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Archives for June 2018

Red Hen, Mr. Rogers and Civility

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One of the many important lessons I learned from sports was to maintain civility and respect for others even in heated competition. This lesson was reinforced when I competed in debate and by gaming hobby. When I became an academic, these lessons served me well by allowing me to easily behave in a professional manner: respectfully disagreeing with my colleagues.

While civil behavior is generally respected, I have taken some criticism in the past for being too civil and respectful—even when people are rude or awful to me, I rarely abandon my commitment to the social rituals of respectful and civil behavior. I will, however, admit that one reason why I do this is that I believe that honorable behavior in the face of rudeness demonstrates good character and shows the failings of the one who descends into rudeness. As such, I do hold to a moral foundation for civility as well as a bit of pride—not descending to the lower level is a point of honor for me.

Since I am a professional philosophy, I approach political differences as I would any theoretical dispute about values. That is, I maintain my professionalism even in in nonprofessional contexts. This serves me quite well in maintaining friendships with people who have vary different political values. For example, I have various running friends who are very conservative politically. However, we get along quite well even though I hold to many liberal and even anarchist positions in politics.

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Because of my views of civility, it might be expected that I would roundly condemn the apparent incivility shown to members of the Trump administration, such as Sanders.  After all, as you might infer from the above, I endeavor to avoid descending into incivility. Despite this, a case can be made that morally justifies such incivility.

I do believe that by default each person should be treated with basic civility—that is the starting point. People can, by their actions, change the level of respect they deserve. For example, people who treat others with respect are thus entitled to that respect in return. As another example, someone who is abusive and disrespectful reduces the respect they are due. Morality is also a key factor here—goodness is to be respected and evil is to be shunned.

In the case of political disputes, I do not assume that a person who disagrees with me must be evil and thus has no claim to respect or civility. If the person shares enough of the essential core values with me, I can accept that while we disagree they are a good person (or at least not evil) who is worthy of respect and civility. For example, while I disagree with my conservative friends on various issues, we still share essential core values about honesty, kindness, fairness, justice, democracy, and dogs. To use a specific illustration, my conservative friends and I both believe that people in need should not be abandoned to their fate. I tend to favor social programs that address this matter, while they tend to prefer a somewhat different approach. However, we agree with the basic ethics of the parable of the good Samaritan. So, my general point here is that civility is owed to those who have morally good core values even when there are heated disputes over political matters. Roughly put, the decent are entitled to decency.

In the case of people who are deficient in the core values and act in accord with their moral defects, they earn the disrespect of others. For example, someone who lies repeatedly and acts in other awful ways forfeits the claim to civility to the degree they are awful. As such, being uncivil to Sarah Sanders would be morally acceptable to the degree that she lies—which is regularly and extensively.

Another key part of civility is reciprocity. People merit civil treatment by being civil; they merit uncivil treatment by being uncivil. As such, people who are insulting, rude, and disrespectful have no right to expect others to treat them with civility and respect. Trump, for example, exemplifies uncivil behavior and hence has no right to expect civility from others. While he no doubt expects the respect due the office, my view is that the idea of respecting the office despite the behavior of the person in that office is absurd—on par with asking people to respect an ass in a nice car because the nice car is nice. A person is, rather, obligated to act in accord with the respect the office is supposed to command, otherwise it is they who are disrespecting the office and not those who disrespect the disrespectful occupant.

Thus, civility is only owed to those who are good (or at least not evil) or those who act with civility. Those who claim that the evil or uncivil should be treated with civility are in error, though people are free to be more civil than they are morally required to be.

 

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Red Hen and Protests: Business Ethics

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The Red Hen situation in which Sarah Huckabee Sanders was politely asked to leave the Red Hen restaurant and politely left, raises ethical concerns about such behavior. The response by Sander’s supporters also raises moral concerns. There was a surge of rage against other restaurants that happened to have the same name.  As is typical of outrage, people who were apparently angry at the way Sanders was treated responded in awful ways, including phoned in threats. There is considerable irony in that this response to a perceived injustice is so disproportionate and that in many cases no effort is even made to determine which Red Hen is the correct restaurant. And, of course, there is the matter of the ethics of Maxine Waters’ call to the public to harass members of the Trump administration. These will be addressed in upcoming essays, but for now I will focus on the matter of ethics and business.
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Since the Red Hen is a business, one ethical question is whether a business has the moral right to refuse to serve someone on political grounds. This can be widened into the more general issue of refusing service based on values. Because of debates over businesses refusing to provide products and services to same-sex couples for their marriages, this matter has been extensively addressed, but it worth discussing more in this context.

A private business owner enjoys numerous rights and protections that are provided by society (that is, they are not in the state of nature). Since these defend business from people doing whatever they want to them, businesses cannot claim a right to do whatever they want regarding refusing services to customers. This is because society has the right to impose on businesses on the same grounds that it has the right to impose on those who would harm businesses. To illustrate, just as society has the right to compel me to not violate a business’ trademarks, society has the right to compel businesses to provide services to the public. The question is, as with all impositions, the extent to which the impositions are warranted.

On the one hand, it is tempting to side with the business owner: they should have the right to not engage in compelled labor and this entails that they should have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. As such, the Red Hen was acting in a morally acceptable way when Sanders was asked to leave. Retaliation against Red Hen would thus be unjustified—Red Hen did nothing wrong. Those who think that businesses should be allowed to refuse to provide goods and services to same-sex couples who are should agree with this position. After all, someone who wants to refuse service to Sanders could appeal to deeply held religious convictions regarding lying. The injunction against bearing false witness is, after all, in the Ten Commandments.

On the other hand, it is also tempting to argue that a business is under an obligation to provide its services to customers unless there is a legitimate reason to refuse service. For example, a business would obviously have the right to refuse service to someone who does not pay or to ask customers engaged in disruptive behavior to leave. That is, the refusal of service should be based on some harm the business would suffer. This would allow a business to refuse to provide goods and services to people because of their values in some cases. For example, if providing services to a terrible person would damage the reputation of the business, then they could make a solid moral case for refusing service. In the case at hand, if Sanders’ presence would have damaged Red Hen, then they would be justified in asking her to leave.

Those who think that businesses do not have the right to refuse to provide goods and services to same-sex couples would also need to accept that business cannot refuse to provide goods and services to people based on their values or behavior (if they do not harm the business). On this view (that business cannot discriminate based on values), Sanders should have been permitted to finish her meal at the Red Hen.

In the next essay, I’ll turn to the remaining moral issues.

 

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Red Hen, Mr. Rogers and Protests: Important?

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Over the weekend, Sarah Huckabee Sanders was politely asked to leave the Red Hen restaurant in Virginia because the employees did not want to serve her. She calmly left the restaurant and the incident did not escalate—except, of course, when it expanded to social media with new players.  This was not the only episode of protest. Rather ironically, Pam Bondi (the attorney general of my adopted state of Florida) was targeted by protestors at a screening of the new Mr. Rogers documentary.

One concern raised by some about the media (social and otherwise) focus on these episodes is that they are a distraction from more important issues. For example, critics have contended that the focus should be on migration, especially the treatment of migrant children being held in detention.

On the face of it, this sort of concern is legitimate. Like a computer, the human mind can only handle so much—memory and processing power used to address one matter means less for other matters. As such, if people cannot focus on multiple matters, then they should focus on the more important ones at the expense of the less important. On a related note, I occasional get a similar sort of criticism when I write an essay on a topic a reader might regard as of little importance—the gist of the contention is that it is a waste to write about such topics.

One reply to this contention is to point out that people deal with hundreds of things each day of varying degrees of importance (and triviality) and it is unlikely that their minds would be utterly exhausted by considering the matter of the Red Hen. Another reply is that people do, obviously, have a choice on what they focus on—so while the media might be focusing too much on, for example, Red Hengate, people can seek out stories that cover the subjects they regard as more important. In the case of my essays, it is easy enough to ignore the ones that a person thinks of as unworthy of attention (which could easily be all of them).

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Another reply is to note the obvious fact that importance is relative. As such, what one person regards as unimportant to them can be very important to others. For example, my knee injury is probably of no importance to you yet is rather important to me. Likewise, the treatment received by Sanders and Bondi might seem unworthy of attention by some yet be quite important to others. As such, when someone says that something is unimportant, they typically mean that it is not important to them. This does raise the broader philosophical question about subjectivity and objectivity. In this context, the key question is whether there is objective importance. Unfortunately, addressing the subjectivity-objectivity debate would go far beyond the limited scope of this essay. Fortunately, I can advance the discussion without addressing that problem.

Even if importance is not objective, it is still possible for a person to be in error in their assessment. This is because, obviously enough, people can make a mistake in assessing how much something impacts what they value—which is a good, albeit rough, measure of importance. For example, someone buying a house might regard the Federal Reserve as unimportant because they find it uninteresting—yet if they knew that it impacts the rate they will pay on their mortgage, they would realize that it is quite important. As such, it is possible that the Red Hen and Mr. Rogers incidents are important even for many who think they are unimportant. The challenge is showing that these incidents do impact what they value. One obvious problem with this approach is that people value different things, so no one argument will appeal to everyone. However, I think that a broad enough argument can be made by appealing to those consider how Americans interact on political matters to be of concern.

While Trump and his defenders have largely shredded the old rules and traditions that have governed political interactions, the liberals have generally followed Michelle Obama’s imperative to “go high” when others “go low.” There have, of course, been some exceptions in the recent past, but the latest incidents could mark a shift in how the left approaches the Trump administration. For example, Maxine Waters has put forth a call to action against members of Trump’s cabinet: she wants people to form crowds to tell them they are not welcome anywhere.  This is essentially what was done to Bondi and Sanders, although they are not members of Trump’s cabinet. While targeting individuals for such public attacks is not a new thing in politics, widespread adoption would mark a shift in American political discourse. As such, those who are concerned with this matter should regard these incidents as important—or, more accurately, potentially important. If they turn out to be aberrations, then it will be show that they did, in fact, not really matter.

I have, obviously enough, not addressed the ethics of such attacks. That will be the subject of an upcoming essay.

 

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The Jacket

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The media erupted when First Lady Melania Trump wore a $39 jacket emblazoned with “I really don’t care. Do U?” during her visit to a detention center in Texas. While this seems like an odd jacket for an actual adult to wear in any serious setting, it certainly seems extremely inappropriate for the context.

As would be expected, people divided on the explanations of the jacket. The initial claim that that the jacket was just a jacket—no message intended. If the first lady was someone who dressed without thinking about what she was putting on or had a very limited wardrobe, this explanation would have more plausibility. Others speculated that the jacket was worn to express her lack of caring for the children being held apart from their parents—which would make her a terrible person. This claim is offset by the fact that she did say the right things during her visit. One rather odd but not absurd claim is that the jacket was a statement to her husband; perhaps the public revelations of his past affairs have troubled her to the point of making statements via jackets. President Trump advanced the claim that Melania wore the jacket as a statement that she cares not about the “fake news media.”

On the face of it, a sensible reply to all this speculation is to adopt the attitude expressed by the jacket: to not care. After all, it is just a jacket being worn by a former model who is the latest wife of Donald Trump. It is not a policy statement, a treaty, a law or anything of real significance. While this approach has merit and the jacket itself is just a jacket, what it revealed about the administration is quite significant.

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As noted above, the official tale of the jacket shifted from the “it is just a jacket” narrative of the first lady’s communication director to the president’s claim that she was making a statement to the news media. This sort of revisionist explanation and chaotic inconsistency is par for the course in the Trump administration. The expression of what seems to be something awful (apparently not caring about the children) followed up by awkward attempts to shift blame and explain it away is also a common occurrence in this administration. Even if the jacket was initially just a jacket, it has now become much more. First, it has become yet another a point of inconsistency and example of poor management in the Trump administration. Not being able to handle something as minor as a jacket effectively illustrates the general skill and competence of this administration. Second, the jacket is now a metaphor for these problems. Sometimes a jacket is just a jacket, but not when ineptitude makes it into a symbol.

 

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Is Gaming Addiction Real?

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While the allegedly nefarious influence of video games has been debated for quite some time, the World Health Organization recently classified ‘gaming disorder’ as a mental health condition. Some have gone further and refer to the phenomenon as ‘gaming addiction’, thus making the association with established addictions like drug addiction. This raises the question of whether gaming disorder/addiction is a real thing.

One obvious point of concern is that some of those who are championing the classification stand to profit greatly from offering expensive treatments for this disorder. For example, reSTART charges $550 a day for the most intensive part of their treatment program. It is also presumably just a matter of time before pharmaceutical companies start producing medication for the alleged disorder. There is also a push to extend insurance coverage for the alleged disorder, which would really open the floodgates for profit.

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It is important to note that the fact that some supporters of the classification stand to benefit financial from this classification does not prove that the classification is in error. To make an inference from the bias of the person making a claim to the claim being false would be a version of the classic ad hominem fallacy and thus poor reasoning. However, the fact that a person is an interested party in a matter does provide grounds for skepticism. This is especially relevant when the person asserts that they are right because of their expertise—bias is one factor that can transform a reasonable appeal to authority (that a claim is true because an expert says it is true) into a fallacious appeal to authority. At this point I should note that I am an avid gamer, hence I also am potentially biased in this matter—after all, who wants to admit that a favorite activity could lead to a disorder or addiction?

One obvious problem with settling whether gaming disorder/addiction is real is to work out proper definitions of “disorder” and “addiction.” In normal usage, people tend to throw around the term “addiction” without much rigor. For example, people often talk about being addicted to donuts or other delicious foods. On this vague concept of addiction, then video games can be addicting like donuts. That is, people will play the games far more than is good for them and do so even when playing is detrimental to their lives beyond gaming. But, of course, informal usage is not the final word on medical matters.

The easy and obvious approach is to go with the standard medical definition and hope that this appeal to the authority of the experts is a strong argument. On the face of it, there could be such a thing as gaming addiction. After all, almost any behavior could become warped in a way that meets the usually characteristic of addiction, such as inability to reliably abstain, a loss of control, cravings, and so on. For example, I have seen people become so obsessed with running that their behavior would seem to match up with the characteristic behavior of addicts. One problem with this approach is that anything could be an addiction, which makes the term “addiction” rather less useful. Another point of concern is that small samples of addiction like behavior and anecdotes from non-experts (like me) fail to support the claim that there is an actual medical condition of gaming addiction. What is needed is, of course, an adequate study to establish whether there is such a thing or not.

One 2017 study indicates that gaming addiction is not real. The study indicates that there are problems connected to gaming, but that gaming disorder seems to more of a symptom of other problems. To be more specific, the study indicates that gaming is a displacement activity rather than an addiction itself. To use an analogy, a person who drinks only because of their life problems is not addicted to alcohol, although they could certainly seem to have a drinking problem. Naturally, there are those who disagree with this study, contending that such a survey-based study will have the usual defect that people tend to underreport bad behavior and to present themselves in a better light. These are reasonable concerns.

It is also worth pointing out that there might be a gaming disorder while there is no gaming addiction. There are, after all, disorders that are not addictions. This is part of the problem of defining the terms, which is a universal problem of meaning. This also ties back to the problem of authority raised earlier; namely the challenge of deciding who gets to determine how things are classified.

Since I am not an expert in the field of psychology, I will not venture to assert that my view is correct. However, it does seem problematic to claim that gaming addiction exists, at least when rigorous standards are applied. There are, one must admit, certainly problems that can arise from excessive gaming—or perhaps it is that excessive gaming arises from problems.

 

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Trophy Hunting for Conservation

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While I often get incredulous stares when I make this claim, it is true that hunters are generally strong advocates of conservation. The cynical might rejoin that this is so that they can keep killing animals. This is, obviously enough, part of the truth: hunters enjoy hunting and animals are required for hunting. However, it would be unfair to cast all hunters as purely selfish in their motives: as a hunter, I have met many others who are concerned about conservation in a broad sense and not merely for their own interest in hunting animals. While the true motives of hunters are relevant to assessing their character, the ethics of hunting for conservation is another matter. This issue is perhaps best addressed on utilitarian grounds: does allowing the hunting of animals and charging for such things as hunting licenses create more good or evil consequences?

In the United States, it seems quite reasonable to believe that this sort of hunting is morally acceptable. After all, hunters of all political stripes tend to support preserving public lands that serve as habitats and the fees they pay are used to fund conservation efforts. There is also the fact that human hunters serve to help check various game populations, especially deer, that would suffer from the harms of overpopulation (namely starvation). Naturally, there are counter-arguments against this view, such as pointing out that human hunters wiped out many of the natural predators that kept deer populations in check in the past and that it would be preferable to restore these animals.

Even more controversial than game hunting in the United States is trophy hunting around the world. While all hunters can take trophies, trophy hunting has as its main objective the killing of a trophy animal and the taking of trophy parts, such as a head, tusks, or hide. The main goal is the prestige of the kill, rather than getting meat to eat or for the challenge and enjoyment of a true hunt. Of special concern is trophy hunting in Africa.

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One key concern about such hunts is that the target animals tend to be at risk or even endangered, such as big cats, elephants and rhinos. The counter to this concern is the main argument for this sort of trophy hunting. Trophy hunting in Africa is mainly to domain of the wealthy because foreigners generally must pay to hunt their desired animal and, of course, they must be able to pay the cost of the hunt itself. This money, so the argument goes, is used to support conservation efforts and incentivizes the locals in conservation efforts.

From a moral standpoint, this argument can be cast in utilitarian terms: while the animals that are killed are a negative consequence, this is offset by the money used for conservation and to add to the economy of the country. The moral balancing act involves weighing the dead animals against the good that is supposed to arise from their deaths. This then leads out of the realm of ethics to the realm of empirical facts about the money.

One point of practical concern is corruption—does the money go to conservation and to the locals, or does it get directed elsewhere, such as the bank accounts of corrupt officials? If the money does not actually go to conservation, then the conservation argument fails.

Another point of practical concern is whether the money from the hunts is adequate to support the conservation efforts. If killing some animals does not conserve more animals than are killed, then the conservation argument would fail. This raises the question of whether there are enough animals to kill and enough left over to conserve. In the case of abundant species, the answer could easily be yes. In the case of endangered species, killing them to save them has less plausibility.

In addition to the utilitarian calculation that weighs the dead animals against the alleged benefits, there is also the worry about the ethics of trophy hunting itself, perhaps in the context of a different ethical theory. For example, a deontologist like Kant might contend that killing animals for trophies would be wrong regardless of the allegedly good consequences. Virtue theorists might, as another example, take issue with the impact of such trophy hunting on the person’s character. After all, the way many trophy hunts are conducted seem to involve people other than the “hunter” doing all the hunting aside from pulling the trigger. As such, it is not really trophy hunting for the “hunter”—it is more aptly described as trophy shooting.

To use an analogy, imagine a rich person who hires a team to play basketball for him. When the players get a free throw, he marches out onto the court to take the shot. This is playing basketball in the same sense that trophy hunting of this sort is hunting. That is to say, barely at best.

 

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