Sex, Desire, Goodness, and Duty

An anonymous member of the studio audience has declared, “I thought I understood desire utilitarianism up to now.”

If there is confusion, I wish to deconfusify the situation.

This specific situation began with a claim of mine that I can find no “desire for sex” that that is morally good (virtuous). By that I mean that there is no desire for sex that people generally have reason to promote in others. Rather, some desires for sex are morally neutral (there is no reason to object to the fact that people have such a desire), while others are morally bad (vicious), in that people generally do have reason to inhibit the formation of those desires.

Anonymous is questioning my claim that his desire to have sex with his wife is not virtuous. I make this claim because it is not the case that people generally do not have a reason to promote an overall desire for everybody to have sex with his wife. That his wife may have an interest in promoting such a desire, but what one person has an interest in promoting does not qualify what is being promoted as a virtue.

Anonymous writes:

I understand the distinction that says a morally good desire is one that tends to fulfill desires generally - so you seem to be saying that if the fulfillment is too specific and limited, this is no longer a moral question. It is hard to see why.

To explain limited value is no longer moral value, I have the good fortune to be able to refer to a recent controversy in astronomy over the definition of a planet. The International Astronomical Union faced the question of whether Pluto was a planet. This is analogous to the question of whether specific and limited relationships between states of affairs and desires are moral values.

The International Astronomical Union settled the question with a vote. Whether Pluto is a planet or not was substantially an arbitrary decision about how we were going to define terms. However, nothing of substance depends on the language that we choose to express it.

An individual can say, “I understand the distinction that a planet is something that orbits a star, is massive enough to be made spherical by its own gravity, and that has substantially cleared its orbit of other bodies, and that something that has not cleared out its orbit of other bodies is not a planet,. It is hard to see why.”

If one is looking for an experiment or some sort of experimental evidence to support the claim that a planet must clear out its orbit, there is nothing. Yet – and this is important – nothing of consequence depends on how this vote turned out. Pluto’s properties – it’s size, mass, orbital dimensions – are unaffected by whether we classify it as a planet or not.

The same is true in morality. The definition of value-laden terms are just as arbitrary as the definition of ‘planet’. However, nothing of consequence depends on how we define these terms.

It is a very common mistake in ethics (though every other field of study I know does not make this mistake) to think that the arbitrariness of terms has some sort of significant theoretical or metaphysical implications. No set of definitions will change the desires that exist, or the relationships between states of affairs and desires, or the relationships between desires and other desires. In the same way that facts about ‘Pluto’ are independent of our definition of ‘planet’, what is true or false about the relationships between states of affairs and desires are independent of the language we use to talk about them.

For these reasons, I have often said (when confronted with somebody who asserts that the arbitrariness of moral terms is in some way significant) that I will use whatever set of terms somebody may want me to use. Changing definitions will not affect the substance of the theory one iota. It will only change the language used to express that theory.

Having said all of this – having said that it is fruitless to look for some piece of data that compels the use of one term over another, there are still reasons for using a term like ‘moral’ one way or another. One of those reasons is that a particular use best fits the way people have been using the term, so it generates the least confusion to use a term in a particular way. There is no law of nature that prohibits me from using the term ‘oxygen’ when talking about atoms with 6-protons, but most people who read the term will expect me to be talking about atoms with 8 protons.

Moral terms are used to refer to universal principles – principles that apply to everybody. If a person says, “It is wrong for A to do X,” he is understood to mean, “It is wrong for anybody who is in a situation like A’s to do anything like X.” Somebody who says that lying is wrong is saying that nobody should lie. Somebody who says that capital punishment is murder is understood to mean that no person should engage in capital punishment.

In fact, this is how we distinguish ‘morality’ from ‘culture’. If people in a society who say that people should do X hold that there is nothing particularly wrong with not doing X, but we simply have a tradition of doing X, then doing X is considered an aspect of culture. However, if those who hold that doing X is something that everybody should do – that there is something wrong with anybody not doing X – then that is taken to be a moral prescription.

Even if Anonymous desires sex with his wife, we can imagine a couple where neither one has a desire to have sex with the other. Imagine a couple where the man received a war wound that castrated him (thus significantly reducing his desire for sex) while the woman simply never acquired much of an interest in the activity. This couple can still be very much in love – concerned for each other’s welfare and dedicated to a life together – without sexual desire.

The fact that we can imagine such a case, and that there is nothing wrong with such an arrangement – that it is simply an alternative lifestyle – suggests that it is more appropriate to put the desire for sex is permissible – neither good nor bad in the moral sense, but not a moral virtue. The couple in the example above is not vicious (lacking virtue), they are just different.

Please note: this is not a test for whether something is, in fact, right or wrong or whether a trait is virtuous or vicious. We cannot reliably measure the moral quality of an act or trait through these types of intuitive tests. What these intuitions measure if the fact that we are in the habit of using the term ‘moral’ when applying it to universal traits, and withholding its use when violations are not ‘wrong’, but only ‘different’.

Anonymous also comments:

If I asked instead whether a general desire to love one's wife was a good desire, it surely would be - it would tend to fulfill the desires of most wives. Hurrah for people who love their spouses and boo to people who neglect them! So why does it stop being a good desire in a specific instance?

First, I need to distinguish between ‘to love one’s wife’ with ‘to have a desire for sex with one’s wife’. Many people love others that they have no desire to have sex with, and have desires to have sex with others they do not love. To avoid confusion, we must keep these two attitudes distinct. I wish to continue to focus on the desire to have sex. There is a distinction between the statement, “Hurrah for people who love their spouses,” and “Hurrah for people who desire sex with their spouses.”

Consider, for example, the difference between the statements, “Hurrah for the parent who loves his child,” and “Hurrah for the parent who desires sex with his child.” Clearly, the statements are not equivalent.

Certainly, it makes sense to say, “Hurrah for the couple who love each other,” but even here, for this to be a moral requirement, we would have to say that there is something vicious (not just different, but evil) in those who simply have no interest in being a couple. Some people may view the life of the confirmed bachelor or spinster to be missing something and have pity on them (a pity, I hold, is misplaced if the individual never had desires left unfulfilled in the absence of such a relationship), but this is not the same as calling such a person evil.

Finally, I want to discuss Anonymous’ claim, But celibacy would be less good by this standard..

Celibacy is certainly something we have little reason to promote as a national standard. This merely means that celibacy is not a virtue. It does not imply that celibacy is a vice. We can certainly get along quite well if some people are celibate. In fact, with the growing population problem, celibacy may well become a growing virtue as time goes by – something we have more and more reason to promote. Unless we have a reason to prohibit all sex, celibacy will not be a moral virtue. However, it could be supererogatory – something we have reason to promote through praise in the sense of saying that those who refrain from sex are acting above and beyond the call of duty.

Desire utilitarianism states that morality is substantially concerned with the malleable desires that we have reason to promote or inhibit universally – desires such as an aversion to lying and a worry over doing harm to others that keeps us vigilant against potential harm. There are lots of different relationships between desires and states of affairs in the world. We speak of some of them using terms like ‘rights’, ‘duty’, ‘obligation’. ‘virtue’, ‘prohibition’. ‘responsibility’, and the like.

However we have other terms that we tend to use when referring to other relationships between states of affairs and desires. ‘Useful’, ‘pretty’, ‘dangerous’, ‘disease’, ‘broken’. Some of these terms are used to refer to things that are good, without claiming that they are a moral virtue or an obligation where those who do not share the characteristic may be condemned.

We have divided the value universe up into different types of goods, just as we have divided the solar system up into planets, asteroids, moons, comets, and the like. The distinctions are arbitrary, but the study of the things that we apply these terms to are not.

Suicide

I have a request from the studio audience to address the moral issue of suicide.

Many "relativists" argue that suicide should be morally acceptable because (to overly simplify their position) you're not harming anyone but yourself and relate to smoking or any other self-destructive liberty. They also argue from the standpoint that condemning suicide promotes the extension of the torture of enduring life itself when suicide is desired. Finally, they argue against the ability for external forces to properly discern between euthanasia and suicide.

One way to interpret this is as a question about the morality of a specific act of suicide. The only possible answer to this question is, “It depends.” Even the act of torturing a child can be made permissible, even obligatory, if we put enough at stake on the other side of the equation. Have some alien race threaten to permanently torture every human on Earth unless you torture one child for one hour, and it becomes permissible. Now, a good person would have such an aversion to torturing a child that this act will likely leave permanent psychological scars (nightmares or even some sort of psychotic break), but this is not an argument against the permissibility of the act.

Condemning Suicide

If we are going to talk about suicide in general terms, then desire utilitarianism suggests that we look at the question of whether people generally have reason to use the tools of social condemnation to promote an aversion to taking one’s own life.

Here, some critics might sarcastically ask, “How are you going to condemn the person who wrongfully takes his own life? Are you going to send him to his room? Are you going to have him whipped?”

In earlier times, this was a common reaction to suicide, and it was a perfectly rational response. The purpose of condemnation is not so much to change the behavior of the person being condemned, but to change the behavior of everybody else. Banishment of the body from the community cemetery is unlikely to build remorse in the heart of the person who has already taken his own life. However, it is likely to build an aversion to suicide in those who are still alive, causing them to think, “I do not want to be thought of in that way, even after I die.”

Prima Facie Argument from Freedom

We can start this analysis from the fundamental argument for freedom. Earlier, I defended freedom on the grounds that each agent is the most knowledgeable and least corruptible individual to put in charge of directing each individual life. Where we are looking for desires that tend to fulfill other desires, a desire for individual liberty puts the most knowledgeable and least corruptible agent in charge of each life, so it would be a desire that tends to fulfill other desires.

This argues that the burden of proof is on those who would condemn suicide. This burden would not be easy to overcome. The person making the claim needs to overcome the presumption that each person is the most knowledgeable and least corruptible agent to put in charge of his own life (or death).

However, we are not completely lacking in arguments that claim to be able to do exactly this.

A Desire to Protect and Preserve Life

Life is an almost universal means to fulfillment of one’s desires. With few exceptions, any desire that an agent may happen to have can be more easily fulfilled by an agent who is alive than an agent who is dead. I am certain that I would suffer a significant decrease in productivity when it comes to writing essays for this blog if I were to suffer an unexpected (or even an expected) loss of life.

One of the ways that we can better secure our lives from being terminated is to promote a general aversion to the taking of a life. We have a great many string reasons for praising those who act so as to protect and preserve life, while condemning those who take life. One potential problem with capital punishment that I have mentioned earlier is that, as children hear adults cheer and applaud any range of killings, they may grow up to have a weekend aversion to killing, thus find it easier to become killers.

It certainly seems to be the case that societies whose citizens are so averse to killing that they even have an aversion to capital punishment may raise fewer murders. Similarly, a society that teaches its children to be so averse to killing that even self-killing is made loathsome might also raise fewer murderers.

In the absence of hard empirical evidence on this issue, we must make do with anecdotal and other less reliable evidence, keeping in mind that controlled scientific research could bring all of this into question.

Anyway, we have at least some anecdotal evidence that societies that are more lenient on suicide and euthanasia still have lower murder rates. People, it seems, have the ability to distinguish between the wrongness of killing others, and the permissibility of killing self.

We see further evidence of this in the fact that we do not seem to need a more general prohibition on putting a person at risk of harm. People seem quite capable of morally distinguishing between putting oneself at risk of harm (which is permissible) and putting others at risk of harm (which is generally prohibited)..

So, we do not yet have good reason to override the presumption in favor of liberty.

Bad Desires and False Beliefs

Still, we may have another reason to promote an aversion to killing self – because those who do so tend to do so for poor reasons.

For example, there is a genetic disorder that causes those afflicted with it to gnaw their own flesh, biting off their own lips and fingers. We may assume that the biting off of one’s own body parts is a desire that tends to thwart other desires. We certainly have reason to condemn those who have this desire, if we had reason to think that condemnation would do any good. Failing that, we have reason to call this affliction an illness, and take steps to prevent these people from doing that which they desire to do. For example, parents of children with this disorder may seek to have the child’s teeth removed.

Some percentage of suicides are due to depression or some other irrational desire. Other suicides are due to miscalculation over what the future will be like. Some suicides are based on false beliefs (e.g., that one will appear in a spaceship riding in the tail of a comet or that the cult one belongs to is under attack and all will be taken away and seduced into an evil life. Some suicides are done as a form of attack, by people think, “I’ll show you. I’ll make you suffer for what you did to me.”

Where rational suicides are the exception, and suicides grounded on mistakes are the rule, and there is enough evidence of this to override a presumption that each individual is the best informed and least corruptible agent of his own actions, we have reason to institute an aversion to suicide. This suicide will prevent people from doing that which, if they were fully informed with good desires, they would clearly not do.

The claim that a person who is considering suicide is mentally ill by definition - that no rational person would ever consider taking his or her own life – is patently false. There are clearly desires that can sometimes be better fulfilled by death than by life. One such desire is an aversion to pain. In situations where there is no way for a conscious brain to block out some pain, death may be a better way to fulfill a desire to be free of pain than conscious life, and unconscious life or life under so many drugs that one cannot function may justifiably be claimed to be as bad as death, at least when it comes to the agent’s ability to fulfill other desires.

However, the fact that there may be instances in which suicide is a rational option does not imply that society lacks good reason to condemn suicide. I once read a case of a person with obsessive/compulsive disorder being shot in the head. The injury did not kill him. In fact, it seemed to have cured his obsessive-compulsive disorder. The fact that there is an instance where being shot in the head produced good results does not change the fact that society has reason to promote an overall aversion to shooting people in the head.

The Old and the Young

As it turns out, instances in which a person can best fulfill the more and the stronger of his or her desires by dying are not that rare – particularly as people near the ends of their lives and who are in extreme pain. It also applies to people who have lost the ability to act so as to fulfill their desires – where there an empty shell – still ‘living’ in a technical sense, but with possibility of beliefs and desires motivating actions that aim to make true a valued state of affairs.

At the same time, we may expect that those who take their own lives for foolish reasons are those who are younger. Indeed, we tend to put greater restrictions on those who are younger precisely because they have a greater tendency to do things that they will regret, and will not be able to undo.

This suggests that there is a curious split in the effects of our attitudes towards suicide. There is reason to condemn suicide in the young if this prevents young people from performing actions that will tend to thwart their own desires and the desires of others, while permitting suicide in the old who can get relief from suffering through death, or who have already died in all but an overly technical sense of the word.

Furthermore, this is not a hard distinction, since there are young people who can be in extreme misery, and older people enjoying life and still capable of acting so as to fulfill their own desires.

An Ideal Position

Ideally, I hold that society should treat suicide as a medical condition. People who think that they may be better able to fulfill the more and stronger of their desires through death rather than life should be free to go to a doctor. A doctor can check their assumptions, run physical tests, and check to see if depression or some misunderstanding of the relevant facts is present. If it is not present, then the physician can administer the treatment that best fulfills the desires of the patient.

This will, unfortunately, require making some judgment call on the merit of the desires that would be fulfilled by death. The patient who comes in seeking an end to his life because he wishes to escape death, or he wishes to make his former lover feel bad, would not be permitted to fulfill those particular desires – at least, not with a doctor’s aid. Doctors shall not be made accomplices in a patient’s wish to do harm to others.

This brings up a principle in medicine that says to do no harm. However, when it can be demonstrated that a patient’s desires are better fulfilled in death than in life, then forcing the patient to continue living is not in that patient’s interests. In this case, life is an imposition that harms the patient. Death is a harm when death prevents a person from fulfilling her desires, and life is a harm when life prevents a patient from fulfilling her desires.

If such a system existed, then we can reasonably condemn anybody who seeks what we might call a ‘freelance’ suicide. These people (in most cases) may be considered foolish or evil – failing to show the proper appreciation for a careful analysis of the facts that we have reason to demand that all people seek.

However, in a society where the work is left up to amateurs, and where no professional option is available, we should not be surprised to find a society where amateurs are constantly mucking up the operation – committing suicide when they need not, and doing so (or attempting to do so) in sloppy ways that simply compound the misery and suffering involved.

Having said this much, there are a couple of additional concerns, that I discussed in the posting on Physician Assisted Suicide.

This, ultimately, is how I would address the issue of suicide.

Externalities and Space Development

It’s my birthday, so, today, I am going to take a detour into issues of personal interest.

Today’s posting will fit into the general themes of the past couple of days, but will apply them to the issue of space development, which continues to be the focus of at least of cluster of brain cells when I have spare time.

Externalities

One of the issues of the past few days has been the issue of externalities – people performing actions that threaten the life, health, and well-being of others without having to compensate those people for the costs. An industry that produces externalities allows the people involved in that industry to profit from the destruction of the things that are of value to other people. In some cases, it takes their lives.

One aspect of space development is that it is one area of industrial development that it can easily be designed to produce few externalities.

Energy Production

In space, we can expect energy to come primarily from two sources; photovoltaic (the use of solar cells to convert sunlight directly into energy), and solar concentration (the use of mirrors to focus solar energy on a reservoir that turns liquid into steam which turns a turbine. Both of these forms of energy production in space has significant advantages over similar systems on Earth. There are no clouds. There is no night. There is no atmosphere blocking the full force of the sun’s energy.

There are no CO2 emissions to contribute to global warming, no spent nuclear fuel rods that need to be disposed of, no windmills to clutter the landscape and chop up migrating birds, none of the problems with being able to produce energy only when the wind is blowing or the sky is clear, no building of huge reservoirs behind dams, or any of those effects.

There is a problem with getting the energy to those who use it. Some systems advocate beaming the energy down to Earth using microwaves. This would generate some potential externalities. Yet, I tend to think in terms of using the energy where it is harvested.

Space Mining and Manufacturing

A mining and manufacturing ship pulls up to an asteroid. A great many asteroids in space appear to be gravel piles held together by their own gravity. They are a loose collection of dust and rocks waiting to be turned into something useful.

A space manufacturing center would pull up to the asteroid, take these chunks of rock, feed them into a grinder to pulverize them, send them through a (solar powered) processing plant to extract the useful materials (oxygen, water, methane, ammonia, aluminum, iron), and spit the mine tailings out the other end.

However, in space, there is no such thing as a ‘waste product’. One of the things that we need in space is radiation shielding. Radiation shielding consists of think walls of anything you have available which can absorb the high energy particles that otherwise contaminate space. Two aluminum sheets with this space debris sandwiched in between would make useful radiation shielding.

So, everything has a use.

As far as providing for the needs of earth, one way to do so is not to beam energy down to the Earth’s surface, but to drop refined mining material onto the surface – huge chunk of iron or aluminum that has already been mined and refined without contaminating one iota of Earth’s delicate environment.

Where possible, these things can even be molded into their final form in space – into I beams and sheet metal or whatever other materials those living on the surface of the future earth may have a use for.

Externalities in Space

Space itself will have some externalities. The externalities we need to worry about include orbiting debris – bullets and cannonballs travelling at 17,500 miles per hour that are the remnants of spacecraft that have disintegrated, either accidentally or intentionally. Those countries who produce this rubble are forcing others to endure a cost – either the cost of shielding their people and materials, the cost of losing their people and materials, or the cost of not utilizing these resources. These are externalities where those who engage in debris-producing activities expect others to pay for the harm that these people do.

Launch and entry back into the atmosphere will have some effects on the atmosphere, owever, , but it would take a great many launches and entries to compare to the damage done by earth-based energy production, mining, and manufacturing. One of the most useful rocket fuels is a combination of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen – which produces water – which is hardly a dangerous chemical to be putting into the air.

I do not know the effects of bring materials back down from space. Over 100 tons of meteors hit the earth’s atmosphere every day, and that seems to produce no ill effects. It will take a while for people to be dropping 100 tons per day down to earth, yet everybody who is interested in space development hopes for the day that this benchmark is passed.

A third externality to be concerned with is obstructing the view. Currently, we can see satellites orbiting the earth. If you look out after sunset or before dawn, while the sky is dark, you can see the occasional satellite drifting across the sky, like an airplane. Now, we do not hear a great deal of concern about airplanes polluting the view of space at night (or of the sky in daylight), and no reason to hold that the sight of a satellite is in any way worse than the site of a plane in the sky.

In these cases, of the externalities we already know to expect, only one of them is a serious threat, that being the creation of orbital debris. Those externalities affect people who put things in space, but have no effect on the earth, other than creating a barrier that prevents people from exploiting space as a way of putting less stress on the Earth.

Timeline

None of this should be considered a suggestion on what humans should try to accomplish in the near future. If that is the objection, then it misses the mark. I fully recognize that it would take a long time for space to reach this level of development. However, in that time, our need for space development might actually be higher than it is now. Over time, we are going to cut deeper and deeper scars into the living earth, unless we are pursuing alternatives that will allow us to leave the earth alone, to some extent.

However, like any investment, the sooner you start, the sooner you will see a return on your investment (if there is a return to be had). The sooner we invest in space-based energy production, mining, and manufacturing, the sooner we will have alternatives to cutting ever larger scars into the living earth.

As my birthday present, I would like to see the appropriate steps made in pursuing these options.

I am not asking for too much, am I?

Capitalism vs. Socialism

Blacksun, in commenting on yesterday’s post, said that:

I have to part company . . . when you insist that the severity of a person’s need should determine their ability to buy something. This to me is drifting dangerously close to flat-out socialism.

I do not recall saying that the severity of a person’s need should determine their ability to buy something.

I did say that free markets contain a serious problem in that it gives wealthy people an ability to bid resources away from more highly-valued uses to which the poor could put those resources.

At the same, I have argued that one of the significant benefits of a free market is that, where property rights (including each person’s property right in their own life and their own physical body) are properly protected, free markets do an excellent job of tying information on what is in the public interest with an incentive to act in the public interest.

I have covered some of the problems with interfering with markets in an article I wrote called Price Gouging, and used it to describe how Democrats will make our energy and global environment situation worse in a posting on Energy Policy. There are also relevant points to be found in my essay, The Value of Freedom.

Flat-out socialism utterly fails to provide enough information to decision makers while at the same time incentivizing them to act in the public interest. Flat-out capitalism is far more efficient at linking incentives to act with the public interest when that system is set up so as to recognize the rights of all individuals – including the rights of the poor to their own life, body, liberty, and property. However, even ‘perfect’ capitalism does not do a perfect job of incentivizing people to act in the public interest. This ideal outcome is distorted by the ability of the rich to bid resources away from the more highly valued uses to which the poor would put those same resources.

Perhaps this inefficiency is unavoidable, but it is an inefficiency nonetheless – a case where the ‘invisible hand’ of the market does real harm, even in its purist and most ideal form.

Economic Systems and Intrinsic Values

Intrinsic values do not exist. Many arguments that people give, arguing for one economic system over another, do so by suggesting that certain actions or states of affairs are intrinsically better than others. Every argument of this type is grounded on a false premise – as false as any argument that grounds a defense of one system over another based on God’s will (another entity that does not exist).

This ties in with a point that I have repeatedly tried to make – that there are more myths and superstitions in the world than those that postulate the existence of gods. Consequently, the abolition of religion is not the same thing as the abolition of belief in mythical entities that affect the value of things. There are some myths – beliefs in things that are not real – that can be found even among atheists.

The only values that exist are not intrinsic values, but relationships between states of affairs and desires. You will find no other form of value in the real world. Yet, these relationships are real, and they are intimately tied to reasons for action in a way that something must be for the term ‘value’ to make sense.

Since relationships between states of affairs and desires are the only values that are real, then the real-world value of an economic system can only be found in that system’s relationships to desires.

Note that, in desire utilitarian terms, it is not the case that most moral economic system is not the one that fulfills the most and the strongest desires. Instead, the most moral economic system is the system that a person with good desires (a person whose desires are those that tend to fulfill other desires) can support.

This is because no person can act in any way but to best fulfill the most and strongest of his own desires, given his beliefs – and will seek to act so as to fulfill the most and strongest of his own desires. Expecting a person to judge an economic system based on only one criterion is the same as expecting a person to act on only one desire, such as a desire for the maximum fulfillment of all desires. This is an absurd demand, and an absurd standard for an economic system.

This is why, instead of focusing on one standard, we must evaluate an economic system according to the weight it gives to the objects of a number of good desires. These desires include such things as liberty, privacy, equality, truth, knowledge, freedom from pain, freedom from disease, and happiness. These things must we weighed against each other, according to the desires that good people would have towards each.

The precise mix is something about which intelligent people are going to be debating for a long time to come, assuming that the human race continues to exist for a long time to come.

Common Ground

However, there is one set of policies that the capitalist idealist and the socialist idealist should agree on. It should also appeal to everybody standing on every point in between that advocates a mixture of these two systems. This would be opposition to the externalities that the wealthy are permitted to inflict on the poor – an opposition to wealth transfer system where the life, health, and property of the poor are sacrificed without compensation so as to increase the wealth of the wealthiest people.

Externalities and Pro-Rich Regulations

Global warming is the largest recent example of just such a wealth transfer scheme. The actions of the rich, in this case, will cost the poor their land, their health, and in some cases their lives, simply so that the wealthier people on the planet can enjoy an even better standard of living.

Yet, global warming is not the only example of this. A great many environmental issues are issues where the wealthy are given special credits to kill, maim, or otherwise harm the poor with impunity – with impure drinking water, poisoned air, and the destruction of their land (to the degree that poor people are permitted to own land).

A great many regulations are restrictions on where people can go to find work, and on the types of work that they can have. This means that employers do not need to provide workers with a level of compensation that would keep them from voluntarily leaving for better alternatives elsewhere – not if there are legal barriers preventing those workers from moving.

In addition to the restrictions that prevent people from seeking better jobs, there are restrictions on jobs seeking the workers that need them. One of the first things a company has an incentive to do when they move into a new area and begin using the labor force there is to corrupt the government into keeping other competitors for that labor out.

Warlords and Tyrants

Earlier, I mentioned the warlords who dominate an area, who prevent food from getting to the poor because they take the food for themselves, or they demand some sort of payment from those who would distribute it. These are people that the world would be better off without. Capitalists and communists alike should be unified in seeking their removal. Tyrants and dictators present the same problem on a larger scale.

I have mentioned that I was in favor of removing Saddam Hussein from power. I was opposed to Bush’s invasion from the beginning, but I did not have any objection based on moral principle. My view is that different nations should treat each other the same way different families treat each other. To a substantial degree, parents should be permitted to raise their children as they see fit, and nations should be allowed to organize themselves as they see fit. However, then there is clear evidence of abuse, society has a duty to step in and free the subjects from that abuse.

By this standard, Saddam Hussein was somebody that the international community needed to remove from power.

However, I opposed the invasion of Iraq, even before it started, because it was obvious that President Bush was incompetent, and even though he was doing the right thing, he would almost certainly mess it up so badly that it was better to do nothing, and to wait for a competent leader to tackle the job.

I have heard liberals complain that if these arguments for removing Saddam Hussein from power are valid, then this implies that there are other world leaders we should be seeking to remove from power as well. It is absurd to claim that we should take action against so many leaders; therefore, we should have left Saddam Hussein alone.

Actually, I have no objection to removing tyrants from power wherever they can be found, though it should be done competently, by people who know how to make the situation better, but not worse.

I am particularly disturbed by those who argue that there will always be tyrants, and that therefore we should do nothing. This is like saying that there will always be parents who abuse their children, so we should take no action against those parents we catch doing so.

There are also those who argue that if we allow even a little bit of interference in the internal affairs of one country that we open the floodgates for interference in every country. Yet, this too is as absurd as arguing that if we protect the children from abuse in even one household, that we open the floodgates for interference in how all parents raise their children. Just as we have been able to strike a reasonable balance in the latter case, I think we can strike a reasonable balance in the former case.

A Common Theme

The one common theme regarding all of these issues is the idea that capitalists and communists alike should be able to find common ground in opposing those who redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich. We are surrounded by them. Do this, and we have made the present and future lives of the poor much better than they would have otherwise been. Unite on these issues, and we can deal with the issues that divide us later.

The True Cost of Ethanol

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit, when people were charging huge amounts of money for bottled water, John Stossel wrote an article that defended so-called “price gouging.” (John Stossel: Price Gouging)

He used a standard claim that one of the virtues of a free market is that it guarantees that resources go to those who value it the most. If one person is only willing to pay $20 for something, and another is willing to pay $21, then this implies that the second person values the water (or what she can do with the water) more than the first. We should praise the system that makes sure that resources go to their most highly valued use.

Or so the argument goes.

However, this claimed benefit of free markets is quite simply false. Free markets do not distribute those who most need the product. It distributes goods to those who can most afford the product. Often, those who need the product are not those who can afford it.

This is, quite simply, one area where free markets utterly fail to fulfill desires.

In my earlier post I illustrated this point by suggesting a scenario where a person with a dehydrated child goes up to somebody selling water for $20 per bottle. But, what if she does not have $20? She doesn’t get the water. However, somebody else going up to the same water seller, who wants to use a bottle of water to shampoo her poodle, will get the water.

Clearly, the water did not go to those who most needed it. It went to those who could most afford it, even if what they want it for is something that has trivial value.

If the poor woman with the sick child had the same size bundle of cash as the rich woman, she would have certainly outbid the rich person for the water. What kept her from bidding more was not that she did not value the health of her child as much as the other valued a shampoo for her poodle. What kept her from bidding more was the fact that she did not have the ability to express her values in market terms because of a lack of money.

The situation regarding the use of some (though not all) forms of ethanol is exactly the same. Most ethanol is made from food – or from resources that could have otherwise been used for growing food. What we have is a situation where billions of poor people want to buy food for themselves and their children. However, wealthier people are willing to bid more for those resources to feed their demand for fuel – much of which goes for recreational or other non-essential uses.

It is the same situation of rich people bidding essential resources away from poor people who have a higher-valued use for those resources, but who lack the ability to express their preferences in market terms.

Compounding the Problem through Regulation

This analogy is not perfect, of course.

We confront one of those limits when we recognize that, in the case of ethanol, we are talking about a subsidy that will increase the demand for the materials that go into the production of food, and food itself, in the face of a population that is not able to afford the higher prices.

It is as if, in the case of a water shortage, the government introduced a low that required people to replace the practice of heating food over a fire with boiling it. Not only will poor, in this case, need to deal with the wealthy bidding away the last bottles of water to shampoo their poodles, they will also have to struggle against the demand for water created by this new requirement for boiling food. This will make their situation that much more desperate.

The analogy is found between requirements to consume water in boiling food in the analogous case, and consuming food as automobile fuel in the ethanol case.

Imaginary Benefits; Real World Harms

I find it particularly tragic when an individual goes to bed, wrapping himself in a warm glow of pride, thinking that he has done great deeds and made the world a better place, when, in reality, he has made the situation worse. I compare it to a person hooked up to a machine that feeds experiences directly into his brain. In this case, the machine makes him think he is a surgeon saving children’s lives. He is proud of his work, and there is nothing that he would rather be doing. Only for every fictitious life he saves, a real child is tortured and killed. If he were merely to give up the practice of saving children, the real-world children who face torture and death because of him will be spared.

The advocates of ethanol are much like this hypothetical doctor, thinking that they have done good deeds while real-world children are made to starve because of their actions.

There is an important difference between the ethanol case and the experience machine. Ethanol advocates face a world where, if they look, they can see the arguments against their position.

Then I imagine the person in the experience machine being woken from her fantasy. She is told that, while she is hooked up to her machine, every fantasy child she saves results in the torture and death of a real-world child. Yet, she still protests that she be placed back into the machine. “There, I was somebody important. I was a doctor. I was saving children. I demand that you return me to the machine.”

Answer: “No, you were not saving children. You were torturing children – or bringing about their torture, even if you were not doing so intentionally.”

We see this type of denial and continued harm in the Bush Administration. They did not want to believe that invading Iraq would lead to problems. They wanted to believe that attacking Iraq was a good idea, so he simply ignored any evidence or arguments that were brought up against it. It is something they had a great deal of practice in. One of the traits that their religion promoted was the ability to ignore evidence and to stick with an idea on the basis of faith alone. “Invading Iraq is a good idea. This evidence, or these arguments, suggest that it is not a good idea. Therefore, this evidence, or these arguments, must be flawed.”

Again, in the case of ethanol subsidies and requirements, the argument has the same form. “The use of ethanol is a good idea. This evidence, or these arguments, suggest that it is not a good idea. Therefore, this evidence, or these arguments, must be flawed.”

Demand and Supply

There is one more complication that deserves our attention. As a matter of fact, we are not talking about a world in which there is a limited resource. We have the ability to grow more food-stuffs, either for consumption as food or consumption as fuel. We are assuming that the additional demand will increase price. That extra price, in turn, provides an incentive to increase supply. At least some of that extra supply of food-stuffs can be made available to those who are starving.

However, this whole mechanism requires the incentive of higher prices, which is exactly what keeps food out of the mouths of those who have a higher-valued use for this product but no way to make their preferences known on the free market. We are still creating a situation where rich people are bidding food away from poor people so that rich people can have fuel for their vehicles. The slope may be less steep than I described it in the sections before this, but it still exists.

Conclusion

Given the particularly high value of food to those who are starving, there is no justification for subsidizing the use of food stuffs for anything other than this high-valued use until all of the starving people are being fed. If there are any subsidies to be had, they need to go first and foremost to the use of foodstuffs for their most valued use – feeding the hungry (particularly hungry children).

Any food stuffs above and beyond that are surplus can be made available for other uses, such as ethanol. Any food stuffs below this limit of adequately feeding the population means bidding food away from the starving in favor of the least-valued uses that we may find for ethanol.

Of course, the issue of providing food to the poor is more complicated than I made it here. Too often, the food is available, but political or social barriers get in the way - such as tribal warlords and national leaders holding whole populations hostage demanding payment before they would let the food through. These issues do not affect the principles outlined in this posting. It does, however, argue for the moral merit of eliminating these barriers.

We can imagine the case of the two women bidding for a bottle of water and ask ourselves what we think of the woman who bids $21, keeping the water out of the hands of the mother with a sick child who only has $20. What type of person would do that?

It’s the same type of person who would bid up the price of food stuffs so that it could be used in recreation, taking it away from the mothers who need it to feed their starving children. We are that type of person, if we advocate and support such a policy.

The True Price of Gas

I have been devoting much of my free time recently to looking into energy policy – particularly on alternatives to fossil fuels. In general, I have to say that I am not impressed with many of the ideas for promoting alternatives to fossil fuels. However, I fear that if I launch immediately into a criticism of those policies, people might mistake me for an apologist for the oil industry. So, let me block that assumption right away.

If I was named energy czar, I would seek to implement a simple energy policy that would take the decision making out of the hands of the legislature and put it into the hands of the free market.

[I can hear the confused reader gasp, “What? I thought you were going to block the assumption that you are an apologist for the energy industry!”]

One of the principles of a free market is that you have to pay for what you use. Obtaining goods, while forcing other people to pay the bill, is generally known as a subsidy. Subsidies distort the market.

The value of a free market is that it carries a tremendous amount of information and it ties incentives for behavior to that information. We want people to refrain from activities that have a high cost on others, and to engage in more activities that provide benefits to others. A free market carries that information because it internalizes the cost. If my activity imposes a cost on you, then I need to compensate you for those costs. If my activity provides a benefit to you, then, in a free market, I can deny you the benefit of that activity until you pay me for it. In general, this combination of information and incentive, properly applied, promotes actions that fulfill the desires of others and inhibits actions that thwart the desires of others.

Desire utilitarianism and capitalism are very compatible systems.

When people are able to engage in activities that impose a cost on others, without paying for those costs, then this is a subsidy. It is also a form of theft. These types of distortions in the market reduce the incentive to avoid behavior that does harm to others. In fact, given the size of the incentive, it might even encourage people to do things harmful to others.

Many big businesses, while they use the terms ‘capitalism’ and ‘free market’ for public relations purposes, invest huge amounts of money in policies that distort the market, allowing them to engage in behavior harmful to others without paying a penalty, effectively obtaining a ‘subsidy’ from the victims harmed by their actions.

In fact, much of the inequality in wealth and power in the world today is not the result of ‘market forces’. It is a result of people with a great deal of money investing it in legislation (and legislators) that permit them to engage in behavior harmful to others without paying the cost – and sometimes even getting the government to pay them to engage in behavior that is harmful to others. The ‘others’ being harmed, of course, are those who cannot afford to buy a legislator of their own.

Some of them, of course, pass their subsidies on to their customers. When Exxon-Mobile obtains a multi-trillion dollar subsidy to the price of gasoline (allowing it to obtain oil without paying the true cost of oil), it passes much of that on to the driver buying gasoline for his SUV.

We would have to imagine something slightly different, if we were to imagine people paying the true cost of fossil fuels.

Imagine

For example, imagine a driver, having filled up his SUV, walking into the convenience store to pay for it. He hands the clerk a credit card, who rings up the gasoline at about $3.00 per gallon. The clerk then says to the customer, “I’m sorry, sir, you are out of credits. I can take $3.00 from your credit card, but you’re going to have to come up with something to cover the additional costs.”

The customer then fumbles through his wallet, looking through a stack of coupons. He picks a coupon – one that shows a family standing in front of their house. The house has been in their family for a couple of generations now. “Take the house; that should cover my additional costs. And, while you’re at it, take the grandfather as well. Put the credit on my account.”

He has other coupons in his wallet.

Some of the coupons simply allow the clerk to take the costs out of the bank accounts of other people. Those other people will have to pay for his gasoline through higher taxes, which will go to provide the services, that get the gasoline to the pump.

One shows a soldier in uniform. The coupon allows the taking of one arm and one leg in a conflict meant to secure some other country’s oil supply for American use. Another coupon also shows a soldier, but offers the soldier’s life in exchange for gasoline credits. Typically, drivers do not pay these costs. A third coupon shows a village in Africa, its crops ruined by drought, its people starving and dying of thirst. By using these coupons, the individual shift the costs off his or her actions onto others and expect those others to pay the cost, allowing them to take only $3.00 per gallon out of their own bank accounts.

Vault Loads of Coupons

The SUV owner has only a few of these coupons. Exxon-Mobile and other companies have vaults full of them. Whenever they need a few billion dollars, they cash in coupons for the destruction of whole counts and even some nations. They are permitted to go to their bank, coupon in hand, and exchange a whole hospital full of patients for a few tens of millions of dollars.

Of course, they give away a few of these coupons to the SUV owners. This is a bribe for the SUV owner to vote to protect the oil company. “If you vote to end this trade, then you will no longer be able to pay for part of your gas by destroying the life, health, and property of others. If you lose this political battle, you will have to pay the whole price of gasoline yourself.”

There are some who argue that forcing people to pay for the true price of gasoline would be bad for the economy.

It is as if they are saying that the destruction of homes, limbs, and lives is somehow good for the economy. The types of subsidies that I am talking about are the type where somebody is going to have to pay the cost. The question is, who will do so?

The propaganda machine from the large companies that hold these vaults full of coupons, and the politicians who mimic these myths in exchange for political contributions, want to make us think that we are faced with a question of paying these costs or not paying them. The only way of not paying them is to end the activity that is causing the harm. Short of that, the question is not one of whether to pay these costs, but who pays the cost.

Are we going to have the person purchasing the gas pay the price at the pump? Or are we going to give them coupons that they can use to pass the cost on to others, in the form of property destroyed, health sacrificed, and lives lost?

Domestic Profits/Foreign Losses

There is one way in which we can argue that such policies would be “bad for the economy.” This situation applies to cases where the people who hold the bulk of these coupons are Americans, and the people who are on the coupons – the people that the coupon holder decides to sacrifice – are foreigners. In this case, using the coupons makes Americans wealthier by sacrificing the lives, limbs, health, and property of citizens of other countries.

This is exactly the situation that we see with respect to global warming, where Americans hold most of coupons, and the poor people in other countries will suffer most of the ill effects. If we give up this multi-billion-dollar business of destroying other countries for profit, then we will be economically worse off – and other countries will be economically better off. However, at some point, a person needs to ask whether he wants to be somebody who profits from killing, maiming, and destroying the property of others.

Arguing in favor of this system is to say that the SUV owner is perfectly within his moral rights to be using these coupons to pay for his gas – sacrificing the life, health, and property of other people to cover costs that do not come from his bank account, as long as the people he decides to sacrifice do not live in America.

Of course, we must ask how we feel about people in other countries who think that it is permissible for them to kill anybody in any country other than their own. What type of person would think this way?

Benefits

There are, of course, some benefits associated with global warming. Some property in northern Canada and Siberia will become more valuable, and we may get a “Northwest Passage” across an Arctic Ocean that thaws in the summer. However, even these benefits can be understood in terms of benefits obtain by forcing others to pay for them. We can imagine the board of directors of Exxon-Mobile mailing out packets of coupons, allowing those land owners who receive them to pay for improvements to their property with the life, health, and well-being of others.

If it is truly a benefit to the people of Canada and Siberia to obtain these benefits, then perhaps they could see fit to compensate those who will suffer the costs, the way that a person who benefits from a gallon of gas pays the gas station owner for that benefit.

This analysis might sound somewhat harsh to some people. I cannot imagine anybody with any conscience paying for their gasoline with coupons that allow the store clerk to take the price by destroying the life, health, or well-being of others. However, it is no objection to a particular point of view that one does not like it. I hold that this does capture the moral dimension of these subsidies.

Yet, at the same time, many of the steps taken to use renewable energy are just as bad. Politicians are getting their hands into the fine details of the business. This is not because they want to promote energy efficiency. It is because they want to take the resources that go into energy efficiency and pass them out to their favorite campaign contributors. Unfortunately, when the government works in these ways, they are, in effect, taking resources that should be going to make the situation better, and diverting them to second-rate solutions.

In other words, they are not helping.

The Desire for Sex

Today, as promised, I am going to write about sex.

Specifically, I am responding to a comment that G-man made to an earlier post:

Consider . . . the fact that our current values are by no means the values we *should* have. Does that mean, then, that if our values can be adjusted (say, for instance, the desire for sex or the desire for personal freedom), would there be anything wrong with that state of affairs? I can't think of any reason why it would. Of course, I have a personal aversion to losing my desire for freedom and for sex - but it's still worth a thought, I guess.

Yesterday, I wrote about the desire for freedom. I presented an argument that the love of freedom is something that we have many and strong reasons to promote regardless of whatever else we may happen to desire – because freedom gives the authority to make decisions on what action to perform to the most knowledgeable and least corruptible agent – the actor himself.

Today, I want to talk about the desire for sex.

As it turns out, we do have ways to alter the desire for sex, at least in certain parts of population. We may not have effective methods for altering the object of sexual desire (though this may simply be a matter of further research), but we certainly have ways of altering the strength of sexual desire among males.

The two options available are (1) castration, and (2) regular injections of methoxyprogesterone. Methoxyprogesterone fits into the brain receptors for testosterone in the brain, blocking the testosterone, thus weakening or eliminating the desire for sex.

Given that these options is available, the question, “Should I act so as to weaken my sexual desire?” is a legitimate question.

A desire for sex is a desire that a particular state of affairs in which the propositions that are the objects of one’s sexual desire are true. It is clearly the case that the term ‘sexual desire’ does not describe just one sexual desire. It involves a wide range of desires where the object of desire fits under the general heading of a ‘sexual situation’. It includes not only intercourse, but desires that one’s sex partner have particular physical and mental properties, particular actions, and particular surroundings.

Yet, if this is truly a sexual desire, then castration or injections of methoxyprogesterone will influce the strength of that desire.

Another fact to note about a sexual desire is that it is an appetite. Appetites are desires that dissipate when fulfilled, only to grow in intensity at a later time. Hunger is an appetite – a desire to eat that goes away when it is fulfilled, then returns a few hours later. Thirst and sleep are also appetites. These are contrasted with, for example, the aversion to pain or the desire for the well-being of one’s children which persists even when it is fulfilled.

However, what G-man wrote about is not the desire for sex, but the desire for the desire for sex. He reports not only a desire for sex, but a desire for a desire for sex.

Because these are distinct and separate desires, it is not impossible that a person can have a desire for (a particular type of) sex, and, at the same time, have an aversion to having that desire. This is true in the same way that a person can have a desire to be drunk or high and have an aversion to having that particular desire. I, for example, have a desire for high-calorie foods (cholesterol being one of the best-tasting substances ever discovered), while at the same time wishing that I did not have this desire.

Is it possible to defend a “desire for a desire for sex” as a good thing?

This depends a lot on the nature of the sex that one desires. Is the desire for sex itself of a form that tends to fulfill or thwart other desires?

If a person’s desire for sex is a desire that tends to thwart the desires of self or others, then there are reasons not to promote a desire for that particular type of sex. Indeed, there is a reason to promote an aversion to that particular type of sex, and to motivate those who have such a desire to take action that will either change the object of that desire (to something less harmful) or change the strength of that desire.

On the other hand, sexual desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others are desires that we have reason to promote or encourage.

I cannot think of any clear examples of this second type of sexual desire – a desire that fulfills the desires of others. Most sexual desire, it seems, falls in the third moral category – neither bad (promoting acts that tend to thwart other desires) or good (promoting acts that tend to fulfill other desires), but neutral (promoting acts that neither fulfill or thwart other desires).

All sexual desire is either neutral (something people generally have no reason to promote or prohibit) or bad (something that people generally have reason to inhibit). There is no such thing as a good sexual desire.

This does not imply that there is anything wrong with a given individual having a desire for (morally neutral) sex, or a desire that he have a desire for (morally neutral) sex. Just as the desire for sex is morally neutral, the desire for the desire for sex is morally neutral.

Some Implications

In the realm of sexual morality, I often hear the claim that people do not choose their sexual desires. This is supposed to have some sort of moral significance, as if, “I did not choose a desire that P; therefore, bring about state of affairs P should be considered morally permissible.”

We typically see this argument with respect to homosexual acts. However, the argument is clearly invalid. We can clearly see this if we replace P with a desire to rape and torture young children, a desire to burn down buildings, a desire to take things that belong to others, or a desire to drive extremely fast through residential and school neighborhoods.

This argument gives the impression that somehow people are supposed to have an opportunity to sit down, weigh the plusses and minuses of having a particular desire, and deciding, “I choose a desire that P.”

Nobody ever does this for any of their desires – even their desires to burn down buildings or to rape and torture small children.

I suspect the next response would be, “How dare you compare a desire for homosexual acts with desires to burn down buildings or to rape and torture small children? These desires are totally different. The homosexual does not desire anything that implies harming others.”

My answer to this is, “That’s exactly my point! Choice is not the issue. The question is whether or not people generally have a reason to promote or inhibit the desire in question. People have no reason to inhibit homosexual desires precisely because they are not desires that tend to motivate people to threaten others. People do have reasons to inhibit the desire to burn down buildings or to rape and torture small children. These facts sit as the foundation of the moral difference between these desires, not ‘choice’.

The fact that there is such a huge variety of sexual desires strongly argues that this is not based entirely on genes. Any who want to argue that social conditioning does no good against homosexual desire needs to explain how it could possibly make sense to explain all of this variety through genetic factors alone. If social factors have any affect at all on sexual desire, then people generally have reason to ask for the most efficient way of inhibiting desires they have reason to inhibit. If social factors have no affect on sexual desire, then how is it that people can acquire so many different sexual desires, and why is it that the factors responsible for this variety are all outside of human control?

Conclusion

I want to add with this: If one has a sexual desire that tends to thwart the desires of self or others, I would like to make it known that the strength of that desire is a matter of choice. It might be difficult to change the object of that desire (I am no expert in this area), but reducing the strength of a sexual desire is clearly on the “can do” list. It would be a service to others and to oneself to free oneself of such a desire that thwarts the desires of self and others.

See a doctor. Get the condition taken care of. It is the right thing to do.

The Value of Freedom

In the comments to a recent post, “G-man” wrote:

Consider . . . the fact that our current values are by no means the values we *should* have. Does that mean, then, that if our values can be adjusted (say, for instance, the desire for sex or the desire for personal freedom), would there be anything wrong with that state of affairs? I can't think of any reason why it would. Of course, I have a personal aversion to losing my desire for freedom and for sex - but it's still worth a thought, I guess.

There are things to be said on both of these issues – the desire for sex, and the desire for freedom. Today, I will give my comments on the desire for freedom. Tomorrow, I will talk about sex.

The Loss of Freedom

Freedom has some unique properties whereby a loss of freedom is bad even for the person who does not value freedom per se.

To start with, I would like you to consider a law that outlaws swimming in the methane lakes of Titan for the next 10 years, or imposes a fine on altering the gravitational constant by more than 1 order of magnitude. In some overly technical sense, this may be considered a loss of freedom. However, in a more day-to-day sense, no freedom has been lost at all. These prohibitions do not prevent people from doing anything that they would otherwise have done.

A more meaningful loss of freedom prohibits people from performing actions that they might have otherwise performed. Imagine an individual facing a choice between two options; Option A and Option B. People choose those actions that fulfill the more and the stronger of their desires, given their beliefs. Our individual, in a state of freedom, would choose Option A. However, if Option A is prohibited – if the individual is denied his freedom – then that individual has been denied the opportunity to fulfill his desires, given his beliefs.

This might not be a bad thing where agents have false beliefs. A person might desire to take arsenic, thinking that it cures the hiccups. A prohibition on taking arsenic would prevent these people from doing something that they would not have chosen if their beliefs were true. Each individual seeks to act so as to fulfill his desires, so such a law would give people what they want, even if it denies them what they would choose.

The Value of Liberty

The ultimate case for freedom comes from the 19th century English philosopher John Stuart Mill, in the essay “On Liberty,” which I discussed in the third part in a series on the value of truth, “True Beliefs III: Liberty of Beliefs.” He gave two principle reasons why we would want the person who directs an individual’s life to be that individual.

I’m going to give his arguments a slight desire-utilitarian twist. (It is just a slight twist because the only difference between desire utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism is that desires are particular types of rules written into the brain.)

Value exists in the form of relationships between states of affairs and desires. Specifically, each agent seeks to create states of affairs in which their desires are fulfilled. If we are going to try to maximize value, then we need to assign the job of running each person’s life to an individual or group who (1) has the best information on what those desires are, (2) has the best information on which states of affairs will fulfill those desires, and (3) is the least corruptible agent when it comes to fulfilling those desires.

In other words, the person who is best qualified to run any given individual’s life in a way that fulfills the most and strongest desires is that person. There are, of course, known exceptions such as young children and the mentally incompetent. However, among competent adults, this is generally true.

The Love of Liberty

This argues that liberty is useful. However, in this post I am interested in showing that the love of liberty is useful.

Imagine that you are a loving parent with a vulnerable child. You have a choice between moving into two neighborhoods. In one neighborhood, people value the well being of children to the degree that they can be convinced that it is useful to do so. We convince them by telling them that those children could grow up to be doctors, lawyers, architects, landscapers, and, in other ways, skilled and useful adults.

In the other neighborhood, people value the well-being of children for its own sake. They have come to desire that children are safe and well cared for independent of its usefulness. It’s like eating chocolate – something that some people may pursue even when it is not useful for them to do so – even when it conflicts with other interests – simply because they like it. The people living in this neighborhood like a neighborhood where children are safe.

To the degree that you are interested in your child’s safety, I would recommend the second neighborhood over the first.

For another example, consider the case of exercise. Exercise is useful in that it promotes health which an individual can reasonably expect will promote the agent’s ability to fulfill future desires. However, exercise is hard work. You are given a choice. You can be made into a person who does not like exercise and exercises only when (and to the degree) that it is useful to do so, or you can be made into somebody who values exercise for its own sake. The second type of person will exercise even when she cannot calculate any use for it, because she likes to exercise, and she insists on doing what she likes.

Again, an argument can be made that it is better to be the second type of person – the person who exercises for the fun of it. This person does not need to be reminded that it is time to job or run. She will exercise (rather than watch television) precisely because exercising is something that she values more than watching television.

Similarly, when it comes to securing liberty (and I have already established that each of us have reason to secure liberty – because no other person is going to do a better job of directing the course of each of our lives than that person), our liberty is better secured in a neighborhood that loves liberty, than in a neighborhood where liberty is valued only for its usefulness (and easily discarded the instant it ceases to become useful).

One of the conclusions that we can draw from the Bush Administration is that they have no love of liberty. If they care about liberty at all it is only insofar as they find it to be useful. They will toss it aside the instant that it ceases to be useful. This is why convincing them to abandon torture and arbitrary imprisonment, or to restore the right of habeas corpus, seems to require an argument as to the usefulness of doing so.

You do not need to convince somebody who loves chocolate to eat chocolate because of its usefulness. In most cases, you do not need to present a person with a case for the usefulness of sex to get him to have sex. These are things that people value for their own sake. You can know this because of the fact that they pursue these ends without regard for their usefulness, simply because they are desired.

So, we know that the Bush Administration has no love of liberty. Because we have placed our liberty in the hands of those who do not love liberty, but who value it only insofar as it is useful to them, our liberty is now far less secure.

Now, please note that I have not premised this argument for the value of the love of liberty on anything other than the fact that each individual is best qualified (most knowledgeable, leas corruptible) person to direct that person’s life. It does not depend on what a person likes, he can almost always do a better job of directing his life towards that end. It is one of the qualities of liberty that it is useful (among such individuals) regardless of what other desires a person has.

Restrictions on Liberty

The love of liberty argues for a presumption in favor of liberty – but a presumption that can be outweighed. In a trial by jury, it argues for a presumption of innocence on the part of the accused – but a presumption that can be overridden by proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In law it argues for a presumption in favor of personal freedom and against government interference – but a presumption that can be overridden by evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

If a person desires to set off a nuclear weapon in a city, then we will prevent him from fulfilling the more and stronger of his desires, given his beliefs. However, we know (quite reliably) that the desires that would motivate a person to set off such a bomb in the middle of a city are desires that tend to thwart other desires. People (whose desires would be thwarted) have reason to inhibit the formation of desires that tend to thwart other desires. They have reason to interfere with the actions that such a person might perform.

So, yes, laws do thwart liberty.

However, in desire-utilitarian terms, they only restrict the liberty of bad people. A good person (a person whose desires tend to fulfill the desires of others) would have such an aversion to detonating nuclear weapons in a city, rape, theft, murder, robbery, and the like, that, to them, committing one of these actions is not within the realm of possibilities for a good person. "I could never do something like that," is a real-world truth when it comes to real-world good people performing such an action.

The love of liberty means that a person is going to need 'proof beyond a reasonable doubt' that the restriction of a particular liberty is necessary. In terms of laws against detonating nuclear weapons in cities, killing and maiming others, rape, theft, and other forms of violence, we have our proof beyond a reasonable doubt. However, the person who advocates restrictions in liberty without proof - based on a 'preponderance of evidence' or 'it seems like a good idea' is like the person who will vote 'guilty' on a trial because the accused, 'just seems guilty to me.'

Belief Without Evidence or Faith

I am growing concerned with presidential candidates drawing their positions from what the core party members believe, when those core party members have no reason for that belief and are quite possibly wrong.

Typically, we see this as a fault of the Republican Party, where evidence-based thinking is publicly ridiculed in favor of faith-based thinking. However, we can also find it in the Democratic Party, where beliefs become popular because of a political fad, rather than from an understanding of the available evidence.

These ‘fads’ themselves are often spread by special-interest groups paying money to public relations firms in order to plant a seed in a particular political faction, nurture it, and watch it grow, until the party faithful culturally accept or reject others in the group by whether they accept this particular view.

Lacking Evidence for War; Lacking Evidence for Withdrawal

I have written about one version of this problem previously, the call for a complete withdraw from Iraq. A huge block of Democratic voters have adopted the attitude that the only acceptable Democratic Party candidate is one who insists that we will withdraw all troops from Iraq. They cannot possibly be basing this opinion on an honest evaluation of the available evidence, because the available evidence is substantially classified. Even if it was not, there is so much information that one would have to digest in order to draw an informed opinion that there are very few who have this luxury.

Yet, tens of millions of Democratic Party faithful believe that they are capable – between job, family vacations, and episodes of American Idol and weekend sports – to determine the best policy, and to insist that agreeing with them on this one issue is the most reliable mark of a quality candidate.

There is just as much arrogant certainty of unquestionable truths in the Democratic Party as there is in the Republican Party. The only difference is that faith-based thinking in the Republican Party is more likely to involve beliefs about God.

As far as I have been able to determine, those experts who have the capacity to draw an informed opinion about what Americans should do with respect to Iraq are not advocates of a complete American withdraw. They are in favor of reducing the American presence, but believe that a substantial investment is still required for a couple of reasons. The primary objection is that a withdraw will give the impression that Allah is on the side of the fundamentalists and that this will enable them to attract even more support – in terms of volunteers, financial help, contacts, safe havens, and assistance in communication among members.

Evidence and the Importance of Ethanol

Another example in which the Party faithful seems to be pushing ideas that lack evidence-based support is in the realm of corn-based ethanol. The Iowa Caucus is one of the first formal political contests in the Presidential race. As such, all major candidates are focusing their attentions on this state. Iowa grows corn, and corn growers certainly have reason to want to believe that corn ethanol is a viable alternative energy source.

However, much of what I read suggests that this is not the case. Ethanol contains less energy than gasoline, so cars that burn ethanol will get fewer miles per gallon. A 10% reduction in price is only a part of the story if it means a 20% increase in the volume one has to purchase to cover the same territory. Sugar cane, for example, is a better source of ethanol, but sugar cane does not grow in Iowa.

What somebody who specializes in rhetoric and other forms of mass deception will tell you is that the way to promote a good is to make the most useful comparison. You do not want to choose a comparison that will give people the most accurate understanding of the situation. You want to select a comparison that will engineer a conclusion that is the most useful – even if, on some fundamental level, it is mistaken.

To sell corn-ethanol, the comparison that the master of rhetoric would advise would be to compare it to gasoline. Gasoline is what everybody uses, so it easily comes to mind, and facts can be cherry-picked so as to make corn-ethanol look like a good, clean energy source compared to gasoline.

However, if somebody is actually interested in renewable energy, then corn-ethanol should not be compared to gasoline. It should be compared to cane-ethanol.

When governments subsidize a lower quality product in order to help it to compete against higher-quality products, this actually makes the world a worse place in which to live. Subsidizing the corn-ethanol industry means taking business, profits, and investment capital away from the cane-ethanol industry. It means having more of a lesser quality replacement to gasoline, and less of a higher quality replacement.

One could argue that there is more than enough of a need for ethanol to justify the use of both cane-ethanol and corn-ethanol; that these products do not compete against each other. This is a mistake. As the cane-ethanol industry grows, it would be expected to suffer from diminishing marginal returns. Corn-ethanol kicks in when the marginal benefit of cane-ethanol equals the marginal benefit of corn-ethanol. At that point, corn ethanol becomes a reasonable substitute for cane-ethanol.

What these subsidies do is to distort the marginal benefit of corn ethanol, making it appear to be higher than it is in fact. This is how subsidies work to promote the industry being subsidized. If subsidies had no effect, if they did not have the power to manipulate market forces, then there would be no sense in using them. When the marginal benefit of corn-ethanol has been raised by subsidies, then resources get transferred from cane-ethanol to corn-ethanol sooner than it would have done so in the free market. The result, as I said, is more inferior ethanol production, at the expense of superior ethanol production.

In the name of protecting the environment and making the world a better place for our children, we make the environment worse than it would have otherwise been and our children’s world worse, rather than better.

Yet, the top Democratic Party presidential contenders ignore these facts. They advocate policies that go right ahead and make the environment worse than it would have otherwise been, because the Party Faithful demand it. Because the Party Faithful base their conclusions, not on a consideration of the evidence, but on a fad, where accepting a particular belief (regardless of its merit) is the ticket one needs in order to be considered a part of the ‘in’ group.

Those who think that religions have a lock on unreasoned belief – that all we need to do is get rid of religion and a world of reason and enlightenment will flourish before us – need to take a closer look at the real world.

Ethanol and Greenhouse Gasses

At the same time, I am aware of the fact that political factions are almost certainly at work to attack the issue with fictions from the other direction. Exxon-Mobile, among others, will contribute significant amounts of money to “engineer false beliefs” in the American public about options that may cut into their profits. They are willing to promote false beliefs about global warming, thereby putting at risk the life, health, and property of billions of people. Such people cannot be expected to have a twinge of conscience arise from promoting fictions regarding ethanol or other potential competition to their industry – regardless of who suffers from these myths.

For example, one of the arguments that I have routinely seen used against ethanol is that it produces just as much greenhouse gas as gasoline.

So?

Ethanol (unlike gasoline) must first pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in order to create the fuel that, then, returns carbon dioxide to the atmosphere when it is burned. Gasoline, on the other hand, is using carbon that was pulled out of the atmosphere many millions of years ago. Over the course of 1 year, the direct net effect carbon effect of ethanol is zero – it pulls as much carbon out of the atmosphere as it puts back in.

This deceptive little half-truth is much like the deceptive half-truths Exxon-Mobile and similar companies and organizations have been telling about global warming, in order to engineer false beliefs. Those false beliefs, in turn, are designed to cause people to put money in the pockets of Exxon-Mobile executives by people who are unknowingly making the world a far worse place for their children and grand-children.

And all of this deception and misinformation takes place without anybody even mentioning God or faith – though it remains as blind to reason as anything any priest might suggest.

So, do I have a position on the issue of promoting ethanol as a substitute for fossil fuels? Not really. It will take a lot more information than I have available to me at the moment. However, I do have a position on the use of bad arguments. People do this when they do not care who is made to suffer so that they can make themselves better off. Yet, others do suffer. Mostly, our children and grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and the children of our friends and neighbors, who will be the victims of this rhetoric.

A Summary on Faith

I am curious how this is going to play out . . .

Carnival of the Godless #70 is out on Friendly Atheist.

In it is an article from Jacob at Winter’s Haven, that Friendly Atheist linked to under the phrase, “faith is not a virtue.” Friendly Atheist also said that this is a response to something I had written (which he also links to).

(So, it looks as if I have an article in this edition of Carnival of the Godless – indirectly.)

One of the things that I pay attention to as a writer is how people read.

My philosophy of writing (at least, for the type of writing that I engage in here) is that writing is theory driven. A concerned writer is always trying to predict what ideas will appear in the mind of the reader when encountering the combination of squiggles and lines that the writer has put on a page. A morally concerned writer wants to make sure that his squiggles (or sounds in the case of podcasts, or images and sounds in the case of video) generates true beliefs and good desires in the brains of those who encounter it.

This, by the way, informs my theory of lying or sophistry. A person lies, not by uttering a proposition that he knows is false, but by uttering a proposition that he knows the reader or listener will interpret in a way that is false. When President Clinton said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” this was a lie. Clinton seems to have sought to defend himself by saying, “By ‘sex’ I mean sexual intercourse, which does not include oral sex.” What makes this a lie is that Clinton certainly knew that the proposition would be interpreted to include a denial of oral sex in the minds of the listeners.

Sophistry or “engineering false beliefs” is the use of true propositions to generate false beliefs in the brains of the listener. In Sophistry: Engineering False Beliefs, I used examples from Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA, 48th District) to show how a sophist tries to get people to believe things that are false without directly lying. The intent is the same – the intent, in this case, is to get people to choose actions that are extremely harmful to themselves and their values my engineering false beliefs. The wrong done here ties directly into the writer’s or speaker’s obligation to judge his honesty by his ability to provide the reader or listener with true beliefs.

This is not to say that the listener or reader’s beliefs are entirely the speaker’s or writer’s responsibility. Readers and writers have some responsibilities as well. Communication is a team effort.

The relevance of these factors to this posting by Friendly Atheist is that I expect some readers will read this part of the posting and draw the following conclusions:

Jacob at Winter’s Haven has written an article saying that faith is not a virtue. He was responding to a post by Atheist Ethicist. Therefore, Atheist Ethicist must believe that faith is a virtue.

The problem is that Friendly Atheist normally has a much larger audience than I do, that the Carnival itself will draw a larger crowd, so there is a risk that the cultural assumption may well become the assumption that Atheist Ethicist believes that faith is a virtue.

Coincidentally, this subject ties directly into the topic that Jacob and I wrote on – which was the ethics of adopting a belief that is a part of the public culture – of assuming something simply because one grows up in a culture where nobody thinks to question it. I argued that it may be wrong, but it is not culpable, to fail to question something that nobody – or a very small segment of society – thinks to be questionable.

Friendly Atheist responsibly linked the reader directly to Jacob’s article, and to mine, giving readers an opportunity to view primary sources. Still, following the model of predicting what ideas will emerge in the minds of the readers, this will reduce, but not eliminate, the risk of people adopting the false belief that Atheist Ethicist (that’s me) argues that faith is a virtue.

So, I’m going to state my position, for the record.

On the concepts of virtue and vice in general, these are not jointly exhaustive categories. There are three moral categories – not two (a feature of morality that trips up many act-based consequentialist theories); the categories of ‘obligation’, ‘permission’ and ‘prohibition’. In the realm of character traits, this points to ‘virtue’ (good desires). ‘vice’ (bad desires), and ‘personal preference’ (desires that are neither good nor bad).

As a result, the proposition, “Faith is not a virtue” does not imply “Faith is a vice”. This proposition allows for the possibility that faith is a personal preference.

Faith is poor justification for a belief – a position that I recently defended in more detail in Faith, Evidence, and Convictions.

It is not a moral failing to adopt a view that is widely accepted in the society in which one lives. In fact, it is reasonable to assume (as a rule of thumb) that a widespread belief is true. In other words, adopting a false belief because it is widely accepted is an example of a non-culpable error.

The above proposition is supported by the fact that we simply do not have the resources – time, ability – to hold each and every one of our beliefs up to the light of reason. We must use quicker, though more fallible, rules of thumb if we are going to have any beliefs at all.

This same lack of resources for holding all of our beliefs up to the light of reason, and the fact that we cannot stop time until we have resolved our differences, argue for a type of ‘belief triage’. Our ‘rules of thumb’ need to be held up to a harm principle, where some extreme cases are categorized as “too much effort required for too little gain”, and others are categorized as “can wait until more urgent issues are taken care of”. The middle category, “urgent matters where immediate action can do the most good” is the category that warrants the greatest focus of attention.

In these areas – global warming, rejection of homosexuals (with its corresponding effect on suicides), opposition to embryonic stem-cell research, opposition to the use of condoms and family planning, opposition to early-term abortions, ‘rapture’ theology’s impact on neglecting policies geared toward long-term human survival, ‘revelations’ theology’s impact on promoting mid-east violence. I have not even mentioned examples where people kill directly, just because (they believe) God wants them to.

Of all of the weapons that a person of faith can use to kill or otherwise harm others, biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons are insignificant in their impotence compared the power the weapon of law. This particular weapon is one which religious zealots even in this country use with reckless abandon, doing countless harm to millions of people every year.

There are naturally going to be some disagreement over what those categories are. For example, I argue that eliminating “under God” and “In God We Trust” is extremely important because they promote in-group favoritism and out-group hostility that prejudices people against those in the best position to offer real-world solutions to real-world problems.

The level of culpability goes up to the degree that an individual professes to be an expert on the subject. Indeed, experts are assumed to have gone outside the fallible ‘rules of thumb’ that people are commonly forced to use because of a lack of time and resources, and grounded their conclusions on something more solid. This allows the common person to say, ‘I do not know or understand the foundation for this commonly accepted belief, but I trust that the experts who speak on this subject have worked those things out.”

It is an abuse of the public trust for people to identify themselves as ‘experts’ when their work is morally and intellectually negligent. They can be – and should be – publicly condemned and shamed not only on intellectual grounds, but on the moral culpability of identifying themselves as experts when they clearly do such a poor job.

So, this is my actual view on the matter.

Where, per chance, somebody seems to have gotten the idea that I argue faith is a virtue, I would not mind it if you would take the opportunity to express the fact that this interpretation is not entirely accurate.

The Value of Value

I came across an article recently, on a study relating biology to behavior, (Economist: “Money Isn’t Everything”) that was conveniently set up to allow me to explain some of the key elements of desire utilitarianism.

The behavior part of the study goes like this:

The researcher gives Person A $40.

The researcher then gives Person A two options.

Option 1: Offer Person B $5 (and keep $35)

Option 2: Offer Person B $25 (and keep $15).

However, if Person B does not accept the offer, then you have to give back the $40.

Often, this experiment is performed as a type of repeated game. In a repeated game, it makes sense for Person B to refuse the $5 offer because it tells Person A “You had better be offering me $25 if you want to keep any of the money for yourself.”

However, this experiment was different. This will only happen once, so there is nothing to be gained (in terms of influencing future iterations) by refusing the $5.

Still, in this study, there were many people who still refused the $5.

Here is where the biology part comes in. The researchers took swabs of saliva from the subjects and discovered that those who refused the $5 had higher significantly higher levels of testosterone than those who accepted the $5.

One quick conclusion that one can draw from this – which many people might have asserted without the experiment – that high levels of testosterone turns the brain into mush and people into idiots. It is irrational, on this view, to refuse the $5.

However, the researchers point out that this conclusion is much too quick – because it is wrong. Testosterone does not cause these people to be irrational. Instead, it gives them a different set of ‘values’ to be rational about. The testosterone causes an aversion to differences in status. We may assume that the individual values having $5. However, his aversion to the other person getting $35 is stronger than his desire for $5. In other words, he will pay (lose) $5, to obtain the value of depriving the other person of $35.

At this point, “biology of value” people would say that this is the end of the story. We now know that people with high levels of testosterone has these particular values. We can write that down in our book of findings and move on. It confirms the hypothesis that values are grounded in biology, which is what the “biology of value” people are interested in, so the work is done.

Desire utilitarianism suggests asking a few more questions.

A desire utilitarian can take everything that was reported in this study at face value. Assuming that there are no flaws in the study, a desire utilitarian can say, “Ahhh, data. I love data. Now, let’s see what we can do with it.”

What is the value of having people in society who would pay $5 to deprive others of $35?

We know that there are people like this. We know how it happens (or, at least, we know one of its causal influences). However, we have another question to answer: Is it good that things are this way, or do we have reasons to prefer something different?

An evil person, within desire utilitarianism, is a person for whom it is rational to do harm to others. An evil person is a person with desires that tend to result in thwarting the desires of others or, at least, lack desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others. An evil person acts so as to fulfill his desires given his beliefs (just like everybody else), and seeks to act to fulfill his desires (just like everybody else). The difference is that the desires that the evil person seeks to fulfill are desires that thwart the desires of others, so the rational evil person does harm to others.

One implication of this is that, if you feed an evil person more information and a better capacity to reason, then what you get from this is the ‘evil genius’ – the person whose evil is executed with greater efficiency (like a Karl Rove or a Dick Cheney). You cannot reason somebody into goodness. You need to change their desires, and desires are not changed through reason. They are changed through social tools such as praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

Here, for example, are two stories that might describe the value of this particular value – the goodness of this particular desire.

A researcher can never fully remove a subject from the social circumstances of his actions. It may be useful, as a general social rule, to promote a general love of fairness within a society. There may not be a second iteration of the game in the context of the experiment where it pays Person B to teach Person A to make a more fair offer. However, refusing the $5 option in the context of the game may have the effect of promoting a stronger love of fairness in Person A that will carry through outside of the research environment. It may be a part of a general (and useful) plan to promote fairness in all context, in order to create a more fair society.

Or, it could be that testosterone turns people into assholes who actually come to value depriving others of gain. We can see how this would work in competition, where a person ‘sacrifices’ five points in a game to prevent an opponent from scoring 35 points, or in a battle where a company commander sacrifices 5 men to set up a trap that kills 35 enemy soldiers. If life were a competition measured in ‘points’ like this, then this type of attitude might make sense. However, what we are talking about is units of well-being. These individuals are destroying 40 units of social well-being because, by destroying 5 units of their own well-being, they can destroy 35 units of well-being for others.

If the first story best describes the situation, then we have a case in which this desire may be a good thing, and one that should be encouraged. Whereas, if the second story is the most accurate, then this desire may be a bad thing, and seek to discourage it.

The desire utilitarian can fully accept that we have a base desire which is heavily influenced by biological factors. However, the desire utilitarian needs would ask additional questions to determine whether and how social factors can influence these options.

For example, it may be the case that people with high levels of testosterone causes people to refuse the $5 offer because, in a particular social environment, people with high levels of testosterone acquire that disposition. However, in a different social environment, people with high levels of testosterone could be raised to adopt a different disposition. For example, it may be the case that one social environment causes people with high leels of testosterone to adopt the ‘competitive value’ described above; whereas, in a different social environment, they would adopt the ‘fairness value’. Or, in a third social environment, they will come to see that allowing 40 units of social utility (even if he gets only 5 of those 40 units) will score him a certain number of moral points, thus giving him a moral victory.

All of these options have one thing in common. They are examples of taking a particular value (a particular desire) and asking, “What is the value of that particular value? Is it something that people generally have reason to promote, or to discourage?”

When it comes to looking at moral questions, the desire utilitarianism does not ask, “What is the value of torture?” He asks, “What is the value of an aversion to torture?” He does not ask, “What is the value of homosexual relationships?” He asks, “What is the value of a desire for, or an aversion to, homosexual relationships?” In the latter case, the desire utilitarian will distinguish between the value of, “I have an aversion to engaging in homosexual acts,” to “I have an aversion to having anybody who engages in homosexual acts.” Recognizing that these are two different desires, they can have two different values. A person can have an aversion to eating spinach, without having an aversion to the fact that there are people who like and eat spinach.

So, now that researchers have linked high levels of testosterone to a particular set of values, the desire utilitarian can take the data and ask, “What is the value of having people around to having these particular values? What are the limits of social forces in molding these values? And, finally, which option, within these limits, does society have the most and strongest reasons to promote?”

Here is an example of the general desire utilitarian framework applied to a specific finding on the relationship between biology and value.