductory post, Enlightenment 2.0: Introduction.

Sir Harold Kroto, Chairman of the Board of the Vega Science Trust, gave a presentation that was very similar to his presentation last year. It concerned a project of using the internet to pread a love of science and math that, ultimately, is the best way of defeating religious dogma. Noting that there is a positive correlation between academic achievement and believing that there is no God, Kroto draws the conclusion that educating people on how the universe really works (in math and science) is our best defense against religious dogma.

Teaching

One of the claims that Kroto made in giving this presentation is that we should not wait until we have better science and math teachers. Instead, we should devote ourselves to improving the math and science teachers we already have. So, his project includes a task of creating collections of math and science teaching materials that teachers can find on the internet and download for free.

Of course, this has one obvious drawback – that it requires that there be teachers who are interested in learning how to teach math and science. Many high school math and science teachers – and particularly biology teachers – do not see their position as being one of teaching biology. They have entered into the profession specifically for the purpose of making sure that the students learn about creationism – and learn only as much (or as little) about evolution as is necessary to pass the tests. Even here, creationists are constantly struggling to change the standards so that they can teach creationism in science class – turning high school biology class into a bible study group.

These types of teachers are too common, and will almost certainly not look towards Kroto’s web site for information on how to teach biology to tenth graders. Instead, they are going to be looking to the Discovery Institute and similar organizations for ways of sneaking creationism into the science class.

The first line of attack is to make sure that the high school curriculum requires that students learn biology in biology class (and not religion in biology class), and to make sure that students appreciate their obligation to teach according to those standards. This, then, will provide teachers with an incentive to go out and find materials that will better allow them to do the job assigned, and to keep teachers who inclined to abuse their positions as science teachers from entering into that profession.

In addition to his own project’s work, Kroto advertised other things that are happening on the Internet that are useful in fighting religion. For example, he mentioned Pat Condell’s videos. Condell used to be a stand-up comedian who recently started to produce podcasts that serious blast religious beliefs. In his video casts, he shows no respect for those who hold dangerous religious ideas, and no respect for atheists who are against speaking disrespectfully towards those people and their dangerous ideas.

Blaming Religion

Kroto is like Condell. He has nothing good to say about religion. The first part of his presentation was substantially a rant about all of the bad things that can be associated with religion.

Listening to his presentation made me want to make clear a very subtle distinction that I have used in my writings that I think a lot of people miss. One of the views that many atheists take towards religion is to make an inference like, “9/11 was caused by people who were acting on religious belief; therefore, all religion is bad.” I argue against this implication precisely because it is invalid and it does not demonstrate the devotion to logical and critical analysis that many atheists say should be a part of our culture.

(Thos atheists are right, by the way People generally do have good reason to promote a love of reason and an aversion to sophistry and rhetoric. Sophistry and rhetoric keeps us away from the truths that could, in some cases, easily save our life, health, and well-being. Whereas superstitious and foolish thinking is likely to lead us into error – causing us to devote resources to activites that are not in our interests.)

I want to distinguish this inference to the conclusion that “X is a bad thing that comes from religion, period.” Saying that the first inference is invalid is not the same as saying that there are good religions. An individual could agree with the position that each religion should be evaluated on its own merits, yet also find that each and every religion has something it it that justifies significant demerits.

This is true in the same way that a person can hold that a group of 10 people should each be judged by their individual actions, yet discover that every one of those 10 people are guilty of a serious crime. The fact we have rejected the proposition, ‘P1 is a bad person, so all ten people are evil” does not imply that we must reject the conclusion, “all ten people are evil.”

Harold Kroto has a lot of bad things to say about many of the more common forms of religion. Though he does not provide enough evidence to show that all religion is evil, he does show that several subsets of religion are evil. This is comparable to showing that 7 out of 10 people in our groop are evil. It is substantially the same thing that Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris had done in their books.

However, even in showing that 7 out of the 10 people in our group had committed a crime, we are not yet justified in condemning the remaining 3. Each person has a right to be judged on his or her own merits. Justice requires this type of individual assessment. Any time people speak of whole groups being guilty of some wrongdoing, merely because a subset are guilty, they are treating the others unjustly, and proving that they have their own moral flaws in the process.

The Templeton Foundation

An item of debate in this presentation was the work done by the Templeton Foundation. Kroto portrayed the organization as one that is using its vast stores of wealth to blur the line between religion and science and of confusing public thinking on matters of science. Ultimately, he called for a boycott of anything having to do with the Templeton Foundation, or at least praised those who would not accept their money.

He criticized a Templeton Foundation advertisement concerning the question of whether the universe had a purpose. The Foundation’s advertisement had comments by about a dozen scientists, of which about half believed in a definite purpose, and a few others argued for some purpose.

Kroto portrayed the advertisement as deceptive. If one takes the opinions of the members of the National Academies of Sc9ience, one would find that over 90% of these people (and over 95% of those thoat are biologists) do not believe in God. An advertisement that accurately represented the thinking of the scientific community would have been one where 11 out of 12 respondents answered “no” – not one in which a single respondent answered ‘no.’. to Kroto, this is an example of deceptive advertising – an attempt to manipulate people into adopting a view of science that is not true.

Michael Shermer challenged Kroto on the fact that the Templeton Foundation funded a study that showed the effects of prayer on medical care. The study showed that prayer had no effect unless the patient knew that he was being prayed for – in which case it made the patient’s condition worse than that of a control group. It is as if those who knew tht they were being prayed for suffered from some type of additional stress or anxiety which adversely affected their health.

The fact that the Templeton Foundation was willing to do this shows that they do objective research.

There is actually no dispute here. The fact of the matter is that the advertisement that Kroto talked about was poorly done, and showed an intent to convince others of a view that was false. In addition, the Templeton Foundation provided at least one example of an objective study.

There is nothing at all inconsistent in complaining that the Templeton Foundation’s behavior was deceptive and manipulative in the first case, and objective in the second. There is nothing inconsistent with saying, “Here, you did as you should; but, over there, your behavior was intellectually and morally worthy of contempt.” It’s just another example of the same policy of judging each case (as one judges each person) on its own merits.

Perspective on the Pledge: Notes - "In God We Trust"

I will be working on my story, “A Perspective on the Pledge” this weekend. For those who are not familiar with my previous posts on the subject, the story concerns a parallel universe in which students are ‘encouraged’ to pledge allegiance to “one white nation”, which I use to expose serious flaws in arguments used to defend having “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I have re-inserted the chapter on scouting, where my protagonist Shawn protests a group that is allowed to recruit on campus that holds that black people are morally inferior to whites and, thus, incapable of being good role models for children.

I have also decided that I wanted to incorporate some comments about the national motto, “In God We Trust”.

I could easily incorporate an equivalent slogan into the story. “In God We Trust” is an inherently segregationist slogan. It says that the most important principle within a particular country is the principle that the population is to be divided between a “we” who “trust in God” and “they” who do not. Furthermore, it holds that the “we” group is the favored group and, by implication, the group that “true” Amerycans would belong to.

In Ameryca, the hypothetical country in which my story takes place, all of these elements can be captured by giving Ameryca a national motto of “White Power”, because “In God We Trust” actually says, “Power to those who trust in God” – a slogan morally equivalent to “Power to those who are white.

An atheist, who walks into a city council meeting that begins with a pledge of allegiance to one nation ‘under Go, with the slogan “In God We Trust” on the wall, is in exactly the same (moral) position as a black person walking into a city council meeting that begins with a pledge of allegiance to ‘one white nation’, with the motto “White Power” sitting on the wall. It would not be surprising in such a nation that the black citizen would be addressing a council that consists entirely of white people, in the same way that atheists in this country face city councils that consist entirely of theists.

Imagine being a black high school student in a country where a substantially white majority insists on hanging the national motto, “White Power”, in all of the classrooms, Imagine seeing that slogan every day, and knowing full well what it is saying about you and your relationship to your white students.

Imagine what it would be like to be a white student in such a society. Imagine being a white eight-year-old, or ten-year-old, or twelve-year-old child who, for as long as he or she can remember, has been told that the official government policy is a policy of white power. Imagine being told from birth, in a government school, that to be a worthwhile person one has to be white – the way that the government tells its children that to be a worthwhile person one has to trust in God.

The argument used by those who insist on posting this motto in government buildings, classrooms, and keeping it on the money, is that it is a ‘patriotic exercise’. However, this merely means that a patriot is somebody who trusts in God, and no person who does not trust in God can be a patriot.

This claim, that pledging allegiance to one nation ‘under God’ and that posting ‘In God We Trust’ on classroom walls is a ‘patriotic exercise’ and not religious is an absurdity. If it is a patriotic exercise, then it is an exercise that says that patriotism requires being ‘under God’ or trusting in God. It is an exercise that says that those who fail to meet this criteria – those who deny that a God exists – are not patriots.

In late December, Michael Newdow was once again before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals defending his lawsuits against ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance and ‘In God We Trust’ in government buildings and on the money. One source that I read briefly mentioned a question that one of the judges asked almost in passing at the end of the questioning. The judge asked whether a person had to believe in God to be pa patriot. The lawyer arguing in favor of keeping ‘under God’ in the Pledge said no.

Yet, if the answer to the question is ‘no’, then this means that pledging allegiance to one nation under God is not a patriotic exercise. I hope that the judge who asked the question was aware of this implication, that this is why she asked the question, and this is what she will put into the opinion when it is released. “The state cannot defend the claim that pledging allegiance to a nation ‘under God’ is a patriotic exercise if it is possible for a person to be a patriot without being ‘under God’. And if it is not a patriotic exercise, then it must have some other purpose.”

Yet, even if it is a patriotic exercise, what sense does it make for a government prohibited by law from establishing a religion, to insist that patriotism consists in being ‘under God’, and those who are not ‘under God’ are not patriots? What reason is there for adopting a position?

In fact, there is no reason for adopting a position. And when one group of people brand others as ‘inferior’ without having reason to do so, that is the essence of prejudice. That is the essence of injustice. That, itself, is a moral crime that no person would find in a just system of law.

I am an atheist. A motto of “In God We Trust” says that in order for me to be counted among the “we” who make up this country, I must trust in God. Either I must take this motto to be among the most transparent examples of a lie that one can imagine (as clear as the claim ‘all swans are white’ when one is holding a black swan), or I must conclude that the government’s official position is that citizens who do not trust in God are not ‘we’.

The motto states nothing less than that trusting in God is a requirement for being a true American; a patriotic American, the type of American that the government finds acceptable enough to be counted among those it calls ‘we’.

What argument can the government give for excluding those who do not trust in God from the group ‘we’? What have those who do not trust in God done to be considered worthy of this form of ostracism and exclusion? Have they committed some crime? Is there evidence of disloyalty or treason? Is there any evidence at all that these are inherently inferior people who are unworthy of membership?

There is no more reason for believing that those who do not trust in God are inferior and do not merit being included in the group called ‘we’, than there is for saying that those of black skin are inferior and do not merit being included in the group called ‘we’. When a group is denigrated and excluded without reason, that is injustice. When people are condemned and labeled inferior when no evidence can be brought against them, then they are the victims of bigotry.

And in this case, not only is the government branding all those who do not trust in God to be inferior beings who do not merit being considered members of the group called ‘we’, it has made it the national motto. It has said that there is nothing more important to this government, no more worthy of respect and remembrance, than the idea that those who do not trust in God are unworthy of membership in the group called ‘we’. When it posts this sign in classrooms, they are telling the students themselves that those who do not trust in God are inferior, and unworthy of membership in the group called ‘we’. This, merely compounds the injustice, by several orders of magnitude.

Let us not pretend that the children are not learning this lesson. There is a reason why most Americans would never support an atheist as President. It is because, every time they look at their money, they see a sign that tells that that those who do not trust in God are inferior, and unworthy of membership in the group called ‘we’. It is because the government itself, our government, has taken it to be its prime mission in life to teach children that those who do not trust in God are inferior, and unworthy of membership in the group called ‘we’. Children cannot see that message day in and day out and not be affected by it.

But, then, affecting children with this attitude towards those who do not trust in God is the entire reason people insist on posting these signs in our schools.

What other reason could there possibly be?

Birth Rates and Competing Ideas

An article in “The Nation” magazine that I received last week discussed a “demographic” problem in Europe and America. The problem is that “the right people” are not having children, which means that other groups are out-producing us, and will soon take over the planet in virtue of their greater numbers. In order to prevent this disaster, “the right people” need to get busy producing as many children as possible, so that “we” can maintain control of the social and political institutions.

The Nation presented this strategy as being racist and tribalist fear-mongering for the sake of promoting a religious-right agenda on reproduction. The problem, the proponents of this view state, is that women are working rather than staying home and having children, which is the ‘proper’ role for women. Secular, liberal culture supports abortion, homosexuality, contraception, and a number of other policies that interfere with reproduction, each helping to ring about a state in which “the right people” are becoming extinct, to be replaced by the children of the barbarian hordes.

Atheists are particularly prone to this problem. Atheists have a far lower birth rate than theists – well below the level needed to maintain its population (in the absence of recruiting). So, atheists themselves are at risk of becoming extinct – allowing the world to fall into the hands of Muslims, who are busy having as many children as possible and moving them to Europe as a way of trying to take over their countries. Or so it goes.

Paradoxically, one of the assumptions that is built into the idea that birth rates are important is that the primary influence on a child’s beliefs about religion and the like is the family. There is an important correlation between what a parents believe and what their children believe. These “Muslim” children (for example) are simply trapped in a system where they adopt a false religion only because they were born into parents who brainwashed them into that position.

Yet, theists who make this type of claim ignore an obvious implication – that perhaps they also have adopted their religious beliefs, not because those beliefs are true, but as a matter of childhood indoctrination. Indeed, they are supporting the idea that their children will acquire their religion in virtue of a parent’s indoctrination. That is precisely why they need more children, so that they have more people to indoctrinate.

In fact, this is true. The religious beliefs that people acquire have nothing to do with an encounter with some sort of transcendental reality. If it did, then something has to explain why the people in one part of the world so reliably encounter one transcendental reality. Yet, people in the other part of the world encounter yet another transcendental reality. Nothing better explains the acquisition of religious belief than the theory that they are a set of fictions that have nothing to do with reality that the child learns from those closest to him or her while growing up.

Now, recognizing that religious belief is the product of one’s culture and not the product of an encounter with transcendental reality, it is true that birth rates will affect the numbers of people who accept one religion over another. It is true that the numbers of Muslims there are versus the numbers of Christians there are does not depend at all on which religion has the most accurate understanding of God. It depends on which one gets the ability to indoctrinate the most children in the least amount of time.

This part of the argument is true. The reasons that different religions are concerned about birth rates are accurate in that birth rates are, indeed, important to the numbers of people who adhere to a particular religion. Failing the birth-rate war does, indeed, carry the risk of falling into being a minority, and then being subject to all of the burdens that the majority religion might impose on minority views. Historically, these have included some extremely bloody burdens.

There are those who claim that atheism is just another religion. As such, it would be a part of the same birth-rate war as genuine religions are. However, atheism is not a set of beliefs acquired by culture with only a pretend relationship to a fictional transcendental reality. Atheism is nothing more than the claim that, in the absence of no evidence of a divine force, the chances that one exists are very, very small, that we could never know anything about its nature even if it did exist, and the question of its existence is of no practical importance.

In a sense, the claim can be made that I am a part of the problem, where secular birth rates are concerned. My wife and I have no children, and will not have any children. So, we will not be contributing to the numbers of atheists by indoctrinating our children.

But, then again, birth rates are not important when what one values is truth and a connection to reality.

This blog, in a sense, is my child. It will soon be 2.5 years old – still an infant, clearly incapable of taking care of itself. It has grown respectably well for the past 2.5 years and seems to be healthy – with no serious problems as far as I have been able to tell.

With luck, the blog – or at least the ideas contained within this blog – will survive my death. They will go on into the future. Even though they, too, will eventually fade away and die, they will, in part, be absorbed into future ideas, which will then be absorbed into other future ideas, leaving behind a long chain of children ideas, grandchildren ideas, and great grand children ideas, for years to come.

It is my hope that my child will make a positive contribution to society – that it will be known for providing society with things of value. Yet,, as many parents will tell you, the children do not always turn out as well as the parents will like. Time will tell how this one turns out.

The point is that this blog is concerned with identifying certain propositions in the fields of ethics, moral theory, and meta-ethics, are true or false. If a proposition is true, then it is true. It’s truth or falsity does not depend on demographics. So, even if the world should become overrun by ‘the wrong type of people’, the real question is whether those people have true beliefs or false belifs. If the proposition is true, and a religion that denies its truth comes to dominate, those people will suffer the consequences of their error. And, eventually, given enough time, they will tire of paying the cost of being wrong and discover that embracing the truth has its benefits.

The crace or gender or cultural identity of the child or the religion it is brought up in all have absolutely no affect on the truth. Either people will come to actually embrace that truth, or suffer the consequences of failure to match their beliefs to reality.

Let us not forget the possibility that I could be wrong. In fact, this is a good time to ring out one of my favorite slogans yet again. I know, as an absolute fact, that at least one of the propositions contained in my writings is false. I simply do not know which proposition(s) it (they) are. In these cases, it would still be the case that society is better off to find truth than to embrace a fiction.

So, I will in no way endorse a policy that as many children as possible must be indoctrinated into the system that I have described here. That would mean indoctrinating them into the at least one fiction that I know for certain exists. I will, instead, repeat my assertion that society is better off to the degree that it embraces truth and shuns fiction – including the at-least-one-false-statement that is contained within this blog.

People who have nothing to go on in defending their ideas but the ability to indoctrinate children and lock them into a particular way of thinking have reason to be concerned about the numbers of children they have unrestricted access to. Whereas people who value truth based on evidence have less of a need for these types of machinations. The evidence will always be there, and it will always point to the same truth, even if people are indoctrinated from childhood on to ignore the evidence or that truth.

Another way of identifying the same point is this:

Take a group of babies too young to know any of our culture and raise them on a distant planet where they will eventually invent their own languages. It is a virtual certainty that they would never invent Islam or Christianity. There is almost no chance that they will develop exactly the same myths that are found on Earth. However, as they grew and intelligence and in their understanding of the scientific world around them, there will eventually be atheists.

People who need to worry about how many children their membership is having that they can indoctrinate are simply admitting that they have nothing to base their beliefs on but the myths that they pass onto their children.

Beliefs and Desires in Moral Claims

It is time, once again, for another Atheist Ethicist episode of “Responding to Atheist Observer.”

In our previous episode, I had written a posting called “Considering Alternative Ideas” about reading only what one agreed with, or reading what one disagreed with under the mindset, “Obviously, this is wrong. I simply need to find the error.”

[Note: In case this introduction should sound derogatory, or in case its meaning may be ambiguous, then please note that I choose to respond to AO’s comments because I consider them worthy of responding to. Not because I am somehow being coerced into something that has no merit.]

Atheist Observer wrote in response:

I was wondering if you still took seriously any alternatives to what seems like almost a mantra for you, “The tools for changing desires are praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.”

Well, there are some obvious additional ways to change desires, such as drugs (e.g., chemical castration for sex offenders) and surgery (e.g., physical castration). One thing about these methods, though, is that they tend to be considered non-moral. It may be the case that a person has a moral obligation to undergo treatment of one type or another (to alter desires through one of these systems). However, this ‘moral push’ to undergo treatment falls under the rubric, again, of using praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment as incentives to get people to undergo treatment. The use of these incentives are an inherent part of morality. Desire-changing options that lie outside of this system are considered non-moral.

I would not argue that these are not tools for changing desires, although I would argue in many if not most circumstances they have limited effectiveness, and in fact they may often be counter productive, bringing about desires and behaviors that may be even more objectionable than those we were trying to change.

These types of points would be relevant to the question of how to use the tools. It does impact the question of whether morality is concerned with their use. To the degree that morality is concerned with their use, then, of course, it would be a part of morality to say, “The rational use of these tools involves using them where they are effective and productive. Do not use these tools in circumstances in which they would be ineffective and counter-productive.”

Prescription drugs are sometimes abused and used in circumstances that are ineffective or counter-productive. This is hardly an argument against the practice of using prescription drugs to treat illness and injury. It is only an argument against using those tools in ways that are ineffective or counter-productive.

But is seems to me that for whatever reasons you choose to give beliefs an unreasonably small role in the development of desires. . . . On the other hand, I have not seen any evidence in your discussions, or in my personal experience, that most desires are not in fact desires as means. These consist of some desire as ends and a set of beliefs about how to achieve those ends. To the extent the means depend upon beliefs, the subsequent desires are susceptible to change by changing the beliefs.

I sharply distinguish between beliefs and desires-as-ends. These are distinct entities. Beliefs, on the other hand, are an integral part of desires-as-means. It is essential that a desires-as-means consist of both a set of desires-as-ends (goals, purposes), and beliefs about the best way to realize desires-as-ends.

In a sense, it will always be the case that ‘most’ of our desires are desires-as-means. If beliefs are represented by blue marbles, and desires-as-ends are represented as red marbles, and desires-as-means are the different possible combinations of red marbles and blue marbles, then the set of desires-as-means must necessarily be significantly larger than the set of beliefs or the set of desires-as-ends.

However, because desires-as-means are always a collection of beliefs and desires-as-ends, we do not need to talk about them as separate entities. We can talk about desires-as-means while still talking exclusively about beliefs and desires-as-ends. A desire-as-means is still nothing more than a particular collection of red and blue marbles.

Furthermore, allow me to repeat, desires-as-means necessarily contain beliefs. One very effective way of changing desires-as-means is to change the person’s beliefs. Switch one blue marble out for another, and you no longer have the same set of red and blue marbles (the same ‘desire as means’) as you started with.

You have a desire to bring others to your view about what the tools are for changing desires. I desire to bring them to mine. We could attempt to condemn each other into changing our desires, but there is virtually no chance that will happen.

Well, I hope that my desire is not to ‘bring others to [my] view.” I propose a theory, but I hope that people would reject the theory if it happens not to be true. However, I believe that the things I write are true (or, at least, they make sense and have a reasonable chance of being true), so they are what I defend.

Now, I am not saying anything against altering people’s behavior by altering their desires-as-means, or by altering their desires-as-means by altering their beliefs. This is a perfectly legitimate activity – and one that we engage in all the time. I have no objections to that practice. In fact, as you point out, I engage in that practice all the time. A great many of my posts are devoted, not to changing desires, but to changing beliefs. A great many of my posts are devoted, for example, to defeating the belief that morality can be a genetic disposition, or that morality is ‘subjective’ in the sense where ‘I want people to do X and am willing to use violence against those who do not do X’ implies ‘people have a moral obligation to do X.’

However, I deny that when people are engaging in these practices that they are working within the tradition called ‘morality’. These types of discussions are not ‘ethics’ per say, they are discussions in the field of ‘meta-ethics’ (or ‘theories about ethics’) – which is an entirely descriptive (belief-centered) field of study. It is my meta-ethical theory that ethics is primarily concerned with the alteration of malleable reasons for action that exist (desires as ends) by the use of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

For example, let us assume that you are in the hospital and discover that the nurse is about to give you some blood – only, it’s the wrong blood type. Naturally, he believed that she was giving you the right blood type and you can change his behavior by pointing out his false beliefs. However, the next question we want to answer is whose moral fault is it that he was about to give you the wrong blood type.

Is this your nurse’s fault? To answer this question we have to look at how the nurse to give you the wrong blood type. Assume that this is what the doctor had requested. In this case, the nurse was not at fault. Fault (or moral blameworthiness) is not associated with false beliefs.

The doctor, it turns out, had your blood typed, was told your blood type, and ordered that you be given blood of that type. The doctor, in this case, is not at fault. The doctor’s false believes does not make her morally blameworthy.

Where is it that we find moral blame?

We do not find moral blame where we find false beliefs. We will, instead, find moral fault where we find somebody whose desires deviated from those that we have reason to want people to have. We will find moral fault in the careless lab technician, whose problem is not that he suffers from a false belief, but from an insufficiently strong desire to avoid deadly mistakes. Or we find in the patient who used an opportunity to alter your records because he is a competitor for a job that you are applying for.

Blameworthiness is not found where we find false beliefs. Blameworthiness is found where we find bad desires. The only time that a person even appears to be condemned for having a false belief, is when a more careful or concerned person (a person with good desires) would not have been tempted to adopt such a belief based on the available evidence.

However, through evidence, logic, and reason I could be convinced my position is in error, and thus I would no longer desire to get others to adapt that position. Given what you state in your post, I would assume you would do the same thing.

Of course I use this method – when I am dealing with what I think is an otherwise good person who has made a factual error (the nurse who is about to give somebody the wrong blood type). Whenever I find somebody whose actions can be improved upon merely by correcting his beliefs, then moral concepts do not apply. This is a situation outside of morality. Moral concepts do not come into play until the method for correcting a person’s behavior comes from correcting his desires-as-ends.

If it is true that desires are the only motivating forces, and that your tools are the only way to change them, we have virtually an Old Testament approach to morality, where all we can do is run around constantly rewarding and punishing people to get moral behavior. To me this is a narrow and generally inaccurate picture of moral behavior in real life.

First, it is important to distinguish between using punishment as a way of altering desires, and using punishment as a way of altering behavior directly (to name one example). The field of law, not of morality, is the field that uses ‘deterrence’ as a method for altering behavior directly. It tries to get people to do the right thing by threatening them with vile consequences if they should get caught doing something else.

Morality is the use of social forces to affect desires, not the use of social forces to affect behavior by threatening to thwart the desires an agent already has. The purpose of morality is to create a person who will not take money that belongs to others, even when the thief has no chance of being caught. This is not accomplished by threatening the individual with consequences of what would happen if he is caught. This is caused by giving the agent an aversion to theft that will inhibit him from taking what belongs to others even when he will not get caught.

“Old Testament” morality is more the morality of a law giver and threats of punishment to alter behavior and an omniscient policeman who sees all and whose punishment is certain. It is modeled after the concept of a law-giver and a law. It is not ‘morality’ in the sense of creating people who do not want to do evil.

This is a significant difference.

In my experience most people have generally benign basic desires, and we encourage moral behavior most effectively for most people by helping them see where they have belief errors that lead to desire-thwarting behaviors and creating societies and institutions that maximize the opportunities for learning beliefs and behaviors that lead to general desire fulfillment.

If a person does, in fact, have basic good desires, then we do, in fact, alter their behavior by changing their beliefs. If the desires are good, than false beliefs is where the error lies. However, the very assumption that a person has good desires takes the discussion outside of the realm of morality. It places ‘desire-thwarting behavior’ in the same category as that of the nurse who is about to innocently give a person a wrong blood type. If the desires are good, then the desire-thwarting behavior qualifies as innocent mistakes where moral praise or condemnation is simply not appropriate.

We will find that where moral blameworthiness, or moral credit, is appropriate it is where the defect is not traced to good desires and bad beliefs, but to bad desires (with or without false beliefs). Since we find moral concepts applied only where we find bad desires, and not where we find bad beliefs, then even though bad beliefs are a serious problem, it is still the case that this problem is not a moral problem.

In no way am I understating the role of beliefs in desires-as-means. Nor do I deny the power of getting a good person (a person with good desires) to do the right thing by altering his beliefs. My claim is that when we look for moral fault - when we seek to apply the concepts of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness, we are not concerned with beliefs or desires-as-means. We look to the ends - that which is actually desired - by those we consider worthy of moral condemnation or praise. Other considerations definitely exist. They simply are not a part of that which we know as morality.

Making Babies

I have known a couple of people in my life who have dealt with a serious ethical concern.

Both of them have suffered severe health problems. Both of them have asked, “Should I have a child, when there is a possibility that this child will grow up with the same problems that I had, and that he or she will suffer as I have suffered? Does morality require that I forego having children of my own?”

I have given these people the same advice.

I ask, “Think back on your life, with the problems that you have had, and asked yourself if the life you have been given have been a blessing or a curse. Yes, you have had to deal with pain, and I am not minimizing that fact. However, you have also laughed, and loved, and experienced awe and wonder at great things that you have encountered in your life. So, you have to ask yourself, was it worth it? Would you have given up the love and laughter and wonder at the universe if that would have freed you from the pain?”

I then ask them to imagine that they are talking to their child, when the child is 30 years old or so and has gone past the trials and tribulations of adolescence. This is how morality would look at their situation:

“Look, kid, I would have given you the opportunity for love and laughter and wonder without the pain if I could have. It hurts me to see you in pain. That wasn’t one of my options. I could have saved you from the pain, but the only way I could have done that would have been to save deny you the opportunity for love and laughter and wonder. So, I had to ask myself whether or not you would have considered that to be too great of a cost. Would you take the love and laughter and wonder with the pain, or would you consider the pain so great that you would gladly give up the others?”

I invite the listener to imagine her mother asking her that question and to imagine what the answer would be. Quite often, the answer is that, “The pain was not so bad that I would have given up the love and laughter and wonder as payment to be rid of it. That would be too high of a price to pay.”

If that is the answer, I tell her that she would be doing a greater harm to her future child to by denying that child the opportunity for love, laughter, and wonder than by saving the child from pain. “You are talking about giving the child an option where, if the child was able to choose herself, she would have almost certainly said was the worse option.”

Of course, the answer could be that the price for experiencing love and laughter and wonder was too great, and the child, now an adult, may well decide that it was not worth paying. If this is the case – and only if this is the case does the parent do the child an actual disservice by bringing that child into the universe. In such a case, the parent gives the child that option that the child would not have selected for herself if given a chance.

So, I argue, “If you want a child, and you are willing and able to undergo the expense of caring for that child (because to have a child that one neglects is not a morally viable option) then one is morally free to go ahead and do so, provided that these conditions are met. And these conditions are met more often than people tend to think.

It is important to note that, even in this argument, where one provides a benefit to the child by bringing that child into the world, where the child has a reason to reflect on his life and say, “I am glad that I have lived,” it does not follow that the mother had an obligation to have that child. It does not follow that having children is a duty.

Instead, the fact of the matter is that giving the child a life that the child actually valued is a gift. It’s a present, for which the child (if the child had a life that the child truly valued) owes the mother a statement of gratitude. (Thank you, mother). It is not, in any sense, a duty or an obligation that I had a right to demand of her (or that anybody else had a right to demand of her in my name) regardless of the value that I would have placed in that gift.

Those who argue for the wrongness of abortion seem to understand this fact from time to time – that bring a child into this world is a gift, and not a duty. After all, they argue for abstinence rather than abortion – where abstinence would have been just as effective at denying me the gift of life as abortion would have been (or as using birth control would have been). How is the child who is not conceived as a result of abstinence in any way better off than he would have been being conceived and aborted?

The doctrine of abstinence recognizes that no child has a right to be born and that no parent has a duty to have a child. The doctrine of abstinence recognizes that life is a gift from the mother to the child, not a duty – and, as such, something the mother has a right to refuse, at least through abstinence, if not through abortion.

The idea that a person benefits if one is given a gift of life, where that person would prefer life with the pain of a defect over freedom of pain through the absence of life does not, in any way, generate an obligation to have a child

What it does say is that the parent who decides to abort a fetus with a birth defect, who claims that she is doing it ‘for the sake of a child’ – as an act of charity – is, in many times, quite simply wrong. Unless there is good reason to believe that the child would grow up into being somebody who would have given away all of his experiences of love, joy, and wonder for freedom of pain, the mother who aborts such a fetus is given that fetus the worst of the two available options, not the better. Claiming that the giving the fetus the worst of the two objections was done for sake of the child simply wrong.

Yet, it may be done for the sake of the parent. Because life is a gift that one has the right not to give, a parent may choose to abort a handicapped fetus because of the tremendous burden such a fetus might bring, to reserve the gift of life for a fetus that does not have the same defects, is a perfectly legitimate option. It is a pretense to say that the act is being done for the benefit of the fetus. It is no crime for the act to be done for the benefit of the mother.

Yet, at the same time, while we have good reason to allow a parent to allow the presence of a birth defect to determine whether she gives the gift of life to a child, we have good reason to condemn the person who bases this choice on the gender of the child. We have reason to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires and to inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires. A desire for boys over girls that plays itself out in terms of a population that values the welfare of women less than of men, and one in which there is simply more men than women (and thus the grief of competition with a large number of clear losers) is a desire that tends to thwart other desires. So it is a desire that we have reason to condemn.

So, here lies a set of related concerns on the legitimacy of having a child. The fact that a child might have a defect does not support the argument that terminating the pregnancy is for the benefit of that child, unless the pain and suffering is so severe the child itself would have exchanged all opportunities for love, laughter, and wonder for the absence of pain. Life is a gift, and nothing that a mother has no obligation to give. The burden of a deformed fetus also gives the mother justification to withhold the gift of life from a defective fetus in order to give it to a non-defective fetus. Yet, people generally have good reason to condemn the desire to have boys over girls (or to value males over females).

E2.0: Peter Atkins: On Pride and Chemistry

This is the 19th in a new series of weekend posts taken from the presentations at the Salk Institute’s “Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0.”. I have placed an index of essays in this series in an introductory post, Enlightenment 2.0: Introduction.

The next presentation from this series came from Peter Atkins, recently retired Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford, Fellow of Lincoln College. Atkins continued the discussion of reductionism from the previous day. He also took up the position that reductionists in science do not have any reason to be concerned with the types of issues that other people raise.

For example, a very common example used against reductionism in science is that one can study all of the properties of a set of water molecules however one will never be able to explain the fact that water is wet. ‘Wetness’ is a property that, allegedly, cannot be reduced to physics.

Atkins asserts that chemists are not really concerned with the issue of the wetness of water. Chemists knows what it means for a substance to be coated with water molecules, and that is all one needs to know to understand wetness.

Another entity that some say cannot be reduced to physics is romantic love. However, scientists are well aware of how different proteins and molecules in men and women and an evolved desire to mate and to share each other’s company can be encoded in the brain as functional states. With this, one doesn’t really need to ‘understand’ anything more about romantic love.

The fact that there are people who want ‘something more’ in romantic love does not prove that there is something more to be had.

This brings up an important point about reductionism. Reductionism holds that an event at one level of description (e.g., World War II) can be ‘reduced to’ statements in a lower level of description (e.g., chemistry) – that the former is simply a simpler way of making claims that are just as true (though not so easily written) in the latter.

On the other side of the spectrum from reduction is elimination. ‘Ghosts’ cannot be reduced to statements in physics because ghosts do not exist. The fact that ghosts cannot be reduced to statements in the area of physics is not a problem for the reductionist project. It is a problem for those who believe that ghosts are real. One of the options that a reductionist can take is that, “Whatever we cannot reduce to statements in the area of physics, we can eliminate, because it plays no role in the real world.”

So, it is possible that a scientist can dismiss problems with the wetness of water and romantic love by saying that those elements that cannot be reduced to statements in the realm of physics are like ghosts. They have no role to play in the real world and we should not pretend that they exist.

One of the accusations made against <> and his defense of science concerns the issue of pride. Diedre McClosky said:

As a Christian, I am very alert to idolatry and to self-idolatry which is the master sin of pride. So, could you tell me, are you also concerned about pride in this evil and hazardous sense.

Atkins responded as follows:

I don't see why pride should be evil. I think that if we've got something that is fantastic, good, that we have developed that turns out to be a way of answering all of the deep questions that have ever been asked about the nature of the world. One that is capable of developing applications that enhances our lives, saves our lives, do everything that science does, then we have every reason not to feel humble.

I am not particularly well informed on the philosophy of reductionism and can do little more than report the claims that Atkins made, I do know something about value theory and the virtue, or the vice, of ‘pride’.

‘Pride” is a state that people generally have reason to keep bound between two extremes. A certain absence of pride (or self-respect) is unhealthy and destructive. A person who is two hard on himself or who cannot lift his head in public is at risk of hating himself and failing to muster the resources to accomplish his ends.

On the other end, there is the evil of arrogance. The arrogant person exaggerates his own worth. He thinks that he can do no wrong when, in fact, being human, he is prone to all sorts of error. He is somebody who is at risk of acting on false beliefs because he does not sufficiently appreciate his own infallibility.

Both vices – the vice of insufficient pride and the vice of excessive pride – can be linked to the value of truth. The insufficiently prideful person denies the truth of his own value. He is somebody who thinks of himself as inherently or intrinsically ‘worse’ than others. However, intrinsic ‘worthiness’ does not exist. As far as intrinsic worth goes, none of us have any. However, all of us have desires. There is no law of nature that demands that any of our desires be made subservient to those of others. We have a right to an equal political and social footing in society.

Of course, this means that if we have a desire that people generally have reason to inhibit, or are lacking desires that people generally have reason to promote, we are legitimately subject to condemnation. When we recognize these shortcomings in ourselves this would justify a certain amount of self-condemnation.

Yet, this is not the same as thinking of oneself as lacking ‘inherent’ worth. These types of problems can be reduced by simply going to work (sometimes with professional help) of inhibit those desires that people generally have reason to inhibit and to promote desires in oneself that people generally have reason to promote. These types of problems do not imply an inherent lack of worth. They imply a need to do some work.

The excessively prideful person – the arrogant person – overstates his own value or the value of his own contributions. He either claims that he has an intrinsic worth that is higher than others – a claim that is false since no intrinsic worth exists. Or he overestimates his ability to bring positive change for others – attributing to himself powers that he does not have. In either of these cases, he gets the facts wrong and, in acting on those false beliefs, he subjects others to risks.

A low sense of self-worth or self-respect is not something that people generally have much reason to condemn. We have more of a reason to pity those people (because of the harm they do to themselves) then to condemn them. However, the good person would find the person of low self-esteem to be a nuisance. The good person desires that the interests of others be considered, while the person of low self-esteem keeps insisting that his own interests are not worthy of being considered. So, the good person may be tempted to slap such a person across the face and shout, “Snap out of it!”

However, the arrogant person is extremely dangerous. He is quite likely to go forth on grand schemes without having any real (rational) idea of what he is doing, putting not only himself but others at grave risk. The invasion of Iraq, with millions of lives destroyed and hundreds of billions of dollars going to destroying things when that money could have gone to building things, is an example of innocent people – some of them not even born yet – suffering huge losses due to the arrogance of others. The suggestion was made that it was a symptom of ‘pride’ to think that, somehow, science would be able to answer all of the great questions (or, at least, had the potential to do so). This type of claim may be a symptom of pride – since the individual is making a claim that we have little reason to believe at this point. However, if it is pride, it is a weak form of arrogance. Few are being put at risk of harm by saying, “Someday, we will have an answer.”

A far greater form of arrogance is that which comes from religious belief. Many religious believers are so wrapped up in the certainty of their religion – which they have no right to given the huge numbers of people who disagree with them – that they are more than willing to pass laws affecting hundreds of millions of people, and sometimes to commit acts of brutally, all in the name of their God. There is no greater example of arrogance than a person who insists on passing legislation that will adversely affect others, and to do so on the basis of his claim to know what God wants.

There is real arrogance in putting, “In God We Trust” on the money, and putting “One Nation Under God” in the pledge, because these people are denying any possibility of error in spite of the fact that there is not only good reason for doubt, and in spite of the fact that their own religion tells them to be humble.

These people are not saying, “Someday, we will have an answer.” They are saying, “I have the answer today, I cannot possibly be mistaken, and I am so certain of my infallibility that I am willing to demand that others acknowledge the greatness of my truth.”

Science is belief with evidence, and even where it says “We will have an answer,” it still only accepts an answer when there is evidence. It is not pride to restrain one’s beliefs according to the evidence. It is pride to go beyond the evidence and claim to know things that the evidence does not support. We find that, not so much in science, as we do in religion.

E2.0: David Albert: The Power of Physics

This is the 18th in a new series of weekend posts taken from the presentations at the Salk Institute’s “Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0.”. I have placed an index of essays in this series in an introductory post, Enlightenment 2.0: Introduction.

The last speaker for the first day of the conference was David Albert, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the M.A. Program in The Philosophical Foundations of Physics at Columbia University.

I have a problem with Albert’s presentation in that he does not seem to present much of an argument for his position. It is difficult to find a set of premises leading to a conclusion. What we seem to have instead is a stream of conclusions with very little support actually being exposed in the presentation.

Albert, like Sean Carroll before him, wants to argue in favor of the Enlightenment idea that everything in the natural world can be reduced to physics – including morality, love, and universities. He wants to argue that the position that had been the received view for the past 70 years in science, that science has fundamental limits that restrict not only what we can know about the world, but in describing the world.

This idea of the limits of science is one which is commonly used by a wide variety of the critics of science. Religious fundamentalists believe that they can use the limits of science to make room for a God. New-age post-modernists try to argue that the limits of science make room for whatever the observer or agent wants to put there – that we (in a sense) create our own reality.

Albert’s view is that this problem does not exist.

There is, indeed, a problem concerning the limits of observation. Albert does argue that observation itself, particularly at the subatomic level, is “an absolutely unavoidably violent an disruptive process.” As such, we cannot oserve things as they would have been in the absence of observation. However, Albert wants to deny that this is a normal scientific problem – not some special problem that calls the whole scientific process into question. It is a limit in our ability to conduct experiments and to make observations that is, at root, no different than the problem with taking measurements and making observations that scientists have always labored under.

This is one of the areas where Albert tends to make assertions rather than arguments. He claims that this view came from Bohr and others who wanted to defend quantum mechanics from certain objections in the early part of the 20th century. To do so, they argued that what appeared to be problems with quantum mechanics was, in fact, problems with the limits of science. The fact that quantum mechanics could not explain certain types of outcomes was not reason enough to question quantum mechanics (as we would have questioned other theories). It was reason enough, so these theorists argued, to to hold that science itself will remain perpetually unable to answer these questions.

To counter this view, Albert asserts that there are now theories on the table that suggest that the original problem was not with the fundamental limits of science, but with quantum mechanics itself. The reason that quantum mechanics fails to answer particular questions is because quantum mechanics needs to be replaced by a better theory that can answer these questions.

For the most part, I have no way to assess his claim that there are these alternative theories exist and that they have the implications he attributes to them. The only way that I have to assess whether his claims have merit is whether the members of the audience (who know more than I do) will accept them or reject them. Even that is hard to determine.

Hope

One of the areas in which theists like to attack atheist value theorists is on the absence of hope. The argument is that no atheist theory can provide people with hope, and that in the absence of religion a person’s life is filled with despair.

Bill Gray recently wrote an article, Faith the Assurance - Hope the Heartbeat lamenting the atheist’s lack of hope. In The Conservative Voice he wrote,

So, my Friend, when you say, "You have absolutely no shred of evidence for your belief. That is the difference between faith and science." I reply to you, "We have something much greater; we have hope. We have blessed assurance; for we have faith -- in the only eternal salvation offered to man, Jesus Christ."

“Hope” in this sense is the product of the snake-oil salesman. “If you by Dr. Smith’s special elixir, you will be buying the hope that your arthritis will go away, you will be able to see again or to walk again, that your cancer will go away. You will be buying hope in an eternal afterlife.”

Hope is all that the customer is buying in this case, because “Dr. Smith’s elixir” does not deliver any of these things.

One of the things that science has the ability to do is to put those who use Dr. Smith’s elixir in a study group, put a comparable group of people in a control group, and (at least for most of these claims) tell us whether Dr. Smith’s customers are buying anything more than ‘hope’. Is it the case that people in the study group suffer less from arthritis, blindness, paralysis, cancer, or the like?

The answer has always been, ‘no’.

There are studies that show that people in the study group are ‘happier’ than people in the control group. They may well be happier because they have the false belief that they are taking something that has the power to cure arthritis, blindness, paralysis, or cancer. Yet, this is the false happiness. This is the same ‘happiness’ that we might find in somebody permanently locked in good dream, where they are imagining themselves being wealthy and popular, while, in the real world, they are rotting away in a hospital bed with no chance of rejoining the real world.

Gray wrote:

My Friend, you may grow warm and fuzzy in the warmth of your religion, your belief system, science. You may even get a warm glow from your glass of wine or your drink of strong spirits; but, in the end the only thing they will give you is a muddled mind and an unpleasant after-effect.

Actually, I do grow warm and fuzzy in a blanket of science. Well, warm, at least. Science provides me with the energy that I use to heat my home. That energy is available because scientists who have studied geology have discovered stores of fuel that they have also learned how to transmit to my home where I can burn it. Science provides the insulation so that I do not need to burn a lot of fuel. Science provides the electricity that runs my stove, and it fills the store across the street with groceries from all over the world – year round.

People for thousands of years have prayed for good crops – for enough to eat, and for a mild winter that will not kill too many of their members off. None of this praying as ever provided an ounce of food or warmth. It has provided them only with Dr. Smith’s snake oil – a hope for warmth that had no bearing on reality.

Science has delivered on the promises that religion has never been able to keep. Give up on Dr. Smith’s useless elixir and go, instead, to see what the scientist is selling, and you will find a product that is clinically proven to produce the results that are promised. Indeed, it is the very nature of science to provide proven results. It is the nature of religion to sell false hope that produces no measurable real-world effect.

In fact, our only real hope rests with science – with understanding the world around us well enough to the harms it would otherwise inflict on us and to obtain those things we value. My wife could not live without science. A brain tumor when she was a child would have killed her at a very young age if the only thing available to her was a priest’s ‘hope’. She would be dead today without the pacemaker in her chest – another gift that science has delivered.

Science has given us hurricane tracking systems that give people hope that they can survive the next category 5 hurricane, not by praying that it will do no harm, but by knowing when it was coming so they can get out of the way. Science has given coastal residents the hope that they can survive the next tsunami because of a tsunami warning system that scientists have set up. Science provides hope that more of us will survive the next pandemic, that there will be food on the table next year and the year after that.

Science provides us with tons of hope.

And science, unlike religion, actually delivers on its promises.

Yet, even with this, the situation is worse than I have portrayed it. This is because Dr. Smith’s snake oil not only fails to provide any real solutions to the world’s problems, it actually makes many of those problems worse. Dr. Smith’s snake oil is not just an impotent elixir, it is a poison.

I do not mean by this that religion poisons everything as Christopher Hitchens claims. I mean by this the more modest claim that some religion does real harm. Mr. Smith’s snake oil comes in a number of different formulae. Some formulations are relatively harmless. Some formulations have been known to wipe out whole nations.

One of the poisonous effects of Dr. Smith’s elixir is that it prevents people from pursuing options that really do help. They buy Dr. Smith’s elixir and they buy the hope that their arthritis will be cured, and in doing so they avoid the treatment that the scientist could provide.

We have people who think that we can alter the course of hurricanes and prevent earthquakes by banning gay marriage and homosexuality and instituting prayer in school. When, in fact, the best way to save lives in the face of hurricanes and earthquakes is to study them scientifically, use what we have learned in our engineering and in emergency response planning, and teaching people the scientific facts behind these type of phenomena.

These people add to our misery in two ways. They sacrifice innocent people in order to try to control natural disasters in the same way that ancient tribal shaman would sacrifice virgins to try to appease the gods. They justify their actions by making unsubstantiated claims of the ‘good’ that would come from such a sacrifice. While they are engaging in these practices of human sacrifice, they are diverting attention and resources away from policies and procedures that might actually produce scientifically measurable benefits – benefits that come from an accurate understanding of the phenomenon in question.

So, here we have the tribal shaman ready to sacrifice a virgin to the volcano in order to save the village. He stands there with the knife in his hand bragging about how he, and he alone, delivers ‘hope’ to the villagers – the hope that their village will be saved. When, in fact, the only thing the shaman provides is a dead virgin.

The shaman says that he delivers hope – that this is the good that his sacrifices provide. This may be true. A gullible people might actually find ‘hope’ in the shaman’s superstitions.

However, while the shaman is busy providing the villagers with (false) hope, the scientist actually delivers.

Considering Other Views

In today’s post, I would like to encourage you to take some steps to avoid a very common and very dangerous human disposition – the disposition to read or to watch only those things that conform to our world view, and to ignore anything that might conflict with it. In selecting what we read or view, we are not actually seeking to learn something new. We are seeking to find something that confirms the things we already (think we) know – to derive comfort from ‘evidence’ that our world view is intact.

Even when we do look at things we disagree with, we tend to do so with the attitude that, “This person is wrong. So, where is that mistake?” I had a philosophy professor who described the average experience of a philosophy faculty member when attending a presentation at a conference. He listens to the paper until the speaker says something the listener disagrees with. Then, the listener latches onto that ‘error’, forms a question that he will ask at the end of the presentation, and does not go any further.

If the reader or listener does not find something that is ‘obviously wrong’ with the other person’s presentation, then he will interpret an error into that presentation. He will study the material until he can find an interpretation that he can attack, and that is what he will attack.

These are tendencies, not natural laws. There are a great many exceptions. However, the number of people who claim, “I have given a fair hearing to views contrary to my own,” who are wrong is substantially greater than the number of people who claim, “I have not given a fair hearing to views contrary to my own,” who are wrong. There is an orders of magnitude difference.

In my own intellectual history, there are two cases where the effect of encountering ideas that contradicted my own thinking were extremely influential.

In the first case, since I was 16 years old, I called myself a libertarian. I remember thinking, “These ideas are so obvious that I cannot imagine how anybody would question them. How can any sane person say they are mistaken?” I said this to one of my libertarian friends, and followed it up with, “But, obviously, there are a lot of people who think that these ideas are wrong. Can you provide me with something that somebody has to say against this view? I want to find out why they object.”

He handed me an article. I do not remember the source, but I remember the content of that article. The author wrote that the libertarian philosophy violates the classic is/ought distinction. Libertarian philosophy begins with a series of ‘is’ statements like, ‘man qua man is a rational animal,’ and from this it draws the whole set of libertarian moral principles such as, “It is always wrong to engage in aggression against another person,” and, “Taxation is theft.” However, it fails to explain how one can go from ‘is’ premises to ‘ought’ conclusions – how prescriptive conclusions can be derived from purely descriptive premises. The arguments they give typically take the form, “See, it is clearly possible to derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’, because that is what I do in this argument.

Regular readers know that I object to the is/ought distinction. It is not the case that I believe, as many do, that this gulf cannot be crossed – only that the libertarians fail to do so. Against the is/ought distinction, I argue that postulating two different types of ‘relationships’ is as problematic as postulating two different types of ‘entities’ – minds and brains, for example, or material and immaterial substance. Dualism in any form is an exceptional claim that requires exceptional proof – or at least some evidence that the second entity exists.

In the case of is/ought dualism, there is no evidence. Hume’s own argument for the distinction between ‘ought’ and ‘is’ is an argument from ignorance. He asserts only that he imagine how it can be done – that ought can be derived from is. He forces us to choose between two options: (1) that Hume is suffering from a lack of imagination, and (2) that a we live in a universe with two types of relationships that are distinct and separate from each other yet somehow interact. Of the two, “failure of the imagination” is the more likely culprit. The claim that one cannot imagine how ought can be derived from is does as poor a job of proving two types of relationships as the inability to imagine how live could have evolved does at proving the existence of God.

So, one consequence of asking, “Why do people disagree with this view that I think is unquestionable?” is that I gave up libertarianism.

Another significant incident in which exposure to views that contradicted my own produced significant results happened while I was in graduate school. I went to graduate school to study value theory (specifically, moral philosophy). Yet, the Philosophy department graduate program required that I take 6 of my 12 classes in fields outside of moral philosophy. I was forced to take a class in the philosophy of science, and ultimately enrolled in a class in the philosophy of psychology.

Science has absolutely nothing to do with morality, or so I believed, so there was absolutely nothing that I could learn in a science class that would be relevant to my interests in value theory. This was the whole ‘is/ought’ problem again, back when I believed the received view that no ‘ought’ could be derived from an ‘is’.

My teacher in that class, Dr. Georges Rey, quickly got into a discussion of ‘folk psychology’ or the ‘theory’ theory of beliefs and desires. On this account, beliefs are propositional attitudes. A person who ‘believes that P’ (for some proposition P) has the attitude that P is true, and will behave as if P is true, to whatever degree he is able to do so. If he believes that a glass contains clean water, he will drink it if thirsty, even if (in truth) the contents are poison. Desires, on this model are also propositional attitudes. A ‘desire that P’ for some proposition P is a motivational attitude that a proposition P is to be made or kept true.

Desires are reason for action. And, insofar as beliefs and desires are scientifically significant entities (like black holes, things we cannot see but which we can know about through their effects), we can, in fact, link reasons for action (the foundation for all ‘ought’ statements) to the world of science.

In this case, I did not look for material that proved that an earlier view of mine was mistaken. I found one nonetheless when I was forced to confront material that I thought was entirely irrelevant to my interests.

We should resolve to confront material we do not agree with – and to confront it with the idea that the people who wrote that material are at least as smart as we are, and might well have something useful to say.

Now, there is a limit to this. If one has made a fair effort to confront an opposing view, and has already engaged it, there is less of a need to continue to confront that view. As a philosophy graduate student, I was forced to engage a number of arguments for the existence of God, and the flaws with those arguments. I have not read every new book that comes out arguing for God’s existence or against the ideas presented by people such as Dawkins and Harris. Then again, I am waiting for people who are experts in that field to announce that somebody has thought up something new.

I take a similar attitude to the idea that there is an ‘evolved’ sense of morality – that morality can be traced back to a series of evolved traits. As I see it, this view is as easily defeated as the Divine Command theory of ethics, using almost exactly the same argument.

When somebody claims that morality comes about through evolution, I ask him to answer a simple question; “Is X moral because it is loved by our genes, or is it loved by our genes because it is moral?” If they say that X is moral because it is loved by our genes, then, if our genes loved killing our stepchildren (as lion males do when they take over a pride) then this would be moral. Tribalism, racism, and rape might ultimately be moral, to the degree that evolution has selected these dispositions.

On the other hand, if the genetic moralist makes the opposite claim that X is loved by our genes because it is good, then the genetic moralist needs to (1) provide an account of what ‘goodness’ is that is independent of evolution, and (2) explain how it is that our genes came to select goodness when, at least hypothetically, evil might have had evolutionary advantages in some cases.

I feel no need to listen to an evolutionary moralist until I find one who is aware of this problem and has an answer to it. It is sufficient, in cases such as this, to wait for somebody to come along who can actually make a serious attempt to answer the question.

This is not the type of closed-mindedness that I spoke about above. This is an example of saying, “I want to hear your response to this problem with your views.” The type of behavior I am condemning above is not exhibited by people who ask questions of other views and demand an answer. It is exhibited by the person who does not ask, or who does not listen to the answers provided, or both.

This is not an easy task. I worry every day whether I am capable of giving objections to my own ideas a fair hearing. It would be arrogant, and wrong (as in mistaken) for me to claim that, even though I am human, I have risen above these human failings. I am as susceptible as others. Moral responsibility comes from recognizing short-comings such as this, and making an effort to prevent them from causing you (or me) from doing harms that a more open-minded person and intellectually honest person could have avoided.

Morally Culpable Stupidity

Unorothodox Atheism has a post, “I Want To Cry”, containing a video that tells of people explaining their reasons for supporting Huckabee and their objections to other candidates. A relevant fact about this video is that many of the claims expressed in the video are false.

Reed Brandon, the author of the blog post that exposes many of the false claims and assumptions that appear in the video. I want to add a moral dimension. Everybody makes mistakes – everybody gets the facts wrong from time to time. Usually, these are non-culpable mistakes. However, we all have an obligation to avoid mistakes. When people get too careless, their mistakes become morally culpable. They prove by their actions that they do not care about the types of things that morally concerned people care about.

The first mistake that Brandon mentions finding in the video is the claim that Barack Obama has asked to use the Koran for his swearing-in ceremony if he is elected as President. This is a widely spread internet rumor. It is also completely false.

I have made the point repeatedly that we can learn something about a person’s moral character by the mistakes that they make. When a person adopts a conclusion that is not, in fact, supported by the available evidence, we have reason to ask what caused them to embrace that particular conclusion. If it is not the evidence that brought the agent to a particular conclusion, then it must have been something else. One of the things that commonly affects our beliefs are our desires. When we know something of a person’s desires, we know something of his or her moral character.

Why did these people want to believe the lie that Obama has asked to use a Koran?

Actually, there are two issues that are relevant here. The first relevant question is, “What should it matter that a person wishes to be sworn in under the Koran as opposed to the Bible?” These speakers obviously believe that being a Muslim makes one unfit for leadership. They have an aversion to somebody who would take their oath on the Koran being President.

Would a good person have such an aversion?

Some atheists have the same aversion. To be fair, some have the same aversion to the idea of a person who will take an oath on the Christian Bible serving as President. However, this post is not about what ‘some people’ will do, it is about what a good person would do.

The concepts of ‘Muslim’ and ‘Christian’ represent a wide variety of attitudes. So does the concept of ‘Atheist’. It is simply not the case that, if you know that one person is a Muslim and another is an Atheist, that you can automatically know which is best suited to be President. Among our moral responsibilities is a responsibility to make sure that we elect the best candidate. We have an obligation to make sure that we do not base our decisions on irrelevant or inaccurate criteria.

The morally responsible person recognizes these facts. The person who does not recognize and respect these facts are guilty of a moral failing.

This is just one example of a mistake that shows up in this video where the speakers ought to have known better (where a morally responsible person would have known better). Another internet rumor that found its way into the video was the claim that Obama refuses to put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance. The evidence for that comes from a clip in which Obama did not put his hand over his heart during the National Anthem. These speakers exhibited absolutely no curiosity or interest in discovering the fact of the matter. They have no love of truth. Indeed, they show that they are the type of person who will eagerly embrace a lie.

Now, I would like to introduce another fact into this analysis. There are people in the lives of those who created this video who have taken it upon themselves to be the ‘moral advisors’ to their flock. They say, “Come to me for moral advice.”

A person who accepts that type of authority also accepts a certain amount of additional moral responsibility. For example, a person who does not pretend to have any special training in medicine gives you advice on how to avoid a flu, this advice can be taken with a grain of salt. People know that the advice is ill informed. However, when a person claims to be a physician – a medical expert – this obligates him to provide better medical advice than one’s next-door neighbor (unless one’s next door neighbor is a physician).

This is an obligation that I recognize myself to be under when I write this blog. With each posting, I recognize that there is a particular danger that I may promote as good that which is in fact evil, or that I may be arguing for people to avoid as evil that which is in fact good. Whenever a person makes a moral mistake of this type, it follows as a matter of definition that innocent people will suffer, or guilty people will be rewarded. It is the very nature of a moral failing that it comes with these types of consequences. A responsible person recognizes and respects these facts.

Who are the people that these agents take to be ‘moral advisors’, and why are they not telling these people of the moral obligation to get their facts rights – to care about the truth and to take care that the claims they make about people are, in fact, true.

In this case, it turns out that one of the speakers herself is somebody who has taken on the mantle of ‘moral advisor’. One of the speakers identifies herself as Karen Sanders. Not only is she failing to provide moral guidance (advising the other speaker on the need to make sure that accusations are true before they are made), she is one of the agents exhibiting the morally objectionable behavior in the video.

This is a culture that completely fails to recognize the moral significance of important moral obligations such as an obligation to check one’s facts.

I want to stress that I am not speaking here about the religious claims that these people defend. I am talking about simple facts such as those concerning Obama – facts that can be easily verified or falsified. It is here that these people exhibit the moral failing of intellectual responsibility.

We can extrapolate from this to conclusions that they show the same immorality with respect to their religious beliefs. It may well be possible to make the case that their religion teaches moral irresponsibility in this regard. It teaches people to form reckless beliefs and to fail (or refuse) to live up to their moral responsibility to make sure that they claims they make are true. They teach people to be reckless in ways that cost people’s lives. All of these inferences are possible. However, I do not need to prove that they are true to make the moral case. Outside of the realm of religion – inside the realm where facts can be easily verified or falsified, even here they exhibit a morally culpable level of intellectual irresponsibility when it comes to what they believe and what they assert to be true.

We could say that this is a culture that does not recognize intellectual responsibilities – that suffers from simple ignorance of the fact that people should be held accountable for culpable mistakes of belief. However, this can easily be proved false. There is no doubt that these people would condemn the engineer or the doctor who made a mistake that proved costly to them. There is no doubt that they could condemn the gossipy neighbor where they were the victims of other peoples’ intellectual recklessness rather than those who are victimizing others. They are hypocrites who simply refuse to abide by a moral obligation that they know exists. They know, but they do not care.

Intellectually reckless people are a danger to others. They kill and maim far more people in the world than drunk drivers. Intellectually reckless people prevent us from taking timely action that could have saved hundreds of millions of lives and trillions of dollars worth of property. Intellectually reckless people order an attack on Iraq that does not turn out at all the way they (intellectually recklessly) think it will turn out.

We have a lot of good reason to invest some time and effort into using social forces such as condemnation to reduce the numbers of intellectually reckless people. Our lives will be healthier, safer, and longer if we do.

There are more people to condemn here - to morally condemn - than just those who spoke. Condemnation also belongs to those who helped to create and promote this video, and any who applaud it as if these characters are exhibiting some sort of moral virtue. This praise of stupidity will only help to ensure that more people suffer from more mistakes made by the intellectually reckless.

In fact, the intellectually reckless doctor, engineer, or other professional can go to jail, and should go to jail.

We should be no less judgmental when it comes to the actions of the intellectually reckless moralist.

Perspective on the Pledge - Part 8: The Hearing

Superintendant Brian Thomas called the administrative hearing into session.

There was no official location for these meetings; the administrators simply took over one of the classrooms for a couple of hours. Three administrators, presiding over the meeting, sat in three comfortable office chairs that had been rolled into the room and set behind a collapsible table. Principle Hadley set up his station at the teacher’s desk, while Shawn was invited to take one of the student’s seats. His mother sat quietly at the back of the room in one corner while Ms. Shelby Johnson stood in the back near the other corner.

The night before, Shawn had asked his mother not to interfere in the hearing. He said that he knew that the administrators were going to decide against him, and that there was nothing he could do about that – or, more precisely, nothing he was willing to do.

“I can continue studying even if I’m not going to school,” Shawn had told his mother. “However, there’s a rule that says that schools have to provide an atmosphere that is not hostile to students based on their race. Teachers cannot denigrate students based as their race. Yet, clearly, this is what the pledging allegiance to a white nation does – it tells the students that pledging allegiance to a white nation is as much a part of patriotism as pledging allegiance to liberty and justice for all. So, after the hearing, I can challenge the school for not living up to its obligations here. This hearing is not the final say on the matter.”

Shawn could see that his mother was trying to hold back tears. “You know, a lot of people leave high school every year saying that they can study at home and still get a degree. But, it almost never works out. Once they’re out of school, life gets in the way. Time just seems to slip by until they find themselves sitting in a cheap apartment with a wife and three kids on a winter night wondering how they’re going to pay to replace the heater.”

“It’ll be different with me, mom. I know how important it is to have an education.”

“Every one of those other students said that it would be different with them, too. It just never turns out to be much different. I want you to stay in school, Shawn. I don’t want to see you on the street.”

“Mom, I’ll get up at 6:30 like I always do. I’ll study just like I do in school every day. If I get a job, it will be in the evening or on weekends. But, I have to do this, mom. I can’t go back into that school and say that they’re doing nothing wrong when they say that dad wasn’t a patriot. I can’t go back into that school and say that there is nothing wrong with a so-called patriotic ritual that says that patriotism requires opposition to having black leaders. What they’re doing isn’t right, and I am past the point where I can say that it doesn’t matter.”

Shawn’s mother simply nodded her head in agreement. She could not speak. So, at the hearing, Shawn’s mom sat and fiddled with the strap to her purse while she listened to the hearing.

Superintendent Thomas announced the business of the hearing. “Shawn Adams, I assume that you have been given a copy of Principal Hadley’s argument as to why you should be removed from this school. According to Mr. Hadley, you insist on disrupting class by pledging allegiance to ‘one black nation’ after the rest of the students give proper pledge of allegiance of allegiance to a white nation. Of course, we cannot allow students to disrupt class. Is it true that you insist on this disruption?”

“No, sir,” Shawn answered.

Superintendant Thomas folded his hands on the desk. “Would you mind explaining that answer?”

“I have a question first, sir.” Shawn said.

“Go ahead.”

“When the rest of the class stands and pledges allegiance to a white nation, and I sit in my desk patiently waiting for them to finish, are they guilty of causing a disruption?”

“That’s not the same thing!” Hadley shouted, rising out of his chair.

Thomas waved Hadley back. “You’ll have your turn, Principal Hadley.”

“That’s my question, Mr. Thomas,” Shawn said. “Why is it different? If they can pledge allegiance to a white nation while I sit quietly and if that is not a disturbance, then why is it a disturbance to allow me the opportunity to pledge allegiance to a black nation while they sit quietly?”

“And are we to require that each student who has their own favorite version of the pledge be given time as well? I would ask you, Mr. Adams, when you expect to actually have time to hold class.”

“No, sir. I think it is absolutely true that a patriotic Amerycan will support liberty and justice for all. If somebody wants to pledge allegiance to tyranny and injustice, then they are simply wrong to do so. The school has no need to allow equal time to such an absurdity. It’s just as absurd to have a pledge allegiance where a student pledges himself to rebellion against the very government he is supposedly pledging allegiance to. So, there is no sense in allowing a student to pledge allegiance to one nation, divided. So, no, you do not need to allow equal time for those other options. But it is absurd, as a matter of fact, to claim that a patriot must support a white nation in the same way he must support union, liberty, and justice for all.”

“Mr. Adams, state law requires that students start each day with the Pledge of Allegiance.”

“That is exactly what I am doing, Mr. Thomas. I stand. I pledge allegiance to the flag. Mr. Hadley says that this is a disturbance, but I am doing the same thing that the other students have done.”

“Yet, you pledge allegiance to a black nation, Mr. Adams,” Thomas said.

“Only to counter your pledge of allegiance to a white nation. My point is that we should not be pledging allegiance to a nation that is white or black. We shouldn’t even mention race in our pledge of allegiance because a loyal Amerycan should not care what race our leaders are. However, since you are pledging allegiance to a white nation, I figure that a pledge of allegiance to a black nation strikes an appropriate balance.”

“None of that matters, Mr. Adams. Your outburst is clearly not a part of the formal ceremony. If you were in a chorus, Mr. Adams, and you start to sing a particular song after everybody else has finished singing it, then you would be accused of disrupting the concert and justifiably removed. If you wish to pledge allegiance to the flag, which I think any good Amerycan citizen would do, then you can do so at the same time as everybody else. If you do not wish to show your patriotism by pledging allegiance to a white nation, you may remain seated and remain silent. You may not disrupt the chorus by standing up and giving your solo performance because you don’t like the arrangement.”

“I have no problem pledging allegiance to the flag, Mr. Thomas. Some do. I will let them make their own case. I so not share that view. My father thought that this country was worth risking his life to defend, but not because it is a ‘white nation’. He fought to defend a country with liberty and justice for all . . . white or black. In fact, that is why he would have opposed pledging allegiance to a white nation, because we can either pledge allegiance to a white nation, or we can pledge allegiance to a nation with justice for all. We can do one or the other. We cannot do both. Any only a nation with justice for all is truly worth dying for.”

“I’m sorry to hear about your father, Mr. Adams, but his sacrifice, however noble, is not relevant to this case. This case concerns whether or not you insist on disrupting a class by stating an unapproved pledge out of turn with the rest of the class.”

“I don’t see that as the real question, Mr. Thomas. I think that the real question is whether a teacher has the right to stand in front of a class and denigrate her students because of their race as a matter of government policy,” Shawn said. He looked back at Ms. Johnson and mouthed the words, ‘I’m sorry,’ before he continued. “I think that the real question is whether a student should be expected to sit and do nothing while a teacher leads the class in a ritual that insults and denigrates his father. Would you sit and do nothing if somebody denigrated somebody you cared about and admired, Mr. Thomas? Pledging allegiance to a white nation means saying that my father is as unpatriotic as anybody who would support rebellion, tyranny, and injustice, Mr. Thomas. Why should I put up with that?”

“Your teacher is doing what the law requires, Mr. Adams. If you have a complaint, you should take it up with the government.”

“A government made up entirely of white people, Mr. Thomas – people who love power and who think that having children pledge allegiance to a white nation is a good way to hold on to that power. You have made a perfect trap for people like me. I can’t get the legislature to listen to me until it is possible for a legislator to question the morality of pledging allegiance to white power without being removed from office. So, I have to take my case to the people. But those people live under a government where, from the time they are six, they are taught to pledge allegiance to white power. It’s a perfect circle, Mr. Thomas. White politicians have students pledging allegiance to white power, who then make sure that only white people get elected into public office. Unfortunately, it is a circle that leaves justice locked on the outside.”

“Your difficulties in approaching the legislature do not argue for your right to disrupt class with your personal, private, political protest, Mr. Adams. We have no obligation to provide you with a soap box during class time and a captive audience. In fact, we have an obligation to prevent you from disrupting our mission to use class time for classroom instruction.”

“But the legislature can demand the use of class time to teach students that real Amerycan patriots support white power.”

Principal Hadley suddenly stood and shouted, “Yes! Yes, Shawn. The legislature has every right to make sure that students learn patriotism along with math, science, and grammar. Patriotism is an important lesson, and we will, in fact, teach our students to be patriotic Amerycans even if the legislature did not require it.”

Shawn answered, “The only way the Pledge can be patriotic is if we accept the assumption that patriots must support a white nation, and those who do not support a white nation cannot be patriots.”

“Yes, Shawn. Patriots support a white nation. People who do not support a white nation are not patriots. Is it even possible for anything to be more obvious? All of our founding fathers were white. Eighty-seven percent of Amerycans are white. Ameryca is a white nation. If you are not pledging allegiance to a white nation, then you are not pledging allegiance to Ameryca. It is as simple as that.”

“And white people cannot possibly accept a black leader,” Shawn said.

“We need people who are white to lead this country. True Amerycans want their leaders to be white. White people have a moral sense, whereas black people have no reason to be interested in anything but themselves. No true patriot is not going to willingly turn this country over to such a person. He’s going to insist that our leaders have a moral sense. He is going to insist that our leaders are white.”

“Enough,” said Thomas. “The purpose of this hearing is not to discuss the merits of the Pledge of Allegiance. We are not here to overrule the legislature, we are here to obey the legislature. The legislature requires a pledge of allegiance to a white nation, and that is what we do. The legislature requires that the rest of the class period be devoted to classroom instruction, and that is also what we will do. If the legislature sets aside a minute at the start of each class for student political speeches, then we will obey that law as well. But that is not the law we are living under today. The law we have today, Mr. Adams, says that you will either participate in the nationally recognized pledge of allegiance to a white nation or sit quietly while the rest of us do so, and then participate in standard classroom instruction. Are you prepared to follow those requirements?”

“The legislature has no right to have students pledging allegiance to white power,” Shawn repeated.

“That is irrelevant, Mr. Adams. If you have nothing new to add, we ask that you clear the room while we discuss our decision. We will summon you when we are ready. Don’t go very far, I don’t think that this will take long.”

Shawn rose, gathered his books, and walked to the back of the room. There, he took his mother’s arm and walked her out of the room. Professor Hadley was close behind. He moved a short distance down the hall and took out his cell phone to place a call. Ms. Johnson stood by herself as well, leaning against the wall, with her arms folded in front of her.

It took only a few minutes for the committee to summon them back into the room. Superintendent Thomas called Shawn before the table and said, “This wasn’t even worth our time to debate, Shawn. Clearly you intend to disrupt class. Clearly, we cannot allow that. If you cannot attend class without disruption, then you may not attend class. You may, if you wish, apply for readmission next semester. We will be happy to have you back. However, your readmission will be contingent on exactly the same conditions that I have set before you today. It requires your personal commitment not to disrupt class you’re your silly demonstrations. You are hereby expelled. You may clean out your locker.”

At the end of the speech, Thomas handed over a copy of the expulsion order, which the three judges had all signed and dated. They then stood and left the room. Principal Hadley left with them, chatting happily about how they had made the right decision.

Shawn turned and saw his mom still sitting, holding a tissue to her eyes. He also noticed Ms. Johnson, standing motionless. Shawn struggled to think of something to say, but he could not. He simply picked up his backpack and walked back his mom. He told the guard that he did not need to go back to his locker, since he had already packed the last of his belongings into his backpack. Together with his mom, they left the building.

Perspective on the Pledge: Part 7 - Tolerance

This is another addition to a story I have been writing that looks at the arguments surrounding the Pledge of Allegiance, and tries to present the absurdity of those arguments, by showing how the look in a slightly different context.

Perspective on the Pledge: Part 7 - Tolerance

“I’m here to explain what is going to happen tomorrow,” said Vice Principal Lewis as he sat across the table from Shawn. “Normally, Principal Hadley would do this himself, but you have him pretty riled up.”

“Of course I have him riled up,” Shawn answered. “He’s white, and he is in a position of power. Naturally, he wants to stay in a position of power. One of the things that helps him do this is a national policy that equates patriotism to the preservation of white power. I am challenging that practice. So, naturally, he is upset. He wants me to continue to accept this pledge of allegiance to white power without question or complaint.”

“I’m not here to discuss the merits of the case, Shawn,” Lewis said. “I’m simply here to explain the rules. Now, Principal Hadley has scheduled an expulsion hearing for tomorrow morning at 9:00 am. He has already talked to your parents . . . “

Shawn interrupted, “Principal Hadley must have amazing powers if he talked to my father. He’s dead.”

“Whoever is responsible for raising you,” Lewis answered. “Your mom? Whoever it is has agreed to be here during the hearing. In addition, you are allowed to have an advocate. Now, this is an administrative hearing not a court of law, so there is no place here for a lawyer. If you do not agree with the decision reached in this hearing you will, of course, have the option of hiring a lawyer and filing a complaint in civil court. That’s actually quite common with parents objecting to anything that we may say against their children. But that is in response to the hearing, not the hearing itself.”

Lewis took a drink of water, than continued. “Like I said, you are allowed to have a representative – somebody who understands the rules and can speak in your defense. Typically, we ask one of the guidance councilors Would you like one of the guidance councilors to represent you tomorrow?”

“How do I know?” Shawn asked. “Guidance councilors are hired by the school. The school is paid for by government money. The government is run by white people who, for the most part, are quite infatuated with this idea of a pledge of allegiance to white power. Is there anybody who is not working for the other side?”

Lewis answered with a shrug. “I can arrange for you to speak to Mr. Fox, if you would like. I don’t need a decision right away.”

“Then I think I should talk to Mr. Fox,” said Shawn.

Lewis scribbled a note onto his pad, then continued, “If the decision goes against you, then you will be escorted to your locker to pick up your things and you and your mom will be escorted off the campus. If you attempt to return to campus without an appointment, then you will be arrested for trespassing.”

“How long does it take the committee to reach a decision take?”

“Typically, they make the decision on the same day – in less than an hour, usually.”

“And if the decision goes in my favor?”

Lewis took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “If the board decides in your favor then you will be allowed to return to class. Now, I’m not on the board and nobody is asking me to be impartial. I can tell you honestly, Shawn, that this hearing is a mere formality. You will have a chance to make your case, but the Board will vote against you and you will be removed from the school system. The only thing that can save you is an apology and a promise not to disrupt class again. Are you prepared to do that?”

“Are you officially prepared to sit there and be quiet while the school you work for officially calls your wife a whore and a slut whose only interest is in her own pleasure?”

Lewis grew noticeably red, but did not answer.

“Well, then, I’m just as ill prepared to sit there while the school officially declares that my dad was not a patriot because he had no allegiance either to establishing or preserving a white nation. He preferred a nation that was color-blind.”

“Then the Board will vote for your expulsion, Shawn. Be prepared for that.”

While Lewis spoke, he slid a stapled set of pages across the table. “Those are the formal rules, in case you want to read them. Do you understand each of the rules that I have explained them to you?”

“I think so,” said Shawn. “I would like to speak to Mr. Fox before I say so for sure.”

“If you insist,” Lewis said. “When you’re satisfied, sign the form at the front of the document and I will pick it up at the end of the day. If you have any questions, tell the guard that you need to see me.”

“Yes, sir,” answered Shawn.

A few minutes after Vice Principal Lewis left, the guard returned to escort Shawn to see Mr. Fox.

Shawn found Fox in his office, greedily downing a thick sandwich. “I hope you don’t mind if I eat,” said Fox through a mouth full of lettuce and bread. “The first days of school are murder. There’s no free time.”

“Not at all,” said Shawn, sinking into a small couch on the other end of the office.

“Do you want me to represent you before the Council?” Fox asked slowly, almost nervously.

“That depends. What do you think of my case?”

Swallowing, Fox answered, “Okay, I will be completely honest with you, Shawn. I am amazed at how intolerant you are of views other than your own. One of the things we value in this school is tolerance. We have a widely diverse student body, and one of the ways we all get along is by simply accepting that others have views different from our own. But not you. You want to force your views on everybody else. If anybody has a different view, you’re more than happy to bring in the state to sweep them aside and institute your views.”

“Mr. Fox,” said Shawn, “My view is that it is wrong to treat people like my father with contempt – to dismiss their service and to say that they are not patriotic because they have no allegiance to a white nation.”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Fox. “Now, I don’t really blame you for this, Shawn. It’s not really your fault. It’s just that, as you know, white people have a moral sense that black people just don’t have. You’re governed only by your own private interests. The only thing you have any reason to care about is yourselves. So, it’s not surprising that you can’t see how wrong it is to force your view on others. Imposing your will on others is the only thing that is consistent with the way you people think. But, it’s wrong. If you had a moral sense like we do, you would see that.”

“I should tolerate your views,” Shawn repeated.

Fox answered, “You should tolerate all views.”

Shawn said quickly, “You should tolerate the view that white people have no special moral sense, and that black people are just as capable of acting morally as whites – better, in fact, than some whites.”

“You see, you don’t understand. There’s a difference. When we white people reflect on our special place in the universe . . . our special status as those with special access to moral knowledge . . . this is what gives our life meaning. This idea, that we are morally superior to all other people, is what gives us purpose and a sense of place in the universe. You would take all of that away from us. You would lower us to the level of . . . well, to the level of blacks. You would have us slaves to our passions, devoid of moral reasons and purpose, like you are.”

“Have you ever listened to yourself, man?” Shawn asked. “Why is it that I am supposed to be tolerant of the view that you are morally superior to me, but you don’t have to be tolerant of the idea that we are morally equal? Why is it that denying your view is ‘offensive’ and something that no good person would do, but affirming your view that me and my people are morally inferiors is perfectly legitimate?”

“It’s okay, Shawn. It’s good to ask questions,” said Fox. “I really have a hard time grasping the idea that you have no moral sense. I keep thinking that if I described the situation – the inherent wrongness of trying to lower whites to the same level as blacks – would help you to understand. Every time I am caught off guard by the fact that your lack of moral sense just doesn’t allow you to see these things. I forget that trying to explain morality to a black man is like trying to explain color to a blind man. The blind man just is not going to understand what blue is, and you’re just not going to be able to understand the moral fine points of tolerance. But, the blind man, if he is wise, will trust himself to be guided by somebody who can see. You, too, Shawn, need to learn to be guided by those of us who have moral sight. Trust me, Shawn, we have a much better grasp of the difference between right and wrong than you do.”

“How do you know this? How do you know that you have a moral sense and I don’t?”

Fox leaned back in his chair. “It’s obvious. It’s evident in the fact that you don’t understand tolerance, and we do. It’s obvious in the fact that you are trying to remove ‘white nation’ from the Pledge of Allegiance, when there is nothing wrong with true Amerycans pledging allegiance to a white nation. We are, after all, a white nation. Eighty-seven percent of us are white. If that’s not enough to justify calling us a white nation and pledging allegiance to a white nation, then I don’t know what is. Ultimately, however, it is simply a part of our beliefs – our culture – our faith. We have adopted a world view where we are the morally superior race. That’s who we are, and you should learn to respect us for who we are.”

Suddenly leaning forward, Fox added, “In fact, Shawn, it’s patently offensive for you to claim to be our moral equals. It’s degrading, dehumanizing. it’s more than offensive. Don’t you see what you’re doing Shawn? Oh, of course you don’t. You’re black. You are attacking our beliefs, our way of life. It’s like you’re asking for a war against white people – a war to put an end to white rule in this country. If you insist on attacking white people, then you really should be prepared for us to defend ourselves. It’s only natural.”

“I’m not attacking anybody,” Shawn shouted as he got to his feet. “I’m attacking the idea that the government should have its children pledging allegiance to a white nation. I’m attacking the idea that a person has to have allegiance to a white nation in order to be patriotic. I’m not trying to drive white people from the public square. I’m not protesting the fact that there are white people in government. I am not trying to force white people out of public office. In fact, you’re the one whose guilty of these things, saying that Ameryca must be ruled by white people and that only a white leader is acceptable.”

“I was speaking metaphorically, Shawn,” Fox said. “Your intolerant, abusive, hate-filled speech against those who believe in white moral superiority is, well, it doesn’t leave a lot of room for compromise. Clearly, you’ll not be happy until you have scrubbed every public document and public building of all reference to the moral superiority of the white race.”

“You could say that,” Shawn answered.

“You don’t see what’s wrong with that? You don’t see how this actually proves that you lack the moral sense that all white people share, the moral sense to see how wrong it is to attack whites like that?”

With a sigh, Shawn said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Fox, but I really don’t think that it would be a good idea for me to have you represent me before the Council.”

“Not if you insist that this crusade of yours actually has merit. Shawn. I think you’re a nice guy and I would hate to see you hurt. I don’t really understand why you hate Ameryca. We don’t hate you. Our philosophy is not a philosophy of hate. It’s a philosophy of love and respect. We only want the best for people like you, Shawn. Honest. The fact that you have no idea what the best is causes problems. You need to learn to accept our guidance in this. We want to make your lives as happy as possible, in spite of your limitations. Ours is a philosophy of love. I hope you understand that.”

As Shawn stepped up to the door, Fox suddenly said, “Hold on a moment, Shawn. I have a question.”

Pausing, Shawn said, “Okay, what?”

“Okay, you think I’m wrong. You think that there’s something wrong with pledging allegiance to a white nation. You think that I am morally blind because I can’t see that. Now, in order to condemn me like that, you have to be thinking that you are better than I am. You have to be thinking that it is okay for you to judge me – to look down on me for supporting a pledge of allegiance to a white nation. Doesn’t that make you a hypocrite? Aren’t you doing the same thing you accuse me of doing?”

“Mr. Fox, let’s assume that you just said that you were taller than me. We both know that is not true. You are, I would guess, no more than five foot six, while I am five foot nine. So, I say that your claim to be taller than me is false. Instead, I claim to be taller than you. That’s not hypocrisy, Mr. Fox. That’s a fact.”

“You are morally superior to me,” Fox said.

“On the issue of whether or not it is morally permissible to have children pledge allegiance to white power every day in public schools, I am right, and you are wrong. That does not make me morally superior to you. That simply makes me right, and makes you wrong.”

“But, morally, how can you possibly know that you’re right and I am wrong, when I am the one with the moral sense, and you are not?”

“Good bye, Mr. Fox,” Shawn said as he reached for the door.

“I stumped you, didn’t I?” Fox said with a self-satisfied smile. “You don’t have an answer for that.”

“Good bye. Mr. Fox,” Shawn repeated.

“Think about this, Shawn. Just, think about it. You can’t refute my views, here. But, still, you want to sweep them aside. Think about how you are exhibiting intolerance, and how bad the world would be if all of us were as intolerant of different views as you seem to be.”

Basting in self-congratulation, Mr. Fox turned his attention back to his sandwich.

E2.0: Sean Carroll: The Origin of the Universe

This is the 15th in a new series of weekend posts taken from the presentations at the Salk Institute’s “Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0.”. I have placed an index of essays in this series in an introductory post, Enlightenment 2.0: Introduction.

The next speaker in this conference was Sean Carroll, Senior Research Associate in Physics at the California Institute of Technology. Sean Carroll is interested in the origin of the universe – specifically, with the idea that the start of the universe is something that is difficult to explain and something for which people are tempted to claim there is a need for a God. Contemporary cosmology suggests that the universe started with a ‘big bang’ about 14 billion years ago which had to start somehow, and that somehow was God.

Carroll wants to suggest that this is not such a problem, for which there is not much of a reason to postulate the existence of a God. Carroll’s argument is that there is no “beginning of the universe” to explain. Because we need no explanation, we need not to postulate a God to explain it.

In general, Carroll seeks to explain his project by looking back to a similar project in physics that began with Aristotle’s physics.

Aristotle argued that the natural state of things in the universe is at rest. If you wanted something to move, you needed to push it. As soon as you quit pushing things, they stopped. This lead to the question, “Where does all of this pushing come from that keeps the universe in motion?” St. Thomas Aquinas provided an answer to that question (to be fair, he presented the accepted view of what that answer was), that this ‘prime mover’ that kept the universe going (without which the universe itself would come to a dead stop) was God.

Then Newton came along and said that this was not the case. On Newton’s model, objects moved in a straight line at a constant velocity unless acted upon by another force. The reason that things slowed down on Earth when we quit pushing them was because of the operation of a number of forces (friction, drag). If we eliminated these forces, then nothing would slow down.

Using this assumption, Newton was able to come up with a set of formulae that easily explained the motion of most objects in the universe, including the planets and the moon.

The moral of this story was that the idea that we needed to postulate a God to keep the universe in motion was a mistake. It was caused by a faulty assumption – an assumption that motionless was the natural state of items in the universe. That assumption made sense given our every-day observations, but it turned out not to be true.

Carroll sees the same problem arising with respect to the origin of the universe.

The idea that the universe actually had a beginning (a ‘big bang’) is not one that drew out of everyday observations, like the idea that everything stopped unless something kept them moving. It followed from observations that the universe was expanding – the galaxies are all getting further and further away from each other. If we “rewound” the universe – tracing these galaxies back to their starting point, we find that their starting point was about 14 billion years ago.

What, then, caused the big bang? Since the big bang could not cause itself, it must have been caused by something outside of the universe, and that thing is (was) God.

Carroll wants to argue that the universe did not have a beginning.

It was once thought that the universe would have an end. All of this material flying out from this big bang would eventually slow down, then stop, then fall back in on itself in a ‘big crunch’. However, that idea has now been rejected. Observations show us that the universe is not only expanding, but that it is expanding at a faster and faster rate. This means that the universe is eternal. It can go on indefinitely into the future.

Then why not suggest that it can also go back indefinitely in the past?

Well, we have this ‘big bang’ to contend with.

However, the ‘big bang’ is not a puzzle to be solved, it is a gap. It is one of those areas that we simply do not yet understand.

It is common among theologians, to find gaps in our knowledge, and to stuff God into those gaps. As soon as somebody comes up with a question that we do not know the answer to, the theologian pipes up, “I know what the answer is! The answer is God!”

Only, time after time the scientists have eventually come up with another suggestion – a suggestion that leads to a set of predictions, and predictions that then are confirmed by observation. When the ‘gap’ was how to explain the motion of things in a universe where everything appeared to slow down and stop without a ‘prime mover’, the theologian chimed in, “And that prime mover is God.” Only, Newton came along and said, “No, actually, the only ‘gap’ that existed was a gap in our understanding the universe. We do not need a God to keep the universe in motion.”

This story that we told you that convinced you there was a big bang is not internally consistent. We have theorems within Einstein’s general theory of relativity within our understanding of classical gravity, that given the conditions of the universe now there must have been a singular point, a point in which the universe was infinitely dense and had infinite space-time curvature, and we can even tell you when it was. It was about 14 billion years ago. And we even have data that tell you what it looked like one second after the big bang.

However, these theoretical demonstrations using classical general relativity can’t be right, because this infinite point of singularity means that general relativity is not correct at that point in the universe’s history, and nobody thinks that it is correct. What actually has to happen is that some better theory has to come into play before you hit this singular state. Normally we think that this is some quantum theory of gravity that we haven’t yet developed. But the point is that all of our firm declarations that there wasn’t anything before the big bang are based on a theory that doesn’t apply at the big bang.

Carroll presents his own idea of what happened at the big bang. He suggests that there was an empty parent universe going about its business and that we are an offspring of that universe. Events in that universe created a child universe, and that child universe is us.

The point being that we do not need to assume that Carroll is right in this. It is sufficient, for the purposes of this conversation, to simply note that we do not need to explain how the universe came from nothing (not even time). The fact that we do not yet know what ‘better theory’ accounts for the first second of the our universe’s existence or what that theory says about what came before implies that there is not yet any reason to believe ‘god did it’. There might not even be an ‘it’ in this case for God to do.

Ultimately, Carroll argues that we need to generalize this idea. There are a number of problems out there that are actually (according to Carroll) more difficult than the origin of the universe. He lists the development of the whole biosphere, morality, and romantic love. These problems are hard, but we are coming up with solutions to hard problems all the time. There is not yet any reason to believe that these hard problems cannot be answered. There is not yet any reason to point to a hard problem and say, “The answer is God.”

Because we are faced with these problems that are hard, but, nevertheless, we see specific examples of hard problems that get solutions, I would say that we should look at problems such as, ‘Where does love come from?’ ‘Where does morality come from?’ ‘How does the biosphere evolve?’ and say, ‘These are hard questions. Let’s get to work.

Of course, I must add that I do not think that the question of the origin of morality is that hard a question to answer. It consists in relationships between malleable desires and other desires – that we have ‘reasons for action’ that are desires to use social forces to promote some desires (desires that tend to fulfill other desires), and to inhibit other desires (desires that tend to thwart the desires of others). And that we encourage the development of good desires and discourage the development of bad desires by (moral) praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

But that’s just me.

E2.0: Stuart Kaufman: Function, Agency, and Reductionism

This is the 16th in a new series of weekend posts taken from the presentations at the Salk Institute’s “Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0.”. I have placed an index of essays in this series in an introductory post, Enlightenment 2.0: Introduction.

In this post I look at the presentation of Stuart Kauffman. Kauffman’s presentation concerned the possibility of reductionism – the idea that any event in nature can be understood in terms of reducing it to statements ultimately in the realm of physics. The idea is that if you knew all of the relevant physical facts about all of the objects in the universe, you could account for everything that has happened or will happen. There is nothing ‘outside the realm of physics’ that we need to consider.

Kauffman denies this claim. He holds that there are things in the universe that cannot be reduced to pure physics.

I am going to admit at the start that I do not have the knowledge to evaluate Kauffman’s whole argument against reductionism. However, I can argue that in a couple of steps he takes along the way – steps having to do with value – he stumbles, and gets the facts wrong. This does not imply that he cannot make his argument work after correcting these mistakes, but they are mistakes nonetheless.

One of the examples that he gives for things that cannot be reduced is ‘function’. He speaks specifically about the function of the heart. The function of the heart, he says, is to pump blood. Hearts also make heart sounds, however the ‘function’ of the heart is not to make heart sounds.

Already this is interesting because it says that the function of the heart is a subset of its causal consequences. It’s the pumping of blood, and not the making of heart sounds. And that means that in order to analyze the function of the heart you have to know the whole organism and its selective environment and probably its selective history.

Here, I will assert that Kauffman is guilty of an important omission. Another thing that one must know before one can answer the question of, “What is the function of the heart?” is “What are the interests of those who are asking the question?”

Kauffman speaks as if the “function” of something is an intrinsic property – that the question has a meaningful sense that is independent of the interests of those asking the question. If it did, then ‘function’ would be a property like ‘mass’ or even ‘distance from’. It makes sense to talk about the mass of an object, or its distance from something else, even if there were nobody around to measure it.

But nothing has a ‘function’ unless there is somebody, at least hypothetically, who has an interest who is asking the question. We then answer the question, in part, by asking and answering the question, “What interests are we assuming for those who are asking the question?”

It turns out, when speaking about hearts, the ‘interests’ that most of us have in mind is survival. The question, “What is the function of the heart?” means “What is it important to us to have the heart keep doing?” We do not care whether the heart makes heart sounds, so making hearts sounds is not its function. We do care if the heart continues to pump blood, so this becomes its function.

If, per chance, the pumping of blood produced results that we simply had no reason to care about, but the heart sounds produced effects that were vitally important to us, then the making of heart sounds would be its ‘function’ – it would be the thing that we wanted the heart to keep doing.

Kauffman wants to explain function in terms of “Why did the heart come into existence?” However, ‘why’ questions inherently ask about an end or a goal. We can ask, “Why did the Earth come into existence?” Without an end or goal or purpose, there is no answer.

However, ends or goals or purposes themselves require interests or desires. A ‘desire that P’ identifies any state of affairs in which ‘P’ is true as an end or a goal of human action (or, at least, human attention). Remove all desires, and ends or goals disappear. When ends or goals disappear, “Why did this happen?” becomes a meaningless question. “How did this happen?” is still an important question, but not “Why?”

This is part of the reason why Kauffman is necessarily going to fail to reduce ‘function’ to physics. He is missing some of the necessary components of ‘function’ – the interests of those who are asking the question.

However, this simply pushes the question over into another realm. Can ‘interests’ be reduced to fundamental physical properties? Atoms do not have ‘interests’ – atoms do not care one way or another about what they are doing. So, how do we take ‘interests’ (or ‘desires’) and reduce them to statements about atoms (or something more basic than atoms)?

Kauffman addresses this question directly, under the title of ‘agency’ – another property that he claims is irreducible.

Agency is real. With agency . . . all sorts of things happen. For example, doing enters the universe. I am giving a talk. . . . Doing, meaning, value, purpose enter once there’s agency.

Kauffman than asks for the “minimum physical system for which I am willing to ascribe agency.” The answer he comes up with is that bacteria swimming up a glucose gradient are agents and rocks are not.

I think an agent is something that can reproduce molecularly and has to do at least one thermodynamic work cycle.

I think that this account of ‘agency’ is absurd. Agency requires the capacity to act on beliefs and desires. An agent is doing something when it is acting to fulfill its desires, given its beliefs. A particular state has meaning or value for an agent to the degree that propositions that are the objects of its more and stronger desires are true in that state. There is a purpose when there is a proposition P that is the object of a desire to be made true.

Bacteria do not have desires.

Like Kauffman, I do not know exactly what marks the point at which desires come into existence. I am willing to say that humans and many higher-level animals have beliefs and desires. I would say that beliefs and desires require a computational network – in other words, a brain. Cells are not agents. Their lives have no meaning, value, or purpose to themselves, because cells are incapable of having desires.

With this, it is still open to question whether agency (or beliefs and desires) can be reduced to physics. Since I take beliefs and desires to be functional states, the question can be translated into one of whether functional states can be understood in terms of physical states. Can we reduce a for-next loop, or a programmatic subroutine, into a set of physical statements?

The question of whether we can or cannot do so is outside of my scope of expertise. In this essay, I will not pretend that I have an answer to this question. However, I will argue that it makes no sense to seek an answer to the question until we make sense of the question.

Kauffman’s question needs some careful modifications. We need to recognize that the ‘function’ of something has to do with interests, and that ‘agency’ depends on computational states such as beliefs and desires. Once we make these changes, are there reasons to believe that these things cannot be reduced to physical states?

Perspective on the Pledge 7: Psychological Arguments

This post represents the seventh in a series that I hope to use in a complete story to be finished before June. I do not know if I will actually include this section in the finished story. It presents a type of argument I commonly see used against atheists, but one which I do not often see used specifically when discussing the Pledge. Still, the arguments and their response deserve some mention.

The rest of the Pledge story can be found at:

Perspective on the Pledge (PDF)

Part 7

“You have a visitor,” the school guard said as he held the door open for an elderly lady.

The lady fumbled to move her books from one arm to the next to free up her hand, which she offered to Shawn. “I’m Ms. Miller. I’m the school psychologist,” she said.

While Ms. Miller came in, the guard commanded Jenny to pack up her books and escorted her to another table in the library.

Shawn shook her hand, nodded acknowledgement, but said nothing.

“I asked Principal Hadley for a chance to come to speak to you,” Miller said as she took a seat at the table. She pulled a folder from her pile of papers and opened it. “I would really hate to see something happen here that all of us will have reason to regret.”

She folded her arms across her open folder, looked at Shawn, and said, “I understand your father died two years ago.”

“Yep,” said Shawn.

“That must have been very hard on you,” said Ms. Miller.

“It wasn’t one of my better days.”

“It also says here that you were a good student, until last year. I went through your records from your previous school. Fighting. Disrupting class. Talking back to your teachers. You were suspended once for showing up drunk at school.”

“That also wasn’t one of my better days.”

“I think I know what’s going on here, Shawn. Losing a parent is a terrible thing. It makes you angry. It makes you want to strike out and hurt people, just like you’ve been hurt. All of this acting out is quite understandable, given your history. It’s just that, I hope you understand, there are socially acceptable ways of dealing with one’s grief. But, what you’re doing just isn’t acceptable. You’re hurting yourself, and you’re hurting the people around you.”

Shawn smiled. “I get it. You think that my protest over the Pledge is because I am sick. I don’t like the idea that the school has a ritual where they encourage students to say that people like my parents aren’t patriots because they didn’t fight and die for white power, and that means I’m sick.”

“You are not sick, Shawn,” Ms. Miller said. “When we are in grief, we go through a well understood set of phases before we move on. The first thing we do is deny what we don’t want to believe. When you were first told that your father had been killed, you probably didn’t believe it. You probably thought it was a joke. Even after you were told, you were probably expecting him to call or to write or to come through the door. Only, it never happened.”

“Ms. Miller, with all due respect I can easily imagine people in your profession 150 years ago, going out to the slave chained to the whipping post, and saying, “Toby, this is the third time you’ve tried to escape. You keep insisting on this destructive behavior. Let me help you. Work with me, and I’ll teach you how to accept slavery so that you can go on to live a full life, and you will never again face another whipping.”

“You are not tied to a whipping post, Shawn.”

“I’m in detention. They’re going to try to expel me.”

“You brought this upon yourself, Shawn. Do you really think that we can tolerate students disrupting class?”

“That’s what I mean, Ms. Miller. I can hear you telling the slave on the whipping post, ‘You brought this on yourself, Toby. Do you really think that the plantation master can tolerate allowing his slaves to run away?’”

“That’s not fair, Shawn. I’m here to help,” Ms. Miller said, her voice quivering with a hint of anger.

“Am I wrong?” Shawn asked.

“That’s not important . . .”

“That’s the only thing that’s important. If I’m wrong, I’ll apologize. If it’s true that patriotism means pledging allegiance to white power, and that no person who refuses to pledge allegiance to a white nation can be a patriot, even if he dies protecting this country, then I will apologize. If it’s not true, then I’m not sick. Or you could think that putting oneself on the line for what is right even if it means risking your life or getting suspended from school is a bad thing – that this is a sickness that you have to eradicate.”

“Shawn, I want you to listen to me. You are the only one who thinks that you are doing the right thing – you and Jenny Bradford. Jenny’s at that rebellious stage where she wants to assert that she is her own woman, and not her father’s daughter. She wants to show her father that she doesn’t have to agree with him. If you’re willing to work with me, we can set up some appointments to help you get through these issues about your father, and I think I can convince Principal Hadley to keep you in school. All you have to do is to turn away from this path of destruction and promise to work with me on finding a more positive route.”

“It doesn’t matter how many people agree with me, Ms. Miller,” Shawn said. “It matters whether they have reasons for agreeing with me that make sense. Does it make sense to say that it’s perfectly acceptable for a government to use its public schools to coerce children into pledging allegiance to white power?”

“Obviously, it is quite acceptable, Mr. Henry, because the people do, in fact, accept it. We have nearly two dozen black students in this school and even they are not rallying to your cause, Mr. Henry. Even they realize that a white nation has a right to select white rulers.”

“We are not all white,” said Shawn.

“But you are the minority, Shawn. This is a democracy. Majority rules. The majority of the people are white, so the whites rule. This is a white nation. You can’t sensibly sit there and say that it is socially unacceptable to have a white nation ruled by white rulers when everybody accepts it. That is proof enough that it is acceptable. What is not acceptable is your disrupting class to say something that is manifestly untrue, that white rule for a white nation is not acceptable.”

Shawn shook his head.

“Now, Shawn, I’m sorry about your father, but you need to make a place for yourself in the world now.”

“I’m hearing that voice again, Ms. Miller. ‘Toby, how can you say that it is not acceptable for white people to hold black people as slaves when, quite obviously, white people accept it. You’re statement is manifestly untrue. Black slavery quite obviously is acceptable, as I can prove by the simple fact that you are a slave.”

“We are not talking about slavery, Shawn.”

“We’re talking about a government coercing its students into adopting a view that patriotism and pledging allegiance to white power are the same thing.”

“Shawn, I really would like to help you. Unfortunately, you have to take the first step. You have to admit that need help dealing with the loss of your father, and that fighting and drinking and disrupting class are not acceptable ways of acting out.”

“Ms. Miller, I admit that the things I did last year were wrong. I was hurt and angry, just like you said. But my mom showed me that I don’t honor my father by turning into a violent drunk. To honor my father I have to be the type of person he would want me to be. He was willing to risk death for what was right. I’m willing to risk suspension in order to fight against the government’s practice of teaching children that patriots must pledge allegiance to a white nation.”

“My door is always open, Shawn,” Ms. Miller said as she collected her gear and stood up to leave. “Some people need to hit rock bottom before they start to claw their way up. Some people never make it back. I’m here to help, so, when you want help, please come see me.”

She tried to shake hands again, but her shifting bundle of papers made that difficult. Shawn walked past her to the door and held it open for her.

“Good bye, Shawn.”

Bush's Defense of Torture

The Bush Administration is making America a vile and despicable country. To make matters worse, it has now embarked on a campaign that, it seems to me, has the specific purpose of corrupting the American moral character and to seduce the American people into embracing pure, uncontaminated evil.

These are the thoughts that came to my mind as I read the MSNBC article, "White House pushes water boarding rationale." The article tells of an administration that has made a conscious decision to use the powers of the President to engage in an orchestrated mass-marketing campaign whose ultimate object is to get the American people to become co-conspirators in its own moral atrocity.

The tactic is the same that Michael Devlin used in the kidnapping of a second boy for his own sexual pleasure. A boy he had kidnapped a few years earlier was protesting Devlin's plans to kidnap another (younger) child. In order to gain the first boy's cooperation, he made the first boy a co-conspirator, involving him in the execution of the kidnapping. The idea is that, once the first boy is involved in supporting the crime, he will 'rationalize' the act in his own mind so as to justify it to himself, in order to protect his own ego.

So, now, the Bush Administration wants to involve the American people in its war crimes, to get us to embrace its own evil.

So, what is this plan?

Bush has ordered six people suspected in some involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks to be tried, with the intention of seeking the death penalty. If these people had been captured and given fair trials, then there would be little grounds for objection. I probably would not have thought the issue worth writing about.

However, these people were tortured.

Of course, the Administration does not torture (Bush has told us this himself). Of course, in order to say this with a straight face, they have literally defined torture as acts of barbaric cruelty inflicted on people other than the Bush Administration. Imagine a rapist who comes to us with the claim, “I do not rape,” defending his claim by saying, “Rape is an act of forcing sex on somebody who is unwilling by somebody other than me.”

We’re talking about somebody who is evil to the core.

Now, it is also the case that every rapist will be able to tell us a story that ‘justifies’ his actions in his own mind. He will tell us that the victim deserved to be raped. “She is nothing but a tease who enjoys frustrating men and she deserved what I gave her.” Or he will defend it as an act of charity. “Women secretly enjoy being raped. It allows them to have the pleasure of sex without the responsibility.”

Gang members will explain how they are only protecting their own turn. The thief who robs the convenience store will tell us that they are robbing the people with their high prices and his theft was only a matter of getting back what the store has wrongfully taken. Even Hitler could give us a story about how the Holocaust was for the greater good, as could every slave owner, crusader, or terrorist who helped to hijack an airplane and fly it into a sky scraper.

Every one of them has a story to tell us about what we can perceive to be justified when we put our minds to it. Every one of them is, in fact, a warning about the type of world we make for ourselves when we accept these types of rationalizations. We are looking at a world in which nothing is evil, in which there is no such thing as an ‘atrocity’, except that which is committed by ‘the other guy’, which can then be used to justify us doing the very thing we have condemned in others.

So, why is torture immoral? Why is it something that no good person can accept?

Because the statement, “Torture is permissible” means anybody can engage in torture. President Bush is giving permission to every tyrant and despot, present and future, with prisoners that he wants to interrogate, to torture them. If America embraces torture, one of the certain effects of our action will be that a lot more people around the world will be tortured. By lowering (or eliminating) the moral barriers against torture, we embrace a world in which torture is more common.

One could argue that the difference between American torture and the torture done by these petty tyrants and dictators is that we have good reasons to torture and they do not. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia brings up the often-used ticking bomb example. “You know that a bomb is going to go off that will kill a thousand innocent children. You can save those children by torturing this one prisoner. Certainly, in this case, it is morally justified to torture this prisoner.”

To somebody who understands morality, the ‘ticking bomb’ example is a moral cake-walk. I have compared it to the case of a father, out fishing with his son, when the son has an allergic reaction to a bee sting, and the only car available belongs to somebody else who has left his keys to the ignition. Does the father take the car?

Yes, the father takes the car and uses it to save his son’s life. But the father still admits that taking the car is wrong. He goes to the person who owns the car and begs forgiveness. “I’m very sorry for taking your car. I know it was wrong. Please forgive me. My son was dying and I couldn’t see any other way to get him to the hospital. If I had any other option I would have used it. I know it was wrong. I’ll make it up to you.”

This type of regret is the sign of a moral wrong outweighed by a legitimate greater concern. We do not meet these types of situations by making car theft legal on the off chance that somebody might actually have a good reason to take somebody’s car. We leave it the case that car theft is illegal and, in the rare circumstances in which somebody needs to take somebody else’s car, we leave it to them to throw themselves on our mercy. And if they can convince us that a greater value was truly at stake, and that the agent made a good-faith effort to realize those values without doing evil to another person, then, and only then, do we forgive him.

Has anybody heard the Bush Administration beg for forgiveness for the evil that it has done? Has anybody heard the Bush Administration admit that their actions were ‘wrong but necessary’. Quite the opposite. They continue to insist that their actions were right. They’re acting like somebody who (claims to) have taken the car to save their sick child, without providing any evidence that the child was, indeed, sick, and who then insists that they now have the right to keep the car.

I want to stress this point, because it is important. I fear that some readers might skim over the above paragraph as pure rhetoric. The behavior of the Bush Administration is like that of the person who takes a car, when asked why he took it he claims that he had a sick child to deliver to the hospital (without providing evidence) and who insists that he may now keep the car.

This is the moral character of the Bush Administration. The contempt and condemnation that we would give the father in this type of case is what any good, moral person would give to the Bush Administration – only more so, given the greater magnitude of the evils that the Bush Administration is embracing and the fact that this evil is its preferred world-wide moral standard.

So, what do we do in this case? As I said, we condemn the Bush Administration. We should insist on a formal condemnation but, failing that, at least to the degree that we are able, we spread the informal condemnation as far and as wide as possible – among all people who do not wish to see casual torture the new moral standard. And we condemn all who do not join us in condemning this administration.

That condemnation need not be because the Administration engaged in torture – just like the condemnation in the above case need not be because the father took the car to get his sick child to the hospital. The condemnation is because the Bush Administration fails to recognize the wrongness of torture and, even where it is necessary, it is something for which a good person would still beg for forgiveness as a way of acknowledging that wrong.

Even more so, the Bush Administration deserves condemnation for this new tactic, of putting the weight of the Administration behind corrupting the moral character of America. Rather than admit the evil that it has done and ask for forgiveness, the Bush Administration now wants to seduce the American people into embracing evil as its new moral standard.

For that crime, there can be no forgiveness.

Any person who sides with the Bush Administration on this, sides with evil. They are evil , too. They are the 21st century equivalent of the “good Nazi.”

One of the goals of this blog is to convince readers that it is necessary to pick up the tools of praise and condemnation and to wield them, at times with unrestrained force, at those who exhibit characteristics that we have reason to promote or inhibit respectively. It is a summons to express contempt at those who are contemptible, and to heap praise upon those who deserve praise. That these are vital tools to making the world a better place.

When you write, and you can demonstrate that the person you are writing about exhibited traits that people generally have reason to inhibit, then make sure that you make it clear that the subject of your writing deserves contempt and condemnation. To say that they deserve contempt and condemnation is nothing but saying that people generally have reason to inhibit the formation of those character traits, that having those traits makes one a person that others generally have reason to condemn.

The Ultimatum Game

Last night I listened to the most recent episode of TED while I was on my exercise bike.

TED is one of my favorite web sites to visit. It contains video of presentations given at an annual conference in California where, at least according to their own promotions, 1000 of the best and brightest minds get together to discuss issues of technology, entertainment, and design. If anybody wants an example of “hope” without a religious context, this is the place to go – to see what real people are doing to make the world a better place.

This current episode had to do with issues of cooperation. Specifically, Howard Reingold argues that the internet is making possible a whole new culture of cooperation, which we can see exhibited in phenomena such as “open source” coding, Wikipedia, and other open, cooperative efforts.

On the issue of cooperation, Reingold brings up a couple of famous problems in game theory – problems that are supposed to highlight some paradoxes of rationality, where people who perform the ‘selfish’ act in a contrived situation ends up creating a situation in which he (and everybody else) is worse off.

He discussed the famous Prisoner’s Dilemma, of course, which I have discussed in the past.

He also discussed another game, an ultimatum game, which deserves our attention.

Before I describe the game, I would like to note that I listen to these types of cases through the filter of desire utilitarianism. A lot of these types of ‘puzzles’, I argue, only appear to be puzzles because people look primarily at actions themselves, and with that narrow perspective they cannot understand why the situation works out the way it does. If one looks at the issue from the perspective of desires, rather than actions, what appears to be a puzzle, actually makes sense.

The ultimatum game works like this: You take two people who do not know each other and you put them in separate rooms. You then go to one person and say, “I have a hundred dollars. I am going to give it to you, but you have to split it with the guy in the other room. I want you to tell me how much of this $100 you are willing to offer that other person. If he accepts the offer, then he will get what you offer and you get the rest. If he refuses, then neither of you get any money.”

According to standard assumptions of rationality, the first person should only need to offer $1 to the person in the second room. The person in the second room has a simple decision, whether to take $1 or to refuse it and get $0. Rationality seems to dictate that he take the $1.

However, in laboratory experiments, people who learn that the first person decided to make a split of $99 to $1, they often refuse the $1. They seek to ‘punish’ the first person by depriving that person of $99, even at a cost of $1 to themselves.

Furthermore, according to <>, people seem to know this, because the people in the first room often offer something closer to a 50-50 split, rather than thinking, “The person in the other room is rational, and will clearly choose to have $1 over having $0.”

Apparently, this is a puzzle.

However, I do not see the puzzle.

Let us take the principle that people act so as to fulfill their desires given their beliefs. Let us also propose that people have reason to promote in others those desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and to inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires. A third proposition that I want to throw into this is that these cases cannot, in fact, be separated from the outside world. The subjects come into the experiment with desires molded in the outside world, and they will carry those same desires back into the outside world.

So, I’m the second person in this contest. Would it make sense for me to refuse the $1?

Of course it would. I have reason to promote those desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others, and inhibit those desires that tend to thwart the desires of others. One of the ways that I do so is through social conditioning. If I reward somebody who makes such an uneven split of money, he will take the story of this encounter into the outside world. He will teach people the benefits of this form of selfishness, and this will generate a culture in which there is even more selfishness – where I am even more likely to suffer at the hands of people willing to take more for themselves than they are willing to give to others.

Whereas, if I refuse this $1, then the other subject is going to take that story into the outside world. He is going to be a living example of a lesson that, “If you want something for yourself, you had better be ready to share it with others.” This will promote an aversion to selfishness and a desire for sharing, which will better fulfill my desires in the outside world.

In fact, other people in the world have reason to condemn me for taking the dollar, because in doing so I have promoted selfishness and inhibited sharing in the real world. The adverse affects of my action give them good reason to say to me that my relationships with them are at risk, because I did not have the good sense to promote sharing and inhibit selfishness.

There is no rationality in accepting the $1.

Okay, what if we can guarantee that everybody forgets about the event once the game is over, so that there is no story to take into the outside world. Thus, none of these adverse consequences will result. That cancels out this reason for refusing to generate $1.

I still have a reason to refuse to take the $1 . . . because I simply do not like the fact that the other person is offering such an unfair deal. In being subject to social conditioning, I should have been caused to have an aversion to unfairness such that, even though I value $1, I value a fair exchange even more. I simply do not want an unfair exchange, and am willing to pay $1 for the sake of avoiding a result in which another person benefits from selfishness.

This is true in the same way that, if somebody were to offer me $1, and say that if I accept the money I would have to endure a series of painful electric shocks, that I would have reason to refuse the $1. If they offer me $1, and require that I eat food that I do not like, I have reason to say, “Keep the money.” If they offer me $1, and offer me the opportunity to reward selfishness, it is not irrational for me to say, “I hate unfair deals even more than I hate that food that you offered me last time. You can still keep the money.”

It does not matter where my hatred of unfair deals comes from. Once I have that desire, then it becomes a part of who I am and one of my reasons for action. It doesn’t matter where my hatred for a certain type of food comes from, once I have that distaste for that food, that is enough to give me a reason to avoid eating it. I do not have to make up a story about how it might thwart my future desires to have news of my eating that food reach the outside world. I don’t like it – and that’s all I need to say on the matter.

The value of creating an actual aversion to unfair trade is that it will affect a person’s behavior even when they can act in secret. It prevents people from engaging in unfair trade, even when they can away with it – even when nobody knows about it.

The same applies to creating aversions to killing innocent people, rape, theft, violent destruction of property. If people have aversions to these things, then they have a reason not to perform these types of acts, even under situations where they could get away with it, and no story of their misdeed will ever reach the outside world.

The rationalist is puzzled by the fact that somebody will not take money even when he can get away with it – when he is absolutely certain that nobody is looking over his shoulder. Yet, for some reason the rationalist is not puzzled by the fact that an agent will not eat food that he doesn’t like, even when he can snitch some of that food without being caught. If he has a distaste for that type of food, it is not irrational to refuse to eat it. If he has a distaste for taking property that does not belong to him, then it is not irrational for him to refuse to take it.

When we add an examination of desires to our view of these particular ‘puzzles’, a lot of the puzzle just vanishes. Looking at these puzzles without including the perspective of desires is like examining planet Earth but ignoring the sun, and then asking, “Where does all of the energy for all of this activity come from? The only possible source of energy we can see (given our artificially narrow perspective) is the Earth’s core, but it is hardly enough to explain all of this activity.”

Indeed, it is not. We need to look away from the Earth and towards the sun to understand where all of this energy comes from. In the subject of morality and rationality, we need to look away from actions and towards desires – and, in particular, at the rationality of promoting and inhibiting certain desires – to understand where much of this behavior is coming from.

This subject of evaluating desires, determining which to promote and which to inhibit, is what desire utilitarianism is all about.

Perspective on the Pledge 6: Hating Ameryca

This installment of the Perspective on the Pledge series was inspired by news of a billboard that went up in Pennsylvania, showing a sign much like the one described in this story. Quite coincidentally, the story provides an excellent way of illustrating the moral quality (or lack of it) of those who would post such a sign.

Previous installments can be found in yesterday's post

Part 6

Principal Hadley had given Shawn the night to choose between submitting to a pledge of allegiance to white power without protest, or being expelled from school. Shawn did not need even a minute to consider his options. He imagined himself sitting there while Ms. Johnson insulted his dad, claiming that a patriot must support white power, and he could not even imagine himself bearing the insult in silence. The only thing he could imagine was Ms. Johnson simply refusing to support the insult, refusing to give class time to the idea that all good Americans pledge allegiance to one white nation.

He told his mother that in the evening. He had everything all worked out, assuring her that he would study and get his degree, even if he was not allowed to attend a public school, but that he would fight any attempt the school made to dismiss him. “I’m doing this for dad,” he told his mother. “I’m doing this because he was a patriot, even if he didn’t have any allegiance to one white nation.”

Eventually, his mother had given in. “When your father went off to war, I didn’t want him to go. I wanted him to stay here with us, safe. Let somebody else do the dirty work. But, if everybody thought that way, nobody would ever do the dirty work. And none of us would ever be safe. I was scared, but I was so proud of him for agreeing to do the dirty work. Shawn, don’t do anything stupid.”

“I’ll do it just like Ghandi did, mom. I won’t raise a hand against anybody, no matter what they do to me. But I won’t give in either.”

The next day, when he got to the school, he found a group of students gathered around the front door. When they saw Shawn, they parted, leaving him a path to a sign that somebody had taped to the door. The sign showed a white kid standing before the flag, his hand over his heart, and a caption below the flag that said, “Why does Shawn Henry hate America?”

Shawn clawed the sign off of the door and looked around. He counted four teachers standing within line of sight of the door, yet none of them had thought to even ask what was going on. Crumpling the paper in his hand, he marched in the direction of the administrative center.

Jenny intercepted him. She handed him another version of the sign. This one said, “Why do blacks hate Ameryca?”

“I can tell you why?” Jenny said and she matched Shawn’s stride. “Because Ameryca is a white nation. If you’re not in favor of a white nation, then you have to hate Ameryca, because Ameryca is a white nation.”

“If Ameryca is a white nation and if loyal citizens have to pledge allegiance to white power, then it deserves to be hated,” Shawn grunted.

“Say that a little louder, Shawn,” Jenny said. “Then you won’t have to worry about detention any more, not until you’re released from the hospital, if you live that long.”

Shawn stopped. He found a chair sitting against the wall of the hallway and climbed on top. “Ameryca is either a great nation that values liberty and justice for all. Or it is a bigoted nation that values white power. It’s one or the other. Take your pick,” he shouted.

Two teachers were already working their way through the crowd to call him down, but Shawn did not give them time. He stepped down and continued toward the administrative center.

Side by side, they entered the administration center, where Principle Hadley and Ms. Johnson stood waiting.

Principle Hadley greeted them with a smile. “Jenny, let’s start with you. Show Shawn your good sense. I trust that your parents had a long and serious talk with you about the importance of staying in school.”

“Yes, Mr. Hadley,” Jenny said with a wide smile. “They taught me the importance of an education. They also taught me the importance of doing what’s right. Ms. Johnson, I live by that motto I gave in your class on the first day. A person does not show her moral character by doing the right thing when it is easy. She shows her moral character by doing the right thing when it is hard. I’ll accept my punishment, but I will not support a pledge of allegiance to white power.”

Hadley reached forward, took hold of Jenny’s arm, and dragged her away. “Jenny, this isn’t some noble cause. Shawn is just a troubled kid trying to find some attention. It’s the Pledge of Allegiance, not the abolition of slavery.”

“It’s a pledge to white power, Mr. Hadley. Of course, I have nothing against white power, if whites actually make the best leaders. But they aren’t the best leaders because of the color of their skin. They’re the best leaders because of their intelligence and moral character. I know it is said that blacks lack the moral sense of white people – that they have trouble being moral. But, from what I see, Shawn’s got a lot better moral sense than a lot of the white people around here.”

“Jenny!”

“There are a lot of private schools that my dad can get me into, Mr. Hadley. But you’re going to have to expel me. In the mean time, I know my way to the detention hall.” Jenny gave a polite bow, and headed down the hall towards the library.

“Look at what you’ve done,” Hadley said. “I suppose that expecting you to apologize and put an end to this is out of the question.”

“Yes, sir,” said Shawn. He held up the sign that Jenny had given him. “I suppose that expecting you to put an end to this is out of the question.”

“Guard, get him out of my sight,” Hadley said. He turned and went into his office while the school guard took Shawn to the detention center.

Perspective on the Pledge 5: Friend or Foe

I have two more parts to my Perspective on the Pledge series.

The previous parts of this series can be found here:

Perspective on the Pledge

Detention did not end when the school day ended. Detention ended at 4:30, when the last of the teachers were getting ready to go home. So, when Shawn and Jenny were finally released and allowed to talk to each other, the school was nearly empty.

“So, what happened?” Shawn asked.

“I waited until everybody else had said the Pledge of Allegiance, then I stood up and gave my version. I didn’t say ‘black nation.’ I hope you don’t mind. I just couldn’t bring myself to say it.”

“What did Ms. Johnson say?”

“She didn’t say anything. The rest of the class started to boo me, and she told them to sit down and be quiet. She let me finish. Then she sent me to the Principal’s office and here to detention.”

“What about Mr. Hadley?” Shawn asked.

“He gave me a lecture about you being a bad influence on me. He said how he hates to see me go down this path, and I have all of this potential and he would like to see me make better choices”

“Speak of the devil,” Shawn said. Mr. Hadley had just entered the library with a middle-aged couple close behind.

Jenny gasped, “Those are my parents!”

Jenny’s parents seemed quite well off. Her father was dressed in a well tailored suit and tie, and her mom was dressed as if she, too, could step into a board meeting without a second glance in a pants suit with a laptop bag over her shoulder.

Mr. Hadley simply opened the door to the detention room and let the couple enter.

“This is the young man?” Jenny’s mom asked, looking at Shawn.

“Yes, Ms. Bradford.”

“Young man, I ask that you find better things to do with your time than to corrupt my daughter.” She then held her hand out towards Jenny and added, “Come along, dear.”

Jenny went with her mom, leaving her dad and Principal Hadley behind. Mr. Bradford waited until the women were out of earshot and added, “I realize that you people have difficulty determining right from wrong, so I will put this in terms that you can understand. If I catch you hanging around with my daughter again, you will suffer the consequences, and that is a promise.”

He did not wait around for Shawn’s rebuttal. He spun on his heel and was out the door at a quick pace, catching up with the women.

“What am I going to do with you, Shawn?” Principal Hadley said. “I can’t let this continue. You are disruption to the school. Either you need to start living by our rules, or I will have no choice but to convene a hearing to have you expelled.”

“Living by the rules. That means pledging allegiance to white power.”

“You have the option, according to state law, of sitting quietly during the Pledge of Allegiance.”

“While everybody goes through this ceremony that says that in order to be a patriot one has to pledge allegiance to white power.”

“You have the option to sit quietly while the rest of the class says the Pledge of Allegiance. That is your only option. I will let you have the night to think about it. Tomorrow morning, you will either tell me that you will live within the rules, or you will come here to detention while I convene a board of expulsion. I have nothing more to say this evening.”

“And Jenny, will you expel her, too?”

“If I have to. Hopefully, with her parent’s guidance, we can get through this phase she is going through without doing permanent harm to her future. She really does have a promising future ahead of her. You’re dismissed. Sleep on it, Shawn. Make the right choice.”

Shawn picked up his books and his backpack and headed down the nearly deserted halls of the school.

He was just off of school property when he heard somebody shout his name. He turned and saw three black students approaching him from behind. He recognized the one in the middle, an athletic kid by the name of Paul who was in his physical education class. Shawn stopped for them, though they did not hurry.

“What do you want?” Shawn asked as they approached. None of the three answered. They looked angry. Shawn let his backpack drop from his shoulder and into his hand.

The middle of the three boys stepped straight up to Shawn and shoved him backwards. As Shawn’s arms went out to keep from falling, he dropped his backpack onto the sidewalk.

“What are you doing?” Paul asked. “Everything was fine here until you come along. Now all the white students are looking at us as if we’re all potential terrorists. Everybody got along. Black people haven’t had it nearly as bad as a lot of other groups did. We’re not getting beaten up and killed like black people in some other schools. Then you come here and start stirring up trouble.”

“All you have to do is pledge allegiance to white power?”

“What does it matter, man? Nobody pays attention anyway. It’s not like people take the Pledge seriously. We just mouth the words anyway. You act like it’s such a big deal.”

“If it’s no big deal, when why is there so much resistance to changing it? One of the ways in which I discover if something is a big deal or not is by looking at whether it dies of neglect. I do not see the Pledge dying of neglect, here. In fact, I see people willing to lynch anybody who suggests that we have a Pledge of Allegiance that is anything other than a pledge to white power.”

“You’re not changing anybody’s mind, Shawn. You’re just getting them mad, and all of us are going to pay the price.”

“Right,” said the student who stood at Paul’s side. “Haven’t you ever heard that you can attract more flies with honey than with vinegar?”

“You call this honey?” Shawn asked. “Your honey has a really bitter aftertaste.”

“You’re not listening, man,” Paul said, stepping up close. “You’re just making them mad. You’re not going to get anybody to change their mind by ridiculing and belittling them.”

“Do you expect that I can get them to change their mind by telling them that there is nothing wrong? You can’t get somebody to change their mind without first saying, ‘You’re wrong and here’s why you’re wrong.’ They’re wrong to have a school ritual of pledging allegiance to white power. And there’s no better way to show them why they’re wrong than by exposing them to a pledge of allegiance to black power.”

“Pledge to black power, and they’ll just see you as a threat. They’ll see all of us as a threat.”

“No,” Shawn said. “All you’re saying is that we’re supposed to act like nice, peaceful little slaves in order to keep the master happy. That way, he won’t beat us as badly. Maybe that’s true. Maybe telling the master that slavery is evil is a good way to get beaten. But slavery is wrong.”

“Leave it alone,” Paul repeated. “If you were the only one to get beaten, I would tell you to go enjoy yourself. But you’re not. All of us are going to suffer as well, and our suffering will be on your hands.”

“No, again,” Shawn said. “That’s like saying that the cop who dies trying to arrest a criminal is the fault of the judge who signed the warrant. No. The wrong being done here is being done by those who insist on a pledge of allegiance to white power. If any evil comes of that, it’s the responsibility of those who support such a pledge, not those who oppose it.”

“You remember that when you read about one of us in the hospital, Shawn.” Paul signaled to his friends that it was time to leave. As he walked away, he turned for a parting word. “I warned you, Shawn. I’m not going to suffer because you can’t keep your mouth shut.”

E2.0: Deirdre McCloskey: The Morality of Capitalism

This is the 15th in a new series of weekend posts taken from the presentations at the Salk Institute’s “Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0.”. I have placed an index of essays in this series in an introductory post, Enlightenment 2.0: Introduction.

The speaker for this presentation is Deirdre McCloskey from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her topic is to defend a moral component of capitalism.

The problem that McCloskey is concerned with is the tendency of capitalist economists to simply ignore any discussion of morality. The only thing that matters is prudent. Capitalism is good because capitalism gives us ‘more’. The only form of rationality is the rationality of means – prudence. There is no rationality of ends. Capitalism provides us with a way of determining the best means for maximizing our ends whatever they may be.

McCloskey wants to insert into this view of capitalism some discussion of the value of ends. Specifically, she argues that capitalism relies upon and draws out seven main virtues; courage, temperance, justice, prudence, hope, faith, and love.

I have a serious problem with this from the start, because it uses a set of assumptions that are so common that few people ever think to question them, and yet they very much need to be questioned. One particular assumption is key to McCloskey’s enterprise. It is a false assumption, but widely assumed to be true. This false assumption cannot be easily squared with a number of issues and concerns in economics and morality. In fact, I would argue that it cannot be squared at all. Yet, people like McCloskey continue to try.

It is much like the Christian attempt to try to square the claim that there is only one God, that Jesus and God were both divine, and yet they were two separate entities. The fact is, this is a contradiction and the set of religious assumptions are to be thrown out. Still, people who do not want to throw out these assumptions want to continue to treat this like a serious problem.

The false assumption that McCloskey and economists like her are making is that there is this hard distinction between the evaluation of means and the evaluation of ends. They have figured out the rationality of means – that is what the study of economics is all about. Yet, they hold that there is absolutely no sense to be made of the idea of evaluating ends. Any claims that ends have different values are claims that intrinsic value properties exist. But, none exist, so there is no such thing as a value of ends. Ends are simply those states that our minds have, by evolution or culture, locked onto as ends.

My answer to this is to point out that every end is also a means. Our desires pick out our ends. A desire that P picks out states of affairs in which ‘P’ is true as an end – and then starts hunting for the means to bring about that end. However, one of the ways in which an agent can bring about a particular end is by altering the desires of other people. His desire that P gives him reason to promote desires in others that will tend to fulfill his desire that P, and to inhibit desires in others that will tend to thwart his desire that P.

That is to say, his desire that P gives him a perspective from which he can evaluate the values as means of the ends that people might adopt, to identify some ends as worthy of promoting, and others as worthy of inhibiting.

With this simple step we can preserve the fact that there is no rationality other than the rationality of means with the ability to determine the value of ends. We have the capacity to determine the value of ends as means and to act on those facts.

Without this, we are left with a quandary. There are no intrinsic values. There is only a rationality of means. Yet, there seems to be a sense (and, indeed, all of morality seems to depend upon the possibility) in which we can evaluate ends. How do you square the fact that all rationality is prudence with the moral requirement that we evaluate ends? The answer is that we recognize that all ends are also, at the same time, means, and that it makes sense to evaluate the means-rationality of ends.

In addition to this concern, McCloskey is interested in explaining the sudden rise in wealth starting in the late 1700s, and she does not think that Gregory Clark’s evolution explanation works. By the way, neither does Margaret Jacob, who points out that the industrial revolution took place mostly in northwestern England, and not all of England, where Clark has collected his data.

McCloskey also objects to the idea that we can find some sort of regularity to explain this event. When it comes to finding a scientific explanation, we are looking for a regularity – a reason as to why something changed in circumstances A, B, and C, but not in circumstances X, Y, and Z. To provide a scientific account of the cause of enlightenment, we need a number of circumstances in which an enlightenment occurred, a number of circumstances in which it did not, and a theory that reliably explains (and predicts) when enlightenments will spring up. However, the enlightenment is a unique event, so a theory that will explain and predict enlightenments (a scientific account of the enlightenment) is out of the question.

McCloskey’s theory for the sudden increase in wealth in the late 1700s is that it is due to a cultural change – an innovation, something that is likely to happen only once. That change was a change in ethics. For millennia, mutually beneficial exchange was seen as either impossible or unethical. If one person gained, then somebody else must have lost.

The 1700s saw the rise of the concept of mutually beneficial trade. Merchants – traders – went from being a dishonorable profession, to an honorable profession. People talked differently about trade and those who engaged in trade.

This was an innovation – like inventing the steam engine was an innovation. All of the pieces were there to be put together, and had been laying there to be put together, for hundreds to thousands of years. Millions of people had an incentive to figure out that putting these pieces together would have value. Yet, nobody thought of it. Then, suddenly, somebody had this burst of inspiration, and the industrial revolution took off.

What England actually needed was a new way of thinking that makes innovation possible – that encourages people to bring ideas together in ways that they have not been brought together before. What England needed was a system that praised and rewarded those who brought ideas together in new and unique ways, and condemned or punished (or at least failed to reward) those who did not innovate.

This cultural shift, too, was an innovation. All of the ingredients had been laying around for people to use, but nobody thought to pick them up. Suddenly, somebody in England (or Holland, actually) came up with the innovation of praising innovation and trade, and with that we get the enlightenment, and the vast accumulation of wealth of the industrial revolution.

E2.0: Gregory Clark: The Evolution of Capitalism

This is the 14th in a new series of weekend posts taken from the presentations at the Salk Institute’s “Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0.”. I have placed an index of essays in this series in an introductory post, Enlightenment 2.0: Introduction.

Our next speaker is economic historian Gregory Clark, the head of the Department of Economics at the University of California, Davis. Clark is seeking to explain the sudden rise in material wealth that occurred in Europe and America, starting about 200 years ago.

Contradicting Shermer, Clark argues that there was no real increase in the standard of living in England (the target of his study) until about 1800. If we look only at the aristocracy, we see something that might be thought of as progress over time. However, if we look at the standard of living for the average Englishman – the vast majority of the population – they did not live any better in 1700 AD then they did in 1700 BC. In fact, their lives may be said to be worse. They had to work longer and harder hours under dirtier conditions surrounded by more disease and suffering than hunter gatherers did for the same amount of food.

The challenge is to explain what changed to bring about this sudden burst in productivity.

Many people (and I have been one of them) attribute this sudden change to the enlightenment. There was a philosophical shift in England and Europe at that time, a shift that threw off superstitious nonsense and replaced it with a disposition to study and understand the real world. It was a shift away from explaining things in terms of gods and other supernatural forces, and towards explaining them in terms of natural forces that we can understand as natural laws and use to our advantage.

Clark suggests that this may not be the case. In terms of economic and social customers, England had nothing under the enlightenment that had not been replicated elsewhere without producing the great boom in productivity we saw in England. Against the idea that ‘enlightenment’ implies ‘skyrocketing growth’, Clark offers a number of examples of ‘enlightenment and no skyrocketing economic growth’

He offers an alternative theory. He looked at wills filed in Europe in the years before this tremendous economic boom and noticed a trend in England whereby unsuccessful Englishmen (the economically disadvantaged) were becoming extinct and replaced by the descendents of more successful Englishmen.

Specifically, these wills show that upper middle class Englishmen had an average of four surviving offspring, whereas significantly poorer Englishermen had an average of less than two (less than the replacement rate). The upper middle class Englishmen were passing the biological determinants of economic success down to their offspring. Many of those offspring themselves tumbled down into the lower class. So, while the old lower class was dying off, a new lower class was coming into existence who were the descendents of these successful upper middle-class Englishmen.

Some of the results of this, over time, is that the lower class became more literate. Clark asserts that in Roman times, for example, very few people even knew their own ages, or knew how to read or write. By the 1700s, almost all Englishmen knew how to read a calendar, and could record the actual date and time they were born, and how old they were.

According to Clark, this shift might well have had a biological component. Lower-class people with lower-class values were dying off, being replaced by a new lower-class form of life, with a new lower class form of values.

In short, Clark asserts, we evolved into a capitalist society. As a result of this biological phenomena, the basic preferences of Europeans changed over time – the fundamental biological underpinning of our values changed. An earlier enlightenment would not have helped an earlier species of Europeans because those Europeans were not biologically fit for an enlightenment environment. They did not have the psychological dispositions that would allow them to thrive in such an environment. After a few centuries lower-class die-off and replacement by the genetic descendents of middle-class culture, the population changed. The new population was, in fact, capable of thriving in a capitalist environment.

Among these middle-class values, there was a very low preference for giving anything to the poor. In examining these wills, Clark noted that the wealthier individuals left less than 0.5% of their income to the poor. They left the rest to their children. They did not even leave money to their wives (who were at risk of taking the money and using it to raise somebody else’s children) – or did so only under the condition that the wife not remarry and that the wealth gets passed on to the man’s own biological children.

These agents also practiced a rigid for of kin selection. If a man had no children of his own, he did not leave the money to strangers. He did not even leave the money to servants. He left the money to nieces, nephews, and other blood relatives. Again, this helped to ensure the survival of those who carried the genetic determinants of success into future generations, and withheld benefits from those who lacked the genetic disposition to thrive in a capitalist society.

There are a lot of things about this theory that could easily cause a person to feel uncomfortable. Primarily, it speaks of social Darwinism. We can easily imagine somebody like Hitler saying that, “My people are genetically superior to these others. It is only fitting that we eliminate these others, replace them, and thereby create a country of super-men who can then enjoy a thousand years of peace and prosperity.”

The Englishmen did not consciously adopt a program of replacing a biologically inferior form of Englishman with a biologically superior form of Englishman. However, can we make a moral argument against doing anything like this consciously?

Clark is careful not to make these types of value judgments. He does not state that the wealthy Englishmen were genetically superior to the (original) species of poor Englishman. He is simply describing a historical fact – he is not attaching any value to them whatsoever. Because his conclusions are value-free, they cannot be used to recommend for or against any particular economic policy.

However, his theory does contain an element that says not only that our values – our preferences – have the same historical and biological component, but that our fundamental values underwent a shift in the previous 200 years. He does not have anything to say against making the value judgment that certain forms of human are biologically superior to others. His neutrality implies saying nothing against the legitimacy of replacing biologically inferior (unfit) individuals in a society – namely, the economically disadvantaged – with the biologically/evolutionarily fit descendents of the upper-middle class.

One thing to say about these conclusions is that the mere fact that people do not like a particular conclusion, this does not imply that it is false. It is scarcely a good argument to claim, “If human values underwent an evolutionary change before the enlightenment, this might support racist doctrines that some people are inherently superior to others. Supporting racist doctrines that some people are inherently superior to others is morally repulsive. Therefore, the theory must be false.”

This would be like arguing, “The holocaust was morally repulsive; therefore, the holocaust did not happen,”

Or, “If carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, then we might be forced to reduce carbon emissions. It would be a pain to reduce carbon emissions. Therefore, it must not be the case that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas.”

These types of arguments do not work. We cannot reject conclusions on the basis of the fact that we do not like where the argument is leading.

As it turns out, in this case, we can reject the idea that this line of reasoning actually supports these types of racist conclusions. To begin with, there is no such thing as intrinsic or no inherent value, so no justification for claiming that one segment of the population is intrinsically or inherently better than another. The only type of value that exists depends on relationships between objects of evaluation and reasons for action, and desires are the only reasons for action that exist. So, the type of person that is ‘better’ than any other – the type that is morally superior – is the type that tends to fulfill other desires. A person who lacks an aversion to wiping out a segment of the population would not easily qualify as a person with desires that tend to fulfill other desires. He would scarcely qualify as a good person.

Preparing for Court of Appeals Decision on the Pledge

Sometime between now and June, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will put out a decision as to whether "under God" in the Pledge, and "In God We Trust" on the currency, are constitutional.

This is an election year. Beyond any doubt, the Democratic candidates for President and for the Senate and House will be required to declare that these are Constitutional and they must promise to do whatever they can to fight those who would remove these phrases.

Those candidates will have a choice - either agree with the Christian majority, or give their political seats to those who do.

It's got to be up to us to have an answer - a way of challenging what will no doubt be either a very vocal cry in protest of the decision, or a vocal cry in defense of that decision.

Obama and Clinton will once again be found on the Capital steps shouting, 'UNDER GOD!" when the Senate shows its support for, or opposition to, the 9th Circuit Court opinion.

Regardless of how the decision goes, the mere fact of the decision will be good for tens to hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into the coffers of theocratic candidates, amid promises that only those who believe that our rights come from God are qualified to serve as judges in the United States.

Our job is to make the task of defending these phrases as difficult as possible, by being prepared to make as much noise in defense of removing these relics of religiosity as possible, using the best arguments.

I've been adding to my story, "Perspective on the Pledge" recently. I have another section to add today.

The complete story to date (all four parts) - with even some of the earlier parts edited and cleaned up, can be found at:

Perspective on the Pledge.

The fourth part - the recently added part - is below:

---------

“You promised,” Shelby Johnson said. She had come to the detention center under the pretext of bringing Shawn’s homework to him. But she really wanted to talk to him about the fact that he had broken his promise to her. “Last night, you looked me straight in the eye and promised that you would not disrupt my class. I actually thought you meant it.”

“I did mean it,” Shawn said. “But, later, I realized that what I promised to do was to sit quietly while you taught another class full of students that people like my dad do not deserve your respect. I have an obligation to my dad, too. I have an obligation not to let the country he died to protect say that he wasn’t a patriot, simply because he had no allegiance to a white nation. I either had to disappoint you, Ms. Johnson, or disrespect my dad. I’m sorry, you lost.”

“It’s not like that, Shawn. You’re the only one who thinks that the Pledge of Allegiance disrespects those who don’t favor a white nation.”

“Then why did I get the reaction I did when I pledged allegiance to one black nation, Ms. Johnson. Some of the white kids in that class were ready to lynch me. They know that pledging allegiance to a black nation means saying that nobody who would support white leaders is patriotic. That’s why they were angry. They know that pledging allegiance to a white nation means saying that nobody who would support a black leader is patriotic. That’s why they want to keep it in the Pledge.”

“People have been saying the Pledge for sixty years, Shawn. You’re saying that you were the first person to figure out this secret meaning?”

“No, Ms. Johnson. You’re not listening. They added ‘white’ to the pledge sixty years ago when black people took over the Soviet Union. They did it because they did not want black leaders in this country. They know what it means. The only thing I did was to actually say out loud what everybody for sixty years has agreed never to say out loud. The words ‘with liberty and justice for all’ are in the Pledge in order to get children to support liberty and justice. The word ‘indivisible’ is in the Pledge to get children to support the union. The word ‘white’ was added to the pledge to get children to support white power. Of course white people love the idea of getting children to pledge allegiance to white power. They’ve been indoctrinating children this way for fifty years. That’s why you won’t find anybody but white people in public office.”

“Shawn, they’re not going to let you back into class unless you promise to behave yourself. They’re just not going to permit it.”

“Ms. Johnson, just don’t tell the class that being a patriot means pledging allegiance to white power. Don’t expect me to sit there while you tell everybody that people like my dad who did not support white power are as unpatriotic as anybody who would support rebellion, tyranny, and injustice. You’re talking about my dad, Ms. Johnson.”

“It’s the law, Shawn.”

“Yes. The law passed by white law makers telling you to teach other people’s kids that they’re not good Amerycans unless they pledge allegiance to white power.”

“Don’t do this, Shawn.”

“It’s your call, Ms. Johnson.”

Shelby left Shawn’s books on his desk and left the room.

A while later, Shawn received a summons to report to the Principal’s office. When he entered the Administration Center, he saw his mother through the glass windows in the Principal’s office. He felt his stomach suddenly tie in knots, and it took all of his effort to quit standing.

When he entered the office, Principal Hadley said, “I’ll leave you two alone for a while.” He left, closing the door behind him.

Shawn looked around nervously for a hidden microphone, realizing that there could be hundreds in the room and he would never see them.

“Honey, this is a new school. You said you wouldn’t get into trouble, here.”

“This is different, mom,” Shawn said. “I’m not fighting. I’m not doing anything like that.”

“They say that you’re causing trouble in the class, that you won’t let the teacher do her job. What are you doing, son?”

“It’s the Pledge, mom. I actually thought about what we’re saying when we pledge allegiance to one white nation. We’re saying that people like dad aren’t patriots – because patriots have to support white power. Dad was more of a patriot than anybody here. None of them died for this country.”

“You’re father was a good man, Shawn. But I bet some of these people fought for their country, too. Just because they didn’t die, that doesn’t mean they didn’t fight.”

“Okay. Still, it’s wrong, mom. It’s wrong what they’re doing.”

“Maybe it is, son. But your dad wanted you to finish school. He wanted you to make something of yourself. He fought to give you a good life, son. Don’t throw it away.”

“He fought to give me a good life by fighting those who would do us harm. That’s what I’m doing, mom. Because the government is having everybody pledge allegiance to white power, people like dad – and people like me – can’t do some of the things we would be good at doing, because it would violate the idea of white power. There are no black people holding political office in this country. Politicians have said, over and over again, that they will only appoint white judges who recognize that our rights came from white men. I’m fighting for a better life, too, mom. A life where being a patriot does not mean supporting white power.”

The room fell into a long, silent pause.

“Mom, it’s like Ghandi. I’ve sworn that I’ll never raise my hand in anger. I will do what I think is right. If the school decides to punish me, I will take my punishment like a man. If they quit saying that my dad wasn’t a patriot, I’ll shut up. If they keep saying that my dad wasn’t a patriot, I’ll speak my mind. But I won’t hurt anybody, I promise. I’m standing up for what’s right, mom. Just like dad did.”

Ms. Peachtree shrugged. “When you go back to detention, I want you to write down everything that happened. I want to know everything. We’ll discuss it when you get home.”

She picked up her gloves and her purse and headed for the door. Hadley saw her through the window and intercepted her.

“He’s all yours, Principal Hadley,” Ms. Peachtree said.

“Did you talk to him?” Hadley asked.

“We talked. We’ll talk some more tonight,” she answered. She said nothing else as she left.

* “I’m not going to do anything stupid, mom,” Shawn said. “I promise, mom, no fighting. A student could be pummeling me with a bat in the parking lot and I promise I won’t hit him. All I’m doing is saying that this isn’t right. If they decide to

The next day, Shawn went straight to the principal’s office as soon as he got in. Ms. Johnson and Principal Hadley were there waiting for him. Hadley spoke formally and deliberately. “Shawn, before I can allow you to return to Ms. Johnson’s class, I need you to apologize to Ms. Johnson about your behavior yesterday, admit that it was wrong, and promise never to do it again.”

“I have to ask Ms. Shelby a question first,” Shawn answered.

“What question?” Hadley asked.

Shawn turned to Shelby. “Are you going to be leading the class in the Pledge?”

“That’s the law,” Hadley answered for her. “You don’t have to participate, but the state legislature requires that she begin first period with the Pledge of allegiance.”

Shelby answered with a shrug, gesturing towards Principle Hadley as if to say, “That’s my position. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“If Ms. Johnson refuses to lead the class in a Pledge of allegiance to white power, I will have nothing to protest. If she tells the class that my dad was not a patriot because he did not fight and die for one white nation, I will answer that insult.”

“Fine. Back to detention,” Hadley said. He summoned the school guard over and Shawn quietly followed him out of the room.

Shawn actually did not mind detention. The school held detention in a room just off of the library, and students were not permitted to do anything but study for the classes they were enrolled in. Shawn was getting well ahead of his reading and other homework, and liked it that way.

He was in the middle of his math homework when he was interrupted by the school guard opening the detention room door. He looked up and saw Jenny entering the room.

“I didn’t know we were allowed visitors?” Shawn said.

“You aren’t,” the guard answered. “Jennifer is a guest.”

“I seem to have gotten myself into a bit of trouble with the establishment,” Jenny said with a mischievous smile.”

“No talking,” the guard announced. “You don’t want to get into any more trouble than you already are.”

Quietly, Jenny took a seat opposite the table from Shawn and got out her books. Through it all, a smile never left her lips.

Protesting the Pledge

Since the start of this blog, I have written a series of posts in the form of a story that describe a high school dealing with a system that encourages its students to pledge allegiance to “one white nation, indivisible.”

A PDF file if the first part of this story can be found on my web site:

A Perspective on the Pledge

It’s time for the next chapter.

“All I want to do is teach,” Shelby Johnson told herself while she watched the students file into her classroom. She was watching for Shawn to enter, hoping that he might decide not to come to school today. She was disappointed. He came through the door. Almost bumping into another student at the doorway, he stepped back to give the classmate room to enter, then entered himself, taking a seat in the back corner, near the door.

He looked up at her, then closed his eyes and laid his head down on his desk.

The sound of the bell announcing the start of the class startled her. Shelby put herself on auto pilot. “All stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.”

Shawn, of course, did not stand. He kept his head on his desk as if he was asleep. Jenny remained seated as well, glancing at Shawn. The boy sitting in the row next to Jenny leaned over and whispered something to her. Jenny’s expression showed her anger, but she did not respond.

As was her duty, Shelby lead the class in the Pledge of Allegiance. Again, she was startled when the class again shouted, “one WHITE nation.” That wasn’t helping, and she resolved that she would put her foot down against that kind provocation.

She did not get a chance. When the Pledge ended, and the students took their seats, Shawn suddenly stood. Standing at attention, his hand on his heart, and in a loud and clear voice he started, “I pledge allegiance to the United States of Ameryca . . .,”

“No! Shawn, sit down!” Shelby shouted immediately.

He ignored her and continued. “. . . and for the republic for which it stands . . . “

Her mind raced to consider her options. Should she let him finish?

“. . . one BLACK nation, indivisible . . .”

“That’s enough!” Shelby shouted. Others in the class erupted in anger as well. One of the larger white boys stood up and started to charge Shawn, but another student between them interfered. “Sit down! Everybody sit down!”

Shawn finished the pledge before sitting, but that did not take much longer.

“Shawn, get out! I will see you at the Principal’s office. Take your stuff and get out of my class!”

Others in the class started to heckle Shawn while he picked up his bag.

“Shut up!” Shelby said. “The next person to speak will go with him.”

The class remained silent while Shawn approached the back door. As he left, Shawn turned to Shelby and said, “I am very sorry I couldn’t keep my promise,” then left.

After Shawn had closed the door behind him, Shelby addressed the rest of the class. “Anybody who shouts ‘white nation’ while saying the pledge ever again, you’re going to the Principal’s office. That’s a deliberate act of provocation and I will not stand for it in my clsssroom.”

One of her students answered, “But that’s what the Senate did, Ms. Johnson. When the appeals court said that the pledge was unconstitutional, they all went onto the steps of the capital and said the pledge, and they shouted, ‘one WHITE nation'.”

“You get yourself elected to the senate, and you too can act like an ass. Not in my classroom. Now, I have to go to the Principal’s office. Jim, go across the hall and ask Ms. Benson to keep an eye on my class while I’m gone. You will remain silent, and you will read the first chapter in your books while I am gone.”

"I already read it," protested one student.

"Then read it again. It won't kill you," Shelby answered.

As she started to leave, she noticed the student next to Jenny take another anticipatory glance in her direction. It seemed a poor idea to leave Jenny here alone, since she had also remained seated. “Jenny, come with me.”

Several in the class taunted her by saying, “You’re in trouble now.” They seemed content with that interpretation, and Shelby let it stand.

When Shelby got to the administrative center, Shawn was standing before the reception desk, and Principal Hadley was just coming out of his office. “What’s going on here?” Hadley asked. He recognized Shawn and asked further, “What type of trouble have you caused now?”

After telling Jenny to sit down, Shelby approached the Principal, “We’re having a bit of a misunderstanding regarding the Pledge. I just need to talk to Shawn for a bit.”

“What kind of trouble?” Hadley asked.

“I think I can take care of it, Mr. Hadley,” Shelby said.

Speaking slowly and deliberately, Hadley said, “I want to know what happened.”

“It was nothing,” Shelby said. “Shawn remained seated during the pledge, as did Jenny. But, when the pledge was over, Shawn stood to give his own version of the Pledge. He pledged allegiance to 'one black nation'?”

“Black nation?” Hadley asked, turning to Shawn with a look of utter contempt.

“I’m certain he was just trying to make a point.”

“Ms. Johnson, come into my office.”

Shelby and Mr. Hadley disappeared behind the closed door. Shawn was certain he knew what they were talking about. Hadley did not want to fight in front of the student, and was telling Shelby to get in line.

“Shawn,” Jenny whispered, looking furtively around to see if anybody was paying attention.

“Shawn,” Jenny repeated.

Shawn turned from the glass window into the Principal’s office to face Jenny.

“Why did you say ‘black nation’?” she asked.

“Because I wanted them to see how wrong it was to say ‘white nation’. The way they felt when they heard me pledge allegiance to one black nation . . . well . . . that’s the way I feel when I hear them pledge allegiance to one white nation. It’s a pledge to treat those people who aren’t being included as lesser beings. Besides, I also wanted them to see that the choice is not between saying ‘white nation’ or not saying it. I wanted them to see that the choice was between saying ‘white nation’ or ‘black nation’, and it’s because both of them are wrong that the right thing to do is to say neither.”

“Well, it didn’t work,” Jenny whispered. “Now everybody thinks you’re some sort of militant who wants to wipe out white people.”

“Militant? That makes as much sense as calling Ghandi ‘militant’. I never so much as raised a finger against anybody. I did nothing but pledge allegiance to the flag. That’s militant? What is it, then, when they pledge allegiance to the flag?”

At that moment the Principal’s door opened and Hadley and Shelby stepped outside. Hadley stepped up quickly and shouted to Shawn, “You stay away from her young man. You have done enough damage as it is.” He literally pulled Shawn away from Jenny and stood him up against the wall.

While they stood, face to face, Ms. Johnson kept walking, looking nervously over her shoulder. She entered the hallway and turned towards her classroom.

Hadley continued. “Our classrooms are for learning, young man. Keep your political protests off of school property.”

“For learning to denigrate good men like my father,” Shawn said. “He died for this country. He died for one nation with liberty and justice for all. He did not die – he would not die – for one white nation. You’re trying to ‘educate’ me into believing that my dad could not be a patriot because he would not and could not devote himself to ‘one white nation’.”

“Your dad has nothing to do with this,” Hadley said. “Get this through your thick black skull. Nobody, I don’t care what your race, has a right to disrupt the classes in this school.”

“So how come it’s not a disruption when I sit quietly while everybody else pledges an allegiance to one white nation, but too much to ask others to sit quietly while I pledge allegiance to one black nation?”

“Shawn, this country was founded by white men. If you paid attention in your history classes you would know this. This is a white nation. You would have us deny our heritage? If you have something to say, we have channels. Take it up you’re your congressman if you want to, but do not come here and disrupt my classes.”

“My white congressman?” Shawn asked. “Did my father go to Afghanistan to ask Al-Quida to respect our rights?”

“How dare you compare us to Al-Queida!”

“How dare you accuse me of comparing you to Al-Queida. When my dad went to Afghanistan he was armed. He had to be. Here, I would condemn violence because I respect that most people will do the right thing once they learn what the right thing is. Only the most hate-filled bigots will insist that I do nothing while the school I attend spits on my dad’s grave by saying that patriotism requires allegiance to a white nation. My dad deserves better than that.”

“I don’t care what your cause is, you will not disrupt this school. You are confined to detention for the rest of the day; I’ll have your teachers deliver your homework. If you insist on continuing this demonstration, you will be expelled, and where will that get you?”

Hadley turned around and told the school guard, “Take this boy to in-school suspension.”

He then saw Jenny, still sitting on the couch. “What are you here for?” Hadley asked.

“I don’t know,” said Jenny. “Ms. Johnson asked me to follow her.”

“Get back to your class,” Hadley commanded. He returned to his office, slamming his door behind him.

On Scouts and Lies

Contributions to a stereotype are not tax deductible.

Yesterday, I read an article by Terry Sanderson, "Scouting Without God," requesting that the Scout Association make its religious oath optional. The line above came when I read some of the comments to this article – comments that effectively said, “There’s no reason for we atheists to request that this oath be made optional. We should just teach our children to lie. It’s the same thing we do with respect to faith schools here in England. We don’t need to change the rules. It is far better to embrace lies and deception as a way around them.”

I need to make it clear that the article and the comments concerned scouting in England, where parents do lie to get their children into government-funded religious schools and the scouts themselves receive public money.

One of the reasons why atheists were not permitted to testify in court, or to hold public office, and one of the major complaints we get today against atheists, is that they have no moral code. Unlike Christians (so the myth goes), atheists have no incentive to tell the truth when lies are more convenient. They have no fear of hell or damnation afterwards, so you can’t trust them.

In these comments, I found one example after another of people contributing to this stereotype.

As it happens my lad is a Cub, my oldest girl a Brownie, my middle girl a Rainbow - they have each made the promise, and none is religious, my son in particular has expressed pretty solid doubt about the god propaganda they get at school, but he's happy enough to go along with the pretence because he wants to be in Cubs.

Another commenter wrote:

Besides which, atheists and secularists can always lie when they take the oath. I believe that's how people get their kids into religious schools these days and if it's good enough for your kids' education then it's good enough for the Scouts too.

A third commenter wrote:

If you're an atheist and you really want your kid to become a Scout then just let them take the oath without meaning it. It worked for me.

So, go ahead, lie to get what you want. While we’re at it, we might as well also be teaching them to lie to get the job they want, lie to get elected into the positions they want, lie to others to get sex or to get them to contribute money. And while we are teaching our children to lie, we are teaching people everywhere to lie to our children, creating an environment for them in which they will need to deal with the deceptive manipulation of others.

I can easily imagine the Christian who thinks that no atheist can be trusted to tell the truth, that no atheist is moral (or is only accidentally moral because he has a false belief that there is a foundation for morality other than God) reading this and saying, “See! See! Truth, honesty, these things mean nothing to atheists. As soon as they see an advantage to lying, they are all over themselves defending the permissibility of lies.”

No, the proper defense is to condemn the culture that forces atheist parents into a dilemma where whatever they do is wrong. Parents have a moral obligation to their children – to their children’s welfare. Children need a good education and character-building experiences.

When the government establishes a set of rules whereby those who believe in God have easy access to these things, but those who do not have to undergo huge expense to get the same quality of education and experiences for their children, atheist parents are forced to either abandon their obligations to their children or abandon their obligations to the truth. This is a true moral dilemma.

It is a dilemma that is caused by unfair and discriminatory government rules.

Once again, I want to remind the reader here that I am writing about the situation in England, where religious schools and scouts receive public money. The atheist parents who are forced to undergo huge expense to get as good for their children are parents who are made poorer by the fact that they are also paying tax money to provide the children of religious parents with these opportunities.

A moral system either has everybody paying his own way, or nobody.

A moral system is not one that begins with a system of injustice, then seeks to alleviate its symptoms with a bout of lying. Defenders of the ‘injustice plus deception’ proposal are not only morally wrong, but they are announcing to the world that, in addition to their lack of belief in God, they have a lack of commitment to morality to go along with it.

This leads up to the issue of whether an organization that receives public money should be allowed to discriminate based on religious belief. The principle at play here is simple. An organization that receives government money is morally permitted to exclude those who provide that money (particularly insofar as they provide it while looking down the barrel of a gun) for reasons of merit or of compelling state interest.

Those who defend this system must either argue that atheists, insofar as they are atheists, do not merit a quality education or the types of character-building experiences that scouting provides. Or they must argue that some compelling state interest is served by denying atheists equal access to these education resources and character-building experiences.

Neither case can be made. In fact, only the worst form of bigot would think that there is any plausibility behind such a situation.

Another potential solution would be to allow secular parents to create a secular version of the scouts to provide character-building experiences. However, this means that the government must adopt some sort of principle of “separate but equal”. We tried that in America for nearly a century, where we segregated everything from our schools to seats on a bus, claiming that it is possible to give blacks and whites ‘separate but equal’ facilities.

Inevitably, prejudice destroys any possibility of separate but equal. Bigots inevitably demonstrate their ability to give advantages to their favored group and disadvantages to their unfavored group, while blinding themselves to this equality. There is no way that a sane person would look at the different facilities provided to blacks and whites in the days of segregation and think that this conformed to the principle ‘separate but equal’. They paid lip service to the principle while knowing full well that they were ignoring it, and that they wanted it that way.

We should expect the same thing if England should embrace ‘separate but equal’ scouting organizations (or schools, for that matter). Inequalities will creep in, and they will be ignored. The best way to prevent these inequalities from creeping in is to deny the practice of keeping these groups separate. Allow the atheist to go to the theist school, and the theist to go to the atheist school, and people will (at least to some degree) use this freedom to bring about more equality than we can hope to find in a system of enforced segregatin.

The other option, of course, is for these schools and organizations to refuse any further government money. Refusing government money the moral principle that no taxpayer may be excluded for any reason other than merit or a compelling state interest no longer applies – people can discriminate at will.

It would still be immoral for such a group to discriminate, by the way. It would simply be wrong to respond to this discrimination through violence. The issue here is the same as we deal with on issues of free speech. The right to freedom of the press does not imply that people may not be criticized or condemned for what they write – only that it is wrong to respond to them with violence. The right to freedom of assembly does not imply a freedom from condemnation for forming hate-groups. It only implies a freedom from violence for doing so.

And no person shall be required to pay tax money to support an organization that targets it with unprincipled and unfounded hate. Whereas the scouts (or religious schools) preach unreasoned hatred of certain groups, and those groups are groups that pay taxes, the government is acting immorally when it taxes the victims of bigotry and uses it to fund the bigotry that victimizes him. To the degree that faith-based schools and faith-based children’s organizations preach that atheist taxpayers are inherently immoral and not to be trusted, to that degree society itself is unjust and immoral to force the atheist to fund that message with its tax dollars.

In the mean time, let’s not be advocating that lying under oath is a perfectly legitimate atheist alternative to these types of situations.

Contributions to a stereotype are not tax deductible.

And for my American readers who think that going through the motions of saying the Pledge of Allegiance while mumbling the words ‘under God’ or substituting something else or leaving them out entirely, please note that this is actually rather juvenile nonsense. Imagine a jurist being sworn in to a jury with the other 11 members, mumbling or leaving out some words that he does not to follow, violating that oath, then claiming, “I actually left that part out, your honor. So, I’m not bound by that part of the oath.” Sorry, but if you go through the motions, you could be mumbling the lyrics to your favorite drinking song, going through the motions without protest binds you to the oath that was given.

Without an outright and public refusal, if you go through the motions, you are in fact pledging allegiance to one nation under God. If that is not, in fact, where your allegiance lies then your obligation is to make that refusal explicit and unambiguous.

Anything else is lying under oath. Lying under oath is not something that good people have reason to encourage or embrace.

McCain: The Accidental Republican Nominee

Assuming that today is February 5th, today nearly half of the country votes (or has an opportunity to vote) in state primaries or caucuses to select the next President of the United States.

Today, I want to rant a bit about the political process. I have no arguments to make. I just want to point out some things about it that I do not like – that it would be within our interests to change to whatever degree we actually make those changes.

On the Republican side, the nominee will probably be John McCain. McCain is almost certainly the best of the Republican candidates. (Some people might have said the same about Ron Paul, until discovering that he is a theocratic creationist little different from Romney, Huckabee, and Brownbeck.) Unfortunately, McCain does not represent the Republican party. McCain’s successful nomination comes from the religious-right contingent splitting their vote between Huckabee and Romney. If either one of these two had dropped out early, the other would have likely been the nominee.

This would have made for an interesting election, because the number one topic under debate would have been the proper relationship between religion and government. The Democratic nominee would almost certainly have tried to secure the Presidency by out-doing the Republican nominee in apparent religiousness. However, I think a substantial portion of the population is uncomfortable with such a blend of religion and politics, and they would have been asking questions.

In this sense, I wish that the religious right would have agreed on a candidate for President and had picked the Republican nominee. If they had done so, then we could have had nine months seriously focusing on the issue of the role of religion in government.

This would not have been a debate between the Republican and Democratic candidates – I have little doubt that the Democratic candidate would certainly try to pander to those with religious sentiments to some extent. This would have been a debate between the Republican candidate and the American people, because I think a significant portion of the American population has serious misgivings about the wisdom of theocracy. This debate would have given them the ability to express those misgivings in a way that the population at large would have had difficulty trying to ignore.

Really, we should have seen the folly of theocracy in the last eight years under the Bush administration. The greatest problem of this administration was its fundamental inability to draw conclusions based on evidence. From global warming to the question of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to dangers represented in a memo saying that Bin Laden is intent on striking within the United States to sitting in children’s class after being told America was under attack, Bush (and his supporters) represented an incredible incompetence when it came to drawing substantive conclusions from available evidence.

Against that background, it should have been easy to argue against more of the same – particularly with a candidate like Huckabee at the head of the Republican ticket, who brags about his unwillingness to draw substantive conclusions from the available evidence.

The Huckabee/Romney faction is going to have to sit through the 2008 election knowing that the type of person that they want to see in government is not on the ballot. They will have to settle for a ‘second best’. This will dampen their enthusiasm, and increase their resolve in making sure that the same thing does not happen in the next election. They will (or they should, if they were wise) use this to remind themselves of the need to settle on a specific candidate early, to provide him with maximum support, and make sure that no other evangelical candidate becomes a serious threat.

This is just a guess. I could be wrong.

Only Atheists Can Be Moral?

Here’s a headline that attracted my attention.

“Only Atheists can Act Morally”

I disagree, of course.

The reason given for saying that only atheists can be moral is:

In most, If not all religions, There is a reward/punishment system at it's very core. Religion comes along, lays down some rules and convinces you that should you break any of these rules you will be subject to torturous punishment, pain and suffering for eternity. For eternity!

In light of that, How can any action performed by a religious person be considered moral? How can it even be a result of free will? If you are told to do something and threatened with eternal suffering should you not comply or promised a reward should you abide how can your action be considered good?

First (and this is admittedly pedantic) actions are right or wrong, people are good or evil. This is true in the same way that propositions are true or false, while arguments are valid or invalid. A more precise use of terms is helpful. Like I said, nothing really depends on this. It is just how I learned to write in studying moral philosophy, and what follows will make more sense if people are aware of these conventions.

Second, a right act is an act that a person with good desires would perform. A right act is not necessarily done from good desires. I borrow $15 from you and promise to pay you back on Monday. Monday comes, and I owe you $15. I do not owe you $15 paid from a particular motive. I simply owe you $15.

Or, assume that you are serving as a witness in a trial, and you are asked a question. Your motivation for telling the truth does not matter. You may tell the truth because you hate the defendant. You may tell the truth because you stand to gain a lot of money. The lawyers will certainly bring up these facts (as a way of determining if you have an incentive to lie), but they do not affect the fact that telling the truth is the right action. You still have an obligation to tell the truth, even if your motives are bad.

So, even if a person does the right act in order to avoid punishment or to obtain a reward, he is still performing the right action. It is not the case that only atheists can perform right actions. It is not the case that an act performed for the sake of obtaining a reward or avoiding punishment cannot be a right action.

So, what about the question that only an atheist can be a good person? A person is a person with good desires. A theist, apparently, only acts on a desire to obtain a reward or to avoid punishment in the afterlife.

This is almost certainly false. To begin with, if we talk about evolved desires, the theist’s (evolved) desire to care for their offspring (for example) is just as real as an atheist’s evolved desire to care for his offspring. No amount of religion changes the fact that theists are evolved creatures with the full range of evolved desires.

I have denied that evolved desires have anything to do with morality. Morality has to do only with learned desires. However, these learned desires involve, in part, strengthening or weakening those evolved desires. Evolution may have given us a sense of altruism. However, it has also given us the ability to strengthen or weaken that sense of altruism through social forces. Do we use those social forces to strengthen altruism, or to weaken it? These are the questions for morality to answer.

The relevant point here is that theists have these desires as well, and the capacity to have these desires strengthened or weakened, and ‘reasons for action’ for strengthening or weakening these desires. Not believing in evolution does not change the fact that one evolved any more than not believing in gravity changes one's weight.

People often do not know why they do things. One of my favorite examples has to do with riding a bike. Many bike riders cannot accurately describe how they keep themselves balanced on a bike. They claim to do this by shifting their weight, but the truth of the matter is that they keep their balance by turning the front wheel and using their momentum to carry their center of balance back and forth across the line from the front tire to the back tire.

We have been practicing morality for a long time - since before religion came into existence. Even animals, I argue, are capable of using social forces (praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment) to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires and inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires. It does not take a lot of intelligence (certainly not as much as inventing the concept of ‘god’) to reward pleasing behavior and condemn displeasing behavior in others. Intelligence still has a role to play in morality - it allows us to create a better morality in the same way it allows us to create better tools generally. Great intelligence is simply not necessary.,/p>

Morality came before religion. Religion did not invent morality. Religion hijacked a moral system that was already in existence.

And what type of situation do these people count as a ‘reward’ in heaven? One of the most common aspects that I hear about is a reunion with family members and other loved ones – for those loved ones to come to heaven with them. What this means is that, yes, these people seek a reward in heaven. However, the reward they hope for is the perpetual safety and happiness of their loved ones in heaven with them.

In fact, this is precisely why many of these people hate atheism so much. Given their religious beliefs, atheists are a threat to the possibility that their children will live in perpetual safety and happiness in heaven. Instead, they will live in perpetual torment. This would not be an easy situation for any loving parent to accept. Is it the case that a parent is a ‘bad person’ because they seek a ‘reward’ of their children joining them in heaven as opposed to the ‘punishment’ of knowing that their child will endure perpetual torture?

Having said this, it is correct to say that that religion provides many religious people with a significant moral handicap. To imagine the handicap that a religious moralist is under, imagine the handicap that a physician would be under if he decided that all medical truths were written in the works of Hippocrates and that anything that deviates from his teachings is false? He would not be a very good physician.

For the same reasons, a moralist who works under the false assumptions that a group of substantially ignorant tribesmen came up with perfect moral knowledge and that anything that deviates from their teaching is a mistake will be working under the same type of handicap.

Anybody who goes to the Bible for moral guidance is going to an extremely unreliable source.

There are some in the Christian tradition who have found a way around this. They have gotten into the habit of rewriting (or reinterpreting) their religious texts, putting into them the most recent advances in secular morality. When secular philosophers discover a new moral truth (e.g., that slavery is wrong), these Christians write these new moral truths into their interpretation of scripture, interpreting scripture as a document that condemns slavery.

They do this, even when secular philosophers make moral mistakes. While Marx was an atheist and his views are often used to condemn all atheists, a great many priests and preachers embraced his philosophy - claiming that Marx described an economic system that Jesus would have embraced.

I challenge anybody to find where it says in scripture that abortion is immoral – that it is murder. People who make this claim are not getting this view from scripture. They are getting it from something else, from their culture, and reading this into scripture. They do this in the same way that they have read the abolition of slavery and democracy into scripture (when, for 1800 years, scripture stood for slavery and the divine right of kings).

Many Christians ignore the biblical prohibitions on the charging of interest and working on the Sabbath, but refuse to ignore the biblical prohibitions on homosexuality. This is not something they get out of the Bible. There is nothing in the Bible that says, ‘ignore this passage; give that one extra emphasis’. They get these prejudices from sources outside of scripture.

Let's go back to our doctor who thinks that all medical truth comes from Hippocrates. Imagine that this doctor keeps up on the most recent medical journals, accepts their findings, then 'interprets' the works of Hippocrates as containing those truths. To the degree that a physician does this, he is still practicing the best medicine available. He just has an odd way of relating to those medical facts.

The ‘moral handicap’ of religion only applies to those who refuse to engage in this practice, and who stick with an interpretation of scripture in the face of modern advances. A lot of religious people do think this way, and we are made worse off because of it. Yet, this fact falls far short of saying that only atheists can be good people.

An atheist can, in fact, be far worse a person than a theist. Because, while thinking that scripture is a good moral guide may be a mistake, it is not the only mistake that a person can make. Nor is it necessarily the worst.

Kmeson's 2nd Question: Exotic Choices

I still am suffering from a flu, so my timing is somewhat off in writing this blog.

So, I’m going to take on a question that is easy for me, since it is in an area where my mind spends a lot of time. It comes from Kmeson’s follow-up question to yesterday’s post:

If I am in a position where I cannot influence the desires of a set of Agents, but can only turn a knob which greatly satisfies the desires of one at the expense of lesser desires of the other then how should I act?

In "desire utilitarianism" you have said that A has bad desires since they tend to thwart B's desires, but if I understand correctly then in my scenario B's desires are twice as bad since they require the thwarting of more of A's desires. I'm still left with the question of what to do with my knob.

First, the only type of person who will turn the knob, based entirely and solely on which option fulfills the most desires, is the agent that has only one desire – a desire to fulfill other desires. Any more complex agent – any human agent is going to be driven to turn the knob by a number of desires. In this example, you will, as a matter of necessity, turn the knob to that point that will fulfill the more and stronger of your own desires. That is the only thing that you can do.

Even though this is a highly abstract and contrived situation, you are human, and you have acquired your desires in the real world. Those desires have been molded – not to fit wildly exotic and contrived situations like the one you describe here. They have been molded to cause you to act in the real world, where people do not, in fact, have the desires of your two hypothetical agent.

So, you have acquired (I may assume) a desire for some sort of equal treatment among the agents. In the real world, we have to deal with laws of diminishing returns, for example. The law of diminishing returns says that the more you have of something, the less each unit is worth. One common example is money. We may assume that, if somebody were to hand you $100, you would spend it on that which you want most for $100. The next $100 would go to your second (and weaker) preference. When you get enough $100 bills, each additional bill may be so worthless to you that you simply roll it up and light it on fire.

The law of diminishing returns argues against giving one person ‘too much’ while another has ‘too little’. It says that the further we get away from equality, the more likely it is that the person who gets more is not gaining as much more as the person who gets less is losing.

This may not be true in your hypothetical case, but it is true in the real world. In that real world, we have reason to use social forces to pressure you into somebody who values some measure of equality. We want you to feel uncomfortable about a situation where one person gains everything and another loses everything. You have reason to want us to feel the same way.

No matter what we do to create a hypothetical moral story such as yours, we cannot eliminate the corruption that is inherent in the fact that the evaluators – you and I – have emotions that people in the real world have reason to want us to have. Those emotions will give us an emotional reaction to these hypothetical worlds that are relevant to this world, not to the hypothetical world we are evaluating.

So, what should you do with the knob? You should turn it to a point where there is some measure of equality between the two agents. We have reason to want you to be somebody who will turn the knob to a location with some measure of equality. That desire – that emotion – might not maximize utility in the exotic and contrived case that you described. However, that type of person will tend to fulfill the more and stronger of our very real world desires. That, ultimately, is what matters.

Now, as a person living in the real world, you should see the value of inhibiting a desire to inflict pain on others. If you were to discover that one of A’s desires is a desire to inflict pain, your reaction should be to say, “That desire does not count. I do not want to fulfill this desire to inflict pain.” You would be right to do so, and we have good reason to encourage you to do so.

Within the hypothetical example, this desire to inflict pain on others has very little consequence. It will only thwart one of B’s desires. However, in the real world, the desire to inflict pain has great consequence, and is a desire we have reason to inhibit to a great degree. So, we have reason to use social pressure to make you reluctant to turn the knob in favor of a desire to inflict pain. We have reason to want you to be the type of person who, when confronted with A’s desire to inflict pain, sees this as a reason to turn the knob against A, for that fact alone. Because somebody with such a desire, in the real world, is somebody that it is safer for us to have as our neighbor.

Once again, you can’t get away from the fact that people generally have reason to tune your desires to what is true of the real world. Once you have these real-world moral sentiments, they will affect your judgments even in highly contrived cases. What should you (want to) do in these highly contrived cases? You should (want to) do that act that a person whose desires tend to fulfill other real-world desires would do.

So, when opponents to utilitarian theories bring up the case of a doctor who has a chance to kill one healthy patient to save five sick patients, and point out that simple utility argues in favor of the murder, and that this is a problem for utilitarian theories, I have an answer.

We, the people who are applying our intuitions to this case, have very real reason to want the very real people we are asking to evaluate this case to be people who are averse to killing this person.

Why?

The answer is the same as the answer I gave in the sibling incest case. If I were to judge the act of killing this healthy patient to be permissible, this would imply that no person should have an aversion to killing this healthy patient. This means a weaker aversion to killing whenever the agent believes that more good can come of killing than harm. This weaker aversion to killing means more killing. A lot of that killing will not, in fact, be incases that produce the most good. A lot of that killing will only be in cases where people have convinced themselves (often wrongly) that more good can come from killing.

In order to better secure our live, health, and wellbeing, we are better off simply promoting an aversion to killing. We want our neighbors to be people who do not want to kill the healthy patient even to kill five. Yes, this means that in some highly contrived case that will almost never certainly happen in real life we will die where we might otherwise have lived, in a great many real-world cases we have a much greater chance of living where we otherwise would have been killed.

I want to repeat this point once more for the sake of any who may have missed it.

The desires that we should have – the desires that we apply even to highly contrived hypothetical cases – are those desires that tend to fulfill other real-world desires. We can speak hypothetically about the desires that people might have reason to promote in some hypothetical world. However, the question of whether or not we like that answer – whether we are comfortable with it or uncomfortable with it – depends essentially on the desires that work in the real world. If an aversion to torturing a child a good real-world desire, that desire is going to sit within us, even as we evaluate highly contrived and imaginary examples in which torturing a child produces the best consequences. We still have reason to demand that nobody want to torture that child.