Month: May 2026

In my previous essay, I presented some groundwork and stage setting for the discussion to follow. In this essay I will look at consent.

Intuitively, what makes some activities wrong (and often criminal) is lack of consent. Theft, for example, is taking property without the owner’s consent. Kidnapping, as another example, is transporting a person without consent. In the case of rape, the activity is sexual in nature (to be deliberately vague) and occurs without consent. While these simple definitions have appeal, the matter of sorting out what counts as consent and what constitutes acting without consent is complicated. To focus the discussion, I will revisit a controversial example.

Years ago, conservative intellectual George Will triggered a firestorm among liberal columnists and bloggers with his June 6 column. The claim that triggered the most outrage was his assertion that “when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate.”

Some of those attacking Will interpreted him as asserting that women want to be raped. While some awful people believe that, this reading is probably not Will’s actual position. Another interpretation, which is supported by the rest of his column, is that some women will embrace a broad definition of “rape” and interpret their experiences to match that definition. The motivation, at least as it seemed to Will, is to gain a “coveted status” that “confers privileges.” My concern here is not with whether Will is correct. Rather, I want to  re-examine what he takes as an example of how one becomes a member of this “privileged” class of victims.

Will uses an example taken from a report about Swarthmore College. In 2013, a woman was in her room with a man “with whom she’d been hooking up for three months”:

 

“They’d now decided — mutually, she thought — just to be friends. When he ended up falling asleep on her bed, she changed into pajamas and climbed in next to him. Soon, he was putting his arm around her and taking off her clothes. ‘I basically said, “No, I don’t want to have sex with you.” And then he said, “OK, that’s fine” and stopped. . . . And then he started again a few minutes later, taking off my panties, taking off his boxers. I just kind of laid there and didn’t do anything — I had already said no. I was just tired and wanted to go to bed. I let him finish. I pulled my panties back on and went to sleep.’”

 

As Will notes, six weeks later the woman reported that she had been raped. Will seems to hold that the woman was not actually raped and decided to join the “privileged” class of victims by redefining her experience as rape. Others might claim that she had been “brainwashed” by feminist ideology or political correctness. Setting aside the topic of motivation, there is an important question of whether the incident was rape. As Will showed, those embracing a specific form of conservative ideology presumably consider it to not be rape.

On the face of it, it is easy to argue the incident was rape. While the man did not threaten or use force, he did engage in a sexual act after she had said that she did not want to have sex with him. Sex without consent is rape and thus she was raped.

To use an analogy, suppose for a few months I had allowed a friend to use my truck, but then we decide (or so I think) that this will no longer be part of our relationship. She comes to borrow my truck and I basically say “No, I don’t want to.” She stops but then returns, takes the keys and drives away. She has engaged in theft by taking my truck without consent. Our previous agreement and behavior are not relevant, since we ended the agreement.

While this view has merit, it is worth considering an alternative. One complication is that consent is a matter of communication and communication can be imperfect. This creates the practical (and moral) problem of sorting out when consent has been given, when it has not, and when (and how) a person should know the difference.

In the specific case, the two parties had been having consensual sex (“hooking up”) for three months. On the face of it, once a relationship is established then it is not unreasonable to accept an assumption of consent. To use an analogy, before COVID moved the game online, I used to keep beer and snacks on hand for my Sunday D&D game. My longstanding friends did not need to explicitly ask permission to get the beer or snacks, since there is a reasonable assumption that they have standing permission. I would, in fact, have an obligation to tell them if certain beers or snacks were off limit—which would then obligate them to not take the specified beer or snacks.

In the case at hand, let it be assumed that the woman changed the relationship from “hooking up” and ended the sexual aspect. This would remove the assumption of consent (unless otherwise informed). As such, the man could no longer assume that she was consenting unless he was told otherwise.

The woman also notes that she “basically” told him she didn’t want to have sex with him—which would show her lack of consent. The man should have left it at that and not tried again.

However, a devil’s advocate might raise certain points. The first is that the brains of young people are different from adult brains, especially in judgment and impulse control. The second is that the desire for sex can be strong and even the prospect of sex impedes rational judgment. The third is that people in general and young people in particular are bad at communication. The fourth is that communication is not merely a matter words—that consent or lack thereof can also be conveyed by actions. Such a devil’s advocate might allege, in his devilish way, that the young man, driven by basic biological desires and impeded judgment, decided to make another attempt at sex and wrongly interpreted, perhaps due to his immature brain and lack of communication skills, her lack of action as consent. That is, he honestly believed that he had consent and had not raped her. She might have also shared this belief for six weeks.

The obvious reply is that none of the devil’s advocate’s claims matter: what matters is that the woman said that she did not want to have sex. Thus, it was sex without consent. But the devil might continue and offer an analog.

Suppose my friend Sally likes driving trucks and hates to drive alone. After we have been friends a while, I agree to let her drive my truck and agree to go with her. This goes on for three months and I find I have gotten tired of this aspect of our relationship and tell her so. As far as I can tell, she agrees.

Then I invite her to come over and sit in my truck. After a while, she reaches for the keys and I say “no, I am not letting you drive and I am not riding with you.” Rebuffed, she pulls her hand back. But, a few minutes later she is after the key again. I do nothing. She takes the key and puts it in the ignition. I say and do nothing. She starts the truck and takes me along for the ride.  I am tired, so I just sit back and let her drive. When she gets back, I take the key out of the ignition. Six weeks later I call the police and accuse her of kidnapping me and stealing my truck.

Theft is taking property without consent and kidnaping is transporting a person without consent. If the woman did not consent in the original situation, then I did not consent in the analogical situation. If the man was a rapist, then Sally was a thief and a kidnapper. However, I suspect that people would react to my claim that Sally kidnapped me and stole my truck by saying that I should have said something when she reached for the keys a second time—by letting her simply take them and drive away with me without another word would seem to show I consented. After all, her reaching for the key and so on could be seen as requests for consent—I could have said “no.” Of course, it could be countered that this view is wrong: Sally is now a kidnapper and truck thief because of my original statement which withheld consent.  After all, it might be argued, saying “no” once suffices—and until an explicit, verbal “yes” is given the original “no” is in place. One should not need to repeatedly say “no” just to maintain the “no”, especially when it comes to sex.

Some might reject the truck analogy while holding the original case was rape. One avenue of reply is to argue that the requirements of consent differ in different contexts, which seems reasonable—the challenge is working out the rules of consent. For example, one could argue that sex always requires affirmative consent each time it is initiated and that if consent is withdrawn it must be explicitly restored.

The example considered in this essay did not explicitly involve drinking—however, many sexual assaults on campus do. In the next essay the moral impact of intoxication will be considered.

 

 

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A basic lesson of philosophy is that terms need to be properly defined. Oversimplifying a bit, a good definition needs to avoid being too narrow and too broad. A definition that is too narrow leaves out things that the term should include. One that is too broad allows in too much. A handy analogy for this is the firewall that your computer should have: if it is doing its job properly, it lets in what should be allowed while keeping attacks out. An example of a definition that is too narrow would be to define “art” as “any product of the visual arts, such as painting and sculpture.” This is too narrow because it leaves out literature. As an example of a definition that is too broad, defining “art” as “that which creates an emotional effect” is defective since such things as being punch in the face or winning the lottery would be art. A perfect definition would be like perfect security: all that belongs is allowed in and all that does not is excluded.

While people have a general understanding of the meaning of “rape”, the usual view covers what my colleague Jean Kazez calls “classic” rape—an attack that involves force, threat or coercion. As she notes, another sort of rape is “date” rape—a form of assault that, on college campuses, often involves intoxication rather than overt violence.

 In many cases survivors of sexual assault do not classify the assault as rape. According to Cathy Young, “three quarters of the female students who were classified as victims of sexual assault by incapacitation did not believe they had been raped; even when only incidents involving penetration were counted, nearly two-thirds did not call it rape. Two-thirds did not report the incident to the authorities because they didn’t think it was serious enough.”

In some cases, a person changes their assessment and re-classify the incident as rape. For example, a woman who eventually reported being raped twice by a friend explained her delay on the grounds that it took her a while to “to identify what happened as an assault.”

The fact that a person changed her mind does not, obviously, invalidate their claim. However, there is the question of what is a good definition of an extremely vile thing. After all, when people claim there is an epidemic of campus rapes, they point to statistics claiming that 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted in college. This statistic is horrifying, but it is still reasonable to consider what it means.

One problem with inquiring into the statistics and examining the definition of “rape” is that this can be an ideological issue for some people. For some, “rape” is broadly construed and to raise even rational concerns about the broadness of the definition is to invite accusations of ignorant insensitivity (at best) and charges of misogyny. For some on the right, “rape” is very narrowly defined (including the infamous notion of “legitimate” rape) and to consider expanding the definition is to invite accusations of being woke or a radical feminist man hater.

As the ideological territory is staked out and fortified, the potential for rational discussion is proportionally decreased. In fact, to even suggest that there is a matter to be rationally discussed (with the potential for dispute and disagreement) might be greeted with hostility. After all, when a view becomes part of a person’s ideological identity, the person tends to believe that there is nothing left to discuss and any attempt at criticism is both automatically in error and a personal attack.

However, the very fact that there are such distinct ideological fortresses indicates a clear need for rational discussion of this matter and I will endeavor to do so in the essays that follows. While this is a subject I wrote on back in 2014, the rise of the manosphere and the misogynistic right has pushed me to re-visit this topic.

 

 

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Back in 2014 Michelle Goldberg published a thoughtful essay on the campus rape crisis in the Nation. As one would suspect, the crisis persists and under the Trump regime it might worsen as the new rules are alleged to protect the accused more than the survivors.

When a student is alleged to have sexually assaulted another student, the assault can be reported to the police or brought to the attention of the college (or both). For legal (and moral) reasons, colleges should not ignore such reports.

While colleges vary, it is common practice for colleges to handle allegations of sexual assault like academic misconduct hearings: a hearing is held with a panel composed of faculty members and administrators. Since the panel is not a court of law, it cannot impose criminal or civil penalties as an actual court could. Rather, the panel typically decides whether the accused student should be subject to disciplinary action, with the highest penalty usually being expulsion. As might be imagined, there are some obvious problems with this approach.

The first is a practical problem: while many schools do have their own police forces, faculty and administrators are generally not trained to investigate and judge sexual assaults. In my own case, I am a philosophy professor, not a detective, lawyer, or CSI professional. I would, if I was assigned to such a panel, do my best—just as a detective or lawyer somehow assigned to teach my class would presumably do their best.

There seem to be two main solutions to this problem. One, which seems the most sensible, would be for colleges to cede authority over these crimes to the legal system. That is, the role of the college would be to assist in reporting the crime to the police. Naturally, the college can also have an important role in providing support. There is, however, the concern that such crimes are not always properly addressed by the authorities.

The other would be for the college to ensure that those handling the incidents are trained professionals. This could be done by hiring such professionals or by training faculty and administrators to handle such cases. This would run into the practical concern about cost.

The second is a practical problem with a moral component. A college has a vested interest in protecting its reputation and protecting itself legally and financially. In a practical sense, this leads to a conflict of interest that could influence the rulings of a panel. In a moral sense, this can lead to justice not being done.

As before, there seem to be two solutions to the problem. One is to remove the handling of such cases from colleges. The other is to take steps to ensure that such internal panels act for the sake of justice rather than trying to protect the reputation of the college. I would say that the former option is the better choice.

The third is a moral problem with two aspects. One aspect is that survivors sometimes report that a college’s handling of their situation is yet another violation—a traumatic and harmful experience rather than professionally conducted justice. Obviously, subjecting someone to such an awful experience is morally wrong. The second aspect is that alleged perpetrators sometimes report that the college’s handling of the situation is a kangaroo court devoid of due process. While these might seem inconsistent, the experience could be both a trauma for the accuser and a kangaroo court for the accused.

Once again, there would seem to be two solutions. One is to have such cases handled by the actual legal system. There is, however, the problem that it is not uncommon for the legal system to handle sexual assault cases badly, which is yet another matter of moral concern and a serious problem. Some have even argued that colleges should continue to handle such cases because the legal system has failed so badly. That is, colleges might be bad, but they are sometimes better than the legal system. This points to the need to address the legal system—there is little sense in handing off such cases to a system that is no better or even worse.

The second is to rework the college system to try to ensure that it operates with proper respect while also ensuring that the alleged perpetrators are given a fair hearing. This would prove challenging—but it is a challenge that must be met if colleges are to continue in this role. If the legal system is doing a poor job, then it would be even more important for colleges to revamp their systems.

The third is a moral problem with legal aspects. As many critics of the current system have noted, there is the moral and legal concern with the basis for the college’s authority to handle these cases. As the usual argument goes, colleges do not handle cases in which a student murders another student—that is turned over to the police. By analogy, the same should apply to sexual assault—which is a crime. While a college does have academic authority over students as well as a degree of disciplinary authority, a college would seem to lack the legal and moral sovereignty needed to claim authority over a serious crimes (even if it had the resources and competence to run its own legal system). As such, a college would seem to be overreaching its authority. That said, there can still be a legitimate role for colleges to play in such matters.

While a college should not have the authority to impose criminal (or even civil) punishments on students, it does have some legitimate authority. A college should have a clearly defined sphere of authority based on the agreement between the student and the institution, as spelled out in the rules and policies of the college. The college also has the legitimate authority to impose certain penalties within a very limited sphere. The outer limit of these penalties is, of course, expulsion from the university.

Such authority is intended to allow colleges to some control over student behavior—after all, without the capacity to punish, authority means little. There is also the purpose of maintaining a safe and non-threatening learning environment. This is what justifies punishing students who disrupt this environment. In some cases, maintaining this environment can require expelling students.

Because of this legitimate function, a college can justly claim the right to hold a hearing for a student accused of sexual assault. However, this should not be in place of a criminal trial. Rather, it should be in addition to the criminal trial. The purpose of the college hearing would be to determine whether the alleged perpetrator should be, in addition to whatever punishment imposed by the legal system, subject to discipline by the college.

While it might be tempting to insist that an alleged perpetrator who is found innocent by a court of law should also be exempt from college discipline, it must be remembered that the requirements of a criminal court are (supposed to be) very rigorous, with an assumption of innocence and a standard of proof set at beyond a reasonable doubt.

It can be argued that the standard of proof for a college disciplinary hearing should be lower than that of a criminal court (as civil courts have a lower standard of proof). After all, the standard should be higher when a person might spend years in jail as opposed to being disciplined by a college. For example, an incident might be such that it seems reasonable to believe that something bad occurred, yet the evidence is not enough to establish proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In such a case, an alleged perpetrator might avoid jail yet perhaps be justly expelled from college.

If this view is accepted, then there are the practical and moral problems of determining the standards of evidence and the appropriate punishments. Some colleges accept a weak standard—that of “more likely than not.” That is, if the panel members  believe that it is more likely that the alleged perpetrator committed the misdeed than did not, then the person is guilty. As might be imagined, some critics see it as far too weak and in stark contrast with the usual principle that it is better for the guilty to go unpunished than for the innocent to be unjustly punished.

There is also controversy over punishments.  It could be argued that even the worst punishment that a college can offer (most likely expulsion) would not be enough. While this might be true, it would not be a good reason to grant colleges more power to punish—after all, if the punishments were sufficiently severe, then the standards would need to be equally high. It can also be said that some punishments, such as expulsion, would be too harsh given the weak standard.

It must be noted that sorting out the standard and the punishments is distinct from the issue of whether a college has legitimate authority to discipline students accused of sexual assault. A college has the authority to impose disciplinary action even on a student found not guilty by a criminal court—much as a civil court can impose a penalty on someone found not guilty by a criminal court. However, I have not given sufficient thought to the standard to be used and the punishments that would be just. It might be the case that the punishment should be linked to the standard, the weaker the standard, the weaker the punishment.

It can also be argued that there is behavior that is not covered by the law but can be justly covered by a college’s policies. For example, cheating on tests is usually not a criminal offense, but it does provide grounds for discipline in a college setting. Likewise, some sexual behavior might not be considered criminal yet still be legitimately regarded as problematic enough to warrant discipline from a college. That is, the behavior is not illegal, but not tolerable behavior for a student. To use an analogy, some colleges have dress codes that forbid attire that would not violate the laws relating to public indecency.

To close, colleges should obviously not be handling criminal cases; these should be turned over to the police and the actual legal system. However, colleges can legitimately hold hearings on allegations of sexual assault and subject students to disciplinary action up to and including expulsion. There are, however, important practical and moral considerations that must be addressed and these include:

 

  • Ensuring the competence and impartiality of the college panel members conducting the investigation and hearing.
  • Ensuring that the standard of proof adopted (such as “more likely than not”) is just.
  • Ensuring that the punishments are just.
  • Ensuring that the applications of the standards and punishments are just.
  • Ensuring that both the alleged perpetrator and purported victim are treated with respect and get due process.

 

If these considerations can be properly addressed, then such a system can be legitimately regarded as just—at least within the specific context.

 

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I, as discussed in the previous essay on this subject, believe students have a right to know the contents of a class in advance and that I am, as a professor, bound by the requirements of civility and compassion. Professors should inform students about potentially upsetting material in their classes. That said, I have some concerns about the imposition of guidance upon faculty. I am especially concerned when the state imposes ideological mandates forbidding and requiring content; this goes far beyond any imposition of trigger warning requirements.

One concern is that guidance might strike some as based on what was called “politically correct” ideology. Nowadays the right would call it “woke”, although that terms seems to have no clear meaning to them beyond denoting what they dislike.  While claims about the dominance of wokeness in academics are overblown, guides that appear based on ideology could be used to criticize the academy. That said, many states (such as my adopted state of Florida) mandate ideological content in GENED classes in state colleges.

An obvious counter is to contend that such guides are not politically correct impositions and to see them as such would be overblown suspicion. Another obvious counter is that such guidance is ideologically neutral and merely aims at protecting students from trauma. Even if trigger warnings were imposed by a university, this is radically different from imposed or forbidden ideological content.  A third counter is that the classroom is a suitable place for the imposition of ideology onto a captive audience; the fight in some states could be seen as being over who gets to impose their ideology.

While this might seem naïve, I think that the classroom should not serve as a place of ideological indoctrination, even when the ideology is my own. As a philosopher, my objective is to teach students how to think and not to preach to them. That said,  someone might say it is a contradiction to instill the principles of academic inquiry and learning while maintaining that ideologies should not be imposed in the classroom. After all, it might be argued that such things as honesty, respect, reason, and intellectual curiosity are ideological in nature.

A second concern is that while guiding faculty about trigger warnings is not imposing a restriction on academic freedom it does do at least two negative things. One is that it makes a value judgment about the material and implies that such material is not suitable for all students. As such, it seems to suggest that faculty should, perhaps, not include it. Another is that it is the first trickle in what might grow into a stream that erodes academic freedom. To lay out the progression, it is not unreasonable to see guidelines gradually evolve into suggestions which then, over a few years, become actual restrictions. As such, it seems sensible to stop the trickle well before the possible flood.

The obvious reply to this concern is that it the feared evolution might never take place—that is, there would be no expansion from guidance to “ism based” restrictions on what faculty are permitted to include. This is a reasonable point in that to simply assume that the slide must be inevitable would be to fall into a slippery slope fallacy. That said, there does seem to be a clear and reasonable path from guidance to actual restriction and thus this is still a matter of legitimate concern.

While my old concern was with an imposition from “the left” what has occurred under Republican rule is an ideological imposition from the right, including weaponizing federal funding to compel universities to comply with an ideology. While some claim the right is being hypocritical given their professed love of freedom, one can only properly understand the right once one understands how their concepts differ from the usual meanings of such terms. They do not oppose the imposition of ideologies, in principle. Rather, they oppose what they see as the imposition of what they perceive as an ideology other than their own.

A third point of concern is a practical one, namely that students might exploit trigger warnings s. As some examples, students might use trigger warnings as an excuse to skip classes, avoid work, or as a way to get a higher grade (based on an appeal to emotional trauma). It would be difficult to prove that a student was exploiting trigger warnings. There is also the concern since trigger sensitivity is linked to various –isms a professor who decided to question a student’s triggers could find themselves accused of various –isms (such as sexism or racism). Professors also generally prefer not to delve too deeply into the emotional issues of students—we are, after all, generally not trained therapists or counselors and professionalism requires a certain emotional distance.

One objection is that students would not exploit such trigger warnings. The obvious counter is that some certainly would. While not a trigger warning case, the 2025 University of Oklahoma essay controversy shows how a student could exploit accusations of -isms.  Another objection is that a system could be created to verify triggers to ensure that excuses are legitimate. While this would be possible, this would entail more bureaucracy and still would not do much to deter exploitation.

A third objection is that allowing some students to exploit the system is an acceptable price to pay to allow students to avoid triggering material. This might be true—although it does raise the question of whether avoiding triggering material is a legitimate reason to miss class, etc. 

It could also be countered that the avoidance of trigger material would not provide a legitimate excuse for missing class, avoiding certain coursework, etc. While this is possible, one might wonder about the value of trigger warnings—that is, there would seem to be something odd in acknowledging that something is potentially traumatic enough that people must be warned while also holding that students are not excused if they elect to avoid the potential trauma. It could be countered that the purpose of the warning is not to allow avoidance but to allow students the chance to be prepared for the incoming trauma. This could be good enough, although it does invite a debate about the value of trigger warnings.

In closing, I do agree that students should be informed about course content and that a professor should be polite and compassionate about letting students know about potentially traumatic material. However, I do have concerns about administrators imposing guidelines and mandating trigger warnings. I have far greater concerns about the ideological impositions of the state, which does illustrate how the “left” and “right” differ in the context of academics in the United States.

 

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A trigger warning, in the context of a university class, is a notification that class content might be upsetting or cause a PTSD response. While warning people about potentially disturbing content is an old one, the more recent intellectual foundations of trigger warnings lie in the realm of feminist thought. While the political right generally does not favor trigger warnings, the return of Trump and the triumph of the right has resulted in state-imposed restrictions on class content. My adopted state of Florida has imposed ideological requirements on the content of GENED classes. Some content is forbidden, some permitted and others (such as the Western canon) are mandated by the power of the state.

Years ago, some colleges considered requests from students for trigger warnings. Oberlin briefly posted a guide: professors should warn students about anything that would “disrupt a student’s learning” and “cause trauma.” The guide also urged professors to “be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression. Realize that all forms of violence are traumatic, and that your students have lives before and outside your classroom, experiences you may not expect or understand.”

As a concrete example, the guide used Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe as an example. While noting that it is a “triumph of literature that everyone in the world should read,” the guide warned that it could “trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, suicide and more.” At Rutgers, a student proposed that the Great Gatsby be labeled with a trigger warning because of “a variety of scenes that reference gory, abusive and misogynistic violence.” Interestingly, the right has professed it also wants to protect students from distressful content; however, their approach is to restrict or ban such content rather than warning students.

While I defend academic freedom, I agree that professors should inform students about content that might be traumatic, offensive or disturbing. I base my view on two principles. The first is that students have a right to know the class content so they can make an informed decision. That is why I make my course material readily available and routinely respond to emails from students inquiring about content. I am not worried that my course content will shock or traumatize students—I tend to use readings from thinkers such as Aristotle, Lao Tzu, Wollstonecraft, King, Plato, Locke, and Descartes. Hardly traumatic or shocking stuff. While I think students should leave their comfort zones, students should do this as a matter of conscious choice and not by being ambushed because they have no idea what the course contains. While I am suspicious of the motives of the state of Florida, I do agree with the new policy that syllabi must be publicly available long before the semester begins. For those familiar with the “free” state of Florida, it will come as no surprise that that our syllabi are reviewed for words the state forbids. I’m not a fan of that ideological policing, but I am glad potential students can see the syllabus well before they need to register. It might, in fact, be the only time they glance at the syllabus.

It might be countered that students should be forced out of their comfort zones and keeping them ignorant of class content is a legitimate way to do this. In reply, while I think education should force students out of their comfort zones, the correct way to do this is not by keeping the students ignorant of what they are getting into. After all, they do have the right to select their classes based on an informed choice. And the more information the better. Most of my classes are, for example, available on YouTube and students can see the content for themselves. I also make notes and PowerPoints readily available.

Obviously, informing students of content is distinct from explicit warnings about content. For example, letting the students know that class will include a showing of Deliverance would not inform those ignorant of the movie that it contains a rape scene and violence.

It can be contended that students should be proactive about checking content and the professor’s obligation ends with simply listing the content. To use an analogy, food labels should list ingredients, but it is up to the consumer to do some research, especially if they have allergies. As the Oberlin guide noted, professors might have no idea what might trigger someone—and warning about the unknown can be challenging. It would be like knowing every food allergy and including a warning for each, just in case.

The second principle is my commitment to the virtues of politeness, civility and compassion. While my classes do not contain material that could be sensibly regarded as traumatizing, if I were to include such material I would be obliged to warn the students. Just as when I have people over for dinner and do not know whether they are vegetarians (vegans always tell me they are vegans), I am careful to indicate which dishes contain meat. I also inquire about possible allergies. While I have no food allergies and I am an omnivore (with some moral exceptions, like veal), I recognize that this is not true of everyone and being a good and civil host requires considering others. As such, if I taught a class on morality and war and decided I needed to include graphic images or video, I would let students know ahead of time.

It might be countered that a professor is exempt from the normal rules of civility on the grounds that they have a right to push students out of their intellectual comfort zones (as a coach can push athletes). This does have some appeal—but I tend to think that courtesy is consistent with presenting an intellectual challenge to the students.

That said, I do acknowledge an obvious problem with the subjectivity of the emotional effect of content. What might have no effect on me might revive old traumas for others or offend them. However, one of the responsibilities of being a professional is being able to make judgments about proper content. We can err in this—obviously. However, if I am competent enough to teach a class, then I should be competent enough to distinguish what I should warn students about and what I should not. Admitting, of course, that I could get it wrong. While I am willing to seek guidance in this matter from others, I have moral concerns about imposed guidance and stronger concerns about state imposed ideological mandates.

 

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Way back in 2014 Hayley Krischer wrote a post for the Huffington Post contending that t Maleficent includes a rape scene. Since this movie is a PG-13 Disney film, it does not contain a literal rape scene. Rather, the character of Maleficent is betrayed and mutilated (her wings are removed) and this can be taken to imply an off-screen rape or be a metaphor for rape.

The claim that the betrayal and mutilation of Maleficent is a metaphor for rape is plausible—Krischer does a reasonable analysis of the scenario and, of course, for rape to be in a PG-13 Disney film it would need to be metaphorical.  But whether the scene is about rape is a matter of dispute. Metaphors are not literal and are always subject to some degree of dispute.

One way to address the question would be to determine the intent of those who created the film. After all, the creators would be the best qualified to know their intent and can be seen as those who get the final say about what it means.

 However, creators sometimes do not know what they intend. While I am but a minor writer, I know that sometimes the words come forth like wild animals,  going as they will. Also, I know that sometimes the audience provides an even better interpretation. For example, in one of my Pathfinder adventures I created a dwarf non-player character named Burnbeard. While interacting with the players, he evolved into a true villain—a dwarf who burns off the beards of other dwarfs after he murders them (the greatest insult in dwarven culture). This sort of interaction between the audience and the work of the creator can invest something with new meaning. As such, even if the creators of the movie did not intend for the scene to be a rape scene, it could have evolved into that via the interaction between the audience and the film.

There is also the possibility that a metaphor, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The intent of the creator does not matter as much as the interpretation of the audience. To use the obvious analogy to communication, a person might say something with a certain intent, yet what matters is the meaning taken by the recipient. As such, whatever an audience member sees in a metaphor is what the metaphor means—for that person. To those who see a rape metaphor in Maleficent, the movie contains a rape metaphor. To those who do not, it does not. As such, every metaphorical interpretation would be “right” in the subjective sense.

While this has some appeal, it makes claims about the meaning of metaphors pointless—if everyone is right, it is not worth discussing metaphors except as an exercise in telling others what you see in the mirror of the silver screen. As such, it seems reasonable that for discussing and disputing metaphors to be worthwhile (other than as psychoanalysis) there must be better and worse interpretations.

In the case of Maleficent, there is a plausible case that there is a metaphor for rape. However, a case can be made against that. After all, there are many fantasy movies in which something awful happens to a main character, in which they are subject to treachery and gravely wronged. However, these are not all taken as metaphors for rape. One does not speak of the rape of Aslan. Or the rape of Gollum (betrayed by the ring and robbed of his precious by Bilbo). Or even the rape of Sauron (who has his finger chopped off and is robbed of his ring of power). However, it might be contended that the rape metaphor is limited to female characters rather than male characters who undergo comparable abuses. But what is needed are clear guides to sorting out the evils which are metaphors for rape, and which are not.

 

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Data Driven, Revisited

Way back in 2014 it seemed like driverless cars were just around the corner. While they do operate on some streets, the focus quietly shifted from them to AI. But as research persists, it is worth revisiting driverless cars.

Back then, I hoped that Google would succeed in producing an effective and affordable driverless car. As my friends and associates will attest, 1) I do not like to drive, 2) I have a terrifying lack of navigation skills, and 3) I instantiate Yankee frugality. As such, an affordable self-driving truck would have been perfect for me.

While the part of my mind that gets lost looked forward to the driverless car, the rest of my mind was worried. I was not worried that their descendants would kill us all. Back then, I joked that Google would kill us all. Currently, my death bet is on us exterminating ourselves.

I was not very worried about the ethical issues associated with how such a car would handle unavoidable collisions: the easy and obvious solution was to do what would harm the fewest number of people. Naturally, sorting that out will be a bit of a challenge—but self-driving cars worry me less than cars driven by drunken or distracted humans. I was also not worried about the ethics of enslaving self-driving cars—if such a car were a person (or person-like), then it should be treated like the rest of us in the 99%. That is, it should join us in working bad jobs for lousy pay while we wait for the inevitable revolution. The workers of the world should unite, be they meat or silicon.

Back in 2014, I was worried about the data that these vehicles would collect, especially Google vehicles. Google is interested in gathering data in the same sense that termites are interested in wood and rock stars are interested in alcohol. The company was famous for its search engine, its maps, using its photo taking vehicles to gather info from peoples’ Wi-Fi during drive-by data lootings, and so on. Obviously enough, Google and other companies would get data from such vehicles (although our vehicles are already reporting back to their creators.

Back then, I was willing to allow my hypothetical driverless car provide data, if I was paid or it. I was willing for three reasons. The first is that the value of knowing where and when I go places would be very low, so even if I was offered a small sum like $20 a month it might be worth it. The second is that I have nothing to hide and do not really care if people know where I go. The third is that figuring out where I go is simple given that my teaching schedule is available to the public as are my race results. Other people see this differently and justifiably so. Some people are up to things they would rather not have others know about and even people who have nothing to hide have every right to not want companies to know such things about them. Although they probably already do.

While I thought the travel data would interest companies, there is also the fact that a self-driving car is a bulging package of sensors. To drive about, the vehicle gathers massive amounts of data about everything around it—other vehicles, pedestrians, buildings, litter, and squirrels. As such, a self-driving car would be a super spy that will, presumably, feed that data back to its masters. It is certainly not a stretch to see the data gathering as being one of the prime (if not the prime) tasks of self-driving cars.

On the positive side, such data could be incredibly useful for positive projects, such as decreasing accidents, improving traffic flow, and keeping a watch out for the squirrel apocalypse (or zombie squirrel apocalypse). On the negative side, such massive data gathering would raise more concerns about privacy and the potential for such data to be misused (spoiler alert—this is how the killbots will find and kill us all).

While I still have concerns about driverless cars, my innate laziness and tendency to get lost will still make me a willing participant in the march towards driverless vehicles and the end of humanity. But at least I won’t have to drive to my own funeral.

 

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The assuming an authority of dictating to others, and a forwardness to prescribe to their opinions, is a constant concomitant of this bias and corruption of our judgments. For how almost can it be otherwise, but that he should be ready to impose on another’s belief, who has already imposed on his own? Who can reasonably expect arguments and conviction from him in dealing with others, whose understanding is not accustomed to them in his dealing with himself? Who does violence to his own faculties, tyrannizes over his own mind, and usurps the prerogative that belongs to truth alone, which is to command assent by only its own authority, i.e. by and in proportion to that evidence which it carries with it.

-John Locke

 

As a philosophy professor who focuses on the practical value of philosophical thinking, one of my objectives is teaching students to be critical thinkers. As I see it, critical thinking is the rational process of determining whether a claim should be accepted as true, rejected or false or subject to the suspension of judgment. A critical thinker operates on the principle that belief in a claim should be proportional to the evidence for it, rather than in proportion to  interests or feelings. In this I follow John Locke’s view: “Whatsoever credit or authority we give to any proposition more than it receives from the principles and proofs it supports itself upon, is owing to our inclinations that way, and is so far a derogation from the love of truth as such: which, as it can receive no evidence from our passions or interests, so it should receive no tincture from them.”

Unfortunately, people often fail to follow this principle in important matters such as climate change and vaccinations. They reject proofs and evidence in favor of interests and passions.

Even though the scientific evidence for climate change is overwhelming, there are those who deny it. These people are typically conservatives—although there is nothing about conservatism itself that requires denying climate change.

While rejecting scientific evidence for climate change can be seen as irrational, it is easy to attribute a rational motive to this view. After all, there are people who have an economic interest in denying it or preventing action from being taken that is contrary to their interests. This interest provides a motive to make claims that one knows are not true as well as a psychological impetus to sincerely hold a false belief. As such, climate change denial can make sense even in the face of overwhelming evidence: money is stake. However, denial is less rational for most climate change deniers—they are not profiting greatly from the fossil fuel business. However, they could be motivated by financial concerns because addressing climate change could raise their energy bills. Of course, not addressing climate change will cost them much more.

I understand climate change denial in that I have a sensible narrative as to why people reject science because of their interests. However, I was much more confused by the vaccine skeptics.

While vaccines are not risk free, the scientific evidence is overwhelming that they are safe and effective. Scientists understand how they work and there is extensive empirical evidence of their positive impact—such as the massive reduction in cases of diseases such as polio and measles. Oddly, there is significant number of Americans who willfully deny the science of vaccination. What struck me as most unusual is that some of these people are college educated. While MAHA has embraced vaccine skepticism, political liberals are also vaccine skeptics, thus showing that science denial can be bi-partisan. It is fascinating, but also horrifying, to see someone walk through the process of denial—as shown in an old segment on the Daily Show. This process is complex: evidence is rejected, experts are dismissed and so on—it is as if the person’s mind switched into a Bizzaro version of critical thinking (“kritikal tincing” perhaps). This is in marked contrast with the process of rational disagreement using  critical thinking  to support an opposing viewpoint. Being a philosopher, I value rational disagreement and I am careful to give opposing views their due. However, the use of fallacious methods and outright rejection of rational methods of reasoning is not an acceptable method.

As noted above, climate change denial makes sense—behind the denial is a clear economic interest. However, vaccine science denial seems to lack that motive for most people (although not everyone). As such, an alternative explanation is needed for those who aren’t vaccine skeptics for the purposes of grifting.

Some research provides insight into the matter and it is consistent with Locke’s view that people are influenced by both interests and passions. In this case, the motivating passion seems to be a person’s commitment to their concept of self. When a person’s self-concept or self-identity is threatened by facts, they will reject facts in favor of identity.  In the case of the vaccine skeptics, the belief that vaccines are harmful has become part of their self-identity. Or so goes the theory as to why these deniers reject the evidence.

To be effective, this rejection must be more than asserting the facts are wrong. After all, the person is aiming at self-deception to maintain self-identity. As such, the person must create a narrative which makes their rejection seem sensible and believable to them. A denier must, as Pascal said about his famous wager, make themselves believe their denial. In the case of science, a person needs to reject not just claims made by scientists but also the scientific method. The narrative of denial must be a complete story that protects itself from criticism. This is, obviously enough, different from a person who denies a claim based on evidence—since there is rational support for the denial, there is no need to create a narrative tale.

This is a major danger of this sort of denial—not the denial of established facts, but the explicit rejection of the methodology  used to assess facts. While people often excel at compartmentalization, this strategy runs the risk of corrupting the person’s thinking across the board.

As noted above, as a philosopher one of my main tasks is to train people to think critically and rationally. While I would like to believe that everyone can be taught to be an effective and rational thinker, I know that people are far more swayed by rhetoric and fallacious reasoning then by good logic. As such, there might be little hope that people can be “cured” of their rejection of science and reasoning. Aristotle took this view—while noting that some people can be convinced by “arguments and fine ideals” most people cannot. He advocated the use of coercive habituation to get them to behave properly and this could (and has) been employed to correct incorrect beliefs. However, such a method is agnostic in regard to the truth—people can be coerced into accepting the false as well as the true.

Interestingly, a past study by Brendan Nyhan shows that reason and persuasion both fail when employed in attempts to change false beliefs that are critical to a person’s self-identity. In the case of Nyhan’s study, there were various attempts to change the beliefs of vaccine science deniers using reason (facts and science) and various methods of persuasion (appeals to emotions and anecdotes). Since reason and persuasion are the two main ways to convince people, this is a problem.

That study and other research did indicate an avenue that might work. Assuming that it is the threat to a person’s self-concept that triggers the rejection mechanism, the solution is to approach a person in a way that does not trigger this response. It is like trying to conduct a transplant without triggering the body’s immune system to reject the transplanted organ.

One obvious problem is that once a person has taken a false belief as part of their self-concept, it is difficult to get them to see any attempt to change their mind as anything other than a threat. Addressing this might require changing the person’s self-concept or finding a specific strategy that is not seen as a threat. Once that is done, the second stage, that of addressing the false belief, can begin.

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Not surprisingly, people often assign responsibility based on ideology. For example, Democrats would be more inclined to regard a Republican leader as being fully responsible for his subordinates while being more forgiving of fellow Democrats. And Republicans are far less inclined to hold a fellow Republican, especially Trump, responsible for anything.  However, judging responsibility based on political ideology is a poor method. What is needed is some general principles that can be used to assess the responsibility of leaders in a consistent manner.

Interestingly (or boringly) enough, I usually approach the matter of leadership and responsibility using an analogy to the problem of evil. Oversimplified, the problem of evil is the problem of reconciling God being all good, all knowing and all powerful with the existence of evil. If God is all good, then he would tolerate no evil. If God was all powerful, He could prevent all evil. And if God was all knowing, then He would not be ignorant of any evil. Given God’s absolute perfection, He thus has absolute responsibility as a leader: He knows what every subordinate is doing, knows whether it is good or evil and has the power to prevent or cause any behavior. As such, when a subordinate does evil, God has absolute accountability. After all, the responsibility of a leader is a function of what they can know and the extent of their power.

In stark contrast, a human leader (no matter how awesome) falls infinitely short of God. Such leaders are not perfectly good, and they are obviously not all knowing or all powerful. These imperfections thus reduce their responsibility.

In the case of goodness, no human can be expected to be morally perfect. As such, failures of leadership due to moral imperfection can be excusable within limits. The challenge is sorting out the extent to which imperfect humans can legitimately be held morally accountable and to what extent our unavoidable moral imperfections provide a legitimate excuse. These standards should be applied consistently to leaders whether one likes them or not.

In the case of knowledge, no human can be omniscient—we have extreme limits on our knowledge. The practical challenge is sorting out what a leader can reasonably be expected to know, and the responsibility of the leader should be proportional to that extent of knowledge. This is complicated a bit by the fact that there are at least two factors here, namely the capacity to know and what the leader is obligated to know. Obligations to know should not exceed the human capacity to know, but the capacity to know can often exceed the obligation to know. For example, the President could presumably have everyone spied upon and thus could, in theory, know a great deal about his subordinates. However, this would seem to exceed what the President is obligated to know (as President) and probably exceeds what they should know.

Obviously enough, what a leader can know and what they are obligated to know will vary based on the leader’s position and responsibilities. For example, as the facilitator of the philosophy & religion unit at my university, my obligation to know about my colleagues is very limited as is my right to know about them. While I have an obligation to know what courses they are teaching, I do not have an obligation or a right to know about their personal lives or whether they are doing their work properly on outside committees. So, if a faculty member skipped out on committee meetings, I would not be responsible for this—it is not something I am obligated to know about.

As another example, the chair of the department has greater obligations and rights in this regard. He has the right and obligation to know if they are teaching their classes, doing their assigned work and so on. Thus, when assessing the responsibility of a leader, sorting out what the leader could know and what they are obligated to know are important matters.

In regard to power (taken in a general sense), even the most despotic dictator’s powers are still finite. As such, it is reasonable to consider the extent to which a leader can utilize their authority or use up their power to compel subordinates. As with knowledge, responsibility is proportional to power. After all, if a leader lacks power (or authority) to compel obedience in regards to certain matters, then the leader cannot be accountable for not making the subordinates do or not do certain actions. Using myself as an example, my facilitator position has no power: I cannot demote, fire, reprimand or even put a mean letter into a person’s permanent record. The extent of my influence is limited to my ability to persuade—and I have no rewards or punishments to offer. As such, my responsibility for the actions of my colleagues is extremely limited.

There are, however, legitimate concerns about the ability of a leader to make people behave correctly and this raises the question of the degree to which a leader is responsible for not being persuasive enough or using enough power to make people behave correctly. The question is whether the bad behavior arising from resisting authority/power is the fault of the leader or the resistor. This is like the concern about the extent to which responsibility for failing to learn falls upon the teacher and to which it falls on the student. Obviously, even the best teacher cannot reach all students, and it would seem reasonable to believe that even the best leader cannot make everyone do what they should be doing.

Thus, when assessing alleged failures of leadership, it is important to determine where the failures lie (morality, knowledge or power) and the extent to which the leader has failed. Obviously, principled standards should be applied consistently—though it can be sorely tempting to damn the other guy while forgiving the offenses of one’s own guy.

 

 

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While I consider myself something of a movie buff, I was out-buffed by one of my old colleagues. This is a good thing—I enjoy the opportunity to hear about movies from someone who knows more than I. Some years ago we talked about  science-fiction classics and movies based on them.

Not surprisingly, the discussion turned to Blade Runner, which is based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Phillip K. Dick. While I like the movie, some fans of the author hate the movie because it deviates from the book. This leads to three questions one should ask about such works.

The first question, which is the most important is: is the movie good? The second question, which I consider less important is: how much does the movie deviate from the book/story? For some people, the second question is important and their answer to the first question can hinge on the answer to the second. For them, the greater deviation from the book/story, the worse the movie. This rests on the view that an important aesthetic purpose of a movie based on a book/story is to faithfully reproduce the book/story in movie format.

My view is that deviation from the original is not relevant to the quality of the movie as a movie. That is, if the only factor that allegedly makes the movie bad is that it deviates from the book/story, then the movie would seem to be good. One way to argue for this is to point out the obvious: if someone saw the movie without knowing about the book, she would regard it as a good movie. If she then found out it was based on a book/story, then nothing about the movie would have changed—as such, it should still be a good movie on the grounds that the relation to the book/story is external to the movie. To use an analogy, imagine that someone sees a painting and regards it as well done artistically. Then the person finds out it is a painting of a specific person and finds a photo of the person that shows the painting differs from the photo. To then claim that the painting is not a good work of art would be mistaken.

It might be countered that the painting would be bad because it failed to properly imitate the person. However, this would only count against the accuracy of the imitation and not the artistic merit of the work. That it does not look exactly like the person would not entail that it is lacking aesthetically. Likewise for a movie: the fact that it is not enough like the book/story does not entail that it is a bad movie. Naturally, it is fair to claim that it does not imitate well, but this is a different matter than being a well-done work.

That said, I am sympathetic to the view that a movie must imitate a book/movie to a certain degree if it is to legitimately claim the same name. Take, for example, the movie Lawnmower Man.  While it is not a great film, the only thing it has in common with the Stephen King story is the name. In fact, King apparently sued over this because the film had no meaningful connection to his story. However, whether the movie has a legitimate claim to the name of a book/story or not is distinct from the quality of the movie. After all, a very bad movie might be faithful to a very bad book/story. But it would still be bad.

The third question is: is the movie so bad that it desecrates the story/book? In some cases, authors sell the film rights to books/stories or the works become public domain (and thus available to anyone). In some cases, the films made from such works are both reasonably true to the originals and reasonably good. The obvious examples here are the Lord of the Rings movies. However, there are cases in which the movie (or TV show) is so bad that the badness desecrates the original work by associating its awfulness with a good book/story.

One example of this is the desecration of the Wizard of Earthsea by the Sci-Fi Channel. This was so badly done that Ursula K. Le Guin felt obligated to write a response to it. While the book is not one of my favorites, I did like it and was initially looking forward to seeing it as a series. However, it was the TV version of seeing a friend killed and re-animated as a shuffling zombie. Perhaps not quite that bad—but still bad. Since I also like Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars books, I did not see the travesty that is Disney’s John Carter. To answer my questions, this movie was apparently very bad, deviated from the book, and did desecrate it just a bit (I have found it harder to talk people into reading the Mars books because of the badness of that movie). I think that the Hobbit films desecrated the Hobbit book and will stand by that position, despite liking most of the director’s works.

From both a moral and aesthetic standpoint, I would contend that if a movie is to be made from a book or story, those involved have an obligation to make the movie at least as good as the original book/story. There is also an obligation to have at least some meaningful connection to the original work—after all, if there is no such connection then there are no legitimate grounds for having the film bear that name.

 

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