My Thoughts on the New Star Wars Film

WARNING: If you have not yet seen the newest Star Wars film, then do not read this review, as it is *full* of spoilers. Much of what's fun about this film depends on little (and big) surprises. Do you really want to ruin it for yourself?

Right, well I hope you've seen the film. Speaking of which, The Force Awakens (TFA) was a good movie. I really don't have much to say that has not been said by most reviewers, so I'll respond to what others are saying.

First, many critics and moviegoers dislike how heavily the film borrowed from A New Hope. Here are my thoughts on borrowing from the original trilogy: sometimes it's fine, and sometimes it's not. When Kylo Ren tells us that the map to Luke Skywalker is hidden in a droid, BB-8, I didn't mind. In fact, I enjoyed it--I got excited. The audience has just been introduced to the protagonist, Rey, and we now know that a run-in between her and Kylo Ren is not far off. It has been done before, but it works. It creates suspense.

People are also protesting the similarities between some of the old and new characters, especially Rey/Luke and Kylo Ren/Vader. But these parallels hardly amount to ripoff. (If you want an example of a character who is clearly a ripoff of another character, click here.) It's one thing to rip off a character. It's another thing to avail oneself of a character archetype. Like Luke, Rey is a lonely young orphan on a bleak world who is about to discover a hidden purpose. But she's also a different character with her own personality: the Luke of ANH and ESB is whiny, petulant, and kind of a moron (that is not to say I dislike the character). By comparison, Rey is measured and assertive. Both are highly talented and have a sense of adventure, yes. As I said, same archetype, different character. I consider myself contemplative, opinionated, and analytical. I also know a lot of other people who are contemplative, opinionated, and analytical. But I consider myself very different from some of those people.

I also strongly suspect that Luke is her father. There are some not-so-subtle hints dropped throughout the movie that he is. But I've been wrong before.

Kylo Ren is not Darth Vader. Think about the way Vader walks--steady, imposing, ominous. Now think about how Kylo Ren walks (if you recall): rushed, agitated, unstable. Think about Vader's voice: commanding, unwavering--everything he says, he means. By contrast, Kylo Ren's voice is quavering and uncertain--even behind the imposing timbre of his voicebox, he's not fully convinced of what he says. And whereas no one (save Leia and some dude on the Death Star who gets choked) makes fun of Darth Vader in the original trilogy, everyone seems to make fun of Kylo Ren--and he can't handle it, because despite his constant attempts to be a badass, he is not one, and this largely explains his fall to the dark side.

I say he is not a badass, but I shall qualify that by stating that he is an effectively terrifying villain when appropriate. Incidentally, he might be my favorite new character in the movie. Had he sucked as a character, I would have been very mad about the death of Han Solo. But I wasn't.

If the complaint is that TFA is too derivative, the only thing that I really did not like in that regard was Starkiller Base. And fundamentally, it's not because of its derivativeness that I dislike it--it's because it makes for uninteresting storytelling. We don't have any emotional connection to the people in the Hosnian System (the star system that gets blown up halfway through the film). In A New Hope, the audience has that connection through Leia: the destruction of Alderaan is a bad thing for her, and thus a bad thing for us, the audience members, because we identify with her. But TFA does not give us anyone to identify with here.

Ditto for the final battle sequence: the audience has no reason to care. What we get is a condensed mashup of the two debriefing sequences from A New Hope and Return of the Jedi, except that this one has all the emotional intensity of a somewhat cheerful office meeting. We don't care that the bad guys are planning to blow up the Resistance's base--and it's not simply because we have already seen A New Hope. It's because there's no desperation or drama of any kind, no sense of impending doom among the characters themselves, who appear just as sanguine as we are that this movie will have a happy ending. During the trench run in A New Hope, everything seems to be going wrong: the starfighters are getting picked off one by one and we actually see the pilots dying. (kids movie my eye, Lucas), an experienced pilot fails horribly to land the shot, R2D2 gets a hole blown in his head, and the audience really has no idea how Luke is going to win this one. With Starkiller Base, there's no challenge, no fear, no dramatic lowpoint where it looks like the characters might actually lose. They fly in, blow it up, and leave. All too easy.

Instead of Starkiller Base, just have those assholes from the First Order land on the Resistance Homeworld and engage in a firefight there while the protagonists do stuff elsewhere. Or have Kylo Ren kidnap Finn and threaten to kill him if Rey doesn't turn to the dark side. Or something. Anything. These are just ideas, spontaneously conjured from the top of my head as I write this, and if I can do that, JJ and crew can do better than Starkiller Base.

Another problem with Starkiller Base is that it drowns out the many glimmers of ingenuity that the filmmakers manage. It's barely forgivable here--but if they do it again in Episode VIII, it won't be. Having said that, here are some things I like about TFA, in no guaranteed order:

The opening crawl. It's clear, exciting, and pulls the audience in. It does not contain the sort of cringe-worthy tripe found in the Prequels, e.g.:

War! The Republic is crumbling
under attacks by the ruthless
Sith Lord, Count Dooku.
There are heroes on both sides.
Evil is everywhere.

("Heroes on both sides"? Wtf? On that note, TFA does not contain anyone named "Dooku", which, as my brother once noted, sounds like a word that a four-year old might use to refer to excrement.)

The scene where Rey dons an X-wing pilot's helmet and then just sits there. It's eccentric, it's endearing, and it also establishes her character.

The opening scene where the Star Destroyer eclipses Jakku. Visually it's quite interesting, and implies the dominance and relentlessness of the first order.

Chewie. The part where he tackles Captain Phasma from offscreen is pretty hilarious, and true to his character as Han Solo's muscle. I also can't remember precisely which character it was--I think Fin?--but there's a funny scene where he falls on top of Chewbacca while the latter is lying on a bed, and we get an awkward closeup of them face to face.

Speaking of which, I wish we'd seen more of Captain Phasma. She was kind of campy in an 80's sci-fi way. Reportedly, she'll be playing a more prominent role in Episode VIII.

Han Solo and Princess Leia. Words can't do justice to Ford's performance in this film. It might just be the crowning performance of his career (though his portrayal of Deckard in Blade Runner is an admittedly tough act to follow). He not only steps back into the shoes of Han Solo, he reimagines him, and his interactions with the younger cast members lifts them up and holds the film together--not unlike Alec Guiness in A New Hope. Possibly my favorite line in the whole film:

"That's not how the force works! That's not how ANY of this works!"

[Chewie grunts]

"Oh, YOU'RE cold."

Like Ford, Fisher not only returns to but reimagines her character--the feisty, driven young woman from the original trilogy is now reserved, measured, but with a warm and dignified bearing. I wish she had had more screen time (but then again, I wish the new cast members had had more screen time).

I'm rather busy and don't have time to say more, so I think I'll stop there. Alas, I wanted to say more on Rey, Fin, and Poe, but I gotta teach a class and do grad school things. I wish Poe Dameron were more prominent in the film, the fight scene with Fin was cool, and hopefully my comments at the beginning implied that I liked Rey. As I said, it was a good movie. There's room to improve--and there are things that are done wrong--and hopefully, Episode VIII will aspire to greater emotional heights (and depths...).

What do you think? Like? Dislike? Love? Hate? A mixture of all of them? Post your comments below!

How to Become a Bit Better at Philosophy: A Beginner's Guide

Below are some suggestions for those who are new to philosophy. Many of them come from anecdotal experience, but, in general, I have found them most helpful:

1. Make outlines

Wittgenstein once said that reading philosophy is a certain sort of agony. Like a lot of people who do philosophy, I find discussing and thinking about the subject matter rewarding and exciting, but reading can, in some cases, be a pain. Making outlines of your reading helps you in several ways: (i) it forces you to pay attention to what is being said, looking for a core argument and the important supporting points; (ii) it gives you something to refer back to after you've done the reading, since people, generally, tend not to retain the bulk of what they've read; and (iii) it improves your sense of how philosophical writing is structured and organized (and your sense of what counts as bad philosophical writing). Not taking notes is a bad idea; if you do not, expect yourself to zone out and forget what is being said.

2. Look things up

We are most comfortable learning things within the confines of what is familiar to us. Suppose Peter's only philosophy class has been a course on Descartes. Now suppose he enrolls in a course on Aristotle. He asks himself, as he is reading a passage from one of his works, "Is Aristotle a dualist?" Dualism is a term that comes from Descartes, but it really has nothing to do with Aristotle. Peter is trying to understand Aristotle in terms that are familiar to him, but he needs to leave those terms aside and learn new ones if he is to gain a better understanding of what is going on in the text.*

This is why it is important to look things up. Jot down the terms and ideas that are unfamiliar to you and Google them later. Check out the entries in the Stanford and Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ask your professor what things mean, like "pro tanto" or "quiddity". Part of his or her job is to tell you. The more sophisticated your working vocabulary, the better you will become at assimilating new ideas and engaging in philosophical discussion.

3. Learn to write an essay

A good philosophical essay follows many of the same principles as any piece of college-level writing. Your primary task is to construct a clear, well-organized argument supporting a central thesis statement. While some variation is allowed, I often stick to the following rubric in my own work (as always, it is helpful to outline!):

i. Introduction. A good introduction usually does two things: (a) it states the main problem/question/issue/mystery that the paper will be dealing with, and then poses a solution/answer/resolution. The latter is the thesis statement.

ii. Background/exposition. Before diving into your main argument, give some background on the important terms, concepts, and/or discussions that you are addressing. Is your thesis intended to resolve a debate? Briefly tell us what the debate is. Are you going to reject skepticism? Give us an overview of the skeptical hypothesis. Pretend you are writing this for an intelligent reader who has no exposure to the subject-matter. Don't just summarize; analyze. Look for implicit premises or veiled assumptions behind the topic you are addressing that might not be obvious.

iii. Main argument. The body of your essay should consist of an argument that defends your thesis. Think of your thesis as a conclusion, and the body of the essay as a detailed set of premises in support of the conclusion. Be careful to avoid fallacies. N. B.: not all good arguments are valid. You may omit unimportant premises, or, depending on the needs of your thesis, use inductive logic.

iv. Objections and replies. This is not always required, but it is often helpful to entertain, and respond to, an objection or two to your argument. Don't pick weak ones; ask yourself what are the best objections you can think of. Make the strongest, most charitable case for them that you can. Then present your response. You may find that the best response you can come up with is not fully satisfying; where necessary, show modesty and admit the shortcomings of your argument.

v. Provide a conclusion that gives an overview of what your paper has accomplished, restating your thesis and the general trajectory of your argument. Think about what the reader should take away from the essay once she has put it down. You may also use this section of the paper to raise additional thoughts or concerns that may be of interest, but are beyond the scope of your paper.

4. Take a course or two in basic logic

In the previous section, I mentioned premises, conclusions, validity, and inductive reasoning. These terms should be familiar to you if you have taken a course in logic. Most universities that have a philosophy department offer such courses. While you do not need to be an expert logician to do well in philosophy, proficiency in the basics can help a person immensely and is crucial if she intends to major. Informal logic introduces one to the structure of argumentation (premises and conclusions), validity, deductive and inductive reasoning, and informal fallacies, which are crucial to assessing the strength of an argument and to be avoided in your own work. Symbolic logic introduces you to the rules of inference, which you can employ very fruitfully in your own work, and, in my experience, improves one's cognitive abilities. It also gives you a way to simplify and assess deductive arguments.

5. Put down the ax

Perhaps you have heard the expression "He has an ax to grind." This expression describes a person who is so obsessed with a certain opinion or topic that he brings it up even when it is not relevant. Consider a student in a bioethics class who feels very strongly about moral relativism. Throughout the class, the student continually voices his conviction that ethical claims are completely relative to a given society or individual. This frustrates his professor and peers, since they are interested in talking about bioethics, which has little to do with moral relativism. It also hurts the ax-grinder himself, since it makes him unwilling to learn about the important ideas in bioethics: paternalism, informed consent, justice, respect for autonomy, etc.

Putting down the ax involves several crucial skills, such as: (i) knowing what is and isn't relevant to a given discussion; (ii) a willingness to learn and discuss things outside of one's comfort zone; (iii) a willingness to listen to other people whose opinions are different from one's own. All of these are important to a student's philosophical progress.

6. Be cautious of easy answers

Beware of simple, catchall answers to philosophical questions. Though perhaps biased by my own opinions, certain forms of radical skepticism, subjectivism, and relativism are all instances of what I mean by easy answers. Suppose your professor asks you to interpret a specific passage from Plato, and you reply that it is impossible to interpret the passage because nobody knows anything. Congratulations, you have just earned an F! You have also shown a complete unwillingness to engage in philosophical thinking, which is what easy answers tend to do (tip #5 is relevant here).

7. Be polite

Philosophy is a polarizing subject. On occasion, people who find themselves in philosophical discussions will raise their voices. They might become hostile or shout at each other. Sometimes they will even say mean things to each other. While this behavior may sometimes be natural, it is bad behavior and should always be discouraged. Hostility hurts philosophy; it discourages shy students from participating, makes people uncomfortable, and, most important, is rude. Courtesy always supersedes the value of philosophical discussion. If someone you are talking to is raising his voice or being insulting, it is acceptable to withdraw from the conversation. Doing so sends an important message. Don't be that person.

In addition to staying calm, do not be dismissive, pompous, or derisive in your interactions with others. Listen to what they have to say and respond in ways that are respectful and show that you value their membership in the discussion.

8. It's not about being smart

When I began my Ph.D program, I was constantly worried that I was stupid. This was an unproductive attitude, and I have since stopped caring. Historically, people have often fallen victim to the stereotype of the philosopher as a genius who spouts profundities and impresses his audience with wit and insight. Such stereotypes are harmful. Among other things,

(i) They distract you from what should be your goal as you do philosophy: careful argumentation and close reading are replaced by an urge to impress your professor and/or audience with cleverness and flowery language.

(ii) They are discriminatory. It has recently come to light, especially thanks to the efforts of feminist philosophers, that the stereotype of the brilliant philosopher is, by and large, a white male. By subscribing to this stereotype, people are more likely to perceive women and minorities as less intelligent. This has brought about a climate problem in philosophy; fortunately, in recent years, a valiant effort has been underway to fix that climate problem. Demolishing the stereotype of the brilliant philosopher has been part of the effort.

(iii) They breed arrogance. If you think you are really smart, chances are you think you are smarter than other people. This will cause you to dismiss others' work, ignore criticism, and be derisive and pompous (see #7).

(iv) They intimidate people. Shy or modest students may be more gifted than they realize. Being in the presence of arrogance prevents these students from participating in class discussions and developing confidence. If your goal is to intimidate people, then you are a bad person.

*I looked back at this post a year and a half after writing it, and--now that I've had some time to appreciate De Anima--I've come to reconsider this claim about Aristotle and dualism. My point still stands, though I probably should have used a better example.

A Defeasible Argument for Value-Realism

Here I appeal to the notion of goodness-for, or benefit, to advance an argument for value-realism. I begin with the following dialogue:

Q1: "What makes a kitchen knife good?"

A1: "That it be sharp, durable, and handle easily."

Q2: "Why is a kitchen knife that has those features good?"

A2: "Because it is good for something, use in preparing food."

Next comes an argument:

1. A2 provides* an explanation.

2. If A2 provides an explanation, then there is an explanandum.

3. There is an explanandum: the hypothetical knife's being good.

(This is basically the kernel of the argument and I could probably stop there, but in the interest of being thorough):

4. Such knives exist.

5. So there exist things that are good.

6. To be good is to instantiate a property, goodness.

7. Value-realism is true iff there exist evaluative properties that are stance-independent.

8. Goodness is an evaluative property.

9. The explanation of the knife's goodness does not require appeal to anyone's evaluative stances.

10. There exists a stance-independent evaluative property.

C11. Value-realism is true.

Is this argument rationally compelling? What would be the defeating conditions of the argument's conclusion, and can those conditions plausibly be met without begging the question in favor of anti-realism or error theory? Merely to deny A2, 1 (from the premise that there is nothing to be explained), 3, 5 (from the consideration that there exists nothing good), or 9, I believe, would do so.

*By "provides" I mean not merely that it offers an explanation, but that it succeeds in doing so by standards that plausibly satisfy the explanatory needs of the question.

What the SCOTUS's Decision Means to Me, a Straight Guy

On Friday, I witnessed what might have been the defining event of my generation: the Supreme Court's nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage. Since then, I've been very vocally celebrating this news with a bunch of status updates on my Facebook. "Vocal" might not be the right word; my celebration might, in fact, be better described as "polemical," since several of my comments are excoriating take-downs of opponents of same-sex marriage. In a way, perhaps this isn't my conversation to have: I'm straight, though I've had many wonderful gay and lesbian friends over the years, and I have the privilege of being happy for them now that this good news has been broken. In defending the Supreme Court's decision, perhaps I'm wasting my breath by arguing a point that need no longer be made.

I realize, however, that there's something else at stake in my feelings on this issue, and it starts with some autobiography. Throughout much of my middle and high-school years, I was bullied. Chronically. I was on the fence about speaking publically about this--if you're not familiar with the psychological effects of bullying, it will suffice to say that the impact is profound--almost a decade out of high school, I still feel a lingering, if irrational, humiliation in admitting it. It cuts very deeply in a way that those unaffected by it can never appreciate, as evinced when they talk about how "soft-skinned" and "hypersensitive" children in my situation must be. But I assume enough time has elapsed, and my audience is mature and compassionate enough, that I can say this without fear.

What I found peculiar at the time is that most, if not the entirety, of what I had to endure took the form of homophobic hate speech. Day in and out, I was repeatedly, relentless told I was a faggot, a cocksucker, and other things that I have no desire to repeat here. For whatever reason, my enemies were intent on telling me that I was gay. What's crucial to note here is the strong connection in their minds between a person's supposedly being gay and the right to treat that person as though they were worthless--as though they did not have the basic dignity and moral status owed to other humans. It was as if the two somehow ran together. Moreover, it was a point that was condoned by the authorities in my school, in that it was never punished or called out by my teachers (who witnessed a great deal of it) in the way that, say, racist hate speech would have been if used on a black student. When I was a kid, it was acceptable to hate gay people, and it was acceptable to hurt them. They did not yet fully count as persons.

You might think that this is not my story to tell, since, as mentioned, I'm not gay, and therefore couldn't feel the full brunt of homophobia as a gay student would. I'm fortunate in that I was not--in that I could never feel the incredible pain and despair that a gay student in my situation would feel.

But here is my important point: somewhere, elsewhere, in another classroom, there was a kid being called exactly the same things I was. And that kid was gay. Just as it was acceptable for my abusers to say the sorts of things they did to me, it was acceptable for them to say those things to that other kid, too. It was condoned. It was unpunished. What I went through was painful. Unbearable, even. I can't begin to fathom what it would have been like were I a gay student.

Things are finally different. We're reaching the point where it's no longer acceptable to call someone a faggot in a public school--where it doesn't command the indifference and lack of disapprobation that it did when I was a kid. I look around now--at depictions of gays and lesbians in the media and in the public eye, and at this nation's overwhelming outburst of joy and exhiliration after the event on Friday--and realize that so much has changed in the sparse ten years that have passed since then. I have the pleasure to find myself among a generation of rising adults who are going to teach their children what my abusers in school were never taught, who will find themselves in positions that allow them to change the world for the better--teachers, principals, politicians. The Supreme Court's decision represents so much more than just the bestowal of legal privileges. It represents a turning point in our society's moral development: the demand by gays and lesbians to be accorded the dignity and fundamental respect owed to every human being is now being recognized. This is not to say that there isn't a great deal of work to be done; marriage equality will not solve all of the challenges faced by gays and lesbians. But things are on the upswing, and much sooner than I would have expected a decade ago. I am embarrassed to admit that, years ago, part of me was pessimistic about ever seeing the legalization of same-sex marriage in my lifetime. I saw the furious opposition, the intransigence, of conservatives in the Bush era and concluded that there was no overcoming such deep-seated hatred and fear. Oftentimes, when I am pessimistic, I have a terrible habit of being right. I am pleased that, for once, I was wrong.

I firmly believe that no caring, just person in this day and age could truly be opposed to the Supreme Court's decision. In the end, I think there are no good arguments against gay marriage--only rationalizations--and that when you strip away the verbiage and all the talk of states' rights and judicial tyranny, what remains is a presumption against gay people. Ultimately it's about so much more than the Fourteenth Amendment and constitutional rights: it's about making progress in our capacity to accept and respect other people, and using the resources that we have to promote that progress. The change in our nation's attitude that I have witnessed affirms my belief that people are good and are capable of grasping the priority of the ethical to the legal. It's that sort of wisdom that Scalia and his ilk, complaining about the legal trappings of this situation, do not understand.

I live in a generation intelligent enough to see these things for themselves, now, with the sensitivity to notice forms of hatred and prejudice in places where they used to not be obvious. And I'm confident that what happened this weekend represents genuine human progress and that a heightened sense of justice and compassion in this nation has finally taken hold. 

Thinking Inside the Box: On the Value of Thought Experiments in Ethics

The other day I was challenged by two of my colleagues with some thought experiments. Admittedly, I was hesitant to engage them; I am lately dubious of the value of thought experiments in ethics, even if I readily admit that there have been some good ones. Thought experiments require you to presuppose a hypothetical scenario, then think through what would follow in this scenario, given your position on some philosophical question. Is the outcome intuitive? Is it logically consistent? Whether it is or isn't is supposedly a test of the viability of one's position.

Take, for instance, the Violinist, a thought experiment devised by Judith Thomson (incidentally, a favorite philosopher of mine). The thought experiment is designed to test whether abortion is wrong. Let us grant for the sake of argument that a fetus has the right to life. As Thomson explains,

You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. [If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but] in nine months he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.

Thomson concludes that if we think it is permissible to unplug oneself from the violinist, then abortion is permissible, even if we agree that a fetus has the right to life--and even if the fetus is sentient.

I think this is a good thought experiment. But I don't think all thought experiments are good. Here are the two thought experiments that were presented to me, followed by a discussion of what I think is wrong with them. I've changed some of the words, but I hope I've summarized them with rough accuracy:

1. The Determined Egg-buyer*

Suppose Jones is determined to buy eggs at a supermarket. He has the choice of buying normal eggs, which were more than likely produced in exceedingly cruel conditions, or "humane" eggs. What ought Jones to do?

Some background: first, I am a vegan (and if you are reading this blog you probably know that). I am also very dubious of the rhetoric of "humane-ness" and would rather see the entire animal industry abolished. Products that are advertised as "humane" are still generally produced in ways that I find objectionable, or mutually support other practices vegans regard as unethical. For instance, there is nothing preventing farmers from disposing of their "humanely" raised hens if they become infertile, or selling their male offspring for slaughter. Note that in this case, the nature of the "humane" conditions was not specified, so I presume they were something like what counts as "humane" in real life.

By my lights, then, Jones is already set on doing something wrong. So the question now is, given that he is determined to do something wrong, what ought he to do?

When challenged with this thought-experiment, I suspected something was awry, but I couldn't get a handle on exactly what. I responded by questioning its relevance to ethical practice, and that, even if it wasn't my interlocutor's intent, thought-experimental questions of this sort have often been levied at me in what are obvious attempts to beg off from the question whether one should be vegan. But I now realize in retrospect that there was something else wrong with the thought experiment: it's incoherent. For we are asking what the right thing for Jones to do is given that he is bent on doing something wrong. So what is the right way to do the wrong thing? Well, if there is a right way, it wouldn't be wrong, would it? And if it were the wrong thing, it can't be right--or else it would not be wrong. The thought experiment is laden with an absurd supposition: that there is a right wrong thing to do.

Now, one could counter that wrong actions can sometimes be right: for instance, it may be wrong, by default, to kill people, but it could be right in certain circumstances, for instance, if killing someone saved more lives than would otherwise be saved by sparing him. But this proposal strikes me as confused; the confusion, specifically, is between right/wrong actions and candidate right/wrong actions. Technically, there's really only one right thing to do: it's the thing you ought to do in the circumstances you inhabit. If killing someone to save more lives is in fact what you should do, then it is the right thing to do--not a wrong thing that is also right. It would be wrong in some other circumstance, perhaps, but not this one.

2. The Extremists

Suppose there are some violent extremists who are bent on doing brutal things to people: going into towns, flaying people alive, decapitating them, cutting off limbs, and so on. You have the power to make them commit their depredations less painfully: for example, they might be persuaded to murder most of their victims before mutilating their bodies instead of after. What do you do?

To be clear, I am to take it as a given that these people are going to continue doing wicked things. I am also to take it as a given that I am their leader and can't walk away from the whole thing.

Incidentally, when I said that I would just as soon not be their leader, I was described as "lacking moral conviction." Huh. Well, to help my interlocutor, let's just assume that someone has implanted a sophisticated restraining device in my brain that will paralyze my limbs if I try to run away. Let's also assume that I've been rendered immortal and cannot escape the whole thing by simply putting a bullet in my head. What then?

Well, supposedly, since I am their leader, I can guide them into committing brutality in ways that cause less suffering. How would I do this?

Their brutality falls into two categories: negotiable brutality (NB) and non-negotiable brutality (NNB). I can do something about NB, but not NNB.

So how do I persuade the extremists to stop committing NB acts? Here's where the thought experiment becomes a real problem for me. I take it that these people act the way they do--and that real life people act this way in real life--because they do not regard their victims as people. They regard their victims as scum, as less-than-human, such that they do not consider it a crime to treat them in the way that they do. In my position as leader, I would try to persuade them otherwise: in particular, I would tell them that acts of NB are wrong because they are not treating their victims as people, and that because their victims are people, they merit respectful and compassionate treatment, even after death. If my subjects see the force of my argument and catch on, then they will stop committing NB. But if they in fact recognize the force of my arguments, then plausibly, they would stop committing NNB as well. Endowed with the power to see that NB acts are wrong, they would see that NNB acts are wrong as well, and they would stop committing both.

Of course, this is disallowed by the contours of the thought experiment. I can't get them to stop committing both NB and NNB, even if it's what I'd opt to do in real life.

I suppose the alternative is that I can administer punishment whenever they commit NB, and in so doing discourage them from doing so (let's assume that if I try to punish them for NNB acts, my restraining device activates again and I can't move). And given the parameters of the thought-experiment, I suppose this is the only option, and I'd have to take it.

My question, now, is What have we learned from this? That a little less brutality is better than a little more?

Is this something we didn't already know?

As I said to my interlocutor, it follows very trivially that I would opt for less brutality. My interlocutor then asked me if I would be willing to accept such a task in real life. My answer was no; in real life, I wouldn't facilitate the sorts of things these people are doing; in real life, we should set the bar higher.

***

Now that I've made an effort (to the extent that I could) to answer my interlocutors, here's my question: given that your questions do not (to my mind) help inform practical life, why do they matter? And why should we care?

Some candidate answers are: (1) inquiries of this sort are intrinsically valuable; (2) to not engage in these inquiries is contrary to the spirit of philosophy; (3) even if they don't inform practice, inquiries of this sort are beneficial in some other way; (4) said inquiry sharpens critical thinking skills; (5) refusal to engage in said inquiry is impolite.

As regards (1), I believe nothing is intrinsically valuable. In fact, it's rather central to my own ethical views that there is nothing of intrinsic value. Maybe I'm equivocating here, and "intrinsic value" is supposed to mean something like "intrinsically enjoyable". Well, I don't know--this is probably something that varies from person to person. Ought it to be intrinsically enjoyable? Does it merit intrinsic enjoyment? I can tell you that criticizing the very spirit of the inquiry is certainly intrinsically enjoyable. But that's a side effect of said inquiry.

Regarding (2): there's a certain opinion that a lot of people bring to philosophy of which I am increasingly dubious. Call it the no-stone-unturned (NSU) view of philosophy. On the NSU view, a philosopher should be willing to answer any question, to examine every supposition, to entertain any hypothetical situation that can be thrown his or her way. This, according to proponents of the NSU, is exactly what philosophy is, it's exactly what philosophers are supposed to do, and it's what draws the line between freedom of thought and dogmatism: the willingness to consider anything. A romanticized view, to be sure.

The problem is that the NSU comes with its own dogmatism: its proponents maintain that one can and should be willing to examine any presupposition of hers. What they do not question is whether their own take on the spirit of philosophy is, itself, the right one, to the extent that calling the NSU into question is itself a form of heresy.

Obeisance to the NSU has implausible implications: the NSU does not put limits on what sorts of questions are relevant to a given discussion. By the NSU advocate's lights, I am required to consider every sort of bizarre question and hypothetical scenario that one can confabulate. What if my toothbrush turns into a poisonous snake (hey, it's conceivable)? What if I give a homeless man a dollar and, through the butterfly effect, he becomes the next Hitler? The answers to these questions are totally insulated from practical considerations about whether I should brush my teeth or help the homeless. Moreover, I can confabulate an infinite number of hypotheticals like these, and it would take a lifetime for me to answer them. Yet if I am to examine every presupposition of mine, then this is exactly what I must do.

One might here be tempted to reply that I have given an unfair characterization of the NSU advocate. The NSU advocate recognizes that inquiry ought to be constrained to some degree by relevance. But if that's the case, she is no longer committed to the NSU. By allowing considerations of relevance to enter into whether a given line of inquiry is worth engaging, she gives her interlocutor the philosophical right to say "I'm sorry, but can you please explain how this question is relevant to the issue at hand?" If she cannot come up with a reasonable answer, her interlocutor can justifiably decline to entertain the question.

So what counts as relevant? Obviously this depends on what both parties agree is the aim of their inquiry. With regard to normative ethics, I believe our job is to attain practical wisdom; the know-how to live our lives well. Practical wisdom is therefore embedded in the contingencies of human life; thus, thought-experiments are relevant to the extent that they mirror such contingencies.

The philosopher who coined the term "ethics" thought much the same thing. Of course, it's not because he coined the term that I think he is right; I think he is right because what he says is plausible: if ethical inquiry is about what we should do, then that inquiry itself should be answerable to practical life. One should be able to ask "How will this question help us?" and expect a reasonable answer. I am doubtful that the two thought experiments I described above really do this.

Regarding (3), I will concede that, at least in my case, there was some benefit to having the thought experiments posed to me. Namely, they served a diagnostic purpose: to discover what I thought was wrong with them and get a sense of where my interlocutors and I fundamentally depart. Specifically, I suspect that we both have very different conceptions of what it is for an act to be right. Thought-experiments of the sort posed by my interlocutors often (though by no means always) presuppose, perhaps implicitly, the following:

(i) No matter how bizarre the circumstances, there is a right answer to the question of what one is to do.

(ii) Right actions are discrete and temporally local events, neatly cut off from the rest of a person's life.

I disagree with both presuppositions. As it pertains to (i), not every scenario allows for us to do the right thing. This is an idea found in Aristotle and in many other figures in the history of philosophy (Hobbes, Hume, and Rawls, to name a few). And I think it's an idea that's very admissible to common sense: when people are thrust into situations of deprivation, social instability, or psychological illness, we can't reasonably hold them to standards of moral agency. To do so would be naive.

(ii) is where my interlocutors and I more strongly disagree. What would it be for a man determined to buy animal  products, or for the leader of a violent terrorist organization, to act rightly? The question suffers a presupposition failure: were Jones to do the right thing, he would not be buying animal products to begin with; likewise, for me, the extremist leader, to do the right thing, would be to not assume leadership of these people at all. For even if I can tone down their brutality in some marginal way, I would still be abetting and encouraging their behavior in the long run; and were I a righteous person, I would already understand this and not be affiliated with them to begin with. If I were brought up among them, I would leave and oppose them from the outside, trying to stop everything they do and not just some of it. Of course, this would require some revelation on my part: I would have to become cognizant of the sheer evil of the people I live among. But assuming I have been brought up by them, I doubt I would be capable of that revelation.

With this in mind, I realize now, It's not that the parameters of the two thought experiments are ones that I simply do not like, or would rather not consider due to narrow mindedness or because I am afraid I will not like the answer; rather, the parameters of both thought experiments rule out an answer to the very question they are asking: what is the right thing to do?

The answer to (4) is an empirical matter. Some thought experiments may challenge us intellectually and help promote sound reasoning skills; others probably do not. I think a case can be made that otherwise impractical thought experiments are usually better suited to younger students of philosophy who are still getting a handle on the sort of reasoning that philosophy requires (again, when I talk about "thought experiments", I specifically have ethics in mind). Once one gets further in her philosophical career, they become vestigial. They may still have a helpful role in illuminating certain ethical questions (see the violinist example above); otherwise, one's time is probably better spent thinking about other things, and using the reasoning skills that she developed at an earlier age for more fruitful purposes.

Finally, there is (5): Is it impolite to refuse to entertain certain kinds of inquiry, when said inquiry is, as far as I can tell, unfruitful for ethics? I suppose that depends on how one goes about refusing (her tone of voice, her mannerisms, etc). Granted, if someone does not wish to engage in a certain topic or answer a certain question, it is no less impolite to press them on the matter. It is, of course, important to me that I make my feelings on this subject known, whether or not I offend anyone, and for good reason: it is potentially harmful when ethical questions don't answer to practical life. For instance, in my experience as a vegan who has engaged with non-vegans, it is often used as a way to dodge criticism, or avoid careful scrutiny of one's own practices. If the goal of philosophy is to get to the heart of an issue, then it is absolutely appropriate to call out discourse which is contrary to that purpose.

By no means is it the case that those who engage in or encourage such forms of discourse always (or even often) do so maliciously or in a disingenuous spirit. This is important to remember, and something of which we more practically-minded ethicists should continuously remind ourselves (I have ethicist-friends who share my skepticism, and frustration, about the NSU  approach to ethics). In exchange, those posing questions should be perfectly willing to tell us why their question is valuable if asked to do so. Because remember, no stone left unturned.

*Initially the question was posed to me to test a paradox in deontic logic, but it became a question about my actual ethical views.

Good as Good-for: Why Worry?

In recent months I have become increasingly sympathetic to a certain metaethical view (dating back--on my reading of him--to Aristotle). The view raises a worry which I can at once understand, yet which strikes me as entirely confused and premature.

The view is this: for a thing to be good or valuable (I use the terms interchangeably) is for it to be good for someone or something.

Most of us don't deny the proposal that to be good-for is one way in which a thing can be good. What is radical about the proposal is that for a thing to be good-for is the only way in which a thing can be good. Many, though happy to allow that good-for is one species of goodness, still hold that there are other ways in which a thing can be good: for instance, to be good-of-a-kind (a good knife, a good person) or to be good simpliciter or absolutely (some take this view of pleasure, for instance, asserting that pleasure is just good, in and of itself and independent of whose it is).

But the good as good-for theorist excludes the latter two notions from her taxonomy of values. Good simpliciter is metaphysically troublesome (and leads to counterintuitive results, e.g., is a serial killer's pleasure good? Is a heroine addict's pleasure good?), while good-of-a-kind doesn't provide a satisfying explanation for what makes something a good x--an explanation, the good-for theorist will assert, that is better supplied by its being good for some activity, product, or individual.*

The worry I often hear when I share this view is this: the theory of good as good-for leads directly to egoism.

Truth be told, this is an objection made (sort of, but not exactly) by G. E. Moore in 1903 (see Chapter III of Principia Ethica), but I still hear it voiced today despite how obviously fallacious it is. The worry seems to proceed as follows:

(1) If something is good for someone, x, then its reason-giving force applies only to x.
(2) Therefore, if the only way in which a thing can be good is for it to be good-for someone, then the only thing each of us has reason to do is to do what is good for us, at the avoidance of altruistic behavior.

(There are, of course, omitted premises in this argument, such as that the good is reason-giving).

Now (1) seems to me to be very mistaken. We often make decisions to act in ways that benefit other people based on considerations about what would be good for them. Consider: I think it would be good for my friend if I threw him a surprise party; I think it would be good for my child if I made her eat her spinach; I think it would be good for an injured stranger on the street if I called 911. And if (2) depends on (1), (2) loses its support.

Why, then, do people so easily fall into the trap of assuming (1)? It might be a fallacy of false analogy: A is good for x; therefore, A provides reasons only for x. The analogy is false because when we say that something is good for someone, we have not yet said anything about the reasons it gives anybody to want or do anything. What we have done, rather, is made a metaphysical assertion about what constitutes the goodness: the goodness is instantiated by a relation between the good thing and a beneficiary.

It could also just be a fallacy of equivocation about the word "for", where "for" is being taken in a sense that connotes responsibility or obligation (i.e., "I have a job for you") when it should be taken in a sense that connotes the recipient of a benefit.

The bottom line is that the worry is premature: the explanation of what makes a thing good can be detached from the normative commitments that its goodness may or may not exert on someone.

*I have also been told that aesthetic value provides a counterexample to the view that all value is goodness-for, but I disagree. Good works of art, for example, enrich our lives, and, especially, the lives of those who appreciate art.

A Thought About Egoism and Rationality

In a talk I gave this evening on Aristotle's ethical theory (in which I defended him from the charge of egoism), someone raised the question of whether it would be rational to act egoistically in extreme circumstances, for instance, where I had to harm others in order to preserve my own life (e.g., suppose I have to throw someone out of a lifeboat in order to prevent it from sinking so that I and the other people on the lifeboat do not drown). The intuition at work here is that standard models of rationality dictate that we should behave egoistically in such circumstances.

(The context in which this question was raised was my proposal that Aristotle thinks our reason for any course of action should be to bring about the highest good for humans--eudaimonia, or a life of virtuous activity*--for myself and for others. This is, at least partly, a non-egoistic endeavor.)

One might be tempted to construe Aristotle's own take on this situation in the following way: the people in this scenario can't act virtuously. Rather, extreme scenarios tempt us to succumb to appetite and emotion and do things that we'd ordinarily think are vicious. Generally, virtuous behavior can't sustain itself outside circumstances in which people have sufficient access to material and social well-being.

But this isn't necessarily right. At NE I 10, Aristotle states quite clearly that virtuous behavior can persist during bouts of misfortune if the person who suffers the misfortune is already virtuous. Even when bad things happen to a virtuous person, virtuous activity “shines through”; the virtuous person “bears . . . severe misfortunes with good temper” because he is “noble and magnanimous” (1100b31-3).

Aristotle, furthermore, allows for the possibility that a virtuous person may choose to die for the sake of others. Why? Simply because courageous actions seem to him a noble (kalon) thing to do (NE IX 8, 1169a26-27). The intrinsic goodness of virtuous actions, even actions of extreme sacrifice, strikes him as a reason to choose them.

Returning to our lifeboat scenario: standard conceptions of rationality suggest that egoistic behavior is the most reasonable course of action. But I cannot help but wonder if we think this simply because they are the intuitions that we--being fallible, admittedly self-interested people--tend to have. In fairness to my interlocutor, she conceded that it is not obvious that acts of self-sacrifice would be any less rational. On the Aristotelian picture, I think it is clear that a virtuous person would not share this intuition either.

The bottom line? I am not sure how on board I am with the notion that egoism is the rational way to behave in extreme circumstances. Although it is fairly uncontroversial that most of us would behave that way, it is not obvious that we should. If we consider more carefully the kind of character that we ought to cultivate, and endeavor sincerely to do, the ordinary thought that egoistic behavior in extreme circumstances is the best course of action may lose its intuitiveness for us. Is it irrational for me to jump overboard and save everyone else on the lifeboat? If the answer is yes, it is by no means an obvious one.

References:

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. In Aristotle: Selections. Ed. and trans. Terrence Irwin and Gail Fine. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett,

1995.

*Aristotle's take on theoria, or the life of divine contemplation, raises a question about whether virtuous activity is the right answer to what he thinks the best life for a human is. I bracket that question for the purposes of this blog, suffice it to say there is little doubt in Aristotle that one who achieves theoria knows how to act virtuously. Keep in mind, also, that theoria is virtuous: the one who practices it possesses a virtue, theoretical wisdom, and possesses the other virtues as well.