Month: October 2025

My Siberian husky, Isis, joined the pack in 2004 at the age of one. It took her a little while to realize that my house was now her house. She set out to chew all that could be chewed, presumably as part of some sort of imperative of destruction. Eventually, she came to realize that she was chewing her stuff. More likely, joining me on 16-mile runs wore the chew out of her.

As the years went by, we both slowed down. Eventually, she could no longer run with me (despite my slower pace) and we went on slower adventures. One does not walk a husky; one adventures with a husky. Despite her advanced age, she remained active. After one adventure, she seemed slow and sore. She cried once in pain but then seemed to recover. Then she got worse, requiring a trip to the emergency veterinarian.

The  x-rays showed no serious damage, just an indication of the wear and tear of age. She also had some unusual test results, perhaps indicating cancer. Because of her age, the main concern was with her mobility and pain. If she could get about and be happy, then that was what mattered. She was prescribed medications, and a follow up appointment was scheduled with the regular vet. By then, she had gotten worse in some ways, and her right foot was “knuckling” over, making walking difficult. This is often a sign of nerve issues. She was prescribed steroids and had to go through a washout period before starting the new medicine. As might be imagined, neither of us got much sleep during this time.

For a while the steroids worked and she could go on slow adventures and enjoy basking in the sun while watching the birds and squirrels, willing the squirrels to fall from the tree and into her mouth.

While philosophy is often derided as useless, it was very helpful to me during this time and I decided to write about this usefulness as both a defense of philosophy and, perhaps, as something useful for others who face similar circumstances with an aging canine.

Isis’ emergency visit was focused on pain management and one drug she was prescribed was Carprofen (more infamously known by the name Rimadyl). Carprofen is an NSAID that is supposed to be safer for canines than those designed for humans (like aspirin) and is commonly used to manage arthritis in elderly dogs. Being curious and cautious, I researched all the medications. I ran across forums which included people’s sad and often angry stories about how Carprofen killed their pets. The typical story involved what one would expect: a dog was prescribed Carprofen and then died or was found to have cancer shortly thereafter. I found such stories worrisome and was concerned as I did not want my dog to be killed by her medicine. But I also knew that without medication, she would be in terrible pain and unable to move. I wanted to make the right choice for her and knew this would require making a rational decision.

My regular vet decided to go with the steroid option, one that also has the potential for side effects and there were horror stories on the web. Once again, it was a matter of choosing between the risks of medication and the consequences of doing without. In addition to my research into medication, I also investigated various other options for treating arthritis and pain in older dogs. She was already on glucosamine (which might not be beneficial, but seems to have no serious side effects), but the web poured forth an abundance of options ranging from acupuncture to herbal remedies. I even ran across the claim that copper bracelets could help pain in dogs. They cannot.

While some alternatives had been subject to scientific investigation, most discussions involved a mix of miracles and horror stories. One person might write glowingly about how an herbal product brought his dog back from death’s door while another might claim that the same product killed his dog. Sorting through all these claims, anecdotes and studies turned out to be a lot of work. Fortunately, I had numerous philosophical tools that helped, specifically of the sort where it is claimed that “I gave my dog X, then he got better (or died) and X was the cause.” Knowing about two common fallacies is very useful in these cases.

The first is what is known as Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc (“after this, therefore because of this”).  This fallacy has the following form:

 

Premise: A occurs before B.

Conclusion: Therefore, A is the cause of B.

 

This fallacy is committed when it is concluded that one event causes another just because the alleged cause occurred before the alleged effect. More formally, the fallacy involves concluding that A causes or caused B because A occurs before B and there is not sufficient evidence to warrant such a claim.

While cause does precede effect (at least in the normal flow of time), proper causal reasoning involves sorting out whether A occurring before B is just a matter of coincidence or not. In the case of medication involving an old dog, it could be a coincidence that the dog died or was diagnosed with cancer after the medicine was administered. That is, the dog might have died anyway or might have already had cancer. Without a proper investigation, simply assuming that the medication was the cause would be an error. The same holds true for beneficial effects. For example, a dog might go lame after a walk and then recover after being given an herbal supplement. While it would be tempting to attribute the recovery to the herbs, they might have had no effect at all. After all, lameness often goes away on its own or some other factor might have been the cause.

This is not to say that such stories should be rejected out of hand, but they should be approached with due consideration that the reasoning involved is post hoc. In concrete terms, if you are afraid to give your dog medicine she was prescribed because you heard of cases in which a dog had the medicine and then died, you should investigate more (such as talking to your vet) about whether there is a risk of death. As another example, if someone praises an herbal supplement because her dog perked up after taking it, then you should see if there is evidence for this claim beyond the post hoc situation.

Fortunately, there has been considerable research into medications and treatments that provide a basis for making a rational choice. When considering such data, it is important not to be lured into rejecting data by the seductive power of the Fallacy of Anecdotal Evidence.

This fallacy is committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on an anecdote (a story) about one or a very small number of cases. The fallacy is also committed when someone rejects reasonable statistical data supporting a claim in favor of a single example or small number of examples that go against the claim. The fallacy is considered by some to be a variation on hasty generalization.  It has the following forms:

 

Form One

Premise: Anecdote A is told about a member (or small number of members) of Population P.

Conclusion: Claim C is made about Population P based on Anecdote A.

 

For example, a person might hear anecdotes about dogs that died after taking a prescribed medication and infer that the medicine is likely to kill dogs.

 

Form Two

Premise 1: Reasonable statistical evidence S exists for general claim C.

Premise 2:  Anecdote A is presented that is an exception to or goes against general claim C.

Conclusion: General claim C is rejected.

 

For example, statistical evidence shows that the evidence that glucosamine-chondroitin can treat arthritis is, at best, weak. But a person might tell a story about how their aging husky “was like a new dog” after she started taking it. supplement. To accept this as proof that the data is wrong would be to fall for this fallacy. That said, I did give my husky glucosamine-chondroitin because it is affordable, has no serious side effects and might have some benefit. I am fully aware of the data and do not reject it, I gambled that it might have done her some good.

The way to avoid becoming a victim of anecdotal evidence is to seek reliable, objective statistical data about the matter in question (a credible vet would be a good source). This can be a challenge when it comes to treatments for pets. In many cases, there are no adequate studies or trials that provide statistical data and only anecdotal evidence is available. One option is, of course, to investigate the anecdotes and try to do your own statistics. So, if most anecdotes indicate something harmful (or something beneficial) then this would be weak evidence for the claim. In any case, it is wise to approach anecdotes with due care  as a story is not proof.

While most current body hacking technology is gimmicky and theatrical, it does have potential. It is, for example, easy enough to imagine that the currently very dangerous night-vision eye drops could be made into a safe product, allowing people to hack their eyes. There is also the cyberpunk future envisioned by writers such as William Gibson and games like Cyberpunk and Shadowrun. In such a future, people might body hack their way to being full cyborgs. In the nearer future, there might be augmentations like memory backups for the brain, implanted phones, and even subdermal weapons. Such augmenting hacks raise moral issues that go beyond the basic ethics of self-modification. Fortunately, these ethical matters can be effectively addressed by the application of existing moral theories and principles.

Since the basic ethics of self-modification were addressed in the previous essay, this essay will focus solely on the ethical issue of augmentation through body hacking. This issue does, of course, stack with the other moral concerns.

In general, there seems to be nothing inherently wrong with the augmentation of the body through technology. The easy way to argue for this is to draw the obvious analogy to external augmentation: starting with sticks and rocks, humans augmented their natural capacities. If this is acceptable, then moving the augmentation under the skin should not open a new moral world.

The easy and obvious objection is to contend that under the skin is a new moral world. That, for example, a smart phone carried in a pocket is one thing, while a smartphone embedded in the skull is another.

This objection does have merit: implanting technology is morally significant. At the very least, there are moral concerns about potential health risks. However, this moral concern is about the medical aspects, not about the augmentation itself. This is not to say that the health issues are not important, they are very important; but fall under another moral issue.

If it is accepted that augmentation is, in general, morally acceptable, there are still legitimate concerns about specific types of augmentation and the context in which they are employed. Fortunately, there is established moral discussion about these categories of augmentation.

Two areas in which augmentation is of concern are sports and games. Athletes have long engaged in body hacking, if the use of drugs can be considered body hacking. While those playing games like poker generally do not use enhancing drugs, they have attempted to cheat with technology. While future body hacks might be more dramatic, they would seem to fall under the same principles that govern the use of augmenting substances and equipment in current sports. For example, an implanted device that stores extra blood to be added during the competition would be analogous to existing methods of blood doping. As another example, a poker or chess player might implant a computer that she can use to cheat at the game.

While specific body hacks will need to be addressed by the appropriate governing bodies of sports and games, the basic principle that cheating is morally unacceptable still applies. As such, the ethics of body hacking in sports and games is easy enough to handle in the general and the real challenge will be sorting out which hacks are cheating and which are acceptable. In any case, some interesting scandals can be expected.

The field of academics is also an area of concern. Since students are adept at using technology such as AI to cheat, there will be efforts to cheat through body hacking. As with cheating in sports and games, the basic ethical framework is well-established: creating is morally unacceptable. As with sports and games, the challenge will be sorting out which hacks are considered cheating, and which are not. If body hacking becomes mainstream, it can be expected that education and testing will need to change as well as the was counts as cheating. Using an analogy, calculators are usually now allowed on tests and thus the future might see implanted computers being allowed for certain tests. Testing of memory might also become pointless. If most people have implanted devices that can store data and link to the internet, memorizing things might cease to be a skill worth testing. This does, however, segue into the usual moral concerns about people losing abilities or becoming weaker due to technology. Since these are general concerns that have applied to everything from the abacus to the automobile, I will not address this issue here.

There is also the broad realm composed of all the other areas of life that do not generally have specific moral rules about cheating through augmentation. These include such areas as business and dating. While there are moral rules about certain forms of cheating, the likely forms of body hacking would not seem to be considered cheating in such areas, though they might be regarded as providing an unfair advantage, especially in cases in which the wealthy classes are able to gain even more advantages over the less well-off classes.

As an example, a company with might use body hacking to upgrade its employees so they can be more effective, thus providing a competitive edge over lesser companies.  While it seems likely that certain augmentations will be regarded as unfair enough to require restriction, body hacking would merely change the means and not the underlying game. That is, the well-off always have advantages over the less-well-off. Body hacking would just be a new tool in the competition. Hence, existing ethical principles would apply here as well. Or not be applied, as is so often the case when money is on the line.

So, while body hacking for augmentation will require some new applications of existing moral theories and principles, it does not make a significant change in the moral landscape. Like almost all changes in technology it will merely provide new ways of doing old things. Like cheating in school or sports. Or life.

While body hacking is sometimes presented as being new and radical, humans have been engaged in the practice (under other names) for quite some time. One of the earliest forms of true body hacking was probably the use of prosthetic parts to replace lost pieces, such as a leg or hand. These hacks were aimed at restoring a degree of functionality, so they were practical hacks.

While most contemporary body hacking seems aimed at gimmicks or limited attempts at augmentation, there are serious applications that involve replacement and restoration. One example of this is the color blind person who is using a skull mounted camera to provide audio clues regarding colors. This hack serves as a replacement to missing components of the eye, albeit in a somewhat unusual way.

Medicine is, obviously enough, replete with body hacks ranging from contact lenses to prosthetic limbs. These technologies and devices provide people with some degree of replacement and restoration for capabilities they lost or never had. While these sorts of hacks are typically handled by medical professionals, advances in existing technology and the rise of new technologies will result in more practical hacks aimed not at gimmicks but at restoration and replacement. There will also be considerable efforts aimed at augmentation, but this matter will be addressed in the next essay.

Since humans have been body hacking for replacement and restoration for thousands of years, the ethics of this matter are well settled. In general, the use of technology for medical reasons of replacement or restoration is morally unproblematic. After all, this process is simply fulfilling the main purpose of medicine: to get a person as close to their normal healthy state as possible. To use a specific example, there really is no moral controversy over the use of prosthetic limbs that are designed to restore functionality. In the case of body hacks, the same general principle would apply and hacks that aim at restoration or replacement are morally unproblematic. That said, there are some potential areas of concern.

One area of both moral and practical concern is the risk of amateur or DIY body hacking. The concern is that such hacking could have negative consequences. This might be due to bad design, poor implementation or other causes. For example, a person might endeavor a hack to replace a missing leg and have it fail catastrophically, resulting in a serious injury. This is, of course, not unique to body hacking, this is a general matter of good decision making.

As with health and medicine in general, it is usually preferable to go with a professional rather than an amateur or a DIY approach (at least in serious matters). Also, the possibility of harm makes it a matter of moral concern. That said, there are many people who cannot afford professional care and technology will afford people an ever-growing opportunity to body hack for medical reasons. This sort of self-help can be justified on the grounds that some restoration or replacement is better than none. This assumes that self-help efforts do not result in worse harm than doing nothing. As such, body hackers and society will need to consider the ethics of the risks of amateur and DIY body hacking. Guidance can be found here in existing medical ethics, such as moral guides for people attempting to practice medicine on themselves and others without proper medical training.

A second area of moral concern is that some people will engage in replacing fully functional parts with body hacks that are equal or inferior to the original (augmentation will be addressed in the next essay). For example, a person might want to remove a finger to replace it with a mechanical finger with a built in USB drive. As another example, a person might want to replace her eye with a camera comparable or inferior to her natural eye.

One clear moral concern is the potential dangers in such hacks as removing a body part can be dangerous. One approach would be to weigh the harms and benefits of such hacking. On the face of it, such replacement hacks would seem to be at best neutral, that is, the person will end up with the same capabilities as before. It is also possible, perhaps likely, that the replacement attempt will result in diminished capabilities, thus making the hack wrong because of the harm inflicted. Some body hackers might argue that such hacks have a value beyond functionality. For example, the value of self-expression or achieving a state of existence that matches one’s conception or vision of self. In such cases, the moral question would be whether these factors are worth considering and if they are, how much weight they should be given morally.

There is also the worry that such hacks would be a form of unnecessary self-mutilation and thus at best morally dubious. A counter to this is to argue, as John Stuart Mill did, that people have a right to self-harm, if they do not harm others.  That said, arguing that people do not have a right to interfere with self-harm (provided the person is acting freely and rationally) does not entail that self-harm is morally acceptable. It is certainly possible to argue against self-harm on utilitarian grounds and based on moral obligations to oneself. Arguments from the context of virtue theory would also apply as self-harm is contrary to developing one’s excellence as a person.

These approaches could be countered. Utilitarian arguments can be met with utilitarian arguments that offer a different evaluation of the harms and benefits. Arguments based on obligations to oneself can be countered by arguing that there are not such obligations or that the obligations one does have allows from this sort of modification. Argument from virtue theory could be countered by attacking the theory itself or showing how such modifications are consistent with moral excellence.

My own view, which I consistently apply to other areas such as drug use, diet, and exercise, is that people have a moral right to freedom of self-abuse and harm. This requires that the person can make an informed decision and is not coerced or misled. As such, I hold that a person has every right to DIY body hacking. Since I also accept the principle of harm, I hold that society has a moral right to regulate body hacking of others as other similar practices (such as dentistry) are regulated. This is to prevent harm being inflicted on others. Being fond of virtue theory, I do hold that people should not engage in self-harm, even though they have every right to do so without having their liberty restricted. To use a concrete example, if someone wants to spoon out her eyeball and replace it with an LED light, then she has every right to do so. However, if an untrained person wants to set up a shop and scoop eyeballs for replacement with lights, then society has every right to prevent that. I do think that scooping out an eye would be both foolish and morally wrong, which is also how I look at heroin use and smoking tobacco.

Mark Bray, History Professor

Because the rulers of my adopted state of Florida hold freedom expression as so precious that they must decide who can exercise it and how one may do so, I must begin by stating that I condemn the use of political violence between Americans. I also, in general, condemn violence. I am, after all, a Christian and a philosopher. Hence, I’m all about talking and believe we should not kill.

As I am writing this, Dr. Mark Bray and his family are fleeing the United States in the face of death threats. Dr. Bray’s first attempt failed, and it appears someone cancelled his family’s reservations as they were about to board. Dr. Bray has been dubbed “Dr. Antifa” because of his scholarly works on anarchism and antifascism. He has also been accused of being a threat to conservative students at Rutgers and a petition has been created to remove him to “protect conservative students from political violence.” Despite Antifa being a political philosophy and not an organization, President Trump has attempted to declare it a domestic terrorist organization.

Following the brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk, the right has professed an abhorrence of political violence and Republican leaders have pledged that action will be taken against people making threats or celebrating violence. Because of this, one might think that the threats against Dr. Bray would result in some action by the state. But the White House responded by claiming that “examples of Democrat violence are plentiful” and presented the murder of Kirk as an example. While the statistical data shows that right wing violence is more common (though all violence is to be condemned), the White House asserted that “The Trump Administration is focused on stopping this violence — Democrats are fueling it.” While it is odd to blame the Democrats for threats made against Dr. Bray, a red herring tactic and perhaps also some “whataboutism” are being used here. While there are some differences between the two rhetorical devices, the tactic is to shift attention from the original issue or question and thus not address or answer it. In this example, when folks on the right are asked about specific threats or violence against people on the left (or center), the tactic is to shift to talking about alleged threats or violence from the left. They are, in effect, saying “what about the left?”

While real left-wing violence and threats are matters of concern, the use of a red herring or whataboutism obviously does not address concerns or questions about right wing threats and violence. In the case at hand, saying that the left is violent does nothing to address the threats made against Dr. Bray.

These rhetorical techniques can be effective in that they can mislead people from the real issue and provide an opportunity to persuade people that the left is to blame even when the violence and threats are against people on the left (or center). The defense against this is easy: just ask yourself if the original issue or question has been addressed.  In this case, it has not. Ignoring right wing violence and blaming the left does not address the problem of right-wing violence. At this point someone who has heard of Dr. Bray might bring up the claim that he seems to have advocated violence and perhaps is reaping what he has sown. This takes us to the straw man technique.

In 2017 Dr. Bray appeared on Meet the Press and claimed that “when pushed, self-defense is a legitimate response to white supremacist and neo-Nazi violence.” For additional context, he added that “We’ve tried ignoring neo-Nazis in the past. We’ve seen how that turned out in the ’20s and ’30s.  A lot of people are under attack, and sometimes they need to be able to defend themselves. It’s a privileged position to say you never have to defend yourself from these kinds of monsters.” This view puts Dr. Bray in such radical company as the English philosopher John Locke. Locke presented a moral justification for self-defense that serves (knowingly or unknowingly) as the basis of moral arguments made for self defense by most Americans. Roughly put, because people have the God-given right to protect their life, liberty and property, they have the right to self-defense against unjustified attacks. If Dr. Bray had simply said “people have a right to defend themselves when attacked”, most Americans would be hard pressed to disagree with him. But he specified that this general right of self-defense would also apply to attacks from white supremacists and neo-Nazis and this triggered some of the right. As they also advocate self-defense, they had to mischaracterize his claims and use the straw man and present a distorted version of his claim.

The conservative site, Campus Reform, claimed he had “endorsed antifa’s violent protest tactics.” The President of Dartmouth at the time issued a statement that was also a straw man, saying Dr. Bray was “supporting violent protest.” Dr. Bray’s colleagues defended him by pointing out that Dr. Bray’s claim had been made into a straw man of his actual position.

Straw man tactics can be effective because they, by definition, contain a sliver of truth. Dr. Bray did advocate self-defense and did so in the context of defending against white supremacists and neo-Nazis. He also noted how peaceful efforts to resist such threats failed. But taking this to be advocating violent protest is like claiming that anyone advocating self-defense is thus advocating violence. While there is a sliver of truth, it ignores the full context and thus creates a strawman. As such, those who attack his view seem to be angry that someone would say that people being attacked by white-supremacists and Neo-Nazis have a right to self defense against their violence. This certainly helps explain why white-supremacists and Neo-Nazis would be mad at him.

As always, the defense against straw man tactics is to find the truth; although this is becoming increasingly difficult as independent journalism and fact checking is under ongoing and increasing attack.

Back in my graduate school days, I made extra money writing for science fiction and horror gaming companies. This was in the 1990s, which was the chrome age of cyberpunk: the future was supposed to be hacked and jacked. The future is now, but is an age of Tinder, Facebook, and Tik Tok. But there is still hope of a cyberpunk future: body hackers are endeavoring to bring some cyberpunk into the world. The current state of the hack is disappointing but, great things arise from lesser things and hope remains for a chromed future.

Body hacking, at this point, is minor. For example, some people have implanted electronics under their skin, such as RFID chips. Of course, most dogs also have an implanted chip. As another example, one fellow who is color blind has a skull mounted device that informs him of colors via sounds. As one might imagine, body hacks that can be seen have generated some mockery and hostility. Since I owe cyberpunk for my ability to buy ramen noodles and puffed rice cereal, I am obligated to come to the defense of the aesthetics of body hacking.

While some point out that philosophers have not given body hacking the attention it deserves and claim that it is something new and revolutionary, it still falls under established moral systems. As such, body hacking is a new matter for applied ethics but does not require a new moral theory.

The aesthetic aspects of body hacking fall under the ethics of lifestyle choices, specifically those regarding choices of personal appearance. This can be shown by drawing analogies to established means of modifying personal appearance. The most obvious modifications are clothing, hairstyles and accessories (such as jewelry). These, like body hacking, have the capacity to shock and offend people, perhaps by what is revealed by the clothing or the message sent by it (including literal messages, such as T-shirts with text and images).  Unlike body hacking, these modifications are on the surface, thus making them different from true body hacking.

As such, a closer analogy would involve classic cosmetic body modifications. These include hair dye, vanity contact lenses, decorative scars, piercings, and tattoos. In fact, these can be seen as low-tech body hacks that are precursors to the technological hacks of today. Body hacks go beyond these classic modifications and range from the absurd (a man growing an “ear” on his arm) to the semi-useful (a person who replaced a missing fingertip with a USB drive). While concerns about body hacking go beyond the aesthetic, body hacks do have the capacity to elicit responses like other modifications. For example, tattoos were once regarded as the mark of a lower-class person, though they are now accepted. As another example, not long ago men (other than pirates) did not get piercings unless they were willing to face ridicule. Now piercing is passé.

Because the aesthetics of body hacking are analogous to classic appearance hacks, the same ethics applies to these cases. Naturally enough, people vary in their ethics of appearance. I, as veteran readers surely suspect, favor John Stuart Mill’s approach to the matter of the ethics of lifestyle choices. Mill argues that people have the right to interfere with liberty only to prevent a person from harming others. This is a reasonable standard of interference which he justifies on utilitarian grounds. Mill explicitly addresses the ways of life people chose: “…the principle requires liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of our life to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow; without impediment from our fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong.”

Mill’s principle nicely handles the ethics of the aesthetics of body hacking (and beyond): body hackers have the moral freedom to hack themselves even though such modifications might be regarded as aesthetically perverse, foolish, or wrong. So, just as a person has the moral right to wear clothing that some would regard as too revealing or dye his hair magenta, a person has the moral right to grow a functionless ear on his arm or implant blinking lights under her skin. But just as a person would not have a right to wear a jacket covered in razor blades, a person would not have the right to hack herself with an implanted strobe light that flashes randomly into people’s eyes. This is because such things become the legitimate business of others because of the harm they can do.

Mill does note that people are subject to the consequences of their choices and not interfering with someone’s way of life does not require accepting it, embracing it or even working around it. For example, just as a person who elects to have “Goat F@cker” tattooed on his face can expect challenges in getting a job as a bank teller or schoolteacher, a person who has blinking lights embedded in his forehead can expect to encounter challenges in employment. Interestingly, the future might see discrimination lawsuits on the part of body hackers, analogous to past lawsuits for other forms of discrimination. It can also be expected that social consequences will change for body hacking, just as it occurred with tattoos and yoga pants.

One final point is the stock concern about the possible harm of offensive appearances. That is, that other people do have a legitimate interest in the appearance of others because their appearance might harm them by offending them. While this is worth considering, there does not seem to be a compelling reason to accept that mere offensiveness causes sufficient harm to warrant restrictions on appearance. What would be needed would be evidence of actual harm to others that arises because the appearance inflicts the harm rather than the alleged harm arising because of how the offended person feels about the appearance. To use an analogy, while someone who hates guns has the right not to be shot, he does not have the right to insist that he never see images of guns.

The discussion has shown that body hacking that does not inflict harm to others falls nicely under the liberty to choose a way of life, provided that the way of life does not inflict harm on others. But, as always, a person who strays too far from the norm must be aware of possible consequences. Especially when it comes to dating and employment.

Back in 2016 when Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump ran for president, many of my conservative friends expressed horror at the prospect of a Trump presidency. My liberal friends were less horrified by Hillary, but many of them expressed the view that she is evil and, not surprisingly, wanted Bernie Sanders.

In 2016 K. York, who argued that Hillary would be the lesser of two evils relative to Trump, asked me to address an important moral question about that election: “is there value in supporting the lesser of two evils?” While Trump won in 2016, lost in 2020 and then won again in 2024, the general question always remains relevant. While there is a multitude of approaches to ethics, the two that fit the best here are consequentialist ethics and action ethics. I will consider each in turn.

While there are many consequentialist theories of ethics, they all share the principle that the action that should be taken is the one that maximizes positive value for morally relevant beings. A consequentialist must specify the measure of value as well as define who counts, thus  defining the scope of morality.

This view has intuitive appeal: if something has positive value (like cake), then having more of it is preferable to having less. Likewise, if something has negative value (like cancer), then having less is preferable to having more. People also seem to intuitively accept that there are entities that count more or less. For example, we tend to value our fellow humans more than we value mosquitoes.

Perhaps the best-known example of consequentialist ethics is utilitarianism of the sort professed by John Stuart Mill. According to Mill, “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” Mill is rather generous in terms of who counts as happiness should be brought to “…all mankind and so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation.”

A significant competitor to utilitarianism of the sort advocated by Mill is ethical egoism. This is a consequentialist approach in which each person limits the scope of morality to himself. Ayn Rand, once a favorite of the now dead Tea Party and Paul Ryan, is perhaps the best known ethical egoist. As she saw it, each person should act from selfishness.

As should be expected, a consequentialist approach provides an easy way to make a moral argument in support of voting for the lesser evil. Doing so would make it more likely that the least harm would be done to those who matter. As such, voting for the lesser evil would be the least bad choice. It would also be the rational choice, at least under the definition of rationality that focuses on maximizing value (which is also a consequentialist position).

There are two main alternatives to voting for the lesser evil (aside from voting for the greater evil) on the assumption that an election has only two viable candidates. At the presidential level, this is a reasonable assumption as the election is always locked down by the Republicans and Democrats. One option is to not vote at all. This has the consequence of reducing the chances that the candidate you regard as the lesser evil will win, thus microscopically increasing the chance that the one you regard as the greater evil will triumph. As such, not voting is effectively choosing the greater evil.

The second option is to vote for a third candidate, who will not win, that you regard as non-evil. This could be a third-party candidate on the ballot or a write in candidate. The consequence of this is about the same as not voting as it is effectively choosing the greater evil if you would have otherwise voted for the lesser evil. It can be argued that some positive result might arise from voting for a third candidate. It might make a statement that influences whoever is elected (but probably not) or encourage a third party to run in the next election to challenge the two party system (but probably not). Considering the above, the ethical vote is to vote for the lesser evil. If there is a non-evil third candidate who could win, then the choice is obvious: vote for that candidate.

While a voter who decides to vote based on consequences would have selected her moral approach to the decision, the voter would still need to decide on a measure of value, estimate which candidate would do the least damage, and sort out who she thinks counts. Any two consequentialist voters could make radically different assessments. For example, a voter who is concerned about all Americans would assess candidates  differently from a person who is only concerned about white Americans.

While the consequentialist approach is intuitively appealing, there is also some weight to the view that actions are just wrong (or right), regardless of the consequences.  Those who accept action ethics hold, as Kant claimed in the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, that “the moral worth of an action is not in its expected effect nor a principle of action motivated by its expected effect.”  Put roughly, the action itself is good or bad. So, if a person chooses an action that is good, “this good is already present in the person and there is no need to wait for it to appear in the result.” Likewise, bad actions are already bad and are not bad because of harmful consequences.

While this could be debated, voting in favor of a candidate one regards as evil would seem to be morally wrong, albeit a very weak form of wrongness. This assumes that supporting evil is evil. This seems reasonable and an analogy can be drawn to the legal notion of aiding and abetting a criminal. Voting for an evil candidate is aiding them, thus making one a party to their crimes.

Voting for the lesser evil would be less evil than supporting the greater evil; but would still be an evil action. Fortunately, a person can avoid supporting even the lesser evil by not voting or casting a vote for someone who is not evil. As such, if a person regards the only viable candidates as evil, then the right thing to do would be to not vote for any of them, thus avoiding the risk of becoming a party to their evil.

This can, however, be countered by pointing out that one of the two evils will win the election, so the voter should vote for the lesser evil.  This is like situations in which doing something wrong is justified on the grounds that someone else would do it or do something even worse. For example, consider a common fictional villain move: the villain offers the hero a choice between killing one person or “making” the villain kill many people. While a consequentialist approach would generally favor killing the one, choosing the lesser evil would still appear to be an evil action. The hero is, obviously, not to blame for the villain killing the many as that is all on the villain. Likewise, if a voter decides to not vote for any evil and the greater evil is elected, the responsibility lies on the candidate for being evil and those who supported the greater evil. 

The criticism can be raised that making the moral choice of not voting for any evil would be the wrong choice if it helps the greater evil win the election. This criticism is, not surprisingly, almost always based on consequentialist considerations: the choice was wrong not because the person supported evil, but because the voter’s failure to back the lesser evil contributed to greater evil. Going back to the villain example, the choice not to kill the one person was wrong not because the hero killed the many, but because his choice resulted in the death of many rather than one.

My own moral view is that voting for a person I regard as evil is an evil action. However, in the case of politics I must think of more than just myself and my moral choice as I must also consider what will happen to others. As such, I am willing to bear the tiny burden of voting while holding my nose to try to protect others from what I regard as a greater evil. So, it while is wrong to vote for the lesser evil it is worse not to. After all, the lesser evil is the lesser evil. So, my advice is that if you regard two candidates as evil, vote for the one you think is the lesser evil.

If you think they are equal in their evil, do not vote for either. Going back to the villain example, if the villain offers two equal evils (the hero kills everyone or the villain kills everyone) then choosing neither evil is the best choice: everyone is dead either way, but at least the hero is not a murderer if she refuses to murder. In the case of the candidates, if both are equally evil, then voting for either would be worse than not voting for either. This is because the evil of your choice would be added to the evil of the candidate being elected, thus creating more evil. So, if there are two equal evils, not voting is the right choice. But you should be wary of the tactic of false equivalence and political parties will try to mislead voters likely to vote against them into not voting.

Like almost everyone, I would prefer that there were far fewer abortions. While this might seem like a problematic claim, it is obviously true. People who oppose abortion obviously want there to be fewer abortions. However, those who are pro-choice are not pro-abortion. That is, they do not want abortions to occur as they would prefer that women did not end up in situations where they see abortion as the best or only option.

While I do not fall into the pro-life camp in terms of political labelling, I do take a position in favor of life. To be specific, I prefer to avoid killing whenever possible and I accept that killing anything is an act of some moral significance. In some case, the ethics of killing are easy: I have no issue with killing bacteria if they are working hard to kill me and I accept the need to kill other living things to use them as food. Meat and salad are both murder.

 In other cases, like abortion, the ethics are more complicated. After all, abortion involves killing a potential human being and this is clearly an act with great moral significance. Because I have a general opposition to killing, I have the obvious general opposition to abortion. However, I do accept that killing can be morally justified and believe this does apply to certain cases of abortion. As such, I favor reducing the number of abortions and support certain means of doing so. I do not, however, favor it being banned.

For those who follow abortion in American politics, the usual means of reducing abortions are aimed at making it harder for women to get abortions. Numerous states have passed laws requiring waiting periods and have imposed medically unwarranted restrictions on abortion clinics aimed at closing them. I am completely opposed to these means of reducing the number of abortions. While I have various reasons supporting my view, my main reason is that these approaches put the burden almost entirely on the woman. Roughly put, it is the woman who bears most of the cost of the moral and religious views of those who impose such restrictions. These costs can be extremely high and not only in terms of financial cost.

The moral foundation for my opposition to this method of reducing abortions is based on the fact that such imposition is unfair and the fact that this method imposes an extremely high cost on women and society. It is the wrong way to reduce the number of abortions. As such, I favor approaches that would reduce the number of abortions while distributing the cost more fairly and reducing the cost to women and society as a whole. To this end, I offer the following general proposals.

The first is doing what is required to reduce sexual violence against women as this would reduce the number of abortions and, rather importantly, make the world safer for women.

The second is to mandate effective and realistic sex education for the youth and make effective contraception readily accessible. If people have a better understanding of sex and have access to the means to prevent pregnancy, there will be fewer unwanted pregnancies and hence fewer abortions. This has other obvious benefits, although some people do oppose birth control for usually unexplained “religious” reasons.

The third is to provide greater social support for mothers and children. This would include such things as affordable day car for all working mothers, financial support for lower income mothers, and other support that would make raising a child less of a financial burden. This would reduce the number of abortions by making the choice to have the child more viable.

The third is to address the gender inequalities that burden women. These include wage inequality, the glass ceiling, and other such things that contribute to making it difficult for women to have a family and a career. This would lower the number of abortions by making being a woman and a mother less of a career handicap, thus giving women a greater opportunity to choose to continue an unplanned pregnancy.

There are, of course, some obvious objections against these proposals. The first is that doing so would require the use of public money. The “advantage” of the usual approaches is that they are initially free for the state and the cost is imposed upon the women. Such cost shifting is beloved by the morally shifty. As such, it comes down to the ethics of deciding who should bear the burden and cost. Being pro-life rather than anti-abortion, I hold that the cost should be shared and I am willing to pay a price for my principles rather than expecting others to bear that cost.

The second objection is that these approaches require some radical changes to society. Those who oppose fairness and prefer the “traditional” approach of oppressing and burdening women will find this problematic. However, they would be wrong about this and morally defending unfairness is rather challenging.

The third objection is that this approach will still allow abortions to occur as there is no proposal to impose new restrictions or ban abortion. My reply is that I do acknowledge that it would be preferable to have no abortions, just as it would be preferable to never have to harm anyone or anything ever. However, if it is accepted that a person’s interests can warrant harming another living being, then there are clear grounds for warranting abortion in many cases. As such, while I favor reducing the need for abortion, I cannot favor eliminating it, any more than I can support a total rejection of ever doing harm. I do, of course, recognize that such complete pacifism could be morally commendable and someone could consistently oppose all abortion if they embraced it.

As this is being written, the government of the United States is shut down. The Republicans, who control all three branches of the federal government, are blaming the Democrats. The Democrats currently have enough votes to prevent the Republicans from simply doing whatever they want but there is the question of why the Democrats are not simply rolling over for the Republicans.

The Democrats have claimed they want to extend the tax credits that make purchasing health insurance more affordable for those using the “Obamacare” marketplace. They also want to undo the Medicaid cuts in Trump’s “big bill.” Given the high cost of insurance premiums and how much people, especially those in many Republican states, depend on Medicaid, the Democrats’ goal seems morally commendable. The Republicans understand that saying they are shutting down the government because the Democrats want to help people afford health care would make them look bad, so they falsely claim that the “Democrats shut down the government because they want to give free health care to immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally.”

But people in the United States illegally are not eligible for federal health care programs, which obviously include the insurance provided by Obamacare and Medicaid. Hence, the Republicans in question are either in error or lying. But there is a small slice, a sliver, of truth embedded deep within these untruths.

From a rhetorical standpoint, this technique allows untruths to be “anchored” to a true claim. This can allow a deflection tactic to be used against critics by insisting that the critics are denying the true sliver when they are, in fact, criticizing the untruth. From a psychological perspective, this method might also allow people to feel better about lying as they can rationalize their lies by telling themselves they are saying something true. As Christianity condemns lying, anyone who professes to be a Christian might find this tactic useful, should they wish to deceive themselves and others. But, of course, God cannot be deceived. Morally this method is also problematic, since it involves both lying and attempting to misuse the truth as part of a deception. But what is the sliver of truth behind these untruths?

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 requires hospitals that receive Medicaid funds to provide emergency care for which they are compensated (and rightly so) by Medicaid. A person in the United States illegally, but who meets the requirements of the act, can thus receive emergency medical treatment and the hospital providing the service can receive compensation from Medicaid. As such, by wanting to reverse the cuts to Medicaid the Democrats do want more funds to be available and a minute fraction of which might go to compensate an American hospital that treated someone here illegally. But this is required by a 1986 law from when Reagan was President, so blaming the Democrats for the shutdown because of this law would be absurd. Also, this act should be supported by any Christian who professes to be moved by the tale of the good Samaritan. From a non-religious perspective, it is also an ethical law. To let people suffer or die simply because of their legal status would be morally monstrous. It is also reasonable that the hospitals be compensated for these services, especially given how underfunded many community hospitals are. As such, it is also clear why Republicans are not focusing on this act and are instead offering straw man attacks on the Democrats.

Trump claimed that “We’ll probably have a shutdown because one of the things they want to do is they want to give incredible Medicare, Cadillac, the Cadillac Medicare, to illegal immigrants.” Then he added “they want to have illegal aliens come into our country and get massive health care at the cost to everybody else.” This claim was echoed by Vance and Mike Johnson. This is an obvious straw man, even laying aside that there is no such thing as Cadilac Medicare. But this is rhetorically effective move since it appeals to fears famously exploited by President Reagan that the wrong people are getting public money. This version has the added power of appealing to xenophobia; that people from somewhere else are taking what should be going to Americans.

While some people might believe the lies, even those who know better might still support the Republicans even if doing so would hurt them personally. Many Republicans rely on the tax credits, and many Republican states depend on Medicaid dollars. But there are those who are willing to hurt themselves if doing so hurts people they do not like. A good (or bad) example of this is how racism drained public pools, support for universal healthcare and other policies. Racism is a powerful force in the United States as is xenophobia; combining these two is an effective way to get some people to act against their own interest and thus hurt everyone. Which seems to be a goal of the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress, something that even MTG seems to recognize.

While a concealed weapon permit allows a person to carry a gun in many places, the campuses of public universities have generally been gun-free areas. The Republican rulers of my adopted state of Florida regularly debate whether to allow concealed carry on campus, while other states have already passed such laws.

Before Texas passed such a law, the faculty of the University of Houston met to discuss this issue and express concern about its impact. A slide from a faculty meeting about the law suggests that faculty “be careful in discussing sensitive topics”, “drop certain topics from your curriculum”, “not ‘go there’ if you sense anger”, “limit student access off hours, go to appointment-only office hours , and only meet ‘that student’ in controlled circumstances.”

What was striking about the slide is that the first three suggestions are identical to limits imposed by what detractors call “political correctness” and there are also similarities to recommendations about trigger warnings. This provides the grounds for the discussion to follow in which I consider limits of free speech and academic freedom.

One way to justify limiting academic freedom and free speech is to argue that students are entitled to a non-hostile learning environment in which diversity and difference are not only tolerated but respected. That is, students have a right to expect limits on the academic freedom and free speech of professors. This is often supported by a moral argument that appeals to the harms that would be suffered by the students if the freedoms of the professors were not suitable limited for their protection. For the good of the sensitive students, professors are supposed to accept such restrictions.

This sort of reasoning assumes that students would be harmed without such restrictions and that their right not to be harmed exceeds the imposition on the rights of the professors (and other students who might gain value from such subjects and discussions).

A similar sort of argument can be made in the case of concealed weapons. The reasoning is, presumably, that an armed student might be provoked to violence by what happens in class and thus hurt other students. As such, for the safety of students, restrictions should be accepted.

This reasoning assumes that armed students pose a threat and are easily provoked to violence, a factual matter that will be discussed later. It also assumes that the risk of harm to the students by a fellow student outweighs the rights of free expression and academic freedom (on the part of both professors and students).

Somewhat ironically, the attitude expressed in the slides suggests that there will be a hostile environment for gun owners which is something I have experienced. Being from rural Maine, I learned to shoot as soon as I could hold a gun and spent much of my youth hunting and fishing. While many colleagues do not take issue with this, I have run into some hostility towards guns and hunting over the years. I have had fellow professors say, “you are not stupid, so how can you like guns?” and “you seem like such a decent person, how could you have ever gone hunting” (sometimes said between bites of a burger). While being a gun owner is a matter of owning a gun, there are also cultures that include gun such as the one I grew up in. Hostility towards people because they belong to such a culture seems comparable to hostility towards other aspects of culture, like being hostile towards Muslims or towards men who elect to wear traditional female clothing.

It might be replied that gun culture is not worthy of the same tolerance as other cultures, which is, of course, what people who hate those other cultures say about them. It might also be argued that the intent is not to be intolerant towards people who have guns as part of their culture, but to protect students from the dangers presented by such irrational and violence prone people.

Another way to justify limiting academic freedom and free speech is on practical or pragmatic grounds. In the case of political sensitivity, professors might decide that it is not worth the hassle, the risk of lawsuits, the risk of trouble with administrators and the risk of becoming a news item. As such, the judgment to voluntarily restrict one’s freedom would be an assessment of the practical gains and harms, with the evaluation being that the pragmatic choice is to run a safe class. This, of course, assumes that the practical harm outweighs the practical benefits, an assessment that will certainly vary greatly depending on the circumstances.

The same justification can be used in the case of armed students. The idea is that professors might decide on purely pragmatic grounds that risking provoking an armed student is not worth it. This would not be a moral assessment, simply a pragmatic decision aimed at having a bullet free day in the classroom.  This, of course, assumes that a pragmatic assessment of the risk shows that the best practical choice is to focus on safety.

A final way to justify restricting academic freedom and freedom of expression is a moral argument that is based on potential harm to the professor. In the case of political sensitivity, there is concern about the damage that a professor can suffer if she is not careful to restrict her freedom. While such fear might be unfounded, it is real and certainly provides a moral foundation for self-censoring: the professor must restrict her freedom to avoid doing moral harm to herself. As with any such assessment, the risk of harm and the extent of the harm need to be considered.

In the case of guns, the worry is that a professor could cause herself harm by provoking gun violence on the part of a student. The moral foundation for self-censorship is the same as above: the professor must restrict her freedom to avoid doing moral harm to herself.

As is the case with career damage, a professor would need to consider the risk of provoking a student to gun violence and perhaps the moral choice would be to choose safety over the risk. This leads to the factual matter of the extent of the risk.

The fear expressed by some about concealed carry on campus seems to assume that it presents a significant risk to professors. However, it is not clear that this is the case. First, such laws only allow guns on campus. Threatening or shooting people remain illegal. If someone is willing to break the law regarding threatening or murder, presumably they would also be willing to break a law forbidding guns on campus. As such, there does not seem to be a significant increase in risk because of allowing concealed carry on campus.

 Second, campuses do not (in general) have security checks for guns. It would be one thing if the law disbanded existing security screening to enter campus as this would increase the risk of guns on campus. This law just allows law-abiding citizens to legally bring a gun on campus and has no effect on how easy or hard it is for someone to bring a gun on campus with the intent to commit violence. As such, campuses would be about as safe as ever.

It might be objected that a person will legally bring a gun to class or the professor’s office, be provoked to violence and act on this provocation only because she has a gun (and would not use her hands, a knife or a chair). Thus, the danger is great enough to warrant professors to self-censor.

One reply to this is to note that violence by students against professors is rare and allowing guns on campus would not seem to increase the violent tendencies of students. It could, of course, happen. But a student could also decide to run over a professor with a car and this possibility does not justify banning cars from campus. The fear that a student carrying a weapon legally will murder a professor after being provoked in class or in the office seems analogous to the fear that Muslim refugees will commit terrorists in the United States. While it could happen, the fear is overblown and does not seem to justify imposing restrictions. As such, while free expression combined with legal campus carry does entail a non-zero risk, the risk is so low that self-censorship seems unwarranted.

“I believe in God, and there are things that I believe that I know are crazy. I know they’re not true.”

–Stephen Colbert

 

While Stephen Colbert ended up as a successful comedian, he originally planned to major in philosophy. His past occasionally returns to haunt him with digressions from comedy to philosophy. Detractors might claim that philosophy is comedy without humor; but that is law. Colbert has an odd epistemology: he regularly claims he believes in things he knows are not true, such as guardian angels. While it would be easy enough to dismiss this claim as purely comedic, it does raise interesting philosophical issues. The main and most obvious issue is whether a person can believe in something they know is not true.

While a thorough examination of this issue would require a deep examination of the concepts of belief, truth and knowledge, I will take a shortcut and go with intuitively plausible stock accounts of these concepts. To believe something is to hold that it is true. A belief is true, in the commonsense view, when it gets reality right. This is the often maligned correspondence theory of truth. A simple account of knowledge in philosophy is that a person knows that P when the person believes P, P is true, and the belief in P is properly justified. The justified true belief account of knowledge has been savagely blooded by countless attacks but shall suffice for this discussion.

Given this basic analysis, it would seem impossible for a person to believe in something they know is not true. This would require that the person believes something is true when they also believe it is false. To use the example of God, a person would need to believe that it is true that God exists and false that God exists. This would seem to commit the person to believing that a contradiction is true, which is problematic because a contradiction is always false.

One possible response is to point out that the human mind is not beholden to the rules of logic. While a contradiction cannot be true, there are many ways a person can hold contradictory beliefs. One possibility is that the person does not realize that the beliefs contradict one another and hence they can hold both.  This might be due to an ability to compartmentalize the beliefs, so they are never in the consciousness at the same time or due to a failure to recognize the contradiction. Another possibility is that the person does not grasp the notion of contradiction and hence does not realize that they cannot logically accept the truth of two beliefs that are contradictory.

While these responses do have considerable appeal, they do not appear to work in cases in which the person claims, as Colbert does, that they believe something they know is not true. After all, making this claim requires considering both beliefs in the same context and, if the claim of knowledge is taken seriously, that the person is aware that the rejection of the belief is justified sufficiently to qualify as knowledge. As such, when a person claims that they believe something they know is not true, then that person would seem to either not telling to truth or ignorant of what the words mean. Or perhaps there are other alternatives.

One possibility is to consider the power of cognitive dissonance management. A person could know that a cherished belief is not true, yet refuse to reject the belief while being fully aware that this is a problem.

Another possibility is to consider that the term “knowledge” is not being used in the strict philosophical sense of a justified true belief. Rather, it could be taken to refer to strongly believing that something is true, even when it is not. For example, a person might say “I know I turned off the stove” when, in fact, they did not. As another example, a person might say “I knew she loved me, but I was wrong.” What they mean is that they really believed she loved him, but that belief was false.

Using this weaker account of knowledge, then a person can believe in something that they know is not true. This just involves believing in something that one also strongly believes is not true. In some cases, this is quite rational. For example, when I roll a twenty-sided die when playing D&D, I strongly believe that a will not roll a 20. However, I do also believe that I will roll a 20 and my belief has a 5% chance of being true. As such, I can believe what I know is not true, assuming that this means that I can believe in something that I believe is less likely than another belief.

People are also strongly influenced by emotional and other factors that are not based on a rational assessment. For example, a gambler might know that their odds of winning are extremely low and thus know they will lose (that is, have a strongly supported belief that they will lose) yet also strongly believe they will win (that is, feel strongly about a weakly supported belief). Likewise, a person could accept that the weight of the evidence is against the existence of God and thus know that God does not exist (that is, have a strongly supported belief that God does not exist) while also believing strongly that God does exist (that is, having considerable faith that is not based in evidence).