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To narrow the moral discussion, I am focusing children migrating to the United States who are not criminals. One reason for this is that the issue of whether criminals should be allowed to come here for the purpose of committing crimes has an easy and obvious answer.

As some Americans like to claim that the United States is a Christian nation, it is tempting to apply Christian ethics to the issue of whether children should be allowed to migrate to the country. While many professed Christians prefer a selective reading of the bible,  the book is clear about this issue: “Thus has the LORD of hosts said, ‘Dispense true justice and practice kindness and compassion each to his brother; and do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.’” The bible also enjoins people to “not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.” Given these statements, it seems to follow that those who profess to practice Christian ethics would be morally (and religiously) obligated to show compassion and kindness to the children who are strangers and foreigners.

There are those who take these injunctions seriously and act accordingly. However, there are others who profess faith but do not heed the words: “But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears from hearing.…” To be fair and balanced, they might sincerely believe that Christian ethics is limited to the values they happen to like.

Alternatively, a person could profess they embrace Christian ethics but contend these principles are overridden by more important concerns. One possible line of argumentation is to point out that children who arrive here illegally should not be given the full measure of compassion but sent back to their place of origin. Another line of argumentation is utilitarian: though extending kindness and compassion to migrant children would be laudable, this would require resources that are either unavailable or would be better used elsewhere (such as helping poor Americans). On this view, utilitarian ethics or practical concerns would trump religious based ethics.

There are non-Christians and those, though professing to be Christians, explicitly reject the principles mentioned above. Such people would need other reasons to believe that migrant children should be treated with compassion and kindness.

One option to appeal to a principle of moral debt: when someone has been harmed, the wrongdoer has an obligation to set matters right. While children migrate for various reasons, many from Central America migrate to escape violence and crime. This claim can be challenged—one could argue that the children are sent to the United States for other reasons, such as better economic opportunities. Some of these arguments have merit and must be given due consideration. After all, if children are coming to the United States illegally to escape danger and death, then that is very different morally than if they are coming to have a better life.

But it seems reasonable to think that some of the children are fleeing danger. An obvious concern is why this might obligate the United States to allow them to stay. One answer, as noted above, is to appeal to a moral debt owed by the United States. Some might wonder what the foundation of such a debt might be. There are two easy and obvious answers to this.

The first is that the United States has a well-documented history of political and economic machinations in the region. These include toppling governments, supporting death squads, and other such nefarious deeds. In short, the United States has significantly contributed to the conditions that threaten the children of the region with death and danger. Fairness does, of course, require noting that the United States has not been alone in its adventures in the region (the Cold War helped shape much of the current situation) and some instability and chaos is self-inflicted. Given the United States’ role in creating the current situation, we owe a collective debt, and this would obligate us to addressing the consequences of these past actions.

The second is that a significant cause of violence in the region is the production and distribution of drugs. While there is some local consumption, the people of the United States are a primary market for the drugs produced in this region and the war on drugs pursued by the United States has been even more disastrous in Central and South America than it has been in the United States. Given our role as drug consumers and our war on drugs, the United States is  a major contributor to the violence and danger of the region. Since we are doing wrong, this would create an obligation on our part towards the children that are fleeing the situation we helped to create and continue to sustain.

To use an analogy, if affluent outsiders wreck a neighborhood and are the prime customers for a drug industry that arises there, then the outsiders are moral accountability. If children try to flee the ruins of that neighborhood and head into the affluent neighborhood, it would be wicked of those people to insist on sending them back into the mess they worked so hard to create and maintain.

 

 

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In my previous essays I wrote about the sharing economy, focusing on regulations and taxes. In this essay I will cover resources (human and other). The new sharing economy is exemplified by companies such as Uber and Airbnb that organize transactions between individuals. In the case of Uber, people can sell rides in their own cars—without (as of this writing) all the usual costs and regulations of operating a cab. In the case of Airbnb, people can rent out property and (as of this writing) generally avoid the usual regulations associated with running a hotel.

For the people providing goods and services, the new sharing economy  is supposed to make it easier to earn money. In general, the new sharing economy involves three parties. The first is the person who provides the actual good (apartment, for example) or service (a ride to the airport, for example). The second is the person who uses the service and the third is the company that provides the organizing service. While this is an old model (people have long offered services and goods via things like newspaper ads), technology changed the scale of this once informal economy. It has also served to blur the traditional roles. Those who provide the goods and services are, it is often argued, not  employees of the organizing services and those using the goods and services are not exactly customers of the services. There are some advantages and some disadvantages to this.

In the case of those providing the services and goods, one obvious advantages is that they can make money. While they could do this without the organizing service, the service is supposed to make this easier and provides other advantages.

One of the advantages of not actually being an employee of the organizing services is that the provider has a degree of autonomy usually absent in the traditional employee-employer relationship. The provider can (within the constraints of economic need) work as little as desired and is free to stop at will. This autonomy appeals to some people—especially those looking for a more traditional job while making money to pay the bills. In some ways, the situation is somewhat like being a temp worker.

Of course, there are many disadvantages to being a provider. One is that there are typically no benefits and no job security. Also, the risks and costs all fall heavily on the provider. For example, if someone crashes into the company truck Sally is driving, then the company handles the matter. But, if Sally is driving for Uber and her car is hit, this is most likely going to work exactly as it would if Sally was just driving to Starbucks for a latte—that is, it is on her.

Another point of concern is that the organizer might be in the position to set rates or impose other limits—much like a traditional boss can. For example, Uber can set what drivers are paid.

But this is nothing new—people who do freelance work or are self-employed in the usual sense face all these problems. After all, being a worker in America always puts one at a disadvantage and being what amounts to a temp or freelancer can be even less optimal in terms of security and pay.

There are many advantages to the companies. One is that their workers are usually not considered employees. Another is that the worker, for the most part, also provide the essential resources like vehicles and property. While the companies do incur costs, they are able to avoid (or significantly reducing) the usual costs of running a business. For example, a hotel needs to have hotel employees and an actual hotel. Airbnb does not—the providers provide the services and buildings. As another example, a service that organizes drivers does not need to buy cars, maintain them or insure them—thus resulting in considerable savings relative to a company that must hire drivers as employees and buy vehicles.

In essence, the new sharing economy splits management from what would traditionally be the resources (human or otherwise) of a company. The organizer takes on the role of management while avoiding the need to have traditional human resources (beyond the administrative aspects of the business) and the need to have the material resources (beyond those needed for the administrative aspects).

Some companies do operate in something of a hybrid mode—having workers as well as material resources owned by the company while also having a sharing aspect to the business. This is a variation of the old model of a company hiring temp workers, freelancers and contractors.

This model can, apparently, be profitable—in large part due to matters of scale. After all, getting a slice of thousands of sales can result in a profit. Also, many of these companies benefit from tech inflation—the almost magical overvaluation of companies with business models based on the right sort of tech. That said, Uber famously operated at a loss for years and some suspect that the sharing economy is built to enrich the very few rather than for creating sustainable businesses. Which, to be fair and balanced, is often how the traditional economy operates.

Given the apparent success of companies like Uber and Airbnb, I predicted years ago that there would be a sharing bubble. But we have seemed to have gotten enshitification. While noting that there are some limits on what sort of sharing companies can exist (or example, airlines and heavy manufacturing are not really fit for the sharing economy) I speculated that additional advances in economy might see new areas for the sharing economy. For example, if 3D printers become truly viable, light and specialized manufacturing might become part of the sharing economy. While this might still occur, the new bubble is the AI bubble. But we might see the residue of the AI bubble worked into the sharing economy.

 

 

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As with regulation, some people are opposed to taxes. Other people are fine with taxes—usually with imposing taxes on others. In general, though, people prefer to not pay taxes. As such, it is hardly a surprise that the companies running the sharing economy try to avoid paying taxes. On the face of it, companies like Airbnb and Uber profess they are just providing a way to connect people to pay for goods and services. This can be seen as a more organized version of the old informal sharing economy in which people sublease, rent out property, or get gas money to drive a friend to the airport.

The old informal economy often operates without taxes being paid (although this is not always done legally). For example, if Professor Sally informally rents her house to her grad student Bob while she is in Europe, Professor Sally and Bob will probably not pay taxes for this—although they would if Bob was renting a room at a hotel Sally owns. While there are probably people who would like taxes paid on even informal transactions, the informal nature of such transactions often makes this impractical. The traditional informal sharing economy is small and decentralized so taxing it would probably be cost prohibitive. There is also the legitimate concern that such private transactions can fall outside of the domain of state concern.

However, when a company such as Airbnb gets involved, things change. The once informal economy becomes centralized around companies and there is also an increase in the scale of operations. After all, it is one thing if Professor Sally’s grad student is paying a modest fee to stay in her house while she is in Europe, it is quite another if Professor Sally starts running her house as a hotel. It also becomes a different matter if the number of people renting out property increases significantly. There would seem to be three important changes between the informal sharing economy and the new sharing economy.  The first is centralization. Instead of people reaching informal agreements as individuals (who often know each other), there would be business transactions through a central company. The second would be the character of the process—short-term renting via a company is closer to the hotel model than to the old informal model. The third would be the number of people involved: the sharing economy would presumably be larger than the old informal economy.

From a practical standpoint, having a centralized company and a large operation allows the collection of taxes to become much more practical. This can justify taxing the sharing economy like other businesses.

From a moral standpoint, if it is acceptable for businesses with the same model (such as the traditional hotel) to be taxed in a certain way, then the same would apply to the new sharing economy. So, if Sally would have to handle taxes if she ran a traditional hotel, then she should have to do the same if she ran her sharing economy hotel through a service like Airbnb. Or perhaps Airbnb should be the one to handle the taxes.

Naturally, it might be wondered why taxes should be imposed on the new sharing economy—even if the new sharing economy is similar to the old economy. Of course, the people who make money through sharing rides or apartments do pay taxes for that income. However, there was some controversy over services like Airbnb paying the hotel tax.

One reason for sharing companies to pay taxes and fees like traditional companies is fairness. After all, the free market is not as free if some companies enjoy special breaks. Although, to be fair and balanced, the American economy is built on special breaks.  Another reason is that the taxes and fees are needed to pay the public services and infrastructure that such companies (and their sharers) utilize. It might be contended that this is already covered by the income taxes paid by individuals engaged in sharing. However, by that logic, businesses would also be exempt from taxes and fees on the grounds that their employees pay taxes. Which would certainly appeal to businesses that pay taxes.

 Also, the growth of the sharing economy imposes new costs on the community like having a similar new business. For example, having many Uber drivers is like adding a large cab company. As another example, having Airbnb rentals in a community makes the area more like a hotel zone, with the accompanying burden on the community. As such, if the community (which includes those who are not part of the sharing economy) faces increased costs then it is acceptable to pass these costs on to those who benefit from this new economy.

There is also the cost of regulating the industries. As  noted in my previous essay, when the sharing economy becomes comparable to the normal businesses (such as hotels and cab companies), then comparable public good (such as safety) regulations should apply. Naturally, these come with costs, and it makes sense that the costs should be connected to the profits, rather than just be taken from the community. For example, with non-professional drivers acting like cab drivers and people renting out apartments and homes like hotels, there are legitimate concerns about public safety. Cab companies and hotels bear some of the cost of their regulation and so too should the sharing companies.

Naturally, there is the general debate about what is a fair tax or fee and concerns about the impact of taxes on the economy. However, it seems reasonable to believe that the sharing economy is analogous to the non-sharing economy and that it should bear a fair share of costs imposed upon the community.

 

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The success of companies such as Airbnb and Uber created a massive sharing economy. The idea grounding the sharing economy is an old one: people provide goods and services as individuals rather than as employees or businesses. A classic example is paying a neighborhood kid to mow lawns or babysit. Another is paying a friend’s gas money for a ride to the airport. The new version of sharing changes the traditional model, probably in ways that make it sharing in name only. One difference is that the old sharing economy was usually an informal system while the new sharing economy is organized by companies. As an example of the old sharing economy, your neighbor might tell you about the teenager she hired to babysit her kids or mow her lawn. As an example of the new sharing economy, you might use the Uber app to pay a soccer mom to give you a ride to the airport in her mini van. Unlike the old sharing economy in which your neighbor (probably) did not take a cut for connecting you to a sitter or mower, these companies get a cut of the proceeds—which could be justified by the services they provide.

The new sharing economy has been praised and defended based on the claim that it makes it easier for people to make money in challenging economic times. For example, the ideal is that anyone can make extra money by driving for Uber or Grubhub. However, the sharing (or gig) economy has been harshly criticized since its inception.

As might be suspected, early critics of the sharing economy included people whose livelihoods and profits were threatened. For example, Uber’s conflicts with taxi services routinely made the news. Some people dismissed these criticisms as the usual lamentations of obsolete industries while others take them seriously. As the sharing economy has embedded itself deeply over the years, there have been ongoing criticisms.

One point of concern is regulation. In most (if not all) cases, the sharing economy exploits loopholes in the informal economy, which is regulated less than the formal economy. For example, professional cab drivers are subject to many strict regulations while an Uber driver is not. As another example, the hotel industry is regulated while services like Airbnb were largely unregulated, although this has changed over the years. These companies also used the strategy of simply ignoring whatever regulations got in their way.

Some proponents of the free market might praise the limited (or nonexistent) regulation, and this praise might have some merit. After all, it has long been contended that regulation impedes profits. However, there are at least two legitimate concerns here.

One is, obviously enough, fairness. If taxi drivers and hotels are subject to strict regulations that also involve additional costs, then it is obviously not fair that companies like Uber and Airbnb can offer the same services while evading these regulations. One obvious option is to impose them on the sharing economy (which “the left” tends to favor). Another obvious option is to reduce regulations on the traditional economy (which “the right” tends to endorse). In any case, fairness would seem to require comparable regulation for comparable industries.

The second is safety and other concerns relating to the public good. While some regulations might be seen as burdensome, others exist to protect the public. For example, hotels are held to certain standards of cleanliness and safety. Since the new sharing economy puts people at risk in similar ways, it seems reasonable to impose comparable regulations on the sharing economy. After all, whether you are getting a hotel room or going through Airbnb, you should have a reasonable expectation that you will not perish in a fire.

It might be countered that the new sharing economy should still fall under the rules of the old sharing economy. For example, if I ask a friend to take me to the airport and she has an awful car and is a terrible driver, it is not the business of the state to regulate my choice (although the state should address any traffic violations). As another example, if I sleep on a friend’s couch, it is not the business of the state to make sure that the couch is properly cleaned and that the house is suitable (beyond being up to code).

While this does have some appeal, there are two main arguments against it. The first is that the informal economy is largely unregulated because it is informal and hence difficult to regulate because there is no central organizing entity for the state to deal with. Once a company like Uber or Airbnb gets into the picture, the economy is now formal—there is now a company organizing things. This allows a practical means of regulating what is now commercial activity.

The second is scale. When the informal economy is relatively small, the cost and difficulty of regulating for the public good can be prohibitive. For example, regulating neighborhood babysitters or people who give the occasional ride to friends and get gas money would impose a high cost for a little return. However, when part of the informal economy gets organized by a company and greatly expands, then there is more at stake and hence paying the cost of regulating for the public good becomes viable. For example, regulating people occasionally giving friends or associates rides is one thing (a silly thing), but regulating large numbers of people driving vehicles for Uber is different.

 

 

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Academic freedom is usually taken as being more than merely the right to freely make specific claims in that it is supposed to provide broad protection in such matters as selecting books, developing curriculum and so on. It is also supposed to protect professors (tenured professors at least) from being unjustly fired or punished for expressing their views. It is, of course, not a license to act without consequences.

While defending academic freedom is often seen as leftist, conservatives have accused the left of restricting the academic freedom of conservative thinkers. While this claim is often hyperbole, there have been past incidents of faculty being punished for holding views that are regarded as politically incorrect. For example, Mike Adams was apparently once denied promotion to full professor based on his political engagement rather than a lack of qualifications. There were past proposals to replace academic freedom with academic justice.  While justice sounds good, the proposal was to substitute an ideological test in place of the general right. In short, academics could research what they wished, if it was consistent with the definition of “justice” in use. There were also proposals for trigger warnings, which also raised concerns about academic freedom. The right, in general, criticized such things and professed to favor freedom. As such, one might think that when they came into power, they would push for freedom.

One specific problem of academic freedom arises for state colleges and universities. While even for-profit schools receive money from the government, state schools receive funding as decided by the state legislature. While academic institutes, they are subject to the control of the state government.

Given that the state government is (in theory) acting in accord with the “will of the people” and that the schools are funded with state money, it is not unreasonable to believe that the state has the right to impose a degree of control over the schools. An important question is the extent to which the state should impose on academic freedom. As might be guessed, people answer this question based largely on their ideology.

As noted above, some of the loudest voices crying out for academic freedom were once on the right. Or rather, those crying out for freedom for certain views. When Republicans have power, they tend to pass laws that restrict freedom. For example, Florida’s state legislature has been busy reshaping the general education of the state schools. The law includes a ban on teaching “identity politics”, it forbids teaching that “systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States” but requires that humanities courses must include selections from the Western canon (even, for example, a GENED class on Japanese literature). And, of course, the Trump regime, which professes to love freedom, has been very busy intimidating universities to push them to conform to his will.

This view of freedom is not surprising. As Mill noted in his classic work on liberty, people rarely make decisions on liberty based on a consistent principle about what should be allowed and what should be restricted. Instead, people decide based on what they like and dislike. As such, it is hardly a shock that folks on the left and right praise freedom when it is protecting something they like while they are happy to restrict freedom when it involves something they dislike.

While the law is whatever those in power say it is, there is still the question of whether the state has the right to make such impositions. As noted above, one way to argue is that since the state funds them and they are public institutions, then the state government has the right to dictate to the universities in such matters as the content of their courses.

If this line of reasoning is good, then this would be a general principle and not one just limited to the Republicans wanting to purge “woke” content and DEI. So, if a state legislature passed laws forbidding teaching business courses or courses in religion, then that would be acceptable under this principle. It would also be acceptable for a law to be passed banning the teaching of Western history, Western values, anything that is seen as endorsing the patriarchy, and anything that is positive about white males and so on. That is, this principle would allow any state to impose any ideology onto the state schools.

Republicans would, one can infer, adamantly oppose to the ideology of their opposition setting the content for public schools. As such, it is probably fair to say that they do not have a general principle about the degree of state control over state schools but rather think that the schools should teach what Republicans like and not teach what they do not like—which is hardly a principle. In my own case, I follow a consistent principle of academic freedom and hence just as I oppose Florida mandating that GENED classes must not teach that “systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States”, I would also oppose a law that required GENED classes to teach this.

 

 

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Years ago, Azim Shariff and Kathleen Vohs had their article, “What Happens to a Society That Does Not Believe in Free Will”, published in Scientific American. This article considers the causal impact of disbelief in free will with a specific focus on law and ethics.

Philosophers have long addressed the general problem of free will as well as the specific connection between free will and ethics. Not surprisingly, studies conducted to determine the impact of disbelief in free will have the results that philosophers have long predicted.

One impact is that when people have doubts about free will they tend to have less support for retributive punishment. Retributive punishment, as the name indicates, is punishment aimed at making a person suffer for their misdeeds. Doubt in free will did not negatively impact a person’s support for punishment aimed at deterrence or rehabilitation.

While the authors did consider a reason for this, namely that those who doubt free will would regard wrongdoers as like harmful natural phenomenon that need to be dealt with rather than subject to vengeance, this view also matches a common view about moral accountability. To be specific, moral accountability is generally held to be proportional to the control a person has over events. To illustrate, consider the difference between these two cases. In the first case, Sally is speeding, texting, and sipping her latte. She doesn’t see the crossing guard frantically waving his sign and runs over the children in the crosswalk. In case two, Jane is driving the speed limit and children suddenly run directly in front of her car. She brakes and swerves immediately, but she hits a child. Intuitively, Sally acted in a way that was morally wrong—she should have been going the speed limit, and she should have been paying attention. Jane, though she hit the children, did not act wrongly, she could not have avoided the children and hence is not morally responsible.

For those who doubt free will, every case is like Jane’s: for the determinist, every action is determined and a person could not have chosen to do other than they did. On this view, while Jane’s accident seems unavoidable, so was Sally’s: Sally could not have done other than she did. As such, Sally is no more morally accountable than Jane. For someone who believes this, inflicting retributive punishment on Sally would be no more reasonable than seeking vengeance against Jane.

 However, it would seem to make sense to punish Sally to deter others and to rehabilitate Sally so she will drive the speed limit and pay attention in the future. Of course, if there is no free will, then we would not chose to punish Sally, she would not chose to behave better and people would not decide to learn from her lesson. Events would happen as determined—she would be punished or not. She would do it again or not. Other people would do the same thing or not. Naturally enough, to speak of what we should decide to do in regard to punishments would seem to assume that we can chose—that is, that we have some degree of free will.

A second impact that Shariff and Vohs noted was that a person who doubts free will tends to behave worse than a person who does not have such a skeptical view. One area where behavior worsens is that such skepticism seems to incline people to be more willing to harm others. Another area is that such skepticism also inclines others to lie or cheat. In general, the impact seems to be that such skepticism reduces a person’s willingness (or capacity) to resist impulsive reactions in favor of greater restraint and better behavior.

Once again, this makes sense. Going back to the examples of Sally and Jane, Sally (unless she is a moral monster) would feel remorse and guilt for hurting the children. Jane, though she would surely feel bad, should not feel moral guilt. This would certainly be reasonable: a person who hurts others should feel guilty if she could have done otherwise but should not feel moral guilt if she could not have done otherwise (although she certainly should feel sympathy). If someone doubts free will, then she will see her own actions as being out of her control: she is not choosing to lie, or cheat or hurt others—these events are just happening. People might be hurt, but this is like a tree falling on them, it just happens. Interestingly, these studies show that people are consistent in applying the implications of their skepticism to moral (and legal) accountability.

One important point is to consider what view we should have regarding free will. I take a practical view of this matter and believe in free will. As I see it, if I am right, then I am…right. If I am wrong, then I could not believe otherwise. So, choosing to believe I can choose is the rational choice: I am right or I am not at fault for being wrong.

I agree with Kant that we cannot prove that we have free will. He believed that the best science of his day was deterministic and that the matter of free will was beyond our epistemic abilities. While science has marched on since Kant, free will is still unprovable. After all, deterministic, random and free-will universes would all seem the same to the people in them. Crudely put, there are no observations that would establish or disprove metaphysical free will. There are, of course, observations that can indicate that we are not free in certain respects—but completely disproving (or proving) free will is beyond our abilities—as Kant contended.

Kant had a practical solution: he argued that although free will cannot be proven, it is necessary for ethics. So, if we want to have ethics (which we do), then we need to accept the existence of free will on moral grounds. The experiments described by Shariff and Vohs seem to support Kant: when people doubt free will, this has an impact on their ethics.

One aspect of this can be seen as positive—determining the extent to which people are in control of their actions is an important part of determining what is and is not just punishment. After all, we should not want to inflict retribution on people who could not have done otherwise or, at the very least, we would want relevant circumstances to temper retribution with justice.  It also makes more sense to focus on deterrence and rehabilitation more than retribution. However just, retribution merely adds more suffering to the world while deterrence and rehabilitation reduce it.

The second aspect of this is negative—skepticism about free will seems to cause people to think that they have a license to do ill, thus leading to worse behavior. That is clearly undesirable. This provides an interesting and important challenge: balancing our view of determinism and freedom to avoid both unjust punishment and becoming unjust. This, of course, assumes that we have a choice. If we do not, we will just do what we do and giving advice is pointless. As I jokingly tell my students, a determinist giving advice about what we should do is like someone yelling advice to a person falling to certain death—they can yell about what to do, but it won’t matter.

 

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As a philosopher, I became familiar with the notion of the modern political concept of privilege as a graduate student. This occurred sometimes in classes and sometimes when I was lectured by other students about my privileges as a white man. Lest anyone think I was exploiting my privileges, the lectures were always about my being a man and my general appearance of whiteness (I am only mostly white) as opposed to any misdeed I had committed. I was generally sympathetic to most criticisms of privilege, but I recognized that it is a fallacy to use a person’s membership in a privileged class as grounds for rejecting their claims. Back then, there was no handy phrase to check a member of a privileged class. Fortunately (or unfortunately) such a phrase emerged: “check your privilege!” Thanks to the victory of the right, this phrase is used less often these days. But as the right has been adept at adopting the tools of the left, I would expect them to have a variation on this to use against those who, in fact, lack privilege.

The original intent of the phrase was to remind someone making a claim on a political (or moral) issue that they are speaking from a position of privilege, such as being a male or straight. While it is most used against members of the traditional privileged classes (males, whites, the wealthy, etc.) it can also be employed against people of classes that are either privileged relative to the classes they are commenting on or in a different non-privileged class. For example, a Latina might be told to “check her privilege” for making a remark about black women. In this case, the idea is to remind the transgressors that different oppressed groups experience their oppression differently.

As might be imagined, some take issue with being told to “check their privilege.” In some cases, this can be mere annoyance with the phrase. This annoyance can have some foundation, given that the phrase can have a hostile connotation, and it can seem like a dismissive reply. But to be fair and balanced, it is no doubt exhausting arguing with the privileged and having a quick reply can save time and effort.

In other cases, the use of the phrase can be taken as an attempt to silence. Roughly put, “check your privilege” can be interpreted as “stop talking” or even as “you are wrong because you belong to a privileged class.” In some cases, people are interpreting the use incorrectly; the privileged are often very defensive and can, oddly, see themselves as the “real victims.”

Thus, the phrase can be seen as having two main functions (in addition to its dramatic and rhetorical use). One is as a reminder, the other is as an attack. I will consider each of these in the context of critical thinking.

The reminder function of the phrase is grounded in a real need to remind people of two common cognitive biases, namely in group bias and attribution error. In group bias is the tendency people have to easily form negative opinions of people who are not in their group. This bias leads people to see members of their own group more positively while seeing members of other groups more negatively. For example, a rich person might think that other rich people are hardworking while thinking poor people are lazy, thieving and inclined to use drugs. As another example, a woman might regard her fellow women as kind and altruistic while regarding men as violent, sex-crazed and selfish.

Given the power of this bias, it is worth reminding people about it, especially when their remarks show signs that this bias is likely to be in effect. Of course, telling someone to “check their privilege” might not be the nicest way to engage in the discussion and it is less specific than “consider that you might be influenced by in group bias.” But an insistence on “niceness” or “civility” is often a tool used to silence critics, so I understand why people would not be inclined to be “civil.” After all, “civil” can often be intended to mean “know your place” or “shut up.”

Attribution error is a bias that leads people to not appreciate that other people are as constrained by events and circumstances as they would be if they were in their situation. For example, consider a discussion about requiring voters to have a photo ID, reducing the number of polling stations and reducing their hours of operation. A person who is somewhat well off might claim that getting an ID and driving across town to a polling station on his lunch break is no problem—because it is no problem for him. However, for someone who does not have a car and is poor, these can be serious obstacles. As another example, someone who is rich might express the view that the poor should not be helped because they are obviously poor because they are lazy (and not because of the circumstances they face, such as being born into poverty).

Given the power of this bias, a person who seems to make this error should be reminded of this. But telling them to “check their privilege” might not be the most diplomatic way to engage and it is certainly less specific than pointing out the likely error. But, given the limits of social media, it might be a viable option when used in this context.

But using it to silence a person or to reject the person’s claim would not be justified. While it is reasonable to consider the effects of biases, to reject a person’s claim because of their membership in a class would be an ad hominen.  An ad hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected based on some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions are made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). But such attacks are irrelevant to the person’s claim, whether it is a traditional ad hominem or a “check your privilege” attack.

 

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A longtime issue in college athletics has been whether college athletes should be paid. I heard debates over this when I was a college athlete and, decades later, I still hear them. One addition to the debate has been over branding deals, such as the use of likenesses in video games.

One classic argument is that in the big money sports (football and basketball) the athletes already receive compensation in the form of scholarships, coaching, medical care, etc. Given the cost of higher education, a full scholarship can be worth $27,000 a year or more.

Even athletes in the other sports (such as track, cross country, field hockey and volleyball) can receive compensation in the form of scholarships, coaching, and medical care—although they usually get much less than the star athletes in the big money sports.

Following this reasoning, it can be claimed that college athletes have always been paid—in that they receive valuable compensation for their contributions. In fact, college athletes have been recognized as being employees with the right to unionize. As such, the dispute is over the amount and nature of the desired compensation, which is a classic employee-employer dispute.

Obviously enough, the NCAA and colleges want to keep player compensation as low as possible, since the less the athletes are paid, the more everyone else gets to keep. However, the fact that they would rather not provide better compensation is not proof that athletes should not receive more. 

While the NCAA and colleges have been on board with specific sorts of compensation (such as scholarships), they have often been very draconian about college athletes receiving other benefits. Based on my own experience at road races, college athletes were forbidden from accepting gift certificates they won. While the NCAA and the college can license the likeness of a player for use in a video game, athletes were not allowed to share in the profits.  Because of these practices, most of the money made in college sports flowed to the NCAA and the colleges, rather than the athletes.

On the face of it, athletes should receive compensation commensurate with their contribution. For example, if a player’s likeness is licensed for use in a video game, they should receive a suitable percentage of that deal. As another example, if selling the TV rights to football games brings in millions of dollars, the players who appear on TV should get a proportional cut. Obviously, the value of what the players receive in terms of other compensation must be factored in as well as part of their pay.

In some cases, the athletes might have been receiving fair compensation. However, the star athletes in the big money sports were probably being exploited.  

Over the years, the main argument advanced by the NCAA and colleges for not providing commensurate compensation is based on the view that a college athlete should be an amateur who competes “for the love of the sport.”

This has some appeal. When I was a college athlete, I competed for that reason—I loved to race. I still do, although I am much slower.  In terms of compensation, I did get some shoe money and boxed lunches when we traveled. I understand the idea of the amateur athlete who is not sullied by crass commerce nor driven by greed.

Of course, the true amateur athlete who is unsullied by greed must also be in an amateur environment driven by the love of the sport. When I was a college athlete, I was in that situation. I competed in cross country and track, both of which are not big money sports. I also went to a division III school—so there were no athletic scholarships. The coaches at the college generally followed the same model that is usually seen at public high schools—they had a primary job at the school and coaching was secondary. For example, my first cross-country coach was also an exercise physiology professor. The football coach also taught classes. So, we were all amateurs competing for the love of the sport—although we did get those boxed lunches and the coaches got some pay.

When everyone is an amateur and the compensation is modest it makes sense to not pay athletes and to hold them to the standards of being an amateur athlete (versus being a paid professional). However, this is not the case with the big money sports at the big schools.

First, the top coaches enjoy truly impressive salaries. The top coaches can make millions each year.  Interestingly, the highest paid public employee in some states is a college football or basketball coach.

Second, college football is a multi-billion-dollar industry and college basketball brings in millions for the colleges and NCAA. While the players did get some of this in the form of scholarships and other compensation, the bulk of it goes to others. A cynical person might note that this is a good lesson for the student athletes: the workers do the work and others reap the profits.

Given the money involved, these college sports are not amateur in any meaningful sense and it is not defined by a love of the game. Rather, this is a big money industry in which those doing most of the work receive very little while very few benefit greatly from their efforts. In short, college sports mirror the larger society. The lie that was long used to avoid justly compensating athletes was that they are amateurs who are supposed to play for the love of the game. Thus, there has been an inconsistency between the reality of the situation and what is expected of the athletes.

There is the option to make the ideal a reality and recreate college sports as amateur sports played for the love of sport. This would require following the model of amateur athletics I mentioned above: minimal compensation for everyone, coaches who are professors (or staff) first, athletes who are students first, no big money deals, and so on. Some schools already follow this ideal, such as the school I attended.

There is also the option to accept that big money sports are professional sports, and they should follow that model: the big money remains, but the athletes are recognized for what they really are—professional athletes.

 

 

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The rise of social media created a new world for social researchers. One focus has been on determining how quickly and broadly emotions spread online. Over a decade ago, researchers at Beijing University found that rage spread the fastest and farthest online. Researchers in the United States found that anger was a speed leader, but not the fastest in the study: awe was even faster than rage. But rage was quite fast. As might be expected, sadness was a slow spreader and had a limited expansion.

This research helped explain how social media made the world worse. Rage tends to be a strong motivator and sadness tends to be a de-motivator. The power of awe was an interesting finding, but some reflection shows this does make sense—it tends to move people to want to share. IRL, think of people eagerly drawing the attention of strangers to things like beautiful sunsets, impressive feats or majestic animals.

In general, awe is a positive emotion, and it seems to be a good thing that it travels far and wide on the internet. Rage can be a mixed bag but has largely proven to be a negative influence.

When people share their rage via social media, they are sharing with an intent to express (“I am angry!”) and to infect others with this rage (“you should be angry, too!”). Rage, like many infectious agents, also has the effect of weakening the host’s “immune system.” In the case of anger, the immune system is reason and emotional control. Anger tends to suppress reason and lower emotional control. This makes people even more vulnerable to rage and susceptible to the classic fallacy of appeal to anger. This is the fallacy in which a person accepts anger as proof that a claim is true. Roughly put, the person “reasons” like this: “this makes me angry, so it is true.” This infection also renders people susceptible to related emotions (and fallacies), such as fear (and appeal to force).

Because of these qualities of anger, it is easy for untrue claims to be accepted far and wide via the internet. This is, obviously enough, the negative side of anger.  Anger can also be positive—to use an analogy, it can be like a cleansing fire that sweeps away brambles.

For anger to be a positive factor, it would need to be a virtuous anger (to follow Aristotle). Put a bit simply, it would need to be the right degree of anger, felt for the right reasons and directed at the right target. This sort of anger can mobilize people to do good. As a recent example, people were outraged by the actions of Trump’s ICE. In response, people protested and ICE started murdering citizens. This caused more protests and the Trump regime changed its tactics.

The challenge is, of course, to distinguish between warranted and unwarranted anger. This is a serious challenge—as noted above, people tend to feel that they are right because they are angry rather than inquiring as to whether their rage is justified or not.

It is wise to follow the advice of Aristotle and consider whether the anger is at the right people, at the right time, for the right reasons and to the right degree. But anger, ironically, makes it hard to engage in such assessment.

 

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As I tell my students, the metaphysical question of personal identity has important moral implications. One scenario I use is a human in a persistent vegetative state. I say “human” rather than “person”, because the human body might no longer be a person. For a metaphysical dualist,  if a person is her soul and the soul has abandoned the shell, then the person is gone.

 If the human is still a person, then it seems reasonable to believe they have a different moral status than a body that that was once a person (or once served as the body of a person). This is not to say that a non-person human would have no moral status—I do not want to be misinterpreted as holding that view. Rather, my view is that personhood is a relevant factor in the morality of how an entity should be treated.

Imagine a human in that vegetative state. While the body is kept alive, people do not talk to the body and no attempt is made to entertain the body, such as playing music or audiobooks. If there is no person present or if there is a person present who cannot sense anything, then this would seem morally acceptable—after all it would make no difference whether people talked to the body or not.

There is also the moral question of whether such a body should be kept alive—after all, if the person is gone, there would not seem to be a compelling reason to keep an empty shell alive. To use an extreme example, it would seem wrong to keep a headless body alive just because it can be kept alive. If the body is no longer a person (or no longer hosts a person), then this would be analogous to keeping a headless body alive.

But, if despite appearances, there is still a person present who is aware of what is going on around them, then the matter is morally different. In this case, the person has been isolated—which is very bad for a person. They have, in effect, been sentenced to solitary confinement.

In terms of keeping the body alive, if there is a person present, then the situation would be morally different. After all, the moral status of a person is different from that of a body of merely living flesh. The moral challenge, then, is deciding what to do.

One option is, obviously enough, to treat all seemingly vegetative (as opposed to clearly brain dead) bodies as if the person was still present. That is, the body would be accorded with the moral status of a person and treated as such.

This is a morally safe option—it would presumably be better if some non-persons get treated as persons rather than risk persons being treated as non-persons. That said, it would still seem both useful and important to know.

One reason to know is purely practical: if people know that a person is present, then they would presumably be more inclined to take the effort to treat the person as a person. So, for example, if the family and medical staff knew that Bill is still Bill and not just an empty shell, they would, one would hope, tend to be more diligent in treating Bill as a person.

Another reason to know is both practical and moral: scenarios arise in which hard choices must be made, knowing whether a person is present is critical. That said, given that one might not know for sure that the body is not a person anymore it could be correct to keep treating the alleged shell as a person even when it seems likely that they are not. This brings up the obvious practical problem: how to tell when a person is present.

Most of the time we judge there is a person present based on appearance, using the assumption that a human is a person. Of course, there might be non-human people and there might be biological humans that are not people (living headless bodies, for example). A somewhat more sophisticated approach is to use Descartes’s test: things that use true language are people. Descartes, being a smart person, did not limit language to speaking or writing—he included making signs of the sort used to communicate with the deaf. In a practical sense, getting an intelligent response to an inquiry can be seen as a sign that a person is present. Or that the LLM is working well.

In the case of a body in an apparent vegetative state, applying this test is a challenge as this state is marked by an inability to show awareness. In some cases, the apparent vegetative state is exactly what it appears to be. In other cases, a person might be in “locked-in-syndrome.” The person is conscious but can be mistaken for being minimally conscious or in a vegetative state. Since the person cannot, typically, respond by giving an external sign some other means is necessary.

One breakthrough in this area is due to Adrian M. Owen. He found that if a person is asked to visualize certain activities (playing tennis, for example), doing so will trigger different areas of the brain and this activity can be detected. So, a person can ask a question such as “did you go to college at Michigan State?” and request that the person visualize playing tennis for “yes” or visualize walking around her house for “no.” This method provides a way of determining that the person is still present with a reasonable degree of confidence. Naturally, a failure to respond would not prove that a person is not present, the person could still remain, yet be unable (or unwilling) to hear or respond.

One moral issue this method can help address is that of terminating life support. “Pulling the plug” on what might be a person without consent is morally problematic. If a person is still present and can be reached by Owen’s method, then this would allow the person to agree to or request that they be taken off life support. Naturally, there would be practical questions about the accuracy of the method, but this is distinct from the more abstract ethical issue.

It must be noted that the consent of the person would not automatically make termination morally acceptable—after all, there are moral objections to letting a person die in this manner even when the person is clearly conscious. Once it is established that the method adequately shows consent (or lack of consent), the broader moral issue of the right to die would need to be addressed.

 

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