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When I look back at over a decade of writing about gun violence, I am struck by the fact that I keep writing essentially the same thing. This is not because I am a lazy writer. This is because almost nothing changes other than the names. Those who oppose gun control have a script they follow after each mass shooting, and it contributes to ensuring that nothing changes.

Immediately after a mass shooting, some people demand more gun control. In response, those who oppose gun control respond with thoughts and prayers. They then say that now is not the time to discuss gun violence. Are they right?

On the one hand, this might be reasonable After all, strong emotions can impede good reasoning, and laws should be well crafted. There is an abundance of fallacies “fueled” by emotions that lead people astray from good reasoning, even when they are acting in good faith. Examples include appeal to anger, appeal to pity, and appeal to fear. In these fallacies, something that creates an emotional effect (anger, pity or fear) substitute for a logical reason to accept a claim. People are more likely to commit such fallacies when they have strong feelings. For example, a person’s anger about and fear of violence might lead them to think a bad law is a good idea.

A reasonable concern is that people will make poor decisions about laws or policies while feeling strong emotions and these decisions can have negative consequences or lead to ineffective solutions.  One can argue that better decisions would be made after emotions have cooled down and we should make laws and policies when our reasoning is at its best. As would be expected, the same people who advise a waiting period for discussing gun violence are quick to press for laws they favor when something happens that supports their political narratives, such as when a migrant commits a crime or has a traffic accident.

On the other hand, waiting to discuss gun violence has downsides. First, concern about gun violence fades over time as people are distracted and their emotions cool. So, a delay might not lead to a more reasonable discussion of gun laws and policies but to no real discussion at all. This is illustrated by the usual media cycle: there is a focus on the shooting for a few days and then coverage fades until the next incident. So, it seems reasonable to push for serious discussion when people are paying attention.

Second, there is the worry that the call to wait is not motivated by a desire  to have calm reflection but a tactic to take advantage of the media’s and the public’s short attention span. If the discussion can be held off long enough, people will forget (as noted above) and the status quo will continue.

While I favor a rational discussion, this can be done without waiting until people have mostly lost interest. As such, the time to discuss the matter seriously is now. And always has been.

While we consider ourselves the dominant species, we face dangers from other species. While some are large animals such as lions, tigers and bears our greatest foes tend to be tiny. These include insects, bacteria and viruses.

While we have struggled to eliminate threats new advances in technology and science have provided additional options. One of these is genetically modifying species so they cannot reproduce, thus potentially resulting in their extermination. As might be suspected, insects such as disease carrying mosquitoes and screwworms are a prime target. One approach to wiping out mosquitoes was to genetically modify mosquito eggs so adults carry “extermination” genes. The adult males are released into the wild and reproduce with native females. The offspring have the modified gene which causes the female mosquitos to be unable to fly. The males can fly normally, and they continue to “infect” the local population until (in theory) it is exterminated. There are also other ways such exterminations might be conducted, although we seem to be best at exterminating benign species. As might be imagined, the extermination option raises ethical concerns.

One concern is that intentionally exterminating a species seems morally dubious. However, this concern can be countered on utilitarian grounds. After all, if an organism (such as an insect or virus) is harmful to humans and does not have an important role in the ecosystem, then its extermination would seem morally justified because this would create more good than harm. Naturally, if a harmful species were also beneficial, then the calculation becomes more complicated and such extermination could be wrong if it would do more harm than good.

The utilitarian approach can be countered by appealing to another approach to ethics. For example, it could be argued that such extermination is simply wrong regardless of the beneficial consequences to humans. It can, however, be pointed out that species go extinct naturally and, as such, perhaps a case could be made that such exterminations are not inherently wrong. The obvious counter would be to point out that there is a moral difference between a species dying of natural causes and being destroyed by us. The distinction between killing and letting die comes to mind here.

The extermination of a harmful species can be acceptable, provided that the benefits do, in fact, outweigh the harm of extermination. Getting rid of, for example, the HIV virus would be morally acceptable—as far as we know, it has no benefits and only causes harm. There are some beneficial viruses, such as some bacteriophages.  In the case of mosquitoes, the concern would be the role it has in the ecosystem, and the impact of its extermination. If, for example, a disease carrying mosquito was an invasive species and its elimination would not impact the ecosystem in a negative way, then it would seem to be acceptable to exterminate it. Naturally, if the extermination is local and the species remains elsewhere, then there are less grounds for moral concern. After all, I have no moral objection to the extermination of the roaches, termites, fleas and other bugs that attempt to reside in my house—there are plenty of these critters in the wild and they would pose a threat to my health and house if they were allowed to dwell with me. But there is a concern that selective extermination could spread. For example, while terminates do pose a threat to my house, I would not want them controlled by means that could bring about the extinction of termites—they are an important part of the ecosystem.

A second point of concern involves methodology. While humans have attempted to wipe out species by killing them the old-fashioned ways (like poisons and gun), the use of genetic modification could be of special moral concern.

There is, of course, the usual concern with “playing God” or tampering with nature. However, as is always pointed out, we routinely accept such tampering. For example, by using artificial light, vaccines, surgery and such we are “playing God” and tampering with nature. As such, the idea that “playing God” is inherently wrong seems dubious. Rather, what is needed is to show that specific acts of “playing God” or tampering are wrong.

There is also a reasonable concern about unintended consequences, as exemplified by the use of DDT which had a host of undesirable effects. I do not, of course, think that modifying mosquitoes will create 1950s style giant mosquitoes that will rampage across the land. However, there are reasonable grounds to be concerned that genetic modification might have unexpected and unpleasant results, and this possibility should be seriously considered when modifying species to exterminate or control them.

A final point I will address is a practical one, namely that even if a species is exterminated by genetic modification another species might take its place. In the case of mosquitoes, it seems likely that if one type of mosquito is wiped out, then another one will move into the niche and the problem, such as a mosquito transmitted illness will return. Naturally, if there are good grounds to believe that the extermination would be effective and ethically acceptable, then this would be another matter.

 

 

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As a runner, martial artist and philosopher my view of the will is shaped mostly by my training and competitions. Naturally enough, I see the will from my own perspective and in my own mind. So, as Hume noted in his discussion of personal identity, I must consider that other people might see their will as very different, or they might not believe that they have a will at all.

As a gamer, I model reality in terms of game rules and statistics—I am approaching the will in the same manner. This is, of course, like modeling reality in other ways, such as using mathematical models.

In my experience, my will functions as a mental resource that allows me to control my actions. By using my will, I can prevent other factors from forcing me to act or not act in certain ways. For example, I can use my will to counter pain or hunger. Or that feeling that I need to check social media. In game terms, I see the will as being like “hit points” that get used up in the battle against these other factors. As with hit points, running out of “will points” results in defeat. Since this is rather abstract, I will illustrate this with two examples.

On August 22 I did the last of the four-part summer trail series. This was a 6-mile trail race in the Florida heat. I had re-injured my foot the week before at another cross-country race, so this run was extra challenging.  As I raced, it became increasingly painful and fatiguing. The pain and fatigue were “trying” to stop me. I wanted to keep running and doing this required expending those will points. This is because without my will the pain and fatigue would stop me before I am physically incapable of running anymore. As long as I have will points to expend, I could keep running until I collapse. At that point no amount of will can move the muscles and my capacity to exercise my will in this matter would also be exhausted. Naturally, I know that training to the point of exhaustion would do more harm than good, so I will myself take a rest day each week even though I still want to run. I also know from experience that my will can run out, and I can give in to fatigue or pain before my body is physically failing.  These occurrences are failures of will illustrate that the will can obviously run out or be overcome.

After my run, I had my breakfast and faced the temptation of a chocolate bar and whoopie pies I had made earlier that week. I really like sugar and there was a conflict between my wanting sweets and my choice not to shove lots of extra calories into my whoopie pie port. My hunger, of course, “wants” to control me. But, of course, if I yield then I am not in control—the desire is directing me against my will. Of course, the hunger is not going to “give up” and it must be controlled by expending will and doing this keeps me in control of my actions by making them my choice. Or so it seems on this narrative.

There are many competing narratives to the will in philosophy. For example, Hobbes’ account of deliberation is that competing desires (or aversions) “battle it out”, but the stronger always wins and thus there is no will or choice. For Spinoza, everything that happens must happen as it does, there is no choice or chance. Philosophers who are less dead have other accounts of the will, some involving whatever scientific view of the brain was in at the time they wrote.

 

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The basic problem of evil is that the existence of evil in the world is incompatible with the Philosophy 101 conception of God, namely that God is all good, all-powerful and all knowing. After all, if God has these attributes, then He knows about all evil, should tolerate no evil and has the power to prevent evil. While some take the problem of evil to show that God does not exist, it can also be taken as showing that this conception of God is in error. For example, if God is not all powerful (perhaps because He is opposed by an equally powerful evil being), then evil would be compatible with God.

Not surprisingly, those who accept the existence of an all good, all powerful and all-knowing deity have responded to the problem of evil. One standard response is that God has granted us free will and this necessitates that He allows us to do evil things. This, it is claimed, gets God off the hook: since we are free to choose evil, God is not accountable for the evil we do.

In a previous essay I discussed the old claim by Republican Richard Mourdock’s that “Life is that gift from God. I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something God intended to happen.” In that essay, I briefly discussed the matter of free will. In this essay I will expand on this subject. While this is callback to a debate from 2012, the victories of the anti-abortion view make this discussion relevant today.

For the sake of the discussion, I assume we have free will because I am interested in whether  free will actually get God off the hook for the evil that occurs, such as rape and its consequences.

On the face of it, free will would seem to free God from being morally accountable for our choices. After all, if God does not compel or influence our choices and we are free to select between good and evil, then the responsibility of the choice rests on the person making the decision. It should also be added that God must be be excused from responsibility for allowing evil choices—after all, for free will in the context of morality there must be the capacity for choosing good or evil. Or so the stock arguments usually claim.

For the sake of the discussion, I will accept this second assumption. This does lead to an interesting question: does allowing free will require that God allow the consequences of the evil choices to come to pass? Could God allow people moral autonomy, yet prevent their misdeeds from bearing their evil fruit?

One way to consider this is that free will requires a person be able to make a moral decision and that this decision be either good or evil (or possibly neutral). After all, a moral choice must be a moral choice. On this approach, whether free will would be compatible with God preventing occurrences (like rape or pregnancy caused by rape) would seem to depend on what makes something good or evil.

There are a multitude of moral theories attempting to explain good and evil. For the sake of brevity, I will consider two: Kant’s view and the utilitarian view (as exemplified by John Stuart Mill).

Kant famously takes the view that “A good will is good not because of what it performs or effects, not by its aptness for the attainment of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of the volition—that is, it is good in itself, and considered by itself is to be esteemed much higher than all that can be brought about by it in favor of any inclination…Its usefulness or fruitlessness can neither add to nor take away anything from this value.”

For Kant, what makes a willing (decision) good or evil is contained in the act of willing itself. Hence, there is no need to consider the consequences of an action stemming from a decision when determining the morality of that choice. An interesting illustration of this view can be found in Bioware’s Star Wars the Old Republic game. Players are often given a chance to select between light side and dark side options, thus earning light side or dark side points which determine the moral alignment of the character. For example, a player might have to choose between killing or sparing a defeated opponent.  Conveniently, the choices are labeled with symbols indicating whether they are light side or dark side—which would be useful in real life.

If Kant’s view is correct, then God could allow free will while preventing evil choices from having any harmful consequences. For example, a person could freely will that they commit rape and the moral choice would be noted by God (in anticipation of judgment day). God could prevent the rape from ever occurring—the rapist could, for example, have explosive diarrhea while trying to corner his intended victim in a changing room. As another example, a person could freely will the decision to commit murder yet find that her gun is empty when aimed at the intended victim. In short, people could be free to make moral choices while at the same time being unable to bring those evil intentions into actuality. Thus, God could allow free will while also preventing anyone from being harmed.

It might be objected that God could not do this because people figure out that they could never act on their evil decisions and hence people would (in general) stop making evil choices. Because there would be an effective deterrent to evil choices this would rob people of free will. For example, those who would otherwise decide to rape if they did not get explosive diarrhea every time they tried would stop choosing rape because they would know they would never succeed.  

The obvious reply is that free will does not mean a person gets what they will—it merely means that the person is free to will. As such, people who want to rape could still will to rape and do so freely. They just would not be able to harm anyone as they would be disabled, in this narrative, by debilitating explosive diarrhea.

It is obvious that this is not how the world works—people are able to do all manner of evil. However, since God could make the world work this way if He was all powerful, this suggests that God does not exist He is not a Kantian (which would disappoint Kant). This leads me to the utilitarian option.

On the stock utilitarian approach, the morality of an action depends on the consequences of said action. As Mill put it, “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” As such, the morality of a willing would not be determined by the will but by the consequences of the action brought about by the willing.

If this is correct, then God would need to allow the consequences of the willing to occur for the willing to be good or evil (or neutral). After all, if the willing had no consequences, then it would have no moral significance on a consequentialist view like utilitarianism. So, for example, if a person freely wills to rape, then God must not intervene. Otherwise, He would be interfering with what determines the ethics of the willing. As such, if God did not allow the rapist to act upon His willing, then the decision to rape would not be an evil decision. If it is assumed that free will is essential to God being able to judge people for their deeds and misdeeds, then He would have to allow misdeeds to bear fruit so that they would be, in fact, misdeeds. On the usual view, He then punishes or rewards people after they die.

One obvious problem with this approach is that an all-knowing God would know the consequences of an action even without allowing it to take place. As such, God could allow people to will their misdeeds and then punish them for what the consequences would have been if they had been able to act upon their intentions. After all human justice punishes people even when they are prevented from committing their crimes. For example, someone who tries to murder another person is (supposed to be) punished for attempted murder when they fail. For many crimes, people do not get a free pass if they fail in the attempt.

It might be countered that God can only punish actual evil and not potential evil. That is, if the misdeed is prevented then it is no misdeed and hence God cannot justly punish. On this view, God must allow rape so He can toast rapists in Hell. This would require that God not consider an attempted evil deed as an evil deed. So, actual murder would be wrong, but attempted murder would not. This is contrary to human justice—but it could be claimed that human law and divine law are rather different. Obviously, humans and God take very different approaches: we sometime try to keep people from committing misdeeds whereas God never does. Rather, He is content to punish long after the fact—at least on the usual account of God.

 

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When a shooting makes the news, someone will often claim that those killed would still be alive if the person who killed them did not have a gun. A talking point response to this is to point out that by this reasoning, if OJ Simpson did not have a knife, then the people who were allegedly killed by him would still be alive.

This talking point does, in a mean way, make a reasonable point. After all, people can kill without guns. Knives have been used to kill people.  Other tools have been used in violence as well, including such bizarre ones as frozen animals (or their parts). As such, getting rid of guns would not eliminate murders or suicide. From this some people conclude that nothing new should be done about guns.

Guns make killing easier as they are tools designed for that task. As such, if people did not have guns, they would have to use other means of killing, most of which make killing people more difficult. This would reduce the number of killings in the same way that if there were no cars, then Americans would be less likely to go places. If a person must work harder to accomplish a task, they are usually less likely to attempt that task.

It is also worth considering that a gun makes impulse killing easier. After all, a person can point the gun and pull the trigger and this allows  little time for thought. If people had to use slower means of killing, they might pause between the impulse to kill and the act of killing. Then again, this might have little impact. After all, a person can stab with a knife almost as fast as shooting a modern gun.

People also correctly point out that a gun can do a lot of damage, making death more likely than with many alternative means of violence. For example, a gun will usually do more damage than a club or a fist.  But there are weapons that can match guns in lethality, such as a knife, crossbow or automobile. But these are harder to use, thus reducing the chances that someone will be able to kill other people, especially many other people. There are obvious reasons, for example, that no one uses a crossbow to attempt a mass shooting. But to be fair and balanced, a person can hurt many people by driving a car into a crowd or slashing people with a knife.

But it does make sense that getting rid of guns would reduce the number of deaths in the United States. However, there is the question of the significance of the impact and the costs associated with eliminating guns. After all, getting rid of automobiles would significantly reduce deaths, yet most Americans would argue that this would not be worth the cost. The usual trump card people play is the Second Amendment, arguing that gun ownership is a legal right. But the obvious reply is that Constitutional rights (including gun rights) are limited and the Constitution can be amended. In the Free State of Florida, for example, the rulers of the state routinely pass laws limiting First Amendment rights, although these sometimes do get overturned.

Another talking point is that “when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns.” A more recent social media variant seems to argue that gun control laws should not be passed because criminals will just ignore them. The obvious problem is that this reasoning can be applied to anything and thus lead to absurdity. For example, if meth is illegal, then only criminals will have meth. While that is true, it does not give us a good reason to not try to control meth.

A final point of consideration is the usual talking point that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” This is true. After all, people do not (in general) kill just because they have guns. Rather, they use guns to kill because they have a reason (or think they have a reason) to kill. As such, banning guns would not address the foundational cause of violence, since taking away guns would not take away the reasons people kill. So, one might conclude, guns should not be banned like comedians Trump dislikes. But this is more of an argument in favor of addressing the root causes of gun violence than a good argument against banning guns. While the right is often happy to blame mental illness, they generally do not support meaningful efforts to address the mental health crisis in the United States or other causal factors behind gun violence.  

 

 

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In science fiction, a cyborg (“cybernetic organism”) is a combination of organic and technological components. Daleks, Cybermen, Terminators, the Bionic Man and the Borg are examples of fictional cyborgs. There are real-life human cyborgs, such as a person with a pacemaker.  Cyborg insects are also real. Back in 2012 I wrote about the ethics of converting beetles and checked in again to see if cyberbeetles are still a thing. They are.

Years ago, Michael M. Maharbiz and Hirotaka Sato developed an interesting, if disturbing system, for creating cyborg beetles. They equipped a beetle with a “backpack” containing electronics linked to the beetle’s muscles and nervous system, allowing the beetle to be driven about like a remote-control vehicle. These cyborgs are more efficient flyers than our mechanical creations. So, it makes practical sense to convert a beetle to a cyborg rather than trying to build a better mechanical beetle.

As far as the uses of such cyborgs, in some future battle swarms of cyberbeetles might be deployed to look for enemy soldiers within a city. As a more peaceful example, cyberbeetles might be released into the rubble after a natural disaster to locate survivors. While cyberbeetles could prove useful, there are still moral questions about their creation and use.

One obvious moral concern is that creating cyberbeetles requires modifying a beetle with technology and effectively enslaving it to serve as a drone. This involves two points of concern, namely the modification and the enslavement.

In terms of the modification, the worry is that such tampering with living creatures is morally dubious, perhaps because it is unnatural. The challenge is, of course, to develop an account of the natural in which such alterations would be wrong. I will not endeavor to do so here.

In terms of enslavement, the obvious concern is that the beetles are being treated the way the fictional Cybermen and Borg treat their victims: they take control of them with technology and rob them of their own lives. On the face of it, such technological enslavement is wrong whether it involves robbing a human or a beetle of whatever freedom they possess.

The obvious reply is, of course, that the “victims” in this case are just beetles. They do not have much of a life (or lifespan) even in the natural world and hence they are not being wronged. In fact, it could be argued that as valuable tools they would have a better life than in the wild. After all, they would be fed and protected. Presumably the Cybermen and Borg would advance similar arguments, should they ever consider the ethics of their actions. That is, the same arguments that are used to justify the enslavement of beetles could be used to justify converting humans into human versions of the beetles. This, of course, leads to another moral concern.

While there is obviously a moral distance between cyborg beetles and creating cyborg humans (basically Cybermen), allowing beetles to be converted into cyborgs is a beetle sized step towards converting higher organisms. After all, if a beetle would make a good flying spy, a bird would make an even better one. Also, imagine the usefulness of converted rats, cats, and dogs. From there it is a much smaller step to creating human cyborgs that are controlled by implants to engage in spying or combat. Enslaving humans in this manner is clearly wrong and the path to this begins, obviously enough, with these beetles.

That said, it is obviously possible to stop before we get to humans—I do not, of course, want to use a fallacious slippery slope argument here. However, before going on a journey it is generally wise to consider where it might end.

 

 

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The now infamous Flock cameras have, like data centers, united Americans in a loathing that crosses the political spectrum. But there are those who defend Flock, presumably with some not even being paid to express this view. As those familiar with my writings would guess, I’m consistently opposed to the surveillance state and hence to the Flock camera system. But I am always willing to consider arguments for mass surveillance.

One stock line I have heard from Flock defenders is that they are morally okay because we do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in public. This is partially true. In the broadest sense, the nature of public spaces is such that we cannot expect privacy in public. But there are specific cases where privacy rights can be violated even in public spaces. Obvious examples include someone intruding into your stall in a public bathroom or getting into your backpack or purse at a public library.

While photographing someone in a public space is usually morally acceptable, there are also exceptions, like upskirt photos. Upskirt photos were once legal even when the target was a minor, as a case in Oregon showed. Fortunately, laws making this illegal have passed in the United States. In terms of how this relates to Flock cameras, it does show that even in public spaces there are still privacy rights about what can be photographed. But someone can easily argue that Flock cameras are not doing the moral equivalent of upskirt photographs as they are allegedly “just” capturing images of our vehicles. Smart glasses with cameras, such as those made by Meta, are also raising privacy concerns because, unlike with a smartphone, it can be difficult to tell when you are being filmed.

As would be guessed (as with upskirt photos) women are the main target of such secret filming. From a legal standpoint, such public filming is allowed (aside from in public bathrooms, etc.) but recording audio can run afoul of the law if private conversations are recorded. Flock cameras, as far as I know, only take photos and hence escape concerns about audio recordings. But the same moral concerns about the cameras in smart glasses arise for Flock cameras: while they are not camouflaged as innocent objects, they can be difficult to spot as you are driving. As such, you and your vehicle can be Flocked without your knowledge or consent—much like how weirdos use their smart glasses to film women in public. Defenders of Flock can argue that those using Flock are different from people using smart glasses from perverse motivations and hence the analogy fails. The obvious reply is to point out that as of this writing at least 50 “rogue” officers have been charged with misusing it and other similar systems. As would be expected, much of the misuse has been to stalk women. As such, the analogy to privacy violations using the cameras in smart glasses seems somewhat reasonable.

To be fair and balanced, the analogy will fall apart under sufficient pressure. For example, Flock is an entire network of cameras and software that takes photos of vehicles without our knowledge or consent, while a guy filming women using his smart glasses without their knowledge or consent is obviously just one guy who might upload the video. But defenders of Flock will insist that the analogy does not hold. Or perhaps they would also defend the use of smart glasses in this manner.

In addition to building arguments based on the lack of an expectation of privacy in public, defenders of Flock often draw an analogy to how Flock is like having a police officer at an intersection, checking out cars and taking notes. Or, since Flock is a private company, like having a police officer and a CEO checking out cars and taking notes at an intersection. However, as opponents point out, it is not like having a single person doing this. It is like having thousands of police (and corporate employees) watching everyone and sharing their notes with each other. This, one might argue, is equivalent to stalking.

But a Flock defender might express doubt: how could having many people watching other people be like stalking? After all, stalking involves one person directing repeated unwanted attention at a specific person that causes the target fear or distress. Going back to the police officer analogy, a cop watching an intersection, even with a CEO with them, is not stalking. They are just watching people go by and there is not that pattern of repeated unwanted attention that is essential to stalking. They could apply the same argument to the analogy involving having thousands of police (and other people) watching their own sections of streets—no one observer is repeating the pattern of unwarranted attention. It is just thousands of unrelated incidents of unwanted attention. At this point, you can see where this is going.

While a single Flock camera at one location would not be stalking, a Flock camera that followed you around all day would be. But as the Flock cameras are in a network, you are being stalked by Flock—it is a repeated pattern of unwanted attention and thus violates your moral right not to be stalked. That is, the Flock is following you all day through its many eyes, like a monster.

 

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When I was a boy, I was small, smart and sensitive. As a good father, my dad did his best to help me develop the manly virtues.  As part of this process, I was sent to basketball camp to develop my skills and build character. I was a terrible player with no skill and no interest in the sport. I much preferred reading to shooting hoops. But I tried to do the best I could within the limits of my abilities. This virtue has proven very useful over the years.

During one drill, the coach called for the best player to run to the center of the court. Immediately all the other boys jumped up and ran. Having an honest understanding of my relative skills, I remained seated. The coach had excellent self-control, and I saw the surprise on his face for only a split second—in retrospect, I am sure I was the first boy to ever do that as we are always supposed to think of ourselves as the best, especially when we are not. I am not sure how the original plan was supposed to play out, but the coach had to do something. He made us all do pushups and I had to do twice as many as everyone else. The coach really did do his best to make us better but had probably never had to deal with my brand of weirdness.

Even at the time I thought this was an odd exercise. It seemed to be aimed at encouraging self-deception and that seemed, even to the young me, wrong. The other boys blamed me (correctly) for the pushups, and this made me even more of an outsider at camp. I knew better than to discuss this with the other boys, but the incident has obviously stuck with me.

While the coaches did their best to improve my skills, when I tried out for the basketball team in high school the coach said they had an important position for me, that of manager. When I said “coach, I have to do a sport” he said, “go out for winter track…they take everybody.” He was right, although winter track did have its own hierarchy. Before the season, the coach put everyone through a series of tests to see what they were good at, with sprinting and jumping events being the most prestigious. Those without any discernible talents became distance runners. That is how I became a distance runner. While not great in high school, my talent for getting lost on runs made me into a good college runner and I ended up being all-conference in cross country twice. After college I kept racing and still “race” today.

For years and even now, people ask me if I will win the race. Back in the day, it was a question about winning overall. Now it is a question about winning my age group. I always give an honest answer, which is usually “no.” Although this seems to bother people, honesty compels me to keep being…honest. While I have won races, I am now 60 years old and my only hopes of victory involve either no one else showing up or divine intervention. While this might seem humble, I struggle with arrogance.

Not long ago, my pride would push me to say that my younger self would have run the race faster than the current winner—when that was true. I am arrogant but not dishonest. But my honesty forced me to confront that looking back on how good I was and comparing that past self to the winner of today’s race is unhealthy and petty. My old times do pop into my head, and I cannot help but make comparisons, but I do try to keep that vice in check. So, I have an odd combination of knowing I am not the best but also being arrogant. But is there an advantage to thinking one is the best or at least better than one is? Was I wrong not to run out when the coach asked for the best player?

On the one hand, I get the point of some degree of self-deception. It could be argued that a person who thinks they are the best will push them towards being the best. Having been racing for decades, I know people like this, and they often push themselves because they believe they are better than they are and are driven to contend against people who are better runners. There can be a downside to this, as those who think they are better than they are sometimes get angry and make excuses for losing to maintain the illusion of their superiority.

On the other hand, this sort of self-deception can be a problem After all, a person who wrongly thinks they are the best will not be acting rationally. In fact, they will probably be suffering from cognitive biases.  

One bias is “overconfidence effect.” This bias causes a person to believe they have done better than they have done. As a professor, I often see this bias in students. For example, I have lost track of the times a student has said “my paper felt like an A” when it was a D (or worse) or has said “I think I did great on the test” when it turns out that they did not do great.

A closely related bias is the “better-than-average illusion.” A person falls victim to this when they overestimate their abilities relative to others. As people often think very highly of themselves, they commonly fall into this trap.

While confidence can be a good thing and demoralizing yourself is not going to do you any favors, these biases have negative consequences. One problem is that they can cause people to do worse. After all, a person who overestimates their performance or abilities might not try as hard as they should. They will think they are already doing much better than they are, thus overestimating their performance and coming to a false conclusion about, for example, their grade or skill at running. This is most likely to occur when they do not have immediate feedback, such as on a test or paper. Even when they do get feedback, they will be inclined to think the feedback is mistaken. If someone gets good at rejecting reality, they might have an excellent career in modern American politics.

This bias can also cause a person to “burn out” by trying too hard based on a mistaken assessment of their abilities. For example, inexperienced runners often sprint at the start of a race only to discover that they are not as capable as they had believed. It can even happen to people who should know better. For example, some years ago I went to the USA 15K championship race as part of a team. Before the race, our best runner bragged about running with the Kenyans. While he got off to a good start, some world class female runner passed him. This broke him and he gave up, leaving the race. These women obviously also passed me, but I knew my capabilities and was honest about them, so I just stuck to my plan. I knew what I could do and what I could not do—and I knew I miles left in the race and I would just burn myself out trying to stick with these women. Despite losing one runner, we placed third overall as a team. My experience is that I do better when I have an accurate assessment of my abilities relative to my competition, especially in running. I always try to do my best—but to do this, I must have an accurate gauge of what this is to avoid overconfidence and to resist being defeated by my own pride. While a runner can lie to themselves about how well they should have run and make excuses, one of the many good things about running is that the time you run is an objective fact. This makes it difficult to maintain delusions, and everyone can see how good or bad you are. Unfortunately, this is not true across all of life and incompetent and ignorant grifters can lie their way into positions of power and lie endlessly about their failures being great successes. To be fair and balanced, the incredible success made possible by being good at lying and grifting does tell against my view about honesty. But, perhaps out of spite, I think that the fact that grifting can be seen as a success is condemnation of the system we have collectively built.

It might be objected that my rational assessment of my abilities robs me of the delusional passion that one must have to be a true competitor. This is, however, not the case. As my friends will attest, while I am gracious in defeat I hate to lose. In fact, honesty compels me to say that I hate losing more than I love winning. And I really love to win. As such, when I get to the starting line or play a competitive video game, I am there to win and to make others lose. But victory often rests on knowing what my competitors and I can and cannot do. I gain no advantage by deluding myself into thinking I am better than I am or they are worse than they are. Once again, it might be objected that grifting and lying are very effective in our political and economic system, so being honest is disadvantageous. To be fair and balanced, if we embrace the sophist view that only success matters and define success in terms of getting money and power, then honesty is a losing option. But as we can see the horrific consequences of the griftocracy of lies we live in, it seems evident that honesty remains the best policy.

God & Rape: The Problem of Evil

Way back in 2012, Republican Richard Mourdock said he believed that abortion is acceptable only to save the life of the mother. Then he went on to say: “Life is that gift from God. I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something God intended to happen.” Mourdock was criticized for these remarks, but my interest is not in revisiting the political fights of 2012. Rather, I will instead focus on his claim that if a woman gets pregnant from rape, then God intended it to happen. This is a narrowly focused version of the problem of reconciling a certain conception of God (all good, all powerful and all knowing) with the existence of evil. It also falls under the question of God’s causal relation to the world.

Mourdock presented a view of God that has long  been argued for by theologians and philosophers. This is the view that God is the cause of all that occurs and that nothing occurs contrary to God’s intention.  For example, Hume in his essay on the immortality of the soul, writes “as every effect implies a cause, and that another, till we reach the first cause of all, which is the Deity; everything that happens is ordained by him…”

As far as things happening against God’s intention, this would seem impossible given the assumption that God is all powerful and all knowing. After all, things could only go against His intention if He lacked the power to do otherwise or something took place without His knowledge. If He is all knowing and all powerful, then nothing can happen contrary to His intention. Thus, if someone becomes pregnant from rape, then God (if He exists) intended that to happen-just as Mourdock claimed.

It might be replied that God allows things to happen contrary to His intention because of free will. In the case of rape, the rapist freely willed that they would commit rape and God had to allow that to happen. While this might get Him off the hook about allowing rape, it does not do so in the case of pregnancy. After all, God could allow rapists to freely rape and still prevent rape from causing pregnancy. He could, for example, give women that pregnancy shut down system that Todd Akin infamously mentioned. Or, even better, he could allow people the free will to choose rape but prevent them from ever acting on that choice. God could, for example, give them explosive diarrhea until they stopped free willing an intention to rape.  As such, if God exists, then God does intend for the pregnancies that arise from rape.

There is, of course, the question of whether women should be legally compelled to endure these God intended pregnancies. An anti-abortion person might argue that since God intended the woman to get pregnant from rape, then abortions should not be allowed because God’s intentions must be honored.  The easy and obvious reply to this is that the same logic would entail that we should do nothing in response to anything that happens other than accept it as God’s intention. To use a silly example, if your house is on fire, then God intended it to be on fire and hence you should let it burn.  This is the same logic as reasoning that if a woman is impregnated by rape, then she should complete the pregnancy.

It can also be argued that we can determine God’s intentions about abortion by allowing abortion. After all, if God intends for the pregnancy to go through, then God can guarantee that happens since what God wants God gets. If an abortion succeeds, then either God intended for it to succeed (and thus the abortion should have been conducted) or God does not exist (or was unable to act on His intention). As such, arguing against abortion based on God’s alleged intent is absurd.

 

 

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Each Sunday I toss my neighbor’s paper down the steep steps from her driveway to her door. During one toss, I saw that Peanuts was still appearing as a Sunday cartoon. Since Charles Schulz is no longer with us, I wondered if someone else was drawing Peanuts. I did learn that Boom Studios has published new Peanuts stories, such as the graphic novel Snoopy: A Beagle of Mars.  But the cartoons in the Sunday paper are reprints.

The continuation of characters and settings beyond the death of the original creator is not new.  Nor is the transfer of creative control of characters and settings anything new. Characters such as Superman and Batman have lived on to be monetized after their creators have died. Star Trek continued after the death of Gene Rodenberry with the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise and beyond. Frank Herbert’s Dune universe has spawned numerous books, including prequels. The same is true of Asimov’s Foundation series.

In general, the legality of the continuation of characters and settings can be easily settled (with obvious exceptions). Intellectual properties are just that, properties. So, they can be inherited, bought and sold like any other property. If a company owns the legal rights to Peanuts, then they can do with it as they wish within whatever agreements might be in effect. Naturally, there can be nasty legal battles and disputes when it comes to specific properties, but this is not anything legally special about even beloved intellectual properties like Peanuts or Star Trek. As a philosopher, I do have thoughts about this.

There is a moral question of whether creations should be continued after the death of the creator. This can, of course, be tied to legal concerns in many ways. If, for example, the creator agreed to this continuation in a contract or other agreement, then the continuation would be morally acceptable, if the agreement was not coerced. If the creator made it clear that they did not want the work continued, then even if someone (say a relative who inherited the property) had the legal right to continue the work, then doing so would be morally dubious. This would also apply to cases in which characters and settings had entered the public domain. While people would have the legal right to use the characters and settings, there is still the moral question of whether they should do so—especially if they degrade the characters and settings. For example, the John Carter movie is based on Burroughs’ works which are now public domain. However, the treatment of these excellent works was so awful that one could argued that Disney did something morally wrong. I am also concerned with the matter of aesthetic identity.

Philosophers love to debate identity, especially personal identity. Fortunately,  a discussion of aesthetic identity can bypass many of the usual metaphysical problems of identity since the fictional characters and settings do not have the ontological status of actual people and settings/ Unless, of course, one believes that fictional worlds are also actual worlds. However, there are still concerns about identity in aesthetics.

In the case of characters, the concern is like that of personal identity: when a character is continued by someone other than the original creator, is the character still the same character? For example, if someone else draws and writes Charlie Brown, is that character still Charlie Brown in terms of aesthetic identity? Or is it a character that looks similar and says similar things but is a mere imitator, a doppelgänger? In some cases, the continuity of aesthetic identity does seem possible. After all, it seems that many comic book characters retain sufficient identity to still be the same characters even though they are drawn and scripted by different people (and played by different actors in movies). For example, most would agree that Spider Man is still Spider Man across most of the movies.  

 Interestingly, it can be argued that in some cases even the creator fails to preserve the aesthetic identity of a character. What is needed, of course, is a full account of the aesthetic identity of characters—a project that goes beyond this short essay.

In the case of settings, aesthetic identity is also of concern. For example, there is the question of whether the universe in the newer prequels to Dune is similar enough to Herbert’s Dune universe in terms of its aesthetic qualities to be the same universe. As another example, the latest versions of Star Trek and Star Wars raise questions about whether they are still Star Trek and Star Wars in terms of aesthetic identity. I know there are dumb culture war fights over Trek and Star Wars. Star Trek has always been woke—just watch the original series, so saying modern Trek is not Trek because it has something to say about racism is an error. But one can raise good faith concerns about whether the Trek retain the aesthetic identity of Star Trek. There is also the question of whether the modern Trek shows are good; after all the original series had some bad episodes (“Spock’s Brain”) but were still Trek.

 While the identity of a setting would include obvious factors such as getting the locations, inhabitants, history and such right, there is also the matter of capturing the “look and feel” of the setting. Beyond that, there are also the deeper qualities that define a setting, such as the Star Trek universe.  So, while a book might get all the facts about the Foundation universe right, it might fail to capture the aesthetic qualities that made the Foundation universe the Foundation universe. As with the aesthetic identity of characters, the specific conditions of the aesthetic identity of settings would also need to be developed. As I am all too familiar with the endless manufactured culture war fights, I always strive to be clear that I am not engaged in that sort of thing. My concern here is not with the manufactured culture war fight over identity politics, but with the philosophic subject of aesthetic identity of characters and settings. That is, what makes, for example, Spider Man the same character across the spider verse?