Practial Morality

Cameron has provided me with one further question on desire utilitiarianism.

Here's a question I might try to answer with DU: If I want to make the world a better place, should I set about trying to instill the best desires in others?

And Martino is doing a good job of answering them in the comments. The post that follows is an alternative phrasing, not a correction, for Martino's answers.

Cameron: There is a prior question to be asked here.

“Should I want to make the world a better place?”

Many people come to desire utilitarianism with a set of assumptions that lead them to think that this is what I am saying – that everybody should instill the ‘best desires’ in others, where ‘best desires’ are desires that tend to fulfill other desires.

This is because they come to the theory focused primarily on actions (What should I do?).

Desire utilitarianism challenges that. It says, “You will do that which fulfill the more and stronger of your own desires, given your beliefs.” Nothing will change that fact. So, the proper focus on morality is not, “What should I do?” but “What should I desire?”

Should you, or anybody, desire to make the world a better place?

There arguments against having such a desire.

One of the key arguments is that it is extremely difficult to determine what counts as ‘making the world a better place’. I have given my ideas in this blog. However, those ideas come from spending a lifetime studying this issue – 12 years of college in moral philosophy, and all of the effort I have put into it since college. Most people do not have that kind of time. They’re too busy being computer programmers, research scientists, parents, engineers, actors, and the like to put this type of energy into trying to come up with answers to such questions.

Compare this ‘desire to making the world a better place’ to ‘an aversion to deception’. The latter is simple. On the whole, we can do a far more efficient job determining when somebody is lying or engaging in sophistry in order to mislead others than we can of determining whether an act ‘makes the world a better place’. When we do, we can react to condemn the speaker immediately, and say with a great deal of confidence in most cases, “That person is lying!” For these reasons, an aversion to deception has much to recommend it over a desire to make the world a better place does not.

What it has to recommend it is that an aversion to deception tends to fulfill other desires. Since people act so as to fulfill their desires given their beliefs, and false beliefs is quite commonly a barrier to desire fulfillment, an aversion to deception will help to eliminate the false beliefs that prevent desire fulfillment.

However, the motivation for a moral campaign to crack down on deception is not ‘a desire to make the world a better place’. The motivation for such a campaign comes from the fulfillment of all of those desires that a campaign for greater honesty would help us to fulfill. One of those desires would be a desire to make the world a better place (where it existed). Other desires include desires for food, clothing, and shelter; for the well-being of one’s friends and family; for health and long-life with less pain and discomfort.

Even if a person does want to make the world a better place, that desire will naturally sit in a brain that is wired with other desires. That person will also likely have a desire for sex, an aversion to pain, a desire for food and water, a desire for a comfortable environment – not too hot or too cold, a desire for the well-being of one’s children. Every act one performs will be the act that best fulfills the more and stronger of the agent’s desires, given his beliefs. Therefore, every act will weigh these other desires against the desire to make the world a better place. Depending on the relative weights of these desires, the desire to make the world a better place will often lose anyway.

It is far better – and far more efficient – to simply mold these other desires so that, while fulfilling them, one happens to bring about (as a side effect) the fulfillment of other desires, rather than expect people to be able to aim for that end directly.

You are walking down an icy street after a blizzard and you come across somebody stuck on the side of the road. How do you decide whether to help him? You do not stop to calculate the sum benefit of your actions on human history. You can never have enough information to answer that question. For all you know, this person is about to meet with his girlfriend where they will conceive a child that will become the next Hitler. But, you help push his car out of the snow bank because you are kind, and you desire to help others. If enough people promote enough kindness and helping others, then we do not need to worry about the next Hitler. People will simply have too strong of an aversion to that type of person for him to get power.

(Which is why I am particularly alarmed that there is not nearly enough of an aversion to the political aims of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. A strong aversion to those types of policies is essential to preventing the next Hitler.)

I do not think that a desire to make the world a better place is a bad desire. I do not see much of a reason to condemn those who have this desire. It might even be a good desire in limited doses – for a small number of people interested in studying moral philosophy. It is just too awkward and unwieldy for general, public use.

However, Cameron, I do not want to be accused of avoiding your question – which was, to the degree that one desires to make the world a better place, should one set about trying to instill the best desires in others.

There is only one way in which something can actually, honestly, in a real-world sense, be ‘better’ than something else. That is if the something fulfills more and stronger desires than the alternative. If you are making A better, then you are making it into something that fulfills more and stronger desires than it used to. To make the world a better place, you make it into a world that people like more than the like the world as it exists today. Making it into a world that people dislike more would be counter-productive.

Promoting desires that tend to fulfill other desires seems like a perfectly sensible way into making the world a place that people like more – a world that fulfills more desires. Promoting desires that tend to thwart other desires, I suspect, would have the opposite effect – generating states of affairs in the world that people do not like.

In a different comment, you stated the question quite differently.

The question I'm struggling with is, if I desire to make the world a better place, what is the best use of my time?

I would say that the best use of your time would probably be participating in a campaign against dishonesty and sophistry – so that liars and manipulators are despised rather than rewarded in this culture. Campaigning to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or discovering how to use embryonic stem cells to cure a range of diseases from Alzheimer’s to spinal cord injuries (if, indeed, this is even possible) are also good uses of your time.

Donating food to the food bank is a viable option.

When it comes to answering the question, “What should I do?” the desire utilitarian answer is, “Do what a person with good desires would do.” A person with good desires is a person with desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others. A good person is not, necessarily, a person with a desire to fulfill the desires of others. He may simply have an aversion to dishonesty. However, this aversion to dishonesty is a desire that tends to fulfill the desires of others.

When you go to visit your friend in the hospital, do not visit him because you have calculated that, in your quest to make the world a better place, you have decided that visiting him is the best use of your time. Visit him because you care about how he is doing and you want to cheer him up – cheer him up; forget about the rest of the world.

Desire utilitarianism takes a step back. It reconizes that a desire to cheer up one’s sick friends is a desire that tends to fulfill other desires, and certainly not a desire that we have any reason to try to reduce or eliminate (or condemn). It is, instead, a desire we have reason to promote and nurture.

When we question the quality of the desire to cheer up one’s friends in the hospital, that is where we consider the rest of the world, and we judge the desire to be good. When it comes to visiting one’s friends in the hospital, the desire that one is acting on is the desire to cheer up a sick friend – a desire to say, “I’m here for you. Is there anything I can do to help?”

Finally, I want to restate Martino's final comment:

Do you want to be dictated to in some form or another and for everyone to want the same thing or do you want to exercise your liberty and freedom in you own way, as everyone else can too?

Desire utilitarianism says that there are some things we have reason to make universal desires. However, in a lot of cases, it simply does not pay for everybody to ‘want the same thing’. If everybody wanted to be a teacher, who would build the buildings? Who would cure disease? Who would examine questions of right and wrong in detail?

It is quite useful that we have some people who love teaching, some who love architecture, some who love medicine, and some who love moral philosophy.

My question to you is: Do you want this ‘freedom and liberty’ that you value to include the liberty to grab children off the street to be raped, tortured, and killed? Does it include the ‘freedom’ to command one’s armies to invade other countries for the purpose of taking control of their oil fields? Does it include the purpose of destroying whole cities because for the sake of adding a few billion dollars to the corporate bottom line?

Desire utilitarianism says that a love of liberty is a good desire for everybody to have. Since each individual is the most knowledgeable and least corruptible agent for directing the life of that individual (with the exception of young children and severely mentally handicapped), that a love of liberty puts decision-making capability of each life into the hands of the most competent and least corruptible agent.

However, it also says that it it is good that everybody love liberty - that those who would act to curtail liberty deserve condemnation and contempt. There is no room in this system for a love of tyranny – the exercise of ‘liberty and freedom’ does not include the liberty and freedom to arbitrarily harm others.

Desire utilitarianism explains where this boundary can be found.

More Issues with Desire Utilitarianism

Cameron has raised some more issues with desire utilitarianism.

One of those issues began with:

If I were omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent . . .

I do recognize that this type of perspective is common in moral philosophy. However, I do not see how it makes any sense.

Imagine a group of people on a sinking ship in the middle of the Pacific. While they look at their situation and try to decide what to do, one of them says, "If I was omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent . . . ."

Stop. You're none of those things. We have a real-world problem here and we need a real-world solution.

Morality, at least as I discuss it, has to do with real people living real lives where they are confronted with real-world human limitations. Those limitations preclude omniscience and omnipotence.

The whole case concerning the promoting of 'good' desires is that, if I desire X, then I have reason to cause you to desire that which will contribute to bringing about X. And if you desire Y, then you have reason to cause me to desire that which will bring about Y. There is nothing magical or mysterious about this relationship. If you want something, then you have reason to act so as to bring about that which you desire - as do I. This includes reason to cause others to have those desires that are useful to us - and for them to cause us to have desires that are useful to them.

If everyone's strongest desire (to the exclusion of all other desires) was to sit, smile, and watch other people sit and smile, that world is just as "good" as the real world in which our desires for justice and freedom and security and community are fulfilled.

Yes, if everybody desired only to sit and smile and watch others sit and smile, then they have no reason to do anything but to sit and smile and watch others sit and smile.

If you do not like this state, then it is because you desire something other than a universe in which people sit and smile. However, if you desired only to sit and smile and watch others sit and smile, you would have no reason to complain about this state either.

If you wish to argue that such a state is intrinsically bad then you need to present me with some type of evidence that intrinsic badness exists. An argument to the effect that you have an aversion to a certain set of propositions being true is not evidence that they are false.

Herein lies my problem. With DU, there's no intrinsic difference between promoting good desires and promoting an aversion to bad desires.

Actually, the claim is that intrinsic values do not exist. There is no real-world entity corresponding to intrinsic value. Any who claim that one state is intrinsically better than another is making a false claim. The only true claims that one can make (at least regarding value or 'reasons for action' is that a state tends to fulfill more and stronger desires than an alternative state.

Questions about what does and does not exist are simply not the types of questions to be settled by determining whether we like or dislike conclusions. They are determined by asking whether theories that contain those entities better explain real-world observations than theories without those entities. The claim that desires are the only reasons for action that exist is a claim that no other entity is needed to explain real-world events. It is not a claim that everybody who thinks about such a universe will find it more pleasing to them than any other universe in which they can imagine.

Now, even though there is no intrinsic difference between promoting good desires and inhibiting bad desires. However, there may well be an important practical difference. Perhaps it is simply easier to promote a good desire than to inhibit a bad desire. Perhaps are desires are more malleable in the direction of promotion than inhibition. In these cases, we are well advised to put more emphasis into promoting good desires than inhibiting bad desires.

What’s to stop someone from going around and attempting to instill in people the best desires he can come up with?

Why stop him. If he is instilling people with good desires, then he is instilling people with desires that tend to fulfill other desires - which includes our desires. What 'reason for action' would we have to stop him if desires are the only reasons for action that exist, and he is bringing about that which we have the most and strongest reason to see brought about?

What’s to stop those people from being wrong (even with the very best of intentions and methods)?

Nothing at all. Of course, this fact is taken into consideration in the theory. One of the reasons that I argue that words should only be met with words and private actions, and that campaigns in an open society should only be met with campaigns, is because of the possibility of error and of corruption. To the degree that I control my own life, I will act so as to best fulfill my desires, given my beliefs. To the degree that you control my life, then you will be directing me to act so as to fulfill your desires given your beliefs. Even if you had a desire that my desires be fulfilled, this will be one desire among many, in competition with others, and cast aside when those other desires outweigh this one.

The best option for fulfilling the most and strongest desires is to allow each individual to decide how best to run his or her own life - to promote an aversion to one person directing the life of another, except in those rare instances where one person is clearly incapable of rational decision making (e.g., young children)

Finally, is the only reason that the idea of people doing that because I have a (malleable) aversion to the whole idea of someone else knowing what’s best for me?

I am not really sure what you intended to say in this sentence. However, in fact, for the vast majority of competent adults, we can direct our own lives more efficiently than others can direct our lives.

This is John Stuart Mill's argument for liberty in On Liberty. Decisions on which options to take should be made by those who have the best information and face the best incentives to making sure that the relevant desires are fulfilled. The person who knows most about how to fulfill your desires is you (again, unless you are suffering under some real significant mental impairment). You are also the least corruptible agent that can be found - the agent most interested in making sure that your acts fulfill your desires. For these reasons, desire utilitarianism argues for a desire for liberty, and an aversion to tyranny and oppression.

Passionately Pursuing Causes of Dubious Value

What should we say of a person who passionately throws himself into promoting a cause that, in fact, produces little harm or benefit? Should we condemn them for wasting time and resources on something trivial? Or should we leave them alone since they are not really hurting anybody?

The discussion so far has suggested leaving them alone. There are more important fish to fry. We should save our own efforts to fighting those who passionately throw themselves into causes that do genuine harm. Global-warming denial, the tobacco lobby, violent religious fundamentalism, attempts to establish a theocracy, the abolition of checks and balances, the public indifference to sophistry and dishonesty, the denigration of atheists in the public school system. These ‘causes’ are far more worth our time and energy than those that produce no real harm or benefit.

However, there is more to say on the issue, from a desire utilitarian perspective.

This situation invites us to ask the question, “Do these people realize that the ‘cause’ they are passionately devoting themselves to produce no real benefit?”

If they truly realize that the cause they are devoting themselves to have little value, then it would be hard to explain their passion. We certainly will not be able to explain it in terms of a passion to bring about that which is good (that which there are the most and strongest reasons to bring about). In fact, if they knew that their aims were relatively worthless we would have to conclude that they do not care much (if at all) about doing that which is good. If they had such a desire, then they would abandon that which has no merit in favor of doing good.

In this case, we can condemn these people for the lack of a desire to do that which is good. We certainly have no reason to promote indifference to the value of the causes one devotes time and energy to. We have reason to demand that those who devote themselves passionately to a cause at least believe that the cause is worthwhile, and to abandon it otherwise.

The other option, then, is that the agents have a desire to do that which is good and falsely belief that promoting this particular cause counts as doing good. Somehow, they have acquired false beliefs about the value of the cause they are promoting.

Consider: Members of group A are passionately opposed to people X-ing. Does the fact that people engage in X-ing thwart A’s desires?

Not necessarily.

It may be the case that the members of group A desire to decrease the total amount of intrinsic badness in the universe, and believe that X-ing contains intrinsic badness. Or, alternatively, they are averse to a state in which God is displeased, and believe that people X-ing displeases God. In these cases, it does not matter how much X-ing that people in Group B do, it will not change the total amount of intrinsic value nor will it create a state in which God is displeased. There is no sense, in these types of cases, that the desire to X can be condemned for being desire-thwarting.

These errors may, in turn, be culpable errors, or non-culpable errors. One of the principles that I have argued for is that when a person makes a mistake, we can often trace the fact that he has made a mistake to the desires of the agent. The agent with a false belief, in many cases, is believing what he wants to believe, rather than what the evidence suggests is true.

Where false beliefs give us insight into a person’s desires, we can use that information to determine whether they give evidence of good desires, or bad desires.

For example, somebody who truly wants to do good in the world should be worried about whether the causes he devotes himself to are actually promoting good in the world. If the agent is dismissing evidence to the contrary without giving it due consideration, we can conclude that the agent really doesn’t care about whether he is doing good or not. If he does not care, then we can still condemn him for lack of caring. Whereas the person who truly worries about arguments against his position shows that he actually does care about doing good.

We can also learn something about a person’s character by his willingness to embrace propaganda when it supports a cause that he favors. We have seen evidence of this type of behavior recently in Rush Limbaugh’s eagerness to embrace a hoax that purported to disprove the claim that humans caused global warming, the willingness of conservatives to embrace the ‘swift-boating’ of a 10 year old boy who spoke in favor of government health care for children, the willingness of democrats to embrace a rhetorical sophistry of dividing the cost of the war in Iraq among all Americans equally, even though they do not all pay an equal amount in taxes. I have found it in Representative Dana Rahrbacher’s eagerness to engineer false beliefs about global warming.

Where we see this type of behavior, we have reason to conclude that those individuals do not truly care about whether they are doing good or evil – because such people would have double-checked these reports and been averse to spreading lies and disinformation.

In these types of cases, we still have no reason to condemn the person for passionately pursuing a cause that has no real value. We do have reason to condemn him for his lack of interest in whether his cause has real value and for his willingness to lie or to engineer false beliefs in order to manipulate others.

Let us say that the agent has made an honest mistake. They passionately devoted themselves to a cause that they sincerely and responsibly came to believe was good, but which in fact had no real-world merit, but produced no real-world harm.

Any of us can find ourselves in that position. I admit that I may be in that position with respect to this blog. Each and every post may well be a passionate defense of attitudes that produce no real harm or benefit. In some cases I might be wrong, passionately arguing in defense of some attitude that, in fact, does far more harm than good.

We do not have reason to condemn such people – as long as they are willing to listen to alternatives and do not dismiss arguments against their position lightly. In fact, in these types of cases, it would be hard to say for sure that they are wrong. These people would be in the same position as a parent who fills a prescription for their child that ends up killing the child. They had good reason to believe that the prescription would help rather than harm the child. These are victims of an unfortunate accident (or a doctor’s negligence). These are not bad people themselves.

However, these people have still wasted their lives. A desire is fulfilled in any state of affairs where the proposition that is the object of the desire is made or kept true. A desire to keep one’s child healthy is fulfilled only if the child is kept healthy. A desire to keep one’s child healthy cannot be fulfilled by making the child sick. The parent who falsely believes that his child is healthy is like the person who lives inside an experience machine, falsely believing the images the machine feeds him. In spite of his ignorance of the fact, his life is wasted.

The person who passionately pursues a cause that has no real merit is in the same situation. His desire to do good is left unfulfilled. He has wasted his life, because he has not spent it doing what he wanted to spend it doing, which is pursuing something that has real value. He got distracted, and ended up wasting his life on a delusion.

In all of this, we must remember how difficult it is in many cases to know what is good, and how easy it is to make mistakes. The doctrine that I have defended in this blog that it is only legitimate to respond to words with words and private actions, and that a political campaign may only be met with a counter-campaign, respects the fact that there is a supreme amount of arrogance in violently forcing one’s views on others.

If somebody has devoted himself to a cause that has no real merit, but he truly wants to do good and is not guilty of any type of intellectual recklessness, then it follows by definition that nobody can easily prove him wrong. He might as well be right. Using violence (rather than words, private actions and political campaigns) pretends to a level of certainty that the individual is wrong that the evidence does not support.

It is a common affliction among humans to arrogantly presume one’s own infallibility. A right to freedom of speech and the press is the rational person’s way of making sure that this all-too-common tendency towards arrogance does not turn into a bloodbath among competing factions foolishly convinced of their own infallibility.

At this point, there is no just condemnation and criticism. These people can and should be left alone, not because the accuser has better things to do with his time, but because the accuser does not have sufficiently strong evidence that the accused is guilty of pursuing a trivial cause. Since it is the agent’s life, and we are assuming a strong desire to do good, we have to leave the agent in the position to decide what that good is. This is not to say that whatever he decides is right. It is to say that the agent has the best incentive to make sure that his beliefs are true and accurate, and he is less likely to corrupt his own actions by twisting it to some other ends.

Provided, of course, that the agent has a genuine interest in doing good – the type of interest that manifests itself in him double-checking his work, objectively studying the data, and considering seriously the possibility of error.

The "Smart" Democratic Candidate

A member of the studio audience asked:

In your opinion, who would be the "smart" candidate for the Democratic party to select (and the smart running mate, for that matter)?

I want to start by claiming that I have no special affection for Democratic candidates. I do not view the differences between Democrats and Republicans to be as stark as the difference between good and evil. There are two factions of the Republican Party that I strongly dislike – one faction fighting for theocracy and another fighting for corporate feudalism. However, there are other Republican factions, such as the principled free-market faction, that I would side with over most Democrats.

However, I was asked about the ‘smart’ Democratic candidate, and a person does not need to be a devoted Party loyalist to answer such a question.

I take the term ‘smart’ in this context to refer to means-ends rationality. This means that, before we can select the best route to take, we need to think about the destination. What is the goal in this case?

I suspect that the goal - at least from a Party point of view - is to have total control of government – executive, legislative, and judicial. Whereas one-party control over all branches of government seems to coincide with the elimination of a system of checks and balances, and an unchecked executive branch is already a serious problem, I am not looking forward to having the Democrats in control of both the legislative and executive branches.

Of course, the Democratic leadership in Congress has proved itself to be inept even when it comes to checking and balancing a Republican executive.

Still, in its quest for unchecked political power, the ‘smart’ thing for the Democrats to do is to take market surveys and opinion polls, testing out different strategies, choosing that strategy that will gain their Presidential candidate a majority of the electoral votes, and a majority in the Senate and House. Since I do not have the resources to conduct those polls and to collect that information, I can only guess at what they say. My guess is of no particular value. In fact, I tend to write in condemnation of those who pretend to know more than they do when there are experts who spend their libes trying to answer these questions. I would rather leave those answers up to the experts.

However, I will offer this prediction. If a Democrat becomes President, he or she will expand upon, rather than curtail, unchecked executive power. This is because the Republicans will still be pressing the fear button. Any and every sign of risk to the American people will be followed up by charges that the administration is not doing enough to protect us. Any attempt to check executive authority will be ‘framed’ as handcuffing those who are protecting us from terrorists.

Most importantly, in this conflict, the people will side with the Republicans over the Democrats. In other words, this will be an effective strategy, and the ‘smart’ Democratic president will do what it takes to minimize its power by refusing to ‘handcuff’ those who are defending us from terrorists.

Besides, every President wants unchecked power. Nothing bothers a President more than a bunch of political opportunists preventing him or her from doing what he or she knows to be right and good. An individual has to have a certain amount of arrogance to run for President, and that arrogance tends to be intolerant of dissent – particularly dissent with power. It is just too tempting to simply silence the dissenters and do what one wants to do.

The ‘smart’ Democrat is also going to pander to the religious right. They have power, and they have money, so they will be listened to. I wrote in an earlier post on The Reason Caucus that political power comes from forming a political organization that focuses on maximizing the amount of money and the number of votes that flows through it to the various candidates. There is no “Reason Caucus” in either political party at this tine (that I am aware of – which itself testifies to the power of any Reason Caucus that does exist). So, candidates have absolutely no incentive (other thIt dan a desire to avoid the harms that come from pursuing irrational policies based on myth and superstition) to pursue a Reason agenda.

Some atheist bloggers have condemned elected Democrats for professing faith over reason. They want to demand that Democrats profess reason over faith. Yet, demanding that a Democrat do this in the current climate is virtually the same as demanding that the Democrat give up his or her opportunity to actually win the election, and to hand that position over to somebody else who is willing to profess faith over reason.

The only way to make it ‘smart’ for a Democrat to profess reason over faith is to form an organization that channels money and votes to candidates that profess reason over faith.

I have seen articles in which atheists bragged that some atheist organizations have jumped in membership to over 10,000 people. Any ‘smart’ Democratic candidate who reads this bost in the paper knows from this fact alone that professing a ‘reason-based’ agenda is political suicide. Reason-based agendas have no political legs until and unless reason-based voters are capable of filling whole football stadiums when the Reason Caucus decides to hold an event in a given city. Until then, they are politically insignificant.

If somebody wants a ‘smart’ candidate to do something else – to restore a system of checks and balances, to pursue reason-based policies – then one has to create an environment where it is politically advantageous to do so. It has to be an environment that channels money and votes to candidates who prove that they are eager defenders checks and balances and reason-based policy.

This takes time and money. An unwillingness to spend time and money in this particular challenge is pretty good testimony that one does not actually care about the potential consequences one way or the other. A person will act so as to fulfill the more and stronger of his desires, given his beliefs. If he does not act to promote reason-based policies or a system of checks and balances, this tells us that he does not care very much about the establishment of reason-based policies and a system of checks and balances.

That, itself, is not very smart. It is just a matter of time until unchecked executive power ends up in the hands of somebody who cares only to use it to enslave the people to the interests of a few wealthy and powerful friends. Faith-based policies, a lack of concern over whether the claims that others make are true or well-founded, a willingness to accept lies and sophist arguments because the person speaking is saying what one wants to hear (and one does not care if what one wants to hear is actually true) means the adoption of poor policies that make all lives worse than they would otherwise be.

The ‘smart’ population will always tell the people what they want to hear. The question is whether the people want to hear the truth, or pleasant lies.

I am amused by candidates who assert, “I am willing to tell people what I believe. My opponent, however, only tells the people what they want to hear.” However, if the candidate in question is not telling people what they want to hear, then he will not get elected. Even the claim, “I am not inclined to tell the voters what they want to hear,” is something that a candidate says, and makes into a campaign slogan, only because (and to the degree that) polls tell the candidate that this is what the people want to hear.

Certainly, no candidate can please all of the voters. So, every candidate has an opportunity to tell some voters what they do not want to hear. After choosing which candidates he is willing to alienate (because those voters do not carry weight – since they are already lost to the candidate anyway or because they are politically impotent), then the candidate can use this as an example of saying what some people do not want to hear. None of this is inconsistent with telling people what they want to hear – regardless of the candidate’s claim to the contrary.

So, the ‘smart’ thing to do is to put some effort into creating body of voters willing to contribute time and money into wanting to hear reason and truth. When people wanting to hear reason and truth are willing to throw their coordinated weight around, and when they want to hear reason and truth so badly that they will outspend and outwork those who want to hear faith and superstition, then the ‘smart’ politicians will change how they conduct their campaigns.

Neutral Desires

Today I turn to the studio audience once again for another question.

On a desire utilitarian theory, can’t a good person ever relax and watch some mindless television? Does he have to

spend every waking moment doing good?

I am paraphrasing what I take to be the heart of an issue that Cameron raised to my posting, "Berlinerblau on Living Large vs Living Right": ,

Cameron points out (correctly) that I have said that we have neither reason to promote nor reason to condemn ‘neutral’ desires – desires that neither fulfill nor thwart other desires. Cameron argues instead that we have reason to condemn neutral desires because the person who is fulfilling neutral desires is not doing any good. He is sitting in front of the television guzzling a beer while he watches American Idol when he could be doing something productive. At the very least, he could be sitting in front of the television guzzling beer watching the Science Channel.

Now if I, as a moral person, truly want the world to be a better place than it otherwise would be, it seems to me that these so-called "morally neutral" desires, ones that don't directly help or hinder the desires of others, should be the subject of condemnation. Since many of these "neutral" desires have to do with personal well being (relaxation, health, etc), there's some flexibility. As a moral society, should we not direct that flexibility towards everyone's benefit? For example, if both watching TV and planting trees are relaxing, should we not condemn those that choose to watch TV when they could be out planting trees?

By the way, ‘flexibility’ (or what I call ‘malleability’) is important here because we are talking about desires that can be modified through social forces. It makes no sense to use social forces to alter a desire that cannot be altered.

However, let us look at our agent with a desire to relax. Let us assume that both watching television and planting trees are equally relaxing. Under these assumptions, why is this person watching television instead of planting trees?

A person acts so as to fulfill the more and stronger of his desires, given his beliefs. If this agent had a desire to relax (that both activities fulfilled equally), and even a smidgen of a desire to provide society with any of the benefits that come from planting trees, then he would be planting trees. The fact that he is not planting trees suggests either that (1) he lacks a desire to provide the community with any of the benefits of planting trees, or (2) planting trees does not fulfill the desire to relax as well as watching television.

The first option leaves the agent open to condemnation. Desire utilitarianism holds that a person can be condemned, not only for the bad desires that he has, but for the good desires he does not have. This is the key difference between desire utilitarianism and motive-based theories of the past.

Previous motive-based moral theories held that an act inherent its moral value from the quality of the motives from which it sprang. These theories could not account for the moral crime of negligence (which does not spring from any desire to do harm; but merely exhibits no particular interest in preventing harm). Desire utilitarianism condemns a person for the absence of good desires. This, it condemns those who negligent for lacking a proper level of concern for the consequences that his actions may have on others.

However, the second possibility – that the desire for relaxation itself motivates people to sit in front of the television all day and watch reruns of Gilligan’s Island or Seinfeld when they could be doing something productive with their lives – still exists. Is this not reason enough to condemn the desire for relaxation.

“Get off your fat, lazy ass and do something with your life.”

Not only do we have reason to condemn those who desire things that do not help others, we actually do condemn them. We do not condemn them enough, as far as I can see. Americans spend far too much time watching television and, when they are watching television, they are watching mind-numbing television with no socially redeeming qualities whatsoever. Americans alone spend over $300 billion per year on sports products. Over the past 20 years, they could have built 60 space stations with the money that they spent on sports.

Does this not contradict my claim that we have no reason to promote or inhibit neutral desires?

To answer this, please note that I express the distinction between a neutral desire and a bad desire using the concept of ‘harmony’. Two desires are in harmony to the degree that both desires can be fulfilled at the same time. For example, a desire to eat and a desire for the company of good friends can both be fulfilled by going out to eat with good friends. To desires are in conflict if an agent must choose between the fulfillment of one desire or the fulfillment of the other. A desire to smoke and a desire to enjoy a long and healthy life are in conflict since smoking thwarts the desire for a long life (and many of the desires that a long life would otherwise help to fulfill).

The so-called ‘neutral’ desire that pulls resources away from activities that would otherwise tend to fulfill other desires is not a neutral desire at all. It is a bad desire. It contributes to the thwarting of other desires by pulling resources away from acts that would fulfill other desires.

Those are desires that we have reason to condemn.

In addition, I would like to note that the question of condemnation also faces a cost-benefit tradeoff. It is not worthwhile to go after limited transgression in the face of more serious transgressions. This, too, would be an example of wasting scarce resources on projects other than where they do the most good. Somebody who does good can be allowed a little time to relax and enjoy himself; he is still better than the person who does nothing.

Let us look at the example of sitting down and watching television. To somebody who generally spends a fair amount of their time doing things to help others, I see no objection against allowing him a little bit of free time. Military planners in particular know the value of a little rest and relaxation from time to time – pulling units off of the front line so that they can fight more effectively when they return to the front line. This leisure is not contemptible unless it becomes excessive. The person who cares about nothing but catching the next episode of his favorite television show is a pathetic (and morally repugnant) individual.

Cameron provides other examples:

Since both eating vegetarian, and eating meat can provide nutrition requirements, should we not condemn those that eat meat (due to the massive additional inputs required to produce it) instead of vegetables?

This is a more potent argument in a region where people were starving due to lack of food. The problem of starvation in many parts of the world is not a lack of food (indeed, governments – including the United States – still pay farmers NOT to grow food. However, if it were the case that the person eating beef caused was taking food out of the mouths of those who were starving, then the person eating beef could be condemned. This would not be a neutral desire – it would be a desire that tends to thwart the desires of others.

Since both donating to church and donating to a local homeless shelter ostensibly fulfill a desire for charity, should we not condemn those that choose to donate to church instead of the homeless?

One of the complications that this brings up is the issue of what it takes to fulfill a desire. A desire that ‘P’ (e.g., a desire that I serve God) can only be fulfilled in a state of affairs in which P is true. Many of the desires that motivate a person to donate to a church rather than a homeless shelter are NOT desires that can be fulfilled. There is, at least, ‘reason for action’ to correct this error to the degree that want the homeless to acquire real-world benefits.

If we go further and discover that the agent does not care about the truth of his beliefs, then we have reason to condemn him for his lack of interest in producing real-world benefits.

So, we have a case of laziness where the desire is not neutral because it tends to thwart other desires. We have a case of where the behavior in question does not thwart desires and would condemn the person if it did. We have a case in which desires cannot be fulfilled because of false beliefs and, potentially, room for criticism for the person who does not care about whether he has false belief or whether he produces real-world benefits.

We do not have examples of a neutral desire itself worthy of condemnation.

We will not have such an example, though the reason for this may be considered ‘cheating’ in a sense. The instant a desire tends to thwart other desires – the instant we have reason to condemn it – at that instant it ceases to be neutral.

A Rationalist Caucus

P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula has asked, Can We Please For a Rationalist Party Now? in the face of significant theism on display in both the Democratic and Republican Parties.

It is a bad idea.

What happens with third parties in a winner-take-all political system that we have is that it drives the nation in the opposite direction to that which the third party desires.

A third party has almost no chance of winning an election. The winner will inevitably be a member of one of the two major parties (unless the nation is on the verge of a major schism such as that produced at the eve of the Civil War). A rationalist party will effectively take all rationalist voters out of the election – telling the candidates in both major parties that the rationalist vote is unavailable.

Assume, for the sake of argument, that rationalists tend to support Democrats over Republicans. If a Rationalist Party removes the rationalist vote from the Democratic Party, the Democratic candidates are going to have to make up those votes somehow. The only option is to embrace theocracy even more strongly than it has in the past, in order to seduce a larger percentage of theocratic voters out of the Republican Party. The result is to drive both major parties (the only parties capable of fielding viable candidates) even closer to theocracy.

If rationalists want to have a genuine influence on the political process, what they need to do is to organize a faction within one of the two major parties. They have to join a party, they have to identify themselves at party meetings and party functions, they have to get together on their own, and they have to commit themselves to simultaneously promoting their own power within the party while promoting the power of the party itself.

Step 1: Join the party. Register as a party member, find out when the next party meeting is, and show up.

Step 2: Declare yourself. At some time, declare that you are a rationalist, that you insist on dealing with social problems by applying the scientific method to those problems and allow policies to be dictated by the results of peer-reviewed academic research. Make it known that you would like to get together with other rationalists to discuss the rationalist cause. For example, extend an open invitation for all people who are interested in a rationalist caucus to meet at your home on Sunday morning.

Step 3: At that meeting, accept the fact that your primary job is to raise money and votes for the party that you have decided to join. This is where your power will come from. When the Rationalist Caucus endorses a candidate, how many votes will that sway? When somebody that the Rationalist Caucus endorses needs money for a new set of television ads, how much money can the Rationalist Caucus provide? When election day comes, how many votes can the Rationalist Caucus deliver to the polls?

This means that, at the very first meeting, set up the infrastructure for collecting and banking money, procedures for deciding who to support with that money, and procedures for raising more money. It means setting up the infrastructure for a contact list, how to get in touch with them, and how to mobilize them when the need arises.

The Rationalist Caucus should begin with the acknowledgement that their job is to form a part of an alliance among the best 51% against the worst 49% of what this country has to offer. If they end up forcing an alliance only among the best 49% then, on election day, they will be handing the country over to an alliance of the worst 51%. This means accepting the fact that many members of that alliance will not be rationalist and may hold ideas that have no rational support whatsoever. It means saying of others, “The unreasonableness of your beliefs are as bad as the unreasonableness of others that we must truly unite against.”

The magic number, again, is an alliance of the best 51%..

Within this “best 51%”, the Rationalist Caucus has the job of making itself an ever more powerful component of that alliance. In order to throw around one’s weight, one needs to put on weight to be thrown around.

Towards this end, the Rationalist Caucus should immediately set to work advertising to increase its membership and increasing the quantity and quality of contributions it can make in terms of money and labor. It does not need to have the money and labor itself, as long as it can direct the actions of those who are willing to contribute. If appealing to the Rationalist Caucus means that an email goes out that adds a few thousand dollars to a local candidate’s election campaign, then people will be appealing to the rationalist caucus.

Growing the Rationalist Caucus does not mean only going to atheist conventions to rally the atheists. It means going onto college campuses where academically-minded people congregate. It also means recruiting the best and the brightest at the high school level – those who have labor-hours available and who show a promising ability to help organize Campus Rationalists once they go to college.

It means that the Rationalist Caucus is going to put a lot of effort in on election day making sure that RC members get out to vote. It will have people set up to call every Rationalist Caucus member to urge them to vote, arrange transportation for those who express any difficulty at all getting to the polls, be ready to answer questions for anybody who has difficulty understanding exactly what they need to do. The more votes, and the more money, that gets to the candidate through the members of the Rationalist Caucus, the more power the Caucus has in determining the course of the party.

Another way for the Rationalist Caucus to grow it power and influence would be through activities such as organizing panel discussions from people with the highest academic credentials to discuss issues of importance. Does the Party want to deal with the issue of teenage suicide? Then the Rationalist Caucus finds those people who have studied the empirical peer-reviewed research and who are respected by their academic peers to come in and explain the facts regarding teenage suicide – what the research shows to be the cause, and how to prevent it.

There will be no room at the Rationalist Caucus Forum for pseudo-scientists and witch doctors. The Rationalist Caucus is for people who want real-world solutions to real-world problems.

At each event, the Rationalist Caucus should advertise why people have reason to help the Caucus. “Our goal is to find real-world solutions to real-world problems. Please contribute. Please join. Go elsewhere, and you will be appealing to snake-oil salesmen and demagogues for your solutions. Here, you get reason and facts.”

The Rationalist Caucus should also go to businesses and organizations that depend on smart people using reason to solve problems and making sure that they know of the Caucus and of the reasons they have to support its effort.

In doing this, I would recommend that the Rationalist Caucus not embrace any particular set of conclusions. As soon as people start to embrace conclusions, they start to use the conclusions they embraced to evaluate the evidence they see. They become dismissive of research that contradicts their desired conclusion, and give extra credit to that which confirms their prejudices. The Rationalist Caucus’ job is to reveal the facts that the best academic minds have so far discovered.

So, the answer to the question of abstinence-only education is not, “Yes” or “No”. It is, “Here is a list of the academics who have written on the subject, reviews of their work, and a tally of the results. We report, you decide.”

I do not think that the Rationalist Caucus should focus so much on getting its members elected (though it certainly must exercise whatever power it has to determine who does get elected). However, the Caucus should make it a point to put its members in a position to be appointed to any committees that will be investigating important matters, and finding qualified witnesses to appear on matters of importance. In all cases, the focus should be on the quality of the arguments, not the effectiveness of the demagoguery.

The Rationalist Caucus should be the first to take action whenever a campaign gets cluttered with some lies that are circulating – through the internet, through advertisements, through campaign speeches. Their network should immediately go into action to correct those lies as loudly as possible – and to condemn the liars, the sophists, or those who generally disrespect truth to such a degree that they seemed not to care that the claims were fallacious or fictitious.

Plundering the Moon

I have warned readers not to be so fixated on religious idiocy that they lose track of non-religious idiocy and thus give it a free pass. One such expression of lunacy (if one will pardon the pun) appeared in the Guardian on October 27. In an article called "Plundering the Moon", Andrew Smith wrote to express his misgivings over the possibility of humans actually mining the resources of the moon.

how extraordinary to think that the next giant leap for the environmental movement might be a campaign to stop state-sponsored mining companies chomping her up in glorious privacy, a quarter of a million miles from our ravaged home.

Some of the comments to the article are also interesting.

There seemed to be plenty of enthusiasm there for digging up the moon when we've finished plundering the Earth. It's a horrifying prospect.

If i had a way i would destroy all of mankind's ventures outside of the Earth, at least until he learns to appreciate and protect - this world. We should stay here until we prove ourselves worthy of existence by learning to live here peacefully with each other - in harmony with our environment.

These types of comments are not merely some mistaken apprehension of some set of complex facts. This is the personification of stupidity. This is like saying, “We are going to take away your food until you learn to survive without eating,” or, “We will not permit you to have any money until you learn to spend it wisely.”

First there is the unmitigated arrogance of these speakers, taking the attitude of a wise ‘father’ who needs to teach us unruly ‘children’ a lesson. The form of speech itself is demeaning, condescending, and arrogant.

Second, the speakers do not offer any solutions to the problems they lament over. They merely assert that the human race does not meet the standards they set to be worthy of survival.

However, let us assume that one of these individuals decides to actually think about solving some of the problems they speak about. What might we predict would occur to a person who has decided to take a different and more cooperative approach – one that asks, “Given that we have these problems, what is the best way to deal with them?”

It is almost too obvious to mention that one of the best ways to deal with the destruction of living ecosystems brought about through mining, manufacturing, and simply living on the Earth would be to move some of those activities to dead worlds in space – places where there is no living ecosystem to damage.

I want to stress this fact. The moon is dead. It is the very embodiment of sterile – lifeless, incapable of appreciating (and holding no entities capable of appreciating) anything that goes on in the living world. It has spent 3.9 billion years in a radiation bath without a magnetic field capable of protecting it from radiation, in capable of supporting an atmosphere, it has no life other than the life that humans bring with them.

On the other hand, there is no place on Earth where humanity can mine, refine, manufacture, or even live that is not cutting into a living eco-system. You can’t build a factory or a plant a crop, build a house or produce energy anywhere on earth that does not require the destruction of living things. You can do all of these things in space and the only living creatures who are impacted are those that we bring with us.

To somebody who thinks in terms of solving problems rather than lamenting how despicable they think human beings are, the moon and the other chunks of dead chunks of rock and ice that are floating around in space are exactly what we need to save the only living ecosystem we have so far discovered.

I can understand something of where some of these people might be coming from. I have looked outside my window after a fresh snow fall and seen a wide open field unblemished by human footprints – or any footprints for that matter. I have some sense of regret when that untrammeled piece of nature comes to bear the scars of a human trafficker. However, I do not allow that one desire to stop me from going to work – even when going to work requires that I be the first to cross that unblemished field of snow. However, when a person’s appreciation for aesthetic beauty is at the point where she is willing to starve herself and demand that those around her also starve – all out of a sense of disgust at disturbing nature – then that person’s desire has progressed into a neurosis.

I can also understand somebody who believes that space development has, at best, limited potential. The idea that we might harvest the bulk of our energy and minerals from the dead of space seems impractical. It is, at best, merely an excuse for refusing to solve the problems of earth. The situation here can be described as similar to that of a person who takes larger and larger doses of aspirin to deal with a toothache, without ever going to the dentist to get the real problem taken care of. Even with space resources available to us, we still need to deal with the problems that space development cannot solve.

I can agree with this – as far as it goes. However, it is not an argument against space development, and it has nothing to do with disturbing the pristine nature of a dead space rock. This is simply a question of what works and what does not work. As for me, I am willing to simply require that companies on earth pay the true costs of cutting deeper and deeper scars into the living ecosystems of Earth. Let those companies decide which option makes the most business sense – moving their operations to a place where there are no such costs, or redesigning their operations to minimize their impact. This hardly implies objection to space colonization. Instead, it implies letting the market decide, once all of the costs of different options have been captured.

It also means capturing the benefits - including those benefits that exist as 'public goods' - the type that create what economists call 'free rider problems'. One of these public goods that needs to be captured in evaluating space is the value of the survival of the human species (or its descendents).

Actually, I consider the Helium 3 option to be mostly science-fiction. It would be nice if it were to pan out, but I am not holding my breath. I am not as eager to buy into the belief that it will solve all of the world’s problems.

However, one thing about the value of space development, to the degree that the survival of the human species is at all important, we significantly improve our chances of survival to the degree that we have a space civilization capable of self-sufficiency. Diversity the number of places where humans live, and we increase the odds that humans (and any other species we care to take with us) will survive a catastrophic event on Earth itself.

Nothing can protect this value better than space development.

There is no escaping the fact that, at some point in our future, the only (descendents of) humans left alive – if there are descendents - will be those living in space, as the earth itself becomes a lifeless shell. are those that have moved off of the surface of the earth. The Earth will become a barren and lifeless planet itself. We might bring this upon ourselves through environmental damage or biological or nuclear warfare. We might simply be the victims of bad luck – a comet heading straight for us or some other natural disaster that sends humanity back to a stone age from which we will never again emerge. It might take until the sun boils away the ocean and destroys the Earth. However it happens, our future rests in space, not on this planet.

Staying on Earth is like a child staying in its mother’s womb. As the child grows, it must leave the womb, or the mother and the child will both die.

Helping Teenagers

I have another question from the studio audience:

Hello Mr. Fyfe, I am a believer and I am doing a paper on why prayer should not be forced in school. Part of that paper is on all of the violence that is taking place in the schools, how the atheists and the believers feel about them, what the two think should be done about the problems. Can you please help me and give me your views on the current problems in the school system. Sex, drugs, shootings, cheating on tests, unprepared teachers are just some of the problems that I am writing about. I thank you

I would be pleased to do so.

However, I must begin with a set of standard disclaimers.

The question of asking how ‘atheists feel” about some policy is about as fruitful as asking about how ‘heliocentrists feel.” Heliocentrists believe that the proposition, “The sun is at the center of the solar system,” is almost certainly true. This view is compatible with a wide range of views on how we on Earth are to live our lives, so that it is absurd to ask about the heliocentrist view on, for example, prayer in schools.

Atheists (as I and the vast majority of competent English speakers use the term) believe that the proposition “At least one god exists” is almost certainly false. This, too, is compatible with a wide range of beliefs about social policy.

It is also the case that belief that the proposition, “At least one god does exist” is almost certainly true is compatible with an endless array of positions on social policy. This is proved by the wide variety of religions that now exist, or have existed.

When I answer questions about how people should live, I do not derive my conclusions from atheism. Atheism is a view that I hold in addition to my moral view, which is ‘desire utilitarianism’. Atheism does not imply desire utilitarianism, and desire utilitarianism does not require that one be an atheist. A person can, for example, consistently believe that there is a God that created a universe in which the propositions that make up desire utilitarian theory are true – just as he can believe that a God created a universe in which humans evolved over billions of years.

Solving Problems

When it comes to solving problems, I think that we need to answer an important question before we start looking at policies, and that is, “How are we going to evaluate different policies?” We have a conflict here between two different ways of evaluating policies. One is to use the scientific method – the practice of making observations, coming up with a number of theories to explain those observations, making predictions based on those theories, and running experiments to see which theory holds up. The other is to trust that a bunch of ignorant tribesmen who have been dead for several thousand years somehow acquired perfect knowledge of the best way to organize a society to eliminate these problems.

If a person truly cares about finding policies that work – if they truly care about making the lives of more teenagers better than they would have otherwise been, then I hold that they would evaluate policies using the first method, rather than the second.

More specifically, the first method says that we take a set of observations about the real world (for example, comparing crime rates, student aptitude, pregnancy rates, prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases among students, suicide rates), and we look for real-world factors that can influence these rates (genetics, family income, social institutions). Theorists attempt to draw relationships between these factors that are consistent with the range of observations. They take these theories and they make predictions of the form, “Under conditions C, R will result.” They then either create conditions C or look for a natural situation where conditions C already exist. If they find R wherever they find (or create) conditions C, then this supports (though does not definitively prove) the theory. If not, this falsifies the theory, and the theorists look for another explanation.

For example, in examining teenage suicide, they come up with a theory that tries to explain and predict the circumstances under which teenagers are more likely to kill themselves. A theory that best explains teenage suicide will typically allow a theorist to say, “If we remove these conditions C, then we can reduce the number of teenage suicides.” They then look at situations where condition C exists, and see if teenage suicides are lower. If they are, then we have reason to advocate removing conditions C elsewhere.

One of the implications of this approach is that it allows for the possibility of expert opinion. Take two people. Person 1 has spent his life going through the data – the set of observations and theories on teenage suicide, read the studies in the peer-reviewed journals, and from this has formed an opinion on how best to reduce teenage suicide. The other is an IT support person who happens to have a blog on the internet. When it comes to trying to learn the best way to deal with teenage suicide, reason suggests trusting the professional who has spent her life studying the data and theories over the IT specialist with a blog.

Which means that I am not going to tell you how I feel about most policies. What I am going to tell you is that ‘feelings’ do not matter so much. What matters are facts. What matters are expert opinions.

I do hold that I am an expert in some areas. I have spent my life studying value theory – theories of what ‘better’ is and how to find it. I can tell you, in my expert opinion, that a ‘better’ policy is a policy that a person with good desires will want to see enacted, and a good desire is a desire that tends to fulfill other desires. I need the input of experts in a specific field to determine which policies in that specific field fit this criterion.

Looking For What Really Works

When people actually take the time to look at the evidence, or to listen to those who have spent their lives looking at the evidence, they may well discover that something they want to believe is false. A common reaction is to then deny what the evidence shows to be true. However, in the case of evaluating policies to prevent teenage suicides, homicides, unplanned pregnancy, illness (sexually transmitted or otherwise), and accident, this arrogant dismissal of the facts has a very real cost. It means embracing policies that fail to prevent the harms that an acceptance of the facts could help us prevent.

Imagine a simple case in which research shows that policy P reduces teenage suicide rates by 30 percent (without having other adverse side effects). Let us say that policy P is accepting homosexuality – because research shows that negative social attitudes towards homosexuality contributes significantly to teenage suicide rates. However, for religious reasons, large numbers of people refuse to embrace this policy. The result is that we have teenagers killing themselves who could have otherwise lived healthy and productive lives.

One of the things that scientists know, and which they incorporate into their work, is the tremendous tendency that people have to allow bias to color what they think they see in the real world. To combat this problem, scientists have come up with a number of ways to remove bias. For example, doctors cannot be trusted to simply observe the results of any given drug. Instead, to get good data, researchers have to keep doctors in the dark as to whether their patient (in any given study) is getting a placebo or the real drug. This way, the doctor who wants to find a cure for a particular disease will not see what he wants (hopes) to see when he examines a patient.

Many scientists, when they send their papers in for review, are also required to send them blind – with the authors’ names removed, and all reference to an author’s earlier publications expressed in the third person. This is to make it easier for a reviewer to judge a submission by its content, rather than by the reputation of the author.

Consider this possibility: Assume that there is a choice between two policies. Policy A has a 45% effectiveness (e.g., 45% of students subjected to Policy A will not engage in risky behavior B), whereas Policy B has a 60% effectiveness. However, 90% of the people are living under Policy A, and only ten percent under Policy B.

Now, assume that the press or Congress, or just your average person on the street appealing to their personal experience, wishes to judge which one is better? They will probably know far more cases in which Policy A produced the desired results (40.5% of the population), but hear of very little in which Policy B provided a benefit (6% of the population). Unfortunately, their evidence gives them a distorted view of reality. They may ‘feel’ that Policy A is better, but they would be wrong. If society changed to Policy B, they could prevent an additional 13.5% of teenagers from engaging in this risky behavior.

It takes an appreciation of the scientific method to draw sift through these types of confusions and prevent mistakes. If somebody really cares about preventing children from engaging in risky behavior, then they should really care that we sift through the noise and expose the underlying facts of the matter. If they do not really care which option is best, we can conclude that they do not really care about what happens to teenagers. They should really care that we use the method of evaluation that does the better job at revealing which processes really work.

Application

The argument above has one implication that leads directly to the issue of forced prayer in school. If, as I have argued, the scientific method is the method that best determines which policies work and which policies fail, and we have reason to educate children to evaluate policies using the best method available, then we should be teaching them respect for the scientific method. Failure to do so teaches them to rely on less reliable methods, which leads to the selection of worse policies, which means that more teenagers will engage in more risky behavior and suffer bad consequences that could have been avoided.

If we mentally tie students to a set of instructions written 2000 years ago by people who were substantially ignorant of the real world we are not teaching them to use the most reliable method for selecting policies. Teaching students to treat these archaic instructions of these ancient tribesmen as infallible is like teaching doctors that the medical claims of Hippocrates are infallible and nothing learned since then should be taken to contradict his medical opinions.

In the case of medicine, we can see how this will lead to a great deal of death, illness, and suffering. It is no less so in the case in matters of public policy. In the case of believing that some primitive tribesmen had perfect knowledge of how best to organize a society, the consequences could be just as bad.

Tyranny or Liberty?

I am a student of history. One of the things that surprises me about history is the degree to which human beings seem to have an affinity to being ruled by tyrants. It seems such a strong compulsion that our political leaders are afraid to take any type of stand against the Bush Administration and its defense of the instruments of tyranny.

Today, in the House of Representatives, a motion to impeach Vice President Cheney appeared on the floor of the house. The democrats attempted to rally support to defeat it. The Republicans, it seems, saw a political opportunity here. They wanted a floor debate. They wanted the public to see the Democrats standing up against tyranny. The reason . . . because they knew that the public would condemn the Democrats and favor the Republicans – favor the supporters of tyranny over those who oppose it. The Democrats were able to save themselves only by mustering enough votes to send the resolution to committee – but just barely.

I believe in trusting to experts to know what is going on. The Democratic and Republican parties both know, through careful research, that the American people prefer tyranny over liberty. We are a diverse population. There is certainly a minority who thinks that liberty is the preferred state. However, elections are won by majorities (or at least the majority of those who vote), so this group is effectively impotent – particularly while they remain passive and silent in the face of the friends of tyranny.

The Republicans and Democrats know that the American people prefer tyranny over liberty because they have no doubt asked their pollsters what would happen if we were to have this debate. Those pollsters contact their 1500 households, wrote up their reports, and probably delivered a nice, sharp presentation that said in no uncertain terms, “Defending liberty in America is political suicide. If you want to keep your position in government, you will defend tyranny over liberty.”

Not that this will be unwelcome news to many of them. The Republicans like the idea of defending tyranny because this is the status quo of this administration. They got elected with a plan to defend tyranny, and they are not likely to surrender now when they have had such amazing success. It would be like a football team, ahead by 40 points at the 2-minute warning, suddenly forfeiting and giving the game to the other team.

The Democrats, of course, strongly suspect that they will have a Democratic president and a Democratic congress next year – unless they do something stupid. Opposition to tyranny can generally be trusted more to those who are at risk of being the victims of arbitrary power, not those who have the ability to wield it. I have no doubt that there are more than a few Democrats thinking, “My, what we could do with an unchecked Democratic president, free of the restraints of checks and balances, in our hands.”

Is there anybody who thinks that they will be inclined to defend civil rights? Remember, the Republican Party was the party of fiscal responsibility, until they got their hands on the checkbook. They were the party of maximum individual freedom and responsibility and “the government is best that governs least.” However, that did not get in the way of electing these advocates of tyranny, and standing as steadfast defenders of the elements of tyranny that their leaders fought so hard to make a part of the American form of government.

No, I have little hope that the Democrats plan to use their unchecked power to establish civil rights, restore the rule of law, and agree peacefully to give up power and hand it back to the people.

As a matter of fact, the most surprising quality that George Washington had was his ability to perform this virtually unheard of task of giving power to the people, when he could have taken the power himself. Given the apparent fondness for tyrants, Washington could have probably declared himself emperor of a new American empire, annulling the Articles of Confederation, and establishing a new monarchy with him as the leader. Since he had no children of his own, he might have adopted the old Roman practice of adopting a successor, making Alexander Hamilton his adopted son and second American emperor.

However, George Washingtons are a very rare breed. To expect that people of this quality make up the majority of the Democratic Party – the same party that finds no value in standing up to the Republican efforts to establish the instruments of tyranny – is insanely naïve.

The Senate, under Democratic control, is hours away of giving a formal vote of approval to torture, rendition, warrantless wiretaps, signing statements, and the other instruments of tyranny that the Bush Administration have fought to establish, when they vote to approve Mukasey to the post of attorney general. During the confirmation hearings, Mukasey refused to state any opposition to these practices. A vote for Mukasey as attorney general will give this position added legitimacy, making it that much tougher for our children to undo the damage that we have done and restore liberty and a system of checks and balances (if they should ever decide that it is worthwhile to do so).

Part of the reason the Democrats give for this is because the Attorney General’s office will be filled with recess appointments until the Senate gives its confirmation to the President’s nominee. However, the very fact that these decisions are being made by Bush lackeys who lack Senate confirmation is enough to deny legitimacy to any efforts they make on behalf of shredding the Constitution. After Mukasey is confirmed, any shredding of the Constitution will wear a formal congressional seal of approval. To a future Stalin or Hitler, this distinction will make a great deal of difference.

It took ancient Rome less than one generation to go from a nation that condemned tyranny to one that embraced it. Brutus and his friends thought that the Roman people would embrace the Senate and cheer anybody who defended it against a tyrant. Their greatest surprise was in learning that humans prefer tyrants. When the time came to take sides, they sided against the Senate and in favor of autocratic rule. It seems that humans have not changed much in 20 years.

Is this claim about ‘friends of tyranny’ out of line? Is it, perhaps, hyperbole? An unchecked executive with the power to command that private citizens be pulled off the street and held without charges or without trial on the mere suspicion on the part of the President that they are a threat to national security, where absolutely nothing stands in the way of an executive to interpret ‘national security’ to mean ‘anything that is a threat to my reign as dictator’. This is the form of government that this administration has spent seven years defending. This is the form of government that the Republicans are trying to manipulate the Democrats into opposing because it would publicly humiliate the Democrats to do so.

Morality as Hate Speech

It appears that some people disapprove with the stand that I took this weekend on the Westboro Baptist Church – claiming that their protests are a protected form of speech. One of the main lines of reasoning used in these arguments is that ‘hate speech’ is a particular type of speech that is not deserving of protection.

My response to this objection is that all moral philosophy is ‘hate speech’ in a sense - and desire utilitarianism is probably more so than others. Any act of moral condemnation, any statement in which an individual is branded as evil and blamed for causing harm to innocent people, The main focus of the objection is that ‘hate speech’ is a particular type of speech that is deserving of mblame for harm done to innocent people – is an invitation, or even an encouragement, to hate such people. If hate speech is such a bad thing, then morality itself is to b condemned.

Yet, morality (or ethicists) cannot be condemned without a contradiction. To condemn ethicists – to condemn those who use ‘hate speech’ against certain targets, is to attempt to elicit hate against those who use hate speech. It is an act of condemning all those who condemn, and to call evil those who call others evil. The position makes no sense.

The correct question we should be asking, then, is not whether we should or should not condemn others, but who should we condemn? In answering this question, the proposal that, “We should only condemn those who condemn others” can be thrown out at the start foor being totally incoherent. We must then look for other answers.

Different people are going to come up with different answers. I hold that there is a right answer to these types of questions. Yet, I also hold that human beings are fallible creatures, and that none of us have exactly the same set of data at our disposal. Consequently, some people will inevitably come up with some false beliefs about who should be condemned. Even in this blog, I have expressed the view that at least one of the things that I have written is false, and I have to leave it up to others to discover what it is.

The next question to answer, then, is, “How are we going to deal with disagreement?” What is the best way to deal with the fact that somebody, somewhere, will always have an opinion that ‘those people deserve our condemnation’ when, in fact, those people do not deserve our condemnation? There will always be somebody, somewhere, directing hate against those who do not deserve it.

Throughout this blog I have maintained a principle that the only legitimate response to words is words and private action. ‘Private action’ consists of those things that a person may decide on without having to justify his actions to others; who to vote for, where to shop, who to go to lunch with, what to eat, what to wear, when to pray, whether to pray, and the like. The proper response to words and private action, no matter how painful, is never to draw out a gun and to threaten the speaker with violence.

One commenter noted accurately that rights are never absolute, and that they must be weighed with other concerns. Of course this is the case. This is why the argument above does not apply to cases of fraud, libel, slander, revealing company secrets, invasions of privacy, and violations of contracts and other forms of legal promises.

The motivation here is to protect people, not from hurt or offense, but from more substantial and substantive harms such as threats to national security (and the loss of life for those who are charged with providing national security), the loss of jobs and income by unsubstantiated claims, or to even allow the institutions of law and medicine to function for the public good. The Westboro Baptist Church provides no such threat of substantive harm. Important institutions will not fail because these people are able to make the comments they make.

The argument for free speech also does not apply to a case in which demonstrators chant, shout, and otherwise disrupt an event such as a movie or play, or a wedding, or a funeral, or to forcefully evict a heckler from the audience (or to taser him if he is resisting the arresting officers in a way that endangers others). Here, it is legitimate to use force to silent those who are disrupting the event.

In the latter case, the key here is whether the protest actually disrupts the event. Some people speak as if the Westboro Baptist Church members were literally dancing on the coffins in which their protests took place, If this were the case, then I, too, would argue for their removal on the grounds that they were being disruptive. However, when their protests are far enough removed and subdued enough not to disrupt the event, then this line of argument disappears.

To silence the Westboro Baptist Church through a civil trial is still a case of responding to words that one does not want to hear with weapons and violence against those who would speak.

If this is permissible, then why is it NOT permissible for certain Muslims to call for a use of violence against people who say things that are offensive to their religion? Why is it then wrong to threaten those who draw cartoons of Mohammed, when it is quite possibly the case that Muslims suffer as much discomfort – as much hurt – as the father of the dead solider.

How long have we had allowed cheering crowds at executions, on the roads approaching a prison where an execution is scheduled, celebrating that execution? None have thought to wonder at the effects that this would have on the family of those about to be killed, and none would certainly have given any sense to confining those protests where they can be out of sight and out of mind.

The question comes up, “Where is it permissible to draw a line?” I would argue that it is permissible to draw the line at harm and at the disruption of an event

The only legitimate response to words are words and private actions. When guns become a legitimate response to words, we must all worry about whether we have enough cover to protect ourselves from the bullets that will start flying and anybody offended or hurt by something others might say.

Berlinerblau on Living Large vs Living Right

Joques Berlinerblau reports that atheists face a dilemma between two alternative models for how we should live our lives. One is the ‘live right’ model where a person “is practiced by those who aspire to ‘leave the earth in better shape than they found it.’” The other he calls ‘living large’ and applies to those who live life to the fullest, getting as much out of the short time they live as they can.

After all, if there is no moral accounting in the world to come (and if there is no world to come) then why not overspend one’s passions in the present one?

Of these, he argues for the latter.

Among contemporary atheists, I regret to say, living right has vanquished living large. Too many nonbelievers seem intent on teaching the faithful a lesson. Namely, that they too can lead virtuous lives and that they can do so without recourse to God or religion.

The text in my profile on the right would seem to put me in the “live right” category. Furthermore, instead of being motivated by a sense of morality – by some concern for what is right and what is wrong – I am allegedly motivated only by a desire to teach the faithful a lesson. Forget kindness, duty, and a love of truth. Morality, for the ‘live right’ theorists, is a done merely on the pretense of behaving like a theist.

“Better Than I Found It” vs “Better Than It Would Have Otherwise Been”

In examining Berlinerblau’s suggestion, I want to note that there is a significant difference between “leaving the world better than one has found it” and “leaving the world better than it would have otherwise been.” When I decided on the goal I list in my profile, I did not simply pick a slogan that I liked. I paid careful attention to precisely what I was saying.

It is possible for a destructive person to leave the world better than he found it, as long as somebody else was introducing improvements that outweighed the destruction that the agent had caused. For example, if I shared a bank account with somebody, and he deposited $100 into the account per month, while I withdrew $50 per month, when I die, I will be leaving the bank account larger than when I found it. However, this does not in any way imply that I had made any contribution to the account.

At the same time, it may be the case that I am depositing $50 into the account every month, while others are removing $100 every month. In the end, I will have left the account with a lower balance than when I found it. Yet, I had still spent my life making a positive contribution to the account. It is still the case that the bank balance ended up higher than it would have been if I had not existed.

This is exactly why I selected the goal of leaving the world ‘better than it would have otherwise been if I had not existed’ rather than ‘better than I had found it’. The phrasing that I selected speaks towards a positive contribution, whether other forces in the universe make things better or worse. It gives me no permission to do evil as long as a sufficient number of others are doing good, and a reason to do good even if a greater and more powerful number of others are doing evil.

Living Large vs Living Right

Berlinerblau asserts that somebody who lives large must experience an ‘irreconcilable inner tension’ with living right.

The most interesting irreligious (and, come to think of it, religious) people I know lead lives in which they attempt, somehow, to balance the conflicting demands of living right and living large. To exist in such a manner is to experience the most irreconcilable inner tensions, the most profound contradictions—the atheist becomes a living, breathing and, ineluctably, dying work of art.

In fact, there is no necessary conflict between ‘living right’ in the sense that I have defended it in this blog, and ‘living large’ in the sense that Berlinerblau. Berlinerblau describes ‘living large’ as ‘overspending one’s passions’. I have described ‘living right’ as a way of evaluating the quality of different passions according to the degree that they are compatible or incompatible with the passions (desires) of others.

On this account, a person who ‘lives large’ with bad passions is one who ‘lives large’ with passions that interfere with the ability of others to ‘live large’ according to their own passions. These people live their lives pursuing pleasures that leave others in a state of harm – unable to pursue their own pleasures.

On the other hand, a person who ‘lives large’ with good passions is a person who ‘lives large’ with passions that promote the ability of others to ‘live large’ accordion to their own passions. These people live their lives pursuing pleasures that leave others able to obtain states that they would have otherwise been powerless to obtain – better able to pursue their own pleasures.

When it comes to neutral desires (desires that do not leave others even better off or worse off), it is still the case that others have less of a reason to promote the pursuit of these desires than to promote the pursuit of desires that produce benefits. The rational person will recognize the reasons he has to promote and reward the holder of desires that produce benefits, while being indifferent to the holder of desires that produce neither benefit nor harm. The pursuit of neutral desires, while it is better than the alternative of pursuing that which harms others, is still, at the same time, a wasted opportunity to live large in ways that benefit others.

Vanquishing Living Large?

Berlinerblau laments that living right has vanquished living large. A steady reader of this blog should not have drawn a similar conclusion. One of the things I have lamented is the shortage of atheists who are willing to do both – live large and live right. I have blamed the psychological abuse that atheists receive while growing up – 12 years of public education with daily lessons pounded into them that those who believe in God are morally superior to those who do not. This creates a group of people with an inferiority complex – who feel nervous and shy at the prospect of upsetting those who believe in God.

By all rights, a national pledge and motto that denigrates atheists (in the former case equating them with rebels, tyrants, and criminals and, in the latter, excluding them from the group of ‘we’ who are the only true Americans and who all share the quality of ‘trust in God) should be met with moral outrage. Yet, we find a large number of atheists (and atheists parents who send their children into this psychological abuse every school day) unwilling to speak up against it themselves, and condemning others who do so.

We see atheists meeting the Hitler and Stalin Cliché with apologetic appeals to unimpassioned reasoned rather than shouting back, “You ignorant, hate-mongering bigot! Would you say that those who believe the earth is round are mass-murderers in training simply because Hitler and Stalin believed the earth was round? Of course not. Only a person who loves to market hate and bigotry against peaceful and innocent neighbors would make such an argument, and that is just the type of person you have just proved yourself to be.”

Berlinerblau finds his list of heroes only in fiction. I, on the other hand, find my list of heroes – people who have lived large and lived right – in the real world. This list of people includes, but is not limited to, George Washington, David Hume, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Al Gore, Burt Rutan, Richard Bransen, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett.

It includes countless scientists and researchers who spend each day adding to the sum of human knowledge – not by engaging in safaris and seeing sites around the world that any can visit, but entering realms that nobody has yet visited and showing the rest of us what it looks like.

It includes teachers, doctors, emergency response personnel, and peace-keeping soldiers who have made it their passion to make the lives of others better than they would have otherwise been.

These people do not strike me as individuals who suffer some sort of irreconcilable tension between ‘living large’ and ‘living right’. Rather, they all seem to have found a way of doing both, by making it their passion to pursue ends that aim have the effect of making the quality of life better for others, rather than worse.

There is nothing that a person needs to feel any type of ‘inner tension’ over if he decides to become passionate about something that also, and at the same time, is something that tends to leave the world better off than it would have otherwise been. In fact, I wish more people would do exactly that.

Funeral Protests and Free Speech

A jury in Maryland yesterday punished the Westboro Baptist Church to the tune of $11 million for protesting at the funeral of an American soldier that America’s tolerance of homosexuality is responsible for the death of its soldiers. This verdict is a violation of the right to freedom of speech, and is an illegitimate use of government power.

Let us pass a law that allows people to express a particular opinion without fear of punishment. However, this law also states that the speaker must stand in a sound-proof booth with the door closed, and is only permitted to speak when he is alone in the room. It would be absurd to say that this law protects the essence of the right to freedom of speech merely because the agent is permitted to utter the words – if it prohibits him from uttering those words in a manner in which others might hear them.

The Bush Administration makes a mockery of freedom of speech when it sets up what it jokingly refers to as ‘free speech zones’ at Presidential appearances – gated areas far away from the cameras and the President’s view where people can say things that the President would not like. In fact, calling these places ‘free speech zones’ is entirely accurate, because it is only within the zone that the freedom of speech exists. Whereas, outside the zone, the moral concept of ‘freedom of speech’ is being mocked and ridiculed by an administration that symbolically and physically puts fences around it.

The verdict against the Westboro Baptist Church is simply another application of the concept of ‘freedom of speech’ as the President and his administration understands it. This, too, is a message that one may speak freely, but only at a time and place where they can be easily ignored, and where their voice will reach as few people as possible.

One of the facts about the Westboro Baptist Church is that they were able to substantially increase the size of their audience precisely because they hold these protests at the funerals of American soldiers. A part of the reason why they are being sued is because they spoke in manner in which they were heard by people who did not want to hear what they had to say.

In fact, a part of the verdict rendered against the Church ($2 million) was for ‘emotional distress’. There is no sense to be made that the Church caused emotional distress other than because of the content of that speech – because they were saying something that displeased other people. If we allow it to stand that speech is prohibited when its content ‘distresses’ others, then there shall be no right to freedom of speech, because there is no such thing as content that does not distress others.

We can see further evidence of the fact that this speech is being punished because of its content by noting that if the family had been met with a crowd of the same size making the same amount of noise, but conveying a different message (one that honored and praised their son for his sacrifice), the family would likely not have filed a protest. This case is not like one in which a person complains about a neighbor’s loud music late at night – a complaint based on the neighbor’s interference with one’s sleep and not on the content of the music. This is a case of a family saying, “I do not like your message; therefore, I shall bring the power of the state against you to prohibit you from speaking in a manner in which I might hear you.”

Now, saying that this verdict is a violation of free speech is not to say that the Phelps family is immune from any sort of criticism – that the family (and those who have sympathy for the family) must bite their lip and say nothing against them. It is as much a violation to free speech to ban those who condemn the protesters as it would be to ban those who protest America’s ‘acceptance’ of homosexuality.

The right to freedom of speech is not a right to be free of condemnation for what one says or in the manner in which one says it. The right to freedom of speech is a right to be free from violence (whether in the form of private violence or government censorship) for what one says or the manner in which one says it. This civil suit against the Westboro Baptist Church crosses the line between legitimate protest (in the form of words and private actions) and illegitimate protest (violence in the form of government action) against the words of another.

In this country, we have an unfortunate tradition of holding that if a view is a religious view that we must not only refrain from using government force against the members of that religion, but we must not criticize it. Representatives of the Westboro Baptist Church have been able to buy a certain degree of legitimacy – or, at least, immunity from criticism for their beliefs – by asserting that those beliefs are religious.

Hopefully, the era in which religious attitudes were held to be immune from criticism merely because they are religious is coming to an end. In fact, if we wanted a poster child for the legitimacy of condemning religious attitudes, the Westboro Baptist Church provides an excellent example for all of us. Here are people who clearly deserve to be condemned, and for whom the defense, “Ours is a religious belief,” is entirely irrelevant.

Still, nobody is denying them the right to peacefully practicing their religion. Freedom of religion, like freedom of speech, does not imply immunity from criticism. It only implies an immunity from private or government violence – except in self-defense.

The right to freedom of speech means nothing unless it is granted to people who say things that (others think) is worthy of condemnation. It is a flat contradiction to assert that freedom of speech exists where one must first submit the content of their speech to a review board who will determine first whether the speech might cause ‘emotional distress’ to others who might come across it.

In fact, the Westboro Baptist Church is deserving of the harshest condemnation in the form of words and private action against their speech. Not only should they be condemned for the absurd belief that the intolerance of homosexuality in American can influence a God to alter the course of a bullet in Iraq to take an American lives, not only are they to be condemned to wanting American soldiers killed, but they are to be condemned for refusing to respect the solemn occasion of a funeral.

Indeed, this condemnation and private action should be more vocal than it has been. Those who are interested in protecting the funerals from this type of invasion should have taken up the challenge long ago of protesting this group itself, condemning the group and any who aid them in their cause – their financial backers, and any who do business with them where that business contributes to the success of their mission. This is a case where refusing to protest, condemn, and take private action against this Church can itself be made reason for condemnation. So, the other Baptist churches in Kansas, for example, should be pressured to bring words and private actions to bear against this church, and be condemned for refusing to do so.