A Philosopher's Blog

Philosophical Essays on Many Subjects

Imus

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As almost everyone knows, Imus got in trouble for using both a sexist and a racist term to describe the members of Rutgers basketball team.

While saying such things is not morally acceptable, it is important to keep in mind two moral principles.

The first is that it is unreasonable to expect moral sainthood from human beings. Human beings are fallible and make mistakes-often stupid and serious ones. This should always be taken into account when passing judgment on others.
The second principle is that of reversing the situation.  When passing moral judgment you should consider what it would be like to be the person on the receiving end.  So, think about something unpleasant or cruel you might have said or done that you were truly sorry about. No doubt you wanted to be forgiven for that offense. If we are to expect others to forgive us, we need to be willing to forgive them.

If Imus said what he did because of a stupid mistake and is truly sorry for his words (and not just sorry he is in trouble), then the right thing to do is forgive his offense…as we would want to forgiven for our offenses. Naturally, if he is not truly sorry, then he should not be forgiven.

I am old enough to remember when Jesse Jackson made his infamous “Hymie town” remark. It was a stupid thing to say and he paid for that thoughtless remark. At the time I thought that he should not have said it, but I also thought that he should be forgiven for the same reason I now think Imus should be forgiven.

Of course, these remarks were not directed against me and perhaps I would think differently if they were.

Florida A&M University Woes…

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As most people have no doubt heard, Florida A&M University is in some serious straits. The latest is covered here.

The gist of the problem is that FAMU has some serious financial management issues. At this point, FAMU is being subject to an audit and the state has given FSU financial control over the joint FSU-FAMU college of Engineering.

Some people have asked me if I think that there is racism involved. Although racism is still a serious problem, I do not think it is really a serious factor here (although the nature of the coverage of FAMU in the press does raise some questions…). The fact of the matter is not about black or white or any other color but green. The sad truth is that FAMU has been badly managed and the state is doing what needs to be done-stepping in and requiring FAMU to get things in order. Although I have my worries, I am confident that FAMU will get through this and emerge even stronger.

That said, I think that this same level of attention should be given to all universities and other public institutions. It would be interesting to see the results if, for example, the federal government were subject to such intense scrutiny and held to the same requirments as FAMU. I do not see that happening anytime soon. Politicians are often keen to check on other peoples’ houses (so to speak) but are loath to allow anyone to peak inside their house. And probably for some very good reasons (at the federal level: billions lost and misspent, pork, corruption, and many crimes).

LILLIE AND LEANDER: A LEGACY OF VIOLENCE

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Kermit Harrison II, one of my former philosophy students, is appearing in a new film. He is a philosophy professor (in real life) and is talking about race and identity in the movie. The film is opening at the Tribeca Film Festival. If you are in the NYC area, be sure to check it out.

Here is the press information about the movie:

“LILLIE AND LEANDER: A LEGACY OF VIOLENCE, a documentary directed by Jeffrey Morgan, produced by, Alice Brewton Hurwitz and Jeffrey Morgan. (U.S.A.) – World Premiere

Investigating the turn-of-the-century murder of her great-great aunt, a woman stumbles upon an explosive secret that hints at her own family’s involvement in decades of racially charged murders. More than a crime investigation, this documentary takes an uncensored look at a community trying desperately to bury its racist past.
Press Contact: Jennifer Morrill, Tribeca Film Festival / [email protected] / 212.941.2418“

Brain Games

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Many years ago I wrote a program called Fallacy Tutorial-a computer program that taught people about fallacies. The program became the basis of a site on fallacies. From these humble origins arose my contribution to the commercial software projects Brain Games,published by the famous Mac game company, Freeverse.The software is getting rave reviews. And they say philosophy is useless. 🙂

Executive Privilege and Spying

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In the face of the inept lying on the part of Attorney General Gonzales, President Bush has decided to invoke executive privilege.

While this alleged power to invoke executive privilege is not specified in the Constitution, the gist of it is that the President can refuse to provide the public with information that he deems as privileged. This power is often invoked in the name of national security but is also justified by the claim that a President’s minions need to be able to freely provide advice without being worried that such advice will be made public. Thus, the justification is based on consequences: such things must be kept secret for the good of the country.

Oddly enough, while Bush and his minions are very much in favor of keeping their conversations secret, they are quite willing to violate the privacy of other people. The Bush Administration’s exploits in what amounts to domestic spying are both numerous and well documented.

When pressed on the matter of such intrusions, the standard justification is national security: by violating peoples’ privacy information can be gained that will help protect America from harm.

From a moral standpoint this practice can be justified on utilitarian grounds. To be specific, the harm inflicted by violating privacy can be justified by appealing to the fact that this practice prevents far greater harms.

Although the Bush administration has little to show for all its privacy violations, this moral logic is reasonable and can be presented as a moral principle: privacy can be violated when doing so will protect America from harm. Now, let us return back to executive privilege.

Bush and his minions have proven to be incredibly damaging to America and the world.

In the case of Iraq, Bush and his minions have directly contributed to the deaths of thousand of Americans and Iraqis. Further, America is wasting vast amounts of money and resources that could be be used to do good-such as providing health insurance to the millions of American children who lack that coverage.

In the case of Katrina, their bungling caused untold harm. In the case of their environmental policies they have continued America on a path towards disaster. In the case of their tax policies, they have helped the very rich and placed the burden of supporting the government on the middle class.

The list of harms could go on, but it is evident that Bush and his minions have hurt America more than bin Laden and all the terrorist in the world could ever dream of doing.

So, if it is acceptable to violate privacy in order to protect America from harm, then it is perfectly acceptable to deny Bush his executive privilege. After all, exposing what he and his minions have really been doing might very well help prevent further acts of Bush terrorism against this great country. The American people need to know what he has been up to…it is a matter of national security.

It’s no Secret…

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Life can be tough and people want easy solutions.  That helps explain why there are so many self-help and positive thinking books and DVDs on the market. One of the latest works in this genre was created by Australian TV producer Rhonda Byrne and is about “the secret.”

 This secret is what she calls “the law of attraction.” This law states that reality can be altered and manipulated directly by people’s thoughts and feelings. To use one of Byrne’s own causal examples, “food is not responsible for putting on weight. It is your thought that food is responsible for putting on weight that actually has food put on weight.” She even claims that she can eat whatever she wants and maintain her weight.

According to empowerment advocate Lisa Nichols, this works in the following way: “when you think of the things you want, and you focus on them with all your intention, then the law of attraction will give you exactly what you want, every time.” Not surprisingly, positive thoughts and feelings are rewarded. This process is illustrated in the film: a woman obsessing over a bauble in a jewelry store windows soon finds the necklace around her neck-apparently with no effort on her part. In another scene, a boy visualizes himself with a new bike and it soon appears. This law apparently even helps with parking-in the film a financial consultant able to find empty parking spaces by visualizing what he wants. While getting material goods and parking spaces is appealing, using this law can apparently also cure disease. For example, a woman in the film claims that she cured her breast cancer by positive thinking.

Of course, like a magnet, the law of attraction has a negative side along with its positive side. Those who have negative thoughts and feelings suffer ill consequences. For example, someone who frets over having her bike stolen will soon find it missing.

As one might suspect from these claims, the work puts forth a causal account that is both implausible and contrary to empirical evidence.

First, the claim that the law of attraction enables people to get what they want by their thoughts and feelings is contrary to the empirical evidence. For example, consider the Playstation 3. On the day of the initial release, many people wanted a PS 3 very badly-badly enough to wait for hours and hours in line for a chance to get one. However, most of these people went home empty handed. If the law of attraction worked, one would expect that there would be many more PS3 owners. As another example, consider grades. As a professor, I have lost count of the number of students who have told me how badly they want an “A” and how focused they are on the grade. However, they are graded on the quality of their work and not once has an “A” miraculously appeared in the grade book simply because a student wanted it badly enough. As a final example, consider illness. I, like many people, have had close friends who have had cancer and who maintained a positive attitude throughout the ordeal and wanted, very badly, to be healthy and to live. Unfortunately, this attitude is clearly not enough since death all too often puts an end to hope. Given that the law of attraction is contrary to experience, it seems reasonable to reject it as yet another form of wishful thinking.
 

Second, consider the specific examples used by Byrne. These examples run contrary to well-established and extensively tested scientific findings. Take, for example her claim about food and weight. The physiological process of fat production in humans is well understood and well tested. It works in purely physical terms and there is simply no evidence that how people think about their food can affect the physiological process of fat production. After all, people in persistent vegetative states gain weight from food even though they presumably have no thoughts about food whatsoever. As another example, consider the claim made about cancer. While a person’s attitude does have an impact on his or her health, there is no evidence that this attitude can actually cure cancer. While cancer is not as well understood as fat production, there is adequate understanding to effectively support the claim that cancer is physiological phenomenon that is not curable simply by thoughts and feelings. Finally, consider the parking space example. If visualizing a space results in an empty space, this would seem to entail that people have great mental powers. To be specific, this would entail that people have the power to cause other people to avoid or leave a parking space simply by thinking. While extensive testing has been done on psychic phenomenon, there is no adequate evidence that people have such powers.

In addition to presenting a false theory of causation, the book and DVD are morally harmful. There are three serious harms that arise from these works.

First, the works put forth a false account of how the world actually functions. As was argued above, the causal claim put forth in the law of attraction runs contrary to both empirical evidence and well-tested scientific theories. Putting forth a wildly implausible account of how the world is supposed to work is morally irresponsible because people can be harmed, perhaps even seriously, if they accept such an account. One obvious example is the case of weight control. If someone who has a serious weight problem believes that he can control his weight by using the law of attraction instead of using proper diet and exercise, then there is a very good chance that his health will be impaired. As another example, if someone believes that she can cure her breast cancer by using the law of attraction and fails to seek proper medical attention, then the results are likely to be dire.

Second, the law of attraction seems to entail that each person is responsible for whatever happens to her-good or bad. While taking responsibility is generally good, claiming that people are responsible for more than they really are accountable for can have a negative psychological impact. To use an example from the film, if someone steals your bike, then your negative thinking and feelings are to blame. To use another example, if you are overweight, it cannot be a medical condition such as diabetes-it must be your negative thoughts. If someone truly believes in the law of attraction, then when bad things happen to them, they could well be doubly harmed: once by the bad event and then again by feelings of self-blame and guilt for their failure to think positively.

Naturally, a person might wonder about truly awful things-such as the genocide in Rwanda. Given the law of attraction, it would seem that the victims of the genocide were responsible for their fate because of negative thoughts and feelings. Obviously, this would be a rather reprehensible thing to claim.

Byrne was asked about Rwanda in a telephone interview conducted by Newsweek (March 5, 2007). Her reply was “If we are in fear, if we’re feeling in our lives that we’re victims and feeling powerless, then we are on a frequency of attracting those things to us…totally unconsciously, totally innocently, totally all those words that are so important.”

This quote creates a bit of a problem. Like all positive thinking people, Byrne puts forth her works as advice on what people should do in regards to their thoughts and feelings. This, naturally enough, presumes that people can control their thoughts and feelings. If people can do this, then they would seem to be responsible for their own negative thoughts and feelings. If negative thoughts and feelings of the genocide victims caused their suffering, then they are not innocent. In effect, they committed suicide by negative thoughts and feelings.

If negative thoughts and feelings are unconscious and innocent, then presumably it follows they are not under our control. If the law of attraction is correct, the victims in Rwanda caused their own deaths in the same way a wounded and bleeding person caused a shark to attack: they simply attracted harm through no fault of their own.
 

However, if negative thoughts and feelings are not under our control, then it would seem that positive thoughts would also not be under our control. After all, if they were then the genocide victims could have just thought enough positive thoughts to offset the negative thoughts and spared themselves. But, if our thoughts and feelings are not under our control, then the book and movie are pointless.

Third, the law of attraction seems to entail that people are not responsible for what they actually do. Consider, for example, the example of the person who can supposedly get a parking space by visualizing this. This entails that his thoughts control other people by somehow causing them to either not park in the spot he desires or to leave it when he is approaching. As another example, consider the cases of the necklace and the bike. Manufactured goods do not appear out of nothing, so presumably the desires of the woman and the child caused other people to bring them what they wanted. As a final example, consider the genocide in Rwanda. By Byrne’s account the negative thoughts of the victims brought their deaths and suffering to them. Under the law of attraction it would seem that people are puppets to the thoughts and feelings of other people. After all, since people are part of reality, if thoughts and feelings control reality, then they control people. Thus, when people take an action it would seem that they are not acting freely. If Sally gives Tom a Playstation 3, it would seem to be because Tom had positive thoughts and feelings about the PS3. If Sally stabs Tom in the face, then it would seem to be because Tom had negative thoughts and feelings that attracted a knife to his left eye. In any case, Sally is not responsible for her actions-Tom’s feelings and thoughts are. If Tom does not control his thoughts and feelings, then he is not responsible either. In this case, no one is responsible for anything at all.

Given the above discussion, it is now no secret that The Secret is fraught with metaphysical and moral problems.

 

 

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