AnalPhilosopher

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has done real harm to nonhuman animals. Anyone who cares about animals should refuse to support this group. It has been co-opted by the establishment; it uses sexist imagery and methods; and, worst of all, it entrenches the view that animals are resources for human use. Read what law professor Gary L. Francione has to say about PETA in this wide-ranging interview. (His critique of PETA comes near the end.)

Peter Singer (born 1946) is a towering figure in animal ethics, so let's clear something up once and for all. I will direct people to this entry whenever they make the mistake I'm about to identify. In 1980, Singer began an essay with the following stirring words:

I am a utilitarian. I am also a vegetarian. I am a vegetarian because I am a utilitarian. I believe that applying the principle of utility to our present situation—especially the methods now used to rear animals for food and the variety of food available to us—leads to the conclusion that we ought to be vegetarian. (Peter Singer, "Utilitarianism and Vegetarianism," Philosophy & Public Affairs 9 [summer 1980]: 325-37, at 325)

Five years before this essay appeared in print, Singer published Animal Liberation (New York: Avon Books, 1975), which has been called "the bible of the animal-liberation movement." In this book, Singer argued against two "speciesist practices": (1) the raising and killing of animals for food and (2) the use of animals in scientific experiments and tests of consumer products.

So Singer is all of the following: (1) a utilitarian, (2) a vegetarian, and (3) the author of Animal Liberation, in which he makes a case for vegetarianism. Moreover, he is a vegetarian because he is a utilitarian. It does not follow from any of this that the argument of Animal Liberation is utilitarian. In fact, it is not, as Singer himself said in 1999. Responding to criticism by Robert C. Solomon, he wrote:

Solomon refers to my Animal Liberation, and suggests that the emotional impact of the photographs included in that book had more impact than the 'ethereally controversial utilitarian attack on "speciesism" that accompanied them'. But the text of Animal Liberation is not utilitarian. It was specifically intended to appeal to readers who were concerned about equality, or justice, or fairness, irrespective of the precise nature of their commitment. (Nor, for that matter, do I think there is anything in the least ethereal about it.) Significantly, the book succeeded in persuading thousands of people to change their diet and become involved in the animal movement. (Peter Singer, "A Response," chap. 13 in Singer and His Critics, ed. Dale Jamieson [Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999], 269-335, at 283)

Singer is a smart man and a good philosopher. He knew in 1975 and knows now that not everyone is a utilitarian. Many people are, but many are not. If the argument of Animal Liberation presupposed utilitarianism, then he would be cutting off much of his audience. People who aren't utilitarians would say, "This argument doesn't apply to me; I reject its main premise." That would be self-defeating, since Singer wanted to persuade as many people as possible to change their beliefs and behavior. The premises of Animal Liberation can be accepted by people of any (or almost any) theoretical persuasion. This gives the book a wide audience.

Here is a handout that I distribute to my Ethics students when we discuss Singer's 1974 essay "All Animals Are Equal" (first published in Annual Proceedings of the Center for Philosophical Exchange 1 [summer 1974]: 103-11). This essay, published when Singer was twenty-eight, is the basis for the main argumentative chapter of Animal Liberation. I showed the handout to Singer a few months ago. He suggested some minor changes in wording but said it accurately reconstructs his argument. As he put it in e-mail correspondence, the argument is compatible with utilitarianism but does not presuppose it. In other words, it's a nonutilitarian argument but not an anti-utilitarian argument. You will note that the argument is entirely free of theoretical commitments.

Are moral considerations applicable to war?

No. This is positivistic political realism. "[M]orality has no application whatever to international relations" (page 56).

Yes. Should moral considerations be applied to war?

No. This is strong normative political realism. "[Moral] notions should [not] be appealed to in international relations" (57).

Yes. Should moral considerations be decisive?

No. This is weak normative political realism. "[M]oral considerations should [not] be decisive in the determination of [foreign] policy" (57).

Yes. This is idealism. "[S]tates ought always to act morally" (57). Is war ever morally justified?

No. I call this extreme pacifism.

Yes. Is war morally justified today, given the technology that exists?

No. I call this moderate pacifism. "[W]ar in the modern world is not morally justified" (14). Holmes is in this category.

Yes, provided certain requirements are satisfied. The just-war theory falls in this category. "[W]ar is sometimes morally permissible" (49).

This flowchart is based on Robert L. Holmes, On War and Morality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).

My sixteenth Tech Central Station column, "Dodging the Issue," has just appeared. Go here.

In a long, interesting comment on one of my posts over at Animal Ethics, Mary writes: "eat what you like and let the rest eat what they like." With all due respect, Mary, you make it sound as though I'm coercing you into giving up meat. No. I'm trying to persuade you to give up meat. There's a big difference between coercion and persuasion! The main difference, and it's a morally important one, is that only persuasion is respectful of the person.

How does persuasion work? By drawing out the implications of what your interlocutor already believes or values. Have you read Mylan Engel's essay "The Immorality of Eating Meat"? If not, please do. There's a link to it on the left side of the blog. Mylan tries to show you that you are already committed (without knowing it) to vegetarianism. There are three things you can do in response to his argument (assuming you want to avoid self-contradiction). First, deny that you have the beliefs and values he says you have. Second, show that even if you have those beliefs and values, they do not commit you to vegetarianism. (In other words, find fault with the structure—validity—of his argument.) Third, accept his conclusion and become a vegetarian. Please read (and think about) his essay. Nobody is trying to force or coerce you into anything. Law is coercive; morality is persuasive. And don't say that Mylan is imposing his values on you. He's imposing your values on you!

Addendum: Mylan's essay is on my university's server, which is down for maintenance for a few days. Please keep trying the link until it works.

Neighbor, n. One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows how to make us disobedient.

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

I received a very nice letter from Scotland this morning:

Please do not feel obliged to read, reply to, or acknowledge this message. I am sure you receive all sorts of emails from people like me who want to witter on about something or other. I recently discovered your blog and have found it very stimulating. I teach philosophy in Scotland to high school pupils (11-18 year olds) and will be recommending your blog to my colleagues. A couple of thoughts about your recent entry on reason and faith. Firstly, like you I have never known anyone persuaded either way by the philosophical arguments for or against the existence of God. And that leaves me with a nagging doubt. There are clearly highly intelligent philosophers on both sides. If their assessments of the arguments are determined by something other that the actual arguments how can anyone be sure that their assessment of any philosophical argument is not being determined by something other than the argument. Such a conclusion would undermine any confidence we might have in the whole philosophical enterprise. Secondly, you say the main argument for the non-existence of god is the problem of evil. Indeed, it is often presented so but it has always seemed to me to be a rather weak argument. If it boils down to saying the existence of a loving God is incompatible with the existence of pointless suffering. It is always open to the believer to say that therefore suffering is not pointless. The fact that we have not or cannot work out the purpose of suffering does not mean that it has no purpose. Of course, you know all this. I find it much more convincing to attempt to show not that God is inconsistent with a feature of the world but that the concept of God is internally inconsistent. Starting from the Euthyphro dilemma if something is good because God makes it so then it is no longer possible to say that God is good for there is no standard with which to judge God. If God tells us that something is good because it is good then God is not all powerful. His power would be limited in at least this one important respect, he cannot change the nature of morality. If so, God cannot be all good and all powerful. I have never seen this last point written down before but my guess is that I would find it easily enough if only I read the right books (quite probably Plato!) All the best X

I replied as follows:

30 December 2003, 6:44 P.M. X: Thanks for writing and thanks for the kind words. You're my first (known) Scottish correspondent. Of course, I know many Scottish philosophers, such as David Archard and Leslie Stevenson at St Andrews, but not via my blog. I should tell you that I love Scotland and all things Scottish. My stepfather's family (the Rowbothams) came from the land of the Scots. I hope one day to visit, but in the meantime I'll have to settle for watching "Local Hero" and listening to Mark Knopfler's wonderful soundtrack (which I have on compact disc).

To answer your questions, I think philosophical discussion of theism can be walled off from other domains. Belief in God is, for most theists, at the center of their doxastic web. It will be the last belief to be abandoned or revised. (Think Quine.) Because this belief is so central (or, to switch metaphors, entrenched), I don't think argument has much effect on it. As you say, the theist can explain away even the most horrendous of evils. Philosophical argument has much greater effect in other domains, where the beliefs in question aren't entrenched. Moral argument, for example, sometimes succeeds in changing people's views.

As for the Euthyphro dilemma, I don't view it as an argument against the existence of God but as an argument against the divine-command theory of morality. It supposedly shows that morality is independent of God's will, for the alternative is arbitrariness. But I think Robert Merrihew Adams has demolished this reasoning. God could command genocide (for example), but, being God, wouldn't. There's a sense in which God's commands are arbitrary (because rooted in God's will) but another in which they're not (because rooted in God's nature). I'm an atheist, as you know from reading my blog, but I have tremendous respect for thoughtful theists such as Adams, Richard Swinburne, and Alvin Plantinga. I'm what William Rowe calls a friendly atheist. That means I believe theism to be false; but I acknowledge that theism can be justified. An unfriendly atheist would deny that theism is (or can be) justified. How can both theism and atheism be justified? Easy. The world as we know it is compatible with both. Take care. kbj

Keep the letters coming!

Why does Fox News Channel persist in characterizing its product as "fair and balanced"? I've been reading newspapers and watching television news for more than three decades. I like Fox News, but it's not fair and balanced in any meaningful sense of those terms. It's slanted to the right. CNN, which I used to watch, is slanted to the left. I don't sense much of a slant on MSNBC or CNBC. I haven't watched network news in years, so I can't speak to their biases (if any). I keep hearing that Dan Rather and Peter Jennings are biased to the left, but I don't know; nor do I plan to take the time to find out.

What offends me is not slant (bias), but pretending not to be slanted or not knowing that one is slanted. The former is duplicitous and the latter delusional. Readers of this blog know that some entries are written in my capacity as philosopher and some in my capacity as citizen. I make no bones about my ideological predilections. I'm a proud conservative/libertarian. I used to be a proud liberal/socialist. If you're wondering how and why I changed, read my forthcoming column on Tech Central Station, "My Journey to Conservatism." When I speak to you as a philosopher, I speak with authority. If you are not a trained philosopher, you have reason to defer to my judgment. When I speak to you as a fellow citizen, I speak as your equal. You should not defer to me. If you transfer authority from one realm to another, without looking into the substance of the claims being made, you reason fallaciously. Authority in one realm does not necessarily translate to authority in another realm. Would you call a plumber for legal advice (or a lawyer for plumbing advice)? I didn't think so.

News operations make fools of themselves when they disclaim bias. Perhaps they think that bias consists in hewing to a party line. If this were the case, they might be on solid ground. But bias can be far more subtle than that. It can consist in using certain terms rather than others. Compare the following three terms:

1. Lazy
2. Unmotivated
3. Laid-back (or easygoing, or [my favorite] energy efficient)

These terms, like most terms in English, have both descriptive and emotive meaning. They convey information and express attitudes (or pass judgment). These three terms have the same (or roughly the same) descriptive meaning. But notice how different they are in emotive meaning. The first term is condemnatory, the second neutral, and the third commendatory. Which term would you use to describe yourself? Which term would you use to describe someone you dislike? Which term would you use to describe someone neutrally, without passing judgment?

The language used by Fox News is often emotive rather than neutral. That is the first journalistic sin. It is compounded by the slant. Liberals are described (not always, but usually) with derogatory terms, while conservatives are described (not always, but usually) with laudatory terms. Qua conservative, I like this; but qua philosopher, I find it unsettling, especially since Fox proclaims itself "fair and balanced." Start paying attention to the terminology used on various news channels. See whether you agree with me that they're slanted to the right or to the left.

Paul Krugman, in my opinion, is intellectually dishonest. He is a political hack masquerading as a disinterested social scientist (specifically, an economist). Thank goodness for people like Donald L. Luskin, who expose Krugman's duplicity within minutes of its occurrence. Krugman's New York Times columns appear on Tuesdays and Fridays. Luskin's dismantling of Krugman occurs shortly thereafter. If you don't have Luskin bookmarked, you're disengaged.

Many terrorists are nihilists, who wish to vent their disappointment by destroying the sham society by which they are surrounded. Such were the terrorists so brilliantly portrayed by Turgenev and Conrad, and whose murderous campaigns have been described by Anna Geifman. But nihilism is the other side of religion: it is the disappointed howl of the believer on discovering that God is dead. The true nihilist is incapable of settling for the world of compromise, toleration, and secular loyalties that the rest of us enjoy, since it is a world deprived of absolutes. The death of God leaves only one remaining absolute, which is Nothingness. The duty to annihilate is the last remaining glimpse of the transcendental in the heart of the one who has lost all belief in it and who cannot live with the loss. The "death-intoxicated" character of the Russian nihilists, and of the revolutionaries who trod in their footsteps, is therefore of a piece with the "God-intoxicated" frenzy of the Shi'ite martyr.

Globalization has plunged the Islamic world into crisis by offering the spectacle of a secular society maintained in being by man-made laws, and achieving equilibrium without the aid of God. It has also obliterated many of the customs and ways of life of the Muslim people, extinguishing ancient pastoral traditions and replacing them with a phony and humiliating economy of pure consumption, fed not by labor but by oil. At the same time it has re-awakened the age-old nostalgia for a reign of goodness, in which those who corrupted the Prophet's community will be finally destroyed, and the true order of the shari'a established on earth. The resulting psychological mixture is explosive, and is bound to prompt young Muslims to express their discontent with the regimes that govern them, with the global economy that finances those regimes, and with the impious way of life that is intruding everywhere into the dar al-islam.

In the Muslim territories themselves, however, possibilities for organized political action are limited or nonexistent. Only in the West, thanks to political freedoms that are the gift of a long tradition of political experiment and Christian self-denial, can opposition to the corrupt regimes that govern the dar al-islam be mounted. Almost all the plots of the Islamist terrorists—from the Shi'ite revolution in Iran to the September 11 attacks—have been hatched in the West by muhajiroun who live, frequently enjoying the protection of asylum, in seemingly harmless symbiosis with the settled communities that surround them. But, because no bond of membership can possibly join them to those communities, they fail to acquire the national loyalty of their hosts. Nor is any effort now made to integrate them or to offer such a national loyalty to their children. Unable either to organize opposition in their country of origin, or to join the society in which they live, they are therefore drawn to religious violence as the only proof of their identity. This alone enables them to rediscover the absolutes that they need, and to generate a form of membership and an 'asabiya untainted by the dar al-harb.

In the face of this we in the West must, I believe, do what we can to reinforce the nation-state, which has brought the great benefits that distinguish the West from the rest, including the benefits of personal government, citizenship under a territorial jurisdiction, and government answerable to the people. This means that we must constrain the process of globalization, so as to neutralize its perceived image as a threat from the West to the rest.

(Roger Scruton, The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat [Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2002], 157-9 [italics in original; footnote omitted])

The following was posted as a comment on my Animal Ethics blog entry, "Becoming a Vegetarian (or Demi-Vegetarian)":

I happened upon your blog from the blogger main page and have been fascinated ever since. I very much enjoy the issues brought up and discussed. This post in particular has really gotten me to think. To be honest, I very much enjoy the taste of beef. I do not enjoy the way in which beef is a[c]quired—the farming or the slaughtering. But I find it interesting when people give up red-meat, but not other meats. Chickens and turkey[s] are raised in terrible environments and treated just as badly with practices such as debeaking and layering. Perhaps you can shed some light on why red-meat is usually the first meat to go from diets and not other meats. I can think of many reasons myself, but I enjoy your thoughts and writings and would love to hear what you have to say especially considering that you have the actual experience. Personally, I'm not a big fan of poultry and would give that up before beef, must [much] to the dismay of our fellow [?] bovine mammals.

Let me say, first of all, that I appreciate the feedback. Mylan, Angus, Nathan, and I hope that our site becomes a worldwide forum for philosophical discussion of the moral status of nonhuman animals. This means give and take, not lecturing. Please spread the word about the blog. And please—all of you—keep the questions coming. We will do our best to respond to them. Right, guys? Guys? Are you there?

You say you enjoy the taste of beef but do not enjoy the farming or the slaughtering. Have you tried various soy-based beef substitutes? One common reaction to this suggestion is, "Yuck!" But seriously, I eat hamburgers, hot dogs, and lunch meat—all made with vegetables. They're delicious. The technology is amazing. Even the texture is mimicked. But suppose you conclude that these items aren't as tasty as the real thing; isn't that a reasonable price to pay to avoid contributing to the suffering and death that you say bothers you? I don't mean to be censorious, but you did ask me. Try the soy products. They're available even in traditional grocery stores such as Kroger and Albertson's. If you have specialty stores such as Whole Foods Market in your area, you will find an amazing assortment of vegetarian foods. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. Perhaps other readers can make recommendations as to brand and so forth.

As for why some people "give up" red meat but not other meats, it probably varies by person. One reason that springs to mind is that beef is less healthy than, say, poultry. If you're wondering about me in particular, red meat (beef and pork) was just the first meat to go from my diet. I didn't want to go whole hog (or quit cold turkey). I was chicken, sheepish, cowed. I don't know why I started with red meat; maybe it was because cows and pigs are bigger and more humanlike. Have you ever looked into a cow's eyes? I don't think I saw any moral difference between the various meats (or animals); nor is there, in my judgment. One reader of the Animal Ethics blog pointed out a while back that, other things being equal, it's worse (morally) to eat chickens than cows or pigs. His reasoning was that the same amount eaten would require more deaths, and also that cows and pigs aren't (in general) treated as badly as chickens.

By the way, I have always considered pork red meat, despite the pork industry's slogan, "The other white meat." What do you suppose explains that slogan? Think like a rhetorician.

Moral philosophy has become as thoroughly professionalized as accounting. The modern moral philosopher is a lifetime academic: he never leaves school. (How odd it is to think that the people who have never left school should be society's moral preceptors.) He takes no professional risks until he gets tenure. After that he takes few professional risks; he never takes any serious personal risks. He lives a comfortable bourgeois life, with maybe a touch of the bohemian. He either thinks Left and lives Right, or he thinks Right and lives Right.

(Richard A. Posner, "The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory," Harvard Law Review 111 [May 1998]: 1637-717, at 1688)

One of the unexpected joys of keeping this blog is receiving e-mail from all over the world. Most of it, I am pleased to report, is complimentary, and even the uncomplimentary mail is civil. I have never taken praise well. When a student tells me, years after taking my class, that it had a profound effect on him or her, I find it hard to believe. Me? Profound effect? Are you sure you haven't confused me with some other professor? I work my students hard, so I assume they hate me for it. I would rather they fear and loathe me than like me. Maybe it was the course material, and not me, that had the beneficial effect.

I would never assume that the e-mail I receive is representative. People who dislike me, based on what they read in my blog, are less likely to write to me than people who like me. So, for all I know, I alienate as many people as I touch. I have an uncanny ability to piss people off. It's an acquired skill. Come to think of it, Socrates pissed people off, too, so at least I'm in good company. I just hope I don't meet his fate.

The following letter came to me a few minutes ago. Instead of responding to its author directly, I will respond publicly and notify the author that I did so. I omit the author's name for reasons of confidentiality. Here goes:

Mr. Burgess-Jackson, I've been reading your website for the past month or so and find it wonderfully thought provoking. I especially appreciate the clarity of thought and lack of academic jargon in your writing. I was wondering if you could recommend to me (and maybe on your website) 10 books for the layman wanting to attain a solid grounding in basic philosophy and/or history of philosophy. regards, X

Thanks for writing, X, and thanks for the kind words! I am more than happy to recommend ten books. I hope others besides you find it useful. What follows are books that, in my judgment, are accessible to intelligent people who lack a formal philosophical education. Most of them contain bibliographies that will lead you deeper into their subjects. Ultimately, you should read primary sources rather than (just) secondary sources. If you find yourself interested in David Hume, for example, you should acquire and read works by Hume, of which there are many (on many topics). The word "introduction" means to draw in. These books will draw you in:

1. Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). It may seem strange for me to list a dictionary, but I think you will find this one riveting, as I did. (I wrote a favorable review of it in Teaching Philosophy.) Don't read it straight through. Read two pages per day. Let the ideas swim around in your mind. Blackburn is a wonderful writer; his wit and intelligence shine through on almost every page.

2. Richard Swinburne, Is There a God? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). I use this book in my Philosophy of Religion course. I reviewed it for Metaphilosophy. It is short, well-written, and easy to understand. Although the book is argumentative (Swinburne argues for the existence of God), it will introduce you to many important concepts and distinctions, some of them peculiar to philosophy of religion and some of them of a more general nature.

3. Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). I reviewed this book in Teaching Philosophy but have yet to use it in a course. Blackburn covers many classic philosophical debates and introduces the reader to the central figures in the history of philosophy. He is very good at explaining difficult concepts and doctrines.

4. James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 4th ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003). I use this book in my Ethics course. I reviewed it in Teaching Philosophy. Rachels, who died a few months ago, covers all the main normative ethical theories (such as utilitarianism and natural-law theory), plus some metaethical theories (such as subjectivism and relativism). It is very readable.

5. Julian Baggini and Peter S. Fosl, The Philosopher's Toolkit: A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003). I am about to use this book for the first time in my research-and-writing seminar. Like any other academic discipline, philosophy has its jargon and methods. This book introduces them. It is another book that should be read slowly, a few pages per day.

6. Irving M. Copi and Keith Burgess-Jackson, Informal Logic, 3d ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996). I know it's unseemly to recommend a book of my own, but I believe it's the best on the market. I was brought on as coauthor after the first edition. That I chose it for my classes well before I was associated with it shows that I thought highly of it. Naturally, having rewritten much of it, I think even more highly of it. The book is about reasoning in natural languages such as English. It has chapters on (a) how to recognize and evaluate arguments, (b) language, (c) fallacies, (d) definition, (e) analogy, (f) Mill's methods of experimental inquiry, and (g) scientific reasoning.

7. Richard H. Popkin, ed., The Columbia History of Western Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). I reviewed this book for Teaching Philosophy. Some of it may be difficult for the novice, but it's well worth the effort. Like Blackburn's dictionary, it should be read slowly, at two or four pages per day.

8. Robert Nozick, The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989). Nozick was one of the greatest philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. I consider him truly brilliant. This book shows him at his best, bouncing from topic to topic.

9. Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (London: Oxford University Press, 1959 [1912]). This is a classic. Nuff said.

10. W. V. Quine and J. S. Ullian, The Web of Belief, 2d ed. (New York: Random House, 1978). This will serve as an introduction to epistemology, which, with ethics and metaphysics, is one of the traditional branches of philosophy.

I hope this helps! I'm sure other philosophers would compile different lists, but you asked for mine. Thanks (again) for writing.

I've been teaching Philosophy of Religion since the fall of 1989, when I came to The University of Texas at Arlington, but I began teaching the arguments for and against the existence of God almost twenty years ago, in my first Introduction to Philosophy course at The University of Arizona. While I enjoy teaching these arguments very much, and always learn something new, I've never seen anyone persuaded by them.

Before proceeding, let me sketch these arguments. The ontological argument says (again, these are sketches) that God's nonexistence is impossible; therefore, God exists. The cosmological argument says that certain facts about the world, such as that there are contingent things, would be impossible without God. The teleological argument says that certain facts about the world, such as its complexity, make God's existence probable. The moral argument says that morality as we know it would be impossible or pointless without God.

The main argument for the nonexistence of God is the argument from evil. The weakest version of this argument says that the existence of evil is logically incompatible with God, and since evil exists, God doesn't. Stronger versions say only that the existence of evil makes God's existence unlikely. Lately, the emphasis has shifted from evil per se to certain types of evil, such as horrendous or seemingly gratuitous evil.

My sense, from long experience, is that no atheist has been persuaded by the arguments for God's existence and no theist has been dissuaded by the arguments for God's nonexistence. I think belief or disbelief in God is nonrational (which is not to say that it's irrational). People believe because they need or want to believe, or because they were taught to believe and never questioned it. A world without a creator appears empty and meaningless to them. People disbelieve because they can't wrap their minds around the idea of a disembodied person with supernatural powers.

If I'm right about this, then why are the classic arguments for and against the existence of God still taught and written about? Aren't they superfluous? Aren't they like the whistle of a locomotive? The whistle accompanies the locomotive but doesn't power it. Its constant presence might lead one to believe that it provides the power, but that's mistaken. It's an epiphenomenon, not a cause.

It might be replied that one purpose served by the arguments is to provide a rational basis (i.e., grounds) for belief or disbelief. Suppose S finds belief in God comforting. S might study the arguments for the existence of God and conclude that belief in God is intellectually respectable (after all). But by hypothesis, the arguments aren't doing any work. They rationalize belief; they don't support it. The belief, ex hypothesi, would remain without them.

The same is true for a certain type of atheist. Suppose S finds the existence of God preposterous. S might study the argument from evil and conclude that disbelief in God is intellectually respectable (after all). But by hypothesis, the argument isn't doing any work. It rationalizes disbelief; it doesn't support it. The disbelief, ex hypothesi, would remain without it.

It's starting to appear as though the classic arguments for the existence of God are worse than pointless. They're rationalizations! The only work they do is put a rational foundation under what would be believed or disbelieved anyway. In other contexts, we condemn this sort of result-oriented thinking. Suppose a judge intuits the outcome of a case and then constructs a legal argument for that conclusion. Is this legitimate? Shouldn't a judge examine the legal materials first, then reach a decision on the basis of what is discovered? If so, isn't that how one should approach religious belief or disbelief? Shouldn't one begin the investigation with an open mind and let the chips fall where they may?

I love teaching Philosophy of Religion, and I love the parts of the course in which we discuss the classic arguments. I consider Anselm's ontological argument one of the greatest intellectual achievements in human history. It is sheer genius (not to mention a thing of beauty). But I have to admit, I wonder about the relevance of the arguments. Perhaps, before examining them, I should discuss their relevance (or lack thereof) with the students. I wonder how many professors do this. If they don't, they may leave their students wondering about the point of it all. It may seem a mere intellectual exercise, interesting but unimportant. Those of you who wish to read further in this area might acquire Richard Messer, Does God's Existence Need Proof? (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).

28 December 2003, 8:35 P.M. John [Ray]: I got a chuckle out of your post in which you say moral philosophy is not complex. It's the most complex of all subjects! It's far more complex than law (I'm a lawyer) and far more complex than politics, economics, psychology, or any other academic discipline. I wouldn't be interested in it if it weren't complex. Nor would Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Bentham, or Mill. The greatest thinkers in the history of the world were drawn to ethics and stumped by it. Please acquire and read Shelly Kagan's Normative Ethics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998). It'll blow your mind. By the way, Bertrand Russell finally gave up on ethics because it was too difficult for him. I'm serious. Let me know if you want citations. kbj P.S.: Outsiders to a field always see it as simple. Immerse yourself in ethics and you'll see how complex and difficult it is.

Addendum: Others I might have listed are Augustine, Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Rousseau, Smith, Hegel, Nietzsche, Dewey, Sidgwick, Sartre, Hare, and Rawls. Great thinkers all, and multifaceted. And these are just the Westerners!

Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

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

This afternoon I received a long, condescending (but otherwise polite) letter from a reader. He thought from reading my various websites that I'm crying out for conversion to Christianity. That brought a smile to my face. As I said in a previous entry, I'm tone-deaf to religion. It has never been a live option for me, as it is for so many others. But how do you explain this to someone for whom belief in a deity is the most important thing in his or her life? It's hard, if not impossible. I wrote back with a simple, "Thanks for writing."

The mistake people make is in thinking that everyone wants (or needs) to believe in a deity. When desire is present, the problem is merely technical. If your interlocutor wants to believe but finds it difficult to do so, you can advise such things as attending mass, "taking the holy water," and running with a new crowd. This is what Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) advised his imaginary interlocutor in Pensees. In effect, he advised going through the motions of faith. Pretending to believe may—if you are lucky—issue in belief, which, for Pascal, was beneficial. You should believe in God not because there is evidence for God's existence (Pascal thought human reason impotent on the question) but because it is in your interest to do so.

Helping someone who wants to believe, but can't, is like helping someone who wants to quit smoking, but can't. Only those who want to quit will succeed in quitting—and certainly not all will succeed. What if your interlocutor neither wants nor needs to believe in a deity? Your well-meaning attempts to proselytize will seem patronizing and, if persistent, disrespectful. The persistent proselytizer should apply the Golden Rule. How would you like it if an adherent of some other religion (or, god forbid, atheism) pestered you to change your beliefs? Wouldn't you be insulted? Wouldn't you say that you are happy with the beliefs you have?

It's an interesting question why I have no desire (or need) to believe. I am fortunate to have grown up in a nonreligious (but not anti-religious) household. This allowed me to think for myself from an early age and to come to grips with my mortality. (Religion is a denial of mortality.) I had every chance to attend church, but chose not to. It saddens me to see children with no critical faculties taught to believe in a deity. Someone might say that parents have a duty to instill values in their children. I'm not talking about values. I'm talking about belief. What's the worst thing that can happen if parents teach their children to be freethinkers? They reach adulthood and think things through for themselves. If, having done so, they form a belief in a deity, so be it. It will be a choice, not a foreordained result. One would think that if there were a god, god would like this. If I were God, I would not take kindly to people who believe in me out of self-interest (see Pascal) or because they were taught to believe in me as children and never questioned it.

So thank you, dear reader, for thinking of me. I know you meant well, despite your insulting tone. It's not that I want to believe but can't, but that I don't want to. And even if I wanted to, or needed to, I couldn't. I can no more believe in a disembodied person with supernatural powers than I can believe in the tooth fairy or Santa Claus. These beliefs are nonstarters for me. They are, in a word, preposterous. I mean no disrespect by this. I make the comparison only to show theists what theism would be like for me and would require of me. It would do real damage to my intellect and to my personal integrity.

Many of the papers [collected in this volume] were written before 'non-sexist' language (so called) became 'politically correct'. I have not altered them in this respect, although more recently I have found a way of conforming which is stylistically just tolerable. The contortions which would have been necessary to make the older papers conform illustrate very well what the feminists are doing to our style. I do not think in fact that the current fashion does much for the welfare of women in general, pleasing as it may be to a few intellectuals; and it certainly makes good clear writing more difficult. The Germans and others, the structure of whose languages makes it well nigh impossible to follow this fashion, are perhaps fortunate. And sometimes I feel like abandoning any attempt to do so, as a protest against the tyranny of 'political correctness'.

(R. M. Hare, Essays on Bioethics [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993], vi-vii)

I stopped eating red meat (i.e., all animal products except turkey, chicken, fish, and eggs) on 11 February 1981, when I was twenty-three years old. I was in law school at the time, hence cooking my own meals. Something happened while I was reading Peter Singer's 1975 book Animal Liberation. I can't say that Singer persuaded me, rationally. It was more like he emboldened me or gave me permission to change my diet. I had always loved animals and felt uncomfortable about eating their flesh, but I didn't know anyone who was a vegetarian and thought I'd be viewed by my family and friends as a crank. My family had always eaten meat, and still does.

As I read Singer, I kept thinking, "Here's someone who is extremely intelligent and who thinks it's wrong to eat meat." I also liked the fact that Singer made no appeal to emotion or sentiment. He was a hard-headed, factually grounded philosopher. Singer became my model and my inspiration. However much I was mocked by family and friends for giving up red meat, I would know that Singer, at least, was on my side. This may seem silly to some, but it's hard for young people (I consider twenty-three young) to take moral stands by themselves. Young people are herd animals. I knew that becoming a vegetarian would require vast changes in my life. I would have to learn how to cook. I would have to learn about nutrition. I would have to adjust my social life. How do you say to a host, without seeming rude or boastful, that you don't eat meat?

As I explain to my students when I lecture on Singer, a decision to become a vegetarian doesn't change one's tastes or desires all of a sudden. For some time prior to giving up red meat, I had stopped at a Burger King outside Flint, Michigan, on my way home from college classes. I always bought a hamburger and a cup of coffee for the long drive to Vassar. It was part of my routine. Once I stopped eating red meat, I had no reason to stop at Burger King. For a long time thereafter, I missed stopping there and missed the taste of the hamburger. Driving by was a forlorn event. Meanwhile, my mother continued cooking meat for my family. I enjoyed the smell and secretly wished I could eat what she cooked. The point is, I still craved meat after I gave it up. This must be counted as a cost of becoming a vegetarian.

But eventually, to my surprise, my affect caught up with my will. I found, as time went by, that I no longer craved meat. I became indifferent to it. And then, miracle of miracles, I came to be disgusted by it. To this day, I cannot watch television advertisements showing frying or broiling hamburgers, with grease dripping from them. It sickens me. Nor can I look at raw meat being sliced. It's interesting how the various parts of the self strive for integration. My moral beliefs (cognition), my volition, my affect, and my conative or desiring side have reintegrated themselves. I assume this happens to others and not just to me. So if you're contemplating becoming a vegetarian, or just giving up red meat (as I initially did), don't fear that you'll be gustatorily frustrated for the rest of your life. You'll probably be frustrated for a while, and may even curse your decision from time to time, but eventually you'll feel integrated again. It's a wonderful, liberating feeling.

Andrew Sullivan is handing out awards. See here. My favorite so far is Margaret Drabble's drivel about the United States. I laughed so hard the coffee dribbled down my chin.

In some quarters, Paul Krugman is worshipped as a deity. The worship, in my judgment, is ludicrously misplaced, as you would know if you read Donald Luskin's blog on a regular basis. Check it out.

Learning to think: our schools no longer have any idea what this means. Even in our universities, even among students of philosophy themselves, the theory, the practice, the vocation of logic is beginning to die out. Read German books: no longer the remotest recollection that a technique, a plan of instruction, a will to mastery is required for thinking—that thinking has to be learned in the way dancing has to be learned, as a form of dancing. . . . Who among Germans still knows from experience that subtle thrill which the possession of intellectual light feet communicates to all the muscles!—A stiffly awkward air in intellectual matters, a clumsy hand in grasping—this is in so great a degree German that foreigners take it for the German nature in general. The German has no fingers for nuances. . . . That the Germans have so much as endured their philosophers, above all that most deformed conceptual cripple there has ever been, the great Kant, offers a good idea of German amenableness.—For dancing in any form cannot be divorced from a noble education, being able to dance with the feet, with concepts, with words: do I still have to say that one has to be able to dance with the pen—that writing has to be learned?—But at this point I should become a complete enigma to German readers . . .

(Friedrich Nietzsche, "What the Germans Lack," in his Twilight of the Idols, or How to Philosophize with a Hammer, in Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale [London: Penguin Books, 1990 (1889)], 75-6, aph. 7 [italics and ellipses in original])

Instructions: Making abundant use of course materials, compose a closely reasoned essay answering the following question bearing on one of the course's central themes (ethics and technology). Limit: 6 bluebook sides. Consider the following case: On Twin Earth, a brain in a vat is at the wheel of a runaway trolley. There are only two options that the brain can take: the right side of the fork in the track or the left side of the fork. There is no way in sight of derailing or stopping the trolley and the brain is aware of this, for the brain—unlike Bo—knows trolleys. The brain is causally hooked up to the trolley such that the brain can determine the trolley's course. On the right side of the track there is a single railroad worker, Jones, who will be killed if the brain steers the trolley to the right. If Jones lives, he will go on to kill five men for the sake of killing them, but in doing so will inadvertently save the lives of thirty orphans (one of the five men he will kill is planning to destroy a bridge that the orphan's bus will be crossing later that night). One of the orphans that will be killed would grow up to become a tyrant who would make good, utilitarian men do bad things, another would grow up to become John Sununu, while a third would invent the pop-top can. If the brain in the vat chooses the left fork of the track, the trolley will hit and kill a worker on the left side of the track, "Leftie," and will hit and destroy ten beating hearts on the track that could (and would) have been transplanted into ten patients in the local hospital who will die without donor hearts. These are the only hearts available, and the brain is aware of this, for the brain knows hearts. If the worker on the left fork of the track lives, he too will kill five men, in fact the same five that the worker on the right would kill. However, "Leftie" will kill the five as an unintended consequence of saving ten men: He will inadvertently kill the five men rushing the ten hearts to the local hospital for transplantation. A further result of "Leftie's" act would be that the busload of orphans will be spared. Among the five men killed by "Leftie" are both the man responsible for putting the brain at the controls of the trolley, and the author of this exam question. If the ten hearts and "Leftie" are killed by the trolley, the ten prospective heart-transplant patients will die and their kidneys will be used to save the lives of twenty kidney-transplant patients, one of whom will grow up to cure cancer and one of whom will grow up to be Hitler. There are other kidneys and dialysis machines available, however the brain does not know kidneys, and this is not a factor. Assume that the brain's choice, whatever it turns out to be, will serve as an example to other brains in vats and so the effects of its decision will be amplified. Also assume that if the brain chooses the right side of the fork, an unjust war free of war crimes will ensue, while if the brain chooses the left fork, a just war fraught with war crimes will result. Furthermore, there is an intermittently active Cartesian demon deceiving the brain such that the brain is never sure whether it is being deceived.

Question: What should the brain do? Justify your answer.

Today's New York Times has a story (see here) about overrated and underrated ideas. Here is Peter Singer's take on what's overrated:

What Americans overrate most is—America. They imagine that they live in the most democratic nation on earth, but in the United States, to a far greater extent than in many other democracies, electorates are shamelessly gerrymandered, the voting system squeezes out minor parties, Wyoming has as many senators as California, and money gives the rich a wildly disproportionate share of power and influence. Americans think they are the freest people on earth, but the president keeps American citizens in detention for nearly two years without even allowing them to talk to a lawyer, let alone putting them on trial. And no one in America has the freedom of the Dutch to choose how they die, should they become incurably ill. Americans also favor "American pre-eminence"—the Hobbesian view that the United States ought to rule the world, simply because it has the military muscle to do so. (Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University)

Where to begin? First, there are many types of democracy, as Singer (author of Democracy and Disobedience [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973]) well knows. We in the United States have a constitutional, representative democracy, not a majoritarian democracy. Our system of government is designed to slow the pace of change by providing checks and balances, both among branches of the federal government and between the federal and state governments. (One wonders whether Singer has read The Federalist Papers.) We also believe in the liberty of citizens to spend money (within limits) in behalf of their political candidates and parties. This is a form of freedom of expression, which is enshrined in our Constitution (and which Americans take very seriously). Wyoming has as many senators as California because it is a sovereign state with interests of its own.

Second, I don't know how "the voting system squeezes out minor parties." There are lots of minor parties (Green, Libertarian, &c) and nothing—except lack of support by the citizenry—stopping them becoming major parties. Parties are not mentioned in our Constitution. What is Singer advocating, that minor parties be funded by government? But this is coercive; and then he would criticize the system for infringing individual liberty.

Third, while Americans value liberty a great deal (it gets pride of place in all our founding documents), they also value such things as security. We are not anarchists. If we're not the freest people on earth, then why are people clamoring to come here? Why is Singer here? I don't see people leaving this country for greener pastures elsewhere. As for the freedom to die, everyone has it. Just kill yourself. What you don't have is a right to an institutionalized, subsidized death.

Finally, I don't know of anyone who believes that the United States ought to rule the world. A fortiori, I don't know of anyone who believes that the United States ought to rule the world "simply because it has the military muscle to do so." Do you know of anyone who believes these things? I admire and respect Singer, but sometimes he writes before he thinks. When he does this, he disgraces himself and makes other philosophers look bad. Stop it, Peter. Think before you write.

Philosophy is a record of great debates, which is why the history of philosophy is considered a branch of, and not something apart from, philosophy. One of the greatest philosophical debates is that between rationalists and empiricists. Everyone, even nonphilosophers, should understand this debate, for only then can one understand the problems, controversies, and debates that have grown out of it. Here is how I explain the debate to my students.

Let's begin with the concept of a proposition. A proposition is what one asserts or denies when one makes an assertion or denial. Propositions can be believed or disbelieved. Belief in proposition p is belief that p is true. Disbelief in proposition p is belief that p is false. One can also take an attitude of nonbelief toward a proposition. Agnostics, for example (in one common use of the term), neither believe nor disbelieve the proposition that God exists. The most important fact about propositions is that they have truth values. Every proposition is either true or false (this is called the law of the excluded middle), and no proposition is both true and false (this is called the law of noncontradiction).

There are two types of true proposition. Some are true extrinsically or contingently, because they correctly represent (depict, portray) how things are. The proposition that the Florida Marlins won the 2003 World Series is true, but it needn't be. We can imagine it being false. It is not self-contradictory to assert that the Florida Marlins did not win the 2003 World Series. Other true propositions are true intrinsically or necessarily, either because of their form (e.g., "It is raining or it is not raining") or because of the concepts they contain. The proposition that all puppies are dogs is true not because things happened to work out that way, but because the concept of a puppy has "dog" built into it (as every competent speaker of English knows).

Everything I just said about true propositions is true, mutatis mutandis, of false propositions. Some are extrinsically or contingently false, e.g., that the New York Yankees won the 2003 World Series, while others are intrinsically or necessarily false, e.g., that some puppies are not dogs. So there are four types of proposition: contingently true, contingently false, necessarily true, and necessarily false. Every proposition is in one of these four categories and no proposition is in more than one category.

The traditional name for necessarily true propositions is "analytic." To analyze a thing is to break it down into its components. If you break the concept of a puppy down into its components, you get "young dog." So the proposition that all puppies are dogs says the same thing as (i.e., is synonymous with) the proposition that all young dogs are dogs. Once the substitution is made, the necessity is obvious. This will not work with the proposition that the Florida Marlins won the 2003 World Series. The concept of the Florida Marlins does not contain the predicate "winner of the 2003 World Series." Propositions that are not analytic are said to be synthetic. So every true proposition is either analytic or synthetic, depending on whether it is necessarily or contingently true. Every false proposition is either analytic or synthetic, depending on whether it is necessarily or contingently false.

Now let's introduce another distinction. There are two ways to know something: a priori and a posteriori. A priori knowledge is knowledge that is prior to, before, or independent of experience. It is knowledge that can be had merely through reflection (in or out of one's armchair). A priori knowledge does not require use of the senses (sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing). A posteriori knowledge, in contrast, is knowledge that is posterior to, after, or dependent on experience. It is knowledge that cannot be had through reflection. It requires going out into the world and making observations, by means of the senses.

Strictly speaking, the terms "a priori" and "a posteriori" apply to knowledge, but we can apply them to propositions. Let us call a proposition that can be known to be true independently of experience an a priori proposition. Let us call a proposition that can be known to be true only via experience an a posteriori proposition. So every proposition is either a priori or a posteriori and no proposition is both.

The two distinctions I've made—between analytic and synthetic propositions and between a priori and a posteriori propositions—cut across one another, creating four categories of proposition: analytic a priori; analytic a posteriori; synthetic a priori; and synthetic a posteriori. I can't draw a two-by-two box diagram here in the blog, but you can. Please do, for it will help you visualize what I am about to say.

The debate between rationalists and empiricists concerns which sorts of proposition there are. Rationalism is the view that the category of the synthetic a priori is not empty, i.e., that it has at least one member. Empiricism is the view that it is empty. In other words, rationalists believe that there are propositions that are capable of being known independently of experience but whose truth is not a function of the concepts they contain. An example might be "Every event has a cause." Empiricists believe that there are no such propositions. Among history's great rationalists are Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, and Kant. (It was Kant who first used the various terms I've employed, such as "analytic" and "synthetic.") Among history's great empiricists are Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Mill. Given how the terms have been defined, everybody is either a rationalist or an empiricist and nobody is both. (People can change, of course.)

Note that there is no difference between rationalists and empiricists with respect to the other three categories in the chart. Both believe that there are analytic a priori and synthetic a posteriori propositions. Thus, it is a mistake to say that empiricists reject a priori knowledge or deny that there are analytic propositions, just as it is a mistake to say that rationalists reject a posteriori knowledge or deny that there are synthetic propositions. Moreover, neither rationalists nor empiricists believe that there are analytic a posteriori propositions. The category of the synthetic a priori is the bone of contention.

Like most of you (or at least those who haven't been out shopping), I've been reading a lot (see here, for example) about mad-cow disease. It's interesting on many levels: epidemiologically, agriculturally, economically, politically, and morally. One thing is clear: The cost of beef and beef products will increase, perhaps significantly. Consumers will demand, and government will require, a more stringent inspection regime, the cost of which will be passed on to consumers by producers. Some consumers will switch to other, comparatively cheaper meats, such as pork, turkey, and chicken; but others will eliminate beef from their diet without replacing it. I can't but think that mad-cow disease will be a good thing for farm animals generally.

While I'm on the subject, is anyone besides me dumbfounded by the fact that otherwise intelligent, reasonable, even sensitive people eat beef? Have you been reading the stories about how it is produced? Cows live in filthy, stinking conditions. They walk about in their own feces and urine, with flies thick on their bodies. The slaughterhouse is covered in blood, guts, and gore. Either beef-eaters don't know about these conditions or they know and don't care. I can't believe they don't care. So maybe reading stories about where their neatly wrapped hamburger and steak comes from will make a difference to their behavior. You are what you eat.

In the 1990s 'conflict resolution' was a good phrase. With the ending of what had then seemed the conflict, the really big conflict, all the little conflicts could be resolved by the techniques of conflict resolution. (Never mind that in the last days of the Soviet empire far more people were being killed in little conflicts than by the big one.) All that was to be needed for the 'new world order['] was a modicum of goodwill, some international peace-keepers and negotiators trained in 'conflict resolution'. The fact that it would have been hard to point to a single conflict which had actually been solved by the methods of conflict resolution (and certainly the big one had not been) was taken to be carping and beside the point.

Conflicts are sometimes resolved, sometimes by force, sometimes by old believers dying out, sometimes by the parties getting richer and less interested in conflict, sometimes just by the parties getting tired or even forgetting whatever it was they had actually been fighting about, and sometimes by the onset of a grudging respect for enemies one never really hated and with whom one finds one can, after all, live. Sometimes they just stop for no ostensible reason at all.

But that there is a technique for conflict resolution looks like a rationalist mirage, a characteristic piece of the third-wayism of which it was a small but significant element. For what underlies such a belief is the premise that parties to a conflict typically share enough beliefs and principles to enable them to lay down their arms and agree among themselves by the application of appeals to reason and mutual self-interest. This surely is to misunderstand the nature of conflict, for most of the cases of conflict in the modern world which readily come to mind are cases where the protagonists have fundamental disagreements of principle or claim, and where violence has been resorted to precisely because there are feelings of great strength on both sides and no common ground of principle. Being lectured to by professional conciliators is hardly likely to do the trick, particularly where the conciliators are from a background which finds it hard to conceive of real differences of principle among reasonable people.

Well, maybe the protagonists in life and death conflict or in a battle between rival faiths are not, in that sense, reasonable. But it is patronising and, in the end, dangerous to have so attenuated a sense [of] reasonableness that one is unable to envisage people willing to die—and kill—for their beliefs, without thereby being insane.

("Editorial: Conflict Resolution," Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy 78 [October 2003]: 441 [italics in original])

Here is another take on Paul Krugman's rules—by professional Krugman-watcher Donald Luskin.

Paul Krugman, the economist-cum-journalist, lists six rules for political reporters in today's New York Times (see here), then admits not only that he doesn't expect them to be followed but that he himself "will break one or more of them." Let's examine the rules:

1. Don't talk about clothes. Al Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean was a momentous event: the man who won the popular vote in 2000 threw his support to a candidate who accuses the president of wrongfully taking the nation to war. So what did some prominent commentators write about? Why, the fact that both men wore blue suits. This was not, alas, unusual. I don't know why some journalists seem so concerned about politicians' clothes as opposed to, say, their policy proposals. But unless you're a fashion reporter, obsessing about clothes is an insult to your readers' intelligence.

This is a good rule. But I'm the opposite of clothes-conscious (I wear only denim jeans, for example), so perhaps clothes signify something of which I'm unaware. A respected colleague at another university insists that what a professor wears in the classroom matters. He says that wearing a suit jacket and tie shows "respect" for the students, who are, after all, paying good money for their education. And of course every lawyer knows (via controlled experiments) that differently colored suits have different effects on jurors. Perhaps clothes shouldn't matter, but they do; and if they do, isn't it legitimate for political reporters to cover it? Of course, every rule should be consistently applied. If a reporter comments on what the Democrat candidate wears, he or she should comment on what President Bush wears. People who don't care about clothes should ignore such comments.

2. Actually look at the candidates' policy proposals. One key proposal in the State of the Union address will, we hear, be the creation of new types of tax-exempt savings accounts. The proposal will come wrapped in fine phrases about an "ownership society." But serious journalists should tell us how the plan would work, who would benefit and who would lose. An early version of the plan was floated almost a year ago, and carefully analyzed in the journal Tax Notes. So there's no excuse for failing to report that the plan would probably reduce, not increase, national savings; that it would have large long-run budget costs; and that its benefits would go mainly to the wealthiest few percent of the population.

I like this rule, too. Policy proposals should be carefully analyzed by reporters. If Howard Dean is the Democrat nominee, as appears likely, his policies concerning health care, military preparedness, foreign affairs, homosexual marriage, and taxation (among other things) should be carefully scrutinized and analyzed. For example, reporters should ask what effect his tax policy will have on (1) incentives to produce, (2) the self-respect and self-sufficiency of those who receive tax monies from the government, (3) the budget deficit, and (4) bureaucratic waste.

3. Beware of personal anecdotes. Anecdotes that supposedly reveal a candidate's character are a staple of political reporting, but they should carry warning labels. For one thing, there are lots of anecdotes, and it's much too easy to report only those that reinforce the reporter's prejudices. The approved story line about Mr. Bush is that he's a bluff, honest, plain-spoken guy, and anecdotes that fit that story get reported. But if the conventional wisdom were instead that he's a phony, a silver-spoon baby who pretends to be a cowboy, journalists would have plenty of material to work with. If a reporter must use anecdotes, they'd better be true. After the Dean endorsement, innumerable reporters cracked jokes about Al Gore's inventing the Internet. Guys, he never said that: it's a malicious distortion of a true statement, and no self-respecting journalist would repeat it.

President Bush is what he is. He's not a journalistic invention. Krugman seems convinced that he's a fraud, which is his right. But he should not take Americans for fools. If, after four years of close scrutiny, they conclude that President Bush is "honest" and "plain-spoken," then they should act on that judgment. They don't need academic ideologues such as Krugman to tell them they're mistaken. This is a condescending rule. As for Al Gore, I think the American people got a good hard look at him for eight years and decided they didn't like what they saw. The people who knew him best, Tennesseans, rejected him. That he received more overall votes than President Bush is irrelevant. We don't elect presidents by popular vote. Al Gore won a moral victory, but moral victories don't put you in the White House.

4. Look at the candidates' records. A close look at Mr. Bush's record as governor would have revealed that, the approved story line notwithstanding, he was no moderate. A close look at Mr. Dean's record in Vermont reveals that, the emerging story line notwithstanding, he is no radical: he was a fiscally conservative leader whose biggest policy achievement—nearly universal health insurance for children—was the result of incremental steps.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, President Bush is what he is. Forget about labels. President Bush's values and policies are well-known to the American people. If voters think he's too far to the right, they'll let him know in November. What needs scrutiny are the values and policies of Howard Dean, who has taken steps to obscure or hide his gubernatorial record. Journalists should demand access to all of his records so voters can decide for themselves whether he's left, center, or right. I assume Krugman supports such access, since otherwise we really don't know whether Dean is a radical, do we?

5. Don't fall for political histrionics. I couldn't believe how much ink was spilled after the Gore-Dean event over Joe Lieberman's hurt feelings. Folks, we're talking about war, peace and the future of U.S. democracy—not about who takes whom to the prom. Political operatives have become experts at manufacturing the appearance of outrage. In the last few weeks the usual suspects have been trying to paint Howard Dean's obviously heartfelt comments about his brother's death in Laos as some sort of insult to the military. We owe it to our readers not to fall for these tricks.

Krugman underestimates the personal element in politics. We elect people, not policies. We want people with character and judgment. President Bush has demonstrated his character and judgment in many ways during the past three years (not counting the period in which he campaigned). Howard Dean's character and judgment are only now emerging. The American people will decide, in the end, which candidate they trust to lead the nation, domestically and internationally. If Krugman is suggesting that personal character is irrelevant, he knows less about typical Americans than I previously thought.

6. It's not about you. We learn from The Washington Post that reporters covering Mr. Dean are surprised—and, it's implied, miffed—that "he never asks a single question about them." The mind reels.

I like this rule. Journalists are not the story. They should be invisible. But if Howard Dean treats anyone, even reporters, with aloofness or disdain, that bears on his character and should be reported.

Some of Krugman's rules are good and some bad. Whichever rules are adopted by journalists, they should be applied consistently to all candidates, including the incumbent president. I'm sure Krugman agrees with that. Let's hold him—qua journalist—to the rules he has proposed.

Whereas, on or about the night prior to Christmas, there did occur at a certain improved piece of real property (hereinafter "the House") a general lack of stirring by all creatures therein, including, but not limited to, a mouse. A variety of foot apparel, e.g., stockings, socks, etc., had been affixed by and around the chimney in said House in the hope and/or belief that St. Nick a/k/a/ St. Nicholas a/k/a/ Santa Claus (hereinafter "Claus") would arrive at some time thereafter. The minor residents, i.e., the children, of the aforementioned House were located in their individual sleeping compartments, i.e., beds, and were engaged in nocturnal hallucinations, i.e., dreams, wherein visions of confectionery treats, including, but not limited to, candies, nuts, and/or sugarplums, did dance, cavort, and otherwise appear in said dreams. Whereupon the party of the first part (sometimes hereinafter referred to as "I"), being the joint owner in fee simple of the House with the party of the second part (hereinafter "Mama"), and said Mama had retired for a sustained period of sleep. (At such time, the parties were clad in various forms of headgear, viz., kerchief and cap.) Suddenly, and without prior notice or warning, there did occur upon the unimproved real property adjacent and appurtenant to said House, i.e., the lawn, a certain disruption of unknown nature, cause, and/or circumstance. The party of the first part did immediately rush to a window in the House to investigate the cause of such disturbance. At that time, the party of the first part did observe, with some degree of wonder and/or disbelief, a miniature sleigh (hereinafter "the Vehicle") being pulled and/or drawn very rapidly through the air by approximately eight (8) reindeer. The driver of the Vehicle appeared to be, and in fact was, the previously referenced Claus. Said Claus was providing specific direction, instruction, and guidance to the approximately eight (8) reindeer and specifically identified the animal co-conspirators by name: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen (hereinafter "the Deer"). (Upon information and belief, it is further asserted that an additional co-conspirator named "Rudolph" may have been involved.) The party of the first part witnessed Claus, the Vehicle, and the Deer intentionally and willfully adjacent to and in the vicinity of the House, and noted that the Vehicle was heavily laden with packages, toys, and other items of unknown origin or nature. Suddenly, without prior invitation or permission, either express or implied, the Vehicle arrived at the House, and Claus entered said House via the chimney. Said Claus was clad in a red fur suit, which was partially covered with residue from the chimney, and he carried a large sack containing a portion of the aforementioned packages, toys, and other unknown items. He was smoking what appeared to be tobacco in a small pipe in blatant violation of local ordinances and health regulations. Claus did not speak, but immediately began to fill the stockings of the minor children, which hung adjacent to the chimney, with toys and other small gifts. (Said items did not, however, constitute "gifts" to said minors pursuant to the applicable provisions of the U.S. Tax Code.) Upon completion of such task, Claus touched the side of his nose and flew, rose, and/or ascended up the chimney of the House to the roof where the Vehicle and Deer waited and/or served as "lookouts." Claus immediately departed for an unknown destination. However, prior to the departure of the Vehicle, Deer, and Claus from said House, the party of the first part did hear Claus state and/or exclaim: "Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!" Or words to that effect. Respectfully Submitted, /s/

In politics, in entertainment, in religion, everywhere, we find the language connected with Nietzsche's value revolution, a language necessitated by a new perspective on the things of most concern to us. Words such as "charisma," "life-style," "commitment," "identity" and many others, all of which can easily be traced to Nietzsche, are now practically American slang, although they, and the things to which they refer, would have been incomprehensible to our fathers, not to speak of our Founding Fathers. A few years ago I chatted with a taxi driver in Atlanta who told me he had just gotten out of prison, where he served time for peddling dope. Happily he had undergone "therapy." I asked him what kind. He responded, "All kinds—depth-psychology, transactional analysis, but what I liked best was Gestalt." Some of the German ideas did not even require English words to become the language of the people. What an extraordinary thing it is that high-class talk from what was the peak of Western intellectual life, in Germany, has become as natural as chewing gum on American streets. It indeed had its effect on this taxi driver. He said that he had found his identity and learned to like himself. A generation earlier he would have found God and learned to despise himself as a sinner. The problem lay with his sense of self, not with any original sin or devils in him. We have here the peculiarly American way of digesting Continental despair. It is nihilism with a happy ending.

(Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987], 146-7 [italics in original])

Ultimately, each of us is responsible for his or her safety. This is true of eating, flying, and everything else. After the horrific attacks of 11 September 2001, each of us had (and still has) to decide whether to fly. Now that mad-cow disease has been documented in a United States herd, each of us has to decide whether to eat beef. (Many of us don't eat it anyway; I'm referring to those who do.)

Do you trust statements emanating from the beef industry? Do you trust statements emanating from the United States Department of Agriculture, which is in the pocket of the beef industry? We know that the beef industry is aggressive to the point of dishonesty in marketing its products. Think of all the slogans over the years designed to make people think beef is essential to health: "Real Men Eat Beef"; "Beef: It's What's for Dinner"; and so on. Lately, the beef industry has been trying to persuade women (how's that for sexism?) that cooking beef is quick and easy. Why, in just thirty minutes you can have beef on the table for your husband and children. The not-so-subtle implication is that if you don't feed your family beef, you're not a good wife and mother.

I wouldn't trust the beef industry with a nickel of my money, much less with my life and health. This is cynical, but I think cynicism is warranted in this case, given the industry's duplicity and demonstrated lack of concern for consumer health. I say the same thing about the airline industry after 9-11. It got to the point where airline representatives were calling Americans weenies for not flying. "Fraidy cat!" "Wuss!"

As most readers of this blog know (but some may not), the beef industry is so sensitive to lost profits that it uses the law to attack critics. Here in Texas, there is a "disparagement" law that allows the industry to sue those who disparage its products. That is an abuse of legal processes. But the industry, at least in Texas, is powerful. It is almost a separate branch of government. At least the airline industry isn't built on deprivation, suffering, and death, like the beef industry.

I hope Americans stop eating beef. It won't be for the right reason (which is concern for the animals whose flesh is consumed), but doing the right thing for the wrong reason is better than doing the wrong thing. What's the industry going to do, sue mad-cow disease? Pass a law requiring that every citizen eat beef? Ha!

Thank goodness this man didn't become president. See here. After reading this, I understand why even his fellow Tennesseans rejected him. They know him best.

[T]he most profound and precise work is done by scholars who both find their subject matter exciting or glamorous and who are anxious to make rational sense of it in an accurate and scholarly manner—that is, who invest their emotions in it in the ways that objective criteria demand.

(John Wilson, A Preface to Morality [Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble Books, 1988], 97 [first published in 1987])

If you're not reading John Ray's blog every day, you're not living an examined life. Socrates would not be pleased.

The word "speciesism" was coined not by Peter Singer, as one might expect, but by Richard D. Ryder. Singer credits (blames?) Ryder for the term in note 4 of chapter 1 of Animal Liberation (New York: Avon Books, 1975). Here is the expanded note from the second edition (New York: The New York Review of Books, 1990):

I owe the term "speciesism" to Richard Ryder. It has become accepted in general use since the first edition of this book, and now appears in The Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).

I happen to have the OED2e on my hard drive. Here is the entry. As you can see, the term was first used by Ryder in his 1975 book Victims of Science: The Use of Animals in Research. Fourteen years later, Ryder published Animal Revolution: Changing Attitudes Towards Speciesism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). Early in that book (see here), he discussed speciesist language and explained how he proposed to avoid it.

Not everyone likes the term "speciesism." In fact, Singer's own teacher, R. M. Hare, had this to say about it:

I use the term 'specist', formed by analogy with 'racist', instead of the intolerably clumsy word 'speciesist' which seems to be becoming current. (R. M. Hare, "Why I Am Only a Demi-Vegetarian," chap. 15 in his Essays on Bioethics [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993], 219-35, at 231-2)

This statement by Hare puzzles me for at least two reasons. First, by 1993, when his essay was first published, the term had long since become current, at least among philosophers. Three years earlier, Singer had said that it was "accepted in general use." Who is right: teacher or student? I say student. Second, Hare seems wrong about the analogy. "Discrimination on the basis of race" makes "racism"; "discrimination on the basis of sex" makes "sexism"; so why doesn't "discrimination on the basis of species" make "speciesism"? I'm with Ryder and Singer as against Hare.

Here are the ten most overrated musicians (or bands):

The Rolling Stones
Eric Clapton
Talking Heads
The Clash
Bob Dylan
Bruce Springsteen
The Grateful Dead
The Ramones
Elvis Costello
Elton John

Here are the ten most underrated musicians (or bands):

The Outfield
The Alan Parsons Project
Bachman-Turner Overdrive
Michael Hedges
Icehouse
Deep Purple
Wang Chung
Saga
Swing Out Sister
Ronnie Montrose

I haven't heard anything by Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Sonic Youth, or Metallica, but I'm sure I'd hate it. No good music was made after about 1985. MTV killed music.

As most of you (my faithful readers) know, I'm an atheist. I've always been an atheist. Like David Hume (1711-1776), I'm tone-deaf to religion. I find the idea of a disembodied person preposterous. A fortiori, I find the idea of a perfectly good, all-knowing, all-powerful disembodied person preposterous. But Christianity is more than belief in a supernatural being or an afterlife. It's a set of moral ideals and injunctions, such as, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18; compare Matthew 5:43-4, 22:39). As I pointed out in a recent post, it's possible to be an atheistic Christian (or Christian atheist). The philosopher R. M. Hare (1919-2002) was one such. Two other great thinkers, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), thought highly of Jesus's moral teachings without subscribing to the belief that he was divine. He was a man. A good man. A wise man.

I, too, think highly of Jesus. I wish more Christians did. I wish they thought highly enough of Jesus to abide by his teachings. Someone asked Mark Twain (1835-1910) what he had against Christianity. He said he had nothing against Christianity; indeed, he wished we would try it some time. In my view, the best thing atheists can do to make the world a better place is to spread the word of Jesus. I'm not being facetious. Hold your Christian friends to their beliefs. Point out their hypocrisy. Keep them from backsliding. More importantly, get them to proselytize. The more nonhypocritical Christians there are, the better the world will be.

Addendum: Jesus would be (and probably was) a vegetarian, if not a vegan. Vegetarianism follows from his injunction to protect the weak, the vulnerable, the poor, and the oppressed.

My sixteenth Tech Central Station column, "My Journey to Conservatism," will appear in early January, after the holidays. The editor (Nick Schulz) wants maximum readership for it, and, frankly, so do I. In the meantime, reflect on your own political journey. Have your values changed over time? If not, why not? Life is about growing, learning, and working out a coherent worldview. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Admittedly, not everyone has a worthwhile life by this standard, but for those who do, wouldn't it be miraculous if this lifelong process of examination had no effect—if they had the same views and values at forty, sixty, and eighty years of age as they had at twenty? If your values have changed, why have they changed? What experiences or arguments produced or contributed to the change(s)?

Sophie, Shelbie, and I wish all of you a safe, happy holiday season. Remember: The best things in life are either free or cheap.

I compiled the following bibliography from various sources to ensure that I have everything Nietzsche published (and some things he didn't). Many of Nietzsche's German titles can be translated differently into English. I put the variations I've seen in parentheses. If you don't know anything about Nietzsche but want to, I recommend Ronald Hayman, Nietzsche: A Critical Life (New York: Penguin Books, 1982 [1980]), and Michael Tanner, Nietzsche (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

May 1869 np. (Homer and Classical Philology).

January 1870 np. (The Greek Music Drama).

February 1870 np. (Socrates and Tragedy).

Summer 1870 np. (Oedipus the King).

Summer 1870 np. (The Dionysian Attitude).

April 1871 np. (Socrates and Greek Tragedy).

1871 np. Uber Musik und Wort (On Music and Words).

1871 np. Der griechische Staat (The Greek State).

April 1871/1872. Die Geburt der Tragodie aus dem Geiste der Musik (The Birth of Tragedy out of/from the Spirit of Music).

1872 np. Uber die Zukunft unserer Bildungs-Anstalten (On the Future of our Educational Institutions).

1872 np. Homers Wettkampf (Homer's Contest).

1872 np. Das Verhaltnis der Schopenhauerschen Philosophie zu einer deutschen Kultur (The Relation of Schopenhauerian Philosophy to German Culture).

1872. Der letzte Philosoph. Der Philosoph. Betrachtungen uber den Kampf von Kunst und Erkenntniss (The Last Philosopher. The Philosopher. Reflections on the Struggle Between Art and Knowledge). Written during fall and winter 1872.

1872. Uber das Pathos der Wahrheit (On the Pathos of Truth). Written in December 1872.

1873. Der Philosoph als Arzt der Kultur (The Philosopher as Cultural Physician). Written between winter 1872 and fall 1873.

1873 np. Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen (Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks).

1873. Uber Wahrheit und Luge im aussermoralischen Sinne (On Truth and Lies/Lie in a Nonmoral/an Extra-Moral Sense). Written in July 1873.

August 1873. Unzeitgemasse Betrachtungen. Erstes Stuck: David Strauss, der Bekenner und der Schriftsteller (Untimely Meditations/Reflections/Thoughts out of Season/Unmodern Observations. First Part: David Strauss, the Writer and the Confessor/David Strauss: Writer and Confessor).

1873. Gedanken zu der Betrachtung: Die Philosophie in Bedrangniss (Thoughts on the Meditation: Philosophy in Hard Times). Written between summer 1873 and summer 1874.

1873/February 1874. Unzeitgemasse Betrachtungen. Zweites Stuck: Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie fur das Leben (Untimely Meditations/Reflections/Thoughts out of Season/Unmodern Observations. Second Part: On the Use(s) and Disadvantage(s)/Abuse of History for Life/History in the Service and Disservice of Life). Written in November 1873.

Summer 1874 np. Rhetorik (Rhetoric).

September 1874. Unzeitgemasse Betrachtungen. Drittes Stuck: Schopenhauer als Erzieher (Untimely Meditations/Reflections/Thoughts out of Season/Unmodern Observations. Third Part: Schopenhauer as Educator). Written between March and September 1874.

1875 np. Wir Philologen (We Philologists/Classicists). Written between March 1875 and end of summer 1875.

1875. Wissenschaft und Weisheit im Kampfe (The Struggle Between Science and Wisdom). Written in late 1875.

July 1876. Unzeitgemasse Betrachtungen. Viertes Stuck: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (Untimely Meditations/Reflections/Thoughts out of Season/Unmodern Observations. Fourth Part: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth). Written between late April and June 1876.

April 1878, 1886. Menschliches, Allzumenschliches: ein Buch fur freie Geister. Erster Band (Human, All-too-Human/All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. Volume One). Written between August 1876 and mid-January 1878.

1879, 1886. Menschliches, Allzumenschliches. Zweiter Band: Erste Abteilung: Vermischte Meinungen und Spruche (Human, All-too-Human/All Too Human. Volume Two. First Section/Part One: Assorted/Miscellaneous/Mixed Opinions and Sayings/Maxims). Written between October and December 1878.

December 1879/1880, 1886. Menschliches, Allzumenschliches. Zweiter Band. Zweite Abteilung: Der Wanderer und sein Schatten (Human, All-too-Human/All Too Human. Volume Two. Second Section/Part Two: The Wanderer and His Shadow). Written between June and September 1879.

Early July 1881. Die Morgenrote: Gedanken uber die moralischen Vorurteile (The Dawn of Day/Sunrise/Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality/Moral Prejudices). Written between February 1880 and March 1881.

26 August 1882, 1887. Die frohliche Wissenschaft (The Gay Science/The Joyful Wisdom). Written between August 1881 and February 1882.

1883, 1884, 1885, 1892. Also sprach Zarathustra: ein Buch fur Alle und Keinen (Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All/Everyone and None/No One). Written between January 1883 and _____.

August 1886. Jenseits von Gut und Bose: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft (Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future). Written between early June 1885 and January 1886.

10 November 1887. Zur Genealogie der Moral: Eine Streitschrift (The/On the/Toward a Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic). Written between June 1887 and _____.

September 1888. Der Fall Wagner: ein Musikanten-Problem (The Case of Wagner/The Wagner Case: A Musicians'/Musician's Problem). Written between May and mid-September 1888.

January 1889. Die Gotzen-Dammerung, oder: Wie man mit dem Hammer Philosophiert (The/Twilight of the Idols/False Gods, or: How to Philosophize/One Philosophizes with a Hammer). Written between the end of June and the beginning of September 1888.

1891. Dionysus Dithyramben (Dionysus Dithyrambs).

1895. Der Antichrist (The Antichrist). Written between 3 and 30 September 1888.

1908. Ecce Homo: Wie man wird, was man ist (Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is). Written between 15 October and 4 November 1888.

1895. Nietzsche contra Wagner: Aktenstucke eines Psychologen (Nietzsche Contra/Against Wagner: Out of the Files/Documents of a Psychologist). Written between _____ and 25 December 1888.

1901 np. Der Wille zur Macht (The Will to Power). Written between 1883 and 1888.

np = not published by Nietzsche

Justice [William J.] Brennan [of the United States Supreme Court] has insisted that the death penalty is "uncivilized," "inhuman," inconsistent with "human dignity" and with "the sanctity of life," that it "treats members of the human race as nonhumans, as objects to be toyed with and discarded," that it is "uniquely degrading to human dignity" and "by its very nature, [involves] a denial of the executed person's humanity." Justice Brennan does not say why he thinks execution "uncivilized." Hitherto most civilizations have had the death penalty, although it has been discarded in Western Europe, where it is currently unfashionable probably because of its abuse by totalitarian regimes.

By "degrading," Justice Brennan seems to mean that execution degrades the executed convicts. Yet philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant and G. F. W. Hegel, have insisted that, when deserved, execution, far from degrading the executed convict, affirms his humanity by affirming his rationality and his responsibility for his actions. They thought that execution, when deserved, is required for the sake of the convict's dignity. (Does not life imprisonment violate human dignity more than execution, by keeping alive a prisoner deprived of all autonomy?)

Common sense indicates that it cannot be death—our common fate—that is inhuman. Therefore, Justice Brennan must mean that death degrades when it comes not as a natural or accidental event, but as a deliberate social imposition. The murderer learns through his punishment that his fellow men have found him unworthy of living; that because he has murdered, he is being expelled from the community of the living. This degradation is self-inflicted. By murdering, the murderer has so dehumanized himself that he cannot remain among the living. The social recognition of his self-degradation is the punitive essence of execution. To believe, as Justice Brennan appears to, that the degradation is inflicted by the execution reverses the direction of causality.

(Ernest van den Haag, "The Ultimate Punishment: A Defense," Harvard Law Review 99 [May 1986]: 1662-9, at 1668-9 [third set of brackets in original; footnotes omitted])

Democrat presidential candidate Howard Dean said the other day (see here) that the United States (presumably he meant Americans) is no safer as a result of Saddam Hussein's capture. This seems patently, palpably, ludicrously false. But it would be too easy to dismiss it as campaign bluster or stupidity. Is there a charitable reading in which what Dean said is at least plausible?

Suppose someone on the other side of the world (e.g., China) reads my blog—maybe this very entry!—and takes a disliking to me. Am I not safer if that person is taken into custody by authorities? I didn't say how much safer, but surely I'm safer! Someone who dislikes me has been taken out of commission, preventing him or her from acting upon the dislike. The more intense the dislike and the greater the person's ability to act on it, the safer I am. In this sense, what Dean said is false, for Saddam Hussein dislikes the United States and Americans intensely. He tried to kill one of our presidents. Hussein's dislike has been amply demonstrated and documented. I assume Howard Dean is aware of it. If he isn't, he's not fit to be president.

Maybe he's saying that the United States is not appreciably safer. But why wouldn't he have said that if that's what he meant? The discussion would then center on what he means by "appreciably." Perhaps he is saying that while Americans are safer, it came at too great a cost. In other words, we gave up too much to get just a little extra safety. This, unlike the first reading of Dean's statement, is an evaluation, and reasonable people might disagree with it; but it opens up a legitimate and important debate about the costs of safety. Maybe that's all Dean was trying to do.

Here's a third reading. Perhaps Dean is saying that while we're safer in one respect as a result of Hussein's capture, we're less safe in another respect. For example, Hussein's capture may incite additional violence against Americans, i.e., violence above and beyond what would have taken place had Hussein not been captured. But again, if this was Dean's point, he could and should have been more perspicuous.

Howard Dean is unsubtle and reckless. Here was a needless and pointless controversy caused solely by his inability to articulate his thoughts. Do we want someone like that in the White House, with his finger on the proverbial red button? I, for one, do not. Howard Dean scares me. He also scares my mother, who is a political bellwether. My mother is better than I am at gauging and predicting political events. It's because she doesn't have book-learnin'. I'm serious. My years of formal study have destroyed my political instincts and my common sense. Which is not to say that I've given up on politics. Not at all. I'm trying to unlearn what I learned from the books.

How many times have you heard it said, as a criticism of President Bush, that there are other national leaders at least as tyrannical or dangerous as Saddam Hussein? I have heard it said, for example, that North Korea is far more of a danger to the United States than Iraq was. And if the rationale was to liberate the Iraqi people, as has been suggested, aren't there other peoples around the world suffering even more at the hands of brutal dictators than the Iraqis were?

Let's reconstruct this, for it's clearly an argument. The suggestion seems to be that President Bush is inconsistent. But what does that mean? Suppose I make a judgment (favorable or unfavorable) about individual or situation X. Suppose there is no relevant difference between X and Y (i.e., they may differ, but only in irrelevant ways). Consistency requires that I make the same judgment about Y as I do about X. If I don't, I employ a double standard: one standard for X (or Xs) and one for Y (or Ys). I agree that this would be bad. Double standards are bad. Each of us should employ a single standard to relevantly similar individuals or situations.

Is President Bush employing a double standard by invading Iraq but not North Korea? He is not. First of all, he is still president, and North Korea is still North Korea. That the United States hasn't invaded North Korea doesn't mean it can't or won't. Consistency doesn't require simultaneous action. In the case of X and Y, I may do something to or for X today and the same thing to or for Y tomorrow. The time lag per se doesn't make me inconsistent.

But what if President Bush never invades North Korea? Does that show that he has a double standard? It does not. First, there may be relevant differences between the cases, unlike in our hypothesized example. North Korea may be able to retaliate against the United States in ways that Iraq could not. That is relevant, because retaliation costs lives and lives matter. This is one of many possible differences that can justify differential treatment. Second, and more importantly, consistency requires consistency in judgment, not necessarily in action. Suppose there are no relevant differences between Iraq and North Korea with respect to invasionworthiness. This requires that the same judgment be made about the justifiability of invasion. It does not require that the invasion actually be carried out.

It's easy to see this. It takes many resources to wage war, and resources, by definition, are scarce. Even if several tyrants deserve toppling, we may have to choose from among them for practical reasons, such as cost. This is how police officers operate. Suppose I, a police officer, see ten speeding vehicles. I can stop only one of them. All ten are stopworthy, but only one can be stopped. Should we say that unless (per impossibile) I stop all ten, I may not stop one? Is it all or nothing? Surely not. I do what I can with the resources I have at my disposal. The speeders who weren't stopped were lucky. All of them avoided deserved punishment. Their situations were relevantly similar. Why does this line of thinking not apply to President Bush?

One rationale of criminal punishment is general deterrence. The objective is to threaten all by punishing some. I believe we are already seeing the fruits of President Bush's war in Iraq. Other tyrants are on notice that they had better shape up. If we are lucky, there will be no need to invade North Korea, for the North Korean dictator will fear suffering Saddam Hussein's fate. This is called getting bang for your buck. Usually people understand this concept, but not, it seems, when they are hell-bent on criticizing a despised president.

With all due respect, critics of President Bush should think before they speak. That the president invaded only Iraq (so far) does not imply that no other nation was or is invasionworthy. It shows only that practical considerations play a role in deciding which target to choose from among multiple relevantly similar targets.

You have to admire Richard Cohen, the Washington Post columnist and longtime opponent of the death penalty. He opposes execution of Saddam Hussein (see here). Not because he has any doubts about Hussein's guilt, and certainly not because he sympathizes with Hussein, but because, well, "Among the things government shouldn't do is take a life." One searches in vain for a reason to support this judgment. The closest one gets is this: "The death penalty vindicates the killer's mentality: Life can be taken."

It is astonishing that Cohen, an intelligent man, can't see the difference between an individual doing X when X is illegal and the state doing X as punishment for the doing of X. The difference is not physical but moral. The punishment is for the offense. By Cohen's reasoning, imprisonment for kidnapping "vindicates the kidnapper's mentality: Liberty may be taken." Fining for embezzlement "vindicates the embezzler's mentality: Money may be taken." Does imprisonment tell the citizenry that they, too, may imprison their fellows? Does fining tell the citizenry that they, too, may take the money of others? One wonders whether Cohen has children, and how, if he does, he justifies punishing them. Isn't he, by punishing, telling them that it is acceptable for them to do to others what he is doing to them?

The death penalty doesn't vindicate the killer's mentality; it condemns and repudiates it. It tells the killer that what was done is unacceptable. It vindicates not the killer's mentality but the rules the killer violated and the interests those rules protect. This is why it is silly to suggest, as Cohen does, that capital punishment is "primitive" or "barbaric." It is the very opposite of these things, which is why we Americans have it and Europeans do not. Capital punishment shows the respect we Americans have for innocent human life. If we didn't value innocent human life, why would we care that it was destroyed? That we punish it so severely shows the high value we accord it. Cohen is simply confused. He is emoting, not thinking.

The only argument I can discern in Cohen's column for opposing the death penalty is that, as Cohen puts it, "only death is irrevocable." Every other punishment, whether corporal, pecuniary, or confining, is revocable. But if this is his rationale, then he should have no opposition to any punishment short of death. He should accept regular beatings to within an inch of Hussein's life, followed by recovery and then more beatings. He should accept daily hard labor to the point of exhaustion. He doesn't accept these, of course, which gives the lie to his "rationale." Cohen is not opposed to death; he's opposed to harsh punishment. He's driven by squeamishness, not principle.

Liar, n. A lawyer with a roving commission.

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

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.

(Jonathan Glover, Causing Death and Saving Lives [Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1977], 269)

One of the tragedies of the war in Iraq (besides the many personal tragedies) is that it did not open up a necessary debate about the morality of humanitarian intervention. The prevailing assumption seems to be that national sovereignty is the only important value. It's not. Remember human rights? Remember the idea that human beings have certain rights simply by virtue of being human beings—rights that no state may abrogate or violate?

National sovereignty is at most an instrumental good. It is good because, and only to the extent that, it promotes the interests of individuals. But if, as in the case of Iraq, agents of the state oppress their citizens (to put it mildly), the presumption in favor of national sovereignty is rebutted. Over and over, during the debate about war in Iraq, I heard the question, "What has Iraq done to us?" The implication is that only an attack by Iraq on the United States could justify intervention. Has it come to that? Have Americans become so self-absorbed that they care only about themselves, about their own comfort, liberty, and security?

The great irony is that it was liberals who invented the concept of human rights. It was liberals who argued for humanitarian intervention. Now they seem to have become self-indulgent. "As long as Saddam Hussein leaves us alone, we'll leave him alone." But what about the Iraqi people he has brutalized (and would have continued to brutalize but for our selfless act)? Do we care about them? Do they enter into our felicific calculus? Here is an opinion piece from a Toronto newspaper, The Globe and Mail. (Thanks to my Canadian friend Angus Taylor for the link.) Here, for good measure, is a philosophical book review on humanitarian intervention. Read up. Things are not as morally simple as you have been led to believe.

Addendum: There's an interesting analogy between states and families. At one time, the family was impenetrable. It was assumed, for legal and moral purposes, that the husband-father ("a man's home is his castle") had the best interests of his wife and children at heart and could be trusted not to harm them. The family was a private institution. Child-welfare advocates eventually penetrated the familial barrier in behalf of abused children, and rightly so. (The locus classicus is Joseph Goldstein, Anna Freud, and Albert J. Solnit, Before the Best Interests of the Child [New York: The Free Press, 1979].)

Feminists have done the same thing with respect to battered women. It is no longer assumed that what goes on behind closed doors is a private matter; harm is everyone's business. (See, e.g., Rosemarie Tong, "Woman-Battering," chap. 5 in her Women, Sex, and the Law [Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1984], 124-52.) If a husband-father refused to allow intervention by agents of the state, he would be—and should be—hauled off to jail. Why does this thinking not apply to heads of state? Why are heads of state conclusively presumed to have the best interests of their citizens at heart? We know for a fact that some, such as Saddam Hussein, do not. Do you see the liberal double standard? Liberals accept the legitimacy of intervention on a small scale, but not on a large scale where even more is at stake.

It might be said that the United States is not the world's police officer or social worker. Fair enough. But wouldn't you have a moral obligation to intervene in your neighbor's family to prevent harm from being done to a child by a parent (or to one spouse by the other)? Indeed, wouldn't you have an even stronger obligation if there were no Child Protective Services agency? The United States is in a position to intervene, so it must face the moral question whether it should. We need a discussion of the principles that distinguish permissible from impermissible interventions. Nobody (I hope) is a pacifist with respect to familial intervention. Why should anyone be a pacifist with respect to national intervention?

I get lots of critical e-mail, which, stoically, I take in stride, but sometimes I get nice e-mail such as this (reprinted by permission):

dear professor burgess-jackson: every day i read your blog. every day, i learn something new from your clear, concise and illuminating pieces. if only everyone in the u.s. could take courses from you! (i am envious of your students.) i recall one of my phil professors once saying that you do not need to have complex, almost-impossible to decipher prose to express something profound. (unless, of course, you are kant.) what you write is a shining example of this principle. thanks SO much for what you write! sincerely, peg kaplan, minnetonka, mn

Thanks, Peg! You're too kind by at least half.

For our purposes here I accept the view that a sound analysis is best understood as providing a satisfactory substitute, one that meets certain desiderata while avoiding certain obscurities and confusions. In other words, explication is elimination: we start with a concept the expression for which is somehow troublesome; but it serves certain ends that cannot be given up. An explication achieves these ends in other ways that are relatively free of difficulty. Thus if the theory of justice as fairness, or more generally of rightness as fairness, fits our considered judgments in reflective equilibrium, and if it enables us to say all that on due examination we want to say, then it provides a way of eliminating customary phrases in favor of other expressions. So understood one may think of justice as fairness and rightness as fairness as providing a definition or explication of the concepts of justice and right.

(John Rawls, A Theory of Justice [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1971], 111 [footnote omitted])

My egg carton has a number of alluring (and cryptic) phrases, but only one of them, so far as I can tell, has moral significance.

The logo depicts a farmhouse with the words "FARMHOUSE EGGS" above and below it. One might be tempted, upon reading this, to think of a cozy henhouse with straw-filled nests and pleasant roosts, but a farmhouse is not a henhouse. The egg farm near my childhood home in Vassar, Michigan, had a farmhouse, and believe me, there were no henhouses on the premises. It was chicken hell.

The logo says "ALL NATURAL" and "HAND GATHERED." It's not clear what the former expression refers to. "Natural" usually contrasts with "artificial." Eggs aren't artificial, so they must be natural. It's natural for hens, even factory-farmed hens, to lay eggs. The latter expression, I think, is meant to mislead. The eggs in the egg farm near my childhood home were hand gathered by either the sons of the proprietor or hired help. When laid, the eggs rolled downward on a wire mesh. Someone came by once or twice a day to "gather" them by hand. The term "gathered" suggests an egg basket carried by a farmer's wife clad in an apron.

On the left of the carton it says, "From Natural Grain Fed / Free Roaming Nesting Hens." How or what the chickens are fed seems irrelevant to how they're treated, and therefore morally irrelevant. The chickens in the egg farm near my childhood home were fed grain. Was it natural? It's not clear what that means. Grain is natural as opposed to artificial, so the word "natural" may add nothing but favorable emotive meaning to the term. Lots of products in grocery stores have "natural" in their title. Natural is good.

The only phrase that's morally relevant, in my view, is "Free Roaming Nesting Hens." The main complaint about factory egg farms is that the chickens are kept in cramped quarters. If they're free-roaming, that would vastly improve the quality of their lives. But who knows what "roaming" means? Does it mean the chickens have the run of an enclosure? Perhaps they have only a little more room than the chickens in factory farms—room to turn around, for example. But any more room to move about is good, morally speaking. PETA certainly thinks so.

Someone might say, upon reading this, that I'm naive. "Do you believe that stuff, Keith? Sheesh!" But why shouldn't I? I have no reason to disbelieve it. If I can't believe what it says on an egg carton, why should I believe what it says on any product container? Should I believe that the computer I purchased has an eighty-gigabyte hard drive in it, or that it was put together in Austin, Texas, simply because it says those things on the box? Maybe I should conduct a personal investigation. I should go to the place where the eggs are produced and see for myself what "free roaming" means. Is that reasonable? Wouldn't it require that I conduct personal investigations of the soy products I buy? After all, why believe it when it says "Meatless Fat Free Slices" on my Deli Slices? Why believe it when it says "Meat Free Soy Protein Links" on my Smart Dogs? This sort of skepticism sweeps too broadly.

"But why eat eggs at all?" you ask. "Even if you're right that the chickens from whom these eggs came were free roaming, it doesn't follow that no suffering was involved." I agree. I'm not doing the best I can. But I'm doing better than if I ate any old eggs, as I did until recently. I'm doing less than the best—by my own standards—but not nothing. You can criticize me for not doing my best as long as you also praise me for doing something. To criticize me for not doing my best is to imply that morality is all or nothing—that there is no morally relevant difference between eating any old eggs and eating eggs from free-roaming hens.

Imagine if we adopted that attitude in other realms. If you're not playing in the major leagues, you may as well not play baseball. If you're not doing everything you can for your spouse, you're acting immorally. If you're causing any animal suffering at all, you may as well be skinning cats alive for the fun of it.

Because logic has been a masculine enterprise in that logicians have been for the most part men, I retain the masculine pronoun, not as generic but as specifically masculine.

(Andrea Nye, Words of Power: A Feminist Reading of the History of Logic [New York and London: Routledge, 1990], 20 n. 2)

It is sometimes suggested that there are (only) two ways of conceiving of equality: as equality of opportunity and as equality of result. Some people plump for the former, some for the latter. But this is an impoverished conceptual scheme. There are at least three other ways of conceiving of equality besides these. Indeed, these two conceptions mark out the extremes! Let me illustrate the five conceptions by means of a metaphor.

Suppose five people sit down for an evening of poker. Each begins with $100. They agree that the playing will end at midnight. What rules might they adopt? The first rule they might adopt is to let the chips fall where they may, so to speak. As long as the rules of the game(s) are complied with and nobody is forced to play, any outcome, as far as how the $500 is distributed, is just. For all they know at the outset, one person will end up with all the money. This rule represents libertarianism or equality of opportunity. It also exemplifies what John Rawls calls "pure procedural justice," for there is no independent standard, beyond the actual playing of the game(s), by which to evaluate the outcome.

A second rule is to let the chips fall where they may, but with a provision that nobody goes home with less than, say, $5. If someone ends up broke, the other players will chip in to see that he or she leaves with $5. Or perhaps the person with the most money must fork over the $5. There's no name for this rule, but R. M. Hare (in his review of Rawls's A Theory of Justice) mentions it as a possibility. We could call it the catastrophe rule, since it provides insurance against catastrophe. Or we could think of it as libertarianism with a safety net. Or we could think of it as quasi-pure procedural justice (which Rawls discusses).

A third rule is like the second except that it has a higher floor. (Sorry for all the metaphors!) It provides not just insurance against catastrophe but a decent minimum for each player. And this time, the funds don't come from the other players equally, or even proportionally. The players who end up with the most money pay a larger proportion of their winnings to the players who do the worst. For example, it might be stipulated that nobody goes home with less than $50. Suppose that at the end of the evening the $500 is distributed as follows: $200, $150, $100, $50, $0. The person with $200 might have to give $25 (rather than $20) to the person with $0, whereas the others give a smaller percentage. This represents Rawlsian liberalism. Query: Why not let everyone go home with $100? Because that would destroy the incentive to play well. The prospect of winning makes the game more competitive and therefore more interesting.

A fourth rule requires that at the end of the evening, the $500 be collected and distributed equally to the five players. Each person goes home with $100. This rule represents egalitarianism or equality of result. The downside of this rule is that you know you won't go home with more money than you brought. The upside of the rule is that you know you won't go home with less money than you brought.

A fifth rule requires whatever distribution maximizes overall happiness. If, as seems plausible, money has diminishing marginal utility, then the distribution will tend toward equality. But only tend. This rule represents utilitarianism.

All five rules can be defended as realizations of the principle of equality. It's just that they equalize different things. Rules 1 and 2 equalize opportunity, although rule 2 provides insurance against catastrophe (the premiums of which must be paid by those who averted catastrophe). Rule 3 equalizes, for want of a better phrase, the product of opportunity and outcome. (It represents a compromise between two values.) Rule 4 equalizes outcomes. Rule 5 equalizes consideration of interests.

The poker metaphor is not perfect. Rawls, for example, allows inequality because (and only because) it creates incentives that increase the size of the economic pie. This is hard to represent with a fixed sum of money in a poker game. But you get the idea.

Imagine a procedure (process, proceeding) that leads to various outcomes (results, states of affairs). First question: Is there "an independent standard for deciding which outcome is just"—i.e., is there "a criterion defined separately from and prior to the procedure which is to be followed" (John Rawls, A Theory of Justice [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1971], 85)?

No. This is pure procedural justice. Example: gambling. "[T]here is a correct or fair procedure such that the outcome is likewise correct or fair, whatever it is, provided that the procedure has been properly followed" (TJ, 86). But notice: "A fair procedure translates its fairness to the outcome only when it is actually carried out" (TJ, 86). Comment: Rawls complicates this category by introducing the notion of "quasi-pure" procedural justice: "laws and policies are just provided that they lie within the allowed range, and the legislature, in ways authorized by a just constitution, has in fact enacted them" (TJ, 201). Earlier, he had said of pure procedural justice that "the outcome is just whatever it happens to be, at least so long as it is within a certain range" (TJ, 85; italics added). Confining outcomes to a certain range introduces a substantive element, which makes it quasi-pure (not to be confused with impure).

Yes. This is impure procedural justice (Rawls does not use this term, but it is suggested by his use of "pure"). Second question: Is it "possible to devise a procedure that is sure to give the desired outcome"—i.e., that is "guaranteed to lead to it" (TJ, 85)?

No. This is imperfect procedural justice. Example: a criminal trial. "Even though the law is carefully followed, and the proceedings fairly and properly conducted, it may reach the wrong outcome. An innocent man may be found guilty, a guilty man may be set free" (TJ, 86). Another example is lawmaking. This explains how unjust laws can emerge from a just constitutional process, and this gives rise to the problem of civil disobedience, to wit: Under what conditions may one disobey a valid law (i.e., a law that was enacted in accordance with just constitutional processes)? Rawls answers this question both in his 1969 essay "The Justification of Civil Disobedience" and in TJ.

Yes. This is perfect procedural justice. Example: dividing a cake, where it is assumed that "the fair division is an equal one" (TJ, 85). Rawls says that "perfect procedural justice is rare, if not impossible, in cases of much practical interest" (TJ, 85).

In the war over copyright, file-sharers won an important battle yesterday. The ruling in Recording Industry Association of America v. Verizon Internet Services by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (opinion by Chief Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg) keeps the recording industry honest. It must do things the conventional way: file suit using a placeholder name, then have the trial court issue a subpoena to the unknown person's internet-service provider (ISP) to ascertain his or her identity.

Don't be misled by the RIAA's spin (see here). It's a defeat. The ruling, unless overturned on appeal by the United States Supreme Court, makes copyright-infringement lawsuits costlier to the industry and therefore less likely to be filed, which, in turn, decreases the deterrent effect on file sharers. The industry will undoubtedly appeal to Congress for protective legislation, but that will take time and may not be successful.

Judge Ginsburg's opinion (sixteen pages long) is a model of judicial restraint. Please read it; even a nonlawyer should be able to understand the facts and reasoning. Another judge besides Ginsburg might have rewritten (in effect) the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. Judge Ginsburg said it's not the role of the courts to write legislation. Good for him! Among other things, judicial restraint in statutory cases disciplines Congress. It's the role of Congress, after all, not electorally unaccountable courts or federal agencies, to make policy choices. Reading Judge Ginsburg's opinion, I regret once again that he was denied his rightful place on the United States Supreme Court—and for the silliest of reasons: smoking marijuana.

By the way, if you're interested in the law of cyberspace, you should keep tabs on Stanford Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig. Note that he has a Master of Arts degree in philosophy from Cambridge University. That alone makes him worth reading on a regular basis. Why? Because, as any major dude will tell you (apologies to Steely Dan), philosophers are the smartest and most interesting people.

I wrote the following in my latest Tech Central Station column, "Utilitarian Punishment of Saddam Hussein":

Whether the United States should have done what it did depends (to a utilitarian) solely on the consequences of doing so, and I have argued that there are many good consequences of punishing Saddam Hussein. Among them are that we incapacitate a demonstrably dangerous person (compare a rabid dog) and that we deter other would-be tyrants from doing what he did (or anything comparable). The United States has spoken loudly and clearly to those who are tempted to violate human rights: "Do so at your peril."

It appears that Moammar Gaddafi of Libya got the message. (See here.) Expect other tyrants and would-be tyrants to fall in line. I hope utilitarians such as Peter Singer are taking note.

Addendum: Even The New York Times, that organ of fashionable but softheaded liberalism, is giving credit to President Bush for making Gaddafi see the light:

Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair are entitled to claim a large share of the credit for Libya's surprising announcement. To an extent that cannot be precisely measured, the fate of Saddam Hussein, who was ousted from power by the American military with British backing after endless prevaricating about Iraqi weapons programs, must have been an important consideration in Libya's decision.

I must be dreaming. (See here for the full editorial.)

Discussions of social justice are typically concerned with a range of questions—about equality, legitimate inequality, compensation for natural or inflicted disadvantage, and so forth—all of which have redistributive consequences. There are, of course, antiliberal theories which oppose these consequences in principle; this kind of objection liberal theorists naturally have no difficulty in discussing—and, in my own view, no difficulty in refuting—at the philosophical level. Having dismissed objections in principle to redistribution, they then find it easy to overlook what are the real difficulties with redistribution: the very serious social, political and economic obstacles to making it work. The obstacles include such things as the bureaucratic inertia of welfare agencies and ressentiment among their personnel; difficulties in targeting; the mounting costs of health services; resistance to taxation; and the unfriendly perception, by both recipients and taxpayers, of welfare support for the structurally unemployed. Such problems are well-known to the social scientific literature. They are equally well-known to anyone who has tried to think about the actual politics of trying to make social democracy once more a credible force by freeing it of discredited managerial assumptions. The philosophy of social justice, however, seems often to acknowledge such problems only in the form of discussing the moral character that would be desirable in citizens, a Utopian emphasis that never gets to most of the real problems.

A convincing social philosophy committed to redistribution will have to confront those problems. It will find it hard. This is partly because of a difficulty that affects all social philosophy, of finding the right altitude at which to fly, between the rocky ground of everyday politics and the outer space of pure ethical aspiration. But, more particularly, it will be hard because the problems themselves are hard. A philosophy that helped to solve them would contribute, more than most philosophies, to a more just society.

(Bernard Williams, "Social Justice," Journal of Social Philosophy 20 [spring/fall 1989]: 68-73, at 72 [italics in original; footnotes omitted])

As faithful readers of this blog know, I have been critical of Andrew Sullivan for presenting himself as a federalist on the question of homosexual marriage. The federalist position is not, as Sullivan has repeatedly said it is, merely opposing a constitutional amendment that bans homosexual marriage. It is that and supporting an amendment that ensures that no state will be forced (by the Full Faith and Credit Clause) to recognize another state's homosexual marriages. The federalist position is that states should be allowed to either allow or disallow homosexual marriage. That is to say, states shouldn't be prevented from recognizing homosexual marriages, as would be the case if the first amendment passed, but neither should they be required to recognize them, as might be the case if the second amendment didn't pass. The second amendment simply ensures that what Sullivan thinks can't or won't happen doesn't happen.

Sullivan has finally acknowledged the true federalist position, albeit without giving me credit. Here's the pertinent passage from his recent Washington Post column, "Bush and Marriage," which he reproduces in full in his blog:

That's why the president has remained so quiet on this subject. Any decision he takes could tear his coalition apart. He does have one viable option. He could restate his personal view that civil marriage should remain exclusively heterosexual, while also saying that the states should decide for themselves. As a last resort, he might even endorse an amendment that would simply reiterate the Defense of Marriage Act, and ensure that states wouldn't be forced by courts to recognize gay marriages from other states. The genius of federalism, after all, is that social change can be tried out in one state before it is enacted elsewhere. Will the president follow this middle, conservative course? For the sake of Republican and American unity, let's hope he will. (italics added by kbj)

I like to think that I got through to Sullivan, but maybe he saw the light on his own. Either way, he now grasps what I've been saying. That is progress.

Bride, n. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

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

Keith, Good columns by you and Lee Harris on the treatment of Saddam Hussein. All along I've thought that the appropriate punishment for Saddam would not be execution but a long life to savour the full measure of his downfall. He is a megalomaniac who wanted to be adored and feared by all, especially Iraqis. To live out the rest of his life in a prison cell, supplied with TV and newspapers so he can grasp how small and irrelevant he has become and how all his dreams are dust, would be his ultimate punishment—far more bitter than a quick death. But is this an appropriate attitude from a retributivist position? Does it not smack of inappropriate rejoicing in the suffering of others (Saddam, in this case)? Which brings me to his videoed medical inspection. When I saw it, I thought, yes, that must be humiliating: to be inspected for lice in front of the world. I suppose one might argue that the purpose was partly to show that he was receiving appropriate medical attention and not being maltreated. But that aside, is it not part of retribution, of appropriate punishment to restore the moral order, that the community that has been wronged feel (and not merely rationally understand) that wrongdoing is being punished? [Name Withheld]

Check out my latest post, "Categorizing Animals," on Animal Ethics.

Paul Krugman, the Ivy League economist and philosopher-king manqué, writes the following in his New York Times column of this date (see here):

By now, we've become accustomed to the fact that the absence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction—the principal public rationale for the war—hasn't become a big political liability for the administration. That's bad enough. Even more startling is the news from one of this week's polls: despite the complete absence of evidence, 53 percent of Americans believe that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, up from 43 percent before his capture. The administration's long campaign of guilt by innuendo, it seems, is still working.

This is a perfect example of two things: liberal distortion and liberal condescension. Krugman begins by identifying "the principal public rationale" for the war, ignoring the fact that there can be—and are in this case—several rationales (see my immediately preceding post); then, in his typically apoplectic manner, he expresses frustration (anger?) that not everyone holds the flimsiness of that rationale against President Bush.

Maybe not everyone shares Krugman's view that the rationale, even if it were the principal or sole rationale, is flimsy. Maybe people are smarter than Krugman thinks they are. They know that the existence of weapons of mass destruction was only one reason for going to war; they know that such weapons may yet be found; and they know that even if such weapons are not found, it does not mean that they didn't exist or that Saddam Hussein wouldn't have tried to develop or acquire them as soon as he could. Indeed, we know that he had them; the only question is where they are. Krugman is projecting his hatred and suspicion of President Bush onto the people as a whole and then finding it hard to understand why they don't hold it against their president, as he does. There is nothing worse than others not sharing one's hatred, suspicion, or anger.

And notice the second part of the quotation. Krugman is enraged that anyone could believe that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9-11. "What idiots!" he seems to be saying. "Don't you see that there's no evidence for what you believe, and don't you know that you should believe something only if you have evidence for it?" This is awfully charitable of the good professor. But what does he count as evidence? What is his epistemic standard? Perhaps the American people are epistemically holistic and conservative rather than atomistic and radical. Perhaps they form a belief on the basis of probabilities and retain it until sufficient evidence accumulates against it. Perhaps they are looking at the whole picture: at Saddam Hussein's demonstrated animosity toward the United States (he tried to kill one of our presidents); at his aggressive behavior toward his own people and toward Iraq's neighbors over a thirty-year period; at his ruthlessness; at his ties to terrorist organizations; and so forth.

Is it unreasonable to think that Hussein may have had something to do with 9-11? He had the motive and the opportunity, didn't he? I think all the poll result shows is that Americans wouldn't be surprised to learn that there's a connection. They haven't ruled out a connection. They are keeping an open mind about whether there's a connection. It's Paul Krugman who dogmatically and unscientifically denies a connection. If the American people are epistemically irresponsible for believing that there's a connection, what does that make Krugman, who emphatically disbelieves that there's a connection even though not all (and maybe only a small percentage of) the evidence is in?

The poll question does say, after all, that Hussein had "something to do" with 9-11. It doesn't say that he flew the airplanes, ordered or funded the operation, or knew or personally trained any of the hijackers. What sort of connection does Krugman have in mind when he ridicules belief in a connection? The American people are on solid epistemic ground, in my opinion. Incidentally, I wonder what Krugman would say about the theism of the vast majority of the American people. Would he say that there is a "complete lack of evidence" for the existence of God? This would sit real well with the American people. It would show where his unreasonable epistemic standard leads. The test of a standard is what it implies. If it implies something unacceptable, it should be rejected.

The condescension expressed by Krugman and other liberals (the paternalistic do-gooding crowd, those who know what's best for the rest of us even if we, the benighted ones, do not) is breathtaking. It has already alienated and antagonized many Americans—and rightly so. They sense that they are being talked down to—lectured—by academics, entertainers, and journalists. They sense that they are being viewed as sheep. Sheep, of course, are incapable of critical thought; they must be herded by their betters. If this condescending trend continues, liberals will lose control not only of the White House, but also of most governorships and both houses of Congress. Oops! They already have. Keep it up, Paul. Keep it up.

Here is an excerpt from yesterday's New York Times story (see here) by Richard W. Stevenson:

Mr. Bush has always been careful to have multiple reasons ready for his major policy proposals, and his administration has deployed them deftly to adapt to changing circumstances.

In trying to build public and international support for toppling Mr. Hussein, the administration cited, with different emphasis at different times, the banned weapons, links between the Iraqi leader and terrorist organizations, a desire to liberate the Iraqi people and a policy of bringing democracy to the Middle East.

The implication is that President Bush is rationalizing, i.e., making up reasons as he goes. But why must there be only one reason for a given course of action, especially one as far-ranging as going to war? Many everyday actions are backed by multiple reasons. Giving correct change to a customer, for example, can be motivated by both self-interest (wanting the customer to come back) and honesty (doing the right thing for its own sake). This is a case in which there is a moral and a nonmoral reason for the same act.

There are also cases in which there are multiple moral reasons for the same act. Telling the truth in a given case can both respect the other and increase overall happiness. The former is a deontological consideration, the latter a consequentialist consideration. Or consider the act of punishing. It can both prevent crime, by deterring others, and give the offender what he or she deserves. Either reason alone might suffice to justify the act. Together they overdetermine its justification.

Why can't there be multiple moral grounds for the war in Iraq? It can punish a mass-murderer (thereby deterring others), liberate a people, democratize a region (or move toward that goal), minimize the terrorist threat to Americans and others, and so forth. If there are multiple moral grounds for the war, then why should President Bush not cite them in his attempts to persuade others that the war was justified? Why must he choose one ground? I don't get it.

As I showed in my recent Tech Central Station column, "How to Argue," effective argumentation requires attention to one's audience. The grounds I just listed are not accepted as adequate grounds by everyone. President Bush must therefore tailor his argument to his audience. For those who value democracy, he should point out that the war subserves that end. For those who care about the Iraqi people, he should point out that he has liberated them from a brutal tyrant. For those who care specifically about Americans, he should point out that they are safer with Saddam Hussein out of power than they were with him in power. And so on.

Richard W. Stevenson and his editors at the Times need a refresher course in logic. They would do well to start with my column.

Put them down.

My mother and stepfather were married on this date in 1970, when I was thirteen and the world was young. Happy thirty-third anniversary!

There seems to be a perfectly natural conception of the distinction between fighting clean and fighting dirty. To fight dirty is to direct one's hostility or aggression not at its proper object, but at a peripheral target which may be more vulnerable, and through which the proper object can be attacked indirectly. This applies in a fist fight, an election campaign, a duel, or a philosophical argument. If the concept is general enough to apply to all these matters, it should apply to war—both to the conduct of individual soldiers and to the conduct of nations.

Suppose that you are a candidate for public office, convinced that the election of your opponent would be a disaster, that he is an unscrupulous demagogue who will serve a narrow range of interests and seriously infringe the rights of those who disagree with him; and suppose you are convinced that you cannot defeat him by conventional means. Now imagine that various unconventional means present themselves as possibilities: you possess information about his sex life which would scandalize the electorate if made public; or you learn that his wife is an alcoholic or that in his youth he was associated for a brief period with a proscribed political party, and you believe that this information could be used to blackmail him into withdrawing his candidacy; or you can have a team of your supporters flatten the tires of a crucial subset of his supporters on election day; or you are in a position to stuff the ballot boxes; or, more simply, you can have him assassinated. What is wrong with these methods, given that they will achieve an overwhelmingly desirable result?

There are, of course, many things wrong with them: some are against the law; some infringe the procedures of an electoral process to which you are presumably committed by taking part in it; very importantly, some may backfire, and it is in the interest of all political candidates to adhere to an unspoken agreement not to allow certain personal matters to intrude into a campaign. But that is not all. We have in addition the feeling that these measures, these methods of attack, are irrelevant to the issue between you and your opponent, that in taking them up you would not be directing yourself to that which makes him an object of your opposition. You would be directing your attack not at the true target of your hostility, but at peripheral targets that happen to be vulnerable.

The same is true of a fight or argument outside the framework of any system of regulations or law. In an altercation with a taxi driver over an excessive fare, it is inappropriate to taunt him about his accent, flatten one of his tires, or smear chewing gum on his windshield; and it remains inappropriate even if he casts aspersions on your race, politics, or religion, or dumps the contents of your suitcase into the street.

The importance of such restrictions may vary with the seriousness of the case; and what is unjustifiable in one case may be justified in a more extreme one. But they all derive from a single principle: that hostility or aggression should be directed at its true object. This means both that it should be directed at the person or persons who provoke it and that it should aim more specifically at what is provocative about them. The second condition will determine what form the hostility may appropriately take.

(Thomas Nagel, "War and Massacre," chap. 5 in his Mortal Questions [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979], 53-74, at 65-6 [italics in original; footnote omitted] [essay first published in 1972])

Lee Harris is one of my Tech Central Station "colleagues." He has a wonderful column today on Saddam Hussein. Go here to read it. I discovered the column several hours after writing my blog entry on treating Hussein as a person. The entry and the column go well together.

This past Tuesday, Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Justice and Peace Department, generated a firestorm of controversy by criticizing the release, by the United States military, of a videotape showing "a grubby, bearded and disheveled Saddam [Hussein] being examined by a military doctor after his capture in an underground hole on Saturday." (See here for details.) I assume everyone reading this blog has seen the footage. Regrettably, I have seen it dozens of times. The images are imprinted on my brain.

According to Cardinal Martino, the videotape footage depicts Hussein being treated "like a cow." He made other remarks, too, such as that he felt "pity and compassion" for Hussein, but I want to focus on the cow remark. I'm with Cardinal Martino. I believe everyone should be.

Before you leap to conclusions, I am not going to rest my case on Hussein's presumed innocence, even if that concept applied in whatever court Hussein ends up being tried in. In our legal system, Hussein, like anyone else, is innocent until proven guilty. This does not mean, however, that citizens cannot come to a conclusion on their own about Hussein's guilt. They can and should. The law's standard is only one standard, albeit an important one.

My argument is different. I submit that even if Hussein is guilty, morally speaking, and even if he is found to be guilty in a duly conducted trial in a duly empaneled court, he has a right to be treated respectfully. Whatever else he is, Saddam Hussein is a person. Persons are autonomous (self-governing) beings, capable of choosing and responsible for the choices they make. They must not be used as mere means to the ends of others. They must not be demeaned or diminished. If one chooses to violate known rules, one subjects oneself to punishment. (Kant would say that one chooses to be punished.) But one never loses the status of person throughout this process. The trial must be fair. The handling of the suspect by interrogators, bailiffs, and others must be respectful. The punishment meted out, should trial result in conviction, must be proportional to the gravity of the offense. At no point in this process may the offender be treated as less than a person.

The videotape footage of Hussein being examined by a doctor was, in my judgment, unnecessary and humiliating. Please understand: I'm not making the argument that the footage will have a bad effect, such as instigating further violence against American soldiers or civilians. I'm saying that it disrespects Hussein. It is intrinsically wrong, not (just) extrinsically wrong. It is wrong because of what it is, not because of what it brings about. The Cardinal's choice of words was illuminating, for a cow is not a person. A cow is less than a person. The Cardinal was saying that Hussein was disrespected, degraded, and demeaned by the public display of his medical examination. The examination itself was not disrespectful; its display was.

It might be argued that enough good was done by showing the footage to justify the disrespect. That is a plausible claim, indeed one that can be made by (moderate) deontologists, but I have not heard those who defend the footage admit to disrespecting Hussein. If they held the view in question, they would admit the disrespect and then proceed to justify it by its good consequences. That this claim hasn't been made suggests that the view is not held.

Utilitarians will not be impressed by my reasoning, for they do not think in terms of persons, rights, desert, and respect. They are result-oriented. To them, the end justifies the means—however disrespectful. But I think most people are retributivists rather than utilitarians on matters of criminal justice. I am therefore appealing to the retributive instincts of my readers. Condemning the humiliating, degrading treatment of Saddam Hussein by the United States military is not to excuse or justify his behavior, which we have ample reason to believe was atrocious. It is simply to live up to our commitment to treat persons as persons. The test of the commitment is its application to reviled individuals such as Hussein.

Certainly nobody can accuse me of being soft on Saddam Hussein, so please don't. Read my blog entries and Tech Central Station columns for the past several months. I've been a firm believer in the justice of the war in Iraq from the outset, and my grounds were humanitarian. But we should not let our belief in Hussein's guilt, or our understandable animosity toward him, undermine our commitment to respect for persons. If Hussein is adjudged guilty, as I believe he will be, then he should be duly and—in light of the crimes with which he will be charged—severely punished. At no point in the process should he be treated like a cow or, worse, an inanimate object. If respectful treatment makes Americans safer, at home or abroad, fine; but that is not the reason for it.

I've had a number of interesting e-mail messages about my Tech Central Station column, "Utilitarian Punishment of Saddam Hussein." Here's one, reprinted by permission:

Hi Keith, I agree with your article's main points. What troubles me is simply this: Your case that utilitarian justice implies this outcome for Hussein—toppling his regime and apprehending him—rests primarily (as far as I can tell) on the general deterrence plank. (I say "primarily" because, as you know, where there's one rat [or cockroach], there's bound to be others, so squishing one doesn't solve the pest problem.) Yet (and here's the crux of my cause), general deterrence itself is valid only to the extent that the Threat is seen as (i) sufficient (to dissuade) and (ii) valid, or likely to occur. No one should quibble with (i); but there's plenty of evidence to question whether the US (or any other country) would raise its fist to squish the next roach. In other words, the US didn't go to war because Saddam was a monstrosity—no, no, there are plenty of them still around. Rather, war eventuated because of a raft of issues. Thus, North Korea's great leader isn't deterred—even though he has starved and is starving to death millions of his own people—millions, not, as with Saddam, hundreds of thousands. Robert Mugabe has and is committing atrocities in Zimbabwe, but no one is smashing that critter. In sum, effective deterrence necessitates that those who could be deterred see the similarities in their situations to what which has been squished and implies that they see the crushing fist as imminent. I'm not sure about the first part; I'm even less sure about the second. Regards, William

Here's my reply:

William: Excellent points! Deterrence works by means of threat, and threats, to deter, must be credible. The United States is not (yet) credible in the eyes of other tyrants around the world, since it has a history of coddling dictators. But every tyrant will have to decide whether this action by the U.S. is an anomaly, in which case there is nothing to fear, or the first step in a worldwide cleansing effort. It'll be interesting to see what they conclude. Maybe it'll take another deposition of a tyrant—the North Korean wacko, for example—to make us credible. kbj

Keep the letters coming—adulatory if possible, derogatory if necessary.

Y'all need to get over to Animal Ethics to read Angus Taylor's latest post. Click here.

A student visited this blog the other day, after which he wrote to me with a question: "How do you write so much?" I doubt that he has seen anything else I've written, including scholarly books, book chapters, articles, and reviews, and I know for a fact that he hasn't seen my sixteen-odd years worth of journal entries or my voluminous snail-mail and e-mail correspondence, so he must have been referring only to this blog, which is but six weeks old. What he didn't realize, in all likelihood, is that this blog constitutes only a small fraction of what I write.

His question, however, intrigued me. I don't think I'm a particularly prodigious writer, but maybe that's because I have high standards. I read many years ago, when I was a member of The Bertrand Russell Society, that Russell wrote an average of ten pages per day throughout his life—and he lived ninety-seven years! I will never approach Russell, either in quantity (since it's unlikely I'll live as long as he did) or in average words per day. Nor do I come anywhere close to another of my intellectual heroes, Richard A. Posner, the full-time federal appellate judge who produces scholarly books as frequently as most scholars produce articles. I hate to say it, but Posner writes faster than I read. I could spend all my time reading just what he writes—which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, given the quality of Posner's mind.

But I suppose I write more (maybe a lot more) than the typical scholar, and certainly more than the typical layperson. Some people don't write at all, except in the form of notes, lists, or other minutiae. As in other areas of life, how much one writes is relative. Relative to Russell and Posner, I write little. Relative to laypeople and my students, I write a lot.

The student's question is deliciously ambiguous, so I intend to play around with it. Perhaps he was wondering how I find the time to write as much as I do. After all, there are only twenty-four hours in each day. Time spent writing is time not spent doing other things. But different people occupy their hours differently. My brother Glenn, who works in an automobile factory in Michigan, gardens. He spends many hours in his garden—hours that I, frankly, consider wasted, since I'm not "into" gardening. (Sorry, bro.) He, however, relishes the time he spends in his garden, or else he wouldn't do it. I'm sure he considers the time I spend writing a waste. This is what makes life great: different people find happiness in different places. To each his (or her) own. When people hint (or come right out and say) that I spend too much time writing, I make an offer. "You let me set your agenda," I say, "and I'll let you set mine." It's only fair, right? Nobody has taken me up on the offer.

I chose a career—philosophy—that affords me ample time in which to write, since I enjoy it. Teaching and writing go hand in hand. Even some of my committee work for the university (or its subdivisions) involves writing. I much prefer that to other forms of committee work. I work at home, as opposed to in my office on campus, so my days aren't divided into "work" and "nonwork," as they are for most people. I never have a feeling of working. (Okay, I do—while grading exams.) I'm just being me, doing what I love, day in and day out. This isn't to say that I spend hours on end sitting at the computer. I may spend three or four hours at the computer in the morning, sipping coffee, then several more in the afternoon and evening, with music playing. And it's not continuous, either. I pause to eat, walk Sophie and Shelbie, run (as I did today), read the newspaper, hang clothes on the line (or take them down), get the mail, nap, and do various other things around the house. My writing is woven into my life. It is not something tacked onto it.

Perhaps the student was wondering about the mechanics of writing. I learned how to type in tenth grade in high school. By the end of the semester, I was the second-fastest typist in the class (albeit well behind the fastest, who was preternaturally swift). Things only sped up from there. I went from an electric typewriter in college and law school to a series of computers beginning in the fall of 1983—twenty years ago this past October. I type so fast that an interesting thing happens. I think a thought; I will my fingers to move; the words appear on the screen before my eyes. I type so fast that I have the sensation of seeing my thoughts. The volitional/physical/perceptual loop is virtually closed. I'm sure my brother has experiences like this while gardening, experiences that I, qua nongardener, do not have and could not understand if explained to me. The difference is that I record my experiences; he doesn't.

I realize that this closed loop creates joke potential. Someone might say that I should think before I write, not while writing. Ha ha. But this, besides being unfunny, misunderstands computer technology. I never said that I publish the result of this initial writing process. It merely gives me the first draft. Anyone with any sense realizes that what comes out must be worked and reworked until it's ready for whatever organ it will appear in. Even e-mail, that much-maligned medium of communication, requires attention and care. One reason I love computerized word-processing so much is that it makes revision easy. Computers haven't made my writing worse by making it easier to write more (logorrhea); they've made my writing better by making it easier to revise. I can't believe I made it through high school, college, and law school with a typewriter and its accouterments: carbon copies, whiteout, scissors, and tape. What a mess! My literary output would have been both greater and more polished had I had a computer instead. The computer, in short, makes me a better writer. It would be an insidious technology if it didn't.

Maybe the student was wondering why I write. That's a whole other question. I write for many reasons, not least of which is to get better at it. I write for relaxation. I write to clarify my thoughts. I write because I have something to say—to a particular person or to particular classes of people—that I believe is important. (Every writer wants to be read. Writers are a vain lot.) I write in order to leave a record of what has been, so far, an unremarkable life, but which could become remarkable. John Rawls was fifty years old when his magnum opus, A Theory of Justice, appeared in 1971. Joel Feinberg was fifty-eight when the first volume of his tetralogy, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, was published in 1984 (and sixty-two when the fourth volume appeared). I'm only forty-six. If Rawls and Feinberg didn't keep journals or copies of their correspondence, as I have, they should have. Not because they knew they'd become famous, but because they didn't know they wouldn't.

I have long said that anything worth doing is worth writing about. Thinking is a kind of doing, so it, too, is worth writing about. I'm not talking about the product of thought, although that, too, is worth writing about; I'm talking about the process of thought—the blocks, the delights, the obstacles, the joys, the perils and pitfalls. Thinking and writing are inextricable. Indeed, writing is a kind of doing, so it, too, is worth writing about—which is precisely what I'm doing this fine afternoon. Metawriting. Writing about writing.

This blog fills a niche in my literary and intellectual life. It lies part way between the journals I kept for so many years, which were often intensely private, and the scholarly works I publish, which are both public and formal. This blog allows me to experiment with ideas, to see how they sound (so to speak) when bounced off the world. I think of it as a field book in which I record sensory impressions for later reflection and use, except they're not so much sensory impressions as snippets of analysis, argumentation, and criticism. The blog is philosophy in process (with a few political rants thrown in for good measure).

I should stop. This has been a self-indulgent entry, for which I apologize. Actually, I don't apologize. Blame my student. Asking a writer to write about writing is like asking a starving tiger to eat meat thrown into its cage. I could do no other.

As I've been saying for some time now, both in this blog and in my columns for Tech Central Station, what really infuriates liberals is their sense that conservatives are "turning back the clock." (See Hillary Clinton's fury here.) They think moral change is ratcheted. Hard-won gains are being reversed. That's risible. Liberals have taken the country in the wrong direction. Moral progress consists in rectifying it. This isn't turning back the clock; it's moving forward into a just world.

The sustained peak [of productivity] in philosophy may seem a mystery, since the ratio of fluid to crystallized intelligence in the activity of philosophers is, or at least might seem to be, very high. The peak is early, and not sustained, for philosophers whose work borders on science or mathematics (Bertrand Russell for example). But Wittgenstein had peaks in his twenties (when he was doing logic) and in his fifties; and many philosophers, ranging from Plato and Kant to Dewey and Sartre, and among the living, Willard Quine, Donald Davidson, John Rawls, Hilary Putnam, Stanley Cavell, Nelson Goodman, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Bernard Williams, Richard Rorty, and a number of others, have remained highly creative in their sixties or even later. To complicate the picture further, a number of distinguished philosophers have had late peaks, as distinct from early peaks sustained; examples are Kant, Rawls, and Goodman.

I suggest two explanations for the fact that age seems to take only a light toll of nonmathematical, nonlogician philosophers. The first is that literary skills are far more important in philosophy than in, say, mathematics. The distinction of many philosophers, including Plato, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, James, Quine, and Rorty, is owed in no small part to those skills. Metaphors ("language game," "veil of ignorance," "cash value," "tribunal of sense experience," etc.) and other striking turns of phrase (such as Kuhn's "normal science" and "paradigm"), neologisms ("grue"), parables (Plato's cave, Neurath's boat, "turtles all the way down"), dialogues (Plato again), and even poetry (Lucretius, Nietzsche) have been employed in philosophy to striking effect.

A second reason for the sustained peaking of philosophers but not of highly mathematical scientists is that philosophy is less progressive than the scientific disciplines. Because the problems addressed by philosophers and the analytic tools used to solve them change much less rapidly than in the case of physics or mathematics, philosophers' human capital depreciates less rapidly than scientists' and therefore requires less new investment to maintain it. The decline of their fluid intelligence is also less hampering if they do not have to address new problems but can continue worrying the old ones, for the ratio of fluid to crystallized intelligence employed is higher the newer the problem being addressed is to the person addressing it.

(Richard A. Posner, Aging and Old Age [Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995], 168-70 [italics in original])

My work done for the day, I turned on the television. Sean Hannity of Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes was interviewing actor Mike Farrell about the war in Iraq. (Don't get me started about why he was talking to an actor.) Almost immediately, they began talking over each other. I thought it would end as soon as one of them realized it was happening, but it didn't. They continued, in fits and starts, to interrupt each other. Neither would cede ground. Finally, in exasperation, I muted the sound and returned to the computer in my study.

Wouldn't it be nice if viewers could deliver an electrical shock to people who interrupt? It would tell them in no uncertain terms that they are being rude. When two people talk at the same time, nothing gets said and nothing gets done. Why people do it is an interesting question. Studies show that males of all ages interrupt more than their female cohorts. It's aggression. Hannity and Farrell are aggressive people, both self-assured, both used to having others listen to them, both used to getting their way.

Here, then, if I may be so bold, is the rule. First you talk while I listen; then I talk while you listen; then you talk again. We keep going like this until we're done. It's really that simple. If you should find yourself talking at the same time as another person, stop. Immediately. It doesn't matter whose "fault" it is or whose "turn" it is. Stop. Get your bearings. Pretend you're in kindergarten again, learning how to take turns.

UTA TODAY
Tuesday, December 16, 2003

ARLINGTON RANKS AS BEST-EDUCATED CITY IN TEXAS

Arlington is the best-educated city in the state and is no. 12 in the nation, based on census data. A Fort Worth Star-Telegram article states that 86.5 percent of Arlington residents, ages 25 and older, have a high school diploma. Austin has 83.3 percent. Fort Worth, Dallas and Houston are ranked among the nation's worst-educated cities with a population of more than 250,000. In the article, Arlington Chamber of Commerce President Wes Jurey said Arlington's numbers mirror the growth at UTA and the Tarrant County College Southeast Campus. "In economic times people tend to pursue education," Jurey said. "If you look at UTA's numbers over the past couple of years, they have become one of the fastest-growing institutions in the state." To read the full story, go here. (Laura Hanna)

I haven't read much fiction in my life. Even as a child, I read history. It mattered to me that what I was reading had happened, not merely that it could happen. How odd that I ended up a philosopher, concerned with possibility rather than actuality! I have, however, read a few novels, and all of them moved me profoundly. One novel that had a lifelong effect on me was Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull: A Story. I read it in high school in the early 1970s, not long after its publication. Here, for those who haven't read it, or haven't read it in three decades, is a snippet (from pages 63-5):

One evening the gulls that were not night-flying stood together on the sand, thinking. Jonathan took all his courage in hand and walked to the Elder Gull, who, it was said, was soon to be moving beyond this world.

"Chiang . . ." he said, a little nervously.

The old seagull looked at him kindly. "Yes, my son?" Instead of being enfeebled by age, the Elder had been empowered by it; he could outfly any gull in the Flock, and he had learned skills that the others were only gradually coming to know.

"Chiang, this world isn't heaven at all, is it?"

The Elder smiled in the moonlight. "You are learning again, Jonathan Seagull," he said.

"Well, what happens from here? Where are we going? Is there no such place as heaven?"

"No, Jonathan, there is no such place. Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect." He was silent for a moment. "You are a very fast flier, aren't you?"

"I . . . I enjoy speed," Jonathan said, taken aback but proud that the Elder had noticed.

"You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there."

Without warning, Chiang vanished and appeared at the water's edge fifty feet away, all in the flicker of an instant. Then he vanished again and stood, in the same millisecond, at Jonathan's shoulder. "It's kind of fun," he said.

Everyone should read this book. Find the time.

Naps are wonderful things. I wake up not just refreshed, but full of ideas. It occurred to me after today's nap that the positions on homosexual marriage will remain hardened until one side or the other appears to be in the ascendant. Then the negotiating and compromising will begin. Perhaps this is as it should be in a democracy.

The two hard positions are these:

1. Do nothing. Let things play themselves out.

2. Amend the Constitution to prohibit homosexual marriage. Here, for example, is the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment (hideous grammar and all): "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."

The first of these positions, as I explained in previous posts, will likely result in nationwide homosexual marriage. One state, such as Massachusetts, will allow it, and then the courts will apply the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution (Article IV, Section 1) to make every state allow it. It will take a little time, but it will happen. The second position will result in a nationwide ban on homosexual marriage. Not even Massachusetts will be able to allow it.

At this point neither hard position (extreme view) is in the ascendant. Suppose it begins to appear that there is little support for an amendment to prohibit homosexual marriage. Those who supported such an amendment will soften their position. Fearing nationwide homosexual marriage, they will offer an amendment that does no more than nullify the Full Faith and Credit Clause with respect to it. In other words, facing the prospect of homosexual marriage everywhere, they will offer to allow states (such as Massachusetts) to allow it in exchange for allowing states (such as Texas) to disallow it.

Suppose it begins to appear that there is great support for an amendment to prohibit homosexual marriage. Those who opposed such an amendment, such as Andrew Sullivan, will soften their position. Fearing a nationwide ban on homosexual marriage, they will offer an amendment that does no more than nullify the Full Faith and Credit Clause with respect to it. In other words, facing the prospect of homosexual marriage nowhere, they will offer to allow states (such as Texas) to disallow it in exchange for allowing states (such as Massachusetts) to allow it.

I truly believe that my proposed amendment (to wit: "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"]") is both a compromise and a vindication of federalism. It seeks neither a nationwide ban on homosexual marriage nor nationwide recognition of it. It leaves the matter up to the states, and ultimately to the people thereof.

Perhaps, now that I think of it, this explains Andrew Sullivan's "blind spot." It may be no blind spot at all, but rather a Machiavellian plan. He really wants nationwide recognition of homosexual marriage—in Texas as well as Massachusetts. But until he sees that an amendment to ban it everywhere is likely to succeed, he's unwilling to compromise. An astute bargainer compromises only when necessary, and in his view it is not yet necessary.

Andrew Sullivan says he doesn't understand President Bush's position on homosexual marriage. Maybe that's because Sullivan unduly narrows the options to two: either endorse homosexual marriage or support a constitutional amendment to ban it nationwide. Sullivan can't get it through his head that there is a third option: federalism. This consists in allowing states to either allow or disallow homosexual marriage, as they see fit.

As I have explained ad nauseam in this blog (see here, for example), there is a real danger that if any state allows homosexual marriage, every state will be required by the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution (Article IV, Section 1) to recognize marriages entered into there. This undermines federalism. A simple constitutional amendment to the effect that the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not apply to homosexual marriage would solve the problem. It would allow states such as Massachusetts to allow homosexual marriage, and it would allow states such as Texas to disallow it.

I believe President Bush has two relevant principles. First, he believes in legislative supremacy. The people of a state, and not its unaccountable judges, should decide (through their elected representatives) whether they want to allow homosexual marriage. This explains President Bush's criticism of the recent Massachusetts case. It is antidemocratic. Second, he believes in federalism (states' rights). This explains why he speaks conditionally. If a state allows homosexual marriage (none has), and if a court rules that other states must recognize that state's marriages, a constitutional amendment is necessary. These things haven't happened yet (although they may), so President Bush speaks conditionally.

It's not President Bush who's confused. It's Andrew Sullivan. I believe that Sullivan is so personally involved in this issue that he's lost the capacity to think clearly. Which is sad, because he's ordinarily a clear thinker. I wouldn't read him if he weren't.

Philosophy, to be any good, must be analytic; but conceptual analysis is not the whole of philosophy. Any genuine progress with philosophical problems requires the sort of argument that takes account of alternative possibilities, that formulates suggestions precisely enough to allow them to be fairly examined and tested, that pays attention to the meanings of the words it uses, and that reflects critically on its own procedures. But the aim is to make progress with substantive questions, to apply our concepts to reality or to consider how far they are applicable, not merely to analyse or clarify those concepts themselves.

(J. L. Mackie, Truth, Probability, and Paradox: Studies in Philosophical Logic [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973], vii)

I received the following letter from a reader:

Hi Keith: You have argued against eating meat along the following lines: Meat eating causes undue pain and suffering to animals. You have also argued that we humans try as hard as possible to hide our animalness from ourselves. You have also said that we very much belong to the animal world. If this is so, although I am not paraphrasing, then isn't meat eating a trait that we would share with lots of other animals and therefore wouldn't the act of devouring flesh be a trait that is inherent to our species. I argue along the following lines: Humans are animals. A lot of animals derive their sustenance from eating other animals. If humans eat animal meat then it is a normal occurrence in the animal world.

Thanks for the feedback! The first thing to notice is that from the fact that humans have some things in common with animals, it doesn't follow that they have everything in common (i.e., that there are no differences). Men and women are alike, but also different. The question is whether the differences, such as they are, are morally significant.

Every animal species has special features. Dogs can smell much better than humans can. Eagles have better eyesight. Humans have greater intellectual capacities. The question is whether any of these differences make a moral difference. They may. If only humans have the capacity to project themselves into the distant future, then only humans can suffer at the prospect of future suffering (or death). But this cuts both ways. Animals can't be told that an intervention is intended to help rather than hurt them. (Think of Marlin Perkins of Wild Kingdom shooting a dart into a rhinoceros to sedate it and allow rescuers to relocate it.) So the special features of humans both increase and decrease the amount of suffering they experience.

One morally relevant difference between humans and other animals is that only humans are moral agents. That is to say, only humans have the capacity to (1) reflect on their conduct and (2) control their behavior in accordance with principles. Only humans can go against their natural impulses. But if we can do these things, then it is an open question whether we ought to. Moral theory is an attempt to determine how humans ought to behave, given their capacities. Moral argument is an attempt to persuade, rationally.

The slogan "'ought' implies 'can'" means that one has a moral obligation to do something only if it is possible to do that thing. If a thing can't be done, then there's no obligation to do it. But animals can't conform their behavior to moral principles, as humans can, so they have no obligation to conform. They are moral patients who can be acted upon, but not moral agents who act. This is why it makes no sense to blame animals for their behavior. We might say, "Bad dog," but we don't think that the dog is responsible for its conduct. Animals are like mentally defective humans in this respect.

To cut to the chase, only humans are morally responsible. That animals harm each other, either intraspecifically or extraspecifically, is irrelevant to how we humans ought to behave toward them. We're special. Our cognitive abilities both liberate us from nature (so to speak) and impose responsibility on us to act morally.

Incidentally, those who reason that because animals kill and eat each other, humans may kill and eat animals, are not consistent. They do not look to animals for guidance about how to raise their children, construct their dwellings, prepare their food, or reproduce. If you think that humans should do as other animals do, then apply the principle consistently. Pick a species and emulate it slavishly. Don't pick and choose among animal behaviors, following animals where it pleases and not following where it doesn't please. That is as disingenuous as abiding only by certain parts of the Bible.

One more thing. It's pretty clear that humans are omnivores. They are capable, biologically, of subsisting on either plant or animal products, or both. But this is just a fact about us. Nothing of a moral nature follows from it. To see this, think of some other natural features. Humans (especially males, who have much more testosterone than females) are naturally aggressive. Does it follow that we may aggress on each other without constraint? Of course not. It may be that human males have an impulse to rape females (in the sense of forcing sexual intercourse on them). Does it follow that they may do so? Of course not. That something is the case is no reason whatsoever for thinking that it ought to be the case.

My fifteenth Tech Central Station column is up. Check it out.

Machination, n. The method employed by one's opponents in baffling one's open and honorable efforts to do the right thing.

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

I found this link on Andrew Sullivan's website. Remember: If it happens and it's bad, it's the fault of the United States. By the way, here is Sullivan's deconstruction of Howard Dean and Hillary Clinton.

The title of this post is sexist. I hope you agree. If you don't, stop reading, for nothing I say is going to persuade you that it's sexist. The question I want to ask is what to do about it. There are, it seems to me, three desiderata. First, we want to write in a nonsexist way. Call this the moral dimension. Second, we want to be grammatically correct. Call this the grammatical dimension. Third, we want to be stylish. Call this the aesthetic dimension.

Is there any way to express the thought conveyed by the title that satisfies all three desiderata: moral, grammatical, and aesthetic? I believe there is, but first let us examine three unsuccessful attempts.

1. A fool and his money are soon parted. This is grammatically correct and stylish, but, as I said, sexist. Two thumbs up, one down.

2. A fool and his or her money are soon parted. This solves the sexism problem and preserves correct grammar, but it's aesthetically abominable. Two thumbs up, one down.

3. A fool and their money are soon parted. This solves the sexism problem and is as stylish (euphonious) as the original, but it's ungrammatical. Two thumbs up, one down.

4. Fools and their money are soon parted. This is grammatical, stylish, and nonsexist, albeit unconventional. Three thumbs up. Let's adopt it.

(By the way, I should give credit where credit is due. This solution of the problem was suggested to me by a student, Jonathan Bucek.)

Sometimes things I write for this blog end up as columns on Tech Central Station, and sometimes things I write for Tech Central Station end up as scholarly publications. A couple of months ago I wrote a column on this past summer's Lawrence v. Texas case (in which the United States Supreme Court struck down anti-sodomy laws). It was longer and more scholarly than I thought it would be, so I submitted it instead to the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy. The editor liked it and will publish it in the spring. Stay tuned.

Today I wrote an entry for this blog on the punishment of Saddam Hussein. It was longer than I thought it would be, so I sent a draft to Nick Schulz, the philosophically trained editor of Tech Central Station. He liked it and will publish it in the next day or so. I will give a heads up in this space when it appears, so either come back here until you see the link or check in with Tech Central Station each day until it appears.

Horner's work on achievement motivation suggested that young women are in conflict, fearing that they will be "unsexed by success." For example, after winning a so-called intelligence test against an opposite sex classmate, the scores of seventh grade girls dropped on the second half of the test whereas the boys' scores went up. The girls explained that they didn't like to beat boys in a competitive game, and "would rather be popular than have good grades or win against a boy." They also know that good looks are essential to attaining popularity. Studies confirm that attractive girls date more often than unattractive ones, whereas appearance is unrelated to dating frequency in boys. High school boys placed good looks and good body as first and second factors in date selection, while girls listed intelligence as the most important characteristics sought in a boy friend.

(Rita Jackaway Freedman, "Reflections on Beauty as It Relates to Health in Adolescent Females," Women & Health 9 [summer/fall 1984]: 29-45, at 32 [citations omitted])

Happy holidays, everyone! Click here. (Thanks to Denny Bradshaw for the link.)

During the past ten years of teaching, my colleagues in the Harvard Philosophy Department uncomplainingly have watched me wend my way across a range of courses without repeating any. That freedom to pursue diverse intellectual interests, sometimes offbeat ones, has been quite important to me.

I would like to thank my parents, but now can only thank my father, for their love and encouragement, their tolerance of their son's meandering academic way (which included failing five courses as an undergraduate, three of them in philosophy), and their ready acceptance of the very early decision not to become a doctor.

For many extended stretches of time during the past four years, I have been intensely preoccupied with thinking and writing about philosophical matters. This cannot have been easy for my family, for my children Emily and David or for my wife Barbara, yet throughout they have been remarkably tolerant and uncomplaining—providing an anchor during the most extensive flights of philosophical fancy.

That I take such flights sometimes strikes me as absurd, anyway. Isn't it ludicrous for someone just one generation from the shtetl, a pisher from Brownsville and East Flatbush in Brooklyn, even to touch on the topics of the monumental thinkers? Of course it is. Yet is was ludicrous for them too. We are all just a few years past something or other, if only childhood. Even the monuments themselves, so serenely in command of culture and intellect, must have been children once and adolescents—so they too are immigrants to the realm of thought. It wouldn't hurt for an acknowledgment of this occasionally through their magisterial prose to peep.

(Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1981], viii [italics in original])

A few minutes ago this message came in:

Your oxford definition means nothing. To most people Democracy means majority rules wheather it be 51% to 49% or 99% to 1% and your definition just does not fit. A better and more honest definition would be the rule of the majority over the minority. So your use of the oxford definition to suit your needs is a "elitist type" attempt to spin and make your point. You are in essence correct in calling us a Democracy now but we were never intended to be one. In fact our constitution is setup to prevent the majority from reigning supreme over the minority but it seems our government just doesnt care and hasn't for several decades now. We were meant to be a Republic not a Democracy and wheather you want to believe it or not there is a big difference. Im not trying to be harsh (well maybe a little) but Democracy as it is being practiced in the US currently is dangerous indeed.

Is it me? Did I not express myself clearly? Did I not address every concern expressed in this letter? Sigh.

Two readers have taken me to task for (1) confusing democracies with republics and (2) saying or implying that the United States of America is a democracy. They refer to the opening sentence of my recent Tech Central Station column, "How to Argue":

Citizens in a democracy must know two things: how to argue and how to evaluate arguments (so as not to be duped, hoodwinked, railroaded, snookered, or browbeaten).

The United States is not a democracy, they say; it is a republic. Here is the pertinent part of the second letter (from a Canadian):

Hello, I see you are in Texas so why not address your article to people in the USA rather than those in a democracy. Those in a democracy may be able to avoid being duped or hoodwinked but would most certainly be railroaded and browbeaten. In a republic such as America was originally intended to be it is possible to avoid all of these pitfalls. To confuse America with a democracy, if that is what you were doing, is to have been duped and hoodwinked yourself. I realize this was just a casual aside and not the point of your article but I believe this fashionable tossing around of the word "democracy" in places it does not belong is dangerous. (quotation marks added)

I didn't mention the United States. But I could have and will now. The United States is a democracy. The word "democracy" (from the Greek) means rule by the people (as opposed to rule by nobody [anarchy], rule by one person [monarchy], or rule by a few [oligarchy, aristocracy, plutocracy]). Here is the first definition of "democracy" listed by the Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed.:

Government by the people; that form of government in which the sovereign power resides in the people as a whole, and is exercised either directly by them (as in the small republics of antiquity) or by officers elected by them. In mod. use often more vaguely denoting a social state in which all have equal rights, without hereditary or arbitrary differences of rank or privilege.

A republic is a particular type of democracy (one in which the will of the people, as expressed by their elected representatives, is constrained by a constitution), just as a puppy is a particular type of dog (a young one). Imagine saying that Shelbie is not a dog because she's a puppy! That would betray a misunderstanding of the concepts.

The writers, bless their hearts, are engaged in what philosophers call "conceptual legislation." (Here is another example.) They confuse the concept of democracy with a particular conception (theory, analysis, understanding) of it. Put differently, they take an ambiguous term—a term with more than one meaning—and identify it with one of its meanings. (On the ambiguity of "democracy," see Richard A. Posner, Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2003], 15-8.) Evidently, they think that democracy requires either direct participation by the citizenry or strict majoritarian voting, as in a New England town hall meeting. But these features are not essential to democracy. They are accidental. They are particular implementations or instantiations of democracy, tokens of the type.

Whatever else it is, the United States is a democracy. Indeed, it is the paradigmatic democracy in the modern world, the democracy with which others are compared (and found wanting). Qualify the term if you must, but remember that a representative democracy, like a constitutional democracy, is still a democracy. And Shelbie, my stinker, is still a dog, however young she may be.

Nor, I should add, is the fact that I have followed standard grammar in using so-called "masculine" pronouns for contexts that are unspecific with regard to gender meant to imply any favoritism toward one sex over the other.

(Robert L. Holmes, On War and Morality [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989], xii)

Lee Harris is a national treasure. See for yourself.

They are a modest and thoroughly mediocre type of man, these utilitarian Englishmen, and . . . insofar as they are boring one cannot think highly enough of their utility. They should even be encouraged. . . . (Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Walter Kaufmann [New York: Vintage Books, 1989 (1966)], 157 [first published in German in 1886; italics in original])

If there are any factually well-informed, sensitive and imaginative, psychologically undisturbed and clear-thinking people who are Nietzscheans, I have yet to hear of their existence. (R. M. Hare, "The Practical Relevance of Philosophy," chap. 6 in his Essays on Philosophical Method [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972], 98-116, at 116 [essay delivered as Hare's Inaugural Lecture at Oxford in 1967])

I heard the news of Saddam Hussein's capture from a fellow marathoner this morning. Any right-thinking person has to be delighted by it (as I was), but somehow I suspect it will be belittled or condemned. The America-haters will condemn it. The Bush-haters will belittle it because they know it makes George W. Bush all but invincible in next year's presidential election. If it helps President Bush, they hate it. I wonder what nasty spin Paul Krugman will put on the capture. Remember: President Bush has been mocked far and wide (and not just by comedians) for his inability to "find" either Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. Will the mockers apologize? Will they give credit where credit is due? They won't, of course, because that would require honesty, decency, balance, and good faith, none of which traits they possess.

Speaking of which, have you noticed the language used by President Bush's critics to refer to Saddam Hussein? They say things like this: "Admittedly, Saddam Hussein was an unsavory fellow, but that doesn't justify a war." Unsavory fellow? That understates it by a magnitude of ten. The man is one of the most brutal, sadistic tyrants of the twentieth century, and this takes into account only what we already know of his horrific deeds. I suspect that things are much worse than we imagine. One salutary effect of a trial by the Iraqi people will be to uncover (in some cases literally) what was done by him. It will be fun to watch the war critics squirm as this unfolds. They will be shown to be useful idiots for a vainglorious, amoral butcher.

Addendum: Just seconds after posting this entry, I visited Andrew Sullivan's website. I'll be damned if I wasn't right about the reaction. Check it out. By the way, let me join Andrew Sullivan in congratulating American soldiers (and their commanders) for the magnificent job they have been doing. You make me proud to be an American. You are the moral heroes of this generation.

I knew it would come to this. I just didn't think it would come so soon. (Thanks to Mindy Hutchison for the link.)

My eleventh marathon is in the books. It was a beautiful day for it. After winning a medal in the 1998 Dallas White Rock Marathon, my times began to increase. I went from 3:07 to 3:07 to 3:10 to 3:10 to 3:15 to 3:24 a year ago. I must have arthritis, because the soreness in my bones and joints has gotten progressively worse during the past few years. I thought I'd do an experiment this year: run slower (with the friend who got me into marathoning in 1996). If there were less pain, I could continue marathoning, just not competitively. But even at today's slower pace I suffered. I came in at 4:00:38. I think this may be my final marathon. But I'll keep running. I can do races of up to a half marathon (13.1 miles) without too much pain. There are many 5K and 10K races in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, plus the occasional 15K, 20K, and half marathon. It's been a great run. My only regret is that I didn't do the Boston Marathon after qualifying for six consecutive years.

My friend John Ray from Down Under has a link to this talk by Michael Crichton on his illuminating website, Dissecting Leftism. Thanks, John! Keep up the good work.

I received the following e-mail message this afternoon:

Prof. Burgess-Jackson, One of the moral differences between spam and junk mail is from who pays the bill. For junk mail, the sender pays all of the delivery charges. If I remember correctly, bulk mail even costs more than regular mail, so they might be subsidising mail delivery for the rest of us. In the case of spam, the sender pays hardly anything. The cost of distribution falls on the recipient. In countries where people pay for Internet access by the byte, the cost is squarely on the recipient. In the case where people pay flat rates, the cost is socialized, through higher bandwidth costs, spam-fighting software costs etc. In both cases, the cost mentioned is in addition to the time spent by the recipient in recognizing and disposing of unwanted bulk mail. The moral question is then, whether it is acceptable to pass on the cost of delivering an unsolicited message to the recipient of said message. I think not.

Perhaps I'm dense, but I don't see the "moral difference." I don't see any difference. All costs are opportunity costs. The time spent sorting through junk mail is costly to me in that it deprives me of opportunities. (I could be cleaning my sink. Ha!) The time spent working to pay for my Internet connection is costly to me in that it deprives me of opportunities. In both cases—junk mail and spam—I am deprived of opportunities. So that can't be a reason for despising spam but not junk mail.

Nor should it matter to the recipient how costly junk mail and spam are to their senders. Remember what I'm trying to explain. I'm trying to find a difference between spam and junk mail that explains why we resent the former but not the latter. Perhaps the letter-writer is suggesting that the overall or per-unit cost of spam is greater than that of junk mail; but I don't see any evidence for that claim. In short, I don't think it's the cost that makes the difference. It's something else, such as the three things I mentioned in my original entry.

BRUSSELS, Belgium—Lance Armstrong has his eyes on cycling history next year: a record sixth straight Tour de France title, with an elusive Olympic gold medal thrown in.

"I'm more motivated and I feel I have a point to prove," he said Friday. "If I win again, it will make up for the last Tour. I was just not happy with my performance in 2003, and that's a big motivating factor."

In the eyes of Thomas Jefferson it was not for the government, whether state or national, to tell the people what they wanted. Government was a means to an end, a means to protect and preserve the sacred freedom of the individual; and in the last analysis even the nation was no more than a means to that end.

For Jefferson, as for John Adams and George Washington, independence brought a kind of personal fulfillment. His was a different, less apparent fulfillment than they enjoyed, but it was similarly rooted in a personal trait. Jefferson, as I have stated, was a very private man. Although he did not cultivate the kind of aloofness with which Washington held others at somewhat more than arm's length, he possessed an inner core of personal privacy that no one has ever breached. His privacy, I believe, was a symptom of the supreme value he placed on individual freedom. It was not mere seclusion that he valued; he might have enjoyed far greater privacy of that sort by not participating in the Revolution at all. But in the establishment of independent republican government in America, Jefferson saw an opportunity to enlarge for mankind the private world in which the individual reigns supreme. The Revolution he fought was for the right of the individual to manage his own life with the minimum of interference from governments. For him the triumph of independence meant the triumph of the individual.

(Edmund S. Morgan, The Meaning of Independence: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978], 78)

I'm introducing a new feature to this blog. Let's call it "Ask Dr Keith." If you have a philosophical question, ask away (using the e-mail address that appears to the left of this entry, in the green area). I'll do my best to answer it. Philosophical questions are about how such-and-such is possible, given so-and-so. For example, how is freedom of the will possible, given a deterministic world? How is it possible for abortion to be morally permissible, given that a fetus is a person with a moral right to life from the moment of conception? How is it possible for evil to exist, given the existence of a perfectly good, all-powerful, all-knowing being? How is it possible for a state to be justified, given that individuals have absolute property rights? How is it possible to be a moral objectivist, given that there is no god? How is it possible for human beings to have knowledge, given that their senses are fallible?

Philosophical questions are different from scientific questions. They're different not in degree but in kind, because philosophy is a second-order discipline (as contrasted with first-order disciplines, professions, or practices such as science, law, medicine, art, politics, and religion). Scientists are concerned with what is the case. Philosophers are concerned with what can, cannot, and must be the case. Scientists are interested in the actual world. Philosophers are interested in possible worlds (of which the actual world is but one). Scientists try to explain why things are as they are. Philosophers try to explain how things can be as they are, logically. Science is interested in things. Philosophers are interested in the categories to which things belong (or, put differently, in our discourse about things).

Philosophers are trained arguers and trained critics of argument. If you have a question about a particular fallacy (reasoning error) or are wondering whether a given argument is fallacious, ask away. If you're confused about a concept, such as equality, rights, knowledge, liberty, validity, peace, or justice, ask away. If you're puzzled by a certain doctrine, such as determinism, libertarianism, theism, atheism, agnosticism, feminism, liberalism, conservatism, Marxism, anarchism, skepticism, egoism, nihilism, subjectivism, relativism, positivism, realism, idealism, materialism, eliminativism, consequentialism, utilitarianism, deontology, or retributivism, ask away. If you're wondering how metaphysics differs from, say, epistemology, or what the relation is between metaphysics and ontology, or how ethics is subdivided, ask away. If something philosophers do or say makes you scratch your head in wonder (or annoys you, or angers you), ask away.

If I cannot answer your question, I will try to find someone in the philosophical community who can and will. This blog is for you. I mean for it to be useful as well as edifying and entertaining. I will post your question when I answer it, but I will not use your name unless you request that I do.

Addendum: As you may have noticed, I do not put a period after the abbreviation "Dr" (except when it ends a sentence). A period indicates that the word has been truncated. Thus, "Abbr." would abbreviate "abbreviation." But in the case of "Dr," the letter "r" ends the word, so nothing has been cut off. If anything, it should appear as "D'r," since an apostrophe indicates one or more missing letters. I follow the British in this regard. It is not carelessness. It is the opposite of carelessness.

I received an interesting letter from a reader:

I very much enjoy the concept of clear thinking. So I enjoy reading your logic columns. You seem to be just the man to explain something to me. I have a very old email address so I get quite a bit of spam. I receive 50 to 100 emails a day. 60 to 80% is spam. This is not a great deal more, if any, than I get in my brick and mortar mail box. It takes me less than 60 seconds to delete the spam, which is about how long it takes me to throw away the junk mail from my mail box. What is all the hubbub about? What is the moral difference between the two? Why is one so terribly offensive and the other is not? (other than obscene content, which is a different issue) Why does it take so much time for companies to deal with it? (other than the obvious problem of sorting out legitimate customers emails) While I haven't looked at this a great deal I also have not seen or heard a rational discussion of it either. It all seems to be some kind of emotional reaction. Run in circles, scream and shout. Your thoughts would be appreciated. [Name and address withheld by kbj.]

I've been thinking about this myself, so thanks for asking. Almost every day, I get junk mail from (i.e., delivered by) the United States Postal Service. Sometimes that's all I get. I never give it a thought. I've never complained, sworn, or demanded legislation; I just sift through it and put the junk mail on the stack of newspapers to be burned in the fireplace (or recycled).

Why is spam any different from junk mail, which we accept (or tolerate) without complaint? I think there are several reasons. First, as the reader mentioned, some of it is obscene. I'm not easily offended, but I know that others are. Have you ever received an advertisement for bestiality in the mail? Nobody would tolerate that. Nor do I have children. If I did, I'd be outraged by the spammers. How dare they expose my children to such filth (or make me take steps to prevent it from reaching them)!

Second, spammers are devious. Lately they've taken to obscuring words by inserting items of punctuation. The word "Viagra," for example, becomes "V'i'a'g'r'a." I guess the computerized spam blockers can't see this as "Viagra," but humans can. There are other misleading techniques as well, such as pretending to be a friend or colleague. I think part of the opposition to spam is that it's so insulting to our intelligence. We feel as if someone is trying to dupe us. The junk mail from Kroger and Dillard's is, by comparison, open and honest. Indeed, many people welcome the ads, since they shop in those places on a regular basis.

Third, e-mail is new. Most of us are used to receiving junk mail. We're not used to receiving spam. Many of us thought, perhaps naively, that e-mail would be noncommercial. It would be like the telephone: a way to communicate. What if someone interrupted your telephone call to make a pitch for a product? What if, before you could talk to someone on your telephone, you had to spend a few minutes getting a marketer off the line? Yes, people call us with marketing pitches, but we resent it. Commerce (we like to think) has no place in certain spheres of our lives. E-mail is one of them.

Those are three differences that come to mind. Perhaps we'll eventually get used to spam. We'll sift through it as quickly and mindlessly as we do the junk mail that fills our mailboxes. We may look back and chuckle at how naive we were to think that e-mail would be any different from snail-mail.

Impartial, adj. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two conflicting opinions.

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

Most normally functioning people are ambitious. I am. You are. There is nothing wrong with it. But ambition, like anything else, can be taken too far. It can be, well, overweening. Most of our politicians at the national level, and almost all who have served as president or sought the presidency, are or were extremely ambitious. But if ambition is one's primary motive for seeking power, something is misfiring. I believe Bill Clinton cared more about obtaining and wielding power than, say, Ronald Reagan. Reagan had values that he sought to implement, a vision that he sought to realize. He wanted to make the nation a better place by his standards. He wanted to ensure that the United States would never be intimidated militarily by another nation.

For Reagan, power was a means to an end. For Clinton, power was an end in itself. How many commentators, including those loyal to Clinton, have noted that he stood for nothing, had no principles, and did at any moment what he thought best calculated to cement his power (or, during his first presidency, to increase the likelihood of reelection)? Our current president, George W. Bush, is in the Reagan mold. He came to Washington with a plan, with values, with a vision. You may not like the vision, but you cannot deny that he has one. Even his critics must acknowledge that some of his actions, such as toppling Saddam Hussein, were risky. A president concerned only with retaining power would not have undertaken them.

Which brings me to Howard Dean. I don't know him personally, but I read as much as I can about him from every corner of the political world. The recent column by David Brooks of The New York Times was a real eye-opener. Dean seems even more ambitious than Bill Clinton, if that is possible. His ambition is such that he will say or do anything to get elected. I don't detect a plan, a principle, a vision, or any reason to be president other than the fact that he wants it. I can only hope that this overweening ambition comes through to the American people before 2 November 2004, when we choose our next president. Eight years of aimless, amoral wandering by Bill Clinton all but destroyed this great country. We cannot afford another four, much less eight.

I myself don't have a spam problem (thank you, EarthLink), but I know that many people (including my sainted mother) do. It occurs to me that unless and until corporations—business firms—demand protection of their bottom line, nothing will change. I keep reading that the elimination of spam from a typical firm's e-mail takes up several human-hours a day. This is money out of the firm's pocket (so to speak). The firm is bearing a cost imposed on it by others. I hate to say it, but money talks. Them that have money, have power. Laws will be passed when firms rise up, not before. Mark my words.

Yesterday I showed that my defense of private gun-ownership is compatible, logically, with my belief that it's wrong to hunt and kill animals. Angus Taylor, my fellow blogger at Animal Ethics, asked some good questions about my views. (See the comments section at the end of my post over at Animal Ethics.)

His first question was about the Second Amendment. Isn't it controversial? Isn't it plausible that it was intended to apply only to militias; and since there is no longer a need for private individuals to retain arms for militia duty, isn't the amendment otiose? This is a good point, but one must keep the context of the amendment in mind. As the founders of our nation well knew, it's important that agents of government fear the citizenry. An unarmed citizenry is at the mercy of the government. Look what happened in Waco a decade ago. Look at other incidents around the country in which law-enforcement agencies overstepped their bounds. The Second Amendment seems to have had several purposes, so even if Angus is right that one of them no longer applies (which I do not for a moment concede), it doesn't follow that the amendment is otiose.

I don't rest my case solely on the Constitution, however. While I believe that there is a constitutional right to own firearms, I also believe that there is a moral right to do so. This would be the case even if there were no provision in the Constitution or any state or federal statute touching firearms. Individuals should be at liberty to do as they please, provided they don't harm others. Harming others with one's firearm is a serious matter and should be punished severely (including by death). The National Rifle Association has always held this view, as does every serious gun owner. Respect for individual liberty requires that individuals be allowed to choose whether to harm others. If they choose to do so, they may rightly be punished. Indeed, they must be punished. Liberty goes hand in hand with responsibility. Guns don't kill people; people with guns kill people. Punish the people. Leave the guns alone.

This brings up Angus's second point. He asks whether there is a correlation between the number of guns in private hands and the amount of gun-related crime. As everyone knows, the United States has both a high rate of private gun-ownership and a high crime rate, compared to other nations (such as Canada). I have two comments about this. First, studies by law professor John Lott and others show that private gun-ownership reduces crime rates. This may be counterintuitive, but it's true. There would be more crime than there is if guns were banned. Second, suppose this were not the case. Suppose we could reduce crime if we took guns away from citizens. A consequentialist might favor such a policy, but no self-respecting deontologist would. If having a right means anything, it means not having it infringed simply because more overall good would be produced thereby. Rights, to use Ronald Dworkin's felicitous term, are trumps. They trump considerations of utility or collective good.

By the way, there's a fallacy here that ought to be made explicit and avoided. (I'm not saying that Angus committed it.) That a policy hasn't achieved perfection doesn't mean that it's a failure. It would be fallacious, for example, to reason that because private gun-ownership hasn't eliminated crime, it's therefore a failure (thus opening the door to various regulations or bans on private gun-ownership). By this standard, all of the following policies or programs would be failures: welfare (there are still poor people), highway safety (people still get killed while driving), education (there are still illiterates), and fire-prevention (people's houses still burn).

In evaluating a policy or program for effectiveness, one should ask how things would be if it did not exist, or how it fares in comparison with alternative policies or programs, not whether it achieves perfection. That there are still gun-related crimes in this country doesn't show that private gun-ownership is a failure; it shows that crimes are committed in spite of the deterrent effect of private gun-ownership. Perhaps if more law-abiding citizens armed themselves, the crime rate would fall even further. This is not an argument for mandatory gun-ownership. It's an argument for education and training. An armed citizen is a safe(r) citizen.

He's at it again. Twice a week he delivers not milk but vitriol. Why should France, Germany, and Russia have the slightest say in Iraqi reconstruction? To play, you must pay. It's a law of nature. It's fundamental. It's something children learn in kindergarten. But Paul Krugman, the learned one, hasn't learned it yet. Here's the evidence for it: He uses the term "allies" four times. An ally is someone who cooperates with or helps another. Doesn't apply to France, Germany, or Russia, does it?

If you love American politics, as I do, you'll love this, the link to which I got from Andrew Sullivan's site.

Two interesting posts just showed up on Animal Ethics: Nathan Nobis's on how to avoid bullshit and mine on harming your children by feeding them animal flesh. Incidentally, "bullshit" is a technical philosophical term as well as an ordinary term. Harry G. Frankfurt wrote an essay entitled "On Bullshit" many years ago (in The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays, 117-33 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988 (essay first published in 1986)]), and Kerry S. Walters has one entitled "On Bullshitting and Brainstorming" (Teaching Philosophy 11 [December 1988]: 301-13). Don't let a day go by without visiting Animal Ethics. My fellow bloggers and I are committed to producing a quality site. Our goal is to engage and enrage.

I have long since learned to doubt the native sagacity of philosophers when discussing technicalities which they have not learned to handle on the job, as in earlier days I learned to doubt the judgements of those towing-path critics who had never done any rowing. Arbitrators should certainly be neutral, but they should also know from inside what the disputants are so hotly fighting on behalf of and against.

(Gilbert Ryle, Dilemmas [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954], 12)

Careful readers of my blogs (personal and communal) may think they've spotted an inconsistency. On the one hand, I defend gun-ownership. I said the other day (on AnalPhilosopher) that one of the things I like about Texas is its gun-friendliness. Much earlier I had written that guns, like David Lee Roth and Jif peanut butter, are underrated. On the other hand, I say disparaging things about hunting and hunters. What gives?

There is no inconsistency. I defend gun-ownership for lots of reasons, the main one being that it is protected by the United States Constitution. Read your Second Amendment. I also believe that private gun ownership deters, and therefore prevents, crime. (Deterrence is one kind of prevention. I'll discuss the distinction in another entry.) If there were more guns in the hands of private citizens and this fact were well known, criminals might think twice about aggressing on them. If you're thinking of burglarizing a house, will you think twice if you know or suspect that the owner has a gun? I thought so. It's common sense. If guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will have guns—and they will terrorize the rest of us.

But defending the legal or moral right of individuals to own guns is not the same as defending whatever uses they make of them. Nobody thinks that the right to own guns confers a right to kill other human beings (except in self-defense or defense of others). Nobody thinks that the right to own guns confers a right to destroy other people's property. Your liberty stops at the tip of my nose.

But animals have noses, too. (Okay, noses, beaks, trunks, and snouts.) The right to own a gun doesn't confer a right to kill sentient beings. Someone asked me recently whether libertarianism takes a position on the moral status of animals. As a former card-carrying member of the Libertarian party, I don't think it does. Libertarianism is a political philosophy. It is about the relation of citizens to the state. It is not a moral theory about which entities have moral status. This is why some libertarians are animal-liberationists and some are not. Nothing in the ideology commits one either way.

Morally speaking, I'm a deontologist, not a consequentialist. I believe that there are constraints on the pursuit of the overall good. The main constraint is against the doing of harm. I'm not an absolutist deontologist, so I'm willing to allow the doing of harm in order to prevent significantly greater harm (emphasis on "significantly"). But hunting does not fall into this category. Hunting inflicts gratuitous harm on animals. It is done for sport or recreation or entertainment, none of which comes close to justifying harm-doing.

"But animals can't be harmed!" you say. Why can't they? To harm another is to set back his or her interests. Animals, whether wild or domestic, have many of the same interests as humans, including life, liberty, security, and bodily integrity. You don't really believe that animals can't be harmed. But if they can, then harming them requires a powerful justification, not just a desire for the activity that does the harm. Nothing hunters come up with comes close to justifying it.

"But what's the point of having a right to own guns if we can't hunt with them?" you ask. There are other uses of guns: competition, self-defense, target practice. No right is absolute. Your right to drive a motor vehicle does not confer a right to run people over. Imagine someone saying, "But what's the point of having a right to drive if we can't run over people?" Sounds silly, doesn't it? So yes, I'm a strong defender of private gun ownership, for legal and moral reasons. But the right is constrained by other moral considerations, such as the moral status of animals. You may disagree with me about whether animals have moral status, and if so what that amounts to, but please don't accuse me of being inconsistent. I'm a gun owner's best friend. I'm a hunter's worst enemy.

Addendum: I'm posting this on both blogs, since it raises general philosophical issues as well as issues related specifically to animal ethics.

On the view of philosophy which I am offering, philosophers should not be asked for arguments against, for example, the correspondence theory of truth or the idea of the "intrinsic nature of reality." The trouble with arguments against the use of a familiar and time-honored vocabulary is that they are expected to be phrased in that very vocabulary. They are expected to show that central elements in that vocabulary are "inconsistent in their own terms" or that they "deconstruct themselves." But that can never be shown. Any argument to the effect that our familiar use of a familiar term is incoherent, or empty, or confused, or vague, or "merely metaphorical" is bound to be inconclusive and question-begging. For such use is, after all, the paridigm [sic] of coherent, meaningful, literal, speech. Such arguments are always parasitic upon, and abbreviations for, claims that a better vocabulary is available. Interesting philosophy is rarely an examination of the pros and cons of a thesis. Usually it is, implicitly or explicitly, a contest between an entrenched vocabulary which has become a nuisance and a half-formed new vocabulary which vaguely promises great things.

(Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989], 8-9 [italics in original])

Tired of being trampled underfoot by trained arguers? Ready to kick some argumentative butt? Then read my latest column on Tech Central Station, "How to Argue." Feedback is of course welcome—preferably on the TCS site, but also by e-mail.

We humans contrive to conceal our animality from ourselves and from each other. We fancy that we differ in kind and not just in degree from the other—inferior—animals. This is of course what Roger Scruton, in another context, called "the joyous work of falsehood." (See Roger Scruton, The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat [Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2002], 80.) Our collective lie—our public mythology—is rooted in hubris, the sense that we are, or must be, special.

One aspect of our animality is our desire for status. Males in particular are obsessed with it. Every human activity, from sport to science to art to commerce to religion to the military, has a hierarchy or pecking order, and those within it know their place. You are my boss. I am your student. I have resources you need. You must obey me. I am beholden to you. You work for me. The hierarchy is asymmetrical, with power wielded over those below and respect shown to (and demanded by) those above.

Academics pretend to be above all this. No cutthroat, dog-eat-dog world for them! That's for lowly commercial types. But academics are at least as status-oriented as anyone else, and probably, in some respects, more so. Let me give an example. Brian Leiter is a law and philosophy professor at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the well-known author of The Philosophical Gourmet Report, which ranks law schools and philosophy programs. Even his blog is given over to rankings. Lately he has taken to comparing earlier rankings of philosophy programs (conducted by others) to current rankings (conducted by him) to see which programs are on the rise and which in decline. He seems particularly interested in how his own UT-Austin programs rank—which makes sense, since, if his own programs climb the ladder, so does he. Males sometimes enter into cooperative status-seeking arrangements. This is as true for law and philosophy professors at UT-Austin as it is for chimpanzees in the wild.

I won't speculate on Leiter's psychological needs, even though he has shown no similar forbearance. He recently speculated publicly about the latent homosexuality of those who support anti-sodomy laws or oppose gay marriage. I have no idea what is supposed to follow from that, even if it were the case. But his example should disabuse anyone of the idea that when one goes into academia, one either eschews status altogether or manifests a lack of concern with it. Leiter is positively obsessed with status, and so, apparently, are the tens of thousands of people—fellow professors, presumably, as well as those who aspire to be professors and professionals—who visit his site to find out whether the philosophy program at Pittsburgh is "better" than that at Stanford, or whether Yale's law school now outranks Harvard's. Among the status-conscious, Leiter ranks first. He is the highest-ranking ranker, the meta-ranker, the ranker's ranker. He is downright rank.

What this shows is that status has many forms. Here is Robert Wright:

The range of things that can bring status in different cultures and subcultures is astonishing. Making beads, making music, delivering sermons, delivering babies, inventing drugs, inventing tales, collecting coins, collecting scalps. Yet the mental machinery driving these various activities is fundamentally the same. Human beings are designed to assess their social environment, and, having figured out what impresses people, do it; or, having found what people disfavor, avoid it. They're pretty open-minded about what "it" is. The main thing is that they be able to succeed at it; people everywhere want to feel pride, not shame; to inspire respect, not disdain. (Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life [New York: Vintage Books, 1995 (1994)], 259-60)

I'm not implying that only males are status-seekers, but they're clearly more powerfully driven in that regard, for biological reasons, than women. Males compete among themselves for whatever it is that confers status in their society. Women are, in turn, attracted to high-status men. This isn't to say that women get up in the morning and say to themselves, "I have to find a man with status and resources." They simply find themselves attracted to men who have these things—and who demonstrate that they're willing to lavish them on their mate and children. Women secure status through men. This is as true now, post-feminism, as it ever was. Read the literature. Look around. Stop denying your animality.

My polymathic friend John Ray from Down Under has an interesting "deconstruction" of "leftist linguistics professor" George Lakoff. Check it out.

Someone needs to say it, so I will. Bill O'Reilly, the host of Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor, is a pompous bully. On weekday evenings, when my work is done, I unwind by watching various cable-television programs on MSNBC, CNBC, and Fox. At ten o'clock here in the Southern Great Plains, I have a choice between The O'Reilly Factor and Chris Matthews's Hardball.

Matthews, by comparison with O'Reilly, is fair and respectful, although sometimes, for who knows what reason, he goes wilding. He seems obsessed with the idea that Vice President Dick Cheney is running the White House, and it drives him crazy that he can't get any information from the Vice President. He also refuses to distinguish between the morality of the war in Iraq and the motives of President Bush in conducting it (about which, see several of my columns on Tech Central Station). When Matthews is on, he is superb. I find it hard not to like him, with his boyish charm, his sincere commitment to working-class values, and his love of country.

O'Reilly is another matter. He disingenuously disclaims political or ideological affiliation. Many times he has said that he is neither liberal nor conservative. He portrays himself as a champion of the common person—as someone who's "lookin' out for the folks." As any regular viewer knows, his views are slanted to the right. There's nothing whatsoever wrong with that, but he should be forthright about it and stop portraying himself as above the fray.

The thing I find most despicable about O'Reilly is the way he treats his guests. They are nothing but props in his megalomaniacal play. Each night, on each topic, he has a line that he's going to push. The guests are there, seemingly, for effect. He belittles them, interrupts them, badgers them, misconstrues their statements and arguments, and in general shows no interest in engaging them. They are his foils.

O'Reilly thinks that if you refuse to come on his show, you are hiding out. If he senses that you are avoiding him, he heaps scorn and ridicule on you. If you go on other shows but not his, it can only be because you fear his vast and probing intellect. He makes it seem as though you can't hold your own in a conversation, much less an argument. His treatment of certain actors, such as George Clooney and Sean Penn, is contemptible, whatever you think of their politics. Why would someone go on O'Reilly's show, knowing how he treats his guests? Only someone who is (1) desperate to sell something or (2) masochistic would consent to it.

O'Reilly is at his worst when it comes to religion. For some reason he has a mental block about the Ten Commandments. He insists that there is nothing religious about them. They are, he says, part of our moral/legal heritage. They express moral/legal principles, not religious commandments. This is dishonest. They can do both. O'Reilly may say he cares about the little person, but he has no sympathy for nonbelievers—a discrete and insular minority!—who prefer not to have religious artifacts in public places, such as courthouses. This is one of many cases in which O'Reilly's professed neutrality conceals a harsh partisanship.

There are things I like about O'Reilly, and I happen to share many views and values with him. I just wish he would show more respect for his guests and for those who disagree with him. A little humility goes a long way. That said, I'll give you the last word, Bill.

Validity is a property (feature, characteristic, attribute) of argument forms. Some argument forms have it; some do not. Valid argument forms are those that are truth-preserving. This means that if you put truths into them (as premises), you will get a truth out of them (as the conclusion). If we did not value truth, we would not value validity. Like currency, validity has only extrinsic (instrumental) value. It is valued as a means to something else we value (namely, truth) but not as an end in itself. This is not to say that validity has no value; it is to specify the type of value it has. (Some things, such as friendship and knowledge, are valued both intrinsically and extrinsically.)

By definition, no valid argument has true premises and a false conclusion. (If it did, it would not be truth-preserving!) Think of it this way. It is logically impossible (i.e., ruled out by definition) for an argument to have all three of the following properties:

Suppose a given argument has (is known to have) two of these properties. Then it can be inferred immediately that it lacks the third. There are three cases:

1. If a valid argument has true premises, then it does not have a false conclusion (i.e., it has a true conclusion).

2. If a valid argument has a false conclusion, then it does not have true premises (i.e., it has at least one false premise).

3. If an argument has true premises and a false conclusion, then it is not valid (i.e., it is invalid).

Suppose a given argument has (is known to have) one of these properties. Then it can be inferred immediately that it lacks either or both of the others. There are three cases:

4. If an argument is valid, then either (a) it has a false premise or (b) it has a true conclusion (or both).

5. If an argument has true premises, then either (a) it is invalid or (b) it has a true conclusion (or both).

6. If an argument has a false conclusion, then either (a) it is invalid or (b) it has a false premise (or both).

What this shows is that if you remember the definition of "validity," you will be in a position to draw inferences about arguments from what you know about them—even if you know very little. Inference, whether inductive or deductive, mediate or immediate, is a means of extending knowledge. Because we value knowledge, we value truth (which is essential to it). Because we value truth, we value validity (which is a means to it). Validity turns out to be the key to knowledge! But wait; it gets better. If knowledge is essential to the good life, as the Greek philosopher Socrates implied when he said that the unexamined life is not worth living, then validity is the key to the good life.

I figure that few things could better prepare my children for the realities of life in our society than being baseball fans, for every month offers them new lessons about the troubled relations between internal and external goods in the age of advanced capitalism. They learn about vicious owners who show no appreciation for the goods of the sport and who manipulate and humiliate their employees. They learn about managers, commissioners, bureaucrats, superstars, agents, markets, racial prejudice, sexist exclusion from a social practice, the intemperance of drug use, corruption by fame, and insanely unjust salaries. Meanwhile, they also learn to love the way Don Mattingly swings a bat, to retell stories of moral heroes like Jackie Robinson, to savor the drama of a close game well played, to lose their sense of passing time, and to understand the pleasure that supervenes upon the realization of goals sought for their own sake through long and arduous effort.

(Jeffrey Stout, Ethics After Babel: The Languages of Morals and Their Discontents [Boston: Beacon Press, 1988], 276)

I see that Al Gore, loser of the 2000 presidential election, has endorsed Howard Dean for president. I predict an avalanche of further endorsements: by George McGovern (1972), Jimmy Carter (1980), Walter Mondale (1984), and Michael Dukakis (1988), all of whom have been repudiated by the American people. Why stop with one loser when you can have five?

Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.

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

In choosing mates, both sexes are influenced by partners' physical and social characteristics. But men and women weigh social and physical traits differently, and the sequences in which traits are weighed also differ. In some respects the evaluation process for women is the reverse from that of men. This process can be visualized as a series of doors—or windows—nested within one another. For men, partners' physical traits act as an initial filter that determines the pool of partners with whom they desire sexual relations. Physical traits thus open a door of opportunity for these partners in which the necessity or desirability of further investment can be explored.

When women choose partners, status is a major criterion in their initial filter. Through a perceptual process that is largely unconscious, high status has the power to transform men's physical and sexual attractiveness in the eyes of women. Women do not have to think, "Oh, now he has high status and my friends think he's attractive, so I should think he's good looking." Rather, status, dominance, peer opinion, and deference from others cause high-status men to be perceived as sexually attractive.

But to decide to have sex, women typically need more information than status and physical appearance provide. A positive first impression, which is also influenced by partners' physical attractiveness, typically opens the door to a first date. For women, a first date is a chance to explore partners' potential for higher-investment relationships—the man's values, warmth, ambition, and interest in them. If all of these indices are acceptable, a woman might want to have sex with this man, but her ultimate motivation is to find the right man—the man who will invest abundantly, reliably, and devotedly in her and her offspring. Thus men first determine which women are acceptable for sexual relations and then evaluate which might merit further investment. Women determine which men appear to be acceptable socially, personally, and physically, and then decide which might be acceptable for sexual relations.

(John Marshall Townsend, What Women Want—What Men Want: Why the Sexes Still See Love and Commitment So Differently [Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998], 119 [italics in original])

I was a feminist for over twenty years. I went to probate court in Michigan in 1981 to have my name changed from "Keith Douglas Jackson" to "Keith Burgess-Jackson." I wanted both of my parents' names, not just my father's. I refused to participate in a sexist naming practice. I share this personal information with you in order to forestall questions about my feminist credentials. You insult me if you dismiss me as a misogynist. Read my published work. Much of it is a spirited defense of feminism. I am excerpted in a law-school casebook by Catharine A. MacKinnon, the uber-feminist; I have been invited to speak on feminist topics at philosophical conferences; I've published in feminist periodicals (such as Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy); I was invited to (and did) write a book chapter on the backlash against feminism.

That said, let me be blunt. Men and women are different. By nature. They're wired differently. They have different brains—different because they evolved differently. The different brains of men and women produce different thought patterns, different emotions, and ultimately different behavior. Please don't leap to conclusions. Saying that men and women are different in some respects is not to say that they're different in all or even most respects. They are one species, not two. Nor is it to say that all men are alike or that all women are alike. Men are taller than women, but this doesn't mean that every man is taller than any woman. We're talking tendencies—tendencies rooted in biology.

Because men and women are wired differently, they have different needs, interests, and perspectives. Some people think that what requires explanation is why marriages fail. I have always thought—at least since my first readings in evolutionary biology—that what requires explanation is how any marriages succeed, given the sex differences that exist. Studies show, even now, that what men want out of a relationship is not the same as what women want. (See, e.g., John Marshall Townsend, What Women Want—What Men Want: Why the Sexes Still See Love and Commitment So Differently [Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998].) There is built-in tension. The tension can and perhaps should be overcome (for the sake of the children, for example), but overcoming tension is not the same as not experiencing any.

Each sex, acting out its evolutionary role, tries to bend the other to its will. Women want men to be more nurturing and sensitive—and to take on a greater share of the domestic chores. They also expect their mates to be good providers. Men want women to be more sexual—and faithful. Depending on whom you listen to, it's either men or women who are being unreasonable. I listened to feminists for many years, so I came to believe that it was men who are unreasonable. This, needless to say, produced more than a little self-loathing. I now think that either both sexes are unreasonable or neither sex is unreasonable. They're just different. They're pitted against one another in a primordial battle.

One thing I refuse to tolerate, now that I've abandoned feminism, is denigration of men and male proclivities and activities. (For an example, see here.) I have heard too many feminist jokes about how loutish and selfish men are, about how all they want is sex, or competition, or power. I have heard the jokes about football, guns, and pickup trucks. Hell, I told some of them! From a male point of view, women are just as laughable and intolerable. Men don't understand the female craving for adornment (now being manifested in ghastly foot surgery to make high heels wearable) or the need for emotional connection. If men are louts, then women, to the male way of thinking, are frivolous.

Isn't it time we accepted sex differences? Anyone with any perceptual ability knows that men and women differ in fundamental ways. Anyone with both a boy and a girl knows that the differences between them are to a large extent hard-wired. This is not to suggest that socialization plays no role in how we turn out. It's to say that socialization isn't the only factor. Some feminists, to their credit, acknowledge sex differences. Ironically, it's the radical feminists. Liberal feminists stubbornly deny the reality of sex differences. I have seen and heard the denial firsthand. It is uttered with religious zeal. They insist that all observed differences are the product of differential socialization, so that, if we socialize differently, we will get different (better) people—androgynous people. (Some philosophers, such as James P. Sterba of The University of Notre Dame, think that androgyny is ideal.)

This, with all due respect, is biologically ignorant. Feminism, as even some feminists (such as law professor Katharine K. Baker, author of "Biology for Feminists," Chicago-Kent Law Review 75 [2000]: 805-35) are coming to understand, ignores biology at its peril. If feminism is to survive as a serious social movement, and I hope it does, it must come to grips with the facts. That said, I think I understand the motivation for liberal feminism. The thinking is that sexism presupposes sex differences. If there were no sex differences, then there could not be, and hence would not be, discrimination on the basis of sex. This is true, but it attacks the factual basis of sexism rather than sexism itself. For consider: If there weren't distinct religions, there would be no religious wars. Should we, in a vain attempt to end religious wars, deny the reality of religious diversity? That would be evidence of mental illness, not a solution of the problem.

What feminists should argue—if I, a lapsed feminist, may be of assistance—is not that men and women have a common nature, but that the natural differences between them have no moral significance (or something less than the moral significance they are thought to have). The argument will need to be made in each context in which difference is thought to justify disparate treatment. Feminism has important work to do. It should not, this late in history, be denying the obvious.

Addendum: The best thing I've read on the topic of feminism and biology—and I've read a great deal—is Robert Wright, "Feminists, Meet Mr. Darwin," The New Republic: A Journal of Politics and the Arts 211 (28 November 1994): 34-46. Please write to me if you would like a copy. I also recommend, as highly as I can, Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1995 [1994]). Kant said that Hume awakened him from his "dogmatic slumber." Robert Wright awakened me from my feminist slumber.

Several people have written to me in the past few weeks to criticize what they call my "armchair psychologizing." As some of you know, I've written columns for Tech Central Station on why liberals think conservatives are stupid and why there is so much hatred of President Bush (see the links to the left, in the green area). Lately, too, I've tried to explain (in this blog) why liberals are angry and hateful. These things genuinely puzzle me, so I try to make sense of them. When I think I've made sense of them, I write about them.

Is this armchair psychology? What's armchair psychology, anyway? The term was obviously condemnatory as used by the writers. Are they suggesting that any claim about what motivates particular people or types of people requires an advanced degree in psychology? Are only trained psychologists competent to make judgments about whether a given action was motivated by greed, lust, envy, hatred, fear, benevolence, or something else? I should hope not, or all of us are guilty of armchair psychologizing.

Nor do I think one must conduct systematic empirical research before coming to a conclusion about human motivation (or anything else). Must I do systematic empirical research on roses before making judgments about what's best for them? Must I do systematic empirical research on childrearing before making judgments about how to raise my child? Must I do systematic empirical research on computers before judging that the Dell is superior to the Compaq? This is scientism: the encroachment of scientific concepts, methods, and terminology on nonscientific realms.

Here's another example. Prosecutors prove motivation (and other mental states, such as knowledge) in every criminal court in the land, every day. They don't just prove it; they prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. How many of them are psychologists? How about the jurors who render verdicts? How about the judges who do the sentencing? I think the charge of armchair psychologizing is bogus. Everyone is competent to make judgments about the motivations of other people. Everyone is competent to explain other people's behavior. Indeed, we are hard-wired to do so. It is selected for.

When is the term "armchair psychology" appropriate? I suppose it would be bad for a psychologist to do armchair psychology. Psychologists should go into the field, as it were, to conduct their research. The rest of us, meanwhile, can draw on our experiences and knowledge—from the comfort of our armchairs. If you think I've explained something poorly, such as why liberals are angry and hateful, provide a better explanation—or deny that they are angry and hateful. Engage me on the merits. Don't tell me I'm incompetent to explain it! That's an attempt to stifle inquiry. Hmm. I wonder why you're trying to stifle inquiry. I'll get back to you when I've explained it.

Reason has been a great success among philosophers who dislike complexity and among politicians (technologists, bankers etc. etc.) who don't mind adding a little class to their struggle for world domination. It is a disaster for the rest, i.e. practically all of us. It is time we bid it farewell.

(Paul Feyerabend, Farewell to Reason [London and New York: Verso, 1987], 17)

If you opposed the war in Iraq, you have this on your head.

This makes me mad.

As Shelly Kagan, a consequentialist, points out in his wonderful book Normative Ethics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), "for the consequentialist, . . . there is no intrinsic moral significance to the distinction between doing and allowing" (page 95; italics in original). Deontologists, in contrast, hold that this distinction does have intrinsic moral significance.

Let us draw out the implications of this consequentialist commitment, for I believe they are absurd. To a consequentialist, there is no intrinsic moral difference between my bringing about ten units of badness (however badness is conceived) and my allowing ten units of badness. (The concept of allowing X entails being in a position to prevent X but not doing so.) I am as responsible, morally, for what I allow as for what I do. Bernard Williams, a critic of consequentialism, calls this "negative responsibility." Here is how he puts it:

It is because consequentialism attaches value ultimately to states of affairs, and its concern is with what states of affairs the world contains, that it essentially involves the notion of negative responsibility: that if I am ever responsible for anything, then I must be just as much responsible for things that I allow or fail to prevent, as I am for things that I myself, in the more everyday restricted sense, bring about. (Bernard Williams, "A Critique of Utilitarianism," in J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973], 75-150, at 95 [italics in original; footnote omitted])

Suppose I can prevent a given bad but do not. I am, according to consequentialism, morally responsible for it. Now suppose I can prevent a given good but do not. Am I not morally responsible for it? By this logic, I am morally responsible for all the good that comes about that I am in a position to prevent but don't. If I'm blameworthy for the bad I allow, why am I not praiseworthy for the good I allow?

Consider an example: My neighbors are having a pleasant meal. I can easily disrupt it, but choose not to. I am therefore morally responsible for the pleasure of my neighbors. Generalize: I can spend my entire day preventing good deeds from being performed by others. If I choose not to do so, I am morally responsible for all the good that is done. It turns out that I'm morally responsible for a great deal of good, just by sitting in my study!

I don't know about you, but this, to me, shows the absurdity of consequentialism. Consequentialism entails the negative-responsibility thesis, which entails that one is morally responsible for allowed good as well as for allowed bad. But it's absurd to think that one is morally responsible for allowed good. Therefore, the negative-responsibility thesis is absurd; therefore, consequentialism is absurd. Q.E.D.

When academics operate outside their areas of specialization, and particularly when they write for the general public about issues of or fraught with politics or ideology, they operate without guidance from their training and experience and without the constraints imposed on academic work by the norms of the university community. In the public-intellectual arena, they operate without any significant constraints; there is nothing to call them to account.

(Richard A. Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001], 397 [italics in original])

I have lived in three states: Michigan (twenty-six years), Arizona (five years), and Texas (fifteen years). Here are ten things I like about Texas (in no particular order):

1. The people are self-sufficient; they don't look to government for help.
2. We don't suffer murderers gladly; we execute them.
3. You can drive all day and still be in its borders.
4. Mild winters (for which we pay in hot summers).
5. Gun-friendliness.
6. The twang.
7. No state income tax.
8. Beautiful vistas.
9. Farm-to-market roads.
10. Humongous reservoirs. (Texas has only one natural lake: Caddo.)

Friendless, adj. Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.

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

In 1972, Peter Singer argued for famine relief by drawing an analogy to a drowning child. "[I]f I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it," he wrote, "I ought to wade in and pull the child out. This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but this is insignificant, while the death of the child would presumably be a very bad thing" (Peter Singer, "Famine, Affluence, and Morality," reprinted in his Writings on an Ethical Life [New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001 (2000)], 105-17, at 107).

Why does this logic not apply to the case of the United States rescuing the Iraqi people from a sadistic tyrant who had already tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, including children? The fact that it is a state rather than an individual doing the rescuing is irrelevant, for states are responsible actors (as Singer himself concedes). The United States was in a position to make a rescue and did so. Had it not made the attempt, would it not be as blameworthy as the person in Singer's example who lets the child drown? That other states stood by and did nothing would not lessen the blameworthiness of the United States for failing to act. Singer is clear about this.

It might be objected that nobody is made to suffer or die in the pond case, whereas, in the case of rescuing Iraqis, it was certain from the outset that many innocents would die. But this objection is not available to utilitarians such as Singer, who insist that there is no morally relevant difference between killing and allowing to die. If the only way to save nineteen innocent lives is to kill one innocent person, one ought to kill the innocent person. (See Bernard Williams, "A Critique of Utilitarianism," in J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973], 75-150, at 98-9.) What if the only way to save hundreds of thousands of innocent people is to kill (unintentionally) several thousand? Forcibly displacing the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein and his sons to prevent hundreds of thousands of rapes, tortures, and murders, knowing that some innocents will die in the process, is justifiable by utilitarian logic. (The sons, by the way, had been groomed to carry on their father's butchery—and had already become proficient at it by the time of their deaths.)

Utilitarians such as Singer are usually outspoken in defense of their theory, but they have been strangely silent on the war in Iraq. They should apply their theory to it and see what results. If they're not willing to accept the implications of their theory, they should stop calling themselves utilitarians.

Is anyone besides me a subscriber to an online music service? I've subscribed to Rhapsody since this past summer and love it. For $24.95 every three months, I get access to tens of thousands of albums. If you like, you can burn songs to a CD for a nominal fee. You can also listen to radio stations of every type, from heavy metal to classical. The sound quality is excellent, especially if, like me, you have good speakers (I have Klipsch THX). Today I learned something interesting. I typed "Pat Metheny" and "Michael Hedges" into a radio-station box. Rhapsody provided a list of similar artists. I created my own radio station! I've loved every song that has come up during the past two hours. I have no stock in Rhapsody and, for all I know, there are better subscription services out there. This is not a plug for any particular service. If you love music and work at the computer a lot, you may want to check into it.

There's a story in today's New York Times Magazine about the many young supporters of former Vermont governor Howard Dean. It's wonderful to see such enthusiasm among the neophytes, but I'm afraid their dreams will be shattered, as mine were in 1976 and 1980. I was aghast in 1976 when an unknown Georgia Sunday-school teacher won the presidency. I remember being angry at the stupidity of the American people as I lay down to bed after a night of watching election returns. I was nineteen. It was my first political disappointment.

I was disappointed again in 1980, by which time I was in law school. Like so many of today's Dean supporters, I had hopped onto a political bandwagon. In my case it was John B. Anderson, the Harvard Law School graduate and longtime member of Congress from Illinois. He was articulate, intelligent, and photogenic. He was fiscally conservative but socially progressive. It seemed the perfect mix for thoughtful people. I became active in the Anderson campaign and even made my way to the 1980 Michigan State Republican Convention in Pontiac. Yes, people voted for me. It was amazing.

Alas, Anderson was defeated in his bid for the Republican nomination (by Ronald Reagan), ran as an independent, and received 6.6% of the popular vote. Thus ended my political innocence. Fortunately, it didn't turn me off from politics forever. It just made me realistic instead of idealistic. I hope that when Howard Dean is defeated in the 2004 general election, if he gets that far, his youthful supporters will recover from the trauma and stay active in political affairs at all levels, including locally. Politics is our lifeblood. It is—or can be—a noble, rewarding endeavor.

I have made no systematic attempt to 'desex' the language of this book, from the opening sentence 'What is man?' onwards—I hope readers will believe me when I say that I intend the masculine words to cover the whole human species. The issue seems to me to require a deeper response than that, yet it did not seem appropriate to extend the book by entering the debate, even if I were qualified to do so.

(Leslie Stevenson, Seven Theories of Human Nature, 2d ed. [New York: Oxford University Press, 1987], viii)

Nicholas Kristof explains why Republicans are delighted with the Howard Dean juggernaut. Go, Howard!

Thomas Friedman is one of my favorite columnists. His presence at The New York Times assures me that it hasn't been completely overrun by Bush-haters. Speaking of which, this column by Friedman might give Bush-haters something to think about.

Read this. It is riddled with confusions. First, it conflates morality with religion. There is at most a contingent connection between the two. Second, it assumes that there is a realm called "values" that is distinct from other realms. That's risible. Every policy in every area—the environment, highway safety, criminal justice, labor law, foreign affairs, education—presupposes values. Third, it portrays values as important only instrumentally—for the political benefit they confer. Has it come to this?

I genuflect before the master blogger, Andrew Sullivan, with whom I have had my disagreements (about homosexual marriage, for example), but whom I respect and admire. (Even geniuses have blind spots.) See his post of this date entitled "Hindsight Check." If you're not reading Sullivan's blog every day, you're, well, out of the loop.

[Sex-equality law] cannot recognize that every quality that distinguishes men from women is already affirmatively compensated in society's organization and values, so that it implicitly defines the standards it neutrally applies. Men's physiology defines most sports, their health needs largely define insurance coverage, their socially designed biographies defined [sic] workplace expectations and successful career patterns, their perspectives and concerns define quality in scholarship, their experiences and obsessions define merit, their military service defines citizenship, their presence defines family, their inability to get along with each other—their wars and rulerships—defines history, their image defines god, and their genitals define sex. These are the standards that are presented as gender neutral. For each of men's differences from women, what amounts to an affirmative action plan is in effect, otherwise known as the male-dominant structure and values of American society.

(Catharine A. MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1989], 224)

Git y'self over to Animal Ethics to read my latest post on theory and practice. Y'all come back now, y'hear?

Does capital punishment deter? That is to say, does capital punishment deter more murders than the next-worst punishment, whatever that is? This is a factual question on which philosophers, as such, have no expertise. But philosophers can make assumptions about the facts and draw out their implications. This helps one see what one is committed to by taking a particular position.

Suppose I oppose capital punishment even if it should turn out to deter. In other words, that capital punishment deters is irrelevant to me. Ernest van den Haag thinks this is perverse. He cites a study by Isaac Ehrlich in which Ehrlich claims that each execution deters seven or eight murders. If this were so, then, by opposing a given execution, I would be preferring the life of one murderer to seven or eight innocent people.

(See Ernest van den Haag, "In Defense of the Death Penalty: A Legal-Practical-Moral Analysis," Criminal Law Bulletin 14 [1978]: 51-68, citing Isaac Ehrlich, "The Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: A Question of Life and Death," The American Economic Review 65 [June 1975]: 397-417. See also Isaac Ehrlich, "The Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: Reply," The American Economic Review 67 [June 1977]: 452-8.)

But suppose it's one innocent life saved for each execution. Shouldn't I still prefer the life of the innocent person to that of a murderer? That the innocent person is unidentified shouldn't matter. It's a real person; I just don't know who it is. It could be me, in fact. The life you save by executing may be your own!

Suppose only half an innocent life is saved by each execution. In other words, for every ten executions, there are five fewer murders. It would still seem perverse to prefer the lives of two murderers to that of one innocent person. And what if it takes 100 executions to save one innocent life? Surely we should prefer the one innocent life to the 100 murderers. These are murderers we're talking about!

Now suppose we don't know whether capital punishment deters. Either way, we're gambling. If we forbear from executing, we may, for all we know, be condemning innocent people to death. If we execute, we may, for all we know, be saving no innocent lives. Shouldn't we gamble in favor of innocent life? Shouldn't we execute convicted murderers because there's a nonzero probability that it will save innocent lives? (One thing we know is that the probability is not zero.) Unless and until it can be shown conclusively that capital punishment has no deterrent effect, we should execute. Better to be safe than sorry.

To live alone one must be an animal or a god—says Aristotle. There is yet a third case: one must be both—a philosopher.

(Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, trans. R. J. Hollingdale [London: Penguin Books, 1990], 33 [first published as Götzen-Dämmerung in 1889] [italics in original])

There is wonderful news out of College Station, Texas, for all who believe in equality. Texas A&M University has decided not to take race into account in admissions, even though, by law, it may. I taught for a year at Texas A&M in 1988-1989, so I consider myself an honorary Aggie. The greatest beneficiaries of this decision, of course, will be African-Americans and other nonwhites. They will not be stigmatized as "affirmative-action babies" and they will know that their achievements are due to merit, not the color of their skin. Now if only the trendy, patronizing liberals in Austin would get the message.

Have you listened to Michael Moore lately? Okay, Moore is a cartoon character who can't be taken seriously. How about Brian Leiter and Henry Farrell, who purport to be disinterested scholars but are in fact vulgar partisans? Their vitriolic speech (Leiter wrote this morning that Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Andrew Sullivan, and sixteen other conservatives "demean human existence") cries out for explanation. Why are they angry? Why are they hateful? Why are they so aggressive toward those with whom they disagree?

The answer, I believe, can be found in the classic 1939 study by John Dollard and his Yale University colleagues: Frustration and Aggression. Dollard et al. hypothesized that the "primary and characteristic reaction to frustration" is aggression, which takes many forms:

Many of the common forms of aggression can be instantly recognized by almost any observer who belongs to Western society. Acts of physical violence are perhaps the most obvious. Fantasies of "getting even" with galling superiors or rivals, calculated forays against frustrating persons (whether the weapon is a business deal, a gun, a malicious rumor, or a verbal castigation is of little moment), and generalized destructive or remonstrative outbursts like lynchings, strikes, and certain reformist campaigns are clearly forms of aggression as well. It hardly needs special emphasis that tremendously complex learning skills, such as the use of the boomerang and machine gun, may occur in these aggressive behavior sequences.

Why are liberals such as Moore, Leiter, and Farrell frustrated? As I explained in a column on Tech Central Station some time back, it's because they believe conservatives are "rolling back" the many "gains" they thought were permanent. These "gains" include abortion rights, environmental protection, assistance for the poor, globalization, multiculturalism, secularism, and affirmative action.

Deep down, liberals know that they have lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people. They control the media, Hollywood, the courts, and academia, but little else. They sense that all is lost—that what they perceive as rollbacks will be permanent. As James Chowning Davies showed with his J-curve theory, revolution (social or individual) is not a function of satisfactions alone but of the increasing gap between expectations and satisfactions. Liberal expectations remain high as a result of past successes, but their satisfactions are plummeting and promise to continue to do so. This creates revolutionary potential. Liberals aren't marching in the streets (yet), but they're doing the next best thing: heaping vitriol on their conservative tormenters. What we are seeing is a grown-up tantrum.

What liberals need to grasp, if they want to remain viable and credible, is that what they view as moral progress is not universally or even widely viewed as progress. Many of us view it as regress. There is an ebb and flow to political change. It is not ratcheted. The excesses of feminism, environmentalism, and secularism are becoming clear and are being curbed. Conservatives are now in the ascendant. By all indications, they will remain in power, for they speak to the aspirations of the American people. Liberalism is in decline—and liberals know it. It remains to be seen whether, and if so when, liberalism will recover. If it does, it will have to be the result of changes from within. I don't see the American people becoming liberal anytime soon, which will only increase liberal frustration and aggression. Conservatives should ignore liberals the way a parent ignores a wailing, kicking child.

I posted my first blog entry on 5 November, a month ago today. My on-site odometer just rolled over to 4,000. Neat! At that rate, I'll have 48,000 site visits in my first year. Brian Leiter told me that he, too, had 4,000 visits in his first month, and he had 50,000 after four months. That's a geometric increase, which makes sense, since it takes a while to get the word out. I told Brian—half kiddingly—that I expect to pass him in two months, and that, when I do, it will be especially satisfying. I've had a link to his blog on mine from day one, whereas he hasn't so much as mentioned mine. Brian doesn't play well with others.

I've had fun this past month and have learned a great deal about HTML and other blog-related stuff. John Ray of Brisbane, Australia, has been my greatest benefactor. Greg Goelzhauser and my student Liz Sikes have also helped me. Thank you. I expect to have even more fun as the readership grows. Thanks for visiting, and please spread the word. I will keep the site interesting. If I antagonize you from time to time, I have done my job. I'm a provocateur at heart, like Socrates. I try to sting people into the reflection that makes life worth living.

Several chess enthusiasts had checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. "But why?" they asked, as they moved off. "Because," he said, "I can't stand chess nuts boasting in an open foyer."

A doctor made it his regular habit to stop off at a bar for a hazelnut daiquiri on his way home. The bartender knew of his habit, and would always have the drink waiting at precisely 5:03 p.m. One afternoon, as the end of the work day approached, the bartender was dismayed to find that he was out of hazelnut extract. Thinking quickly, he threw together a daiquiri made with hickory nuts and set it on the bar. The doctor came in at his regular time, took one sip of the drink and exclaimed, "This isn't a hazelnut daiquiri!" "No, I'm sorry," replied the bartender, "it's a hickory daiquiri, doc."

A hungry lion was roaming through the jungle looking for something to eat. He came across two men. One was sitting under a tree and reading a book; the other was typing away on his typewriter. The lion quickly pounced on the man reading the book and devoured him. Even the king of the jungle knows that readers digest and writers cramp.

There was a man who entered a local newspaper's pun contest. He sent in ten different puns, in the hope that at least one of the puns would win. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.

A guy goes to a psychiatrist. "Doc, I keep having these alternating recurring dreams. First I'm a teepee; then I'm a wigwam; then I'm a teepee; then I'm a wigwam. It's driving me crazy. What's wrong with me?" The doctor replies: "It's very simple. You're two tents."

A man went to his dentist because he feels something wrong in his mouth. The dentist examines him and says, "that new upper plate I put in for you six months ago is eroding. What have you been eating?" The man replies, "all I can think of is that about four months ago my wife made some asparagus and put some stuff on it that was delicious: Hollandaise sauce. I loved it so much I now put it on everything—meat, toast, fish, vegetables, everything." "Well," says the dentist, "that's probably the problem. Hollandaise sauce is made with lots of lemon juice, which is highly corrosive. It's eaten away your upper plate. I'll make you a new plate, and this time I'll use chrome." "Why chrome?" asks the patient. To which the dentist replies, "It's simple. Everyone knows that there's no plate like chrome for the Hollandaise!"

An Indian chief had three wives, each of whom was pregnant. The first gave birth to a boy. The chief was so elated he built her a teepee made of deer hide. A few days later, the second gave birth, also to a boy. The chief was very happy. He built her a teepee made of antelope hide. The third wife gave birth a few days later, but the chief kept the details a secret. He built this one a two-story teepee, made out of a hippopotamus hide. The chief then challenged the tribe to guess what had occurred. Many tried, unsuccessfully. Finally, one young brave declared that the third wife had given birth to twin boys. "Correct," said the chief. "How did you figure it out?" The warrior answered, "It's elementary. The value of the squaw of the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two hides."

What is the "classic disease concept of alcoholism"? First proposed in the late 1930s, it goes like this. Alcoholism is a specific disease to which some people are vulnerable. Those who are vulnerable develop the disease if they take up drinking. From apparently normal social drinking, they progress to drinking ever greater amounts, to private and secret drinking, to developing an increased tolerance to liquor, and to experiencing withdrawal distress if drinking is interrupted; they begin to have blackouts (morning-after amnesia) and they forget the previous day's drinking bout. Most crucially: those afflicted by the disease inevitably progress to uncontrolled drinking because the disease produces a distinctive disability—"loss of control," a loss of "the power of choice in the matter of drinking." Then, as the saying goes: One drink, one drunk.

According to this disease concept, alcoholism progresses stage by stage in a regular, fairly standard course that does not respect a person's individual characteristics: "Background, environment, race, sex, social status—these make no appreciable difference when once the disease takes hold of the individual. For all intents and purposes he might just as well then be labelled with a number: he has become just another victim of the disease of alcoholism." Inevitably, the alcoholic "hits bottom." From there, physical or emotional breakdown and premature death is the final step unless, with luck, or God's grace, or the help of Alcoholics Anonymous or some sort of treatment, the drinker manages a radical conversion to total abstention. Abstention is the only hope, because the disease is incurable. At best, an alcoholic learns to abstain from the fatal first drink that invariably triggers a new descent into drunken oblivion.

Few people (except those involved with alcoholics) can fully state this entire theory, and many people either do not believe every detail of the doctrine or hold some beliefs inconsistent with it. But versions of the classic disease concept remain a dominant theme in the public's thinking about alcohol abuse.

And yet, no leading research authorities accept the classic disease concept. One researcher puts it quite baldly: "There is no adequate empirical substantiation for the basic tenets of the classic disease concept of alcoholism." Another expert, whose views are more conservative, dismisses the classic disease concept of alcoholism as "old and biased," a model whose propositions are "invalid."

Scientific evidence or no, many knowledgeable people are greatly disturbed by criticism of the disease concept. They argue that the labeling of alcoholism as a disease frees alcohol abusers from feeling guilty or ashamed of their drinking and thereby makes it easier for them to seek treatment. This has the ring of plausibility, and yet reports suggest that the disease concept does not always have this effect. Many heavy drinkers view the labels "diseased" and "alcoholic" as stigmatizing, and so they reject help under such terms. Furthermore, the notion that this disease causes people to lose the ability to control their drinking may discourage a heavy drinker from trying to stop in the (false) belief that it's hopeless. Then, too, some drinkers will not seek help if they believe that lifelong abstinence is the only "remedy" for uncontrolled heavy drinking; the thought of never being able to have even an occasional social drink is too disheartening. Finally, proponents of arguments for retaining the disease concept as a useful tool take it for granted that getting the drinker into alcoholism treatment will make a big difference—an assumption that is not supported by the scientific evidence, as we shall see.

(Herbert Fingarette, Heavy Drinking: The Myth of Alcoholism as a Disease [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988], 2-4 [italics in original; footnotes omitted])

I've done some posting (including "Vegetarianism as a Lifelong Project") on my communal blog. Check it out.

As many of you know, I write a column entitled "The Examined Life" for Tech Central Station. My fourteenth column, "How to Argue," is scheduled to appear any day. Several of my columns have dealt with the war in Iraq, of which I am a firm supporter. I have argued, for instance, that in determining whether the war was justified, one need not and should not make reference to President Bush's motives. An act can be right even if poorly motivated (which is not to say that I think it was poorly motivated).

Much of the feedback on these pro-war columns was positive, but some of it was negative. That comes with the territory. I appreciate all feedback, positive or negative. Indeed, I try to respond civilly to all respondents. But one criticism struck a nerve. Two or three readers called me a "shill." A shill?! Am I a shill? What's a shill, anyway?

The best place to start a conceptual inquiry is a reputable dictionary, and there's no better dictionary of the English language than the Oxford English Dictionary, which, having done some reviewing work for Oxford University Press, I have on my hard drive. The word "shill," used as a noun, has two definitions, the second added in 1993. Here's the first (older) definition:

A decoy or accomplice, esp. one posing as an enthusiastic or successful customer to encourage other buyers, gamblers, etc.

The second definition is clearly related to the first, but without the implication of gaming:

One who poses as a disinterested advocate of another but is actually of the latter's party; a mouthpiece, a stooge.

This is pretty clearly what I was accused of being. The writers in question were claiming that I present myself as nonpartisan but am in fact partisan.

If this is what it is to be a shill, I'm no shill. First of all, when I wrote my columns in defense of the war in Iraq, I wasn't presenting myself as nonpartisan. I was presenting myself as a supporter of the war, which I was and am. One can do this either by making a case for war, as I have done, or by criticizing arguments against the war, which I have also done.

But maybe this goes too fast. The definition uses the expression "disinterested advocate of another," which implies that there are two types of advocacy: interested and disinterested. A shill pretends to be a disinterested advocate but is really an interested advocate.

Let's make this concrete. Suppose I, a philosopher, had been a longtime Republican and had voted for President Bush in 2000. If I wrote a column in my capacity as a philosopher in which I made the case for war in Iraq, but with the real aim of promoting President Bush and the Republican party, and if I failed to disclose my real affiliation or aims, I would be a shill. I would be presenting myself as a "disinterested advocate"—e.g., as someone searching for the truth—when in fact I am a partisan.

Does this describe me? Not at all. I'm not a Republican, card-carrying or otherwise. Yes, I voted for Gerald Ford in 1976, but only because I viewed him as the lesser of two evils (and he was a fellow Michigander who had spoken to my college class). I did serve as a delegate at the 1980 Republican State Convention in Michigan, but I was a John Anderson supporter, not a Reaganite, and I ended up voting for the Libertarian candidate, Ed Clark. I did not vote for President Bush in 2000; nor, if Ralph Nader runs again, will I vote for President Bush in 2004. I have no ties to the Republican party or to the Bush administration.

But if I have no party or administrative ties, how can I be a shill? That my arguments are useful to the Bush administration doesn't make me a shill. If it did, then every commentator on public affairs would be shilling all the time, for every argument one makes is useful to some party or cause. The writers were simply misusing (or misapplying) the term. They should reserve it for the real shills of the world, of which there are, unfortunately, many.

Anyone who knows me knows that I take pride in my intellectual honesty, integrity, and independence. This is why the charge of being a shill bothered me, and it's why I'm proud to say that I'm not one. I hope I've convinced you that I'm not. By the way, I'm not only not a shill; I'm not a lapdog, a stooge, a toady, a mouthpiece, a puppet, a sycophant, or a useful idiot, either. If you call me one of these things, I'll have to commit philosophy on you.

To achieve valuable personal integration, people typically need a significant measure of security from invasions of their private space as well as their private records and information. In fact, they need more than immunity from invasion: they need time for reflection, time when they are not in co-operation with others or distracted by other commitments. In this sense, the right to privacy really is concerned with valuable (i.e. morally upright) individual self-development.

(Robert P. George, Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993], 214)

Readers of this blog know that I post a lot of quotations. It was recently suggested that I elaborate on one of them, including stating whether I agree with it. This made me think that I should explain why I post quotations. I do it not to convey my sentiments indirectly (through various authors) but to stimulate thought. If a quotation intrigues you, please acquire the book or article and read it. That is why I provide links to Amazon.com when the book (if it's a book) is still in print.

In case you're wondering, I don't necessarily share the views or values of the authors of these passages. In some cases I do; in some cases I don't. Sometimes I shared the views or values being expressed but no longer do. Like all of you, I'm a work in progress. I am constantly revising my beliefs to produce a coherent whole. I never rule out change in what I believe or value. That would be idiotic. Rational people take account of new evidence, new arguments, and new experiences. If I learn that person S once believed p but now disbelieves p (i.e., believes non-p), I will ask what changed. What new evidence came to light? What new experiences did S have? What arguments against p were made?

It's unfortunate that in our political system, a changed mind is viewed as a weakness or, worse, as an act of expediency. How many times have you heard the expressions "flip-flopped," "waffled," and "rolled over"? I want my elected representatives to be attentive to evidence and argument. I want them to follow Hume's dictum that a wise man proportions his belief to the evidence. I want a thinker, not a cipher. Don't you?

To return to the point, please don't think about me when you read the quotations I post. Don't try to guess whether I share the views or values being expressed. Consider them on their merits, and if you're interested, acquire the book or article and read it. The main thing I try to do in all of my posts, including the quotations, is stimulate thought. This is partly for selfish reasons: My own thought is stimulated in trying to stimulate yours!

Any serious attempt to answer the question "What is good history?" leads quickly to another—namely, "What is it good for?" To raise this problem in the presence of a working historian is to risk a violent reaction. For it requires him to justify his own existence, which is particularly difficult for a historian to do—not because his existence is particularly unjustifiable, but because a historian is not trained to justify existences. Indeed, he is trained not to justify them. It is usually enough for him that he exists, and history, too. He is apt to be impatient with people who doggedly insist upon confronting the question.

Nevertheless, the question must be confronted, because the answer is in doubt. In our own time, there is a powerful current of popular thought which is not merely unhistorical but actively antihistorical as well. Novelists and playwrights, natural scientists and social scientists, poets, prophets, pundits, and philosophers of many persuasions have manifested an intense hostility to historical thought. Many of our contemporaries are extraordinarily reluctant to acknowledge the reality of past time and prior events, and stubbornly resistant to all arguments for the possibility or utility of historical knowledge.

(David Hackett Fischer, Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought [New York: Harper & Row, 1970], 307)

If all of your news came from big-city newspapers, network television, or, god forbid, National Public Radio, you'd swear that President George W. Bush was all of the following: (1) out of touch with ordinary Americans, (2) stupid (or widely believed to be so), (3) unpopular, and (4) ineffectual. According to the National Annenberg Election Survey released yesterday, nothing could be further from the truth.

The survey shows that President Bush's job-approval rating is sixty-one percent. Thirty-six percent of the respondents disapprove. But when the question was about President Bush as a person, seventy-two percent of the respondents had a favorable opinion. Only nineteen percent—fewer than one in five respondents—had an unfavorable opinion.

Americans overwhelmingly like President Bush, and almost as many approve of his job performance. He gets high marks for knowledgeability and strong leadership. As I say, one would never have guessed this from the commentary of the pundits—the so-called opinion makers. They are out of touch with the American people. They certainly do not speak for ordinary Americans.

I think Americans appreciate having a manly, firm president. They know that, unlike our previous president, he is what he purports to me. He has gravitas. He has principles. He does what he thinks is right, not what he thinks will redound to his political or personal benefit. Most Americans are responsible and self-sufficient in their own lives and want these qualities both valued by their elected representatives and reflected in public policy. They don't like having their hard-earned wealth taken from them by government and distributed to those who lack initiative. I'm heartened by this latest survey. It shows that basic American values are intact.

How many of the people currently agitating for homosexual marriage are also opposed to genetically modified foods? I suspect the answer is "Many." I think this is inconsistent. The reasoning that cautions against genetically modified foods also cautions against changes to the institution of marriage.

The main argument against genetically modified foods is that we don't know enough (yet) about their effects, either in terms of human health or in terms of the larger ecology. (See here for an illustrative statement.) Because of the complexity of the ecosystem, we are told, we should move very slowly, if at all. (See here.)

Why doesn't the same reasoning apply to homosexual marriage? Moral ecology is at least as complex and mysterious as natural ecology. Marriage implicates everything from relations between the sexes to the welfare of children to tax policy to the transmission of wealth between generations to residential patterns. A seemingly innocuous change in the delicate balance could be catastrophic. But you never hear this from proponents of homosexual marriage. They are hell-bent on implementing their vision of a just society. They are certain not only that homosexual marriage will not be catastrophic, but that it will have no untoward effects whatsoever. Indeed, if you listen to them carefully, they make it seem as if it will improve the moral ecology! If hubris is appropriate here, why is it not appropriate with regard to genetically modified foods?

Forgive me if I'm unconvinced. Just as evolved plant and animal life is a repository of wisdom—of successes and failures, trials and errors, compromises, trade-offs—so are evolved human institutions such as marriage. It would be nice to see just a glimmer of uncertainty and humility in those who would so rashly tinker with an important human institution.

It is not enough . . . for men simply to condemn the harm that other men do; men who care about women (or justice) must also act to transform the social relationships that permit violence against women in all its forms—physical, emotional, economic, or institutional. Unless they engage in demolishing patriarchal structures, they are complicit in the maintenance of those structures. Because sexism gives men the option of exercising the unjust power they retain over women, men who are committed to gender equality must do more than refrain from using that option; they should take steps to eliminate the residual power that attaches to them by virtue of being male. They can, for example, join women in subverting the sex-gender domination system by challenging the social tolerance of pornography and sexual harassment, by learning to employ gender-neutral language, by attending specifically to the experiences of women, and by rejecting jokes and stories that humiliate and devalue women. Further, they can challenge assumptions of male dominance when they encounter them and demonstrate their commitment to making unacceptable the subordination of women in all its manifestations. It follows, then, that men who do not actively involve themselves in dismantling patriarchy permit continued injustice.

(Susan Sherwin, No Longer Patient: Feminist Ethics and Health Care [Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992], 25-6 [footnote omitted])

If you're opposed to capital punishment, either in principle (because of what it is) or in practice (because of its ineffectiveness as a general deterrent or because of how it's administered), you should be willing to sign a legal document to the effect that if you are murdered, however brutally or pointlessly, your murderer will not be executed. This seems to me to be a simple test of your sincerity. If you're not willing to sign such a document, that suggests that you don't believe (or mean) what you say. Either that or you're willing to deny something to others that you're not willing to deny to yourself. I respect opponents of capital punishment even though I disagree with them. What I don't respect is hypocrisy.

Actually, now that I think of it, you should be more than just willing to sign such a legal document. You should insist on it. If you sincerely believe that capital punishment is wrong, then, to be consistent, you must oppose it even in the case in which you are the murder victim. For you to allow your murderer to be executed would be an affront to your values. You should insist that the murderer's blood not be spilled in your name; and you should insist on the right to prevent the execution, since you are the person most affected by your murder. Stand on your rights. Insist that your opposition to capital punishment be respected by authorities.

In case you're wondering, I'm willing to sign a legal document to the effect that if I commit murder, I will be executed. I have the courage of my convictions. Do you?

As a longtime (but lapsed) feminist, I've been concerned with eliminating sexism from the language. One aspect of this concern has been collecting what I consider sexist and nonsexist literary practices from the books I read. Today I will begin the process of posting these practices. I begin with the sexist ones. Eventually I will post the nonsexist ones. The posts are in no particular order. Here is the first:

Terms such as "himself" and "men" should, throughout this book, be taken as abbreviations for "himself or herself," "men and women," and so on.

(Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979], p. 4, n. 1)

Reality, n. The dream of a mad philosopher. That which would remain in the cupel if one should assay a phantom. The nucleus of a vacuum.

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

I can't stand it. I have to get this off my chest. When someone says "Thank you," the proper response is "You're welcome," not "Thank you." There; I feel better.

An anthropologist returned from spending a year studying the natives on one of the South Sea islands. His friends asked whether he had anything unusual to report. The man replied that this particular tribe had invented palm-leaf suppositories for use when they were constipated. "How good are they?" he was asked. "Well," he replied, "with fronds like these, who needs enemas?"

If you're interested, we're having a discussion of the use of violence as a means over at my communal blog, Animal Ethics.

Did anyone besides me notice that the APA resolution (see the immediately preceding post) employed the expression "war against Iraq" rather than, say, "war in Iraq"? I think this is revealing. Any competent philosopher knows that there are important differences among the following:

1. Nation N.
2. The government of N.
3. The person or persons in charge of the government of N.

Since these differ, one can take different attitudes to them. One can oppose 3, for example, without opposing 2 or 1. One can go to war to remove the person or persons in charge of a government without undermining (or trying to undermine) the government. One can go to war to destroy a government without seeking to destroy (or in fact destroying) the nation or its people.

How should we describe the late war? It seems clear that the aim of the United States government was to displace a regime. It was not a war against the Iraqi people or even against Iraq, unless one identifies Iraq with the regime that happens to control its government. I believe the APA chose "against" rather than "in" to make it seem as though the United States were attacking the Iraqi people. That is disingenuous. Our aim was to liberate the Iraqi people. We are now in the process of giving their government back to them. This is just one of many reasons the APA should be ashamed of itself.

Some of you may not know that I recently resigned my fifteen-year membership in The American Philosophical Association to protest its disgraceful resolution against "war against Iraq." Yesterday, Chris Morris of The University of Maryland wrote to congratulate me on my letter of resignation, which, unbeknownst to me, had recently been published in the APA Proceedings (which I no longer receive). If you're interested in the details, please see my blog entry of 20 November 2003.

Sometimes I think I'm a better Christian than Christians are, which would be ironic in the extreme, since I'm an atheist. Or maybe I'm just a more careful reader than the typical Christian. I have heard it said many times by Christians that one should not judge. "Judge not, lest ye be judged," they say. It seemed incredible to me that Christianity would declaim against judging, since Jesus himself—the original Christ-ian—did little else.

Like any reputable scholar, I went to the source, in this case the Bible. Yes, I have a Bible. Several, in fact. Students keep giving them to me, usually with condescending messages written inside to the effect that I am going to burn in hell forever. Anyway, I found the following passage in Matthew (7:1-2):

Judge not, that you be not judged.

For with that judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the same measure you use, it will be measured back to you. (italics in original)

The first verse might be construed to prohibit judging, although I submit that it means "Don't judge unless you're prepared to be judged." The second verse, however, is unambiguous. It prohibits not judging but inconsistent judging. Use one standard for all, including yourself. Don't judge others by standard A and yourself (or those near and dear to you) by standard B.

When read together, the verses say this: Either don't judge at all or judge consistently (i.e., by a single standard). No special pleading; no double standards; no hypocrisy. This is eminently sound advice. Indeed, I know of no philosopher who would reject it.

The late great moral philosopher R. M. Hare called himself a Christian but rejected Christianity's supernatural aspects. (See R. M. Hare, "The Simple Believer," chap. 1 in his Essays on Religion and Education [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992], 1-36 [essay first published in 1973].) "What's left if you subtract the supernatural stuff from Christianity?" you ask, incredulously. What's left is Jesus's moral teachings, to which Hare, a utilitarian, subscribed. As he put it in a letter to me (dated 11 February 1998), "there is a lot more to Christianity than eternal life." Most Christians would consider Hare an atheist, but he stubbornly held onto the label. I think he was right to do so. As odd as it may sound, one can be an atheistic Christian (or a Christian atheist). This is no more odd than atheistic religions, of which there are several.

The proportion of people over the age of eighty-five is growing six times faster than the population as a whole. In just the past three decades, the average life expectancy in the United States has gone from 69.7 to 75.2 years. More than a quarter of every health care dollar is now spent on patients in the last year of life, and the need for nursing home beds is expected to quadruple in the next twenty years. Medicine has changed its focus from acute diseases of children and younger adults to chronic diseases of the elderly. Doctors who imagined spending their careers giving antibiotics to stop pneumonia and doing heroic curative surgery now find themselves monitoring high blood pressure, evaluating memory problems, and relieving the symptoms of chronic heart disease. Many of these physicians and their patients still think of senescence as a disease. We expect that knowledge about the evolutionary origins of senescence will have profound effects that are difficult to predict.

This perspective may also change how we see our own lives. Some may find it a consolation to know that senescence is the price we pay for vigor in youth. There is also relief as well as disappointment in knowing that no medical advance is ever likely to extend our lives to any dramatic extent. The search for some pill or exercise or diet that can save us from senescence may be replaced by an appreciation of life as it is, of vigorous function at whatever age. The preoccupation with living forever is likely to be supplanted by a desire to live as fully as possible, while it is possible.

(Randolph M. Nesse and George C. Williams, Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine [New York: Vintage Books, 1996 (1995)], 122)

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

(David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Ernest C. Mossner [London: Penguin Books, 1969], bk. I, pt. IV, sec. VII, p. 319 [first published in 1739])

A fallacy is an error in reasoning. Fallacies are psychologically attractive but logically infirm. Not all fallacies have fancy Latin names, such as argumentum ad misericordiam (appeal to pity). Some are quite mundane. For example, Antony Flew described what he called the "It-Is-Merely Fallacy." This is the inference from "x is F" to "x is merely F." I'm a professor, but I'm not merely a professor. I'm many other things besides. It might also be called the Reductionist Fallacy.

Here's a new fallacy. Democrats are in a dither about President Bush's Thanksgiving visit to American troops in Iraq. They're saying that he did it as a publicity stunt, or what's called a "photo op." Here's the form of their reasoning:

1. S did A, which benefited S.
Therefore,
2. S did A because it benefited S.

It should be clear that this is fallacious. Not all actions that redound to a person's benefit were motivated by that benefit. Sometimes the action has an other-regarding motivation but happens to redound to the agent's benefit. I believe this was the case with President Bush's visit. He did the right thing and he did it for the right reason. He's the Commander-in-Chief of American forces. Many other presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, spent time with their troops in wartime. Let us christen this the Cynical Fallacy, for it imputes the worst motives to the agent.

Andrew Sullivan continues to suggest that there are just two options on homosexual marriage: (1) support the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) and (2) "let the states decide." I'm beginning to think he has a mental block. For at least the third time: States will not be able to decide whether to allow homosexual marriage as soon as one state allows it, and it looks like Massachusetts is going to allow it. Sullivan is so convinced that the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the United States Constitution (Article IV, Section 1) will not be applied to homosexual marriage that this seems unproblematic to him. Lawyers know better. The solution is an amendment that would do nothing more than make the Full Faith and Credit Clause inapplicable to homosexual marriage. This is the federalist position. Sullivan is no federalist, so he should stop pretending he is by saying such things as "let the states decide." That is federalist language. A federalist would (1) oppose the FMA and (2) support the amendment I described.

I've been meaning to write something about the lack of a comments section on this blog. Eugene Volokh over at The Volokh Conspiracy expressed my sentiments exactly, and probably better than I would have. Thanks, Eugene.

We had a typically bizarre November, weatherwise. The average high temperature at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport during the past month was 68.7 degrees Fahrenheit. We had high temperatures in the forties (two days), fifties (six days), sixties (five days), seventies (ten days), and eighties (seven days). Let's just say that it made marathon training interesting.

My polymathic friend John Ray from Down Under asks a good question: Do most contemporary moral philosophers reject deontology? His impression is that they do.

To answer John's question, we must get a clear sense of what deontology is. I like Shelly Kagan's definition in Normative Ethics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998). Deontology is the rejection of consequentialism, which is the thesis that "There is one and only one factor that has any intrinsic moral significance in determining the status of an act: the goodness of that act's consequences (as compared to the consequences of the alternative acts available to the agent)" (page 70). Actually, it's a little more complicated than this. Deontologists both reject consequentialism and endorse constraints (what Samuel Scheffler, in The Rejection of Consequentialism, calls "agent-centered restrictions") on pursuit of the overall good. For example, if I say that harm may not be done or rights violated in the pursuit of the overall good, I am a deontologist.

Many of the most prominent moral philosophers of the past forty years are deontologists in this sense. Here's a list:

John Rawls
Thomas Nagel
Robert Nozick
Ronald Dworkin
Charles Fried
G. E. M. Anscombe
Bernard Williams
John Finnis
Alan Donagan
Joel Feinberg
Bernard Gert
Judith Jarvis Thomson
T. M. Scanlon

This is a veritable Who's Who of contemporary moral philosophy. I'm not suggesting that deontologists dominate the field; nor am I making any claim about which theory—consequentialism or deontology—is in the ascendant. But it should be clear that deontology is a viable, sophisticated, and attractive theory. Thanks for asking, John. Now get back to work.

We have developed an understanding by now of what the point of this importunate behavior might be. There is more to it, we found out, than pleasant mental and verbal gymnastics; the effect of looking into the most implausible corners—and entertaining the palest of challenges and addressing them with a whole battery of logical tools—may be that of amassing weapons for future fights and patching the fault lines of our precious island before they begin to crack.

(Ermanno Bencivenga, Logic and Other Nonsense: The Case of Anselm and His God [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993], 62)