Pragmatism

Classes start in 321 days.

I have requested official transcripts, and now need to start working on verifying my in state status.

Meanwhile, the more I read about pragmatism, the more I seem to like it.

I want to offer a word of warning. My exposure has been limited, and I may be reading things into it that is not there in fact.

When I originally encountered pragmatism long ago, I got the impression that this was one of those early 20th century philosophies that was considered, rejected, and now only of historical importance. Consequently, I decided to spend my time on things that were more practical (or "pragmatic", if you do not mind a bit of irony).

Now that I am looking at it, I see elements that I already favor.

For example, thought - or 'mental states' - are to be understood pragmatically - according to their use. Their use is determined by their relationship to what we do. I would say that a desire that P is a disposition to try to bring about or preserve states of affairs in which "P" is true. A belief that Q is a disposition to choose those actions that would realize or preserve "P" in a universe where "Q" is true. These accounts understand desires and beliefs pragmatically.

Pragmatism, then, seems to anticipate functionalist theories of mind - that understands mental states as functions that relate input (sensory experience) to other mental states to intentional action.

Pragmatism also seems to anticipate a coherentist theory of justification. We examine a belief and we look at the strength and number of its connections to other beliefs. In modern terms, we are told to imagine a web. Beliefs sits at the nodes where different different strands come together. How firmly a belief is anchored depends on the number and strength of these connections.

Early pragmatists, who wrote long before the World Wide Web imagined a cable where separate strands of material, each individually weak, combined to provide a great deal of strength.

Desirism, of course, evaluates desires pragmatically - according to their tendency to fulfill or thwart other desires. Rewards such as praise, and punishments such as condemnation, are justified pragmatically by their use in molding desires.

If you want to look at whether to accept or reject a proposition, according to your pragmatists, you have too look for the ways in which it matters whether you accept or reject that proposition. This means asking about what the proposition predicts. If the proposition does not predict anything pragmatic, then the proposition is worthless - there is no reason to bother with it. Propositions are only meaningful or significant if its implications have pragmatic value.

This is an earlier way of describing the falsifiability requirement for scientific theories. The scientist creates a hypothesis. The scientist then asks, "What does it matter whether this is true or false? What does it imply?" Finding a practical application - something that matters - is the same as finding a way to falsify the hypothesis. We can never prove a hypothesis true, the pragmatists tell us, but we can show whether it has implications we have reason to reject.

In fact, some of the principles that we use in science - Occam's Razor and parsimony among them - can only be justified in pragmatic terms.

Occam's Razor says not to add entities beyond those that are strictly needed to explain a set of observations. Why not? The fact that an entity explains nothing does not prove that it does not exist. However, it does prove that the entity does not exist for all practical (pragmatic) purposes, and that is good enough.

Parsimony says that, all things being equal, the simplest theory is the best. Ptolomey's theory for the orbit of planets can, with proper modification, do just as good a job at predicting the motions of planets as the Compernican/Newton model. However, the latter model is much simpler and easier. What reason do we have to adopt the simpler theory? Our reasons are purely pragmatic.

In fact, my atheism is ultimately grounded on these practical considerations. When it comes to the proposition, "God exists," I ask, "What practical use does this have?" It has none. Everything that happens in the universe is compatible with the proposition, "God exists". It doesn't tell me anything. Now, one may argue that "scripture" tells me something important. However, "God exists" does not imply that "the claims found in scripture are true." We can well imagine that a god exists, that this god created us and gave us a capacity to reason, that some humans came along and invented scripture. To this development, God said, "I gave them brains and the capacity to reason. If they use the abilities that I gave them, they should be able to determine that these scriptures are largely works of the imagination, not descriptions of reality. Its authors are claiming to speak for me when anybody who can reason should be able to determine that they speak only for themselves." So, "God exists" does not give us the conclusion, "The claims of scripture are true." It gives us nothing.

Consequently, I judge that "God exists" to be a claim that is simply not worth bothering with. My belief that the proposition, "At least one god exists" is almost certainly false is actually the belief that, for all practical purpose, the proposition, "At least one god exists" is, for all practical purposes, worthless. It tells me nothing about what I should do.

Belief in a god might have some practical implications in the sense that, if there is a god, and this god punishes people who do not believe that he exists (though why a god would do that without providing some very clear and unambiguous evidence that this is the case is beyond me), then I will be punished. However, the set of propositions of which this may be true is infinite and incoherent. There might be a god who decides to punish anybody who believes in him on faith - thinking that only those who use the divine gift of reason are to be given everlasting life. Or might punish people who do not soak their toes in milk every evening at 7:00 PM local time. Or punish those who do soak their toes in milk. There is just nothing we can do with these types of claims. They are - for all practical (pragmatic) purposes - worthless - and that is why I do not bother with them.

In short, pragmatism sounds promising at this point. It certainly deserves more investigation.

The Ethics of Public Discourse

321 days until my first class.

This morning I listened to a discussion on Reason and Rhetoric: The Ethics of Public Discourse from the London School of Economics.

An "ethics of public discourse" in this day and age is an ethics of blog posting (this article, for instance), facebook and twitter postings, emails, comments, and comments. A discussion of the ethics of public discourse is a discussion of what people ought and ought not to write about.

The discussion was divided into two parts (though the speakers blurred the lines in their actual statements) - first, what are the standards for public discussion, and, second, do we live up to those standards?

I will stay at the start that I think that the second question is unfair. We never live up to our standards. Standards are to be aimed for, even if we fall short. A better question to ask would be: Where do we fall short and how may we change things so that we do better.

One of the examples of "public discourse" mentioned in the presentation was that of a female member of parliament who received over 600 rape threats as comments on her position on some matter. I do not think there is any system of ethics that would describe this as something other than "that which ought not to be done", and yet it was done by a substantial number of people.

On the "ought to be" side of the discussion, it seems clear that one of the goals of public discussion should be (often is not - but should be) to identify and to promulgate truth. Ideally, people with different opinions get together, have a discussion, each presents their evidence for and against their propositions, and, on the whole, people walk away with more truth than they had when they arrived.

At the start of the discussion, Dr. Peter Dennis, noted what is required of people who are charged with determining the fate of an accused criminal in a trial. The jurists are forced to sit, to hear and consider the evidence for and against the truth of the proposition that "the accused is guilty", and then render a verdict. This takes a great deal of time and effort, but it is considered important when we put a person's freedom at stake.

Yet, political decisions have a lot stronger impact on a lot more people, yet we do not have nearly as strict of a set of requirements. In fact, a person can walk into a voting booth and vote without knowing anything but the names of the candidates. In fact, the voter does not even need to know that - he simply needs to know approximately where and how to place a mark such that the mark counts as a vote.

We do not FORMALLY require that voters take the time to consider all of the evidence and render an impartial verdict as to who will be the representative or whether the referendum will pass or fail. Yet, morally, this is a requirement. It is something that each voter is morally obligated to do - to consider each vote as they would consider a verdict for or against the guilt or innocence of an accused individual in a civil trial.

Moral obligations do not only fall on those who engage in public discussion as speakers, it also applies to those who consume material - listeners and readers.

The major reason why we get so much garbage in public discussion is that this is what consumers buy. What people click on - what they consume - whether online, at a news stand, or when they turn on the television - gets recorded. The media industry then says, "Give them more of the same." If people are consuming garbage the media then says, "Produce more garbage". If, instead, readers were to hunt down informed argument and accurate information, the media would say, "Produce more informed argument and accurate discussion."

People like to blame the media for producing "the wrong stuff", but the media, almost entirely, is producing what the people want. The people who have the ultimate say in what the media produce are those who are clicking on the links, turning the channel on the television, or buying the book or magazine. These are the people who bear ultimate responsibility.

Please keep that in mind the next time you click on a link, turn on a television, or buy a book or magazine. You are telling media, "make more stuff like this and less stuff like that which I am ignoring."

It has been well known for decades (and, as Professor Catarina Novaes pointed in in the discussion, even mentioned by Plato) that people spend far more of their time seeking confirmation of what they want to hear than they do seeking the truth. Consequently, the media (and politicians) are more interested in telling people what they want to hear, and less interested in telling them the truth. To be devoted to the truth - whether as a media outlet or as a politician - is to fail.

We condemn the politician who tells us what we want to hear, but then we elect the politician that tells us what we want to hear. We condemn the media outlet that panders to a particular demographic, yet we share only those articles and other postings that pander to our demographic.

Actually, people who claim that they want politicians or the media to report "the truth" are usually just using this as a code phrase for, "I want politicians and the media to tell me what I already believe to be true." How else are we going to judge whether the politician or media is telling us "the truth" other than by judging whether they are telling us what we already believe to be true?

One of the more important and useful things that one can do, if one is interested in the truth, is to investigate the claims of those who think that one is wrong.

We often do this in fields that we are actually interested in. My interest in moral philosophy has me reading articles and books defending utilitarianism, deontology, divine command theories, social contract theories, natural law theories, intuitionism, relativism, subjectivism, and even moral nihilism. I spend more time reading material produced by people who disagree with me rather than those who agree with me.

It would be useful if those who participated in the public discussion - whether it be on Clinton's emails or the activities of her foundation, minimum wage, exporting jobs, free college tuition for everybody, universal healthcare, should consider themselves as reporters whose duty it is to understand and report fairly on why others think one's position is mistaken.

The person who does this is going to sometimes learn that the position one has adopted has some problems. This leads to the second useful tasks that a person who is interested in the truth can perform. That is to draw information into one's bubble that might upset others who are living their whole life inside. If they seem to unanimously favor a high minimum wage or legalized marijuana, then this by itself is a good reason to bring into the discussion a peer reviewed economic study suggesting ways in which increasing the minimum wage or legalizing marijuana could be harmful.

But most importantly, at the root of all of this, public discussion requires a public who are interested in seeking the truth - who are willing to reward those who are trying to back up their position with the best available evidence, and shunning those who are clearly providing tribal propaganda. That is a moral duty.

This, by the way, is also relevant to the current post:

Desirism Book - Part 29 - Prescriptivism

There is a view that holds that moral statements are commands - statements like "close the window" or "go stand in the corner."

This view is commonly found in religious morality where right and wrong are described as a set of divine commands. In these cases, God commands us, "honor thy mother and father" and "do not take the lord's name in vain", and it is our duty to obey.

On this model, moral claims lack truth value. If you were to hand somebody a list of commands and ask them whether they are true or false, they would look at you and try to make some effort to get you to make sense. A statement of the form, "Put your finger on your nose" has no truth value. If the agent obeys the command he can create a situation in which "I have put my finger on my nose" is true, but the command itself - the literal statement "put your finger on your nose" is not true or false.

This, by the way, is one of the objections to command theories of morality. Command statements do not have truth value, but moral statements do. If we were to repeat the statement above by giving people a list of moral statements, we would discover them answering that they are true or false. "abortion is murder," "slavery is wrong," and "if you borrow money from somebody and promise to pay it back then you are under an obligation to repay the money" are statements that people easily assert are true or false. Consequently, of moral claims are commands, people do not treat them as commands. They treat them as truth-bearing propositions.

Now, let us return to our proto-moral community consisting of Alph (with a desire to gather stones) and Bett (with a desire to scatter stones). Both of them have reason to promote an aversion to causing injury. To do this, they praise those who refrain from causing injury or who take steps to make injuries less likely, and condemn those who cause or create situations likely to cause injury. This, at least on our model, creates in both agents an aversion to causing injury.

"Do not cause injury", of course, is a command - it lacks a truth value. However, "It is wrong to cause injury" in our proto-moral world is a truth-bearing proposition, at least in the way that our agents Alph and Bett are using the term. It means that people generally have many and strong reasons to condemn those who cause injury and/or to praise those who take steps to make injuries less likely. This, indeed, is true.

We will also note, in their moral statements, that the term "causing injury is wrong" also contains the condemnation of those who cause injury and the praise of those who prevent it in the very meanings of the term itself. To state that causing injuries to others is wrong is not only to state that reasons exist to condemn those who cause injury, it is also and at the same time a statement of condemnation of those who cause injury. It is also, and at the same time, a statement of praise for those who take steps to prevent injury. However, the fact that these statements contain a non-cognitive element (an expression of approval/praise or disapproval/condemnation) does not change the fact that they have a truth-bearing component as well which is sometimes true. It remains true that the people in our proto-moral community have reasons to promote a universal aversion to causing injury.

There are other arguments against a command theory of morality. One of these being that commands - in virtue of the fact that they are not truth-bearing propositions - cannot play a role in a logical argument. For example, we may have an argument that states: (1) Abortion is the taking of an innocent life without consent, (2) It is wrong to take an innocent life without consent, (3) Therefore, it is wrong to perform an abortion. It does not matter whether one agrees with the conclusion of this argument or with the premises. What matters is the fact that it forms what, in all appearances, is a valid argument.

However, if we were to substitute out the second premise and put a command in its place - "Do not take an innocent life." - then we no longer have an argument that makes any sense.

This is meant to show that the claim that moral statements are commands - that a command statement is the best way to understand and interpret a moral statement - does not work. We cannot simply remove a moral statement, put a command statement in its place, and accurately report that we have a statement that means the same thing as the statement we removed. The statement we removed made sense in the context of a moral argument, while the command statement makes no sense in that context. We cannot, in fact, use the latter as a substitute for the former.

In fact, our evidence suggests that we can only understand moral claims as truth-bearing claims. That is simply the role that they play in our language. Everybody who uses moral claims - with the exception of a few theory-laden philosophers - treats them in all respects as truth-bearing propositions. Consequently, the best interpretation we can give to moral claims is that they are capable of being true or false. Better yet would be an interpretation that respects the fact that they can be true, because a great many people do actually take them to be true.

The idea that a moral prohibition is something that agents have many and strong reasons to form an aversion to, using the tools of condemnation and punishment, fit this requirement. In our case of Alph and Bett, it is descriptively true that Alph and Bett have reasons to use condemnation to promote a general aversion to injuring others. In other words, in the proto-moral universe of Alph and Bett, injuring others is morally wrong. This is true as a matter of fact. It may justify the command not to injure others. In other words, upon being commanded not to injure others, it would answer the question, "Why not?" if the person commanded were to ask it. And in giving this answer, the person who answered the question would be saying, "People generally have many and strong reasons to condemn, and perhaps even to punish, those who injure others." The person commanded may well respond in turn, "I do not care about that," but the people issuing the command - people generally - still have many and strong reasons to make him care about that.

Desirism: Catching Up

IT is time to return to my presentation on desirism.

First, let's just remember where we left off.

I wrote a summary piece on the first section of my presentation: Desirism Book: Part 1 - Table of Contents".

In that section I imagined a universe with one agent (Alph) with one desire (a desire to gather stones - or, more precisely, a desire "that I am gathering stones"). I explained the difference between means (scattering stones so that one has stones to gather) and ends (a state of affairs in which the proposition, "I am gathering stones" is true).

I used Robert Nozick's experience machine argument to claim that what matters is not pleasure or some other brain state but a state of affairs in which the proposition that is the object of one's desire is true. This is a good that, in some cases, an experience machine cannot provide.

I argued that desires provide the only end-reasons for intentional action and that the proposition, "What should I do?" can only be answered by arguing what desires are served by each individual action.

I then brought a second person into this world (Bett) and gave Alph the power to select Bett's desires. I looked at the reasons that Alph may have for giving Bett either a desire to gather stones, or a desire to scatter stones. Alph's desire to gather stones - on a planet with few stones to gather - gave him a reason to cause Bett to acquire a desire to scatter stones. This would allow Alph to keep the proposition, "I am gathering stones" true.

In a case where Alph has a reason to give Bett a desire to scatter stones, and can do so by giving Bett an injection, then Alph has reason to give Bett an objection. On the other hand, if Alph lives in a world where he can mold Bett's desires by acts of praise and condemnation, then he has a reason to use these tools to promote in Bett a desire to scatter stones.

In short, I created a proto-moral society in which Alph was using praise and condemnation to mold Bett into being a scatterer of rocks.

In the second set of posts I was looking at this proto-moral society and describing what is true of that society and what is not.

In Part 23, I described the difference between a moral prohibition and a moral non-obligatory permission. Both Alph and Bett have reasons to cause others to have an aversion to injuring others. This is because the "other" that the other person would injure, and being injured would prevent them from gathering or scatting stones respectively. Whereas gathering or scattering stones are not things that either person has reason to encourage or discourage universally. On these grounds, injuring others is a moral prohibition (nobody may injure others; all people should be given an aversion to injuring others), while gathering or scattering stones is a non-obligatory permission - something not to be universally encouraged or discouraged.

I then turned my attention to alternative claims about morality to look at the degree to which they are true or false.

In Part 24 I pointed out that Alph has a reason to gather stones, Bett has a reason to scatter stones, and both have a reason to avoid injuring the other. However, neither has a reason to "create the greatest good for the greatest number". Indeed, there is no place for the act-utilitarian principle in this community. It may have a place in our community, but it can only serve as one desire among many and not as a universal measure of all things right and wrong.

Indeed, as i point out in Part 25, the only way to create a society in which people always act so as to maximize utility is to create a society in which people have only one desire - to maximize utility. There can be no desire to gather or scatter stones because this desire would, at times, motivate action other than maximizing utility (namely, gathering or scattering stones).

In Part 26 I argued against the existence of moral absolutes. An absolute can only work if it is the sole desire that an agent has. For example, in order to never lie, an agent must have an aversion to lying that is stronger than any other desire - stronger, in fact, than all other desires combined.

In Part 27, I objected to moral sentiment theories - that we get right and wrong by examining our sentiments. In the case of Alph and Bett, they did not get a prohibition on causing injury from a moral sentiment. They got a prohibition on causing injury from having reasons to promote an aversion to causing injury universally. Moral sentiment theories, in fact, fail to make a necessary distinction between what people actually do like or dislike, and what they should (have reason to) like and dislike.

And in my last post before getting distracted, Part 28, I objected to evolved moral sentiment theories both on the grounds that they are moral sentiment theories and that there is no reason to believe that evolution gave us the attitudes we ought to have. Again, Alph and Bett in our proto-moral society did not evolve a sentiment against injuring others. The story of what sentiments they have reason to promote is not at all determined by the sentiments they actually evolved to have.

That catches me up. The next question is: Where do I go from here?

Our proto-moral community already gives us enough information to challenge the idea that morality is a set of commands or prescriptions that lack descriptive content. Similarly, we can reject the idea that morality is just a matter of opinion - there is no fact of the matter. Quite the contrary - there are moral facts and they are independent of what anybody in the community believes or wants those facts to be. I also want to challenge any type of "objective list" theory of right and wrong - and with it any theory that looks for "the end" or "the purpose" of human existence. There is none. While, at the same time, theories that tell us to invent our own ends or purposes are just as absurd. There are ends and purposes, but no single end for everybody, and they are not merely spun out of thin air.

Once I cover these points (and maybe a couple of others that I may have thought up, or that may come to me in the form of comments from interested readers), I am going to develop this proto-moral community a little further. I am going to add more people and more desires and see what comes of it.

Stay tuned.

Pragmatism and the Meanings of Moral Terms

322 days (a.k.a. 46 weeks) until I will be sitting in my first university class in 24 years.

I have been on vacation. I hoped to do some writing, but I at least got some reading in.

I have been reading about pragmatism. I was hearing things about pragmatism - in Philosophy Bites as well as a biography of Henry Sidgwick - that made it sound interesting.

In fact, the very start of these lectures on pragmatism contained an illustration that hit close to home.

Back when Luke Muehlhauser and I were working on the Morality in the Real World podcast, we came to the conclusion that philosophers were wasting a lot of time looking for "the one true and correct definition of terms" - such as "morality" or "knowledge". Readers and listeners were expecting us - and we were expecting ourselves - to identify this one true and correct definition of knowledge. The problem is that neither of us believed there was such a definition. Language is an invention - a tool created by a committee which simply is not as "clean and pure" as would be required for such a project to work.

I had long ago come to the conclusion that I did not care what definition my readers adopted for moral terms. If they wanted to use some alternative definition then they could simply do so at their convenience, and we can translate from the language I used to their language. The question of what was true of something was a different question of what we called it. Using different names from the same thing - or the same names for different things - introduced some inconveniences but, with care, was something we could work around.

The fact is, words do not have an "intrinsic meaning" to be discovered through philosophical analysis. Instead, words had a practical meaning - a meaning that made the term useful to those who used it. A theory of morality cannot give us the one true and correct meaning of moral terms, but it can give us a practically useful definition of moral terms.

Luke offered an example:

If a tree falls in the woods and there is nobody there to hear it does it make any sound?

The answer, according to Luke, was that it depends on what you mean by "sound".

If you mean a subjective experience caused by sound waves striking a normally functioning eardrum properly connected to a normally functioning brain, then the answer is, "No. We have already stated that no such eardrum and brain is within range and, as a result, the consequent subjective experience would not have been created."

If, instead, you mean the vibrations in the air that would typically produce such a sensation if the requisite brain and eardrum were present, the answer is, "Yes. If there were somebody there then the tree falling would have produced the air vibrations necessary to have caused such a person to have such a subjective sensation."

The lesson we drew is that many philosophical problems could be eliminated if we - in Luke's terms - "replaced the symbol (word) with the substance (the exact description of what we were trying to point to with that word)".

Our defense of desirism is that it provides a practically useful set of definitions that so closely match the common uses of terms like "good", "right", "excuse", "responsibility", "praise", "condemnation", "prohibited", "obligation", and the like.

Luke's story follows exactly the same structure as a story that William James told in the first of his lectures on pragmatism, as presented in the book Pragmatism.

James told about being presented with a metaphysical dilemma on a camping trip. One of the campers was trying to see a squirrel clinging to the side of a tree. No matter how the camper moved, the squirrel would move so as to stay on the opposite side of the tree. James was asked to settle a dispute over whether the camper went around the squirrel.

James said that the correct answer depends on what one meant by the term "around".

If, by "around" you meant that the camper went from being north, then west, then south, then east, then back to being north of the squirrel, then the answer was, "Yes."

However, if by the meaning of the term "around" one meant going from the front of the squirrel to its right side, to going behind the squirrel, around its left side, and back to the front, then the camper did not go around the squirrel.

Furthermore, which definition the speaker used was not set in stone - it depended on the speaker's interests and concerns. He picked the definition that was useful to him.

There is no intrinsically correct answer to the question of whether the camper went around the squirrel - because there was no intrinsically correct meaning to the term "around".

Similarly, there is no intrinsically correct meaning of the term "morality". The answer to the question, "Is morality objective?" is not a flat "yes" or "no", it is "I can't answer the question until you tell me more precisely what you mean by 'morality'". There is no objectively correct answer to that question. However, once answered, there would likely be a correct answer to the question of whether 'morality' understood in that way was objective or subjective. There would also be a large number of other implications as well which we would have reason to examine.

There is a significant difference between the pragmatism that Luke and I came up with and the philosophy of pragmatism that James defended. Our pragmatism was a pragmatism about the definitions of words. James was defending a pragmatism about truth. For James, to say that a proposition was true meant to say that the proposition was useful. To be true in any meaningful way, a proposition had to have practical implications, and we were to look at those implications to determine if we ought (if we had reason to) accept the proposition. Luke and I were not offering a theory of truth. We were offering a theory of language - a theory of that which was used to communicate truth.

The fact that James began with a story that was almost exactly like the story that Luke used brings forth the question of how much of James' pragmatism could actually be captured in our pragmatism. There was certainly an element of linguistic pragmatism in James' defense. I have an interest in discovering just how for those two types of pragmatism can travel together, and at what point (if any) they would split up and go in different directions.

Pride and Power

325 days until the start of class.

I recently encountered a meme on Facebook that compared the Wikipedia entries for Black Pride, Gay Pride, and Asian Pride with that for White Pride. While the first three were presented in substantially positive terms, the last was presented in negative terms linking it to white supremacy and racism. Nothing else was included in this account, yet it seemed to wish to present the case that there was an illegitimate distinction being made between the four different "pride" movements - that it was wrong to consider the first three legitimate and the fourth illegitimate. Either all were legitimate, or all were illegitimate.

That implication ignores a significant difference between the first three groups on the one hand, and the fourth group on the other. That relevant difference is power. Up to and including the present, in North American and European culture, the latter group had political, economic, and social power, and the first three groups did not. The fourth group - white people (and, in particular, white males) have used this power to go so far as to justify chattel slavery and genocide against members of other groups, as well as the colonization of their lands.

While some people might actually see equating these four groups as being an example of establishing moral equivalency - either all four pride movements are legitimate or none of them are - I do not think that the fact is lost on members of the "white pride" movement that a major consequence of this would be to help protect and preserve "white power".

Claiming that the four types of pride movement are equivalent (ignoring the differences in their quantities of economic, social, and political power) serves to protect "white power" by disrupting and undermining the formation of groups that would challenge this power in the name of their former (and current) victims. It would have the effect of weakening those organizations and, in doing so, help to keep these various forms of power in the hands of white people longer. At the same time, it promotes "white power" by giving a cloak of legitimacy to the idea of white people, under the banner of "white pride", getting together for that purpose. What appears to be a step towards equivalence in a purely theoretical or ideal universe is quite the opposite in the real world - a way of protecting and preserving a power difference between white males and other groups.

If this analysis has any merit, then it implies that we would have reason to revisit any of these "pride" movements if it were to become the case that they acquire the ability to combine their pride movement with economic or political power. It suggests that, at that time, we may have reason to view the pride movement in question in the same light under which we currently view "white pride", and to see "white pride" as a legitimate way for white people to politically organize to combat real discrimination against them.

Recently, I listened to a podcast from the London School of Economics on The Decline of the West in the New Asian Century?. It describes a possible future where "Asian power" continues to grow and replace white, male European power. - and it takes little imagination to imagine what that world will be like if we add to it a measure of "asian pride".

I find no difficulty in imagining a future world where Asians have accumulated much of the globe's economic and political power, and hold onto it by showing favoritism towards other Asians. It would be a world in which white people live in an impoverished and politically impotent state (because Asians have accumulated the economic and political power), with no hope of getting out of this situation since "Asian pride" means a preference for doing business with other Asians, appointing Asians to positions of political authority and responsibility.

This gives us a reason to ask what "Asia Pride" will mean in a world where China and other Asian countries have reached a point of political and economic dominance. We can imagine a world in which, once wealth and power flows into Asian hands, it remains in Asian hands because of racial and cultural preferences. This would be a world in which white people live in an impoverished state and remain in an impoverished state because Asian people refuse to provide them with economic and political opportunities and repeatedly show preferences for fellow Asians.

We have reason to ask what the situation might be in a future world that combines "Asian power" with "Asian pride" in the same way that "white power" and "white pride" has worked in the past few centuries. It gives a bit of realism to asking the question, "Are we treating blacks, Asians, homosexuals, women, atheists, etc., the way that we would want to be treated if we were in their position and they were in ours?"

If the account that I have given above has any merit, in that possible future world, "Asian pride" would be as much of a problem as "white pride" is today. It will become a slogan that actually aims to promote and encourage these racial preferences for Asians by those who have political and economic power - a pattern of discrimination that would work at the disadvantage of white people. In that world, there would be reason to denigrate "Asian pride" as a movement, and reason for a "white pride" movement as a way for white people to politically unite and to demand some share of that economic and political power.

However, that imaginary potential world is not the world we live in today. The world in which we live in today is one in which there are many and strong reasons to denigrate and discourage any notion of "white pride" (because of the seriously destructively implications of combining 'white pride' with 'white power'), and with encouraging others who have been the traditional victims of 'white power' to organize for their political, economic, and social self-defense in the face of 'white power'.

While we are in this world, we have reason to establish a moral precedent for governing the way that a group with power treats those who are, at the moment, out of power. We have reason to point out the destructive nature of the combination of pride with power. We have reason to condemn pride when it is combined with power as a way of preventing these abuses, and with supporting pride among those who lack power as a way of decreasing their economic, political, and social vulnerability.

We should not pretend that, in our current situation, black pride, gay pride, Asian pride, and the like are equivalent to white pride. They are only equivalent in a world where black power, gay power, and Asian power are also equivalent to white power - and that is not the world we live in today.

Implicit and Explicit Biases

327 days until classes start.

I have finished Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, and I have begun Henry Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics.

As a defender of classic utilitarianism, Sidgwick is not as famous as John Stuart Mill or Jeremy Bentham, but he is considered a better philosopher in terms of the quality and consistency of his arguments. Furthermore, I found his name prominently mentioned in course descriptions at the University of Colorado. These all give me reason to refamiliarize myself with this book.

Of course, another reason it is important is as a vehicle for presenting some of my ideas. In the chapters that I have already read, I have found opportunities to talk about intrinsic value and the relationship between desire and value.

Given the importance of this work, I am going to give it some special attention. I wish to use this blog to store some notes and thoughts that may serve as the foundation for one of those future papers.

In other news, I listed to a podcast of a presentation at the London School of Economics titled, "Women in Science: Past, Present, and Future Challenges".

This podcast told of the value of having women in science. For example, it helps to aim the scientific method at questions that concern women. Male researchers on animals tend to focus on the behavior of males - dominance rituals, for example. The introduction g female researchers has resulted in more research being done on the female portion from of the animal kingdom.

In economics, female researchers shifted the paradigm economic model of the family as a unit consisting of a benevolent dictator and his subjects, to a model that sees the family as a community of individuals with certain interdependencies and conflicting interests.

Interestingly, a previous podcast from the London School of Economics concerned How Philosophy Drives Discovery: A Scientist's View of Popper". A part of that discussion concerned Popper's objection to the idea that scientists derive general rules from a set of observations (because there are always an infinite set of generalizations consistent with any finite set of data). Instead, scientists come up with general rules as a burst of inspiration, then seek to falsify them. Here, a diversity of scientists with a diversity of experiences is useful for coming up with a diverse range of inspired general rules to attempt to falsify - for the general benefit of science in specific and society in general.

The research that the presenters provided on implicit biases that prevent female scientists from reaching their potential partially informed my claims in the previous post about biases against female presidential candidates. It is virtually certain that at least some of the opposition to Clinton consists of rationalization (an struggle to find a legitimate-sounding reason) for what is, in fact, an emotional reaction to the idea of a woman seeking such a position.

Some people have responded to these accusations by saying, "I would have supported Elizabeth Warren or Jill Stein." However, is this true? Since neither are actually in a position where they could become President, they are not in a position to stir the same emotions - in the same way that thinking about looking over the edge of a cliff or asking somebody on a date does not feel like actually doing so. Let them become an actual threat to hold such power, and there will be a lot of people finding credibility in objections raised against them as well.

Of course, this gives is not true of everybody, and the existence of a few individuals on the extreme end of the bell curve is not proof that the bell curve does not exist. In fact, research shows that virtually all of us has some implicit bias, so that each of us is disposed to judge a female candidate less suitable for the office she seeks than she is in fact. Women and men both have this bias. For some of us, this difference is not enough to have an impact on out vote. However, there is inevitably some portion of the population for which this is not the case.

This election gives us an account of the potentially huge social cost of this bias, as it can potentially put us under the leadership of Donald Trump rather than Hillary Clinton.

We all have many and strong reasons to discourage the use of these irrelevant standards of quality. It puts less qualified people in charge of important functions and keeps more qualified people out. Furthermore, each of us is at risk of falling victim to some prejudice or other - age, height, weight, physical attractiveness. Or we know and care about someone disadvantaged by these standards.

We may imagine that there could be a few who benefit from these prejudices (for a time), but that does not change the fact that people generally have many and strong reasons to object to such standards.

These principles apply as much to philosophy as they do to science and to Presidential candidates. Philosophy has long recognized that it is objectionable to assess an argument by assessing the individual. Such reasoning is identified by the name, "argumentum ad hominem" and is rejected as fallacious. What philosophers need to add to this is the fact that living up to this standard is very, very difficult (but also very important).

A Moral Philosopher's View of the 2016 Presidential Election

I have been looking at this year's presidential election through the eyes of a moral philosopher, and have found it distressing.

First, there is the issue of basic moral wrongs - issues about which it would be difficult to argue that there is a principled partisan difference. There are three that I tend to mention as elements of this basic morality.

1. Honesty - the moral obligation to speak the truth, which includes making a good-faith effort to discover what the truth is before speaking.
2. Keeping promises - doing what one says that he is going to do.
3. Repaying debts - a special case of keeping promises.

We all have many and strong reasons to promote a society that obeys these basic moral principle. Unlike issues such as abortion, public education, or a minimum wage, I would expect surveys among Republicans and Democrats to show nearly universal agreement as to the importance of these values - at least in principle. "Should a person pay his debts?" and "Should a person basically seek to know and tell the truth" are not claims where there is a "left" versus "right" difference of opinion.

Yet, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gets by with telling one falsehood after another without any sort of condemnation from a large part of the population. On September 24, the New York Times listed Trump's falsehoods for just the previous week in "A Week of Whoppers from Donald Trump". According to Fact-checking the first Presidential Debate, Trump clocked in at 34 false claims (keeping his pace of 1 false claim every 3 minutes) to 4 total false claims in 90 minutes for Clinton.

Many people claim that their reason for opposing Clinton is because she is dishonest. They claim, at least, that honesty is important and dishonesty is reason for condemnation. Yet, if this were they case - if they really cared about dishonesty (as opposed to caring about something else and using "dishonesty" as a socially acceptable cloak of concealment), then they would be far more opposed to Trump than to Clinton. In fact, given Clinton's record in comparison to other politicians, she would have to be preferred to just about anybody of either party. That is not to say that she has been totally honest, and "one of the most honest politicians around" is generally a low bar to clear, but she does clear it.

The issues of keeping promises and paying debts are related. A person contracts for other people to do a certain job. Those people do the job (increasing the net wealth of the person they did the job for, usually). The individual who contracted for the work has made a promise to pay the workers for that work, and thereby puts himself under an obligation to pay the bill. All of us recognize the obligation to pay our bills. Few of us - and none of us who are considered moral human beings - simply refuses to pay due to the fact that we can get away with it.

According to an investigation by USA Today published Thursday and a similar investigation by The Wall Street Journal published later in the day on Thursday, Trump's companies are facing hundreds of claims that Trump has stiffed people he contracted with for decades. (CNN, "Reports: Donald Trump Stiffs Contractors" (June 11, 2016) - with links to reports from the Washington Post and USA Today)

Apparently, the moral principles of "keep your promises" and "pay your debts" mean very little to Trump.

At the same time, one of Clinton's guiding principles during the Democratic primary has been a refusal to over promise during the campaign. She sought to give people an honest accounting of what she thought could be accomplished during the next four years. This hurt her in a contest against a candidate who promised far more than he could possibly deliver. Many voters went for the pie-in-the-sky promises of the one candidate to the "what I think I can actually deliver" promises of the other.

The relevant point here is that, in spite of the cost, Clinton refused to give campaign promises that she thought she could not keep. This demonstrates that she is a person who respects the obligation to keep promises.

Ultimately, one of the ways we can describe Trump is as a thief - a person who collected millions of dollars worth of goods and services from others to enrich himself, then refused to pay what he owed for those goods and services. This made him wealthier, and those from whom he stole the labor and materials - many of them small business owners and the common workers they employed or could have employed if they had been paid - poorer.

Here, again, the claim that Clinton is the least trustworthy goes so far contrary to the available evidence that we have reason to believe that there is something else going on in the minds of those who make this claim - some other reason that is motivating their action - and they are using "trustworthiness" as a convenient smoke screen behind which they can hide an unpleasant truth.

Again, I am not talking about principles about which people on the political left and right may disagree. There is no question of the merits or demerits of honesty, keeping promises, and repaying debts that is like what we find regarding infrastructure investments, environmental protection, and Obamacare. Yet, in this election, we have one (and only one) candidate with utterly no respect for the principles of honesty, keeping promises, and repaying debts - or any moral principle but his own advantage, by the looks of things.

If we take seriously this question of why some people, contrary to all available evidence, hold that the candidate who is by far the most honest is the least honest, and who is by far the most trustworthy is the least trustworthy, we do have a possible answer.

A reasonable story to tell suggests that some people have an aversion to having a woman in power. However, "having a woman in power" is not considered a legitimate reason to reject Clinton. They look for a legitimate-sounding reason, and latch onto "dishonesty" and "trustworthiness" to give their bigotry a cloak of legitimacy.

I am not saying that these people consciously oppose having a female President and are engaged in conscious deception to prevent her from winning the election with what they fully recognized to be trumped-up charges. Instead, what is happening is that their opposition to having a female President is found in their emotions, not in their beliefs. They think of her being President and this makes them uncomfortable - gives them a sense that something is wrong. Many likely also believe that it is morally wrong to reject a candidate because she is a female and that they need a more socially acceptable reason. This drives them to imagine that Clinton is dishonest and untrustworthy - contrary to all evidence. They take snippets of evidence that support this conclusion and blow it out of all proportion. It "feels like" she is dishonest and untrustworthy - and they draw this feeling from their emotions rather than from the evidence. In fact, this feeling is actually coming from a discomfort at having a female President.

We have evidence that this does happen - and that both men and women are afflicted with this form of rationalization.

We have the observation that people see Clinton as dishonest when the objective evidence is that she is among the most honest of politicians, and the fact that people find her untrustworthy when again without evidence.

We have the observational evidence that people see her as more dishonest and more untrustworthy than a person who makes a false claim every 3 minutes and has enriched himself by taking from and then refusing to pay thousands of average American workers and small business owners.

We also have a great deal of empirical evidence about how implicit bias works.

There is research in which recruiters are provided with identical resumes - where the only difference is that one contains a male name and the other a female name - who choose the male candidate and claim he is better qualified. The "difference in qualifications" that they see in the resumes exist only in their imagination.

We have studies where there are two standard resumes - one showing more experience and less education, and another showing more education and less experience. One resume is submitted with a male name, and another with a female name. When the resume with the male name has the more experience, recruiters say "experience is what we really need in this job" and they send the offer to the man. When the resume with the male name contains more education, recruiters say "education is what we really need in this job" and they send the offer to the man. Clearly, they are not, in fact, basing their decision on education or experience but on "being male". However, they fool even themselves into thinking that they are grounding their decision on a more socially acceptable criterion.

We have observations that need explaining and a well supported theory with which to explain it. It is not an unreasonable hypothesis.

Here, too, it is important to stress that implicit bias is not a "conservative" problem. It is a problem in the way human brains function - the brains of liberals as well as conservatives.

Regardless of the merits of this hypothesis, the observations pertain - that we have a great many voters abandoning fundamental moral values of honesty, keeping promises, and repaying debts in order to prevent a female from being President. As a moral philosopher, I find this to be wrong on a fundamental level.

Predation

Yesterday, as my wife and I walked to the grocery store, we walked over a footbridge that has a "fence" over it - probably to prevent kids from throwing things down onto the cars below, or performing the types of dangerous antics that children are disposed to perform.

As we got to the far end of this fence, I looked up to see a hawk or a falcon (I will not pretend that I have the skill to tell the difference) surveying the ground. From eyeball to eyeball we were perhaps two meters apart. It seemed uninterested in me.

There was a natural thrill in being so close to a bird of prey.

It was fairly big.

This brought to mind the thought that every aspect of that bird's existence - its feathers to its muscles - was brought about through the pain and suffering of other creatures. What causes this bird of prey to have a good life necessarily implies a painful, fear-filled, untimely end to the life of a great many other creatures. Those creatures were captured and torn apart by beak and talon.

For that one life to continue into the future . . . for another year . . . for several years . . . meant a violent end to still other creatures.

It is no consolation to talk about the pain and suffering that would have resulted from the overpopulation of the herds that the bird preys upon. If there were a benevolent god, it would have found a less horrendous way to prevent the ill effects of overpopulation. And if the capturing of innocent creatures and tearing them apart can be justified in virtue of its overall social utility, then perhaps it is something we should try as well.

Or, if it is too horrendous to for us to try, then all of the reasons against it are reasons to be uncomfortable with the pain and suffering that this method of population control brings into the wild.

These facts are among the facts that cause me to scoff at the thought that we have evolved some sort of moral sense. Is there some sense among birds of prey that give them any reluctance at all to inflict such pain and suffering on animals in the wild? Is seems absurd to argue that there a wrongness to these acts to which it is simply blind. Rather, it makes more sense to say that birds of prey have evolved those sentiments suitable to their continued existence - and a sense of moral approval at tearing apart other creatures and eating them simply is not on the list.

The fields below where we saw this bird tend to be filled with rabbits. My wife and I enjoy counting the rabbits as we walk to the bus in the morning to go to work - counting as many as ten different rabbits some days.

This morning, we did not see any rabbits.

It is quite likely that one of the rabbits we saw last week was captured and torn apart.

This is a part of the world in which we live. This has been a part of the world for hundreds of millions of years without anybody giving even a moment's moral thought to any of it. Creatures have been captured and torn apart - with all of the pain and suffering inherent in these activities - without the least bit of moral objection.

If there is an objection to be made to the bird of prey inflicting such harm on the rabbits, then that objection does not come from the birds. It comes from us - grounded on our sensibilities. The rabbits might also have something to say about it - insofar as they could say anything about it. But there is no "moral sense" that dictates that any properly functioning bird of prey has a reason to refrain from these types of activities.

Smith vs. Hume on Evaluating Moral Sentiments

Class begins in 329 days.

What can I accomplish in 329 days?

I would actually like to write a couple of papers - papers that I can later turn into presentations. I have discovered that graduate students do have opportunities to give such presentations.

With an idea of writing a paper on Sidgwick's arguments concerning the evaluation of motives, I have downloaded and converted to text Towards that end, I am converting Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics to speech so that I can listen to it while I exercise. I will certainly have reason to go through it more than once.

I am nearly finished with Adam Smith's, Theory of Moral Sentiments - and will likely have it done in a couple more days. It has some weaknesses, but, over all, it has been quite valuable.

I have answered the question of whether Davis Hume had an influence on Adam Smith's work. Smith wrote:

The same ingenious and agreeable author who first explained why utility pleases, has been so struck with this view of things, as to resolve our whole approbation of virtue into a perception of this species of beauty which results from the appearance of utility. No qualities of the mind, he observes, are approved of as virtuous, but such as are useful or agreeable either to the person himself or to others; and no qualities are disapproved of as vicious but such as have a contrary tendency. (Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part IV, Section 1, Chapter 2)

This follows Hume's theory too closely for this to have been some other ingenious and agreeable author.

Yet, Smith disagreed with this view. In doing so, he gave two reasons.

Smith objected that the quality that we assign to character traits is immediately recognized as being of a different type than the quality that we assign to useful artifacts.

For first of all, it seems impossible that the approbation of virtue should be a sentiment of the same kind with that by which we approve of a convenient and well-contrived building; or that we should have no other reason for praising a man than that for which we commend a chest of drawers. (Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part IV, Section 1, Chapter 2)

That is to say, the value of prudence and benevolence appear directly to be of a different quality than the value of a pocket watch or umbrella.

Hume argued that the beauty of a ship is found in the ship having those qualities that make it a good and fast ship - one that sails quickly and smoothly. The shape of a beautiful ship is the shape that suits it to perform the function of a ship, and the appearance of a beautiful house is one that fits it to perform the functions of a house.

According to Smith, Hume falsely believes that we can find beauty in a character trait in virtue of its utility. He argues that reason, applied to the highest pursuits in mathematics, has very little utility, but it is still prized.

In response, I can distinguish three different ways in which we may assess the value of something; practically, aesthetically, and morally.

In the first instance, we look only at the usefulness of something - of a watch's ability to tell us the time of day or an umbrella's ability to keep the rain off.

In the second instance, we look only at the direct appreciation of its qualities - the degree to which it pleases or displeases people directly. This identifies the way in which we may appreciate a piece of music, a painting, or the appearance of a building.

In the third instance, we look at the reasons that exist for promoting a certain level of approval or disapproval - the reasons that exist for causing people to like or dislike something. Here, we look at the reasons for promoting an aversion to lying or intellectual recklessness, breaking promises, or refusing to pay debts.

According to Smith, Hume argued that the value of the second type follows from the value of the first type. Recall how the beauty of a ship is found in those qualities that provide smooth and speedy sailing. Yet, it is odd to argue that the same can be said of the aesthetic evaluation of a piece of music or a painting.

However this difficulty gets resolves, Smith's point is that the moral appreciation of character traits is, unlike the appreciation of a ship, grounded on its usefulness. Instead, the immediate evaluation of a character trait - like that of a piece of music or a painting - may not be found in the appreciation of the object itself. He does not consider the reaction that people generally might have reason to cause others to have.

It would be a mistake to argue that Smith fails to distinguish between the sense of applause or condemnation that a person may have to expressions of a particular character trait from the reaction that the same agent ought to have. The measure of the reaction that a person ought to have is determined by the applause or condemnation that would be given by a detached observer - a person with no specific attachment to the person expressing such a trait. This is the reaction that an agent should try to copy.

Hume's view of morality is such that we should look not only at the actual and immediate appraisal of a character trait - the degree to which we (or even detached observers) are immediately disposed to applaud or condemn it - but also at the reasons that we may have to create a community in which people applaud or condemn that trait. We may be disposed to applaud a trait that people generally have reason to condemn. Smith would have us continue to applaud it. Hume would have us condemn it.

On this matter, fairness requires that I report that Smith would have rejected the idea that we are disposed to applaud traits that we have reason to condemn, or condemn traits we have reason to applaud. Smith believed that humans are the product of a creator who has given us the sentiments that best suit our interests in civil society. Readers may be interested to note that Smith sometimes assert that this creator is a god who has designed us intelligently, but elsewhere argued that we may have acquired these traits through nature fitting us to our environment. Still, the fact that there is this match between the traits we tend to applaud and those that are beneficial, we are not disposed to applaud them because they are beneficial. Rather, we have been made to applaud those traits for their own sake that also, and at the same time, happen to be beneficial (and, perhaps, not accidentally so).

Yet, this runs into my long-standing objection to these types of arguments. If this is true, then why is it that we praise and condemn? Why is praise an appropriate response in some cases and condemnation an appropriate response in others? I argue that it is because praise and condemnation do useful work - promoting those sentiments that are praised and those aversions to act-types that are condemned. This response supports Hume over Smith in that it argues that we decide which traits are virtues and vices, rather than having the decision made for us by an outside force.

This leads to the second of Smith's arguments against Hume.

Reason 2: We learn the value of each sentiment directly, not by an evaluation of its usefulness.

And secondly, it will be found, upon examination, that the usefulness of any disposition of mind is seldom the first ground of our approbation; and that the sentiment of approbation always involves in it a sense of propriety quite distinct from the perception of utility. We may observe this with regard to all the qualities which are approved of as virtuous, both those which, according to this system, are originally valued as useful to ourselves, as well as those which are esteemed on account of their usefulness to others.

It seems quite true that we base our judgments of character traits on our immediate appraisal based on our immediate like and dislike. In this, Smith is providing an accurate account of what happens. However, here we can argue that Smith fails to distinguish between what we do and what we should do. The slave master, the individual who condemns homosexual or interracial marriage, and the like, are telling us what they feel about those types of relationships. However, the fact that this is how they feel is not a measure of how they should feel - or a measure of the feelings that people have reason to promote or inhibit. When we get into moral disagreements, it is here where we turn to the utility of particular traits in order to determine which ones people generally have reason to promote or inhibit.

I have an interest in looking deeper into this matter. I need to do some research to see if anything might have already been written. With a little luck, perhaps I could get one of those papers I was talking about out of this.

The Function of This Blog

In 331 days, I am sitting in my first class.

I am quite anxious to get started. Attending a couple of lectures and being able to share some emails with the presenters has whetted my appetite.

On Friday, October 7, Dr Steinbock will be giving another presentation - this one on euthanasia. I have a schedule conflict. If I was a student, I would certainly be attending this and other presentations, and sharing notes.

I hope to share those notes here as well, as I have been.

I continue to have second, third, and fourth thoughts about this blog as I go through graduate school. I have turned this into a more genuine "web log" in discussing actual events in real time regarding my efforts in graduate school. It is not that I think people care about such things - it would be self-centered to think so. But I do value expressing such thoughts and concerns.

However, I ask myself, is that appropriate? Am I doing myself more harm than good?

My discussion of returning to graduate school probably - I think - gives this blog and the ideas contained within an amateurish taint. It discredits what I right by denying even the illusion that I have the status of an academic philosopher.

And appearances matter.

We can speak all we want about how an argument SHOULD be judged by the strengths of its premises and the validity of its reasoning. However, in the real world, that is simply not what people do. A "nobody" can put an idea on the table and have it rejected precisely because it comes from a "nobody". Then, somebody with connections and a reputation comes along and says the same thing, and the idea spends almost instantly through the academic community.

This ties in to one of the objections that I have of the claims of many atheists. They proudly boast that they base their beliefs on reason alone - unlike those pathetic "religious" types who fall victim to all sorts of fallacies and error. Yet, it is simply not true that they do not "worship" certain authors of ideas and are more willing to adopt a claim - not because of the strength of the arguments behind it - but because of who said it.

I keep wondering if, some day, in my readings, I will encounter a named philosopher presenting some of these ideas that I present here. I am not talking about plagiarism. I am talking about some named philosopher or somebody who has access to the ear of named philosophers coming up with the same idea and presenting them. Then that person gains credit and fame for ideas that have actually been "out there" for the past 20 years.

Along these same lines, I wonder how many brilliant ideas have been thought up by women, minorities, the poor, and those who lack connections to the families that have influence in a society, whose ideas died of neglect. We celebrate Hume, Locke, Kant, and Descartes as great philosophers, yet they were lucky enough to have the skin color, gender, and social connections that allowed them to be great. Take any of these things away and, though their ideas would have been the same, we would never have heard of them.

Somewhere, in a slave shack in Alabama in 1700, a slave could well have been wondering, "How is it that we can actually get a general principle from some specific observations?" His mind could have toiled with the problem while he picked cotton, wondering as he looked around him at the reliability of perception and the actual nature of cause and effect. Yet, it was Hume, and not him, who gets the credit and the fame.

I am in the class of old, white, male, that tends to get listened to more than others. However, I am still disqualified - or have been - on account of not having the connections to the great families that would get anything I have to say before a wider audience in a way that would give it a fair hearing.

This may sound like "crying in my milk" as it were. It might well generate a response of "quit your whining, you baby". Perhaps such a response is appropriate. Yet, I do not think any serious look at history would deny these points - that, throughout history, some are born with qualities - gender, race, wealth, connections - that give them significant advantages over others. That this goes a great deal to explaining the identity of those who become known for their greatness.

It is a fact of the world - a fact, like all facts, that a person living in the world has reason to acknowledge and accept.

Self Help Philosophy: Desirism

Can Desirism help a person to live a better life?

In my last post I looked at some self-help philosophies and tried to express them in more modern terms. This raised the question of whether desirism itself has any recommendations for living a better life.

One of the recommendations that it comes with is a way to improve the community in which one lives. This is to determine what desires and aversions people generally have reason to promote and ally with other members of the community to promote those desires and aversions. One can create a community in which people are more honest, kind, and helpful, less eager to see harm come to others, who repay their debts, keep promises, and try not to be an undue burden on others.

In other words, it helps to identify where to put the moral fence so as to improve the quality of life for those living within the bounds of that fence.

But that's moral-ought. Does desirism provide any advice on how one ought to practical-ought live their lives.

To start with, desirism can endorse the advice offered by the Buddhists, stoics, and Adam Smith in the previous post. Our desires give things value. However, it is possible to become so attached to a state of affairs that one simply cannot bear a world in which that state of affairs does not obtain. Yet, the universe promises us nothing. To avoid extreme disappointment, we have reason to temper our desires - to enjoy the time that we have to do what we want and with whom we want, but to brace oneself for the fact that things will change and what we have today may not be here tomorrow.

If your attitude towards another person is, "I couldn't live without you," then you have a problem. It is not only a problem for you in that the fates might not give you the company of the person you could not live without. You are also creating a problem for that person. If you find yourself in this type of situation, you should admit to the fact that it is not a good situation to be in and to take steps to temper those sentiments.

Another important piece of advice - and one that I gratefully followed even before I knew anything about desirism - is to avoid acquiring those desires that tend to thwart future desires. Smoking, drug addiction, and the like are desires best avoided. The best way to avoid acquiring these desires is to refuse to take up the activity that causes one to have them. Scientists know how these activities work on the brain to alter desires - and, science can tell you, with an increasing measure of accuracy, what you should avoid.

I did end up with an over-fondness for chocolate and computer games, but I have avoided acquiring some of the worst future-thwarting desires simply by avoiding cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs.

This leads to a third important piece of advice - to know and understand the world as it is.

A major cause of human misery has and continues to be "false belief". False beliefs cause people to devote time and resources to plans that do not produce expected results, and to fail to devote time and resources to plans that would produce exceptional payoffs. The range of activities that are adversely impacted by false belief range from investment and career options to health matters. False beliefs on climate change threatens countless lives and promises untold amounts of human suffering. Mistaken beliefs about vaccines, genetically modified foods, nuclear power, and alternative medicine cause significant harm.

However, understanding the world as it is involves more than acquiring correct beliefs, it requires an honest appraisal of how one acquires beliefs. Confirmation biases, cherry-picking, and tribal prejudices combine to motivate people to make judgments that are often far from the truth, and hijack an interest in doing good to produce behavior that does harm.

The value of true beliefs provides a substantial reason to come down particularly hard on those who lie - where a "lie" is understood as any communicative act that seeks to cause in others a belief that the communicator believes to be false. It also provides reason for the harsh condemnation of those who are intellectually reckless, because they do not exercise sufficient caution or concern over whether their claims are true or false.

It is also important to be modest in one's beliefs. All it takes is a casual look around at the numbers of people who have been absolutely confident that they were right who have, in fact, been dead wrong to draw the conclusion that one should be a bit anxious about one's own beliefs. The idea that one is to grab a belief, as a matter of faith, and hang onto it beyond all reason and allow no questioning has been a barrier to progress, good judgment, and respect for others throughout human history. Try to understand the world as it is. However, if your neighbor also tries to understand the world as it is and comes up with some different answers, certainly one of you must be wrong, but an impartial judge may not find it particularly easy to determine who it is.

Another piece of advice that I have illustrated in a recent post on weight loss comes from the fact that the way that a desire presents itself depends on its environment. In the case that I described earlier, desires that have motivated me to waste time playing computer games also motivated me to lose weight when I put them in a context where I could "keep score" regarding the number of calories I burned and consumed in a day. Along that same line of reasoning, one can take their desires as they are and try to change the environment so that the desires express themselves in useful and productive ways. This is a great deal easier than altering one's desires.

These are a few pieces of practical advice that come from desirism.

1. Promote a community in which others keep promises, repay debts, and the like by praising/rewarding those who do and condemning/punishing those who do not.
2. Avoid overly strong attachments to that which is temporary or that can be lost.
3. Avoid desires that thwart future desires.
4. Seek true beliefs; educate yourself about the real world and avoid the epistemic traps that lure people into false beliefs.
5. Promote a community in which people generally respect the value of true beliefs (condemn lying and intellectual recklessness).
6. Avoid arrogance in one's beliefs. In every dispute, somebody has to be wrong and it is not always "the other guy".
7. Try to create a context in which your desires (interests) can express themselves in ways that are useful to yourself and others.
8. Promote a community within which people generally are kind and helpful.

Well, that's a start.

Self-Help Philosophy

333 days until my first classes and, as promised, a blog post on self-help philosophy.

A couple of posts ago, I distinguished between moral philosophy (How moral-ought I to live my life?) from what I will call here self-help philosophy (How practical-ought I to live my life?).

The distinction rests on whether one is evaluating a life relative to the desires one ought to have (moral-ought) or the desires one does have (practical-ought). For the virtuous person there is no conflict between the two. For everyone else, there is. Yet, even for the virtuous person, moral-ought leaves a lot of room within which one can roam - and decisions to be made about how practical-ought one to live within those moral boundaries.

Recently, I have encountered three examples of philosophies that sought to give advice on how one should practical-ought live one's life.

Two appeared in the more recent episodes of the Philosophy Bites podcast: Graham Priest on Buddhism and Philosophy and William B. Irvine on Living Stoically.

Both of these episodes spent some of their time discussing how to handle disappointment.

Actually, "disappointment" is too mild of a term. One example they both used involved the parent's loss of a young child - in my opinion, one of the most painful events a person may have to endure. Yet it is still only one example among a great many possibilities. At the very least, old age and death bring the promise of forcing us to endure some loss, either of friends and family, or our own faculties.

The Stoics and the Buddhists also have similar ways of addressing these problems - solutions (or, at least, mitigations) that promise to remove some of the emotional pain out of life.

Buddhists, at least according to Graham Priest, state that this distress is caused by wanting that which one cannot have - or that one cannot have reliably. The world is constantly changing such that even if, at the moment, you have that which you want, it will not last. The more tightly one tries to hang on to things in this world, the stronger the sting will be when reality takes it away. Consequently, the wise person does not attach great importance to such things. They enjoy that which they have, but not in a way that they suffer greatly when it is gone.

Stoicism also tells us not to value something to such a degree that we are torn up by its loss.

Desirism would state this as, "Insofar as you have a reason to avoid great emotional pain and suffering, do not cultivate a desire that P that is so strong that one cannot endure a state in which 'P' is false."

William Irvine said that the stoic can, in a sense, immunize himself against the potential death of a child by taking the time each night to consider the fact that the child could be dead tomorrow. One should not dwell on this potential loss - that would be a recipe for misery. However, one should at least face the possibility. This gives the stoic a double blessing of being all the more grateful for having just one more day with that child should the fates allow it, and being psychologically prepared for the state in which the fates did not allow it.

I found the third example of this type of self-help philosophy in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Although Smith talked about the loss of a child, most of his discussion concerned the hypothetical loss of a leg by a cannon in a wartime battle.

Smith's suggested remedy to the problem of suffering some great disappointment or loss was to get out more - to meet people and share their company. Furthermore, the company that one is to seek is the company of strangers or, at least, more distant acquaintances. Friends and close family are going to be too sympathetic and indulgent of the person feeling sorry for himself. More distant acquaintances and strangers, on the other hand, have less of a tendency to be so indulgent.

More generally, Smith argued that the proper measure of the sentiment one should have to some object is that which "everybody" would have who is at such sufficient distance from the object so as to be impartial. Such a hypothetical agent would still carry a common amount of human sympathy, and thus will not be entirely unfeeling towards the person who has suffered such a loss. However, they would not allow their lives to be torn up over the fact. Through them, the agent can learn not to allow such a loss to destroy his own life.

I want to repeat that this is not a suggestion to join the company of people who care nothing about us. Smith argues that sympathy is a powerful and important sentiment - one that grounds all of morality - and one that "everybody" shares. Consequently, his advice to seek the company of others who are somewhat removed from one's loss is still advice to seek the company of people who have some measure of natural sympathy. However, it would be a sympathy that held the loss in its proper context - as one tragedy among many in a universe filled with tragedies and joys. Through their example, and with the benefit of time, one can learn to see their own loss in something near the same way.

Ultimately, the goal here is little different from that which the Buddhist and the stoic suggests - to temper one's 'desire that P' such that one can tolerate living in a world in which 'P' is false. It is to lessen the importance of 'P' being true, in order to lessen the pain that is consequent upon living in a universe in which 'P' may end up being false.

It is a type of advice that desirism, too, can recommend to anybody who has an interest in avoiding such pain.

Emerita Steinbock on "Designer Babies"

334 days until the start of class.

I tried to get a posting on self-help philosophy in yesterday, but I failed to finish it.

Not enough time.

I will likely post it later today.

One of the reasons I failed is because I went to the University of Colorado in Boulder to attend another lecture. Dr. Emerita Steinbock wrote on "designer (genetically enhanced) babies."

She began with some technical accounts that suggested that, with a few exceptions, genetic enhancement would be hard to come by. Genes do not have just one effect - they effect many different body functions. Altering a gene to bring an enchancement to one function may have detrimental effects somewhere else.

Similarly, few traits are controlled by just one gene. One may seek an enhancement by modifying Gene A, only to discover that Gene B has reversed the effect.

We can add to this the environmental and social effects on genes. Chemicals - from hormones to environmental toxins - can alter the way a particular gene expresses itself. Furthermore, social and cultural factors may have an influence. A child given the height and coordination to play basketball may discover that she enjoys philosophy instead.

There are some things that parents can select for - such as the sex of a child. And we do know of some genetic determinants of disease, such as Downs' Syndrome. In these areas, early tests allow parents to determine if the child has traits that the parent or parents value. We can expect that our ability to predict the effects of genetic manipulation will increase - though the above complications suggest that this will be slowly with great difficulty and potential for unforeseen consequences.

There is also the question of what counts as an enhancement. Steinbock brought up the fact that there are genetic factors that dispose certain people to extreme shyness. She spoke of this as a defect - something that a parent may wish to prevent passing on to future generations. As somebody who is extremely shy, I resent that description. Yes, being extremely shy has certain drawbacks (e.g., desirism would probably be the leading moral theory if I had a disposition to actually sell it and promote it), but, I believe, it also makes me sensitive to certain facts about the world that a less shy - and, in some areas, less observant - person would be. This speaks to the difficulty, in some cases, to even knowing whether a change actually counts as an enhancement.

Still, Steinbock thought it would be useful to examine the moral arguments concerning genetic enhancement.

She seemed to think that there were no good arguments against it. For example, the argument that it somehow violates the authonomy of the child can be set aside because being genetically entineered or having random genetic traits has no impact on a child's autonomy. It is not as if the parents are overriding the child's decision regarding its genes - the child lacks the capacity to make any decision.

On the matter of consent, the fact that a child lacks a vote in its genetic makeup also fails to provide an objection to genetic enhancement. Because the child lacks a voice, it is the duty of the parents to do that which is in the interests of the child. This actually provides an argument in favor of enhancement rather than against it. If there were a genetic enhancement that would give a child immunity from a particular disease (e.g., malaria), would that be any different than giving the child an immunization shot as protection against polio?

There was one objection brought up by a member of the audience that I had a particular interest in - and that became the subject of an email that I sent to Dr. Steinbock after the event. Writing this email was another reason I was unable to finish the posting on self-help philosophy yesterday.

As I understood the argument - and attempting to put it in the best light I can think of - it asked us to consider the psychological harm that may be done to the person who discovers that she is not a "natural" child but, instead, a genetically enhanced child.

Dr. Steinbock's answer to this objection was that there is no good reason to hate oneself for being a genetically enhanced child. The child who discovers this fact about herself, according to Steinbock, should just "get over it".

At this point I attempted to put the argument in a stronger light - as well as suggest an objection against even this stronger version of the argument - by pointing out that these types of arguments have been used in the past. People, trying to present their racism as altruistic, have argued against interracial marriage in virtue of the psychological harm that the child would suffer as a result of being a "mixed race" child. Similarly, people have used "psychological harm" as a reason to oppose allowing same-sex couples to raise (or to adopt) children.

I was attempting to imply that we can imagine a case in which a culture adopted the attitude that designer babies, though perhaps mentally or physically superior to most "natural" children, were still considered to have less intrinsic worth - as being less "human" in the moral sense. We could imagine "designer baby" becoming a cultural slur - an insult hurled with venom aimed at communicating that the genetically enhanced child was, by that very fact, worthy of contempt. In this way, a genetically enhanced child can come to suffer abuse and psychological harm.

After all, there are a lot of people who view "natural" as intrinsically more valuable than "artificial", and humans are disposed to attack and belittle minorities, as well as have an incentive to put down in other ways those who they may have to compete with for jobs and public acclaim.

Steinbock responded to these points by saying that research shows that there was no psychological harm that resulted from being a mixed-race child or being raised by same-sex parents. This implies that we can expect no similar harm to come from being the a "designer baby".

That may well be true (I later told her in an email), but it does not actually address the argument in its strongest form. What if there was psychological harm? Would preventing this harm count as a good reason to prevent an activity? Should the possibility that genetically enhanced children are the subject of ridicule and abuse in virtue of that fact could as a reason to condemn the parents who would bring such a child into the world or raise the child in such a way?

My argument is that, even if there is real psychological harm, the fault lies with the abusers, not with the parents of that child. The cultural or social denigration of mixed-race children would not count as a reason to condemn the mixed-race parents, it counts as a reason to condemn those who express bigotry towards - who, in a very real sense, abuse - the mixed race child in virtue of its being mixed-race. Similarly, if children were being harmed as a result of social ridicule for "having two mothers" or "having two fathers", the fault rests not with the mothers or fathers, but with the society that allows and inflicts that abuse.

Along these same lines, any abuse that a "designer baby" may suffer as a result of being targeted as something lacking the intrinsic worth of a "natural" human would be the fault of those who would have and express bigotry against such a child. It should not count as a reason to condemn the parents of a child.

I did not express in my email an objection to this argument that has always concerned me. Let us say that I knew that the man living up the street had a disposition to murder women. When my sister comes to visit, I send her up to the neighbor's house to borrow a tool, expecting that he she would be murdered. I can make the same argument that the fault rests with the neighbor who did the murder, and the decision to send my sister to get the tool is and remains a totally blameless activity. Yet, this seems not to be the case. Similarly, in each of the three cases above, we can, perhaps, hold out some measure of condemnation against the mixed-race or same sex couple bringing a child into the world where she will suffer abuse at the hands of bigots. We can extend this moral judgment to the couple bringing a "designer baby" into a world where people would condemn and denigrate that person.

An important difference between these two types of cases is that there are many and strong reasons for society to abolish this prejudice against mix-race children or children raised by same-sex couples. Those same kinds of reasons also apply to "designer babies". There is no similar argument to be made for tolerating murderers. In order to promote tolerance where intolerance is unjustified, we need to condemn the intellerant - and deny them a "heckler's veto" over that which they do not tolerate. This argues for giving a pass to the parents being discussed in this posting, but not to the man who sends his sister to barrow a tool from the murderer.

Well, now that this is behind me, I can get back to that posting on self-help philosophy. It is nearly done, and I anticipate no other interruptions - except work, exercise, family time, and some social obligations.

*sigh*

How Practical-Ought/Moral-Ought I to Live My Life?

The first day of class is now 335 days away.

The final episodes of Philosophy Bites exposed me to a pair of interviews that brought up the idea of "Self Help Philosophy". This is the idea that philosophy exists to improve the quality of one's life - to make life go better for those who engage in its practices.

I am going to divide this discussion into two parts.

First, I want to look at the idea that philosophy is supposed to answer the question of how we should live. Second, in the next post, I will look at how Buddhism and Stoicism attempt to answer one interpretation of this question.

I specify, "one interpretation of this question" because the phrase, "how one should live" contains an important ambiguity. The term "should" has two related meanings - "moral ought" and "practical ought". In other words, the question, "How morally-should we live" is distinct from "How practical-should we live."

Desirism distinguishes between these two uses of the word "should" by asking how the object of evaluation (possible lives) stands in relation to what an agent does desire (practical ought" versus what he should desire (moral ought). "Should desire" in this case looks at the desires and aversions people generally have reason to promote, not at the desires and aversions the agent actually has.

There is no inherent irrationality in immorality. In fact, the true villain is somebody for whom it is rational to do the immoral. Given his desires, the practical thing for him to do is that which fulfills his own desires in ways that thwart (harm) the interests of others. You cannot argue a person out of immorality. You can only threaten him, and try to change his desires so that immorality no longer tempts him.

Some do not see a distinction here. Plato and Aristotle, for example, seemed determined to show that living as one practical-ought is the same as living as one moral-ought. Immanuel Kant also sought to show that immorality is irrational.

G.E. Moore objected to John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism that it fails to distinguish between what we desire and what we ought to desire - which is exactly where I place the distinction between practical and moral ought. This is not true. Mill wrote, for example, that the love of virtue does not come naturally. It must be taught, and we have reason to teach it that is grounded on its good consequence. Insofar as one acquires a love of virtue, practical ought comes into alignment with moral ought.

There is only one type of person where the answer to the question, "How practical-ought I to live?" and "How moral-ought I to live?" are in harmony, and that is in the case of a person with perfect virtue. It is the person for whom what she desires and what she ought to desire are the same.

Yet, the boundaries of morality encompass a large territory where morality says nothing about what an agent should do in any sense of the term. The choice of career, of friends, of a mate, of what to eat and what to wear, within limits, are not determined by morality. The agent is free to make choices, and to find separate answers to the question, "What practical-ought I to desire?"

Even if one lives a life entirely within the boundaries of morality, one is bound to suffer hardship. Personal injury or illness, the loss of livelihood or property, the suffering of cold, thirst, hunger, and the want of good company, becoming the victim of wrongdoing or injustice, or even receiving just punishment, can threaten to knock an agent off of her feet. At the very least, age guarantees some upset.

This is where self-help philosophy comes in. This is where the question, "How practical-ought I to live?" takes on a measure of importance. I will address that in a future post.