AnalPhilosopher

Everyone has seen Rodin's statue The Thinker. That may have been an appropriate symbol for another age, but it's not for ours. Today's statue would show a person talking on a cellphone. It would be called The Talker.

When I walk across campus at The University of Texas at Arlington, just about every other person I see, student or professor, has a hand to his or her ear. The eyes are cast downward, with an occasional glance upward to take one's bearings. What are these people talking about? To whom are they talking, and why?

I asked these questions of a colleague. He said the typical conversation would probably go like this:

A: "What's up?"
B: "Nothin'. Just got out of chem class. Where are you?"
A: "Headed for the dorm. Gotta study for a logic exam."
B: "Talk to you later."
A: "Bye."

The time spent yakking is time not spent thinking (or worse, spent not thinking). I fear for the future of thought. I really do. Television has already destroyed our attention spans. Now there are cellphones to deliver the coup de grace to reflection. We have become a society of zombies.

While I'm ranting about cellphones, has it occurred to anyone besides me that they enslave their users? If you're always in touch, you're always accessible. Marilyn Frye defines power as access to others. (See Marilyn Frye, "Some Reflections on Separatism and Power," in her The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory [Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press, 1983], 95-109, at 103.) If you're always accessible to others, no matter where you are, whom you're with, how you feel, what you're doing, or how important it is, you're beholden to them. They own you.

Please don't dismiss me as a Luddite. I'm no technophobe. But I'm no technophile, either. Technology isn't our master. It's our servant—as Thoreau long ago pointed out. I predict that cellphones will one day be seen for what they are: leashes. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be leashed to anyone.

How many times have you heard it said (see here, for example) that the United States is the only civilized (industrial, first- or second-world) nation with the death penalty? I have never understood the import of this statement. Either capital punishment is justified or it's not. If it is, then we should pay no attention to the fact that other nations disallow it. They are mistaken and misguided. If it isn't, then we should disallow it for that reason, not because other nations disallow it. Either way, it's irrelevant what other nations think, say, or do.

There are only two reasons I can think of for paying attention to what other nations do. The first is that uniformity is inherently good. But this sweeps far too broadly. I don't hear the people who make the claim about capital punishment say that we should adopt the diets, sports, sexual practices, mannerisms, and laws of other nations. How could we? There is no uniformity in these areas. The second is that the other nations may be on to something with respect to capital punishment. Perhaps we can learn from them. But this goes back to what I said earlier. We must ultimately decide for ourselves whether capital punishment is justified. This requires examining all the reasons for and against it. That most or all other nations have concluded that it's unjustified doesn't establish that it is unjustified.

The United States has always been a special place, morally speaking. We have a written constitution. We have a Bill of Rights. We assign a high value to the individual. What critics of the death penalty don't understand is that it is precisely because of the high value we assign to each individual that we execute convicted murderers. (For attempts to explain American exceptionalism that entirely miss this point, see here and here.) The value of a thing is expressed in its cost. The cost of taking innocent human life is death.

Don't dismiss this as sloganeering. The two greatest liberals in modern history, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), a deontologist and a consequentialist, a retributivist and a utilitarian, a German and an Englishman, a rationalist and an empiricist, defended capital punishment. I'm not suggesting that we should allow it because they supported it. That would be as fallacious as the argument that we should disallow it because Europeans reject it. I'm suggesting that the reason they supported it is their firm belief in the worth, dignity, and inviolability of the individual.

Eleven years ago today, Sophie was born in a horse barn in Red Oak, Texas. Her father was a purebred English Springer Spaniel and her mother a purebred Brittany Spaniel. We've been together for all but the first two months of her life. She is my friend, my protector, my confidant, and my faithful companion. We have rambled close to 10,000 miles together. Despite her advancing age and sore leg (on which she had surgery several years ago), she is alert and playful. Happy birthday, Sophie! I love you, stinker.

Conclusions about religious and moral matters are ones on which we are so obviously liable to bias because, whatever conclusions we reach (whether religious or atheistic), they have consequences about the sort of life which is worth living; and we may be reluctant to accept them because they clash with our current life-style.

(Richard Swinburne, Is There a God? [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996], 123)

David Brooks has a brilliant new column in The New York Times. It's great to see liberalism in decline. Liberals aren't taking it well, either, as Paul Krugman's increasingly hysterical semiweekly columns show. I would take issue with one aspect of Brooks's column, however. He fails to grasp that conservatives are not libertarians. There is nothing in conservatism, as a political philosophy, that rules out costly governmental programs. Conservatives are not necessarily advocates of minimal government. What we have seen since Ronald Reagan was elected is a coalition of conservatives and libertarians. They worked together to acquire and solidify power. But now that the movement has succeeded, we will begin to see the philosophies split. Libertarians will press for smaller, leaner government; conservatives will tax and spend as necessary to achieve their substantive aims. Here is philosopher Roger Scruton:

It seems, then, that the conservative attitude in fiscal matters will be opposed to the attempt to bend taxation permanently and directly to some external aim of redistribution. This does not mean that conservative politicians will subscribe to the view that the only legitimate use of tax is to secure the revenues of the state: they too will be prepared, when necessary, to use it as an instrument of social control. But they will do so only rarely, and in the interests of continuity rather than social revolution. (Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism, rev. 3d ed. [South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2002], 102)

Making the lives of the elderly secure promotes continuity. It is a way of keeping faith and of linking generations. The new Medicare program is expensive, but that, in itself, does not make it nonconservative.

Andrew Sullivan is one of my favorite commentators. I love his writing on the war in Iraq—and I've told him so. But he has a blind spot when it comes to homosexual marriage. Today, for example (see here), he criticizes Princeton philosopher Robert P. George, who wrote a column about the recent Massachusetts homosexual-marriage case. George made a point that I made the other day in this blog, namely, that the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the United States Constitution (Article IV, Section 1) will be used to make all states recognize homosexual marriages entered into in any state.

Sullivan's reply to George, like his e-mailed reply to me, is dismissive, condescending, and dogmatic. He simply asserts that the Full Faith and Credit Clause "never has" been applied to marriage. But what does this show? Does it follow from the fact that something hasn't been done that it can't or won't be done, or even that it's unlikely to be done? And shouldn't Sullivan address the question why it hasn't been done? Perhaps it hasn't been done because nobody asked that it be done. Courts don't go around interpreting and applying constitutional provisions without being asked to do so by a litigant!

What makes Sullivan's dismissive remarks so ludicrous is that he is not a lawyer. George is. I am. The New Jersey judge I quoted the other day is. So here we have a nonlawyer making a confident legal judgment that at least three legal specialists reject. That alone should tell you something. I argued in a recent blog entry that Sullivan can show his good faith by supporting a constitutional amendment to the effect that the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not apply to homosexual marriage. If he is so confident that the Clause doesn't apply, or will never be applied, he should have no problem with this amendment. All it does is ensure that what he thinks won't happen doesn't happen.

If I were cynical (or more cynical than I am), I'd say that Sullivan has a hidden agenda. He wants all states to be forced by the Full Faith and Credit Clause to recognize homosexual marriages entered into in places such as Massachusetts. He wants a judicial coup along the lines of Roe v. Wade, which is the consummate anti-federalist case. He wants to deny citizens of the various states the right to make up their own minds, democratically, about whether to allow homosexuals to marry. Come clean, Andrew. Your dogmatism is showing.

Self-deprecating humor is endearing, so let me tell a joke about philosophy. I heard it from Daniel Wikler many years ago when he gave a lecture at The University of Arizona.

A boy in Wisconsin had arranged his first date. He was a nervous wreck. He liked the girl a lot and didn't want to lose her. What worried him is that he would clam up during the date, making her think he was boring. So he asked his father for advice. "Don't worry, son," said the father. "If you just remember the three 'Fs'—food, family, and philosophy—you'll never be at a loss for words.

"Thanks, dad!" said the son. Sure enough, while at dinner with his date, the son clammed up. Then he remembered his father's advice. He thought for a second and looked up brightly. "Do you like potato sausage?" he asked. The girl, looking bored, said no. "Hmm," he thought. Family. He furrowed his brow, looked up, and asked, "Do you have a brother?" "No," she said with a sigh. "This isn't going well," thought the boy. "What's that third 'F'?" Ah yes, philosophy. After thinking for a moment, he blurted, "If you had a brother, would he like potato sausage?"

Faithful readers of this blog know that one of my long-standing interests is the moral status of nonhuman animals. I've posted entries on that topic in this blog. From now on, most of my blogging on animal ethics will be in my communal blog, Animal Ethics. There is a permanent link to it on the left of this page, so please click it regularly to see what's new. I just wrote a longish entry in which I list some of the issues I'd like to discuss with my fellow bloggers. Speaking of whom, there are now three of us: Mylan Engel Jr, Angus Taylor, and me. I'm awaiting word from three or four others. I think six or eight bloggers would be a good number, but three or four will do. I'm not aware of any other site that is devoted to the philosophical dimension of human interactions with animals. If you know of such a site, please let me know. It would be nice to cross-link with it.

[T]o say that television is entertaining is merely banal. Such a fact is hardly threatening to a culture, not even worth writing a book about. It may even be a reason for rejoicing. Life, as we like to say, is not a highway strewn with flowers. The sight of a few blossoms here and there may make our journey a trifle more endurable. The Lapps undoubtedly thought so. We may surmise that the ninety million Americans who watch television every night also think so. But what I am claiming here is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience. Our television set keeps us in constant communion with the world, but it does so with a face whose smiling countenance is unalterable. The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining, which is another issue altogether.

(Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business [New York: Penguin Books, 1986 (1985)], 87)

I ran 20.8 miles this morning at White Rock Lake in Dallas. The sunrise was spectacular. Birds were everywhere, doing their bird thing. The temperature was in the mid-thirties at the start but had climbed into the upper fifties or low sixties by the finish. This evening I do the Jingle Bell 5K race in downtown Fort Worth. In between, I get to eat, nap, eat some more, watch a little football, and, most importantly, blog. Blogito ergo sum! I hope all of you are having a safe, enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday, as Sophie, Shelbie, and I are.

Let's get serious. Have you heard critics of the war in Iraq describe it as a "war of choice" as opposed to a "war of necessity"? What does this mean, and why is it a criticism?

A war of necessity is presumably a war that we have no choice but to wage. This would include, at a minimum, wars of self-defense, but also what lawyers (international and otherwise) call "anticipatory self-defense." It's interesting that some of the people who insist that only a war of self-defense is justified defend women who kill their abusive husbands by stealth. You can't have it both ways. Either it's sometimes permissible to pre-emptively attack an assailant or it's not. No reasonable person can doubt that Saddam Hussein had evil intentions toward the United States, or that he would have attacked us had he been able to. The links between Hussein and terrorists are becoming increasingly clear, although one suspects that no amount of evidence to that effect will ever persuade the critics.

Let's ignore self-defense for the time being. I want to explore (at least tentatively) the concept of a war of necessity and its contrast, a war of choice. A war of choice is a war that is unnecessary. But unnecessary given what? Judgments of necessity always presuppose an end or goal. If I say that it's necessary for you to take the Law School Admission Test, I assume (perhaps because you have told me as much) that your goal is to attend law school. Without the goal, the test—a means to the goal—is unnecessary. Whenever someone says that X is necessary (or unnecessary), it makes sense to ask, "Given what end?" A thing can be necessary for me, given my ends, but not for you, given yours.

So we need to ask why the war in Iraq was unnecessary, for saying that it's unnecessary is saying that it subserves no proper end. It was certainly necessary if the Iraqi people were to be liberated from a brutal dictatorial regime—i.e., if we had liberation as our end. No reasonable person thinks that anything would have changed in this regard if the United States hadn't invaded Iraq. Even after Saddam Hussein died, his sons (one or both of them) would have taken over, continuing the reign of terror for decades to come. They had been groomed for precisely this role. They were mass-murderers, like their father.

People who say that the war in Iraq was unnecessary are therefore saying that the end of liberating the Iraqi people was not important or worthy. But how can one say this without disregarding or discounting their interests? Those who say this must be counting only the interests of Americans. Given our interests, they seem to be saying, the war was unnecessary. This, with all due respect, is selfishness. But leave that aside. Is it so clear that American interests weren't implicated? Saddam Hussein had a nuclear program. Nobody disputes that. Perhaps it had been dismantled by the time of the invasion, but he had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to revive it at any time. Do the critics think that a world in which Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapon (or other weapons of mass destruction) would not threaten American interests?

It's all very puzzling. Those who supported the war in Iraq, such as me, should not deny that it was a war of choice. That plays into the critics' hands. It was a war of choice, and the choice was a good one for all concerned: for Americans (present and future), for Iraqis (present and future), and for other residents of the Middle East. (Okay, it wasn't such a good choice for Saddam Hussein and his Baathist thugs.) Some of us thank goodness that we have a president with backbone, a moral compass, and a willingness to risk much to achieve great things. Yes, some Americans have paid the ultimate price during the war, and more will surely die before order is restored; but that has always been the case when much was at stake. Americans have never shied away from sacrifice in a noble cause.

As for Europeans—the French, the Germans, the Belgians—they should thank their lucky stars that they have George W. Bush and tens of thousands of brave American soldiers to protect them. A nuclear-armed Iraq would have made all of their lives fearful. Perhaps, now that I think of it, that would be a good thing; it might remind them that evil knows only one language: force. It might make them less squeamish. One would think that this, after all, was the lesson of the twentieth century: that weakness, squeamishness, and vacillation abet and encourage violence. Americans, who have already saved the world once, know better.

Two hours ago, in a fit of what I hope is not baseless enthusiasm, I created a new blog, Animal Ethics. This one will be communal. Or so I hope. I have invited a few fellow philosophers (alliteration!) to come aboard. As I explain on the blog (see here), I hope it becomes a clearinghouse for information and argumentation about the moral status of nonhuman animals. Please visit the site, send comments and suggestions, and spread the word. Thank you.

Ranting, in the sense of using bombastic language or preaching noisily, is fun. I do it. Brian Leiter does it. Andrew Sullivan does it. Everyone does it. Even intellectuals do it. Blogging, I am afraid, lends itself to ranting. But is there anything more to ranting than fun? Does it have any redeeming intellectual or social value?

I say no. Who cares what Brian Leiter thinks or values? Seriously. I like Brian. He's intelligent; he's witty; he's a good writer; and he has important things to say about legal theory. I learn from him. But when he expresses his opinions about political or moral matters, why should I attend to them? This goes for my opinions as well. Why should he or anyone else give a damn what I think or say?

I hate to break it to you, but I'm not your moral authority. I'm nobody's moral authority. I don't believe in moral authorities. The mere fact that I believe this or value that gives nobody else any reason to believe or value it. I'm no wiser than anyone else, despite my years of study. If anything, I'm less wise because of my years of study. My philosophical training equips me to pay attention to certain things, such as consistency and ambiguity, but it doesn't inflate or enlarge my values. Brian Leiter and I have similar training—law and philosophy—but we disagree about fundamental evaluative matters. He's on the political left and I'm on the right. (One difference may be that I used to be on the left. I doubt that Brian was ever on the right, although he probably will be one day, as he matures and gains experience.) Even if training in a field such as philosophy made one wise, how would one choose between people with the same training (such as Brian and me) who have different views and values?

If blogging is to survive as anything more than self-indulgent ranting, it must engage readers. It must seek to persuade them, rationally. But it can do this only if it begins where they are, with the beliefs and values they already have (or are presumed to have). Suppose you think the war in Iraq unjustified, but I think it justified. One thing we might do is fling our opinions at each other. I say the war is justified. You say it's not. I repeat what I said, only louder. You repeat what you said, louder still. I repeat what I said, this time with an implication that you're stupid. You repeat what you said, this time with an implication that I'm a shill for the Bush administration.

What does this accomplish? Precisely nothing. What I must do, if I aim to persuade you, is show you that your belief in the unjustifiedness of the war conflicts with other of your beliefs. I must show you that certain of your other beliefs (or principles) commit you to believing that the war is justified. You, by the same token, must show me that certain of my other beliefs (or principles) commit me to believing that the war is unjustified. This process requires patience, intelligence, understanding, and civility. I must talk with you (or simply listen to you) long enough to understand your belief structure. I must find out which of your beliefs are basic and which derivative. I must elicit your principles, your standards of evidence, and so forth. You, in turn, must elicit these items from me.

There is no guarantee that this process will result in agreement. We may find, after a long discussion (in which, among other things, we resolve factual disputes), that we have divergent basic values. But unless we try to reach agreement, we will never know whether this is so. This is why it is so frustrating, for a philosopher, to observe contemporary political debate (especially contemporary televised political debate, wherein thinking appears to be disallowed). Almost no attempt is made by the person arguing to ascertain the beliefs or values of his or her interlocutors. Each party to the "debate" ends up shouting at the other (or ranting). It is all very sad. Actually, it's worse than sad; it's tragic. We can and should do better. Philosophers—progeny of the great Socrates—can and should lead the way.

[T]here are two central goals of an undergraduate college education in the liberal arts: to produce students who can reason and argue for themselves, conducting a Socratically "examined life," and also to produce students who are, to use the old Stoic term, "citizens of the entire world."

The first idea speaks for itself. It demands the searching criticism of traditional belief, conducted in an atmosphere of open debate and genuine receptivity. Indeed, the Socratic commitment to the life of reason not only does not require reverence for traditional norms, it requires their most vigilant scrutiny, and a determined openness to new argument and new evidence. And far from requiring the abandonment of logic and standards of rigor, as some conservatives charge, this critical posture of the mind rests precisely upon logic and a respect for standards of argumentation—a point that some anti-traditionalists on the left have not always sufficiently grasped.

The second idea holds that we live in a world that is complex and various, that has a history of still greater complexity—and that in order to be good citizens in such a world, we must make ourselves competent in that complexity, able to grapple with that variety and historical many-sidedness. We will need to know, in other words, whatever is required in order to converse and to argue intelligently with people who come from ways of life other than our own. We will also need to be able to convey our respect for our fellow world-citizens by taking them and their lives seriously. Our students will go out to take many roles in this world, participating in discussions where progress can be made only with information, sensitivity, and sound argument. They must be pedagogically prepared for this, both by learning many things and by coming to know what they don't know.

(Martha Nussbaum, "The Softness of Reason: A Classical Case for Gay Studies," The New Republic: A Journal of Politics and the Arts 207 [13/20 July 1992]: 26-35, at 30)

Mylan Engel Jr is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. We met in graduate school at The University of Arizona in the mid-1980s. A few years ago, to my surprise, Mylan, who works primarily in epistemology, published an essay on the moral status of nonhuman animals, "The Immorality of Eating Meat." I had no idea that he was interested in the topic. I do not exaggerate when I say that this essay is the best thing I have ever read on the moral status of nonhuman animals. Mylan just gave me permission to upload it to my university webspace and provide a permanent, prominent link to it on my blog. (See the green area to the left.) The file is large, so please give it a few seconds to load after you click the link. Be forewarned: If you read the essay—and I hope you do—you will become a vegetarian. Either that or you will have to live with the awful knowledge that you are not living up to your moral principles.

AnalPhilosopher is getting about 150 site visits a day. The number was higher (about 200 a day) after the publication of my latest column on Tech Central Station, so I assume I'll get another spike with the next column. I wish I had a better feel for my audience. I get e-mail, of course, but to date I haven't put a comments section on my blog. What's strange about a blog is that you never know who's reading it. But if you don't know who's reading it, how do you know how to pitch it or what to write about? What can I reasonably assume about the intelligence, education, values, and interests of my readers? I thought I should explain what I take myself to be doing.

Some of my readers are highly educated professionals, such as my philosophical colleagues. Just as I enjoy reading the daily posts of Brian Leiter and Andrew Sullivan (see their links at the left of this page), I assume (and hope!) that my fellow philosophers—and scholars in related areas, such as law—enjoy reading my posts. Maybe I'm delusional (megalomaniacal), but that's my hope. I've received feedback (almost all positive, in case you're wondering) from colleagues far and wide. But I don't want the blog to be accessible only to those who already have professional training, in or out of philosophy. I want to reach out to those who are interested in philosophical topics or a philosopher's "take" on things but haven't done any formal study in the area. I want to show the power and promise of thinking philosophically (which is to say rigorously) about various issues.

For example, I've written several blog entries on the moral status of nonhuman animals. Nothing I've written to this point on that topic would be new to a philosopher who works in this area; but the feedback I've received suggests that some people have never even thought about such matters, much less thought through them systematically. Many readers have said that they find my posts interesting, provocative, and challenging. Others probably find them frustrating, disappointing, and infuriating. Some readers ask for book recommendations. I like that. I'm a teacher at heart, and I love explaining things. The best teachers teach people how to teach themselves.

When you think about it, how could someone write for an audience as diverse as my family members (most of whom are in Michigan), my far-flung friends (or ex-friends), my athletic buddies, my philosophical colleagues, colleagues in other disciplines, my students (yes, I gave them my blog address), various acquaintances (including some I "met" online), and strangers? It's laughable. But maybe I can find that happy middle ground wherein I challenge some readers while giving professionals and specialists a new way to look at something familiar. In the end, I must admit, this blog is a self-indulgence. I love to write, and I'm interested in everything. Okay, not opera. I hope that you—the individual reading this—find at least some of what I say interesting. Please spread the word.

Thanks to all of you for reading my blog. I enjoy writing in it every day. I am constantly making notes about things to discuss. Feel free to send e-mail to me if you have comments, questions, or suggestions. My address is listed to the left of this entry, in the green area. It's not clickable and I had to leave the "at" symbol out to keep spammers from "harvesting" my e-mail address. Just type the address and peck away. I respond to all e-mails, although sometimes not right away. (Remember: I'm anal-retentive. E-mail must be processed in the order in which it was received.)

A few weeks ago, I published a column on Tech Central Station entitled "The Natural History of Bush-Hating." I used New York Times columnist Paul Krugman as my example of someone who hates President Bush, and listed what I consider four signs of hatred. I said in my column that Krugman could weaken the inference to hatred if he would, from time to time, say something positive about the president. Today, when I saw Krugman's title, "The Good News," and read his first sentence, I thought we might get such a column. Alas, it turns out to be another Bush-bashing piece. Instead of weakening the inference to hatred, it strengthens it.

Wedding, n. A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become supportable.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

For better or for worse (I think for worse, but that's another post), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the face of the animal-liberation movement. Another group that makes headlines is the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). Animal liberationists such as me are often dismayed—and sometimes outraged—by the tactics used (encouraged, condoned, tolerated) by these organizations. One such tactic is violence (understood as intentional or reckless damage to person or property). Is violence ever justified as a means to protecting animals?

As is so often the case, the answer is, "It depends." It depends, specifically, on one's theoretical outlook. Let me mark out the ground. Act-consequentialists evaluate actions on a case-by-case basis. That act is right (they say) that maximizes overall good, taking all interests into account and counting all individuals (including the agent, or person performing the action) equally. That an act is of a certain type, such as "lie," "broken promise," "killing the innocent," or "torture," is irrelevant. That is to say, there is no presumption either for or against the doing of any particular type of act. Only the consequences of concrete (token) actions matter.

Deontologists deny this thesis. Deontologists say that the type of act one performs has (or can have) moral significance. Certain acts are wrong in themselves, independently of their consequences. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), for example, held that lying, qua lying, is wrong. But it's not always noticed that there are two types of deontologist. Some are absolutists. They say that no amount of good consequences brought about or bad consequences prevented can justify committing one of the prohibited acts. Kant was an absolutist deontologist. He held that one must not lie, period. Lying is always and everywhere wrong, whatever the circumstances and whatever the consequences. (Do you see why the adjective "absolutist" is appropriate?)

Other deontologists are nonabsolutists. Let's call them "moderates," since they do not lie at one of the extremes of the theoretical spectrum. Moderate deontologists are deontologists, because they think that certain act-types are wrong in themselves, but they believe that acts of those types may be performed if enough good will be produced (or bad prevented) as a result.

Think in terms of thresholds. Absolutist deontologists have an infinitely high threshold. Nothing can reach it. Act-consequentialists have no threshold. There is no presumption against any type of act. Moderate deontologists have a finite threshold. It gets complicated here, because moderate deontologists can have different thresholds. One moderate deontologist may have a low threshold that allows lying if and only if it produces X units of good (or prevents X units of bad). Another may have a higher threshold, one that allows lying if and only if it produces X+10 units of good (or prevents X+10 units of bad). If you want to think numerically, the absolutist deontologist is at 100 (on a scale of 0 to 100); the act-consequentialist is at 0; and moderate deontologists fill the gap between 1 and 99. If someone tells me that he or she is a deontologist, I don't know much. He or she could be a weak moderate deontologist, and hence very close to the act-consequentialist, or an absolutist deontologist—or anything in between.

In case you're wondering whether anyone these days is a deontologist, the answer is yes. Emphatically yes. All of the following contemporary moral philosophers (some of them, alas, recently deceased) are deontologists in my sense (either absolutist or moderate): John Rawls, Thomas Nagel, Robert Nozick, Ronald Dworkin, Charles Fried, G. E. M. Anscombe, Bernard Williams, Alan Donagan, and John Finnis. These are among the most highly regarded of contemporary philosophers. Nor should one think that deontology is incompatible with atheism. Nagel is an atheist. Anscombe and Finnis are theists. Deontology has nothing to do with belief in a supernatural being.

Let us return to the question whether violence is ever a morally permissible tactic. The act-consequentialist will not rule it out. If an act of violence is the act, of all those available to the agent, that maximizes overall good, then it is the right thing to do. The end justifies the means. Everyone has heard this slogan. Now you know who subscribes to it and lives by it: act-consequentialists. Think about what the slogan means. It means that no path (means) to the end of maximizing overall good is ruled out. If torture is necessary to maximize overall good, then torture is justified. If lying is necessary to maximize overall good, then lying is justified. No means are forbidden. That an act is of a particular type (a lie, a broken promise, a killing of the innocent, a case of torture) is of no moment, morally speaking.

The absolutist deontologist rules out violence categorically. No amount of good can justify it. Evil may not be done that good may come. Moderate deontologists endorse a presumption against violence, but they differ, as we saw, in how strong the presumption is. Those who are close to absolutist deontologists will require that the violent act produce a great deal of good, or prevent a great deal of bad, in order to be justified. If the only way to save 10,000 innocent people is by blowing up a building that contains one innocent person, it might be justified, but not, say, if only ten people will be saved by killing the one. A moderate deontologist with a weak presumption (i.e., a low threshold) might allow the killing of one to save ten. An act-consequentialist would allow the killing of one to save two, or even the killing of one to save one, if the one saved has a longer expected lifespan (or a greater capacity for happiness) than the one killed. See the difference?

What this shows is that what one thinks about the moral permissibility of violence depends on one's theoretical outlook. I would be remiss if I ended the post here, because I have not done justice to act-consequentialism. I said that the act-consequentialist believes that the end justifies the means. But even act-consequentialists can adopt rules of thumb. Experience shows that acts of violence do less good than they are expected or hoped to do by those who perpetrate them. They also do more bad. And most people abhor violence, so any individual or group who is interested in social change would do well to use it only as a last resort, to avoid alienating or antagonizing those who are sympathetic to the group's ends. There are almost always other, more effective means to the end of social change.

Peter Singer, the famed (but in some quarters reviled) author of Animal Liberation (New York: Avon Books, 1975), which has been called the bible of the animal-liberation movement, believes that violence should be a last resort. He won't rule it out categorically, because he's an act-consequentialist, but he thinks that it is rarely (if ever) justified. Here is his discussion of violence in the second edition of Animal Liberation (New York: The New York Review of Books, 1990):

It would be a tragic mistake if even a small section of the Animal Liberation movement were to attempt to achieve its objectives by hurting people. Some believe that people who make animals suffer deserve to have suffering inflicted upon them. I don't believe in vengeance; but even if I did, it would be a damaging distraction from our task of stopping the suffering. To do that, we must change the minds of reasonable people in our society. We may be convinced that a person who is abusing animals is entirely callous and insensitive; but we lower ourselves to that level if we physically harm or threaten physical harm to that person. Violence can only breed more violence—a cliché, but one that can be seen to be tragically true in half a dozen conflicts around the world. The strength of the case for Animal Liberation is its ethical commitment; we occupy the moral high ground and to abandon it is to play into the hands of those who oppose us. (pages xii-xiii)

Singer is a wise man.

Note that in a particular case, each of the moral theorists I have described can condemn violence. Suppose someone kills the proprietor of a chicken farm in order to get publicity for the cause of animal liberation. The act-consequentialist would condemn it for the reasons Singer gives: It is counterproductive; it is not the act, of all those available to the agent, that maximizes overall good. The absolutist deontologist would condemn it because it's a case of killing the innocent (a species of violence), and no amount of good consequences produced or bad consequences prevented can justify killing the innocent. (Don't protest that the chicken farmer isn't innocent. He may not be to you, but he is to the absolutist deontologist, and we're talking right now about how the absolutist deontologist reasons about violence.) The moderate deontologist would condemn it because the amount of good consequences produced or bad consequences prevented are insufficient to justify it. This shows that theories can converge, or overlap. That they sometimes converge, however, doesn't make them the same theory. All it takes is one case of divergence to show this, and there are, take my word for it, many cases of divergence.

[P]hilosophy can no more show a man what he should attach importance to than geometry can show a man where he should stand.

(Peter Winch, Moral Integrity, Inaugural Lecture in the Chair of Philosophy Delivered at King's College London 9 May 1968 [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968], 25)

An acquaintance/friend from Down Under forwarded a message he received. I'm not sure whether the message was in response to one of my blog entries or to the acquaintance/friend's commentary on it. The message-writer asked (I paraphrase) why anyone would care one iota about turkeys (and presumably other nonhuman animals). That's a good question. We know, first of all, that different people care about—or value—different things. Some people care about sports; some don't. Some people care about their mother tongue; some don't. Some people care about amassing wealth; some don't. Some people care about animals; some don't.

Would it make sense to say to someone who doesn't care about X, "You should care about X"? I believe it does. But the "should" is hypothetical, not categorical (in Immanuel Kant's sense). If someone tells me that he or she doesn't care about nonhuman animals, I will say, "You should care." What I mean is that, given other things the person values, it's irrational not to care about nonhuman animals. I suspect that the person who says he doesn't care about turkeys cares about pain. His pain. The pain of his children. The pain of other humans. But why care about pain? Isn't it because pain is intrinsically bad (i.e., bad in and of itself)? Pain is pain, and therefore bad, whoever experiences it. Why should it matter whether the being who experiences the pain comes in a human package or a nonhuman package? And if pain is bad, then one must have a powerful reason to inflict it. Liking the taste of animal flesh is not a powerful reason. My liking the taste of human flesh would not justify raising and killing humans. I believe there's an inconsistency in this person's beliefs. Either he doesn't know it or he knows but doesn't care.

As I said in an earlier post, not everyone has the time or training to identify inconsistencies. It's conceivable (barely) that someone not care about having inconsistent beliefs, but most people do care. Inconsistent beliefs create an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance. Also, anyone who cares about truth, which is essential to knowledge, which is intrinsically as well as instrumentally good, should care about inconsistency, because an inconsistent set of beliefs must have at least one false member. Consistency may not be sufficient for truth (there can be a consistent set of false beliefs), but it's necessary (there can't be an inconsistent set of true beliefs). A person who cares about truth, therefore, should care about consistency. Note the hypothetical nature of this imperative. If you care about truth, then you should care about consistency.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the message-writer cannot be brought to care about turkeys or other nonhuman animals. Does it follow that anything may be done to them? Of course not. I don't much care for people (I admit it; I'm a misanthrope, like Arthur Schopenhauer), but I have a moral obligation not to harm them, and maybe an obligation to prevent harm to them if I am in a position to do so with little or no cost to myself. Caring is rooted in love; justice is rooted in respect. One can respect someone without loving him or her. This is why it is scurrilous to describe Peter Singer and other animal liberationists as "animal-lovers." Singer's argument is not rooted in love for animals; nor can anything be inferred from it about his attitude toward animals. For all we know, he has no fondness for animals. His argument is rooted in respect for them. We have obligations to animals. We can wrong them. They have valid claims on us. That they cannot make demands on us (i.e., assert their claims) is irrelevant. Babies can't make demands on us.

So even if the message-writer doesn't care about turkeys, he can have duties to them. Where do these duties come from? His own principles (as I said earlier). I believe that if he thinks things through carefully, without bias or prejudice, he will see that he thinks it is wrong to inflict pain. He may try to cabin this judgment, making it applicable only to humans; but now he generates an inconsistency. He will have to explain why only certain pains (those of humans) count. I have never heard a convincing argument to the effect that being human (a member of homo sapiens) is a morally significant property. How could it be? Homo sapiens is a biological construct, not a moral category.

My (unsolicited) advice to readers is this: Think through your principles. Take the time. Consult a philosopher if necessary. Ask whether your principles allow you to eat animal flesh. If, as I suspect, they do not, then you have three options: First, you can abandon (or modify) the principles; second, you can stop eating animal flesh; third, you can live with inconsistent beliefs. Good luck.

I keep hearing that people don't like negative campaigning, but the discussion then shifts to personal attacks, as if that's what negative campaigning means. I think these are different matters. One can engage in negative campaigning without attacking anyone personally (although it's hard to imagine a personal attack that does not constitute negative campaigning).

A positive campaign consists in setting out (or displaying) one's background, character, principles, and policies. The candidate says, in effect, "Here's what I stand for; here's who I am; here's what matters to me; here's what I will work to achieve; here are my values." A positive campaign makes no reference to what one's opponent(s) stand(s) for.

A negative campaign, in contrast, consists in setting out—and then criticizing—one's opponent's background, character, principles, and policies. It is other-directed rather than self-directed. It runs another down rather than building oneself up.

I believe that the opposition to negative campaigning, so understood, is that it is insulting to the electorate. The candidates must think that unless they run the other(s) down, the voters will not be able to figure out for themselves how and why the candidates' principles and policies differ. The voters are being treated like children. Most voters are intelligent enough to understand such differences. They want to hear what each candidate will do upon being elected. Having heard this, they will compare the views and decide how to vote.

If I (god forbid) were a candidate for public office, I would set out my principles and policies as clearly as I can and let the chips fall where they may. I would not even address the views or values of my opponent(s). If what I say appeals to the voters, they will elect me; if not, they won't. I retain my pride and self-respect; the voters feel as though they are treated like adults (because they are). The system itself is cleansed of negativity. Politics becomes noble again. All of us are better (and better off) for it.

[Spinoza] appears not to have known dogs at all. The revolting proposition with which the above-mentioned twenty-sixth chapter begins: Praeter homines nihil singulare in natura novimus, cujus mente gaudere et quod nobis amicitia, aut aliquo consuetudinis genere jungere possumus [Besides human beings, we know of no individual being in nature whose mentality could give us pleasure, and with whom we could be united through friendship or through any kind of association], is best answered by a Spanish man of letters of our day (Larra, pseudonym Figaro, in Doncel, c. 33): El que no ha tenido un perro, no sabe lo que es querer y ser querido. (Whoever has never kept a dog does not know what it is to love and to be loved.) The deeds of cruelty which, according to Colerus, Spinoza was accustomed to practise on spiders and flies, for his own amusement and amid hearty laughter, correspond only too closely to his propositions that are here censured as well as to the aforesaid chapters of Genesis. By virtue of all this, Spinoza's Ethica is throughout a mixture of the false and the true, the admirable and the bad.

(Arthur Schopenhauer, "Fragments for the History of Philosophy," in his Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, trans. E. F. J. Payne [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974 (1851)], 1:29-136, at 73 [italics in original; footnote omitted])

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, a national holiday. The first Thanksgiving was in 1621 in Plymouth Plantation. The recently settled Pilgrims had had a rough winter, during which many of them died. When October came, and the harvest, they invited various Indians to a feast. The feast was not just a token of appreciation for the considerable help the Indians had given them; it was meant to thank God—the big Indian in the sky—for the wonderful bounty of the land.

The Thanksgiving holiday clearly has religious origins. Does this mean that only a theist can celebrate it? No. That is a conceit. For some people, even certain theists, the holiday has long since lost its religious significance. But there is another way to celebrate Thanksgiving without abandoning the thanks-giving concept. Atheists and agnostics have much to be thankful for. I am thankful to my fellow Americans, past and present, for bequeathing such a free (yet ordered) society to me. They owed me nothing. They gave me much. While I cannot literally thank those who no longer exist, I can express thanks (without the uptake) and vow to do for others what these generous individuals did for me. That is, I can work to ensure that the next generation, and those following it, have the same legacy of individual liberty and material prosperity that I have had, and that provide the basis of my happiness.

I can also give thanks to particular others, such as my parents. They did not write my term papers, read my casebooks, take my bar exams (Michigan and Arizona), or write my Ph.D. dissertation, but they made it possible for me to do these things. Thank you, Mom and Jerry. Thank you for giving me a safe, structured environment; thank you for giving me a love of books; thank you for taking me on vacations, which fired my imagination; thank you for supporting me through every harebrained scheme I concocted (including abandoning a legal career for the will-o'-the-wisp of philosophy); thank you for making me feel special; thank you for having such high expectations of me; and thank you for supplying my material needs for so many years. Thank you, in short, for loving me. Love is the most powerful force in the world, as these lines by Pete Townshend so beautifully convey:

Love conquers poses.
Love smashes stances.
Love crushes angles into black.

(Pete Townshend, "Stop Hurting People," All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes [1982])

So yes, an atheist can—and should—celebrate Thanksgiving. I, for one, have much to be thankful for, and I don't mind saying so. I hope you do, too; and I hope you show it by both word and deed.

I apologize to Andrew Sullivan for quoting his private correspondence. He said (in another—and more respectful—e-mail message) that it's not "fair" (oops! I did it again, but only to rectify a wrong) and he's right. I don't think I betray any confidences when I say that Sullivan's view is that the Full Faith and Credit Clause is not likely to be applied to homosexual marriage. He couldn't seriously maintain that it can't be, or that it will, to a certainty, never be, only that it probably won't be.

I disagree. I think the Clause is likely to be applied to homosexual marriage, probably on the first challenge. Mark my words. But let's get beyond this factual or legal dispute (I'm not sure which it is) and get to the philosophical heart of the matter. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Sullivan is right: that the Full Faith and Credit Clause is not likely to be applied to homosexual marriage. Suppose the probability is only one in ten. That ten-percent probability is what bothers federalists. We could wake up one day and find that every state in the union is required to recognize homosexual marriages because one state has. Federalists want assurance that no state will ever be given this power over the others.

If Sullivan is so confident that the Clause will never be applied to homosexual marriage, he should support a constitutional amendment to that effect. It would be breathtakingly simple:

Article IV, Section 1 of this Constitution shall not be construed to apply to homosexual marriages [or "to marriages other than those between a man and a woman"].

For the life of me, I don't see the harm in such an amendment. I realize that amending the Constitution is serious business and should never be undertaken lightly. I'm really just trying to see whether Sullivan is arguing in good faith. I don't think he is. He presents himself as a federalist, but I can't get him to accept the implications of federalism. All I get is optimism that no court will ever apply the Full Faith and Credit Clause to homosexual marriage. Forgive me, but I'm not the least bit optimistic on this score. Indeed, I'm downright pessimistic, as any self-respecting federalist ought to be.

Not to belabor this, but all I want to know from Andrew Sullivan is whether he takes the second position I set out in an earlier post. Here it is:

2. It [homosexual marriage] should not be disallowed in any state.

If he does, fine; we know where he stands. He would be disavowing federalism. He would be insisting that every state recognize homosexual marriages provided any state does. What I object to is his presenting himself as a federalist when he's not. Andrew?

Andrew Sullivan honored me by replying (by e-mail) to my latest post on homosexual marriage. He says the premise of my argument—that the Full Faith and Credit Clause requires states such as Texas to recognize homosexual marriages entered into in states such as Massachusetts—is "factually wrong." Why is it wrong? Because, he says, the Clause "has never applied to marriage, doesn't apply to marriage and never will apply to marriage."

Sullivan is probably right that it "has never applied to marriage," but that's because nobody has tried. He's wrong, however, in saying that it "doesn't apply," if that expresses a view about the Clause's meaning. Here, for those who haven't read the United States Constitution lately, is the Full Faith and Credit Clause (Article IV, Section 1):

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.

On its face, the Clause applies to marriage, including homosexual marriage. That the matter has never come before a court doesn't imply that it can't or won't, or that, if and when it does, it will be resolved in a way that satisfies federalists.

What Sullivan is saying is that people who take a different position than he does on homosexual marriage should rely on his untrained and inexpert legal judgment. This is preposterous! Sullivan could show his good faith in this debate simply by endorsing a Constitutional amendment to the effect that the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not apply to homosexual marriage. What has he to lose from this endorsement? He already thinks the Clause doesn't apply to homosexual marriage and that it will never be applied to homosexual marriage. Then why not let the Constitution say that? Why not put his money where his mouth is?

By the way, I'm not off in the woods by myself when I say that the Full Faith and Credit Clause, on its face, applies to homosexual marriages. Here is a retired New Jersey judge, writing in a legal periodical. He is sympathetic to homosexual marriage, so he can't be dismissed as a biased observer on the meaning of the Full Faith and Credit Clause. Make up your own mind. As for Andrew Sullivan, I wish he'd come clean. He seems increasingly to want to force homosexual marriage down the throats (sorry for the pun) of all Americans. It's not enough (for him) that it be available for Massachusetts residents; it must also be available for residents of Texas, Alabama, New Mexico, Montana, and so forth.

Addendum: Sullivan replied to my e-mailed reply to his e-mail, in which I accused him (respectfully) of avoiding the issue. I included a link to the New Jersey judge's essay. Within minutes, which could not have been enough time for him to read the essay, Sullivan wrote back: "he's wrong. you're wrong. i'm avoiding nothing. andrew." Sounds dogmatic to me, but hey, people are allowed to be dogmatic, ignorant (of the law), and evasive. My respect for Sullivan (not to mention his credibility on the matter of homosexual marriage) is rapidly eroding. This saddens me greatly, because I had heretofore thought highly of him.

Here are two positions on homosexual marriage:

1. It should not be allowed in any state.
2. It should not be disallowed in any state.

Those who take the first position would like to amend the United States Constitution to define "marriage," for legal purposes, as the union of a man and a woman. This would prevent any state, including Massachusetts, from allowing homosexuals to marry. I am not concerned, here, with the motivation of those who support this amendment. Many supporters are probably motivated by religious considerations, but this need not be the case. Someone could have nonreligious moral grounds (or even nonmoral grounds) for supporting it. We should focus on the position, not the motivation for taking it.

Some of those who oppose a Constitutional amendment such as the one described appear to take the second position on homosexual marriage. They believe (rightly, in my opinion) that if even one state, such as Massachusetts, allows homosexual marriage, every other state will be forced by the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution (Article IV, Section 1) to recognize it. This has the effect of preventing any state, such as Texas, from disallowing homosexual marriage, since homosexuals who desire to marry will simply go to a state that allows it, marry, and come home.

The problem with the two positions is that they're extreme. Federalists reject both of them. Federalists believe that states should be free to both allow and disallow homosexual marriage. I argued in my earlier post on this topic that the way to do this—probably the only way—is to amend the Constitution so that it makes the Full Faith and Credit Clause inapplicable to homosexual marriage. Since the Constitution is supreme (see Article VI), no state could ignore the provision. Texas would not have to recognize marriages entered into in states such as Massachusetts. If enough Texans want to allow homosexuals to marry, fine; they are free to do so. But it would be a political question, not one for the courts.

Is it objectionable that states be allowed to take different positions on homosexual marriage? I don't know why it would be. We have a federal system, not a unitary government. National uniformity may be desirable or even essential in some areas, but marriage is not one of them. As things now stand, states can have different abortion laws, provided they don't violate the central right defined in Roe v. Wade. This is as it should be. There are of course people who think that uniformity is intrinsically good, and that there is (therefore) a presumption in its favor, but this is antithetical to federalism. I wish Andrew Sullivan, who argues so forcefully against the first position set out above, would argue just as cogently against the second. In other words, I wish Sullivan would embrace federalism. As it stands, he appears to want to deny Texans (for example) the right to disallow homosexual marriage.

Perhaps the analogy I have (occasionally) drawn between philosophical discussion and political discussion may be of help. One of my colleagues [the late Robert Nozick] is a well-known advocate of the view that all government spending on 'welfare' is morally impermissible. On his view, even the public school system is morally wrong. If the public school system were abolished, along with the compulsory education law (which, I believe, he also regards as an impermissible government interference with individual liberty), then the poorer families could not afford to send their children to school and would opt for letting the children grow up illiterate; but this, on his view, is a problem to be solved by private charity. If people would not be charitable enough to prevent mass illiteracy (or mass starvation of old people, etc.) that is very bad, but it does not legitimize government action.

In my view, his fundamental premisses—the absoluteness of the right to property, for example—are counterintuitive and not supported by sufficient argument. On his view I am in the grip of a 'paternalistic' philosophy which he regards as insensitive to individual rights. This is an extreme disagreement, and it is a disagreement in 'political philosophy' rather than merely a 'political disagreement'. But much political disagreement involves disagreements in political philosophy, although they are rarely as stark as this.

What happens in such disagreements? When they are intelligently conducted on both sides, sometimes all that can happen is that one sensitively diagnoses and delineates the source of the disagreement. Often, when the disagreement is less fundamental than the one I described, both sides may modify their view to a larger or smaller extent. If actual agreement does not result, perhaps possible compromises may be classed as more or less acceptable to one or another of the parties.

Such intelligent political discussion between people of different outlooks is, unfortunately, rare nowadays; but it is all the more enjoyable when it does happen. And one's attitude toward one's co-disputant in such a discussion is interestingly mixed. On the one hand, one recognizes and appreciates certain intellectual virtues of the highest importance: open-mindedness, willingness to consider reasons and arguments, the capacity to accept good criticisms, etc. But what of the fundamentals on which one cannot agree? It would be quite dishonest to pretend that one thinks there are no better and worse reasons and views here. I don't think it is just a matter of taste whether one thinks that the obligation of the community to treat its members with compassion takes precedence over property rights; nor does my co-disputant. Each of us regards the other as lacking, at this level, a certain kind of sensitivity and perception. To be perfectly honest, there is in each of us something akin to contempt, not for the other's mind—for we each have the highest regard for each other's minds—nor for the other as a person—, for I have more respect for my colleague's honesty, integrity, kindness, etc., than I do for that of many people who agree with my 'liberal' political views—but for a certain complex of emotions and judgments in the other.

But am I not being less than honest here? I say I respect Bob Nozick's mind, and I certainly do. I say I respect his character, and I certainly do. But, if I feel contempt (or something in that ballpark) for a certain complex of emotions and judgments in him, is that not contempt (or something like it) for him?

This is a painful thing to explore, and politeness normally keeps us from examining with any justice what exactly our attitudes are towards those whom we love and disagree with. The fact is that none of us who is at all grown up likes and respects everything about anyone (least of all one's own self). There is no contradiction between having a fundamental liking and respect for someone and still regarding something in him as an intellectual and moral weakness, just as there is no contradiction between having a fundamental liking and respect for oneself and regarding something in oneself as an intellectual and moral (or emotional, etc.) weakness.

I want to urge that there is all the difference in the world between an opponent who has the fundamental intellectual virtues of open-mindedness, respect for reason, and self-criticism, and one who does not; between an opponent who has an impressive and pertinent store of factual knowledge, and one who does not; between an opponent who merely gives vent to his feelings and fantasies (which is all people commonly do in what passes for political discussion), and one who reasons carefully. And the ambivalent attitude of respectful contempt is an honest one: respect for the intellectual virtues in the other; contempt for the intellectual or emotional weaknesses (according to one's own lights, of course, for one always starts with them). 'Respectful contempt' may sound almost nasty (especially if one confuses it with contemptuous respect, which is something quite different). And it would be nasty if the 'contempt' were for the other as a person, and not just for one complex of feelings and judgments in him. But it is a far more honest attitude than false relativism; that is, the pretense that there is no giving reasons, or such a thing as better or worse reasons on a subject, when one really does feel that one view is reasonable and the other is irrational.

(Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], 164-6 [italics in original])

A hypocrite, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed., is "One who falsely professes to be virtuously or religiously inclined; one who pretends to have feelings or beliefs of a higher order than his real ones; hence generally, a dissembler, pretender." The Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide (1999) defines "hypocrite" as "a person given to hypocrisy." "Hypocrisy" is then defined as "the assumption or postulation of moral standards to which one's own behavior does not conform; dissimulation, pretense."

The word "hypocrite" is what philosophers call a thick moral term. Like "liar" and "coward," it has badness built into it. But each of these terms has descriptive meaning as well, unlike, say, "good" and "bad," which the late philosopher R. M. Hare called terms of general commendation and condemnation (respectively). Thus, calling someone a hypocrite is doing two things: describing and prescribing. The utterer both conveys information and makes an evaluation—a negative evaluation. To see that hypocrisy had badness built into it, imagine asking someone to describe him- or herself. Are you likely to find "liar," "coward," or "hypocrite" among the descriptors?

Nobody wants to be a hypocrite. But when you think about it, it's easy to avoid hypocrisy. All you have to do is refrain from professing to be "virtuously or religiously inclined." If you don't profess these things, you can't falsely profess them. Or, to use the second definition, don't assume or postulate moral standards. If you don't assume or postulate moral standards, your behavior can't possibly fail to conform to them. If hypocrisy is failure to practice what one preaches, then one can avoid it by not preaching. If hypocrisy is failure to live up to one's moral standards, with or without preaching, then one can avoid it by not having moral standards. A nihilist cannot, logically, be a hypocrite.

There are many things in life like this. If I choose not to have children, I ensure that I never experience the anguish of losing a child. If I choose not to ride my bicycle, I ensure that I never get injured in a bicycle crash. If I choose not to marry, I ensure that I never suffer the agony and embarrassment of divorce. But most people think the risks of these activities are outweighed by the benefits. Isn't it the same with morality? Again, most people think so. Christians, for example, profess to love their neighbors as themselves. This is a demanding requirement. Does any Christian live up to it? Almost certainly not, especially if "neighbor" is construed to include all of humanity. Because Christian moral standards are so demanding, Christians open themselves up to criticism as hypocrites. But this can have a salutary effect: The pressure to avoid hypocrisy pushes them to do better, to be better Christians.

One does not have to be a Christian to have high moral standards, of course. Consequentialists subscribe to a secular version of the Christian doctrine about loving one's neighbor as oneself. They, too, fall woefully short. So do deontologists such as Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). But I would argue that in all of these cases it is better to have high moral standards and fall short of them than not to have high moral standards at all. For one thing, there is the standing possibility of incremental movement toward perfection (as defined by the standard). I may be a better Christian, consequentialist, or deontologist tomorrow than I am today, and better next week than tomorrow. The standard serves as a beacon to guide me. It makes moral growth possible. It also helps us make sense of the concept of backsliding. To backslide is to move away from, rather than toward, one's goal. If each slide backward is met with two steps forward, then, however haltingly, one makes moral progress.

I believe it would be a better world for all concerned, including nonhuman animals, if each of us became a hypocrisy-sniffer. Most of us are already good at it, although all too often the term "hypocrite" is used as a weapon rather than as a means of enlightenment and inspiration. Each person, especially our children, should be encouraged to have high moral standards—and to strive mightily to live up to them. By risking hypocrisy, we make great moral gains possible.

Robert Wright is too smart and too good a writer to be my age (forty-six). He sickens me. You can't go wrong reading Wright. Start here.

This is a hard case for death-penalty abolitionists. If John Muhammad doesn't deserve to die for his ruthless murders, then nobody does.

The finest achievement for humanity is to recognize our predicament, including our insecurity and our coming extinction, and to maintain our cheerfulness and love and decency in spite of it, to prosecute our ideals in spite of it. We have good things to contemplate and high things to do. Let us do them.

(Richard Robinson, An Atheist's Values [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964], 157)

I've been deluged with requests to name the three best moral philosophers in the world. Actually, nobody asked, but here's my list:

Samuel Scheffler (UC-Berkeley)
Shelly Kagan (Yale)
Michael Slote (Miami)

If you're good, I'll give you a summary of the main debate in normative ethical theory. Stay tuned.

We can define a platitude, echoing David Lewis, as a judgment that only the philosophers (and the morally incompetent or utterly vicious) among us would think of denying.

(Jeffrey Stout, Ethics After Babel: The Languages of Morals and Their Discontents [Boston: Beacon Press, 1988], 212-3)

I've been taken to task, and rightly so, for being cryptic in my comment about raising and killing animals. Philosophers do not like to be cryptic. (Okay, some do. Nietzsche did. But analytic philosophers don't, and I'm an analytic philosopher.) Here's what I said: "If you aren't prepared to raise and kill a turkey, don't eat one. It's that simple." Let me unpack this. I assume that many or most of my readers (including you) subscribe to principles that, when conjoined with the facts of modern meat production, entail that eating animal flesh is wrong. Not imprudent, mind you. Wrong. Morally. One important task of the philosopher is to draw out the implications of various principles. We're trained to do this. We're good at it. Infuriatingly good.

Most people have full, busy, comfortable lives. They work hard during the week, recreate on Saturday, and worship on Sunday. They like to think that they (1) have stringent moral principles and (2) live up to them. Unfortunately, they don't spend time, as philosophers do, checking their beliefs and actions for consistency with their principles (or, for that matter, checking for consistency among their principles). It falls to philosophers to hold people to their principles. This is what got Socrates into trouble. It is what gets Princeton philosopher Peter Singer into trouble. People don't like having their weaknesses, foibles, and shortcomings pointed out to them. They don't like being told, even indirectly, that they're hypocrites. So they take it out on the messenger. That's fine; philosophers are thick-skinned. Philosophy attracts people whose skin is already thick and then thickens it some more. Some philosophers revel in the abuse. It makes them feel closer to their idol, Socrates, the Athenian gadfly.

What I was trying to say in my blog entry is that each of us should take responsibility for his or her actions. If it's wrong for me to do X, then it's wrong for me to have X done for me. I'm assuming, for the sake of argument, that it's wrong for me to raise an animal in a way that inflicts suffering on it. But if it's wrong for me to do this, then it's wrong for me to have someone do it for me, for a fee. This is what happens when you buy a packaged turkey (or other meat item) in a grocery store. I believe that if people had to raise and kill the turkey themselves, they wouldn't do it. Is this because they're squeamish? For some people, yes. But it could also be because the person hasn't thought through the moral implications of buying turkey. The turkey, unbeknownst to the purchaser, was made to live an abysmal life, one that involved pain, deprivation, confinement, and frustration of natural urges.

Let me repeat: I am not (here) arguing for the claim that it is wrong to eat animal flesh, although I believe it is. I'm assuming that it's wrong in order to see what, if anything, follows from it. What I'm saying is that you are responsible for what you allow to be done in your name (for what you cause to be done) and not just for what you do. When you buy a packaged turkey or any other animal product, you are buying (morally speaking) all of the pain, deprivation, confinement, and frustration that its presence in the store involved. Taking responsibility for your purchase requires learning the awful facts of modern meat production. It requires facing up to the ugly reality that lies behind the clean, shiny cellophane.

By the way, one writer asked whether my claim applies to other foodstuffs, such as rice. Yes. While rice itself is nonsentient, and therefore not something that has interests, it must be planted, harvested, transported, and processed. You should find out how the rice you purchase was produced. What if it was planted or harvested by slaves or children, or by people who have no alternative but to work long hours under inhumane conditions? What if the rice you purchase involved destruction of the local environment, including animal habitat? The same principle applies: You are responsible for what you allow to be done. A morally upright consumer is a knowledgeable consumer. Acquiring the relevant knowledge is costly, sometimes very costly. But who said living a morally upright life would be easy—or cheap?

We did not invent our mother-tongue, any more than any other language that we have learned: we inherited it. It was created over centuries by generations of our forebears; and most of them, whether well or poorly educated, literate or illiterate, treated it with respect. All languages are the co-operative creations of human beings; they are marvellous instruments for the expression and communication of thought and feeling, and vehicles for private thought. Each generation makes changes in them, but all have the responsibility for handing them on to the next generation in at least as perfect a condition as that in which they themselves inherited them. Disrespect for one's language is ingratitude to our forebears and selfishness towards our descendants.

(Michael Dummett, Grammar and Style for Examination Candidates and Others [London: Duckworth, 1993], 116)

I howled with laughter when I heard Dick Gephardt say (in today's televised presidential debate) that the Republican party represents "special interests." His party—the Democrat—is the party of feminists, teachers, union members, environmentalists, senior citizens, African-Americans, homosexuals, the poor, the disabled, pacifists, and various and sundry do-gooders, each of whom has a narrow, self-serving agenda. The Democrat message is simple: "If you elect me, I'll take money from them and give it to you." It would be funny if it weren't so despicable.

If you would like to read my latest scholarly publication—a defense of ethical egoism—click here.

Every decision you make, including what to eat, has costs and consequences. If you eat the flesh of an animal, then you are responsible not just for its death but for how it was made to live. That you yourself didn't do the killing is irrelevant, although it has the convenient effect of hiding the awful costs of your action from you. If you aren't prepared to raise and kill a turkey, don't eat one. It's that simple.

Addendum: Here are replies to the New York Times column to which I linked.

I keep hearing, from the likes of Andrew Sullivan, that federalism—the doctrine of states' rights—is incompatible with a constitutional amendment that prohibits homosexual marriage. It is said that a true/good/real federalist would allow states to do as they please with respect to homosexual marriage. By supporting a constitutional amendment that prohibits such marriages, however, one is choosing not to allow states to do as they please.

Is this right? Does federalism entail opposition to a constitutional amendment? Yes and no. It entails opposition to the constitutional amendment described (one that prohibits homosexual marriage), but it does not entail opposition to all amendments. Indeed, as I shall argue, it requires a particular amendment.

The problem, from a federalist point of view, is that Article IV, Section 1 of the United States Constitution requires that "Full Faith and Credit . . . be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State." Suppose Massachusetts allows homosexuals to marry on the same terms as heterosexuals. If the effects of such a decision could be confined to Massachusetts, a federalist would have no problem with it. But the Full Faith and Credit Clause will not allow it to be confined to Massachusetts. In time (probably right away), a homosexual couple married in Massachusetts will move to another state (say, Texas) and demand recognition by that state. (Or: A Texas couple will go to Massachusetts to be married, the way heterosexual couples have traditionally gone to Las Vegas to be married.) Either way, the matter will end up in court. The court, applying the Full Faith and Credit Clause, will rule that the couple is married in Texas as well as in Massachusetts. If you're married anywhere, you're married everywhere.

In 1996, Congress enacted a law—the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)—that tries to confine homosexual marriage to the state of origin. It provides, in pertinent part, as follows:

No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe, shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right or claim arising from such relationship.

The problem with DOMA is that it runs afoul of the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution, which is supreme. Neither DOMA nor the second state's (e.g., Texas's) law restricting marriage to heterosexuals would stand in the way of a ruling to the effect that the Constitution requires nationwide recognition of a marriage that is lawful in any state. The problem, as the federalist sees it, is the Full Faith and Credit Clause. It effectively nationalizes marriage law. It prevents states from legislating as they see fit on the question of homosexual marriage.

But federalists are disingenuous if they say that the only solution is a constitutional amendment prohibiting homosexual marriage. There is another solution that stops short of that while keeping faith with federalism—namely, a constitutional amendment that nullifies the Full Faith and Credit Clause with respect to homosexual marriage. The amendment would decree that the Full Faith and Credit Clause not be construed to apply to homosexual marriage. In other words, no state would have to recognize another state's homosexual marriages. The adjective "homosexual" is important. Without it, states could refuse to give full faith and credit to any marriages entered into elsewhere, even those between heterosexuals.

The solution I'm proposing is federalist in nature but does not take a position on the substance of the matter. It is federalist because it both (1) allows states to allow homosexual marriage and (2) allows states to disallow homosexual marriage. A constitutional amendment that bans homosexual marriage would not allow states (such as Massachusetts) to allow homosexual marriage. No constitutional amendment at all—the current situation—would not allow states (such as Texas) to disallow homosexual marriage (assuming, as seems plausible, that the Full Faith and Credit Clause would be interpreted by courts to require every state to recognize a marriage that is lawful in any state).

Federalists should not allow nonfederalists, such as Andrew Sullivan, to speak for them. The federalist position is a respectable one and deserves to be articulated. But at the same time, federalists should not present federalism as if it takes a position on the substance of the debate over homosexual marriage. It does not. It simply requires that states be free to legislate in this area: free, that is, to allow or disallow homosexual marriage. People who don't like the marriage law of their state can either work to change it (through the political process) or move.

[M]ale dominance is perhaps the most pervasive and tenacious system of power in history. . . . [I]t is metaphysically nearly perfect. Its point of view is the standard for point-of-viewlessness, its particularity the meaning of universality. Its force is exercised as consent, its authority as participation, its supremacy as the paradigm of order, its control as the definition of legitimacy. Feminism claims the voice of women's silence, the sexuality of our eroticized desexualization, the fullness of "lack," the centrality of our marginality and exclusion, the public nature of privacy, the presence of our absence. This approach is more complex than transgression, more transformative than transvaluation, deeper than mirror-imaged resistance, more affirmative than the negation of our negativity. It is neither materialist nor idealist; it is feminist. Neither the transcendence of liberalism nor the determination of materialism works for us. Idealism is too unreal; women's inequality is enforced, so it cannot simply be thought out of existence, certainly not by us. Materialism is too real; women's inequality has never not existed, so women's equality never has. That is, the equality of women to men will not be scientifically provable until it is no longer necessary to do so. Women's situation offers no outside to stand on or gaze at, no inside to escape to, too much urgency to wait, no place else to go, and nothing to use but the twisted tools that have been shoved down our throats. If feminism is revolutionary, this is why.

(Catharine A. MacKinnon, "Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence," chap. 9 in Feminist Legal Theory: Readings in Law and Gender, ed. Katharine T. Bartlett and Rosanne Kennedy [Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991], 181-200, at 182 [citation omitted] [essay first published in 1983])

I should explain the name of my blog. I've had at least two negative reactions to it, one by a former (and perhaps future) student who says it undercuts the seriousness of (some of) the entries and one by a fellow blogger who listed it as "Anal(ytic)Philosopher." What gives? There isn't a damn thing embarrassing about the name. As you can see by reading the sidebar, the word "anal" is a play on "analytic" (as in analytic philosopher) and "anal-retentive." I'm proudly both. The name was suggested to me several years ago by a friend. He was probably trying to insult me, but insults work only if they receive the intended uptake. What he didn't realize is that "anal-retentiveness," in my view, is a desirable quality, indeed a virtue (if not the master virtue). The world works, when it does, because of anal-retentive people like me. It fails, when it does, in spite of their noble efforts. So stop thinking of excrement or anal sex (sheesh!) when you see "AnalPhilosopher"! Think fussiness and orderliness. Think careful analysis. Think quality. As you were.

I understand that Congress is about to pass anti-spam legislation. Having followed the progress of this legislation in The New York Times and elsewhere, I'm convinced that it will do little to stanch the flow of unwanted, unsolicited commercial e-mail messages. Why do I say this? Because there is a great deal of money involved. So-called legitimate businesses support the legislation. What does that tell you? It tells me that they plan to continue spamming, perhaps at a greater rate than ever. They want to normalize spam by eliminating the seedier merchants. Is this good enough for you? Will people be content with spam as long as it doesn't sell penis patches (what the hell is that?), Viagra, and pornography? I don't know about you, but I don't want any commercial solicitations in my e-mail box. If I want something, I'll go shopping for it, thank you.

Because of the power of money in our political system, there will never be a legal solution to spam. I've had enough experience both with law and with politics to think it's highly unlikely. The solution, therefore—if there is going to be one—will have to be technological. Someone is going to have to figure out a way for individuals like me to block spam. Not just some of it, but all of it. There's a useful analogy to criminal punishment. Criminologists distinguish between specific (individual) deterrence and incapacitation. Deterrence works by means of threat: Do this or else. It assumes rational self-interest on the part of the person to be deterred. Incapacitation works by means of, well, incapacitation. If I lock you up, I prevent you from committing further crimes. I'm not persuading you to forbear; I'm keeping you from acting on your malicious desires. We incapacitate dangerous dogs; we don't try to deter them by reasoning with them. (Another example comes from nuclear policy. Mutual Assured Destruction [MAD] was a deterrent strategy. The Strategic Defense Initiative [derisively known as Star Wars] was/is an incapacitation strategy.)

A legal solution to spam tries to prevent it by making the cost too high for a rational, self-interested spammer to bear. But spammers have shown their ingenuity by moving offshore, by using other people's computers to send messages, and so forth. They will remain untouched by the law, and hence undeterred. A technological solution, on the other hand, incapacitates them. It keeps them from acting on their desires. There's another reason to prefer a technological solution besides feasibility, and that's ideology. In a free society, individuals should be able to communicate to others provided they don't harm them. I cherish our free society. So please, computer specialists, come up with a technological solution. Soon. As Ralph Waldo Emerson reputedly said, if you build a better mousetrap, people will beat a path to your door. (See here.) The person who invents an effective spam-blocker will be instantly—and deservedly—wealthy.

While cleaning up e-mail from 1997 (don't ask), I found the following list, which was sent to me by a friend. I do not vouch for the authenticity of the items, but I have no reason to doubt their authenticity, either. Enjoy!

Study Finds Sex, Pregnancy Link (Cornell Daily Sun)
Whatever Their Motives, Moms Who Kill Kids Still Shock Us (Holland Sentinel)
Survey Finds Dirtier Subways After Cleaning Jobs Were Cut (The New York Times)
Larger Kangaroos Leap Farther, Researchers Find (The Los Angeles Times)
'Light' Meals Are Lower in Fat, Calories (Huntington Herald-Dispatch)
Alcohol Ads Promote Drinking (The Hartford Courant)
Malls Try to Attract Shoppers (The Baltimore Sun)
Official: Only Rain Will Cure Drought (The Herald-News, Westport, Massachusetts)
Teenage Girls Often Have Babies Fathered by Men (The Sunday Oregonian)
Low Wages Said Key to Poverty (Newsday)
Man Shoots Neighbor with Machete (The Miami Herald)
Tomatoes Come in Big, Little, Medium Sizes (The Daily Progress, Charlottesville, Virginia)
Dirty-Air Cities Far Deadlier Than Clean Ones, Study Shows (The New York Times)
Man Run Over by Freight Train Dies (The Los Angeles Times)
Scientists See Quakes in L.A. Future (The Oregonian)
Wachtler Tells Graduates That Life in Jail Is Demeaning (The Buffalo News)
Free Advice: Bundle Up When Out in the Cold (Lexington Herald-Leader)
Prosecution Paints O. J. as a Wife-Killer (Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel)
Economist Uses Theory to Explain Economy (Collinsville Herald-Journal)
Bible Church's Focus Is the Bible (Saint Augustine Record, Florida)
Clinton Pledges Restraint in Use of Nuclear Weapons (Cedar Rapids Gazette)
Discoveries: Older Blacks Have Edge in Longevity (The Chicago Tribune)
Court Rules Boxer Shorts Are Indeed Underwear (Journal of Commerce)
Biting Nails Can Be Sign of Tenseness in a Person (The Daily Gazette, Schenectady, New York)
Lack of Brains Hinders Research (The Columbus Dispatch)
Chick Accuses Some of Her Male Colleagues of Sexism (The Los Angeles Times [about L.A. Councilwoman Laura Chick])
How We Feel About Ourselves Is the Core of Self-Esteem, Says Author Louise Hart (Sunday Camera, Boulder, Colorado)
Fish Lurk in Streams (Democrat & Chronicle, Rochester, New York)

I wonder how many of the people who call President George W. Bush a draft dodger supported Bill Clinton and now support Howard Dean—about whom, see this. Let's please have a single standard for everyone.

The practice of animal experimentation is a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Researchers conduct thousands of experiments annually. Thus, we should not be surprised to find some substantial successes when we survey the practice over several decades. If you fire a shotgun (with thousands of pellets) in the general direction of a target, there is a good chance that several pellets will hit the target.

(Hugh LaFollette and Niall Shanks, Brute Science: Dilemmas of Animal Experimentation [London and New York: Routledge, 1996], 173)

I was born to blog. A log, in the original sense, is "a record of events occurring during and affecting the voyage of a ship or aircraft (including the rate of a ship's progress . . .)." By extension, the term has come to mean "any systematic record of things done, experienced, etc." (The Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide [1999], 583). A blog—the contracted form of "weblog"—is, quite simply, a log posted on the World Wide Web, often with provision for reader comments and other interactive features.

I kept a log (journal) from 21 November 1978, when I was twenty-one and a half years old, to 8 March 1995, when I was almost thirty-seven. I have a record of every day of law and graduate school. (Frightening, eh?) The first five and a half years of entries were handwritten in bound notebooks; then, in 1984, I started typing the entries into my Kaypro II computer. I had many reasons for keeping a journal. One was to improve my writing ability. Like anything else, writing improves with practice. The more you write, the better you get at it. Another reason was to leave a record of my existence for my children, should I have any, and for historians, should I live a remarkable life. (One never knows.) Some people gain immortality by having children. Others gain it through religious faith. Still others gain it by writing. As for why people crave immortality, I don't know. Perhaps I'll write a blog entry on that topic some day.

Several things led to the demise of my journal. The main one was the advent of electronic mail. Like Thomas Jefferson, I have always been a faithful correspondent. I wrote long letters to family members, friends, and acquaintances. This gave me a sense of community. When e-mail arrived on the scene in 1994 (at least for me), I was immediately hooked. It was the perfect medium. It was written, like snail-mailed correspondence, but fast, like the telephone. Best of all, it didn't have the intrusiveness of the telephone. One can write, send, and read e-mail whenever one wants: first thing in the morning, in the middle of the day, or late at night. Unlike the telephone, you're not at the mercy of another person's schedule.

Pack rat that I am, I saved all of my incoming and outgoing e-mail. Why not? Hard drives are capacious. My rule has always been that unless there is a reason to dispose of something, you shouldn't. As more and more friends and family members got online, I began sending messages to several of them at once. Some people didn't understand this. I never understood why they didn't understand it. Suppose I have a friend who's a runner, as I am. I might write a letter to him describing a race I did. Since others might be interested as well, or just want to know what I'm up to, I would "copy" them on it. This was my way of keeping people in the loop, and perhaps inspiring them.

Unfortunately, some people took umbrage. Reactions ranged from confusion ("Who's Kevin?") to anger ("Why do you send me stuff that's written for someone else?"). But how is this any different from the following situation: Kevin and I are having a conversation, in a cafe, about running. A friend of mine walks by. Wouldn't it make sense to bring the friend into the conversation? Many people would ask to be brought in! But somehow, e-mail elicits a different reaction. I'm afraid to say that I angered and frustrated a great many people over the years with my e-mail practices. I'm sorry. It was innocent. It was an attempt to build a community of like-minded people, or, in some cases, to expand the interests and knowledge of those not like-minded. Someone who knew nothing about running, bicycling, philosophy, politics, or law—the things I discourse most about—might learn and grow.

Now, at long last, comes blogging. My blog is a continuation of what I've been doing so faithfully and enthusiastically for twenty-five years. It is a "systematic record of things done, experienced, etc." First came the journal (together with snail-mailed correspondence), then e-mail, now blogging. Only the medium has changed; the content is roughly the same. And the best part of blogging is that nobody has reason to be confused, angry, or frustrated. If you don't like me, the things I write about, or my take on those things, you are free never to visit my blog. If you visit it, therefore, you assume the risk of being offended in Joel Feinberg's sense of being put into a disliked mental state (such as boredom, anger, frustration, or resentment). It makes me feel good to know that I'm no longer responsible for other people's adverse reactions to me. I'm glad I lived long enough to blog. I was born to blog.

[W]hatever existence means for each class of men, whatever it is for whose sake they value life, in that they wish to occupy themselves with their friends; and so some drink together, others dice together, others join in athletic exercises and hunting, or in the study of philosophy, each class spending their days together in whatever they love most in life. . . .

(Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, Book IX, 1171b18 [trans. David Ross; italics in original])

Someone wrote to me suggesting that I'm a hypocrite for (1) inveighing against scholars who accept grants (see here) while (2) taking money from Tech Central Station, for which I write a column. I don't want to go into the details of my relationship with TCS, which is confidential, but suffice it to say that I haven't been paid for anything I wrote. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that I had been, or will be. Would/will that make me a hypocrite, in the sense of someone who doesn't practice what he or she preaches?

No. If the writer had read my blog entry carefully—including its title!—he would have noticed that I'm concerned with scholarly integrity. What does it mean to be a scholar? I suggest that it means at least this: disinterestedly pursuing truth. Every university has a mission statement to this effect. My university's statement begins as follows:

The mission of The University of Texas at Arlington is to pursue knowledge, truth and excellence in a student-centered academic community characterized by shared values, unity of purpose, diversity of opinion, mutual respect and social responsibility.

If truth is the goal (the raison d'être) of scholarship, then one must not be distracted from it by other considerations, such as financial interest. Just as judges should be strictly impartial as between the litigants of a case, scholars should have a single-minded devotion to truth. If you don't wholeheartedly subscribe to this value, you should leave academia.

TCS is not an academic environment. The columns I write for it have nothing to do with my role as a professor. It is a hobby, something I do for fun. (This blog is also in that category.) How could writing for TCS compromise my scholarly integrity when it's not a scholarly outlet? I assure you that when merit raises are distributed by my departmental chair, my work for TCS, like my performance in footraces, is irrelevant. Only my scholarly work is considered. That is as it should be.

By the way, this incident gives me an opportunity to describe something that is unique to philosophy. Philosophers proudly subscribe to what's called "the principle of charity in interpretation." This principle requires that one forbear from criticizing until one has made the argument or utterance in question the best it can be. Be charitable. Don't leap to the conclusion that there has been a contradiction; bend over backward to explain away the appearance of contradiction. Ask yourself whether there is any interpretation of what is being said that can withstand criticism. Strive to make the utterance rational and plausible. If it's an argument being criticized and it's invalid, fill in the premises to make it valid. This is one respect in which politics differs from philosophy. In politics, one makes one's opponent's arguments look worse than they are. In philosophy, one makes one's opponent's arguments look better than they are.

What my critic would have done before accusing me of hypocrisy, if he were charitable, is ask himself two questions: First, could it be that Keith hasn't been paid for his TCS columns? Second, is there a relevant difference between scholarly writing and nonscholarly writing that might ground an objection to accepting grants for the former while allowing compensation for the latter?

Hatred, n. A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

If you've read Henry Farrell's Crooked Timber post about Tech Central Station, as I recommended in a previous blog entry, you'll have noticed that he used the term "useful idiot." It's pretty clear that he's applying the term to Glenn Reynolds (the InstaPundit), who writes for TCS. I assume, therefore, that he would apply it to me, since I, too, write for TCS. Glenn Reynolds can speak for himself (and has), so let me respond. I feel as though either my integrity or my intelligence is being impugned, and perhaps both.

A useful idiot is someone, first of all, who is an idiot. An idiot is "a stupid person; an utter fool; a person deficient in mind and permanently incapable of rational conduct" (The Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide, 485). People, like objects, can be used. This is, of course, disrespectful, provided they are not also being treated as ends. As Immanuel Kant would put it, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with using another as a means; but if one is not also (at the same time) being treated as an end, it is wrong.

So a useful idiot is someone who is being used by another as a mere means to his or her ends, and who is too stupid to realize it. Does this apply to Glenn Reynolds and the other academic authors at TCS? It should be obvious that the answer is no. First of all, none of the authors is an idiot. If Henry has evidence to the contrary, he should supply it. Second, what is Henry's evidence that TCS authors are being used? Remember: This means not just being treated as a means, but not being treated as an end. If those of us who write for TCS know about its ideological commitments, sources of funding, and so forth, but do it anyway, how—precisely—are we being disrespected? Where's the coercion or manipulation?

Commerce is a consummately respectful realm, in Kantian terms. When I buy nails in a hardware, both the proprietor and I are being used as a means to the other's ends. But since neither of us is being coerced or manipulated, each of us is also treating the other as an end. This makes it morally acceptable. When I write a column for TCS, each of us is using the other as a means. I get an audience for my views (and a paycheck, which in my case is secondary); TCS gets content that attracts readers, who pay for it by having to view advertisements. But unless one of us is being deceived in some way, the interaction passes moral muster.

It follows that TCS authors are not useful idiots. They are not idiots and they are not being used in any morally objectionable way. That Henry would apply this term to them is therefore puzzling (not to mention insulting, for which an apology is in order). It may simply reflect his lack of philosophical acumen. (He's a mere political scientist, after all, with no philosophical training that I can discern.) Frankly, I prefer that explanation to something more psychological, such as paranoia, envy, or, dare I say it, idiocy.

I've been writing a column called "The Examined Life" for Tech Central Station for almost half a year (since 5 June). To date, I've written thirteen columns. They're listed to the left of this blog entry under the heading "My TCS Columns." Henry Farrell of Crooked Timber thinks that "respectable" people like me are providing "cover" for the "corporate shills" that he thinks lie behind TCS.

This is absurd. First of all, nobody at TCS solicited me. I had written a column about war in Iraq and wanted it published. I sent it to TCS on a lark and the editor liked it. The feedback was good and I was asked to write more columns. I choose the topics. I write what I want. Every essay I've submitted, except a long scholarly one on argumentation that's probably not appropriate for the site, has been published without question by TCS's editor, Nick Schulz, for whom I have the utmost respect. My sympathetic essay on Peter Singer is hardly a conservative or libertarian screed. Hell, Singer thanked me for it. He has a link to it on his website. Why would TCS publish such an essay if it were hell-bent on shilling? Unless, of course, it's part of an elaborate plan to provide cover. Publish the occasional contrarian piece to throw dust into people's eyes.

I frankly don't understand Farrell's concern about TCS. Who, exactly, is being misled? TCS's slogan is "Where Free Markets Meet Technology." Does he expect TCS to publish essays that are inconsistent with its values? If I write an essay on rape for Crooked Timber, will he publish it? If I write an(other) essay defending war in Iraq, would The Nation publish it? Of course not. Publications have angles, interests, even ideologies. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with that. Nor is there anything wrong with individuals or corporations supporting sites that share their values. In short, there's no hidden agenda. Nobody is being coerced or manipulated. No author, to my knowledge, has been misled in any way. (I certainly haven't.) The essays published on TCS are, in my experience, well-written and well-reasoned. They stand or fall on their merits. If Henry doesn't accept the conclusion of a particular argument, he should engage it. That's how it works. Focus on the argument, not the context in which it is uttered. You do believe in rational argumentation, don't you, Henry?

So I'm left wondering: What bothers Henry about TCS? All I can think of is that he doesn't share its commitment to free markets and doesn't, therefore, want respectable writers like me to write for it. We give TCS what he considers undue respectability. If I were cynical, I'd say that Henry feels threatened by TCS. Think about it. If TCS published badly written, badly reasoned essays, he'd ignore it. He's not ignoring it. You can complete the syllogism. The fact is, TCS is becoming a force to be reckoned with in the world of public affairs. I'm proud to be associated with it.

There is a virtue in the careful use of our mother tongue that exceeds many other virtues, since it is the use of language that makes us human in the first place. As our common heritage, it is infinitely more worth preserving than nations and specific arts and sciences. If in passion we lose our love and care for our native tongue, we will have lost what can hardly be restored.

(J. Glenn Gray, On Understanding Violence Philosophically, and Other Essays [New York, Evanston, and London: Harper and Row, 1970], 19)

Perhaps I'm naive, but I would have thought that being a scholar—a veracious inquirer, a searcher after truth—meant being independent. That means not depending on others. It means not being beholden to others, not having others pull one's strings, not being at another's beck and call. It means being able to make decisions about what to read, what to think, how to think, what to write, which lines of research to pursue, and where and when to publish the results of that research.

But how can one be truly independent if one receives grant money from an organization? It doesn't matter whether the organization is political, ideological, governmental, religious, industrial, or commercial. The fact is that when you receive a grant, you are beholden. It's easy to say that one retains one's independence; that one is free to say whatever one wants. But is that likely? Even if the grant doesn't stipulate the methods or outcomes of the research, it hangs over one's head like a cloud, threatening rain (or worse, thunder and lightning).

I honestly believe that one cannot be independent while taking money or other resources from a partisan organization. It creates an expectation, if nothing else. Surely, by now, we know that what is expected of one affects what one does or accomplishes. If you have high expectations of your children, they will achieve more than if you had lower expectations. The expectation or understanding created by a grant is the problem. I also think gratitude is a natural human response to having been benefited. If I am the beneficiary of someone's largesse, I will feel obligated to reciprocate. I will want to return the favor to my benefactor, even if only symbolically. It takes an acutely self-reflective and powerfully willed person to resist the temptation.

Does anyone remember scholarly integrity? Does anyone know what it means to be principled? Sometimes I think the concept of integrity, in or out of academia, no longer registers. I see hypocrites, opportunists, and scoundrels at every turn. I see insincerity, duplicity, and inauthenticity. People don't mean what they say; they don't believe what they say; they don't feel the feelings they express; they don't practice what they preach. Everyone is pretending to be someone, putting on airs, performing, looking for the main chance. An integrated person is a whole person, a person whose various parts—cognitive, affective, conative, volitional, behavioral—cohere. If I take money from an organization, I abandon my scholarly integrity. I become someone's tool. Someone else's ends become my own.

I am fortunate to be in a discipline (philosophy) in which grant money is inessential. I am able, with some ease, to remain independent. Until I publish an essay, nobody even knows what I'm working on. This is not to say that there are no grants for philosophers, because there are. It's to say that I can and do forbear from applying for them. I hope nobody suggests that the salary I earn from The University of Texas at Arlington is tantamount to a grant. That is risible. There has never been the slightest suggestion from anyone in the administration, at any level, that I work on this topic, use these methods, or publish those results. Nor could I discern an agenda or program if I wanted to. Should I publish essays that make UTA look good? What exactly does UTA, as opposed, say, to IBM or The Institute for Humane Studies, stand for? The bottom line is that I can write on anything I want in any way I want. I am beholden to no one. I am fiercely and proudly independent. I wish more scholars were.

It's nice to know that I'm not the only person who thinks New York Times columnist (and Princeton economist) Paul Krugman has gone batty. Read my recent Tech Central Station column, then this, which I discovered a few minutes ago via Andrew Sullivan's blog.

Living a self-conscious life, under the pressure of time, I work with the consciousness of death at my shoulder, not constantly, but often enough to leave a mark upon all of my life's decisions and actions. And it does not matter whether this death comes next week or thirty years from now; this consciousness gives my life another breadth. It helps shape the words I speak, the ways I love, my politic of action, the strength of my vision and purpose, the depth of my appreciation of living.

(Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals, special ed. [San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1997], 14 [composed 29 August 1980; first published in 1980])

You can't kill rock and roll, so don't even try. Here are my favorite albums of all time, in alphabetical order. I tried to come up with 25, but 26 will have to do.

ABC, Beauty Stab (1983)
Aerosmith, Get Your Wings (1974)
The Alan Parsons Project, Pyramid (1978)
Alice Cooper, Billion Dollar Babies (1973)
Black Sabbath, Sabotage (1975)
Cheap Trick, Cheap Trick (1977)
Eddie Jobson/Zinc, The Green Album (1983)
Genesis, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974)
Golden Earring, Moontan (1974)
Joni Mitchell, Dog Eat Dog (1985)
Lou Reed, Berlin (1973)
The Pat Metheny Group, Travels (1983)
Peter Frampton, Frampton Comes Alive! (1976)
Peter Murphy, Deep (1989)
Pink Floyd, Animals (1977)
Queen, Queen II (1974)
Re-Flex, The Politics of Dancing (1983)
Ronnie Montrose, Open Fire (1978)
Roxy Music, Country Life (1974)
Saga, Behaviour (1985)
Tears for Fears, The Seeds of Love (1989)
U.K., U.K. (1978)
Van Halen, Diver Down (1982)
Wang Chung, To Live and Die in L. A. (1985)
The Who, Quadrophenia (1973)
Yes, 90125 (1983)

My favorite song of all time is "Generation Landslide," by Alice Cooper, from Billion Dollar Babies (1973). In case you're wondering, almost no good music has been made since the advent of MTV in the early 1980s.

I think; therefore I am. (René Descartes)

To be is to be perceived. (George Berkeley)

Existence precedes essence. (Jean-Paul Sartre)

I yam what I yam. (Popeye)

My Australian polymathic friend John Ray (don't you love Australian accents?) is posting chapters of a book entitled Conservatism as Heresy. See here. Enjoy! Spread the word!

Philosophers pride themselves on their analytical, expository, argumentative, and critical powers, but the recent resolution against war in Iraq issued by the Eastern Division of The American Philosophical Association suggests that shame and embarrassment would be more appropriate emotions. Here is the text of the resolution, lifted from the APA site:

Resolved, that members of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association express our serious doubts about the morality, legality and prudence of a war against Iraq led by the United States.

Both just war theory and international law say that states may resort to war only in self-defense. Iraq has not attacked the United States, and claims that it is about to do so are not credible. Even in the absence of imminent threat, the United States claims a preemptive justification for war in this case. This claim stretches the meaning of preemption beyond reasonable bounds and sets a dangerous precedent which other states may feel free to follow.

A war waged by the United States against Iraq will be costly in lives, both Iraqi and American, and probably those of other nations. It will likely create disorder leading to more suffering of innocent people in the long term, both within Iraq and elsewhere. It will cost American taxpayers many billions of dollars that would better be used for humane purposes at home and abroad.

The resolution passed, with 1,202 voting in favor and 263 opposed.

I have several comments. First, the members of the APA are said to have serious doubts about the "morality, legality and prudence" of war. These are three different things. The APA is saying that the war is (arguably) immoral, illegal, and imprudent. Since when do philosophers have legal expertise? Would you go to a philosopher if you had a legal problem? I didn't think so. This is a flagrant example of the fallacious appeal to authority. Every philosopher who signed the resolution (by voting for it) committed that fallacy. Anyone for practicing what one preaches?

And what about prudence? Have philosophers demonstrated a greater degree of prudence than nonphilosophers, in the sense of knowing and promoting their interests? My experience is that philosophers are no better than anyone else in knowing or promoting their interests; so why should anyone care whether a philosopher or group of philosophers thinks the war in Iraq imprudent? And imprudent to whom? The American people? The Iraqi people? Arguably, the war in Iraq both made Americans safer and liberated a people from a brutal dictatorial regime. What could be more prudent than that?

Second, the drive-by analyses of the doctrines of self-defense and preemption are downright embarrassing, as any lawyer or foreign-policy specialist will attest. When it comes to abortion, philosophers have been ingenious in analyzing and applying the concept of self-defense; but when they apply it to war, their brains lock up. This isn't philosophy; it's ideology dressed up as philosophy. It's using (abusing) the good name of philosophy to make a partisan political point.

Third, isn't philosophy supposed to be a search for truth? Why else do philosophers devote so much attention to validity? We care about validity because, and only because, we care about truth. Valid arguments are truth-preserving arguments. Is truth or falsity determined by vote? Does the fact that 82% of philosophers oppose war in Iraq (assuming that's the case, which I am sure it is not) mean that the war is wrong? What exactly is being suggested? Henceforth, when a philosophical essay is submitted for publication, should the editor of the periodical conduct a survey to determine what percentage of the author's peers agree with the author's conclusion? Should we conduct a vote on the various theories of mind and body to settle that issue once and for all? Why bother arguing when we can vote!

Fourth, the dire predictions made by the APA about the consequences of war in Iraq have not been borne out. Should anyone be surprised by this? Where do philosophers get their putative expertise on matters of fact, such as what will transpire if X is done? The answer, of course, is that they have no factual expertise. Nor, in light of their dismal predictive record, should anyone give any credence to their future prognostications. In the seminar room, philosophers love to disclaim competence on factual matters; but for some reason they feel competent in making bold predictions about the actual outcomes of a complicated military campaign. It would be funny if it weren't so sad.

As I said in an earlier post, I resigned from the APA over this issue. I am proud of my principled stand. I wish more of my colleagues would join me. My reason for resigning is not that I disagreed with the majority (although I did and do); it is that the APA has no business taking a stand on issues that lie outside its (and our) competence. We are a profession, not a political party; a discipline, not disciples. In case you're wondering, I would be just as opposed to the resolution if it had come out the other way. In the end, I decided that I could not be a member of such a disingenuous and disreputable organization, one that would sully the name "philosopher" for political advantage. My fellow philosophers who participated in this charade should be ashamed of themselves. They have made a mockery of a noble profession and discipline.

[T]eaching philosophy to women is a complicated thing to do, perhaps especially for a man, though I think that that idea needs to be thought about more deeply than it has been. It means that one has to do a sort of balancing act. On the one hand, as a philosopher, that is, as someone who finds enough worthwhile in the tradition of Western philosophy to spend his life thinking about it and the various problems it puts forward, I want to teach my students to appreciate what is worthwhile in that tradition. For example, to stick to the example of my course on the History of Ancient Philosophy, I find the idea of phronesis or practical wisdom one from which we can learn a great deal and that we, as a culture, would do well to reappropriate. On the other hand, as a feminist (and anti-racist, among other things), there is much that I find objectionable in that tradition. In particular, its degradation of women, non-Greek peoples, and non-aristocrats. The question is how does one manage to teach both of these things at the same time?

(Thomas E. Wartenberg, "Teaching Women Philosophy," Teaching Philosophy 11 [March 1988]: 15-24, at 22)

Is anyone besides me troubled by the position being taken by the American Library Association on the USA Patriot Act? When did the ALA become an arm of the American Civil Liberties Union? The job of the librarian is to comply with the law, not question it. Obviously, each librarian is also a citizen, and, as such, can and should become involved in public affairs. But the role of librarian has no normative, and certainly no political, presuppositions or commitments. Must one be a libertarian to be a librarian? Is one not a good librarian (or not a real librarian) if one believes that certain forms of governmental surveillance of library patrons are acceptable? This is another example of the politicization of American culture, and, as I argued in another post, it will result in loss of respect for librarians.

Librarians are professionals. Their training equips them to perform certain technical and administrative tasks. Taking political stands is not one of them. If I were a librarian, I would be outraged that my organization, the ALA, has undermined my credibility and respectability. I would be outraged even if, qua citizen, I happened to share its view of the USA Patriot Act. By the way, I recently resigned my longstanding membership in The American Philosophical Association to protest its politicization. The Eastern Division of the APA (the largest of three divisions) issued a resolution opposing war in Iraq. It is a disgrace and an insult that an organization of professionals of divergent views and values should presume to speak for them on a matter that is unrelated to their status as philosophers and about which there is clear and sincere disagreement.

Just as I dress and go out to visit the professor and exchange a few more or less insincere compliments with him, without really wanting to at all, so it is with the majority of men day by day and hour by hour in their daily lives and affairs. Without really wanting to at all, they pay calls and carry on conversations, sit out their hours at desks and on office chairs; and it is all compulsory, mechanical and against the grain, and it could all be done or left undone just as well by machines; and indeed it is this never-ceasing machinery that prevents their being, like me, the critics of their own lives and recognizing the stupidity and shallowness, the hopeless tragedy and waste of the lives they lead, and the awful ambiguity grinning over it all. And they are right, right a thousand times to live as they do, playing their games and pursuing their business, instead of resisting the dreary machine and staring into the void as I do, who have left the track. Let no one think that I blame other men, though now and then in these pages I scorn and even deride them, or that I accuse them of the responsibility of my personal misery. But now that I have come so far, and standing as I do on the extreme verge of life where the ground falls away before me into bottomless darkness, I should do wrong and I should lie if I pretended to myself or to others that that machine still revolved for me and that I was still obedient to the eternal child's play of that charming world.

(Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf, trans. Basil Creighton [New York: Bantam Books, 1969 (1927)], 89)

I assume for the sake of explanation (not argument) that intellectuals are disproportionately liberal. That is to say, the proportion of liberals among intellectuals is greater (I won't say by how much, although I believe it to be significant) than the proportion of liberals among people generally. I believe this to be the case, but I will not adduce evidence for it. What I want to know is why. If you, dear reader, don't think it's the case, then stop reading, for I will be trying to explain something that, in your view, doesn't exist.

Liberals worship reason. I don't mean that disrespectfully. What I mean is that liberals have faith in the power of reason to solve all problems, whether theoretical or practical. Many problems of both sorts have already been solved. The rest will be solved, once we apply reason to them properly and eliminate various obstacles. One such obstacle is tradition. Liberals don't understand why conservatives give any weight, much less considerable weight, to tradition. They say that the mere fact that something is traditional is no reason whatsoever to retain it. Everything must be thought through from scratch. To the liberal mind, conservatives are obstructionists, standing in the way of moral progress. They represent bias, prejudice, and (willful) blindness.

Intellectuals are thinkers. They live in the world of ideas. Their tool for sorting through ideas—arraying them, comparing them, clarifying them, analyzing them, evaluating them—is reason. Reason helps one distinguish the true from the false, the good from the bad, the useful from the useless. Reason is the basis of (and means to) knowledge. Reason is what distinguishes humans from other animals. Reason is light.

I have no idea why some people are intellectuals and others are not; nor will I presume (here) to explain it. But once one becomes an intellectual, and hence a devotee of reason, one looks at the ideological landscape and sees that only liberalism respects it. Actually, conservatives respect reason as well, but they are skeptical that any particular human or group of humans (think vanguard of the proletariat) can do better than the accumulated wisdom that tradition represents. Tradition is a record of trial and error, success and failure. It is not to be taken lightly. One should tamper with it only where it is unambiguously bad. But this, the conservative says, is rarely the case. So perhaps it's more accurate to say that while both liberals and conservatives respect reason, only liberals exalt it.

Traditions reflect not just trial and error over a long period of time but compromises, some of which are difficult to discern. Take marriage, for example. It is easy to criticize the limitation of marriage to heterosexual couples. If it is said that only heterosexual couples can procreate and that the state has an interest in protecting and nourishing children, the reply is that not all heterosexual married couples procreate. Nor is it a necessary condition of receiving a marriage license that one express either an intention or a desire to have children. But this is too quick. We're dealing with an institution, not an action. Marriage, qua institution, represents a great many compromises and trade-offs, as anyone versed in evolutionary psychology knows. Marriage is a multifaceted, multilayered institution. It has sexual, social, legal, psychological, and economic dimensions.

I am not here arguing against homosexual marriage. I am suggesting that one should be cautious in altering such a longstanding and useful institution. Who knows what consequences may attend its abolition or modification? This is where reason shows its impotence. It can guess, but it can't know. There is a certain arrogance in thinking that one can reason one's way to a better conclusion than that represented by generations of thinkers and practitioners. I've noticed this arrogance among my liberal friends. Frankly, it's frightening. Reason may well be our last best hope, but it's a dangerous instrumentality, like fire. It must be used cautiously, not blithely or arrogantly. If change is to occur, it should take place gradually, not abruptly. That way, mistakes can be corrected before catastrophe ensues. Perhaps for this reason society should develop something short of marriage for homosexuals. Call it a civil union or whatever; the name doesn't matter. This new institution, once implemented, can be observed for several generations to see what transpires. Yes, several generations. It will take at least that long for the ripples to reach the shore.

To return to the question I posed, intellectuals tend to be liberal because liberalism assigns a greater value to their favored tool, reason. Liberalism exalts reason. Liberalism lets intellectuals—the priests of the religion of reason—lead. Conservatism, by contrast, gives intellectuals no special role or prominence. It's as simple as that. Or so it appears from my armchair.

If you (yes you, the person reading this) have never run a marathon and would like to do so, let me know. I'll be happy to get you started and give you a training regimen. I've been athletic my entire life (I'm forty-six) and have been a serious bicyclist since 1982, when I rode around Michigan (740 miles) in ten days. In 1996, having never run more than three miles at a time in my life, I began marathon training. A friend, Joe Culotta, guided and inspired me. All of the suffering I've experienced during the past seven years is therefore his fault. He knows this and accepts it. I've now run ten marathons, with number eleven in the works (next month). I always qualify for Boston (though I've never gone) and I've even won a medal in the Dallas White Rock Marathon. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a natural athlete, much less a natural runner, so I hope this encourages others to get started. Marathoning is all about discipline, planning, and willpower. Don't be misled: It's frightfully hard. My 1998 White Rock marathon, which I completed in 3:07:14.30 (a mile pace of 7:08.48), was the hardest thing I've ever done, physically or psychologically—and I've done many difficult things. Truth be told, I hate running; but I love having run. It does wonders for my self-esteem, self-respect (these differ), health (I have a resting pulse in the forties), and general outlook on life. Oh, and did I mention that it's beautiful? Running is poetry in motion.

I am in a small cabin outside Fairbanks, Alaska, as I write these words. The cold sits down like iron here, and the long hours of winter darkness cause us to leave a light on most of the day. Outside, at thirty below, wood for the stove literally pops apart at the touch of the ax. I can see out across the short timber of the taiga when I am out there in the gray daylight.

Go out there.

Traveling for hours cross-country you see only a few animal tracks. Perhaps a single ptarmigan or a hare. Once in a while the tracks of a moose. In the dead of winter hardly anything moves. It's very hard to make a living. Yet the wolf eats. He hunts in the darkness. And stays warm. He gets on out there.

(Barry Holstun Lopez, Of Wolves and Men [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978], 1)

All slippery-slope fallacies are slippery-slope arguments, but not all slippery-slope arguments are fallacious. A slippery-slope argument is a type of argument. Some tokens of the type are bad arguments and some are not. This is what it means to say that it is an informal fallacy: It cannot be detected merely by examining its form. One must examine its content.

The form of a slippery-slope argument is simple. The first premise asserts that there is a slippery slope. Doing X, it is said, will have a particular result, Y. To use the slope metaphor, since the slope is slippery, taking even one step onto it will cause one to slide to the bottom.

The second premise of a slippery-slope argument asserts that the bottom of the slope is a bad place to be. Thus, one should not take even one step onto the slope. It is important to understand that the person making the slippery-slope argument is not saying that the first step is intrinsically bad. It may not be. But it is alleged to have an inevitable bad result.

Here's an example. Suppose I believe that physician-assisted suicide is not intrinsically wrong, but that, if it is allowed by law, it will result in the deaths of people who do not want to die. I may argue as follows:

1. If we allow physician-assisted suicide for those who request it, it is only a matter of time before we allow it for the incompetent, and perhaps eventually for those who refuse it but are deemed undesirable or expendable.

2. Allowing physician-assisted suicide for the incompetent or for those who refuse it is unacceptable.

Therefore,

3. We should not allow physician-assisted suicide even for those who request it.

Note that I myself (the arguer) may believe that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with physician-assisted suicide. I oppose it because of what it will lead to, not because of what it is. It is extrinsically wrong, not intrinsically wrong.

What makes some slippery-slope arguments fallacious is that the first premise is false. There is little or no reason to believe that doing the specified act, X, will have the specified result, Y. Since this can be determined only by examining the facts, one cannot dismiss an argument just because it has the slippery-slope form. If there is reason to believe that the specified result will come about as a result of the specified action, the argument is not fallacious.

The most common debate about slippery-slope arguments is whether the asserted causal connection exists. But one can also deny the second premise, which says that the inevitable result is bad. Suppose I argue that if we allow Congress to ban so-called cop-killer bullets, it is only a matter of time, given certain psychological, legal, and institutional facts, before Congress bans private ownership of firearms. I may think this a bad result, but someone else might disagree, saying that a world without firearms is a good state of affairs (or at least not bad). In general, one can respond to a slippery-slope argument in either of these two ways: by questioning the asserted causal connection (i.e., by denying the first premise) or by questioning the judgment of badness expressed by the second premise.

No political party or ideology has a monopoly on the use of slippery-slope arguments. I hear them from every quarter. Liberals use arguments of this type to argue against restrictions on speech; conservatives use them to argue against regulation of guns. Other names for this argument type are "wedge argument," "camel's-nose-in-the-tent argument," and "foot-in-the-door argument." The idea is the same; only the name differs.

By the way, I've been discussing only the causal version of the slippery-slope argument. There's also a logical version. Suppose I'm wondering whether to adopt a particular principle. I may like the result it gives in certain cases. Someone may point out to me that if I adopt the principle, I will be committed, on pain of contradiction, to certain other results, which I may not like. The argument goes like this:

1. If you adopt principle P, it will commit you to making judgment J.

2. You do not want to make judgment J.

Therefore,

3. You should not adopt principle P.

The logical version of the slippery-slope argument is really just an appeal to consistency. It works by drawing out the implications of a principle. There are two responses to it. First, one can deny that P has the stated implication (about J). Second, one can change one's mind about J, embracing it rather than rejecting it. This is known as "biting the bullet." I will discuss bullet-biting in another post.

Ad hominem arguments are not just a way of winning a dispute: a logically sound ad hominem argument does a service, even if an unwelcome one, to its victim—it shows him that his present position is untenable and must be modified. Of course people often do not like to be disturbed in their comfortable inconsistencies; that is why ad hominem arguments have a bad name.

(P. T. Geach, Reason and Argument [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976], 27)

My friend John Ray, Down Under, has an interesting post today about John Stuart Mill. Some libertarians claim Mill as one of their own because of On Liberty (1859). But this work does not commit Mill to libertarianism. On Liberty is about the moral limits of the criminal law, and to a lesser extent about the moral limits of social pressure brought to bear on individuals by other individuals or groups.

Mill's foremost contemporary defender is my teacher, Joel Feinberg. Feinberg's magnum opus is The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, 4 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984-1988). Feinberg defends what he calls "the liberal position" on the moral limits of the criminal law. The liberal position is that there are only two good (though not sufficient) reasons for criminal prohibitions: harm-prevention and offense-prevention. Two oft-cited reasons, prevention of harm to self and prevention of immoral conduct, are not good reasons. In volume one of the tetralogy, Harm to Others (1984), Feinberg clarifies, elaborates, and defends the harm principle. In volume two, Offense to Others (1985), he clarifies, elaborates, and defends the offense principle. In volume three, Harm to Self (1986), he clarifies, elaborates, and rejects legal paternalism. In volume four, Harmless Wrongdoing (1988), he clarifies, elaborates, and rejects legal moralism. Two thumbs up, two thumbs down.

Here is Feinberg, an unabashed liberal, on libertarianism:

Some mention here should be made of the currently popular ideology that bears the name of "libertarianism." Libertarians are very likely to accept the liberal position on the moral limits of the criminal law, and their support is surely welcome. But the liberal arguments deployed in this book give little support to the other central doctrines of libertarianism. As I understand it, libertarianism embraces three positions: laissez-faire in economic policy, isolationism in foreign policy, and liberalism on the question of criminal prohibitions. This triad of views is described pithily (though informally) by Edward H. Crane III of the libertarian Cato Institute: "I see what many people have interpreted as a conservative trend in our country as really more of a libertarian trend; a growing sophistication among people who reject the authority of the alleged leaders of society who presume to tell us how much of our money we can keep, where we've got to fight, and what kind of sexual life we can have." The liberal agrees emphatically that the state may not try to determine what kind of sexual life we may have. The question of military conscription is a more difficult one, but the liberal is surely not opposed to it in an absolute way in any and all circumstances. Sometimes, after all, failure to serve is to inflict a social harm that the state is entitled to prevent, and in those circumstances, therefore, conscription receives support from the harm principle. Other questions of foreign affairs and economic management are questions of policy rather than principle, unaddressed by liberalism in the sense of this work. As for taxation (decreed by those who "presume to tell us how much of our money we can keep"), the libertarian's adamant opposition can only be a source of amazement to the liberal, who appreciates the great social harms (and not mere loss of benefits) that would be incurred were tax revenues to disappear, and also the extent to which individual income and wealth is a product of social conditions rather than the fruit of individual effort, in the first place. (Joel Feinberg, Harm to Others, vol. 1 of The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law [New York: Oxford University Press, 1984], 15-6 [italics in original; footnotes omitted])

Feinberg and Mill are peas in a pod. Both are liberals; neither is a libertarian. By the way, I have argued that Mill is a radical feminist rather than, as is usually supposed, a liberal feminist. See Keith Burgess-Jackson, "John Stuart Mill, Radical Feminist," Social Theory and Practice: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal of Social Philosophy 21 (fall 1995): 369-96. Please write to me if you want a PDF version of this essay.

I'm behind the times. I just read Peter Beinart's wonderful essay on foreign policy, which was first published in the 3 November 2003 issue of The New Republic. It's worth a few minutes of your time. (By the way, why do we say "bipartisan"? Why not "nonpartisan"? The distinction is between being partisan and not being partisan, or being nonpartisan.)

Suppose, as seems increasingly probable, that George W. Bush is reelected president in 2004. This will be the fourteenth presidential election since 1952 and the ninth won by a Republican. That's 64.2%, or almost two in three elections. Republicans will have served for thirty-six years, Democrats for twenty. As for the number of different presidents, there will have been five Republicans (Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Bush) and four Democrats (Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton).

I realize that if I had gone back to 1932, the numbers and percentages would have come out very differently. But doesn't the recent history—the past half-century—suggest something about the American people? I believe it suggests that the American people want what Republicans have to offer. What Republicans have to offer is austere government and strong foreign policy. No party can long survive by advocating redistributive taxation. It goes against the American grain of hard work, self-sufficiency, and personal responsibility. Americans are a generous people, but they don't like having their hard-earned wealth taken from them by the political class and distributed to strangers. Charity begins and ends at home.

Nor do the American people trust Democrats to protect American interests abroad. Republicans exhibit a manly firmness in the face of terrorist threats. Americans know in their bones that weakness incites violence; it doesn't deter it. Only a credible threat of retaliation for harm caused can make Americans secure—and we crave the security that defines our way of life. Republicans don't much care about what the rest of the world thinks of Americans. The New York Yankees are despised because of their strength, confidence, and success. Should George Steinbrenner apologize for this? Should he try to understand the resentment and envy experienced by Boston Red Sox fans? Americans are the Yankees of the world.

The role of the teacher of philosophy, like the role of the guide, is to point students in certain directions so the students can discover things on their own. The role of the philosophy teacher is not that of cramming information down the throats of students (stuffing information into their souls). The students who enter our courses have been trained to take good notes, memorize, and regurgitate what the teacher says. It is very important for these students to realize that philosophy is not like that. A philosophy course is not a course in the archeology of ideas. In a philosophy course, we ask more from our students than the mere ability to memorize and repeat what the great philosophers of the past wrote. Rather, what we want our students to do is to use the great philosophers of the past to challenge, confront, and serve as gadflies for their own philosophical reflection. Philosophy is, therefore, a more skills oriented course than a content oriented course. The emphasis is on thinking philosophically.

(Jeffrey Gold, "Bringing Students Out of the Cave: The First Day," Teaching Philosophy 11 [March 1988]: 25-31, at 29)

Jeff Stake of the Indiana University School of Law (Bloomington) wrote to me to protest that I misconstrued the argument of those who believe that George W. Bush is not the duly elected president. The argument, he says, is not that Al Gore received more popular votes than George W. Bush, but that he received more votes in Florida, the electoral votes of which would have given him the victory. Jeff says he has never heard anyone make the argument I discussed.

Several things. First, while Jeff may not have heard the argument I discussed, I have. Many times. Even by intelligent people. Why else would anyone mention that Al Gore got more popular votes than George W. Bush? What's the point of saying that unless one thinks it has a bearing on who won? Second, there are many arguments about the election. I discussed only one of them. I did not say (or imply) that it was the strongest argument. Indeed, it's weak! That's why I discussed it. Why is such a weak argument still made? Third, and relatedly, Jeff suggests that I was "unfair" or uncharitable to people who think Al Gore won the election. I would be unfair only if I were trying to represent the argument Jeff had in mind. I wasn't. I had a particular argument in mind. I addressed it. That there are other and better arguments for the same conclusion doesn't undermine what I said.

Jeff concludes his message with an argument to the effect that George W. Bush was "handed" the election by the U.S. Supreme Court. He says the election was "improperly 'called' in [Bush's] favor." Actually, Jeff doesn't make this argument himself; he says it's the best argument and the one most critics of the Court's decision made. I agree that it's the best argument, or one of the best, but, like Richard Posner, I think it's a bad argument. Judge Posner makes the case far better than I can, so I will simply direct interested parties to his book. Thanks for writing, Jeff. Nice meeting you.

Brian Leiter has a tantalizing (and all too brief) discussion of Ronald Dworkin's place in legal philosophy. From the moment I first read Dworkin, in 1983 or so, he struck me as a political hack rather than as a serious, careful thinker. (I ended up writing about Dworkin in my Ph.D. dissertation, so I know whereof I speak.) Even in his scholarly publications, Dworkin was in attack mode. The first indication that my view of Dworkin was shared by others came a few years ago when Maimon Schwarzchild referred to Dworkin's "relentless spin." That was exactly my sentiment. How refreshing to see someone else say it!

Dworkin runs roughshod over those with whom he disagrees. He has no sense of charity and no patience for views or values he rejects. He is a true believer. His 1996 essay on objectivity ("Objectivity and Truth: You'd Better Believe It," Philosophy & Public Affairs 25 [spring 1996]: 87-139) is a travesty of reason and an insult to those good people (such as Simon Blackburn) he criticizes. Dworkin is condescending, flippant, brusque, and impolite, qualities that are no more acceptable in scholarship than in ordinary life. (They should be less acceptable.) He writes diatribes. He gives credit to nobody for anything, which suggests he hasn't learned anything from anybody. He makes those who disagree with him appear to be either stupid or evil (or both). Dworkin lacks the deft touch. He would make a good butcher but a terrible surgeon.

One reason I went into philosophy, as opposed, say, to legal practice is that I care deeply about how one persuades others and not just that one persuades. The process is as important to me as the result, perhaps more important. One senses that for Dworkin, things are the reverse. It is all very sad, for Dworkin is now old. He is seeing his reputation crumble. But he has nobody to blame except himself. He could have used his magnificent intellectual skills to clarify important issues. He could have emulated the man he replaced at Oxford, H. L. A. Hart, whose reputation, eleven years after his death, is secure. Instead, he put those skills in the service of a cause: egalitarianism. And it's a bad cause. I will always remember Dworkin as a Clinton apologist, defending the indefensible. How embarrassing. How sad.

I came to law from philosophy. I was always drawn to abstraction and systemization. Law was an attractive career for a philosophy student. It has nearly the same intellectual appeal. Law is applied philosophy of a sort, but better than "pure" philosophy in two ways. First, it is not as rigorous; it has no requirement of logical consistency. Indeed, for law to work and move, it can't be logically consistent. Second, though philosophy in my opinion has amazing persuasive power (ideas matter), there are no winners or losers. In law, at least theoretically, if you've got the best argument, you win, and the world changes. Law is second-rate philosophy backed by the force of the state.

(Ann C. Scales, "Midnight Train to Us," Cornell Law Review 75 [March 1990]: 710-26, at 710)

I'd like to put in a plug for my friend, Owen Jones, and his organization, SEAL (of which I'm a proud but so far noncontributing member). If you're interested in the intersection of law and biology (who isn't? who wouldn't be?), check it out. I consider this one of the most fruitful fields of inquiry in today's academy. Practicing or theorizing about law without understanding the biology of human thought, feeling, motivation, and behavior is like flying blindfolded.

It's been over three years since the fateful (and, I must say, fascinating) 2000 presidential election. How many times have you heard it said that George W. Bush didn't win, since he received fewer popular votes than Al Gore? At first, I chalked this up to sore losing, but I still hear it said, and always with rancor. Perhaps all that is meant is that Al Gore won a moral victory. A moral victory isn't a real victory, since nothing concrete is gained by it, but it feels like one. I suppose I would be pleased and gratified if, in a national election, I received more votes than any of my opponents. But what is supposed to follow from this? Is the suggestion that George W. Bush isn't entitled to govern? That he didn't really win?

What's conveniently ignored, of course, is that we don't vote for president at the national level. We vote in states, for electors. The electoral-college system may be skewed toward the more sparsely populated states. Perhaps, all things considered, it's a bad system. But this is an argument for changing the system, not for questioning results obtained under the existing system. Al Gore, a fair man (by all indications), knew the rules of the game when the game started. I didn't hear him or his supporters complaining about the electoral college before 7 November 2000; nor, I suspect, would there have been any yelping on their part if he had pulled out the victory. Democrats need to face up to the fact that George W. Bush is the duly elected president of the United States. As such, he is entitled to govern. Whether he deserved to win the election, hence to govern, is another matter. Desert is not entitlement. Lack of desert is not lack of entitlement.

By the way, if you haven't read Richard A. Posner's take on the election—Breaking the Deadlock: The 2000 Election, the Constitution, and the Courts (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001)—you're missing a treat. If I were stranded on an island with only one book, it would be something by Judge Posner.

Now I've done it. I entitled a recent post "John Rawls, Question-Begger." Then I got to wondering whether it should be "Question-Beggar." A person who begs is a beggar, not a begger. So the question is whether the word "begging," in the expression "begging the question," means asking for something. I'm inclined to say yes, because as far as I know the expression "begging the question" dates to the Middle Ages, when monks engaged in the disputatio. The dispute centered on a particular question, which was called, not surprisingly, "the question." One debater would argue for an affirmative answer to the question, the other for a negative answer. The rules were such that each debater could ask the other to concede certain propositions. These could then be used as premises in one's argument. To ask the other to make a concession was to beg (for) the proposition. Obviously, one was not allowed to ask the other to concede the very proposition in issue; but if one did so, he was said to have begged the question. He was asking his opponent to concede what needed to be established by argument! At least that's my understanding. If I'm right, then the word "beg" in this context is the same "beg" as in "I may have to beg for mercy." And if that's the case, then "Question-Begger" in my title should be "Question-Beggar." Bryan? Help!

2003 Most Valuable Player Award Voting, American League

     Alex Rodriguez, Texas         6 5 6 6 2 1 1 - 1 - 242
     Carlos Delgado, Toronto       5 8 3 1 1 2 4 1 1 - 210
     Jorge Posada, New York        5 4 4 3 4 1 1 - 1 - 194
     Shannon Stewart, Minnesota    3 2 2 3 2 3 2 1 2 1 140
     David Ortiz, Boston           4 3 2 2 - 3 - - 1 - 130
     Manny Ramirez, Boston         1 3 3 1 1 1 2 3 1 1 103
     Nomar Garciaparra, Boston     1 2 1 - 6 2 2 1 - 2  99
     Vernon Wells, Toronto         1 - 1 3 1 1 4 3 2 1  84
     Carlos Beltran, Kansas City   - - 1 4 2 2 1 2 3 3  77
     Bret Boone, Seattle           - - 1 1 3 2 - 4 4 2  65
     Miguel Tejada, Oakland        1 - 1 1 1 - 2 - 2 2  49
     Bill Mueller, Boston          - - 2 - 1 2 3 - - 1  45
     Jason Giambi, New York        1 - - 1 - 1 1 1 - 3  36
     Garret Anderson, Anaheim      - - - 1 2 1 - 3 1 -  35
     Keith Foulke, Oakland         - - 1 - - - - 1 3 3  20
     Frank Thomas, Chicago         - - - 1 - - 1 2 1 1  20
     Eric Chavez, Oakland          - - - - 1 1 - 2 - 1  18
     Carlos Lee, Chicago           - - - - - - 1 1 1 2  16
     Magglio Ordonez, Chicago      - - - - - 1 1 1 1 2  16
     Alfonso Soriano, New York     - - - - 1 1 - 1 - 1  15
     Derek Jeter, New York         - 1 - - - - - - - 1  10
     Pedro Martinez, Boston        - - - - - 1 - - 1 -   7
     Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle        - - - - - 1 - - 1 -   6
     Esteban Loaiza, Chicago       - - - - - - 1 - - -   4
     Jason Varitek, Boston         - - - - - - 1 - - -   4
     Aubrey Huff, Tampa Bay        - - - - - - - - 1 2   4
     Mariano Rivera, New York      - - - - - - - 1 - -   3

Voting is based on a 14-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 point system.

It has always puzzled me why John Rawls and his legion of devoted followers think contractors in the original position will choose the difference principle. For readers not familiar with A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1971), let me explain.

Rawls describes an idealized choice situation and asks what the idealized individuals in that situation would choose. The situation, called "the original position," deprives choosers ("the original contractors") of what Rawls considers morally irrelevant information, such as one's race, sex, age, nationality, religion (if any), and conception of the good. All the contractors know are general things, such as the laws of economics, human psychology, and so forth. It is as if the contractors are wearing a veil. A veil permits its wearer to see general shapes, but no details. Rawls calls the veil worn by the original contractors the "veil of ignorance." Since nothing morally irrelevant goes into the choice procedure, whatever emerges is fair; and since Rawls conceives of justice as fairness, it is just as well. Rationality + self-interest + ignorance = fairness = justice.

Rawls believes that the original contractors will choose two principles: the "equal-liberty principle" and the "difference principle." The former, which must be satisfied before the latter, states that "Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all" (page 302). The latter states that "Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity" (ibid.).

Think of it this way. Since the original contractors are free and equal, with nobody beholden to anyone else, it would be irrational (in the sense of imprudent) for any of them to settle for less than an equal share of primary goods (such as wealth). But since none of them is superior to any other, it would be unreasonable for any of them to demand more than an equal share.

The default position is therefore an equal distribution. But inequalities may work to the advantage of the least well-off members of society. It may do this by providing incentives. The prospect of a greater share of primary goods will induce individuals to work harder, thus increasing the size of the economic pie. If the pie increases in size, then each slice, even that of the worst-off person, may be larger. In other words, we have gone from a small pie with equal slices to a large pie with unequal slices. The smallest slice in the large pie is larger than the (equally sized) slices in the small pie. This is how inequalities ("differences") can be to the advantage of the least advantaged. Since nobody is worse off in the situation with inequality, nobody has reason to complain about the move to it. (In technical terms, the latter situation is Pareto superior to the former. At least one person is better off in it and no person is worse off in it.)

Back to my puzzle. Why does Rawls think the original contractors will choose the difference principle? After all, there are many other possible (and widely held) principles. One is utilitarianism. A utilitarian would use the principle of utility as the basis for distribution of primary goods. This requires maximization of the overall good (which is equivalent to average utility if the size of the population is held constant). If a distribution with no safety net maximized overall utility, then it would be endorsed by the utilitarian. On the other hand, an equal distribution, or something close to it, might well maximize overall utility. The utilitarian lets the chips fall where they may. Which distribution is just depends on how the utility calculation comes out.

Another principle is egalitarianism. This requires an equal distribution of primary goods. A third principle is libertarianism, which imposes no pattern on distribution. The libertarian is willing to allow great disparities in wealth and status in the name of individual liberty. Redistributive taxation is rejected. Libertarianism allows individuals to be extremely wealthy or extremely poor. Finally, there is what we might call utilitarianism with a safety net. R. M. Hare, a utilitarian, raised this possibility in his 1973 review of Rawls's book. Just as we insure our houses against fire and other catastrophes, we might ensure that nobody falls below a certain level of wealth. The aim is not to maximize the minimum ("maximin"), as Rawls would have us do, but to lay down a floor below which nobody will be allowed to sink.

So look what we have. Libertarianism allows the greatest disparity in wealth, followed by utilitarianism with a safety net, followed by Rawls's difference principle, followed by egalitarianism. One cannot locate utilitarianism a priori, for, as we saw, it depends on how the utility calculation comes out. Utilitarians think that there will be pressure for an equal distribution, since the utility of a given primary good to someone who already has many of them is likely to be less than the utility to someone who has fewer. If this is right, then utilitarianism will end up somewhere between libertarianism and utilitarianism with a safety net.

Why does Rawls think the original contractors will choose the difference principle rather than one of its rivals? It seems to me that the only reason one could have for preferring one principle to another, given the constraints of the original position, is one's attitude toward risk. We know that some people are risk-preferrers. These are people (gamblers) who enjoy taking risks. To make it possible to win a lot, they risk a lot. At the other extreme are risk-avoiders. These are people who want to avoid risk and are willing to give up something to get it. They are willing to forgo the chance to become wealthy, for example, in order to ensure that they do not become destitute. Egalitarians are risk-averse (excessively so!) in this sense. Some people are risk-neutral. This describes utilitarians. Their aim is to maximize overall utility, which, as we saw, is the same as average utility if the number of individuals is held constant. The way to maximize average utility is to rule out no distribution in advance (i.e., a priori), even one that has a large disparity between rich and poor.

By claiming that the original contractors will choose the difference principle, Rawls is ascribing mild risk-aversion to them. There is no other basis on which it would or could be chosen. But where does he get off making such an ascription? Why assume one attitude toward risk for everyone? We know that real people—people like you and me—have different attitudes toward risk. Just look at your own family. But Rawls builds risk-aversion into his idealized choosers, as if any other attitude toward risk is irrational. This, with all due respect to Rawls, is question-begging, as Hare pointed out three decades ago:

[T]he very most that Rawls may have done toward setting up a non-utilitarian theory of justice is to show that it is possible, if one desires, so to rig the assumptions of the theory that it does not lead straight to a utilitarian conclusion. (R. M. Hare, "Rawls's Theory of Justice," chap. 10 in his Essays in Ethical Theory [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989], 145-74, at 170 [essay first published in 1973])

I agree with Hare. Rawls gets out of his procedure exactly what he puts into it. No more, no less. When you think about it, this has to be the case. Every argument with a normative conclusion must have at least one normative premise. A procedure such as Rawls's that produces normative principles (principles of justice) must have at least one norm put into it. Unfortunately, Rawls never defends the norm he puts into it: risk-aversion. He has given us a procedure, mechanism, or argument schema with which to generate principles of justice. This is important, for it shows us the relation between norms at different levels. But he has given us no reason to accept the particular norm he puts into it, and therefore no reason to accept the resulting principle (the difference principle).

The Romans . . . were notorious for their barbarous use of animals for entertainment. During their rise to imperial power, the citizens of Rome took an extraordinary delight in the sight of countless wild animals slaughtered by professional fighters (bestiarii), or goaded into fighting one another in the Circus Maximus and other arenas. Like the Assyrians, they also staged theatrical hunts in which trained hunters (venatores) attacked and slew creatures before assembled crowds. Bears and bulls were chained together to fight; elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, lions and leopards were fed intoxicants in order to excite them into a frenzy, and those that survived the ensuing carnage were shot from ringside seats by archers who paid specially for the privilege. The number of animals involved was prodigious. At 26 'beast hunts' organized by Caesar Augustus, 3,500 creatures were killed. In 2 BC, 260 lions were slaughtered at the Circus Maximus and 36 crocodiles at the Circus Flaminius. Gaius (Caligula) arranged a show at which 400 bears and 400 African beasts were killed and, not to be outdone, Nero allowed his personal bodyguard to murder 400 bears and 300 lions with javelins. The Emperor Trajan, however, held the record by ordering the public butchery of 11,000 beasts to celebrate his military victories in Dacia. Many Emperors enjoyed personal participation in the slaughter. Domitian apparently shot 100 assorted beasts with arrows at his Alban estate, and Commodus publicly despatched 100 bears, 6 hippopotamuses, 3 elephants, rhinoceroses, a tiger and a giraffe. According to one account, he also amused the multitude by shooting ostriches with special crescent-shaped arrowheads that were designed to decapitate the birds, while their headless bodies continued to run around. Very occasionally these displays of rabid cruelty exceeded the otherwise limitless bounds of Roman decency. A staged hunt or venatio put on by Pompey the Great featured a performance in which eighteen African elephants were slaughtered by heavily armed gladiators. To Pompey's dismay, the elephants refused to defend themselves and the crowd actually took pity on the unfortunate beasts.

(James Serpell, In the Company of Animals: A Study of Human-Animal Relationships [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 (1986)], 219-20 [footnotes omitted])

Not everyone likes to admit it, but everyone has heroes. A hero is "a person noted or admired for nobility, courage, outstanding achievements, etc." (The Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide, 456). Heroes inspire and edify. We learn how to be, how to think, how to feel, and how to behave by observing them. They point to something beyond us, to something we are not, but which we can nonetheless understand and aspire to be. The hero must be enough like us to make the identification possible, but different enough to take us out of our skin.

Hero-worship, like heroism itself, is realm-specific. I have sports heroes (e.g., Lance Armstrong, Haile Gebrselassie), literary heroes (Barry Holstun Lopez, Lewis Carroll), scientific heroes (Charles Darwin), legal heroes (Richard Posner), and personal heroes (my mother and stepfather). Here, for what it's worth, is a list of my philosophical heroes (in chronological order, by date of birth):

Epicurus (341-270 B.C.E.)
David Hume (1711-1776)
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Richard Robinson (1902-1996)
H. L. A. Hart (1907-1992)
J. L. Mackie (1917-1981)
R. M. Hare (1919-2002)
Alan R. White (1922-199?)
Joel Feinberg (born 1926)
Richard Swinburne (born 1934)

These are not necessarily the people whose views I share. Mill and Hare, for example, were consequentialists. Swinburne is a theist. They are the people who taught me the most, including how to write. They inspire, instruct, and guide me. I never tire of returning to their work—and always feel intellectually rejuvenated when I have done so. Naturally, I would recommend any of their works to aspiring philosophers. I can say of any of them what Richard Robinson so poignantly said of one of his teachers, H. A. Prichard, in the preface of The Province of Logic (1931):

An earlier form of this book was accepted by the University of Oxford as a thesis for the B.Litt. degree. The present form was accepted by Cornell University as a thesis for the degree of Ph.D. It owes a great deal to the Provost of Oriel, my first teacher in philosophy; a great deal to the benevolent criticism of Professor G. Watts Cunningham; but by far the most to Professor H. A. Prichard, whose magnificently high standards at first appalled and then inspired me.

I never knew Robinson, but I like to think that he would be pleased that his own work (on definition, for example) had the same salutary effect on me as Prichard's had on him.

Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

One of the great conceits (and deceits) of contemporary moral philosophy is its insistence that there is only one point of view from which moral questions are to be asked and answered. This gives rise to book titles such as "The Moral Point of View" (see Kurt Baier, The Moral Point of View: A Rational Basis of Ethics, abridged ed. [New York: Random House, 1965 (1958)]). One philosopher, the late James Rachels, went so far as to define "morality" in terms of impartialism (see James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 4th ed. [Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003], 14-5). According to Rachels, nobody, not even the actor, counts for more than anyone else. This of course rules out ethical egoism by fiat, which makes one wonder why Rachels proceeds to devote a chapter to it.

Why would anyone think that in acting, one may give no preference to oneself (or to others who are near and dear to one)? Unfortunately, no answer is forthcoming. What one finds instead are vague charges of "arbitrariness." Rachels, for example, assimilates ethical egoism to racism and sexism (see ibid., 88-90), which he assumes his readers condemn. Just as the racist and the sexist draw arbitrary lines between races or sexes, the egoist draws an arbitrary line between self and others. But this proves too much. Rachels would like to undermine the idea that in acting, only the actor matters. But the argument he uses to assail this idea proves that no preference for oneself, not even the assignment of some extra weight, is justified. Surely Rachels would not say that a small amount of discrimination is acceptable!

Lest anyone think that only Rachels makes this mistake, here is a passage from a new book by Russ Shafer-Landau, a fellow graduate of The University of Arizona (and a very nice man):

Ethical egoism claims that there is just a single, ultimate moral duty—to look out for Number One. Anything else is immoral. Strange as it might at first appear, the fatal flaw of such a view is that it amounts to a kind of unjustified discrimination. It requires you, systematically, to give favor to one person (yourself) over all others. That sort of extreme partiality calls out for justification. (Whatever Happened to Good and Evil? [New York: Oxford University Press, 2004], 131)

Is Shafer-Landau suggesting that one may never prefer oneself, or only that one may not always prefer oneself? He might respond that he's saying the latter, but his reason for it commits him to the former. Think about it. If assigning more weight to one's own interests is a form of discrimination, why is it ever acceptable?

Admittedly, Shafer-Landau is writing for undergraduates, but doesn't he have an obligation to be fair? With all due respect, he is not fair to the ethical egoist. And does Shafer-Landau live up to his high standard? If he treats himself, his spouse, his children, his friends, or his colleagues any better than he would a similarly situated stranger, he is no better than a racist or a sexist. He is discriminating in the morally objectionable sense of that word. Shafer-Landau might respond that he's weak-willed, and that his own personal failings do not cast doubt on the principle. But what good is a principle if even its most highly motivated practitioners can't live up to it?

It occurred to me today that impartialism has affected people's thinking about foreign policy as well as individual conduct. I keep hearing that the United States doesn't "play by the rules," or has a "double standard" in its relations with other nations. But why should an American put the United States on a moral par with other nations? I'm an American. Just as I favor my mother, I favor my nation. This is not to say that I'd do literally anything for my mother or my nation, only that loyalty pulls me in that direction. Loyalty means putting one's own first. It means according particular others the benefit of the doubt. It means making sacrifices for the other(s) that one would not make for just anyone. Loyalty means that not everyone counts the same. It is the denial of impartialism, which requires that one view others sub specie aeternitatis (Latin for "under the aspect of eternity"). Rachels, Shafer-Landau, and other impartialists must show not only that it's possible to view self and others under the aspect of eternity, but that it is desirable to do so. It is not.

Addendum: If you would like to read a serious discussion (and defense) of ethical egoism, see Keith Burgess-Jackson, "Deontological Egoism," Social Theory and Practice: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal of Social Philosophy 29 (July 2003): 357-85. There's a link to the essay on the left of this blog.

Some of my liberal friends—even the highly educated and intelligent ones—have cartoon versions of conservatism. It would be laughable if it didn't affect their thinking, but, alas, it does. When I describe myself as a conservative, or express sympathy for conservatives or conservatism, my statement is met with bewilderment. I think it's because I don't fit the stereotype. I'm not old (I'm forty-six). I'm not a racist or a sexist. I'm not religious (I've always been a confirmed atheist). I'm not stupid (or so I like to think). I'm not anti-science. I'm not a redneck (I was born and raised in Michigan). I'm not a Southerner or a Westerner (although I attended graduate school in Arizona). I'm not pro-business or pro-wealthy. I'm not anti-environment.

In short, I'm none of the things that these friends (in some cases former friends) associate with conservatives. What this shows is that the characteristics I've listed are only accidental (as opposed to essential) properties of conservatism. Conservatism is a respectable political philosophy. Liberals would do well to get to know it better. To that end, I have two book recommendations. The first is Roger Scruton's The Meaning of Conservatism, rev. 3d ed. (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2002), the first edition of which appeared in 1980. Nobody can dismiss Scruton as a yahoo. He is as erudite as anyone alive. Read his book and learn from it. The second is John Kekes's A Case for Conservatism (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998), which is a companion to Kekes's earlier book, Against Liberalism (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997). Kekes is wonderfully sane and intelligent, and a good writer to boot.

If liberals read and reflect on these books, they will no longer think of the likes of Tom DeLay and Pat Buchanan when they hear the word "conservative." I'm not saying that DeLay and Buchanan are cartoons, but they are at best imperfect exemplars of conservatism. Would liberals want liberalism identified with the likes of Michael Moore or Barney Frank? I didn't think so. Read up. If you read Scruton and Kekes, at least you'll know what you're talking about (literally) when you discourse (or complain) about conservatism.

Someone wrote to me the other day about one of my columns on Tech Central Station. It was, I think you'll agree, vile stuff:

With such a stupid article from someone claiming a Ph.D, no wonder the U.S. is full of gullible dumbass people believing this lying and deceiving criminal Gov. with it's puppet-boy GWB, the AWOL (ex-)alcoholic half literate village idiot from Texas! Just hoping that justice prevails and these warcriminals will be prosecuted, together with their cheerleaders! X

Tempted though I was to reply in kind, I took the moral high road. I responded with a question:

Thanks for writing, X. Can you explain something to me? What is it about George W. Bush that generates such anger? I don't get it.

Today I got an answer:

OK, professor, just to name a few, without mentioning the abandoning of civil liberties under the Partiot act.

- BushCo got into power via a stolen (s)election with the help of his daddys buddies.

- The BushCo Gov. allowed 9/11 to happen, to say the least! (Where is the 9/11 investigation? What are they stonewalling from the investigation committee?)

- BushCo Gov started an illegal war/occupation based on outright lies / distortion.

- BushCo violated the U.N. charter with his pre-emptive unilateral war.

- BushCo Gov violates the Geneva convention holding people in Guantanomo indef.

- BushCo outs their own CIA operatives (federal crime) to smear those who are publicly outspoken against the falsified and ever changing reasons to start the war.

- Bush touts "mission accomplished" and when that mission turns sour, blames the Navy sailors, although the whole banner-parading was set up by his staff.

- Bushboy and his gang think he/they can get away with big and small lies (he obviously can, given the gullible U.S. sheeple) on a daily basis.

- Bush boy takes no responsability for anything that went wrong. In a way understandable because he's the puppet of Rove and the PNAC crowd and his IQ comes measured well below room-temp. Everything he spouts is pre-arranged Rove/Rice-spin read mostly from teleprompters. He's the dumbest asshole ever to occupy the white-house and if you don't realize that just from watching his public appearances on TV with his mantra like Saddam, Saddam, WMD, WMD sputterings, I'm wondering whether the intellect of U.S. professors may have been lost under the influence of of the constant drivel of mass-media BS-itting?

- BushCo has started the groundwork for the demise of the U.S. and its transformation into a corpo-fascist banana-republic. X p.s. my anger is less about this stupid puppet of the PNAC crowd but about people who see this fraud of a president as a responsible person/leader!

As we lawyers like to say, res ipsa loquitur.

[E]vil men always want quick victories; they prefer the elimination of opponents to-day to their conversion—or even their adequate indoctrination—to-morrow.

(W. B. Gallie, "Essentially Contested Concepts," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, n.s., 56 [1955-56]: 167-98, at 194)

Astute readers of this blog will have noticed a sea change in its appearance. While I liked the austerity of black lettering on a white background, I wanted things like links even more. Yesterday morning I received an e-mail message from an Australian man, John Ray, who expressed surprise that nobody had offered to help me with my blog. He said, almost boastfully, that he could change my blog template to look like his "in five seconds flat." While I was examining his site, a follow-up e-mail came across the transom: John would need my Blogspot username and password. Gulp. Did I trust him? I went back to John's blog, this time to look for telltale signs of nefariousness. Was this some liberal or, God forbid, a Continental philosopher who would love nothing more than the chance to mess up my blog?

After a few minutes of reflection, during which awful scenarios appeared to me, I decided that I would risk it. John looked right of center, as I am, so I discounted the liberal hypothesis. He seemed like a normal man, or as normal as Australians get. (Just kidding, John. I watched Crocodile Dundee too many times.) I figured that the worst-case scenario was losing my blog, or having to spend hours repairing it. I made sure I saved the entire blog so that at least my writings were safe. Then I changed my Blogspot password. After ensuring that it worked, I sent my username and password to John. The next few minutes were, shall we say, interesting.

And then the hoped-for e-mail message. John announced that my blog was done. Yeehaa! I clicked the icon and saw—his blog. The color scheme, that is. There followed a flurry of e-mail messages in which I picked John's brain. How do I do this? Can I make that do this? Where are my archives? For a while, my archives were gone, but John managed to get them back. All told, he spent about two hours helping me. A stranger! An American, for godsake! This act reaffirms my faith in humanity. Okay, not humanity generally, because I'm still a misanthrope, but middle-aged Australian men. Thanks, John. Now the rest of you, get on over to John's site and savor the man's intelligence and wit. You will not be disappointed.

Addendum: The titles of my posts must now be incorporated into the posts. Please be patient as I go back through the posts (I'll do a few each day) to get the titles back. Also, the rounded apostrophes and quotation marks I used (from Word for Windows) came through as strange-looking symbols in the new blog. I'm changing them, too, but it'll take a few days. Thanks for your patience. Now that my 30K footrace is over, I should be a more faithful blogger (despite the lingering soreness).

[W]e can get a man to adopt an end only by starting from other ends which he already has, and we must therefore acknowledge those other ends in order to move him.

(Richard Robinson, An Atheist's Values [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964], 33)

One advantage of my having been a welfare-state liberal for many years is that I know what they think, how they think, and why they think it. How many times have you heard a liberal exclaim (in exasperation) that conservatives are trying to "turn back the clock"? This infuriates liberals. Let's try to unpack it.

Liberals view history as a progression from barbarism and injustice to civilization and justice. Sometimes there are setbacks, to be sure, but they are to be resisted. For every step backward, there are supposed to be two steps forward. Over time, there is progress. Not just technological progress, mind you, but moral progress. Things are getting morally better over time. Darkness gives way to light. Tradition succumbs to reason.

What liberals don't grasp is that not everyone shares their values. What seems self-evidently true to a liberal—for example, that there should be public provision for the poor—is viewed as contestable or downright false to a conservative (or to some significant subset of conservatives). Liberals think that some things are settled. They say that it is now settled that the United States Supreme Court will give only cursory (i.e., rational-basis) review to state or federal economic regulations. In other words, Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905), was a mistake. The New Deal settled that.

It didn't settle it. It's an open question, today as in 1905, whether states may, consistently with the Constitution, regulate economic activity. The Constitution says what it says. That a succession of judges have interpreted it one way rather than another doesn't change that fact. If Lochner was rightly decided, then cases that overruled it are mistaken. Liberals would like that this debate not occur, because they like the settlement, but liberals are not bound to get what they desire and conservatives are not bound to give it to them.

Much of the opposition to Judge Robert H. Bork was rooted in a belief that he would "turn back the clock." He refused to pay the usual homage to such cases as Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), which struck down state anti-contraception laws on the basis of a nebulous right to "privacy." Liberals understand that the privacy rubric is crucial to abortion rights, to the so-called right to die, and to other favored rights. (Liberals don't much like Second Amendment rights.) They are extremely vigilant in protecting it. Anyone who so much as wonders aloud about it is immediately cast as an extremist, as someone "out of the mainstream." This isn't debate; it's battle.

But these are issues about which there can and should be debate. Liberals don't want debate. They try to squelch discussion. To a liberal, the battles I've mentioned have been fought and won. They hate the idea that they must be fought again and again, generation after generation. Having "won" those battles, they want to move forward on other fronts, not fight rear-guard actions. (For a perfect example of this, see Ellen Goodman's recent column, in which she expresses regret that she has to write about abortion. "I want the abortion debate to end," she says. "I want abortion to be safe and rare. And early." But the debate won't end. Lots of people sincerely believe that abortion is murder. Does one stop trying to stop murder?) This is why liberals view conservatives as obstructionists and barbarians. Conservatives (they think) want to take the country back to what the liberal views as a bad place, a place in which women were kept "barefoot and pregnant," in which African-Americans were "second-class citizens," and in which the poor were left "to fend for themselves." Recognize the liberal rhetoric? Unfortunately for the liberal, rhetoric is not logic. Indeed, it's often meant to circumvent logic.

I'm not taking sides here, despite appearances. I'm trying to understand liberal discourse and tactics. Liberals, for all their vaunted talk about freedom of expression, don't want a robust debate on issues such as privacy, affirmative action, and redistributive taxation. They are true believers—dogmatists—who view opposition to their views and values as malice, ignorance, or stupidity rather than as a reflection of honest and respectable disagreement. In short, liberals have become totalitarians. Whatever happened to the liberal ideal of a free and open debate on issues of public concern? Whatever happened to the marketplace of ideas? Conservatives, as such, aren't malicious, ignorant, or stupid; they simply have a different vision of the just society. They do not share the liberal view that things have gotten morally better. If the concept of moral progress makes sense, then so does its opposite, moral regress. Progress is in the eye of the beholder.

I said at the outset that I was once a welfare-state liberal. Everyone should be, at different times, a liberal and a conservative. When you're immersed in an ideology such as liberalism, you come to take its principles for granted. You cease interrogating them. You stop thinking, questioning, and examining. You resort to groupthink and groupspeak. If and when you leave the ideology, you see it in a different light. You gain the detachment that allows you to see what was previously invisible. You lose your blinders. I've been inside and outside the liberal circle. I believe this gives me an epistemically privileged vantage point. How many liberals were at one time conservatives? I suspect that there are far more conservatives-who-were-liberals than liberals-who-were-conservatives. I'm not asking you to accept what I say on authority. I'm not your authority. I'm asking you to think things through for yourself, Socratically. The unexamined life is not worth living.

The philosopher's product is his life (which occupies the most important position, before his works). His life is his work of art, and every work of art is first turned toward the artist and then toward other men.

(Friedrich Nietzsche, "Philosophy in Hard Times" [1873], in Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870's, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale [Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1990 (1979)], 109 [italics in original])

Twenty-five years ago, the debate between liberals and conservatives was the reverse of what it is today. Liberals argued for humanitarian military intervention, or at least against its categorical rejection. Liberals believed in, and thought it worth fighting and dying for, human rights. (See, e.g., David Luban, "Just War and Human Rights," Philosophy & Public Affairs 9 [winter 1980]: 160-81.) Conservatives opposed these ideas. As Peter Berkowitz argues in this column, President Bush has taken up the liberal mantle. Liberals have gone soft, both morally and intellectually. They have become hand-wringing pacifists. Great liberals such as Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill would be ashamed of them and aghast at their naivete. (See Michael W. Doyle, "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs," Philosophy & Public Affairs 12 [summer 1983]: 205-35; "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Part 2," Philosophy & Public Affairs 12 [fall 1983]: 323-53.) I can only hope that contemporary liberals come to their senses and get on the right side of history: the side that believes in and is willing to make sacrifices for human rights. But I fear that their hatred of President Bush will continue to cloud their thinking and weaken their resolve.

This is funny.

12 May 1999, 9:57 A.M. The first thing you noticed was his innocence. He was a harmless, gentle soul. In spite of his imposing size—he stood two feet tall at the shoulder—he radiated warmth and affection. I doubt that he had ever put anyone in fear. Someone, unfortunately, had beaten him, for he flinched when I extended my hand. This never changed, which shows that there are psychological as well as physical scars and that animals, no less than humans, can bear them. When he realized that I meant no harm, he allowed me to rub and pat him. He liked this. It must have reassured him that not all humans are evil. Whether he believed that any are good remains a mystery. He allowed me to clip his toenails and put flea and tick fluid on his back. His hair was short, so he never needed grooming. He seemed annoyed sometimes that I brought only dry food. He would touch my leg with his paw as I left his shed, as if to say, "Aren't you forgetting something?" Every other day he got, in addition to the dry Alpo chunks, a can of soft food. This he relished. I think his teeth may have hurt him, so the canned food went down easier.

I met Huck (as in Huckleberry Hound) on 6 May 1995, the day after a devastating hailstorm. He was wandering, emaciated, near a burned-out house in the wooded area where I take Sophie and Ginger every evening. He had a gaping wound on his leg. He must have thought that I would administer the death blow, and perhaps, given his condition, he hoped I would. Urine ran down his leg when I extended my hand. But I brought food and water instead. He found it, as I expected, and during the next few days and weeks he regained his strength. His wound healed; he put on weight; and his youthful vigor and personality returned. I assume someone abandoned him near Cooks Lane. This person will go to hell, should there be such a place.

The next four years were joyous for all of us. The girls and I had a reason, beyond exercise and the experience of nature, to go to the woods every evening—and we missed only a handful of days in that time. I carried Huck's food and water—seven cups of the former, half a gallon of the latter—in a knapsack that I threw over my back. I eventually built a shelter for him in one of the sheds, into which I put blankets. I also folded a blanket on the wooden floor near his food so that he would have a soft place to lie. Sometimes, when I came early, I would find him sleeping in the sand near the shed—soaking up the sun's rays. He survived four winters and four hot summers in this situation. The summer of 1998 was particularly oppressive, so Huck, being prudent, took up residence in a small shed with a concrete floor. I found him there several times. The floor must have felt cooler to him than his usual resting place.

In March 1998, I discovered, to my horror, that Huck had been shot. The bullet went in one side of his chest and out the other. I have no idea who did it or why. I did what I could for him, such as apply peroxide, but I didn't know whether he could survive it. The high temperature at the time was the mid-forties, and it dipped into the twenties at night. For Texans such as Huck, that is frigid. For several days I had to lift him into the shed so he could reach his food and water. He was weak, but the light of life never left him. Somehow, to my inexpressible joy, the old boy survived. I began to wonder whether he could die, for he seemed invincible. The only lingering effect of the shooting was labored breathing. Huck always ran around like a crazy dog when we arrived with his food. (Sometimes I think I should have named him "Goofy.") This inevitably brought on a coughing fit, often followed by a discharge of phlegm. I told him to settle down, but it was to no avail. That was not his nature. Judging from his behavior, every time I brought food and water was a miracle. In fact, he must have thought that he had died and gone to dog heaven when the girls and I showed up that May day long ago.

Spring and fall were the best seasons, short as they are in Texas. The weather is mild at these times of year, and I spent many a glorious afternoon reading in the woods. I would leave the house early, Sophie and Ginger springing behind me (or ahead, or nearby), and fill Huck's bowls. Then I would plop down a hundred yards or so away, either under my favorite oak or on what used to be a swimming pool deck. Huck would invariably find us after eating some of his food. He loved smelling me. I must have seemed strange to him, a big ape. Perhaps he wondered why I didn't beat him, as other big apes had. He also took an interest in Sophie. He would fawn over her, but Sophie was uninterested. She never snapped at him, however, even when he raked her with his paws in a fit of enthusiasm (or lust). Ginger didn't much care for Huck, so he left her alone. She kept him away from me as I read. Huck took these snubs in stride. Sometimes he would follow us as we resumed our grand loop through the woods. I would turn to see him on the opposite bank of the creek as we crossed for the final time. Tail wagging. Head high. Eyes flashing. Then he would trot back in that inimitable way of his. "See you tomorrow," I would say, and after a while he knew that I meant it.

This story, alas, has a sad ending. Indeed, it has a tragic ending. This past Monday, four years and four days after we met, Huck was mortally wounded in a fight with two chows. I heard an odd cry—an anguished bark—as the girls and I approached his shed. Huck was a silent dog, so this concerned me. When I reached the structure, I saw a brown chow standing over Huck's body. Another chow stood nearby, panting. I rushed over, shooing them away, and found Huck lying in the dirt, bloody but breathing. He was motionless, but his eyes were open. There was dirt in his mouth and ears. I cleaned his mouth out and tried to get water down his throat. His head, neck, sides, and rump were covered with bites, some gaping. The ground showed signs of struggle. Had I arrived earlier, I may have been able to save him; but I came at the usual time. The one thing I could not do is leave Huck, even to fetch my car, for as I stood there the chows returned. They would surely kill Huck if I left him for any length of time. So, with darkness approaching, I hoisted his bloody body, called the girls, and headed for home. If anyone could survive these wounds, I thought, Huck could.

It took an hour to get Huck to my house. I carried him half a mile, up and over the creek, setting him down occasionally so that I could rest. He was limp. When I got him far enough from the chows, I hurried home with the girls. I was drenched in blood. A neighbor, evidently shocked by my appearance, asked, "Are you okay?" I said I was but did not elaborate. I returned with a garden cart and brought Huck to my garage. I cleaned him, put him on Sophie's soft bed, and comforted him. During all of this time he lay motionless, looking straight ahead. I put food nearby and squirted water into his mouth. When I went to bed late that evening, he was still breathing, lightly but steadily. I knew that by morning he would be either improved—perhaps even up and about—or dead.

He was dead. He looked peaceful. My first thought was that he would suffer no more—he, who had suffered so much. At least he died with those who loved him instead of lying on the ground in the chilly, dark woods. Yesterday, heartbroken, I drove him back to the wooded area, and last night I pulled him, still on Sophie's bed, a quarter of a mile to a final resting place. Tonight I will bury him on a hillside near the shed in which he lived. This was his home, his territory, his domain. Whatever he lacked in the way of creature comforts, and there were many, he made up for in liberty. He was a wonderful friend and companion. He taught me much—as much as any human could—about love, patience, gratitude, fortitude, and grace. I will miss you, Huckleberry.

Addendum: I now believe, having read up on the topic, that Huckleberry was in shock. I should have driven him to my veterinarian's office for care. There is a chance, however small, that something could have been done for him. I will never know. I will always have to live with the thought that I failed him. I'm sorry, Huck. Forgive me.

The debate about judicial confirmation over at Legal Theory Blog reminds me of something from the 1980s. I published an essay entitled "Should Robert Bork Be Confirmed?" (I argued for confirmation, despite loathing Bork. Now, ironically, I like Bork. I highly recommend his book, The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law [New York: The Free Press, 1990], to anyone who is interested in constitutional interpretation, which was, incidentally, the topic [and title] of my 1989 Ph.D. dissertation.) The essay was published as written, but the front cover of the publication (The General Practitioner) had the following title: "Should Robert Bork Be Confined?" Someone had fun at my (and Judge Bork's) expense. Ha ha.

We must distinguish (1) the concepts that the philosopher is examining, whether they be the concepts of everyday or technical use, (2) the concepts, perhaps of a technical nature, which he may invent to help his examination, (3) the ideas, theories, concepts, or conceptions that a philosopher may have about the nature of the concepts he examines, and (4) the further theories he may be led to about, e.g., the soul or fate, as a result of his theories in (3). The philosopher is entitled to change, criticize, improve, or evaluate (2), (3), and (4), but not (1). His job is to discover the properties of (1).

(Alan R. White, "Conceptual Analysis," chap. 5 in The Owl of Minerva: Philosophers on Philosophy, ed. Charles J. Bontempo and S. Jack Odell [New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1975], 103-17, at 114-5)

Bryan A. Garner is smarter than you are. He's also a better writer. How do you like them apples? But he's not always right. In his magisterial book, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), now superseded by Garner's Modern American Usage (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), he says that, "Strictly speaking, unique means 'being one of a kind,' not 'unusual.' Hence the phrases very unique, quite unique, how unique, and the like are slovenly" (page 669; italics in original).

I beg to differ! There is a perfectly good sense in which one person or thing can be more unique than another, or most others, or all others, hence very unique. In other words, there's a comparable sense of the word.

The first thing to notice is that everything is a token of more than one type. I'm a token of the following types: professor, moral philosopher, Michigander, American citizen, lawyer, resident of Texas, baseball fan, headbanger, bicyclist, runner, atheist, demi-vegetarian. (That should give you several reasons to hate me.) To be unique, as Garner points out, is to be one of a kind. But if I instantiate many kinds, I can be unique in some respects but not in others. Aristotle, for example, was unique in several respects. Suppose Aristotle were unique in five respects and Plato in four. Then Aristotle was more unique than Plato. He was a one-of-a-kind member of more classes. I'm not saying that we should strive for this sort of uniqueness, only that it's possible (intelligible, meaningful).

What Garner should say (because it's correct) is that, with respect to a given type, kind, or category, it makes no sense to speak of degrees of uniqueness. Either you're the only token, instance, or member of that type, kind, or category, or you're not. The word "unique," in short, is both comparable and uncomparable. In this respect it may be unique.

It ain't called the World Wide Web for nothin'. Many nice people have either linked to one of my posts or placed my blog on a list of recommended sites. I will reciprocate as soon as I figure out how to do it. (I hope this very post goes part way toward reciprocating.) Greg Goelzhauser informed me the other day that everything I want can be had, probably for free. The number of people visiting my site continues to increase. This morning I had "736" showing on my on-site odometer and "1390" on blogstats. I have no idea why the numbers differ. Perhaps someone can explain the discrepancy to me. If you click the on-site odometer, you get all manner of statistics. (My mother pointed that out to me. Thanks, Mom! When did you become a computer genius?) This is of course an anal-retentive's dream.

Let me take a moment to acknowledge the sites that send the most visitors to my blog. First there is Tech Central Station, my cyberspatial home base. Thanks, Nick. Crooked Timber (courtesy of Harry Brighouse, who commented on my tenure post) has sent many people my way, as has Lawrence Solum's Legal Theory Blog. Others include Pejmanesque, Commonsense & Wonder, Greg Goelzhauser, and Nathan Newman. This morning I found three new referrers: what appears to be a German site, Objektivist; Brian Weatherson's site, Thoughts Arguments and Rants; and one without a title. Brian doesn't like my politics. That's okay, Brian; I probably don't like your politics, either. Can we still be friends?

One can establish (prove) the truth of a proposition by (1) assuming its denial and (2) validly deducing a self-contradiction (absurdity) from it together with one or more other propositions that are known to be true. This procedure, or form of argument, is known by the Latin name "reductio ad absurdum" (reduction to absurdity). (It is also known as indirect proof and reductio ad impossibile.)

Strictly speaking, the reductio ad absurdum requires that all of the additional propositions be known to be true. What if they're not? What if they're questionable? Then all one can infer from the fact that a self-contradiction has been deduced is that either the assumption or one of the additional propositions is false. Our confidence that the assumption is false is no greater than our confidence that all of the other propositions are true. Put differently, to the extent that we are confident that the other propositions are true, we are confident that the assumption is false.

The reductio ad absurdum is a special case of a more general argumentative technique. Let us define "valid argument" as an argument in which, if the premises are true, then the conclusion is true. In other words, it is logically impossible for a valid argument to have true premises and a false conclusion. Valid arguments are truth-preserving. Suppose we know that the conclusion of a particular argument (call it "X") is false. What else do we know? We know that either X is invalid or one or more of X's premises is false (or both). This follows from the definition of "valid argument" just given. But all self-contradictions are false (though not conversely), so any argument the conclusion of which is a self-contradiction is either invalid or has one or more false premises. Different people may come to different conclusions about which of these is the case, and those conclusions will, in turn, require argumentation. For example, one person may claim that the assumption is false; another may claim that one of the added propositions is false; yet another may question the validity of the argument.

One final twist. Suppose we adopt the ad hominem conception of argumentation in which the aim is to persuade a particular person to believe a given proposition rather than to establish its truth. The procedure is as follows. First, state the proposition of which the interlocutor is to be persuaded. Second, assume the denial of that proposition. Third, add propositions that are already believed by the interlocutor. Fourth, using only rules of inference that the interlocutor accepts as valid, deduce a self-contradiction. This shows the interlocutor that the assumption is inconsistent with his or her beliefs. Of course, it is open to the interlocutor to reject one of the other beliefs rather than the assumption; but that just shows him or her the cost of rejecting the original proposition. (After all, you can't make people believe things.) This procedure seeks not truth but consistency in belief.

To summarize, suppose you are trying to establish the truth of proposition p by means of a reductio ad absurdum. You must do the following:

1. Assume (assert) the denial of p, namely, non-p.
2. Using only valid rules of inference,
3. Deduce a known falsehood from non-p together with
4. Other known-to-be-true propositions.

If you can do this, you will have shown that the assumption (non-p) is false; and if non-p is false, then p is true. This is what you set out to prove.

There are two ways to strengthen the argument. First, since someone might disagree that the "falsehood" is false, try to generate a self-contradiction. In other words, show that the premises entail a necessary falsehood rather than a contingent falsehood. Second, since someone might disagree that the "true propositions" are true, try to use only necessary truths (as opposed to contingent truths) as premises. Necessary falsehoods can't possibly be true and can't reasonably be believed; necessary truths can't possibly be false and can't reasonably be denied (disbelieved). If the inferences are truly valid, then the only way out is to deny (disbelieve) the assumption, which is precisely what the arguer set out to do. Here, then, is the strongest possible reductio ad absurdum:

1. Assume (assert) the denial of p, namely, non-p.
2. Using only valid rules of inference,
3. Deduce a necessary falsehood (i.e., a self-contradiction) from non-p together with
4. Other necessarily true propositions.

Here is the weakest possible (but still effective!) reductio ad absurdum:

1. Assume (assert) the denial of p, namely, non-p.
2. Using only rules of inference accepted by your interlocutor as valid,
3. Deduce a proposition believed by your interlocutor to be false from non-p together with
4. Other propositions believed by your interlocutor to be true.

This, as I said, is the argumentum ad hominem. Do not confuse the argumentum ad hominem ("argument to the person") with the ad hominem fallacy (attack on the person). The former is a legitimate argumentative technique; the latter is a fallacy. The ad hominem fallacy consists in dismissing an argument on the ground that the person making it is defective in some way. Example: If you argue that capitalism is unjust and I dismiss your argument on the ground that you're a Marxist, I commit this fallacy. I have attacked you (the person), not your argument. Persons are not arguments. Good people can make bad arguments and bad people good arguments. (I'm assuming, for the sake of argument, that Marxists are bad people.)

If you want to learn more about argumentation, see Irving M. Copi and Keith Burgess-Jackson, Informal Logic, 3d ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996).

If biography could be made as shapely as a good play, we could ring the curtain gently down on Washington, leaving him in white-haired tranquillity. His existence, however, was not cast in such a pattern. The curtain was always jerking up again, the music awakening suddenly from some lulling coda. So it was to be again with him in 1798. In a way, it was his own fault. He would have been left alone if he had seemed senile. Instead, he appeared as vigorous as ever, whether in superintending his farms, in offering hospitality, or in dealing with correspondence. His letters, in fact, seem more pungent—perhaps because he now felt more at liberty to speak his mind, whereas hitherto official caution had hedged him in. At any rate, he was summoned back into uniform in 1798. French conduct had grown so outrageous that she was virtually at war with the United States. At naval war, that is. America had no army, except for the tiny nucleus of regulars that Washington had struggled to retain. He was now required to raise an army and assume command. The prospect made him groan. When Hamilton predicted that another summons to action would reach him, Washington replied that he would go "with as much reluctance from my present peaceful abode, as I should do to the tomb of my ancestors." He was displeased when President Adams nominated him as commander in chief without previous consultation. He was worried, as before in his career, that opponents might interpret his return to authority as a piece of ambition or—in view of his Farewell Address—hypocrisy. But the obligation was not to be evaded. Brisk, sensible, conscientious, he set about the task. As before, the ubiquitous Alexander Hamilton was promptly on hand, arranging things behind the scenes, securing for himself an appointment that would make him Washington's second-in-command. It was a hectic time, especially for poor John Adams. In his place, Washington would probably have come in for similar vilification. But we can be fairly sure that Washington would have avoided some of Adams's tactical blunders in the business of administration. A detailed comparison of his Presidency with Washington's would do much to bring out the solid, sober merit of the latter.

However, there was no war in 1798 or in 1799. Washington's life resumed its normal tempo. The months wheel by in the jog-trot entries of his diary. Hot days, cool days, rain, snow. Surveying, riding, visitors, dinners, a baby daughter born to his niece Betty Lewis. Then the diary stops on December 13, with a note that the thermometer has dropped to a slight frost. Then, indeed, the curtain comes down with a rush. Washington has caught a chill; he has a sore throat; the doctors bleed him, bleed him again, to no avail. At ten in the evening of December 14 he is dead, without a climax (save for that invented posthumously by Parson Weems), without a memorable final utterance; in pain, a sacrifice to the well-meaning but barbarous medical treatment of his day.

With less primitive care he could have survived a few more years. He could have witnessed the removal of the federal government to Federal City (christened Washington, D.C.), which would have pleased him, or the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson in 1801, following a Republican victory that would not have pleased him. He could have read of the Louisiana Purchase, and of Hamilton's death in a duel—a medley of bright news and dark news. But would he have wanted much more? His century was over, and he with it. Spenser's quiet lines fit his end better than many of the sonorous phrases that orators and scribes (including Freneau) were soon declaiming throughout the enormous, ramshackle, thriving Union:

Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas,
Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please.

[I]t would be quite wrong to end on a flat note. As perhaps in the career of any great man, there is a deeply sad flavor to the life of Washington. It is poignant to inspire awe rather than intimate affection, to have the warm flesh strike cold like marble, because one's temperament was thus, and because America insisted on such frozen excellence. It is melancholy to be entrusted with vast responsibilities, as aware as Washington was of one's own shortcomings. It is grim to be plunged into an endless sequence of war, controversy and crisis, walking the knife edge of catastrophe.

Yet Washington's is also a deeply satisfying record. Here was a man who did what he was asked to do, and whose very strength resided in a sobriety some took for fatal dullness; who in his own person proved the soundness of America. A good man, not a saint; a competent soldier, not a great one; an honest administrator, not a statesman of genius; a prudent conserver, not a brilliant reformer. But in sum an exceptional figure.

His private solace was to know at the last that his path had been straightforward and honorable, that he was dying in the house he liked better than anywhere else on earth, watched over by the wife to whom he had been faithful for forty years. His public achievement is the inverse measure. He died knowing that America was intact, that he as much as any person had assisted in its formation, and that while his own sands ran out, time was still on the side of his country. It was an achievement of far more permanent effect than most in history.

How much of the credit is due to him alone we cannot say; in the final analysis the question is irrelevant. He had become so merged with America that his is one of the names on the land, the presences in the air. Useless for his biographers to try to separate Washington from the myths and images surrounding him—the visage on the postage stamp and on the dollar bill, so familiar that no one sees it, the horseman on the Confederate seal, Andrew Jackson running for the Presidency (oblivious of his early strictures) as the "second Washington," the cherry tree, Cincinnatus at the plow, the grinding ice in the Delaware, the imaginary Indian chief at the Monongahela who declared that no mortal bullet could dispatch George Washington. None can. The man is the monument; the monument is America. Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.

(Marcus Cunliffe, George Washington: Man and Monument [New York: New American Library, 1958], 153-6, 177-8 [italics in original])

Am I crazy for thinking that Richard A. Posner deserves, and might one day win, the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his economic analysis of law?

Whatever happened to the distinction between fact and value, between what is and what ought to be? Scientists (natural and social) used to pride themselves on being concerned only with the facts ("Just the facts, ma'am"), but now it would appear that some of them think their office is to evaluate.

Leave aside why this happened. It has happened in other fields as well, such as journalism and philosophy. What concerns me here is its effect. What is the relation between the authority (or respectability) of a discipline (or profession) and the degree to which its practitioners are partial?

Let me explain what I mean by "partial." An impartial (disinterested) person doesn't take sides in the contest. Baseball umpires are supposed to be impartial. They are not players; their job is to supervise and regulate the play. Judges are supposed to be impartial. This is why they must recuse themselves when they have, or might reasonably be seen as having, a conflict of interest. Journalists are supposed to be impartial. They are supposed to report the facts, not make judgments about them. (I'm talking reportage, not editorializing.)

My hypothesis is this: Authority (respectability) is inversely proportional to partiality. The more partial one is, the less authority one has. The less partial (i.e., more impartial) one is, the more authority one has. This is an empirically testable hypothesis. I would love to see it rigorously tested, once its key terms are operationalized. I believe it would be confirmed.

It is often noted that journalists are not respected as they once were. Could this be because they have entered the fray of public debate rather than giving an accurate rendering of it? Do you respect The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times as much as you once did? If not, why not? Is it because their political biases are so obvious? Even their editors have come clean about it in recent months. I once admired and respected The New York Times. It did indeed seem to me that it was the first draft of history. I thought it was an honest and reliable organ of reportage. I no longer think that. It has become a player. This costs it its objectivity, its authority, and its respectability.

Scientists, too, risk losing whatever authority and respect they once had when they enter into public-policy debates. Economists are the worst culprits. Economics aspires to be a science, but many of its practitioners believe that they can and should take normative stands on matters of policy and principle. Where did economists get normative expertise? I'm dumbfounded by the arrogance. Economics will earn respect as a science only when its practitioners cease evaluating (prescribing). They have a great deal to contribute to public affairs. What they have to contribute is an understanding of how things are, not how they ought to be. Economics is the science of means, not of ends. It issues hypothetical imperatives, not categorical imperatives. It is said that many social scientists have physics envy. Perhaps they envy the authority of physicists. If so, they should focus on facts, as physicists do. Physics earns its authority the old-fashioned way: by staying above the fray.

My own profession (and discipline), philosophy, is in danger of losing whatever respect it once had. Many philosophers believe that their training equips them to take sides on controversial moral matters, such as the permissibility of capital punishment, the morality of abortion, and the moral status of animals. But where do philosophers get their normative expertise? I went through a high-powered philosophy program at The University of Arizona. In no course I took was I taught correct values. What I learned was how to analyze, criticize, and argue. These are technical skills. I can get from a normative premise to a normative conclusion as well as the next philosopher. (Every argument with a normative conclusion must have at least one normative premise; otherwise, where did the normativity come from?) What I can't do is make someone accept my normative premise. I can show you that your norms or principles commit you to acting one way rather than another. I can't supply you with your principles.

There has been much talk during the past three decades about "applied" or "practical" ethics. Some philosophers think this is the savior of philosophy. I think it's the death of philosophy. The more we philosophers engage substantive issues; the more we enter the fray; the more we act as partisans for a cause; the more we play the game rather than supervising it, the less respect and authority we have. If we stayed within our realm of expertise, which is analysis, people would take what we have to say seriously. When people see that philosophers are playing the game just like everyone else, they start thinking of them as they do others: as partisans. Philosophy loses its distinctiveness. Perhaps the solution is for those philosophers who wish to be players to call themselves something else, such as "hired gun" or "spokesperson for a cause," leaving the term "philosopher" for those of us who practice what we were taught.

If anyone knows of empirical research on the relation between authority and partiality, I would appreciate hearing of it. Of course, the research must be conducted by someone without an ax to grind. Are there any scientists left who don't have an ax to grind?

Would it be unseemly of me to plug a book on this blog? Oh, who cares; I'm going to do it. The book is Animals and Ethics: An Overview of the Philosophical Debate, by Angus Taylor, a Canadian professor. I reviewed the first edition of this book (entitled Magpies, Monkeys, and Morals: What Philosophers Say About Animal Liberation) for the prestigious philosophical periodical Ethics. I had nothing but praise for the book. It is fair, balanced, honest, and beautifully written. It is, in my opinion, a perfect example of what a philosopher can contribute to public debate. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) said that every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, and adoption. Animal liberation is beyond the ridicule stage (thank goodness) but not yet (regrettably) at the adoption stage. Taylor's book shows that the discussion stage can be civil and edifying. Please look into it. You will not be disappointed.

Philosophy—philosophy that is clear and deep at any rate—is fundamentally an effort to work out the implications of a world view . . . with respect to the sorts of questions philosophers ask and answer.

(Alvin Plantinga, "Augustinian Christian Philosophy," The Monist: An International Journal of General Philosophical Inquiry 75 [July 1992]: 291-320, at 306)

A couple of years ago I had a student who did not like tenure. We argued about it (in the philosophical sense, not in the sense of a quarrel) before and after class. The thing she kept saying is that professors should not have more job security than other professionals. I have no idea why this stuck in her craw, but it did. Is there anything to her argument? Should tenure be abolished?

It's often argued that tenure is necessary in order to protect and promote academic freedom, which is in turn (it is said) a necessary condition for knowledge, which is assumed to be both intrinsically and instrumentally good. Without tenure, it is argued, people will publish what pleases (or doesn't offend) rather than what they deem to be the truth. We're all better off with unfettered inquiry.

This is a consequentialist argument. It evaluates a thing (tenure) solely in terms of its consequences. Society might decide what it wants and then choose means appropriate to that end. Tenure may or may not be a means, depending on how the calculation comes out. What I want to discuss here is another aspect of the student's argument. She made it sound as though professors have an unearned (and therefore undeserved or unfair) advantage over other professionals. I knew in my bones that this was not the case, but at the time I was unable to articulate it.

Let me try to articulate it. People's ends differ. Some people value autonomy (the making of one's own decisions, without close scrutiny). Some people value material things (and therefore money, which secures those things). Some people value security (in the sense of not being able to be fired or laid off except for good cause). Actually, everyone values all of these things to some extent, so let's just say that different people value different mixtures of goods.

Suppose person P assigns a high value to material things and a low value to security. P is a go-getter and a risk-taker. Such a person may find commerce a congenial environment. Businesses sometimes fail, but they also succeed, sometimes spectacularly. Employees (even managers) of business firms can be fired or laid off, unless of course they've contracted for long-term employment. P will probably not be happy in an academic setting, despite having the opportunity to earn tenure. The pay is comparatively low. In P's view, the autonomy and security of academia are not worth the low pay.

Suppose person Q assigns a high value to autonomy and security and a low value to material things. Such a person will find academia a congenial environment. Professors (I can attest) have a great deal of autonomy and, if tenured (as I am), lifetime security. Q will be willing to accept the lower pay in order to get these other goods. Different people, different mix.

Many or most of us who gravitated to academia did so not because we're incapable of doing other things (I turned down an associate's position at a law firm, for example) but because we like the mix of goods it provides. Anyone who values wealth would be irrational to become a professor. The means are simply not conducive to the end. In law school, the gag making the rounds went like this: "Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, teach law." I don't know about the second part of this, but the first part is false. The professors I know—and I know many—are accomplished, intelligent, ambitious, multifaceted people, people who could succeed in almost any line of work. It's not inability that prevents them from doing so; it's lack of desire.

Let us return to my student's argument. Is it unfair that professors have greater job security than other professionals? I don't see how it could be. The security was part of the bargain. It's what we got in return for comparatively low pay. As I just said, most of us could take jobs in commerce or the professions (such as law) and make much more money. But we don't want to. We're happy to settle for lower pay (okay, we tolerate it) in order to get autonomy and security. My student's mistake was looking at only one aspect of being a professor. She thought that the job security we tenured professors have was something extra thrown in—in addition to the other benefits of the job. No. It's part of the bargain. We wouldn't be here without it.

I asked my student to imagine a world without tenure. Suppose tenure were abolished, as some people advocate. It seems clear to me that abolition would generate a mass exodus from academia. If I lost my job security, being a professor would no longer be attractive to me. I would try to find another job that offered at least as much security, and if I couldn't, I would demand a great deal more money from my university to compensate for the lost security. Let's do a thought experiment. Suppose my university doubled my salary but retracted tenure, making me a free agent. I would immediately bargain to get tenure back. I would offer to pay some (perhaps much) of the money to get the job security I no longer have.

I guess what I'm saying is that the system we have is already in equilibrium. The university gets professors on the cheap (compared to what we could earn in commerce or the professions); we professors, in return, get autonomy and security. Everyone's happy. Just as squeezing a balloon in one place creates a bulge somewhere else, abolishing tenure would change the face of academia. Tenure, in short, is a bargained-for exchange, a contract. To abolish it would constitute a breach of contract—morally as well as legally.

I hasten to add that this is not a knock-down, drag-out argument for tenure, because, as I said, there are other considerations. In the end, society must decide what it wants: a tenure system with all that it entails (comparatively low-paid but happy professors) or a nontenure system with all that it entails (risk-taking, go-getting professors who value wealth more than autonomy and security). The latter system would see far more people come and go. Would students like that? Would it be good for the institution? Presumably this would be one of its costs. I, for one, prefer the former system to the latter, and I don't think it's (just) because I'm a tenured professor. It's because I think the tenure system serves society well and treats those who have tenure fairly.

Character cannot be perceived, but it's real. Like belief, value, and intention, it must be inferred from behavior, including linguistic behavior (what one says). A person's character reveals itself in such things as what he or she loves. President Bush loves dogs, running, and baseball. That tells me a great deal about his character—all, I might add, favorable.

If intellectual sophistication really is needed to get us out of our present troubles, then a really tough sophisticated philosophical education is a good thing. Those philosophers who prefer to lecture on topical themes of immediately obvious social concern do so at the cost of not lecturing on abstract, sophisticated tough philosophical questions. In their courses they may deal with certain rather elementary conceptual confusions, but there is so much empirical content in their courses that the student does not get scope for really advanced conceptual work, as he does when discussing, say, Quine on the indeterminacy of translation. So the students do not get the really sophisticated conceptual training which they can apply later in other fields, perhaps socially relevant ones. In other words, philosophy can be most socially relevant by being true to itself and not setting out directly to be socially relevant.

(J. J. C. Smart, "My Semantic Ascents and Descents," chap. 3 in his Essays Metaphysical and Moral: Selected Philosophical Papers [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987], 25-37, at 35-6 [essay first published in 1975])

Many years ago, my students and I were discussing the trial, conviction, and execution of Socrates. I believe I asked how Socrates was executed. One of the students raised his hand. I gestured to him. "He drank the Maalox," the student said. Ah yes, the Maalox. At least Socrates died with a settled stomach. Another student, long ago, confessed to me that during our entire discussion of Plato, he thought I was saying Play-Doh. I kid you not. I have always wondered what the student was thinking as I discoursed about clay. "According to Play-Doh, the ideal republic would be ruled by philosopher-kings." "Play-Doh conceived of knowledge as justified true belief." "Socrates was Play-Doh's teacher." I must admit, I admire the student's honesty. Can you imagine a more embarrassing admission?

When I was a child, I was puzzled by many things. Puzzlement is good, for it motivates inquiry. For example, I didn't understand what was happening when my mother and I went to a grocery store and came home with lots of goodies. I saw my mother hand strange-looking papers to the person behind the counter, but what it signified and why it worked was beyond me. Thus was born an intellectual.

I majored in political science as an undergraduate for two reasons. First, politics seemed to be where important things got done. It's a natural arena for an ambitious, competitive young man. Second, someone told me that it was good preparation for law school. (For what it's worth, I now think that philosophy is the best preparation for law school. By far. See "Advice for Prospective Law Students.") I had already decided to go to law school, in part because I viewed law as the foundation of politics. Law is the water in which we fish swim. It pervades our lives. Everything we do has a legal dimension. Thus, nobody can truly understand society without knowing the law—from the inside. But once I got to law school, I was frustrated. First, there was precious little discussion of where laws came from. I had always been interested in history. It seemed to me that knowing the history of law (and laws) was important, not something that could be dispensed with. I enrolled in the joint M.A./J.D. program after my first year of law school. (It turned a three-year stint into four, culminating in both a Master's degree in history and a law degree.)

Another frustration of law school was its unphilosophical nature. I craved discussion of the concepts we were using on a daily basis, concepts such as negligence, rights, procedure, and contract. There was also a missing normative dimension to my experience. Yes, we were learning the law, but were the laws we were learning worthy? Did they deserve our obedience? These questions both frustrated me and motivated me to study philosophy. I didn't go into philosophy to get the truth, but to get the tools with which to sort things out. (The only truths philosophers are competent to deliver are necessary truths, such as "murder is wrong." They purchase necessity at the cost of informativeness.)

As soon as law school ended, I took the Michigan Bar Examination (which I passed, albeit not with flying colors) and headed for graduate school in philosophy at The University of Arizona. My career path looks tortuous from the outside, but I assure you that it is linear from the inside. Each stage of my education generated puzzles that were solvable only at a higher level. Politics required an understanding of law, which required an understanding of history and philosophy. Nor has the ascent come to a halt. Having immersed myself in philosophy for some twenty years, I have come to wonder about the concepts and methods (of analysis, argumentation, and criticism) that philosophers take for granted in their work. Philosophers should be the last people to take things for granted, but many do. Many, I hate to admit, are downright dogmatic. We might call this new interest of mine philosophy of philosophy, or metaphilosophy.

I believe it is both natural and desirable to wonder. Philosophy, like science, begins in wonder. At first, puzzlement comes from without, but in the end it comes from within. Philosophers are puzzle-generators. They see puzzles where others do not. They don't solve (m)any of the puzzles they generate, but that's not the point. Their aim is to display them, to problematize the world. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. I concur; but I would go further. A person who is not puzzled, who has ceased to inquire, who wonders about nothing, has already died, intellectually. May I always be puzzled!

A minute ago, out of the blue, I received an e-mail message from Greg Goelzhauser. He flattered me with kind words about my blog and proceeded to advise me on how to improve it (since I had admitted publicly that I'm lost). This is welcome advice! I am, after all, a blogospheric novice, wet behind the ears and all that. (Anyone know the origin of that metaphor?) Thank you, Greg! I mentioned some time back that I view blogs as a form of community, or as a way to forge communities. Case in point.

I hate running, but I love having run.

Here, for what it's worth, is a list of votes I've cast for president of the United States:

1976 Gerald Ford (Republican) (lost)
1980 Ed Clark (Libertarian) (lost)
1984 Walter Mondale (Democrat) (lost)
1988 Michael Dukakis (Democrat) (lost)
1992 Bill Clinton (Democrat) (won)
1996 Ralph Nader (Green) (lost)
2000 Ralph Nader (Green) (lost)
2004 to be determined

I defy anyone to find a pattern in these votes. As I have argued in the pages of Tech Central Station, voting in a statewide election (as we do when we vote for president) is vanishingly unlikely to affect the outcome. It is therefore pointless (and stupid) to vote for strategic reasons, as if one's vote mattered. My state (Texas) was going to George W. Bush, as any idiot could see. Did it matter, then, that I voted for Ralph Nader rather than Al Gore (assuming I liked Al Gore, which I most emphatically did not)? Would it have mattered even in a close state, such as New Mexico or Florida? No. Your vote affects only the final digit of the vote total. You can make a "3" a "4," for example. Unless, without your vote, there would be a tie or a one-vote victory, you haven't affected the outcome, and what is the chance of that happening?

Next question: Do I share Ralph Nader's values? Some of them, but not all. I voted for Nader because I admire him as a person. He has unquestioned integrity (about which, see this interview with another of my heroes, Christopher Hitchens). He has principles. He is engaged in the affairs of the day. He chose not to use his impressive legal credentials (Harvard law degree) to amass wealth. He has been an indefatigable defender of the common person. When the history of the twentieth century is written, he will have his own chapter. If Nader runs for president in 2004, and I hope he does, I will cast my vote for him again. I hope lots of others join me. Use your vote the way you use your dollars: to express and vindicate your values. I value character.

I've heard it said many times, by welfare-state liberals, that conservatism and libertarianism are driven by greed. This is of course a calumny, and a fallacy to boot. It commits the genetic fallacy, which consists in dismissing a thing on the basis of its disreputable origin. (Retributivism, for example, is often dismissed on the ground that it is rooted in vengeance. For a discussion, see Joel Feinberg, "The Classic Debate." Publication details can be found by going to the post of a few days ago entitled "An Almost-Complete Joel Feinberg Bibliography.") Perhaps the conservative/libertarian response to the charge of greed should be conditional in nature: If conservatism and libertarianism are driven by greed, then welfare-state liberalism is driven by envy. This, while not a rebuttal, at least takes the wind out of the critic's sails.

You've probably noticed the austerity of my blog. This is not by design. So far I've paid nothing for the site (except allowing the advertisement at the top). I would love to upgrade and get various bells and whistles, but every time I try to do so, I get a message saying that orders are not being taken. I'll upgrade as soon as I can. I want a links section, a section for reader comments, an e-mail icon, a search engine, and other features. Here's an example of a full-featured blog.

Nobody asked for what I'm about to supply, but I don't care. The genius of blogging is that you can say anything you want for any or no reason. (Whether anyone reads it, of course, is another matter.) For at least a year now I've been compiling a list of books that shaped me. Why? I don't know. I'm forty-six years old, therefore half done living. (Yes, I'm an optimist.) I've been reading voraciously since early childhood—since my parents took my brother Glenn and me to the Lapeer County (Michigan) Library. During law school I was consumed by law, but I found time to sate my curiosity about other things, such as history, nature, philosophy, and sociobiology. Graduate school gave me a chance to delve deeper into philosophy, with which I fell in love as an undergraduate (despite majoring in political science). Once I earned tenure (in 1995), I began exploring. I read books and essays on whatever interested me. I've read feminism, biology, history, law, and economics, among other subjects. With that as prolegomenon, here are the ten books that made me the person I am, in the order in which I finished reading them (perhaps later I'll explain how they affected me):

28 December 1980: Barry Holstun Lopez, Of Wolves and Men (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978).

31 December 1981: Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations (New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1966).

2 January 1982: Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: Avon Books, 1975).

1 June 1985: Albert Camus, The Stranger, trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York: Vintage Books, 1954).

5 April 1986: Samuel Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism: A Philosophical Investigation of the Considerations Underlying Rival Moral Conceptions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982).

22 May 1986: David Hackett Fischer, Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).

30 March 1989: Ronald D. Milo, Immorality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).

9 June 1994: Richard Robinson, Definition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950).

20 December 1997: Paul W. Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).

8 July 1998: Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1995).

Needless to say, I highly recommend these books to everyone. Caveat: They may change your life!

I begin this post with a confession. I was a card-carrying member of the Libertarian Party in 1980. I fell in love with the party after discovering its literature in the foyer of the law building at Wayne State University. Although I had worked on the John Anderson for President campaign for several months, and even been an Anderson delegate at the 1980 Michigan Republican State Convention, I voted for the Libertarian candidate, Ed Clark. I had a "Clark [for] President" bumper sticker on my car and wore a green campaign pin (like this) on my lapel.

What attracted me to libertarianism was its commitment to individual liberty. The other parties seemed to me to be incoherent. The Republicans advocated liberty in the economic realm but paternalism and moralism in the social realm. The Democrats advocated liberty in the social realm but coercion in the economic realm (in the form of redistributive taxation). Libertarians advocated liberty in both realms. Clean, pure, simple. I was hooked.

But as I read my way through the libertarian literature (popular and academic), something struck me. Much of it was a celebration of wealth. Liberty wasn't viewed so much as an end in itself, as I viewed it, but as a means to wealth and status. A free and open economy allows an ambitious person to accumulate property far beyond his or her needs. I come from a working-class family, and I admit to having had a goal, for many years, of becoming wealthy. I once wrote in my journal that I would become a millionaire by the age of forty, instead of the usual thirty, because I wanted to complete my education first.

I laugh at these juvenile musings. I'm now an Epicurean. Wealth is at best a means to an end, the end being happiness. Wealth makes one self-sufficient. Self-sufficient people are happy. But as Epicurus knew, too much wealth (or rather, the pursuit of unnecessary wealth) is as likely to make one unhappy as happy. But I confess that I'm still drawn to libertarianism. Perhaps there needs to be a distinction made within the class of libertarians. I don't know what labels we might use, but we should distinguish between libertarians who view liberty as an end in itself and those who view it as a means to some further end. I'm a libertarian of the former type. I do not celebrate wealth; I do not make the accumulation of wealth my goal; I do not think more highly of the wealthy. If anything, I feel sorry for those for whom wealth is the goal. This is not an indictment of libertarians of the other type. We share a commitment to individual liberty. But we value it in different ways. That, I think, is a difference worth marking.

For Epicurus, the primary aim of moral philosophy is to describe the nature of happiness and to discover the best method for achieving it. He thus shares with other Greek moral philosophers a basic eudaimonist outlook. He believes as well that happiness has several essential requirements. To be happy, agents must be self-sufficient, immune to the vagaries of chance, and in possession of all the goods necessary for completely satisfying their natures. The best strategy for meeting these requirements, he argues, is to submit one's desires to careful scrutiny. Such examination will show that desires are of three sorts. Some, e.g., for food or shelter, are natural and necessary, while others, e.g., for sex or for specific types of food, are natural but not necessary. Others, like those for wealth or political power, are neither natural nor necessary and should be eliminated from our lives; they are inimical to happiness and threaten our self-sufficiency. Of our natural desires, necessary ones are easily met; attempting to satisfy unnecessary ones, however, may disturb our equanimity and we need to treat them with caution.

(Phillip Mitsis, "Epicurus [341-270 B.C.E.]," in Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2d ed., ed. Lawrence C. Becker and Charlotte B. Becker [New York and London: Routledge, 2001], 476-8, at 476 [italics in original])

This is Veterans Day (formerly known as Armistice Day), so I want to thank all those (including my father and stepfather) who defended the freedom I so prize, who answered the call to duty, who rose to the occasion. Some made the ultimate sacrifice so that I and many others could live comfortable, secure, free, happy lives. This is the greatest nation in the history of the world. That is not jingoism. It is truth. Even Noam Chomsky, who for several decades has been a severe critic of this nation's economic and foreign policies, admitted recently in a New York Times interview with Deborah Solomon that "this is the best country in the world." What a refreshing statement! It would be nice if other critics of American policy were as honest as Chomsky. Make your criticisms, to be sure, but have the decency to acknowledge the good while condemning the bad.

I've been blogging for six days. I must say, I enjoy it tremendously. As I'm fond of saying, anything worth doing is worth writing about. Traveling, teaching, training for a marathon, walking my canine companions, writing. Yes, even writing is worth writing about. Metawriting. The writing needn't be public, either. I kept a journal (the manly name for a diary) from November 1978 to March 1995, a period that included law school (at Wayne State University) and graduate school in philosophy (at The University of Arizona). It served many purposes. It was my sounding-board for ideas, my emotional outlet, my confidant, my friend. For almost five years I've been transcribing my handwritten journal to the computer in real time—twenty years after the fact.

Today, for example, I will transcribe the entry for 11 November 1983. I was in my first semester of graduate school (having just passed the Michigan Bar Examination), taking courses from Robert Harnish (Pragmatics), Holly Smith (Ethics), and Jules Coleman (Philosophy of Law). I was Jules's teaching assistant in Logic. Transcribing the journal is like reliving my life, which would be horrifying if I had had a miserable life; but I have had the opposite of a miserable life. I have had a joyous, active, variegated, fulfilled life. Come March 2015, I will be done transcribing the journal.

Which brings me to this blog, my newest literary outlet. I'm still learning the ropes. Each day I check to see what Brian Leiter and Andrew Sullivan have to say on their sites. They inspire me. And then I wonder about such things as what blogs represent. Are they the pinnacle of self-absorption, the last gasp of a narcissistic culture? The thought that this is so depresses me; but then I think an uplifting thought. Blogs are communities. I have always sought community. Not just any community, but a community of kindred spirits, of people who share my intellectual interests, of alter egos. When I wrote my journal entries late at night at my desk lo those many years, I imagined myself writing for the ages, for thinkers to come. Thomas Jefferson, an inveterate correspondent and journalist, the master of the familiar letter, was my idol. The man thought so much of his correspondence that he invented a device to make copies of his letters as he wrote them! Things are easier now, with computers and printers, but the idea—the motive—is the same.

I have been heartened by the reception of my blog by colleagues far and wide. I call them "colleagues," but I don't know them. Lawrence Solum graciously linked to my blog on his Legal Theory site. I have just now—here in this very act—reciprocated. Brian Leiter says he will link to my site when I have said something worth discussing. That will be my goal: to impress Brian. If and when I achieve it, I will move on to something greater. I hope readers of this blog find some of my posts interesting. I will do my best to enliven your days, indeed, to make your head hurt. With any luck, I'll get a comments section operational in the next few days. I blog; therefore I am. Blogito ergo sum.

If you're interested in reading any of the thirteen columns I've written for Tech Central Station, click here. Hey, what's a blog for if not self-promotion?

I only recently discovered Andrew Sullivan. I know, I know: Where have I been? The man is irrepressible, unpredictable, and inimitable—and he once linked to one of my Tech Central Station columns. His presence on the political scene gives me hope that our discourse may once again become civilized, or at least less barbaric. Here is his latest.

Men in groups make for competition; men drinking in groups make for trouble; men drinking in groups with cheap handguns in their pockets make for homicide, usually of an unpremeditated sort.

(David T. Courtwright, Violent Land: Single Men and Social Disorder from the Frontier to the Inner City [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996], 182c [photo caption])

Anyone with any philosophical training (or sensibility) has to be distressed by the low level of discourse concerning the war in Iraq. There is an almost obsessive focus on what actually motivated President Bush. I understand that we live in a democracy and that people are (and should be) concerned with the actions and motivations of their leaders. But shouldn't there be a parallel discussion of the justification of war that is independent of President Bush? Indeed, shouldn't there be a discussion of the justification of war that is independent of events in Iraq? The war in Iraq would not be irrelevant to this discussion, for it would serve to illustrate various principles of justified war. However, it would be the principles, not their illustration, that concern us.

Many readers of this blog (I do have some, don't I?) will be familiar with the Oxford-trained philosopher Jonathan Glover. There is no more sensitive and intelligent observer of world events, as readers of his recent book, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), well know. Glover is nobody's shill or lapdog. He thinks for himself, as each of us should. He cares about principle, not just practice. More than a quarter of a century ago, Glover published Causing Death and Saving Lives (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1977), in which he explored, as only a philosopher can, the topics of killing and letting die. The nineteenth of twenty chapters concerns war.

Glover, from his temporal vantage point, could not have foreseen the war in Iraq, but much of what he says in this book bears on that war. Let us examine some of it. First of all, Glover rejects both absolute and contingent pacifism. Absolute pacifism is the view that "it is never right to kill another person, however evil the consequences (including loss of life) of not doing so" (page 256). Contingent pacifism is the view that, while it is possible for wartime killing of the innocent to be justified, it is highly unlikely. Modern warfare, with its weapons of mass destruction, requires a heavy burden of justification, and this burden will only rarely (if ever) be carried. Also, there is the precedent effect. Here is Glover:

There is a further argument in favour of contingent pacifism which appeals to longer-term considerations than the horrors of a particular war. This argument appeals to the effects of breaching or of helping to establish a precedent. Since war is such a major evil, the argument goes, the establishing and maintaining of a tradition of repudiating it as a means of policy will have far more beneficial overall consequences than the most desirable outcome of any war. Every time we go to war, even in such a relatively clear-cut case as to defeat Hitler, we make a contribution to a tradition in which war is legitimate. But every time we refuse to continue politics by the 'other means' of war, we contribute to the establishment of the alternative tradition, which may be the most important thing in the world. (page 259)

Glover casts doubt on this argument from precedent in two ways. First, he denies that "the awfulness of war is always worse than that of the wrong side winning" (page 260). Consider World War II. "Anyone who reflects both on the horrors of the Second World War and on what the Nazis managed to do in what would otherwise have been only their first twelve years should be able to see how decent and rational people can take different views here" (page 260). In other words, contingent pacifism looks weaker than one may have supposed. Second, he notes that "the pursuit of a pacifist policy by some countries gives unlimited power over them to those non-pacifist countries who care to use it" (page 260). In a world in which there are malevolent people—this describes our world, unfortunately—contingent pacifism arguably makes things worse rather than better. It sounds good until you examine its implications.

Glover concludes his discussion of pacifism by saying that "while there is a very strong presumption against a war being justifiable (just as there is in the case of individual acts of murder), particular cases have to be considered on their merits" (page 261). So unless one is an absolute pacifist, one must examine the war in Iraq on its merits. Does it satisfy the requirements for a justified war? There is no alternative but to think things through for oneself, drawing upon the facts as we know them.

Following a digression on nuclear war, which raises special questions, Glover returns to the topic of the justification of conventional war. He begins by emphasizing that there is a strong presumption against war. Indeed, late in the chapter he says that "it is hard to believe that more than an insignificant number of all the wars in history have been justified" (page 284). Presumptions, by their nature, can be rebutted. Strong presumptions require strong rebuttals. Not going to war is the default position, morally speaking. Those who advocate war must therefore bear the burden of persuasion. It may not be inapt to say that the proponent of war must "prove" the justification of war "beyond a reasonable doubt."

Glover, as we saw, suggests that World War II was justified. It was the lesser of two evils, the greater evil being Nazism. One problem with justifying war is that not all the consequences of war can be foreseen. But precision is not necessary. We must do the best we can with the information we have available. "[W]ho in 1939 could predict how long the war would last?" Glover asks. "On the one hand, who could predict that the war would include the use of nuclear weapons? On the other hand, who in 1939 could predict the full results of Nazism?" (page 268; italics in original).

The applicability of these questions to the war in Iraq should be obvious. It is beside the point that no weapons of mass destruction have been discovered in Iraq to this point. Whether the war was justified depends on what was known, or what policymakers had reason to believe, at the time war commenced. If there was good reason to believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, their not turning up later does not undermine the decision to go to war on that basis. If there was not good reason to believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, their turning up later does not bolster the decision to go to war.

I have heard it said many times in the debate leading up to the war in Iraq, as well as many times afterward, that the United States must not be the aggressor. This suggests the principle that all and only defensive wars are justified. But Glover, who is hardly a warmonger, rejects such a principle:

There seems no reason in principle why it should always be wrong to start a war. If other governments had foreseen what the Nazis would do, they would probably have been right to invade Germany to remove Hitler in the early 1930s, or to wipe out all the leading Nazis by a bombing raid on one of the Nazi rallies at Nuremberg. Either of these courses of action would have avoided the far worse calamities that actually took place. (page 269)

Glover goes on to question the other half of the principle as well: namely, that all defensive wars are justified. "If there is no prospect of winning, as in Czechoslovakia in 1968, a defensive war is only pointless bloodshed. And, even if there is prospect of winning, the cost may be too great" (page 269).

I discuss Glover at length not because he is a moral authority on war (there are no moral authorities, in my view), not because he supported the war in Iraq (I do not know), or even because I agree with him in principle. I discuss him—I quote him at length—because he shows how a thoughtful, conscientious person can think through issues of war and peace. I chose Glover for another reason, too. He appreciates the horror of war. He believes that only in very special circumstances is war justified. He assigns a heavy burden to those who would persuade us that a particular is justified. That Glover rejects both absolute and contingent pacifism; that Glover denies that wars of aggression are always unjustified; that Glover believes that sometimes war is the lesser of two evils, and therefore the right thing to do, all things considered, should give us pause. If I could snap my fingers and get everyone to read Glover, it would immediately elevate the level of discourse. Wouldn't that be something?

According to Simon Blackburn, a proof, informally speaking, is "a procedure that brings conviction. More formally, a deductively valid argument starting from true premises, that yields the conclusion" (The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994], 306). Here, without further ado, is a proof of my divinity:

1. A conditional statement is false if and only if its antecedent is true and its consequent is false.

2. Z = If Z is true, then Keith is God. (That is, let "Z" be the statement "If Z is true, then Keith is God.")

3. Z is a conditional statement.

Therefore,

4. If Z is true, then either (a) "Z is true" is true and "Keith is God" is true, (b) "Z is true" is false and "Keith is God" is true, or (c) "Z is true" is false and "Keith is God" is false (from 1, 2, and 3).

5. It is not the case that (if Z is true, then "Z is true" is false and "Keith is God" is true).

6. It is not the case that (if Z is true, then "Z is true" is false and "Keith is God" is false).

Therefore,

7. If Z is true, then "Z is true" is true and "Keith is God" is true (from 4, 5, and 6, Impl, Assoc, Com, Impl, DeM, DN, Com, Simp, Impl, DeM, DN, Com, Simp, Conj, DeM, DS, Impl).

Therefore,

8. If Z is true, then "Keith is God" is true (from 7, Impl, Dist, Com, Simp, Impl).

Therefore,

9. If Z is false, then "Z is true" is true and "Keith is God" is false (from 1, 2, and 3).

Therefore,

10. If Z is false, then "Z is true" is true (from 9, Impl, Dist, Simp, Impl).

Therefore,

11. If Z is false, then Z is true (from 10).

Therefore,

12. Z is true (from 11, Impl, DN, Taut).

Therefore,

13. "Keith is God" is true (from 8 and 12, MP).

Therefore,

14. Keith is God (from 13). Q.E.D.

As far as I know, this argument originated with Jonathan Kandell, who, at the time (April 1987), was a graduate student in philosophy at The University of Arizona. My contribution was to reconstruct and formalize his argument.

On the assumption that you reject the conclusion (proposition 14) and accept the validity of the argument, which premise—1, 2, 3, 5, or 6—is false? Premise 2 is a stipulation; it simply tells us what "Z" represents. Premises 3, 5, and 6 seem beyond question. That leaves premise 1, which, horror of horrors, every logic textbook sets forth as a truth. (See, for example, Irving M. Copi and Carl Cohen, Introduction to Logic, 11th ed. [Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002], 316.) So either the textbooks are wrong or—gasp!—Keith is God. But surely the textbooks aren't wrong; therefore, Keith is God.

Here's a meta-argument with the same conclusion:

1. Either Keith is God or the argument is invalid or at least one of the premises is false.

2. The argument is valid (that is, it's not the case that the argument is invalid).

3. All of the premises are true (that is, it's not the case that at least one of the premises is false).

Therefore,

4. Keith is God (from 1, 2, and 3).

This meta-argument is valid and all of its premises are true; therefore, its conclusion is true; therefore, Keith is God. We keep coming back to the same profound (and, I must admit, profoundly satisfying) truth. Incidentally, since Keith is God and Keith exists, God exists. This result will please theists, who have long sought a proof of God's existence.

Anyone who reads The New York Times on a regular basis knows that at least three of its columnists—Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, and Bob Herbert—are left of center on the political spectrum. I'm inclined to say "far left," but let's just leave it at "left" so I will not be accused of exaggerating. Their criticisms of the Bush administration are frequent, vociferous, and often, in my opinion, intellectually dishonest. Which raises the question: What are they trying to accomplish? I assume they would like to displace the Bush administration, since they believe its policies (domestic, foreign, or both) are wrongheaded.

Is there any chance that the Left's shrill rhetoric will move a supporter of President Bush to vote against him? (That's a rhetorical question.) If anything, the Left's rhetoric will steel the resolve of the Right. But that leaves two audiences: their fellow leftists and those in the center. Trying to persuade their fellow leftists that the Bush administration should be replaced is a case of preaching to the choir. Of course, preaching to the choir is sometimes useful. The choir may need motivating. Krugman et al. may be trying to rile the Left into donating money, organizing, and turning out the vote a year from now.

The real audience for anyone who wishes to secure and retain political power at the national level is the center: the so-called moderates. Whoever wins the Middle wins the 2004 presidential election. I think Republicans are overjoyed at the venom being spat at the president by the likes of Krugman, Dowd, and Herbert (not to mention would-be presidents Howard Dean, John Kerry, and Richard Gephardt). It is as likely to turn off a moderate as to persuade him or her. Those of us who support the war in Iraq (on humanitarian grounds, for example) and who believe that small government is good government hope that the Left continues its intemperate assault on the Bush administration. In poll after poll, Americans say they despise negative campaigning. I suspect they despise virulent attacks by columnists (calumnists) just as much, in which case, keep it up, Krugman et al.

For some people, the United States is rotten to the core. Read these letters. Perhaps the writers would be happier in some other country.

I am sure that if we had better moral philosophy, we should have less public perplexity and confusion about moral questions. But I am not at all hopeful that this will actually happen; there are too many bad moral philosophers throwing dust in our eyes, and all too few good ones clarifying the issues.

(R. M. Hare, Sorting Out Ethics [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997], 124)

Suppose I adopt the liberal view that paternalistic legislation is unjustified. I believe, let us assume, that it is always a good reason to prohibit and punish actions that they threaten harm to others (in other words, I endorse the harm principle), but that it is never a good reason to prohibit and punish actions that they threaten harm to the actor (in other words, I reject legal paternalism). My view, in a nutshell, is that the state has no business interfering in people's purely self-regarding activity. People have a legal right to harm themselves, to be fools, to be stupid (by my standards).

Now suppose a law is introduced in my jurisdiction requiring motorcyclists to wear safety helmets. Can I, qua liberal, support such a law? Before answering this question, stop and think. Should I care about the motives of those who introduced the legislation? Or should I ignore their motives and ask whether my own principles justify it? Two things complicate the situation. First, there can be more than one motive for a given action. I may save a drowning friend not just because I care about the friend, but because I hope for reward. Two motives, one action. Since legislation is a joint product, there can be as many motives for it as there are legislators.

Second, there can be more than one justification for a given action. Here is philosopher Gerald Dworkin:

Almost any piece of legislation is justified by several different reasons, and even if historically a piece of legislation can be shown to have been introduced for purely paternalistic motives, it may be that advocates of the legislation with an anti-paternalistic outlook can find sufficient reasons justifying the legislation without appealing to the reasons that were originally adduced to support it. (Gerald Dworkin, "Paternalism," chap. 2 in Paternalism, ed. Rolf Sartorius [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983 (essay first published in 1972)], 19-34, at 20)

Why should I, a liberal, care what motivated the legislation? Shouldn't I ask whether it can be justified by principles that I endorse? Shouldn't I ask, specifically, whether the legislation is justified by the harm principle? Suppose riding a motorcycle without a safety helmet threatens harm both to the actor and to others. Then it finds support in both the harm principle and legal paternalism. That I reject legal paternalism doesn't mean that I can't or shouldn't support the legislation. Indeed, I should support it! I should support it because the harm principle, which I endorse, endorses it. It is neither here nor there, to me, that some other principle, which I reject, also endorses it.

Let us apply these ideas and distinctions to the war in Iraq. I hear it said ad nauseam (by, for example, Chris Matthews of MSNBC's Hardball) that the "real reason" President Bush went to war in Iraq is such-and-such (that he wanted control over Iraqi oil [perhaps to help his "oil buddies"], that he had a personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein, that he wanted to divert attention from a faltering economy, that he sought greater influence in the Middle East, that he had imperialist ambitions, that he wanted to campaign for reelection in 2004 as a victorious commander-in-chief, and so forth).

What does this mean: "real reason"? Matthews and other critics seem obsessed with President Bush's motives in going to war in Iraq. Shouldn't they be concerned with the war's justification? I assume that Matthews and other war critics believe that some (but not all) wars are justified. They must, therefore, have a principle that distinguishes justified from unjustified wars. Why don't they forget about President Bush's motives or stated justifications and ask whether the war is justified by their own principles? I have yet to hear Matthews address this question. To this day, having watched his program for many months, I have no idea what he would consider a justification for war. If he is a pacifist, he should say so.

Let me give an example. Suppose I believe in humanitarian intervention (as liberals once did). I believe, say, that the United States should intervene in other countries to prevent—and perhaps to punish—atrocities (understood as widespread, systematic human-rights violations). Suppose I reject intervention on other grounds, such as the acquisition of territory or resources. Now suppose I'm convinced that President Bush's motive in going to war in Iraq was the latter rather than the former. Should it matter to me? No. What I should say is that the war is justified (by my own principles). It is justified not because of the president's stated reasons for going to war, which I reject, but in spite of them. I will think, and say, that the president did the right thing for the wrong reason.

The debate about the war in Iraq is frustrating to philosophers such as me because it focuses on motives rather than on justifications. It is off track. I am not saying that if we focused on justifications there would be agreement. Not at all. There will almost surely be disagreement, since there are different (contending) principles of justified war. But at least we would be arguing about the right thing: principles. Each of us should ask the following question: Given my principles of justified war, does the war in Iraq pass muster? In answering this question, one need make no reference to either President Bush's principles or his motives. Those are irrelevant considerations. Focusing on the president is a distraction, and ultimately an evasion of responsibility to think things through for oneself.

[T]here is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some Philosophers have not maintained for Truth.

(Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, ed. Philip Pinkus [New York: The Odyssey Press, 1968], pt. III, chap. VI, p. 180 [first published in 1726])

For better or for worse, we have a strict-liability political system. Strict liability in tort (the law of civil wrongs) is liability without fault. It is the exception rather than the rule. Most torts, such as negligence and battery, require evidence of fault on the part of the defendant. Some—the so-called strict-liability torts—do not. In the political realm, strict liability manifests itself in holding the president of the United States responsible for whatever happens on his or her watch. If the economy goes well, the president gets credit. If the economy goes poorly, the president gets blame.

Assigning responsibility independently of fault is arguably unfair, but it's the system we have. What would clearly be unfair is holding the president responsible for what goes poorly in the economy but not for what goes well. I fear that this is about to happen. Critics of President Bush, such as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, have been all over him about the economy, which has been in a tailspin almost from election day. Now that the economy is on the upswing, with good days ahead, will Krugman and his ilk apply the same strict standard? Will they give President Bush credit for reduced unemployment, increased growth, and higher stock prices? It is a sign of bad faith (or worse: hatred) to change standards in the middle of the game. Let's see what happens.

Joel Feinberg (born 1926) is a towering figure in social philosophy, which comprises philosophy of law, moral philosophy, and political philosophy. His tetralogy, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984-1988), is a contemporary classic. In it, he makes the case for a liberal position on the moral limits of the criminal law. Feinberg is now Regents Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Law at The University of Arizona. For an almost-complete bibliography of Feinberg's work, click here. Feel free to link to the page. It should be up for a long time, since it's on my university's website. Feinberg, by the way, was my teacher and dissertation director in the 1980s. Many of his students, such as Jules L. Coleman of the Yale Law School (another of my teachers), are now themselves prominent philosophers.

I am sick to death of the charge that President Bush lied to the American people by "linking" the war in Iraq to the horrific mass murders of 9-11. Perhaps I haven't been paying adequate attention, but I don't recall either President Bush or any cabinet officer making such a linkage. Has 9-11 been mentioned in the same speech as Iraq? Of course, but that's not the same as saying that the war in Iraq was a response to the former.

It might be said that President Bush didn't do enough to disabuse people of their belief in a linkage. Come on! Is it the president's responsibility to correct prevailing falsehoods? People are going to believe what they want to believe. Lots of people read horoscopes every day, and I'm not sure it's just for entertainment. Lots of people believe in UFOs. Lots of people think there was a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. Hell, lots of people (including the president) believe in the existence of a disembodied person with superhuman powers: a person who can do anything (short of violate the laws of logic), who knows everything, who is everywhere and always, who is perfectly good, and who loves us like a parent. I don't know what's worse: saying that Iraq was behind the 9-11 attacks or saying that President Bush said that Iraq was behind the 9-11 attacks. There is no more evidence for the latter proposition than there is for the former. If anything, there's less.

[A]longside the factual questions that have to be answered before we can make any progress with a moral problem, there has to be put another class of question: questions about the meanings of words. I have given the theoretical reason for this, namely that all argument depends on logic, and what is or is not logically valid depends on what words mean. But I could equally well have quoted empirical evidence. If one looks at almost any moral argument, for example those conducted in the correspondence columns of the newspapers, one cannot help noticing, interspersed among the factual arguments that are brought forward, frequent instances where the disputants are at cross-purposes owing to ambiguities in the use of words. One of them, it may be, thinks that some fact which he has established proves some moral conclusion; his opponent does not think it proves anything of the kind. This may be a sign merely that they were understanding words in different senses.

So in trying to solve a moral problem we have to get the facts straight, and we have to be clear about the meanings of the words we are using, including the moral words. Only when we have done that will it be clear whether there are other questions that have to be answered which do not fall into either of these two classes. In particular, only then will it be clear whether there is a residual class of ultimate questions of value which are neither questions of fact nor questions about the meanings of words, and on which we can go on disagreeing even when we have agreed about the facts and about the meanings of the words we are using.

So, really, investigation of the meanings of the moral words plays a key part in the study of moral problems. It is only by undertaking it that we shall understand what it is that we are arguing about in a moral argument. And it is only by undertaking it that we shall find out what steps in the argument, if any, are valid. Thus moral philosophy—the logical study of the language of morals—has an indispensable part to play in practical moral arguments. But it is also of great importance to establish, as only moral philosophy can do, whether any moral arguments are cogent—whether, that is to say, moral judgements are the sort of things one can argue about at all. And this too can only be done by studying the moral words and their logical properties.

All this is so clearly true that it really is surprising that many writers have attacked recent moral philosophers for discussing the moral words, as if they ought to have been discussing something else. Certainly Socrates started the subject off by insisting on a study of the moral words, as I have already mentioned. Aristotle says of him that he was 'busy himself with moral questions . . . and directing the mind for the first time to definitions' (Met. 987bI ff.).

We might feel inclined to retort to those who attack moral philosophy in this way, that they dislike our studying the moral words and their meanings because they do not want us to understand what we are saying when we engage in moral argument—that they think that, in moral matters, there is safety in obscurity. Undoubtedly there are a lot of people going around in this area who positively prefer obscurity to clarity. But to make this a general accusation would be unfair. There are others who attack modern moral philosophy for a more respectable reason—though not an entirely cogent one. They think, rightly, that there are important moral questions of substance that we have to answer, and that moral philosophers ought to be helping us to answer them. With this we can agree. But then they go on to say that therefore moral philosophers ought to go straight on to the questions of substance, and not get side-tracked into questions about meaning. Their mistake is not to see that the moral philosopher's distinctive contribution to the discussion of the substantive moral questions is the investigation of the words and concepts, and thus the logic, that are being employed. If they ask the moral philosopher to leave this conceptual discussion and get on to the substantial issues, they are asking him to stop being a moral philosopher. But I believe that the conceptual discussion can contribute to the practical discussion, and that I have show this in my writings on practical issues. I shall try to placate these opponents of modern moral philosophy by discussing the theoretical issues always in relation to their bearing on practical questions. I hope that we shall end up seeing that theory is relevant to practice.

(R. M. Hare, Sorting Out Ethics [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997], 38-40 [italics and ellipsis in original])

Many universities across the country (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Wayne State University, and Washington University in St Louis, to name just three) have requested permission to link to or use my web page entitled "Advice for Prospective Law Students." This is flattering. If you're thinking about a career in law, click here.

I've yet to upgrade my blog, which will allow me to use various tools (such as a visitor counter and a comments section). In the meantime, those who wish to contact me may do so through my university website. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the mailbox icon.

Peter Singer, an Oxford-trained philosopher, is the author of Animal Liberation (1975; 2d ed., 1990), which has been called "the bible of the animal-liberation movement." Singer's book was based on an essay ("All Animals Are Equal") that he published in 1974. Here is my reconstruction of Singer's argument (thanks to Singer for constructive comments on the original version):

1. An act is right only if it is the act that would be performed by an agent who (a) takes all relevant interests into account and (b) treats equal interests equally. (In other words, to act rightly, one must neither disregard nor discount the interests of those affected by the act.)

2. Certain acts, such as eating the flesh of an animal and experimenting on an animal, would not be performed by an agent who both (a) takes an animal's interests into account and (b) treats the animal's equal interests equally. (In other words, certain acts either disregard or discount the interests of animals.)

Therefore,

3. Certain acts, such as eating the flesh of an animal and experimenting on an animal, are not right (from 1 and 2).

Notes on premise 1: This premise states a necessary condition (two necessary conditions, actually) of rightness, not a sufficient condition. In other words, it states two ways that an act can fail to be right. There may be other ways for an act to fail to be right. Note that the premise makes no mention of animals. It is general in nature, not specific to a particular issue. It is a principle. Singer calls it "the principle of equality" or "the principle of equal consideration of interests."

Notes on premise 2: (a) The word "certain" is important. Singer does not categorically rule out either the eating of animal flesh or the use of animals in experiments. It may be that an animal's interests are outweighed by the combined interests of others. (Note that a human's interests can be outweighed in the same way.) Keep in mind that Singer is a utilitarian. There is no type of action—not a lie, not a broken promise, not a theft, not even a killing of an innocent person—that a utilitarian rules out categorically. An act is right or wrong only because of its consequences, and in a particular case killing and eating an animal or experimenting on an animal may have the best consequences, all things considered. But in most cases, probably the overwhelming majority of cases, the animal's interest in not being made to suffer outweighs the interests on the other side of the scale (such as one's taste for animal flesh). Thus, Singer's argument rules out most cases of meat-eating and many or most experiments, but not all. (b) If it be objected that animals lack interests, Singer has a response. Any being that is sentient (i.e., capable of suffering) has an interest in not suffering. This is because suffering is intrinsically bad (i.e., bad in and of itself, even if it doesn't lead to any other bad things). This is not to say that animals lack other interests, only that they have this interest. According to premise 1, therefore, an animal's interest in not suffering must be taken into account and given the same weight as the like interest of a human. To disregard or discount an animal's suffering, simply because the suffering is animal suffering, is to exhibit speciesism, which is analogous to (and therefore just as wrong as) racism and sexism.

Notes on the conclusion (3): Singer is trying to persuade his readers (you, for example) to accept 3—and to act on it. To do this, he appeals to propositions 1 and 2, which he assumes all or most of his readers accept. He is trying to show you that your beliefs (or principles) commit you to changing the way you view, and treat, animals. He is trying to show you that if you eat meat or support unnecessary experimentation on animals, you have an inconsistent (and therefore an incoherent) set of beliefs. (The assumption is that people want to have coherent beliefs—beliefs that can all be true and that mutually support one another.) The argument appears to be valid, so everyone (including Singer) must do one of the following: (a) reject 1; (b) reject 2; or (c) accept 3. Singer accepts 3. What do you do? If you accept 3, are you prepared to live in accordance with it, as Singer does? If not, why not? Isn't it irrational to believe that an act is not right but do it anyway? Do you want to have a coherent (integrated) life, a life in which you have coherent beliefs, believe what you say, mean what you say, feel what you express, live up to your principles, and practice what you preach? The alternative is personal disintegration.

Smith & Wollensky, a North Dallas eatery, has been publishing a third-of-a-page advertisement in The Dallas Morning News. I've seen the ad two or three times now, including in today's Sports Section. The restaurant's slogan, "Horrifying Vegetarians Since 1977," appears prominently in the ad (above a life-size steak knife). I believe this slogan is used by other restaurants across the country, but that doesn't make it any more acceptable. It is unacceptable. Where does a restaurant get off belittling vegetarians? There are, of course, different grounds for vegetarianism. Some people forbear from eating meat on prudential grounds: They believe it to be unhealthy. But others forbear on moral grounds: because they believe meat-eating to be wrong. It is one thing to reject the proposition that meat-eating is wrong; this is a respectable position taken by many intelligent, well-meaning people (including philosophers). But how low is it to belittle those who conscientiously choose vegetarianism as a way of life? The slogan encourages meat-eaters to look down on vegetarians, when in fact they should look up to them.

In some quarters, sadly, moral seriousness is seen as naivete. People with moral scruples are viewed as uncool, dorky, laughable, perhaps even as ascetic or religiously dogmatic. Don't vegetarians realize that the vast majority of people enjoy the taste of animal flesh? Don't they know that humans have been eating meat for as long as there have been humans? Do vegetarians really believe that their choice of a meatless diet will make a difference? Will a lifetime of vegetarianism save even one cow?

But these questions presuppose that the point of living a moral life is to make a large-scale difference. It is not. None of us controls anything but his or her own behavior. The point of living a moral life is to achieve a kind of integrity in which one not only has moral principles (one can always avoid hypocrisy by refusing to stand for or espouse anything), but strives mightily to live up to them. An integrated person—a whole person rather than a shard of a person—tries to integrate his or her beliefs, principles, feelings, values, attitudes, and actions. An integrated person avoids hypocrisy (not practicing what one preaches), insincerity (not believing what one says), and inauthenticity (not feeling the feelings one expresses).

I'm not making a case, here, for vegetarianism. Others have done so far better than I can, or ever will. I'm making a case for respecting, even admiring, vegetarians. They are trying to live a life of integrity and principle. They want the world to be better, not worse, as a result of their existence. They care about something besides social status and gustatory pleasure. Not consuming animal flesh is a way of showing respect for the animals, many of whom were treated like machines while they lived. It is a way of saying, "Not through me." It is a way of standing up for something.

Most readers of this blog know about Peter Singer's important work in animal ethics. Animal Liberation, now in its second edition, is a classic. Singer made discussion of the moral status of animals respectable and serious (not to mention lucrative, in the sense that one can make it an academic specialty). Here are two other worthwhile items: (1) David DeGrazia, Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); (2) Mylan Engel, Jr., "The Immorality of Eating Meat," in The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature, ed. Louis P. Pojman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 856-90. Anyone who wants a PDF version of the second of these items, which I consider the best essay ever written about vegetarianism, should write to me. I will be happy to e-mail it.

Brian Leiter has an interesting (but I think wrongheaded) discussion of analytic philosophy on his blog. I think he confuses a particular program or conception of analytic philosophy with analytic philosophy itself. I'm an analytic philosopher. This means that, unlike certain other philosophers, I care about clarifying (rather than obscuring) concepts, arguments, and methods. Philosophy is a second-order discipline, a discipline about disciplines (as well as practices, professions, and institutions). Philosophy is not science. Nor is it continuous with science. It occupies a different logical order from science. Analytic philosophers, to use John Locke's quaint terms, are Under-Labourers, not Master Builders.

I, for one, am not committed to the idea that there are necessary and sufficient conditions for every concept. Some concepts succumb to this type of treatment; some don't. The analytic philosopher examines the concept in question to see how it behaves. He or she comes to the task with no preconceptions or assumptions about what will be discovered. For Leiter to say (or imply) that analytic philosophy is "defunct" is to mischaracterize the field and, I am afraid, marginalize those of us who consider ourselves analytic philosophers but do not buy into particular (defunct?) research programs.

For those who wish to understand analytic philosophy, read the following essay by one of its ablest practitioners: Alan R. White, "Conceptual Analysis," chap. 5 in The Owl of Minerva: Philosophers on Philosophy, ed. Charles J. Bontempo and S. Jack Odell (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1975), 103-17. Some of the material in this essay appears in Alan R. White, Grounds of Liability: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).

Today's New York Times column by Paul Krugman shows why Democrats are becoming a permanent minority party in the United States. They project their own values, emotions (mainly fear), insecurities, and lack of principle onto others. Krugman sets out to explain why Southern whites support President Bush and the Republicans. His answer is twofold: They're racist and they're stupid. He doesn't come out and say they're stupid. Not even Democrats are that stupid. He implies it by saying that by voting Republican, they're voting against their economic interests.

But why must one vote one's economic interests? Can't one vote on the basis of principle rather than prudence, on the basis of what's right rather than what is likely to redound to one's benefit? By implying that Southerners vote only their selfish interest, he calls their intelligence and integrity (not to mention their honor) into question. What Krugman doesn't grasp is that many white Southerners (that's the group he's trying to explain) reject the welfare state. On principle. They despise the "vote for me and I'll give you goodies" mentality represented by the Democrat party. Southern whites value independent thought, self-sufficiency, and personal responsibility. Honor and pride still mean something to them. I wonder sometimes whether liberals understand these concepts. Their policy prescriptions suggest that they don't. I honestly hope that Krugman and his fellow lefties keep thinking as they do of Southern whites. It will speed the Democrat rush to oblivion.

I have a question for political philosophers. How much of John Rawls's popularity (in academia, for he's unknown outside of it) derives from the fact that he provided an intellectual focus for so many people? His work, culminating in A Theory of Justice, supplied a topic (justice), a discourse ("original position," "veil of ignorance," "lexical priority," &c), a method (reflective equilibrium), and an extended argument for substantive principles. Sometimes originality consists simply in focusing lots of people on the same problem or issue. Any thoughts? I realize I don't have a comments section yet (I'm working on it!), but perhaps readers can answer the question on their own sites. By the way, I'm not denigrating Rawls by querying his popularity (although I think he's overrated; perhaps the subject of another post). I'm trying to disentangle the bases of his popularity.

A student in today's Philosophy of Law class asked a strange question, one that I've been thinking about ever since. I had quoted from an essay by Brian Leiter entitled "Why Is It So Easy to Get Tenure in Law Schools?" Leiter says that some of the interdisciplinary work being done by law professors is "incompetent," since they have no credentials in the field(s) outside law. (Some law professors have advanced degrees in other fields. He is not talking about them.) For example, law professor Toni Massaro has written an essay on shaming sanctions in the criminal law in which she reports, summarizes, analyzes, and applies findings from psychology and anthropology. (This is my example, not Leiter's.)

The student in question asked whether it was "elitist" to hold this view. I was stunned by the question, but recovered to ask him what he would do if he were hiring a homebuilder. Wouldn't he look for signs of expertise, or at least competence, such as being licensed by the local housing authority? Would it be elitism to prefer a master builder to a fly-by-night homebuilder? Presumably not. Why is it any different for scholars? Toni Massaro may be a superb amateur psychologist (or anthropologist), but if I'm not expert in either field, I can't rely on her. I want someone who's been trained in a high-quality psychology or anthropology program, someone with a demonstrated mastery of the field. The letters "Ph.D." signify, even if they do not guarantee, expertise. Doctoral degrees aren't handed out to just anyone.

The student viewed this as elitism, and it was clear from the context that he used the term pejoratively. Which makes me wonder: How did we come to view expertise, or its pursuit, as elitism? Whatever became of excellence? Is it a transgression of the prevailing egalitarian ethos to want to excel at something or to believe that there are qualitative differences among people? Is it politically incorrect to say that X is expert in some realm but that Y is not? Does saying as much hurt Y's self-esteem? Are we forbidden to evaluate people in terms of their abilities, training, or competence?

It's all very disconcerting. Perhaps I've become an aristocrat in my old age (I'm forty-six), but I would have thought that excellence is a concept to be preserved. It loomed large in the Greek mind and should loom large in ours. Obviously, excellence isn't the only important good, and its pursuit must therefore be constrained. Nobody would suggest, for example, that if chattel slavery were an effective means to excellence, it would thereby be justified. But excellence, properly understood, is neither incompatible with democracy nor an objectionable form of elitism. If we come to think—like the student—that it is either of these things, we shall surely lose the concept, and that would be a tragic loss.

Some Democrats object to the adjectival use of "Democrat," as in "Democrat party." They think it is a devious Republican attempt (probably instigated by the archsemanticist and antichrist Newt Gingrich) to disparage the party. (Lexicographer Bryan A. Garner calls such behavior "semantic jockeying." See A Dictionary of Modern American Usage [New York: Oxford University Press, 1998], 196.) This is absurd. There are ample linguistic grounds for using "Democrat" rather than "Democratic" as the adjective. We say that Chris is a Democrat and Leslie a Republican. From these we get "Democrat party" and "Republican party." We don't refer to the "Republicanist" or "Republicanite" party, so why should we refer to the "Democratic" party?

That Republicans attend to this matter doesn't show that they're devious; it shows that they're responsible users of the language and don't want their opponents to have unearned advantages. If anything, it's the Democrats who are devious. By insisting on "Democratic," they appear to be exploiting the favorable connotations of "democratic," which stands opposed to "aristocratic," "autocratic," and "plutocratic," none of which, these days, anyone wants to be. If Democrats are democratic, then Republicans must be—gasp!—aristocratic, autocratic, or plutocratic. This case of Democrat word play is despicable—and arguably, by virtue of its subliminality, undemocratic.

Here are some things that are overrated:

soccer
the telephone
youth
alcohol
Eric Clapton
Bruce Springsteen
money
opera

Here are some things that are underrated:

guns
naps
rice (all kinds)
David Lee Roth
Jif peanut butter (crunchy or creamy)
Texas landscapes
books
Planet of the Apes

I would invite you to submit your own lists, but I haven't figured out how to allow comments. Perhaps one day soon. . . .

I saw a disturbing but thought-provoking billboard on the way home from my allergist's office this afternoon. By the time I made out the words, I was past the billboard, so I didn't catch the product being sold. It appeared to be a sandwich. Here's what it said: "Moderation is the invention of small minds." Moderation, of course—also known as temperance—is one of the cardinal virtues of Greek antiquity. (The others are courage, justice, and wisdom.) A moderate person avoids both excesses and deficiencies. He or she finds the happy medium or golden mean between extremes. It should be obvious why this is a virtue, so I won't bother explaining or defending it. What disturbs me is the suggestion that moderation is to be dismissed or scoffed at. Small minds? Did Plato, a proponent of moderation, have a small mind? Did Aristotle?

I love my country and its people, but one aspect of American life that I have never understood is its emphasis on bigness. "Big is better," one hears. I'm sorry, but bigness is not always better. Sometimes small is better. Sometimes big is bad. I realize that advertisers have an incentive to increase consumption of their goods and services, but the rest of us need not and should not fall for it. It's a trick! Moderation in all things is the recipe for happiness, health, and overall well-being. Do I practice what I preach? I think I do, but you'll have to be the judge.

I just got home from teaching. It's wonderfully dry and cool. We're doing proofs in Logic and punishment in Philosophy of Law. I love teaching both subjects. They go well together, in fact, since I punish my students for messing up the proofs. Just kidding. When I got home and fired up the computer, I found lots of spam. You know, unwanted, unsolicited commercial e-mail. (That's my definition of "spam.") I've been reading a lot about spam and about what may be done about it. There seem to be two approaches, one technological and the other legal. As a libertarian, I resist the legal solution. (For a similar view, see this.) Who is being harmed by spam? Offended and annoyed perhaps, but harmed? It would be nice if someone developed a technological solution of the problem, one that would allow people to allow or disallow this or that type of e-mail. Voluntary solutions are good. We should have a strong preference for them.

It occurred to me as I deleted the dozen or so spams (is that the plural?) that it wasn't so bad. Sure, some of it is offensive, but I'm not easily offended. I'm more likely to be amused than offended by an advertisement for penis-enlargement devices/techniques. One thing I have not seen or heard advocated is attacking the problem at the demand end (rather than the supply end). If someone, somewhere, weren't buying penis-enlargement devices/techniques, there would be no profit (and therefore no point) in advertising them. Who is buying these things? I'm not advocating that the act of buying (rather than selling) be illegal. I just said that I don't like that approach. But what about morality? Moral sanctions include such things as ostracism and condemnation. If a friend or a family member purchased something from a spammer, I would condemn it. "Don't you realize that you sent a message to the spammer to keep spamming?" I would ask. Let's all refuse, on principle, to buy any good or service that is advertised through spam. And let's enforce the ban informally, through ostracism and condemnation (with maybe a little humiliation thrown in for good measure). That would shut spammers down in an instant. I know; I'm dreaming. But dammit, it's a nice dream!

Since early June of this year, I have published several columns about the war in Iraq on Tech Central Station. I have had a great deal of feedback, both on-site and in the form of e-mail. Much of the feedback is favorable to me, which is gratifying, but some of it is unfavorable. A proper subset of the unfavorable feedback is downright nasty. I want to focus on something that the nastier writers keep saying. Over and over again they say that President Bush lied. He lied about the yellowcake in his State of the Union address, they say. He lied about this, that, and the other thing. The concept of lying, as I argued in a recent TCS column, has gotten inflated beyond recognition. People fling "lied" around when they mean misspoke, misrepresented, exaggerated, or played fast and loose with the truth. This is unfortunate. I think it would serve all of us if we deflated the concept. But I've already made that case. What I want to do now is assume that President Bush's critics are correct. Let us assume, to make the discussion concrete, that President Bush lied about the yellowcake. Let us assume that he uttered a false statement, believing it to be false, intending thereby to deceive the American people into thinking that they faced an imminent threat from Iraq. His plan, let us suppose, was to mobilize support for the war. What follows from this assumption? Does it follow that the war was unjustified? For that is what the critics imply. (Some come right out and say it.)

It does not follow from the assumption that President Bush lied about the yellowcake that the war was unjustified. First of all, the lie might have been harmless. What I mean by this is that nobody may have relied on it. For someone to have been harmed by the lie, he or she would have to have opposed the war but for the lie and supported the war as a result of it. How many people are in this category? I doubt that the critics themselves are in it. They probably opposed the war from the outset, well before the State of the Union address. If so, then they were not personally harmed by the lie. But suppose lots of people were harmed by the lie. In other words, suppose many Americans opposed the war before hearing the State of the Union address and supported it afterward, having heard the claim about yellowcake. Suppose the lie worked on a broad scale. Does it follow that it was wrong?

This time the answer is, "It depends." It depends on one's view of the propriety of lying. There are three theoretical possibilities. Act-consequentialists hold that acts are right or wrong solely in virtue of their consequences. That an act is a lie or a murder or a case of torture is neither here nor there. Deontologists hold that whether an act is right or wrong depends on what type of act it is. Certain acts, such as lying, murder, and torture, are wrong in themselves, whatever their consequences. There are two types of deontologist. Absolutist deontologists say that no amount of good consequences can justify commission of a proscribed act. They have an infinitely high justificatory threshold. Moderate deontologists say that proscribed acts are wrong unless committing them averts catastrophe (or a great deal of badness). Moderate deontologists have a finite (but usually high) threshold. Act-consequentialists have no threshold.

How do these theorists approach the question of the wrongness of President Bush's lie about the yellowcake (still assuming, for the sake of argument, that it was a lie and that it was harmful on a broad scale)? An absolutist deontologist would say that the act was wrong, even if it averted catastrophe. Evil may not be done that good may come. Moderate deontologists say that there is a presumption against lying, but that it can be rebutted by enough good (or averted evil). How much good or averted evil depends on how high the threshold is set. An act-consequentialist would attach no significance to the fact that President Bush's utterance was a lie. It was an act, and whether it was justified depends (solely) on its consequences.

Was President Bush's lie justified? The implication of many of his critics is that it was not. But they must establish this, not merely assume it. Absolutist deontologists have the easiest task, since in their view no attention to consequences is necessary. I have no idea whether the critics of President Bush are absolutist deontologists. It's easy to say that one is, but it's a demanding position. Absolutist deontologists cannot acknowledge such a thing as a white lie, for a white lie is still a lie. Lying is wrong, whatever the consequences (or context). Both moderate deontologists and act-consequentialists attend to the consequences of action, so they must compare the consequences of lying with the consequences of not lying. Keep in mind that we are assuming that President Bush's lie was harmful. What we mean by that is that many people relied on it to their detriment. They supported the war because and only because of the lie. Had President Bush not lied, there would have been less support for the war. Isn't it arguable that the deception facilitated the war effort by mobilizing assent to it? I'm not saying that the lie was sufficient, only that it was part of the case for war.

We must now ask whether the war was a good thing. Surely it has had its bad (even horrific) aspects, such as suffering and death. But any reasonable critic must acknowledge the great good that was done by removing the Baathist regime from power. This regime, we now know, was responsible for an incalculable amount of evil, evil that would almost certainly have continued but for the invasion. It is dismaying to hear critics such as Paul Krugman ignore this great good. Nobody wishes to minimize the evil, obviously, but some people seem committed to minimizing or dismissing the good done by the war. If the reconstruction of Iraq succeeds—and the Bush administration vows that it will—the evil will, in my opinion, be vastly outweighed by the good. If that is the case, then an act-consequentialist will have to conclude that President Bush's lie was justified. He did the right thing by lying. The end justified the means. Even the moderate deontologist will have to make this calculation, since his or her threshold is finite rather than infinite. The overall good done by the war could significantly outweigh the bad, where the bad consists of both bad states of affairs such as suffering and death and intrinsically bad acts such as lying.

In conclusion, those who say that President Bush lied about the yellowcake need to tell us what follows from that "fact." They seem to suggest that the mere fact of lying entails that the war was unjustified. This, as I have shown, is a non sequitur. They need to stop leaping to conclusions and fill in the rest of the argument. Most importantly, they need to articulate the moral theory that licenses their conclusion. That this is never done suggests to me that the criticism is rooted in emotion (hatred, for example) rather than reason.

Cold, wet weather has pushed its way into Fort Worth, bringing relief from the unseasonable heat. It makes running more pleasant, or at least less onerous. While running a few minutes ago (just 3.1 miles today), I noticed dozens of vehicles going toward and away from Handley Middle School. This occurs twice a day: morning and afternoon. Why are kids not walking to and from school? One mile is nothing. A middle-school child could cover a mile in twenty minutes, easily. Even two miles is not too far for an eight- to twelve-year-old child, backpack or no.

Every week we see another report about the skyrocketing rate of obesity in this country. The rate of obesity among children is supposedly higher than among people generally. Do parents care about the health of their children? What better way to exercise their children than to require them to walk to and from school? There are sidewalks throughout the neighborhoods. I've heard of no abductions or accidents in the ten years I've lived in Fort Worth. Parents need to stop pampering their children. A little rain, cold, or heat never hurt a child. Walking home alone or in the company of other students teaches a child responsibility and discipline. Even if there were no health benefits to walking, which of course there are, it would be a good idea. Among other benefits, it would reduce vehicular traffic, and therefore smog.

Does anyone know why parents are so indulgent? Is it that they themselves are lazy, and can't imagine walking more than a few feet? (I think here of people who wait ten minutes or more for a parking spot in a shopping center to avoid having to walk an extra fifty feet.) This will mark me as an old fogey, but in my day, we thought nothing of walking five miles to town (and five back) to play a Little League or Pony League baseball game. There's also this thing called a bicycle. I have no idea why kids don't ride bikes to school. Okay, that's my rant for the day. As you were.

anal retentive adj. (of a person) excessively orderly and fussy (supposedly owing to aspects of toilet training in infancy).

(The Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide [New York: Oxford University Press, 1999], 32)

Much has been written lately about the ugliness—the vulgarity—of American politics. It's not enough (any more) to express disagreement with policy or principle; one must attack the person who espouses it. I've been a student of politics since about 1970, when I began reading The Detroit News. I recall criticism of President Carter, but it was nothing like what we see today. For the most part, it was civil. President Carter was said by his critics to be intelligent and well-meaning, but not an effective leader.

When did things change, and why? I think a lot changed when Ronald Reagan was elected. Many people (including me) thought he was intellectually unqualified to be president. In many quarters, he was a joke. A bad joke. We now know that he was smarter than he was given credit for. He was probably smarter than most of the people who thought him an imbecile. Our current president, George W. Bush, is also smart—by any reasonable standard. And yet the thought circulates that he is an ignoramus. I've written a column for Tech Central Station about why liberals think conservatives are stupid, so I won't repeat the explanation here. One thing I didn't emphasize in that column is speaking ability. Bill Clinton, whatever his moral faults (and there were many), was and is a brilliant speaker. He could think on his feet (as every law student is taught to do); he was charming; and he seemed genuinely interested in ideas. Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, was also a good speaker, but it was assumed by his liberal critics that he was mouthing other people's words.

George W. Bush has none of these qualities. He's neither articulate (like Reagan and Clinton) nor, seemingly, interested in ideas for their own sake. But why should presidents be intellectuals? Think about it. Presidents must have a great many moral qualities, such as courage, honesty, and compassion, and certainly, to be effective, they must have what are called executive virtues, such as leadership, decisiveness, and practical wisdom, but why must they be interested in ideas for their own sake? Americans have never made intellectual curiousness (or ability) a necessary condition for being president. Woodrow Wilson is our only president with a Ph.D. degree. (Lawyers are not intellectuals; they are professionals.)

I think that, deep down, liberals resent the anti-intellectualism of the American people. By criticizing Presidents Bush and Reagan for being unintellectual, they are criticizing the people who elected them. We have seen the result of this condescension. Since 1952, Americans have elected five Republican presidents (Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Bush) and four Democrat presidents (Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton). But in terms of years served, Republicans lead Democrats, thirty-two to twenty (through 2004). If President Bush is reelected, it will be thirty-six to twenty. Until Democrats change their criteria for the presidency, lessening the emphasis on (1) speaking ability and (2) interest in ideas for their own sake, they will be a permanent minority party. This, I am afraid, will only increase their bitterness and animosity. Many of us would rather have a morally serious but intellectually uncurious president than one, such as Bill Clinton, who is merely articulate or clever (or both).

Alex Rodriguez, the Gold-Glove-winning shortstop of the last-place Texas Rangers, should have at least two Most Valuable Player awards by now. He was robbed in 1996, when he played for Seattle, and again in 2002, while with the Rangers. Many of the voters think that the MVP must come from a winning team. They say that "valuable" means valuable to someone, and you can't be valuable if your team doesn't win. But why should the performance of a player's team affect one's candidacy for an individual award? As good as he is, Alex can't carry his team. Why should a position player be held responsible for bad pitching? Shouldn't the MVP award be reserved for the player who makes the biggest difference to his team's performance?

You might say that the Rangers could have finished last without Alex. True. But how much worse would they have done? I believe Alex accounted for more victories (or a greater percentage of victories) than any other player in the American League. The Rangers won 71 games with him (of 162). I doubt very seriously that the Rangers would have won 60 without him. Compare one of Alex's rivals for the award this year: Jorge Posada of the Yankees. The Yankees, a team of stars, won just over 100 games (I don't have the exact number). Does anyone think Posada accounted for 11 or more Yankee victories? Three or four, maybe. Six at the most. I realize that these are judgments. But that's what the MVP voters must make.

I think the reason many voters limit their consideration to players on winning teams is that it reduces the scope of the judgments they must make. One local sportswriter all but said that he lists the best player on the handful of winning teams and makes his choice from the list. That's not judgment; that's evasion of judgment. If Alex is not named the MVP of the American League next week, I will scream. Will it do any good? No. Will it make me feel better? Damn straight it will.

Welcome to the blogosphere, comrades! Fancy meeting you here! As some (most?) of you know, blogging (weblogging) is the latest Cool Thing. I've been reading the blogs of Andrew Sullivan and Brian Leiter for several days now. It got me wondering whether I could create a blog, but I had no idea where to begin. I typed "how to create a weblog" into Google, poked around for a few minutes, and came across Blogger. It seemed legitimate, so I signed on and did what it said. It was simple! Better yet, it's free. I guess I "pay" by allowing an advertisement for Blogger on my site. I'm pretty sure I'm going to upgrade to a more powerful version, one that supplies a visitor counter and other goodies. If I read the material correctly, it will cost $100 a year. A mere pittance! In return, I get to muse (and rant) publicly. I'm going to post this and see whether the links I inserted work.