In the last three posts in this series, I've suggested that the way adults make moral decisions is by asking if they can live with the foreseeable consequences of the actions, and if not, then what changes to the actions might make the goal of those actions achievable in a way they can live with. What adults don't do is look for principles from which to deduce an answer. Their concern is with their conscience, not with what God and Her Angels might think is the right thing to do. This might be how adults make a moral decision, but we can always ask: is it the way they should make it? The answer to this depends on your view of what a person is and how that affects their responsibility and accountability.
You can believe that a person is only able to live a purposeful life through membership in some reasonably-ordered community and as such has a prudential interest in following its rules. (If the society falls apart, so does their life.) Hence their moral obligations and duties arise from the rules of the society: they are accountable for following the rules, and doing so is their defence in the event that, having done so, something really nasty happened as a result.
You can believe that, modulo the interests themselves, everyone has a common conception of what is in their interests and what is not. No matter what you want to achieve in life, being murdered or having a limb chopped off won't help. Nor will loss by theft, arson or negligence of your property, work-in-progress and reputation. Any action which leads to one of these harms can be condemned for that reason, and so made a crime, tort or regulatory breach, depending on how the society wants to handle the administration. Thus actions, decisions and even rules and laws can be judged by their consequences. The prime moral obligation is not foreseeably to cause one of these harms, and the prime defence is that the harm was either not reasonably foreseeable or did not result from the action.
No matter what your views on these subjects, you can independently believe that there are limits to a person's accountability: that there are legitimate excuses for the harm you caused or your breach of the rules. Insanity has long been one, and ignorance of the law has long not been one. You can also decide that there are times when responsibility does not always imply punishment or censure: the light punishments, often judicial warnings, given to "first offenders"" are an example of this. All this gives you, if you want it, what many feel to be a necessary flexibility in the administration of justice and the conduct of social censure and reward.
So far, so flexible. However, if a society says that its citizens must follow the rules and do not need to think about the consequences, and if a defence of following the correct procedures is always effective, then that society has effectively removed the responsibility for decision-making from its citizens and given it to its legislators. It has infantalised its citizenry, who merely need to follow the rules and need not make independent judgements.
Making independent judgements, no matter the rules and expectations of society, is one characteristic of adults and a necessary condition of rational conduct. Adults cannot allow themselves the luxury of "following procedures" but must make up their own minds, and to do this, they must look at consequences as well as rules in order to strike a balance or reach a solution that they can live with.
But if you're someone who wants rules, and duties, and obligations and rights clearly stated, you won't like this. You will prefer people to have to deduce the correct thing to do from your general principles as you interpret them. Plato thought like this, it's the implicit position of deontologists, and many cultures have a strong legalistic streak in them. Of course, Plato wanted to be King, and legalistic cultures are often run by an elite of law-interpreters who don't really trust their people to make decisions. Adults don't much go for being subjects of anyone, whether Kings, priests or bureaucrats. And that, ultimately, is why they reserve the right to make up their own damn minds.
Friday, 31 December 2010
Wednesday, 29 December 2010
How Adults Solve Moral Problems: Part Three
The two examples of someone making moral decisions were both about someone deciding if they could live with something they were going to do. I hold this is the prototype of a moral decision. A moral decision differs from a legal, tactical, logistical, business, medical, artistic or any other kind not because of its content, but because we remain responsible for its foreseeable consequences no matter what reasons we had for making it. Nothing and nobody can remove this responsibility, neither God, nor the High Command nor the Categorical Imperative, the teachings of our prophet nor the advice of our lawyers. Moral decisions are taken by ourselves alone. We cannot lay off our responsibility on our culture, God or principles, because it is for us to decide to act according to those principles, that culture or God. It is our decision how we decide how to decide.
And this is the relevant characteristic of an adult: someone who accepts their responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of their decisions, their responsibility for choosing how to decide, and for the decision itself. (Deciding how to decide how to decide is equivalent to deciding how to decide, so the regress stops at two paces.) The question "what should I do" invites an answer from an authority, from Emily Post to Halsbury Laws of England, or perhaps guidance from a guru, from Aristotle to L Ron Hubbard, but while the authority can rule, and the guru can suggest, neither removes the responsibility from you. The question "can I live with this?" puts the responsibility where it lies - though it is worth noting that the answer "I can live with it, but that doesn't mean I'm going to do it" is perfectly consistent.
If we accept that morality is about what we should do, we set off in the wrong direction from the first step. It has us arguing about the merits of one authority over another, and the tenability and interpretation of general principles: arguments that have been going nowhere since the Egyptians built the Pyramids. Given two people of equal sincerity, intelligence and good intentions, if they hold inconsistent principles (or inconsistent interpretations of the same principle) then agreement is out of reach. If we accept that morality is about what we can live with, what we can do in good conscience, then we recognise that the discussion is there to persuade, influence, inform, and maybe even convince, the us, the decision-maker. In most circumstances, to call an argument "ad hominem" is dismissive, but part of what makes morality special is that its arguments are properly ad hominem. They are properly directed at the concerns, interests, beliefs, situation and interests of the decision-maker.
Two quick technicalities. First, moral responsibility is not legal responsibility. It's up to the legislature, influenced by whatever theories of the mind they may hear, to decide when a person should not be held to account for the foreseeable consequences of their actions - the scope and limits of legal irresponsibility is itself a moral decision. Moral responsibility applies to anyone capable of acting, because even if we do not use the law to punish someone for an action, we may still decide to exclude them from our daily lives, and that is moral censure as much as it may be prudential good sense.
Second, foreseeable consequences are those that a reasonable person would predict. I know no tax law, but my decision not to pay my dues taxes is unreasonable because I lacked the information I needed (the size of the fine for non-payment) to make it. Being late for a meeting because the train was cancelled is not foreseeable (at least if the weather is clement) because we cannot reasonably work in a world where we can't assume that railway companies might arbitrarily cancel trains. However, my powers of reasonable prediction end when another person has to decide how to respond. The actions of other people in response to our actions are not foreseeable. If I throw a punch in your direction, the blood from your nose is foreseeable, but your reaction is not. You might do many things as a result of many different calculations and reactions. One day you might fight back, and another not. However, some of your responses will be entirely reasonable and in common speech I "shouldn't be surprised" or I "can't complain" if you do them: others will be unreasonable. I can't complain if you take a swing back at me, but I can if you pull out a knife. Such actions are considered possible responses by a reasonable person, but which if any will happen is not reasonably predictable.
Adults make moral decisions by asking what they can live with. How do we best influence them? Treat the problem as a practical one. What would change their minds? What facts would make a decision easy? What are the pulls-and pushes in their decision, what are the trade-offs? Are there any principles they really won't compromise? (For me, it doesn't matter what you threaten me with, I'm going to take an alcoholic drink.) What are their concerns? What actions might mitigate those concerns? Is there a way of doing whatever it is that is acceptable, and are there unacceptable ways? Can they live with it if amends are made for the harms and losses the action might cause? Or is it simply a question of steeling themselves to do it, of overcoming some squeamishness and of accepting the full scope of the responsibility their role places on them? And if so, how do we help them do so? (What we do not do is preach, harangue, threaten, insult, charm, bribe, distract, sweet-talk, promise, or use tricks like reflective listening. Because that's not how you treat equals and colleagues. It's how you treat children. And if you want an adult to punish you for your insult and presumption, treat them as a child. You will deserve everything you get.)
In the next post I will look at the consequences of this position for traditional moral philosophy.
And this is the relevant characteristic of an adult: someone who accepts their responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of their decisions, their responsibility for choosing how to decide, and for the decision itself. (Deciding how to decide how to decide is equivalent to deciding how to decide, so the regress stops at two paces.) The question "what should I do" invites an answer from an authority, from Emily Post to Halsbury Laws of England, or perhaps guidance from a guru, from Aristotle to L Ron Hubbard, but while the authority can rule, and the guru can suggest, neither removes the responsibility from you. The question "can I live with this?" puts the responsibility where it lies - though it is worth noting that the answer "I can live with it, but that doesn't mean I'm going to do it" is perfectly consistent.
If we accept that morality is about what we should do, we set off in the wrong direction from the first step. It has us arguing about the merits of one authority over another, and the tenability and interpretation of general principles: arguments that have been going nowhere since the Egyptians built the Pyramids. Given two people of equal sincerity, intelligence and good intentions, if they hold inconsistent principles (or inconsistent interpretations of the same principle) then agreement is out of reach. If we accept that morality is about what we can live with, what we can do in good conscience, then we recognise that the discussion is there to persuade, influence, inform, and maybe even convince, the us, the decision-maker. In most circumstances, to call an argument "ad hominem" is dismissive, but part of what makes morality special is that its arguments are properly ad hominem. They are properly directed at the concerns, interests, beliefs, situation and interests of the decision-maker.
Two quick technicalities. First, moral responsibility is not legal responsibility. It's up to the legislature, influenced by whatever theories of the mind they may hear, to decide when a person should not be held to account for the foreseeable consequences of their actions - the scope and limits of legal irresponsibility is itself a moral decision. Moral responsibility applies to anyone capable of acting, because even if we do not use the law to punish someone for an action, we may still decide to exclude them from our daily lives, and that is moral censure as much as it may be prudential good sense.
Second, foreseeable consequences are those that a reasonable person would predict. I know no tax law, but my decision not to pay my dues taxes is unreasonable because I lacked the information I needed (the size of the fine for non-payment) to make it. Being late for a meeting because the train was cancelled is not foreseeable (at least if the weather is clement) because we cannot reasonably work in a world where we can't assume that railway companies might arbitrarily cancel trains. However, my powers of reasonable prediction end when another person has to decide how to respond. The actions of other people in response to our actions are not foreseeable. If I throw a punch in your direction, the blood from your nose is foreseeable, but your reaction is not. You might do many things as a result of many different calculations and reactions. One day you might fight back, and another not. However, some of your responses will be entirely reasonable and in common speech I "shouldn't be surprised" or I "can't complain" if you do them: others will be unreasonable. I can't complain if you take a swing back at me, but I can if you pull out a knife. Such actions are considered possible responses by a reasonable person, but which if any will happen is not reasonably predictable.
Adults make moral decisions by asking what they can live with. How do we best influence them? Treat the problem as a practical one. What would change their minds? What facts would make a decision easy? What are the pulls-and pushes in their decision, what are the trade-offs? Are there any principles they really won't compromise? (For me, it doesn't matter what you threaten me with, I'm going to take an alcoholic drink.) What are their concerns? What actions might mitigate those concerns? Is there a way of doing whatever it is that is acceptable, and are there unacceptable ways? Can they live with it if amends are made for the harms and losses the action might cause? Or is it simply a question of steeling themselves to do it, of overcoming some squeamishness and of accepting the full scope of the responsibility their role places on them? And if so, how do we help them do so? (What we do not do is preach, harangue, threaten, insult, charm, bribe, distract, sweet-talk, promise, or use tricks like reflective listening. Because that's not how you treat equals and colleagues. It's how you treat children. And if you want an adult to punish you for your insult and presumption, treat them as a child. You will deserve everything you get.)
In the next post I will look at the consequences of this position for traditional moral philosophy.
Monday, 27 December 2010
Seasonal Fatuous Advice For All
I thought I would bring you this piece of silliness, to add to all the other silliness of the season, from those people who brought you Lending Money to Irish Property Companies. Posted on The Bank's intranet recently was this, to keep you from slitting your wrists at the thought of a whole Christmas weekend with the in-laws...
"Ten Tips for your Emotional Wellbeing. ABC Corp, one of our Employee Assistance Providers, has these top 10 tips for your Emotional Wellbeing:
1. Get Active! There is no better way to lift low mood than exercise. Any moderate to vigorous activity can enhance general well-being. Try dancing, walking, cycling. Don't forget to eat well and drink lots of water too!
2. Sing Your Heart Out! Recent research has shown that singing a favourite upbeat song increases positive states of mind.
3. Get The Balance Right. It has been proven many times that people with a reasonable work/life balance tend to be happier and healthier.
4. Let Go! People who 'live in the moment' not in the past are mentally more alert and relaxed. Try yoga or Tai Chi.
5. Volunteer. Get the 'feel good factor' – give to others – get involved in charitable causes.
6. Play It Forward. Positive anticipation has been proven to stimulate the brain to expect the best – this then translates into intentionally seeking the best for ourselves. Result – more pleasure, less stress.
7. Accentuate The Good Stuff. Psychological research suggests that reflecting on our achievements – no matter how small- can boost our mood.
8. Feel the fear – Do it anyway! Stepping outside our 'comfort zone' taking a risk every now and again is good for our wellbeing. A sense of achievement, fun and challenge boosts endorphins (our feel good hormones).
9. Find Your Passion. Throwing yourself into an activity, hobby or special interest has a very beneficial effect upon our mental health. Being totally absorbed in any activity reduces the stress hormones.
10. Nurture Your Social Network. Numerous studies have shown that people who spend fun time with family and friends are generally happier and healthier and live longer."
So there you are. Easy as that. What could be holding you back?
Happy Christmas.
(And in a post to follow in the New Year, I'll explain exactly what is silly about this...)
"Ten Tips for your Emotional Wellbeing. ABC Corp, one of our Employee Assistance Providers, has these top 10 tips for your Emotional Wellbeing:
1. Get Active! There is no better way to lift low mood than exercise. Any moderate to vigorous activity can enhance general well-being. Try dancing, walking, cycling. Don't forget to eat well and drink lots of water too!
2. Sing Your Heart Out! Recent research has shown that singing a favourite upbeat song increases positive states of mind.
3. Get The Balance Right. It has been proven many times that people with a reasonable work/life balance tend to be happier and healthier.
4. Let Go! People who 'live in the moment' not in the past are mentally more alert and relaxed. Try yoga or Tai Chi.
5. Volunteer. Get the 'feel good factor' – give to others – get involved in charitable causes.
6. Play It Forward. Positive anticipation has been proven to stimulate the brain to expect the best – this then translates into intentionally seeking the best for ourselves. Result – more pleasure, less stress.
7. Accentuate The Good Stuff. Psychological research suggests that reflecting on our achievements – no matter how small- can boost our mood.
8. Feel the fear – Do it anyway! Stepping outside our 'comfort zone' taking a risk every now and again is good for our wellbeing. A sense of achievement, fun and challenge boosts endorphins (our feel good hormones).
9. Find Your Passion. Throwing yourself into an activity, hobby or special interest has a very beneficial effect upon our mental health. Being totally absorbed in any activity reduces the stress hormones.
10. Nurture Your Social Network. Numerous studies have shown that people who spend fun time with family and friends are generally happier and healthier and live longer."
So there you are. Easy as that. What could be holding you back?
Happy Christmas.
(And in a post to follow in the New Year, I'll explain exactly what is silly about this...)
Friday, 24 December 2010
How Adults Solve Moral Problems: Part Two
The next problem has a similar structure as the last one. A large corporation is going to close the factory which provides the living of a small and up until now thriving community in what is really a company town a long way from the nearest big city and industrial park. Two thousand jobs are going, after a couple of years of re-organisations, cost-savings and productivity agreements, and some quite remarkable co-perations from the workforce and Unions, who understood how important it is to keep the jobs in the town. They know what happens to company towns which lose the company: permanent high unemployment passed down the generations and problems with drugs, depression, health and petty crime. The CEO knows this as well, and in a moment of night doubt, the CEO asks if she can, in all conscience, do this thing. She's not asking if she has a legal defence, because, assuming that her HR department are following the rules about consultation, there is no crime anywhere in sight. She's wondering if she can live with herself for causing the misery and degradation that is going to follow.
The following morning, she's just fine with it. First, neither she not the corporation are responsible for the lack of other economic opportunities in or near the town; second, it's not her fault if the locals take to heroin and skunk, that's their decision; third, the local council should be working to attract new employers into the area, and the local MP should be trying to get some Government subsidies to help that process; fourth, there is no rule that says the people have to stay in the town, let them move to where the work is; fifth, it's not her job to look after communities, it's her job to look after the company, and that's what she's doing. They can't go on with that loss-making factory, and they tried hard enough to make it profitable. Maybe, she thinks, they could do more than provide the usual outplacement advice, but what? Well, that's what she has an HR specialist for. Sixth, the only reason they are having to close the factory is the lower costs that competitors are getting by manufacturing in China. If you want a villain, blame the Chinese.
These look very similar to the reasons I gave in the first example. Except I don't like corporations who create employment ghost towns and I want them on the hook.
First, I can argue that the corporation is responsible for the lack of other employment opportunities: the world is covered by company towns and one-industry counties. Multi-employer areas are the exception, not the rule: London has two industries - The City and Whitehall - that all the rest rely on; Washington is a company town; New York falls apart without Wall Street and media. Actually, it's quite hard to think of robustly multi-industry towns. The CEO's company created the town, and now it is destroying it. Third, neither the local council nor the local MP have the skills to find another employer: this is like the NHS closing the hospitals and shutting down the GP's surgeries and saying that the local council should find its own health service. Fourth, everyone can't pack up and go, because how are they going to pay rent when they get to wherever it is they're going? This is England, not Kenya, they can't just build some more shacks in Kibera. I'm agreeing with her on points two and five. Point six is a real cheek: if she and her fellow CEO's hadn't started outsourcing to China in the first place, they wouldn't have let the Chinese create the industrial base in the first place. That's a devil of their own creation.
Now I've got her back on the hook, how does she get off? I'm not going to expect her to keep the factory open. I am going to ask she uses her corporation's vast networks to see if they can find another employer for the town, maybe as a joint venture with investment from both the exiting and the entering companies. I'm going to ask that her company sets up a scholarship program so that the children can see there is a point to doing well at school: they will be able to get out via university. I'm going to ask that the company make zero-interest loans available to help people re-locate if they do find jobs elsewhere, and set up a fund for paying interview expenses to be administered by its own finance department. Any more ideas along those lines, add them to the list. (In a similar vein, the pilot of our first example could ask that the army make some attempt to provide medical services to the children in the school if there are injuries. Of course, that would be a lot harder to do in practice than what we're asking the corporation to do, which is spend a bit of money.)
Notice how I'm not discussing right and wrong. That would get me nowhere. Nor am I appealing to general principles, which for different reasons, would also get me nowhere. I'm keeping the discussion about practicalities, and appealing implicitly, to a sense of fairness or common interest or general decency and thoughtfulness. This isn't what moralists do, but it is what politicians, businessmen and, I rather suspect, priests and other elders do.
In the third part, we will see why the moralists are on the wrong track entirely.
The following morning, she's just fine with it. First, neither she not the corporation are responsible for the lack of other economic opportunities in or near the town; second, it's not her fault if the locals take to heroin and skunk, that's their decision; third, the local council should be working to attract new employers into the area, and the local MP should be trying to get some Government subsidies to help that process; fourth, there is no rule that says the people have to stay in the town, let them move to where the work is; fifth, it's not her job to look after communities, it's her job to look after the company, and that's what she's doing. They can't go on with that loss-making factory, and they tried hard enough to make it profitable. Maybe, she thinks, they could do more than provide the usual outplacement advice, but what? Well, that's what she has an HR specialist for. Sixth, the only reason they are having to close the factory is the lower costs that competitors are getting by manufacturing in China. If you want a villain, blame the Chinese.
These look very similar to the reasons I gave in the first example. Except I don't like corporations who create employment ghost towns and I want them on the hook.
First, I can argue that the corporation is responsible for the lack of other employment opportunities: the world is covered by company towns and one-industry counties. Multi-employer areas are the exception, not the rule: London has two industries - The City and Whitehall - that all the rest rely on; Washington is a company town; New York falls apart without Wall Street and media. Actually, it's quite hard to think of robustly multi-industry towns. The CEO's company created the town, and now it is destroying it. Third, neither the local council nor the local MP have the skills to find another employer: this is like the NHS closing the hospitals and shutting down the GP's surgeries and saying that the local council should find its own health service. Fourth, everyone can't pack up and go, because how are they going to pay rent when they get to wherever it is they're going? This is England, not Kenya, they can't just build some more shacks in Kibera. I'm agreeing with her on points two and five. Point six is a real cheek: if she and her fellow CEO's hadn't started outsourcing to China in the first place, they wouldn't have let the Chinese create the industrial base in the first place. That's a devil of their own creation.
Now I've got her back on the hook, how does she get off? I'm not going to expect her to keep the factory open. I am going to ask she uses her corporation's vast networks to see if they can find another employer for the town, maybe as a joint venture with investment from both the exiting and the entering companies. I'm going to ask that her company sets up a scholarship program so that the children can see there is a point to doing well at school: they will be able to get out via university. I'm going to ask that the company make zero-interest loans available to help people re-locate if they do find jobs elsewhere, and set up a fund for paying interview expenses to be administered by its own finance department. Any more ideas along those lines, add them to the list. (In a similar vein, the pilot of our first example could ask that the army make some attempt to provide medical services to the children in the school if there are injuries. Of course, that would be a lot harder to do in practice than what we're asking the corporation to do, which is spend a bit of money.)
Notice how I'm not discussing right and wrong. That would get me nowhere. Nor am I appealing to general principles, which for different reasons, would also get me nowhere. I'm keeping the discussion about practicalities, and appealing implicitly, to a sense of fairness or common interest or general decency and thoughtfulness. This isn't what moralists do, but it is what politicians, businessmen and, I rather suspect, priests and other elders do.
In the third part, we will see why the moralists are on the wrong track entirely.
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
How To Solve Moral Problems: Part One
Philosophers like to solve moral problems by appealing to principles, and it's what we are supposed to do. Being "principled" is very good, if not always fun. The opposite is "expedient", which may be fun, but isn't very, well, principled. There's just one little catch. Seasoned adults don't use principles to make their decisions. They never have. And since the seasoned adults are in charge, it might behoove philosophers and those who study decision-making to wonder how the grown-ups decide things.
Here is a problem. "Suppose a pilot comes to us with a request for advice: “See, we’re at war with a villainous country called Bad, and my superiors have ordered me to drop some bombs at Placetown in Bad. Now there’s a munitions factory at Placetown, but there’s a children hospital there too. Is it permissible for me to drop the bombs?”
The first thing you have to do is get over your horror at the idea of bombing innocent children. You won't think straight with that in the way. The second thing to notice is that it's not clear what is being asked for. The pilot already has permission - from her superiors. There is one catch, which is that "I was only following orders" was removed as a presumptive defence after World War Two, so she may well be asking if she has a good defence if she is charged with war crimes afterwards. That is a matter for an international war crimes lawyer. What she is asking is something like: "can I, in all good conscience, fly this mission?". (We will assume that she has no religious beliefs that provide her with an unequivocal "no" - if she has, I think she has to ask her superiors that someone else fly the mission. After that, it's between her and her rabbi.)
As I read the problem, a number of questions occurred to me. How close is the munitions plant to the hospital? How is the pilot going to bomb the plant: using a fire-and-forget GPS-linked missile launched from several miles out, a laser-guided smart bomb dropped a lot closer or with dumb bombs aimed by old-fashioned targeting computer? Have similar missions been well-informed as to GPS co-ordinates? Why are the children in the hospital: because of the injuries they received as combatants or because they are suffering from a terminal illness? What is the attitude of the local people towards children: do they regard them as precious possessions - as Westeners do - or do they take the more robust view that if there's one thing people can always make more of, it's children, and that it's the mothers who are precious? Why didn't the authorities re-locate the hospital once they knew there was an insurgent munitions plant next to it? Why did the insurgents put the munitions plant there? How many of her own comrades will be killed if the munitions factory continues to work? Or will they just start another one down the road the next day? Does the pilot have a choice in flying the mission, or will she get a court-martial or a reprimand if she doesn't? If she doesn't fly it, will someone else? Does the pilot have religious beliefs that preclude her from flying aggressive missions like this? Did she understand when she signed up that she might have to fly missions like this? Is it likely that the conflict will be over before the children grow up to be insurgents themselves? Would seeing the hospital go up affect her ability to fly other aggressive missions?
Eventually, the following argument resolved itself. The only reservation about the mission is the possible harm to the children. Assume that the weaponry she is given is accurate enough to hit the munitions factory, and the blast from that weapon would not itself damage the hospital beyond a slight shaking. What will damage the hospital is the blast from the explosives stored in the factory. A blast that will be set off by the pilot's missile, but equally could be set off at random by some clumsy materials handling by the insurgents. The children will be harmed, not by the missile fired at the building next door, but because that building contained explosives. Which were put there by the insurgents, who are cynically using the children's hospital as a human shield. The harm to the children is not caused by the attack on the munitions dump, which would be attacked no matter where it was, but by the decision of the insurgents to put their munitions factory there. And, by the way, by the complicity of the local people in not raising hell when the insurgents did. The fact the local people don't see it that way makes the PR harder but doesn't affect the moral issues. An army cannot be deterred by the use of human shields (exercise for the reader: why not?) - though a civilised army might try to work around the poor bastards being used as shields if they can, just not at the risk of greater harm to its own people.
This argument is intended to make you realise that, assuming the weaponry is well-chosen, the blame for any collateral harm to the children can be seen as not being the pilot's fault (strictly, the fault of her superiors who tasked her with the mission). Most people buy into the idea that it would be the pilot's fault. after all, the very setting of the question assumes that it's the pilot (strictly, her superiors) who has to justify her actions. Whereas it isn't: it's the insurgents who have to provide a moral justification for putting a munitions factory next to a school hospital.
I think the pilot's commanders can properly ask her to do it, and she should carry out the orders, if she is given a smart weapon (laser or GPS) of appropriate destructive force (that is, a small nuclear warhead would not be acceptable). If she believes the weapons are not adequate, she should ask for the appropriate ones. If none are forthcoming, she might request someone else fly it if she believes that her future effectiveness would be compromised by knowing she had caused the deaths of innocent children. That's the situation as I see it.
Which doesn't look anything like a regular moral argument. No appeal to principles, to the relative value of human lives, to our folk intuitions of fairness nor appeals to the rights of the children not to be harmed by a conflict between two groups of people neither of whom have the childrens' well-being in mind. No weighty demand that the pilot's superiors must answer to a higher standard of behaviour than that applied to insurgents. Just some fairly practical considerations about whose explosives did the actual damage and what weapons the pilot will use. Of course, there is an argument about responsibility in there, and that might make it a moral argument, but the assignment of responsibility is more a matter of fact, even if those facts can cut both ways.
In a later post, I'm going to look at another example and see how we deal with that.
Here is a problem. "Suppose a pilot comes to us with a request for advice: “See, we’re at war with a villainous country called Bad, and my superiors have ordered me to drop some bombs at Placetown in Bad. Now there’s a munitions factory at Placetown, but there’s a children hospital there too. Is it permissible for me to drop the bombs?”
The first thing you have to do is get over your horror at the idea of bombing innocent children. You won't think straight with that in the way. The second thing to notice is that it's not clear what is being asked for. The pilot already has permission - from her superiors. There is one catch, which is that "I was only following orders" was removed as a presumptive defence after World War Two, so she may well be asking if she has a good defence if she is charged with war crimes afterwards. That is a matter for an international war crimes lawyer. What she is asking is something like: "can I, in all good conscience, fly this mission?". (We will assume that she has no religious beliefs that provide her with an unequivocal "no" - if she has, I think she has to ask her superiors that someone else fly the mission. After that, it's between her and her rabbi.)
As I read the problem, a number of questions occurred to me. How close is the munitions plant to the hospital? How is the pilot going to bomb the plant: using a fire-and-forget GPS-linked missile launched from several miles out, a laser-guided smart bomb dropped a lot closer or with dumb bombs aimed by old-fashioned targeting computer? Have similar missions been well-informed as to GPS co-ordinates? Why are the children in the hospital: because of the injuries they received as combatants or because they are suffering from a terminal illness? What is the attitude of the local people towards children: do they regard them as precious possessions - as Westeners do - or do they take the more robust view that if there's one thing people can always make more of, it's children, and that it's the mothers who are precious? Why didn't the authorities re-locate the hospital once they knew there was an insurgent munitions plant next to it? Why did the insurgents put the munitions plant there? How many of her own comrades will be killed if the munitions factory continues to work? Or will they just start another one down the road the next day? Does the pilot have a choice in flying the mission, or will she get a court-martial or a reprimand if she doesn't? If she doesn't fly it, will someone else? Does the pilot have religious beliefs that preclude her from flying aggressive missions like this? Did she understand when she signed up that she might have to fly missions like this? Is it likely that the conflict will be over before the children grow up to be insurgents themselves? Would seeing the hospital go up affect her ability to fly other aggressive missions?
Eventually, the following argument resolved itself. The only reservation about the mission is the possible harm to the children. Assume that the weaponry she is given is accurate enough to hit the munitions factory, and the blast from that weapon would not itself damage the hospital beyond a slight shaking. What will damage the hospital is the blast from the explosives stored in the factory. A blast that will be set off by the pilot's missile, but equally could be set off at random by some clumsy materials handling by the insurgents. The children will be harmed, not by the missile fired at the building next door, but because that building contained explosives. Which were put there by the insurgents, who are cynically using the children's hospital as a human shield. The harm to the children is not caused by the attack on the munitions dump, which would be attacked no matter where it was, but by the decision of the insurgents to put their munitions factory there. And, by the way, by the complicity of the local people in not raising hell when the insurgents did. The fact the local people don't see it that way makes the PR harder but doesn't affect the moral issues. An army cannot be deterred by the use of human shields (exercise for the reader: why not?) - though a civilised army might try to work around the poor bastards being used as shields if they can, just not at the risk of greater harm to its own people.
This argument is intended to make you realise that, assuming the weaponry is well-chosen, the blame for any collateral harm to the children can be seen as not being the pilot's fault (strictly, the fault of her superiors who tasked her with the mission). Most people buy into the idea that it would be the pilot's fault. after all, the very setting of the question assumes that it's the pilot (strictly, her superiors) who has to justify her actions. Whereas it isn't: it's the insurgents who have to provide a moral justification for putting a munitions factory next to a school hospital.
I think the pilot's commanders can properly ask her to do it, and she should carry out the orders, if she is given a smart weapon (laser or GPS) of appropriate destructive force (that is, a small nuclear warhead would not be acceptable). If she believes the weapons are not adequate, she should ask for the appropriate ones. If none are forthcoming, she might request someone else fly it if she believes that her future effectiveness would be compromised by knowing she had caused the deaths of innocent children. That's the situation as I see it.
Which doesn't look anything like a regular moral argument. No appeal to principles, to the relative value of human lives, to our folk intuitions of fairness nor appeals to the rights of the children not to be harmed by a conflict between two groups of people neither of whom have the childrens' well-being in mind. No weighty demand that the pilot's superiors must answer to a higher standard of behaviour than that applied to insurgents. Just some fairly practical considerations about whose explosives did the actual damage and what weapons the pilot will use. Of course, there is an argument about responsibility in there, and that might make it a moral argument, but the assignment of responsibility is more a matter of fact, even if those facts can cut both ways.
In a later post, I'm going to look at another example and see how we deal with that.
Monday, 20 December 2010
Reflecting On A Former Ambition To Be An Academic
Once upon a time I wanted a career in academia. Now I thank God or whoever that I didn't. I've worked in a number of large and small companies since, in industries ranging from railways to telecoms to retail to banking. I've learned financial reporting and accounting, marketing, three programming languages and, of course, have an unhealthy familiarity with Excel, Access, SAS, SQL and computers in general. I've worked for CEOs who have gone to jail, who were in the Israeli Special Forces, and who were borderline con-men: I've also worked for large, institutional world-class companies.
And all I would have done for the same length of time as an academic was teach logic to a never-ending stream of undergraduates, thanking God when I got a bright one. I'm not academic superstar material - I might have had the looks but I didn't have the confidence and self-promotion. No best-sellers and television shows for me.
What has really disappointed me about academia has been the invisibility of the philosophers - which I would have been. Since I left university in the mid-1970's, there have been three high-profile "scientific causes", each one generating substantial grant monies, profitable commercial spin-offs, a great steaming pile of bullshit in the press and public arena, and which have been exploited by politicians and bureaucrats: AIDS; global-warming / climate-change; and the obesity / healthy eating campaign. Additionally, there is the misuse of statistics across the social sciences; the disaster that has been mathematical finance; the running sore of pharmaceutical research and epidemiology; string theory; cold fusion, and the continuing farce of economic forecasting. And that's just reading the headlines.
Where were the philosophers when we needed them? Why did it take a junior economic analyst (Bjorn Lomberg, The Sceptical Environmentalist) to expose the weakness of climate change "science"? Where is the measured methodological appraisal of String Theory we might have expected from Lakatos' students? Where is the controversial but measured book - perhaps co-authored by a journalist, a former technical journal editor and a philosopher - about the quality and reliability of published medical research? Why did it take a journalist (Gary Taubes, The Diet Delusion) to write a detailed expose the utter lack of science behind the current carbohydrate-heavy views on "healthy eating"? Why did it take a maverick options trader with a PhD (Nicolas Nassem Taleb, The Black Swan) to point out the flaws with the basics of the current theories of mathematical finance?
The philosophers might reply that they don't do nutrition, medicine or commenting on physics - except there's a branch of the philosophy of science called "methodology" which is about evaluating scientific theories - nor indeed do they do anything much to do with the daily world, and certainly not the Black-Scholes equation. As philosophers, they are concerned with a number of technical issues and that's it. This is pretty much the standard reply and they would be only the second generation of philosophers to make it. Previous generations of philosophers thought nothing of writing on the proper form of government on Monday, the theory of mind on Tuesday and the concepts of space and time on Wednesday. The Philosopher (Aristotle) wrote on everything from ethics to physics and from rhetoric to biology.
They could also reply that they don't want to say anything about these and other shortcomings. Their fellow academics have careers to make, and they have their reputations to consider. It's professional courtesy not to mention the King's New Clothes. Large corporate bureaucracies see that kind of behaviour as well, but it's all surface: no-one in The Bank says in public that the Operational Risk function is a farce (recently we all got stickers reminding us of what to do if we got a bomb-threat phone call!), but in private it gets no respect. This doesn't matter much because Operational Risk just mess up the lives of bureaucrats like me. But science-free nutritionists advising governments and writing pop diet books have created an overweight population, while the users of Black-Scholes equations have flushed many, many billions of everyone's pensions down the toilet. Letting pseudo-science run free through Whitehall and Washington is not harmless.
Which is one thing. The other is that philosophers aren't supposed to be courteous: they are supposed to upset people so much they get given a double brandy with a hemlock chaser. Descartes, Rousseau and Voltaire spent their lives slipping away at night before the Authorities caught them; Bertrand Russell served two jail terms (six months in 1918 and one week in 1949); Hegel had to write in an incomprehensible manner so no-one would notice he was an atheist left-winger; Socrates, the First Philosopher, was assassinated. Is anyone sticking their head above the parapet today? The French have had a good line in provocateurs but the last time I looked, none of them ever did time.
And you know what? I have many dissatisfactions with my current life. But at least I'm doing my job.
And all I would have done for the same length of time as an academic was teach logic to a never-ending stream of undergraduates, thanking God when I got a bright one. I'm not academic superstar material - I might have had the looks but I didn't have the confidence and self-promotion. No best-sellers and television shows for me.
What has really disappointed me about academia has been the invisibility of the philosophers - which I would have been. Since I left university in the mid-1970's, there have been three high-profile "scientific causes", each one generating substantial grant monies, profitable commercial spin-offs, a great steaming pile of bullshit in the press and public arena, and which have been exploited by politicians and bureaucrats: AIDS; global-warming / climate-change; and the obesity / healthy eating campaign. Additionally, there is the misuse of statistics across the social sciences; the disaster that has been mathematical finance; the running sore of pharmaceutical research and epidemiology; string theory; cold fusion, and the continuing farce of economic forecasting. And that's just reading the headlines.
Where were the philosophers when we needed them? Why did it take a junior economic analyst (Bjorn Lomberg, The Sceptical Environmentalist) to expose the weakness of climate change "science"? Where is the measured methodological appraisal of String Theory we might have expected from Lakatos' students? Where is the controversial but measured book - perhaps co-authored by a journalist, a former technical journal editor and a philosopher - about the quality and reliability of published medical research? Why did it take a journalist (Gary Taubes, The Diet Delusion) to write a detailed expose the utter lack of science behind the current carbohydrate-heavy views on "healthy eating"? Why did it take a maverick options trader with a PhD (Nicolas Nassem Taleb, The Black Swan) to point out the flaws with the basics of the current theories of mathematical finance?
The philosophers might reply that they don't do nutrition, medicine or commenting on physics - except there's a branch of the philosophy of science called "methodology" which is about evaluating scientific theories - nor indeed do they do anything much to do with the daily world, and certainly not the Black-Scholes equation. As philosophers, they are concerned with a number of technical issues and that's it. This is pretty much the standard reply and they would be only the second generation of philosophers to make it. Previous generations of philosophers thought nothing of writing on the proper form of government on Monday, the theory of mind on Tuesday and the concepts of space and time on Wednesday. The Philosopher (Aristotle) wrote on everything from ethics to physics and from rhetoric to biology.
They could also reply that they don't want to say anything about these and other shortcomings. Their fellow academics have careers to make, and they have their reputations to consider. It's professional courtesy not to mention the King's New Clothes. Large corporate bureaucracies see that kind of behaviour as well, but it's all surface: no-one in The Bank says in public that the Operational Risk function is a farce (recently we all got stickers reminding us of what to do if we got a bomb-threat phone call!), but in private it gets no respect. This doesn't matter much because Operational Risk just mess up the lives of bureaucrats like me. But science-free nutritionists advising governments and writing pop diet books have created an overweight population, while the users of Black-Scholes equations have flushed many, many billions of everyone's pensions down the toilet. Letting pseudo-science run free through Whitehall and Washington is not harmless.
Which is one thing. The other is that philosophers aren't supposed to be courteous: they are supposed to upset people so much they get given a double brandy with a hemlock chaser. Descartes, Rousseau and Voltaire spent their lives slipping away at night before the Authorities caught them; Bertrand Russell served two jail terms (six months in 1918 and one week in 1949); Hegel had to write in an incomprehensible manner so no-one would notice he was an atheist left-winger; Socrates, the First Philosopher, was assassinated. Is anyone sticking their head above the parapet today? The French have had a good line in provocateurs but the last time I looked, none of them ever did time.
And you know what? I have many dissatisfactions with my current life. But at least I'm doing my job.
Friday, 17 December 2010
St Thomas Aquinas and The American Postgrad
I went looking for philosophy blogs recently. Which is another subject. I found the top ten philosophy blogs on blogs.com and took a look at Think Tonk. Where its author Clayton Littlejohn discusses a thing called the Doctrine of Double Effect. This is Aquinas' solution to the problem of bad things you didn't intend happening as a result of you doing something good. Aquinas' criterion has four parts and is: the nature of the act is itself good, or at least morally neutral; the agent intends the good effect and not the bad either as a means to the good or as an end itself; the good effect outweighs the bad effect in circumstances sufficiently grave to justify causing the bad effect; and the agent exercises due diligence to minimise the harm.
Before going any further, remember that this was put forward by a man who was born in 1225 and died in 1274. That was an age so different, they didn't even have syphilis, the first recorded outbreak of which was in 1494. He saw the introduction of at least one devastating military technology in his lifetime: gunpowder. Printing was two hundred years away and America was undiscovered. They had decent steel swords and the deadliest weapon was the longbow. He wasn't thinking about carpet-bombing, prescribing drugs with spirit-sapping side-effects or building dams which would deprive the tribes downstream of water. No-one could do that then. I doubt he intended his criterion to be used to debate the permissibility of precision-bombing munitions factories placed by cynical insurgents next to schools. In fact, it's very hard to work out what he could have had in mind. Sawing off limbs to prevent gangrene, maybe; diplomatic fibbing, most likely.
Today, we understand that even the simple act of breathing has a downside: it creates the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. People are not carbon-neutral. (I'm not a carbon-facist, but like rats, there's always one within ten yards of you.) It's no problem for us to do something knowing that there will be bad, undesirable, wish-we-could-avoid-it-but-we-can't consequences. Perhaps any significant action cuts both ways, and the only ones that don't are trivial gestures. Maybe the issue is not a formal one about when we can commit actions with downsides, but a substantive one about which downsides should make us re-consider the desirability of the proposed action. Now there's a challenge for a modern St Thomas.
Well, except Think Tonk doesn't look at the DDE itself, but at the comments of another contemporary philosopher, one "Thompson", who doesn't like the idea that we should look at someone's intentions when judging their actions. Then Think Tonk walks straight into the Fallacy of Supplying The Right Assumptions (see later entry) and afterwards heads off into a discussion of intentions and intending as abstract as any you will find this side of... anywhere. I am not going to discuss his argument, because, well, here's the conclusion: "thus, the fact that we do not look inward in deliberating about what to do is not a reason to think that intention has no bearing on permissibility." (This pile-up of negatives reminds me of Rae Langton at her worst.)
So let's look at intention. It seems to me that the question is: can I claim that I intended for the good thing to happen, but not the bad thing that seems to go with it, if I knew that the bad thing did go with it? St Thomas obviously thought that the answer was "yes". St Thomas' world had an idea of foreseeable consequences, but back in 1260, they couldn't see very far. (I'm not sure that St Thomas's world had many "side effects" either - they simply didn't have enough understanding of what caused what to have "side effects". Their world was much more random, and hence much more God-directed.) There was no idea of testing medicines, or food additives, or consumer goods, or anything much. Today, a doctor prescribing metformin, which causes nausea, loss of appetite and diaorreah in about forty per cent of the people who take it, knows very well there is a high probability that the next patient will wish they had never been given the stuff. Here's the question: can the doctor claim she didn't intend the nausea, but did intend the cure, given that both are as probable? (Metformin only provides significant benefits to about a third of the people who take it.) If so, why can't the murderer say they did intend the attack, but not the death?
Well, maybe "intending" means, in these circumstances, nothing more that "wanting to happen"? The doctor wants to reduce your blood sugar and doesn't want you to feel nauseous: she's just chosen a very ineffective way of achieving those two hopes at the same time. (Bad drugs make good doctors look incompetent.) I suspect that's all St Thomas meant by it. "Intention" sounds too subtle, and verges on the logically private: "wanting" has the right common-ness about it. The murderer did want to attack their victim (to scare them) but didn't want to kill them: since the attack was malicious and with a very large knife, I'm going for murder and the I bet the jury agree. I still don't know what the difference between the doctor when prescribing and the doctor when waving knives at her cheating husband. Let me know.
The catch then is that the "intention" clause is pretty weak: everyone can get the right answer to it. And that's why intention should be left out of "permissibility" - it's way too easy to fake. St Thomas could scare people with the knowledge that God would know if they were faking it. Now we know God is AWOL, we're not so bothered about spinning our answers. And that's another difference between St Thomas' world and ours.
Which is a much neater way of getting to a result than paragraphs like this: "While acting for some intention rather than another is something that happens and happens just when we do something, it is not itself something done. To see this, remember that the agent who decides to V could potentially V from any number of intentions. If she were obliged to V from one intention as opposed to another and this was something she did, it too could be the sort of thing that could be done from one intention as opposed to another. Again, if this is a doing, to be done from one intention rather than another, the agent would have to select between possible intentions. A vicious regress looms. It would seem that doing something from one intention rather than another would require completing an endless series of prior acts, something we cannot do. So, since doing something from one intention rather than another is not something we do, it is not something that we concern ourselves with in practical deliberation."
Let me know if a) you understood that the first time you read it, and b) if you think he's right. This is the kind of stuff that gives philosophy a bad name. It's confined to academics, however. Real philosophers tend to be quite snappy writers. (Except Hegel, but he was prolix so that stupid university Chancellors wouldn't get what he was really saying.)
Before going any further, remember that this was put forward by a man who was born in 1225 and died in 1274. That was an age so different, they didn't even have syphilis, the first recorded outbreak of which was in 1494. He saw the introduction of at least one devastating military technology in his lifetime: gunpowder. Printing was two hundred years away and America was undiscovered. They had decent steel swords and the deadliest weapon was the longbow. He wasn't thinking about carpet-bombing, prescribing drugs with spirit-sapping side-effects or building dams which would deprive the tribes downstream of water. No-one could do that then. I doubt he intended his criterion to be used to debate the permissibility of precision-bombing munitions factories placed by cynical insurgents next to schools. In fact, it's very hard to work out what he could have had in mind. Sawing off limbs to prevent gangrene, maybe; diplomatic fibbing, most likely.
Today, we understand that even the simple act of breathing has a downside: it creates the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. People are not carbon-neutral. (I'm not a carbon-facist, but like rats, there's always one within ten yards of you.) It's no problem for us to do something knowing that there will be bad, undesirable, wish-we-could-avoid-it-but-we-can't consequences. Perhaps any significant action cuts both ways, and the only ones that don't are trivial gestures. Maybe the issue is not a formal one about when we can commit actions with downsides, but a substantive one about which downsides should make us re-consider the desirability of the proposed action. Now there's a challenge for a modern St Thomas.
Well, except Think Tonk doesn't look at the DDE itself, but at the comments of another contemporary philosopher, one "Thompson", who doesn't like the idea that we should look at someone's intentions when judging their actions. Then Think Tonk walks straight into the Fallacy of Supplying The Right Assumptions (see later entry) and afterwards heads off into a discussion of intentions and intending as abstract as any you will find this side of... anywhere. I am not going to discuss his argument, because, well, here's the conclusion: "thus, the fact that we do not look inward in deliberating about what to do is not a reason to think that intention has no bearing on permissibility." (This pile-up of negatives reminds me of Rae Langton at her worst.)
So let's look at intention. It seems to me that the question is: can I claim that I intended for the good thing to happen, but not the bad thing that seems to go with it, if I knew that the bad thing did go with it? St Thomas obviously thought that the answer was "yes". St Thomas' world had an idea of foreseeable consequences, but back in 1260, they couldn't see very far. (I'm not sure that St Thomas's world had many "side effects" either - they simply didn't have enough understanding of what caused what to have "side effects". Their world was much more random, and hence much more God-directed.) There was no idea of testing medicines, or food additives, or consumer goods, or anything much. Today, a doctor prescribing metformin, which causes nausea, loss of appetite and diaorreah in about forty per cent of the people who take it, knows very well there is a high probability that the next patient will wish they had never been given the stuff. Here's the question: can the doctor claim she didn't intend the nausea, but did intend the cure, given that both are as probable? (Metformin only provides significant benefits to about a third of the people who take it.) If so, why can't the murderer say they did intend the attack, but not the death?
Well, maybe "intending" means, in these circumstances, nothing more that "wanting to happen"? The doctor wants to reduce your blood sugar and doesn't want you to feel nauseous: she's just chosen a very ineffective way of achieving those two hopes at the same time. (Bad drugs make good doctors look incompetent.) I suspect that's all St Thomas meant by it. "Intention" sounds too subtle, and verges on the logically private: "wanting" has the right common-ness about it. The murderer did want to attack their victim (to scare them) but didn't want to kill them: since the attack was malicious and with a very large knife, I'm going for murder and the I bet the jury agree. I still don't know what the difference between the doctor when prescribing and the doctor when waving knives at her cheating husband. Let me know.
The catch then is that the "intention" clause is pretty weak: everyone can get the right answer to it. And that's why intention should be left out of "permissibility" - it's way too easy to fake. St Thomas could scare people with the knowledge that God would know if they were faking it. Now we know God is AWOL, we're not so bothered about spinning our answers. And that's another difference between St Thomas' world and ours.
Which is a much neater way of getting to a result than paragraphs like this: "While acting for some intention rather than another is something that happens and happens just when we do something, it is not itself something done. To see this, remember that the agent who decides to V could potentially V from any number of intentions. If she were obliged to V from one intention as opposed to another and this was something she did, it too could be the sort of thing that could be done from one intention as opposed to another. Again, if this is a doing, to be done from one intention rather than another, the agent would have to select between possible intentions. A vicious regress looms. It would seem that doing something from one intention rather than another would require completing an endless series of prior acts, something we cannot do. So, since doing something from one intention rather than another is not something we do, it is not something that we concern ourselves with in practical deliberation."
Let me know if a) you understood that the first time you read it, and b) if you think he's right. This is the kind of stuff that gives philosophy a bad name. It's confined to academics, however. Real philosophers tend to be quite snappy writers. (Except Hegel, but he was prolix so that stupid university Chancellors wouldn't get what he was really saying.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)