Rust Belt Philosophy

Or, in the words of Jeff Mirus, the problem with people comparing their gut feelings about a child to their gut feelings about a dog is "that the dog has no value but that their minds" whereas children (read: fetuses) have some other kind of value. See, for Mirus, the world "cannot be interpreted morally without a great respect for the concept of personhood." Having this respect in hand, he says, we will understand - and I'm sure you already know where this is going - "that all non-personal being is [sic] at man's disposal" in precisely the same sense that "no personal being," including a fetus, "is at man’s disposal." How reasonable this all is will depend on what Mirus means by "personal being."

Thankfully, he actually gives us this definition: "every person has both intellect and will and so is at least potentially capable of entering into relationships of love." As for "relationships of love," those happen through "an act of the will based on a proper intellectual valuation of the other, a valuation through which the intellect instructs us to love, that is, to will the other's good." Got it? People have intellect and will and are capable of properly intellectually evaluating others and choosing to act in their benefit. If any of this sounds familiar, you've been paying attention: we've been here before.

When I went through this whole thing with Joel last month, I was never able to get him to see the whole picture at once. At first he used the definition that "any human being...is one that has 'potential for growth and full realization.' Potential for growth is one of the necessary characteristics in defining a thing as living and human beings by definition are animals capable of full realization." This seems to be the direction Mirus is going: work with established scientific terms ("intellect," "animal," "growth") and use their common meaning to show that fetuses are just the same as full-grown humans. But this leads to problems, especially for religious frameworks like the one Mirus explicitly operates in. For one thing, not all human-patterned DNA physically has the potential to grow and develop - some will die in vitro, some will live but fail to develop higher brain functions, etc. Even worse, some humans who actually do have will and intellect and all that jazz will eventually lose those capacities permanently, at which point Mirus is bound to say that they're no longer people. Since he refuses to do this - and, more broadly, since both he and Joel refuse to say that fetuses without the physical capacity for development aren't people - this route won't work for them.

Going for something more metaphysical, then, seems to be the right response. This can be done in one of two ways: either through a religious perspective or not. Joel chooses the latter, and this option is also open to Mirus (though he'd never take it). The most famous account of this can be found in Aristotle's De Anima, and that's precisely where Joel looks: according to Aristotle, he says, "there is a particular kind of living thing that has the capacity for reason, namely human beings. Given that reason is such that it cannot be attributed to matter per se...he attributes it to the immaterial soul. Now if the soul as such that it makes the particular living thing be what it is (a human, a monkey, a giraffe, etc.) and is also the principle of life, then any human living thing posesses a rational soul." In cases where the human doesn't actually develop or even cannot actually develop rationality (or, for Mirus, intellect and will), the differences are "purely accidental" - that is, they don't make a difference one way or the other about whether the thing really is a person or not. (Here I leave aside the issue of whether Joel misreads Aristotle, which I think he does. Assume for the sake of argument that he doesn't.) This saves them from admitting that it's okay to kill e.g. really senile people, but it has two very awkward consequences, one ontological and the other epistemological.

First and foremost, this will be bad news for people with conjoined twins. Even in the case where the conjoined twin is just limbs, we'd have to give that entity the same rights we give a full person: after all, the fact that it can't possibly develop rationality or intellect (because it can't even develop a head or a brain) is just an accident, not something that affects what they really are. Similarly for other biological conditions wherein a human fetus or blastocyst is physically restricted from ever reaching full human development, we would be bound to consider them full people and treat them as such. Joel denies this, though, and I bet Mirus would, too. From another point of view, we'd also have to be much more careful with the dead: since physical death is just an accidental state (i.e., not something that affects the metaphysical substance), we'd have to totally overhaul our practices concerning the dead. Especially since we still can't say for sure when a person is biologically dead for good, we would have to begin behaving towards the dead just like we do towards the living (at least, for some significant interval). This may not seem so unreasonable, but consider also that we can keep bodies alive for a very, very long time even without brain stem activity if we try hard enough: since this, too, is just an accident according to this argument, we'd have to treat even decapitated bodies as though they were just fine. Again, I don't think this is something that Joel or Mirus wants to adopt, so I have no choice but to conclude that the secular-soul strategy unavailable to them both.

Finally, Mirus could retreat to a religious (in this case, Christian) conception of the soul. (Joel could've, too, if he hadn't committed himself to making a universally accessible argument.) The biggest problem here - besides, of course, the total lack of evidence and other various problems associated with religion in general - is that Mirus must maintain a certain exclusivity. He has to say, in other words, that only humans have rational souls - or, in his words, that "[n]either a dog, nor a dolphin, nor a chimpanzee, nor any other embodied being besides man is capable of" love (i.e., properly evaluating others and acting for their benefit as a result of this evaluation). As well as this matches up with his tradition, this is a view that can no longer be sustained in the face of the facts. When he claims that animals "give no evidence either of intellectual analysis or of moral judgment," Mirus is just plain full of shit. It seems, then, like the only way out for Mirus and Joel would be to postulate something like this from the start:

(*) By definition, a person (or "living being worthy of moral respect") is either a living human fetus at any stage of development or a living human at any post-fetal stage of development, so long as it has a head and some part of a brain.

There is no obvious set of axioms that leads to this definition, nor can it be easily defended from criticism - in fact, it looks like exactly what it is: a cobbled-together set of conditions with no connection to the actual world. But it's what Mirus and Joel would have to use if they even wanted to start their argument against abortion (and, in Mirus's case, animal rights). And I do mean start: if that definition holds, we'd be free to analyze fetuses as though they were regular ol' people, which means holding them responsible for their actions. Recall, for instance, what Mirus said about humans: no personal being is at the disposal of any human. Very well: then no woman is at the disposal of any fetus! Even if we ignore all of the inconsistencies and factual errors in their respective cases, then, neither Mirus nor Joel has even come close to giving a compelling reason why abortion is wrong.

The unspoken implication here - and the real force behind the argument - is that abortion treats humans (i.e., fetuses) like animals (i.e., non-human animals), and this line of thought certainly resonates powerfully with the unconscious hierarchy that many of us work with on a daily basis. But until we get workable definitions of the relevant terms involved, this will never be anything more than suggestion and innuendo, totally unsuitable for philosophical discourse.

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Labels: abortion, bioethics, ethics, fantasy world, reducto ad absurdum, tin man

I, on the other hand, have to stick with appreciating the art and inferring the joke from context. Even so, I like it:


It's a nice change to see a webcomic made by someone who can, y'know, draw.

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As this country's right wing so often points out, actions typically (perhaps always) have unintended consequences. Though they're pretty much committed to this phenomenon only affecting the government, it really does affect everything. One question that evidences this, as posed by Conor Friedersdorf, is: "Is there an inherent tension between the social norms that advance your agenda on reproductive rights, and the ones that better bring about the world you'd like to see more generally?" In particular, Friedersdorf senses "that the social norms we are inculcating are working to safeguard reproductive choices for women, and to undermine men's investment in pregnancies and child-rearing."

This would indeed be somewhat problematic, and not just because "progressives and feminists are especially invested in pushing back against the notion and reality that rearing children is the province of women": the path of human progress has been, and by definition must continue to be, that an average person of one generation uses a more level playing field in their moral reasoning than an average person of the previous generation. So, for example, where one generation will see homosexuality as a mark of utter sin and corruption, the next will see it as just an undesirable psychological affliction, and so on and so forth until there's no perceived moral difference between same- and opposite-sex relationships and intimacy.* Anything that permanently stalls or, worse, reverses such inclusiveness, then, is at least an area of concern. It is therefore a relief to know that, at least in theory, the conflict can be resolved.

To determine the source of his error, I turn to Friedersdorf's chosen example, a hypothetical** movie designed to appeal to the "the cultural sensibilities of secular liberals. The woman," he says, "gets pregnant: 'I'm late,' she tells her boyfriend. The man, if he wants to keep the sympathy of the audience, says, 'What are we going to do?' The 'we' signals his mutual responsibility for the circumstance and investment in the process -- and the question mark signifies that he'll pretty much support whatever she decides." Ah, but to tell "men [that] they shouldn't have any part in decisions about abortion...inevitably discourages them from responding to a pregnant girlfriend by asking, 'What should we do?'" And so it does: but does that really go as far as he says?

Remember, Friedersdorf said that keeping men out of abortion decision-making will "undermine men's investment in pregnancies and child-rearing." At its most successful, though, his argument can only touch the pregnancies part - and, in fact, it's not even that successful. The telling attribute of Friedersdorf's little scenario is that the boyfriend has to ask the question in the first place. This question pretty much directly implies that the pregnancy was unintended, but part of being a progressive and a feminist is to hold that pregnancy should (in the most idealistic sense of the word) never be accidental - hence the phrases "family planning" and "reproductive choice." When examined only in the context Friedersdorf provides, there most certainly is some tension: the outlook for the boyfriend is, if not outright unmanageable, at least very complicated. Progressives and feminists, however, don't have to operate in this context, as their preferred vision of the world minimizes its occurrence to a level where it's not nearly so threatening.

Two challenges still remain - first, what to do in the inevitable cases of unintended pregnancy; and second, whether the feminist ideal is at all realistic - but I don't think either is particularly troubling. Even if solutions prove difficult to obtain (which would surprise me), feminism wouldn't be the first position to suffer from questions like these, so Friedersdorf likely still wouldn't be justified in his skepticism. At any rate, he would be better served addressing these questions instead of changing the dimensions of the very discussion itself.

*This is, obviously, a little simplified. You'd expect this to work first of all as a trend, so that it allows for small breaks in the pattern, and then second of all as an approach to a limit, so that you never have to achieve (or expect to achieve) full and total equality in order for it to count as progress. And the trend will vary from case to case, and so on - but the point here is the overall mechanism.
**Which is a little strange: he couldn't have found even one actual example of this? There has to be one, right?

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Labels: abortion, gender issues, hasty generalization

(Shorter me in this post: screw you Hollywood, you are ruining art.)

So, in accordance with my movies post from a short while back, I went and saw Harry Potter and the Almost Last Movie last night at midnight - it was a fine movie, decent acting, decent scriptwriting, very good special effects, some excellent moments of cinematography. But the highlight of the night, as it so often is when I go to the movies, was the trailers. Something in particular struck me about this one:



What are they doing playing "Wake Up" by Arcade Fire?

Someone should please correct me if I'm wrong, cause the last time I read this children's book was when I was, well, a child, but isn't Where The Wild Things Are sort of child-positive? Like, in favor of children being children and stuff? It might have some other things to say, but I'm fairly certain it at least had a good feeling about children qua being children. And yet here's what the song in the trailer says:

If the children don't grow up
Our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up
We're just a million little gods causing rainstorms
Turning every good thing to rust

(oh oh oh oh etc.)

(Reaches and touches my hand)

You'd better look out below!

If you read the full lyrics, it's actually worse: people who refuse to face reality honestly ("hold your mistake up") can expect to be cold-hearted, blinded and petulant whiners (the "little gods causing rainstorms" have "lightning bolts a-glowing" because of which they "can't see where [they are] going") who'll ruin everything around them ("turning every good thing to rust") for the entire rest of their lives (i.e., until "the reaper, he reaches and touches my hand"). I ask you: is this a positive portrayal of childhood?

Granted, they don't mean literal childhood (or, at least, I really hope they don't). And granted, the metaphorical angle from which they approach the issue is totally appropriate and even meaningful in a different context. But a catchy, upbeat melody and sweetly-played string section isn't really the same as having actual content that matches the content of the movie.

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Among its many failings, Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism purposefully neglects to distinguish among beliefs. "Our beliefs are unreliable on N&E," it says, and then just leaves it at that. But we have many, many different kinds of beliefs, and it means very, very different things for one kind of belief to be reliable as opposed to another. Take this argument from Alex Pruss about what might result if we could, in some sense or other, trust our ethics:

1. (Premise) If the cosmos is an (axiologically) abhorrent place, then it is not the case that we should trust our moral beliefs.
2. (Premise) We should trust our moral beliefs.
3. Therefore, the cosmos is not an abhorrent place.

I don't want to linger on which "should" he's using in premise 1, nor even the likely mismatch of scopes between 1 and 2. For the purposes of this post, I'd like to investigate his conclusion - the idea that the cosmos ("the sum total of what is, including ourselves and, if theism is true, God") isn't abhorrent.

Appropriate to the richness of the word, Pruss gives several interesting characteristics that would qualify a cosmos as being abhorrent. One such example, he says, leads to:

4. (Premise) If there is no life after death, then the cosmos is an (axiologically) abhorrent place.
5. There is life after death. (By 3 and 4)

Why would our ultimate mortality suffice for cosmic abhorrence? "Think," Pruss says, citing Gabriel Marcel, "of someone you love, and think what a horror it would be if this person—this very individual—were to cease to exist forever." As regular readers of this blog already know, I'm no fan of thought experiments; this case is no exception.

To begin with, my reaction to thinking that my loved ones will die forever is: meh, okay. To be honest, I get a little more upset when thinking about how great works of art will be gone forever, which brings me to my next point. As we learned earlier, people tie themselves emotionally to more than just other people: pets also hold a special place in some people's hearts. Without taking other considerations into account, then, it's hard to say why this isn't also strong enough to demonstrate the spiritual immortality of all manner of earthly creatures.

But then again, maybe this is acceptable for Pruss. I really don't know how the various Christian denominations come down on the question of pets in heaven, so it's quite possible that he'll go, "Yep - you've got it right!" Rather less encouraging, though, should be the converse of the question he asked. In other words, consider somebody you love, and then picture that person burning in hell for eternity. Pretty abhorrent, right? Or, if that doesn't do it for you, try imagining somebody you hate - like, really hate - basking in heavenly bliss for eternity. I dunno about you, but I would characterize that situation as abhorrent. Pruss, it would seem, has to choose at least one of these outcomes, but how? All we're working with are the gut reactions of a self-selected group of (almost certainly highly biased) readers, which have - gasp! - turned out to be largely inconsistent. It's beginning to look like he cherry-picked the reaction he wanted out of a much larger group of very similar (if not relevantly identical) reactions, which won't do at all.

To help clear up the logjam created by this mass of musings, I've generated a new poll. If you please, select the most abhorrent option from the list, which I've composed of the alternatives mentioned in this post and then a control. After the poll closes, we'll analyze the results.

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Labels: religion, thought experiment

I don't normally just quote folks, but when the time's right... Ladies, gentlemen, and other - Matt Steinmetz on the Sarah Palin point-guard analogy:

"I know as point guards we're in the minority here, but I can't let a politician – or anyone for that matter – denigrate the position I've come to love. This has nothing to do with partisanship. This has to do with all point guards coming together and refuting this kind of speech.

I'm talking all point guards, past and present, pros and non-pros, from Bob Cousy to Jason Kidd to that guy Hank at the gym who may be undersized but still tries to play the right way.

Let's break down the quote:

'Let me go back to a comfortable analogy for me – sports – basketball. I use it because you're naïve if you don't see the national full-court press picking away right now. A good point guard drives through a full-court press, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket.

'And she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can win. And I'm doing that – keeping our eye on the ball that represents sound priorities – smaller government, energy independence, national security, freedom. And I know when it's time to pass the ball, for victory.'

Where do you even begin with this assault on the point guard position?

C'mon, a good point guard knows never to drive through a full-court press. A good PG knows you beat the press with a pass. Unless you're Curly Neal or maybe Earl Boykins, dribbling into traffic will put you on the bench, down from the coach and sitting with the scrubinis.

And how about ' ... keeping her eye on the basket.'

Well, that's about the last place a point guard's eyes should be. Now, if you're Billy Ray Bates or World B. Free or Reggie Miller, keeping your eyes on the basket may be a little more acceptable. But good point guards don't focus on the rim. That's unheard of. Unless, of course, it's time to get a little some for themselves.

And what about the 'And I'm doing that -- keeping our eye on the ball ...'

Now I don't want to nitpick here but that's about the first thing a point guard learns -- to not look down at the ball while dribbling and handling. Sure, it might work for Corey Maggette but he's the exception -- and he's not a point guard, either."

As a more general point of order, point guards are basically not supposed to look at the ball ever (while on offense). The primary job of a true point (i.e., someone playing the role, not just the smallest player on a team or the one who just usually dribbles the ball upcourt) is to unite the five players on the floor into a cohesive points-scoring group.

When you have the ball, that means working to distort the defense (or working to set up a play that'll distort the defense) so that teammates can better position themselves to score - which, of course, they'll only be able to do if you take your eye off the basket to see where they are with respect to the defense. When teammates have the ball, that means making sure that the play proceeds as planned - or, if it's too late for that, getting the ball back and refocusing your team. Again, this simply can't happen if you glue your eyes to the ball or to the basket.

The reason for this is very simple: the ball and the basket are static where the team is dynamic. That is, the ball and the basket aren't going to do anything you don't expect them to - this isn't football with its ridiculous bounce-physics or one of those arcade mini-basketball games where the rim moves back and forth. More philosophically, the nature of the ball and the basket don't change over the course of the game: the one will always be fit for going through the other no matter what else happens. But your teammates will change over the course of the game, especially in more competitive leagues. Players go between hot and cold, energetic and lethargic, selfish and selfless, controlled and harried, focused and distracted, confident and hesitant, even smart and stupid; and point guards make sure that, on any given possession, those capable of contributing get the chance to do so and those incapable of doing so stay the hell out of the way. Good luck figuring all of that out if you spend all your time ogling the ball.

If Palin's analogy is at all accurate - I mean, the fixed-up version where she actually describes the position correctly - then this is a tacit admission of what we've known all along: right now, she just isn't capable of contributing to politics. To which I say, okay! Don't let the gym door hit you on the way out!

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But this time, internet-slacker-style. For those looking for new lit-learning opportunities, here are links to some of the free(!) legal(!!!) literature available online:

Various works by various authors, including Jhumpa Lahiri and Cory Doctorow

"From May through September" and "On a Saturday Afternoon" by Aimee Bender

"Puppy" by George Saunders

"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut

"The White Room" by Jeanette Winterson

"On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning" by Haruki Murakami

"How To Talk To Girls At Parties" by Neil Gaiman

"Adventure of a Nearsighted Man" by Italo Calvino

More coming, perhaps, as I find them...

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