If you're looking for something less bite-sized...

I've officially finished a draft of my ethics term paper. I plan for there to be quite a bit of revising in the next couple weeks, but it's now at the point where it can be digested and commented on. Much of the writing has been done late at night, so some sentences are suboptimally clear at this stage, but I think my ideas and arguments are pretty much where I want them to be. So if you're interested, check it out and let me know what you think. (For some reason, a direct link from here doesn't work... geocities doesn't like blogspot, perhaps... you'll have to copy and paste. Sorry about that. http://www.geocities.com/a_pirateking/consequentialism.pdf. The title is "Utilitarianism and Second-Order Moral Judgments", and its thesis is that if we distinguish first-order moral judgment (that act is wrong) with second-order judgment (we should criticize that actor), standard act-utilitarianism gives us a very plausible account of our intuitions about the structure of morality. In particular, utilitarianism has no trouble dealing with supererogation, "tragic dilemmas", and problems from uncertainty of consequences.

The world would be fun if I were God

One of the pleasures of being a philosopher is the construction of thought experiments. It's a powerful feeling, to be able to dictate every detail of every situation and participant. I've never written fiction, but my suspicion is that this particular thrill is greater for the philosopher -- a thought experiment is goal-driven, and I get to tweak each detail however I want, until my thought experiment is complete, and successful. In my less mature days, I was a champion smart-ass of what-if's. Today, I can turn that power against my own experiments and build in safeguards. I just wrote one that I think I'm rather proud of (it's late and I'm tired and I've been writing for a long time, so I reserve the right to not be proud of it the next time I read it). The point is to illustrate how a utilitarian can consistently hold that an act could be right but blameworthy. Here's the passage (from a very rough draft of an ethics term paper):

Remember, while first-order moral judgments depend only on the consequences of an action, second-order judgments take many more things into account -- they consider everything that bears on what the consequences of our second-order judgments would be. This includes some considerations which do not depend on the first-order moral status of the action at all. Consider the following thought experiment. In the spirit of debates about consequentialism, my story will involve a trolley, but against that spirit, it will not involve any harms so bad as death. William, who is wheel-chair-bound, is near a trolley track. He knows that the afternoon trolley contains a quantity of baked goods, intended for the enjoyment of a group of children this, their last afternoon of school for the year. However, just as he sees the trolley approaching, he notices that the track switch is in the wrong position; unless something is done immediately, several seconds from now, when the trolley reaches the juncture, it will follow the wrong path and fail to deliver the cookies and cake to the children. William happens to be sitting with Alisha, a ten-year-old girl. He considers quickly explaining the situation and instructing her to turn the switch, but he realizes that he doesn't have enough time to get the message across. (Alisha doesn't speak English.) So, William pushes Alisha toward the switch. He throws her with enough force to cover the distance to the switch and still have enough momentum to push the switch into the correct position, but with a small enough amount of force such that he was reasonably sure she wouldn't be seriously injured, although the whole ordeal was likely to be somewhat physically painful for her. (The switch is not near the track, so there's no danger Allisha's falling in front of the trolley.) William's plan succeeds, and the trolley delivers the sweets to the kids. Alisha does not suffer any serious injury, and five minutes later, no pain remains. If the happiness brought to the children by the sweets outweighed the pain suffered by Alisha (and that suffered by the over-sugared children's' parents), and there was no other way to solve the problem, then William's action satisfied the utilitarian formula and maximized happiness in the world. But it would probably not be praiseworthy -- William demonstrated a lack of a protective instinct against harm to children. We might criticize William, admonishing him for his ready willingness to hurt a child, even for the greater good. We could reason, what if everyone were as willing as William to hurt children? This would surely result in more hurting of children, which is first-order bad! Even if we were assured that William acted out of the best utilitarian intentions, calculating probabilities of variously-valued outcomes, and were careful to specifically praise his calm, moral deliberation, this would still be likely to have a bad result. Suppose that many others were encouraged by William's example, and were careful always to be ready to hurt children in situations were such that doing so would maximize utility. This would also be undesirable, because it would also inevitably lead to more child-harm than good. People are not reliable judges of when it's best to ignore rules of thumb. That's why utilitarians encourage character traits and dispositions in the first place.

Comments welcome -- particularly smart-ass ones. My favorite part of the thought experiment is the first parenthetical.

Soundness, Validity, and Gay Marriage

"Anybody who has several sexual partners in a year is committing spiritual suicide." Catchy first line, huh? It's funny when I read columns that start like that, and conclude with a controversial suggestion that I agree with. I'm obviously pretty slow to note this, but there's an interesting column in last Saturday's New York Times. The conclusion is that conservative Christian supporters of traditional family values ought to support legalization of homosexual marriage.

Marriage is in crisis because marriage, which relies on a culture of fidelity, is now asked to survive in a culture of contingency. ... Still, even in this time of crisis, every human being in the United States has the chance to move from the path of contingency to the path of marital fidelity — except homosexuals. ... We shouldn't just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.

I found this interesting for two reasons. First, because it's a very different argument than I'm used to hearing from the right, and second, because it's a good object lesson for validity and soundness of arguments, which I discussed a few days ago. Here's an oversimplified version of the argument:

1. Sex, including homosexual sex, outside of marriage is bad.
2. The more marriage, including homosexual marriage, there is, the less sex outside of marriage there will be. Therefore,
3. It is good to encourage homosexuals to marry.

The argument is valid -- if we accept (1) and (2), we must accept (3). Of course, it's only sound if (1) and (2) are both true. (2) is an empirical claim that seems likely. (1) is a value claim that I disagree with as a universal claim. So we have an unsound, valid argument, which also happens to have a true conclusion. Go team.

Think how we loved her!

The seventh and best Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera premiered 121 years ago today, both in London and New York. Happy Birthday, Iolanthe.

Where to find Jonathan

For any of you who may be wondering, the following is now part of my official plan: I will remain in Providence from now until December 18. Possible weekend road trip destinations are NYC and Toronto. I will fly to Midland, MI on December 18 to spend the holidays with my family. I also intend to spend quality time with high school friends. I will fly from Midland to Houston, TX on January 5, and spend my weekday days working for Jones McClure Publishing, and my evenings and weekends catching up with Rice people. I will return to Providence on January 28 for the start of my second semester here. I will return to Houston March 27 to catch the closing night for RLOS's Pirates and to audition for Houston G&S's Mikado. I don't yet have a return ticket yet, but I'll come back to Providence sometime between the 28th and April 5, when my Spring Break ends. I'm really very excited about what promise to be two excellent trips. Those of you friends in Midland or Houston, I hope to spend some good time with you. And now, I will continue to write a term paper.

Moral intuitions poll

Pretty basic questions, here, but I'd like to know how people feel about this. (1) Obviously, it's at least usually morally wrong to punch innocent people in the face. But what if the only way to prevent five innocent people from being punched in the face was for you to punch one innocent person in the face? Would it be permissible for you to punch him? Would it be required? (2) Obviously, it's at least usually morally wrong to intentionally hurt an innocent person's feelings. But what if the only way to prevent five innocent people having their feelings intentionally hurt was for you to intentionally hurt one innocent person's feelings? Would it be permissible for you to hurt his feelings? Would it be required? (3) Obviously, it's at least usually morally wrong to torture innocent people to death. But what if the only way to prevent five innocent people from being tortured to death was for you to torture one innocent person to death? Would it be permissible for you to torture him? Would it be required? Assume that in each case, there is no morally significant difference between any of the innocent people, and that you're positive that the only way to avoid the greater evil is to hurt the one person. If your answers to (1), (2), and (3) aren't all the same, what is the difference between them? Also, feel free to substitute the harm of your choice in the appropriate place.

Philosophical Buzzword: Modus Ponens

Savannah said, in reference to my Curry paradox post: I think I need to know what modus ponens means, because I don't see how your argument goes from 3) to 4). It looks to me like since 3) is the same as 1), you might as well have gone from 1) to 4) and it would have made just as much (or little) sense. The argument in question was this:

C: If this sentence (C) is true, then Santa Claus exists. (1) If C is true, then If C is true, then Santa Claus exists. (1') If if C is true, then Santa Claus exists is true, then (if C is true, then Santa Claus exists). (2) If if C is true, then Santa Claus exists is true, then Santa Claus exists. (3) If C is true, then Santa Claus exists. (4) Santa Claus exists.

I said that to go from (3) to (4), we used modus ponens on (3) and (3). Modus ponens is one of the basic rules of logic. Basically, it says that any time you know A, and also know "if A, then B", you can conclude "B". Here's an example of valid use of modus ponens:

1. If Jonathan is rich, I'm a monkey's uncle.
2. Jonathan is rich.
3. Therefore, by modus ponens on (1) and (2), I'm a monkey's uncle.

So how's this work in the Santa case? Let A be C, and let B be "Santa Clause exists". So sentence (3) above is equivalent to "if A, then B". But, because of the self-reference in C, sentence (3) is also equivalent to A. So we can invoke (3) as both antecedent and conditional (that is, as both "A" and "if A, then B"). This gets us to B by modus ponens. UPDATE: Thank you Alexis for catching a very bad error. It's now fixed.