Category: Ethics

It is estimated that almost 30% of humans are overweight or obese and this is likely to increase. Given this large number of large people, it is not surprising that moral and legal issues have arisen regarding their accommodation. It is also not surprising that people arguing in favor of accommodation contend that obesity is a disability. The legal issues are, of course, are matter of law and are settled by lawsuits. Since I am not a lawyer, I will focus on ethics and will address two main issues. The first is whether obesity is a disability. The second is whether obesity is a disability that morally justifies making accommodations.

On the face of it, obesity is disabling. That is, a person who is obese will have reduced capabilities relative to a person who is not obese. An obese person will tend to have lower endurance than a non-obese person, less speed, less mobility, less flexibility and so on. An obese person will also tend to suffer from more health issues and be at greater risk for some illnesses. Because of this, an obese person might find it difficult or impossible to perform certain job tasks, such as those involving strenuous physical activity or walking relatively long distances.

 The larger size and weight of obese individuals also presents challenges when they deal with chairs, doors, equipment, clothing and vehicles. For example, an obese person might be unable to operate a forklift with the standard seating and safety belt. As another example, an obese person might not be able to fit in one airline seat and instead require two (or more).  As a third example, an obese student might not be able to fit into a standard classroom desk. As such, obesity could make it difficult or impossible for a person to work or make use of certain goods and services.   

Obviously enough, obese people are not the only ones who have disabilities. There are people with short term disabilities due to illness or injury. I experienced this myself when I had a complete quadriceps tendon tear. My left leg was locked in an immobilizer for weeks, then all but useless for months. With this injury, I was much slower, had difficulty with stairs, could not carry heavy loads, and could not drive. This experience opened my eyes to the challenges of navigating a world not designed to accommodate people.

There are also people who have long term or permanent disabilities, such as people who are paralyzed, blind, or are missing limbs due to accidents or war. These people can face great challenges in performing tasks at work and in life. For example, a person who is permanently confined to a wheelchair due to a spinal injury will find navigating stairs or working in the woods rather challenging.

In general, it seems morally right to require employees, businesses, schools and so on to make reasonable accommodations for people who have disabilities. The principle that justifies that is equal treatment: people should be afforded equal access, even when doing so requires some additional accommodation. As such, while having ramps in addition to stairs costs more, it is a reasonable requirement given that some people cannot fully use their legs.  Given that the obese are disabled, it is reasonable to conclude they should be accommodated just as the blind and paralyzed are accommodated.

Naturally, it could be argued that there is no moral obligation to provide accommodation for anyone. If this is the case, then there would be no obligation to accommodate the obese. However, it would seem to be rather difficult to prove, for example, that veterans with disabilities returning to school should just have to fight their way up the steps in their wheelchairs. For the sake of the discussion to follow I will assume that there is a moral obligation to accommodate the disabled. However, there is still the question of whether this should apply to the obese.

One obvious way to argue against accommodations for the obese is to argue that there is a morally relevant difference between those disabled by obesity and those disabled by injury, birth defects, etc. One difference that people often point out is that obesity is claimed to be a choice and other disabilities are not. That is, a person’s decisions result in their being fat and hence they are responsible in a way a person who is disabled by an accident or war is not.

It could be pointed out that some people who are disabled by injury were disabled as the result of their decisions. For example, a person might have driven while drunk and ended up paralyzed. But, of course, the person would not be denied access to handicapped parking or the use of automatic doors because their disability was self-inflicted. The same reasoning could be used for the obese: even if their disability self-inflicted, it is still a disability and thus should be accommodated.

A reply to this is that there is still a relevant difference. While a person who loses the ability to use their legs in a self-inflicted drunken crash caused their own disability, there is little they can do about that disability. They can change their diet and exercise, but this will not restore functionality to their legs. That is, they are permanently stuck with the results of that decision. In contrast, an obese person must maintain their obesity. While some people are genetically predisposed to being obese, how much a person eats and exercises is a matter of choice. Since they could reduce their weight, the rest of us are under no obligation to provide special accommodation for them. This is because they could take reasonable steps to remove the need for such accommodation. To use analogy, imagine someone who insisted that they be provided with a Seeing Eye dog because she wants to wear opaque glasses all the time. These glasses would result in their being disabled since they would be effectively blind. However, since they can just remove the glasses, there is no obligation to provide them with the dog. In contrast, a person who is blind cannot just get new eyes and hence it is reasonable for society to accommodate them. 

It can be argued that obesity is not a matter of choice. One approach would be to argue for metaphysical determinism: the obese are obese by necessity and could not be otherwise. The easy reply here would be to say that we are, sadly enough, metaphysically determined not to provide accommodation.

A more sensible approach would be to argue that obesity is, in some cases, a medical condition that is beyond the ability of a person to control. The most likely avenue of support for this claim would come from neuroscience. If it can be shown that people are incapable of controlling their weight, then obesity would be a true disability, on par with having one’s arm blasted off by an IED or being born with a degenerative neural disorder.

It could also be argued that a person does have some choice, but that acting on the choice would be so difficult that it is more reasonable for society to accommodate the individual than it is for the individual to struggle not to be obese. To use an analogy, a person with a disability might be able to regain enough functionality to operate in a “mostly normal” way, but doing so might require agonizing effort beyond what could be expected of a person. In such a case, one would surely not begrudge the person the accommodations. So, it could be argued that since it is easier for society to accommodate the obese than it is for the obese to not be obese, society should do so.

There is, however, a legitimate concern here. If the principle is adopted so that society must accommodate the obese because they have a disability and they cannot help their obesity, then others could appeal to that same sort of principle and perhaps over-extend the realm of disabilities that must be accommodated. For example, people who are addicted to drugs could make a similar argument: they are disabled, yet their addiction is not a matter of choice. As another example, people who are irresponsible can claim they are disabled as well and should be accommodated on the grounds that they cannot be other than they are. But  it is likely that boundaries  can be drawn in a principled way so that the obese have a disability, but the irresponsible do not.

Human flesh is weak, and metal is strong. So, it is no surprise that military science fiction includes cyborg soldiers. An example of a minor cybernetic is an implanted radio. The most extreme example would be a full body conversion: the brain is removed from the original body and placed in a mechanical body. This body might look like a human (known as a Gemini full conversion in Cyberpunk) or be a vehicle such as a tank, as in Keith Laumer’s A Plague of Demons.

An obvious moral concern with cybernetics is the involuntary “upgrading” of soldiers, such as the sort practiced by the Cybermen of Doctor Who. While important, the issue of involuntary augmentation is not unique to cybernetics and was addressed in the second essay in this series. For the sake of this essay, it will be assumed that the soldiers volunteer for their cybernetics and are not coerced or deceived. This then shifts moral concern to the ethics of the cybernetics themselves.

While the ethics of cybernetics is complicated, one way to handle matters is to split cybernetics into two broad categories. The first category consists of restorative cybernetics. The second consists of enhancement cybernetics.

Restorative cybernetics are devices used to restore normal functions to a wounded soldier. Examples would include cyberoptics (replacement eyes), cyberlimbs (replacements legs and arms), and cyberorgans (such as an artificial heart). Soldiers are already being fitted with such devices, although by the standards of science fiction they are very primitive. Given that these devices merely restore functionality and the ethics of prosthetics and similar replacements are well established, there is no moral concern about using such technology in a medical role. In fact, it could be argued that nations have a moral obligation to use such technology to restore their wounded soldiers.

While enhancement cybernetics might be used to restore functionality to a wounded soldier, enhancement cybernetics goes beyond mere restoration. By definition, they are intended to improve on the original. These enhancements break down into two main classes. The first class consists of replacement cybernetics. These devices require the removal of the original part (be it an eye, limb or organ) and serve as replacements that improve on the original in some manner. For example, cyberoptics could provide a soldier with night vision, telescopic visions and immunity to being blinded by flares and flashes. As another example, cybernetic limbs could provide greater speed, strength and endurance. And, of course, a full conversion could provide a soldier with a vast array of superhuman abilities.

The obvious moral concern with these devices is that they require the removal of the original organic parts, something that certainly seems problematic, even if they do offer enhanced abilities. This could, of course, be offset if the original parts were preserved and restored when the soldier left the service. There is also the concern raised in science fiction about the mental effects of such removals and replacements. The Cyberpunk role playing game developed the notion of cyberpsychosis, a form of insanity caused by having your body replaced by machines. Obviously, it is not yet known what negative effects (if any) such enhancements will have. As in any case of weighing harms and benefits, the likely approach would be utilitarian: are the advantages of the technology worth the cost to the soldier?

A second type of enhancement is an add-on which does not replace existing organic parts. Instead, as the name implies, an add-on involves the addition of a device to the body of the soldier. Add-on cybernetics differ from wearables and standard gear in that they are implanted in or attached to the soldier’s body. As such, removal is more complicated than just taking off a suit of armor.

A minor example would be something like an implanted radio. A rather extreme example would be the comic book villain Doctor Octopus: his mechanical limbs are add-ons.  Other examples of add-ons include such things as implanted sensors, implanted armor, implanted weapons (such as in the comic book hero Wolverine), and other such augmentations.

Since these devices do not involve removal of healthy parts, they do avoid that moral concern. However, there are still legitimate concerns about the physical and mental harm that might be caused by such devices. It is easy enough to imagine implanted devices having serious side effects on soldiers. As noted above, these matters would probably be best addressed by utilitarian ethics, weighing the harms against the benefits.

Both types of enhancements also raise a moral concern about returning the soldier to the civilian population after their term of service. In the case of restorative grade devices, there is not as much concern. These ex-soldiers would, ideally, function as they did before their injuries. However, the enhancements do present a potential problem since they, by definition, give the soldier capabilities that exceed that of normal humans. In some cases, re-integration would probably not be a problem. For example, a soldier with enhanced cyberoptics would presumably present no special problems. However, certain augmentations would present serious problems, such as implanted weapons or full conversions. Ideally, augmented soldiers could be restored to normal after their service has ended, but there could obviously be cases in which this was not done, either because of the cost or because the augmentation could not be reversed. This has been explored in science fiction, soldiers that can never stop being soldiers because they are machines of war. While this could be justified on utilitarian grounds (after all, war itself is often justified on such grounds), it is certainly a matter of concern, or will be.

 

Humans have limitations that make us less than ideal weapons of war. For example, we get tired and need sleep. As such, it is no surprise militaries have sought various ways to augment humans to counter these weaknesses. For example, militaries use caffeine and amphetamines to keep their soldiers awake and alert. There have also been experiments in other forms of improvement.

In science fiction, militaries go far beyond these drugs and develop potent pharmaceuticals. These chemicals tend to split into two broad categories. The first consists of short-term enhancements (what gamers refer to as “buffs”) that address a human weakness or provide augmented abilities.  In the real world, caffeine and amphetamines are short-term enhancement drugs.

In fiction, the classic sci-fi role-playing game Traveller featured the aptly (though generically) named combat drug. This drug would boost the user’s strength and endurance for about ten minutes. Other fictional drugs have more dramatic effects, such as the Venom drug used by the super villain Bane. Given that militaries already use short-term enhancers, it is reasonable to think they are interested in more advanced enhancers of the sort considered in science fiction.

The second category is long-term enhancers. These are chemicals that enable or provide long-lasting effects. An obvious real-world example is steroids: these allow the user to develop greater muscle mass and increased strength. In fiction, the most famous example is probably the super-soldier serum that was used to transform Steve Rogers into Captain America.

Since the advantages of improved soldiers are obvious, it seems reasonable to think that militaries would also be interested in the development of effective long-term enhancers. While it is unlikely there will be a super-soldier serum soon, chemicals aimed at improving attention span, alertness, memory, intelligence, endurance, pain tolerance and such would be useful to militaries. And people in general.

As might be suspected, chemical enhancers raise moral concerns worth considering. While some might see discussing enhancers that do not yet (as far as we know) exist as a waste of time, there is an advantage in considering ethical issues in advance. It is wiser to plan for a problem before it happens rather than waiting for it to occur and then dealing with it.

One obvious point of concern, especially given the record of unethical experimentation, is that enhancers will be used on soldiers without their informed consent. Since this is a general issue, I addressed it in its own essay and reached the obvious conclusion: informed consent is morally required. As such, the following discussion assumes that the soldiers using the enhancers have been informed of the nature of the enhancers and have given their consent.

When discussing the ethics of enhancers, it might be useful to consider real world cases in which enhancers are used. One obvious example is that of professional sports. While Major League Baseball has seen many cases of athletes using such enhancers, they are used worldwide and in many sports, from running to gymnastics. In the case of sports, one of the main reasons certain enhancers, such as steroids, are considered unethical is that they provide the athlete with an unfair advantage.

While this is a legitimate concern in sports, it does not apply to war. After all, there is no moral requirement for fair competition in battle. Rather, the goal is to gain every advantage over the enemy to win. As such, the fact that enhancers would provide an “unfair” advantage in war does not make them immoral. One can, of course, discuss the relative morality of the sides involved in the war, but this is another matter.

A second reason why the use of enhancers is wrong in sports is that they often have harmful side effects. Steroids, for example, do awful things to the body. Given that even aspirin has potentially harmful side effects, it seems likely that military-grade enhancers will have serious harmful side effects. These might include addiction, psychological issues, organ damage, death, and perhaps even new side effects yet to be observed in medicine. Given the potential for harm, an obvious way to approach the ethics of this matter is utilitarianism. That is, the benefits of the enhancers would need to be weighed against the harm caused by their use.

This assessment could be done with a narrow limit: the harm of the enhancer could be weighed against the benefits provided to the soldier. For example, an enhancer that boosted a combat pilot’s alertness and significantly increased her reaction speed while having the potential to cause short-term insomnia and diarrhea would seem to be morally (and pragmatically) fine given the relatively low harms for significant gains. As another example, a drug that greatly boosted a soldier’s long-term endurance while creating a high risk of a stroke or heart attack would seem to be morally and pragmatically problematic.

The assessment could also be done more broadly by considering ever-wider factors. For example, the harms of an enhancer could be weighed against the importance of a specific mission and the contribution the enhancer would make to the success of the mission. So, if a powerful drug with terrible side-effects was critical to an important mission, its use could be morally justified in the same way that taking any risk for such an objective can be justified. As another example, the harm of an enhancer could be weighed against the contribution its general use would make to the war. So, a drug that increased the effectiveness of soldiers, yet cut their life expectancy, could be justified by its ability to shorten a war. As a final example, there is also the broader moral concern about the ethics of the conflict itself. So, the use of a dangerous enhancer by soldiers fighting for a morally good cause could be justified by that cause (using the notion that the consequences justify the means).

There are, of course, those who reject using utilitarian calculations as the basis for moral assessment. For example, there are those who believe (often on religious grounds) that the use of pharmaceuticals is always wrong (be they used for enhancement, recreation or treatment). Obviously enough, if the use of pharmaceuticals is wrong in general, then their specific application in the military context would also be wrong. The challenge is, of course, to show that the use of pharmaceuticals is simply wrong, regardless of the consequences.

In general, the military use of enhancers should be assessed morally on utilitarian grounds, weighing the benefits of the enhancers against the harm done to the soldiers.

Science fiction abounds with stories of enhanced soldiers such as Captain America and the Space Marines of Warhammer 40K. The real-world augmentation of soldiers raises a moral concern about informed consent. While fiction abounds with tales of involuntary augmentation, real soldiers and citizens of the United States have also been coerced or deceived into participating in experiments. As such, are legitimate grounds for being concerned that soldiers and citizens could be involuntarily augmented as part of experiments or actual weapon deployment.

Assuming the context of a democratic state, it is reasonable to hold that augmenting a soldier without informed consent would be immoral. After all, the individual has rights against the democratic state, and these include the right not to be unjustly coerced or deceived. Socrates, in the Crito, also advanced reasonable arguments that the obedience of a citizen required that the state not coerce or deceive the citizen in the social contract and this would apply to soldiers in a democratic state. Or any morally legitimate state.

It is tempting to rush to accept that informed consent would make the augmentation of soldiers morally acceptable. After all, the soldier would know what they were getting into and would be volunteering. In popular fiction, one example is Steve Rogers volunteering for the super soldier conversion. Given his consent, such an augmentation would seem morally acceptable.

There are, of course, some cases where informed consent makes a critical difference in ethics. One obvious example is the moral difference between sex and rape; the difference is a matter of informed and competent consent. If Sam agrees to have sex with Sally, then Sally is not raping Sam. But if Sally drugs Sam and has her way with him, then that would be rape.  Another obvious example is the difference between theft and receiving a gift. This is also a matter of informed consent. If Sally gives Sam a diamond ring, then that is not theft. If Sam takes the ring by force or coercion, then that is theft and presumably wrong.

Even when informed consent is important, there are still cases in which consent does not make the action morally acceptable. For example, Sam might consent to give Sally an heirloom ring that has been in the family for untold generations, but it might still be the wrong thing to do, especially when Sally pawns the ring to buy ketamine and Tesla stock.

There are also cases in which informed consent is not relevant because of the morality of the action itself. For example, Sam might have consented to join Sally’s plot to murder Ashley but this would not be relevant to the ethics of the murder. At best it could be said that Sally did not add to her misdeed by coercing or tricking her accomplices, but this would not make the murder itself less bad.

Turning back to the main subject of augmentation, even if the soldiers gave their informed consent, the above consideration shows that there would still be the question of whether the augmentation itself is moral. For example, there are reasonable moral arguments against genetically modifying human beings. If these arguments hold up, then even if a soldier consented to genetic modification, the modification itself would be immoral.  I will be addressing the ethics of pharmaceutical and cybernetic augmentation in later essays.

While informed consent does seem to be a moral necessity, this position can be countered. One way to do this is to make use of a utilitarian argument: if the benefits gained from augmenting soldiers without their informed consent outweighed the harm, then the augmentation would be morally acceptable. For example, imagine that a war against a wicked enemy is going badly and that an augmentation method has been developed that could turn the war around. The augmentation is dangerous and has awful long-term side-effects that would deter most soldiers from volunteering. However, losing to the wicked enemy would be worse, so it could be argued that the soldiers should be deceived so that the war can be won. As another example, a wicked enemy is not needed, it could simply be argued that the use of augmented soldiers would end the war faster, thus saving lives, albeit at the cost of those terrible side-effects.

Another stock approach is to appeal to the arguments used by democracies to justify conscription in time of war. If the state (or, rather, those who expect people to do what they say) can coerce citizens into killing and dying in war, then the state can surely coerce and citizens to undergo augmentation. It is easy to imagine a legislature passing something called “the conscription and augmentation act” that legalizes coercing citizens into being augmented to serve in the military. Of course, there are those who are suspicious of democratic states so blatantly violating the rights of life and liberty. However, not all states are democratic. The United States, for example, seems to have given up the pretense of democracy.

While democratic states face some moral limits when it comes to involuntary augmentation, non-democratic states appear to have more options. For example, under fascism the individual exists to serve the state (that is, the bad people who think everyone else should do what they say). If this political system is morally correct, then the state would have every right to coerce or deceive the citizens for the good of the state. In fiction, these states tend to be the ones to crank out involuntary augmented soldiers that still manage to lose to the good guys.

Naturally, even if the state has the right to coerce or deceive soldiers into becoming augmented, it does not automatically follow that the augmentation itself is morally acceptable, this would depend on the specific augmentations. These matters will be addressed in upcoming essays.

Military science fiction often includes powered exoskeletons, also known as exoframes, exosuits or powered armor. A basic exoskeleton is a powered framework providing the wearer with enhanced strength. In movies such as Edge of Tomorrow and video games such as Call of Duty Advanced Warfare the exoskeleton provides improved mobility and carrying capacity but do not provide much armor. In contrast, powered armor provides the benefits of an exoskeleton while also providing protection. The powered armor of Starship Troopers, The Forever War, Armor and Iron Man all serve as classic examples of this sort of gear. The Space Marines of Warhammer 40K and the Sisters of Battle also wear powered armor. While the sisters are “normal” humans, the Space Marines are enhanced super soldiers.

Because the exoskeletons of fiction provide soldiers with enhanced strength, mobility and carrying capacity, it makes sense that real militaries are interested in exoskeletons. While they have yet to be deployed on the battlefield, there are some ethical concerns about the augmentation of soldiers.

On the face of it, using exoskeletons in warfare seems morally unproblematic. An exoskeleton is analogous to any other vehicle, with the exception that it is worn rather than driven. A normal car or even a bicycle provides a person with enhanced mobility and carrying capacity and this is not immoral. In terms of the military context, an exoskeleton would be comparable to a Humvee or a truck, both of which seem morally unproblematic as well.

It might be objected that the use of exoskeletons would give wealthier nations an unfair advantage in war. The easy and obvious response to this is, unlike in sports and games, gaining an “unfair” advantage in war is not immoral. After all, there is no moral expectation that combatants will engage in a fair fight rather than taking advantage of such things as technology and numbers.

It might be objected that the advantage provided by exoskeletons would encourage countries that had them to engage in aggressions they would not otherwise engage in. The obvious reply is that despite the hype of video games and movies, any exoskeleton available soon would most likely not provide great advantage to infantry. As such, the use of exoskeletons would not seem morally problematic in this regard.

Another possible concern is what might be called the “Iron Man Syndrome” (to totally make something up). The idea is that soldiers equipped with exoskeletons might become overconfident (seeing themselves as being like Iron Man) put themselves and others at risk. After all, unless there are some amazing advances in armor technology that are unmatched by weapon technology, soldiers in powered armor will still be vulnerable to weapons capable of taking on light vehicle armor (which exist in abundance). However, this could be easily addressed by training. And experience.

A second point of possible concern is what could be called the “ogre complex” (also totally made up). An exoskeleton that dramatically boosts a soldier’s strength might encourage some people to act as bullies and abuse civilians or prisoners. While this might be a legitimate concern, it can be addressed by proper training and discipline.

There are, of course, the usual peripheral issues associated with new weapons technology that could have moral relevance. For example, it is easy to imagine a nation wastefully spending money on exoskeletons. However, such matters are not specific to exoskeletons and would not be moral problems for the technology as such.

Given the above, augmenting soldiers with exoskeletons poses no new moral concerns and is morally comparable to providing soldiers with trucks, tanks and planes.

Once and future presidential candidate Mike Huckabee once expressed his concern about the profanity flowing from the mouths of New York Fox News ladies: “In Iowa, you would not have people who would just throw the f-bomb and use gratuitous profanity in a professional setting. In New York, not only do the men do it, but the women do it! This would be considered totally inappropriate to say these things in front of a woman. For a woman to say them in a professional setting that’s just trashy!”

In response, Erin Gloria Ryan posted a piece on Jezebel.com. As might be suspected, the piece utilized the language that Mike dislikes and she started off with “listen up, cunts: folksy as balls probable 2016 Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has some goddamn opinions about what sort of language women should use. And guess the fuck what? You bitches need to stop with this swearing shit.” While the short article did not set a record for OD (Obscenity Density), the author did make a good go at it.

I am not much for swearing. In fact, I used to say, “swearing is for people who don’t how to use words well.” That said, I do recognize there are proper uses for swearing.

While I generally do not favor swearing, there are exceptions in which it is not only permissible, but necessary. For example, when I was running college cross country, one of the other runners was looking super rough after a run. The coach asked him how he felt, and he said, “I feel like shit coach.” The coach corrected him by saying “no, you feel like crap.” He replied, “No, coach, I feel like shit.” And he was completely right. Inspired by the memory of this exchange, I will endeavor to discuss proper swearing. I am, of course, not developing a full theory of swearing.

I do agree with some of what Huckabee said, namely the criticism of swearing in a professional context. However, my professional context is academics, and I am doing my professional thing in front of students and other faculty. Not exactly a place where gratuitous f-bombing would be appropriate or even useful. It would also make me appear sloppy and stupid, as if I could not express ideas or keep the attention of the class or colleagues without the cheap shock theatrics of swearing.

I am open to the idea that such swearing could be appropriate in certain professional contexts. That is, that the vocabulary of swearing would be necessary to describe professional matters accurately and doing so would not make a person seem sloppy, disrespectful or stupid. Perhaps Fox News and Jezebel.com are such places.

While I was raised with certain patriarchal views, I have shed most of them but must confess I retain a psychological residue. Hearing a woman feels worse than hearing a man swear, but I know this just confirms I am an old man. If it is appropriate for a man to swear, the same right of swearing applies to a woman equally. I’m gender neutral about swearing, at least in principle.

Outside of the professional setting, I have a general opposition to casual and repetitive swearing. The main reason is that I look at words and phrases as tools. As with any tool, they have suitable and proper uses. While a screwdriver could be used to pound in nails, that is a poor use.  While a shotgun could be used to kill a fly, that is excessive and will cause needless collateral damage. Likewise, swear words have specific functions and using them poorly can show not only a lack of manners and respect, but a lack of artistry.

In general, the function of swear words is to serve as dramatic tools. They are supposed to shock and to convey something strong, such as great anger. To use them casually and constantly is like using a scalpel to cut everything from paper to salami. While it will work, the blade will grow dull from repeated use and will no longer function well when needed for its proper task. So, I reserve my swear words not because I am prudish, but because if I wear them out, they will not serve me when I really need them most. For example, if I were to say “we are fucked” all the time for any minor problem, then when a situation in which we are well and truly fucked arrives, I will not be able to use that phrase effectively. But, if I save it for when the fuck really hits the fan, then people who know me will know that it has gotten truly serious for I will have broken out the “it is serious” words.

As another example, swear words should be saved for when a powerful insult or judgment is needed. If I were to constantly call normal people “fuckers” or describe not-so-bad things as being “shit”, then I would have little means of describing very bad people and very bad things. While I generally avoid swearing, I do need those words from time to time, such as when someone really is a fucker or something truly is shit. Which is often the case these days.

Of course, swear words can be used for humorous purposes. This is not really my sort of thing, but their shock value can serve well to make a strong point or shock. However, if the words are too worn by constant use, then they can no longer serve their purpose. And, of course, it can be all too easy and inartistic to get a laugh simply by being crude. True artistry involves being able to get laughs using the same language one would use in front of grandpa in church. Of course, there is also artistry to swearing, but that is more than just doing it all the time.

I would not dream of imposing on others. Folks who wish to communicate using an abundance of swear words have every right to do so, just as someone is free to pound nails with a screwdriver or whittle with a scalpel. However, it does bother me a bit that these words are being dulled and weakened by excessive use. If this keeps up, we will need to make new words and phrases to replace them.

There are two issues here.  The first is determining what is the worst thing that a person should express. The second is the issue of determining the worst thing that a person should be allowed to express. While these might seem to be the same issue, they are not. There is a distinction between what a person should do and what is morally permissible to prevent a person from doing. The focus will be on using the coercive power of the state in this role.

As an illustration of the distinction, consider the example of a person lying to her boyfriend about playing video games when she was supposed to be doing yard work. She should not lie to him (although there are exceptions). However, the police should not be sent to coerce her into telling the truth about this. So, she should not lie about playing video games, but the state should allow her to do this.

This view can be disputed and there are those who argue in favor of complete freedom from the state (such as anarchists) and those who argue that the state should control almost every aspect of life (totalitarians). However, the idea that there are some matters that are not the business of the state is an intuitively plausible position. What follows will rest on this assumption and the challenge will be to sort out these two issues.

A plausible and appealing approach is to take a utilitarian stance and use Mill’s principle of harm to determine the worst thing a person should express and should be allowed to express. The right of free expression is limited by the right of others not to be harmed in their life, liberty and property without adequate justification.

In the case of the worst thing that a person should express, I am speaking in the context of morality. There are, of course, non-moral meanings of “should.” To use the most obvious example, there is the pragmatic “should”: what a person should do in serving their practical self-interest. For example, a person should not tell her boss what she really thinks of him if doing so would cost her a job she desperately needs. To use another example, there is also the “should” of etiquette: what a person should do or not do to follow the social norms. For example, a person should not go without pants at a formal wedding, even to express his opposition to the tyranny of pants.

Returning to morality, it is reasonable to weigh the harm the expression generates against the right of free expression. Obviously enough, there is not an exact formula for calculating the worst thing a person should express, and this will vary according to the circumstances. For example, the worst thing one should express to a young child is different from the worst thing one should express to a jaded adult. In terms of the harms, these would include such harm as offending the person, scaring them, insulting them, and so on for harm that can be inflicted by mere expression.

While people do not have a right not to be offended, people do have a right not to be unjustly harmed by other people. To use an obvious example, men should not catcall women who do not want to be subject to this verbal harassment. This sort of behavior certainly offends, upsets and even scares many women and the right to free expression does not give men a moral pass that exempts them from what they should or should not do.

To use another example, people should not intentionally and willfully insult deeply held beliefs simply for the sake of insulting or provoking the person. While the person does have the right to mock the belief of another, the right of expression is not a moral free pass to be abusive.

As a final example, people should not engage in trolling. While a person does have the right to express his views to troll others, this is wrong. Trolling is, by definition, done with malice and contributes nothing of value to the conversation. As such, it should not be done.

While I have claimed that people should not unjustly harm others by expressing themselves, I have not made any claims about whether people should be allowed to express themselves in these ways. It is to this that I now turn.

If the principle of harm is a reasonable principle (which can be debated), then a plausible approach would be to use it to sketch out some boundaries. The first rough boundary was just discussed: this is the boundary between what people should express and what people should (morally) not. The second rough boundary begins at the point where other people should be allowed to prevent a person from expressing themselves and ends just before the point at which the state has the moral right to use its coercive power to prevent such expression.

This area is the domain of interactions between people that does not fall under the authority of the state yet still allows for preventing people from expressing their views. For example, people can be justly prevented from expressing their views in the workplace without the state being involved. To use a specific example, the administrators of my university have the right to prevent me from expressing certain things in my classes, although the specific restrictions can be debated. To use another example, a group of friends would have the right, among themselves, to ban someone from their group for saying racist, mean and spiteful things. As a final example, a blog administrator would have the right to ban a troll from her site.

The third boundary is the point at which the state can justly use its coercive power to prevent a person from engaging in expression. As with the other boundaries, this should be set (roughly) by the degree of harm that the expression would cause others. There are many easy and obvious examples where the state would be right to limit expression: threats of murder, damaging slander, incitements to violence against the innocent, and similar such unquestionably harmful expressions.

Matters do, of course, can get complicated quickly. Consider, for example, a person who does not call for the murder of Democrats but tweets his approval when they are assassinated. While this seems to be something a person should not do, it is not clear that it crosses the boundary that would allow the state to justly prevent the person from expressing this view. If the approval does not create sufficient harm, then it would seem to not warrant coercive action by the state.

As another example, consider the expression of racist views via social media. While people should not say such things, as long as they do not engage in actual threats, then it would seem that the state does not have the right to silence the person. This is because the expression of racist views (without threats) would not seem to generate enough harm to warrant state coercion. Naturally, it could justify action on the part of the person’s employer, friends and associates: they might be fired and shunned. Or might have been in the before time.

As a third example, consider a person who mocks the dominant or even official religion of a state. While the rulers of such states usually think they have the right to silence such an infidel, it is not clear that this would create enough unjust harm to warrant silencing the person. Being an American, I think that it would not, but I believe in both freedom of religion and the freedom to mock religion.  There is, of course, the matter of the concern that such mockery could provoke others to harm the mocker, thus warranting the state to stop the person for their own protection. However, the fact that people will act wrongly in response to expressions would not seem to warrant coercing the person into silence.

In general, I favor erring on the side of freedom: unless the state can show that silencing expression is needed to prevent real and unjust harm, the state does not have the moral right to silence expression.

I have merely sketched out a general outline of this matter and have presented three rough boundaries about what people should say and what they should be allowed to say. Much more work would be needed to develop a full and proper account.

Photo by Céréales Killer

While the murders of twelve people at Charlie Hebdo were morally unjustifiable, one of the killers did attempt, in advance, to justify the attack. The  justification offered was that the attack was in accord with Islamic law. Since I am not a scholar of Islam, I will not address the issue of whether this is true or not. As an ethicist, I will address the matter of moral justification for the killings.

From the standpoint of the killers, the attack on Charlie Hebdo was presumably punishment. In general, punishment is aimed at retaliation for wrongs done, to redeem the wrongdoer or  for deterrence (this is the RRD model of punishment). Presumably the killers were aiming at both retaliation and deterrence and not redemption. From a moral standpoint, both retaliation and deterrence are supposed to be limited by a principle of proportionality.

In the case of retaliation, the punishment should correspond to the alleged crime. The reason for this is that disproportionate retaliation would not “balance the books” but instead create another wrong that would justify retaliation in response. This, of course, assumes that retaliation is justifiable in general, which can  be questioned.

In the case of deterrence, there is also a presumption in favor of proportionality. The main reason is the same as for retaliation: excessive punishment would, by definition, create another wrong. A standard counter to this is to argue that excessive punishment is acceptable on the grounds of its deterrence value on the view that the greater the punishment, the greater the deterrence.

While this does have a certain appeal, it also runs counter to common moral intuitions. For example, blowing up a student’s car for parking in a faculty parking space at university would deter students, but would be excessive. As another example, having the police execute people for speeding would tend to deter speeding, but this certainly seems unacceptable.

There is also the standard utilitarian argument that excessive punishment used for deterrence would create more harm than good. For example, allowing police to summarily execute anyone who resisted arrest would deter resistance, but the harm to citizens and society would outweigh the benefits. As such, it seems reasonable to accept that punishment for the purpose of deterrence should be proportional to the offense. There is, of course, still concern about the deterrence factor. A good guiding principle is that the punishment that aims at deterrence should be sufficient to deter, yet proportional to the offense. Deterring the misdeed should not be worse than the misdeed.

In the case of the people at Charlie Hebdo, their alleged offense was their satire of Mohammad and Islam via cartoons. On the face of it, death is a disproportionate punishment. After all, killing someone is vastly more harmful than insulting or offending someone.

A proportional response would have been something along the lines of creating a satirical cartoon of the staff, publishing an article critical of their cartoons or protesting these cartoons. That is, a proportional response to the non-violent expression of a view would be the non-violent expression of an opposing view.  Murder is obviously a vastly disproportionate response.

It could be replied that the punishment was proportional because of the severity of the offense. The challenge is, obviously enough, arguing that the offense was severe enough to warrant death.  On the face of it, no cartoon would seem to merit death. After all, no matter how bad a cartoon might be, the worst it can do is offend a person and this would not warrant death. However, it could be argued that the offense is not against just anyone but against God. That is, the crime is blasphemy or something similar. This would provide a potential avenue for justifying a penalty of death. It is to this that I now turn.

Religious thinkers who believe in Hell face the challenge of justifying eternal damnation. As David Hume noted, an infinite punishment for what must be finite offenses is contrary to our principles of justice. That is, even if a person sinned for every second of their life, they could not do enough evil to warrant an infinitely bad, infinitely long punishment. However, there is a clever reply to this claim.

In his classic sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, Jonathan Edwards says of sinners that “justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment of their sins.” He justifies the infinite punishment of sin on the grounds that since God is infinitely good, any sin against God is infinitely bad. As such, the punishment is proportional to the offense: infinite punishment for an infinitely bad crime.

It could be contended that creating cartoons mocking Mohammed and Islam are sins against an infinitely good God, thus warranting an infinite punishment and presumably justifying killing (which is much less than infinite punishment). Interestingly, the infinite punishment for sins would render punishing of sinners here on earth pointless for two reasons. First, if the sinner will be punished infinitely, then punishing him here would not increase his punishment. So, there is no point to it.  Second, if the sinner is going to be punished divinely, then punishment here would also be pointless. To use an analogy, imagine if someone proposed having a pre-legal system in which alleged criminals would be tried and, if found guilty, be given pointless sentences (such as being mildly scolded). The alleged criminals would then go on to the real legal system for their real punishment. This pre-legal system would be a pointless waste of time and resources. Likewise, if there is divine justice for sins, then punishing them here would be a pointless waste of time.

This, obviously enough, assumes that God is real, that He punishes and that He would punish people for something as minor as a cartoon. Attributing this to God would present him as a petty and insecure God who is overly concerned about snarky cartoons. People are most likely to react violently to mere mockery when they are strong enough to punish, but weak enough to be insecure. God should not be enraged by cartoons. But I could be wrong. If am, God will take care of matters in the afterlife and there is thus no reason to kill cartoonists.

If God does not exist, then the cartoons obviously cannot have offended God. In this case, the offense would be against people who believe in fiction. While they might be angry at being mocked, killing the cartoonists would be like enraged Harry Potter fans killing a cartoonist for mocking Daniel Radcliffe with a snarky cartoon. While they might be devoted to the world of Harry Potter and be very protective of Daniel Radcliffe, offensive cartoons mocking a real person and a fictional world would not warrant killing a cartoonist.

As such, if God is real, then He will deal with any offense against Him. As such, there is no justification for people seeking revenge in His name. If He is not real, then the offense is against the make-believe, and this does not warrant killing. Either way, such killings would be completely unjustified.

Photo by Céréales Killer

After the 2015 Charlie Hedbo murders in France, the discussion of group responsibility heated up.  Some contend that all Muslims were responsible for the actions the killers. Most people did not claim that all Muslims supported the killings, but there was a tendency to put a special burden of responsibility upon Muslims as a group. Some people did claim that the murders were evidence that Islam itself is radical and violent. This sort of “reasoning” is, obviously enough, the same sort used to condemn all Christians or Republicans based on the actions of a few.

To infer an entire group has a certain characteristic (such as being violent or prone to terrorism) based on the actions of a few involves committing the fallacy of hasty generalization. This “reasoning” also often includes the fallacy of suppressed evidence in that evidence contrary to the claim is ignored. For example, to condemn Islam as violent based on the actions of terrorists would be to ignore the fact that most Muslims are as peaceful as people of other faiths, such as Christians and Jews.

It might be objected that a group can be held accountable for the misdeeds of its members even when those misdeeds are committed by a few and even when these misdeeds are supposed to not match the beliefs of the group. For example, if I were to engage in sexual harassment while on the job, Florida A&M University can be held accountable for my actions. Thus, it could be argued, all Muslims are accountable for the killings in France and these killings provide just more evidence that Islam itself is a violent and murderous religion.

In reply, Islam (like Christianity) is not a monolithic faith with a single hierarchy over all Muslims. After all, there are diverse sects of Islam and many Muslim hierarchies. For example, the Muslims of Saudi Arabia do not fall under the hierarchy of the Muslims of Iran. 

As such, treating all of Islam as an organization with a chain of command and a chain of responsibility that extends throughout the entire faith would be absurd. To use an analogy, sports fans sometimes go on violent rampages after events. While the actions of violent fans should be condemned, the peaceful fans are not accountable for those actions. After all, while the fans are connected by their being fans of a specific team this is not enough to create accountability. As such, to condemn all of Islam based on what happened in France would be both unfair and unreasonable.

This, of course, raises the question of the extent to which even an organized group is accountable for its members. One intuitive guide is that the accountability of the group is proportional to the authority the group has over the individuals. For example, while I am a philosopher and belong to the American Philosophical Association, other philosophers have no authority over me. As such, they have no accountability for my actions. In contrast, my university has authority over my work life as a professional philosopher and hence can be held accountable should I, for example, sexually harass a student or co-worker.

The same principle should be applied to Islam (and any faith). Being a Muslim is analogous to being a philosopher in that there is a recognizable group. As with being a philosopher, merely being a Muslim does not make a person accountable for all other Muslims any more than being a Christian makes one accountable for the actions of every other Christian across time and space.

But just as I am employed by a university, a Muslim can belong to an analogous organization, such as a mosque or ISIS. To the degree that the group has authority over the individual, the group is accountable. So, if the killers in France were acting as members of ISIS or Al-Qaeda, then the group would be accountable. However, while groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda might delude themselves into thinking they have legitimate authority over all Muslims, they obviously do not. After all, they are opposed by most Muslims.

 So, with a religion as vast and varied as Islam, it cannot be reasonably be claimed that there is a central earthly authority over its members and this would serve to limit the collective responsibility of the faith. Naturally, the same would apply to other groups with a similar lack of overall authority, such as Christians, conservatives, liberals, Buddhists, Jews, philosophers, runners, and satirists.

When people disagree on controversial issues it is not uncommon for one person to accuse another of lying. In some cases, this accusation is warranted and in others it is not. There is also some confusion about what should count as a lie.

While this might seem mere semantics, the distinction between what is a lie and what is not a lie matters. The main reason for this is that to accuse a person of lying is to make a moral charge against them. It is not merely to claim that the person is in error but to claim that they are doing something morally wrong. While some people do use “lie” interchangeably with “untruth”, there is a difference. To use an easy and obvious example, imagine a student who is asked which year the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The student thinks it was in 1944 and writes that down. She has made an untrue claim, but it would be unfair to accuse her of lying.

Now, imagine that one student, Sally, is asking another student, Jane, about when the United States bombed Hiroshima. Jane does not like Sally and wants her to fail, so she tells her 1944, though she knows it was 1945. If Sally tells another student that it was 1944 and puts that down on her test, Sally could not fairly be accused of lying. Jane, however, lied. While Sally is saying and writing something untrue, she believes the claim and is not acting with malicious intent. In contrast, Jane believes she is saying something untrue and is acting from malice. This suggests some important distinctions between lying and making untrue claims.

One obvious distinction is that a lie requires that the person believes they are making an untrue claim. Naturally, there is the practical problem of determining whether a person really believes what they are claiming, but this is not relevant to the abstract distinction: if the person believes the claim, then they would not be lying when they make that claim.

It can be argued that a person can lie even when they believe a claim, that what matters is whether the claim is true. The obvious problem is that the accusation of lying is not just a claim the person is wrong; it is also a moral condemnation of wrongdoing. While “lie” could be taken to apply to any untrue claim, there would be a need for a new word to convey not just a statement of error but also one of condemnation. Going back to the test example, it would be odd to say that a wrong answer on a test is thus a lie.

It can also be argued that a person can lie by telling the truth, but by doing so in such a way as to mislead a person into believing something untrue. This does have a certain appeal in that it includes the intent to deceive but differs from the “standard” lie in that the claim is true (or at least believed to be true).

A second obvious distinction is that the person must have malicious intent. This distinguishes untruths of movies, stories and shows from lies. When the actor playing Darth Vader says to Luke “No. I am your father.”, he is saying something untrue, yet it would be unfair to say that the actor is thus a liar. Likewise, the references to dragons, hobbits and elves in the Hobbit are all untrue, yet one should not brand Tolkien a liar for these words.

The obvious reply to this is that there is a category of lies that lack a malicious intent. These lies are often told with good intentions, such as a compliment about a person’s appearance or when parents speak of Santa Claus. As such, there are lies that are not malicious and often called “white lies.” If intent matters, then this sort of lie is much less bad than the malicious lie. They do meet a general definition of “lie” which involves making an untrue claim with the intent to deceive but the deceit is supposed to be benign. Naturally, there are those who would argue that such deceits are still wrong, even with good intentions. The matter is also complicated by the fact that there seem to be untrue claims aimed at deceit that intuitively seem morally acceptable. The classic case is, of course, misleading a person who is trying to murder someone.

In some cases, one person will accuse another of lying because the person disagrees with a claim made by the other person. For example, a person might claim that Trump wants to help average Americans and be accused of lying about this by a person who hates Trump.

 In this context, the accusation that the person is lying seems to rest on three points. The first is that the accuser thinks the person does not actually believe their claim and is engaged in an intentional deceit. The accuser also thinks that the claim is not true. The second is that the accuser believes that the accused intends to deceive and expects people to believe them. The third is that the accuser thinks the accused has malicious intent. This might be merely limited to the intent to deceive, but it typically goes beyond this. For example, Trump supporter might be suspected of employing their alleged deceit to encourage cruelty and fascism. Or maybe the person is trolling.

So, to be justified in accusing a person of lying, it needs to be shown that the person does not really believe their claim, that they intend to deceive and that there is malicious intent. Arguing against the claim can show that it is untrue, but this would not be sufficient to show that the person is lying, unless one takes a lie to merely be a claim that is not true. On this view, if someone made a mistake in a math problem and got the wrong answer, they would be a liar. What would be needed would be adequate evidence that the person is insincere in his claim (that is, they believe they are saying the untrue), that they intend to deceive and that there is some malicious intent.

Naturally, effective criticism of a claim does not require showing that the person making the claim is a liar. In fact, the truth or falsity of a claim has no connection to the intent of the person making the claim or what they believe about it. An accusation of lying moves from the issue of whether the claim is true to a moral dispute about the character of the person making the claim. It can, of course, be a useful persuasive device to call someone a liar, but by itself it does nothing to prove or disprove the claim under dispute.