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The United States persists in waging and endless war on drugs and faces ever increasing and problems with higher education. I will reconsider an immodest proposal I made years ago intended to address both problems.

In the case of higher education, one problem is that the cost of education exceeds the resources of many Americans. One reason is that America’s political and economic elites repeatedly blow up the economy and have been engaged in an unrelenting extermination of the middle class. Another reason is the view that higher education has been cast as a private (rather than public) good and is seen by the elites as just another area to exploit for profit. Because of this, funding to public schools has been reduced and funding has been diverted from public schools to costly and ineffective for-profit schools. Yet another reason is that public universities have an ever-expanding administrative burden. Even the darling of academics, STEM, has seen significant cuts in support and public funding.

Through their war on drugs, the rulers have imposed a massive cost on the United States. First, there is the cost of the resources devoted to policing citizens, trying them and incarcerating them for drug crimes. Second, there is the cost of the social and personal damage done to individuals and communities. From the perspective of most citizens, the war on drugs has been a losing fight—mainly because “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

Fortunately, I have a solution to both problems. Years ago, I spoke with an engineering student about Florida State’s various programs aimed at creating businesses and heard a piece on NPR about the financial woes of schools and how faculty and staff were being pushed to be fund-raisers for schools. Unsurprisingly, things are even worse now.

This got me thinking about how universities could generate funding and I remembered a running joke from long ago. Back when universities started to commit to  “businessification, I joked with a running friend (hence a running joke) that we faculty members should become drug lords to fund our research and classes. While I do not think that I should become a drug lord, I would propose that public universities get into the drug business.

States should begin by legalizing marijuana and pass a general law allowing recreational drugs that can be shown to be as safe as tobacco and alcohol (that sets the bar very low).  The main restriction will be that the drugs can only be produced and sold by public universities. All the profits will go directly to the universities, to be used as decided by boards composed of students and faculty. To be realistic, the ruling elites would need to get a cut of this, but I’ll leave the corruption aspects to others.

To implement this plan, faculty and students should be actively involved. Business faculty and students would develop the models, plans and proposals. Design and marketing students and faculty will handle those aspects. Faculty and students in chemistry, biology and medicine will develop the drugs and endeavor to make them safer. Faculty and students in agriculture will see to the growing of the crops, starting with marijuana. Engineering students and faculty will develop hydroponics and other technology.

Once the marijuana and other drugs are available, the universities will sell the products to the public with all profits being used to fund the educational and research aspects of the universities. Since the schools are public universities, the drugs will be tax-free—there is no sense in incurring the extra cost of collecting taxes when the money is going to the schools already. Since schools already have brand marketing, this can be easily tied in. For example, Florida State can sell Seminole Gold and Seminole Garnet marijuana, while my own Florida A&M University can have Rattler Green and Rattler Orange.

One practical objection is that the operation might not be profitable. While this is obviously a reasonable concern, the drug trade can be very profitable. Also, by making such drugs legal, the cost of the war on drugs would drop, thus potentially freeing up resources for education and reducing the harms done to individuals and the community.  So, I am not too worried about this.

One reasonable objection is that drugs are unhealthy. The easy reply is that while this is true, we already tolerate unhealthy products such as tobacco, alcohol, cars and firearms. If these are tolerable, then the drugs sold by the schools (which must be at least as safe as tobacco and alcohol) would also be tolerable. The war on drugs is also very unhealthy—so scaling back the war would be good for public health.

One moral objection is that drugs are immoral. There are three easy replies. The first is that the drugs in question are no more immoral than alcohol and tobacco. If these can be morally tolerated, then so can the university drugs. Second, there is the consequentialist argument: if drugs are going to be used anyway by Americans, it is better that the money go to education rather than ending up in the coffers of criminals, gangs, terrorists and the prison-industrial complex. Third, there is also the consequentialist argument that university produced drugs will be safer and of higher quality than drugs produced by drug lords, gangs, terrorists and criminal dealers. Given the good consequences of legalizing university-manufactured drugs, this plan is clearly morally commendable.

Given the above arguments, having universities as legal drug sellers would clearly help solve two of America’s serious problems: the high cost of education and the higher cost of the ineffective and destructive war on drugs. As my contribution to the brand, I offer the slogan “get high for higher ed.” As you would suspect, I am not good at marketing.

 

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D&D and associated games have a famous alignment system that defines the morality of creature in terms of good, evil, neutral, lawful and chaotic. In Pathfinder version of the game, neutral good is characterized as follows:

 

A neutral good character is good, but not shackled by order. He sees good where he can, but knows evil can exist even in the most ordered place.

A neutral good character does anything he can, and works with anyone he can, for the greater good. Such a character is devoted to being good, and works in any way he can to achieve it. He may forgive an evil person if he thinks that person has reformed, and he believes that in everyone there is a little bit of good.

 

In a fantasy campaign, the player characters usually encounter neutral good beings as allies who render aid and assistance. Even evil player characters are willing to accept the assistance of the neutral good, knowing that they are more likely to try to persuade them to the side of good than smite them with righteous fury. Neutral good creatures are rare in most fantasy worlds as good types tend to polarize towards law and chaos.

Not surprisingly, neutral good types are rare in the real world. A neutral good person has no special commitment to order or lack thereof—what matters is the extent to which order or lack of it contributes to the greater good. For those devoted to the preservation of order, or its destruction, this can be frustrating.

While the neutral evil person embraces the moral theory of ethical egoism (that each person should act solely in her self-interest), the neutral good person embraces altruism—the moral view that each person should act, at least sometimes, in the interest of others. In informal terms, the neutral good person is generous rather than selfish. The neutral good position is sometimes portrayed as stupidly altruistic. Stupid altruism presents the altruist as sacrificing everything for the sake of others or being willing to help anyone, regardless of who they are or what they might be doing. While a neutral good person is willing to sacrifice for others and willing to help people, being neutral good does not require being unwise or stupid. So, a person can be neutral good and still consider her own needs. After all, the neutral good person considers the interests of everyone, and she is included among everyone. A person can also be selective in her assistance and still be neutral good. For example, helping an evil person do evil things would not be a good thing and hence a neutral good person would not be obligated to help—and would probably oppose the evil person.

Since a neutral good person works for the greater good, the moral theory of utilitarianism tends to fit this alignment. For the utilitarian, actions are good to the degree that they promote utility (what is of value) and bad to the degree that they do the opposite. Classic utilitarianism (that of J.S. Mill) takes happiness to be good and actions are assessed in terms of the extent to which they create happiness for humans and, as far as the nature of things permit, sentient beings. Put in bumper sticker terms, both the utilitarian and the neutral good advocate the greatest good for the greatest number.

This commitment to the greater good can present some potential problems. For the utilitarian, one classic problem is that what seems rather bad can have great utility. For example, Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” puts into literary form the question raised by William James:

 

Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier’s and Bellamy’s and Morris’s utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?

 

In Guin’s tale, the splendor, health and happiness that is the land of Omelas depends on the suffering of a person locked away from all kindness in a dungeon (with not even a single dragon). The inhabitants of Omelas know the price they pay and some, upon learning about the dungeon dweller, walk away.  Hence the title. For the utilitarian, this scenario would seem to be morally correct: a small disutility leads to a vast amount of utility. Or, in terms of goodness, the greater good seems well served.

Because the suffering of one person creates such an overabundance of goodness for others, a neutral good character might tolerate the situation. After all, benefiting some almost always comes at a cost to others. It is, however, reasonable to consider a neutral good person would find the situation morally unacceptable. Such a person might not free the sufferer because doing so would harm so many other people, but she might elect to walk away.

A chaotic good type, who is committed to liberty and freedom, would certainly oppose the imprisonment of the innocent person—even for the greater good. A lawful good type might face the same challenge as the neutral good type: the order and well-being of Omelas rests on the suffering of one person and this could be seen as a heroic sacrifice on the part of the sufferer. Albeit one they did not choose, which might not sit well with some lawful good creatures. Lawful evil types would probably be fine with the scenario, although they would have issues with the otherwise benevolent nature of Omelas. Truly subtle lawful evil types might delight in the situation and regard it as a magnificent case of self-delusion in which people think they are selecting the greater good but are merely choosing evil.

Neutral evil types would also be fine with it—if it was someone else in the dungeon. Chaotic evil types would not care about the sufferer but would certainly seek to destroy Omelas. They might, ironically, try to do so by rescuing the sufferer and seeing to it that he is treated with kindness and compassion (thus breaking what is supposed to be a necessary condition for Omelas’ exalted state).

 

 

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In my previous essay, I considered various arguments that we have obligations to people we do not know. In this essay I will consider hunger in the United States of America in the context of obligations.

The United States is both the wealthiest nation and one that has been facing an obesity epidemic. Hence, it might seem odd to claim that hunger is a problem in the United States. Millions of Americans, many of whom are white and rural, suffer from food insecurity. American children, senior citizens and people with disabilities make up the largest demographic of people who are food insecure. Most families suffering from food insecurity have at least one employed adult. One reason why employed adults need assistance is declining wages: people can work multiple jobs and still not earn enough to buy adequate food. These facts run counter to the usual stereotypes that are exploited by wicked politicians.

The United States does have a program to address hunger—what was once called food stamps is now called SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). While sometimes enjoying bipartisan support, the recent politics of ignorant cruelty has focused on gutting programs that help people, such as SNAP. On average, SNAP recipients run out of benefits before the month ends and must turn to charity, such as food pantries.

The federal government also uses taxpayer money to subsidizes the production of certain crops. Corn gets the lion’s share and is distantly followed by wheat and soybeans. Rice, sorghum, peanuts, barley and sunflowers also receive some subsidies while the only subsidized fruit is the apple. Because of such subsidies, food products that contain corn, wheat or soybeans tend to be the cheapest. Hence, low-income people get most of their calories from such foods. Examples include sodas, energy drinks, sports drinks, chicken, grain-based desserts, tacos and pizza.  These foods tend to be high calorie and low nutrition foods. To be fair and balanced, a taco with the right ingredients could be healthy food, but these healthy versions are usually not what low income people are eating.

Food deserts also impact the diet of people with low incomes. These are areas lacking supermarkets but usually have fast food restaurants and small markets (like convenience stores). A surprising number of Americans live in these food deserts and do not own a car that would allow them to drive to buy healthier (and cheaper) food. The food sold at these places tends to be more expensive than the food available at a grocery store and they tend to be high calorie, low-nutrient foods.

These two factors help explain the seeming paradox of an obesity epidemic among hungry people: we have easy access to high calorie foods of low nutritional value. Hence, people tend to be overweight while also being malnourished. Now that the nature of the problem has been discussed, I now turn to the matter of obligations to others.

On the face of it, the main issue regarding obligations to the hungry would seem to focus on whether there is an obligation to provide people with food. This can be broken down into two sub-categories. First, whether there is a collective obligation to provide hungry citizens with food via the machinery of the state (in this case, SNAP). Second, whether there is an obligation on the part of better-off citizens to provide food to their hungry fellow citizens.

Arguing that the state has such an obligation is relatively easy. A minimal obligation of the state is to provide for the good of the people and to protect them from harm. While the traditional focus is on military and police forces, this would seem to extend to protecting citizens from nutritional deficits and hunger.

A utilitarian argument can also be advanced for this obligation: helping to feed millions of citizens creates more utility than disutility. Part of this is the fact that people are happier when they have good food to eat. Part of this is the less obvious fact that when people get hungry enough, open rebellion might seem better than starving to death—so feeding the poor helps maintain social stability. Or so those who praise bread and circuses might claim.

One objection against this view is to contend that providing such support creates a culture of dependence encouraging people to stay poor. The obvious is that, as noted above, those receiving the aid are mostly people who are seniors, people with disabilities or children—people who should not be expected to labor to survive in an advanced, wealthy nation. Also, as noted above, most families that receive SNAP have at least one working adult. People are not on SNAP because they turn down opportunities for riches—they are on SNAP because of the lack of opportunities.

Things become more controversial when the issue switches to whether better off individuals are obligated to assist their fellow citizens. This means doing more than just paying taxes that help fund SNAP. Such assistance might involve donating money, time or food.

Intuitively, people usually think that such charitable acts are nice things to do and worthy of praise. However, some think that there is no obligation to do this and that someone who does not assist others in this way is not a bad person. This does have some appeal—after all, being bad is typically seen as being actively bad rather than merely not doing good things.

Turning back to the general arguments for obligations to others, there are religious injunctions to feed the hungry (which explains why American churches are on the front line in the war against hunger), and it is easy to reverse the situation: if I were hungry, I would want my fellow citizens to help me. As such, I should help them when I am well off.

The utilitarian argument also applies here: a person who gives a little to help the hungry will incur a small cost (but might gain in happiness) but it will yield greater happiness on the part of the recipients who now have something to eat. As such, the utilitarian argument would seem to ground this obligation. Of course, there is the stock objection about building dependence, which is all too often made by people who inherited their wealth or acquired it by exploiting the labor of others.

Rational self-interest would also seem to provide a reason to provide such aid—there are plenty of selfish reasons to do so, not the least of which is gaining a good reputation and helping to keep social order.

The debt argument might work here as well—if a person has benefited from the assistance of others, then she would be obligated to repay that debt. However, a person could contend that if they have not received food from others when hungry, they owe nothing.

The argument from virtue applies here: the virtue of generosity obligates a person to give to others in need. This, and the religious injunction, would seem to be the truest forms of actual obligation—as opposed to merely doing it from self-interest or for utility.

Digging deeper, there is also another issue. As noted above, people are hungry mostly because they are not earning enough to purchase adequate food. One reason for this is that wages have consistently declined for most Americans, although the profits of businesses have steadily increased. As such, the United States is the wealthiest country in the world yet has many very poor people. This raises the moral issue of whether employers are obligated to pay a living wage—a wage that would enable a person to purchase food on that salary without requiring the assistance of the state or others.

Businesses obviously have a strong self-interest argument against not paying living wages when they can get away with it. Lower wages mean greater profits and shifting the cost to other people (taxpayers and those who contribute to food pantries) means that their workers survive despite the lack of a living wage. However, there is still the moral question of whether they have an obligation to provide such a living wage.

The religious injunctions would seem to apply to employers that accept these specific faiths—and companies that wish to claim they are religious should be obligated to act the part. But companies that use religious arguments seem more focused on legalizing their intolerance and harming others rather than helping people. However, secular companies can easily claim exemption.

Reversing the situation would also apply: presumably those running businesses would not want to be so poorly paid. Of course, they would probably claim that as job creators there is a relevant difference.

The utilitarian argument does involve some complexities. After all, there can be good utilitarian arguments for allowing some to suffer so as to produce greater utility for others—so a case could be made that the utility generated outweighs the disutility of the low pay. However, the opposite sort of argument can also be made.

The debt argument would also apply. If corporations are people (or legal fictions run by people), then they would have a debt to the others that make civilization possible. As such, they should pay back this debt, perhaps in the form of decent wages.

The virtues of fairness and generosity would seem to obligate employers to pay employees fairly and this should be a living wage, at least in many cases. If corporations are people, then they should surely be held to the same obligations as actual people.

Thus, there are good reasons to accept that we are obligated to help others and feed the hungry.

 

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Obligations to People We Don’t Know

“It’s a good thing, protecting other people’s homes.”
–Himmel the Hero

One of the classic moral problems is the issue of whether we have moral obligations to people we do not know.  If we have such obligations, then there are also questions about the foundation, nature and extent of these obligations. If we do not have such obligations, then there is the obvious question about why there are not such obligations. I will start by considering some stock arguments regarding our obligations to others.

One approach is to base such moral obligations on religion. This requires two main steps. The first is establishing the religion imposes such obligations. A stickler might even require that the truth of the religion be established. The second is transitioning from religion to ethics.

Many religions impose such obligations. For example, John 15:12 conveys God’s command: “This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you.”  If love involves obligations, then this would place us under these obligations. That said, one could argue for an empty love free of any obligations Other faiths include injunctions to assist others.

In terms of transitioning from religion to ethics, one way is to use divine command theory—the moral theory that what God commands is right because He commands it. This does raise the classic Euthyphro problem: is something good because God commands it, or is it commanded because it is good? If the former, goodness seems arbitrary. If the latter, then morality would be independent of God and divine command theory would be false.

Using religion as the basis for moral obligation is also problematic because doing so would require proving that the religion is correct—and this is no easy task. To be fair and balanced, attempting to prove a moral theory would also be challenging. There is also the practical problem that people differ in faiths, which makes finding a universal religious grounding for moral obligations difficult. But one could either argue that their faith is the one true view or that multiple religions enjoin us to accept obligations to others.

Another approach is to argue for moral obligations using the moral method of reversing the situation.  This method is based on the Golden Rule (“do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) and the idea is that consistency requires a person treat others as they would wish to be treated.

To make the method work, a person would need to want others to act as if they had obligations to them and this would  obligate the person to act as if she had obligations to them. For example, if I would want someone to help me if I were hit by a car and dying in the street, then consistency requires I accept the same obligation: If I should be helped, then consistency requires that I must help others.

This approach is somewhat like that of Immanuel Kant. He argues that because a person necessarily regards herself as an end (and not just a means to an end), then she must also regard others as ends and not merely as means.  He endeavors to use this to argue in favor of various obligations and duties, such as helping others in need.

There are, unfortunately, at least two counters to this sort of approach. The first is that it is easy imagine someone willing to forgo assistance and can consistently refuse to accept obligations to others. So, for example, a person might be willing to starve rather than accept assistance from other people. While such people might seem irrational, if they are sincere then they cannot be accused of inconsistency.

The second is that a person can argue that there is a relevant difference between himself and others that would justify their obligations to him while freeing him from his obligations to them. For example, a person of a high social class might claim this obligates people of lesser classes while freeing her from any obligations to them.  Naturally, the person must provide reasons in support of this alleged relevant difference.

A third approach is to present a utilitarian argument. For a utilitarian, like John Stuart Mill, morality is assessed in terms of consequences: the correct action is the one that creates the greatest utility (typically happiness) for the greatest number. A utilitarian argument for obligations to people we do not know would be rather straightforward. The first step would be to estimate the utility generated by accepting a specific obligation to people we do not know, such as rendering aid to an intoxicated person who is about to be assaulted. The second is to estimate the disutility generated by imposing that obligation. The third step is to weigh the utility against the disutility. If the utility is greater, then such an obligation should be imposed. If the disutility is greater, then it should not.

This approach rests on embracing utilitarianism. There are numerous arguments against this moral theory, and to the degree they are effective, they would undercut a utilitarian grounding for obligations. Even for utilitarianians, there is the possibility that there will always be greater utility in not imposing obligations, thus undermining the claim that we have obligations to others.

A fourth approach is to consider the matter in terms of rational self-interest and operate from the assumption that people should act in their self-interest. In terms of a moral theory, this would be ethical egoism: the moral theory that a person should act in her self-interest rather than acting in an altruistic manner.

While accepting that others have obligations to me would certainly be in my self-interest, it initially appears that accepting obligations to others would be contrary to my self-interest. That is, I would be best served if others did unto me as I would like to be done unto, while I am free to do unto them as I wish. If I could get away with this, it would be ideal (assuming I am selfish). However, as a matter-of-fact people tend to notice and respond negatively to a lack of reciprocation. So, if having others accept that they have some obligations to me were in my self-interest, then it would be in my self-interest to pay the price for such obligations by accepting obligations to them.  For those who like evolutionary stories in the context of ethics, the tale is easy to tell: those who accept obligations would be more successful than those who do not.

The stock counters to the self-interest argument are the problem of Glaucon’s unjust man and Hume’s sensible knave. While it seems rational to accept obligations in return for getting others to accept similar obligations, it seems preferable to exploit them while avoiding acting on one’s supposed obligations whenever possible. If a person should act in accord with self-interest, then this is what a person should do.

It can be argued that this approach would be self-defeating: if people exploited others without reciprocation, the system of obligations would eventually fall apart. As such, each person has an interest in ensuring that others hold to their obligations. Humans do, in fact, seem to act this way—those who fail in their obligations sometimes get a bad reputation and are distrusted. From a purely practical standpoint, acting as if one has obligations to others would thus seem to be in a person’s self-interest because the benefits would generally outweigh the costs

The counter to this is that each person still has an interest in avoiding the cost of fulfilling obligations and there are ways to do this using deceit, power and such. As such, a classic moral question arises once again: why act on your alleged obligations if you can get away with not doing so? Aside from the practical reply given above, there seems to be no answer from self-interest. In fact, the President of the United States is this sort of person.

A fifth option is to look at obligations to others as a matter of debts. We are born into a worldwide human civilization built on thousands of years of effort. Since each of us arrives as a helpless infant, each person’s survival depends on others. As the person grows up, she also depends on the efforts of countless other people she does not know. These include soldiers that defend her society, the people who maintain the infrastructure, firefighters who keep fire from sweeping away the town or city, the taxpayers who pay for all this, and so on for all the many others who make human civilization possible. As such, each member of civilization owes a great debt to those who have come before and those who are here now.

If debt imposes an obligation, then each person who did not arise ex-nihilo owes a debt to those who have made and continue to make their survival possible. At the very least, the person is obligated to make contributions to continue human civilization as a repayment to these others.

One objection to this is for a person to claim that she owes no such debt because her special status obligates others to provide all this for her with nothing owed in return. The obvious challenge is for a person to prove such an exalted status.

Another objection is for a person to claim that all this is a gift that requires no repayment on the part of anyone and hence does not impose any obligation. The challenge is, of course, to prove this implausible claim.

A final option I will consider is that offered by virtue theory. Virtue theory, famously presented by thinkers like Aristotle and Confucius, holds that people should develop their virtues. These classic virtues include generosity, loyalty and other virtues that involve obligations and duties to others. Confucius explicitly argued in favor of duties and obligations as being key components of virtues. While not a philosopher, the Hero Himmel from Frieren seems best characterized as following virtue ethics. He acts from the virtues of compassion, empathy, and respect. Very much in line with Aristotle, Himmel strove to improve himself and endeavored to act in the right way, towards the right people and to the right degree. From a philosophical perspective, one of the most interesting aspects of Himmel’s ethics is that he always asked for a reward. While this might strike some as selfish (albeit standard adventurer practice), Himmel explains that “if you accept a reward from someone, they will not need to owe you. We are the hero party.” By this practice Himmel acts on his obligations to others by always helping them even with small things while also allowing them to act on an obligation to his party. Although the payment is small, it allows the person helped to discharge the burden of debt and to show that they were not helpless recipients of charity.

In terms of why a person should have such virtues and accept such obligations, the standard answer is that being virtuous will make a person happy through excellence. Also, it’s what Himmel the Hero would have done.

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While in Indonesia in 2011, photographer David Slater’s camera was grabbed by a macaque. While monkey shines are nothing new, the macaque took hundreds of shots including selfies that went viral. While the macaque seemed to have an aesthetic gift, the United States copyright office ruled that “Works produced by nature, animals or plants” or “purportedly created by divine or supernatural beings” cannot be copyrighted. After AI began creating images, American law also says that these images cannot be copyrighted.  While the legal issues have been addressed, the philosophical issues have not.

The general issue is whether a non-human animal can have moral ownership rights over its artistic works. This breaks down into the two sub-issues. The first is whether a non-human animal has a moral status that can ground ownership rights. The second is whether a non-human has the capability to create a work of art. These issues have often been the subject of philosophical discussion, but it is certainly worth considering them again.

One approach to the issue of ownership rights is that non-human entities do possess ownership rights. Corporations have ownership rights and own copyrights. If a legal fiction like a corporation be seen as having ownership rights, there seems to be no principled way to deny the same rights to animals. After all, animals have a better claim to rights since they are real beings with qualities analogous to humans. Our fellow primates are often very intelligent and can have complex emotional and social lives. Because of these qualities, it is tempting to grant them a proportional status.

An obvious reply to is that corporations are legal fictions and legally fictional people in the United States. As such an appeal to a legal fiction does not help with the philosophical issue of whether animals can have ownership rights. Legally, the matter is simple: just like corporations, animals have whatever legal rights the law gives them. So, if the Supreme Court ruled that animals are people and can own property, then that would be the law—but the philosophical issue would remain unresolved. That said, if corporations should be regarded as having ownership rights (and as people), then it seems reasonable to accept that animals should have ownership rights (and perhaps recognized as people in some cases).

To determine whether animals have ownership rights, it is necessary to determine the foundation of these rights. Our good dead friend John Locke bases property rights on the claim that each person owns their own body (well, God does but He is cool about it) and hence each person owns their own labor. This labor is mixed with common property and makes what it is mixed with the property of the laborer. If animals have this sort of self-ownership, then they would have the same ownership rights as humans—whatever an animal mixed their labor with would be theirs. The usual counter is to claim animals are not owners—they are objects to be owned. It is worth noting that people often say the same thing about other people.

Higher animals like dogs and primates also grasp the basics of ownership: they distinguish between what is their stuff and what is not. My dogs have always grasped the distinction between their toys and similar objects that belong to other dogs. They also seemed to understand territory, responding differently to people and animals near our house compared to their reaction in common areas, like the park behind my house. As such, perhaps animals see themselves as possessing ownership rights. Or to be less abstract, thinking they own stuff.

An obvious objection is that animals have, at best, an extremely limited understanding of property and this could be attributed to possessiveness or territoriality. The obvious reply is that ownership does not seem to require an understanding of property rights—corporations (which have no minds and hence have no understanding) and humans who have no understanding of property rights are still seen as having ownership rights.

While the debate over ownership could go on endlessly, animals seem to have as good a claim to ownership rights as humans, at least in terms of the foundation of such an alleged right. So, if humans have ownership rights, then animals would seem to also qualify.  Thus, animals do have ownership rights.

The next issue is whether an animal can create an artistic work. Addressing this properly would require an adequate definition of “art” that would enable one to distinguish between art and non-art.  While there have been many attempts to provide such a definition, they are all inadequate.  Since such a definition is lacking, a rough and ready approach must suffice.

In this case, the rough and ready approach is to begin by considering cases in which it is intuitively appealing to accept that a human is creating a work of art. The something similar.

Painting provides a good example: a human intentionally applies paints to a surface based on the contents of their intentional states and this image sometimes resembles something internal (a feeling or thought) or external (a person, landscape, etc.). While animals can apply paint to surfaces, their lack of language makes it difficult to determine what they are doing. If, for example, good grounds for thinking they are creating art.  But to be fair to the animals, there are humans who create paintings that look like those created by elephants. The main difference is that the humans claim to be artists while the elephants say nothing about this (which is yet another reason to like elephants). But, if judgment is based solely on the work produced, if those humans are artists, then so are the elephants.

Another case is that of photography and it seems reasonable to accept a photo can be a work of art and a photographer an artist. The challenge is distinguishing between just taking a photo and being an artist. To clarify, photos can be taken by automatic timers, motion sensors, tripwires or by accident but these would not be cases involving an artist. If the shelves in a shed fail and the paint spills to create a work on par with a Jackson Pollock, that would not make the shed’s owner an artist.  If the paint were spilled by a trip-wire trap, this would not make the victim an artist. So, being an artist in photography would seem to require intent and control rather than automation or chance.  At the very least, the photographer must know what they are doing and act with intent.

In the case of the monkey taking pictures, the key question is whether the monkey understood what it was doing and acted with intent. If the monkey was just playing with the camera and it just happened to take a few shots that looked good, the monkey is no more an artist than an automatic timer, motion sensor or defective shutter control that made the camera constantly shoot. Or AI generating an image.

It might be objected that some shots were aesthetically good and judging by the work itself, the monkey had produced art. This does have some appeal—after all, whether the work is art should (it can be argued) rest in the work itself rather than the process of creation. One could use this to argue that AI could thus create art, provided that the image generated would be seen as art until one learned it was AI generated. This is the classic question of whether you need to know who the creator of a work is to decide whether it is art.

But, even if this is granted, it does not follow that the monkey is an artist. After all, an automated camera shooting constantly would almost certainly produce some good photos eventually—but the automating machinery or software would not be an artist.  Perhaps there could be art but no artist. In the case of the monkey, this seems to be the most plausible explanation—the money was probably just pushing the button and by chance some good images occurred. As such, the monkey was probably not an artist. In the case of AI image generators, they have far less claim to being artists. At least animals can lay claim to intent and feelings.

 

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One classic philosophical dispute is the battle over innate ideas. An innate idea, as the name suggests, is not acquired by experience but is somehow “built into” the mind. Philosophers who accept innate ideas differ about their nature and content.  Leibniz, for example, sees God as the creator innate ideas that exist within the monads. Other thinkers forgo metaphysics, such as those who think humans have an innate concept of beauty that is the product of evolution.

Over the centuries, philosophers have argued for and against innate ideas. For example, some take Plato’s Meno as an early argument for innate ideas. In the Meno, Socrates claims to show that Meno’s servant knows geometry, despite the (alleged) fact that he never learned geometry in this life. Other philosophers have argued that there must be innate ideas for the mind to “process” information coming in from the senses. To use a modern analogy, just as a smart phone needs software to enable the camera to function, the brain needs innate ideas in to process the sensory data coming in via the optic nerve.

Other philosophers, such as John Locke, have reject innate ideas in general. Others have been critical of specific forms of innate ideas—the idea that God is the cause of innate ideas is, as might be suspected, not very popular among those who attribute them to evolution.

Interestingly, there is some contemporary evidence for innate ideas. In his August 2014 Scientific American article “Accidental Genius”, Darold A. Treffert presents something akin to a 21st century version of the Meno. Investigating the matter of “accidental geniuses” (people who become savants as the result of an accident, such as a brain injury), researchers claimed they could create “instant savants” by the use using brain stimulation. These instant savants were able to solve a mathematical puzzle they could not solve without the stimulation. Treffert asserted that this ability to solve the puzzle was since they “’know things’ innately they were never taught.” To provide additional support, Treffert gave the example of a savant sculptor, Clemons, who “had no formal training in art but knew instinctively how to produce an armature, the frame for the sculpture, to enable his pieces to show horse in motion.” Treffert goes on to explicitly reject the “blank slate” notion (which was made famous by John Locke) in favor of the notion that the “brain might come loaded with a set of innate predispositions for processing what it sees or for understanding the ‘rules’ of music art or mathematics.” While this explanation is certainly appealing, it is well worth considering alternative explanations.

One established objection to this sort of argument is the like that used against past life experiences. When someone claims to have had a past life based on knowing things they would not normally know, the obvious reply is they learned through perfectly mundane means. In the case of alleged innate ideas, one reply is that the person gained the knowledge through experience. This is not to claim that such claims are intentional deceptions. They might not recall the experience that provided the knowledge. For example, the instant savants who solved the puzzle probably had previous puzzle experience and the sculptor might have seen armatures.

Another objection is that an idea might appear innate but instead is a new idea that did not originate directly from a specific experience. For example, consider a person who developed a genius for sculpture after a head injury. The person might have an innate idea that allowed them to produce the armature. An alternative explanation is that they faced a problem and solved it without any appeal to innate knowledge. The solution turned out to be an armature, because that is solved the problem. To use an analogy, someone faced with the problem of driving a nail might re-invent the hammer, but this does not entail that the idea of a hammer is innate. Rather, a hammer is what would work and it is what a person would tend to make.

As has always been the case in the debate over innate ideas, the key question is whether the phenomena in question can be explained best by innate ideas or without them. As a Cartesian, I am fond of innate ideas but always consider alternative explanations.

 

 

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Years ago, one-time `presidential candidate Mitt Romney was criticized for saying corporations are people. The guy who beat him, Obama, called corporation that used inversion unpatriotic. One might argue that criticizing corporations for being unpatriotic is to accept that they are people.

In the United States, corporations are legally persons—and the Supreme Court is devoted to granting them all the advantageous and convenient rights of actual people. The court, because it is not constrained by logic, ignores that it is illegal to own persons in the United States. I have argued elsewhere that corporations are not people and should not have that legal status—so I will not repeat those arguments here. However, I will address the issue of whether a corporation can be called unpatriotic without being committed corporate personhood.

On the side of corporate personhood, it could be argued that being unpatriotic (or patriotic) requires the intentional and emotional mental states that only a person could possess. As such, if a corporation is unpatriotic, then it is a person.

This sort of language argument has been used by philosophers such as Socrates and John Locke. In arguing for universals, Socrates (or Plato) would proceed from how one talks to accept an ontological commitment. In discussing personal identity, Locke took the fact that people use expressions such as a person not being themselves as evidence that someone in a normal state of mind can be a different person from someone in an abnormal state: “human laws not punishing the mad man for the sober man’s actions, nor the sober man for what the mad man did, thereby making them two persons: which is somewhat explained by our way of speaking in English, when we say such an one is not himself, or is beside himself; in which phrases it is insinuated, as if those who now, or at least first used them, thought that self was changed, the selfsame person was no longer in that man….”

One counter is that when someone refers to a corporation as being unpatriotic (or patriotic), they need not commit to the corporation itself being a person. Rather, the person can be taken as using a shorthand expression in place of asserting that the people who decide to implement corporate policy and make it happen are acting in what is seen as an unpatriotic way. To use an analogy, if someone claims a sports team is enthusiastic, the she is not committed to the team being a person—an entity over and above the players, coaches, etc. Rather, she is just using conversational shorthand to refer to the members of the team.  If such conversational shorthand expressed a commitment to personhood, then people would be routinely expressing commitments to a vast number of entities—thus dramatically swelling the ontology of persons. This seems both odd and unnecessary. Given the injunction of Occam’s razor, due care should be used when moving from how people speak to an ontological commitment. In the case of corporations and other groups, it would seem to suffice to attribute the mental states to the people that make them up rather than adding another entity to the matter. As such, the appeal to language argument for corporate personhood fails.

Thus, someone can claim that a corporation is unpatriotic (or patriotic) without being committed to corporate personhood. Just like a person can talk about team spirit without being committed to team personhood.

 

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It waits somewhen in the dark infinity of time. Perhaps the past. Perhaps the future. Perhaps now. The worst thing.

Whenever something bad happens to me, such as that full quadriceps tendon tear, people helpfully remark “it could have been worse.” After that tendon tear, I wrote an essay on the worst thing focused on possibility and necessity. This is the issue of whether it could be worse. While the tendon tear was the worst thing to happen to me (as of this writing), bad things do happen and people tell me things could have been worse. Logically, there can only be one worst thing or, perhaps, there could be a tie for worst. What would be the worst thing? That which nothing worse can be conceived.

I am confident there must be such a thing (or things). Just as there must be a tallest building, there must be the worst thing. But, of course, this would not be much of an essay if I did not argue for my claim.

Conveniently, arguing for the worst thing is like arguing for the existence of a perfect thing. This is usually God. Thomas Aquinas used his Five Ways to argue for the existence of God and most of these arguments rely on a combination of an infinite regress and a reduction to absurdity. For example, Aquinas argued from the fact that things move to the need for an unmoved mover on the grounds that an infinite regress would arise if everything had to be moved by something else. A regress argument with a reduction to absurdity will serve quite nicely in arguing for the worst thing.

Take any thing. To avoid the usual boring philosophical approach of calling this thing X, I’ll call this thing Don. If Don is the worst thing, then the worst thing exists. If Don is not the worst thing, then there must be another thing that is worse than Don. That thing, which I will call J.D., is either the worst thing or not. If J.D.  is the worst thing, then the worst thing exists and is J.D. If it is not J.D, there must be something worse than J.D. This cannot go on to infinity so there must be a thing that is worse than all other things—the worst thing. I’ll call it Elon.

The obvious counter is to throw down the infinity gauntlet: if there is an infinite number of things, there will not be a worst thing. After all, for any thing, there will be an infinite number of other things. As Leibniz claimed, the infinite number cannot be said to be even or odd, therefore in an infinite universe a thing could not be said to be worst.

One might be inclined to reject the infinity gauntlet—after all, even if there were an infinite number of things, each thing would stand in a relation to all other things and there would thus still be a worst thing.

Another obvious counter is to assert that there could be two or more things that are equally bad—that is, identical in their badness. This would be the tie situation mentioned earlier. In the case of a tie, there would not be a single worst thing.  A counter to this is to steal from Leibniz again and argue that there could not be two identical things—they would need to differ in some way that would make one worse than the other. This could be countered by asserting that the two might be different, yet equally bad. In this case, the response would be to follow the model used in arguing for the best thing (God) and assert that the worst thing would be worst in every possible respect and hence anything equally as bad would be identical and thus there would be one worst thing, not two. I suppose that this would have some consolation value—it would certainly be a scarier universe that had multiple worst things rather than just one.

Of course, this just shows that there is something that is worse than all other things that happen to be—which leaves open the possibility that it is not the worst thing in another sense of the term. So now I will Oversimplified, the ontological argument begins with the claim that God is that which nothing greater can be conceived. If God only existed as an idea in the mind, a greater can be conceived, namely God existing for real. Thus, God must exist.

In the case of the worst thing, it would be that which nothing worse can be conceived. If it only existed as an idea in the mind, a worse thing can be conceived, namely the worst thing existing for real, perhaps in your basement or the White House. Thus, the worst thing must exist.

Another variant on the ontological argument can also be used here. One variation is that since God is perfect, He must exist. This is because if He did not exist, He would not be perfect. But He is, so He must. In the case of the worst thing, the worst thing must exist because it is the worst. This is because if it did not exist, it would not be the worst. But it is, so it does. This worst thing would be the truly worst thing (just as God is supposed to be the best thing).

This approach does, of course, inherit the usual difficulties of an ontological argument as pointed out by Gaunilo and Kant (that existence is not a quality). It would certainly be better for the universe if there is no worst thing, but that is just wishful thinking.

 

 

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J’atorg struggled along on his motile pods, wheezing badly as his air sacs fought with the new atmosphere. He cursed the humans, invoking the gods of his people. Reflecting, he cursed the humans by invoking their gods. The gods of his people had proven weak: the bipeds had come and were remaking his world to suit them, proving their gods are stronger. The humans said it would take a long time for the world to fully change, but J’atorg could already see, taste and smell the differences. He did not know who he hated more: the hard-eyed humans who were destroying his world or the soft-eyed humans who spewed words about “rights”, “morality” and “lawsuits” while urging patience. He knew his people would die, aside from those the humans kept as curiosities or preserved to assuage their conscience with cruel pity.

 

Terraforming is transforming a planet to make it more earthlike. In science fiction, the goal of terraforming is to make an alien world suitable for human habitation by altering its ecosystem. Interestingly, the ruling classes are busy seeing to the reverse terraforming of our home world, making it less habitable for our species. Since this process would radically change a world, terraforming does raise ethical concerns. Conveniently, the ethical discussion that follows applies to both terraforming and reverse terraforming.

From a moral standpoint, the clearest scenario is when a lifeless, uninhabited planet is terraformed. If Mars is lifeless and uninhabited, it would fall into this category. If there are no beings on a world, there would be no rights violated and no harms inflicted. As such, terraforming such a planet would seem morally acceptable.

One obvious counter is to argue that a planet has moral status of its own, distinct from that of the beings that might inhabit it. Intuitively, the burden of proof for this status would rest on those who make this claim since inanimate objects do not seem to be the sort of entities that can be wronged.

A second counter is to advance potentiality arguments, somewhat akin to those used in the abortion debate. If a planet might someday give rise to beings who would have moral status, then terraforming the planet would be wrong because it would prevent them from arising. After all, the scientific account of life on earth involves it arising from non-life by natural processes. If an uninhabited world is terraformed, the possible inhabitants that might have arisen from the world would never be.

While arguments from potentiality tend to be weak, they are not without appeal. Naturally, the moral concern for the world should be proportional to how likely it is that it would produce inhabitants. If this is unlikely, then terraforming would be of less moral concern. However, if the world has considerable potential, then the possibility of moral harm is greater. To reverse the situation, we would not have wanted earth to be transformed by aliens if doing so would have prevented our eventual evolution. As such, to act morally, we would need to treat other worlds as we want our world to be treated. That said, our ruling class is ensuring that our world is undergoing reverse terraforming.

The standard counter to potentiality arguments is that mere potential does not morally outweigh the actual. This is used to justify the use of resources now even when doing so will make them unavailable to future generations. It is also the reasoning that is sometimes used to morally justify abortion, with the actual person outweighing the potential person. This view does, of course, have its own problems and there are serious arguments regarding the status of the potential versus that of the actual.

If a world has life or is otherwise inhabited (I do not want to assume that all inhabitants must be alive in the way we understand it), then the morality of terraforming would be much more complicated. After all, the inhabitants of a world would seem likely to have moral status. Not surprisingly, the ethics of terraforming an inhabited world are like those of altering an environment on earth, such as building houses in what was a forest. Naturally enough, the stock arguments about species extinction would apply here. As on earth, the more complex the inhabitants, the greater the moral concern—assuming that moral status is linked to complexity. After all, we do not balk at eliminating viruses or bacteria but are sometimes concerned when higher forms of life are at stake, such as owls or our fellow humans.

If the inhabitants are people, then the matter is even more complicated and would bring into play the usual arguments about how people should be treated. Despite the ethical similarities to these smaller scale scenarios, there are some important differences when it comes to terraforming ethics.

One main difference is one of scale: bulldozing a forest to build condos versus changing an entire planet for colonizing. The fact that the entire world is involved seems morally significant—assuming size matters.

There is also another difference, namely that the world is a different world. On earth, we can at least present some an ownership claim over our home world. Asserting ownership over an alien world is more problematic, especially if it is already inhabited. But it must be noted that there are moral arguments against claiming to own parts of our earth.

Of course, it can be countered that we are inhabitants of this universe and hence have as good a claim to alien worlds as our own—after all, it is our universe. Also, there are all sorts of clever moral justifications for ownership that people have developed, and these can be applied to ownership of alien worlds. After all, the moral justifications for taking land from other humans can be inflicted on aliens. To be consistent we would have to accept that the same arguments would morally justify aliens doing the same to us. Or we could simply go with a galactic state of nature where profit is the measure of right and matters are decided by the sword. In that case, we must hope that we have the biggest sword or that the aliens have better ethics than we do.

 

 

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After the murder of Michael Brown, protests took place which led to additional conflicts between citizens and police. Initially, the police met the protestors like an invading army: many officers were in military gear and backed up by armored vehicles. Militarized and brutal responses to protests have occurred repeatedly. As noted in my previous essay, this approach is based on a philosophy of order that perceived threats are to be met with physical force. Even when the perceived threat consists of citizens acting within their rights.

One reason is practical—the state has an advantage of force. As Thoreau notes, “…the state never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses.  It is not armed with superior with or honesty, but with superior physical strength.”

Another reason for this is conceptual. Many authorities prefer to use coercion rather than persuasion and reason. There is also a philosophical element—those in authority often seem to have a philosophical view about the rights of citizens that differs from that of the founders they so often praise when running for re-election.

To begin with the most obvious violations of constitutional rights, the rights of free speech and assemble have been routinely violated. The harassment of journalists also seem to be clear violations of the freedom of the press.

Section 1 of the 14th amendment has also been relentlessly violated since citizens have been “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” and citizens have been denied “the equal protection of the laws.” The violations of the 14th amendment are not limited just to the treatment of the protestors—the disproportionality  in the response to protests illustrates systematic violation of this amendment.

There are also clear violations of internationally established human rights: the protestors have been shot with rubber bullets (admittedly this is better than being shot with metal bullets) and tear gas has been used.

Those who accept natural rights, such as John Locke, would agree that these rights are being regularly violated. The most obvious being the right of liberty.  As such, the violations are not just a matter of violations of human law but also violations of natural rights (assuming there are such things). For those who prefer a more utilitarian approach to liberty, Mill’s utilitarian arguments would certainly support the claim that the state has been violating the rights of protestors.

One obvious counter to this view is the claim that the police are justified because they are acting to protect the rights of life, liberty and property for some people. This, of course, requires the use of force and it might appear that some rights are being violated in the keeping of order.

This counter has some abstract merit. The state does have an obligation to prevent protestors from violating the rights of other people. Being a protestor does not grant a person special rights to violate the rights of others, so a protestor who engages in unwarranted violence or other misdeeds can be justly stopped or arrested.

There is also the obvious concern with people who use protests as an excuse to engage in or as cover for misdeeds such as looting and violence. If the police arrest someone who has come to “protest” by stealing, they have not violated that person’s rights as they have no moral right to steal even if they claim it is an act of protest. That said, a case can be made for theft as an act of protest.

A reply to this counter is that the legitimate need to protect rights does not justify violating those rights. So, while the police have an obligation to keep protestors from committing crimes against life, liberty and property the police also have an obligation to not violate the rights of the protestors. I admit that this can be challenging in practice since opportunists and criminals can mix in with actual protestors. Just as they mix in with politicians and police. However, if our society is supposed to respect rights, effort must be taken to ensure that these rights are protected—even (and especially) in heated moments. After all, rights are not just for corporations.

 

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