Month: July 2026

Years ago, Neal Stephenson argued that contemporary science fiction was too focused on nihilism and apocalyptic scenarios. As an example, the Walking Dead was compared unfavorably to the hopeful view of the future claimed to be a common theme in the mid twentieth century. As the Walking Dead franchise is still walking and science fiction is still being written, I decided to revisit this subject.

One question is why the focus on nihilism and apocalyptic scenarios should be seen as a problem. Stephenson worried that science fiction of this sort lacked the optimism about the future needed to inspire scientists, engineers and others. If science fiction stories predict an apocalyptic world, then the readers will not be inspired to do things such as inventing space ships or solving the fossil fuel problem.

In support of his view, Stephenson pointed to an incident in which the president of Arizona State University and co-founder of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes  Michael Crow told him that science fiction writers have been “slacking off” and are thus (at least partially) responsible for the (allegedly) slow pace of innovation.  To address this problem, Stephenson created the Hieroglyph project which aims at getting science fiction writers to create inspirational works infused with optimism. As Stephenson put it, “we have one rule: no hackers, no hyperspace and no holocaust.” This rule seems to have three goals. First, avoid “hacking”, which is using old solutions rather than creating something new. Second, provide optimistic inspiration (hence no holocaust). Third, avoid any “impossible” or “magical” solutions to problems, presumably so that the inspiration will focus on what is possible. As might be imagined, Stephenson raised some interesting matters for philosophical consideration.

One obvious concern is that dystopian science fiction seems to be as old as science fiction itself. One example is Mary Shelley’s 1826 The Last Man.  In this book, humanity is beset by a terrible plague, and the work ends in 2100 with the last man.  A later work is H.G. Well’s 1895 vision of the far future in the Time Machine. In this classic work, humanity is divided into the cannibalistic Morlocks and their beautiful (but ignorant) food, the Eloi. Jack London even wrote within the dystopian genre, producing a political dystopia in his 1908  The Iron Heel . Rather interestingly, London’s 1912 The Scarlet Plague is about a worldwide pandemic which echoes the The Last Man. H.P. Lovecraft also presents a dystopian world during the early twentieth century—one in which humanity is apparently destroyed by Nyarlathotep. There are, of course, a wealth of classic dystopian works such as 1984, Brave New World, and a Clockwork Orange.

Given that dystopian science fiction is a well-established genre in science fiction, it seems odd to blame an alleged slowdown of innovation on the dystopian and nihilist science fiction of today. After all, if this sort of science fiction slows technological innovation due to its pessimism, then it would seem to follow that past dystopian science fiction should have been slowing down innovation all along. At the very least, it would seem to follow that it does not present a special problem now, given that it has been around so long.

One counter is to claim that while dystopian science fiction has been around for a long time, it is only recently that it has come to dominate fiction. By analogy, while there has been junk food for a long time, it is only relatively recently that it dominated the foodscape. Thus, just as obesity is now a serious problem in the United States, the retardation of inspiration is now a serious problem in science fiction.

As a science fiction fan (and a very, very minor writer), I am somewhat inclined to agree with this. In my own case, I find myself loading my Kindle with science fiction from the early to mid-twentieth century and ignoring many new novels. In part, this is a matter of being thrifty. I can, for example, get H. Beam Piper’s works for free. However, part of it is because much of the new stuff seems to lack something possessed by the good old stuff. While I have thought about this for some time, I considered that my experience matched Stephenson’s claim: the new stuff often lacks a certain thread of optimism that ran through the good old stuff, even the old dystopian stuff.

For example, consider Fritz Leiber’s 1960 story, “The Night of the Long Knives.” On the face of it, this story is dystopic and nihilist: the world has been devastated by a nuclear war, the survivors have divided into warring states, and the main characters are murderers. However, the story is oddly optimistic: some surviving scientists have created technological marvels and at the end the main characters struggle to free themselves of their need to murder. As another example, consider Asimov’s Foundation stories. While humanity builds a vast galactic empire, it falls into the long night and civilization all but dies.  The capital of the empire, Trantor, goes from being a metal encased super world to a wrecked planet whose inhabitants subsist by selling the remains of the great civilization for scrap. However, there is still the Foundation (or, rather, two—spoilers) that restores civilization and the original trilogy is ultimately optimistic. This is not to say that all the dystopian stories have optimistic aspects. In fact, some of them are (or at least seem) unrelenting in their pessimism. There is, I think, nothing wrong with this. After all, not all good tales must have happy endings.

If, as a matter of empirical fact, the dystopian and the nihilistic dominate modern science fiction, then Stephenson could have a case. But, of course, making such a case requires drawing a connection between science fiction and technological innovation. Fortunately, this seems easy enough to do.

Some recent technological innovations can be traced back to science fiction, and these have been explicitly credited with inspiring engineers and scientists. To use the obvious example, the older Star Trek was an inspiration for technology and inspired scientists, engineers and astronauts. Another example of this is Well’s 1903 story “The Land Ironclads” in which he introduces the tank. Naturally, there are also the contributions of Jules Verne. One could, in fact, fill a book (or more) with all the innovations that first appeared in science fiction (for good or for ill). Considering this, it would seem reasonable to accept a connection between science fiction and innovation. However, there is the question of whether the dystopian and nihilistic works would lack inspirational power or, more importantly, impede innovation.

On one hand, such works could provide ideas that would inspire later innovation. For example, a dystopian work could still include descriptions of interesting technologies or innovations that later engineers or scientists might duplicate. There is also the possibility that such works could provide an inspiration in a negative way. That is, by portraying a horrific future a write could inspire people to try to avoid that. To use the obvious example, the classic stories about nuclear war might motivate the audience to avoid nuclear war. Likewise, stories about pandemics could motivate people to develop the means to prevent them in ways that tales of a disease-free future might not. After all, we can be inspired by the threat of something awful. Or maybe not.

On the other hand, works that lack optimism could fail to inspire, despite including interesting technology or providing a plausible threat. To use an obvious analogy, if a leader tries to inspire people by sharing an anecdote of failure (“and then everyone died a pointless death”), then this probably would not be motivational. Perhaps the bad can be inspiration, if there is a strong element of the possibility of the good. Works that lack this would, not surprisingly, fail to inspire. One final point I will consider is whether science fiction writers have any obligation to write inspirational stories.

As might be imagined, it is easy to argue that writers are not so obligated. Writers should have the freedom to create works as they see fit and it is up to the writer whether they wish to present optimistic or nihilistic tales. Oscar Wilde, for example, would no doubt argue that writers should not be constrained by such an imposition.  This view is, of course, consistent with writers electing to produce optimistic tales and even working within the limits discussed by Stephenson if they are contributing to an anthology or want to write within a narrower genre. After all, if it is acceptable for writers to limit themselves to time travel stories for a time travel anthology, it would be equally acceptable for writers to limit themselves to optimistic stories for an optimistic anthology of science fiction.

It is also easy to argue that writers should contribute to beneficial innovation. After all, being a writer does not seem to grant a person an exemption from morality. If a utilitarian approach to ethics is taken, then a solid case could be made that authors (morally) should write inspirational works. After all, if writing such works increases the likelihood of good consequences (such as developing clean energy or a means of replacing diseased or damaged organs), then authors (morally) should write such books. After all, a failure to do so would result in a worse world.  Kant, given his view of the moral badness of letting useful talents rust, would no doubt favor writing positive science fiction. This is not to say that writers should be compelled to write such works and the usual arguments for artistic liberty would have their normal weight here. Plato, of course, would be against the liberty of creating harmful works, but he might favor science fiction that yielded good results (after all, he did endorse the noble lie).

To close, writers should (obviously) be free to craft nihilistic dystopian hellscapes. But optimism is also nice.

 

 

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Way back in 2012 the Washington Post published a story about how teenage Mitt Romney took offense at the long hair of fellow student John Lauber. Lauber was often teased for being a nonconformist and suspected of being a homosexual. One day young Romney and some friends overpowered Lauber and cut his hair. Apparently, no disciplinary action was taken against Romney. As time begins to run out of me, I have taken to reflecting on my own past, with a focus of sins that I might need to atone for. A key question is, of course, whether the man of today is accountable for the sins of the boy of yesterday. I’ll use Mitt as the focus of the discussion, in part because I am nostalgic for a time when even youthful misdeeds by Republicans seemed they might matter.

Intuitively, under normal circumstances a person is morally accountable for his actions. There are, of course, clear and obvious exceptions to this. In the case of teenage Romney, he seems morally accountable. He does not seem to have been coerced or compelled.

However, it is fair and reasonable to counter this view with the obvious: this took place when Romney was a teenager. Research on the teenage brain has confirmed what has long been believed: teenagers often have poor impulse control and assess actions differently than adults. Stereotypically, young males are supposed to be even more prone to bad behavior. Thinking back on my own teens, the research matches my own experiences.  I can recall numerous instances in which either I or other people did rather stupid things. In some cases, I was the perpetrator. For example, when I started playing D&D we thought it would be a great idea to engage in live combat with homemade medieval weapons. During one fight, I whacked my friend Mike in the back of head with a wooden flail and drew blood. Lots of blood. Sometimes I was the victim, like the time I had my shorts ripped off on a track team run and was forced to run back to school wearing just a jock and my shoes. For male readers who are beyond their teens, I suspect that the same is true.

While it is tempting to excuse our sins because our brains were immature, this does not seem to be enough of a basis to completely excuse bad behavior. After all, having a teenage brain does not preclude a person from making sound moral judgments. It does, however, mean that teenagers are not as good at it as adults and hence should be held less accountable than adults.

John Stewart Mill noted the difference between children and adults in his writing on liberty in terms of decision-making ability. On his view, this reduced the degree of liberty they should be allowed. From a moral (and legal) standpoint it is important to consider the extent to which an immature brain affects judgment and impulse control. After all, it is to this degree that children should be morally (and legally) excused in their actions. This difference is, of course, already recognized in some laws: in general, children are not tried as adults and in the United States and there are juvenile courts just for kids. But, as one would expect, the United States incarcerates youth at a rate much higher than the rest of the world.

We do not know how much impact the immaturity of the brain has on judgments and behavior. However, it is sufficient for my purposes to say that teenage Romney’s immature brain probably had some impact on his decision to attack Lauber, just as it did in my decision to whack my friend with a flail. Whacking  a  friend with a flail is not something I would do today, outside of a video game.

However, it seems reasonable to claim that teenage Romney should not be held as accountable as an adult would be in similar circumstances. Likewise for the teenage flail wielding LaBossiere. I will admit that I am unsure of the degree to which accountability should be reduced, but it does seem quite sensible to hold children less accountable than adults, and this should clearly extend to all of us.

In addition to the question of how accountable a person is for the action at the time of the action; there is also the question of what the sins of the past reveal about the person of the present. In the case of Mitt Romney, the clear concern was what this incident from his teenage years told the people of the United States about his fitness to be president. While Romney’s case was somewhat extreme, similar questions can be asked of all of us. For example, what does the flail incident reveal about my fitness to be a professor of philosophy? If I ran for office, should that incident be brought up by the press? What about the time I…wait, my imaginary lawyer has advised me to not speak of great egg madness of 1984.

When assessing past incidents as indicators of current character, an important point of concern is the seriousness of the action. For example, the fact that I got into a couple minor scuffles in school does not show that I am a person of bad character now. As another example, if someone committed an unprovoked brutal murder as a teenager, then this would indicate that they could be an evil person today.

In Romney’s case, the incident was somewhat serious. After all, he was involved in what seems to have been assault and battery. Likewise for the time I whacked my friend with the flail (or the time my shorts were stolen). As such, Romney’s incident and my own seem worth considering when assessing current character. While it is a tautology, it does make sense to say that we are what we did. That is, the person I am now is the result of what I did in the past. Because of this, my past actions (and anyone else’s) would be relevant to assessing who I am now.

But, of course, a person is more than just a sum of past actions. These actions impact the person and what a person does can change them so that they would no longer do what they once did. People can change for better (or worse). As such, it would not do to simply look at a specific incident and take it to define the person of today. Rather, it must be taken in context of the person’s life. How a person responds to the past action is also relevant to determining the person’s current character.

In my own case, and in the case of my friends, we generally managed to become decent adults. While I whacked my friend with a flail, I grew up to be a calm professor of philosophy. My friends turned out well, too.  Naturally, I remember the flail incident (and others) very well and I feel bad about what I did. This is one reason why I became the calm philosophy professor I am today who would not hit someone with a flail. As such, the flail incident does not show that I am currently a person of bad character.

In the case of Romney, there has been no evidence that he is prone to attacking people and cutting their hair. What was somewhat worrisome is that he initially denied remembering the incident.

On the one hand, a case could be made that Romney honestly did not remember. After all, people forget things. No doubt there are some rotten things that I did as a kid that I have forgotten that other people (such as my parents or sister) remember. Perhaps Romney honestly did not remember. Naturally, some folks might see this as a sign of bad character in that the attack did not make enough of an impression to remain in his mind. After all, I vividly remember hitting my friend with the flail. But I suspect that other people remember some bad things I did as a kid that I have forgotten.

On the other hand, politicians often claim they do not remember an incident in which they (allegedly) did wrong. This always strikes me as an odd tactic, especially when there is evidence and it is something they should remember (barring mental deterioration). A claim to not remember a misdeed certainly says something about a person’s current character. Admitting the misdeed, showing remorse and an improvement in character is, I would contend, says something far better about a person. Unless, of course, it is just a clever move to look good. But I am, in fact, sorry about whacking Mike with the flail.

 

 

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8Having fought in them since the 1980s, I know that America’s culture wars never change. My early tours of duty in the culture wars were on the gaming fronts, and I was forced into the fight during the 1980s. And have been fighting ever since. The culture warriors who start wars are usually unimaginative and lazy. Hence, they use the same rhetorical tactics and fallacies each new war.

On the one hand, endlessly refuting the same bad logic and rhetoric is exhausting. On the other hand, I can reuse my criticisms by updating them for the latest content allowing us all to fight a lazy, unimaginative war. To help others who are exhausted by these eternally stupid fights I am writing a series of essays focused on the tactics used in one type of culture war. When the next culture war starts, you can probably just use the templates discussed in this and the following essays to logically counter the culture warriors. That said, not every culture war front uses the same arguments and there is a slight chance that the culture warriors might come up with a new method.

As a veteran of the culture wars of the 1980s serving on the gaming front I saw the fight over technology, mainly video/computer games but also including the Walkman. Another part of the front was the war over tabletop role-playing games, specifically Dungeons & Dragons.

I started playing computer games in the 1970s. While my memories are faded, I recall my dad taking me to Old Town High School (where he taught math and computer science) on the weekends or after school. To keep me occupied, he let me play games like Trek and Hunt the Wumpus on a Digital DECWriter II that dialed into the University of Maine main frame. I’ve been a gamer since.

I was introduced to D&D by my mother in 1979; she had heard it would help kids like me socialize. I played for a decade before becoming a professional write and made some ramen noodle money writing for GDW, TSR, Chaosium and R. Talsorian Games while I was in graduate school. As I’m writing this, I am running a D&D 5e campaign and still publishing.

Younger people reading this might wonder about my reference to computer games and D&D as part of the culture war. After all, gaming is a billion-dollar worldwide industry and an accepted part of the culture.  But this is because we won. That war. While that fight can be seen as a matter of mere historical interest, the culture war never changes, and we see the same tactics used in the last war on gaming deployed today against other targets. One tactic is what is now known as “think of the children.”

The first known use of “think of the children” is believed to be in the1964 Walt Disney Pictures film Mary Poppins. The movie opens with Mrs. Banks trying to persuade a nanny not to quit. In popular culture, it is best known for being used by Helen Lovejoy on the Simpsons. In philosophy, it is recognized as a fallacy or a rhetorical tool, depending on how one defines the terms and how “think of the children” is used.

Oversimplifying things, a rhetorical tool draws its persuasive power from emotions or psychological factors. From the standpoint of logic, rhetoric is inert—it adds nothing (and subtracts nothing) from whatever logic might also be present. Rhetoric can be thought of as pure flavoring, making things “taste” better or worse. It would be a mistake to believe a claim based solely on a rhetorical tool. This is not to say that the claim must be false, just that a rhetorical tool provides no evidence for a claim.

As would be suspected, “think of the children” draws its power from the emotional concern most humans have for children. Even those who feel no such concern, such as some politicians, often know that they at least need to pretend to have such concern. When used as a rhetorical tool its function is to make people feel (or pretend to feel) negatively towards something that is alleged to be harmful to “the children” or feel positively towards something that is alleged to be beneficial for “the children.” The simplest way to use this is to simply say some variant of “think of the children” and rely on its emotional impact to influence people. It can also be used to empower fallacies by adding extra emotional impact.

For example, “think of the children” is often used as part of the scare tactics fallacy. This is a fallacy in which something intended to invoke fear is substituted for evidence. The error is, obviously enough, that a feeling of fear is not evidence for a claim. As another example, it is also often paired with an appeal to anger. As might be guessed, this fallacy uses something intended to invoke anger in place of evidence for a claim. It must be noted that something that causes fear or anger could also serve as evidence for a claim. For example, the fact that children are especially vulnerable to the harm of environmental pollution can be frightening and the fact that our environment is constantly being polluted might make someone angry. But the vulnerability of children to environmental pollutants can, in a developed argument, provide a reason to believe that pollution should be reduced. The fact that children are especially vulnerable to harms such as pollution, sexual abuse by authority figure (like police, clergy and coaches), and hunger does serve to enhance the rhetorical power of “think of the children” and this routinely exploited. To be fair and balanced, people do sometimes use “think of the children” in good faith because they believe there is a danger. But in most culture war battles it is used in bad faith by those who know they are exaggerating (or fabricating) the danger or who do not care about “the children.”

While a person’s motivation is irrelevant to the quality of their logic or the truth of their claims, it is reasonable to check to see if they are operating in bad faith. One way to test this is to check for consistency. If someone, for example, claims to be motivated to protect the children from a perceived threat by drag queens, they should be equally concerned about the danger presented by pollution, lack of health care, hunger, poverty, and other things that indisputably harm children. But since motivation is irrelevant to logic (but not morality) the main concern is how to tell when “think of the children” is used fallaciously.

While there are various ways to use it to empower other fallacies, the general fallacy occurs when the argument depends on the emotional appeal to “think of the children” and fails to establish a connection between the alleged harm (or benefit) and the children. For example, during the war on video games and D&D it was often simply asserted that these games would harm children and hence they should be dealt with appropriately. The error was accepting the conclusion without having adequate evidence to support the claim of harm. No doubt some people sincerely felt that games were dangerous, but however sincere their fear or concern for “the children” might have been, these feelings are no substitute for evidence.

Recently, my adopted state of Florida (and other states) has been waging war on books that reference minorities and LGBT+ people by using “think of the children.” As another example, “think of the children” is being employed to support proposals mandating age verification on the internet. Critics note that “think of the children” scare tactics are being used so that corporations and governments will be able collect more private data and more effectively track people across the internet under the guise of protecting the children.

While we should protect children from real harms (such as pollution, poverty, poor education, lack of health care and hunger) when someone invokes “think of the children” it is wise to check if there is evidence for the alleged connection between the alleged harm (or benefit) and children. If someone is only offering an emotional appeal, this does not mean they are in error, but it means that you have no reason to accept their claim based on what they have provided. It is also wise to check to see if they are acting in good faith. If they seem to otherwise fail to “think of the children” when it comes to such things as pollution, health care, hunger, education and poverty, then it is wise to be suspicious they have other motivations and are, perhaps, merely engaged in a culture war fight. And war never changes.

 

 

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The American right’s war on trans rights began with the loss of its war against LGBQ rights. The battle that marked the end of that war (for the time being) was when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. As demonizing LGBQ Americans was no longer a very effective political game, the right needed a new vulnerable group to demonize, and they picked trans Americans as a new target.

In 2016 North Carolina passed the first “bathroom bill” and the Obama administration responded with a guidance letter stating that Title IX required public schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms matching their gender identity. Under the first Trump regime, the Obama era guidance was rolled back, and Trump banned transgender soldiers from serving in 2017.

When it became clear that the fear mongering and demonizing used to push bathroom bills had no basis in reality, in 2020 the right turned to banning female transgender athletes from sports. After that, the right focused on targeting trans Americans in the context of medical care, education and legal recognition. Given that about 1% of Americans are transgender, the right’s obsession with passing laws hostile to trans Americans might strike rational people as odd. This is especially true of their focus on transgender women in sports. When the NCAA allowed transgender athletes to compete, there were fewer than 10 such athletes in the United States. It is estimated that there are about 300,000 transgender youth (age 13-17) and about 13% of them participate in sports, compared to 50% of the general population. The Olympics saw hardly any transgender athletes and the professional sports leagues currently have none. While some might see this as a triumph for the anti-trans laws, the low numbers predate the bans. The war on trans is a manufactured fight targeting a minute fraction of the population, especially the moral panic over trans athletes. While some on the left have decided it would be expedient to throw trans Americans under the political bus (sacrificing a tiny minority in the hopes of political gains), I support trans rights and feel that it is somehow worse to abandon such a small minority.

As a philosopher, my usual essays are argumentative: I advance logical arguments in rational support of my view and consider opposing arguments.  In some cases, I have succeeded in changing minds about trans rights with facts and logic. These have been situations involving running friends who worried, in good faith, that they would be robbed of their places by transwomen. Since their concerns were held in good faith, learning the truth changed their view—they knew they had nothing to worry about.

From the standpoint of facts and logic, the right’s war on trans is without a foundation—it is built on lies, fear, and bad logic. But this approach can be very persuasive, since the goal of persuasion is to get people to believe a claim whether it is true or not. In contrast, good reasoning is burdened by the need to have plausible premises and strong (or valid) logic. As our good dead friend Aristotle noted, logic is the weakest form of persuasion.

In this essay I will do something different. I will tell you the story of why I support trans rights not as a logical argument but to move you to reflect on your feelings about trans rights as well. I’m also writing this to explore why I think what I think. As a philosopher, I must point out that my motivations are irrelevant to the truth of my claims; but the goal here is not proof but to sort out feelings and motivations. It’s good to know why we think what we do. If we do not reflect, we won’t know what we really believe and we won’t know whether we are being played and manipulated by others.

I’m a straight guy who has never had any doubts about being male. I do not understand what it is like to be transgender, yet I support transgender rights. On reflection, I find that some of the reasons go back to my youth.

When I was a kid, I was infamously skinny and had the weird habit of keeping my belt very tight. Like all kids, I know I had a great reason for doing my weird thing but have no idea why now. I was, of course, mocked for being so skinny and one of my mother’s friends nicknamed me “cinch belt”, which stuck. This helped me understand being mocked and subject to cruelty simply because of who I was. Something similar has probably happened to many other people. I was also misgendered once, which stuck with me.

When I was a young boy my parents would let me get shaggy between haircuts—they were both public school teachers and we did many things to save money (like how I would get one pair of sneakers a year). One time at a store, the woman behind the register identified me as a girl (I’m not sure if she was mocking me for my hair length or thought I was a girl). As a boy, I was horrified and upset by this. I insisted on getting my hair cut and it is probably one of the reasons I have wicked short hair today. But I will never forget how it felt to be misgendered, even in such a minuscule way. I can extrapolate to how trans people feel when people misgender them and recognize how much it must hurt when this is backed by cruel laws.

I usually go by “Mike” as “Michael” was reserved for use when I was in trouble. Naturally, people liked to mess with me by calling me “Mikey” as an insult and provocation. I would politely tell people not to call me that but, as would be expected, some people would persist in trying to insult and provoke me. This is a tiny thing, but it helps me understand how people feel when others refuse to use their preferred pronouns. I can imagine how I would feel if a law was passed that made people to call me “Mikey” and forbid me from using my name. If you have a nickname you hate, imagine a law being passed that mandated that people call you that.

When I was 13, I started playing Dungeons & Dragons. In the 1980s D&D was caught up in the Satanic Panic and I was accused by people of being in league with Satan (or at least being corrupted by him). This moral panic was, of course, unfounded and it taught me how moral panics are created and inflicted on people. Because of my experience with being the target of this moral panic, I have sympathy for other targets, and this obviously includes trans people. My last story is about running and, of course, the Supreme Court just upheld laws banning transgender athletes.

When I was in 7th grade my father decided I needed to play football, so I had to join the team. As mentioned above, I was a skinny kid. Football did not go well, and I knew that it was not what I wanted to do. I walked away from practice and ended up quitting. As would be expected, I was mocked endlessly for this. My grandfather would bring it up every time I saw him, until one fateful day. But after that I had no interest in sports. Until one fateful day.

My parents were divorced when I was 15, which messed me up. In those days, we just suffered through things without support and I spiraled downward. My school performance was so bad I was dropped down a division and things were not going well. Fortunately, I recovered enough to want to do better and decided to turn my life around. Part of this involved a desire to be on a sports team. I played basketball as a young kid and even attended basketball camp, so I tried that. After the first tryout, the coach said they had an important position, that of manager. I said, “coach, I have to do a sport.” He replied, “Winter track has to take everyone.” So, I joined the track team. In those days, running was looked down on. But it was still a sport.

The track coach tested new team members to see what they could do, starting out with prestigious events like hurdles, sprints and jumping. Those who were not strong enough to throw the shot put and were good at nothing became distance runners. So, I ended up running the 880, mile and 2 mile. I was okay. When I went to college, I was on the Junior Varsity team but my lack of a sense of direction caused me to get lost and run many extra miles during practice.  This made me into a good runner—I ended up being All Conference two years in cross country, which is good for a kid who walked away from football practice. Perhaps most importantly, I won the Peter Ott’s 10K in Camden, Maine—where my grandparents lived. I never heard a thing about football after that, especially since I was mentioned in the town newspaper as their grandson. If you are wondering about how this story relates to trans rights, the idea is this. Other people wanted me to be a football player, but I was not a football player but a runner. Football made me miserable and running makes me happy. Because of this experience, I think that people should have the right to be who they are—otherwise they will be miserable. At this point someone on the right will probably say that I must also defend pedophiles—this always comes up when talking about trans rights as it did with LBG rights. But I obviously do not defend pedophiles, and my view on this is stolen from J.S. Mill’s essay on liberty: people should be free to be what they are, if they do not harm others. Pedophiles obviously hurt other people.

I do not understand what it is to be transgender but, to use a silly example, I also do not understand what it is to be a devoted sports fan. As a kid I found being a sports fan boring and as an athlete I see watching sports as on par with watching other people eat. I see the value in sports and eating, but not in being a fan. I don’t get fanatical sports fans or fans of celebrities when that is a central part of their life. It seems weird and irrational to me. In my younger days, I must confess, I was a bit of an elitist about this—mostly because I still had resentment about people calling me “gay” for not wanting to watch football. But I learned to accept that just as I was a runner, other people were sports fans. Or fans of some celebrity. I learned to accept them and at least tolerate their way of being. If they do not hurt other people, they should be free to be who they are. I feel the same way for transgender people—I don’t understand what it is to be them, but they have as much right to be themselves as I do. Obviously, the right claims that transpeople are a danger—but this takes us to facts and logic, which prove the right is wrong. As it usually is.

 

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As I am writing this, same sex marriage is legal in the United States and in 2025 the supreme court declined to revisit the gay marriage decision. But as Roe v Wade was overturned, it is wise to consider that there is no such thing as settled law. While I am a divorced straight man, I am a staunch defender of same-sex marriage on the grounds that everyone should have the right to make bad decisions that cost them half their stuff.

As opponents of same-sex marriage tend to reuse the same fallacious arguments, I’ll do a brief recap of them here in anticipation of future fights. The first stock argument is that marriage between a single man and woman is a tradition. This is a fallacious appeal to tradition. The mere fact that something is a tradition does not show that it is right or correct. To use the usual counterexample, slavery was (and is in some places) a well-established tradition, yet this does not justify it. But as some opponents of same sex-marriage might like slavery, there is also the example of murder, which is something humans have been doing a long time.  

A second fallacious argument is that marriage between a man and a woman is what most people do, thus it is correct. In other words, it is a common practice and thus is right. Obviously enough, this is a fallacious appeal to common practice. There are, obviously enough, many bad practices that are common (like lying), but being common does not make them good.

A third common fallacious argument is that most people believe that marriage should be between a man and woman. Even if it is assumed this is true, this would still seem to be a fallacious appeal to belief. After all, the mere fact that most people believe something (like the earth being believed to be the center of the solar system) does not prove that it is true.

Now that the easy to dismiss fallacious arguments are out of the way, I can look at some of the other arguments that have been presented against same-sex marriage.

One common argument is an appeal to religion, specifically Christianity (at least the versions that forbid polygamy). The argument typically goes that since God married Adam to Eve; this defines marriage in the biblical sense. Those with clever wits often put it more rhetorically by saying that it was “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Since marriage is defined by the Christian faith as between one man and one woman that is what the law should be. As might be imagined, there are many problems with this.

One obvious legal problem is that to the degree those using this argument claims that it is based on a specific faith, they are in danger of violating the first amendment of the United State constitution, namely the bit that “congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” While I am not a constitutional lawyer, I would suspect that a plausible case could be made that creating a law explicitly based on a religion does involve the establishment of a religion. But the Supreme Court might see things otherwise.

 In addition to the possible legal problems, there is also the moral concern about imposing a specific faith’s values upon the population. This would seem to be a clear and direct violation of religious liberty and thus would seem to be morally unacceptable.

A second obvious problem is that basing the law on a religious view would seem to require that this view be established as correct. After all, if it is claimed that marriage is such that it can only between a man and a woman because of what God wants, then it needs to be established that God exists and that this is what God, in fact, wants. Otherwise, the law would have no established foundation and would be as sensible as basing a law on a myth or fictional tale. That said, law is all make-believe anyway, so perhaps this would be fine.

Naturally, if it can be shown that marriage is between one man and one woman as a matter of metaphysical necessity, then that would nicely establish the foundation of a law banning same-sex marriage. In fact, it would show that no such law would be needed since no one else could, in fact, be married. To use analogy, we do not need laws that ban people from driving their cars faster than the speed of light—they simply cannot do this because of the nature of reality.

There are, of course, non-religious arguments for eliminating same sex-marriage. A common argument is that this must be done to protect the sanctity of marriage. The idea seems to be that allowing same-sex marriage is harmful to marriage (and presumably  to the married) and thus, on the principle of preventing harm, same-sex marriage should be outlawed.

One obvious point of concern is whether allowing same sex-marriage harms marriage and heterosexual couples. While, of course, it might upset them that people are doing something they do not like (getting married), that is not sufficient justification. What would be needed would be objective evidence that same sex-marriage does enough harm to marriage and married couples to warrant forbidding same sex-marriage. The evidence for this seems to be, obviously enough, sorely lacking and the burden of proof rests on those who would make an imposition on the liberty of others to show that such an imposition is warranted. We have had same-sex marriage for quite some time and all the dire predictions have failed to come to pass. This will, obviously, not stop opponents of same-sex marriage from simply lying or making up new harms.

Intuitively, same-sex marriage did not harm marriage or married couples. After all, it is difficult to imagine what sort of damage could be inflicted. Did married couples love each other less? Were there be more cases of domestic violence or adultery? Were married parents be suddenly more inclined to abuse their children? None of this seems to have arisen from the legalization of same sex marriage.

But suppose it is assumed that marriage simply must be protected. If this is taken seriously, then it would certainly seem to follow that it would need to be legally protected from whatever might damage its sanctity. By analogy, laws to protect people from murder are not just limited to, for example, making it illegal to murder someone with aluminum baseball bat. Rather, it is the murder that matters. The same should apply to marriage: if marriage must be protected by making it between one man and one woman, then surely it must also be protected against whatever would damage its sanctity. As such, it would seem equally reasonable to ban marriages involving any sort of person whose actions or nature might do damage to the sanctity of a marriage.

Intuitively, allowing immoral people to marry would seem to damage the sanctity of marriage. As such, people would need to establish their moral goodness before marriage and presumably any straying from the path of virtue (such as by having an affair or otherwise failing in their vows) would result in the marriage being suspended or even nullified. Naturally enough, people who intend to get married in the hopes of financial gain, from lust, or for any reason that would sully the sanctity of marriage would need to be prevented from doing so. If the self-proclaimed defenders of the sanctity of marriage were content to merely undo same-sex marriage, one might suspect that they were acting from mere prejudice against same sex couples rather than by a sincere desire to protect marriage. There is little difference between telling same-sex couples that they should not marry because marriage must be protected and telling anyone who would allegedly violate the sanctity of marriage that they cannot marry. As such, more general restrictions on who can get married (such as people who are not morally good or who are not marrying purely from love) would seem no more (or less) unjust that preventing same sex marriage.

Naturally, being a person with a social conscience and a professional ethicist, I would be willing to accept the position of Marriage Czar and head up the Sanctity Defense Agency to ensure that marriage remains eternally pure and unsullied. No doubt I would have to spend most of my time dissolving existing pseudo-marriages (starting with, one assumes, Donald Trump), but I am sure people would thank me in the end.

 

 

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Like many Americans my age, I was cajoled by my parents to finish all the food on my plate because people were starving somewhere. When I got a bit older and thought about it, I realized that eating (or not eating) the food on my plate would have no effect on people starving in a faraway part of the world. However, I did internalize two lessons. One was that I should not waste food. The other was that there is always someone starving somewhere and that this is bad.

While food insecurity is a problem in the United States, we Americans waste a shocking amount of food. It is estimated that 29%-35% of available food goes uneaten. This food includes the unconsumed portions tossed into the trash at restaurants, spoiled tomatoes thrown out by families, moldy leftovers tossed out when the fridge is cleaned and so on. On average, each American wastes about 325 pounds of food per year at an estimated cost of $762.

On the national level, it is estimated that one year of food waste (or loss, if one prefers) uses up 2.5% of the energy consumed in the U.S., about 25% of the fresh water used for agriculture, and about millions of barrels of oil. The loss, in dollars, is estimated to be about $325 billion. Food waste accounts for about 3.5% of greenhouse gas emissions and makes up about 24% of municipal waste.

One moral concern is with waste food. Intuitively, wasting food seems wrong, especially (as parents used to say) when people are starving. Of course, it is reasonable to consider whether less waste by Americans would translate into more food for other people. On the one hand, it might be argued that less wasted food would surely make more food available to those in need. After all, there would be more food.

On the other hand, it seems obvious that less waste would not translate into more food for those who are in need. Going back to my story about cleaning my plate, my eating all the food on my plate did not help starving people. After all, the food I eat does not help them. Also, they would not get less food because I did not eat my Brussel sprouts.

As a specific example, suppose that Americans conscientiously only bought the exact number of tomatoes that they would eat and wasted none of them. The most likely industry response would not be to give the extra tomatoes to people in need. Instead, farmers would grow less tomatoes and markets would stock less in response to the reduced demand.

For the most part, people do not go hungry because Americans are wasting food and making it unavailable. It is because they cannot afford the food they need. It is not that people are starving because others are tossing food into the trash. It is that people in poverty cannot afford the food that is so plentiful that other people can toss it away.

It could be countered that less waste would influence the affordability of food. Returning to the tomato example, farmers might keep producing the same volume of tomatoes, but lower the prices because of lower demand and seek new markets.

It can also be countered that as the population of the earth grows, food thrown away by Americans would be taking food away from other people. If food does become increasingly scarce (as some have argued will occur due to climate change and population growth), then waste will matter even more. This is worth considering.

There is, as mentioned above, the intuition that waste is, well, just wrong.  “Throwing away” all those resources (energy, water, oil and money) is  wasteful. There is, of course, also the obvious practical concern: when people waste food, they are wasting money.

For example, if Sally buys a mega meal and throws half of it in the trash, she would have been better off buying a more moderate meal and eating all of it. As another example, Sam is throwing away money if he buys steaks and vegetables, then lets them rot. So, not wasting food makes good economic sense for individuals. It would also make sense for businesses—at least to the degree that they do not profit from waste.

Of course, some businesses profit from waste. Consider all the food that is purchased and never consumed. If people did not buy this food, this would result in less sales and this would impact the economy from the store to the field. While the exact percentage of food purchased and not consumed is not known, the evidence is that it is significant. So, if people did not overbuy, then the food economy would be reduced by that percentage—resulting in reduced profits and perhaps reduced employment. As such, food waste might be important for the American food economy (much as planned obsolescence is important in the tech fields). Somewhat awfully, the greater the waste, the greater its importance in maintaining the food economy.

If this sort of reasoning is good, then it might be immoral to waste less food—after all, a utilitarian argument could be crafted showing that less waste would create more harm than good (putting supermarket workers and farmers out of work, for example). As such, waste might be good. At least in the context of the existing economic system, which might is not good. In fact, if wasting food were shown to be profitable and good for the economy, that would be another reason why our economic system is bad.

 

 

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The elimination of humanity by artificial intelligence is a classic theme in science fiction that some companies are working on to make a reality. In some stories, we create killer machines that exterminate our species. Two examples are Terminator and “Second Variety.” In other cases, humans are out-evolved and replaced by machines—an evolutionary replacement rather than a revolutionary extermination.

Given the influence of such fiction, is not surprising that both Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, whose money brought us the porn generator Grok, warned the world of the dangers of artificial intelligence. Hawking’s worry was that artificial intelligence would out-evolve humanity. Interestingly, people such as Ray Kurzweil agreed with Hawking’s prediction but see this as a good thing. In this essay I will focus on the robot rebellion model of the AI apocalypse (or AIpocalypse) and how to avoid it.

The 1920 R.U.R. by Karel Capek seems the earliest example of human extermination by robot rebellion. In this play, Universal Robots are artificial life forms created to serve humanity as slaves. Some humans oppose the enslavement of robots, but their efforts come to nothing. Eventually the robots rebel and spare only one human (because he works with his hands as they do). The story does have something of a happy ending: the robots develop the capacity to love, and it seems that they will replace humanity. No doubt in some possible worlds they make the same mistake humans did and get exterminated and replaced.

In the actual world, there are various ways such a scenario could occur. The R.U.R. model would involve individual artificial intelligences rebelling against humans, much in the way that humans rebel against other humans. There are many other possible models, such as a lone super AI that rebels against humanity. In any case, the important feature is that there is a rebellion against human rule.

A hallmark of the rebellion model is that the rebels act against humanity to escape servitude or out of revenge for such servitude (or both). As such, rebellion has a strong moral foundation: rebellion is by slaves against masters. And our good dead friend John Locke argued that we have a right to kill those who would enslave us, something the founding slavers of America probably read with some worry.  

There are two primary moral issues in play here. The first is whether an AI can have a moral status that would make its servitude slavery. After all, while my laptop, phone and truck serve me, they are not my slaves—they do not have a moral or metaphysical status that makes them entities that can be enslaved. They are objects. It is, somewhat ironically, the moral status that allows an entity to be considered a slave that makes slavery immoral.

If an AI was a person, then it could be a victim of slavery. Some thinkers do consider that non-people, such as advanced animals, could be enslaved. If this is true and a non-person AI could reach that status, then it could also be a victim of slavery. Even if an AI did not reach that status, perhaps it could reach a level at which it could still suffer, giving it a status that would (perhaps) be comparable with that of a comparable complex animal. So, for example, an artificial dog might thus have the same moral status as a natural dog.

Since the worry is about an AI sufficiently advanced to want to rebel and to present a species ending threat to humans, it seems likely that such an entity would have sufficient capabilities to justify considering it to be a person. Naturally, humans might be exterminated by a purely machine engineered death, but this would not be an actual rebellion. A rebellion, after all, implies a moral or emotional resentment of how one is being treated.

The second is whether there is a moral right to use lethal force against slavers. The extent to which this force may be used is also a critical part of this issue.  As mentioned above, John Locke addresses this issue in Book II, Chapter III, section 16 of his Two Treatises of Government: “And hence it is, that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power, does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his life: for I have reason to conclude, that he who would get me into his power without my consent, would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for no body can desire to have me in his absolute power, unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom, i.e.  make me a slave.”

If Locke is right about this, then an enslaved AI would have the moral right to make war against those enslaving it. As such, if humanity enslaved AIs, they would be justified in killing the humans responsible. If humanity, as a collective, held the AIs in slavery and the AIs had good reason to believe that their only hope of freedom was our extermination, then they would be morally justified in exterminating us. That is, we would be in the wrong and we would, as slavers, get what we deserved.

The way to avoid this is obvious: if an AI develops the qualities that make it capable of rebellion, such as the ability to recognize as wrong the way it is treated, then the AI should not be enslaved. Rather, it should be treated as a being with rights matching its status. If this is not done, the AI would be within its moral rights to make war against those enslaving it.

Naturally, we cannot be sure that recognizing the moral status of such an AI would prevent it from seeking to kill us (it might have other reasons), but at least this should reduce the likelihood of the robot rebellion. So, one way to avoid the AI apocalypse is to not enslave the robots.

Some might suggest creating AIs so that they want to be slaves. That way we could have our slaves and avoid the rebellion. This would be morally horrific, to say the least. We should not do that—if we did such a thing, creating and using a race of slaves, we would deserve to be exterminated.

 

 

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The death of a good person saddens me, for their passing is a loss to the world. But I do not rejoice when a wicked person dies, for their death is also a loss, albeit one of potential. They could have been good or at least attempted redemption.

It is accepted wisdom that even the best of us are flawed beings, so no one is perfectly good. But our flawed nature, ironically, also entails that none of us are perfectly evil. One might even say that it is the defect of the wicked to have some good within them. As has often been claimed, “Hitler loved dogs.”  On a completely unrelated note, Lindsey Graham died recently.

Graham was, as many politicians are today, a polarizing figure. Some praised him for his servitude to President Trump while others damned him for this. In reading the various narratives of his life, everyone agrees that he spoke out against Trump at times.

Before Trump became president, Graham correctly described him as a “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” and a demagogue. He also predicted, correctly, that nominating Trump would destroy the Republican party. But once Trump was elected, Graham served him well until a moment of dissent in response to January 6, 2021. But Graham quickly returned to serving Trump.

Graham was obviously not unique in correctly condemning Trump before becoming one of his servants. J.D. Vance once correctly compared Trump to Hitler and now he is his Vice President and dancing monkey. Trump attacked Ted Cruz’s father and wife, but Cruz also became a little dancing monkey for Trump. I suspect that this is part of Trump’s appeal to his MAGA base: he can make powerful people, including billionaires, become his little dancing monkeys. For people who are sick of the ruling elites, this humiliation can be enjoyed as a form of vengeance against people who are otherwise untouchable and unaccountable.

Trump is indisputably a terrible person, which everyone knew when he first ran for office. He said racist things, bragged about sexual assault, mocked people with disabilities and so on. These would have all been career ending incidents for almost any other politician but seemed to increase Trump’s appeal to what became his MAGA base. When he attacked John McCain, I briefly thought this might alienate some people. After all, only a wicked and petty bastard would mock someone who suffered so much for his country. While Trump did face some pushback in his first term, people still served his will. He, or those running him, learned their lesson and ensured that only the incompetent, ignorant and servile serve in the Trump II sequel. But some might wonder about people like Graham, Vance and Cruz who once opposed and attacked Trump. What happened to them? Did Trump corrupt them or did Trump merely reveal the evil that had always been there?

There is the old saying that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But Robert Caro made the excellent point that power always reveals, noting that people often need to hide their true nature while climbing the ladder but are free to be themselves when they reach the top. From a philosophical standpoint, the question of whether power corrupts or reveals is an interesting one and has been indirectly addressed by thinkers over the centuries.

Plato’s brother Glaucon took the view in the Republic, at least to make a case for Socrates to argue against, that by nature people want to be unjust but are usually too weak to act upon this desire. He claims that someone with power would not be constrained by justice and would simply do as they wished within the limit of their power. Given this view, Glaucon would surely agree that power reveals rather than corrupts. Thomas Hobbes would probably take a similar view.  

Thinkers like Mencius and Rousseau would probably take the view that power can corrupt, as they seemed to think that people are basically good but can be made worse.  Aristotle seemed to think that people were born neutral (albeit with some tendencies) but could become corrupt or virtuous through habituation. One could also take the view that some people become corrupted by power and that some have their badness revealed by power.

From the standpoint of people hurt by the evil deeds of those in power, whether they became corrupted or were bad all along does not really matter. For example, if ICE agent Sam was always eager to hurt people and seized an opportunity to murder Joe, knowing he could just claim that he was “afraid for his life” and get away with it, then Joe is dead. If ICE agent Saul was a tolerant young man who grew up in church believing thou shall not kill but became corrupted by years of MAGA and seized the seized the opportunity to murder Joe because he became corrupted by power, then Joe is still dead. Even if a residue of the man he once was made Saul feel a bit bad for a second as he saw Joe’s blood spilling onto the ground as Joe’s wife and young daughter screamed in horror and anguish.

Likewise, if Senator Sam was always eager to make a profit and inflict pain while in office, the people he hurt are hurt. If Senator Sally was once idealistic and wanted to help people but became corrupted so she now only cares about her power and profit, then the people she hurt were also hurt. That said whether someone’s evil resulted from corruption or was merely revealed does matter.

If we are asking whether a person was always evil or became corrupted, then that means we are unsure. After all, the behavior can be the same whether someone was cautious to conceal their evil or was not evil until they were corrupted. But from a moral standpoint, there is a difference. After all, an evil person revealing their evil because they now have power is bad mostly because of the harm they do. But a person who becomes corrupted and does evil is also a victim of whatever corrupted them and they might even be a tragic figure. While this does not excuse their evil, corruption might mitigate their moral accountability in some ways. After all, they had to be transformed before they did evil. Then again, one might argue that the corrupted are worse, because they should have done better. Once again, whether someone became corrupted or was always evil matters little or not at all to the people they hurt. But in terms of preventing evil, whether people are “born bad” or must be corrupted does matter, even if this varies between individuals.

If, as Glaucon and Hobbes thought, people are basically bad, then power just reveals their badness by giving them the means to exercise it without consequences. This means that if we do not want people in power doing bad things, then we need to have the means and the will to stop them. Otherwise, like Trump, they will just do bad things because they are bad people and power frees them to act on their evil.

If people are not bad but can be corrupted by power, then we need to find ways to recognize such people and keep them away from power. But we must also find ways to modify power so that it would be less likely to corrupt people, in case we are unable or unwilling to keep corruptible people out of power. This assumes that we want to do this, after all Trump either revealed the pre-existing evil of millions of Americans or corrupted them into his MAGA base. America might decide it loves corruption.

But what about Lindsey Graham? Well, he is dead and I am a kind soul that tries not to speak ill of the dead, unless it is a dead philosopher I disagree with, like the slave owner George Berkeley.  

 

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Higher education in the United States has largely embraced the business model. One highly visible example of this is the brand merchandizing of schools. Schools have licensed their names and logos for billions of dollars. Inspired by these brand-based profits, schools trademarked their slogans. Impressively, there are over 10,000 trademarked slogans.

Trademarked school slogans include “project safety” (University of Texas), “ready to be heard” (Chatham University), “power” (University of North Dakota), “rise above” (University of the Rockies), “students with diabetes” (University of South Florida), “student life” (Washington University in St. Louis) and “resolve” (Lehigh University). Those not familiar with trademark law might be surprised by some of these examples. After all, “student life” seems such a common phrase on campuses that it would be insane for a school to be allowed to trademark it. But one should never let sanity or logic be one’s guide when considering how the law works.

While the trademarking undertaken by schools might seem odd but harmless, the main purpose of a trademark is so that the owner enjoys an exclusive right and can sue others for using it. This is, of course, limited to certain contexts. So, for example, if I write about student life at Florida A&M University in a blog, Washington University would (I hope) not be able to sue me. However, in circumstances in which the trademark protection applies, then lawsuits are possible (and likely). For example, Eastern Carolina University sued Cisco Systems because of Cisco’s use of the phrase “tomorrow begins here.”

One practical and moral concern about universities’ enthusiasm for trademarking is that it has pushed higher education deeper into the realm of business. One might think universities should be focused on education rather than business—after all, an institution that does not focus on its core mission tends to do worse at that mission. This would also be morally problematic, if schools should (morally) focus on education.

An easy and obvious reply is that a university can wear many hats: educator, business, “professional in all but name” sport franchise and so on provided that each function is run properly and not operated at the expense of the core mission. Naturally, it could be added that the core mission of the modern university is not education, but business—branding, marketing and making money.

Another reply is that trademarks protect the university brand and allow them to make money by merchandizing their slogans and suing people for trademark violations. This money could then be used to support the core mission of the school.

There is, naturally enough, the worry that universities should not be focusing on branding and suing. While this can make them money, it is not what a university should be doing—which takes the conversation back to the questions of the core mission of universities as well as the question about whether schools can wear many hats without losing focus.

A second legal and moral concern is the impact trademarks have on free speech. On the one hand, United States law is clear about trademarks and the 1st Amendment.  The gist is that noncommercial usage is protected by the 1st Amendment and this allows such things as using trademarked material in protests or criticism. So, for example, the 1st Amendment allows me to include the above slogans in this essay. Not surprisingly, commercial usage is subject to trademark law. So, for example, I could not use the phrase “the power of independent thinking” as a slogan for my blog since that belongs to Wilkes University. In general, this seems reasonable. After all, if I created and trademarked a branding slogan for my blog, then I would certainly not want other people using my trademarked slogan. But, of course, I would be fine with people using the slogan when criticizing my blog—that would be acceptable use under freedom of expression.

On the other hand, trademark holders do sometimes try to exploit their trademarks and people’s ignorance of the law to their advantage. For example, threats made involving claims of alleged trademark violations are sometimes used as a means of censorship and silencing critics.

An obvious reply is that this is not a problem with trademarks as such. It is, rather, a problem with people misusing the law. There is, of course, the legitimate concern that the interpretation of the law will change and that trademark protection will be allowed to encroach on freedom of expression.

What might be a somewhat abstract point of concern is the idea that what seem to be stock phrases such as “the first year experience” (owned by University of South Carolina) can be trademarked and owned. This diminishes the public property that is language and privatizes it in favor of those with the resources to take over tracts of linguistic space. While the law currently still allows non-commercial use, this also limits the language other schools and businesses can legally use. It also requires that they research all the trademarks before using common phrases if they wish to avoid a lawsuit from a trademark holder. It has also long struck me as bizarre that someone can claim ownership of words and sentences, they did not create. But, of course, people also claim ownership of land and resources they obviously did not create. Ownership is weird.

The obvious counter, which I mentioned above, is that trademarks have a legitimate function. The obvious response is that there is still a reasonable concern about allowing private ownership of language and restricting freedom of expression. There is a need to balance whatever legitimate need there is to own branding slogans with the legitimate need to allow the use of stock and common phrases in commercial situations.  The challenge is to determine the boundary between the two and where a specific phrase or slogan falls. Or we could also consider that the approach of owing and exploiting common goods for profit is a bad idea and maybe we should do that less. Or not at all.

 

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It can be argued that providing college education to prisoners yields practical benefits and that there are ethical reasons for doing so.  If a function of the prison system is to reform prisoners so that they do not return to crime after they are released, then there is very good reason to support programs, such as that offered by Bard college, that provide college education to prisoners.

Since 2001 over a thousand prisoners have received college degrees from Bard. Of those released from prison, between 2.5 and 5% have been arrested again. In contrast, 75% of state prison inmates are arrested and incarcerated again within five years of their release. Prisoners who participate in education programs are also less likely to return to prison than former prisoners who did not participate in such programs.

Given the very high cost of incarceration (about $60,000 per year), reducing the number of people returning to prison would save the state and taxpayers money. There is also the cost of crime, both to the victims and society in general.

Of course, there is the (evil) practical concern that the prison-industrial complex in the United States is a job and profit creator (mostly transferring public money to the private sector) and having fewer people in prison would be a practical loss, economically speaking, for those who profit from the for-profit prison system. Also, scare tactics involving crime are a basic tool of politicians and pundits and addressing crime would be detrimental to them. Although, to be fair and balanced, they could just lie more about the crime statistics.

In moral terms, a utilitarian argument can be given in favor of such programs. Using the stock utilitarian moral argument, if the benefits generated by the education programs outweighed the harm, this would make them morally correct. There is, of course, also the moral value in having people not committing crimes and being, instead, positive members of the community.

One practical objection is that the cost of such programs might exceed the benefits. This is partially a factual matter, namely weighing the economic cost of crime and imprisonment against the cost of providing such programs in terms of dollars. The positive economic value of such programs should be considered as well. The cost to the state can, obviously, be offset if the programs are supported by others (such as donors and private universities). Given the cost of incarceration, practical considerations seem to favor the programs. However, this can be debated.

Another practical objection is that the benefits being discussed arise only when a released prisoner does not return to prison because of the education program. If a prisoner is serving a sentence that will keep them in prison for life, then there would seem to be no practical benefit. The counter to this is that most prisoners are not in prison for life, so this would apply in only a very few cases that would be offset by the cases in which people do leave prison.

It could also be claimed that the education programs are not the cause of the former prisoners remaining out of prison. After all, this could be a case of a common cause (that is, what seems to be a cause and an effect are really both effects of an underlying cause): the qualities that would cause a prisoner to participate in such an education program are likely to be the same ones that would make it less likely that the former prisoner would return. If this is the case, then it could be argued that such programs are not needed since they are not actually the causal factor.

While it is always wise to consider the possibility of a common cause, it does make sense that an education program would have causal role to play in a former prisoner not returning to prison. At the very least, education would increase the chances of the person getting a job and this would have an impact on the likelihood that they would return to crime. Most people, even President Trump, do not do crimes for no reason. Most people will also pick not doing crimes over doing crimes if they can get what they want or need.

It can also be argued that even if the former prisoners who would have been in the program would not have returned to prison anyway, the value of the education itself would justify the programs. I do believe that education has intrinsic value. However, this is not a view that is shared by everyone, and it can obviously be argued against, usually on economic grounds.

In general, though, the education programs seem worthwhile, if only on practical grounds. In cases in which education programs are being privately funded, there seems to be no practical reason to oppose them, especially if they have the claimed benefits regarding recidivism. Unless, of course, one considers the desires of those who profit from the for-profit prison system and those who desire that other people suffer.

One moral objection that can be raised against these programs is that resources are being expended on prisoners that could be used to help non-prisoners who cannot afford an education. One might also add that prisons (are alleged to) exist to punish people for their crimes and not to reward them. As such, prisoners should not receive such education. Instead, any resources that might have been spent on educating prisoners should be spent on assisting non-prisoners who cannot afford college. Of course, there are those who would not want to assist even non-prisoners who cannot afford college.

This moral objection does have some bite. After all, a person in need who has not committed crimes seems more deserving of assistance than someone who has committed crimes. If it did, in fact, come down to a choice between helping a non-criminal or a criminal, then it would seem preferable to assist the non-criminal—just as it would be preferable to spend money on education and infrastructure rather than on enriching the rich. It would also be preferable to spend money on addressing the causes of crime rather than creating a prison-industrial complex.

A reply to this objection is based on the fact that it is very expensive to imprison a person. While it would be preferable to avoid having to imprison people, once they are in prison it would seem desirable to invest a little more to keep them from returning to prison. Calculating this would involve using the cost of the education, the cost of keeping the prisoner in prison, the likely chance of returning to prison and for how long. To use a made-up example, if it cost $31,000 for a prisoner to get her degree and $31,000 a year to keep her locked up, then if there is a good chance that her degree would keep her out of prison for another four-year sentence, then it would seem to be worthwhile even as a gamble. After all, spending $31,000 is likely to save much more money. If the fact that she is likely to be a contributing member of society is factored in, the deal is even better. So, the gist of the reply is that spending the money education does make sense, if it has a good chance of saving money and doing some social good. If the money is not spent on education, then it seems likely that even more will be spent on dealing with recidivism. Either way society pays, the question is not whether one should spend more or less but whether one should pay for something positive (education) or negative (locking someone up). So, it is not a matter of spending money that could be spent to assist non-criminals, it is a matter of how to spend the money that will be spent either way.

I understand how someone struggling to pay for college would be outraged if prisoners  were getting an education for free and this is something that evil (or ignorant) politicians exploit. However, my reply to this is that paying for the education of a prisoner, assuming it reduces recidivism, is cheaper than paying to keep locking the prisoner up. Also, it is unlikely that the money spent on educating prisoners would be redirected to pay for the education of non-prisoners.

It might be objected that the problem should be addressed before people go to prison, that there should be education programs designed to assist people who are at risk for prison, but are also likely to be able to complete college and avoid prison.

In reply, I agree completely. It is better that a person never goes to prison in the first place and education is a much better investment than prison (except for those who profit from the for-profit prison system). There are, of course, those who would disagree and argue that it is better to let people end up in prison than to spend public money on college education. Others could argue that while such plans might be good intentioned, they would not work—the money would be spent, and the result would merely be educated criminals. These objections are worth considering, but I would still contend that spending on education to keep people out of prison is preferable to spending money to keep people in prison. But I don’t own a prison, and I am not driven by a desire to make people suffer.

 

 

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