"Blood Oil" and the Real-World Implications of Moral Philosophy

339 days until I am sitting in my first class.

I am down to eight (8) Philosophy Bites podcast.

One of the recent set of podcasts that I listened to, Leif Wenar on Trade and Tyranny discussed changing international law to prohibit the purchasing of raw material from sources where the resource was not controlled by the people.

Wenar identified four criteria for determining if the people controlled the resource.

(1) Were the people able to discover what is happening with the resource?
(2) Were the people able to talk freely among themselves about what is happening with the resource?
(3) Were the people able to petition those who controlled the resource to change what is happening?
(4) When the people petitioned those who controlled the resource for change, were those wishes carried out?

Wenar's proposal was that, where these conditions were not met, trade with that entity would be prohibited.

He compared this to the project of ending the slave trade and ending colonization. In both of these cases, entrenched instances were up to their neck in an activity that was determined to be immoral and unjust. A difficult political struggle resulted. However, the result of that struggle was finally to change international law and to end the immoral activity.

He gave a specific example in which this was actually done concerning blood diamonds. Blood diamonds were diamonds from mines that criminal warlords controlled in Africa. Their purchase was being used to finance these criminal overlords. Through public pressure, companies that market diamonds developed a system for registering diamonds and to restrict their purchase from places that these criminal organizations controlled. The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme has been criticized for its failure to guarantee that diamonds do not come from a prohibited source, but it does increase the costs and difficulties of selling those resources.

Wenar wants to apply the same system to "blood oil". "Blood oil" refers to oil resources controlled by warlords or terrorist organizations, as well as by tyrannical governments. Each oil well has a unique chemical fingerprint that can be used to determine the source of oil, allowing us to set up barriers to the sale of oil by organizations such as ISIS, which are using it to fund violent and oppressive regimes. Wenar would also include the government of Saudi Arabia in his list of sources of "blood oil", since it fails to satisfy the four crtieria for a legitimate source of oil outlined above.

Interviewer Nigel Warburton asked about how this is a philosophical topic. Wenar answered by identifying many political philosophers in history who took on important political institutions of their time; Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau. He could have added Socrates and Aristotle - both of whom antagonized the government of Athens to the point that they had reason to fear for their lives. Socrates was executed. Aristotle fled Athens to avoid the same fate several years later.

That part of the interview has made me wonder about the degree to which I have applied my political philosophy to the issues of the day - and what it would look like if I took on a more activist role.

I have used it to criticize the campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Both campaigns were built on a foundation of hate-mongering bigotry, identifying a social group as "them" who are the source of "all of our problems" and, thus, legitimately made the object of hatred. Trump targeted Muslims and immigrants, while Sanders targeted billionaires, but the logic of their arguments was identical.

I have also spoken repeatedly against the derogatory overgeneralizations of atheists who fail to distinguish between "criticizing an idea" versus "promoting hatred of a people". These are atheists whose tribal instincts are such that it blinds them to the difference, so that they convince even themselves that their instances of promoting hatred of a people is actually criticism of an idea.

If I were to identify an issue that I think I should devote more time and effort to, it would be the issue of intellectual recklessness. It is a meta-issue that has implications to everything from climate change to the shooting of unarmed black men because they are "perceived" to be dangerous. We live in a society that allows Republican nominee Donald Trump to lie repeatedly with impunity while unfounded accusations against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton are embraced with the flimsiest of evidence. It supports "alternative medicine" and other forms of pseudo-science that do more harm than good, and is the foundation for the types of derogatory overgeneralizations that I mentioned above.

Intellectual recklessness, of course, is not, "You disagree with me; therefore, you are guilty of intellectual recklessness." It is an evaluation of whether the conclusion actually follows from the given premises. Donald Trump lied when he said that the Clinton campaign was responsible for the Birther movement. It was a false claim, and Donald Trump had to have known that it false because he, in fact, made his reputation as the spearhead of the Birther movement. This actually goes beyond intellectual recklessness - this is intentional wrongdoing.

Yet, it does not draw near the condemnation it deserves.

If we can build up some degree of intellectual responsibility in our communities, we may be able to get a better handle on some of the other issues that we confront.

Desirism and the Duty to Keep a Promise

One of the recent Philosophy Bites podcasts that I listened to interviewed David Owens on Duty..

Desirism has some specific things to day about duty. Namely, that duties have to do with aversions that people generally have many and strong reasons to create, using the tools of praise and condemnation. Specifically, the duty to keep promises means that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote an aversion to breaking promises by praising those who keep promises and condemning - perhaps even punishing - those who break promises.

Near the beginning of the episode, Owens mentions the two dominant theories for the justification of duty. The first is the intrinsic value theory - it is "just wrong" to break a promise. The second is an instrumental account that holds that the institution of promise keeping provides certain benefits, and the benefits justify the institution.

I hold that there is no such thing as intrinsic value. I understand intrinsic value to imply intrinsic end-reasons for intentional action, and no such entity exists. Desires exist, and can be expressed in the form "agent desires that P". In this case, the desire gives the agent a reason to realize any state of affairs in which "P" is true. Those states of affairs have no intrinsic merit, they just happen to be something that the agent has come to value.

This leaves us with an instrumentalist account of promise keeping. However, we are not talking about the instrumental value of an institution. We are talking about the instrumental value of promoting a particular desire or aversion. In this case, it is an aversion to breaking promises.

We can see some of the importance of looking at desires and aversions rather than institutions by looking at objections that Owens raises to traditional defenses of the duty to keep promises.

First, Owens examines the idea that there is a duty to create promises because other people build expectations on our promises - they make plans expecting us to act in certain ways (keeping our promises). Consequently, when we break our promises, we harm others. Harming others is a bad thing to do. Consequently, breaking promises is a bad thing to do.

Against this argument, Owens brings up the fact that not all cases of promise keeping harm others. It may be the case that the other person has forgotten the promise and, consequently, has made no plans based on that expectation. Alternatively, it may be the case that the other person never believed that one would make good on the promise and made no plans on that account. This defense for promise keeping says that if others do not believe that one would keep a promise, then one has no obligation to keep a promise. This odd result raises flags for the "harm" argument.

Next, Owens mentions an argument that states that the institution of promise keeping produces good benefits. Thus, there are reasons to bind ourselves to and obey the requirements of this institution. Failure to keep a promise damages the institution - which, in turn, would deprive society of the benefits that the institution would otherwise bring about.

However, it is clearly not the case that every act of breaking a promise causes the institution of promise keeping to utterly collapse. Breaking a promise to meet somebody for lunch, for example, will not imply that every contract and agreement currently in force will become worthless.

Owens says that we should see promise keeping as good for its own sake - and not for its instrumental value. He also links the moral value of promise keeping to desire by saying that it is something we care about for its own sake. It matters to us that others keep their promises. Because we care about our duties, we have reason to care about controlling our duties. The institution of promise keeping gives us this control. We decide what duties we have by deciding what to promise and what not to promise. We decide what duties others have by deciding whether to keep others bound to a promise or to release them from their promise.

In linking the morality of promise keeping to "reasons to care", Owens says something that desirism would certainly agree with. What we are after is making people care about keeping their promise - promoting desires in people to keep their promises and aversions to breaking them.

Owens does not mention the fact that this interest in creating certain desires and aversions to others explains why we praise and, in extreme cases, reward those who keep their promises while we condemn and sometimes punish those who break promises. These rewards and punishments reinforce the desire to keep promises and the aversion to breaking promises respectively. They work not only on those rewarded or punished, but on the community generally - even where the story of the reward or punishment does not even describe a real event.

To say that people have an obligation to keep their promises - even where it would do no harm to the person who was given the promise, or to the institution of promise keeping - is to say that people have many and strong reasons to condemn those who break promises, even under these circumstances. They have many and strong reasons to condemn the breaking of promises because they have many and strong reasons to establish a general aversion to breaking promises - an aversion that will motivate agents to keep promises even when they have other reasons that would motivate them not to, and when they could get away with it.

However, people generally have no reason to motivate others to keep promises under conditions where changed circumstances or new information means that the person to whom the promise was made does not want it kept. That is to say, we want our aversion to breaking promises to dissipate when the promisee releases the promise. Owens is correct to argue that we have reason to seek this level of control. Consequently, we have reason to build it into the desires and aversions we create through praise and condemnation - refusing to condemn the person who fails to keep a promise that he was released from.

This, then, is how desirism handles the institution of promise keeping.

341 Days Until Classes

341 days until the start of classes.

I am assuming, of course, that I will have a class on the first day of classes. This is certainly not guaranteed, but it does admit to an error bar in my calculations.

The latest London School of Economics public lecture broadcast was a waste of time. in Signals and Social Consequences from Shrinkflation to Fighter Jets, Dr. Pippa Malmgren argued for using "narrative" and "signals" in economic analysis, as opposed to math-driven economic models and more empirical evidence. She draws significant conclusions from the price of fish or a shipment of olive oil. All of this predicts the end of civilization as we know it.

The problem is - as is always the problem with this type of evidence, one can always find the signals that one wants to find. I have endured advice to prepare for the coming economic collapse for over 40 years. There is no way to remove confirmation bias, cherry picking, and "just-so" stories from this type of work.

To top it all off, she adds a layer of conspiracy theory - of the form, "Officials are hiding the truth from you but you can figure it out for yourself if you just know how to read the signals." Yet, she accompanies this with self-promoting claims about how she seems to be the only person on the planet looking at the right signals and drawing the right conclusions. She literally said at one point that the number of people in the world watching one of her signals and drawing the relevant conclusions is, "just me".

It is true that economic modelling is a seriously flawed business. When it comes to people making predictions as to whether the stock market will continue to go up, go down, or flatten, I substantially ignore all of them as being nothing more than throwing darts at a distant dart board. However, we know how cognitive biases corrupt less rigidly defined evidence, and we have know reason to believe that an amateur looking at "the signals" can do a better job than an expert looking at hard numbers - even if the expert cannot do very well.

On the Philosophy Bites front, a new episode showed up. I am now down to 12 episodes left.

There are several episodes recently that I would like to comment on. There is an episode on epistemic responsibility, an episode on duty (using an example the duty to keep promises), and episodes on Buddhism and stoic philosophy. Each one of these raises an interesting subject of discussion, so I intend to devote a separate post to each.

I also ventured into the Philosophy department site for the University of Colorado at Boulder and found some class materials for the graduate level Ethics Proseminar. The department has a requirement that all incoming PhD students take certain general classes in ethics and metaphysics that will give them a common history regarding these subjects. The ethics courses involved taking some classical readings in ethics and discussing them.

I had a thought of adding a project of reading some of these assignments in advance. However, I do not have any reason to believe that the course I am required to take will be taught the same way by the same people, and there is far too much potentially relevant literature for me to have any hope of getting through it all. Therefore, I will wait until the course descriptions are posted next spring and spend the summer months trying to get a head start on those materials.

A specific note of disappointment was that the readings on Henry Sidgwick did not include Book III, Chapter XII of the Methods of Ethics, "Motives or Springs of Action as Subjects of Moral Judgment". This, clearly, would be a chapter that I would like to write a paper on. If, per chance, when I take this course it involves the same reading assignments, I wonder if I will be able to get away with petitioning to include this chapter so that I can give a presentation on it. Chapters II, III, VIII, and IX are also not on the reading list. Being chapters devoted to virtue, they would certainly be ways of entering into a discussion of motives (desires) as subjects of moral judgment.

Perhaps I will write a separate paper and turn it in anyway.

Too much to do. Too little time. I think I have said that before.

Adam Smith on Moral Approval and Disapproval

342 days until the start of class.

I am continuing my reading of Adam Smith’s A Theory of Moral Sentiments..

Part II of the book concerned "Merit and demerit: The objects of reward and punishment" - or, in other words, praise and condemnation.

Smith's view, as I wrote yesterday, is substantially intersubjective. What is praiseworth is what impartial judges in a community are disposed to praise, and what is worthy of condemnation is what people in a community are disposed to punish. This means that if a community of individuals are disposed to execute somebody like you, then you deserve to die. In fact, he discusses self-hatred and remorse as a sentiment that comes from the recognition of how others are disposed to see the person.

However, his account continues and, for a time, it runs along a track parallel to desirism.

For example, what people are disposed to condemn are actions that cause harm - or, as desirism would understand it, the thwarting of desires. This is what arouses our sense of sympathy for those harmed and, in turn, gives rise to the sentiment of resentment (the foundation for condemnation and punishment) of those who caused the harm.

However, this is only a part of the story. We must also look at the motives of those who caused the harm. If the motives are bad, then the resentment that the harms inflicted on others finds a proper object. However, if the motives are good, then there is resentment for the harms done. Thus, the harms inflicted by the judicial punisher under the direction of the courts acting to preserve the public order gives rise to no resentment.

In short, as Smith tells us, we must look to two measures to determine if condemnation is warranted. First, there must be a harm done - something that would give rise to our sympathy. Second, the harm done must not come from a good motive. If both of these conditions are met, the proper response that all of mankind would have is resentment for - an impulse to condemn or even to punish - the transgressor.

Technically, there is one more element we need to look at in our judgment. Smith acknowledges that it is possible for a person to perform the right action, but to do so from the wrong motives. He acknowledges that a person can go through the motions of gratitude, for example, without feeling any gratitude. When this happens - when a person performs a right action from a wrong motive - so long as they go through the right actions - they deserve no punishment. They deserve no great praise, either, but they are not to be punished.

I did not see in Smith's treatment how to evaluate actions that cause no harm but which are of a type that would tend to cause harm. He does not describe how attempted murder relates to murder. However, I suspect that Smith would have no problem qualifying his judgment to be of actions of a type that tend to cause harm, rather than those that actually cause harm.

Then, desirism and Smith's theory diverge again on the question of how we determine whether the motive is a good motive or a bad motive. According to Smith, we evaluate a desire according to whether people generally are disposed to approve of or disapprove of the motive. According to desirism, we evaluate a motive according to whether it tends to bring about the fulfillment or thwarting of other desires if universalized.

At this point, what Smith's account of reward and punishment is missing - what all of moral philosophy seems to be missing and what may count as one of my contributions to the discussion once I get to graduate school - is the idea that praise and condemnation are not mere reflex reactions to a good or bad act. Praise and condemnation exist for a reason. They serve a purpose. On the basis of this, we can evaluate their use according to how well or how poorly they serve that purpose.

That purpose is not merely to provide incentives and deterrence. Incentives and deterrence exist well outside of morality. I can provide an incentive for my neighbor's child to rake the leaves in my yard by offering to pay her. Yet, this transaction exists far outside of the realm of morality. Similarly, I may refuse to pay for half of the gas when my co-traveller asks for a detour to see a historic site without suggesting that there is anything morally objectionable in wanting to see this historic site.

Rewards and punishments only take on a moral dimension when they include an element of praise and condemnation. The soldier who is given a medal at a public ceremony that consists, not only of the medal, but a heaping dose of praise for the actions that prompted the award, is being provided with a moral assessment of his actions. The cost - the fine or imprisonment - that comes with condemnation (a claim that the punishment is deserved) makes a statement that the action was wrong.

But why is it that we meet some actions with praise and others with condemnation?

The answer is because these things do work. They act on the brain, not only on the person praised or condemned, but on others who may even contemplate being praised or condemned, to mold their characters along certain lines. Dispositions to approve of that which is praised are reinforced, and aversions to that which is condemned are weakened.

This, then, gives us reason to ask, "What should we praise?" and "What should we condemn?" - which is the same as asking, "What do we generally have the most and strongest reasons to praise?" and "What do we generally have the most and strongest reasons to condemn?"

Smith, as is the habit of moral philosophers generally, treat praise and condemnation as a mere reflex action. It is simply that which marks its object as morally good or morally bad - and nothing more.

In short, I am finding many of the elements of desirism in Smith - or, at least, accounts that are quite similar to those of desirism. Actions are evaluated according to their disposition to cause harm (thwart desires). Even here, we must also look at whether the action is motivated by a good sentiment (desire) or a bad sentiment (desire). A right action is still a right action (in the sense of not deserving punishment) if it is something that a person with good motives would do, even if the agent is not acting from the same motives.

However, insofar as Smith does not recognize the work that praise and condemnation are meant to do, he has us evaluating motives on whether impartial judges would unanimously approve or disapprove of them, rather than evaluating them on whether people generally have many and strong reasons to strengthen or weaken them.

David Hume and Adam Smith

343 days until the start of class.

I am down to 17 Philosophy Bites podcast episodes. There has not been an episode posted since early August so I think this may be the end of it. It has given me a good overview of current philosophical concerns - and enough information to know that (1) there is a lot I do not know, but (2) I can make a useful contribution to the discussion.

Over at iTunes U, I am finishing up a course on Hume. I actually only have one lecture left.

And through my LibreVox app, I am going through Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Yes, that Adam Smith - the author of The Wealth of Nations.

[Note: One advantage of studying philosophy is that a lot of the material one might want to draw upon is in the public domain.]

For somebody who thinks that desires (sentiments) are the proper object of moral evaluation, and that they are to be evaluated according to their consequences, this is a useful resource.

And he was a good friend of David Hume's - which makes the study of Hume's theory of knowledge and of morality along side Smith's theory of moral sentiments particularly interesting.

Smith substantially has been giving me - at least so far - a guide to English culture in the late 1700s. I cannot read it without imagining a 17th century English court, or a 18th century street in working-class London, depending on what part of society Smith is writing about at the moment. If I were going to create a movie - a period piece set in the 1700s in England - I would require all of the actors to read Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Of course, I have no comparison with which to judge its accuracy. It is not as if I have lived in 18th century England and could see by observation that Smith's descriptions correspond to reality. However, it does provide fodder for the imagination and it is interesting enough to note that Smith (and others) at least respected this account as an accurate description of the moral sentiments of the time.

I wonder how much of David Hume's philosophy I see in Smith - who certainly knew Hume and had read Hume's earlier works during the writing of this book. And I imagine how much of Smith appears in Hume. That is to say (or to ask), "Can we gain some understanding of Hume's moral theory through Smith's interpretation and application?"

It may just be an idle question.

When it comes to evaluating the sentiments, there are elements in Smith's writing that I find necessary to reject.

According to Smith, we judge whether a sentiment properly fits its object or its cause by judging whether it would agree with our own sentiment in relevantly similar circumstances. Another's anger is proper if it would arouse a similar anger in us. Their grief is proper if a similar event would grieve us as much.

This may be descriptively true, but it does not answer the question of what emotional response and to what degree an agent should have. It is also descriptively true that we judge another person's belief true if we, also, believe it - and false if we do not. Yet, this psychological fact is distinct and separate from the question of whose belief is true in fact. Accordingly, we may judge the emotional response of another unfit or inappropriate if it does not agree with our own under similar circumstances, but the question of what is, in fact, the appropriate response is a different question entirely.

And Smith does allow that individuals can judge their own moral sentiments to be inappropriate. He writes about how envy can get in the way of our experiencing joy at the success of another person - that we may secretly harbor resentment while we give the outward appearance of support and applause. And that we may judge ourselves harshly if we cannot be as happy for our friends as their good fortune would warrant. So, we cannot say that Smith holds that we judge ourselves infallible in our emotional responses - that we are not subject to correction.

Relevant to this blog is the question of the degree to which Smith is willing to evaluate the molding of a sentiment according to its consequences - that the strength and the object of a sentiment can be judge by the degree to which a sentiment of that strength and with that object is socially useful. I have seen hints, but no strong evidence of this yet - though I am only a quarter of the way through the book.

Oh, and for those who may want to know, Smith is no great fan of the pride and arrogance of the wealthy, or of selfishness.

With Philosophy Bites and the Hume lectures coming to an end, I will have an opportunity to turn to new projects. One object will be to find papers written by the professors at the University of Colorado in Boulder and make comments on them before classes start. I wish to understand their interests and their philosophical positions before class starts.

Declawing a Cat

Earlier, I wrote about the intrinsic value of an animal's life.

Here, I want to apply those ideas.

Let me take the moral issue of whether it is permissible to declaw a cat.

The declawing of a cat involves the amputation of each "finger" at the first knuckle. If somebody did that to you, you would lose your claws.

Is it wrong to do this to a cat?

Well, we need to look at the reasons that exist for declawing a cat - and the reasons that exist against it - and the quality of those reasons.

We also need to set aside reasons that do not exist.

For example, there is the "unnatural" argument. It is natural for a cat to have claws and removing the claws is unnatural - it is simply wrong. There is an intrinsic "ought not to be doneness" in the act that us the reason not to do it.

These types of reasons do not exist. It is like saying that it is wrong to declaw a cat because doing so would cause extraterrestrial aliens to destroy the earth. Because the claim is untrue, it does not provide a reason for action. A person who believes it may believe that he has a reason for action, and he may choose to act. However, he would be mistaken, and acting for no good (of real) reason.

Consider spaying or neutering a cat. This, too, is a painful medical procedure that utterly destroys a natural function of some part of a cat's biology. An "unnatural" argument would be just as applicable here as well. Yet, we see sufficient reason to have the cat "fixed" to create a harmonious home environmentnn

The cat's interest in avoiding pain certainly provides a real reason for the cat to avoid being declawed. This is a reason that exists. Any human with an aversion to thwarting the desires of others - such as avoiding a cat's desire not to be in pain - has a reason to avoid declawing a cat.

At the same time, an owner's aversion to pain and potential infection - particularly the pain and infection that may come from being clawed by a cat - are also real reasons for action. They are reasons for the human to have the cat declawed.

With respect to the aversion to thwarting the desires of others - the aversion to causing a cat pain - this reason enters into the realm of morality. This is a reason - an aversion - that people generally have reasons to promote. Each of us is safer in a community of others averse to causing pain then we are in a community of individuals indifferent to the pain of others. This gives us many and strong reasons to promote this aversion - specifically by condemning/punishing those who demonstrate indifference to the suffering of others and praising/rewarding those who demonstrate an interest in helping others avoid pain.

Of course, this compassion should also extend to the owners seeking to avoid the pain and possible infections that could result from cat scratches. On this matter, the person with an aversion to others being in pain would be torn between the pain of the cat and the pain of the human.

At the same time, the human's aversion to pain stands outside of morality. Praise and condemnation cannot alter this aversion. Therefore, an assertion to the effect that agents (morally) ought not to be averse to personal pain would be absurd.

Owners also have reasons to be concerned with the well-being of their furniture, clothes, and other things that may be damaged. These are reasons - they are real. To say that such reasons do not exist is to ignore reality. To say that such reasons should not exist - that individuals concerned with the condition of their furniture and clothes deserve condemnation and perhaps punishment - would be a difficult case to make.

Another set of reasons that both the cats and humans have is in a harmonious relationship.

The state of affairs between a cat and its owners is inherently one of conflict. The cat, acting on its natural desires, engages in behavior that thwarts the desires of the owner. The owner, seeking fulfillment of her desires, has reason to act in ways that thwart the desires of the cat. The best way to resolve the conflict is by creating a state of affairs within which each can act on their own desires without disturbing the other. Once the cat is declawed, such a state of affairs obtains.

Cats are going to naturally seek to sharpen their claws. A declawed cat can go through the motions without any reason for stress or interference from the adult. A cat with claws is in a position where acting on this natural desire creates conflict with the owner, requiring discipline, which the cat cannot understand. Similarly, the destructive behavior creates anger, which puts the cat at risk of physical harm.



Now, the aversion to pain is reason to look for less painful alternatives that serve the same wants. Capping the claws seems to be an alternative to declawing. There ought to be reasons to prefer claw caps to declawing - thus fulfilling the desire that others not be harmed.

The Intrinsic Value of an Animal Life

Classes start in 346 days.

I am nearing the end of my project of going through all of the Philosophy Bites podcasts - about 25 to go. I still think that I can make a contribution. I find philosophers saying things that I take to be mistaken.

Let's consider Christine Korsgaard on the Status of Animals.

Korsgaard holds a Kantian theory of value. This is an intrinsic value theory that holds that some acts or states of affairs are good in themselves - independent of desires.

She accepts the idea that all good is good for some conscious creature. It seems that she would deny that a waterfall in a mountain valley surrounded by forest vegetation, but devoid of animals, has any value. It would have value for any animals that lived there, so long as the environment was compatible with their living a long and healthy life. For Korsgaard, an animal living a healthy life has intrinsic value - it is a good that provides all people with a reason for action. Thus, it is morally permitted to act in a way that denies an animal a healthy life - to do something that is not good for the animal, such as to kill it and eat it.

In other words, using Kant's model, it is wrong to treat an animal as a means only and not, at the same time, as an end in itself. One must always consider what is good for that animal. In other words, it is wrong to kill an animal and eat it.

Korsgaard provided a useful analogy between her view and Peter Singer's preference utilitarianism. The usefulness of this analogy is found in the fact that people often compare and confuse the theory that I defend with Peter Singer's preference utilitarianism. I received a question on that issue just a few weeks ago.

Korsgaard reported that Peter Singer expressed the view that there would be no moral difference if one animal (one's pet dog) died and another animal stepped in to replace him. There would be just as much doggie desire satisfaction in the world, and that is what determines moral value.

The view I defend is different from both of these. Desires provide the only end-reasons for intentional action and, only then, they are reasons only for the being that have the desires. They are reasons to use tools such as praise and condemnation to mold the desires of others - thus giving others different reasons to act and, thereby, causing them to behave differently. The desires of the cat living in the scene described above gives the cat reasons to act in particular ways - even if the cat does not know this.

Against Korsgaard, no end-reason for intentional action can be found that is intrinsic to a state of affairs in which an animal is living a healthy life. Against Singer, no end-reason for intentional action can be found merely in the fact of a satisfied preference. The animal has reason to seek its own healthy life; in fact, a "healthy life" is simply a life in which one's physical and mental functioning is such as to fulfill the desires of the creature living it. Similarly, the animal's desires provide the animal with reasons to act so as to fulfill those desires. That is as far as it goes.

Intrinsic values do not exist. Korsgaard and Singer are "making things up" - the way that one may make up the commands of a god that does not exist in order to get people to do what this imaginary god requires them to do. This is not to say that they are being deceptive - they sincerely believe that these entities exist, just as many people sincerely believe that a god exists. The fact is, they do not.

One of the ways to see that these types of entities do not exist is to look at the relationship between an animal predator and prey. The antelope's long and healthy life does not create any type of intrinsic reason for the lion to refrain from hunting the antelope. Nor does the antelope's preference satisfaction create such a reason. The lion's reasons for action have to do entirely with the lion's hunger and other interests, such as feeding and caring for her young.

The main point of this illustration is to point out that there is no reason to believe that

The standard respose to this is that lions are not moral agents - but that response is not applicable here. We are talking about the existence of a reason. When we observe what is happening in nature with respect to the lion or the antelope, we see no reason to believe that an "intrinsic value property" (what J.L. Mackie calls and intrinsic "ought to be doneness" or "ought not to be doneness") is anywhere in the picture. We can understand everything that happens without inventing such an entity.

Animals do have reason to cause us to behave in ways that are compatible with their interests. Unfortunately, they do not know how to do this. Evolution takes care of this to some extent by making them "cute" to us, or useful to us, but these poorly track their interests at this point. However, animals lack the capacity to intentionally take actions for the purpose of molding our desires in such a way that will consider their interests. Only other humans have the capacity to do that.

Humans do have reasons to cause other humans to be concerned with the interests of others - including others who cannot defend themselves. We want other humans to be concerned with our interests and the interests of those we care about, even when those people cannot defend their own interests. We have reason to consider cruelty to animals to manifest itself also as a lack of interest in the harms that other people may suffer - which gives us reason to morally condemn those who display a lack of interest in the well-being of animals (or even an actual interest in harming animals). Animals have many and strong reasons to morally condemn us, but they lack the capacity to do so.

It would be a mistake to consider this merely an instrumental account of a concern for the welfare of animals. A purely instrumental account says that the only reason we have for promoting a concern for animals in others is because it will tend to cause people to behave in ways that benefit us (or avoid behaving in ways that harm us). This would deny that we have any reason to be concerned for the welfare of animals themselves.

What we would be promoting is an aversion to that which causes suffering in others. Once a person has such an aversion, that person has a reason to avoid anything which causes suffering in others for its own sake - not as a means to some other end, but as an end in itself. This aversion is justified on account of its instrumental value (in virtue of the fact that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote such an interest). However, once established, the aversion provides a reason for action - not the desires and aversions that give reason to create such an aversion.

The intrinsic reasons for intentional action that Korsgaard and Singer believe in simply do not exist. This is a metaphysical claim. It cannot be disproved by looking at our intuitions. Our intuitions will tell us what we wish to be true, not what is true in fact. We live in a universe that does not contain such entities and, to the degree that we want to live in the real world, these are the facts we have to live with. There is no intrinsic prescriptively dictating human behavior towards animals, there are only the reasons that people have in virtue of their desires, and the reasons they have reason to modify by promoting some desires and aversions and inhibiting others.

Forgiveness

347 days until my first class, and I sent the university my money to confirm that I will enroll in 2017. I seem to be committed.

Yet, there are Philosophy Bites podcasts that frighten me. They tell me not only how little I know, but how little I can know, even about subjects that are relevant to my main interests.

This morning, I listened to Lucy Allies on Forgiveness

It seems that I should be able to say something about forgiveness. To say something about forgiveness, I would need to find out what other people have said. There is a body of philosophical and psychological literature on the subject that I really should read before offering an opinion. Yet, that raises the question of how to fit my reading this body of literature into the set of other stuff I really should read. I will never be able to catch up.

I have offered opinions on some related issues.

I have written a series of posts on the subject of "excuses". Specifically, I have written on accidents, on false belief, on denying harm, on consent, on the greater good, and on deserved punishment. All of these things can - in certain circumstances - excuse an act that, at least on the surface, looks like a wrongdoing. They all show that what appears to be a wrongdoing deserving of condemnation is deceptive, and there was no wrongdoing deserving of condemnation.

I have written on apologies, which seem closely related to forgiveness since a common response to an apology is a forgiveness.

Forgiveness seems to have something to do with condemnation, and condemnation is a central focus of the theory that I use in these posts. Condemnation is a tool that is used to mold desires - most often to promote aversions (desires that not-P) that inhibit people from performing certain types of actions (e.g., lying, breaking promises). If I were to take a first guess on forgiveness, it is a decision to no longer condemn. However, if this is what forgiveness is, then forgiveness is a decision not to use the tool of condemnation to mold useful aversions. How can forgiveness ever be justified?

There are some other important things we can say about forgiveness.

First, forgiveness requires a wrongdoing. If you say, "I forgive you," then you are implying "You did something that a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would not have done." You are implying that the person you are talking to has done something wrong - something to be forgiven.

If a driver should strike your parked car legally parked in front of your house because he was excessively tired as a result of helping people who were victims of an accident up the street, you may forgive him. However, if the driver should strike your car because of a manufacturing defect that locked the steering wheel, then there is nothing to forgive. Or, at least, the driver of the car has done nothing to forgive, because even a person with good desires and lacking bad desires could not have turned the car at that moment.

Furthermore, only the victim of a wrongdoing can forgive a wrongdoer. I have no legitimate authority to forgive the person who hit your car. I can only forgive the driver if the driver has wronged me in some way, and only for those things where I was wronged. In fact, third-party forgiveness is an insult to the person who was wronged - a claim that they lack moral significance.

Can forgiveness be justified? If forgiveness requires a wrongdoing, a wrongdoing is an act that people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn, and forgiveness is a decision to stop condemnation, then it seems we have a contradiction.

Divine forgiveness is a forgiveness of wrongs done against God (assuming there was a God that one could wrong). However, even God cannot forgive the wrongs that a person inflicts on another person. After pummeling an individual in a bar, the claim "god forgives me" does not imply that the victim pummeled either does or should forgive the assailant.

Lucy Alles provides a paradigm example of a justified forgiveness. This happens in a case in which one person is in a long-term relationship with another; a family member or a friend. All of us are wronged in various ways by those around us. None of us are perfect, and each of us steps out of bounds from time to time with respect to others. Maintaining a state of condemnation against somebody for prior wrongs (holding a grudge) would poison those relationships over time. There comes a point at which a prudent thing to do is to "put the past behind us" and carry on.

In other words, forgiveness tells us that, even though morality is important, it is not the only thing that is important. Sometimes the concerns of morality have to give way to other concerns, such as our concern to have and maintain long-term relationships. Having and maintaining long-term relationships requires forgiveness. Yes, a wrongdoing was done. Yes, it was a type of thing that people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn.

However, people also have many and strong reasons to form long-term commitments and there are circumstances where this outweighs the concerns of morality and we are well advised to put aside our condemnation and carry on.

This account also has something to say about "asking for forgiveness".

Because forgiveness implies a wrongdoing, asking for forgiveness is, at least in part, an admission of wrongdoing. It is an admission of the fact that people generally have reason to condemn - even perhaps to punish - those who have done what the agent asking for forgiveness has done. One can only ask for forgiveness from the person wronged. And it is asking a lot. It is asking the person wronged to withhold condemnation when she is perfectly justified in that condemnation. However, in asking for forgiveness, one does signal that one is wanting a long-term relationship, without the corruption of perpetual condemnation. Forgiveness is essential in long-term relationships. However, some things cannot be forgiven.

Definition: "Good Desires"

I have been asked to provide a definition of "good desires".

The short answer is that a good desire is a desire that tends to fulfill other desires.

To fulfill a desire means that, for a desire that P, to create a state of affairs in which P is true. Thus, to fulfill a desire that one's children are healthy one must create a state of affairs in which the proposition "my children are healthy" is true.

However, this is a simplified definition. What it leaves out is the fact that the desires it is being evaluated against themselves have to be evaluated according to their capacity to fulfill other desires - including the desire being evaluated.

This will tend to bring charges of "circularity".

However, this is a type of circularity that philosophers consider virtuous. It can be found elsewhere.

For example, in the interpretation of language, the meaning of a word is determined by its relationship to other words. The meaning of those other words is determined by their relationship to still other words including the word that is being defined.

In epistemology, coherentist theories of epistemology argue that a belief is justified according to its coherence with other beliefs. Those beliefs are further justified by their coherence with still other beliefs, including its coherence with the original belief being justified.

Consequently, there is nothing particularly problematic with the claim that a good desire is a desire that tends to fulfill other desires, where those other desires are evaluated according to their capacity to fulfill still other desires including the desire being evaluated. These types of virtuous circles create no overwhelming difficulty for interpreting language or justifying belief, and it should create no special problems for morality.

The State of Philosophy and Atheism Regarding Evolution and Morality

Classes start in 348 days.

Actually, it seems that there are no current obstacles - just potential setbacks (like being hit by a bus and suffering brain damage). So . . . Yeah . . . 348 days from today I will be nervously anticipating the start of my first class.

On the department website yesterday I saw an invitation to perspective graduate students to visit the department, contact the professors, and attend presentations. I had been assuming that those options were not available until I was enrolled and paying my tuition. I will be taking advantage of that in the weeks ahead.

One of the issues where I was thinking I could be making a contribution was concerning the relationship between evolution and morality. One of my current themes has been the criticism that evolutionary psychologists have discovered the evolutionary foundation for moral beliefs. My complaint has been that an evolved moral belief is a contradiction in terms. It simply makes no sense to day, "I have evolved a disposition to kill you and feel justified in doing so; therefore, you deserve to be killed."

Well, as I have gone through the Philosophy Bites podcasts, one thing that has become clear is that moral philosophers already know these things.

Take, for example, Amia Srinivasan on Genealogy.. Srinivasan talks about using the genesis of an idea as a justification, and specifically about linking moral arguments to evolved beliefs. She specifically mentions the points that I have made on the illegitimacy of those types of inferences. We need some type f independent verification that our evolved beliefs are true. Where is that independent verification to come from?

Previous episodes also addressed these concerns - enough for me to now conclude that the objections that I have raised are already generally known among philosophers.

In terms that I have used in the past – evolution perhaps can explain why we have a certain amount or a certain kind of altruism. However, I am still waiting for the evolutionary justification for the claim “altruism is good” and for evolution to justify claims about how much and what kinds of altruism we SHOULD have.

I am not surprised that moral philosophers are already aware of these concerns. The objections are actually quite obvious to any who are concerned enough to have their beliefs grounded on reason to look for them. There has to be some psychological need to believe that evolution justifies morality to gloss over these concerns.

In ignoring these objections, atheist tribes are behaving in substantially similar ways as the religious tribes they ridicule. They have a favorite belief that they are comfortable with (evolution explains morality), and the simply shut out objections to a favorite belief. They do not ask whether these beliefs are reasonable, and if they happen to encounter an objection to a favored belief their eyes glaze over and brain stops until they get beyond the objection, and they can continue with their favored beliefs intact.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog posting, atheist tribes like to blame religion for things that are actually the fault of human psychology. Consequently, atheist tribes fall into the mistake of assuming that, in virtue of being atheists, they are immune to the cognitive biases that afflict “lesser” (theist) humans. That is a mistake.

Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and the Threat of Atheist Tribes

In 349 days, I start my first day of classes.

On September 11, somebody took a lighter and set fire to the clothing of a Muslim woman - a dentist - while she was shopping.

Atheists need to concern themselves with the question of how much of their rhetoric is actually criticism of an idea, and how much of it is promoting hatred of a group of people that causes innocent people to fear for their lives, which they cloak behind a veil of "criticizing an idea".

One of my hobbies has been, for the past several years, listening to podcasts made of public lectures at the London School of Economics. I like this series because of its international focus - looking at issues as diverse as that of failed states, economic development in Brazil, Russia, India, and China (the so-called BRIC countries), global issues such as Climate Change, the European Union, and a view of the United States from the outside. I make it a point to listen to lecturers from diverse backgrounds (e.g., Senator Rick Santorum, the CEO of British Petroleum, and a number of Muslim speakers) as a way of stepping out of my social and political bubble.

I do this because I think that morality has to have relevance to real-world problems. If a moral philosophy has nothing to say about real-world issues, then that should be taken as evidence that t really is not talking about morality at all.

This week, they posted a lecture, Professor Yehuda Bauer on Anti-Semitism in the Modern Age."

This topic is related to that of Islamophobia - which was mentioned in the lecture.

The Holocaust tells us how powerful and destructive tribalism can be - about the costs of identifying a group of people as "the enemy" and making them the scapegoat for all problems. So does slavery, the subjugation of women, the near-genocide of Native Americans, the Crusades, the 30 Years War, and countless other examples of human history. However, the Holocaust now serves as our go-to example.

Yesterday was also the 15th Anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. As has become traditional, Atheist sites I monitor filled up with Islamophobic memes and rhetoric - claims that are not substantially different from those that contributed to the Holocaust 80 years ago. These are memes and statements whose purpose was not to criticize an idea, but to promote hatred of a whole population.

There seem to be a lot of atheists who seem to think that they represent some sort of superior form of life - whose beliefs are entirely checked by reason - and who are immune to the cognitive biases that afflict lesser humans. As such, we can expect that merely because they are atheists, they are not going to fall victim to the type of tribal psychology that gave us the Holocaust and these other ills. They tell us that it is "religion" that is responsible for all of these evils and, if we can only rid the world of religion, we can rid the world of these evils.

But - where does religion come from? What is it that makes a religion successful and causes those beliefs to become widely accepted in a community? Atheists speak of religion as if it is something outside of humanity - something given to us as if from a divine or supernatural source. Those who accept it are responsible for all the social ills, while those who reject it are the virtuous "we" that represent the best of humanity.

The way many atheists speak and write, they may be surprised to learn that religion did not come from a divine source. Humans invented religion and humans decided which religious interpretations they are going to adopt. Religions are a product of human psychology and atheists - those who are not religious - are still human. They are still subject to the same cognitive biases and still prone to creating the evils that they want to blame on religion.

It often goes without notice that act utilitarianism - the most popular secular moral system - also justifies stoning people to death, torture, terrorist attacks, killing civilians, even genocide whenever it brings "the greatest good for the greatest number". Hitler justified the Holocaust more on utilitarian grounds than on religious grounds. Moral relativism, social Darwinism, Marxism, Libertarianism, moral nihilism - all non-religious philosophies - have all been used to justify their share of evil.

This represents the types of cognitive bias found in tribalism. It includes a disposition to cherry-pick data - to focus and embrace those claims that denigrate the target group while ignoring anything that would draw attention away from the target group.

Representative of the types of facts that the atheist tribes are likely to ignore is a three-day international conference in Marrakesh earlier this year on the rights of religious minorities in Muslim-majority countries. (See, Morocco Hosts Conference on Protecting Religious Minorities in Muslim Countries.

At this point, extremists on both sides of this debate try to draw us into a false dichotomy.

On the one side, there are those Muslims and multi-cultural liberals who take the arguments that I have given so far and carry them to one extreme. That extreme says that any criticism of anything that a Muslim might do and claim to be a part of his religion constitutes promoting tribal hatred and must be condemned. Honor killings, the killing of apostates, terrorist acts, death threats and executions of those who violate Islamic rules, acid-attacks on women, throwing homosexuals off of buildings and burning non-Muslims alive, must not be criticized. Any criticism is attacked as promoting tribal hatred of all Muslims, which cannot be permitted.

On the other side, there are those that say that since the criticism of such things as honor killings and throwing homosexuals off of buildings must certainly be legitimate, that the most blatant examples of hatemongering must also be permitted. Anybody who criticizes those statements that clearly aim to establish a tribal hatred of all Muslims is taken to be a defender of honor killings and terrorism and, consequently, their criticism is set aside.

What is missing is the possibility of objecting to honor killings and murdering apostates while, at the same time, also objecting to the type of tribal rhetoric that has resulted in the worst atrocities in human history. As soon as one criticizes tribal rhetoric, one is painted as a defender of honor killings and the murder of apostates. As soon as one objects to honor killings and the murder of apostates, one is accused of propagating the type of tribal rhetoric of a style responsible for the worst atrocities in human history.

This is a rhetorical trap, it is not basing conclusions on the best evidence. Somebody who knows that humans are disposed to these types of cognitive biases and wishes not to be deceived by them

There is a distinction between criticizing an idea and promoting hatred against innocent people. There are those who try to confuse the two. There are those who try to characterize any criticism of their beliefs as an attempt to promote hatred against them. At the same time, there are those who try to promote hatred against a people and try to give themselves cover by calling what they do "criticism of a belief." Decent people try not to confuse the two.

The Failure of Desirism

The Failure of Desirism

353 days now until classes start. There is still a question of whether I will have a part time job that will allow me to go to graduate school. (No part time job - no graduate school.) But, I have hope in that area.

Last night's "Philosophy Bites" episodes included a particularly interesting episode, John Skorupski on Normativity. Normative statements - as opposed to descriptive statements - are statements that refer to reasons. To say that something should or ought to be the case is to say that there are reasons that it be the case.

Desirism says that desires provide the only end-reasons for intentional action. However, there are other types of reasons. There are reasons to believe something and causal reasons (flipping the light switch should have caused the light to turn on). Still, what Skorupski says about reasons is interesting. The first 2/3 of the episode went along almost as a defense of desirism - but Skorupski ultimately asserts that there are reasons to do or avoid some action that are not grounded on desires.

Much of the talk recently - about podcasts and creating a Wikipedia page on desirism - there is a question as to why desirism has not reached an audience or level of respect that "it deserves".

Even if one adopts the position that desirism is totally flawed and unworthy of serious belief - there are a great many totally flawed belief systems in existence that seem to get along quite well. Desirism, even if not perfect, is still better than most.

Of course, the responsibility is mine. I like to think about and write about ideas - I am not much into selling a movement.

However, there is more behind it.

What is needed for desirism to become a movement is the development of a desirism tribe. This requires a spokesperson who is entirely unapologetic and confident in their belief in desirism. It is an attitude of "I have found the one and only true system in the entire universe and everybody else is not only wrong, but either foolish or malicious in their devotion to a false system of beliefs."

Once such a tribe is set up, it will acquire followers. These followers seek a sense of community and of belonging. A part of the price of membership is to accept the tribal doctrine - to accept its core beliefs and, more important, to accept them as true beyond question. The very quality that distinguishes members from non-members is their devotion to the tribal doctrine. Even the most absurd and irrational belief systems can gain acceptance once a tribe forms around it. Once established, its core beliefs are beyond question.

This clearest example of this can be found in organized religion. Religions are tribes that give its members a sense of belonging - of membership. To be a member, individuals have to sign on to the core religious beliefs (or, at least, the core beliefs of their sect). Once embraced, the costs of giving up those beliefs include the costs of being excluded from the tribe. That psychological cost is tremendous - far greater than the cost of embracing an absurdity.

However, this form of tribalism is not limited to religion. Atheists who say that the problem is religion fails to recognize that atheism is its own tribal community - which, like all tribes, excludes anybody who fails to embrace its core beliefs. To the degree that atheism form a tribe, atheism creates the same tremendous psychological costs with rejecting its core beliefs and, as a result, being forced out of the tribe. "You are no longer one of us."

None of this implies that beliefs themselves are entirely subjective. It is quite possible that there is a fact of the matter and that the core beliefs of some tribes are closer to these facts than the beliefs of other tribes. However, one of these objective facts is that once a person becomes a member of a tribe, that person must recognize that he may well lose the ability to hold that tribe's core beliefs up to the light of reason.

And, as with any tribe, to be a considered a leader of the atheist movement one has to be an uncompromising advocate of the atheist core beliefs. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, PZ Myers, and Christopher Hitchens all have been able to acquire a large following based in part on their success into tapping into these tribal dispositions.

Political movements also succeed when they form a tribal identity. Marxism and Libertarianism are examples of political tribes. Each of them have their unapologetic spokesperson who had the arrogance to tell the world, "I have discovered the one true and accurate way of looking at the world and those who disagree are either fools or are maliciously pursuing selfish ends." These political tribes became movements with a great deal of political weight and influence.

The success of presidential candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders can also be found in their success in establishing tribal identities. Both of them have divided the world up into "us" and "them" - tribal members and the "others" who are responsible for all of their problems. In the case of Trump, the tribal "other" are immigrants, Muslims, and "the establishment". In the case of Sanders, the "other" are "the establishment", billionaires, corporations, and the global poor who are taking away their jobs by agreeing to work at lower wages.

In fact, we can even explain Clinton's struggles in the fact that there is no Clinton tribe. She is constantly attacked by the members of the tribes she does not belong to - Republicans and Progressives - without having formed a rival tribe to rally to her defense. This leaves her vulnerable.

So, what desirism needs in order to become a movement is an unapologetic, arrogant defender who is willing to present the ideology as a contest between "us" who know the one true way and "them" who are denying this truth either because they are fools or are engaged in their own selfish program of malicious deception.

Of course, once this happens, then in order to be a member of the desirism tribe one must embrace its core beliefs. Because of the severe psychological costs that would then be associated with abandoning those beliefs, the beliefs will be as far beyond rational criticism as the beliefs we find in any other religious or political tribe.

I am simply not that person.

Ironically, I think that desirism would not have good things to say about such a person. Arrogance and the type of tribalism that it spawns has been responsible for a great deal of human suffering. Whereas many atheists like to blame religion, tribalism is the true culprit and tribalism is something that can afflict atheist and political groups as easily as it can afflict religious groups. Religions are just one type of tribe. Desirsm looks at tribalism and sees it as something that people generally have many and strong reasons to respond to with condemnation.

The irony comes from the fact that desirism probably can never become much more than just a local discussion unless its practitioners embrace the practices that desirism itself condemns. (Though, this would not be the first time that tribal psychology has allowed the members of a tribe to ignore the internal incoherence of their own beliefs.)

A Desire to Thwart the Desires of a Minority

Sometimes, it is useful to try to express an argument in new ways. What is confusing in one expression may be clear in another.

So, let's take:

Here's an argument against desirism.
1. The majority of people desire to see the desire of a certain minority thwarted.(premise)
2.The desire to thwart the desires of the minority tends to fulfill more desires then it thwarts. (from 1-there are more desires that the desires of the minority be thwarted then there are that the desires of the minority not be thwarted.
3. The desire to thwart the desires of the minority is a good desire (from 2 and definition of good desire.
3. The right act is the one a person with good desires would perform.
4. A person with good desires would have the desire to thwart the desires of the minority. (From 2 and 3)
5. The right act is to thwart the desires of the minority. (From 3 and 4)
I suppose the committed desirist could accept the conclusion, and say that our moral intuitions are wrong in this case.

What does the term "people" mean in the first premise? Are these human beings, or a strange form of life discovered on Proxima Centauri?

If they are human beings, then the property of "the majority desire to see the desire of a certain minority thwarted" is a contingent fact. Even if it happens to be true at a given moment, we can ask what reasons exist to preserve this truth. What attitude should people adopt towards this desire?

The members of the minority have reason to condemn it.

Anybody who forms a friendship or other caring relationship with a member of this minority has reason to condemn it.

But, most important, among humans there is a great deal of potential for people harming others. Wars, terrorism, murder, rape, assault, abuse, theft, embezzlement, exploitation, fraud. To combat these, people generally have many and strong reasons to promote an overall aversion to thwarting the interests of others and to even offer aid in helping to fulfill those desires. These are reasons to condemn the attitudes expressed in Premise 1 and to condemn - perhaps even to punish - those who act on such a desire.

In other words, even if (1) is true, people have many and strong reasons to put the tools of condemnation and punishment to work to make it false. There are no reasons being offered to keep it true.

Against this, one might assert, "But this is a premise. You are to just assume that it is true."

Well, if I am being instructed to accept this premise then I am being instructed to not only accept that the majority have this desire, I am also being instructed to assume that the attitude in this case is legitimate and cannot be criticized or condemned. The argument smuggles in a moral premise that it is not only a fact that the majority desires to thwart the desires of the minority, but it is a morally neutral fact.

This unspoken moral claim, smuggled into the argument, assumes that Desirism is false. Since the argument is intended as an argument against Desirism, in this form, it is begging the question.

So, if the attitude expressed in (1) cannot be morally condemned, then it begs the question against Desirism. If it can be criticized, Desirism points to many and strong reasons to condemn it. Those reasons do not bring in an intrinsic "ought not to be doneness". They are built on the actual reasons of those who are a member of the minority, those who care for members of the minority, and reasons to promote kindness and a general intolerance of cruelty.

The next maneuver that I can imagine is to say, "No. Imagine not only that the majority have this desire to thwart the desires of a minority, but that they are always kind and helpful to each other. Consequently, there is no reason to promote a general desire to help others or to condemn unkindness and cruelty that would otherwise provide a reason to condemn the cruelty towards this minority."

If we go this route, then we are abandoning the assumption that "people" means "humans" and entering a realm where "people" means "an alien race found living on proxima centauri who are significantly different from humans." Under this assumption, I would argue that we need a science fiction author to flesh out the details of this alien race before we can draw any conclusions about what they should or should not do.

However, I can say that our reasons for promoting an aversion to cruelty and a disposition to help others would give us reason to side with the minority on this alien planet and at least pull us in the direction of doing something to better their welfare and end their victimization. We retain our reasons for condemning this cruelty towards the minority even if the majority on this planet lack any reasons to do so. The fact that we can imagine a possible world in which people are being victimized does not imply that we have a reason to adopt a neutral attitude towards that world. We may still have reasons to adopt an attitude of condemnation and to promote that attitude among other humans.

So, in summary

If "person" means "human" then either I can condemn the attitude in Premise 1 or I cannot. If I cannot, then you are smuggling a moral claim into the argument that contradicts (begs the question against) desirism. If I can condemn the attitude in Premise 1, I will - because there are many and strong reasons among humans to do so. If we are also going to introduce a premise that says that there are no reasons to condemn the attitude in Premise 1, then we must deny the assumption that "person" means "human" and we are talking about attitudes among an alien species. We do not have enough information to make judgments about what they should do - but it is still the case that we have reason to promote an aversion to their cruelty among fellow humans.

In other words, the right act among humans is to condemn the people in premise (1) who have this desire to thwart the desires of the minority.

Presenting Desirism

355 days until I start classes.

I have an active dislike of the idea of going to graduate school with the idea that I have this philosophy that I intend to defend.

First of all - and this is an issue I have long dealt with - it seems presumptuous and arrogant to be promoting and defending my own philosophy. I mean . . . who am I to think that, in a world filled with people who are smarter than I am, that I alone have been able to figure something out that people have been working on for centuries?

Second, I have seen a great many people present their philosophy, proudly declaring that they have figured out something that nobody has figured out before, only to present something that at least strikes me as significantly and clearly flawed. The first thing I think when I read an introduction from somebody who claims to have figured everything out is "Yeah, right."

Yet, on the other hand, these arguments concern quite indirect inferences. The test is in the arguments themselves. The inference, "Countless people have presented countless flawed arguments; therefore, your argument is flawed" is not valid. It is a reason to be suspicious, but it is not a proof against the argument.

To defeat desirism itself, one needs an argument against desirism, not one of these inferences that say, "There is probably an argument against desirism out there somewhere."

These are the concerns that come to my mind when I read David Jacquemotte's suggestion that I rename the theory the "General Theory of Morality". He correctly guesses that I consider the name "too grandiose". I think it would be arrogant of me to give it such a title. Though, I would say, if others think that it has merit, they are free to present and defend that position. I would be flattered.

Or, perhaps, to defend the thesis that desirism works as a general theory of morality.

There is also the idea of a podcast that has been mentioned – it is something I have thought about as well. It would be great to be a part of a project such as that. Yet, again, I feel the arrogant presumption of making a podcast about my own work. Perhaps a podcast that reviews the work of other philosophers (and non-philosophers making moral claims).

This has been the approach that I have been using in trying to introduce myself to the philosophical community in recent months.

I suggested to Dr. Chris Heathwood that there is a distinction between “seeking as much desire fulfillment as possible” and “seeking the fulfillment of the most and strongest of one’s desires” as a way with dealing with Robert Nagel’s “addiction” counter-example. Giving a person an addiction to an easily available drug gives the agent a way of obtaining as much desire satisfaction as possible, but (depending on what the agent desires) will not likely help an agent to fulfill the most and strongest of his existing desires. And he did say that my argument was effective in doing what I said it would do.

I should note that it was in actually specifying this distinction in this context that I finally faced the fact that “desirism” is not “desire utilitarianism”. The distinction between these two theories is precisely the distinction between “fulfilling the most and strongest desires” and “seeking as much desire satisfaction as possible”.

I suggested to Dr. Simon Blackburn that his objections to J.L. Mackie’s “Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong” was mistaken. Mackie objects to the thesis that there are objective (intrinsic) values. However, there is another type of objective value that Mackie does not object to – the idea that one can make objectively true statements of the form, “Is such as to fulfill the desires in question.” He, too, said that I had effectively made my case.

Perhaps with a few more of these types of successes under my belt, I may grow a bit more confident about these ideas to explain the links between these different parts.

I also sent Dr. Neil Sinhababu an email after listening to his presentation presenting a distinction between “has a reason” and “ought to have a reason” – and that the job of a moral externalist is to provide an account of “ought to have a reason”. I felt that it would have been too much to add that I have an account of “ought to have a reason” (namely, others have a reason to use reward/praise and punishment/condemnation to cause people generally to have a reason) – but I did introduce the distinction and what the externalist has to do. I haven’t heard back from him.

I am pondering sending a version of the Sinhababu comments to Dr. Iskra Fileva at the University of Colorado. She was at the presentation and participated in the discussion. I would like to get her input on whether these criticisms are sound and, hopefully, she will come to think that it is worthwhile to have me as a funded member of the PhD program.

As a side note: one of my projects in the 355 days that remain before graduate school is to research the philosophers teaching at the University of Colorado to find out their specific interests and concerns. Towards that end, I found a podcast episode of PsychTalk featuring Iskra Fileva and Chris Heathwood discussing Well-Being on the Minerva podcast.

Donald Trump's Hate Mongering

Twice, now, Republican Presidential Nominee pulled a stunt that I consider far outside the bounds of morality, and generated very little comment that I know about on this fact.

At the Republican National Conventional in which he was nominated, in order to sell his immigration policy he brought on a parade of people who were in various ways related to crimes committed by immigrants.

From the Politfact article on the convention, Who Were the Victims of Illegal Immigrants Trump Named at the RNC?":

Three parents — Mary Ann Mendoza, Sabine Durden, and Jamiel Shaw — spoke about their children on the first night of the Republican National Convention Monday and called for stronger immigration enforcement...."They're just three brave representatives of many thousands who have suffered so gravely," Trump said. "Of all my travels in this country, nothing has affected me more, nothing even close I have to tell you, than the time I have spent with the mothers and fathers who have lost their children to violence spilling across our borders, which we can solve. We have to solve it."

Trump's acceptance speech was also filled with stories of people who have been killed - allegedly by illegal immigrants.

Trump continued this tactic when he gave his immigration speech on August 31 in Phoenix.

As described on CNN, Trump on Immigration: No Amnesty, No Pivot"

In his speech, the billionaire repeatedly called attention to the crimes of some undocumented immigrants and drew on stories of Americans killed by undocumented immigrants, bringing parents of some of those victims on stage to share their graphic and heart-wrenching tales of loss....As he painted a picture of a country besieged by "illegal alien" crime, Trump accused Washington politicians and the media of underplaying the dangers posed by illegal immigration and warned voters that the stakes this election will never be higher.

So, what's wrong with this?

Imagine Joseph Goebbels parading the victims of Jews on a stage in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

The reason for such a tactic is hatemongering - that is, the selling of hatred. The lesson is clear - the audience is being told that the proper reaction is to hate all people like those who committed the crimes being presented on stage. The propagandist is saying that the proper target of his hatred is not murderers or drunk drivers or "those who commit this type of crime". The audience is being taught to hate Jews or, in the case of Trump, to hate illegal immigrants. And, on the basis of that hatred - on the basis of dehumanizing the target group - the audience is primed to take action harmful to the target of that hatred.

We are routinely told that we are not supposed to compare the actions of contemporary politicians to Hitler.

I once thought of writing a science fiction story in which Hitler himself has been sent forward in time. With a bit of plastic surgery and using a forged identity, Hitler then tries to get elected to public office. As he does so, he shuts down anybody who suggests that his policies are "like those of Hitler" simply by condemning anybody who dares to compare him to Hitler. Such a comparison, he asserts - as it is often asserted in political discussion today - is intrinsically illegitimate.

Consequently, Hitler manages to get re-elected.

If I were to write such a story, I would have a hard time imagining that it would be any different than telling the story of Donald Trump's attempt to become elected as the President of the United States. His propaganda is structurally identical to that of the Nazis.

Donald Trump is a hatemonger. The product that he is selling to the public is hatred - pure and simple - and he sells it using the same techniques that Hitler used to sell his brand of hatred to the Germans.

And a lot of Americans are buying it.

As they do so, we are told that it is wrong to make the comparison - to point out that a lot of Americans are buying merely a modern repackaging of what the German people bought in the 1930s.

Intentionality

357 days until the first day of classes.

In addition to continuing with the Philosophy Bites podcasts, I have been looking at some works on intentionality.

Desires are intentional states. One of the things I have been neglecting is a detailed look at what a desire might be - other than just a propositional attitude. A couple of Philosophy Bites podcasts interviewing Daniel Dennett: Daniel Dennett on Free Will Worth Wanting and Daniel Dennett on the Chinese Room have suggested to me that I should look into this issue more carefully.

Today, I started my investigation by going through the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Intentionality. (To be honest, my current practice is to create an MP3 file of the philosophical writings that I am interested in so that I can listen to them while exercising.)

I have discovered that the problem with this body of literature that persisted when I first went into graduate school still exists. Almost all of the work looks at beliefs. None of it - or almost none of it - considers desires. Thus my own claim that a desire provides motivation to make or keep a proposition true is not discussed in the literature, because it concerns desires, which are not discussed in the literature.

One of the main concerns expressed in the article concerns the relationship between belief and truth. For example, beliefs are thought of as describing a relationship between the agent and something else - between the believer and the thing believed. However, how can you have a relationship between something that exists (e.g., the belief that Pegasus could fly) and something else that does not exist (Pegasus)? A great deal of philosophical work seems to have gone into accounting for exactly what it is for a belief to be true.

I listen to this with my thought on desires.

A great many of our desires are relationships between us and things that are not true. I desire to have millions of dollars, and to be a world-famous philosopher. In neither of these cases is the proposition "I have millions of dollars" and "I am a world-famous philosopher" true. In fact, even when we look at more mundane examples we see the same issue. I am thirsty. I desire that I am drinking some cold water. Yet, "I am drinking some cold water" is a false proposition.

But it is a proposition that I can make true simply by going over to the refrigerator and pouring myself a glass of cold water and drinking it.

The motivation behind desire is a motivation to make a proposition true if it is currently false. A "desire that P" where "P" is false does work. This is what gets the agent out of his chair and moving towards the refrigerator.

Speaking of which, I will be right back . . .

Ahhhh! That's better. *Sets down the glass of water.*

For my money, the most interesting discussion within the article concerned Ruth Millikan's teleosemantic theory of mental content. Millikan builds on the observation that biological systems - eyes, hearts, kidneys - look as if they have a designer. They look as if they have been built to serve a purpose in the same way that a watch is built to serve a purpose. In this way, biological systems display intentionality.

The basic idea that I got from this discussion is that we can understand beliefs and desires the way we understand eyes, hearts, and kidneys. They are systems designed to serve a natural purpose. Eyes evolved to give the agent information about the external world. Hearts pump blood. Kidneys filters impurities out of the blood. Beliefs represent the external world. Desires motivate the agent to realize states of affairs within the external world. All of them show intention by doing what they were selected for.

Evolution gave me a belief about the water in the refrigerator. Thirst motivated me to go to the refrigerator and pour myself a glass of water. These two systems perform an evolutionary function of keeping my hydrated.

Well, I am just getting started on this study - so I can say little of use at this moment. Consider this to be nothing more than the type of brief overview of an overview that one can only have on the first contact with a new subject matter. My next task is to create an MP3 file of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Teleological Theories of Mental Content. that I can listen to on my next trip to the gym.

Have I mentioned how I have an issue with not having enough time?

The Current Value of Future Generations

The Value of Continued Existence

Imagine that you were to learn that, shortly after your death, the human race would be destroyed. Let's say that a massive long-period comet was going to strike the earth. You are going to live out the rest of your life - the comet is not going to kill you. However, the rest of humanity would die shortly thereafter.

Would this alter your life plans?

In my case, I know it would. I would find these blog postings to be quite a waste of time. I would regret that I had spent so much time on them at all - all of that time writing, reading, and thinking about the difference between good and evil was wasted - it has no value. It only has value if it is a part of an ongoing discussion that will continue long into the future.

Samuel Scheffler discusses this scenario in Death and the Afterlife, which was the focus of a podcast episode from the London School of Economics, After Your Death.

One of the implications of this thought experiment is that it seems to suggest that, for many of us, what happens after we die seems to be important. It is not just our children and grandchildren that matter - it is the continued existence of the human race. Without this, some of our current projects lose their value. There may be some people for whom existence itself becomes pointless.

I find this to be another example - like Robert Nozick's experience machine - that shows that people do not just value their own pleasure. They care about things that will happen even when their own capacity to feel pleasure no longer exists.

We can handle these observations with a theory that people have "desires that P" - and desires motivate agents to realize states in which "P" is true - even though P does not become true until after the agent's death. I can have a desire to participate in a philosophical discussion that goes on after my desk such that, 72 years and 4 months from now, a philosopher puts into an article something that somehow gets linked causally to a blog posting of mine, or an email that I sent - even if the author does not realize that such a link exists (or that such a person as Alonzo Fyfe ever existed). I have still had an influence . . . for the better, I hope.

Hedonism, I think, would have to introduce some gymnastics to account for these observations. It's not that it can't be done; hedonism can be manipulated to explain all human actions in the same way that Ptolomey's epicycles can be manipulated to explain the motion of the planets. It's just that there are reasons to prefer a simpler theory to a burdensome and complex theory.

The simpler theory is that the propositions P that are the objects of our desires can sometimes be made true after our death. When this happens, we are still motivated to realize those states; they give our current life meaning. We are, in a sense, better off today to a degree if the future of humanity is better off.

In the podcast, Sam Scheffler said,

We need other people to exist in the future or else our own lives are going to be less valuable now....It's not just that they depend on us and our willingness to make sacrifices. It's that we depend on them. We need humanity to be an ongoing flourishing enterprise in order to find value in our own lives.

Desirism, Utilitarianism, Kantianism, and Virtue Theory

360 days until the start of class, and what have I done recently in the service of philosophy.

I have often benefitted a great deal by going through the effort of trying to explain things to others. In my recent post, Dr. Neil Sinhababu's Epistemic Argument for Hedonism I sought to explain some thoughts regarding Dr. Sinhababu's argument to readers who, I assumed, were not familiar with the original argument.

In doing so, I think I came up with clearer ways of making my points, so I wrapped them up and send a second email to Dr. Sinhababu.

I considered also sending my comments to one of the professors at the University of Colorado as a way of introducing myself - but I worry that such a move may be taken as odd.

I also edited a couple of my previous posts.

I edited A Desire That a Child Be Tortured because I was informed of typographical errors. That has always been a problem with me. Long-time readers know this. It's a part of the "time" problem I mentioned.

I do go back and edit old postings, by the way. I try to only make improvements - though I may not always be successful.

I also edited The Death of Desire Utilitarianism, to make the argument for the case that desirism is not desire utilitarianism more explicit.

However, you know, desirism does mimic desire utilitarianism quite closely. The relationship between desirism and desire utilitarianism may be compared to the relationship between Einsteinian and Newtonian physics. At the every-day realm in which we live our lives, the two theories give quite similar answers. In the realm of keeping promises, repaying debts, honesty, kindness, helpfulness, we can look at these as desires that maximize utility.

Desire utilitarianism is, itself, a slight variation on rule utilitarianism. The only difference is that the rules are written into the brain in ways that do not allow for exceptions. This slight change protects rule utilitarianism from the charge of collapsing into act utilitarianism whenever an exception to a rule maximizes utility. People cannot simply turn off a desire at will, so they cannot simply shut off its motivational force just because, in a given case, utility would be maximized.

So, desirism mimics this very popular theory quite closely.

I also think that it mimics both other major moral theories quite closely as well.

Take, for example, one of the expressions of Imanual Kant's categorical imperative, "Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law."

Desirism says to act in accordance to those desires which you can will to be universal desires. What we do here is take Kantian principles and make them the objects of desires, and then see if we have reason to promote that desire universally across a whole population. A Kantian maxim against lying says to take lying, make it the object of an aversion, and promote that aversion universally.

Here, desirism provides an answer to a problem with Kantian ethics - namely, the ranking of principles. Kantian theory has trouble with situations that arise where one principle conflicts with another - where the principle of saving a life comes into conflict with a prohibition on lying. Some philosophers try to work out a way to rank principles. Desirism holds that each desire has a strength, and these strengths weigh against each other as they do when we struggle with going to one's favorite restaurant or going to the gym. When the Nazi soldiers come to the door asking if you are hiding any Jews in the attic, your aversion to lying may make you a bit nervous, but your interest in saving the lives of others should still motivate you to say, "Jews? I haven't seen any Jews."

Quite obviously, desirism also closely mimics the third most popular cateogry of moral theories - virtue theory.

Virtue theory says that actions are not really what matters - character traits are what matters. We should be concerned with being good or bad people more than with performing right or wrong actions. In fact, the "right action" in virtue theory is nothing more than that act which a virtuous person would perform, and a "wrong act" is an act that a virtuous person would not perform.

Desirism says that the right act is the act that a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would perform, and a wrong act is the act that a person with good desires and lacking bad desires would not perform.

Desirism then answers one of the major questions in virtue theory: What is it that makes a character trait a virtue? Desirism says that a desire is good to the degree that it fulfills other desires. This property gives others reason to use the tools of reward/praise and punishment/condemnation to promote that desire. A tendancy to thwart other desires gives others a reason to use these same tools to inhibit that desire.

I find it to be a mark in favor of desirism that it effectively brings all three popular moral theories together. It is a virtue theory in that it looks primarily at desires and not at actions. It is a Kantian theory in that it looks at the reasons that exist (or not) for making some deires and aversions universal. It is utilitarian in that the value of a desire is determined by its consequences. No utilitarian, Kantian, or virtue theory actually needs to go very far to reach desirism.

Perhaps one of the things that made those other three theories so popular is that each of them were quite close to the truth to begin with.