Month: December 2024

 

While Florida Republicans falsely proclaim that Florida is a free state, the legislature and governor are hard at work to limit freedoms they dislike. One costly example of this is a potential $15.6 million contract with Maryland based Trinity Education Group to create a centralized system for reviewing and objecting to instructional materials and books in Florida’s public schools. In higher education, where I work, the state is engaged in an ongoing review of course syllabi and books to ensure conformity with the official ideology and indoctrination goals set by the legislature.

As of this writing, Florida has redistributed $3 million in taxpayer money to Trinity. Given that Florida’s teacher pay is last in the United States, a strong case could be made that the money should have gone to Florida teachers rather than to enrich a Maryland CEO. Florida schools, like most American schools, are also chronically underfunded and if the goal is to improve education, then it would make more sense to spend the money addressing this issue. Given these facts, it might be wondered what Florida is supposed to get in return for these millions and why this is so critical that it must be funded at the expense of educating children.

As might be guessed, this spending is part of Florida’s war on critical race theory, DEI, and woke. There are two reasons being presented as to why this system is necessary. The first is the claim by Sydney Booker that, “The Department firmly believes that parents have the fundamental right to know what materials their child is accessing at school.”  This view is eminently reasonable, and it is difficult to imagine that anyone would object to such a right. But the obvious question is why the state would need to enrich a Maryland CEO for parents to know what school materials their kid is accessing. While it would take a tiny bit of effort, a parent could ask their kid what they are accessing, they can look at the syllabi, they can talk to teachers, and they could take a few minutes to look through the catalog of the school library. That is, there are free and easy ways for a parent to quickly find out what material their kid is accessing. So why is this system needed? This takes us to the second reason.

According to the state, this multimillion-dollar system will ensure the public can access the same information, since “districts are currently making the materials accessible in various formats and platforms.” While this is superficially appealing, a moment’s reflection destroys this justification. Unless a parent has numerous children spread over several school districts, they will only need information from one school district. As such, they only need to be concerned with the one format and one platform used by that district. This reasoning is like justifying spending millions on a statewide database listing what classes each student is taking so that parents can check to see what classes their kids are taking. This would be absurd, as is the wasteful plan for the central system of course materials. This leads to the question of the system’s actual purpose.

As noted above, its first purpose is to fulfil a central goal of Republican education strategy: redistribute public education funds into CEO compensation and private profit.  The second goal, which is obvious from the “justification” given for a centralized system, is to provide a centralized system to enable a few actors to challenge books across the state. Without a centralized system, a person interested in censoring school material would need to put in more effort to determine what every school might be offering as opposed to a parent’s legitimate concern with what their kid’s school is offering. This system is clearly designed to facilitate people like Friedman (a man responsible over 30% of Florida’s book challenges) who have the goal of banningbooks that do match their value system. The state is thus sending up to $15.6 million to a Maryland corporation to make it easier for a few people in Florida to ban books and course material. Whatever one’s political ideology, this should seem like a terrible waste of taxpayer money.

If you are wondering how this got approved, the answer seems to be duplicity. The department told an administrative law judge that the rules implementing the school library statute wouldn’t have regulatory costs. The state then entered the contract with Trinity, which would seem to prove that there were regulatory costs. In response to questions about this, the department replied with a clever bit of sophism: “A statute that results in costs to either the district or to the state is not synonymous with regulatory costs of a rule.” This is like someone getting you to go to a restaurant by saying “it’s free to go with me” and then being hit with a huge bill that is defended by the person saying, “it being free to go with me is not synonymous with getting a free lunch.” You would be right in thinking they had misled you.

In closing, this system sems to serve three awful purposes. The first is to deplete education funding. The second is to redistribute public funds to a Maryland CEO. It is not even enriching one of our own Florida CEOs.  The third is to create a system to make censorship easier for a very few people. But all this lines up with the Republican approach to education and it is working as intended.

The rap musician Sean “Diddy” Combs has been accused of kidnapping, drugging and coercing women into sexual activities. This potentially puts him in the company of such men as Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein. These cases, and others like them, raise the question of the aesthetic impact of these misdeeds on their works. This is an old topic and philosophers, since at least Plato, have discussed the effect of the ethics of the artist one the aesthetics of their works. However, it is still worth discussing and is obviously relevant today. I will begin by getting some easy matters out of the way.

One concern that is more a matter of psychology than philosophy is the impact of the artist’s behavior on the audience. The experience of the audience can be affected by their beliefs about the ethics of the artist. It is possible that an audience member will find their aesthetic experience diminished or even destroyed by these beliefs. For example, someone listening to Combs’ music might think of the allegations and be unable to enjoy the work. It is also possible that some will be unaffected by this. For example, someone who enjoys his music might find this enjoyment undiminished by the allegations against Combs.

While considerations of how people might react are relevant to the aesthetic issues, they do not settle these issues. For example, how people might react to an artist’s misdeeds does not settle whether the ethics of an artist is relevant to the aesthetic merit of their work. To use an analogy, how fans feel about a professional athlete’s moral misdeeds does not settle the issue about whether they are a skilled athlete.

Another area of concern is the ethics of supporting an artist who has engaged in misdeeds. This is part of the broader issue of whether one should support anyone who has engaged in moral misdeeds. As such, it is a moral issue rather than a specifically aesthetic issue.

While a customer has every right to patronize whoever they wish to give their money, what is under consideration is whether one should support an artist one thinks is a bad person. On the one hand, a moral case can be made that by supporting such an artist by buying their work, purchasing tickets to their movies or subscribing to a service that streams their shows one is supporting their misdeeds. Naturally, as the degree of financial support diminishes, so does the support of their misdeeds. To illustrate, if I think a painter is evil, but pay them $10,000 for a painting then I am providing more support than a situation in which I think Combs is evil yet keep paying for a music streaming service that he profits from.

It is also worth considering that unless the artist is operating alone the decision not to support their art impacts other people. So, for example, if someone decides to not buy any music by Combs because of what he is accused of doing, this might cost Combs some minute fraction of his income, but it also punishes everyone else who receives money from these sales. While people have every right to make purchasing decisions on ethical grounds, it is also important to consider that the target of their ire might not be the only one impacted.

 It can be argued that supporting an artist one regards as morally bad is not supporting their misdeeds. One is paying for the art and not paying them to commit misdeeds. The purchasing of the art is not an endorsement of the misdeeds but a financial transaction and what matters are the aspects that are relevant to the transaction. To use an analogy, one does not need to inquire whether a mechanic has engaged in misdeeds that have nothing to do with their job before deciding to use their services or not. One also does not feel obligated to investigate what the mechanic might use the money for. What matters is the quality and cost of the work. Naturally, a person might prefer a nice person as a mechanic or be upset if the mechanic used the money to pay prostitutes or buy illegal drugs, but that is a matter of preference.

It can be argued that patronizing a bad person who is an artist does support their misdeeds. After all, it is the wealth and power of people like Combs, Spacey and Weinstein that enabled them to get away with their alleged misdeeds for so long. On this view, once a person knows about the misdeeds, they would be morally accountable for continuing to provide support for the artist. This is analogous to patronizing any business that is accused of doing terrible things. On the one hand, one can claim to be just buying their product or service without endorsing their misdeeds. On the other hand, without customers they would be far less able to do their misdeeds.

 

By J R – https://www.flickr.com/photos/jmrosenfeld/3639249316, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37298033

Some of the surplus of military equipment leftover from America’s foreign adventures were given to American police forces. While this might have seemed to be a good idea at the time, it did lead to infamous images of war ready police squaring off against unarmed civilians. This is the sort of image one would expect in a dictatorship but are not supposed to see in a democracy.

This images helped start a debate about the appropriateness of police equipment, methods and operations. The Obama regime responded by putting some restrictions on the military hardware that could be transferred to the police, although many of the restrictions were on gear that the police had, in general, never requested. In his first term, Trump decided to lift the Obama ban and  then attorney general Jeff Sessions touted this as a rational response to crime and social ills. As Sessions sees it, “(W)e are fighting a multi-front battle: an increase in violent crime, a rise in vicious gangs, an opioid epidemic, threats from terrorism, combined with a culture in which family and discipline seem to be eroding further and a disturbing disrespect for the rule of law.” Perhaps Sessions believes that arming the police with tanks and grenade launchers will help improve family stability and shore up discipline. With Trump’s promise to forcibly deport millions of migrants, we are likely to see a militarized police forcer operating alongside the actual military.

While it might be tempting to dismiss Trump and Session having engaged in a mix of macho swagger and the view that bigger guns solve social ills, there is a real issue about what is appropriate equipment for the police.

The key factor in determining the appropriate armaments for police is the role that the police are supposed to play in society. In a democratic state aimed at the good of the people (the classic Lockean state) the role of the police is to protect and serve the people. On this view, the police do need armaments suitable to combat domestic threats to life, liberty and property. In general, these threats would usually involve engaging untrained and unarmored civilian opponents equipped with light arms (such as pistols and shotguns). As such, the appropriate weapons for the police would also be light arms and body armor.

Naturally enough, the possibility of unusual circumstances must be kept in mind. Since the United States is awash in guns, the police do face opponents well-armed opponents. The police might have to go up against experienced (or fanatical) opponents, perhaps within a fortified defensive position. They are also sometimes called upon to go up against rioters.  In such cases, the police would justly require riot gear and military grade equipment. However, these should be restricted to specially trained special units, such as SWAT.

It might be objected that the police should be equipped with this sort of equipment, just in case they need it. I certainly see the appeal to this. A rational combat mindset is to be ready for anything and to meet resistance with overwhelming force. But that points to the problem: to the degree the police adopt a combat mindset, they are moving away from being police and towards being soldiers. Given the distinction between the missions, having police operating like soldiers with military equipment is a danger to civil society. Defeating an enemy in war is different from protecting and serving.

There is also the problem that military equipment is more dangerous than standard police weapons. While a pistol can kill, automatic weapons can do much more damage. The police, unlike soldiers, are presumed to be engaging fellow citizens and the objective is supposed to be to use as little force as possible. They are supposed to be policing rather than subjugating.

But the view that the police should serve and protect the good of the people is not the only possible view. As can be seen around the world, some states regard the police as tools of repression and control. These police operate as the military, only with their fellow citizens as enemies. If the police are regarded as tools of the ruling class and exist to maintain their law and order, then a militarized police force makes sense. Militaries serve as an army against the people of other countries, serving the will of their rulers. Same basic role, but different targets.

It could be argued that while this is something practiced by repressive states, it is also suitable for a democratic state. Jeff Sessions characterizes policing as a battle, and one could argue the is right. As Trump likes to say, one might think there are enemies within America that must be defeated in the war on crime. On this view, the police are to engage these enemies in a way analogous to the military engaging a foreign foe and thus it makes sense that they would need military grade equipment. They are a military force serving military objectives. This lines up with the criticism that the police are often an occupying army in poor neighborhoods, but this is regarded as a feature rather than a flaw as that is the function of the police.

While I do think the militarization of the police impacts their behavior (I would be tempted to use a tank if I had one), my main concern is not with what weapons the police have access to, but the attitude and moral philosophy behind how they are armed. That is, my concern is not so much that the police have the weapons of an army, but that they are regarded more as an army to be used against citizens than as protectors of life, liberty and property. As this is being written, the police have been deployed against striking Amazon workers and critics point to this as an example of how the police force serves as domestic army for the rich.

https://dukeroboticsys.com/

Taking the obvious step in done technology, Duke Robotics developed a small armed drone called the Tikad. Israel also developed a sniper drone that it is using in Gaza. These drones differ from earlier armed drones, like the Predator, in that they are small and relatively cheap. As with many other areas of technology, the main innovations are in ease of use and lower cost. This makes the small armed drones more accessible than previous drones, which is both good and bad.

On the positive side, the military and police can deploy more drones and reduce human casualties (at least for the drone users). For example, the police could send a drone in to observe and possibly engage during a hostage situation and not put officers in danger.

On the negative side, the lower cost and ease of use means that armed drones are easier to deploy by terrorists, criminals and oppressive states. The typical terrorist group cannot afford a drone like the Predator and might have difficulty in finding people who can operate and maintain such a complicated aircraft. But smaller armed drones can be operated and serviced by a broader range of people. This is not to say that Duke Robotics should be criticized for doing the obvious as people have been thinking about arming drones since drones were invented.

Inexpensive gun drones do raise the usual concerns associated with remotely operated weapons. The first is the concern that operators of drones can be more aggressive than forces that are physically present and at risk of the consequences of engaging in violence. However, it can also be argued that an operator is less likely to be aggressive because they are not in danger and the literal and metaphorical distance will allow them to respond with more deliberation. For example, a police officer operating a drone might elect to wait longer to confirm that a suspect is pulling a gun than they would if they were present. Then again, they might not as this would be a training and reaction issue with a very practical concern about training officers to delay longer when operating a drone and not delaying too long in person.

A second concern is accountability. A drone allows the operator anonymity and assigning responsibility can be difficult. In the case of the military and police, this can be addressed by having a system of accountability. After all, military and police operators would usually be known to the relevant authorities. That said, drones can be used in ways that are difficult to trace to the operator and this would be true in the case of terrorists. The use of drones would allow terrorists to attack from safety and in an anonymous manner, which are matters of concern.

However, it must be noted that while the first use of a gun armed drone in a terrorist attack would be something new, it would not be significantly different from the use of a planted bomb or other distance weapons. This is because such bombs allow terrorists to kill from a safe distance and make it harder to identify the terrorist. But, just as with bombs, the authorities would be able to investigate the attack and stand some chance of tracing a drone back to the terrorist. Drones are in some ways less worrisome than bombs as a drone can be seen and is limited in how many targets it can engage. In contrast, a bomb can be hidden and can kill many in an instant, without a chance of escape or defense.  A gun drone is also analogous in some ways to a sniper rifle in that it allows engagement at long ranges. However, the drone does afford far more range and safety than even the best sniper rifle.

In the United States, it is currently not legal to arm your drone. While the people have the right to keep and bear arms, this does not extend to operating armed drones. The NRA does not seem interested in fighting for the right to arm drones, but that could changes.

In closing, there are legitimate concerns about cheap and simple gun drones. While they will not be as radical a change as some might predict, they will make it easier and cheaper to engage in violence at a distance and in anonymous killing. As such, they will make ideal weapons for terrorists and oppressive governments. However, they do offer the possibility of reduced human casualties, if used responsibly. In any case, their deployment is inevitable, so the meaningful questions are about how they should be used and how to defend against their misuse. The question about whether they should be used is morally interesting, but pragmatically irrelevant since are being used.

Since the US is experiencing a drone panic as this is being written, I’ll close with a few rational points. First, of course people are seeing drones. As comedians have pointed out, you can buy them at Walmart. Drones are everywhere. Second, people are regularly mistaking planes and even stars for drones. Third, as has been pointed out and as should be obvious, if a foreign power were secretly operating drones in the US, then they would turn the lights off. Fourth, no harm seems to have been done by the drones, so it is a panic over nothing. But it is reasonable to be concerned with what drones are being used for as corporations and the state are not always acting for the public good.

 

Imagine a twenty-sided die (a d20 as it is known to gamers) being rolled. In the ideal the die has a 1 in 20 chance of rolling a 20 (or any number). It is natural to think of the die as being a locus of chance, a random number generator whose roll cannot be predicted. While this is an appealing view of dice, there is a question about what random chance amounts to.

One way to look at the matter is that if a d20 is rolled 20 times, then one of those rolls will be a 20. Obviously enough, this is not true. As any gamer will tell you, the number of 20s rolled while rolling 20 times varies. This can be explained by the fact that dice are imperfect and roll some numbers more than others. There are also the influences of the roller, the surface on which the die lands and so on. As such, a d20 is not a perfect random number generator. But imagine there could be a perfect d20 rolled under perfect conditions. What would occur?

One possibility is that each number would come up within the 20 rolls, albeit at random. As such, every 20 rolls would guarantee a 20 (and only one 20), thus accounting for the 1 in 20 chances of rolling a 20. This seems problematic. There is the obvious question of what would ensure that each of the twenty numbers were rolled once (and only once). Then again, that this would occur is only a little weirder than the idea of chance itself.

But a small number of random events (such as rolling a d20 only twenty times) will deviate from what probability dictates. It is also well-established that as the number of rolls increases, the closer the outcomes will match the expected results. This principle is known as the law of large numbers. As such, getting three 20s or no 20s in a series of 20 rolls would not be surprising. But as the number of rolls increases, the closer the results will be to the expected 1 in 20 outcomes for each number. So, the 1 in 20 odds of getting a 20 with a d20 does not seem to mean that 20 rolls will guarantee one and only one 20, it means that with enough rolls about 1 in 20 of all the rolls will be 20s. This does not say much about how chance works beyond noting that chance seems to play out “correctly” over large numbers.

One way to look at this is that if there were an infinite number of d20 rolls, then 5% of the infinite number of rolls would be 20s. One might wonder what 5% of infinity would be; would it not be infinite as well? Since infinity is such a mess, a more manageable approach would be to use the largest finite number (which presumably has its own problems) and note that 5% of that number of d20 rolls would be 20s.

Another approach would be that the 1 in 20 chance means that if all 1 in 20 chance events were formed into sets of 20, sets could be made from all the events that would have one occurrence each of the 1 in 20 events. Using dice as an example, if all the d20 rolls in the universe were known (perhaps by God) and collected into sets of numbers, they could be dived up into sets of twenty with each number in each set. So, while my 20 rolls would not guarantee a 20, there would be one 20 out of every 20 rolls in the universe. There is still the question of how this would work. One possibility is that random events are not random and this ensures the proper distribution of events such as dice rolls.

It could be claimed that chance is a bare fact, that a perfect d20 rolled in perfect conditions would have a 1 in 20 chance of producing a specific number. On this view, the law of large numbers might fail. If chance were real, it would not be impossible for results to be radically different than predicted. That is, there could be an infinite number of rolls of a perfect d20 with no 20 ever being rolled. One could even imagine that since a 1 can be rolled on any roll, someone could roll an infinite number of consecutive 1s. Intuitively this seems impossible. It is natural to think that in an infinity every possibility must occur (and perhaps do so perfectly in accord with the probability). But this would only be a necessity if chance worked a certain way, perhaps that for every 20 rolls in the universe there must be one of each result. Then again, infinity is a magical number, so perhaps this guarantee is part of the magic.

While there are ongoing efforts to revise the Confederate States of America story from one of slavery to one of state’s rights, secession from the Union was because of slavery. At the time of succession, the leaders explicitly said this was their primary motivation. This is not to deny there were other motivations, such as concerns about state’s rights and economic factors. The Confederacy’s moral and economic foundation was slavery. This is a rejection of the principle that all men are created equal, a rejection of the notion of liberty, and an abandonment of the idea that the legitimacy of government rests on the consent of the governed. In short, the Confederacy was an explicit rejection of the professed values of the United States. Other than white supremacy.

While the Confederacy lost and the union was reformed, its values survived and are now manifested by the alt-right and increasingly the right. This is shown by their defense of Confederate monuments, their use of Confederate flags, and their racism. They are aware of the moral foundations of their movement.

While the value system of the Confederacy embraced white supremacy and accepted slavery as a moral good, it did not accept genocide. That is, the Confederacy advocated enslaving blacks rather than exterminating them. Extermination was something the Nazis eventually embraced.

The Nazis took over the German state and plunged the world into war. Like the Confederate states, the Nazis embraced the idea of white supremacy and rejected equality and liberty. The Nazis also made extensive use of slave labor. Unlike the Confederate states, the Nazis engaged in a systematic effort to exterminate those they regarded as inferior. This does mark a moral distinction between the Confederate States of America and Nazi Germany. This is a distinction between degrees of evil.

While the Nazis were once regarded by most Americans as a paradigm of evil, many in the alt-right embrace their values and some do so explicitly and openly, identifying as neo-Nazis. Some claim they do not want to exterminate what they say are other races but want to have racially pure states. For example, some on antisemites on the right support Israel because they see it as a Jewish state; a place where all the Jews should be. In their ideal world, each state would be racially pure. This is why the alt-right is sometimes also known as the white nationalists. The desire to have pure states can be seen as morally better than the desire to exterminate, but this is a distinction in evils rather than one between good and bad.

Based on the above, the modern alt-right (and increasingly the American right) is the inheritor of the Confederate States of America and Nazi Germany. While this might seem a matter of mere historic interest, it has important implications. One is that it provides grounds that the members of the alt-right should be regarded as on par with members or supporters of ISIS or other enemy foreign terrorist groups. This is in contrast with seeing the alt-right as being entirely domestic.

Those who join or support Isis (and other such groups) are seen as different from domestic hate groups. This is because ISIS (and other such groups) are foreign and conflict with the United States. This applies even when the ISIS supporter is an American who lives in America. This perceived difference has numerous consequences, including legal ones. It also has consequences for free speech. While advocating the goals and values of ISIS in the United States would be a threat and could result in criminal charges, the alt-right is protected by the right to free speech. This is illustrated by the fact that the alt-right can get permits to march in the United States, while ISIS supporters and similar groups cannot. One can imagine the response if ISIS or Hamas supporters applied for permit or engaged in a march.

While some hate groups are truly domestic in that they are not associated with foreign organizations at war with the United States, the alt-right cannot make this claim. At least they cannot to the degree they are connected to the Confederate States of America and the Nazis. Both are foreign powers who were at war with the United States. As such, the alt-right should be seen as on par with other groups that affiliate themselves with foreign groups engaged in war with the United States.

An obvious reply is that the Confederacy and the Nazis were defeated and no longer exist. On the one hand, this is true. The Confederacy was destroyed, and the states rejoined the United States. The Nazis were defeated and while Germany still exists, it is not controlled by the Nazis. At least not yet. On the other hand, the Confederacy and the Nazis do persist in the form of groups that preserve their values and ideology here in the United States. To use the obvious analogy, the defeat of ISIS and its territorial losses did not end the group. It will persist as long as it has supporters, and the United States has not switched to a policy of tolerating ISIS members and supporters simply because ISIS no longer has territory.

 The same holds true for those supporting or claiming membership in the Confederacy or the Nazis. They are supporters of foreign powers that are enemies of the United States and are thus on par with ISIS supporters and members in that they are agents of the enemy. This is not to say that the alt-right is morally equivalent to ISIS in terms of its actions. Overall, ISIS is worse. But what matters in this context, is the expression of allegiance to the values and goals of a foreign enemy—something ISIS supporters and alt-right members who embrace the Confederacy or Nazis have in common.

Briefly put, right-to-try laws give terminally ill patients the right to try experimental treatments that have completed Phase 1 testing but have yet to be approved by the FDA. Phase 1 testing involves assessing the immediate toxicity of the treatment. This does not include testing its efficacy or its longer-term safety. Roughly put, passing Phase 1 just means that the treatment does not immediately kill or significantly harm patients.

On the face of it, no sensible person would oppose the right-to-try.  This right is that people who have “nothing to lose” are given the right to try treatments that might help them. The bills and laws use the rhetorical narrative that the right-to-try laws would give desperate patients the freedom to seek medical treatment that might save them and this would be done by getting the FDA and the state out of the way. This is powerful rhetoric that appeals to compassion, freedom and a dislike of the government. As such, it is not surprising that few people dare oppose the right-to-try. However, the matter does deserve proper critical consideration.

One way to look at it is to consider an alternative reality in which the narrative is spun with a different rhetorical charge, a negative spin rather than positive. Imagine, for a moment, if the rhetorical engines had cranked out a tale of how the bills would strip away the protection of the desperate and dying to allow predatory companies to use them as Guinea pigs for their untested treatments. If that narrative had been sold, people would probably be opposed to such laws. But rhetorical narratives, positive or negative, are logically inert and are irrelevant to the merits of the right-to-try. How people feel about the proposals is also logically irrelevant as well. What is needed is a cool examination of the matter.

On the positive side, the right-to-try does offer people the chance to try treatments that might help them. It is hard to argue that terminally ill people do not have a right to take such risks. That said, there are still some concerns.

One concern is that there is an established mechanism allowing patients access to experimental treatments. The FDA already has as system that approves most requests. Somewhat ironically, when people argue for the right-to-try by using examples of people successfully treated by experimental methods, they are showing that the existing system already allows such access. This raises the question about why the laws are needed and what they change.

The main change is usually to reduce the role of the FDA. Without such laws, requests to use experimental methods must go through the FDA (which seems to approve most requests).  If the FDA routinely denied treatments, then such laws would seem needed. However, the FDA does not seem to be the problem as they generally do not roadblock the use of experimental methods for the terminally ill. This leads to the question of is limiting patient access.

The main limiting factors are those that impact almost all treatment access: costs and availability. While the right-to-try grants the negative right to choose experimental methods, they do not grant the positive right to be provided with those methods. A negative right is a liberty, and one is free to act upon it but is not provided with the means to do so. The means must be acquired by the person. A positive right is an entitlement, and the person is free to act and is provided with the means of doing so. In general, the right-to-try does little or nothing to ensure that treatments are provided. For example, public money is usually not allocated to pay for them. As such, the right-to-try is like the right-to-healthcare: you are free to get it if you can pay for it. Since the FDA does not roadblock access to experimental treatments, the bills and laws would seem to do little or nothing new to benefit patients. That said, the general idea of right-to-try seems reasonable and is already practiced. While few are willing to bring them up in public discussions, there are some negative aspects to the right-to-try. I will turn to some of those now.

One obvious concern is that terminally ill patients do have something to lose. Experimental treatments could kill them earlier or they could cause suffering. As such, it does make sense to have limits on the freedom to try. At least for now it is the job of the FDA and medical professionals to protect patients from such harms even if the patients want to roll the dice.

This concern can be addressed by appealing to freedom of choice, provided patients can provide informed consent. This does create a problem: as little is known about the treatment, the patient cannot be well informed about the risks and benefits. But, as I have argued often elsewhere, I accept that people have a right to make such choices, even if these choices are self-damaging. I apply this principle consistently, so I accept that it grants the right-to-try, the right to get married, the right to eat poorly, the right to use drugs, and so on.

The usual counters to such arguments from freedom involve arguments about how people must be protected from themselves, arguments that such freedoms are “just wrong” or arguments about how such freedoms harm others. The idea is that moral or practical considerations override the freedom of the individual. This can be a reasonable counter, and a strong case can be made against allowing people the right to engage in a freedom that could harm or kill them. However, my position on such freedoms requires me to accept that a person has the right-to-try, even if it is a bad idea. That said, others have an equally valid right to try to convince them otherwise and the FDA and medical professionals have an obligation to protect people, even from themselves.

A philosophical problem is determining what can, and perhaps more importantly cannot, be owned. There is considerable dispute over this subject and an example is the debate over whether people can be owned. A more recent example is the debate over ownership of genes. While each dispute needs to be addressed on its own merits, it is worth considering the broader question of what can and what cannot be property. It must be noted that this is not just about legal ownership.

Addressing this subject begins with the foundation of ownership, which justifies the claim that one owns something. This is the philosophical problem of property. Most people are probably unaware this is a philosophical problem as people tend to accept the current system of ownership, though people do criticize its particulars. But, to simply assume the existing system of property is correct (or incorrect) is to beg the question and the problem of property needs to be addressed without simply assuming it has been solved.

One practical solution to the problem of property is to argue property is a convention. This can be formalized convention (such as laws) or informal convention (such as traditions) or a combination of both. One reasonable view is property legalism, that ownership is defined by the law. On this view, whatever the law defines as property is property. Another reasonable view is that of property relativism, that ownership is defined by cultural practices (which can include the laws). Roughly put, whatever the culture accepts as property is property. These approaches correspond to the moral theories of legalism (that the law determines morality) and ethical relativism (that culture determines morality).

The conventionalist approach seems to have the virtues of being practical and of avoiding mucking about in philosophical disputes. If there is a dispute about what (or who) can be owned, the matter is settled by the courts, by force of arms or by force of persuasion. There is no question of what view is right as winning makes the view right. While this approach does have its appeal, it is not without problems.

Trying to solve the problem of property with the conventionalist approach does lead to a dilemma: the conventions are either based on some foundation or they are not. If the conventions are not based on a foundation other than force (of arms or persuasion), then they are arbitrary. If this is the case, the only reasons to accept such conventions are practical, such as to avoid harm (such as being killed) or to profit.

If the conventions have a foundation, then the problem is determining what it might be. One approach is to argue that people have a moral obligation to obey the law or follow cultural conventions. While this would provide a basis for a moral obligation to accept the conventions, these conventions would still be arbitrary. Roughly put, those under the conventions would have a reason to accept whatever conventions exist, but no reason to accept a specific convention over another. This is analogous to the ethics of divine command theory, the view that what God commands is good because He commands it and what He forbids is evil because He forbids it. As should be expected, the “convention command” view of property suffers from problems analogous to those suffered by divine command theory, such as the arbitrariness of the commands and the lack of justification beyond obedience to authority.

One classic moral solution to the problem of property is offered by utilitarianism. On this view, the theory of property that creates more positive value than negative value for the morally relevant beings would be the morally correct practice. It does make property a contingent matter since radically different conceptions of property can be thus justified depending on the changing balance of harms and benefits. So, for example, while a capitalistic conception of property might be justified at a certain place and time, that might shift in favor of a socialist conception. As always, utilitarianism leaves the door open for intuitively horrifying practices that manage to fulfill that condition. However, this approach also has an intuitive appeal in that the view of property that creates the greatest good would be the morally correct view of property.

A classic attempt to solve the problem of property is offered by John Locke. He begins with the view that God created everyone and gave everyone the earth in common. While God does own us, He is cool about it and effectively lets each person own themselves. As such, I own myself and you own yourself. From this, as Locke sees it, it follows that each of us owns our labor.

For Locke, property is created by mixing one’s labor with the common goods of the earth. To illustrate, suppose we are washed up on an island owned by no one. If I collect wood and make a shelter, I have mixed my labor with the wood, thus making the shelter my own. If you make a shelter with your labor, it is thus yours. On Locke’s view, it would be theft for me to take your shelter and theft for you to take mine.

This labor theory of ownership quickly runs into problems, such as working out a proper account of mixing of labor and what to do when people are born on a planet on which everything is already claimed and owned. However, the idea that the foundation of property is that each person owns themselves is an intriguing one and does have some interesting implications about what can (and cannot) be owned. One implication would seem to be that people are owners and cannot be owned. For Locke, this would be because each person is owned by themselves, and ownership of other things is conferred by mixing one’s labor with what is common to all.

It could be contended that people create other people by their labor (literally in the case of the mother) and thus parents own their children. A counter to this is that although people do engage in sexual activity that results in the production of other people, this should not be considered labor in the sense required for ownership. After all, the parents just have sex and then the biological processes do all the work of constructing the new person. One might also play the metaphysical card and contend that what makes the person a person is not manufactured by the parents but is something metaphysical like the soul or consciousness (for Locke, a person is their consciousness and the consciousness is within a soul).

Even if it is accepted that parents do not own their children, there is the obvious question about manufactured beings that are like people such as intelligent robots or biological constructs. These beings would be created by mixing labor with other property (or unowned materials) and thus would seem to be things that could be owned. Unless, of course, they are owners like humans.

One approach is to consider them analogous to children. It is not how children are made that makes them unsuitable for ownership, it is what they are. On this view, people-like constructs would be owners rather than things to be owned. The intuitive counter is that people-like manufactured beings would be property like anything else that is manufactured. The challenge is, of course, to show that this would not entail that children are property. After all, considerable resources and work can be expended to create a child (such as IVF, surrogacy, and perhaps someday artificial wombs), yet intuitively they would not be property. This does point to a rather important question: is it what something is that makes it unsuitable to be owned or how it is created?

 

Before getting into the discussion, I am not a medical professional and what follows should be met with due criticism and you should consult an expert before embarking on changes to your exercise or nutrition practices. Or you might die. Probably not. But maybe.

As any philosopher will tell you, while the math used in science is deductive (the premises are supposed to guarantee the conclusion with certainty) scientific reasoning is inductive (the premises provide some degree of support for the conclusion that is less than complete). Because of this, science suffers from what philosophers call the problem of induction. In practical terms, this means that no matter how careful the reasoning and no matter how good the evidence, the inference can still be false. The basis is that inductive reasoning involves a “leap” from the premises/evidence (what has been observed) to the conclusion (what has not been observed). Put bluntly, inductive reasoning always has a chance to lead to a false conclusion. But this appears unavoidable as life seems inductive.

Scientists and philosophers have tried to make science entirely deductive. For example, Descartes believed he could find truths that he could not doubt and then use valid deductive reasoning to generate a true conclusion with absolute certainty. Unfortunately, this science of certainty is the science of the future and (probably) always will be. So, we are stuck with induction.

The problem of induction applies to the sciences that study nutrition, exercise and weight loss and the conclusions made in these sciences can always be wrong. This helps explain why recommendations change relentlessly.

While there are philosophers of science who would disagree, science is a matter of trying to figure things out by doing the best we can do at this time. This is limited by the available resources (such as technology) and human epistemic capabilities. As such, whatever science is presenting now is almost certainly at least partially wrong; but the wrongs often get reduced over time. But sometimes they increase. This is true of all the sciences. Consider, for example, the changes in physics since Thales got it started. This also helps explain why recommendations about diet and exercise change often.

While science is sometimes idealized as a field of pure reason outside of social influences, science is also a social activity. Because of this, science is influenced by social factors and human flaws. For example, scientists need money to fund their research and can be vulnerable to corporations looking to “prove” claims that are in their interest. As another example, scientific subjects can become issues of political controversy, such as race, evolution and climate change. This politicization tends to be bad for science and anyone who does not profit from manufacturing controversy. As a final example, scientists can be motivated by pride and ambition to fake or modify their findings. Because of these factors, the sciences dealing with nutrition and exercise are, to a meaningful degree, corrupted and this makes it difficult to make a rational judgment about which claims are true. One excellent example is how the sugar industry paid scientists at Harvard to downplay the health risks presented by sugar and play up those presented by fat. Another illustration is the fact that the food pyramid endorsed by the US government has been shaped by the food industries rather than being based entirely on good science.

Given these problems it might be tempting to abandon mainstream science and go with whatever food or exercise ideology one finds appealing. That would be a bad idea. While science suffers from these problems, mainstream science is better than the nonscientific alternatives. They tend to have all the problems of science without any of its strengths. So, what should one do? The rational approach is to accept the majority opinion of qualified and credible experts. One should also keep in mind the above problems and approach the science with due skepticism.

So, what does the best science of today say about weight loss? First, humans evolved as hunter-gatherers and getting enough calories was a challenge. Humans tend to be very good at storing energy in the form of fat which is one reason the calorie rich environment of modern society contributes to obesity. Crudely put, it is in our nature to overeat because that once meant the difference between life and death.

Second, while exercise does burn calories, it burns far less than many imagine. For most people, most of the calorie burning is a result of the body staying alive. As such, while exercising more could help a person lose weight, the calorie impact of exercise is surprisingly low. That said, you should exercise (if you can) if only for the health benefits.

Third, hunger is a function of the brain, and the brain responds differently to different foods. Foods high in protein and fiber create a feeling of fullness that tends to turn off the hunger signal. Foods with a high glycemic index (like cake) tend to stimulate the brain to cause people to consume more calories. As such, manipulating your brain is an effective way to increase the chance of losing weight. Interestingly, as Aristotle argued, habituation to foods can train the brain to prefer foods that are healthier. You can train yourself to prefer things like nuts, broccoli and oatmeal over cookies, cake, and soda. This takes time and effort but can be done.

Fourth, weight loss has diminishing returns: as one loses weight, one’s metabolism slows, and less energy is needed. As such, losing weight makes it harder to lose weight, which is something to keep in mind.  Naturally, all these claims could be disproven tomorrow, but they seem reasonable now.