Category: Ethics

All professions have their problem members, and the field of medicine is no exception. Fortunately, the percentage of bad doctors is low—but this small percentage can do considerable harm. After all, when your professor is incompetent, you might not learn as much as you should. If your doctor is incompetent, they could kill you.

Back in 2016 Consumer Reports published an article by Rachel Rabkin Peachman covering bad doctors and the difficulty patients face in learning whether a physician is a good doctor or a disaster. Unfortunately, not much has changed since then.

There are three main problems. The first is that there are bad doctors. The article presented numerous examples to add color to the dry statistics, and this includes such tales of terror as doctors molesting patients, doctors removing healthy body parts, and patient deaths due to negligence, impairment or incompetence. These are obvious all moral and professional failings on the part of the doctors, and they should clearly not be engaged in such misdeeds. For more recent examples, John Oliver provides disturbing coverage of the dangers presented by med spas.

The second is that, according to Peachman, the disciplinary actions tend to be rather less than ideal. While doctors should enjoy the protection of a due process, the hurdles are, perhaps, too high. There is also the problem that the responses are often very mild. For example, a doctor whose negligence has resulted in the death of patients can be allowed to keep practicing with minor limitations. As another example, a doctor who has been engaged in sexual misconduct might continue practicing after a class on ethics and with the requirement that someone else be present when he is seeing patients. In addition to the practical concerns about this, there is also the moral concern that the disciplinary boards are failing to protect patients.

One possible argument against harsher punishments is that there is always a shortage of doctors and taking a doctor out of practice would have worse consequences than allowing a bad doctor to keep practicing. This would be the basis for a utilitarian argument for continuing mild punishments. Crudely put, it is better to have a doctor who might kill a patient or two than no doctor at all because that would result in many more deaths.

This argument does have some appeal. However, there is the factual question of whether the mild punishments do more good than harm. If they do, then one would need to accept that this approach is morally tolerable. If not, then the argument would fail. There is also the response that consequences are not what matters and people should be reprimanded based on their misdeeds and not based on some calculation of utility. This also has some intuitive appeal.

It could also be argued that it should be left to patients to judge if they want to take the risk. If a doctor is known for sexual misdeeds with female patients but is fine with male patients, then a man who has few or no other options might decide that the doctor is his best choice. This leads to the third problem.

The third problem is that it is very difficult for patients to learn about bad doctors. While there is a National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), it is off limits to patients and is limited to law enforcement, hospital administration, insurance and a few other groups.

The main argument against allowing public access to the NPDB is based on the premise that it contains inaccurate information which could be harmful to innocent doctors. This makes it similar to the credit report data which is notorious for containing harmful inaccuracies that can plague people.

While the possibility of incorrect data is a matter of concern, that premise best supports the conclusion that the NPDB should be reviewed regularly to ensure that the information is accurate. While perfect accuracy is not possible, surely the information can meet a reasonable standard of accuracy. This could be aided by providing robust tools for doctors to inform those running the NPDB of errors and to inform doctors about the content of their files. As such, the error argument is easily defeated.

Patients do have some access to data about doctors, but there are many barriers in place. In some cases, there is a financial cost to access data. In almost all cases, the patient will need to grind through lengthy documents and penetrate the code of legal language. There is also the fact that this data is often incomplete and inaccurate.  While it could be argued that a responsible patient would expend the resources needed to research a doctor, this is an unreasonable request, and a patient should not need to do all this just to know that the doctor is competent. One reason for this is that someone seeking a doctor is likely to be sick or injured and expecting them to add on the burden of a research project is unreasonable. Also, a legitimate role of the state is to protect citizens from harm and having a clear means of identifying bad doctors would seem to fall within this.

Given the above, it seems reasonable to accept that a patient has the right to know about her doctor’s competence and should have an easy means of acquiring accurate information. This enables a patient to make an informed choice about her physician without facing an undue burden. This will also help the profession as good doctors will attract more patients and bad doctors will have a greater incentive to improve their practice.

Isis, my husky, joined the pack in 2004. She was a year old, and her soul was filled with wildness and a love of destruction. I channeled that wildness into running and that (mostly) took care of her love of destruction. We ran together for years, until she could no longer run. Then we walked on our adventures with a stately saunter rather than a mad dash. One day in March, 2016 she collapsed, and I thought that was the end. But steroids granted her a reprieve, and our adventures continued. But time ends all things.

As the months went by, she hit a plateau of recovery and then began her second decline. She could not walk as far; she had to be supported while doing her business and was sometimes confused about where she was. This worsened as November progressed. She required ever more support, walked ever less distance, and had trouble distinguishing between the outside and inside of the house. Since she was my dog and I was her human, I accepted all this. I stocked up on carpet cleaner and ran the steam cleaner regularly. Since she could not handle the smooth floors, I put down yoga mats for her. I had tried carpet runners, but they become urine sponges. Yoga mats can be hosed off, dried and put back in place.

Though she suffered a physical and mental decline, her will remained unimpaired. When she decided that she wanted to walk someplace, she would overcome her weakened legs and force her way through vegetation and up hills. If she could not make it on her own, she would look at me and would not move until I helped her to power up that hill. She had the spirit of a true runner; never giving up in the face of a challenge. But in the face of time will and love are not enough.

She suffered a sudden decline and lost her ability to walk. I would carry her to do her business, but even with my support she had difficulty. On November 22, her suffering peaked and neither of us slept that night. I wanted her to make it through Thanksgiving (she loved turkey), but on the morning of the 23rd I saw the pain in her eyes and knew what had to be done. Courtney, a friend of mine from Maine, had sent us some Christmas dog treats and a dog toy. I unwrapped those and hand fed her, placing the toy between her paws. After we had our early Christmas, I carried her to my truck and drove to Oakwood Animal Hospital. While no one really knows what is in the heart of another, I could tell that she had absolute trust in me as I carried her into the office. She knew that I would, as I have always done, do the right thing for her.

Her regular vet was on duty and, after we talked, Isis was put on an IV. As the vet, vet tech and I comforted her and cried, she passed away gently and peacefully. This was the hardest decision of my life, choosing the death of my friend.

Since I teach ethics, I have thought a great deal about this situation in the abstract. But the theoretical context of the classroom is different from the harsh reality of deciding if your friend should keep living. While some doubt the use of philosophy, thinking about this matter proved  helpful and even comforting.

While people are said to own dogs, I never saw our relationship as matter of owning property. Rather, we had reached a mutual understanding and formed a team. Huskies are supervillains when it comes to escape, so they can (and do) end their relationships with humans when they wish. By accepting her, I took on many moral responsibilities. Some of these were like those to my human friends, others are more like those of a parent to a child. These included the usual obligations of keeping her healthy and safe; but they also included the obligation to ensure her well-being and happiness.

When she collapsed in March, I had to make the decision whether to try treatment or let her go. While she was suffering, the vet said she had a chance to recover. Knowing her stubborn will, I believed she would want to take that chance and power through the pain. I could not be certain; but I went with what I thought she would want. It turned out it was the right call; she recovered and returned to enjoying life.

As I got to know her, I learned that she had a look that meant “I need you to do something for me.” In the past, this usually meant playing with her, getting her a snack or letting her into the backyard to menace the lesser creatures (to a husky, almost all other creatures are lesser).  These things made her happy, and I was pleased to oblige. After all, I had a moral responsibility to her wellbeing because she was my dog and I was her human.

When she had declined to her worst, she stared at me intently with that look. Since she could not talk, she could not say what she wanted. She, I believed, wanted an end to her pain. I might just think that to feel better about my decision and perhaps she was doing nothing of the sort. But I knew that to keep her alive and suffering would not be a choice for her wellbeing or happiness. Medicine is quite good these days; I probably could have kept her going for a few months more with painkillers and other medications. But that would be a dull and drugged life, not a life suitable for a soul so full of wildness and a love of destruction. I wanted her to end her life as my beloved wolf and not dissipate to nothing in a sea of pharmaceuticals. So, I said goodbye to my good girl.

 

James O’Gara, a resident of my adopted state of Florida, sent a postcard to Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia with the handwritten message “You lack values.” In response, officers from our state’s Department of Financial Services (which is overseen by Ingoglia) were sent to his house to question him. Ingoglia’s communication director Sydner Booker was asked about the incident but declined to explain why the postcard was considered a threat. She also declined to answer questions about how many other people had been investigated and how much it cost to send the agents. Mr. O’Gara and his wife Cathy have been critical of both the Trump and DeSantis administration.

A rational assessment of the postcard and O’Gara’s history (the agents expressed knowledge that he served in the infantry during the Vietnam war) would obviously reveal no threat. And, of course, while “you lack values” might sting a bit, it is clearly no threat. As such, there seems to be no justification for the visit, and the best explanation is that this was an effort at intimidation by the state. The media coverage in Florida is likely to serve an intended purpose of the visit: to spread the word that criticism and opposition to the regimes  of Trump and DeSantis can, and will, result in a visit from agents of the state.

This is consistent with the current ruling ideology of “free speech” in Florida, in which free expression is protected when it is in accord with the values of the right and suppressed when the rulers of the state dislike it or see an opportunity for intimidation. In the past I might have said this was un-American, but now I will simply state that this is immoral. I’ve argued at length in defense of free expression (including for those on the right) and will not repeat my arguments here. In addition to the primary concern about free expression and the coercive power of the state being misused, there are other concerns.

As Republicans pretend to care about state spending and fighting crime, there is a reasonable concern about the cost of sending agents to, it seems, intimidate citizens. These resources would be better spent dealing with actual crimes in Florida. To be fair, while my home state of Maine has America’s lowest crime rate, Florida has a lower crime rate than many other states. But the rate is not low enough that officers have nothing better to do than “talk” to citizens about innocuous postcards.

Another concern is that while the interaction between the agents and O’Gara seemed cordial, there is always the possibility that interactions between police and citizens can go very badly. For example, from 2017 to 2023 at least 800 people were killed in traffic stops. One reason for this is the cultivation of the warrior mentality in police. “Under this warrior worldview, officers are locked in intermittent and unpredictable combat with unknown but highly lethal enemies. As a result, officers learn to be afraid.” Having taught critical thinking for decades, I am aware of the effects of fear on how a person perceives other people and situations. Put simply, while vigilance is wise, fear is unwise. Innocent actions can be seen as potential threats, items such as cell phones or wallets can be perceived as being guns, and any defiance or disrespect can be interpreted as evidence of violent intent. As such, even if an officer has good intentions, unnecessary violence can arise from fear. If, for example, O’Gara had gotten into a heated exchange with the agents then things could have turned out very differently. There is also obvious concern with race in the context of law enforcement.

Someone more cynical than I might claim that certain state officials might be pleased with a violent encounter for two reasons. One might be that the violence could be used as “evidence” that the investigation was justified (much how ICE seems to be trying to provoke violence to justify its violence). Another reason might be that fear of being killed by law enforcement sent to “investigate” threats would deter people from exercising their moral right to criticize the rulers of Florida.

Speaking of free expression, because the rulers of my adopted state of Florida hold it as so precious that they must decide who can exercise it and how one may do so, I must always state that I condemn the use of political violence between Americans

Having a pet imposes morally accountability upon a person, the life of a pet is in one’s hands. When I took my husky Isis to the emergency vet in 2016, she was in such rough shape that I thought I might need to choose to end her suffering that night.

While some dismiss philosophy as valueless in real life, my experience as a philosopher was useful in dealing with the decline of my beloved husky. Having studied and taught ethics, I learned a great deal that helped me frame the choices I had to face

When I brought Isis to the emergency vet, I knew that it would be expensive. When the vet showed me the proposed bill, I was not surprised it was around $600. I am lucky enough to have a decent job and fortunate enough to have made it through the last time the rich wrecked the American economy. While worried about her, I also worried about people who are less well-off yet love their pets as much as I do. They could face a terrible choice between medical care for their pet and having the money for some other essential expenses, such as their own medical care. Or they might not have enough money and hence cannot even make a choice. The Big Beautiful Bill will make this even worse and I am sure that pets will be among the many indirect victims of that act of political cruelty.

Since there are many systems of ethics, there are many ways to approach the moral decision of costly (in money or time) pet care. The most calculating is a utilitarian approach: weighing the costs and benefits to determine what would create the greatest utility. In my case, I could afford such care and the good for my husky vastly outweighed the cost to me. So, the utilitarian calculation was easy for me.

Others are not so lucky, and they will face a difficult choice that requires weighing the well-being of their pet against the cost to them. While it is easy enough to say that a person should always take care of her pet, people have other moral obligations, such as to their children and themselves. In addition to the ethics of making the decision, there is also the moral matter of having a society in which people are forced to make such hard decisions because they have been denied the financial resources to address the challenges they face. While some might say that those who cannot afford pets should not have pets (something also said about children), that is just another evil. While I would not say that people have a right to pets as they have a right to life and liberty, a system that gives rise to such a view is an unjust system. Naturally, some might still insist that pets are a luxury, like adequate education, health care and basic nutrition.

Another approach is to set aside the cold calculations of utility and make the decision based on an ethics of duty and obligation.  Having a pet is analogous to having a child: the choice creates a set of moral duties and obligations. Part of the foundation of these obligations is that the pet cannot make their own decisions and cannot care for themselves. As such, taking an animal as a pet is to accept the role of a decision maker and a caretaker.

An analogy can also be drawn to accepting a contract for a job: the job requires certain things and accepting the job entails accepting those requirements. In the case of a pet, there are many obligations, and the main one is assuming responsibility for their well-being. This is why choosing to have a pet is such a serious decision and should not be entered into lightly.

One reason having a pet should not be taken lightly is that the duty to the pet imposes an obligation to make sacrifices for the well-being of the pet. This can include going without sleep, cleaning up messes and making the hard decision about the end of life. There are, of course, limits to all obligations and working out exactly what one owes a pet is a moral challenge. There are certainly some minimal obligations that a person must accept, or they should not have a pet. These include providing for the basic physical and emotional needs of the pet. The moral discussion becomes more complicated when the obligations impose greater burdens.

When Isis was at her low point, she could barely walk. I had to carry her outside and support her while she struggled to do her business. When I picked her up, I would say “up, up and away!” When carrying her, I would say “wooosh” so she would think she was flying. This made us both feel a little better.

 She could not stand to eat or drink and had little appetite. So, I had to hold her water bowl up for her so she could drink and make special foods to hand feed her.  I found that she would eat chicken and rice processed into a paste—provided I slathered it with peanut butter and let her lick it from my palm. At night, she would cry with pain, and I would be there to comfort her, getting by on a few hours of sleep. Sometimes she would not be able to make it outside, and there would be a mess to clean up.

I did all this for two reasons. The first is, of course, love. The second is duty. My moral obligation to my husky required me to do all this for her because she is my dog. If I did not do all this for her, I would be a worse person and, while I can bear cleaning up diarrhea at 3:23 in the morning, I cannot bear being a worse person.

I am no moral saint and I admit that this was difficult (though it obviously pales in comparison with what other people have faced). It did not reach my limits, though I know I have them. Sorting out the ethics of these limits is a significant moral matter. First, there is the moral question of how far one’s obligations go. That is, determining how far you are morally obligated to go. Second, there is the moral question of how far you can go before your obligations break you. After all, each person also has duties to herself that are as important as obligations to others.

In my case, I accepted that my obligations included all that I mentioned above. While doing all this was exhausting me (I was dumping instant coffee mix into protein shakes to get through teaching my classes), Isis recovered before my obligations broke me. But I had to give serious thought to how long I would be able to sustain this level of care before I could not go on anymore. I am glad I did not have to find out.

While most current body hacking technology is gimmicky and theatrical, it does have potential. It is, for example, easy enough to imagine that the currently very dangerous night-vision eye drops could be made into a safe product, allowing people to hack their eyes. There is also the cyberpunk future envisioned by writers such as William Gibson and games like Cyberpunk and Shadowrun. In such a future, people might body hack their way to being full cyborgs. In the nearer future, there might be augmentations like memory backups for the brain, implanted phones, and even subdermal weapons. Such augmenting hacks raise moral issues that go beyond the basic ethics of self-modification. Fortunately, these ethical matters can be effectively addressed by the application of existing moral theories and principles.

Since the basic ethics of self-modification were addressed in the previous essay, this essay will focus solely on the ethical issue of augmentation through body hacking. This issue does, of course, stack with the other moral concerns.

In general, there seems to be nothing inherently wrong with the augmentation of the body through technology. The easy way to argue for this is to draw the obvious analogy to external augmentation: starting with sticks and rocks, humans augmented their natural capacities. If this is acceptable, then moving the augmentation under the skin should not open a new moral world.

The easy and obvious objection is to contend that under the skin is a new moral world. That, for example, a smart phone carried in a pocket is one thing, while a smartphone embedded in the skull is another.

This objection does have merit: implanting technology is morally significant. At the very least, there are moral concerns about potential health risks. However, this moral concern is about the medical aspects, not about the augmentation itself. This is not to say that the health issues are not important, they are very important; but fall under another moral issue.

If it is accepted that augmentation is, in general, morally acceptable, there are still legitimate concerns about specific types of augmentation and the context in which they are employed. Fortunately, there is established moral discussion about these categories of augmentation.

Two areas in which augmentation is of concern are sports and games. Athletes have long engaged in body hacking, if the use of drugs can be considered body hacking. While those playing games like poker generally do not use enhancing drugs, they have attempted to cheat with technology. While future body hacks might be more dramatic, they would seem to fall under the same principles that govern the use of augmenting substances and equipment in current sports. For example, an implanted device that stores extra blood to be added during the competition would be analogous to existing methods of blood doping. As another example, a poker or chess player might implant a computer that she can use to cheat at the game.

While specific body hacks will need to be addressed by the appropriate governing bodies of sports and games, the basic principle that cheating is morally unacceptable still applies. As such, the ethics of body hacking in sports and games is easy enough to handle in the general and the real challenge will be sorting out which hacks are cheating and which are acceptable. In any case, some interesting scandals can be expected.

The field of academics is also an area of concern. Since students are adept at using technology such as AI to cheat, there will be efforts to cheat through body hacking. As with cheating in sports and games, the basic ethical framework is well-established: creating is morally unacceptable. As with sports and games, the challenge will be sorting out which hacks are considered cheating, and which are not. If body hacking becomes mainstream, it can be expected that education and testing will need to change as well as the was counts as cheating. Using an analogy, calculators are usually now allowed on tests and thus the future might see implanted computers being allowed for certain tests. Testing of memory might also become pointless. If most people have implanted devices that can store data and link to the internet, memorizing things might cease to be a skill worth testing. This does, however, segue into the usual moral concerns about people losing abilities or becoming weaker due to technology. Since these are general concerns that have applied to everything from the abacus to the automobile, I will not address this issue here.

There is also the broad realm composed of all the other areas of life that do not generally have specific moral rules about cheating through augmentation. These include such areas as business and dating. While there are moral rules about certain forms of cheating, the likely forms of body hacking would not seem to be considered cheating in such areas, though they might be regarded as providing an unfair advantage, especially in cases in which the wealthy classes are able to gain even more advantages over the less well-off classes.

As an example, a company with might use body hacking to upgrade its employees so they can be more effective, thus providing a competitive edge over lesser companies.  While it seems likely that certain augmentations will be regarded as unfair enough to require restriction, body hacking would merely change the means and not the underlying game. That is, the well-off always have advantages over the less-well-off. Body hacking would just be a new tool in the competition. Hence, existing ethical principles would apply here as well. Or not be applied, as is so often the case when money is on the line.

So, while body hacking for augmentation will require some new applications of existing moral theories and principles, it does not make a significant change in the moral landscape. Like almost all changes in technology it will merely provide new ways of doing old things. Like cheating in school or sports. Or life.

While body hacking is sometimes presented as being new and radical, humans have been engaged in the practice (under other names) for quite some time. One of the earliest forms of true body hacking was probably the use of prosthetic parts to replace lost pieces, such as a leg or hand. These hacks were aimed at restoring a degree of functionality, so they were practical hacks.

While most contemporary body hacking seems aimed at gimmicks or limited attempts at augmentation, there are serious applications that involve replacement and restoration. One example of this is the color blind person who is using a skull mounted camera to provide audio clues regarding colors. This hack serves as a replacement to missing components of the eye, albeit in a somewhat unusual way.

Medicine is, obviously enough, replete with body hacks ranging from contact lenses to prosthetic limbs. These technologies and devices provide people with some degree of replacement and restoration for capabilities they lost or never had. While these sorts of hacks are typically handled by medical professionals, advances in existing technology and the rise of new technologies will result in more practical hacks aimed not at gimmicks but at restoration and replacement. There will also be considerable efforts aimed at augmentation, but this matter will be addressed in the next essay.

Since humans have been body hacking for replacement and restoration for thousands of years, the ethics of this matter are well settled. In general, the use of technology for medical reasons of replacement or restoration is morally unproblematic. After all, this process is simply fulfilling the main purpose of medicine: to get a person as close to their normal healthy state as possible. To use a specific example, there really is no moral controversy over the use of prosthetic limbs that are designed to restore functionality. In the case of body hacks, the same general principle would apply and hacks that aim at restoration or replacement are morally unproblematic. That said, there are some potential areas of concern.

One area of both moral and practical concern is the risk of amateur or DIY body hacking. The concern is that such hacking could have negative consequences. This might be due to bad design, poor implementation or other causes. For example, a person might endeavor a hack to replace a missing leg and have it fail catastrophically, resulting in a serious injury. This is, of course, not unique to body hacking, this is a general matter of good decision making.

As with health and medicine in general, it is usually preferable to go with a professional rather than an amateur or a DIY approach (at least in serious matters). Also, the possibility of harm makes it a matter of moral concern. That said, there are many people who cannot afford professional care and technology will afford people an ever-growing opportunity to body hack for medical reasons. This sort of self-help can be justified on the grounds that some restoration or replacement is better than none. This assumes that self-help efforts do not result in worse harm than doing nothing. As such, body hackers and society will need to consider the ethics of the risks of amateur and DIY body hacking. Guidance can be found here in existing medical ethics, such as moral guides for people attempting to practice medicine on themselves and others without proper medical training.

A second area of moral concern is that some people will engage in replacing fully functional parts with body hacks that are equal or inferior to the original (augmentation will be addressed in the next essay). For example, a person might want to remove a finger to replace it with a mechanical finger with a built in USB drive. As another example, a person might want to replace her eye with a camera comparable or inferior to her natural eye.

One clear moral concern is the potential dangers in such hacks as removing a body part can be dangerous. One approach would be to weigh the harms and benefits of such hacking. On the face of it, such replacement hacks would seem to be at best neutral, that is, the person will end up with the same capabilities as before. It is also possible, perhaps likely, that the replacement attempt will result in diminished capabilities, thus making the hack wrong because of the harm inflicted. Some body hackers might argue that such hacks have a value beyond functionality. For example, the value of self-expression or achieving a state of existence that matches one’s conception or vision of self. In such cases, the moral question would be whether these factors are worth considering and if they are, how much weight they should be given morally.

There is also the worry that such hacks would be a form of unnecessary self-mutilation and thus at best morally dubious. A counter to this is to argue, as John Stuart Mill did, that people have a right to self-harm, if they do not harm others.  That said, arguing that people do not have a right to interfere with self-harm (provided the person is acting freely and rationally) does not entail that self-harm is morally acceptable. It is certainly possible to argue against self-harm on utilitarian grounds and based on moral obligations to oneself. Arguments from the context of virtue theory would also apply as self-harm is contrary to developing one’s excellence as a person.

These approaches could be countered. Utilitarian arguments can be met with utilitarian arguments that offer a different evaluation of the harms and benefits. Arguments based on obligations to oneself can be countered by arguing that there are not such obligations or that the obligations one does have allows from this sort of modification. Argument from virtue theory could be countered by attacking the theory itself or showing how such modifications are consistent with moral excellence.

My own view, which I consistently apply to other areas such as drug use, diet, and exercise, is that people have a moral right to freedom of self-abuse and harm. This requires that the person can make an informed decision and is not coerced or misled. As such, I hold that a person has every right to DIY body hacking. Since I also accept the principle of harm, I hold that society has a moral right to regulate body hacking of others as other similar practices (such as dentistry) are regulated. This is to prevent harm being inflicted on others. Being fond of virtue theory, I do hold that people should not engage in self-harm, even though they have every right to do so without having their liberty restricted. To use a concrete example, if someone wants to spoon out her eyeball and replace it with an LED light, then she has every right to do so. However, if an untrained person wants to set up a shop and scoop eyeballs for replacement with lights, then society has every right to prevent that. I do think that scooping out an eye would be both foolish and morally wrong, which is also how I look at heroin use and smoking tobacco.

Mark Bray, History Professor

Because the rulers of my adopted state of Florida hold freedom expression as so precious that they must decide who can exercise it and how one may do so, I must begin by stating that I condemn the use of political violence between Americans. I also, in general, condemn violence. I am, after all, a Christian and a philosopher. Hence, I’m all about talking and believe we should not kill.

As I am writing this, Dr. Mark Bray and his family are fleeing the United States in the face of death threats. Dr. Bray’s first attempt failed, and it appears someone cancelled his family’s reservations as they were about to board. Dr. Bray has been dubbed “Dr. Antifa” because of his scholarly works on anarchism and antifascism. He has also been accused of being a threat to conservative students at Rutgers and a petition has been created to remove him to “protect conservative students from political violence.” Despite Antifa being a political philosophy and not an organization, President Trump has attempted to declare it a domestic terrorist organization.

Following the brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk, the right has professed an abhorrence of political violence and Republican leaders have pledged that action will be taken against people making threats or celebrating violence. Because of this, one might think that the threats against Dr. Bray would result in some action by the state. But the White House responded by claiming that “examples of Democrat violence are plentiful” and presented the murder of Kirk as an example. While the statistical data shows that right wing violence is more common (though all violence is to be condemned), the White House asserted that “The Trump Administration is focused on stopping this violence — Democrats are fueling it.” While it is odd to blame the Democrats for threats made against Dr. Bray, a red herring tactic and perhaps also some “whataboutism” are being used here. While there are some differences between the two rhetorical devices, the tactic is to shift attention from the original issue or question and thus not address or answer it. In this example, when folks on the right are asked about specific threats or violence against people on the left (or center), the tactic is to shift to talking about alleged threats or violence from the left. They are, in effect, saying “what about the left?”

While real left-wing violence and threats are matters of concern, the use of a red herring or whataboutism obviously does not address concerns or questions about right wing threats and violence. In the case at hand, saying that the left is violent does nothing to address the threats made against Dr. Bray.

These rhetorical techniques can be effective in that they can mislead people from the real issue and provide an opportunity to persuade people that the left is to blame even when the violence and threats are against people on the left (or center). The defense against this is easy: just ask yourself if the original issue or question has been addressed.  In this case, it has not. Ignoring right wing violence and blaming the left does not address the problem of right-wing violence. At this point someone who has heard of Dr. Bray might bring up the claim that he seems to have advocated violence and perhaps is reaping what he has sown. This takes us to the straw man technique.

In 2017 Dr. Bray appeared on Meet the Press and claimed that “when pushed, self-defense is a legitimate response to white supremacist and neo-Nazi violence.” For additional context, he added that “We’ve tried ignoring neo-Nazis in the past. We’ve seen how that turned out in the ’20s and ’30s.  A lot of people are under attack, and sometimes they need to be able to defend themselves. It’s a privileged position to say you never have to defend yourself from these kinds of monsters.” This view puts Dr. Bray in such radical company as the English philosopher John Locke. Locke presented a moral justification for self-defense that serves (knowingly or unknowingly) as the basis of moral arguments made for self defense by most Americans. Roughly put, because people have the God-given right to protect their life, liberty and property, they have the right to self-defense against unjustified attacks. If Dr. Bray had simply said “people have a right to defend themselves when attacked”, most Americans would be hard pressed to disagree with him. But he specified that this general right of self-defense would also apply to attacks from white supremacists and neo-Nazis and this triggered some of the right. As they also advocate self-defense, they had to mischaracterize his claims and use the straw man and present a distorted version of his claim.

The conservative site, Campus Reform, claimed he had “endorsed antifa’s violent protest tactics.” The President of Dartmouth at the time issued a statement that was also a straw man, saying Dr. Bray was “supporting violent protest.” Dr. Bray’s colleagues defended him by pointing out that Dr. Bray’s claim had been made into a straw man of his actual position.

Straw man tactics can be effective because they, by definition, contain a sliver of truth. Dr. Bray did advocate self-defense and did so in the context of defending against white supremacists and neo-Nazis. He also noted how peaceful efforts to resist such threats failed. But taking this to be advocating violent protest is like claiming that anyone advocating self-defense is thus advocating violence. While there is a sliver of truth, it ignores the full context and thus creates a strawman. As such, those who attack his view seem to be angry that someone would say that people being attacked by white-supremacists and Neo-Nazis have a right to self defense against their violence. This certainly helps explain why white-supremacists and Neo-Nazis would be mad at him.

As always, the defense against straw man tactics is to find the truth; although this is becoming increasingly difficult as independent journalism and fact checking is under ongoing and increasing attack.

Back in my graduate school days, I made extra money writing for science fiction and horror gaming companies. This was in the 1990s, which was the chrome age of cyberpunk: the future was supposed to be hacked and jacked. The future is now, but is an age of Tinder, Facebook, and Tik Tok. But there is still hope of a cyberpunk future: body hackers are endeavoring to bring some cyberpunk into the world. The current state of the hack is disappointing but, great things arise from lesser things and hope remains for a chromed future.

Body hacking, at this point, is minor. For example, some people have implanted electronics under their skin, such as RFID chips. Of course, most dogs also have an implanted chip. As another example, one fellow who is color blind has a skull mounted device that informs him of colors via sounds. As one might imagine, body hacks that can be seen have generated some mockery and hostility. Since I owe cyberpunk for my ability to buy ramen noodles and puffed rice cereal, I am obligated to come to the defense of the aesthetics of body hacking.

While some point out that philosophers have not given body hacking the attention it deserves and claim that it is something new and revolutionary, it still falls under established moral systems. As such, body hacking is a new matter for applied ethics but does not require a new moral theory.

The aesthetic aspects of body hacking fall under the ethics of lifestyle choices, specifically those regarding choices of personal appearance. This can be shown by drawing analogies to established means of modifying personal appearance. The most obvious modifications are clothing, hairstyles and accessories (such as jewelry). These, like body hacking, have the capacity to shock and offend people, perhaps by what is revealed by the clothing or the message sent by it (including literal messages, such as T-shirts with text and images).  Unlike body hacking, these modifications are on the surface, thus making them different from true body hacking.

As such, a closer analogy would involve classic cosmetic body modifications. These include hair dye, vanity contact lenses, decorative scars, piercings, and tattoos. In fact, these can be seen as low-tech body hacks that are precursors to the technological hacks of today. Body hacks go beyond these classic modifications and range from the absurd (a man growing an “ear” on his arm) to the semi-useful (a person who replaced a missing fingertip with a USB drive). While concerns about body hacking go beyond the aesthetic, body hacks do have the capacity to elicit responses like other modifications. For example, tattoos were once regarded as the mark of a lower-class person, though they are now accepted. As another example, not long ago men (other than pirates) did not get piercings unless they were willing to face ridicule. Now piercing is passé.

Because the aesthetics of body hacking are analogous to classic appearance hacks, the same ethics applies to these cases. Naturally enough, people vary in their ethics of appearance. I, as veteran readers surely suspect, favor John Stuart Mill’s approach to the matter of the ethics of lifestyle choices. Mill argues that people have the right to interfere with liberty only to prevent a person from harming others. This is a reasonable standard of interference which he justifies on utilitarian grounds. Mill explicitly addresses the ways of life people chose: “…the principle requires liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of our life to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow; without impediment from our fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong.”

Mill’s principle nicely handles the ethics of the aesthetics of body hacking (and beyond): body hackers have the moral freedom to hack themselves even though such modifications might be regarded as aesthetically perverse, foolish, or wrong. So, just as a person has the moral right to wear clothing that some would regard as too revealing or dye his hair magenta, a person has the moral right to grow a functionless ear on his arm or implant blinking lights under her skin. But just as a person would not have a right to wear a jacket covered in razor blades, a person would not have the right to hack herself with an implanted strobe light that flashes randomly into people’s eyes. This is because such things become the legitimate business of others because of the harm they can do.

Mill does note that people are subject to the consequences of their choices and not interfering with someone’s way of life does not require accepting it, embracing it or even working around it. For example, just as a person who elects to have “Goat F@cker” tattooed on his face can expect challenges in getting a job as a bank teller or schoolteacher, a person who has blinking lights embedded in his forehead can expect to encounter challenges in employment. Interestingly, the future might see discrimination lawsuits on the part of body hackers, analogous to past lawsuits for other forms of discrimination. It can also be expected that social consequences will change for body hacking, just as it occurred with tattoos and yoga pants.

One final point is the stock concern about the possible harm of offensive appearances. That is, that other people do have a legitimate interest in the appearance of others because their appearance might harm them by offending them. While this is worth considering, there does not seem to be a compelling reason to accept that mere offensiveness causes sufficient harm to warrant restrictions on appearance. What would be needed would be evidence of actual harm to others that arises because the appearance inflicts the harm rather than the alleged harm arising because of how the offended person feels about the appearance. To use an analogy, while someone who hates guns has the right not to be shot, he does not have the right to insist that he never see images of guns.

The discussion has shown that body hacking that does not inflict harm to others falls nicely under the liberty to choose a way of life, provided that the way of life does not inflict harm on others. But, as always, a person who strays too far from the norm must be aware of possible consequences. Especially when it comes to dating and employment.

Like almost everyone, I would prefer that there were far fewer abortions. While this might seem like a problematic claim, it is obviously true. People who oppose abortion obviously want there to be fewer abortions. However, those who are pro-choice are not pro-abortion. That is, they do not want abortions to occur as they would prefer that women did not end up in situations where they see abortion as the best or only option.

While I do not fall into the pro-life camp in terms of political labelling, I do take a position in favor of life. To be specific, I prefer to avoid killing whenever possible and I accept that killing anything is an act of some moral significance. In some case, the ethics of killing are easy: I have no issue with killing bacteria if they are working hard to kill me and I accept the need to kill other living things to use them as food. Meat and salad are both murder.

 In other cases, like abortion, the ethics are more complicated. After all, abortion involves killing a potential human being and this is clearly an act with great moral significance. Because I have a general opposition to killing, I have the obvious general opposition to abortion. However, I do accept that killing can be morally justified and believe this does apply to certain cases of abortion. As such, I favor reducing the number of abortions and support certain means of doing so. I do not, however, favor it being banned.

For those who follow abortion in American politics, the usual means of reducing abortions are aimed at making it harder for women to get abortions. Numerous states have passed laws requiring waiting periods and have imposed medically unwarranted restrictions on abortion clinics aimed at closing them. I am completely opposed to these means of reducing the number of abortions. While I have various reasons supporting my view, my main reason is that these approaches put the burden almost entirely on the woman. Roughly put, it is the woman who bears most of the cost of the moral and religious views of those who impose such restrictions. These costs can be extremely high and not only in terms of financial cost.

The moral foundation for my opposition to this method of reducing abortions is based on the fact that such imposition is unfair and the fact that this method imposes an extremely high cost on women and society. It is the wrong way to reduce the number of abortions. As such, I favor approaches that would reduce the number of abortions while distributing the cost more fairly and reducing the cost to women and society as a whole. To this end, I offer the following general proposals.

The first is doing what is required to reduce sexual violence against women as this would reduce the number of abortions and, rather importantly, make the world safer for women.

The second is to mandate effective and realistic sex education for the youth and make effective contraception readily accessible. If people have a better understanding of sex and have access to the means to prevent pregnancy, there will be fewer unwanted pregnancies and hence fewer abortions. This has other obvious benefits, although some people do oppose birth control for usually unexplained “religious” reasons.

The third is to provide greater social support for mothers and children. This would include such things as affordable day car for all working mothers, financial support for lower income mothers, and other support that would make raising a child less of a financial burden. This would reduce the number of abortions by making the choice to have the child more viable.

The third is to address the gender inequalities that burden women. These include wage inequality, the glass ceiling, and other such things that contribute to making it difficult for women to have a family and a career. This would lower the number of abortions by making being a woman and a mother less of a career handicap, thus giving women a greater opportunity to choose to continue an unplanned pregnancy.

There are, of course, some obvious objections against these proposals. The first is that doing so would require the use of public money. The “advantage” of the usual approaches is that they are initially free for the state and the cost is imposed upon the women. Such cost shifting is beloved by the morally shifty. As such, it comes down to the ethics of deciding who should bear the burden and cost. Being pro-life rather than anti-abortion, I hold that the cost should be shared and I am willing to pay a price for my principles rather than expecting others to bear that cost.

The second objection is that these approaches require some radical changes to society. Those who oppose fairness and prefer the “traditional” approach of oppressing and burdening women will find this problematic. However, they would be wrong about this and morally defending unfairness is rather challenging.

The third objection is that this approach will still allow abortions to occur as there is no proposal to impose new restrictions or ban abortion. My reply is that I do acknowledge that it would be preferable to have no abortions, just as it would be preferable to never have to harm anyone or anything ever. However, if it is accepted that a person’s interests can warrant harming another living being, then there are clear grounds for warranting abortion in many cases. As such, while I favor reducing the need for abortion, I cannot favor eliminating it, any more than I can support a total rejection of ever doing harm. I do, of course, recognize that such complete pacifism could be morally commendable and someone could consistently oppose all abortion if they embraced it.

As this is being written, the government of the United States is shut down. The Republicans, who control all three branches of the federal government, are blaming the Democrats. The Democrats currently have enough votes to prevent the Republicans from simply doing whatever they want but there is the question of why the Democrats are not simply rolling over for the Republicans.

The Democrats have claimed they want to extend the tax credits that make purchasing health insurance more affordable for those using the “Obamacare” marketplace. They also want to undo the Medicaid cuts in Trump’s “big bill.” Given the high cost of insurance premiums and how much people, especially those in many Republican states, depend on Medicaid, the Democrats’ goal seems morally commendable. The Republicans understand that saying they are shutting down the government because the Democrats want to help people afford health care would make them look bad, so they falsely claim that the “Democrats shut down the government because they want to give free health care to immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally.”

But people in the United States illegally are not eligible for federal health care programs, which obviously include the insurance provided by Obamacare and Medicaid. Hence, the Republicans in question are either in error or lying. But there is a small slice, a sliver, of truth embedded deep within these untruths.

From a rhetorical standpoint, this technique allows untruths to be “anchored” to a true claim. This can allow a deflection tactic to be used against critics by insisting that the critics are denying the true sliver when they are, in fact, criticizing the untruth. From a psychological perspective, this method might also allow people to feel better about lying as they can rationalize their lies by telling themselves they are saying something true. As Christianity condemns lying, anyone who professes to be a Christian might find this tactic useful, should they wish to deceive themselves and others. But, of course, God cannot be deceived. Morally this method is also problematic, since it involves both lying and attempting to misuse the truth as part of a deception. But what is the sliver of truth behind these untruths?

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 requires hospitals that receive Medicaid funds to provide emergency care for which they are compensated (and rightly so) by Medicaid. A person in the United States illegally, but who meets the requirements of the act, can thus receive emergency medical treatment and the hospital providing the service can receive compensation from Medicaid. As such, by wanting to reverse the cuts to Medicaid the Democrats do want more funds to be available and a minute fraction of which might go to compensate an American hospital that treated someone here illegally. But this is required by a 1986 law from when Reagan was President, so blaming the Democrats for the shutdown because of this law would be absurd. Also, this act should be supported by any Christian who professes to be moved by the tale of the good Samaritan. From a non-religious perspective, it is also an ethical law. To let people suffer or die simply because of their legal status would be morally monstrous. It is also reasonable that the hospitals be compensated for these services, especially given how underfunded many community hospitals are. As such, it is also clear why Republicans are not focusing on this act and are instead offering straw man attacks on the Democrats.

Trump claimed that “We’ll probably have a shutdown because one of the things they want to do is they want to give incredible Medicare, Cadillac, the Cadillac Medicare, to illegal immigrants.” Then he added “they want to have illegal aliens come into our country and get massive health care at the cost to everybody else.” This claim was echoed by Vance and Mike Johnson. This is an obvious straw man, even laying aside that there is no such thing as Cadilac Medicare. But this is rhetorically effective move since it appeals to fears famously exploited by President Reagan that the wrong people are getting public money. This version has the added power of appealing to xenophobia; that people from somewhere else are taking what should be going to Americans.

While some people might believe the lies, even those who know better might still support the Republicans even if doing so would hurt them personally. Many Republicans rely on the tax credits, and many Republican states depend on Medicaid dollars. But there are those who are willing to hurt themselves if doing so hurts people they do not like. A good (or bad) example of this is how racism drained public pools, support for universal healthcare and other policies. Racism is a powerful force in the United States as is xenophobia; combining these two is an effective way to get some people to act against their own interest and thus hurt everyone. Which seems to be a goal of the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress, something that even MTG seems to recognize.