JV PhiloBlog

By now you know that ad hominem attacks (name-calling) are fallacious and cannot be used in rational debate.

What examples of name-calling are you aware of in the discourse around you? (in "discourse"I include radio and television, entertainment, church, work, etc.)

Examples
I have heard people make the claim that George W. Bush is "stupid" or "of low intelligence" in spite of the fact that he is qualified to pilot a jet plane.

I have heard those who favor withdrawing American force from Iraq called "surrender monkeys."

I have heard that the New York Yankees are bums.

Link: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Obama-helps-strengthen-General-Electric-Putin-ties-59644627.html

The following article gives what appears to be a good example of what is meant by "crony capitalism": the writer implies wrongdoing. However, the fact that Russia does a favor for G.E. after Obama does a favor for Russia, does not prove that it resulted from that favor. Though suggestive, the conclusion does not necessarily follow. The syllogism would be:

Friends help friends.
Obama is friends with G.E.
Killing the missile program helps G.E.
Therefore, Obama killed the program to help G.E.

Here's the story:

Obama helps strengthen General Electric-Putin ties
By: Timothy P. Carney
Examiner Columnist
09/17/09 2:06 PM EDT

Reuters reports an interesting nugget in the wake of President Barack Obama's decision to grant Vladimir Putin his wish and kill the Eastern European missile shield:

Shortly after the pullback on the shield programme was announced, Russia's government said Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would meet several U.S. executives on Friday from firms including General Electric, Morgan Stanley as well as TPG, one of the world's largest private equity firms

General Electric may be the company with the closest ties to the Obama administration (if not, GE is second only to Goldman Sachs), and here we see the company benefiting from an abrupt foreign policy change made by President Obama. But GE isn't the only company benefiting. Reuters paints the broader picture:

"U.S. companies have arguably lost out to some European companies in joint ventures, and better diplomacy will likely improve the chances for investors in the strategic sectors of the Russian economy," said Carlo Gallo, senior Russia analyst at London-based consultancy Control Risks.

GE CEO Jeff Immelt sits on Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, and GE owns MSNBC, the network famously friendly to Obama.

In his dystopian 1984, the socialist George Orwell described what was to him a grim future:

The new aristocracy was made up for the most part of bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organizers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists, and professional politicians.

Do you agree with Orwell's list? Are these the new ruling classes? If so, should they be? Is this new aristocracy better, worse, or the same as the old one?

Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056217/

Here is a famous moral problem used in many philosophy classes.

You are an experienced train engineer. You are rolling along when to your horror you see a small group of kids playing on the track. You know from experience that there is no time to stop the train. But there is a switch off in front of you too. You can take that, but there is a workman on the track. If you turn off, you will kill him.

What is the moral thing to do and why?

In general, we seem to use a Utilitarian approach to moral decisions. Faced with a choice between staying on track and killing a group of youngsters or veering off track and killing an innocent workman, most choose the latter course. The argument boils down to "Five young lives vs. one older life." The medieval philosophers had developed the doctrine of the least evil. When confronted with a choice between two evils, choose the lesser evil.

Some students say they will simply refuse to get involved. To veer off is to make an active decision to sacrifice the worker. They refuse to make that choice, knowing of course that they are thereby insuring the death of the youngsters. For such students, the key seems to be that at least they did not get involved in the messy business. This is the position taken by pacifists in time of war. They refuse to serve in any capacity because of moral objections to war itself. What happens on the ground does not matter.

My brother recently told me about a news story he was following from Sweden. Apparently, the Swedes have ended up giving asylum to jihadist who is wanted for murder elsewhere. (I do not know what country he's from or how he ended up in Sweden.) An American newsman is asking how comes it that the Swedes are harboring a man who openly says he wants to kill Americans and kill Swedes and is known to have been close to bin Laden. Apparently, the answer is that Swedish Law requires them to give asylum to anyone who faces the death penalty at home because Sweden regards the imposition of the death penalty as a violation of human rights. Under no circumstances will Sweden violate human rights, so he stays. (My brother may have garbled some details and I haven't time to research the story, so I do not vouch for the accuracy here.)

But this case is similar to one I do know the facts about. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq, American and European forensic experts worked on a project to reunite the remains of Saddam's victims (in the hundreds of thousands), with their families. Since many of Saddam's enemies simply "disappeared," the families were left with nothing to grieve over. And grieving is important in the Middle East. So the American and European experts went to Iraq to assist the Iraqis in finding their dead. And they succeeded to a high degree, because modern technology really can do wonders. This was work everyone could be proud for doing.

Then one day the Europeans announced that they were withdrawing their participation in the worthy effort. Why? As they found more material and tied it via DNA with individuals, they were also as a side effect building a case of mass murder against Saddam--and he had just been captured. That meant that he could be tried and, since Iraq has always practiced capital punishment for certain crimes, he could be executed. The Europeans faced a moral dilemma. If they withdrew, they would harm (by withholding aid) the Iraqi families who wanted the bodies and justice. If they kept working, they would violate the basic human rights of one man. They chose to withdraw.

My question is whether this behavior comports with the Utilitarian ethics we used in the train problem.

A secondary problem, I think, for the Europeans is whether they should impose their laws upon the Iraqis. Since the Iraqis have no objection to the ancient punishment, should the Europeans treat their own moral opinion as Absolute Law, on the Kantian model? It seems arrogant. Yet we do not require pacifists to shoot at enemies or, until now, Catholic doctors to perform abortions. Some values are such that a person might say, "Do what you like to me, I will not do THAT." The British in India ended the suttee, and most of us would say, "And a good thing too."

The case seems to hinge on the question of whether capital punishment is indeed such an evil that to participate in it is simply impossible. And could a person who believes that there ARE no moral absolutes be justified in abandoning Utilitarian ethics for more Kantian ones in just this one case? That is, can one claim that both "there are no moral absolutes" and "capital punishment is absolutely wrong" are true?

Similarly with torture. In the famous ticking bomb hypothetical where you know there is a bomb set to kill thousands or even millions, and you know a person in you custody knows how to prevent it, are there any limits on what you might do to get that information? Or does our wish to do what will bring about "the greatest good for the greatest number" mean that, really, there can be no limits equal to the suffering that could ensue from observing them.

Some say, "Torture is that limit." (The argument about whether torture works or not is not at issue here. That's an empirical question. Experience seems to show that there are generally better methods and that torture does indeed work in some cases.)

To me, the troubling thing is when an abstract idea gets someone to ignore the facts on the ground. Judge Sotomayor's wise Latina comment comes to mind. She was invoking some feeling that the law itself cannot be all we go by. Real suffering is at stake here.

Still, Kant's practical imperative--the demand that all humans, even murderous dictators, must be treated as ends and never as means--can not be silenced. It is a noble idea, on the order of "We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights...." This is either always true or never true, I think.

So I am left with a contradiction: that moral absolutism is dangerous yet some principles are absolute--if they are true at all.

One of my favorite movies deals with this theme: check out The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence.

A philosophy student raised this question:

I was always wandering, in philosophy their needs to reasoning to for science and religion. Can you been born with homosexuality or is it something more of science with an additional chromosone that can conflict with the human nature of a person devlopment? Can Philosophy determin a understanding of this issue?

A very good question. Mythos or logos? I decided to write a short essay in response. Here it is.

Whether a phenotype (an observable trait like blue eyes, big nose, a tendency to develop a given disease, timidity or being easily startled) is or is not caused by a genotype (in the egg and sperm, the DNA code) is entirely a matter for the science of genetics, in our terms logos. We posses excellent means for determining how physical and some psychological conditions correlate with genetics.

For example, it is now known that in general criminals, including non-violent offenders, tend to arouse very slowly. Their bodies do not respond to stimuli in the same way most other bodies do. This seems to be an inherited and not a learned response. (How else could a burglar stand calmly by your bed deciding what to take while you sleep two feet away?)

As for sexual preference--it is more complicated because we are speaking of a behavior and not a physical thing like eye-color. (Even there genetics cannot DETERMINE eye color by itself. It is not a sufficient cause; it is the necessary cause. You need exposure to the actual sun to get your actual eye color as an adult.)

I just read the claim that boys adopted by gay males are more likely to experiment with gay sex than boys not raised by gay men. If accurate, that is empirical data. We can measure and count. But what does it mean? Would this data prove that something in the experience caused the behavior? Or consider that heterosexual men will perform gay acts when women are unavailable. Do they have the "gay gene"? As often happens, the data points in a couple of directions.

Here is my hypothesis: like eye-color, sexual orientations of many sorts (foot fetishism, fixation with various body parts, etc.) will turn out to have some sort of genetic component. But experience in life, especially early experience, will turn out to be a factor too.

On the simplest level, how could homosexuality be a mere choice? How easy would it be for you to choose the other orientation, if you even think you could do it? So the idea of punishing a person for a given sexual proclivity (top? bottom? legs? breasts? spanking? older? younger?) seems inconsistent with the current state of science to me, not mention downright arrogant. (Naturally, should the behavior harm others, then different moral codes would come into play. Thus, if a behavior like divorce (often thought as a purely private matter these days) is shown to cause great harm to children, then the moral code of not causing harm would come into play. Same with pornography. Same with prostitution. Same with hooking-up.)

I think, then, that the causes of and influences upon sexual behaviors are questions for genetics and psychology and maybe sociology--what we call Science. But the morality of sexual behavior will always be an issue for Religion and Philosophy, partly because sexual behavior has such enormous consequences, both for the person and the community at large.