The Stone is Back

Cool.  Simon Critchley announces the return of the New York Times's philosophy blog, and here's the first installment.

Procreation and Parenthood on Film - Abortion

Thanks to some great feedback from commenters, I have a bunch of movies about procreation and parenthood to preview, for possible use in an ethics class I'm teaching in the fall.  Movies are often used in philosophy classes to enliven topics like skepticism, free will, time travel, and personal identity, but I think they're going to be really helpful in this class.  Reason:  college students have not had a lot of first-hand experience with procreation and parenthood, or if they have, they're not likely to want to talk openly about their experiences.  So making the issues palpable through film is going to help ... I hope.


The first two movies I've previewed are Juno and Vera Drake, both movies that deal with abortion.  Juno is a wonderfully quirky and entertaining movie about a funny, independent-minded 16-year-old girl who gets pregnant, heads for an abortion clinic, and then turns around and decides to have the baby and give it up for adoption.  The movie comes across as being about one person's decision. It's not prescriptive and judgmental.  Yet it does deliver an interesting message:  while it would be permissible for Juno to have the abortion, it's admirable that she doesn't.  She is a good Samaritan.

This movie would pair very nicely with Judith Jarvis Thomson's famous article "A Defense of Abortion," or with Rosalind Hursthouse's "Virtue Theory and Abortion"  (thanks to Aeolus for the latter suggestion).  I think it would easily generate an interesting discussion about whether it really is admirable to continue a pregnancy.  What's admirable about it?  If a fetus, early on, is really just "nothing," what's so admirable about letting it gestate to the point that it is "something"?  In combination with one or both of those articles, the debate about this movie could have some philosophical heft.

Less philosophical but also interesting, there are issues to discuss about the way the movie represents the choice not to abort.  Juno makes this choice under no pressure from her parents or boyfriend, and with no religious influences.  She is a free-spirit -- entirely her own person.  In fact, she is exactly the kind of girl who (in my experience) will actually take control of her life and end an unwanted pregnancy. So does the film lie to us?  Maybe. This qualm  doesn't detract at all from classroom potential, as the issue of the movie's truthfulness would be grist for discussion.

Vera Drake is a very, very fine Mike Leigh movie about a woman who "helps girls" in 1950s England, with tragic consequences.  After a house of cards is set up in the first half of the movie, it's riveting and heartbreaking to see them all come down in the second half.  What's particularly brilliant is the way we see that there is no one to blame except ... well, I won't spoil it for you.  The portrayal of the woman's family and all the other people involved is fascinating and touching.

Classroom potential? The message of the movie is that if abortion were illegal, women would have them anyway, and they would be unsafe.  American students take for granted the availability of abortion, so it would be helpful for them to get a glimpse of life when it's illegal.  But that would only provide them with valuable factual background. I don't think the movie really stimulates thinking about the ethics of abortion, as fine as it is.  American students will also, I suspect, find the movie slow, and the lower class British accents incomprehensible.  They will find Juno relevant to their own lives, but (I worry) would find Vera Drake distant and irrelevant.  Still: it's a great movie, well worth seeing.

The End of the World - What to Tell the Kids

There's something attractive about the Haddad parents' approach to parenting, described in the New York Times today.  The parents think Judgment Day is coming tomorrow, and the devout will be rapturized, but they haven't forced that belief on their kids, ages 14 and up.  They even let their son talk to a reporter during a trip to Manhattan for last minute evangelizing.

“People look at my family and think I’m like that,” said Joseph, their 14-year-old, as his parents walked through the street fair on Ninth Avenue, giving out Bibles. “I keep my friends as far away from them as possible.”

“I don’t really have any motivation to try to figure out what I want to do anymore,” he said, “because my main support line, my parents, don’t care.”

But then, the parents have caused the kids a lot of anxiety about the future.  The mom quit her job to free up time to spread the word.  Not good, says the son.

“I don’t really have any motivation to try to figure out what I want to do anymore,” he said, “because my main support line, my parents, don’t care.”

Fortunately, the kids see the humor in the situation too.  They've used the big day as an excuse not to clean their rooms and do they're homework.  But then they're old enough to think for themselves.

Younger kids are a lot more impressionable.  If Mom and Dad say the rapture's on Saturday, they're very likely to believe the rapture's on Saturday.  Which is ... what?  Altogether bad?

How much personal ideology should parents pass on to their kids?  It's tempting to make judgments based on one's own beliefs, instead of on principles that can be generalized.  I find it disturbing that people take their kids hunting, but not disturbing that parents restrict their children to vegetarian diets.  The imposition is the same, it's only the beliefs in question that differ.  So ... what principle should we follow, when deciding whether or not to inculcate some outlook or behavior in children?

Joel Feinberg postulated a "right to an open future" in a well known, much quoted article.  The idea is that kids should be raised in such a way that their ability to make their own choices, as adults, is preserved.  That argues against sealing them in insular communities, without access to outside ideas and ways of life.  The right to an open future is (you might argue) not honored by Hasidic and Amish parents, for example.

Ordinary religious education isn't so restrictive.  The typical American kid has religious education on Sundays and mixes with people who have other beliefs the rest of the week.  Whatever beliefs are inculcated can readily be shed later on.  Even the rapturists are presumably not denying their young kids an open future by telling them tomorrow is judgment day.  They'll be able to shed the belief later on, as long as they get to interact with the world at large.

Of course, there are other rights, besides the right to an open future.  There's the right not to be scared half to death, for no real reason, and I imagine a lot of little kids are pretty nervous about tomorrow.  There's also a right to prepare for next week and next year, and the rapturous parents aren't doing well in that area.  But the sheer fact that they're teaching their kids about the rapture doesn't seem to violate their basic right to an open future.

So -- what's going to happen when the rapturists find out tomorrow's just another day? How will the face their kids?  How will they recover from abandoning their jobs?  Will they somehow insist the prediction came true, in some esoteric sense?  This should be interesting!

Update 7:25 am, Dallas: Live-blogging the non-end of the world.  Still here.
Update 11:31 am, Dallas:  Things still look very normal.  

Three Scandals

#1  I don't often have the feeling of being "proud to be an American"--in fact, I feel compelled to put that phrase in quotation marks, just to create some ironic distance.  Yet (blush) I am proud to be an American, when I think about the fact that the head of the IMF was charged with rape and other crimes on the word of a hotel housekeeper--a single mother, a widow, an Islamic immigrant, a woman of color, no less.  With liberty and justice for all - HURRAY!  It was consensual, his lawyer says.  Ohhhh, I see.  (Nauseating footnote--he had lunch with his daughter afterwards!)

#2  The Synthese business.  I have trouble getting on board with the claim that the Editors-in-Chief owe the philosophy world an abject apology, because of their disclaimer (long story--some of it told here).  While the disclaimer was an awkward fix, it does seem to me that there was a problem.  The special issue on intelligent design did involve a level of personal invective that is seldom seen in philosophy journals. 

#3  Dear Arnie, I'm very disappointed in you.  I'm glad you're just an ass, and not a rapist (see above), but still. 

Procreation and Parenthood on Film

Sending out an SOS ...

Next year I'm teaching a course about the ethics of procreation and parenthood and want to generate vividness by pairing topics with movies. So far I've thought of--

Never Let Me Go (ethics of creating clones and using them as organ banks)
The Island (same as Never Let Me Go, but not as subtle)
Children of Men (large populations, "the repugnant conclusion," the right to have children)
The Road (would it be bad if humans became extinct, must the last couple reproduce?)
28 Days Later (must the last couple reproduce? if your zombie kid attacks you, may you defend yourself?)
Gattaca (genetic screening, disabilities)
Peggy Sue Got Married (would it have been bad if I hadn't been born?)
The Station Agent (disabilities)


I can't think of good movies about...

Enhancement--smarter, prettier, longer-living people (there must be plenty out there)
Surrogate motherhood (please, no made-for-TV movies)
Rights of children (overbearing parents--a movie that connects with the "tiger mother" phenomenon)
Duties of children to parents
Lying to children

Help!

**


Update (5/17)--Your suggestions (keep 'em coming) plus my further thoughts:

Idiocracy (enhancement?) 
Juno (virtues of parenthood, abortion?) 
Throw Momma From the Train (duties to parents) 
Miracle on 34th Street (lying to kids)
Ordinary People (parenthood, duties of parents?)
Bladerunner (status of genetically altered people)
Baby Boom (parenthood and career, role of women)
Mildred Pierce (maybe...duties of children to parents)
Mask (having children with disabilities)

Military Sock Puppets

We haven't talked about sock puppetry here for a long time--i.e. the practice of fabricating identities and using more than one at the same time, to create the illusion of debate or agreement (as the case may be). That's a no-no, in all situations I could have imagined before today. But now I read that the US is deploying sock puppets on social networking sites around the world. All it takes is a few good sock puppets? Servicemen and women will get to have up to 10 identities "based all over the world," but not operating on English-speaking sites or addressing US audiences.

So I wonder--why 10? What if a person got to have 20? Would that be like using excessive force? Would it be too psychologically taxing? Is a lean and mean sock puppet force more disciplined, more effective? Just what is the ideal number of sock puppets in the army? Will there be the equivalent of a Seal 6 team, an elite group of puppets that does especially dangerous work? Like, maybe, taking out especially lethal foreign puppets?

Actually, I have a great idea. Let's get rid of conventional warfare. Let's do it all with sock puppets!

The Magic of Reality

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True.  Epistemology for kids, or just basic science? I don't know, but it looks wonderful.  Open the .pdf -- it's worth it.

Mother's Day with Your Philosopher

My son--age 14--is most impressed with The Philosiologist, as you can tell from the card he gave me yesterday.  Here's an excerpt--

Liberal Guilt Be Gone!

Thank you Jonathan Haidt, thank you Maureen Dowd.

***

Elsewhere in today's New York Times today--a very nice of example of how Occam's Razor isn't always sharp, in Lisa Sanders' medical mystery column.

When making a diagnosis, doctors frequently cite the principle of Occam’s razor: the simplest answer is most likely to be the right answer, and a single diagnosis is more likely than a collection of diagnoses. This principle, however, doesn’t necessarily hold with older patients. High blood pressure is seen in 80 percent of those over age 70. Nearly half over 60 are overweight. A quarter are depressed. One in six Americans over age 40 will have cataracts in one or both eyes. Given these numbers, having a 76-year-old patient with all of these distinct diseases — as was the case with this patient — is common, and a doctor might not feel the need to look for a single, unifying disease process.

She goes on to say about the patient in question--

As one of her daughters wrote in an e-mail to friends: “We were told that her psychological state, her neurological problem, her circulation issues and her excessive bleeding were an unrelated bunch of unfortunate circumstances conspiring to make this woman ill. It happens when you are old, we were told more than once.” This thinking was familiar to many readers. Jonquil of Utopia wrote: “ ‘It happens when you are old’ is such a dangerous diagnosis, yet it’s given every day. . . . G.P.’s need to be better trained in geriatrics.”

Occam's razor isn't an all purpose good principle, but only good in certain cases.

Readers know that this column often reads like a detective story in which a single criminal (one disease) is responsible for a variety of crimes (symptoms). As a result, the reader has an advantage over a doctor, who has to figure out which patient, out of all those she has seen that day, has many individual problems without a unifying cause, and which will need Occam’s razor. While that distinction may not be sufficient, it is the necessary start of diagnosis.

***

Happy Mother's Day!

A Few Good Links

Until I am released from grading purgatory, all I've got is a few good links.

***

Here's a very nice (and funny) "defense of motherhood" from Bonnie Rochman at time.com, who links to my recent TPM article on motherhood.

Speaking of that article, in the same issue of TPM  there's an essay by David Benatar about how life's not good, and we should stop procreating.  His "share its" are phenomenal.  People seem to be intensely attracted to bad news!

I'm talking about both my essay and Benatar's at an event next week, so I'm back to pondering Benatar's anti-natalism, a recurrent habit of mine. 

***

I'm making my way through Jackson Lears' mega-bashing of Sam Harris in The Nation.  Although Lears seems to want to show that he knows everything about everything, I don't think he knows everything about positivism.  The positivists (like A J Ayers in Language, Truth, and Logic) were rejecters of objective morality, not explainers of objective morality like Harris.

***

Scott Aikin and Robert Talisse write about Mary Warnock's book Dishonest to God at 3 Quarks Daily. (Their review of the book will be in the next issue of TPM.)  Apparently she says something positive about the utility of belief, and they complain.

... a defense of religion which rests solely upon considerations regarding the social value of religious belief is ultimately no defense at all.  If religious belief is to be defended, it must be understood in terms that religious believers can recognize.  According to religious believers, their beliefs are not merely useful social instruments or efficient means for instilling good moral habits

But there are different senses of "defending" a belief--so why "no defense at all"? You can defend the truth of a belief. but you can also defend the holding of the belief--that might have utility, even if the belief is false.   Example -- Most people believe in free will, which raises two separate questions:  Is there really free will?  And is the holding of the belief functionally advantageous?  You could easily think No to the first question and Yes to the second.  There might be no coherent defense of there being free will, but a defense of the holding of the belief nevertheless. (For what that defense might look like, see here.) 

I don't think recognizing that sort of defense implies throwing truth out the window, or no longer seeing it as the cardinal virtue of beliefs.  It just mean recognizing that truth is not all that matters.  A functional defense may or may not be "in terms that religious believers can recognize," but I don't see why every defense should fit that description.  To defend a belief is not always to address believers directly--to say something to them that strengthens their convictions.

***

On my reading list:  this book about getting old.  Good title: You're Looking Very Well:  The Surprising Nature of Getting Old (Lewis Wolpert).

***

Back to grading.

Liberal Guilt

Barack Obama succeeded in eliminating Osama bin Laden from the world stage.  You'd think that liberals would be wildly celebrating.  I'm amazed -- really, really amazed -- that some have managed to find something to feel bad about.  The first thing they felt bad about was being happy.  I don't know how many articles I've seen -- and conversations I've had -- about whether happiness is appropriate.  But what a strange question.  There's so much to be happy about, all above board.  A just mission ended successfully.  (Dayenu!)  And Barack Obama led the way, vanquishing stereotypes about him, his ethnicity, and his political party.  And we shouldn't be happy?

Ah, but we're celebrating a death -- naughty, naughty.  But are we, exactly?  What happened on Sunday can be described in many ways.  The very same event was the elimination of OBL, and a big bloodbath and the success of a 10 year mission, and a dazzling demonstration of military intelligence and prowess and a ton of molecules moving around like so and etc.  We are happy about things under a description.  You can be happy about the elimination of OBL without being happy about the bloodbath, even though they're the same event.  That's the nature of happiness -- it attaches to features of events, not to the events themselves.   I'm happy about what I ought to be happy about -- the elimination of bin Laden, the success of a 10 year mission, the display of intelligence and prowess. 

Next thing we're supposed to wring our hands about:  he was killed, not captured.  The White House says there was an attempt to capture, but he resisted.  But he had no gun.  So.... so what?  Imagine being one of the men who went into that compound.  You've got bin Laden cornered, and he's not going quietly.  You don't know who might still be in hiding or what bin Laden might do next.  You invaded Pakistan under cover of darkness and you've got to get back out. Do you really have to increase the risk by going to great lengths to avoid bin Laden's death?  No, surely not.  That's more than we can fairly expect. 

And then there's the argument that eliminating bin Laden was no great accomplishment, because he was a figurehead anyway, or because other bad actors will take his place in the terrorism business.  Even if that were so, do people saying this really put so little store in the simple justice of punishing people for past crimes?  Do they want to see mass murderers go free? Would it have been OK for Hitler to retire to a mansion in the country, after the Holocaust?

But wait, but wait. If it's OK to celebrate, maybe we could feel bad because some people are celebrating in the wrong way -- you know, waving flags and shouting "USA! USA!"  So ... good job, but we mustn't be proud of our country over it.  Or we may be proud of our country, but we mustn't run out into the street and wave flags?  We can be glad, but we mustn't be triumphal.  Or something!

I confess -- I'm baffled.  And happy.

Dancing in the Streets

May we celebrate?  Yes we may.  I am not celebrating anyone's suffering--that would be sadistic. I am celebrating the success of an entirely just mission.  Osama bin Laden is dead, not brought to justice--true--but apparently he was asked to surrender, and he declined.  Should I really weep over that?  No.  He had confessed to mass murder on 9/11, in fact bragged about it, and gone on to more appalling crimes.  A trial would have been only fair, but at the same time, a huge waste of money and time.  The outcome was inevitable.  I am thrilled that the mastermind of 9/11 is no longer luxuriating with friends and family--10 years of that was 10 years too many.  I am also thrilled that there actually are smart people in the US military--people who can get things done. Like Barack Obama, and the anonymous members of the Navy Seal team who pulled this off with so little loss of innocent life.  Obama got Osama....as they keep saying on Facebook. HURRAY!

The Intelligent Mother's Perfect Mother's Day Gift

I'm going to talk about this book next week, but you need to know about it now, because it's the perfect mother's day gift for the intelligent mother.  I would have loved to receive it as a new mother, and I'd be thrilled to get it now, 14 years later.  Except I have it, so I'll have to accept some other expression of slavish devotion from my kids.  There are good philosophy articles in here  (I really like Amy Kind's article about lying to kids), and also articles less narrowly philosophical. It's fun, covers a very smart range of topics, and don't worry, it's not dry and dull and didactic.  There are even pictures. More next week....

Must Wills and Kate Breed?

I was all agog about the dress yesterday, and then I made the mistake of reading Practical Ethics News. It turns out the royal wedding raises serious philosophical questions. Worst of all, they are questions I've been reading and obsessing about lately. Groan.

Charles Foster says, "Most people have no obligation to reproduce." Wills and Kate, though, are a special case. Millions of pounds were spent on the wedding, and now they owe the British people a couple of little heirs to the throne.

The money has been spent primarily to ensure dynastic continuity. By accepting our money for their Bollinger and bobbies, William and Kate are impliedly accepting our commission to use their best endeavours to breed. They have taken the People’s Shilling, and have become, first and foremost, breeding animals. Their gametes are held in trust for the nation, and they should guard them.  Kate must marinate her eggs in the finest organic nutrients that Fortnums has to offer: William must never wear tight underpants, and always wear a box when he plays cricket.

Forgive me if I don't understand the phrase "Bollinger and bobbies" and don't know what Fortnums are, but I really would have thought the People payed for a wedding and got a very fine wedding.  They can hope for little heirs, but it's understood that babies are not for sale.  So William and Kate do not owe the British people anything.

Then again, maybe they have the same obligation to reproduce that most people do, and is that really no obligation at all?  Is there not even the slightest bit of a prima facie obligation to reproduce, to be weighed against all the other obligations that press upon us?  From many philosophical perspectives, it seems like there must be such an obligation.  Kant says we ought to make use of our talents--and it's quite a talent to be able to create new human lives, especially if you believe what he says about the gloriousness of humanity.  Utilitarians say we ought to maximize happiness, and most new lives are more happy than unhappy.

I would think the presumption is that there is a duty (however prima facie) to reproduce, only to be defeated by fancy footwork.  The standard fancy footwork is to say that there can't be a prima facie obligation to reproduce because parents don't benefit their children by creating them--the children wouldn't be any worse off unconceived, and are no better off conceived.   Coming into the world is nothing at all like going from poor to rich, or headachy to headacheless.

Maybe so, though I'm puzzled how birth can fail to benefit, if death does harm, but never mind.   Kant's dictum about exercising your talents has nothing to do with a duty to benefit (i.e. make x better off).  Utilitarians also aren't (necessarily) committed to the idea that every genuine chunk of good benefits, in a "poor to rich" sense.  Good is just...good.  And human lives are (usually) good.

It's certainly not inherently appealing to assert baby-making duties--just the opposite.  It offends against feminist and liberal sensibilities.  But maybe, as we move through the maze of People Making Puzzles (e.g. the puzzle in David Benatar book Better Never to Have Been), there's no way out without saying so. 

So maybe the royal couple ought to make a royal baby -- not because they owe it to The People, but because a royal baby is a good thing.  But this (I stress!) is just a prima facie ought. It's perfectly possible they have better things to do, other talents to cultivate.

The New Openness

Here's a picture of a group getting together for a party at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.  Are they ... a fellowship of Christians?  Tea Party fans?  Sports buffs?  No, they're members of a group called MASH - Military Atheists and Secular Humanists.  There's a great article about them on the front page of today's New York Times.  Which reminds me ... I've been meaning to comment on what I see as the essence of the new atheism (since various people, at various blogs, are trying to define it). It's nothing complicated--it's just the idea that atheism is a respectable outlook, and atheists don't need to hide in the shadows.  Obviously, you can subscribe to that, and have disagreements about all manner of things, including the relationship between science and religion, the issue of tone, the value of religion, the connection between religion and well-being, the merits of various arguments for atheism, etc.  The essence of new atheism -- sheer openness -- is something I'm very much for.  Go MASH!

Parenthood and Meaning

My TPM essay about parenthood and meaning is online.   No time to discuss right now, but come back Saturday!

Religious Fictionalism

I've been reading Richard Joyce's book The Myth of Morality, which is certainly interesting and very well written.  The main idea is that moral claims are all untrue--morality is a myth.  "Torturing babies is wrong" is not true, and "Torturing babies is right" isn't true either.  But no, we shouldn't banish all these sentences alike to the flames.   Morality is a myth we should hang on to.  Presumably we should hang on to the first sentence, not the second.  Joyce thinks we should continue to make believe it's true.

As I was reading this, I was struck by the fact that I am a fictionalist about some things, though not (or at least not yet) about morality. To wit, I am a religious fictionalist.  I don't just banish all religious sentences to the flames. I make believe some of them are true, and I think that's all to the good.

Matzoh Dog - not as bad as it looks

For example, this week I'm pretending it's true that I'm supposed to eat matzohs instead of bread, and avoid other puffy, leavened-seeming foods.  That's why I served the above concoction to my family this week (as awful as it looks, it wasn't bad--and yes, that's a tofu dog).  It's the week of Passover, and at our Seder last week I pretended there was a deity to be praised for various things. I also pretended the Jews were once slaves in Egypt, and were liberated with the help of a powerful deity who ushered them into the land of Israel (after making them wander in the desert for 40 years). 

I think the pretending is all to the good, like Joyce thinks we should keep pretending "Torturing babies is wrong" is true, though the reasons for the pretense aren't the same.  I like pretending the Passover story is true because of the continuity it creates--it ties me to the other people at the table, past years that I've celebrated Passover (in many different ways, with different people). I like feeling tied to Jews over the centuries and across the world.  I also like the themes of liberation and freedom that can be tied to the basic story.

But yes, it's a story. Not only is there no deity, but the Exodus story is not supported by the archaelogical record, as I understand it.  So--no God leading the Jews out of Egypt, and quite possibly no Jews in Egypt either!  But no worry. It's a great story. Or at least, some of it is great.  Some of it is atrocious. What could be more appalling than the idea that God would kill the first born in every Egyptian household, to convince the Pharoah to liberate the Jews?  Even worse, there's the bit about God hardening Pharoah's heart, deliberately making him resistant to persuasion.  The killing of the first born isn't forced upon God because of Pharaoh's own recalcitrance, but because of God's own machinations!

It's just a story, so we can laugh about it, critique it, change it. We can pretend the story is really about freedom and liberation, in some universal sense, not about a highly partisan God trying to show off his might to his chosen tribe.  The important thing is that we keep telling the story--in one way or other!--year after year.  Plus, doing the things that go with it, because that makes it all much more vivid.  

The Cruci-fiction?

On this Easter Sunday, I'm wondering whether explicit, self-conscious religious fictionalism is possible within other religions, or it's something particularly viable for Jews (for various reasons).  Could you approach Easter in the same way I approach Passover?  Could you got to church today, fully recognizing that Christ's crucifixion (crucifiction?) and resurrection are parts of a story--at best, historical fiction?  Could you find value in the story, and the yearly retelling of it, yet think at least the supernatural aspects are untrue?

I should think so.  That's seem to be what's happening in countries like Denmark, where most people don't embrace the tenets of Christianity, but still belong to the Lutheran church.  What are they doing, when they go to church for baptisms, weddings, confirmations, and funerals, but pretending there is a deity to sanctify these events?  Apparently they prefer this sort of "make believe" approach to complete rejection of religion (see here). The high level of happiness in Denmark is often mentioned by new atheists to counteract the argument that religion makes people happier, but it actually makes the case for fictionalist retention of religious stories, practices, and feelings of belonging, not complete abandonment of religion. 

Of course, like moral fictionalists don't want us to retain every moral fiction, religious fictionalists can criticize certain religious fictions, even just as fictions. Some stories should be thrown out, or at least criticized and mocked (see above--the hardening of Pharoah's heart and the killing of the first born).  I personally don't know whether I'd want to stick with Christian stories, if I'd been born into a Christian family.  I like the Christmas story, but as it happens, I don't like the Easter story much. I don't think any retelling could make me like it more, short of getting rid of the essential thing (Jesus saves humanity by getting nailed to a cross). 

But that's not the point.  The point is that the sheer falsehood of religious stories is not, without further argument, a reason to throw them all out.  It can be worthwhile to make believe a story is true.

The More the Merrier

What exactly are we doing when we create new people?  Are we "doing good," adding something positive to the world, fulfilling the utilitarian injunction to maximize utility?  Well, it seems like it.  Babies are good things, surely, so making them ought to be praiseworthy.  Obviously, we want to have kids for lots of reasons, and we're not looking for ethical "credit," but at least at first glance, it seems like baby-making is beneficent.

OK, so suppose it is beneficent.  That's going to lead quickly to some very puzzling conclusions.  Take the orthodox Jewish community of Kiryas Joel, near New York (see this fascinating NYT article).  If baby-making is beneficent, they get a lot of credit.  The median number of children per household is four. There are so many kids that 70% of people live below the poverty level.  Median family income is just $17,929. Their poverty shouldn't top us from assuming they have pretty happy kids--positive psychology doesn't show that income makes a huge difference.  But as more kids come along, each has a smaller share of the resources--money, parental attention, etc.  So it's reasonable to think that, at some point,  quality of life starts to drop.

Nevertheless, a big pile o' kids means a larger quantity of the various life goods (like happiness) is added to the world.  So the parents in Kiryas Joel are more beneficent, baby-wise, than they'd be if they had smaller families.  In fact, this could keep going, generation after generation, until the community was bursting at the seams.  Mathematically, a huge number of Joelians who were not so very happy might still add more total good to the world than half that number of happier people.  So even considering where they are heading, they get a lot of credit.  And that's the puzzle.  While it does seem as if making new people is doing good, making gradually worse off people doesn't seem good--even if the result, aggregated together, is a whole lot of good.

**

Derek Parfit came up with this puzzle 25 years ago.  We are embracing his "repugnant conclusion" if we say the Joelians should keep going (up to a point), making more and more babies even if their offspring are less and less happy.  With 25 years' time to work on it, philosophers have come up with lots and lots of ways to avoid this assessment (see here).  One way to avoid it is to scrap the whole idea that baby-making is beneficent.  The idea is:  you haven't actually done any good at all by creating a new person, except perhaps indirectly--to people who already exist.  Once a new baby exists, you can do good by taking care of it, but there's no credit for adding the baby to the world in the first place.

This view appeals to our liberal sensibilities--it seems odd to give credit to baby-makers.  Surely it's no worse to choose not to have a family. The "no credit" view also has appeal because (surely) a person isn't better off existing than he or she was in a pre-conceived, merely potential condition.  Making a baby isn't helping somebody get from a worse situation to a better situation.  So (the argument goes) it's not beneficent at all.

I "get" all of that, but can't wrap my mind around how it could be neutral to make a baby, considering that human life is a good thing. Call me simple minded, but making a good thing has got to be good.

**

Maybe we could make some headway on Kiryas Joel and other puzzles by thinking about the "metaphysics" of baby making.  What is the good thing you make, when you make a baby?  Duh--it's the baby, all 8 pounds, 20 inches of him or her.  But what's so good about that?  To cut to the chase--I'm thinking the good thing we create, in creating a baby, is a life.  The baby is an object, so to speak, the life is an event--a very long-lasting event.  It's an event that will last for 80 or 90 years, if the baby is lucky.

This picture of things has a curious upshot: it demotes parents.  They're the primary baby-makers, but not nearly as primary where life-making is concerned.   Teachers are also in the business of making good lives, even if they don't "manufacture" the body that lives the life.  The whole village is involved, whether at a distance or at the center of the process.  (Yet, my child is my child--I have special rights where his or her upbringing is concerned.  We need to make room for that.)

This picture of things also changes the basic goal--it's not maximizing the number of bodies; it's not maximizing the total number of happy moments;  it's maximizing the number of good lives (the long lasting, 80-90 year events).

Suppose the Joelians see it as beneficent to make good lives.  They also see that everyone's in the good-life making business, not just couples about to have new babies.  Will that shift their attention from procreation to parenting and other life-enhancing activities?  That's the idea.

Problem: I think this will stop them from rampant reproduction at some point.  It's pretty clear that tons of people living minimally happy lives are not living good lives.  But what about today's Joelians, who are deciding to increase their family size from six to seven or eight?  They are functional and prosperous enough that they seem to be able to say they are increasing the number of good lives.  Yet it doesn't seem genuinely beneficent of them to add to their families.  So we don't get everything we would like by thinking in terms of life-making rather than baby-making or happy-moment-making. We don't get to slow down the Joelians now.

Creating new people is the must fundamental and elementary of things, yet it's wonderfully puzzling.  Reading suggestion:  I'm enjoying David Heyd's book Genethics, which is online here.

Craig vs. Harris (comments)

 

I've now had a chance to listen to the Craig vs. Harris debate, thanks to this audio version. 

Both sides, I would say, pander to the audience, making moves that are obviously illegitimate, but calculated to be crowd-pleasers.  Early on, Craig accuses Harris of just semantically defining right actions in terms of well-being, and thus making it impossible to challenge the claim that right actions enhance well-being.  In his first rebuttal (I think), Craig distinguishes between a semantic claim and an ontological claim.  He stresses that the divine command theory--Craig's own view--makes no claims about what "right" means but about what rightness is.  Obviously that's what Harris would also say about his own account of rightness--it's ontological, not semantic.  Craig surely knows this, so he's got to be pandering to the audience when he makes the semantics charge against Harris.  He may have won some points, but didn't come by them honestly.

The big diatribe against religion 3/4 of the way through the debate is classic Sam Harris--very powerful and convincing, dripping with outrage and black humor. Hurray. But it's all obviously irrelevant.  The debate is not about whether Christianity is nonsense, but about whether there can be objective moral goodness and rightness  without God; and whether the existence of God could (at least in principle) explain objective morality.  So: he may have won lots of points, but none of them honestly.

Some deeper problems.  When Craig tells us how God's commands make for objective morality, he helps himself to ideas that are just barely intelligible.  Suppose there's an invisible, immaterial being that's intrinsically perfect, etc.  When this thing tells you to do something, you ought (morally) to do it. Does this really make sense, or is Craig just stringing words together?   God is... intrinsically perfect. What does that even mean?  Is he intrinsically perfect in the way that sugar is intrinsically sweet?  But how's that?  He's not made out of any kind of stuff.  What does his goodness really inhere in? What makes it operative and functional?  How does his goodness imbue his commands and generate obligation?  What on earth are we really talking about here?

Harris is also guilty of trying to hide complexities and mysteries.  He usually formulates his thesis in a sketchy, vague manner (morality "relates to" well-being).  On the other hand,when he's most crisp, his arguments are weak. For example, he insists repeatedly that it's got to be objectively right to avoid the world where everyone is as miserable as possible.  Are we really supposed to be convinced, by that, of a clear and consistent relationship holding between rightness and well-being? Decisions about how best to alter that most miserable world aren't always easy to make.  Suppose I can add ten very happy people to that world, or I can give an extra minute of happiness to each person in the ultra-miserable world.  What is the "objectively correct" decision?   The idea that things are "objective" just as long as we relate morality to well-being goes out the door pretty quickly.

Here's a more realistic dilemma.  It turns out that when you provide basic health care to the world's most poverty-stricken people, they become healthier but not necessarily happier.  In fact, one study of a poor population in Africa showed that people soon started being dissatisfied with their lot in life when they received better health care.  The reason why is captured by a line from a children's book:  "If you give a moose a muffin, he'll want some jam to go with it." Actually, he'll notice that someone else has jam and want some too.  So what's "objectively" right--building clinics, or letting people remain cheerfully doomed?

Craig's answer:  find out what the intrinsically perfect, invisible being prefers. Harris says "not religion, science," but how is science really going to sort out which aspect of well-being is more valuable, the aspect involved in physical health or the aspect involved in good cheer?  (Surprisingly enough, they don't consistently covary.)

Neither succeeds in  explaining the source of "objective morality."  Fortunately, I think there are philosophers who would be able to do a better job of that, though on anyone's story, right and wrong, good and bad, are going to remain quite peculiar and puzzling.  Morality is weird, but (I suspect) not weird enough to be illusory.

Anyhow--this is good philosophical entertainment.  Extra credit for Craig, because he's extremely clear.  Extra credit for Harris, because of the pancakes and Elvis point.

Living with Your Philosopher

How to, HERE. Really funny, and what great graphics!  (My family will appreciate the "safe sentence" suggestion.)

(via Jeremy)

p.s.  LOL!!!!  Exactly

p.p.s.  How to buy gifts for philosophers.  :-)

Craig vs. Harris

Did you watch this debate?  I've been so busy I've only had a chance to listen to about 10 minutes of it--a bit of William Lane Craig (someone I respect, based on a talk he gave in my department many years ago), and a bit of Sam Harris.  Fortunately, I happened to tune in to the bit where Harris says calling a communion wafer the body of Jesus is like calling a stack of pancakes the body of Elvis.  Plus, there was stuff about people burying babies under fence posts to propitiate the gods.  Good stuff!  Apparently he ignored Craig's arguments, though...or so I've read.  (And vice versa?  Not sure.)

In the atheosphere, I notice much tussling these days, but it's all pretty much putting me to sleep.  Have there ever been martyrs to atheism....(see here and elsewhere)?  Quick, someone tell me why it matters?  All the inter-atheist warfare reminds me of Spy vs. Spy from Mad Magazine.

If you have photoshop talent, maybe you'd like to change the caption to "Gnu vs. Not" and send it to me.  Chuckle.

Taxidermy Auction

View more videos at: http://www.nbcdfw.com.

What can I say?

Life Goes On

Recently I've made two visits to a skilled nursing facility--a place that's part "rehab" and part "nursing home."  Some residents are just there temporarily, but for others this is going to be the last stop.  My father's there temporarily, because of a broken hip.

There was a three week interval between the two visits (because my parents are a couple of thousand miles away), which somehow changed my reaction. On the first visit, the "no exit" patients gave me a bad case of existential alarm.  Good God, stop the clocks!  One day that will be me!  I sure don't want to wind up ensconced in hospital mauve, eating terrible food, and deprived of the essentials of life--like good coffee and wifi!  Are my kids going to visit me when the time comes?  Etc. etc.

The second time, I was a bit more used to the environment, and so was my father.  I had the (profound, maybe not) insight that (um) life goes on.  The day still has its pleasant rhythms in a place like this. There is friendly banter.  There is black humor (one of the essentials of life)--like when a staff member joked with a very old man in the dining room about how men like to be tied up.  The nurses and assistants are miraculously patient and accommodating.  But yes, life is different.  A total stranger will sit and talk to you about his urinary incontinence over dinner.  But there's laughter about it--these people have not entirely lost their original identity.

I left my father with the book Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar...Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes (Cathcart and Klein).  The book itself is as lovely and charming as can be -- it is small, adorable, and completely unintimidating.  But smart and insightful too, from what I could tell.  A little elevation can't hurt, when everyone's talking about their urinary problems.

The Weight of Things...Lightened

What a great cover!  More here and here.

Animal Cams and the Existence of God

All over the blogosphere, everyone seems to be fascinated with animal cams. Here's one I just saw at Feminist Philosophers.


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Animal cams are just about the only thing that make me feel slightly agnostic about the existence of God.  What huh?  Well, think of these eagles.  They have no notion whatever that they're being watched by nearly a million viewers.  They can't begin to conceive of the nature of those viewers.  They don't know, and can't know, about The Human Mind.  Isn't it just slightly possible that there are things beyond our ken as well?  In fact, could some other force be watching us right now?  Maybe aliens, who have unimaginable ways of keeping us under surveillance?  Then again, if something could be watching us like we watch these eagles, couldn't that something be goddish, even though it's hard to imagine how it could really be goddish? If I am a 6 out of 7 atheist (like Richard Dawkins!), not a 7 out of 7, I think animal cams are the main reason for that.  No really, I mean it!

I won't say QED, because nothing's been proven. A more suitable ending for this post would be this--




For further reading (read it to find out why):