80-20 and Civil Liberties for Muslims

I'm finding myself more and more in agreement with certain Kantian ideas in ethics. I think I'm on board, for instance, with the moral significance of the motivation for a particular action. Kant famously discusses two shopkeepers -- one who treats his customers fairly because he believes that doing so is the best way to get repeat business, and one who treats his customers fairly because it is just the right thing to do. Only the latter is acting out of morality. That much is pretty uncontroversial, I think; the tricky part comes when we get to the shopkeeper who treats his customers fairly because it makes him happy to see them happy. That's a trickier question, both in ethics and in Kant interpretation. I'll set it aside. Bad motivations are bad, but good actions are good, even when they arise from bad motivations. A lot of people are criticizing our President for what they take to be a politically-motivated change in tone toward aid for tsunami victims; it's easy to go overboard with that, and forget how important that aid is. Bad motive or not, now is not the time to oppose aid -- including any particular good aid programs, whatever their motivations. But sometimes, bad motives even mess up the judgment or decision. I got an email this morning from 80-20, an Asian-American interests PAC. They cited this AP story about how 44% of American favor restricting Muslims' rights, which was carried in most newspapers last month. Now, outrage is the appropriate response to such a fact about our nation's population. But 80-20 doesn't talk about Muslims' rights, or justice, or freedom of religion, or utility maximization, or any of the dozen appropriate grounds for outrage it could have chosen from. Instead, they say this:

If our compatriots are that alarmed by the terrorists who don't have nuclear weapons and collectively do NOT represent a sovereign power, what if one day the US and China or N. Korea are in conflict? We must urgently find a way to make sure that AsAms don't have our rights curtailed in that unthinkable eventuality. GETTING A GOOD ASAM SUPREME COURT JUSTICE is one subtle way.

Then they go on to ask for money. I've remarked before how silly -- and offensive -- I think it is to assume that someone will favor certain policies based only on his race. I still think that. But this is much worse. Our priority should be ensuring that Asian-Americans' rights are protected? We should care about American Muslims only because if they're treated badly, we might eventually be treated badly? When peoples' rights are being violated, that comprises a reason to oppose what's going on. It doesn't matter what race they are. And it certainly doesn't matter what race I am. 80-20 is trying to turn persecution of Muslims into an issue about Asian-American rights. The position seems to be summarizable thus: "Muslims are being treated unfairly. We must take immediate action to ensure that we are treated better than they are." And I find that more than a little bit disgusting.

Birth Control and Promiscuity

The Washington Post carries a story about the 'morning-after pill', Plan B.

Providing women with easy access to the emergency contraceptive Plan B did not lead them to engage in more risky sexual behavior, a study of more than 2,000 California women has concluded. The study did find that women given a supply to keep at home were more than 1 1/2 times as likely to use the drug after unprotected sex as those who had to pick it up at a clinic or pharmacy. The findings led the study authors to conclude that easy access to Plan B, also called the morning-after pill, could reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies while posing no apparent risk to women. The study contradicts a key claim made by opponents of easier access to Plan B at a time when the Food and Drug Administration is preparing to decide on a second application to allow nonprescription sales of the drug.

Well, I guess that now the Religious Right will recognize the empirical fact that access to birth control does not actually lead to dangerous promescuity. I expect James Dobson to endorse FDA approval of Plan B any minute now.

Alberto Gonzales and Torture

From moveon.org:

Subject: Say No to Torture Dear friend, I hate to start the New Year with bad news, but the Senate is about to consider Alberto Gonzales' nomination to become Attorney General, replacing John Ashcroft. Gonzales is the White House counsel notorious for opening the door to torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons. Senators should view the Gonzales nomination very skeptically, given this radical history. As part of the upcoming hearings, we can call on Senators to ask Gonzales to unequivocally renounce torture as an instrument of American policy. Join me in asking Gonzales and Senators to prohibit torture by clicking here: http://www.moveon.org/gonzales/ Thanks.

It's just a petition, but it won't hurt.

Belief without Proof

The New York Times has an interesting feature today -- they asked a bunch of scientists the philosophically interesting question, "what do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" The responses are interesting to read (although the first one seems to completely miss the point of the question). Predictably, the scientists generally failed to recognize the apparent unprovability of some of our most basic beliefs -- the stuff that makes up the extreme skeptic scenarios. No one professed to a belief in an external world, despite lack of proof, although Joseph LeDoux does mention one skeptical challenge:

For me, this is an easy question. I believe that animals have feelings and other states of consciousness, but neither I nor anyone else has been able to prove it. We can't even prove that other people are conscious, much less other animals.

The one that really shocked me was Donald Hoffman, a cognitive scientist at UC-Irvine, who is apparently some kind of neo-Berkelean Idealist. I didn't know people like that existed. Hoffman says:

I believe that consciousness and its contents are all that exists. Space-time, matter and fields never were the fundamental denizens of the universe but have always been, from their beginning, among the humbler contents of consciousness, dependent on it for their very being. The world of our daily experience - the world of tables, chairs, stars and people, with their attendant shapes, smells, feels and sounds - is a species-specific user interface to a realm far more complex, a realm whose essential character is conscious. It is unlikely that the contents of our interface in any way resemble that realm. Indeed the usefulness of an interface requires, in general, that they do not. For the point of an interface, such as the Windows interface on a computer, is simplification and ease of use. We click icons because this is quicker and less prone to error than editing megabytes of software or toggling voltages in circuits. Evolutionary pressures dictate that our species-specific interface, this world of our daily experience, should itself be a radical simplification, selected not for the exhaustive depiction of truth but for the mutable pragmatics of survival. If this is right, if consciousness is fundamental, then we should not be surprised that, despite centuries of effort by the most brilliant of minds, there is as yet no physicalist theory of consciousness, no theory that explains how mindless matter or energy or fields could be, or cause, conscious experience.

The name 'Hoffman' is somewhat familiar, and I have this idea that maybe I should've already know about him, but I didn't. The other response I wanted to draw attention to: Robert Sapolsky thinks that non-proof implies non-justification:

Mine would be a fairly simple, straightforward case of an unjustifiable belief, namely that there is no god(s) or such a thing as a soul (whatever the religiously inclined of the right persuasion mean by that word). ... I'm taken with religious folks who argue that you not only can, but should believe without requiring proof. Mine is to not believe without requiring proof. Mind you, it would be perfectly fine with me if there were a proof that there is no god. Some might view this as a potential public health problem, given the number of people who would then run damagingly amok. But it's obvious that there's no shortage of folks running amok thanks to their belief. So that wouldn't be a problem and, all things considered, such a proof would be a relief - many physicists, especially astrophysicists, seem weirdly willing to go on about their communing with god about the Big Bang, but in my world of biologists, the god concept gets mighty infuriating when you spend your time thinking about, say, untreatably aggressive childhood leukemia.

This seems to be just inconsistent. He says that justification requires proof, and that he's unwilling to believe without proof, but then he goes on to admit that there's no proof against the existence of gods and souls.

Fiction Course!

My fiction course has been approved for Spring 2006! I am very excited. EDIT: My fiction course has been moved to Fall 2005! I am still very excited.

Evangelism

I've been thinking about evangelical Christianity -- and particularly about deathbed evangelism. You know the sort of thing I'm talking about: a longtime athiest is dying in the hospital, and a Christian relative comes in at the last minute to try to bring salvation. My gut reaction is what I take to be the pretty standard liberal line; in the words of my friend Mandy:

Dude, I'd be PISSED if I were dying and some self-rightous idiot tried to convert me on my deathbed. If I had wanted to believe in something, I would have done it during my life and not tried to cheaply redeem myself at the last possible second. Someone tried to do this to my stepfather, an atheist, as he lay in a coma during his last days, and when I heard about it I felt violated for him because I knew he couldn't do anything to stop the person, which he would have if he hadn't been busy dying. It's like raping someone with religion.

Mandy says she'd be pissed off if someone hoisted religion on her on the deathbed. I'd feel the same way. But when I try to consider the Christian's point of view, I start to think that's not the relevant consideration. We liberals need to be careful about over-generalizing the principle that we shouldn't force our worldview onto others. *Sometimes*, it's appropriate to force things like moral beliefs onto others. For instance, we should *not* be tolerant of people who like to rape children. If a man likes to rape children, he should be stopped. Liberals will often try to explain away the significance of this obvious fact by claiming that we're doing something other than using our own moral beliefs to decide policy, and being intolerant of alternative worldviews -- but that's just what we're doing. And of course, in this case, that is exactly the right thing to do, because the moral beliefs in question are the right ones to have. How does this relate? Well, consider the point of view of the author of the deathbed evangelizer (or indeed, someone who evangelizes in other circumstances). She believes that when people die, they either spend eternity in torture in hell, or in bliss in heaven. And she also believes that the presense or absense of one particular action -- repenting and accepting Jesus -- in life is what determines which way we go. To me, this belief seems difficult to justify, but I recognize that lots of smart people believe things like this. I don't get it at all, but I'll set that aside. Given that a person has this belief, the type of rabid evangelism that so many of us view as an affront starts to look a lot less inappropriate. To see this, suppose that the belief is true; that evangelical Christianity correctly explains what happens after we die. I'm laying in the hospital, terminally ill, with days or hours left to live. Some relative comes in and trys one last time to convert me to Christianity. Since I'm not already a Christian, presumably, I do not believe in heaven, hell, salvation, etc. Since we're supposing that that IS the way the world works, that means that I'm just wrong about what happens post-death. So here comes the Christian relative, trying to save me -- and yeah, I'm annoyed. I tell her, you're not respecting my rational autonomy! You're not valuing me as an agent who makes his own decisions! I've lived my whole life as an athiest, and I have the right to die as an athiest! But it seems like none of this matters. If Christianity *is* correct, then once I'm dead, if I'm in hell, I'm going to be desperately wishing I'd listened. And if I'm in heaven, I'm going to be very, very grateful for the last-minute saving. I'd remember how upset I'd been at the time, but I'd realize that he was, in fact, acting out of love, and with my best interests at heart. If pestering me on my deathbed is the only way to send me to heaven instead of to hell, then by all means, pester me on my deathbed. And I think something like this argument will even go through on the assumption that evangelical Christianity is *false*. Suppose I walk down the street and see what appears to be a person lying on the street, covered in blood, writhing in agony. I ought to stop and help him. I should administer first aid if I know how, and I should call for help. Now fill out the story: suppose that the person was only pretending to be gravely injured, and that it was a fun game, and that my attempts to help him disrupted his concentration and ruined his afternoon. I'm not criticizable for trying to help him, since I had the reasonable and false belief that he needed help. In fact, it would be a horrible thing for me to just walk on by. That would be evidence that I don't care about the suffering of those around me. It seems to me that the evangelical Christian might be like I am in that story. She have false beliefs about what we need, and they try to help us accordingly. The problem is in the belief, not in the action. I would be hurt if I knew that someone who professed to care about me believed that by talking to me, she might've successfully saved me from eternal damnation, and didn't even try. What's the upshot of all this? I definitely do *not* want the evangelicals of the world to redouble their efforts to bring me to Christ. But I think what this sort of consideration shows is that it's not reasonable to just ask them to hold onto their beliefs, minus the going forth to all nations making disciples part. The problem is not that they're trying to force their beliefs onto others -- the problem is that their beliefs are wrong. I think this means that we athiests have to either gratefully accept the annoying but virtuous intentions of the evangelicals, or be willing to engage their religious convictions; willing to try to bring them around to our worldview. We liberals should have a knee-jerk reaction against this suggestion, but if we're serious about the unacceptability of this sort of evangelism, the way that we're serious about the unacceptability of raping children, then this seems to be the appropriate course. (I'm not committing to that last alternative. Maybe we should just put up with it all. But we should NOT continue to criticize the actions while holding the beliefs to be above reproach. The beliefs make the actions appropriate.)

Giving opportunities

I thought I'd pass on this couple of pluts from the radical leftist fringe group MoveOn.org, which hates America almost as much as it hates Christmas. Oh yeah, also families.

Dear MoveOn member, This is a cherished time of year, when we take time out from the workaday world to focus on our families and friends. Our thoughts also naturally go to those in harm's way -- the young American men and women who won't be with their families this holiday season, and the Iraqi refugee families that face a long, cold winter. That's why we're highlighting two opportunities for MoveOn members to reach out in the holiday spirit to the people who are paying the true costs of war. For the 160,000 men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan, even a holiday call home can be prohibitively expensive. That's why the United Service Organizations (USO) has launched "Operation Phone Home" to provide phone cards to every soldier who wants one in time for the holidays. With just a few days left, the USO is still trying to hit its goal, and MoveOn members can make the difference. To send a phone card, just go to: http://www.uso.org/pubs/8_20_2733.cfm This is a great way of showing that those of us who didn't support the Iraq war still support and appreciate the sacrifice of the people who were called to serve in it. And this kind of small-scale giving can snowball into large-scale benefits for the troops. After MoveOn members and many others donated millions of frequent flyer miles to bring soldiers home during their leave, the Pentagon was compelled to fully fund all future flights themselves. Your leadership made the difference then, and it can do so again. War takes its toll on civilians as well as soldiers. Massive numbers of Iraqi families that have been displaced by the escalating violence. Because conditions are so dangerous, humanitarian relief organizations have withdrawn from Iraq, and the Iraqi winter is closing in. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is one of the very few international organizations still daring to bring vital services directly to Iraqi civilians. You can make your donation to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and earmark it for Iraq, at: http://www.ifrc.org/helpnow/donate/donate_response.asp The IFRC is racing to help hundreds of thousands of refugees survive the winter by providing blankets, heaters, and basic medical supplies. In the face of increased insurgent violence targeted at government schools, the Red Crescent has mounted an effort to equip every school with first aid training and basic medical supplies. They've also been charged with maintaining the rapidly growing number of orphanages in the most war-torn parts of the country. Most of our holiday traditions revolve around the simple metaphor of bringing light into the darkness. For us here at MoveOn, you're the single greatest source of light we know. We're awed and honored to be working with you. Because of you, we know there are brighter times ahead. Have a wonderful holiday.