A Philosopher&#039;s Blog

Must James Bond Be a White Man?

October 22, 2021 by Michael LaBossiere Leave a Comment

Since his creation, James Bond has been a white man. Much to the delight of some and to the horror of others, there are serious plans to have a black actor play the next James Bond. There has even been some talk about having a female James Bond. While racist and sexist reasons abound to condemn having Bond be anything other than a white man, there is the question of whether there are good reasons for James Bond to always be a white man. Before getting into this discussion, I will first look at the matter of the 007.

While James Bond has been known as 007, this is his agent designation and there are other 00 agents. This can thus be seen as analogous to the number used by an athlete on a team. As such, while James Bond has been 007, another person could replace him and get that number—just as a guy who was 23 on a baseball team could retire and a new person could get that number (although teams sometimes retire numbers). Within the James Bond universe, it would thus make sense for someone else to get the 007 designation and this person need not be white or male. As far as why this could occur in universe, James Bond is not immortal and hence would eventually be too old or dead to remain 007. From an aesthetic standpoint, it would be interesting to see a Bond timeline in which time mattered; that is, a Bond world in which Bond grew old and a new agent took his place. This would have the benefit of keeping Bond relevant to today while also maintaining (in universe) the old Bond. There is, of course, the obvious financial risk: having a new 007 who is not James Bond can be seen as analogous to replacing a star athlete with a new person who just gets the same number. There is the risk of losing the drawing power of that person. But my main concern is with the more interesting matter of whether James Bond must be a white man, so I will leave the money worries to the branding gurus.

One obvious fact about the Bond of the movies is that different actors have played that character. While there are strong opinions about the best Bond, there was little debate about whether a new white man should take the role when the previous Bond aged out of the role or left for other reasons. The actors who played Bond were (in general) accepted as at least adequate for the role and there was no real debate about whether the character was still James Bond despite the change in actors. That is, there is no general issue with a new actor playing the role. There were also, obviously enough, no effort to explain in the Bond universe the change in Bond’s appearance. I mention this because of another famous character from United Kingdom fiction, Dr. Who. When Dr. Who began, the actor playing the doctor was quite old and they ran into the rather practical problem of age. They hit on a brilliant solution: Dr. Who regenerates and radically changes appearance, though remaining the same person. This gives the show an interesting feature: continuity of character through changes of actors with an in-universe explanation.

While Bond movies do feature gadgets and plots that border or even cross into science fiction (consider Moonraker), it seems unlikely that the Bond cinematic universe would allow for such science fiction devices as alternative realities, such as brilliantly done in Marvel’s What If…? As such, the various Bonds are not explained in terms of being alternative or variant Bonds; they are all the James Bond. Now, if Bond can remain Bond despite the changes of actors, then it would seem that he would remain Bond even if he were played by a non-white actor. After all, if switching from Sean Connery did not entail that Bond was no longer Bond, then changing his race should not do that either. After all, the actors that played Bond are different people, with significant differences in appearance, mannerisms, and voice. Having a black actor, for example, would just be another change of appearance. It would also seem to follow that having a female actor play Bond would also make as much sense; it would just be another change in appearance. But one could attempt to argue that it is essential to Bond that he be a white man. This, of course, gets us into the notion of essential properties.

In philosophy, an essential property (to steal from Aristotle) is a property that it must have. In contrast an accidental property is one that it does have but could lack. To use a simple example, it is essential to a triangle that it be three-sided. It must have three sides to be a triangle. But the size and color of a triangle are accidental properties; they can change, and it will still remain a triangle. So, the relevant issue here is whether being a white man is essential to being James Bond or merely accidental. Given all the changes in actors over the years, there are clearly many properties that Bond has accidentally—they can change with the actors while the character is still Bond. One advantage of a fictional character is, of course, that the author can simply decide on the essential properties when they create the metaphysics for their fictional world. But, of course, the creator of Bond did not do that-so we would need to speculate using various metaphysical theories about our world. That is, would a person changing their race or gender result in the person ceasing to be, just as changing the sides of a triangle would make it cease to be a triangle? On the face of it, while such changes would clearly alter the person, they would seem to retain their personal identity. If this is true, then James Bond need not be a white man.

Paint, Substance & Substrata

October 15, 2021 by Michael LaBossiere 1 Comment

In philosophy, the classic problem of universals is the challenge of determining in virtue of what (If anything) a particular individual is a member of a category. Some philosophers, such as Armstrong, Plato, and myself believe that at least some categories are metaphysically real and hence we are seen as realists about properties. For example, if mass is a real quality, then entities with mass are grouped into that category in virtue of possessing that metaphysical property. A realist does not need to accept that all categories have a metaphysical foundation. For example, I take race and gender to be social concepts based on ideas rather than grounded in metaphysical entities. To use a less contentious example, I also take the property of being a citizen of the United States to be a social construct.

When talking about particulars being in categories, there are two general ways to view this. One is a matter of grouping—the property in question is what puts the entity in that category. There is also the matter of the entity being what it is in terms of that quality. These two can amount to the same thing, but these can be distinguished conceptually. For example, there is the matter of what it is for a green thing to be in the category of green things and the matter of what it is for an entity to be green. Again, one might determine that these amount to the same thing. To illustrate, Plato would (probably) say that the Form of Beauty groups beautiful things into that category and makes a beautiful individual beautiful. I have not, of course, gotten into the epistemic aspect of this, such as how we know that something is in a category. I have also not addressed alternatives to metaphysical realism about properties. But for the sake of what follows, I will assume properties are real so that I can get on to discussing substances and substrata.

Philosophers such as Aristotle and Descartes accepted the existence of substance and defined it as something that exists in a manner that does not depend on other entities to exist. This can get messy quick, but to keep it simple think of some everyday object like an apple. It can exist as a distinct entity, apart from other things. Yes, I know that apples come from trees and depend on the existence of dimensions such as time; but I am keeping it simple here. The ability for an apple to exist on its own is contrasted with that of its properties. To illustrate, I can buy an apple at Publix and take it home. I can take a bite out of it, taking that piece from the apple and having a mouthful of fruit. But no matter how I bite it, I cannot bite away the property of mass or shape and have a mouthful of just mass or shape. As such, properties are generally taken by many philosophers as not being substances. You can have an apple in your mouth, but you cannot have just apple shape or apple mass. Because of this sort of thinking, philosophers such as John Locke have reluctantly accepted substance, calling it “something I know not what.” Others, of course, have rejected substance. If you accept properties as existing as part of substances, there is then the matter of whether the substance is just a bundle of properties or if there is another metaphysical entity that “binds” the properties together into a substance.

While bundle theorists have the advantage of metaphysical economy, they face the problem of explaining what connects the properties together into a single entity. Substrata theorists, like me, claim that there is a second type of metaphysical entity, the substrata. It has the function of binding properties together to form objects. While I have argued in favor of substrata at length, teaching the subject again in my Metaphysics class provided me with a metaphor that might help explain the matter. Or not.

Think of properties as being like paints and objects being like paintings. For those who just believe in properties and reject substrata, a painting would just be paint. Metaphorically, one would paint a painting by painting nothing—there would just be paint touching paint, forming a painting. Naturally, one could talk about letting some paint dry and then painting on that paint like a paint canvas, but there would be the question of what the first paint was painted on.

For those who accept substrata, the canvas (or other surface) would be like the substratum and the properties would be like paint: one paints on the canvas and the canvas plus the paint forms the painting. Naturally, metaphors and analogies tend to fall apart quickly when pressed. For example, one could say that one just needs to paint on the canvas until the paint dries, then peel the paint off. While this would be a flimsy painting, a painting made entirely of paint could thus exist. At least after it had been painted on a canvas. One could also reject the paint analogy or modify it in some manner so a painting could just be paint without a canvas. But the canvas and paint metaphor has a certain appeal.

Deficit & Dependency II: The Dependency Argument

October 13, 2021 by Michael LaBossiere Leave a Comment

In response to the progressive proposals to provide new and expanded benefits to Americans, the right has made use of two stock arguments. The first is the deficit argument, which I addressed in my previous essay. The second is the Dependency argument.

The gist of the Dependency argument is that if people get assistance or benefits of a certain sort, such as unemployment benefits or childcare, from the state, then they risk becoming dependent upon the state. Since this dependence is claimed to have negative consequences, such assistance and benefits should be limited or not provided. This can be seen as a utilitarian argument.

There are numerous variations of this argument which tend to focus on specific alleged harms. For example, it might be contended that if unemployment benefits are too generous then people will not want to work. As a specific illustration, in April, 2020 Senator Lindsey Graham argued that public financial relief for the coronavirus would incentivize workers to leave their jobs. Other alleged harms include damage to the moral character of the recipients of such benefits and, on a larger scale, the creation of a culture of dependency and a culture of entitlement. While this argument is passionately advanced by many on the right, there are two main issues that need to be addressed. The first is whether the argument is being made in good faith. The second is whether the argument is a good one from a logical standpoint.

Bad faith argumentation can occur in a variety of ways. One way is for a person to knowingly use fallacies or rhetoric as substitutes for good reasoning. Interestingly, a person can use fallacies and rhetoric in good faith when they do so unintentionally. In such cases, they are using bad logic in good faith. Another way is for a person to use premises they believe are untrue. Naturally, a person can make untrue claims in good faith—they do not realize their claims are untrue. Another way a person can argue in bad faith is to advance arguments that they do not believe in. This usually involves making arguments based on principles or reasons that they do not actually accept, while they pretend that they do.

Because of the problem of other minds, sorting out when people are engaged in bad faith argumentation can be challenging. After all, even if you can show that a person has used a fallacy or made a false claim, this does not itself prove they were arguing in bad faith: bad faith involves intent. Fortunately, there are ways to make a decent case that someone is engaged in bad faith and one of these is to provide evidence of inconsistency. This is, unfortunately, not always decisive: people can be sincerely inconsistent because they do not understand the implications of their claims and for other reasons that do not involve an intent at deceit. But in the case of the right, their dependency argument seems to generally be a bad faith argument.

If we take the Dependency arguments seriously, then they would also tell against inheritance. In fact, philosophers have long made this argument.

Mary Wollstonecraft contends that hereditary wealth is morally wrong because it produces idleness and impedes people from developing their virtues. Inheritance is unearned. So, if receiving unearned resources creates dependency, then inheritance would create dependency. It could be countered that people can earn an inheritance, that it might be granted because of their hard work or some other relevant factor. While such cases would be worth considering, earning by hard work is not the usual way one qualifies for an inheritance. However, an earned inheritance would certainly not be subject to this argument. This exactly mirrors the conservative Dependency arguments, and they should, if they are consistent, agree with Wollstonecraft. But they clearly do not.

As one would expect, conservatives on the right generally favor inheritance and oppose estate taxes. During the Trump administration, the exemption to the estate tax increased to $5.49 million and in 2017 it increased again to $11.18 million. This is inconsistent with their Dependency argument; if they fear that people getting small benefits from the state will create dependency and destroy incentives, then they should be terrified by such massive inheritances: these would, as Wollstonecraft argued, seem to be vastly more harmful. If one does not like the inheritance argument, then there is also the welfare for the wealthy argument.

While there are some exceptions, the right typically favors subsidies and benefits for corporations, businesses, and the wealthy. As such, it is hardly surprising that the bulk of social welfare spending benefits them rather than the poor. With almost no exceptions, one does not hear the people railing about dependency argue against these benefits and assistance—they are only concerned when the beneficiaries are the poor rather than the rich.

One can, of course, argue that there are relevant differences between benefits and assistance for the rich and those for the less-well off (or everyone). Often, these arguments also tend to be made in bad faith—a common tactic is to use the Perfect Analogy fallacy. This fallacy occurs when one takes the standards for assessing an argument by analogy to the extreme and imposes unreasonable requirements for similarity. This is the opposite of the Poor or False Analogy fallacy; this occurs when the standards are applied too laxly by the person making the argument.

As a tactic, when using the Perfect Analogy Fallacy, one simply refuses to accept that the two things are similar, no matter what evidence or reasons are presented. As always, it can be challenging to prove that someone is doing this in bad faith, but one can sometimes push the person into trying to defend something that they clearly do not believe, and their bad faith becomes evident. That said, one must always be careful to not assume that a person who rejects an analogy must be arguing in bad faith or that they must be wrong—to refuse to consider their arguments would be an act of bad faith.

In closing, those who oppose the progressive proposals and use the Dependency argument generally seem to be arguing in bad faith. Naturally, if they have also argued against inheritance and benefits for the wealthy using the Dependency argument, then they can bee seen as arguing in good faith. As far as whether benefits create dependency or destroy incentives to work, that is another matter. But the answer seems to be “no”, as long as one looks at the statistical data rather than simply speaking from ideology or “common sense.”

Deficit & Dependency I: The Deficit Argument

October 8, 2021 by Michael LaBossiere Leave a Comment

Progressives in congress are proposing a wide range of benefits for Americans, such as a universal pre-K program, childcare benefits for working families, expansions of the child tax credit and the earned income credit, free college and so on. While it is certainly reasonable to debate the merits of such proposals, many on the right (such as Fox News) have engaged in D&D. Not the roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons, but the Deficit argument and the Dependency argument.

The deficit argument, which can also be categorized as the “it costs too much” argument, is that such programs will cost too much money, thus increasing the deficit. Since increasing the deficit is claimed to be harmful, then these programs should not be implemented. Cost-benefit arguments are certainly sensible if they are made in good faith. While some on the right are making this argument in good faith, many are not.

While the philosophical problem of other minds shows that I cannot know the content of another’s mind (or even if they have one), a good general test for bad faith is the consistency test. If a person is making a good faith argument based on their professed concern about something, then they will have a similar concern about that thing in other situations as well. Naturally, there can be relevant differences that warrant not applying the same principle in other circumstances. In the case of the deficit argument, the test for bad faith is to see if those making the argument are consistently concerned about cost and the deficit. If so, then this can be reasonably taken as a good faith argument: they believe what they are arguing. If their concern is not consistent, then it is reasonable to suspect bad faith—although people can be inconsistent for other reasons, such as being unaware of the inconsistency. Looking back on the Trump presidency (and other Republican administrations), we can see that the right generally did not care about costs or deficits when it came to spending money on or increasing the deficit for things they liked, such as military expenditures, corporate subsidies, and tax cuts. As such, it is reasonable to conclude that these people do not believe in their deficit argument—they do not care about costs or deficits as such. This is not to say that their argument must thus be flawed or their claims untrue.

Bad faith argumentation is like (and can include) lying: it is a matter of intent and belief. To infer that someone’s argument must be fallacious or their claim’s false because they are arguing in bad faith would be to fall victim to the ad hominem fallacy. Just as person could be telling a “true lie” by making a true claim they believe is false in an attempt to deceive, a person could make a good bad faith argument: the argument could have good logic and plausible premises, but the person making it does not believe in their own argument. So why not just assess the logic of the argument and truth of the claims?

While that assessment should be done, determining whether an argument is made in bad faith is still important as a normative rather than logical matter. When someone makes a bad faith argument (or claim), they do not believe in their own argument (or claim). As such, other people are not under any moral obligation to take their bad faith argument or claim seriously. To use the example of lying, if I know someone is lying to me, my moral concern is not with whether their claim is true or not (that is a matter for critical thinking) but with their intention to deceive or manipulate me. As such, while I should not reject their claim out of hand (it could be a true lie) I should certainly not be influenced by their lie—they have forfeited the expectation that I will give them serious consideration.

As noted above, the right generally does not care about deficits as such. To be fair, there are some who are consistent on this point—they have thus earned the normative right to be given due consideration. But those who have proven that they do not care about the deficit as such are just advancing a bad faith argument—they are engaging in deceit rather than good argumentation.

In closing, I want to stress that it does not follow that a bad faith argument must be a fallacy or that a bad faith claim must be false. Just as people can tell true lies, they can also advance good arguments in bad faith. As such, the argument that the programs will cost too much should be given due consideration on its own merits and, of course, this should also apply the next time the right is gleefully running up the deficit with tax cuts, corporate subsidies and military spending.

In addition to the deficit argument, many on the right also advance the Dependency argument. This will be considered in the next essay.

Facebook: Profits over People

October 6, 2021 by Michael LaBossiere Leave a Comment

I was shocked to learn that Facebook (allegedly) puts profits over people. Or I would have been if I knew nothing about Facebook or American capitalism. “Profits over people” is a core principle of how our economic system operates, right up there with “money talks.”

While Facebook has weathered numerous controversies in the past, it might finally face serious consequences for its alleged misdeeds. In many ways, the testimony of Frances Haugen served to confirm views about the harms and dangers of Facebook and its associated products, such as Instagram. Most importantly, she provided a trove of Facebook documents to support her claims.

Pushed into playing defense, Facebook has decided to borrow the playbook used by tobacco companies in response to analogous misdeeds, such as launching ad hominem attacks on whistleblowers and critics . While the tobacco companies and Facebook obviously differ, there are some fundamental similarities. They both profit from products they know are dangerous, with the products often intentionally made more dangerous to boost profits. They also both aggressively target the youth, following an ancient strategy. Like tobacco products, Facebook seems even more harmful for young people, making this targeting even more morally reprehensible. But perhaps the tobacco company analogy will hold in other ways.

After years of deceit, the tobacco industry eventually had something of a judgment day. Many governments began imposing or expanding their regulations, there were huge settlements, and a decline in smoking. Some predicted that the days of big tobacco were over. However, tobacco companies proved quite resilient. In 2001 American tobacco companies had $78 billion in revenues. In 2016 this was $177 billion. While cigarette sales are still declining, tobacco stocks have been performing extremely well. Given that Facebook has vast financial resources and an addictive product line, it should be able to do at least as well as the tobacco companies did. While the products are different, Facebook can make use of the strategies and tactics successfully developed and deployed by tobacco companies. They can also afford to buy politicians and talented people to assist them in their efforts. But perhaps there is a critical difference.

While Facebook has the cash to lobby, they do not seem to have a loyal cadre of politicians who are dedicated to fighting for them. Tobacco companies, in part because of their economic importance to tobacco growing states, enjoyed (and still enjoy) the advantage of die-hard advocates in Congress and local governments. Facebook seems to have, perhaps, erred by failing to win key allies in government. The right, left and Congress have found something they agree on: they are angry at Facebook and believe that something needs to be done about the company. While there are some shared dislikes, there are some differences. The right got rather mad at Facebook because when the company started to police misinformation, it impacted the right far more than the left. This is for the obvious reason that the American right is a massive generator and consumer of misinformation ranging from the big lie about the 2020 election to lies about COVID. While the left is not composed of moral saints, they generally dislike Facebook because it hurts our democracy and hurts people in general. They also tend to dislike corporations that put profits over people—which is most corporation. It might turn out that Facebook has miscalculated and made enemies of the right and the left (and center), leaving it with little hope of getting allies in this fight. Other than those it can buy. As such, Facebook might face consequences—perhaps some new regulation and perhaps a few fines. We might even be shocked to see a huge corporation face serious consequences for its misdeeds.