Author: Michael LaBossiere

 

In something of a flashback to 2001, Microsoft is once again the target of an antitrust lawsuit. Google and other tech companies are facing similar challenges as governments have found the political will to go up against big tech, at least for now. While there are various legal arguments as to why tech companies should be split up, there are also good policy reasons for this. For this essay, I will focus on the sensible warning to not put all your eggs in one basket and argue that this is also rational for digital “eggs.” As might be expected, the 2024 CrowdStrike disaster will serve as the main example of why the one basket approach is a bad idea.

On July 19, 2024, CrowdStrike released a flawed update to its Falcon Sensor software causing about 8.5 million Windows systems to crash and become unable to properly restart. As of this writing, this was the largest outage in history. As businesses ranging from airlines to gas stations rely on these Windows systems, the impact was devastating, and it is estimated the financial damage was at least $10 billion done over the course of only a few hours. In addition to becoming a textbook case about how not to test and rollout security software, it also provides a lesson in the danger of putting some many digital eggs in one basket, especially given the inclination companies often have to cut corners and operate badly. The repeated, self-inflicted failures at the once respected Boeing provides another excellent example of how this sort of easily avoidable failures occur.

While the poor handling of the update is the main cause of the disaster, the fact that CrowdStrike was the security software on so many Windows systems enabled it to be a worldwide disaster. While Microsoft was not to blame, the market dominance of Windows was also a factor since Macs and Linux systems were not impacted by the failure of CrowdStrike. The case of CrowdStrike was, of course, unintentional but there are also intentional efforts to cause harm.

Like many people, I recently received a letter from Change Health Care informing me of a data breach that occurred back in February. While they did offer me free monitoring, my data (and probably yours) is now out in the wild, presumably being sold and used by criminals. Such data breaches are common for a variety of reasons. In terms of why health care data is targeted, the short version is that such data is very valuable and stealing it is relatively easy. The larger a company gets, the more desirable it is as a target. This is because breaching a large company is often not much more challenging than breaching a small company, but the potential payoff is greater. Unfortunately, these companies are not like monsters in video games in that the challenge of getting the treasure is not proportionate to the value of the loot.

This points to the obvious danger presented by data and software companies gaining dominance in markets: when they drop the basket, the eggs break. To be fair to these companies, they are playing the game of capitalism and trying to win it by maximizing their profits by grabbing as much of the market as they can. As noted above, some governments are pushing back but there is the question of whether this will continue in the United States with the change of administration. While the devil is in the details, this danger does provide an excellent justification for keeping market dominance in check, since this dominance entails that the eggs will be stuffed into one basket and companies have shown they are constantly poor stewards. Thus, good policy should be aimed at restricting the size of companies, not to “punish their success” but to mitigate the damage done to other companies and the public caused by their inevitable failures.

The execution of CEO Brian Thompson has brought the dystopian but highly profitable American health care system into the spotlight. While some are rightfully expressing compassion for Thompson’s family, the overwhelming tide of commentary is about the harms Americans suffer because of the way the health care system is operated. In many ways, this incident exposes many aspects of the American nightmare such as dystopian health care, the rule of oligarchs, the surveillance state, and gun violence.

As this is being written the identity and motives of the shooter are not known. However, the evidence suggests that he had an experience with the company that was bad enough he decided to execute the CEO. The main evidence for this is the words written on his shell casings (deny”, “depose”, and “defend”) that reference the tactics used by health insurance companies to avoid paying for care. Given the behavior of insurance companies in general and United Healthcare in particular, this inference makes sense.

The United States spends $13,000 per year per person on health care, although this is just the number you get when you divide the total spending by the total number of people. Obviously, we don’t each get $13,000 each year. Despite this, we have worse health outcomes than many other countries that spend less than half of what we do, and American life expectancy is dropping. It is estimated that about 85 million people are either without health care insurance or are underinsured.

It is estimated that between 45,000 and 60,000 Americans die each year because they cannot get access to health care on time, with many of these deaths attributed to a lack of health insurance. Even those who can get access to health care face dire consequences in that about 500,000 Americans go bankrupt because of medical debt. In contrast, health insurance companies are doing very well. In 2023, publicly traded health insurance companies experienced a 10.4% increase in total GAAP revenue reaching a total of $1.07 trillion. Thomson himself had an annual compensation package of $10.2 million.

In addition to the cold statistics, almost everyone in America has a bad story about health insurance. One indication that health insurance is a nightmare is the number of GoFundMe fundraisers for medica expenses. The company even has a guide to setting up your own medical fundraiser. Like many people, I have given to such fundraisers such as when a high school friend could not pay for his treatment. He is dead now.

My own story is a minor one, but the fact that a college professor with “good” insurance has a story also illustrates the problem. When I had my quadriceps repair surgery, the doctor told me that my insurance had stopped covering the leg brace because they deemed it medically unnecessary. The doctor said that it was absolutely necessary, and he was right. So, I had to buy a $500 brace that my insurance did not cover. I could afford it, but $500 is a lot of money for most of us.

Like most Americans, I have friends who have truly nightmarish stories of unceasing battles with insurance companies to secure health care for themselves or family. Similar stories flooded social media, filling out the statistics with the suffering of people. While most people did not applaud the execution, it was clear that Americans hate the health insurance industry and do so for good reason. But is the killing of a CEO morally justified?

There is a general moral presumption that killing people is wrong and we rightfully expect a justification if someone claims that a killing was morally acceptable. In addition to the moral issue, there is also the question of the norms of society. Robert Pape, director of the University of Chicago’s project on security and threats, has claimed that Americans are increasingly accepting violence as a means of settling civil disputes and that this one incident shows that “the norms of violence are spreading into the commercial sector.” While Pape does make a reasonable point, violence has long been a part of the commercial sector although this has mostly been the use of violence against workers in general and unions in particular. Gun violence is also “normal” in the United States in that it occurs regularly. As such, the killing does see to be within the norms of America, although the killing of a CEO is unusual.

While it must be emphasized that the motive of the shooter is not known, the speculation is that he was harmed in some manner by the heath insurance company. While we do not yet know his story, we do know that people suffer or die from lack of affordable insurance and when insurance companies deny them coverage for treatment.

Philosophers draw a moral distinction between killing and letting people die and insurance companies can make the philosophical argument that they are not killing people or inflicting direct harm. They are just letting people suffer or die for financial reasons when they can be helped. When it comes to their compensation packages, CEOs and upper management defend their exorbitant compensation by arguing that they are the ones making the big decisions and leading the company. If we take them at their word, then this entails that they also deserve the largest share of moral accountability. That is, if a company’s actions are causing death and suffering, then the CEO and other leadership are the ones who deserve a package of blame to match their compensation package.

It is important to distinguish moral accountability from legal accountability. Corporations exist, in large part, to concentrate wealth at the top while distributing legal accountability. Even when they commit criminal activity, “it’s rare for top executives – especially at larger companies – to face personal punishment.” One reason for this is that the United States is an oligarchy rather than a democracy and the laws are written to benefit the wealthy. This is not to say that corporate leaders are above the law; they are not. They are wrapped in the law, and it generally serves them well as armor against accountability. For the lower classes, the law is more often a sword employed to rob and otherwise harm them. As such, one moral justification for an individual using violence against a CEO or other corporate leader is that might be the only way they will face meaningful consequences for their crimes.

The social contract is supposed to ensure that everyone faces consequences and when this is not the case, then the social contract loses its validity. To borrow from Glaucon in Plato’s Republic, it would be foolish to be restrained by “justice” when others are harming you without such restraint.  But it might be objected, while health insurance companies do face legal scrutiny, denying coverage and making health care unaffordable for many Americans is legal. As such, these are not crimes and CEOs, and corporate leaders should not be harmed for inflicting such harm.

While it is true that corporations can legally get away with letting people die and even causing their deaths, this is where morality enters the picture. While there are philosophical views that morality is determined by the law, these views have many obvious problems, not the least of which is that they are counterintuitive.

If people are morally accountable for the harm they inflict and can be justly punished and the legal system ignores such harm, then it would follow that individuals have the moral right to act. In terms of philosophical justification, John Locke provides an excellent basis. If a corporation can cause unjustified harm to the life and property of people and the state allows this, then the corporations have returned themselves and their victims to the state of nature because, in effect, the state does not exist in this context. In this situation, everyone has the right to defend themselves and others from such unjust incursions and this, as Locke argued, can involve violence and even lethal force.

It might be objected that such vigilante justice would harm society, and that people should rely on the legal system for recourse. But that is exactly the problem: the people running the state have allowed the corporations to mostly do as they wish to their victims with little consequence and have removed the protection of the law. It is they who have created a situation where vigilante justice might be the only meaningful recourse of the citizen. To complain about eroding norms is a mistake, because the norm is for corporations and the elites to get away with moral crimes with little consequence. For people to fight back against this can be seen as desperate attempts at some justice.

As the Trump administration is likely to see a decrease in even the timid and limited efforts to check corporate wrongdoing, it seems likely there will be more incidents of people going after corporate leaders. Much of the discussion among the corporations is about the need to protect corporate leaders and we can expect lawmakers and the police to step up to offer even more protection to the oligarchs from the people they are hurting.

Politicians could take steps to solve the health care crisis that the for-profit focus of health care has caused and some, such have Bernie Sanders, honestly want to do that. In closing, one consequence of the killing is that Anthem decided to rescind their proposed anesthesia policy. Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield plans representing Connecticut, New York and Missouri had said they would no longer pay for anesthesia care if a procedure goes beyond an arbitrary time limit, regardless of how long it takes. This illustrates our dystopia: this would have been allowed by the state that is supposed to protect us, but the execution of a health insurance CEO made the leaders of Anthem rethink their greed. This is not how things should be. In a better world Thompson would be alive, albeit not as rich,  and spending the holidays with his family. And so would the thousands of Americans who died needlessly because of greed and cruelty.

 

While the United States is the richest country on earth, people asking for money is a common occurrence. Last week, when I went to CVS to get my COVID shot, a person laying on the sidewalk asked me for money. I’m often approached while grocery shopping and even while running. Although I have been told I am just helping to buy someone drugs or beer, I routinely give people cash. This is a moral choice, and I would be going against my own professed principles if I did not help people, even when they might be deceiving me about what they will purchase. But some people find panhandling a problem and not in terms of people needing to beg for money.

Local officials sometimes believe panhandlers are detrimental to businesses and tourism and there have been efforts to ban begging. While local governments try to craft laws to pass constitutional muster, their efforts have generally proven futile in the face of the First Amendment. While the legal questions are addressed by courts, there remains the moral question of whether banning panhandling can be morally justified.

One starting point for a moral argument for banning panhandling is a utilitarian approach. Local officials generally want bans because they believe panhandlers are bad for businesses and tourism. For example, if potential customers are accosted by panhandlers on the streets around businesses, then they are less likely to patronize those businesses.

As another example, if a city gets a reputation for being awash in panhandlers who annoy tourists with, then tourism might decline. From the perspective of the business owners and the local officials, these effects would have negative value that outweigh the benefits to the panhandlers of being able to ask for money. There is presumably also utility in encouraging panhandlers to move away to other locations, thus removing the financial and social cost of having panhandlers. If this utilitarian calculation is accurate, then banning panhandling would be morally acceptable. Of course, if the calculation is not correct and such a ban would do more harm than good, then the ban would be morally wrong.

A second utilitarian argument is the safety argument. While panhandlers generally do not engage in violence (they are asking for money and not trying to rob people), some claim they do present a risk. One concern is that by panhandling in or near traffic, they put themselves and others in danger. If this is true, then banning panhandling would be the right thing to do.  If, however, the alleged harm does not justify the ban, then it would be morally unacceptable.

There is also the reply that safety concerns could be addressed by having laws that forbid people from obstructing the flow of traffic and being a danger to themselves and others. Presumably these laws already exist in most places. There is also the concern that the safety argument would need to be applied consistently to all such allegedly risky behavior around traffic, such as people engaging in political campaigns or street side advertising.

One can advance a utilitarian argument in favor of panhandling based on the harm that could be done by restricting the panhandlers’ rights. Following Mill’s classic argument, if panhandlers are not harming people with their panhandling, then it would be wrong to limit their freedom to engage in this behavior. This is on the condition that panhandling is merely annoying and does not involve threatening behavior or harassment. After all, politicians are allowed to annoy us with texts and emails begging for money, so they would be hard pressed to consistently oppose panhandling while asking us for money.

It could be objected that panhandling does cause harm. As noted above, the presence of panhandlers could harm local businesses. People can also regard panhandling as an infringement on their freedom to not be bothered in public. While this does have some appeal, this justification of a panhandling ban would also justify banning any public behavior people found annoying or that had some perceived impact on local businesses. This could include public displays of expression, political campaigning, preaching in public and many other behaviors. In short, the problem is that there is not something distinct about panhandling that would allow it to be banned without also justifying the ban of other activities. To simply ban it because it is panhandling would seem to solve this problem but would not. After all, if an activity can be justly banned because it is that activity, then this would apply to any activity. After all, every activity is the activity it is.

Those who prefer an alternative to utilitarian calculations can easily defend panhandling against proposed bans by appealing to a right of free expression and behavior that is not based on utility. If people do have the moral right to free expression, then reasons would need to be advanced that would be strong enough to warrant violating this right. As noted above, an appeal could be made to the rights of businesses and the rights of other people to avoid being annoyed. However, the right to not be annoyed does not seem to trump the right of expression until the annoyance becomes significant. As such, a panhandler does have the right to annoy others by asking for money, but if it crosses over into actual harassment, then this would be handled by the fact that people do not have a right to harassment.

In the case of businesses, while they do have a right to engage in free commerce, they do not have a right to expect people to behave in ways that are conducive to their business. If, for example, people found it offensive to have runners running downtown and decided to take their business elsewhere, this would not warrant a runner ban. But, if runners were blocking access to the businesses by stretching in the entrances, then the owners’ rights would be violated. Likewise, if panhandlers are disliked by people and they decide to take their business elsewhere, this does not violate the rights of the businesses. But, if panhandlers started harassing people and blocking access to the businesses, then this would violate the rights of the owners.

 

This is from my book 110 Fallacies.

Also Known as: Misuse of Authority, Irrelevant Authority, Questionable Authority, Inappropriate Authority, Ad Verecundiam

Description:

The fallacious Appeal to Authority is a fallacy of standards rather than a structural fallacy. A fallacious Appeal to Authority has the same form as a strong Argument from Authority. As such, determining when this fallacy occurs is a matter of assessing an Argument from Authority to see if it meets the standards presented below. The general form of the reasoning is as follows:

 

Premise 1: Person A is (claimed to be) an authority on subject S.

Premise 2: Person A makes claim C about subject S.

Conclusion: Therefore, C is true.

 

This reasoning is fallacious when person A is not qualified to make reliable claims in subject S. In such cases the reasoning is flawed because the fact that an unqualified person makes a claim does not provide any justification for the claim. The claim could be true, but the fact that an unqualified person made the claim does not provide any rational reason to accept the claim as true.

When a person falls prey to this fallacy, they are accepting a claim as true without having adequate evidence. More specifically, the person is accepting the claim because they erroneously believe the person making the claim is an expert. Since people tend to believe people they think are authorities this fallacy is common one.

Since this sort of reasoning is fallacious only when the person is not a legitimate authority in a particular context, it is necessary to provide the standards/criteria for assessing the strength of this argument. The following standards provide a guide to such an assessment:

 

  1. The person has sufficient expertise in the subject matter in question.

Claims made by a person who lacks the needed degree of expertise to make a reliable claim are not well supported. In contrast, claims made by a person with the needed expertise will be supported by the person’s competence in the area.

Determining whether a person has the needed degree of expertise can be very difficult. In academic fields (such as philosophy, engineering, and chemistry), a person’s formal education, academic performance, publications, membership in professional societies, papers presented, awards won and so forth can all be reliable indicators of expertise. Outside of academic fields, other standards will apply. For example, having sufficient expertise to make a reliable claim about how to tie a shoelace only requires the ability to tie the shoelace. Being an expert does not always require having a university degree. Many people have high degrees of expertise in sophisticated subjects without having ever attended a university. Further, it should not be assumed that a person with a degree must be an expert.

What is required to be an expert is often a matter of debate. For example, some people claim expertise because of a divine inspiration or a special gift. The followers of such people accept such credentials as establishing the person’s expertise while others often see these self-proclaimed experts as deluded or even as charlatans. In other situations, people debate rationally over what sort of education and experience is needed to be an expert. Thus, what one person may take to be a fallacious appeal another person might take to be a well-supported line of reasoning.

  1. The claim being made by the person is within their area(s) of expertise.

A person making a claim outside of their area(s) of expertise should not be considered an expert in that area. So, that claim is not backed expertise and should not be accepted based on an Appeal to Authority.

Because of the vast scope of human knowledge, it is impossible for a person to be an expert on everything or even many things. So, an expert will only be an expert in certain subject areas. In most other areas they will have little or no expertise. Thus, it is important to determine what subject a claim falls under.

Expertise in one area does not automatically confer expertise in another area, even if they are related. For example, being an expert physicist does not make a person an expert on morality or politics. Unfortunately, this is often overlooked or intentionally ignored. In fact, advertising often rests on a violation of this condition. Famous actors and sports heroes often endorse products that they are not qualified to assess. For example, a person may be a famous actor, but that does not automatically make them an expert on cars or reverse mortgages.

  1. There is an adequate degree of agreement among the other experts in the subject in question.

If there is significant legitimate dispute between qualified experts, then it will be fallacious to make an Appeal to Authority using the disputing experts. This is because for almost any claim being made by one expert there will be a counterclaim made by another expert. In such cases an Appeal to Authority would tend to be futile. In such cases, the dispute must be settled by consideration of the issues under dispute. Since all sides in such a dispute can invoke qualified experts, the dispute cannot be rationally settled by an Argument from Authority.

There are many fields in which there is significant reasonable dispute. Economics, ethics, and law are all good examples of such disputed fields. For example, trying to settle an ethical issue by appealing to the expertise of one ethicist can easily be countered by pointing to an equally qualified expert who disagrees.

No field has complete agreement, and some degree of dispute is acceptable. How much is acceptable is, of course, a matter of debate. Even a field with a great deal of dispute might contain areas of significant agreement. In such cases, an Argument from Authority could be a good argument. For example, while philosophers disagree on most things, there is a consensus among the experts about basic logic. As such, appealing to the authority of an expert on logic in a matter of logic would generally be a strong Argument from Authority.

When it comes to claims that most of the qualified experts agree on, the rational thing for a non-expert to do is to accept that the claim is probably true. After all, a non-expert is not qualified to settle to question of which experts are correct and the majority of qualified experts is more likely to be right than the numerical minority. Non-experts often commit this fallacy because they wrongly think that because they prefer the claim of the minority of experts, it follows that those experts must be right.

  1. The person in question is not significantly biased.

If an expert is significantly biased, then the claims they makes will be less credible. So, an Argument from Authority based on a biased expert will tend to be fallacious. This is because the evidence will usually not justify accepting the claim.

Experts, being people, are vulnerable to biases and prejudices. If there is evidence that a person is biased in some manner that would affect the reliability of their claims, then an Argument from Authority based on that person is likely to be fallacious. Even if the claim is true, the fact that the expert is biased weakens the argument. This is because there would be reason to believe that the expert might not be making the claim because they have carefully considered it using their expertise. Rather, there would be reason to believe that the claim is being made because of the expert’s bias or prejudice.

No person is completely objective. At the very least, a person will be favorable towards their own views (otherwise they would not hold them). Because of this, some degree of bias must be accepted, provided it is not significant. What counts as a significant degree of bias is open to dispute and can vary a great deal from case to case. For example, many people would probably suspect that doctors who were paid by tobacco companies to research the effects of smoking would be biased while other people might believe (or claim) that they would be able to remain objective.

  1. The area of expertise is a legitimate area or discipline.

Certain areas in which a person may claim expertise may have no legitimacy or validity as areas of knowledge. Obviously, claims made in such areas tend to lack credibility.

What counts as a legitimate area of expertise can be difficult to determine. However, there are cases which are clear cut. For example, if a person claimed to be an expert at something they called “chromabullet therapy” and asserted that firing painted rifle bullets at a person would cure cancer it would not be unreasonable to accept their claim based on their “expertise.” After all, their expertise is in an area which has no legitimate content. The general idea is that to be a legitimate expert a person must have mastery over a real field or area of knowledge.

As noted above, determining the legitimacy of a field can often be difficult. In European history, various scientists had to struggle with the Church and established traditions to establish the validity of their disciplines. For example, experts on evolution faced an uphill battle in getting the legitimacy of their area accepted.

A modern example involves psychic phenomenon. Some people claim that they are certified “master psychics” and that they are experts in the field. Other people contend that their claims of being certified “master psychics” are simply absurd since there is no real content to such an area of expertise. If these people are right, then anyone who accepts the claims of these “master psychics” are victims of a fallacious Appeal to Authority.

  1. The authority in question must be identified.

A common variation of the typical Appeal to Authority fallacy is an Appeal to an Unnamed Authority. This fallacy is Also Known as an Appeal to an Unidentified Authority.

This fallacy is committed when a person asserts that a claim is true because an expert or authority makes the claim, but the person does not identify the expert. Since the expert is not identified, there is no way to tell if the person is an expert. Unless the person is identified and has his expertise established, there is no reason to accept the claim on this basis.

This sort of reasoning is not unusual. Typically, the person making the argument will say things like “I have a book that says…”, or “they say…”, or “the experts say…”, or “scientists believe that…”, or “I read in the paper..” or “I saw on TV…” or some similar statement. in such cases the person is often hoping that the listener(s) will simply accept the unidentified source as a legitimate authority and believe the claim being made. If a person accepts the claim simply because they accept the unidentified source as an expert (without good reason to do so), he has fallen prey to this fallacy.

 

Non-Fallacious Arguments from Authority

Not all Arguments from Authority are fallacious. This is fortunate since people must rely on experts. No one person can be an expert on everything, and people do not have the time or ability to investigate every single claim themselves.

In some cases, Arguments from Authority will be good arguments. For example, when a person goes to a skilled doctor and the doctor tells them that they have a cold, then the patient has good reason to accept the doctor’s conclusion. As another example, if a person’s computer is acting odd and their friend, who is a computer expert, tells them it is probably their hard drive then they have good reason to accept this claim.

What distinguishes a fallacious Appeal to Authority from a good Argument from Authority is that the argument effectively meets the six conditions discussed above.

In a good Argument from Authority, there is reason to believe the claim because the expert says the claim is true. This is because a qualified expert is more likely to be right than wrong when making claims within their area of expertise. In a sense, the claim is being accepted because it is reasonable to believe that the expert has tested the claim and found it to be reliable. So, if the expert has found it to be reliable, then it is reasonable to accept it as being true. Thus, the listener is accepting a claim based on the testimony of the expert.

It should be noted that even a good Argument from Authority is not an exceptionally strong argument. After all, a claim is accepted as true because a credible person says it is true. Arguments that deal directly with evidence relating to the claim itself will tend to be stronger.

 

Defense: The main defense against this fallacy is to apply the standards of the Argument from Authority when considering any appeal to authority important enough to be worth assessing. You should especially be on guard when you agree with the (alleged) expert and want to believe they are correct. While there are legitimate uses for claims by anonymous experts, the credibility of these claims rest on the expertise of the person reporting the claim. This is because the evidence for such a claim is the credibility and expertise of the person reporting it. That is, you are trusting that they are honestly reporting the claim and are qualified to assess that the anonymous expert is credible.

Example #1:

Bill: “I believe that abortion is morally acceptable. After all, a woman should have a right to her own body.”

Jane: ‘I disagree completely. Dr. Johan Skarn says that abortion is always morally wrong, regardless of the situation. He must be right, after all, he is a respected expert in his field.”

Bill: “I’ve never heard of Dr. Skarn. Who is he?”

Jane: “He’s that guy that won the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on cold fusion.”

Bill: “I see. Does he have any expertise in morality or ethics?”

Jane: “I don’t know. But he’s a world-famous expert, so I believe him.”

Example #2:

Kintaro: “I don’t see how you can consider Stalin to be a great leader. He killed millions of his own people, he crippled the Soviet economy, kept most of the people in fear and laid the foundations for the violence that is occurring in much of Eastern Europe.”

Dave: “Yeah, well you say that. However, I have a book at home that says that Stalin was acting in the best interest of the people. The millions that were killed were vicious enemies of the state and they had to be killed to protect the rest of the peaceful citizens. This book lays it all out, so it must be true.”

Example #3:

Actor: “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on the hit series ‘Bimbos and Studmuffins in the OR.’ You can take it from me that when you need a fast acting, effective and safe pain killer there is nothing better than MorphiDope 2000. That is my considered medical opinion.”

Example #4:

Sasha: “I played the lottery today and I know I am going to win something.”

Siphwe: “What did you do, rig the outcome?”

Sasha: “No, silly. I called my Super Psychic Buddy at the 1-900-MindPower number. After consulting his magic Californian Tarot deck, he told me my lucky numbers.”

Siphwe: “And you believed him?”

Sasha: “Certainly, he is a certified Californian Master-Mind Psychic. That is why I believe what he has to say. I mean, like, who else would know what my lucky numbers are?”

Example #5

Sam: “I’m going to get the Shingles vaccine based on my doctor’s advice.”

Ted: “Well, I saw this guy on YouTube who says that the vaccine has microchips in it. And that it causes autism.”

Sam: “Are they are doctor or scientist?”

Ted: “Well, I think he was a doctor once. He said something about getting his medical license revoked because They are out to get him and want to silence him.”

Sam: “Does he have any evidence for these claims?”

Ted: “Look, you can believe your doctor if you want, but don’t come crying to me when the microchips take over your brain and you catch autism.”

Sam: “You don’t catch autism.”

Ted: “Whatever.”

 

The idea that government should be more like a business is appealing to those whose education, experience and values are in the business world. People do see the world through the lens of their experiences and want to apply the methods they are most familiar with to as many areas as possible. For example, I am a philosophy professor and tend to see the world through the philosophical lens and want to apply critical thinking, logic and ethical reasoning whenever I can. Likewise, those who are educated and experienced in business see the world through a business lens and wish to broadly apply their business skills and methods.

A reasonable case can be made as to why a business focused approach has merit. One can point out that many skills developed in the context of business can be used in government. For example, negotiating and deal making skills can be applied to politics. As another example, business leadership and management skills can also be applied in government. It would be a mistake to claim that government is nothing like a business, but it can also be argued that it is mistaken to try to transform government into a business.

One mistake is to think that just because there are positive qualities of business that overlap with those of government, making government more like a business will thus make government better. Making one thing more like another only adds positive qualities if they are made alike in positive ways. Making them alike in other ways does not do this. For example, dressing like a runner makes one like a runner, but this does not confer the health benefits of running.

 There is also the fact that although things with similar positive qualities are similar, it does not follow they are otherwise alike in relevant ways. For example, efficiency is a positive quality of business and government, but merely making government like business does not necessarily make it more efficient. There are businesses that are very inefficient.

Also, the fact that efficiency can be a positive quality of both business and government does not mean they are alike in other ways or that the way business is made more efficient is the way to make government more efficient. To illustrate, a business might be very efficient at exploiting customers and workers while enriching the stockholders, but that is presumably not the sort of efficiency one should aim for in government.

Avoiding this mistake involves resisting the mythology and fetishizing of making things like businesses and giving due consideration to which skills, methods and approaches transfer well from business to government and which do not.

A second basic mistake is like that made by Ion in Plato’s dialogue Ion. The rhapsode Ion believes, at the start of the dialogue, that poets have knowledge and mastery about almost everything. His reasoning is that because poets write about, for example, military matters, they thus are experts in military matters. As such, poets should be able to teach people about everything and serve as leaders in all these areas.

Socrates shows that the poets (as poets) do not have such knowledge. The gist of his argument is that each area is mastered by mastering the subject of that area and all these areas “belong” to others and not to the poets. For example, knowledge of waging war belongs to soldiers. The poets touch but lightly on these other areas and understand only the appearances and not the depth. Socrates does note that a person can have multiple domains of mastery, so a medical doctor could, for example, also be skilled at mathematics or art history.

The error in the case of business is to think that because there are many types of business and almost everything has some connection to business, then an alleged mastery of business confers mastery over all these things. However, business skills are distinct from skills specific to types of businesses. To illustrate, while a manager might believe that their management skills are universal, managing a software company does not confer software skills nor does managing a hospital confer medical skills. One might pick up skills and knowledge, but this would not be as a businessperson. After all, while a businessperson might be a runner, that does not make running a business. The fact that there are businesses associated with running, such as Nike, does not entail that skill in business thus confers skill in running. As such, for someone to think that business skills thus confer mastery over government would be a mistake. They might believe that they have such mastery because government interacts with business and some businesses do things like what government does, but they would be as mistaken as someone who thinks that because they manage a Nike outlet, they are thus an athlete.

 

While pharmaceutical companies profited from flooding America with opioids, this inflicted terrible costs on others. Among the costs has been the terrible impact on health. One example of this is endocarditis.

Endocarditis is an abscess on a heart valve. While not limited to drug users, it can be caused by injecting opioids. As opioids were pushed onto the American people, it is no surprise that the number of drug users suffering from endocarditis increased significantly.  The treatment of endocarditis involves a very expensive surgery and many drug users getting this surgery are on Medicaid. To make matters worse, people often return to opioid use after the surgery and this can lead to another expensive surgery, paid for by Medicaid. This raises moral concerns.

There is the moral issue of whether Medicaid should even exist. On the one hand, a compelling moral argument can be made that just as a nation provides military and police protection to citizens who cannot afford their own security forces or bodyguards, a nation should fund medical care for those who cannot afford it on their own. On the other hand, a moral argument can be made that a nation has no obligation to provide such support and that citizens should be left to fend for themselves regarding health care. Naturally enough, if the nation is under no obligation to provide Medicaid in general, then it is under no obligation to cover the cost of the surgery in question. On this view, there is no need to consider the matter further.

 However, if the state should provide Medicaid, then the issue of whether the state should pay for endocarditis surgery for opioid addicts arises. It is to this discussion that I now turn.

While it is harsh to argue against paying for an addict’s heart surgery, a moral case can be made in favor of this position. The most obvious way to do this is on utilitarian grounds. As noted above, surgery for endocarditis is very expensive and uses financial and medical resources that could be used elsewhere. If more good could be done by using these resources elsewhere, the utilitarian conclusion is that this is what should be done. This argument can be strengthened by including the fact that addicts often return to behavior that resulted in endocarditis, thus creating the need for repeating the costly surgery. From a utilitarian perspective, it would be morally better to use those resources to treat patients who are less likely to willfully engage in behavior that will require them to be treated yet again. This is because the resources that would be consumed treating and retreating a person who keeps inflicting harm on themselves could be used to treat many people, thus doing greater good for the greater number. Though harsh and seemingly merciless, this approach seems justifiable on grounds like the moral justification for triage.

Another approach, which is even harsher, is to focus on the fact that the addicts are giving themselves endocarditis and sometimes doing so repeatedly. This provides the basis for two arguments against public funding of their treatment.

One argument can be built around the idea that there is no moral obligation to help people when their harm is self-inflicted. To use an analogy, if a person insists on setting fire to their house and it burns down, no one has a moral responsibility to pay to have their house rebuilt. Since the addict’s woes are self-inflicted, there is no moral obligation on the part of others to pay for their surgery and forcing people to do so (by using public money) would be like forcing others to pay to rebuild the burned house.

One way to counter this is to point out that many health issues are self-inflicted by a lack of positive behavior (such as exercise and a good diet) and an abundance of negative behavior (such as smoking, drinking, or having unprotected sex). If this principle is applied to addicts, it must be applied to all cases of self-inflicted harm. While some might take this as a refutation of this view, others might accept this as reasonable and warranting a state of nature approach to medicine in which everyone is on their own.

Another argument can be built around the idea that while there could be an obligation to help people, this obligation is limited. In this case, if a person is treated and knowingly returns to the same harmful behavior, then there is no obligation to keep treating the person. In the case of the drug addict, it could be accepted that the first surgery should be covered and that they should be educated on what will happen if they persist in their harmful behavior. If they then persist in that behavior and need the surgery again, then public money should not be used. To use an analogy, if a child swings their ice cream cone around and is surprised when the scoops hit the ground, then it would be reasonable for the parents to buy the child another cone. If the child swings the new cone around and the scoops hit the ground, then the child can be justly denied another cone.

An obvious counter is to contend that addicts are addicted and hence cannot be blamed for returning to the behavior that caused the harm. They are not morally responsible because they cannot do otherwise. This does have some appeal but would seem to justify requiring addicts to also undergo treatment for their addiction and to agree to monitoring of their behavior. They should be free to refuse this (which, ironically, assumes they are capable of free choice), but this should result in their being denied a second surgery if their behavior results in the same harm. Holding people accountable does seem to be cruel, but it could be argued that the alternative is unfair to other citizens. It would be like requiring them to keep rebuilding houses for a person who persists in setting fires in their house and refuses to takes steps to stop doing this.

These arguments can be countered by arguing that there is an obligation to provide such care regardless of how many times an addict returns to the behavior that caused the need for the surgery. One approach would be to build an analogy based on how the state repeatedly bails out big businesses every time they burn down the economy. Another approach would be to appeal to the value of human life and contend that it must be preserved regardless of the cost and regardless of the reason why there is a need for medical care. This approach could be noble or, perhaps, foolish.

 

Feminists tend to criticize the portrayal of female superheroes in comics.  This criticism is usually body types of female heroes, the poses, and skimpy. One response is the Hawkeye Initiative in which Hawkeye (or another male superhero) is drawn in the same pose and costume type as a female superhero. As would be imagined, the male hero looks absurd when so posed and costumed, which is the point of the criticism.

While the presentation of female superheroes in comics is a first world problem, it does raise important concerns about potential harms, such as perceptions of body image.  But my interest here is in superhero costumes from a practical standpoint. While I am no expert on fashion, I draw on my experiences as an athlete, martial artist and gamer to guide the discussion.

In the realm of fiction, being a superhero generally means being very physically active and engaging in combat. This means that a sensible superhero would have a costume designed to take these into account.

While I am not a superhero, decades of competitive running give me some insight into what to wear when engaged in physical activity. One important factor is mobility, as you need to be able to move properly in athletic clothing. One approach is loose fitting clothing that allows a lot of motion (such as running shorts) while another is the tight-fitting spandex (such as running tights) that also allow free motion. The idea of heroes wearing tights makes sense for the same reason it makes sense for runners to wear them. Another important factor is temperature management. Most heroes will generate body heat and sweat when they are active. So, they will need to be able to stay cool while active but also remain warm when they are just patrolling or engaging in dramatic dialogue.

As a runner, I wear as little as possible when I am running in warm weather. These are just shorts, socks and shoes.  Many other runners are similar, with women generally adding the legally necessary coverage. Presumably a superhero that runs about would want to wear as little as possible. As such, in warm weather superheroes dressed in super versions of running clothes would make sense and they would have lots of skin exposed.  This assumes that the superheroes need to stay cool when being active. A superhero that had no need to sweat could wear whatever they wished—the concerns of mere sweaty mortals would not matter to them.

Considering this, it would make sense for female superheroes to wear the same amount of clothing as competitive runners: not much. However, the same would also apply to male superheroes.

While wearing minimal clothing is a good idea when active under warm conditions, like runners facing cooler weather, superheroes would alsoneed to cover up more to remain comfortable and perhaps avoid hypothermia. Practical and sensible superheroes should also consider following a standard practice of runners: wearing more clothing to warm up or when waiting to compete, then shedding clothing when it is time to get down to business. Since hanging out all day in sweat-soaked clothes is uncomfortable, sensible heroes would also change costumes when they can. And shower.

Unlike runners, superheroes engage in combat, and this imposes another set of practical considerations. Since superheroes tend to fight hand to hand, it would be unwise to have costumes that provide a foe with easy handholds. As such, tight costumes without extraneous material would be the best choice. Capes would, as always, be a poor choice.

When engaging in combat, it has always been a good idea to have protective gear. Some of this protection is intended to deal with the incidentals of combat, such as ending up in contact with rough surfaces (like being knocked down in the street) but most of it is supposed to provide protection against attacks. This protection usually takes the form of armor, ranging from ballistic clothing to powered armor (like Iron Man wears).

Armor does have the usual trade-offs: it tends to restrict movement, tire out the wearer quicker, and create overheating problems. As such, heroes that rely on speed and freedom of movement might be inclined to avoid armor or at least keep it to a minimum. The classic Batman, for example, did not wear any armor. However, as anyone who plays games like D&Ds or faces combat in the real world knows, armor is usually a good idea when other people are trying to kill you.

To be effective armor must at least cover the important parts (usually the head and torso) and that means exposing a lot of skin is a bad idea. As such, the “classic” fantasy drawings of heroines in armor are absurd. Or, as a veteran D&D player put it, “if the enemy can see your cleavage, they can cut your boobs.” And no one wants their boobs cut.

Superheroes who have powers that make them invulnerable or otherwise grant great defensive powers do not need to rely on armor and they can safely wear whatever they like; such as Power Girl’s famous cleavage window costume. While the classic Wonder Woman relied on her magical bracelets, the updated version seems to be close to Superman in her ability to withstand damage. As such, she would not need to rely on armor for protection. Superman, of course, does not need armor since his skin is almost certainly stronger than almost anything he could find on earth. As such, a superhero who still had to deal with the sweating problem but did not need armor would want to wear as little as possible, be they male or female. Perhaps this explains why Wonder Woman still dresses the way she does.

 

A way to argue the United States is obligated to provide health care is by contending it is analogous to its obligation to defend citizens from “enemies foreign and domestic.” While there is disagreement about the obligations of a country, most thinkers believe the state is required to provide a military defense against foreign threats and deploy the police against domestic threats. So, just as the United States is obligated to defend its citizens from foreign terrorists and domestic criminals, it is obligated to defend them against cancer.

Another approach is to forgo the analogy and argue the basis of the obligation to provide military defense and police services also extends to providing health care. The general principle is that the state is obligated to protect its citizens. Since anthrax and heart failure can kill a person just as dead as a bullet or a bomb, then the state is also obligated to provide medical protection. Otherwise, the citizens are left unguarded, and the state would fail in its duty as a protector. While these lines of reasoning are appealing, they can certainly be countered. This could be done by arguing that there are relevant differences between providing health care and providing armed defenses.

One way is to argue that the state is only obligated to protect its citizens from threats presented by humans and not from other threats, such as disease or accidents. So, the state is under no obligation to protect citizens from the ravages of natura disease. But, the state is obligated to protect citizens from foes using disease as a weapon.

This seems odd. From the standpoint of the victim, it does not matter whether their disease is natural or inflicted, since the effect on them is the same. What matters is the harm being inflicted on the citizen. To use an analogy, it would be like the police being willing to stop a human from trying to kill another human but shrugging and walking away if they see a wild animal tearing apart a human. As such, it does not matter whether the harm is caused by a human or, for example, a virus—the state’s obligation to protect citizens would still apply.

Another counter to my view is to argue that while the state is obligated to protect its citizens, it is only obligated to provide a certain type of defense. The psychology behind this approach can be made clear by the rhetoric of those supporting generous state funding of the military and police while being against state funding for medical care. The military is spoken of in terms of its importance in “degrading and destroying” the enemy and the police are spoken of in terms of their role in imposing “law and order.” These are very aggressive roles. One can appear tough while speaking about funding submarines, torpedoes, bullets and missiles.

In contrast, the rhetoric against state funding of health care speaks of “the nanny state” and how providing such support will make people “weak” and “dependent.” This is caring rather than clubbing, curing rather than killing. One does not look manly or tough when speaking about funding preventative care and wellness initiatives.

What lies behind this psychology and rhetoric is the principle that the state’s role in protecting its citizens is one of force and violence, not one of caring and curing. This does provide a potentially relevant difference; but the challenge is showing that this difference warrants providing armed defense while precluding providing medical care.

One way to argue against it is to use an analogy to a family. Family members are generally obligated to protect one another, but if it were claimed that this obligation was limited only to using force and not caring for family members, then this would be rightfully regarded as absurd. Imagine, for example, a parent who was willing to kill to protect their child, but unwilling to take care of their illnesses and injuries. They would be rightfully condemned as a bad parent.

An interesting rhetorical approach is to embrace the military and police metaphors. Just as the state should thrust its force against enemies within and without, it should use its medical might to crush foes that are literally within—within the citizens. So, the state could wage war on viruses, disease and such and thus make it more manly and less nanny. This should have some rhetorical appeal to those who love military and police spending but are loath to fund healthcare.

As far as the argument that health care should not be provided by the state because it will make people dependent and weak, the obvious reply is that providing military and police protection shoulf have the same impact. As such, if the dependency argument works against health care, it would also work against having state military and police. If people should go it on their own regarding health care, then they should do the same when it comes to their armed defense. If private health coverage would suffice, then citizens should just arm themselves and provide their own defense and policing. This, obviously enough, would be a return to the anarchy of the state of nature and that would be bad. If accepting military and police protection from the state does not make citizens weak and dependent, then the same should also hold true for accepting health care from the state.

As a final point, an easy way to counter the obligation argument for state health care is to argue that the state is not obligated to provide military and police protection to the citizens. Rather, the military and the military, it could be argued, exists to protect and advance the interests of the elites. Since the elites have excellent health care thanks to their wealth and power, there is no need for the state to provide it to them. Other than the elites in government, like the Republicans in congress, who get their health care from the state.  On this view, support for using public money for the military and police and not health care makes perfect sense.

 

When Middlebury invited Charles Murray to speak, the event was disrupted by student protestors and both Murray and Professor Allison Sanger were assailed on campus. This incident sparked reflection on the campus and beyond. Peter Singer, a philosopher who is no stranger to controversy,  had his talk disrupted by people who disagree with his views. The process of shutting down a speaker by disruption is the heckler’s veto.

Critics have claimed that such disruptions prove the left believes free speech extends only to those they agree with. On the one hand, this does have some merit: some notable disruptions have been aimed at speakers whose views are generally opposed by the left. On the other hand, such disruptions have also been opposed by others on the left. As such, claiming the left opposes free speech they disagree with is no more (or less) accurate than saying the right opposes local control when they disagree with it, such as when local governments want to ban fracking or impose gun control. While speculating about whether “the left” is against free speech is interesting, the focus of this essay in on the ethics of the heckler’s veto.

The extreme version of the heckler’s veto is violence, such as that directed against Murray and Sanger. Richard Spencer, who is regarded by some as a Nazi, was famously punched for his views, igniting a debate about the ethics of punching Nazis. When protests occurred on campuses over Gaza, violence was often used to silence the protestors. This violence included state and university sanctioned police violence. The right, which had been outraged about “the left” silencing speakers was generally on board with this.

The standard version of the heckler’s veto is, as the name indicates, heckling to prevent a speaker from being heard or interfering until they give up. The hallmark of this sort of heckler is that they are not trying to engage and refute the speaker, they are endeavoring to prevent the speaker from being heard.

One approach is to take the standard view that as long as the speaker is not engaged in directly harmful speech (such as slander or calls for violence), they should be free to speak without disruption. A more sophisticated approach is to use a utilitarian method of weighing the harms and benefits of allowing the speaker to exercise the right to free speech. For example, if punching Nazis to silence them sends the message that Nazism will not be tolerated and this reduces the hate crimes committed in the United States, then such punching could be defended as good. For those who see protesting against Israel as bad, they could argued that the good of silencing protestors warrants disrupting protests, perhaps even with violence.

An alternative to the utilitarian approach is to argue that there are some things, such as Nazism and sexism, whose badness entails people should not be permitted to speak in favor of them even if doing so created no meaningful harms. While I do see the appeal in the “there are things we must not allow to be said” approach, there is the challenge of showing that even without any harm being caused, such speech is simply wrong. One obvious approach, which I will not develop here, is that publicly speaking in favor of such things will always cause meaningful harm.

One interesting approach to heckling is to point out that it seems to be a tactic for those who cannot refute the views they oppose; it is the noisy refuge of the logically or rhetorically incompetent. If the views being expressed by the offending speaker are wrong, then they should be refutable by argumentation. If all someone can do is yell and disrupt, they should remain silent in favor of someone who can refute the speaker. For example, those who disagreed with Murray could have made their points by arguing against him.

A practical reply is that the audience might not be given the opportunity to engage in a possibly lengthy refutation of the speaker. As such, they must engage in heckling to prevent the speaker from speaking. A reasonable counter to this is that while a person might not have the chance to engage at the actual event, they have an opportunity at refutation via other venues, such as social media.

Another reply to this is that allowing the speaker to speak on a campus lends legitimacy and normalizes the speaker’s views, even if the views are not explicitly endorsed. As such, if a speaker cannot be prevented from being invited, then they must be silenced by disruption to prevent their views from gaining a platform.

While this does have appeal and schools should consider the educational merit of speakers, having a person speak on campus does not entail that the school endorses the views and does not automatically make them legitimate. To use the obvious analogy, using the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf in a political science class does not endorse or legitimize these works. Likewise, inviting someone with right wing views or who is critical of Israel to a debate does not entail that the school endorses these views or make them automatically legitimate. Just as reading books containing ideas one might not agree with (or even hate) is part of education, so too is listening to speakers expressing such ideas. As such, heckling speakers to silence them would be on par with censoring books to keep people from reading them or movies to keep people from seeing them. Critics of the right are, no doubt, thinking that is exactly what the right does, and this exposes the hypocrisy of their claims that they are protecting freedom from the left.

The educational value argument can be countered by making use of  one of Plato’s arguments for censorship in the Republic. Plato argued that exposure to certain types of art would corrupt people and make them worse. For example, someone who was exposed to violent works of art could become corrupted into becoming violent. Plato’s solution was to ban such art.

In the case of speakers, it could be argued that they must be silenced by heckling because their speeches would corrupt members of the audience. For example, one might claim that listening to Murray talk about his work would corrupt audience members with racism and poor methodology. As another example, one might argue that allowing people to protest Israel’s actions would corrupt the audience This argument assumes, as does Plato’s, that most people lack the ability to defend themselves from such corrupting power. Since the hecklers think the speaker is wrong, they presumably think that most people are either incapable of discerning right from wrong or are just awaiting the right trigger to cause them to embrace evil. On this view, the hecklers would be heroes: those strong enough to resist the siren song of evil and loud enough to drown it out. For those who agree with Plato, Aristotle or Stanley Milgram, this argument should be appealing: most people are easily swayed towards misdeeds and few are influenced by either arguments or fine ideals. Those who dislike Trump and attribute his election in part to defects in voters would also find this approach appealing. And, of course, no discussion of this sort would be complete without a mandatory reference to Hitler and his ability to win over the people.

But, of course, no discussion of this sort would be complete without noting how heckling is like any other tool in that it can be used by the good and the evil alike. Naturally, the people using it will usually think they are on the side of good and their foes evil. Their foes are likely to think the opposite. Since sorting out what is good and bad requires consideration and discussion, silencing people would interfere with sorting these things out. As such, I am opposed to heckling, even if I disagree strongly with the target. That said, one might be tempted by Plato’s argument that the ears of the many must be protected from corrupting words and that it is up to the philosophers to decide which words are corrupting and which are wholesome.

 

While the right to free speech is fundamental to classical liberalism, contemporary liberals are often accused of being its enemy. Two examples include incidents at Berkeley and Middlebury. As always, the matter of free speech is philosophically interesting, especially when it involves higher education.

One important distinction in the context of rights is that of the negative versus the positive. A negative right is not an evil right; rather it is a freedom such that the possessor is not entitled to be provided with the means to exercise the right. It is a right to not be interfered with.

A positive right is an entitlement to the means needed to exercise the right. For example, the United States currently grants citizens a right to public K-12 education. In addition to having the liberty to seek this education, it is also provided (by the taxpayers). In contrast, college education is usually a negative right: students have the liberty to attend college but are (generally) not provided with free education.

The right to free speech is a negative right; it is intended as a protection from impediment rather than an entitlement to the means of expression. To use an obvious example, while I have the right to express my views no one is obligated to provide me with free radio or TV time in which to do so.

While university personnel have no right to unjustly interfere with free speech, they are usually under no moral obligation to provide people with speaking opportunities on campus. For example, while I might be invited to speak at Harvard, Harvard has no obligation to provide me with a room just because I might want to talk about philosophy.

Decisions about who to invite and who to allow to speak in official venues are often made on pragmatic grounds, such as which speakers will boost the reputation of the school or who happens to be friends with top administrators. There are also practical concerns about the cost of the speaker, the likelihood of trouble arising, and the extent of the interest in the speaker. While these practical concerns are important, decisions about who to invite (and who to exclude) should also be made on principled grounds.

One reasonable principle is that decisions should be made based on the educational value of the speaker campus, broadly understood. Since universities are supposed to educate students, it makes sense for them to operate on this principle. Speakers who offer little or nothing in the way of educational value could be justly denied invitations. Of course, education is not the only concern of a university in terms of what it offers to the students and the community. Speakers who offer things of artistic value or even mere entertainment value should also be given due consideration.

One concern about decisions based on these factors is that there can be good faith debate about which speakers have the merit to warrant their invitation. For example, the incident at Middlebury arose because some see Charles Murray’s co-authored controversial book The Bell Curve as  based on pseudoscience and bad methodology. While these matters can be clouded with ideology, there are established standards regarding educational merit regarding such things as methodology and legitimacy. The main problem lies in their application, but this is not a problem unique to picking speaker as it extends across the academy. Fortunately, the basic principle of merit is reasonable clear but the real fights take place over the particulars.

Another seemingly sensible principle is a moral one; that those invited should reflect the values of the institution and perhaps the broader society. At the very least, those invited should not be evil and should not be espousing evil.

This principle does have some problems. One is deciding what conflicts with the values of the institution. Another is that it is difficult to speak of the values of the broader society, given the considerable diversity of opinions on moral issues. When people use this approach, they usually refer to their own values and fall prey to the cognitive bias that leads them to assume their values are shared by society. There is the enduring problem in ethics of sorting out good and evil. There is also the concern about whether academic or artistic merit can offset moral concerns. For example, a Catholic university might see a pro-choice philosopher as endorsing a morally wrong position, yet think that having this philosopher engage a pro-life philosopher in a campus debate to have educational merit. As another example, a liberal institution might regard an extreme libertarian as having morally problematic views yet see educational merit in having them present their arguments as part of a series on American political philosophy.  As with the matter of merit, there are rational and principled ways to approach ethical concerns but this is even more fraught with controversy than questions of assessing educational merit.

While I agree that speech can cause harm, I hold to a presumption in favor of free expression. As a principle, this means that if there is reasonable doubt as to whether the merit of a speech outweighs moral concerns about the speaker or content, then the decision should favor free expression. This is based on the view that it is better to run the risk of tolerating possible evil than to risk silencing someone who has something worth saying. As such, I generally favor a liberal (in the classic sense) approach to inviting speakers to universities.

Americans tend to favor free expression for those they agree with and oppose it for those they dislike. When campuses attempted to exclude right wing speakers, the right expressed its devotion to free expression, speaking of the free market of ideas. As was expected, when college students and faculty recently protested the treatment of the Palestinians by Israel, the right supported a crack down on free expression and on some campuses riot police were turned lose on students and faculty. The right has also worked hard to restrict the content of college classes, enacting laws imposing what they call “reforms.” For example, my adopted state of Florida professes to be all about freedom, but this is only for the freedom to express views that accord with the ideology of the right. It could be countered that “the left” takes a similar approach when it is in power, allowing free speech it approves of. While such finger pointing might feel good, it also shows that Americans are not as committed to free speech as we claim.