Author: Michael LaBossiere

Thanks to Jean Garnett’s New York Times article, the concept of heterofatalism has gone viral in some circles. The theoretical foundation for heterofatalism is heteropessimism, a concept developed by Professor Ara Seresin. Heteropessimism describes the disillusionment with heterosexual dating alleged to inflict many women. Heterofatalism transforms pessimism into fatalism about heterosexual relationships. On this view, men are disappointing, relationships are inevitably doomed, but the afflicted women are still attracted to men. Negative views of heterosexual relationships are nothing new, so what is the difference between older criticisms and the new fatalism?

Being an older philosopher, I am most familiar with the “classic” feminist criticisms of heterosexual relationships. While there are many historical versions of feminism and it would be a mistake to treat them all the same, the classic criticisms tend to be based on the negative aspects of patriarchy, broadly construed. Most criticisms focus on how men are constructed by society in ways that incline them to be oppressive, exploitive and abusive in heterosexual relationships. This is bad for the men and worse for the women, leading to some feminists to advocate varying degrees of rejecting heterosexual relationships. Other feminists argued for changing gender roles to improve things for everyone.

While there are still classic feminist criticisms of heterosexual relationships, the new heterofatalism (which I am sure the cool kids call neo-HF) seems to be exemplified by the anecdotes of Jean Garnett and other women. Their disappointment with men is not based on men being domineering, oppressive, abusive or exploitative. Instead, their tales speak of men who are emotionally avoidant, fearful of commitment, and inconsistent. But haven’t women been saying that about us men since we developed language? The answer is “yes.” So, the big change is that while men are criticized for disappointing, they are not being criticized for manifesting the patriarchy. It could be argued that this is an improvement: while we men still have the old disappointing qualities, at least women like Garnett are not lamenting about being oppressed or exploited by the men they are in a relationship with. At the current rate of “progress” men should be good relationship material in a few centuries. But is there actually a significant problem of the sort described by Garnett?

When it comes to inferences about populations, we philosophers worry about the dangers of hasty generalizations, biased generalization, anecdotal evidence, and the spotlight fallacy. A hasty generalization occurs when an inference is drawn from a sample that is too small to warrant the conclusion. For example, before going to college in Ohio I was biking in my hometown. I was struck by a car from Ohio and inferred that Ohio would be dangerous place based on that sample of one. While I was right about Ohio drivers, my inference was unwarranted at the time. So, there is the question of the sample size used to support the claim that heterofatalism is widespread.

A biased generalization occurs when the sample is not representative. While the sample can also be too small (making it as hasty generalization as well) it can also be large. The problem is that an inference drawn from a biased sample will be unreliable. For example, a survey of 10,000 churchgoers about the existence of God would be a biased sample, since people who go to church would tend to believe in God. So, there is also the question of whether samples used to establish claims about hetereofatalism are biased in some manner.

An appeal to anecdotal evidence is committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on an anecdote (a story) about one or a very few cases. The fallacy is also committed when someone rejects reasonable statistical data supporting a claim in favor of a single example or small number of examples that go against the claim. To be fair and balanced, Garnett does not seem to claim that her article is a rigorous analysis of heterofatalism but people do, as always, seem to be drawing inferences from her anecdotes. While I do not doubt that she and her small circle of friends are suffering dating woes, drawing a conclusion about American women in general from their anecdotes would be fallacious. But, as always, to infer that they must not be representative because they are mere anecdotal would be to commit the fallacy fallacy. This is the fallacy that a fallacy must have a false conclusion because it is a fallacy.

Thanks to Garnett, heterofatalism is enjoying a moment in the media spotlight (complete with backlash from the right). While the anecdotes of heterofatalism are likely to resonate with every woman who has had a bad relationship experience (that is, all women) it is wise to be aware of the spotlight fallacy. This fallacy rests on the availability heuristic cognitive bias. We tend to infer that something is widespread or frequent just because we hear about it often. So, the more something is in the media spotlight, the more inclined we are to think that it happens often or is a widespread occurrence. This can be intentionally used, as politicians often do. For example, an anti-immigrant politician might turn the anecdote of a murderer who is a migrant into a talking point in the right-wing media to create the impression that such murderers are common. When something goes viral, it can have the same effect. So, it is reasonable to wonder whether heterofatalism is widespread or just in the spotlight for now. That said, I think that Garnett is sincere in her article and honestly reports the disappointment of her and her friends.

While feminism is not one of my specialties, I do have moral concerns about relationships and how people are being treated. Like many “classic” feminists, I have argued the obvious: being abusive, oppressive and exploitative in a relationship is bad. But are the men Garnett is complaining about bad people and are they to blame for their alleged failures?

Based on the descriptions offered by Garnett, they are not bad. Just disappointing in that they fail to do what she wants. She does not report any cases of them being abusive or oppressive, or trying to exploit her. Ironically, one of her biggest complaints is that they seem unwilling to leave their house to come have sex with her. Many classic criticisms of men are that “all we care about” is sex. The worst that can be said of these men is that they fail to match her conception of what a man should be, which is (ironically) a criticism feminists have often made of men in terms of their expectation that women should match their expectations (such as being caregivers or having a certain appearance).

My last long-term relationship started in 2016, became a long-distance relationship in 2020 and ended in May, 2024. The ending was amicable, and she broke up with me in person. Like Garnett, I tried dating again and like her I have settled into my own version of heterofatalism. But, obviously, for different reasons.

In my own case, I take the obvious move of applying causal reasoning to assess why my relationships have ended. As a philosopher, I use the obvious approach of Mill’s Method of Agreement. This method requires considering at least two cases in which the effect is present. In this method, these cases are examined to find a common thread. The one indisputable common thread in all my relationships is me; so it makes sense to infer that I am the problem. But to be fair and balanced, I also need to consider common threads in the women I date, and I definitely have a type: ambitious, smart, and professional women whose careers will take them far away. As such, it makes sense why my relationships would end as they do: the woman breaking up with me (amicably) when the challenges of long distance love become too much. I must note that I went into these relationships with my eyes open: the women always made it clear that their career came first and that I would always be, at best, second in importance. Probably third, because dogs.

Garnett reveals much about herself in her article and her qualities and the qualities she seeks in men do provide an explanation for her disappointment. She notes that she recently ended her open marriage because she was in love with a man who later seemed unable to commit. She says she has gone after similar men who also seemed unable to commit. In discussions with her friends, they ripped apart the men they had been dating with obvious contempt for these pathetic creatures who failed them. Using common thread reasoning, one might suspect that while the men include a common thread, the women do as well. While we men are often criticized for being emotionally retarded, we do have feelings, and we can be surprisingly good at noticing how women feel about us (we can also be shockingly or willfully blind). Anecdotally, if I felt that a woman was contemptuous of me and mocking me with her friends, I would certainly not text her back or want to have anything to do with her. Also, if I was looking for a committed and loyal relationship, I would be wary of a woman who had an open marriage yet still divorced her husband because of what she thought she saw in some other man. While I know that this is anecdotal evidence, reading about Garnett and her friend’s contempt for men made me feel even more pessimistic. As such, it is worth considering that part of the problem in any relationship is you. And in my case, me.

A fundamental ethical concern in sports is creating fair categories of competition. Age is a non-controversial example of this: elementary school teams do not compete against high school teams. Size is also a relatively non-controversial example in boxing. A heavyweight fighter will generally have a significant advantage over a smaller fighter. But there is a challenge in developing principles of category fairness. After all, there are many factors that can provide one category of athletes an advantage over others that intuitively should not be the basis of categorizing athletes for fair competition.

As an obvious example, some have anatomies and physiologies that give them an advantage. To illustrate, a runner with an ideal body type for running and excellent genetics for speed and endurance will have an advantage over someone with a body that is biomechanically terrible for running and whose genes lack those advantages. One could also consider psychological factors (such as determination) and even economic factors (which can affect diet, coaching, and available training time). While trying to adjust for these factors would make competition fairer, it does lead to a reductio ad absurdum: the ultimate in fairness would be for each person to be in their own category, competing against only themselves. That is, there would be no competition.

The other extreme would be to have no categories: everyone competes with everyone regardless of such factors as age, gender, or weight. This could even be seen as fair: everyone is competing without distinction and the best will win. But this would also be absurd (and dangerous): imagine elementary school students playing tackle football against the Patriots. It can also be argued that this would be unfair: professional football players enjoy far too many advantages over elementary school football players. As Aristotle would say, the right approach lies in a mean between these two extremes: neither too many nor too few categories for fair competition.

One category that seems reasonable in most sports is sex. Males generally enjoy significant physical advantages relative to females and genderless competition would tend to result in males dominating sports. As an example, if the Olympic marathon had no gender categories, all the competing athletes would almost certainly be males. There would, of course, be exceptions at individual competitions as a female runner might beat all the males at a specific marathon. As such, a case can be made that gender categories in sports are fair. While this might seem like a simple matter, it is complicated.

There are world class women athletes, such as Caster Semenya, who have XY chromosomes. While there are many bad faith arguments made about this issue, one can have a good faith debate about the fairness of allowing women with XY chromosomes to compete with XX women since there are some reasons to think XY chromosomes can provide an advantage that XX women lack. It must be noted that the performance of elite XY women athletes does not match that of elite male athletes and XX women athletes can outperform XY women athletes in competition.

The easy and obvious reply to concerns about XY women is to point out that this seems to be almost the only case where people are worried about genetic advantages in sports. Athletes do not get tested to see if they have advantageous genes (or anatomy and physiology) to determine if they can compete. For example, very tall basketball players have an edge over shorter players, and this has a genetic component, but they do not get banned because of that genetic feature. In fact, elite athletes probably enjoy a range of genetic advantages over other athletes, but they do not get banned from the sport even when they greatly exceed even other athletes in their performance.

It can be countered that there are grounds for concern about allowing XY women to compete as women. We have accepted the categories of male and female in sports as a division needed to ensure fair competition. It can be argued that XY women should be excluded from the female category in sports on the grounds that they do not qualify for inclusion. This, one might argue, is based on fairness: XY males are excluded from competing against XX females based on fairness because they do not belong in the female category and would have an unfair advantage. This reasoning can also be backed up by an analogy.

Imagine that Sam has been adopted and is just young enough to be able to play one year of little league baseball before aging out. When he tries out for the little league team, he finds that his somewhat unusual size and strength give him an edge over the other kids and people notice that he seems to be the size of kids a year older. Now imagine that the parents of another child think that something is up, so they hire an investigator to check Sam’s background. The investigator finds out that there seems to have been a mistake in Sam’s records, and he might be a year older than what the official documents say. While Sam and his parents have done nothing wrong intentionally, it would be unfair for Sam to compete against kids a year younger than him. As such, Sam should not be allowed to finish the season because he exceeds the age limit. While this argument does have some appeal, it does raise important concerns.

While I do agree that dividing athletes into the male and female categories can be warranted on the grounds of fairness, to simply assume that XY women are not females would be unwarranted. What is needed is a well-developed and defended set of principles for sorting athletes into these categories. These principles would also need to be consistent and consistently applied.

Going back to the analogy with Sam, he appears to be a large person of his claimed age. But the parents of the other child believe the evidence provided by their investigator and by their standard, Sam is too old to compete in little league and must be excluded on the grounds of fairness. While age is clearly an objective matter, this lack of certainty is intentional to make the analogy fit: while some believe that XY women are not women, this is a matter of what standards one accepts. Just as one would need to argue for which documentation to accept about Sam’s age, one must argue for the standards used to exclude or include people in the male/female categories in sports.

If it is decided that the distinction is based on genetics (which it seems to be) and that XY women must be excluded from the female category because they have an unfair advantage, then consistency would seem to require doing a genetic analysis of all athletes to discern if there are genes that yield similar unfair advantages. If such genes do exist, then allowing people with them to compete with those without would be unfair. If we should exclude XY women based on their alleged advantage, then the same would apply to these other athletes and they would need to be excluded as well. If one says that this should be limited solely to XY and XX, then they would need to provide a principled argument for making this the only genetic distinction that matters. While one could make a practical appeal to the cost of testing; the same would also apply to the XY/XX cases as one must test a person to determine if a woman is XX or XY.  And if there is a need to test for that, then there would seem to be a need to test for other genetic advantages.

One can also argue that the genetic advantages of top athletes are too diverse to identify and categorize and the XX/XY distinction is a simple one that allows the preservation of existing sports competition categories. There would also be degrees of advantage and sorting this all out would be needlessly complicated. But one could reply that we could create broad genetic categories analogous to age groups in sports. This could be countered by arguing that the distinctions and advantages are fuzzy and unclear, so why not let people compete without genetic testing and categorization? This would, of course, seem to also apply to XY women and while they might have some possible advantage over some XX women in sports, this does not seem to warrant creating a special category that excludes them from competing against other women. This does require accepting that the sharp and absolute male/female distinction that some people crave does not exist, that the boundaries are fluid and fuzzy and this reflects reality. While some might want “pure” Platonic concepts of male and female, we do not find them instantiated perfectly in this world. As such, XY women should be permitted to compete as women.

While the wealthy did very well in the pandemic, businesses and employees were eager to get back to normal economic activity. While the vaccines were not perfect, they helped re-open the economy. As another pandemic is certainly on the way, it is worth considering the issue of vaccine mandates again.

While there are various moral issues involving vaccines, one is whether employers have the right to require employees to get vaccinated. While this situation is somewhat unusual, it falls under the broader issue of employee rights.

In the United States employers hold vast power over their employees. This power stems from the doctrine of employment at will: an employer can fire an employee for almost any reason or no reason at all. Employees can, of course, quit for almost any reason at all or no reason at all. But employers generally hold an advantage: it is usually much easier for an employer to replace an employee than for an employee to find an equal or better job.

This doctrine allows employers to exert broad control over the lives of their employees within and beyond the workplace. For example, an employer can fire an employee for holding political views they dislike and even for social drinking or smoking outside of work. Employers also have a very broad right to surveil their employees at work or when using work equipment. While the government would need a warrant to read your work email or listen to your calls made at work, your employer can do that at will. In some cases, they can legally put cameras in bathrooms to monitor employees.

While some see this degree of employer power as wrong and even on par with tyranny, it is the default moral view in practice. That is, employers have the moral right to fire their employees at will with only very few exceptions. Under this doctrine, an employer would be within their rights to offer an employee the choice between being vaccinated and being fired just as they can do the same thing with almost anything else. Obviously, if this doctrine is rejected, then the ethics must be addressed in a different manner.

One reasonable approach is utilitarianism. This is the view that the morality of an action is determined by its positive and negative consequences for those who count morally. Actions whose negative consequences are greater than their positive consequences are wrong. Good actions are those whose positive consequences outweigh the negative. I, like many others, use this approach when addressing large-scale ethical matters such as public policy.

Assuming mandated vaccines are safe and effective, they would present little risk (though there are always risks). They also provide benefits during this next pandemic. Because of this, an employer could make the moral argument that employees must be vaccinated based on the positive consequences of reducing the likelihood and severity of their illness (which would impact the employer). There is also the fact that vaccination of employees would help protect co-workers and customers. An unvaccinated employee would be a health risk to themselves and others and thus it would be right for employers to mandate vaccination in most cases. Employees who would be harmed by the vaccine or who do not interact with other workers or customers could, of course, opt out.

One could make a broad moral argument against employer power and use this to argue that employers should not have the power to force employees to vaccinate (naturally, employees always have the right to quit to avoid doing anything they do not want to do). I do find this appealing because I think employers have too much power and workers too few rights in terms of how employers can coerce employees. That said, vaccination seems morally on par with safety mandates of other kinds that are aimed at protecting workers and customers from harms and these seem warranted on utilitarian grounds. A business could be morally responsible for not requiring vaccines if employees infect each other or customers.

One way to counter this argument is to argue that requiring vaccination is different from other safety requirements. To illustrate, an employee who is required to wear a hair net while preparing food can take that off at the end of their shift and it has no lasting impact. A vaccination is different as it is not something that could be removed at the end of the workday. Even safe vaccines come with risks that make them different from hair nets and gloves (though a person could be allergic to latex gloves). As such, these might be relevant differences that break the analogy.

This can, of course, be countered by the fact that vaccination is usually required to attend K-12 schools and college so there is a moral precedent to requiring vaccination. One could argue that school and work are different; the challenge would be showing how the differences break the analogy. Or one could also argue that schools should not require vaccination either, but the challenge is proving this rather than just assuming it. But it is worth considering that an employer could be morally responsible if an employee were harmed because they were required to get vaccinated to keep their job.

One can also make an appeal to rights, that people have the right to refuse medical procedures. I do agree that people have this right; but it is distinct from the right to be allowed to be unvaccinated if one is around people at work or school. By analogy, I agree that people have the right to use drugs, but this is distinct from the right to use drugs at work, such as while flying a plane.

One argument against raising the minimum wage is based on the claim that doing so would hurt small businesses. This argument has some merit, at least for small businesses with narrow profit margins or low income. While companies like Amazon could increase wages while still making massive profits for upper management and shareholders, a small business that is barely making a profit could be hard pressed to increase wages.

 To use an imaginary example, suppose Larry owns Larry’s Lawn Care and pays his workers $10 an hour. He charges his customers $20 an hour for labor and has expenses of about $5 an hour, so Larry makes a profit of $5 for every hour an employee works. He also draws a salary for his work running the business and working on lawns and this is worked in the billing on top of the $20 per hour charged for labor.

But if the minimum wage were increased to $15 an hour, then Larry would make no profit unless he cut expenses or charged more. Charging more, some would argue, could make him lose customers which would lead to fewer hours of work for his employees. This could cause a loss of income or force him to fire people.

It could be countered that if Larry’s business breaks even while Larry is earning a wage for his own labor, then everything is good. Larry and his workers seem to be getting what they deserve within the context of what customers are willing to pay for the services. But if the business was experiencing a loss and could not make full payroll because the wages and cost of operating the business exceeded what customers would pay, then it can be claimed that the increase in wages hurt the business and employees. This is the sort of scenario used in making the small business argument against minimum wage. The reasoning is that because of the harms of increasing wages, they should not be increased.

But it must be noted operating costs (and such) are also a factor. In the lawn care example, if gas and equipment costs were lower, the lawn care business would have more income.  But it is usually not argued that these costs should be kept low by the government to aid small businesses and the burden of keeping small businesses profitable is usually put on the employees. One could argue that the state keeping operating costs low would hurt other businesses and thus hurt other employees, but this is a choice about who is harmed and how. Increasing what the customers pay would also shift the harm, which is also a choice. But one would need to sort out the impact of increasing prices in terms of how it would impact available hours and jobs. Interestingly, those who argue against minimum wage tend to accept that companies can raise prices to increase profits even when doing so could result in employees losing hours or jobs—in fact, companies are often rewarded financially for firing people.

To be consistent, someone who argues that increasing minimum wage is wrong because it would hurt employees by reducing hours or costing jobs must also argue that profitable policies that result in workers losing hours or jobs would be wrong. Otherwise, it would be evident that the argument has nothing to do with protecting employees and everything to do with protecting profit. An honest argument from such folk would be refreshing, which would be that wages should not be increased because owners would make less profit.

It is also often argued that the increase in wages would hurt small businesses because larger companies can afford to pay these wages while still being profitable. A reply is that if this is true, then small business could have an exception if they prove they would be unfairly harmed.

A second reply is that those who argue against increasing the minimum wage on this ground would also need to argue that small businesses should be protected from larger businesses in other ways. After all, if the minimum wage should not be increased because smaller businesses cannot compete with large businesses, then the state should also see to it that larger businesses do not enjoy other advantages over small businesses. If one is not willing to accept this view, then it is likely that one does not care about small businesses, one just does not want wages increased. At third reply is the harsh free market reply: if small businesses cannot compete, then they will go out of business just as they would if they cannot compete in other ways.

A final response to the small business argument is to point out that the argument can also be seen as making the case that minimum wage should not be increased because doing so would decrease the income of small business owners. This seems to assume that the owners are entitled to their profits. But employees can point out that not increasing the minimum wage (even if only to match inflation) reduces their income as inflation reduces the value of their wages. So, if reducing income is wrong, then not increasing the minimum wage to at least account for inflation would be wrong. After all the owners would still me making the same profit they were before (adjusted for inflation). As such, those who oppose increasing the minimum wage to at least account for inflation cannot consistently use the small business argument unless they are willing to be clear that what they are concerned with is the profits of the owners rather than alleged harm that might be caused to employees.

While some would be angry if student loans were forgiven and might believe their anger proves this would be unfair, this sort of “reasoning” has it backwards. While people should be angry at unfairness, anger does not prove that something is unfair. People can be angry about things that are fair and even things that are unfair in ways advantageous to them yet not as unfair in their favor as they might wish. As such, as was discussed in the previous essay, it is no surprise that arguments from anger against student loan cancellation are flawed.

People also use the concepts of fair and unfair when engaged in moral masking. This is a rhetorical technique in which a person uses moral language to create the appearance that they are making moral claims or arguments when they are not. In most cases, those using this technique are concealing their own self-interest, desires, or feelings about the matter behind a mask of morality. The rhetorical advantage is that the person seems to have more laudable motivations or reasons than their wants and feelings. To illustrate, saying “I would resent it if other people had their student loans cancelled” is probably less persuasive than saying “student loan cancellation would be unfair.”

Being a professional philosopher, I would be remiss if I did not mention that there are philosophical theories in which moral claims are just expressions of emotions or preferences. While this oversimplifies things, on such views saying, “student loan cancellation is unfair” would be means something like “I don’t like student loan cancellation” or even “student loan cancellation yuck!” Crudely put, on these views there is nothing more to ethics than these feelings or preferences. Fortunately, even if these views of ethics are correct, we could still have a meaningful debate about whether student loan forgiveness is fair in terms of considering the quality of the arguments advanced in favor of the various positions. There are also some sophisticated theories of emotion or preference-based ethics that do allow for meaningful moral debate about which feelings or preferences are more apt. But let us set aside these theoretical meta-ethical concerns and get into the debate over fairness and student loan cancellation.

While people think they know what is fair (and hence unfair), they usually do not have a well-considered concept of fairness. So, a sensible place to begin is with some discussion of the notion of fairness. Perhaps the simplest version of fairness is that everyone gets the same treatment. This view does have considerable appeal and is one I use when teaching. For example, students will sometimes ask for individual extra credit. My response is always that allowing this would be unfair to the other students. While this oversimplifies things, a fair class treats the students the same.

On this view of fairness, student loan cancellation would clearly be unfair. Those who happened to have unpaid student loans right now would receive a benefit that no one else would. Those who paid off their loans, especially those who did so soon before the forgiveness, would be denied this government largesse because they were responsible and probably made sacrifices to repay their loans. Many people who never took out student loans could contend that the debts they have are just as deserving of cancellation as student loans. Since everyone is not getting the same treatment, student loan cancellation is wrong and should not be done. This can be presented as an argument from fairness:

 

Premise 1: Government student loan debt cancellation would not treat people the same.

Premise 2: The government not treating people the same is unfair.

Premise 3: Treating people unfairly is wrong.

Conclusion: Student loan debt cancellation is wrong.

 

While this is certainly a viable moral position, it runs directly into the fact that the government routinely treats people differently. For example, business owners and corporations receive subsidies (agricultural subsidies are a common example) that other people do not receive. As another example, the wealthy and corporations enjoy the advantages of tax laws and policies that allow some of them to pay no taxes despite being greatly benefited by the state.  As such, if someone uses this sort of fairness argument against student loan debt cancellation, then they would be inconsistent if they failed to apply it to other cases in which the government does not treat people the same—which is most cases.

There are two main approaches to having the government treat people the same. One is for the government not to do anything for people. This would treat people the same because the government would not be doing anything for anyone. For example, not providing any form of relief or benefits (such as student loan cancellation or tax cuts) would treat people the same. Taking this to the extreme would result in anarchism (the elimination of the coercive state) or a return to the state of nature (an absence of any government). While there are those who advocate anarchism and even those who favor the state of nature, these would be a long way to go just to avoid cancelling student loan debt.

The other approach is for the government to do things but ensure that each person receives the same services and benefits from the state. For example, if one person received subsidies, then everyone would. If one person got a 10% tax cut, then everyone would. If one person had $50,000 in debt cancelled, then everyone would (perhaps getting a voucher for future debt). Taken to the extreme, this would resemble a common straw-person version of socialism in which everyone is treated identically by the state.  While this might have some initial appeal, reflection shows that it would be absurd. As everyone does not have the same needs and wants, treating everyone exactly the same would not be a very wise approach. Although the rest of us would certainly be better off if we were all treated like the wealthy, the powerful and the corporations by the state.

It would seem that taking fairness as treating people exactly the same in order to argue that cancelling student loan debt is unfair would create some problems: one would seem to be committed to either the state treating everyone the same by doing nothing (no more state) or by having the state treat everyone the same in every way which would seem absurd. As such, we need to consider another conception of fairness.

Long ago, when I was a student, student loans were mostly manageable. Over the years, the cost of college has increased dramatically, and student loans have become increasingly burdensome. There is also the issue of predatorial for-profit schools. Because of this debt burden, there have been proposals to address the student loan problem. Some have even proposed forgiving or cancelling student loans. This proposal has generated hostile responses, although Roxane Gay has advanced some well-reasoned arguments in its defense. I paid my relatively modest loans long ago, so my concern with is a matter of ethics rather than self-interest. In this essay and those to follow I will consider the ethics of student loan forgiveness and provide some logical assessment of various relevant arguments.

As Gay noted in the New York Times, Damon Linker tweeted that “I think Dems are wildly underestimating the intensity of anger college loan cancellation is going to provoke. Those with college debt will be thrilled, of course. But lots and lots of people who didn’t go to college or who worked to pay off their debts? Gonna be bad.” Linker was right. Even if there was not genuine grassroots anger at student loan forgiveness, Republicans and the right-wing media  generated rage against it. But is there any merit to the anger argument?

Put a bit simply, the anger argument against student loan forgiveness is that because federal student loan forgiveness would make many people angry, then it would be incorrect to do it. This is obviously the appeal to anger fallacy; a fallacy in which anger is substituted for evidence when making an argument. Formally, this version of the fallacy looks like this:

 

Premise 1: X would make people angry.

Conclusion: X is wrong or incorrect.

 

This is bad logic because the fact that something makes people angry has no connection to whether it is true or correct. People can be angry about claims that are true and enraged about things that are good. They can, of course, also be angry about claims that are false and enraged about things that are evil. But the anger people feel does not prove (or disprove) falseness or wrongness. A silly example illustrates this:

 

Premise 1: The triangle haters get angry when it is claimed that triangles have three sides.

Conclusion: Triangles do not have three sides. 

 

Somewhat less silly examples are as follows:

 

Premise 1: Some people got angry about the American colonies rebelling. 

Conclusion: The colonies were wrong to rebel.  

 

Premise 1: Some people are angry about evolution. 

Conclusion: Evolution does not occur.

 

Premise 1: Atheists would be angry if God exists.

Conclusion: God does not exist.

 

As these examples show, drawing a conclusion about the truth of a claim or the morality of something from people being angry is bad reasoning. As such, the anger people might feel about student loan forgiveness is irrelevant to whether it is the right thing to do. But perhaps there is a way to make a non-fallacious argument from anger. One way to do this is to switch from concerns about truth and morality to pragmatism. That is, perhaps it could be argued that the anger of some people would provide a practical reason to not have student loan forgiveness.

While this greatly oversimplifies things, pragmatic arguments are aimed at establishing what would be the most prudent or advantageous thing. This is an argument from consequences. The idea is that the correct choice is the one that generates the best consequences for those who matter. While people tend to think the correct choice is the one they think is best for them, working out an appeal to consequences requires arguing to establish who matters and how to assess the value of the consequences. Laying aside all these concerns, pragmatic arguments from anger can easily be made.

To illustrate, imagine that a politician sees the polls show that most voters are angry about student loan forgiveness and this anger is strong enough to influence their vote. From a pragmatic standpoint, the anger of their voters does give them a practical reason to oppose forgiveness: if they want to increase their chances of being re-elected, then they should oppose it. While this could be for selfish reasons (the politician might want to stay in office to keep cashing in on insider trading) it could also be for benevolent reasons (the politician might want to stay in office to try to improve the lives of their constituents). From a pragmatic standpoint responding to the anger could be the prudent or advantageous thing to do. While these pragmatic reasons can be strong motivating factors, they do not prove (or disprove) anything about the rightness or wrongness of student loan forgiveness. But there is still an option for using anger in a non-fallacious moral argument.

Utilitarianism, a view argued for by the likes of Bentham and Mill, is the moral view that the morality of an action depends on the consequences for those who are morally relevant. Put in simple terms, an action that creates more good for those who count would be better than an action that creates less good (or causes harm). Since utilitarian arguments deal with consequences, it is often possible to re-tool a pragmatic consequentialist argument into a moral argument. Here is how it could be done.

Suppose that there is good reason to believe that Linker is right and anger at any student loan cancellation “gonna be bad.” If the harms generated by this anger outweighs the benefit of the loan cancellation when considering all Americans, then the loan cancellation would be wrong. Thus, it would seem that the right sort of appeal to anger can work. But there is an obvious concern about the role of the anger in generating the harms.

If cancelling the loans itself resulted in greater harms than not doing so (such as pulling money from critical social programs), then it would seem right to not cancel them. But the anger argument rests on how people respond to the cancellation, not the harm done by the cancelling itself. That is, the harms in question would arise because of what people do because they are angry in response to the cancellation. This leads to an old ethical debate about how to factor in responses when doing the utilitarian calculation. On the one hand, it does seem reasonable to consider how people will respond when sorting out consequences. On the other hand, there is the obvious problem that people could force a change in the moral calculation by responding in ways that would create harms. That is, they could “rig” the moral argument by threatening to respond with terrible actions.

To use a fictional example, imagine a debate over raising minimum wage in which businesses said they would kill their minimum wage employees, their pets, and their loved ones if the wage was increased. In terms of consequences, this would make increasing the minimum wage extremely harmful and so it would be wrong to increase it. As an alternative fictional example, imagine the much-feared radical leftists threatened to kill business owners, their pets, and their loved ones if the minimum wage is not increased. This would make not increasing it wrong. But there is clearly a problem with assessing the morality of an action based on what the worst people might do in response to that action since this would make morality hostage to the worst people. One fix is to consider the action apart from such efforts to prevent the action by intentionally increasing the harms while also, obviously enough, assessing the ethics of these efforts. So, when considering student loan cancellation there is the moral issue of the consequences of the cancellation itself and there is the distinct moral issue of whether the responses to it would be morally appropriate or not. That is, we need to see if the anger against loan cancellation is morally warranted. If it is not, then the anger might have negative consequences but yielding to that anger would be wrong. In the next essay I will consider the fairness argument, free of anger.

In sci-fi people upload their minds to machines and, perhaps, gain a form of technological immortality. Because of the obvious analogy to the way computer memory works, it is appealing to take uploading the mind as uploading memories. In fiction, the author decides whether it is the same person or not, but philosophers need to argue this matter.

While the idea of mind uploads might seem a recent thing, philosophers have been considering this possibility for a long time. On excellent example is John Locke.  On his view, a person is their consciousness, and he considered the possibility that this consciousness could be transferred from one soul to another. Locke’s terminology can get a bit confusing since he distinguishes between person, body, soul, and consciousness. But suffice it to say that on his view, you are not your soul or body. But you are your consciousness. Crudely put, this consciousness can be considered to be your memory. As far back as your memory goes, you go. The basis of personal identity is important: for you to achieve technological immortality (or as close as possible) it needs to be you that continues and not just someone like you.

Locke anticipates the science fiction idea of uploading your mind and considers problems that arise if consciousness makes personal identity and could be transferred or copied. His solution seems to be a cheat: he claims that God, in His goodness, would not allow this to happen. But if Locke is right about consciousness being the basis of personal identity and wrong about God not allowing it to be copied, then it would be at least metaphysically possible to upload your mind by copying your memories.

David Hume, an empiricist like Locke, presented an argument by intuition against Locke’s account: people believe that they can extend their identity beyond their memory. That is, I do not think that it was not me just because I forgot something. Rather, I suppose that it was me and I merely forgot. Hume took the view that memory is used to discover personal identity and then went off the rails and declared personal identity to be about grammar rather than philosophy. But even if the memory approach to personal identity fails, there are other options. One simple approach is to cheat a lot and just talk about the mind (whatever it is) being uploaded. The mind would, of course, also need to be the person otherwise it would not be you getting immortality.

Assuming the mind is the person, there are two possibilities: it can be copied/transferred or it cannot. If it cannot, then this sort of technological immortality is impossible.

Suppose that the mind can be copied. If it can be copied once, then there seems to be no reason why it cannot be copied multiple times. The problem is that what serves as the basis of personal identity is supposed to be what makes me who I am and makes me distinct from everyone else. If what is supposed to provide my distinct identity can be duplicated, then it cannot be the basis of my distinct identity. Locke, as noted above, “solves” this problem by divine intervention. However, without this there seems to be no reason why my mind could not be copied many times if it could be copied once. As such, a being might have a copy of my mind, just as it might have a copy of the files from my PC. There seems to be a paradox here: to have technological immortality, then the mind must be copyable. But if it can be copied, then it is not the basis of personal identity and it is not what makes you the person you are, distinct from all other things. So, if your mind can be copied, you are not your mind, and the copy will not be you. It will just be someone like you; a technological doppelganger. If your mind cannot be copied, then there is no technological immortality in the strict sense.  So, for the copy to be you, it would need to possess whatever it is that made you the person you are and what distinguished you from all other things: your personness and your distinctness. But perhaps the basis of identity could be transferred rather than copied.

One interesting possibility is that the mind could be transferred from a biological system to a new technological one. In this case, you would be transferred rather than copied. It would be like handing off a unique item as opposed to creating a copy. In this case you could achieve technological immortality. Your original body might keep living, but if you are transferred whatever that entity is it would no longer be you. It would be like a house you once occupied. This, of course, is analogous to possession: an entity takes over a new body by transferring into it.

As a final possibility, it is worth considering that the Buddha is right: there is no self. In this case, you can never upload yourself because there is no self to upload.

The assassination of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh might have been conducted by a remote-controlled weapon. While this was still a conventional assassination, it does raise the specter of autonomous assassination automatons or assassin bots. In this context, an assassin bot can conduct its mission autonomously once deployed. Simple machines of this kind already exist. Even a simple land mine can be considered an autonomous assassination device because once deployed it activates according to its triggering mechanism. But when one thinks of proper assassin bot, one thinks of a far more complicated machine that can seek and kill its target in a sophisticated manner. Also, it could be argued that a mine is not an assassination machine. While it can be placed in the hopes of killing a specific person, they do not seek a specific human target. As such, a proper assassin bot would need to be able to identify their target and attempt to kill them. To the degree that the bot can handle this process without human intervention it would be autonomous. 

The idea of assassin bots roaming about killing people raises obvious moral concerns. While the technology would be new, there would be no new moral problems here, with one possible exception. The ethics of assassination involve questions about whether assassination is morally acceptable and debates over specific targets, motivations, and consequences. But unless the means of assassination is especially horrific or indiscriminate the means are not of special moral concern. What matters morally is that some means is used to kill, be those means a punch, a poniard, a pistol, or poison. To illustrate, it would be odd to say that killing Mohsen Fakhrizadeh with a pistol would be acceptable but killing him as quickly and painfully with a knife would be wrong. Again, methods can matter in terms of being worse or better ways to kill, but the ethics of whether it is acceptable to assassinate a person are distinct from the ethics of what means are acceptable. Because of this the use of assassin bots would be covered by established ethics an if assassination is wrong, then using robots would not change this. If assassination can be morally acceptable, then the use of robots would also not change this.  Unless the robots killed in horrific or indiscriminate ways.

There seem to be two general ways to look at using assassin bots to replace human assassins. The first is that their use would remove the human assassin from the equation. To illustrate, a robot might be sent to poison a dissident rather than sending a human. As such, the moral accountability of the assassin would be absent, although the moral blame or praise would remain for the rest of the chain of assassination. Whether, for example, Vlad sent a human or a robot to poison a dissident Vlad would be acting the same from a moral standpoint.

The second is that the assassin bot does not remove the assassin from the moral equation, but it does change how the assassin does the killing. To use an analogy, if an assassin kills targets with their hands, then they are directly engaged in the assassination without the intermediary of a weapon. If an assassin uses a sniper rifle and kills the target from hundreds of yards away, they are still the assassin as they directed the bullet to the target. If the assassin sends an assassin bot to do the killing, then they have directed the weapon to the target and are the assassin. Unless the assassin bot is a moral agent and can be accountable in ways that a human can be, and a sniper rifle cannot. Either way, the basic ethics do not change. But what if humans are removed from the loop?

Imagine, if you will, algorithms of assassination encoded into an autonomous AI. This AI uses machine learning or whatever is currently in vogue to develop its own algorithms to select targets, plan their assassinations and deploy autonomous assassin bots. That is, once humans set up the system and give it basic goals the system operates on its own.

The easy and obvious moral assessment is that the people who set up the system would be accountable for what it does. Going back to the land mines, this system would be analogous to a very complicated land mine. While it would not be directly activated by a human, the humans involved in planning how to use it and in placing it would be accountable for the death and suffering it causes. Saying that the mine went off when it was triggered would not get them off the moral hook as the mine has no agency. Likewise, for the assassination AI because it would trigger based on its operating parameters, but humans would be accountable for what it does to the degree they were involved. Saying they are not responsible would be like the officer who ordered land mines placed on a road claiming that they are not accountable for the deaths of the civilians killed by those mines. While it could be argued that the accountability is different than that which would arise from killing the civilians in person with a gun or knife, it would be difficult to absolve the officer of moral responsibility. Likewise, for those involved in creating the assassin AI.

If the assassin AI developed moral agency, then this would have an impact on the matter because it would be an active agent and not merely a tool. That is, it would change from being like a mine to being like the humans in charge of deciding when and where to use mines. Current ethics can, of course, handle this situation: the AI would be good or bad in the same way a human would be in the same situation. Likewise, if the assassin bots had moral agency they would be analogous to human assassins.

Trump and his supporters claimed Biden “won” in 2020 because of widespread election fraud. While Sidney Powell wove an international conspiracy too crazy even for Rudy Giuliana, some of Trump supporters embraced it. Another conspiracy theory claimed, falsely, that the US seized election servers in Germany in an armed raid. The pardoned (by Trump) criminal Michael Flynn  called on Trump to suspend the Constitution and impose martial law in order to re-do the election. Officials in Georgia  received death threats for accepting the election results and when a fellow Republican pleaded with Trump to address this, Trump doubled down on his conspiracy theory.

The various conspiracy theories seem to have claimed that all election officials in areas won by Biden were involved in the alleged fraud. It must be noted that these included Republican election officials who supervised elections in which down-ballot Republicans often won. As always, the entire mainstream media (except perhaps Fox News) was said to be in on the conspiracy against Trump. Social media companies, voting machine companies and fellow travelers have been accused of being in on the conspiracy.  Even the Secretary of State and the Governor of Georgia seem were cast into the conspiracy by Trump and his followers thought they betrayed Trump for Biden. Attorney General Bill Barr disputed Trump’s claims of fraud; Lou Dobbs suggested Barr was “compromised.” As other Republicans publicly accepted the results of the election, they were also be seen as “compromised” and in on the alleged conspiracy against Trump. The large number of people alleged to be involved in election fraud to help Biden leads to a conspiracy paradox. But first, a bit more set up.

About 34% of registered voters identify as independents, 33% identify as Democrats and 29% identify as Republicans. Independents tend to lean towards a party and 49% of all registered voters are either Democrats or lean that way. 44% identify as Republicans or lean that way. The party members and leaners do not always vote based on their affiliation or lean; 2016 provides a relevant example here. 5% of the Democrats and Democrat leaners jumped party to vote for Trump while 4% of Republicans and their leaners jumped party to vote for Hillary. Hillary did, after all, get millions more votes than Trump in 2016, she just got them in the wrong places.

In his first term as President, Trump had low approval ratings and his handling of the pandemic was horrible. Polls showed  that 52% of Americans were satisfied (18%) or happy (34%) that Trump lost the 2029 election. Early on Biden had a 55% approval rating. While not conclusive, this information provides evidence in support of the legitimacy of the election. That is, there are good reasons to believe that millions more people voted for Biden than voted for Trump and enough of the votes were in the right place to win the electoral college. But for the sake of the conspiracy theories, let us suppose that this view is mistaken. Given the 2016 results, the best that can be done for Trump’s side is to consider that Biden had millions more popular votes but not enough to beat Trump in the electoral college. As such, the conspiracy theory claim would be that widespread election fraud enabled Biden to win.

As noted above, Trump and his supporters claimed many people were involved in the conspiracy. While they obviously think Democrats are involved, they are added in Republicans. This number kept growing over the year. As noted above, when Barr said that the election was legitimate, he became a suspect in the conspiracy. The same held for other Republicans when they accepted the results. As such, Trump and his supporters need to claim that all these people were involved to maintain the conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud. After all, if these Republicans are not in on the conspiracy, then that would suggest the election was legitimate. The alleged conspiracy became so large that Biden would have won if the alleged conspirators had simply voted for him in a legitimate election. This, then, is the paradox: Trump and his supporters had to expand the membership in the alleged conspiracies but doing so undermined the theory of fraud. At a certain point, the conspiracy became so large that if everyone in on the alleged conspiracy voted for Biden, then Biden would have easily won legitimately.

Trump is infamous for spewing lies and his supporters are known for believing his claims. As noted in previous essays, one of the many things that is striking about supporters professing belief in Trump’s claims is that they accept claims that are logically inconsistent or even contradictory. Two claims are inconsistent when they both cannot be true but they both could be false. This is different from two claims being contradictory: if one claims contradicts another, one must be true and the other false.

The last pandemic provides a horrific example of the ability of Trump supporters to profess belief in inconsistent claims.  Many Trump supporters claimed to believe that COVID-19 was a hoax, that it was no worse than the flu, that it was a Chinese bioweapon, that Trump did a great job with the pandemic and that Trump should get credit for the vaccine.   When Bob Woodward released tapes proving that Trump acknowledged the danger of the virus in February, many Trump supporters accepted Trump’s claim that he wanted to play down the virus to avoid a panic. His supporters defended him, claiming that great leaders have and should lie to prevent panic in the face of terrible danger. If Trump was right to lie to play down the deadly danger of the virus, then this is inconsistent with the claim that it is like the flu and inconsistent with the claim that it is a hoax. If he was right to lie because of the danger, then it is not like the flu nor is it a hoax. But if it is like the flu or a hoax, then he would not need to lie about the danger. One way to explain Trump supporters professing inconsistent beliefs is that some of them are accomplices. Another is that they are victims. I will begin with the accomplice explanation.

It is possible, even likely, that some of Trump’s supporters are aware when he is lying and perhaps even recognize when they make inconsistent claims. In this case, the inconsistency can easily be explained: they are accomplices to his lies and are repeating them. There is no inconsistency in their beliefs because they do not believe what they are claiming. There are various reasons for people to serve as his accomplices. They might want to express their allegiance to him, they might find his lies advantageous in their own grifts, they might be trolls, or they might gain some other advantage by professing belief in his lies. Not believing inconsistent claims does not make the claims consistent; it is just that the accomplices do not have inconsistent beliefs in this context.

As would be suspected, it can be difficult to prove that a supporter is an accomplice of Trump rather than a victim. While Trump pulls the curtain back and reveals things (like how Republicans want to make it harder to vote), it is unlikely that one of his accomplices would end a social media post professing belief in Trump’s claims by revealing that they do not believe the lies they just professed to believe. Sorting out the accomplices from the victims would require access to such things as private emails and recordings, things that would be difficult and perhaps illegal to acquire. In general, the accomplices are not very interesting from an epistemic standpoint since they are lying. About the only thing interesting is the epistemic problem of discerning the accomplices from the victims. Now, on to the victims.

In this context, the victims of Trump are supporters who believe his lies. These victims can be further divided into those who would change their view of Trump if they realized he was lying and those who would still support him (that is, would become accomplices). Given that Trump lies badly and blatantly even when his lies are easily exposed, my main explanation as to why these victims believe him is that they are often basing their beliefs on an appeal to authoritarian. This fallacious reasoning has the following form:

 

Premise 1: Authoritarian leader L makes claim c.

Conclusion: Claim C is true.

 

The fact that an authoritarian leader makes a claim does not provide evidence or a logical reason that supports the claim. It also does not disprove the claim because accepting or rejecting a claim because it comes from an authoritarian would both be errors. The authoritarian could be right about the claim but, as with any fallacy, the error lies in the reasoning.

A silly math example illustrates why this is bad logic:

 

Premise 1: The dear leader claims that 2+2 =7.

Conclusion: The dear leader is right.

 

Since this is bad logic, it gets its power from psychological rather than logical factors. In this case, these factors are the psychological features of authoritarian personalities. An authoritarian leader is characterized by the belief that they have a special status as a leader. At the extreme, the authoritarian leader believes that they are the voice of their followers and that they alone can lead. Or, as Trump put it, “I alone can fix it.” Underlying this is the (false) belief that they possess exceptional skills, knowledge and ability. This causes them to make false claims and mistakes.

Since the authoritarian leader is reluctant to admit errors and limits, they must be dishonest to the degree they are not delusional and delusional to the degree they are not dishonest. Trump exemplifies this with his constant barrage of untruths and incessant bragging. These claims are embraced as true by his supporters who are victims.

An authoritarian leader like Trump desires followers and fortunately for him, there are those of the authoritarian follower type. While Trump’s accomplices make use of him and assist him, they know he is lying. The authoritarian follower believes that their leader is special, that the leader alone can fix things. Thus, the followers must buy into the leaders’ delusions and lies, convincing themselves despite the evidence to the contrary. Trump’s devoted supporters incorrectly believe him to be honest and competent.

Since Trump has failed often and catastrophically, his victims must accept the deceitful explanations put forth to account for them. This requires rejecting facts and logic.  These victims embrace lies and conspiracy theories—whatever supports the narrative of Trump’s greatness and success Those who do not agree with Trump are not merely wrong but are enemies.  The claims of those who disagree are rejected out of hand, and often with hostility and insults. Thus, the followers tend to isolate themselves epistemically—which is a fancy way of saying that nothing that goes against their view of the leader ever gets in. While this explains, in part, their belief in Trump’s lies it also helps explain how they can believe inconsistent (even contradictory) claims.

Someone who forms beliefs based on the appeal to authoritarian will accept what the authoritarian tells them as true. What justifies these beliefs in the minds of the victims is that the authoritarian made them. As such, they have no reason to consider other evidence and are effectively immune to arguments against these beliefs. After all, if the justification of a belief is a matter of it being a claim made by the authoritarian, then any other evidence or argument against that claim cannot impact its justification. The only things that could undermine the belief would be if the authoritarian told their followers to accept a new belief in place of the old (for example, the authoritarian saying that a once trusted minion is now an enemy) or if the victim stopped accepting the authoritarian for some reason.  So how does this enable inconsistent beliefs?

The answer is that it does so very easily. If the victim believes a claim because the authoritarian makes the claim and other factors are irrelevant, then consistency will not matter to that victim. These beliefs are not accepted because they are backed by evidence, and they are not subject to critical assessment. As such, it would not even occur to the victim to check the claims made by the authoritarian against each other to see if they are consistent or not: these claims are simply believed, and they are believed because the authoritarian makes them. In the case of Trump supporters who are victims, this seems to be what they are doing: they believe what Trump says because Trump says it and that is good enough. It must be; if they engaged in a honest assessment and searched for the truth, they would not believe Trump’s lies. While they might bring up “evidence” and “argue” when responding to critics of Trump, these are not good faith efforts since they do not believe based on evidence (because there is none) and they will refuse all evidence and arguments that go against these beliefs. Trump’s victims believing his lies about the election and insisting there is evidence of widespread fraud is an excellent example of this. The lack of evidence has no impact on their beliefs nor does the inconsistency of some of their beliefs because all that matters is what Trump says. This, of course, is a terrible epistemic system, although it is the foundation of authoritarianism (which is what Trumpism is, at least in part).