Author: Michael LaBossiere

 

Politicians recognize the political value of mass shootings, with Republicans trying their best to prevent Democrats using these events to pass gun control laws. When a mass shooting occurs, two standard Republican tactics are to assert that it is not time to talk about gun control and to accuse Democrats of trying to score political points. I will consider each of these in turn.

The assertion that after a mass shooting is not the right time to talk about gun control does have some merit. Emotional decisions made in haste are usually worse than those resulting from cool and deliberate consideration. A good example of this is the flood of laws passed in response to 9/11. That said, there is a negative side to waiting as motivation and political will can fade until nothing is ever done. When people debated acting against slavery in the United States, there was a similar dispute between those who proposed gradualism and those who demanded action. Those in favor of immediate action often used an analogy to rescuing people from a fire: gradually removing them from a burning house would be a terrible idea. Likewise for addressing slavery and, perhaps, gun violence.

One response to Republicans who use this tactic is to point out that they do not hold to it consistently. While they say this after every mass shooting, they do not take the same approach in other situations of intense emotion and calls for hasty action. As such, they are obviously using the “not the time” rhetorical device rather than following a principle of when action should take place. The goal of this rhetorical device is not to call for calm deliberation but to delay action or prevent action. To be fair, Democrats who use this rhetorical tactic against Republicans in other areas are equally guilty. Now to the second tactic.

When the Democrats try to act in response to a mass shooting, Republican politicians often accuse them of trying to score political points and of playing politics. Ironically, in making this accusation they are trying to score political points by accusing the other side of trying to score political points.

On the one hand, this charge has merit. If a Democrat is just cynically using a mass shooting politically and does not care otherwise, then they would be justly accused of playing politics. But the motivation of a politician is just relevant to a moral assessment of the person and is  irrelevant to whether the their claims are true and whether their proposals are good.

Attacking someone for playing politics and rejecting their claims would be a type of ad hominem which could be called the “accusation of playing politics fallacy.” The form is as follows:

 

Premise 1: Politician A accuses politician B of trying to score political points by playing politics about subject S.

Premise 2: Politician B makes claim C about subject S.

Conclusion: Claim C is false.

 

This is obviously bad logic. Even if one politician is trying to score political points, this does not prove that their claim is not true. While assessing their motives is relevant to assessing their ethics, their motives have no bearing on their claim being true or false.

The “accusation of playing politics” can also be a rhetorical device—it is a type of red herring in which one tries to switch the discussion from one issue to another. In the case of mass shootings, the goal is to switch the issue from whether there should be more gun control to whether Democrats are playing politics. The end game is, of course, to keep attention away from the original issue.

This is not to deny that Democrats and Republicans are playing politics. Democrats do try to use mass shootings to get more gun laws passed, Republicans try to prevent this with the two methods described above. Some pro-gun people also try to score political points off mass shootings by appealing to fear that the Democrats will try to do something about mass shootings. But what is important, at least to people who would prefer fewer mass shootings, is addressing the problem of mass shootings and gun violence. This does require doing politics and the time to do so, as always, is now

When a mass shooting occurs, Republican politicians blame mental illness or video games. Placing the blame on video games makes use of an argument that dates back at least to Plato. In the Republic, Plato argues that exposure to art can have a corrupting effect, making people more likely to engage in bad behavior. While Plato focused mainly on the corrupting influence of tragedy (which could cause people to fall victim to inappropriate sadness) he also discussed the corrupting influence of fictional violence. As he saw it, exposure to fictional violence could incline people to real violence. Plato’s solution to the threat was to ban such art from his ideal city.

This argument has some appeal. People are influenced by experiences and repeated exposure to fictional violence could affect how a person feels and thinks. Exposure to non-fiction, such as hateful speech, writings and tweets could influence a person in negative ways. The critical question is whether the influence of video games can be a causal factor in violence, especially a mass shooting.

Determining whether video games are a causal factor in mass shootings involves assessing causation in a population. The challenge is showing whether there would be more mass shootings in a population if everyone played video games than if no one did. If there is a statistically significant difference, then video games can would have a causal influence on violent behavior. So, let us consider this matter.

If video games were a statistically significant causal factor for mass shootings, then we would expect to see the number of mass shootings varying with the number of video game players in a country. While the United States is a leader in both video game revenues and mass shootings, other countries also have large populations of gamers, yet do not have a corresponding level of mass shootings. As such, video games would not seem to be a significant causal factor in mass shootings.

This does not prove that video games are not a factor at all. Perhaps video games combined with other factors do cause mass shootings. So, we need to look at the differences between the United States and other countries to see what factors combine with video games to cause mass shootings. Now, If video games play a causal role in mass shootings, the question is the extent to which they have this effect.

About 67% of Americans play video games of one form or another. But the concern is not with video games but with violent video games like Call of Duty and Fortnite. While most Americans do not play these games, millions of Americans do. The overwhelming majority of people who play violent video games never become mass shooters. As such, if violent video games do have causal influence, it must be extremely limited, otherwise mass shootings would be more common.

Some politicians have tried to make use of the method of difference to argue that video games are causing mass shootings. This method involves comparing cases in which an effect has occurred to similar cases in which the effect did not occur and finding a plausible difference that could be the cause. This method is a good one but must be used with care to avoid falling into error. The gist of the argument made by these politicians is to conclude that violent video games cause mass shootings because mass shootings increased when violent video games were created. Because of the difference between before and after, video games are taken to be a causal factor.

While it is true that the number of mass shootings correlates with the number of violent video games available (both have increased over the years), correlation is not causation. After all, the number of tech startups has also increased, yet it would be absurd to conclude that they are causing mass shootings. To simply assert that since mass shootings increased as more violent video games appeared would be to commit the cum hoc fallacy, that because two things correlate, there must be a causal connection. This does not entail that violent video games do not play a role, but more is needed than mere correlation. As argued above, there seems to be no significant causal connection between violent video games and mass shootings; they merely happen to correlate as do many other things.

While blaming video games has political value, it does nothing to address the problem of mass shooting since there seems to be no meaningful causal connection between real violence and video games.

Image by Binarysequence

Back in 2019, the Smithsonian did a retrospective in honor of the 40th birthday of the Walkman. While an impressive innovation, the Walkman is a single function device: it only plays cassette tapes. Yet it triggered cries of technological doom that are being echoed today.

While unable to record, the Walkman was used to play mixtapes, and the music industry saw this as a threat. While many awful mixtapes were mixed, the industry somehow survived. With each new technological innovation, the cry of doom echoed across the world again and again. And yet the day the music died has not arrived. As such, we should heed the lesson of the Walkman: dire predictions of doom should be made more cautiously. That said, technology can be a terrible swift sword and the challenge is to sort out what it is likely to slay and what it will spare

The Walkman was also symbolically to insult the youth.  Der Spiegel called it “A technology for a generation with nothing left to say.” But the Walkman generation had a lot to say, and the prophecy of silence did not come true. With the invention of the smart phone and tablet, this same story played out again. And it will happen again with the next innovation.

 Regardless of technology, the youth of today are always claimed to be the worst generation. They are also supposed to lack the virtues that their elders supposedly possessed in their youth. When I was a kid, we didn’t rot our brains wit smart phones. We did it with TV and the Walkman. But if every generation of youth were as terrible as claimed, the elders would also lack virtue since today’s elders are yesterday’s youth. Before claiming that the youth of today are terrible, think back on what your elders said of you.

The Walkman was supposed to “rot” the brains of the youth, just like TV only by using audio. Alan Bloom, the philosopher of doom and gloom, wrote in The Closing of the American Mind about  youth defiled by the walkman, “a pubescent child whose body throbs with orgasmic rhythms.” He predicted that “As long as they have the Walkman on, they cannot hear what the great tradition has to say.” Having grown up during the height of the Walkman era, I can assure readers that the Walkman did not have this effect. In addition to people listening to the classics on tapes, many people read the classic while listening to their Walkman, just as people did with their Victrola, Gramophone, or stereo. The Walkman of today is the smart phone, and the worry is that the youth will be swiping rather than throbbing. But the truth is that the youth do read the classics on screens (and on paper) and that the dire predictions will no more come true now than they have in the past. AI is also being presented as a brain rotting technology, although it is something accessed through existing technology, including phones.

Looking back at the Walkman, there is a law governing the emergence of new entertainment technology and the societal response. It is created, dire predictions are made, it becomes a symbol used when bemoaning how bad the youth are today, and then another generation is born, and new technology emerges. The process repeats itself. The Walkman users were judged to be the “throbbing youth”, now they are the judges. The smartphone kids are growing up to judge their kids, making dire predictions about whatever they think is rotting the brains of the youth.

It is worth considering that technology will be developed that will fulfil these prophecies of doom, that really does degrade, corrupt and isolate the youth. But until then, the cycle will continue.

In the previous essay I drew an analogy between the ethics of abortion and the ethics of migration. In this essay, I will develop the analogy more and do so with a focus on the logic of the analogy. Because everyone loves logic.

Strictly presented, an analogical argument will have three premises and a conclusion. The first two premises (attempt to) establish the analogy by showing that the things in question are similar in certain respects.  The third premise establishes the additional fact known about one thing and the conclusion asserts that because the two things are alike in other respects, they are alike in this additional respect. Here is the form of the argument:

 

Premise 1: X has properties P, Q, and R.

Premise 2: Y has properties P, Q, and R.

Premise 3: X has property Z as well.

Conclusion: Y has property Z

 

X and Y are variables that stand for whatever is being compared, such as rats and humans or Hitler and that politician you hate. P, Q, R, and Z are also variables, but they stand for properties or qualities, such as having a heart. The use of P, Q, and R is just for the sake of the illustration as the things being compared might have more properties in common.

It is easy to make a moral argument using an argument from analogy. To argue that Y is morally wrong, find an X that is already accepted as being wrong and show how Y is like X. To argue that Y is morally good, find an X that is already accepted as morally good and show how Y is like X. To be a bit more formal, here is how the argument would look:

 

Premise 1: X has properties P, Q, and R.

                    Premise 2: Y has properties P, Q, and R.

                    Premise 3: X is morally good (or morally wrong).

                    Conclusion: Y is morally good (or morally wrong).

 

The strength of an analogical argument depends on three factors. To the degree that an analogical argument meets these standards it is a strong argument. If it fails to meet these standards, then it is weak. If it is weak enough, then it would be fallacious. There is no exact point at which an analogical argument becomes fallacious, however the standards do provide an objective basis for making this assessment.

First, the more properties X and Y have in common, the better the argument. This standard is based on the commonsense notion that the more two things are alike in other ways, the more likely it is that they will be alike in some other way. It should be noted that even if the two things are very much alike in many respects, there is still the possibility that they are not alike regarding Z.

Second, the more relevant the shared properties are to property Z, the stronger the argument. A specific property, for example P, is relevant to property Z if the presence or absence of P affects the likelihood that Z will be present.

Third, it must be determined whether X and Y have relevant dissimilarities as well as similarities. The more dissimilarities and the more relevant they are, the weaker the argument.

In the case of drawing a moral analogy between the ethics of abortion and migration, the challenges are to determine the properties that make them alike and to establish the relevant moral status of abortion.

Since my goal is to show that those who already think abortion is morally wrong should also think expelling migrant children is wrong, I can assume (for the sake of the argument) that abortion is wrong. The next step is showing that abortion and expelling migrant children are alike enough to create a strong analogy.

Opponents of abortion tend to argue that human life has intrinsic worth and often speak in terms of a life being precious and a sacred gift from God. Since they tend to believe that a child exists at or soon after conception, it follows that the wrongness of abortion stems from the harm done to that precious life and sacred gift. While some opponents of abortion do allow exceptions for incest and rape, some do not and  reject abortion even if the pregnancy occurs against the mother’s will. Obviously enough, all opponents of abortion agree that in most cases the mother should be compelled to bear the child, even if they do not want to and even when doing so would cause them some harm. One way to see this is that the child has a right to remain where it is, even when it got there without the consent of the owner of the womb (the mother) and when she does not want it to remain.  What, then, are the similarities between abortion and expelling child migrants?

While this makes for a very problematic analogy, one could note that a child who is brought into the United States illegally would be like a child implanted in a woman (or girl) by rape. That is, their presence is the result of an illegal act and is against the will of the host. While expelling a fetus would certainly (given current technology) result in death, expelling a migrant child generally results in harm and can result, indirectly, in death. As such, if abortion is wrong for the above reasons, then expelling migrant children would be wrong, even if they were brought into the United States illegally.

There are a few obvious ways to counter this reasoning. One is to focus on the distinction between expelling a fetus and expelling a migrant child. As noted above, the fetus will certainly die during an abortion, but expelling a migrant child back into danger does cause certain death. This requires taking the moral position that only certain death matters. Interestingly, if artificial wombs became available, then abortion opponents who take the only death matters view would have to accept that a woman would have every right to expel a fetus into an artificial  womb, if death was not certain. That is, if the odds of the fetus would be comparable to the odds of a child being expelled back into a dangerous region.

A second difference is that migrant children are already born, so they are not unborn children. Those who are anti-abortion are often unconcerned about what happens to born children and mothers (anti-abortion states tend to have the highest infant mortality rates), so it would be “consistent” for them to not be concerned about the fate of migrant children. This requires accepting the moral view that what matters is preventing abortion and that once birth occurs, moral concern ends. While not an impossible view, it does seem rather difficult to defend in a consistent manner. As such, those who oppose abortion in all cases would need to accept that expelling migrant children into danger would be morally wrong and they should oppose this with the same vehemence with which they oppose abortion. But what about anti-abortion folks who allow abortion in the case of rape and incest?

Those who oppose abortion but make exceptions for cases of rape and incest would seem to be able to consistently advocate expelling migrant children, even when doing so would put them in danger. This is because they hold to what seems to be a consistent principle: if a child is present against the will of the property owner and as the result of a crime, then the child can be expelled even if this results in death whether this is an abortion or expelling a child who is an illegal migrant. But if the child is present due to consensual activity, then it would be wrong to expel the child.

While sexual consent can be a thorny issue, migration consent is even more problematic. After all, there is the question about what counts as consensual migration. On the face of it, one could simply go with the legal view: those who cross the border illegally are here without consent and can be expelled. But there is the fact that American business and others actively invite migrants to cross the border and want them here, thus seeming to grant a form of consent. Also, people can (or could) legally cross the border to seek asylum, thus there is legal consent for such people, which includes migrant children. So, the matter is less clear cut. But even if we stick with strict legality, then asylum seekers are still here with consent and hence expelling their children is morally like abortion: children are being harmed by being expelled. As such, those who hold an anti-abortion position are obligated to also oppose expelling migrant children if they arrived seeking asylum.

It is worth noting that if the analogy holds, it will also seem to hold in reverse. That is, a person who is opposed to expelling migrant children because of the harm it would do to them would seem to also need to oppose abortion. Pro-choice pro-migrant folks do have a way to get out of this. They can argue that while migrant children are clearly people and hence have that moral status, a developing fetus does not have that moral status and hence the choice of the woman trumps the rights (if any) of the fetus. This is a consistent position since the pro-choice pro-migrant person holds that people have rights, but that the fetus is not a person. In contrast, the anti-abortion anti-migrant person is in something of a bind; they need to argue that unborn fetuses have a greater moral status than already born migrant children.  But they are usually comfortable with claiming that an unborn fetus has the same or more rights than the mother, so this is probably not a problem for them.

As J.S. Mill pointed out in his writing on liberty, people usually do not follow consistent principles. Instead, they act based on likes and dislikes, which often arise from misinformation and disinformation. Comparing the view of many Republicans on abortion to their view of on immigration illustrates this clearly.

To use a concrete example, Alabama passed a very restrictive anti-abortion law that even forbids abortion in the case of rape. Proponents of the law, such as Alabama governor Kay Ivey, claimed the motivation behind the law is to protect life. As the governor said, “to the bill’s many supporters, this legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God.”

On the face of it, the principle is that because each life is precious and a sacred gift, if a man impregnates a woman (or girl), then she is obligated to host the zygote until birth. The expenses and risks of doing so fall on the woman (or girl). The United States government does little to assist pregnant women. Looked at in the abstract, the principle is that if a child manages to get inside a certain area, then there is an obligation on the part of the owner of that area to care for that child until the child can safely exit the area. If removing the child would kill or harm the child, then the child cannot be removed, perhaps regardless of how the child got there.

This principle would seem to also apply to migrant children who enter the United States, even if they are brought here illegally and against the will of the United States. Once they get within the United States, if expelling them would lead to harm, then the United States is obligated to care for them until they can safely exit the United States. After all, if the principle permits compelling women to bear a child from rape, then it surely permits compelling the United States to care for migrant children who are here illegally. At least until the children can safely leave the country.

It could be objected that abortion always kills a child while expelling a migrant child from the United States will probably not kill them. Hence the analogy fails. One reply is to argue that if every life is precious and a sacred gift, then even harming a precious, sacred gift would be wrong. That is, the principle isn’t “killing them would be wrong, but anything else is okay” but that each precious life must be treated as a sacred gift and one does not throw a sacred gift out.

 But making the strongest analogy requires considering only cases in which expulsion would result in death. There are migrant children (and adults) who are likely to be killed if they are sent back. It could be countered that, unlike abortion, they do have a chance of surviving. If so, the principle would have to be “each life is precious and a sacred gift, but this only entails that children should not be exposed to certain death. Likely death or great harm is morally okay.” While this is certainly a principle that one could hold, it is not commendable.

 As such, there would seem to be two options for anti-abortion folks who also want to be anti-migrant. The first is to consistently apply their avowed principle and accept immigrants when their expulsion would be likely to result in their harm. Or, if they want to be extremely strict, their deaths. The second option would be to abandon or modify their principle so that it applies only to abortion but not to migrants. The challenge is doing so in a manner that is not ad hoc or begs the question. For example, just saying that the principle only applies to the bodies of women but not to the United States would be ad hoc, as would saying that only zygotes deserve to be protected. It is worth noting that those who are pro-choice and pro-migrant would also need to consider the possible conflict between their principles as well.

One might also suspect that some anti-abortion folks are not motivated by a desire to protect “sacred, precious life” but have other, less laudable, motivations. Such people could easily reconcile being anti-abortion with being anti-migrant, perhaps by holding the principle that the state’s power should be used to harm people they dislike.

 

 

The first Trump administration made it clear that they saw creating fear as a legitimate tool to deter migration. During his campaign, Trump promised mass deportation and there is no reason to think that a kinder, gentler approach will be adopted in his second term in office. But is using fear to deter migration ethical?

It can be argued that it is. Obviously, deterring people by using laws and policies aimed at creating fear is a how society attempts to deter people from committing crimes. If it is morally acceptable to do this to deter potential jay walkers and murderers, then it is acceptable to do this to deter migrants. While some ethicists oppose the use of coercion by fear, the strategy of deterring bad behavior through fear has the approval of Aristotle.  This is like the use of force: not all uses of force are to be condemned, just immoral ones. So, the key question is whether using fear to deter migrants is morally acceptable.

In the past, the Trump administration adopted a strategy of creating fear by doing evil. First, the administration aggressively followed a policy of separating children and parents and officials were clear that this was intended to deter migration by creating fear that America would do evil to migrants. It is no accident that in fiction a quick way to show a group is evil is for it to take children from their parents. Second, the Trump administration treated detained children badly. Caging children and denying them necessities is also a stock behavior of evil characters in fiction. This is for good reason since mistreating children is evil. The purpose of this was to deter migrants through fear that if they try to come here, America will put their children into dirty cages without soap or toothbrushes.

Proponents of this policy argued that people choose to come here illegally knowing what will happen, then what is done to them is justified. On the one hand, this has some appeal. If I tell someone that a pot is hot and they grab it anyway, they only have themselves to blame.  On the other hand, if people are being pushed into a situation, such tactics mean people will be harmed rather than deterred. Going back to the stove, if I keep a hot pot to deter starving people from taking the food, I will just end up burning hungry people. Saying that they knew they would be burned is not an adequate defense. In the case of migration, many people are fleeing problems the United States helped. People are being pushed by things worse than what the Trump administration tried to do to scare them away.

There is also the fact that, as Locke argued, there are moral limits to how even a criminal can be treated. One of these is proportionality. Separating families and imprisoning children without necessities is a punishment that goes beyond the alleged crime. This is especially important in the case of children; they cannot rightly be considered guilty of a crime and hence punishing them is unwarranted. As such, using these methods is wrong.

As a final point, even if using such wicked means to deter people could be justified on utilitarian grounds, this would require showing that they are effective. However, they clearly did not work, and we were burning the hungry because the pain of the burn is less than the pain of the hunger. The Trump administration was fine with this. While they had hoped these evils would deter people, they had no qualms about doing wrong even when it does not achieve their stated goal. It became evil for evil’s sake, and we should expect more of the same.

While the United States purports to be a democratic republic, it is already an oligarchy. This was made clear by the billionaires at the inauguration of the billionaire Trump. It was made even clearer by Trump handing power over to Elon Musk and his DOGE.

 In this context, an oligarchy is a political structure in which power is held largely by a small number of people. While all hierarchical systems have power disparities, the hallmark of an oligarchy is that power is highly concentrated in a few. Russia, which is ruled by Putin and his fellows, is a clear example of an oligarchy.

While oligarchs can be elected democratically, a democracy distributes power and the choices of the many are not nullified by the will of the few. In a republic,  power is concentrated in the representatives, but they serve the people they represent rather than a few who hold the power. Preventing an oligarchy from emerging from the corpse of a democracy or republic requires preventing the concentration of power. Alternatively, allowing the butterfly of oligarchy to emerge from the caterpillar of democracy requires shifting power from the many to the few. This has already happened, but there is still some chance of rolling back the oligarchy. Fortunately for the oligarchs, cementing their rules is straightforward.

One important step is to ensure that limits are removed from the use of money in politics. The United States has hyper-concentrated wealth, which means that the hyper-wealthy are vastly outnumbered by everyone else. If the use of money in politics is ever limited, then the hyper-wealthy must compete for political influence using the same tools as the non-wealthy, which means they will not always get their way. To the degree that the wealthy are free to use money to influence politics, they gain an advantage over the many and can use this advantage to concentrate political power to match their concentration of money. Thanks to the Supreme Court, the use of money in politics is all but limitless.

A second important step is to weaken or eliminate groups that can compete with the oligarchs. While the many cannot match the wealthy few in individual spending and influence in a money-based political system, the many can pool their resources and match the few with their collective effort. One obvious example of this collective group is the labor union. If these groups are viable, the oligarchs cannot enjoy the full concentration of power. As such, cementing the American oligarchy requires crippling or destroying these unions. This is already being done with right to work laws and other legislation. While it might be thought that business tends to oppose unions because of financial reasons, unions also pose a clear political threat to oligarchs. There are, of course, other groups besides the unions that can exert political influence. For example, religious groups have political clout. Because of this, building the oligarchy requires eliminating, weakening or assimilating these groups. Ideally, of course, religious groups would support the oligarchy.  One way that has proven effective is manipulating Christian groups to focus on homosexuality, transgender people, and abortion rather than on social justice; this encourages them to hand power to those who claim they will outlaw abortion and oppress homosexuals and transgender people. Racism and sexism are also very useful here as tools for keeping groups from forming alliances against the oligarchs. For example, the people hurting the white working-class the most are not brown or black workers, but the rich white people who make the economic decisions. If white workers realized this, it would be bad for the white oligarchs.  Once the significant groups are neutralized or assimilated, then the oligarchy will be well established. Of course, there are still the pesky voters—they can still, in theory, resist the oligarchy, which leads to the third step.

While the United States still has elections, allowing honest and fair elections would be an impediment to the oligarchs. After all, the many might vote against what the powerful few want. As such, the influence of certain voters must be reduced. Fortunately, there are already tools to make this happen. One is gerrymandering, which allows numerical minorities to foil the will of the majority—an important condition for oligarchy. Another tool is voter suppression, something forged throughout United States history (especially the Jim Crow laws). If the right people can be prevented from voting, then the results of elections can be influenced. Combining the two tools and adding a few more into the mix (such as election fraud and having candidates supervise their own elections) can really help solidify the oligarchy.

Lastly, there is the strategy of concentration itself—power must flow from the many to the few. One ongoing method is crafting laws and policies that ensure that money flows upward and concentrates rather than flowing downward. Another method is to hoard opportunities, something that the college admission scandal exposed (now largely forgotten). And, as DOGE is showing, professional civil servants who might impede the will of the oligarchs must be fired or traumatized into quitting so that they can be replaced with those loyal to the oligarchs. This is all part of keeping power concentrated—if the people stand a chance of regaining power, then that could be end of the oligarchy. As such, they must be kept in their place if the oligarchy is to be an enduring reality.

 

 

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One of the founding myths of the United States is that religious liberty is enshrined because people fled to the colonies to escape religious persecution and the strong connections between the church and state in Europe. Whatever the truth of the matter, these are two excellent reasons to legally protect religious liberty. After all, persecuting people based on their faith (or lack thereof) seems wrong. Concentrating secular and theological power has often proven dangerous, although the church and the state can be quite harmful operating on their own. See, for example, Pol Pot or the scandals of the Catholic Church. As such, freedom of religion seems generally good, albeit within limits.

It might strike some as odd that religious liberty should be limited, but it is the nature of freedoms that they require limitations to exist. To say that freedom requires limiting freedom might seem paradoxical or Orwellian, but it is neither. Consider, for example, the freedom to own property. As Hobbes argued in his Leviathan, if everyone has the right to everything, then this amounts to a right to nothing. As Hobbes and others have noted, meaningful property rights require limiting property rights. To illustrate, for you to own your phone or house, it follows that my liberty to own or use them must be limited. The same applies to other freedoms and rights. For example, your right to life puts limits on the freedoms of others; they are not free to murder you. The same applies to religious liberty: for you to have freedom of religion, others must be restricted in their ability to compel you to practice a different faith or to forbid you from practicing your faith. As such, to accept religious liberty in a meaningful sense is to accept that it has limits. The practical challenge is sorting out these limits, which is a matter of grave concern in the areas of religion, law and ethics.

One sensible approach to freedom is that of John Stuart Mill. Mill argues that freedom should be set on utilitarian grounds using a principle of harm. The gist of his approach is that if what you are doing does not harm anyone else, then you should be free to act (or think) in that way. If your action harms others, then this provides a reason to limit your freedom. As would be expected, this approach is often applied to religious freedom. To illustrate, it is unreasonable to tolerate human sacrifice on the grounds of religious liberty.  This can also be seen as an evaluation of which right trumps the other. In the case of human sacrifice, it can be argued that the right to life takes precedence over the right to practice one’s religion. As a practical matter, as Mill noted, people tend to take the view that what they like should be allowed and what they dislike should be forbidden, without any general principle in operation beyond liking and disliking.

Some would argue that religious freedom has been weaponized to be used against homosexuals, transgender people and women. For example, there are those who argue that discrimination against homosexuals and transgender people in housing, employment, and so on is justified by the religious views of those who claim that homosexuality or being transgender is against their religion. In the case of women, there are those who contend that their religious liberty should allow them to refuse to provide contraception or abortion services to women. There are, of course, those who say that they are just defending true religious freedom, it just so happens that it seems to always discriminate against people they do not like.

One interesting point is that if religious freedom allows such discrimination, then it will allow discrimination against anyone if one has the right sort of religion. For example, Christianity would seem to warrant discrimination against liars, adulterers, those who worship graven images, witches, those who misuse the name of God, those who do not respect their mother and father, and so on. Consistency would seem to require that if, for example, homosexuals can be discriminated against because they are seen as violating sincerely held religious beliefs, then the same would apply to all sinners. That is all of us, for we are all guilty of some sin or another. Probably many. Oddly enough, there seems to be little interest in denying goods and services to adulterers and liars (which is fortunate for Trump) even though adultery and lying make it into the Ten Commandments and homosexuality is mentioned but once and apparently as being on par with eating shellfish. One might suspect that proponents of this sort of religious freedom are looking for a way to justify their discrimination rather than with acting consistently in accord with their professed faith. After all, if one should be allowed to discriminate against homosexuals because they are engaged in what one regards as sinful behaviors, then the same should apply to all sins. This, of course, seems absurd since it would warrant discrimination against everyone. So, let he is without sin engage in the first discrimination.

Some years ago, Alabama led the way by passing the most restrictive anti-abortion law of the time, one that forbid abortion even in cases of rape and incest. After Roe v Wade was overthrown, other states rushed to implement anti-abortion laws. Proponents of such laws, such as Alabama governor Kay Ivey, claim that their motivation is to protect life. As the governor said, “to the bill’s many supporters, this legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God.” Some who opposed the bill claimed that it was not about protecting life but about restricting women’s reproductive rights. While we can never know what other people think and feel, it is sensible to look at the evidence when determining likely motivations and intentions. As always, it is rational to judge the function of something by what it does, rather than what people say it is intended to do.

In the case of the abortion law, the claim was that Alabamians believe that every life is a precious and sacred gift from God. This is certainly consistent with wanting to reduce the number of abortions. But do Alabamian politicians and authorities hold to this view? A sensible test is to see if they consistently apply this principle in their legislation and actions throughout the state.

Coincidentally, as the governor of Alabama was signing the law because of her deep belief that life is a precious, sacred gift a story broke that Alabama’s prison conditions are so awful as to be unconstitutional. If Alabamians believe that every life is a precious, sacred gift then they would presumably not permit the sacred lives in their prisons to endure such unconstitutional treatment.

An obvious objection is to argue that while all lives are precious, sacred gifts, some lives are more precious and sacred than others. While fetuses are innocent, prisoners have been found guilty of something and hence deserve to be punished. As such, having horrible prisons is consistent with the view that life is a precious, sacred gift.

This has some appeal. Even if life is precious, morality still permits people to be treated differently based on their actions. As such, one can hold that life is precious, but some life must be locked up. However, there is still a problem. If life is a precious, sacred gift, then even the worst people are still precious, sacred gifts and deserve decent treatment. Moral and legal limits of punishment are, of course, recognized by the constitution and Alabama’s failure to act on this casts doubts on their devotion to the professed principle that each life is a precious, sacred gift.

But one could still argue that criminals earn their abuse by being bad and hence Alabama is acting consistently by having terrible prisons and a strict anti-abortion law at the same time. But if Alabamans have this devotion to life, one expects that it would manifest in excellent maternal and infant health. If your doctor said she saw you as a precious, sacred gift and would do anything to protect life, you would expect her to act on that. You would no doubt be shocked if she proved negligent in her medical responsibilities and you ended up being needlessly ill.

Given the professed view that Alabamans regard life as a precious, sacred gift, one would be shocked to learn that Alabama does poorly when it comes to maternal and infant health. Alabama is tied for 4th worst in the United States, with 7.4 deaths per 1,000 live births. While it might be argued that this is due to factors beyond their control, there is a consistent correlation between strong anti-abortion laws and poor maternal and infant health. While correlation is not causation, the reason for this correlation is clear: the state governments that enact the strictest anti-abortion laws also show, via public policies, the least concern for maternal and infant health. This is inconsistent with the professed principle that life is a precious, sacred gift. It is also inconsistent with the professed motivation for anti-abortion laws: to protect the life of children. It is, however, consistent with the hypothesis that anti-abortion laws are motivated by misogynistic principles. After all, if legislators pass anti-abortion laws because of hostility towards women’s reproductive freedom and wellbeing, then one would also expect them to also neglect maternal and infant health in their other policies. On the face of it, this is the better explanation. The function of state policy is to ban abortion and increase infant and maternal mortality; it is what it does.

It could be argued that Alabaman leaders do hold to the life is a precious, sacred gift principle, they are just bad at consistently applying it. So, it is applied to abortion but not to maternal and infant health or to prisoners. Failing to apply one’s professed principles consistently is a common human failing and could explain how anti-abortion leaders fail to apply their professed pro-life principles to infant and maternal health care. So, one could argue that the Alabaman legislators have a good principle, but they do not apply it consistently, despite their professed devotion to it and the effort they put in applying it in the case of abortion.

But a better explanation is that the Alabaman legislature and governor do not hold to their professed principle. Their actual principle is one that is hostile to women and perhaps to the less powerful in general. This principle is consistent with the state of Alabama prisons and the state of maternal and infant health care. If they do hold to their professed principle, they are incredibly inconsistent in their application, which is morally problematic as well. But the simplest explanation is that they are lying when they profess to believe that life is a sacred, precious gift.

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In 1981 the critically unacclaimed Looker presented the story of a nefarious corporation digitizing and then murdering super models. This was, one assumes, to avoid having to pay them royalties. In many ways, this film was a leader in technology: it was the first commercial film to attempt to create a realistic computer-generated character and the first to use 3D computer shading (beating out Tron). Most importantly, it seems to be the first film to predict a technology for replacing people with digital versions and to predict that it would be used with nefarious intent.

While the technology for creating digital versions of real people is still a work in progress, it is quite good and will continue to get better. While one might think that such creations would require the resources of Hollywood,  the software to create such deep fakes has been readily available for years, thus opening the door to anyone to create their own digital deceits.

As should be expected, the first use of this technology was to “deepfake” the faces of celebrities onto the bodies of porn actors. While obviously of concern to the impacted celebrities, the creation of deepfake celebrity porn is probably the least harmful aspect of deepfakes. Sticking within the realm of porn, deepfakes could be created of normal people in efforts to humiliate them and damage their reputations (and perhaps get them fired). On the other side of the coin, the existence of deepfakes could enable people to claim that real images or videos of them are not real. One can easily imagine cheaters using the deepfake defense and the better deepfakes get, the better the defense. This points to the broad problem with the existence of deepfakes: when the technology is good enough and widespread enough, it will be difficult to tell what is real and what is deepfake. This is the core moral problem with the technology and its potential for abuse is considerable. One obvious misuse is the creation of fake news in the form of videos of events that never occurred and recordings of people saying things they never said.

It can be argued that there are legitimate uses of deepfake style technology, such as movies and video games. This is a reasonable point: if those being digitized provide informed consent, this is just an improved version of the CGI that has long been used to recreate the appearance of actors in movies and video games. However, this argument misses the point: it is not the technology that is the problem, it is the use. To use an analogy, one can defend guns by arguing that there are legitimate uses (such as self-defense, hunting and target shooting) but this does not defend homicides committed with guns. The same holds for deep-fake technology: the technology itself is morally neutral, although it can clearly be used for evil ends. This makes it problematic to control or limit the underlying technology, even if it is possible to do so. It is easy to acquire the software and almost impossible to control access to this technology. Controlling it would be on par with trying to prevent access to pirated movies and software. Because of this, limiting access is not a viable option.

From a philosophical perspective, deepfakes present an epistemic problem worthy of the skeptics. While not on the scale of the problem of the external world (how do we know the allegedly real world is really real?), the problem of deepfakes presents a basic epistemic challenge: how do you know that a video or audio recording is real and not a deepfake? The problem can be seen as having two parts. The first is discerning that a fake is a fake. The second is discerning that the real is real. Fortunately, the goal here is practical in that we do not need epistemic certainty, we just need to be reasonably confident in our judgements. This does raise the problem of sorting out how confident we need to be in each situation, but this is nothing new and law and critical thinking have long addressed the matter of required levels of proof.

On the philosophical side, the old tools of critical thinking will still serve against deepfakes, although awareness of the technology will be essential. For example, if a video appears of Taylor Swift killing cats, then it would be reasonable to conclude that this is a deepfake. Whatever one might think of Taylor Swift, she does not seem to be a cat killer. There is also the general point that deepfakes do not create physical evidence and Life Model Decoys (probably) do not exist.  Naturally, fully addressing the critical thinking needed to address deepfakes goes far beyond the scope of this essay.

On the technological side, there will be an ongoing arms race between software used to create deepfakes and software used to detect them. One concern is that nations will be working hard to both defeat and create deepfakes—so there will be plenty of funding for both. Interestingly, there seems to have been little use of deepfake technology in American politics, perhaps because it was judged to be either unnecessary or too risky to use.

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