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Dead Celebrity Hologram Ethics II: Afterlife

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As noted in the previous essay, it can be argued that the likeness of a dead celebrity is a commodity like any other and thus can be inherited and used as the new owner sees fit. On this view, the likeness of a celebrity would be analogous to their works (such as films or music) and thus its financial exploitation would be no more problematic than the sale of movies featuring actors who are dead. This view can be countered by arguing that there is a morally relevant difference between putting a hologram of a dead celebrity on tour and making money off sales of their music or videos of past concerts. Similar arguments can be made about using the likeness of a dead celebrity in new media, such as in a commercial or movie.

As with any analogy, one way to respond is to find a relevant difference that weakens (or breaks) the analogy. One relevant difference that would seem to weaken the analogy is that the celebrity (presumably) consented to participate in their past works and did not do so regarding the hologram. If the celebrity did not consent to the past works or did consent to being “made into” a hologram, then things would clearly be different. Assuming the celebrity did not agree to the hologram, then their likeness is being “forced” to create new performances without the agreement of the person, which would seem to raise some moral concerns.

Another, more interesting, relevant difference is that the holographic likeness can be seen as a rather simple sort of virtual person. While it obviously lacks any of the qualities required to be a person, this can (and will) be used as the foundation for a moral argument against the creation and exploitation of holograms. Before presenting that argument, I will consider arguments that focus on the actual person that was (or perhaps is) the celebrity.

One approach is to argue that a celebrity still has rights after death and their likeness cannot be used in this manner without their permission. Since they are dead, their permission cannot be given and hence such holograms are morally wrong because they would exploit the likeness of the celebrity without their consent.

But, if the celebrity does not exist after death, then they would seem to have no moral status (since nothing cannot have a moral status) and hence cannot be wronged. Since they no longer exist to have rights, the owner of the likeness is free to exploit it—even with a hologram.
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The obvious problem here is that while people profess belief in various forms of afterlife, there is no definite proof for or against it. As such basing the rights of the dead on their continued existence would require metaphysical speculation of the most dubious sort. On the other side of the coin, denying the dead rights based on the metaphysical assumption they do not exist would also be problematic for it would also require a claim of confidence in a matter of uncertainty. As such, it would be preferable to avoid basing the ethics of the matter on dubious metaphysics.

One approach that does not require that the dead have any moral status of their own is to argue that people should show respect to the person that was by not exploiting their likeness. Making a hologram of a dead person and sending it out to perform without their consent is, as noted in the first essay, a bit like using Animate Dead to raise up a zombie from the remains of a dead person. This is obviously not a good thing to do and, by analogy, animating a zombie of light would seem to also be morally dubious at best. For those who like their analogies free of D&D, one could draw an analogy to desecrating a corpse or gravesite—that even though a dead person can no longer be harmed by harming their corpse or grave, it is still something that should not be done.

A final approach is to build on the idea that while the hologram is clearly not a person, it can be seen as a simplistic virtual person and perhaps this is enough to make this action wrong. I will address this argument in the final essay of the series.

 

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Dead Celebrity Hologram Ethics I: Ownership

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Those who play D&D are familiar with the spell Animate Dead. It allows the caster to re-animate the corpse (or bones) of a dead creature and make it serve their will as an undead slave. This sort of necromancy is considered evil and is avoided by good creatures.

While the entertainment industry has yet to recruit true necromancers, they have worked out a form of holographic Animate Dead—the celebrity hologram. With this light necromancy does not raise up the corpse of a dead celebrity, it re-creates their body and makes it dance, sing, and speak at the will of its masters. Tupac Shakur is probably the best known victim of this dark art of light (though it was not exactly a hologram) and he might soon be joined by Amy Winehouse. As might be imagined, these holograms can create strong emotional responses with some people seeing them as desecrating the memory of the dead. There are also spiderwebs of legality entangling the creation and use of such holograms. Fortunately, I can leave the legal wrangling to those who are paid for that task. I will focus on the ethics of the matter.

One relevant factor in assessing the ethics of this matter is how the holograms are used and what they are made to do. Consider, for example, the holographic Amy Winehouse. If the hologram is used to only re-create a concert she recorded, then this would seem to morally on par with showing a video of the original concert. While the hologram would be a change, it would seem to be analogous to remastering the original video in HD or creating a VR version of the concert from original digital recordings.  That is, it is merely a modification of the medium. As such, using a hologram in this manner would seem to be morally unproblematic. If the use of the hologram goes beyond merely recreating past performances, then the morality can become more complicated.

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One matter of concern is the ethics of making the hologram perform new shows, say new things and perform in new ways. That is, the hologram is not merely re-enacting what the original did in a way analogous to a recording but being used to create new performances using the image of a dead person. This is of special concern if the hologram is made to perform with other performers (living or dead), to perform at specific venues (such as a white nationalist event), or to endorse or condemn products, ideas or people.

If, prior to death, the celebrity worked out a contract specifying how their hologram would be used, then this would lay to rest the general moral concern about this matter. After all, the use would be with the permission of the person and would be no more problematic than if they did those actions while alive. If holograms become a thing, presumably such contracts will become common.

If, as is most likely, the celebrity did not specify how their hologram should be used, then there would potentially be moral problems. To illustrate, a celebrity might have been against this use of holograms (as Prince was), a celebrity might have disliked the other performers that their image is now forced to sing and dance with, or a celebrity might have loathed a product, idea or people that their light corpse is being forced to endorse. One approach to this matter is to use the guideline of legal ownership of the rights to the celebrity’s works and likeness.

When a celebrity dies, the legal rights to their works and likeness goes to whoever is legally specified to receive them. This person or business then has the right to exploit the works and likeness for their gain. For example, Disney can keep making money off the Star Wars films featuring Carrie Fisher—though she died in 2016. On this view, the likeness of a celebrity is a commodity that can be owned (and thus bought and sold). While the celebrity can disagree with the usage of their likeness while alive, after death their likeness is controlled by the owner who can use it as they wish within the limits of property rights. This assumes that the celebrity did not set usage restrictions while alive. This usage is analogous to the use of any property whose ownership is inherited and it can be thus contended that there should be no special moral exception that forbids monetizing a dead celebrity’s likeness by the owner of that likeness. That said, the next essay in the series will explore reasons as to why the likeness of a celebrity is different in morally relevant ways from other commodities.

 

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Dementia & the Death Penalty

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In 1985 Officer Julius Shulte responded to a missing child report placed by the then girlfriend of Vernon Madison. Madison snuck up on the officer and murdered him by shooting him in the back of the head. Madison was found guilty and sentenced to death.

As the wheels of justice slowly turned, Madison aged and developed dementia. He was scheduled to be executed in January, 2018 but the execution was delayed and the Supreme Court has agreed to hear his case. The defense’s argument is that Madison’s dementia prevents him from remembering the crime and his execution would violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The prosecution seems to agree that Madison cannot recall the crime because of his dementia but argue that he should still be executed because he can understand that he will be put to death for a murder he was convicted of committing. This case will, of course, be settled in court but it does raise some classic problems in philosophy.

While metaphysics might seem far removed from the realm of crime and punishment, as John Locke noted, “In this personal identity is founded all the right and justice of reward and punishment…” The reason for this is obvious: it is only just to punish (or reward) the person who committed the misdeed (or laudable deed). Locke is talking about metaphysical personal identity: what it is to be a person and what it is to be the same person across time. As such, he is using the term technically and not in the casual sense in which terms like “person” and “man/woman” are used interchangeably.

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In the normal course of events the practical goal is to find the right person and no worries about the metaphysics of personal identity come into play. In odd circumstances, the question can arise as to whether what seems to be the same person really is the same person. For example, one might wonder whether a person with severe dementia is the same person as the person who committed a crime long ago.  Appropriately enough, John Locke addressed this problem in considerable detail.

In discussing personal identity, Locke notes that being the same man (or woman) is to the same as being the same person. For him, being the same man is a matter of biological identity: it is the same life of the body through which flows a river of matter over the course of the years. Being the same person for him is having the same consciousness. Roughly put, Locke seems to take consciousness to be awareness and memory. In any case, he hinges identity on memory such that if memory is irretrievably lost, then the identity is broken. For example, if I lose the memory of running a 5K back in 1985, then I would not be the same person as the person who ran that 5K.

Locke does consider cases in which someone might try the memory defense in court and addresses this challenge with practical epistemology. If the court can establish that the same man (biological identity) but the defendant cannot establish that they have permanently lost the memory of the misdeed, then the matter will be proved against them and they should be found guilty. Locke does remark that in the afterlife, God will know the fact of the matter and punish (or reward) appropriately. However, if it can be established that the person does not remember what the man (or woman) did, then they would not be the same person as that man (or woman). As such, punishing a different person for what the same man did would be unjust.

While there is the practical matter of knowing whether a person has forgotten, it does seem that this has been established in the Madison case. While people can obviously lie about their memory, dementia is impossible to fake, since there are objective medical tests that can assess the brain. As such, concerns about deception can be set aside and the question remains as to whether the person who committed the crime is still present to be executed. On Locke’s theory he would not—the memories that would forge the chain of identity have been devoured by the demon of dementia.

There are, of course, many other theories of personal identity to choose from. For example, one could go with the old classic that the same soul makes the same person. One must simply find a way to identify souls to make this work. There are, of course, other options to pull from the long history of philosophy. It is also worth considering various justifications for punishment in this context.

Punishment is typically justified in terms of rehabilitation, retribution, and deterrence. While rehabilitation might be possible in the afterlife, execution cannot rehabilitate a person for the obvious reason that it kills them. While the deterrence value of execution has obviously failed to deter the person to be executed, it could be argued that it will deter others—which is a matter of considerable debate. It could be argued that executing a person with dementia will have deterrence value. In fact, it could be contended that showing that the state is willing to kill even those with dementia would make the state even scarier and thus boost the deterrence value. For the deterrence justification, the metaphysical identity of the person does not seem to matter—what matters is that the punishment would deter others, which is essentially a utilitarian argument.

The retribution justification takes us back to personal identity: retribution is only just if it is retribution against the person who committed the crime. It could be argued that retribution just requires retribution against the same man because matters of metaphysics are too fuzzy for such matters as murder. Also, as noted above, one could use the retribution justification by advancing another theory of personal identity. For example, David Hume argues that a person is a bundle of perceptions united by a causal chain (rather like how a nation has its identity). On his view, memory discovers identity but (unlike for Locke) it is not the basis of identity. Hume explicitly makes the point that a person can forget and still be the same person; so Madison could still be the same person who committed the crime on Hume’s account. However, Hume closes his discussion on personal identity in frustration: he notes that the connections can become so tenuous and frayed that one cannot really say if it is the same person or not. This would seem to apply in cases of dementia and hence Madison might not be the same person, even on Hume’s view.

This view could be countered by arguing that it is the same person regardless of the deterioration of the mental states. One approach, as noted above, is to go with the soul as the basis of personal identity or make an intuition argument by asking “who else could it be but him?” One could, of course, also take the pragmatic approach and set aside worries of identity and just embrace whatever the court says.

 

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Blood Pressure

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At my recent checkup, my systolic blood pressure was 145 (one measurement taken by manual means). My doctor expressed concern about this and asked me to monitor my blood pressure. A few years back, I also had a bout of higher blood pressure and bought the top-rated automatic blood pressure checker. I had found that by sitting still and breathing deeply, I could lower my systolic blood pressure to 130 (sometimes lower). During the summer, when I am not teaching, it will go even lower. But, my high reading got me interested in high blood pressure—hence this essay.

I had recalled that what counted as high blood pressure had changed over the years. The ideal now is 120 systolic (though there was a push for 115). Looking into the change, it turns out that the pharmaceutical companies that sell blood pressure medication were instrumental in the change. This influence even extends worldwide, with the WHO panel on the matter being strongly connected with the industry. As is standard practice in the industry, there have been concerted efforts to “educate” and influence doctors by the pharmaceutical companies. This connection has not gone unnoticed, leading some to question whether the new guidelines are legitimate or merely a money maker for the pharmaceutical companies. While I will certainly not begin by assuming a conspiracy, this matter is well worth considering.

The scientific evidence seems clear that high blood pressure is unhealthy, but that leaves open the question of what counts as high blood pressure. There are also practical concerns about properly measuring blood pressure: instruments are often not very accurate, blood pressure varies greatly depending on circumstances and so on. Since I am not medical expert, I will focus on my area of expertise (critical reasoning) and not directly address the specific medical issues.

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One obvious concern with the research that has been influenced by the pharmaceutical companies is whether it is accurate. An obvious point of concern is that the influence of these companies on the research means that bias is a factor. That this is a legitimate worry is nicely illustrated by the infamous case of how the sugar industry paid scientists to blame fat, thus distorting health information. The pharmaceutical companies’ role in the opioid crisis shows clearly that these companies have no moral qualms about inflicting great harm in order to make profits. As such, it is reasonable to be suspicious about the guidelines for blood pressure.

One interesting way to motivate suspicion in this matter across the political spectrum is to make use of climate change. Climate change deniers often assert that there is a conspiracy among climate scientists to deceive the public about climate change. Or, at the very least, the scientists are in error because they are being misled by political forces. Climate change believers claim that the fossil fuel industry has been distorting the matter to their own advantage. While the two sides differ about who is distorting information, they both agree that information distortion is a standard practice. As such, it would certainly make sense to them that there could be information distortion about blood pressure.

That said, the fact that research is biased and information distortion occurs does not entail that the results of the research must be wrong. The blood pressure guidelines could be medically sound; it just so happens that they were influenced by the companies and that the new guides provide considerable profit. The problem is, of course, that there is a dearth of unbiased research that would confirm or discredit the biased research. As such, confidence in the guidelines should be relatively low. That said, the evidence seems quite solid that one should strive to keep one’s blood pressure low—and the non-drug ways to do this (exercise, rest, good diet, stress management) are good even for people who don’t have unhealthy high blood pressure. So, I certainly agree that people should use those methods to be healthy and that high blood pressure is probably bad. However, medication is another matter.

When it comes to medication, the first question (which has been addressed) is whether there is an actual problem. As noted above, high blood pressure does seem to be bad—but it is not entirely clear what is the correct level at which blood pressure is a real health threat. If there is a problem, then the second question needs to be addressed: does the medication work? On the face of it, the blood pressure medications that have been approved by the FDA do seem to work—in that they lower blood pressure. This leads to the third question: if they work, do the benefits outweigh the side effects?

The oldest (and least profitable) blood pressure medication, diuretics, do seem to work with minimal side effects. The new (and more profitable) ones seem to have problematic side effects including increased risk of stroke, increased risk of heart attack, and increased rates of suicide and depression.  As such, the rational approach to these medications (as always) would be to weigh the possible harms against the possible benefits. While there are certainly some objective factors in play here, there are also subjective factors—such as how people feel about risk and side effects. Part of the problem in weighing the harms and benefits takes the discussion back to the question of what constitutes unhealthy high blood pressure. Since the research on this is biased, judging whether the drugs the pharmaceutical companies are selling are worth the side effects (and monetary cost) is problematic. Without trustworthy information on the danger, one cannot make a good judgment about accepting risks to offset that alleged danger.

While my focus is on blood pressure, the same sort of problem arises generally when it comes to medicines and surgeries: without independent, trustworthy research we cannot make good health decisions. Unfortunately, there is a general problem with independent research. There has been a systematic defunding of public institutions that engage in research and this creates two major impacts.

The first is that important medical research is not conducted due to lack of funds. The second is that industry often funds the research that is conducted, which biases it. One plausible, but not perfect, solution is to increase the funding of public institutions so that they can increase independent and objective research into health issues. This, of course, will tend to be opposed by industry. While this would reduce their research expenses, it would give them far less control over the research, which could prove slightly problematic for their profits.

A more radical approach would be to impose additional regulations on the pharmaceutical industry such as requiring establishing the validity of medical claims via independent, publicly funded research before drugs could be marketed to address the alleged problems. The challenge would be to balance the need for objective, trustworthy research against medical innovation and (of course) the legitimate business interests of the for-profit industry.

While some might balk at such regulations and make appeals to the free market, it must be pointed out that the key to the pharmaceutical business is the patent system—which is government regulation that prevents competition. These patents are backed up by the public institutions of law enforcement and the courts. As such, piteous cries about the free market should not be heeded, unless the squeeze is truly unfair and too tight. On a personal note, it does worry me that I am unsure whether my blood pressure is a problem, or whether the pharmaceutical companies are lying so they can extort money through a campaign of deceit. In a civilized nation that cares for its citizens, that should not be a real worry. And yet it is.

 

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The Ethics of Opposition Research IV: Content

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Now that the ethics of methods and sources have been addressed, I now turn to considering the ethics of the content of opposition research. The objective is to provide some general guidance about what sort of content is morally acceptable to research and use against political opponents.

Since the objective of opposition research is to find damaging or discrediting information about the target, the desired content will always be negative (or perceived as negative). While there is the view that if one has nothing nice to say about someone else, then one should say nothing, the negative nature of the content does not automatically make such research unethical. To support this, consider the obvious analogy to reporters: the fact that they are on the lookout for negative information does not make them unethical. Finding negative things and reporting on them are legitimate parts of their jobs. Likewise for opposition researchers. As such, concerns about the ethics of the content must involve considerations other than the mere negative nature of the desired content.

One obvious guide for ethical content is that the information must be true. This does raise an obvious epistemic problem: how can the researchers know that the information is true? Laying aside the classic epistemic problems of skepticism, this is a practical question about evidence, reasoning and credibility—which go way beyond the scope of this essay. However, a general ethical guide can be provided. At a minimum, the claim should only be accepted and used if it is more likely to be true than false. Both ethics and critical thinking also require that the evidence for a claim be proportional to the strength of the claim. As such, very strong claims require equally strong support. Ethics also requires considering the harm that could be done by using the claim and the greater the harm that could be done to a person, the greater the evidence needs to be. This guide is at odds with the goal of the research, since the more damaging the claim, the better. But, ethics requires balancing the political value of the weaponized information against the harm that could be done to person who might be innocent of the alleged wrongdoing. This is not to say that such damaging information should not be used, but that due caution should be used.

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This approach is analogous to guides to the use of physical force. Justifying the use of lethal force against a person requires having very strong reasons to believe that person is a threat and that the force must be used to stop them. To the degree that there are doubts about the threat, the justification for the use of force is reduced. Likewise, damaging information should be used with due caution to try to ensure that an innocent person is not unjustly harmed. For example, if someone is accused of running a gang-rape ring in high school and college, then there would need to be strong evidence supporting such a damaging claim.

There is, of course, considerable debate about when the use of force is justified, and people often take into account the perception of the person using the force (such as how scared or threatened they claimed to be). The same would apply to the use of damaging information and there will be considerable disagreement (generally along ideological lines) about whether the use of damaging information is justified or not. And there will be debates about how the people assessing the claim see the claim’s plausibility. Despite these issues, the general guide remains: the evidence needs to be adequate to justify the belief the claim is true. The use of information that does not meet even the minimal standard (more likely to be true than not) would clearly be unethical. In other cases, there can be considerable warranted debate about whether a claim is adequately supported or not. In addition to the concern about the truth of the information, there is also the concern about the relevance of the information.

The general principle of relevance is obvious enough: the content must be relevant to the issue at hand. In the abstract, relevance is easy enough to define: information is relevant if it bears on the person’s suitability for the position/office/etc.  For example, if the opposition research is against someone running for senate, then the content must be relevant to the person’s ability to do the job of a senator properly and effectively. What should be considered relevant will vary from situation to situation.

One problem is that when it comes to particulars people can have very different notions of what is relevant. For example, some might consider the high school and college behavior of a candidate for the Supreme Court to be relevant information while others might disagree. As another example, some might consider a candidate’s sexual activity relevant while others might see consensual sex of any kind between adults to not be of concern.

One way to solve this problem is to use this principle: whatever would influence voters (if true) is acceptable to use. While this seems to be entailed by the citizen’s right to know, it provides a very broad principle. In fact, it might be so broad as to be useless as a guide. After all, voters can be influenced by almost any fact about a person even when it would seem to have no relevance to the office/position/etc. in question.

That said, there is also the problem that many offices and positions have little in the way of requirements. For example, the office of President has only the age and nationality requirements. Because of this, using the requirements of the office/position/etc. to set the limits of information would be far too narrow. What is needed is a guide that is not too narrow and not too broad.

One option would be to go with the established norms for the office/position/etc. For example, while the requirements to be President are minimal, there (used to be) expectations about what the person should be like to be fit for office.

The problem with using the norms is that this seems to embrace relativism and allows for a potentially unchecked race to the bottom as norms are broken and replaced. As such, there should be some restrictions on what is ethical content that goes beyond the norms of the day. Developing a full moral guide goes beyond the scope of this essay, but a general guide can be offered. The guiding principle is that the content should be relevant to the office/position/etc. while also considering what would reasonably be relevant to the voters.

 

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The Ethics of Opposition Research III: Sources

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As with any research, opposition research relies on sources (which might be fictional). If the goal is to gather true and relevant information, then the credibility of sources is of great concern. There are, of course, the usual logical standards for assessing the credibility of sources. This assumes that the goal is to find information that is true (and relevant). In such cases, the argument from authority provides a good guide. After all, to accept a claim from a source as true because of the source is to engage in the argument from authority.  This argument has the following form:

 

Premise 1: A makes claim C about Subject S.

Premise 2: A is an authority on subject S.

Conclusion: C is true.

 

The argument can also be recast as an argument from credibility, if one prefers that to authority.

 

Premise 1: A makes claim C about Subject S.

Premise 2: A is a credible source on subject S.

Conclusion: C is true.

 

Assessing this reasoning involves assessing the credibility of source of the claim. One of the main factors of concern is the degree that the source is biased: the more biased, the less credible. Other factors include that the source has the expertise/knowledge to make claims on the subject, whether the source is identified or not (anonymous sources cannot be properly assessed for credibility), and whether credible sources also agree that the claim is true. It must be noted that a lack of credibility does not prove that a claim is false. Rather, a lack of credibility means that there is no reason to accept the claim on the basis of that source. Because people tend to weigh bias very heavily, it is especially important to note that biased sources can still make true claims—proving bias lowers credibility but does not disprove the claim. For example, the fact that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange hates Hillary Clinton does not prove that his claims about her are false. This bias does, however, reduce his credibility since he has a reason to say untrue negative things about her. As such, using Assange as a source for opposition research against Hillary would require considering this biasing factor. Credibility, obviously, is quite relevant to the assessing the ethics of selecting sources.

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If the goal of opposition research us to get true and relevant information, then only credible sources should be used. While there is the question of how credible a source should be, a minimal standard should be that the source is more likely to be truthful than lying. And, to follow the advice of John Locke, the evidence must be proportional to the strength of the claim. So, for example, the claim that a candidate’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination would require considerable support. If the goal is simply to win by any means necessary, then the moral concerns are irrelevant. What would matter would be pragmatic concerns about the effectiveness of the information acquired from the source. If the credibility of the source matters to the public (which, as Trump has shown, is often not the case), then credible sources should be used. If the target audience does not care about credulity, then it would not matter—and opposition research could become fiction writing. One could also advance the usual sort of utilitarian argument that the end of defeating a bad opponent would justify the means—though this would also require considering the harm caused by setting aside concerns about credibility.

In addition to the credibility concerns about sources, there are also moral worries about sources—especially about which sources are ethical to use. As was the case with methods, the use of publicly accessible sources raises no special moral problems. After all, such information is already available, and the opposition research merely collects it so it can be used against the opposition. As with the ethics of methods, the law can provide a useful starting point for ethical considerations about sources. It can also be argued that the use of illegal sources would be unfair to the opposition—if they are staying within the law.  Naturally, it should be kept in mind that the law is distinct from morality, so that the legal is not always ethical and the illegal is not always unethical.

One example that helped bring opposition research into the public eye is the Russian efforts to get information to the Trump campaign in 2016. While Trump claims that they had nothing of value, it is illegal for a candidate to receive anything of value from a foreign source.  In addition to the illegality of accepting foreign assistance in a political campaign, there is also the moral argument that outsiders should not be allowed to interfere in our elections—even if they have true and relevant information. After all, the election is the business of the citizens and foreign involvement subverts democracy. As another example, someone who violates a non-disclosure agreement to provide information would also be an illegal source. From a moral standpoint, the person who signed the NDA would be breaking their agreement and thus acting unethically. Naturally, if the NDA was imposed unjustly or otherwise morally problematic, then breaking it could be morally acceptable. However, as a general rule, using sources that have made an agreement not provide information would seem to be wrong. But, there is the obvious problem that NDAs are sometimes used to hide rather bad things that would be quite relevant to political decision making.

As was the case with methods, one could advance the argument that winning is all that matters or a utilitarian argument could be used to justify using morally dubious sources. For example, a utilitarian argument could be made for getting a source to break an NDA that forbids them from talking about the settlement they got from being sexually harassed by a Democratic senator. After all, this information would be relevant to deciding whether to vote for the senator.

More broadly, it could be argued that the source should not matter—if the information is true and relevant. After all, the right of citizens to know true and relevant information could be taken to override ethical concerns about sources. This is something that likely requires assessment on a case-by-case basis. To illustrate, consider the question of whether political campaigns should accept true and relevant information from foreign powers. On the one hand, there is the argument that the information could help prevent harm by reducing the chance that a bad person would be elected or appointed. However, accepting such aid from foreign powers is to invite the subversion of the election process and would presumably create more harm in the long run than whatever harm specific information might prevent in particular cases. As such, foreign sources of this type would be unethical to use. In the next and final essay, I will consider the ethics of the content of opposition research, which focuses on the matter of relevance.

 

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