Category: Ethics

Back in 2016 Martin Shkreli became the villain of drug pricing when he increased the price of a $13.50 pill to $750. While buying up smaller drug companies and increasing prices products is a standard profit-making venture, the scale of the increase and Shkreli’s attitude drew attention to this incident. Unfortunately, while the Shkreli episode briefly caught the public’s attention, drug pricing is an ongoing problem.

For consumer, the main problem is that drugs are priced extremely high, sometimes high enough to bankrupt patients. In the face of public criticism, drug companies attempt to justify the high prices. One reason they give is that they need to charge these prices to pay the R&D costs of the drugs. While a company does have the right to pass on the cost of drug development, the facts tell another story about the pricing of drugs.

First, about 38% of the basic research science was funded by taxpayer money.  Thus, the public was paying twice: once in taxes and again for the drugs. This, of course, leaves a significant legitimate area of expenses for companies, but hardly enough to warrant absurdly high prices. As the federal budget for this research is cut, companies will be able to make a better argument based on the cost of research as they will need to spend more of their profits for research.

Second, most large drug companies spend almost twice as much on promotion and marketing as they do on R&D. While these are legitimate business expenses, this undercut using R&D expenses to justify excessive drug prices. Saying that pills are expensive because of the cost of marketing pills would not be a very effective strategy. There is also the issue of the ethics of advertising drugs, which is another matter entirely.

Third, many “new” drugs are just slightly modified old drugs. Common examples including combining two older drugs to create a “new” drug, changing the delivery method (from an injectable to a pill, for example) or altering the release time. In many cases, the government will grant a new patent for these minor tweaks, and this will grant the company up to a 20-year monopoly on the product, preventing competition. This practice, though obviously legal, is sketchy. To use an analogy, imagine a company holding the patents on a wheel and on an axle. Then, when those patents expired, they patented wheel + axle as a “new” invention. That would be absurd.

Companies also try other approaches to justify the high cost, such as arguing that the drugs treat serious conditions or can save money by avoiding a more expensive treatment. While these arguments do have some appeal, it is morally problematic to argue that the price of a drug should be based on the seriousness of the condition it treats. This seems like a protection scheme or coercion amounting to “pay what we want, or you die.” The money-saving argument is less odious but is still problematic. By this logic, car companies should be able to much more for safety features since they protect people from expensive injuries. It is, of course, reasonable to make a profit on products that provide significant benefits, but there need to be moral limits to the profits.

The obvious counter to my approach is to argue that drug prices should be set by the free market: if people are willing to pay large sums for drugs, then the drug companies should be free to charge those prices. After all, companies like Apple and Porsche sell expensive products without (generally) being demonized for making profits.

The easy response is that luxury cars and Macbooks are optional luxuries that a person can easily do without and there are many cheaper (and better) alternatives. However, drug companies sell drugs that are necessary for a person’s health and even survival. They are usually not optional products. There is also the fact that drug companies enjoy patent protection that precludes effective competition. While Apple does hold patents on its devices, there are many competitors. For example, if you don’t want to pay a premium for an Apple computer, you have your pick of thousands of options. But, if you need certain medications, your options can be much more limited.  

While defenders of drug prices laud the free market and decry “government interference”, their ability to charge high prices depends on the “interference” of the state. As noted above, the United States and other governments issue patents to drug companies that grant them exclusive ownership. Without this protection, a company that wanted to charge $750 for a $13.50 pill would find competitors rushing to sell the pill for far less. After all, it would be easy enough for a competitor to analyze a drug and produce it. By accepting the patent system, the drug companies accept that the state has a right to engage in legal regulation in the drug industry, to replace the invisible hand with a very visible hand of the state. Once this is accepted, the door is opened to allowing additional regulation on the grounds that the state will provide protection for the company’s property using taxpayer money in return for the company agreeing not to engage in harmful pricing of drugs. Roughly put, if the drug companies expect people to obey the social contract with the state, they also need to operate within the social contract. Companies could, of course, push for a truly free market: they would be free to charge whatever they want for drugs without state interference, but there would be no state interference into the free market activities of their competitors when they duplicate the high price drugs and start undercutting the prices. But, as always, companies want a free market when freedom benefits them and a nanny state when it benefits them.

In closing, if the drug companies want to keep the patent protection they need for high drug prices, they must be willing to operate within the social contract. After all, citizens should not be imposed upon to fund the protection of the people who are, some might claim, robbing them.

I, along with some other philosophers, was interviewed in 2016 about voting for an article by Olivia Goldhill of Quartz. While I still stand by what I said, interviews do have inherent problems. One common thing is the lack of depth. In some cases, this is due to the interview being short. For the Quartz piece, I spoke to the author for about five minutes. In other cases, the interview might be longer, but the content must be slashed down to fit in a limited amount of time or space. An interview I did about D&D and the real world was about thirty minutes long; but only about a minute was used in the broadcast. Another problem is that complex material aimed at the public must be simplified because most people are not experts. As such, I need to expand on my quote in the article.

After briefly discussing the difference between deontological and utilitarian approaches to voting, I presented my soundbite view of the issue:

 

 “As a citizen, I have a duty to others because it’s not just me and my principles, but everybody. I have to consider how what I do will impact other people. For example, if I was a die-hard Bernie supporter, I might say my principles tell me to vote for Bernie. But I’m not going to let my principles condemn other people to suffering.”

 

My position can be taken as either a deontological approach or a utilitarian approach. For the deontologist, an action is right or wrong in and of itself—the consequences are not what matter morally. For the utilitarian, the morality of an action is determined by its consequences. Looked at from a deontological perspective, acting on a duty to the general good would be the right thing to do. The fact that doing so would have good consequences is not what makes the action good. From the utilitarian perspective, the foundation of my duty would be utility: I should do what brings about the greatest good for the greatest number.

In 2016 I followed my principles. While I voted for Sanders in the primary and preferred him over Hillary, I thought that a Trump presidency would be much worse for the country than another Clinton presidency.  I saw her as competent business as usual politician. I predicted, correctly, that Trump would be bad for most Americans. I had the view in 2020 and 2024. When Trump runs in 2028, I’ll probably vote against him.  As such, I take the classic approach of choosing the lesser evil and the devil I know. If I was voting for the greater evil, Cthulhu would have my vote.

It might be objected that my approach is flawed. After all, if someone votes based on a rational assessment of the impact of an election on everyone, then she might vote against her own self-interest. What a person should do, it could be argued, is consider the matter selfishly and vote based on what is in her interest regardless of the general good.

This approach has considerable appeal and is based on an established moral philosophy which is ethical egoism. This is the view that a person should always take the action that maximizes her self-interest. Roughly put, for the ethical egoist, she is the only one with moral value. The opposing moral view is altruism; the view that other people count morally (to at least some degree). Ayn Rand is probably the best-known proponent of ethical egoism and the virtue of selfishness. This ideology was embraced by Paul Ryan and she was beloved by the American Tea Party before it was assimilated by MAGA.

While supporters of selfishness claim that the collective result of individual selfishness will be the general good (a view attributed to Adam Smith), history and reason show the opposite. Everyone being selfish has exactly the result one would suspect, and most people would be worse off than if people were more altruistic. To use an analogy, everyone being cruel does not make the world a kinder place. More people being kind makes kinder.

This is not to say that people should not consider their interests, just that they should also consider the interests of others. This is, after all, what makes civilization possible. Pure selfishness without regulation, as Hobbes argued, is the state of nature and the state of war and is not in anyone’s interest.

It can also be objected that my approach is flawed because it perpetuates the two-party lockdown of the American political system. While most people didn’t know this, there were many third party candidates running in 2016. Perhaps the best known was libertarian Gary Johnson. He received 1% of the popular vote in 2012 and managed to reach double digits in some polls. As he did not win, a vote for Johnson helped either Trump or Hillary get elected (depending on whether the person would have otherwise voted for one of them). Many claim that Nader’s ill-fated bid for president enabled Bush to win the election. While voting for a third-party candidate can be seen as, at best, throwing away one’s vote a case can be made for voting this way.

Like the approach I took in the interview, the argument for voting third party can be based on utilitarian considerations (one can also make a deontological argument based on the notion of a duty to vote one’s conscience). The difference is that the vote for the third party would be justified by the hope of long-term consequences. To be specific, the justification would be that voting for a third-party candidate could allow the greater evil to win this election. And the next election. And probably several more elections after that. But, eventually, the lockdown on politics by Democrats and Republicans could be broken by a viable third party. If the third party is likely to be better than the Democrats or Republicans, then this could be a good utilitarian argument.  It could also be a good argument if having a viable third party merely improved things for the population. The deciding factor would be whether the positive consequences of eventually getting a viable third party would be worth the cost of getting there. Naturally, the likelihood of viability is also a factor.

I am still split on this issue, though Trump’s two victories have pushed me towards favoring voting for the lesser evil. On the one hand, there seems to be a good reason to stick with voting for the lesser evil, namely the fact that third party viability is a gamble. There is also concern about whether any third-party candidate is better than the lesser evil. On the other hand, voting for the lesser evil does lock us in a two-party system and this could prove more damaging than allowing the greater evil to win numerous times on the way towards having a viable third party.

Peaceful protest is an integral part of America. As is murder. Back in 2016 the two collided in Dallas, Texas: after a peaceful protest, five police officers were murdered. While some might see it as ironic that police rushed to protect people protesting police violence, this reminds us about how police are supposed to function in a democratic society. This stands in stark contrast with the unnecessary deaths inflicted on citizens by bad officers, deaths that once caused the nations to briefly consider that such deaths might be worth preventing.

While violence and protests are worthy of in-depth discussion, my focus will be on the ethical questions raised by the use of a robot to deliver the explosive device was used to kill one of the attackers. While this matter was addressed by philosophers more famous than I, I thought it worthwhile to look back to 2016 to see if my thoughts have changed.

While the police robot is called a robot, it is more accurate to say it is a remotely operated vehicle. After all, the term “robot” implies some autonomy on the part of the machine. The police robot is remote controlled, like a sophisticated version of RC toys. In fact,  one could do the same thing  by putting an explosive on a toy.

Since there is a human operator directly controlling the machine, the ethics of the matter are the same ass if  conventional machines of death (such as a gun) had been used to kill the shooter. On the face of it, the only difference is in perception: a killer robot delivering a bomb sounds more ominous and controversial than an officer using a firearm. The use of remote-controlled vehicles to kill targets was nothing new as the basic technology has been around since at least WWII and the United States has killed many people with drones.

If this had been the first case of an autonomous police robot sent to kill (like an ED-209), then the issue would be different. However, it is a case that falls under established ethics of killing, only with a slight twist in regards to the delivery system. That said, it can be argued that the use of a remote-controlled machine is a morally relevant change.

Keith Abney raised a very reasonable point: if a robot could be sent to kill a target, it could also be sent to use non-lethal force to subdue the target. In the case of human officers, the usual moral justification of lethal force is that it is the best option for protecting themselves and others from a threat. If the threat presented by a suspect can be effectively addressed in a non-lethal manner, then that is the option that should be used. The moral foundation for this is set by the role of police in society: they are supposed to protect the public and should take every legitimate effort to deliver suspects for trial. They are not supposed to function as soldiers sent to defeat enemies. There are, of course, cases in which suspects cannot be safely captured and lethal force can be justified. A robot (or, more accurately, a remote-controlled machine) can radically change the equation.

While a police robot is an expensive piece of hardware, it is not a human being (or even an artificial being). As such, it only has the moral status of property. In contrast, even the worst human criminal is a human being and thus has a moral status above that of an object. If a robot is sent to engage a human suspect, then in many circumstances there would be no moral justification for using lethal force. After all, the officer operating the machine is in no danger. This should change the ethics of the use of force to match other cases in which a suspect needs to be subdued but presents no danger to the officer attempting arrest. In such cases, the machine should be outfitted with less-than-lethal options.

While television and movies make subduing someone safely seem easy, it is difficult to do. For example, the classic rifle butt to the head is a fictional favorite for knocking someone out, when doing that in the real world would cause serious injury or even death. Tasers, gas weapons and rubber bullets also can cause serious injury or death. However, the less-than-lethal options are less likely to kill a suspect and thus allow them to be captured for trial, which is supposed to be the point of law enforcement. Robots could be designed to both withstand gunfire and securely grab a suspect. While this is likely to result in injury (such as broken bones) and could kill, it would be less likely to kill than a bomb. An excellent example of a situation in which a robot would be ideal would be to capture an armed suspect barricaded in a structure.

It must be noted that there will be cases in which the use of lethal force via a robot is justified. These would include cases in which the suspect presents a clear and present danger to officers or civilians and the best chance of ending the threat is the use of such force. An example of this might be a hostage situation in which the hostage taker is likely to kill hostages while the robot is trying to subdue them with less-than-lethal force.

While police robots have long been the stuff of science fiction, they do present a potential technological solution to the moral and practical problem of keeping officers and suspects alive. While an officer might be legitimately reluctant to stake her life on less-than-lethal options when directly engaged with a suspect, an officer operating a robot faces no such risk. As such, if the deployment of less-than-lethal options via a robot would not put the public at unnecessary risk, then it would be morally right to use such means.

In response to a growing general acceptance of LGBT rights, some states have passed laws requiring a person to use the bathroom (and similar facilities) for the sex on their birth certificate.

Being a veteran runner, I am generally fine with people using whatever bathroom they wish to use, if they do not otherwise engage in immoral or criminal activity. Almost anyone who has run a major race probably has a similar view based on pure practicality. Also, like any mature adult, I go to the bathroom to do my business and if everyone else is minding their business, I could care less about who is in the next stall. Or urinal. Obviously, I do hold that assault, rape, harassment, stalking, and so on should not be allowed, but all these misdeeds are already covered by existing law.

Being a philosopher does require that I consider opposing arguments and that they are entitled to whatever merit they earn through the quality of the reasoning and the plausibility of the premises. As such, I will consider a few arguments in favor of bathroom bills.

One of the most compelling arguments is the one from harm. The gist of the argument is that allowing people to use facilities based on their gender identity will allow rapists, molesters, pedophiles and peepers easy access to women and girls, thus putting them in danger. The bathroom bills, it is claimed, will protect women and girls from this danger.

Since I also accept the principle of harm, I accept the basic reasoning conditionally: if the law did protect women and girls from harm (and did not inflict a greater harm), then it would be a sensible law. The main problem with the argument lies in the claim that the bills will protect women and girls from harm. Many states and localities have long prohibited discrimination in public facilities and there has not been an increase in sexual assault or rape. As such, the claim that the bills are needed to protect the public is untrue. The imposition of law should, as a matter of principle, be aimed at addressing significant harm.

This is not to deny that a person might pretend to be transgender to commit nefarious deeds in a bathroom. However, such a determined attacker could just attack elsewhere (it is not as if attacks can only occur in public facilities) or could just disguise himself as a woman (the law does not magically prevent that). There also = seems to be an unwarranted fear that bathrooms are ideal places for attacks, which does not seem true. That said, if it turns out that allowing people to use facilities based on their gender identity did lead to a significant harm, then the bathroom bills would need to be reconsidered.

A second argument that has been advanced is the privacy argument. The gist of it is that allowing people in facilities based on their gender identification would violate the privacy of other people. One common example of this is the concern expressed on the behalf of schoolgirls in locker rooms: the fear that a transgender classmate might be in the locker room with them.

While our culture does endeavor to condition people to be ashamed of their nakedness and to be terrified that someone of the opposite sex might see them naked, the matter of privacy needs to be discussed a bit here.

On the face of it, gender restricted locker rooms are not actually private. While I am not familiar with the locker room for girls and women, the men’s locker room in my high school had a group shower and an open area for lockers. So, every guy in the locker room could see every other guy while they were naked. Some boys found this lack of privacy too much and would put their normal clothes on over their gym clothes without showering. Or they would try to cover up as much as possible. As such, the concern about privacy is not about privacy in the general sense. In space, everyone can hear your scream. In the locker room, everyone can see your junk.

As such, the concern about privacy in locker rooms in regard to the bathroom bills must be about something other than privacy in the usual sense. The most reasonable and obvious interpretation is privacy from members of the opposite sex: that is, girls not being seen by boys and vice versa. This could, I suppose, be called “gender privacy.”

Those favoring transgender rights would point out that allowing people to use facilities based on gender identity would not result in boys seeing girls or vice versa. It would just be the usual girls seeing girls and boys seeing boys. Since the main worry is transgender girls in girls’ locker rooms, I will focus on that. However, the same discussion could be made for transgender boys.

The obvious reply to this would be to assert that gender identification is not a real thing: a person’s gender is set by biological sex. So, a transgender girl would, in fact, be a boy and hence should not be allowed in the girls’ locker room. This is presumably, based on the assumption that a transgender girl is still sexually attracted to girls because they are still a boy. There seem to be three possibilities here.

The first is that transgender girls really are boys and are sexually attracted to girls (that is, they are just faking) and this grounds the claim that a transgender girl would violate the privacy of biological girls. This entails that lesbian girls would also violate the privacy of biological girls and since about 10% of the population is gay, then any locker room with ten or more girls probably has some privacy violation occurring. As such, those concerned with privacy would presumably need to address this as well. The worry that a “hidden homosexual” might be violating privacy could be addressed by having private changing rooms and closed shower stalls. However, this would be costly and most public schools and facilities would not have the budget for this. As such, a more economical solution might be needed: no nakedness in locker rooms at all to ensure that privacy is not being violated. People could wear bathing suits while showering and then wear them under their clothes the rest of the day. Sure, it would be uncomfortable, but that is a small price to pay for privacy.

The second is that transgender girls are not sexually attracted to girls and hence do not violate their privacy: they are just girls like other girls. It could be objected that what matters is biology: a biological boy seeing a biological girl in the locker room violates her privacy. Arguing for this requires showing how biology matters in terms of privacy. That being seen non-sexually by biological girls is no privacy violation but being seen non-sexually by a biological boy who is just going about their business is a privacy violation. That is, if the person looking does not care about what is being seen, then how is it a privacy violation? The answer would need to differentiate based on biology, which could perhaps be done.

The third is that transgender girls are just girls. In which case, there is no privacy violation since it is just girls seeing girls.

While the harm and privacy arguments do have some appeal, they do not seem to stand up well under scrutiny. However, there might be other arguments for the bathroom bills worth considering, although I have yet to see one.

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.