AnalPhilosopher

A colleague forwarded a link to this essay by William Germano on how to give a scholarly lecture. I gave two public lectures in 2003: one on "The Virtues and Vices of Lewis and Clark" (28 March) and one on "Our Millian Constitution: The Supreme Court's Repudiation of Immorality as a Ground of Criminal Punishment" (2 October). The full version of the latter will appear soon in the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy.

I don't get it. No sane person denies that there are dog breeds. See here. Why, then, is so much energy invested by so many intelligent people in denying the existence of human races? See here. They are analogous. If dog breeds exist, then human races exist (and for the same reason). If human races do not exist, then dog breeds do not exist. Even more astounding is that PBS (the Public Broadcasting Service) affirms the existence of dog breeds while denying the existence of human races. Does PBS even realize how silly it looks? And to think that my hard-earned income is taken from me against my will to fund this nonsense. (Thanks to my colleague, Denny Bradshaw, for bringing the dog link to my attention. He is not responsible for this harangue!)

To the Editor:

Catching my eye in "Where's the Apology?" (column, Jan. 30) was how Paul Krugman embraces the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report (could anyone expect such a group to support a war?) while rejecting Lord Hutton's report vindicating Tony Blair.

I find it fascinating to watch Mr. Krugman blast the Bush administration for using politicized intelligence (or "cherry-picking," which seems to be the left's buzz word of the week) by using the same tactic.

TIMOTHY CORKERY
Hingham, Mass., Jan. 30, 2004

A cynic questions other people's motives. A cynic refuses to accept the stated reason for an action, preferring instead to find an ulterior motive. When cynics get carried away, they become conspiracy theorists. They find plots, intrigue, duplicity, and disingenuousness at every turn. Nothing is as it appears. Everything is concerted for disreputable—and sometimes nefarious—purposes.

A certain degree of cynicism is healthy and appropriate, but, like anything, it can be carried too far. The New York Times has gotten to the point where everything President Bush does is for an ulterior motive, usually to promote his electoral prospects. Please. Give the man credit. Evaluate what he does and forget why he does it. For one thing, you don't know why he does it. You're only speculating. Here is the latest example of excessive, gratuitous cynicism by what used to be a great newspaper but is now merely an apologist and propagandist for the Democrat party.

Some utilitarian writers aim to increase a sense of indeterminate guilt in their readers. Peter Singer is an example, and in his book Practical Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), he is evidently more interested in producing that effect than he is in the theoretical basis for it, which gets very cursory treatment. As moral persuasion, this kind of tactic is likely to be counterproductive and to lead to a defensive and resentful contraction of concern.

(Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985], 212)

The critical stages in the acquisition of biophilia have been worked out by psychologists during studies of childhood mental development. Under the age of six, children tend to be egocentric, self-serving, and domineering in their responses to animals and nature. They are also most prone to be uncaring or fearful of the natural world and of all but a few familiar animals. Between six and nine, children become interested in wild creatures for the first time, and aware that animals can suffer pain and distress. From nine to twelve their knowledge and interest in the natural world rises sharply, and between thirteen and seventeen they readily acquire moral feeling toward animal welfare and species conservation.

(Edward O. Wilson, The Future of Life [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002], 137-8)

Donald Luskin is, as usual, dead-on. See here.

I'm proud to call Dr John J. Ray my friend, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I learn from him every day. He didn't just help me with my blog, getting nothing in return; he's an honorable, honest, and kind man. See here. Do we agree on everything? Don't be silly. If we did, we'd be one person, not two. But we agree on a lot, including many of the most important things. Keep up the good work, John. I hope I send a few readers your way.

To the Editor:

Re "Dump Cheney Now!," by Maureen Dowd (column, Jan. 29), and "Report on Iraq Case Clears Blair and Faults BBC" (front page, Jan. 29):

Many politicians and others have been quick to judge the Bush and Blair administrations for leading their countries into an unnecessary war and are accusing both of manipulating intelligence. But based on the David A. Kay report and the Hutton inquiry in Britain, it appears that the two leaders acted on the intelligence information presented to them at the time.

Although in hindsight this intelligence may prove to be partly or completely erroneous, the president and the prime minister have a duty to protect their citizens. Had they stood idly by, they would have failed in this responsibility.

WILLIAM D. LOWN
Bronxville, N.Y., Jan. 29, 2004

Here is a magnificent resource for students of the Second Amendment, by law professor Eugene Volokh.

don't give me the lecture, but - i ate a steak last night. (i'm on that south beach diet.)

I LOVE animals ....... we have pet birds, and i cannot tell you how smart my cockatiel . . . is.

i can imagine that, in one sense, it IS irrational for me to eat meat, because of how much i love animals and i KNOW that at least animals like birds and dogs & cats DO have feelings & intelligence, etc. but - i still eat beef & pork & chicken.

i've read what you have written about vegetarianism........ but i don't think i will change. irrational, perhaps. but - i feel better eating some meat protein

It is sometimes said, though less often now than it used to be, that philosophers have no special role to play in public affairs, since most public issues depend primarily on an assessment of facts. On questions of fact, it is said, philosophers as such have no special expertise, and so it has been possible to engage in philosophy without committing oneself to any position on major public issues. No doubt there are some issues of social policy and foreign policy about which it can truly be said that a really expert assessment of the facts is required before taking sides or acting, but the issue of famine is surely not one of these. The facts about the existence of suffering are beyond dispute. Nor, I think, is it disputed that we can do something about it, either through orthodox methods of famine relief or through population control or both. This is therefore an issue on which philosophers are competent to take a position. The issue is one which faces everyone who has more money than he needs to support himself and his dependents, or who is in a position to take some sort of political action. These categories must include practically every teacher and student of philosophy in the universities of the Western world. If philosophy is to deal with matters that are relevant to both teachers and students, this is an issue that philosophers should discuss.

Discussion, though, is not enough. What is the point of relating philosophy to public (and personal) affairs if we do not take our conclusions seriously? In this instance, taking our conclusion seriously means acting upon it. The philosopher will not find it any easier than anyone else to alter his attitudes and way of life to the extent that, if I am right, is involved in doing everything that we ought to be doing. At the very least, though, one can make a start. The philosopher who does so will have to sacrifice some of the benefits of the consumer society, but he can find compensation in the satisfaction of a way of life in which theory and practice, if not yet in harmony, are at least coming together.

(Peter Singer, "Famine, Affluence, and Morality," Philosophy & Public Affairs 1 [spring 1972]: 229-43, at 242-3)

Reasonable, adj. Accessible to the infection of our own opinions. Hospitable to persuasion, dissuasion and evasion.

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

Keith:

Jesus.

As a child my mother would correct my English until finally "It was he" actually sounded O.K. (I think I was 35...:) To this day I shudder involuntarily when I hear "It don't matter" or "It was him." Old habits die hard. Like a monkey hitting his red light to get fed. (Ah, we Psych. Majors...) (Skinner, no less, from UW-Madison...and his little monkeys hugging stuffed mothers...) In the end, as with lawyers seeking expert witnesses, "authorities" can assuage any position we culprits desire. Then again, we Anal-Retentive types like things "just so." Likely my best course should have been to shut up and get a life.

I am reminded of a televised basketball game between Duke and Wake Forest recently when as the camera panned the rabid fan section there stood a proud student with a sweatshirt emblazoned with: FUCK DUKE. Simple. Eloquent. To the point. And doubtless his parents were proud as punch to have his paunch fed into the nation's homes. Indeed, standards are in flux, sir. As I recently heard purported, grammar is what's OUT there. If everyone says, "It is him," It IS him!!!

Any Ayn Rand in your past?

Best, Will

Dear Keith

Thank you for posting the letter from the UTA alumna or alumnus on religious belief. I find in it several common confusions about the relationship between reason and faith. I'd be curious to know what you think.

First, the writer says that most things in the Bible don't have a scientific explanation. But isn't it true that we all believe many things without a scientific reason for doing so? For instance, much of what we believe we accept on the testimony of authorities we regard as reliable, whether our parents, or historians, or legislatures. One might even include our memories among the authorities we sometimes trust. What is more, as we grow and learn, we refine our criteria for trusting authorities, such that we decide that some authorities are to be trusted on certain subjects or under certain circumstances, but not on other subjects or in other circumstances. Any realistic account of belief formation must take these phenomena into account, and yet so often people who think of themselves as scientifically minded overlook the role that testimony plays in their beliefs. If we exclude this category of belief formation from rationality, then most of us lead largely irrational lives even in this scientific age, and those (if indeed there are any) who do restrict their beliefs to what can be scientifically verified probably lead very impoverished lives. Perhaps you can tell that I recently read Plantinga's essay "Reason and Belief in God." In fact, that essay incited my renewed interest in philosophy.

Second, the writer seems to take a reductionist line in the way he suggests that science mitigates against religious faith.

If science truly confines itself to natural phenomena as its base of data, it is then never in a position to apprehend supernatural phenomena (if there are any). Strict science can never say whether its failure to observe supernatural phenomena is due to the fact that there aren't any such phenomena, or to its own epistemological blind spot. When scientists encounter phenomena they cannot explain in terms of current science, they are obliged to assume that there are yet undiscovered scientific explanations for the phenomena, and to pursue those explanations under that assumption. Since I believe in a God who with few exceptions governs the universe according to the natural laws he established, I believe that this assumption is largely warranted, but it is nonetheless an assumption.

To illustrate the problem with this sort of argument against religion, Wittgenstein is said to have used the example of a group of researchers studying the fish in a pond. Using a net with a 2" mesh to drag the pond, they conclude that there are no fish smaller than 2" in the pond. (see here).

I do see two ways in which science can be used to argue against religious faith:

(1) it can be used to point out inconsistencies in revelation regarded as authoritative, thereby suggesting that the revelation is fallible and doesn't deserve credence (or as much credence as it claims);

(2) it can be used to suggest that there is no need to resort to God as an explanation for the natural universe, thus paring God away with Occam's razor.

There are probably other approaches from science that can plausibly be used to argue against religious faith, but these are the two that occur to me now. (1) has more promise in my mind, as there is the hope of uncovering inconsistencies that cannot be reconciled. However, many Christians consider their understanding of the Bible fallible even while they consider the Bible infallible. Thus, they are always open to improving their understanding of scripture, and it may be that arguments of the type of (1) will incite them to refine their interpretations rather than give up their faith (and it may be that this applies to believers in other religions as well). Still, (1) does have some hope of falsifying a religion. (2) seems to me worth little if the religion being criticized asserts that God ordained natural law, and that he accomplishes his will through its natural outworking as well as through whatever supernatural means he chooses. In that case, (2) seems to me rather to amount to a criticism of how particular adherents of the religion have understood the relationship of God to his creation, and unless those adherents' understanding of that relationship is the only one consistent with the faith in question, then (2) is of no force against that religion.

I think you are correct that very few people are swayed by the classical arguments [ontological, cosmological, teleological] for and against religious faith.

You write that some people find belief in a god and an afterlife comforting, and that they can't or won't face up to their mortality. While this is doubtless true, it doesn't seem to me to offer a complete explanation of religious faith, nor a cogent critique of it. Perhaps you didn't mean it that way. Some people believe a particular faith is true in spite of finding the idea of accountability to God frightening. These people might find the idea of annihilation at death more comforting than the thought of a final judgment. But I think that psychological explanations and critiques of religion (e.g. that it arises from some weakness of character in the believer) suffer from a more fundamental problem: they have no bearing on the truth claims of the religion (unless the religion makes claims about the psychological state of each and every person who professes that faith). Many of the central claims of Christianity are historical, e.g. that God brought about the redemption of his people through the atoning death of Jesus on the cross. Even if we claim that 95% of professing Christians believe solely because they derive comfort from that belief (and I don't claim that), that claim still does not touch the central claims of the Christian faith. The psychological argument against religious faith is a kind of ad hominem fallacy it seems to me.

This email has gone on long enough—much longer than I intended. I hope it hasn't been too tedious. I welcome any comments, criticisms, and suggestions, however brief. Thanks again for your interesting weblog.

Chuck Bearden

I received the following e-mail message this morning (referring to my entry on R. M. Hare):

"Later, when I saw a picture of Hare, I realized it was him." HE! Will Nehs, Oconomowoc, WI

Thanks for writing, Will. I'm not a perfect writer (nobody is), but in this case I stand my ground. Here is Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 388-9:

it is I; it is me. Generally, of course, the nominative pronoun (here I) is the complement of a linking verb (this is she) (it was he). But it is me and it's me are fully acceptable, especially in informal contexts: "both forms, 'It is I' and 'It is me,' are correct—one by virtue of grammatical rule, the other by virtue of common educated usage." Norman Lewis, Better English 186-87 (rev. ed. 1961). And, of course, those with even a smattering of French know that It's me answers nicely to C'est moi. Good writers have long found the English equivalent serviceable. . . . Similar problems arise in the third person, as in it is him.

The thing stays! Bryan Garner is my authority on such matters.

Addendum: I need some coffee. I had "persnicketyness" instead of "persnicketiness" in my title. The Oxford English Dictionary (2d ed.) set me straight.

R. M. Hare died two years ago today at the age of eighty-two. I have learned as much philosophy from him as from any other person, living or dead—and I expect to continue learning from him for as long as I live, since I have still not read everything he wrote. Over the years I had occasion to write to Hare several times. He always wrote back, busy as he must have been. His letters were warm and encouraging. In one letter he said that he despaired of the way philosophy was being conducted in the United States, but that my letter made him think that all was not lost. Needless to say, I was flattered. Later, I sent a chart of metaethical theories to him. He replied by sending a copy of his Axel Hagerstrom lectures (subsequently published as Sorting Out Ethics [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997]) and remarked that my chart was almost identical to his.

I never met Hare, but I'm pretty sure I saw him at an American Philosophical Association meeting in Atlanta in December 1989. As I entered an elevator in the conference center, I saw an elderly, distinctive-looking man approach. (Hare would have been seventy at the time.) I noticed his unruly hair. Later, when I saw a picture of Hare, I realized that it was him. I wish I had known, if only to introduce myself and tell him how much he had meant to my philosophical development. If I were stranded on a desert island and could take books by only two authors, they would be Richard A. Posner and R. M. Hare. My mind would never want for nourishment.

Addendum: Here is a memoir of Hare by one of his students, John Randolph Lucas. Here are links to many of Hare's writings. Here is a link to the web page of Hare's only son, John E. Hare, who was recently appointed Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology at the Yale University Divinity School. Here is a bibliography that I painstakingly compiled over a period of many years.

I'm proud to be the adviser of this student organization. Please visit its website. I hope students at other universities are as vigilant in protecting their Second Amendment rights as they are in protecting their First Amendment rights.

One winter evening in New York he had had dinner with a classmate from Amherst, on 56th Street. When they emerged it was to find it had been snowing. They were dressed for it. They were full of food and wine and did not care to get away anywhere. They stood on the corner of 54th and Park and talked. The falling snow obliterated their footprints and left them standing in a field of white illuminated by a street lamp before the friend finally caught a cab uptown. He watched the cab until it was only red taillights. He did not want to hurry away. In the chilled air and falling snow was some universal forgiveness and he did not want to disturb it. He stepped slowly off the curb, headed south.

Overhead, above the surface of the pool of light cast by the street lamps, the canyon of the wide avenue disappeared into darkness. He had walked only a few blocks when he realized that birds were falling. Great blue herons were descending slowly against the braking of their wings, their ebony legs extended to test the depth of the snow which lay in a garden that divided the avenue. He stood transfixed as the birds settled. They folded their wings and began to mill in the gently falling snow and the pale light. They had landed as if on a prairie, and if they made any sound he did not hear. One pushed its long bill into the white ground. After a moment they were all still. They gazed at the front of a hotel, where someone had just gone through a revolving door. A cab slowed in front of him—he shook his head, no, no, and it went on. One or two of the birds flared their wings to lay off the snow and a flapping suddenly erupted among them and they were in the air again. Fifteen or twenty, flying past with heavy, hushing beats, north up the avenue for two or three blocks before they broke through the plane of light and disappeared.

(Barry Holstun Lopez, "Winter Herons," in his Winter Count [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1981], 15-25, at 23-4)

1. Jimmy Carter's election in 1976.

2. Law school.

3. Prices in New York City.

4. The politicization of academia.

5. The depth and breadth of Bush-hatred.

Re: "Christianity, capitalism," Saturday Letters, by Patrick Holloway, who argues that works, not words, reveal true faith.

OK, I've had it; this is enough! Christianity is not socialism, and Christ never gave anyone authority or even a hint that it was OK to steal from one person in order to give to someone else; book, chapter and verse, please! (Before anyone brings up the communal living of the saints in Acts as justification for socialism/communism, let us remember that this was a voluntary action by local Christians, for a specific purpose, under the Apostles' guidance. Not a form of government practiced by the masses and enforced by the gun of government. And, even here, the sanctity of the disposition of private property was upheld.)

Christ told the rich young ruler to sell what he had and give to the poor. He did not tell him to use the power of government to plunder his neighbor and to then give to the poor. Christianity is, was and shall always be a personal religion. We do good and seek to convince others to do good but we have no right to force them to do so.

Thomas Jefferson noted the self-evident truth that the government is created by the people and draws its just powers from them. If we can't steal, we can't give our government the right to do it for us. Plunder is plunder, regardless of the cause or the plundering agent.

Democrats use force to tax me to give to whoever will vote for them. Republicans use force to tax me and give to whoever will vote for them. Neither is the work of God.

David R. Calvert, Weatherford

My eighteenth Tech Central Station column is up. See here. Thank you, Peg Kaplan, for the constructive criticism.

Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion—thus:

Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.

Minor Premise: One man can dig a post-hole in sixty seconds; therefore—

Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a post-hole in one second.

This may be called the syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed.

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

Capitalism is the engine of prosperity. If liberals really cared about the poor, as they claim to, they would promote capitalism, not try to thwart it. Sometimes I think liberals prefer everyone being poor to some being affluent. Please read this. It will open your eyes to liberal obtuseness. (Thanks to Peg Kaplan for the link.)

I have a new hero tonight: Dr David Kay. His report shows that President Bush acted on the best information available in going to war in Iraq. That some of the information turned out to be false is no reflection on President Bush. What is he supposed to do, go to Iraq personally to see whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? Any president, whether Democrat or Republican, must rely on intelligence gathered by various agencies. That's exactly what President Bush did. The focus now should be on why the intelligence was defective. That is cause for alarm. It should concern every American. Whatever went awry must not be allowed to recur.

In a better world, President Bush's critics would take a deep breath. They would ask not whether what President Bush believed was true, but whether it was reasonable for him to believe it. David Kay is saying that it was. I honestly believe that the incessant charges that President Bush "lied" about weapons of mass destruction will backfire on those who make them. Americans have a deep and abiding sense of fairness. They will imagine themselves in the White House with the information President Bush had at his disposal and ask what they would have done. I believe they will conclude that they would have done exactly what President Bush did. President Bush is an honorable man whose primary motive in going to war in Iraq was to protect Americans from a "gathering threat." Liberating the Iraqi people from a sadistic tyrant was a secondary (but important) motive, as was promoting democracy and liberal values in the Middle East.

Thank you, Dr Kay, for telling the truth—and for risking the wrath of the Bush-haters. I'm sure Paul Krugman will have nasty things to say about you Friday morning in The New York Times. Mark my words. Anyone who is not the enemy of Krugman's enemy, President Bush, is Krugman's enemy.

One reason I was drawn to politics early in life (it was my major field of study as an undergraduate) is that I've always been interested in language. What it is; how it's used; how it's abused; &c. Language is a powerful instrument. Those who understand it and know how to use it have power over others. Politics is about power—who has it, what forms it takes, how it's acquired and lost, what is and ought to be done with it, and so forth—so naturally most politicians are adept with language. Rhetorical ability helps them gain power, and, having gained it, helps them solidify, ramify, and retain it. Newt Gingrich, for example, is one of the most gifted rhetoricians this nation has produced. His speeches and writings should be study manuals for aspiring demagogues. Here are two examples of political rhetoric:

1. At least twice in the past couple of weeks I heard someone describe President Bush as "prancing about in a flight suit on an aircraft carrier." Not wearing a flight suit, mind you; not walking around in a flight suit; but prancing in it. When said of a horse, to prance is to raise the forelegs and spring from the hind legs. When said of a person, to prance is to "walk or behave in an arrogant manner" (The Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide). Arrogance is bad, obviously, so the word "prance" is evaluative (prescriptive) as well as descriptive. It simultaneously tells the reader what President Bush did (the descriptive part) and condemns him for doing it (the evaluative part). The evaluation is implicit rather than explicit.

2. A great deal has been spoken and written about whatever it is that Howard Dean did nine days ago in what was supposed to have been his concession speech in Iowa. Some jokers have called it the "I Have A Scream" speech. At least the humor there is obvious. But a letter writer to today's Dallas Morning News describes what Dean did as a "squeal." He says Dr Dean squealed in order to thank and motivate his many young volunteers. Interesting word, no? Piglets squeal. Children squeal with delight. This term domesticates what many people saw as an intemperate, vulgar, and frightening outburst.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with rhetoric, even political rhetoric. An educated, informed electorate would see through it and perhaps even be amused by it (as I am). Unfortunately, not everyone is educated and informed. Rhetoric is used because it works. It engages the heart rather than the brain. It bypasses the rational faculty, thereby disrespecting ("dissing") the person. I've said for many years, only half kiddingly, that nobody should be able to vote without having taken my Critical Thinking course, or at least having read my coauthored (with the late Irving M. Copi) textbook, Informal Logic, 3d ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996). Learn logic. Don't be hoodwinked and bamboozled by the Al Frankens and Newt Gingriches of the world.

To the Editor:

Since the early 1990's, complaints about student disengagement have become common. Rhonda Garelick's contribution ("Career Girls," Op-Ed, Jan. 24) is clarifying, for it reveals just how political this complaint is.

How dare students in her class reject feminism! The outrage, that students in a French class would rather discuss French subjects than sit through left-wing criticism of the president's foreign policy!

Professor Garelick is correct: there is a generation gap. There is a reason campus antiwar protests feature more gray-haired professors than students.

But the generation gap is not a problem to be solved. Students should not be forced to believe what their professors believe, but must be free to explore their own ideas.

JOSHUA GALUN
Washington, Jan. 24, 2004

To the Editor:

As a current college student, I have sat in many classes over the last three semesters in which professors have deviated from their syllabuses to discuss other issues, most frequently, the war in Iraq.

I can well understand what Rhonda Garelick (Op-Ed, Jan. 24) describes as campus apathy, but I would like to suggest a different reason for it: the students actually like their career plans and are happy with the way our society is structured.

Many of them agree with our government's decision to drive Saddam Hussein from power.

But none of us appreciate it when instead of learning material that we pay dearly to learn, we are forced to listen to a teacher's personal opinions.

BARRY VERSTAENDIG
Plainview, N.Y., Jan. 24, 2004

I would have sworn that I (my Compaq Presario computer) had the latest e-mail worm. (See here for the story.) When it comes to keeping my computer free of viruses, worms, trojans, and other critters, I'm borderline obsessive. I run Norton SystemWorks's LiveUpdate every night before turning the computer off. I refuse to open attachments. I use all the tools provided to me by Windows XP, Norton, and EarthLink. But the other day I received an e-mail message from a long-lost cousin in Michigan. It had an attachment. I guess I thought (hoped) it was a picture, so I clicked it. After that, strange things began to happen.

First, I received more spam than usual. Second, I began getting undeliverable-mail messages from people to whom I had not sent e-mail. Third, I received messages from ISPs saying that an e-mail message I had "sent" was infected and could not be delivered to its "intended" recipient. I would have wagered a hundred dollars or more that I had the e-mail worm described in the Times story.

Nope. An hour ago I went to the Symantec website and downloaded a removal tool for the worm. I did everything it said, including turning off my Internet connection and temporarily disabling System Restore. I waited twenty minutes or so for the tool to scan my computer. It said it did not find the worm. (It was looking for a particular worm, not just any worm.) I suppose I should be happy, but I wanted to kill the critter. As for why those strange things were happening to my computer, I don't know. They may have been signs that other people's computers were infected. Please protect yourself! If you have unprotected computer sex, you are having sex with every computer with whom your computer's companion has had sex.

Here is a textbook example of advocacy journalism, i.e., opinion-writing in the guise of a news report. Sadly, it comes from what used to be a respectable newspaper, The New York Times. Notice that the worst interpretation is put on every statement made by President Bush. Every motive is questioned. Nothing can be what it appears. Despicable.

1. My concern to this point has been with the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution (Article IV, Section 1). But other constitutional provisions, such as the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, could be used to achieve the same result of requiring all states to recognize homosexual marriage. A federalist should be concerned about any use of the Constitution to force homosexual marriage on states.

What to do? My solution of the problem posed by the Full Faith and Credit Clause was to amend the Constitution to make the clause inapplicable to homosexual marriage. In effect, it would constitutionalize the Defense of Marriage Act. Now, in light of the problem I discovered, we must have an amendment that prevents any provision of the Constitution from being used by judges to force homosexual marriage on states. The following amendment should do the trick:

Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to require that a state recognize or give legal effect to marriages other than those between one man and one woman.

This amendment would not only disable the Full Faith and Credit Clause; it would prevent any state or federal judge from holding that the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause or Equal Protection Clause confers a right of homosexual marriage analogous to a right to abort a fetus. In other words, it leaves the matter to the states. This, and not the Federal Marriage Amendment, is the amendment a federalist should support.

2. Federalists are proponents of states' rights. They believe that states should be free to experiment (i.e., do as they please) in the realm of public policy. But states are composed of judiciaries as well as legislatures. What if the highest court of a state rules that its constitution requires homosexual marriage? The people of that state, by hypothesis, will not have voted on the matter, but it wasn't imposed on the state by the United States Constitution, either. What should a federalist say about this?

I believe a federalist should remain silent. The constitution of a state presumably reflects the will of the people of that state. It is the job of the state judiciary to interpret that document. If state judges interpret the document in a way that the citizenry of the state opposes, the citizens have two forms of recourse. First, they can amend their constitution to nullify what was done. Second, they can replace the judges, either by electing different ones (if judges are elected) or by electing a governor who will appoint new ones (if judges are appointed). These acts may be time-consuming, costly, and cumbersome, but they are not impossible.

Federalism is not identical to majoritarianism. These doctrines should not be conflated, even though they sometimes are. A majoritarian insists that homosexual marriage be left up to the people, acting through their elected representatives. It is not (he or she says) a matter for judges to decide. A federalist, however, remains neutral as between the legislative and the judicial branches of state government.

When we put everything together (see the previous two posts), we get the following as the federalist position on homosexual marriage:

1. Oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment and all other proposals that would prevent states (such as Massachusetts) from allowing homosexual marriage;

2. Support a constitutional amendment such as the one set out above, which prevents state or federal judges from forcing homosexual marriage on unwilling states (such as Texas); and

3. Take no position on how state-court judges interpret state constitutions. In other words, let the various state legislative and judicial processes work.

Here, for curious readers, is an argument for the Federal Marriage Amendment (by the editors of National Review Online). The FMA, as I have argued several times (okay, ad nauseam) in this blog, violates federalist principles. Suppose I had to choose between position 1 and position 2 in my previous post. In other words, suppose I could not have the federalist result (position 3). Which would I choose? I would choose position 1. I would rather prevent all states from allowing homosexual marriage than force all states to allow it. So my ranking is 3 > 1 > 2. Position 3 is well ahead of the others. Position 1 is preferable (though not by much) to position 2.

Why do I prefer 1 to 2? Because at this time, only a few states wish to allow homosexual marriage. (My evidence for this is that only two states—Vermont and Massachusetts—have seriously entertained it.) Not allowing these few states to allow homosexual marriage is less of a violation of federalist principles than forcing all the remaining states to allow homosexual marriage. The fewer infringements of federalism, the better. Of course, if things were to change and most states wanted to allow homosexual marriage, I would prefer position 2 to position 1—for the same federalist reason. Fortunately, I don't have to choose between 1 and 2. Both are vastly inferior to 3.

Terry Eastland (see here) has joined the crowd of legal experts/commentators who worry that state or federal courts (or both) will use the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the United States Constitution to impose homosexual marriage on every state. I have expressed this worry many times in this blog. (See here, for example.) I'm a federalist. I believe that each state's citizens should decide for themselves whether to allow homosexual marriage. I have no problem whatsoever with states such as Massachusetts allowing it, but I don't want Texans (for example) to have no choice about whether to allow it. Let the people decide! Andrew Sullivan, who is a bright man but not a lawyer, is confident to the point of certitude that no court will ever apply the Full Faith and Credit Clause to mandate homosexual marriage. Then why does he oppose a simple constitutional amendment that would disable the clause (i.e., make it inapplicable to homosexual marriage)? He continues to bash the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA), but that amendment is not in accordance with federalist principles. The FMA would prevent any state (even Massachusetts) from allowing homosexual marriage. It would prevent it even if the vast majority of citizens of a state wanted it! If Sullivan is a federalist, as he sometimes suggests he is, he should endorse a weaker amendment that would, in effect, allow states to either allow or disallow homosexual marriage, as they see fit. Federalists both oppose the FMA and support the amendment I described.

Let me summarize. There are three positions on homosexual marriage:

1. No state should be able to allow it (i.e., it should be disallowed everywhere, even in those states—e.g., Massachusetts—in which a majority of citizens want it).

2. No state should be able to disallow it (i.e., it should be allowed everywhere, even in those states—e.g., Texas—in which a majority of citizens don't want it).

3. Each state should decide for itself whether to allow it.

Sullivan rejects 1 (which would be the result of the FMA) and implies that he accepts 3 (the federalist position); but he refuses to endorse an amendment that would preclude 2. I think he really holds position 2. That is to say, he secretly hopes that state and federal judges use the Full Faith and Credit Clause and other constitutional provisions to mandate homosexual marriage throughout the nation. It would be nice if Sullivan would clear this up for his large readership, but he refuses to engage my arguments. The closest he has come to an engagement is telling me "You're wrong." Oh well, at least he replied.

Bertrand Arthur William Russell died on 2 February 1970, almost thirty-four years ago. He was ninety-seven. Russell's godfather, believe it or not, was John Stuart Mill. Russell was born in 1872. Mill died in 1873. In 1957 (the year of my birth), when Russell was eighty-five years old, he wrote a preface to a collection of his essays being edited by Paul Edwards. Here is the beginning of the second paragraph of the preface:

There has been a rumor in recent years to the effect that I have become less opposed to religious orthodoxy than I formerly was. This rumor is totally without foundation. I think all the great religions of the world—Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Communism—both untrue and harmful. (Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, ed. Paul Edwards [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957], v)

If you'd like to read Russell's 1927 essay "Why I Am Not a Christian," click here. If you'd like to read the entry on Russell in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (by A. D. Irvine), click here. If you'd like to take a virtual tour of The Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University, click here. If you'd like to see some images of Russell, click here.

Theodore Roosevelt was the best-known proponent of wildlife conservation in his day. He was also the nation's most famous hunter. Today, many animal lovers would find that a strange and unappealing combination. Indeed, among environmentalists, it is becoming increasingly fashionable to be against hunting. Although sportsmen are included in such organizations as the Audubon Society, Sierra Club, and Earth First!, they are continually criticized by other members. One of the most aggressive groups to oppose hunting is The Fund for Animals. Its members actually meet sportsmen in the wild, in the hopes of convincing them to refrain from killing animals. This tension is not new; in the United States, organized protests against blood sports emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hunting, however, is not antithetical to conservation. A hundred years ago, much of the groundwork for the protection of wildlife was laid by sportsmen. Their call for conservation was conveyed through a variety of hunting journals, including American Sportsman, Forest and Stream, Field and Stream, and American Angler—all of which were founded in the 1870s and 1880s. Some hunter-conservationists were particularly concerned about birds; the Audubon Society was founded by a sportsman.

(Lisa Mighetto, Wild Animals and American Environmental Ethics [Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1991], 27)

Watching Donald Luskin dismantle Paul Krugman is great fun. Twice a week. Check out today's humiliation, based on this Krugman column. That Krugman, a smart man (by all accounts), would make such absurd claims in a public forum makes you wonder about his mental stability. I honestly think he hates President Bush so much (see here) that he can't see or think straight. Watching Krugman disintegrate is like watching the great Nietzsche go insane. Sad.

Addendum: If you're interested in how partisan various columnists are, see here. Look for Paul Krugman's name. Interesting, eh? All 388 of his columns for The New York Times were partisan. (Thanks to Peg Kaplan for the link.) By the way, many conservatives (including me) have distanced themselves from Ann Coulter, a smart woman (a University of Michigan Law School graduate) who has no sense of balance or fairness. I have yet to hear a liberal distance him- or herself from Paul Krugman, who is every bit as shrill, partisan, imbalanced, and unfair. When liberals start condemning Krugman's manipulative rhetoric, I will begin respecting them.

Lani Guinier, "Comment: [E]racing Democracy: The Voting Rights Cases," Harvard Law Review 108 (November 1994): 109.

"Cleaning Up the Mess, or Messing Up the Cleanup: Does CERCLA's Jurisdictional Bar (Section 113(H)) Prohibit Citizen Suits Brought Under RCRA?" Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review 22 (fall 1994): 49.

Kenneth S. Abraham, "The Natural History of the Insurer's Liability for Bad Faith," Texas Law Review 72 (May 1994): 1295; Robert H. Jerry II, "The Wrong Side of the Mountain: A Comment on Bad Faith's Unnatural History," Texas Law Review 72 (May 1994): 1317.

Timothy H. Engstrom, "Accounting for Ethics: Where Does Ethics Fit into Accounting Theory and Practice?" Business and Professional Ethics Journal 13 (spring 1994): 41.

James A. McGilvray, "Constant Colors in the Head," Synthese 100 (August 1994): 197.

If you want a good rant, read this. Andrew Sullivan criticizes President Bush for not being a libertarian. Should we also criticize him for not being an atheist, a vegetarian, and a feminist? Where did Sullivan get the idea that President Bush is a libertarian? He's a conservative—maybe even a new conservative—but he's not and has never been a proponent of minimal government. I know; he was my governor for several years before he became my president. Conservatism, like liberalism, uses government to achieve its ends. It's just that the ends differ.

Sullivan has said that he's conservative, but nothing he has written in the past year or so (since I've been reading his blog) supports that judgment. He has liberal moral values and wants fiscally frugal government. He's a libertarian, or perhaps a libertarian hawk. The sooner he grasps that, the better off all of us will be. He'll be better off because he'll have self-knowledge. We'll be better off because we won't have to listen to his infernal whining about President Bush not being what he was "supposed" to be. Stop trying to make President Bush something he's not!

Don Marquis, author of "Why Abortion Is Immoral," kindly provided me with a survey of abortion literature (see here) and gave me permission to post it on this blog. If you've read his essay (see here for ways to acquire it) and want to see what sorts of criticism it generated, scroll about halfway down. Thanks, Dr Marquis!

Long experience with liberals convinces me that they cannot think clearly about guns. Their brains lock up. Here is some common sense from a reader of The New York Times:

To the Editor:

Re "The Power of the Gun Lobby" (editorial, Jan. 22):

We do not need gun control; we need criminal control.

The National Rifle Association is one small voice that keeps us citizens, not subjects.

BOB CLUNIE
Picayune, Miss., Jan. 22, 2004

Amen. Thank you.

To the Editor:

President Bush mentioned the issue of steroids in sports in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night (front page, Jan. 21).

As a lifelong baseball fan, I am very concerned about the effect of steroids on the integrity of baseball and its players, statistics, records and history. Let's hope that this very public message reaches those who can—and should—rid all sports of these substances.

JOAN BALDWIN CHAPMAN
Cheshire, Conn., Jan. 22, 2004

This story in today's New York Times vindicates President Bush. Will those who accused him of lying about weapons of mass destruction apologize? What do you think?

Ignore the obligatory (and gratuitous) Bush-bashing in this column. The rest of it makes sense.

Here is an interesting (but not terribly philosophical) column about the role of religion in public affairs. (Thanks to Peg Kaplan for the heads-up.)

If Darwinian thinking tells us that we have been too ready to assume a fundamental difference in kind between human beings and nonhuman animals, it could also tell us that we are too ready to assume that all human beings are the same in all important respects. While Darwinian thought has no impact on the priority we give to equality as a moral or political ideal, it gives us grounds for believing that since men and women play different roles in reproduction, they may also differ in their inclinations or temperaments, in ways that best promote the reproductive prospects of each sex. Since women are limited in the number of children they can have, they are likely to be selective in their choice of mate. Men, on the other hand, are limited in the number of children they can have only by the number of women they can have sex with. If achieving high status increases access to women, then we can expect men to have a stronger drive for status than women. This means that we cannot use the fact that there is a disproportionately large number of men in high status positions in business or politics as a reason for concluding that there has been discrimination against women. For example, the fact that there are fewer women chief executives of major corporations than men may be due to men being more willing to subordinate their personal lives and other interests to their career goals, and biological differences between men and women may be a factor in that greater readiness to sacrifice everything for the sake of getting to the top.

The diverse ways in which Darwinian thinking can connect with ethics and politics mean that drawing a distinction between facts and values does not settle all the issues about the nature of a Darwinian left. While the core of the left is a set of values, there is also a penumbra of factual beliefs that have typically been associated with the left. We need to ask whether these factual beliefs are at odds with Darwinian thinking and, if they are, what the left would be like without them.

(Peter Singer, A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution and Cooperation [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000 (1999)], 17-8)

Here is another nail in the coffin of the blank-slate theory of human nature. For further reading, see Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Viking, 2002).

The original position as described by [John] Rawls requires that the original contractors must be all moral agents (otherwise they could not make the decisions needed for the contract), and it is assumed that they will remain so in the real world. I am not sure that this second rule is essential for the idea of a social contract. By analogy with the idea of 'living wills', in which people leave directions about the way they want to be treated if they subsequently lose the ability to make rational decisions, it seems possible that moral agents in the original position might want to safeguard themselves against the possibility of becoming moral patients in the real world. If the contractors do not know whether they may be moral agents or patients later on, they cannot rationally be prepared either to deny the basic rights of moral patients or to commit moral agents to an intolerable burden of ceaseless labour for the welfare of the former. By definition moral patients are not capable of understanding the nature of moral duties so the contractors cannot reasonably decree that the right to basically fair treatment should depend upon acceptance of reciprocal obligation since this would mean giving up their own rights should they happen to be, or to become, moral patients.

(Rosemary Rodd, Biology, Ethics, and Animals [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992 (1990)], 241 [footnote omitted])

If you're thinking of a legal career, please see my essay "Advice for Prospective Law Students," which I updated today. There's a permanent link to it on the left side of this blog (in the green area). The essay is being used by many universities across the country (which you can confirm by Googling its title). Today I received a nice letter from Dr Daniel R. Pinello, who has written a similar essay. Here is his letter (reprinted by permission):

Dear Professor Burgess-Jackson:

I write you in your capacity as Pre-Law Advisor at the University of Texas-Arlington to let you know about a free resource on my website. Over the years, I've developed an extensive lecture for my students about getting into law school. I posted the talk on my website and hope your students can also benefit from the information there. So please feel free to share the reference. Navigate to http://www.danpinello.com and click on "Advice for Getting Into Law School."

Best regards,
Dan Pinello
Associate Professor
Government Department
John Jay College of Criminal Justice of The City University of New York

There are other interesting links on Dr Pinello's page, including one to a debate on politics and ideology in the classroom.

I received the following letter this morning:

Dear Dr., Let me start by telling you who I am. I am a UTA alumni who graduated with a Master's in Electrical Engineering in August 2003. I am Indian by Race and I was born and raised Roman Catholic. Off-Late I have been very confused about the whole theory of religion and about the existence of GOD. I spend hours a day arguing with many people about it and I get upset at the end of all the argument. I have spent a lot of time thinking about religion and the bible and about GOD, and I feel that the whole thing is a BIG STORY. Most things in the bible dont have any scientific explaination. I'm sorry to be so rational, but I am a scientist and I like believing in things that have reason, logic, practicality and proof. I have read bioraphies and articles by many great thinkers and philosophers and most of them strongly oppose the existence of a god. To name a few, I have read quotes by Bertrand Russell, Robert Ingersoll, Robin Lane Fox, Albert Einstien, Edward De bono, Isaac Newton, Sigmund Frued and Donald Morgan. These men were well read and learned and it is hard to ignore what they say. Besides most of the things they say makes a LOT of sense as compared to the Bible. I am very confused cause I have been believing in God all my life and it is very difficult for me to accept that god does not exist. Thats why I thought of seeking guidance from a learned man like you who has done ample research in "philosophy of religion". I would be open to accepting any side of the controversy as long as it is REAL and TRUE . . . at the same tmie I do not mean to disrespect your beliefs. Please advice me on this. I would also be glad if you could suggest some books/movies that I could read/watch. It would also be great if we could talk about this some time over email or in person. Thanking you in anticipation. Yours Rationally, X

Here is my reply:

25 January 2004, 11:26 A.M. X: Thanks for writing. You say that many intelligent people are atheists or agnostics. But many intelligent people are theists as well. It's not a matter of intelligence or insight or ability to see. Whether a person is religious seems to depend on other things besides intelligence, such as how you were raised. Belief in a supernatural being (and an afterlife) is comforting to many people. They can't or won't face up to their mortality. I doubt that many people are persuaded to believe in God by the classic arguments. I also doubt that many people are dissuaded from believing in God by the argument from evil. These arguments are interesting, which is why I and other professors discuss them with our students, but I doubt that they have any effect. You wrote to me for advice, but I don't have any. I hope you find peace and happiness, with or without belief in God. kbj

To the Editor:

Re "Before Cancer Strikes, and After" (letters, Jan. 18):

The overwhelming majority of the world's cancer control professionals agree that prevention and early detection will save more lives from cancer than any other tool available.

Studies show that about 60 percent of the cancer deaths that will occur in 2004—more than 300,000—will be related to preventable behaviors like poor nutrition, physical inactivity, obesity and smoking.

Many of the more than one million skin cancers that will be diagnosed could have been prevented. And certain cancers related to infectious diseases, like hepatitis B and the human papilloma virus, could be prevented through behavioral change, vaccines or antibiotics.

Regular cancer screenings can result in detection of cancers of the breast, colon, rectum, cervix, prostate, oral cavity and skin at their earliest, most treatable stages. If all of these cancers were diagnosed at these early stages, their five-year survival rates would increase to an impressive 95 percent.

JOHN R. SEFFRIN
Chief Executive Officer
American Cancer Society
Atlanta, Jan. 19, 2004

Different people are proud of different things. This is one of the things I'm most proud of.

Syllogism, n. A logical formula consisting of a major and a minor assumption and an inconsequent.

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

To the Editor:

In "Heartless Marriage Plans" (editorial, Jan. 17), you call President Bush's marriage plan "one of those rather expensive but basically symbolic gestures." Not true.

Under the plan, up to $300 million a year would be dedicated to marriage education services to help couples who have chosen marriage for themselves form and sustain a healthy marriage. For low-income couples, this would undeniably improve the lives of children.

Moreover, you claim that low-income communities have been stripped of "'marriageable' men." To the contrary, research by the Heritage Foundation examining a sample of mostly unwed parents at the time a child is born found that two-thirds of the non-married fathers studied had at least a high-school degree, 97 percent were employed during the past year and they had earnings sufficient to bring a family of three out of poverty.

President Bush's plan is a forward-looking, common-sense initiative to encourage healthy marriages.

WADE F. HORN
Washington, Jan. 23, 2004
The writer is assistant secretary, Administration for Children and Families, Department of Health and Human Services.

The New York Times reports today (see here) that David Kay is resigning his position as arms inspector. Kay is quoted as saying that at the time the United States went to war in Iraq in March 2003, Iraq had no chemical or biological weapons. The Times reporter then announces triumphantly:

Dr. Kay's statements undermined one of the primary justifications set out by President Bush for the war with Iraq. Mr. Bush and other top administration officials repeatedly cited Iraq's possession of chemical and biological weapons as a threat to the United States, and the lack of evidence so far that Saddam Hussein actually had large caches of weapons has fueled criticism that Mr. Bush exaggerated the peril from Iraq.

This is, to quote Ronald Dworkin from another context, an album of confusions. First, why does the reporter say that the presence of chemical and biological weapons was one of the primary justifications for war? There were several independent and individually sufficient justifications for the war in Iraq. Ranking or prioritizing them is pointless and misleading, especially if more than one of them is sufficient. As I have argued in several Tech Central Station columns during the past few months (see here, for example), even if it was no part of President Bush's motivation to liberate the Iraqi people, that could (and arguably would) suffice to justify the war.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Times reporter is right, and that protecting the United States from Iraq's chemical and biological weapons was the primary justification for war. Indeed, suppose it was the only asserted justification. The second problem with the report is that the conclusion—to the effect that Iraq had no such weapons—is premature. Chemical and biological weapons may yet be found. Iraq is a large country, and not all of it has been searched. Things do not happen on the timetable of the New York Times or its reporters.

But suppose (again for the sake of argument) that such weapons are never found. Does it follow that the war in Iraq was unjustified? No. Whether an action is justified depends not on what was the case at the time it was performed but on what was reasonably believed to be the case. Reasonable beliefs can be false and unreasonable beliefs true. If I shoot what I think is an intruder, when in fact it is my spouse returning unexpectedly from a business trip in the middle of the night, I act reasonably under the circumstances. I may have done wrong, objectively speaking, but I am not blameworthy for it. The Times reporter seems to think that the mere falsity of the belief that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons renders action based on that belief unjustified. No. It depends on whether the "false" belief was reasonable in the circumstances.

This is not logic-chopping. It's common sense. Suppose you manage a baseball team. One of your players tries to steal second base in a situation in which he is highly unlikely to succeed. (Suppose he's slow.) If, as a result of the other team's inattention or error, he makes it safely, does that justify his decision to steal? Surely not! Any self-respecting manager would upbraid him, explaining that it was a poor decision, despite its success. And if a player tries to steal in a situation in which it is called for and he is likely to succeed, but in which he is put out by a perfect throw from the catcher, he should be praised, not blamed. It was a good decision, despite its failure. A decision should be evaluated not on the basis of its actual consequences but on the basis of its expected consequences, and expectation is a function of what was reasonably believed at the time the decision was made. Success does not automatically confer justification; failure does not automatically confer lack of justification.

The question with regard to President Bush is whether he made the right decision in light of what he had reason to believe. If it were widely believed within the intelligence community that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, then it would have been reasonable for President Bush to rely on that information. The question is not whether such weapons turned up, but whether there was reason to believe they existed and posed a threat. The Times reporter, in his apparent eagerness to criticize the president, makes no inquiry into this important matter. This is another example (one of many I could cite) of sloppy, adversarial journalism. It is one more reason why many of us can no longer take the Times seriously.

In instances where it is unavoidable, the masculine pronoun has been used in the generic sense to mean "he or she."

(Charles E. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987], 154)

Opponents in politics are not necessarily enemies, for some opponents are respected and accepted as legitimate. The distinction between unacceptable and acceptable opponents, or between enemies and adversaries, lies in whether the focus of attention is upon the inherent nature of the antagonist, or, instead, upon the tactics an opponent employs.

The world of the game defines the antagonist as an adversary. Here there is competition to win. It may be sporting and good humored, as in many electoral rivalries and some competitions for such public benefits as a new post office or a public contract. It may be deadly serious, as in contested elections, international territorial disputes, and even war. So long as the focus is on finding and pursuing winning tactics, the opponent is an adversary, whether the stakes are small or vast.

The relation between law enforcers and people accused of violations is typically adversarial in this sense. The police officer and the speeder, the factory inspector and the manager who violates a health and safety code, even the prosecutor and the person accused of homicide, are involved in a competitive game in the crucial sense that the costs, the stakes, and even the definitions of the offense are negotiable within some limits, and each party can calculate the probable risks and benefits of pursuing alternative courses of action. In all such encounters there is some sporting element in playing the game and trying to win, and the procedures themselves capture attention.

Where an opponent is an enemy rather than an adversary, it is not the process but the character of the opponent that focuses attention. Enemies are characterized by an inherent trait or set of traits that marks them as evil, immoral, warped, or pathological and therefore a continuing threat regardless of what course of action they pursue, regardless of whether they win or lose in any particular encounter, and even if they take no political action at all. To the Nazi, the Jew is an enemy (and vice versa) so long as he or she exists. When defined as subversive, the liberal is an enemy. So is the foreign country that is perceived as intent upon subverting the "free world" (or the "people's democracies"). If enemies are not observably doing anything, that is itself evidence of underground activities to undermine the good society. In this form of construction, the incentive is not to win encounters but rather to destroy the opponent.

Different kinds of statements are accepted as appropriate for these radically different perceptions of antagonists. To define political opponents as adversaries connotes that the issue is tactical rather than moral; questions of principle and value rankings are not at issue, so that people can decide on the basis of their interests whether to get involved and on which side. The fight is limited in its importance and in the spectrum of groups that are concerned. To define political antagonists as enemies drastically broadens both the range of issues and the range of concerned groups.

Clearly, there is nothing distinctive or inherent about adversaries or enemies as people that makes them one or the other. To understand such language in politics it is necessary to focus upon the social situation and self-characterization of observers rather than upon the people who are labeled. Only then can we explain why changes occur so often in the definitions of political enemies and why, in some situations, anyone is likely to define others as enemies or to be defined as such. Many political "enemies" already cited as examples did no harm at all, though the attribution of harm served a purpose for their antagonists.

(Murray Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle [Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1988], 67-8 [italics in original])

If you're a headbanger and want a good song, let me know. I'll e-mail it. It's 2.25 megabytes in size and in Windows Media Audio format.

I recently wondered aloud (see here) why Don Marquis used the terms "pro-choice" and "anti-abortion" in his essay "Why Abortion Is Immoral." They seem asymmetrical. Here is his explanation (reprinted by permission):

Keith:

1. Why speculate about my state of mind? We have e-mail now and one can ask!

2. I usually do not use the term 'pro-life'. I have used the word 'anti-choice' to describe my view. Here is why. The abortion debate is characterized by a great deal of emotionally loaded language. I try very hard to avoid such language when it is in my favor. My claim is that my anti-abortion view is correct because it is supported by the best reasons, and its correctness is entirely independent of the language used to characterize it. So my challenge to the pro-choicer is: I'll let you label the positions any way you choose. I shall show that, even so, the anti-abortion position is correct. And I don't want anyone to accuse me of getting mileage out of the labels I use.

When I am discussing this issue with persons who are basically pro-life, but who waffle more than they should, I have been known to speak of the murder of innocent unborn children!

Best,
Don

If I were Howard Dean, I'm not sure I'd be altogether pleased to have Meathead in my corner.

pander (foll. by to) gratify or indulge a person, a desire or weakness, etc. (The Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide, 1999)

Is anyone besides me sickened by the incessant pandering of the Democrat presidential candidates? They're willing to believe, say, or do whatever will secure the Democrat nomination; and you can be sure that the eventual nominee will believe, say, or do whatever will secure election come November. As Ruben Navarrette points out in today's Dallas Morning News, even the candidates' choice of wardrobe depends on what they think will "sell." John Edwards has been running a "positive" campaign. Is he doing it because it's the right thing to do? No. He's doing it because he thinks it will get him more votes than any other type of campaign. Expediency, not principle, is the order of the day.

Instead of saying, "Here's what I am; take it or leave it," as any self-respecting, principled person would do, the Democrats say, "I'm a lump of clay; mold me; I will be whatever you want me to be; if you're opposed to the war in Iraq, then I'm opposed to the war in Iraq." The Democrats are variables, not constants; vessels, not liquids or solids; structure, not content. They're willing to promise whatever it takes to get elected. Most people want resources, so of course most of their promises are of resources. This group gets promised this; that group gets promised that. Anyone who objects to the level of spending of the Bush administration (and many are objecting, even in the conservative ranks) had better think twice before voting for a Democrat, given the exorbitant and irresponsible promises being made.

The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)—for which all productive Americans must pay, whether they watch it or not—has bought into the trendy but false idea that race is not real. See here. By PBS's standard of reality, none of the following is real: baseball, widowhood, monarchy, and science. (See my Tech Central Station column "Dusty Baker, Philosopher" for a list of racial fallacies, and see Steve Sailer's essay "Dusty Baker Was Right!" for another take. For the record, I had not read Sailer's essay when I wrote my column. I'm pleased to see that we made some of the same points.) It is an outrage and a disgrace that I have to support such left-wing, feel-good propaganda. This is an example of what Roger Scruton called "the joyous work of falsehood." What next? Will PBS deny that dog breeds are real?

Have you thought about speed bumps? Not technologically, but philosophically. I refer to the elevated parts of a road surface designed to slow the rate of speed of vehicles. (See here for an example.) I live in a neighborhood near a middle school (in beautiful Fort Worth, Texas). Parents taking their children to school sometimes come roaring down my street. They'll be sorry if, in trying to cut a minute or two off the travel time, they strike a child, a dog, a cat, or a squirrel. (Come to think of it, they may not care a whit about dogs, cats, or squirrels.)

Some municipalities use speed bumps to reduce people's speed. And they work. People who do not care enough about others to drive slowly through a neighborhood will slow their vehicles in order to prevent damage to them. In other words, self-interest accomplishes what law (fear of punishment) and morality (doing the right thing) will not. This is a metaphor for our society. We are thoughtless, insensitive people. We care a great deal about ourselves and about our things, but almost nothing for others.

I love my country. I love its history, its institutions, its government, its language, and its values. But I despise many of the people who populate this great land. I'm sorry to say this. I'm being honest.

Dear Keith,

I enjoy your blog and find it very edifying—thanks, and keep up the great work. Some time soon I hope to start working through your suggested reading list for philosophy. One request: PLEASE syndicate your blog content in RSS or RDF if at all possible. I don't know if Blogspot offers that service, but if they do, I would greatly appreciate it and I'm sure there are others who would as well.

I want to take issue with the Tom Regan excerpt you posted on 1/6, arguing from the creation account that Christians should be vegans. The problem with Regan's argument is that he overlooks God's covenant with Noah (Gen. 9), in which God gives humans all creatures, both plants and animals, as food (Gen. 9:3).

I realize that you are a religious sceptic, that you see no need of resort to God or revelation in your thinking, and that you therefore won't find an appeal to scripture very convincing.

Nonetheless, I think that Regan creates at least two kinds of problem for his argument by using scripture selectively, citing God's dietary ordinances at creation but ignoring those proposed in his covenant with Noah.

First, he opens himself to the charge of cherry-picking scripture for those passages that support his position. Clearly, if all parts of scripture are equally authoritative, he is wrong to argue in this fashion, because his position requires that he deny authority to the Noahic covenant. Thus, he must deny that all parts of scripture are equally authoritative. In that case, we must ask why he considers the one passage authoritative and not the other.

The best account he can give of his use of scripture in support of his argument is: (1) he has good reason for considering one set of passages authoritative, but not the other; and (2) he has conformed his positions to the teachings found in the passages he does regard as authoritative.

If he can demonstrate (1), I'll take him on his word that he has done (2), though I'll still disagree with his handling of scripture. Note that it is problematic to cite the moral quality of the authoritative passages as criteria for (1) if he is in turn using these passages to support moral arguments: great care would be needed to avoid circularity (and in some cases it might even be impossible to do so).

Of course, if he is simply selecting those parts of scripture that support a position he already holds, he is undermining any claim that scripture has intrinsic authority. In that case, scripture contributes nothing to his argument. It is meaningless except as an appeal to sentiment in order to persuade the careless thinkers.

Second, because his argument assumes that Creation is still in the state in which it was created, it is cogent only for a subset of people calling themselves Christians (and certainly not for me). Christianity as I (and orthodox Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Wesleyans, Calvinists, and others) understand it posits a Fall due to human sin. The Fall radically altered all aspects of Creation (Romans 8:22ff). It radically altered humanity's relationship with Creation (Gen. 3:16-24). It entails that the state of original human blessedness is now inaccessible to us, due to our sins. Indeed, within the creation account, God signifies the human need for redemption by making garments of leather for Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:21). Clearly, things have changed, and in his curses on Adam & Eve, God indicates that their existence will be very different than it has been up to that time. Those Christians who hold to the Fall and the Noahic covenant have to reject Regan's argument if they are consistent. That amounts to quite a few Christians for whom this argument lacks cogency.

I realize that I haven't stated my points as clearly as I might have, but it's way past my bedtime and I do want to get this email "onto the wire" tonight.

Thanks again for your blog, and please try to implement some kind of XML syndication of your content.

Best wishes,
Chuck Bearden

Dorothy = John Edwards
Toto = Joe Lieberman
The Scarecrow = John Kerry
The Tin Man = Wesley Clark
The Cowardly Lion = Al Sharpton
The Wizard = Howard Dean
Munchkin = Dennis Kucinich
The Wicked Witch of the West = George W. Bush

All of us have heroes: people we admire, respect, learn from, are inspired by, and try to emulate. Abraham Lincoln is one of my heroes. He had a powerful, logical mind; he was patient, strong-willed, and disciplined; he loved his wife and children; he was a great orator (probably the best this nation has produced, with Martin Luther King Jr a close second); and he was humble. Here is a letter written by Lincoln to his new general, Ulysses Grant, in the middle of the Civil War:

Executive Mansion,
Washington, July 13, 1863.

Major General Grant
My dear General

I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do, what you finally did—march the troops across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition, and the like, could succeed. When you got below, and took Port-Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join Gen. Banks; and when you turned Northward East of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right, and I was wrong.

Yours very truly
A. LINCOLN

Gives you chills, doesn't it? Imagine Bill Clinton writing such a letter. The man would rather lie to the nation than admit to a peccadillo. If you want to read a biography of Lincoln, and I recommend that you do, acquire Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York and Scarborough, Ontario: New American Library, 1978 [1977]). Be forewarned: You will cry at the end, even though you know the ending.

In the culture generally, postmodernism is associated with a playful acceptance of surfaces and superficial style, self-conscious quotation and parody (although these are also found in modernist literature, such as that of James Joyce), and a celebration of the ironic, the transient, and the glitzy. It is usually seen as a reaction against a naive and earnest confidence in progress, and against confidence in objective or scientific truth. In philosophy, therefore, it implies a mistrust of the grand recits of modernity: the large-scale justifications of western society and confidence in its progress visible in Kant, Hegel, or Marx, or arising from utopian visions of perfection achieved through evolution, social improvement, education, or the deployment of science. In its post-structuralist aspects it includes a denial of any fixed meaning, or any correspondence between language and the world, or any fixed reality or truth or fact to be the object of enquiry.

(Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994], 294-5 [italics in original])

To the Editor:

The State of the Union address (front page, Jan. 21) consisted, in roughly equal measure, of triumphalism, Pollyannaism, false messianism and sanctimonious smugness.

Reduced to its essentials, this disingenuous exercise in self-congratulation offered the country a continuing diet of repression, reaction, religion and inequality at home, and imperialism, militarism, arrogance and high-handed adventurism abroad.

Both domestically and internationally, the present administration confuses leadership with issuing self-righteous decrees and bullying dissenting voices into submission. It takes misguided pride in the fact that it has thoroughly militarized our society and placed the country on a permanent war footing.

The chief losers in this process, unfortunately, are the American people.

JOHN S. KOPPEL
Bethesda, Md., Jan. 21, 2004

To the Editor:

Re "State of the Union: Abroad" (editorial, Jan. 21):

Your assessment of President Bush's achievements abroad is far off course.

It's hard to imagine a president accomplishing more in three years than this man has done.

After a shocking attack on our country, President Bush took the offensive and attacked the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Then, after going to the United Nations pleading the case against Iraq and Saddam Hussein, he took the offensive again and rid Iraq of the man who tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people.

Certainly, the world is safer without the likes of Saddam Hussein.

Our president is focused on protecting us from those around the world bent on destroying us; may God bless him in his efforts.

RICHARD LEVY
New York, Jan. 21, 2004

Didi Herman, "The Good, the Bad and the Smugly: Perspectives on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms," Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 14 (winter 1994): 589.

Gretchen Craft Rubin and Jamie G. Heller, "Restatement of Love (Tentative Draft)," The Yale Law Journal 104 (December 1994): 707.

Adine Y. Kernberg, "The Right to Bear Art: The Impact of Municipal Anti-Peddling Ordinances on the First Amendment Rights of Artists," Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts 18 (fall 1993): 155.

Gilbert Paul Carrasco, "Congressional Arrogation of Power: Alien Constellation in the Galaxy of Equal Protection," Boston University Law Review 74 (September 1994): 591.

Steve Fuller, "The Sphere of Critical Thinking in a Post-Epistemic World," Informal Logic 16 (winter 1994): 39; Miriam Solomon, "Sizing Up Science: A Reply to Fuller," Informal Logic 16 (winter 1994): 55; Steve Fuller, "The Governance of Big Science: On the Wisdom of Solomon," Informal Logic 16 (winter 1994): 59.

For the true philosopher the most exciting thing in the world—perhaps the only exciting thing—is to become really clear about some important question.

(R. M. Hare, "Medical Ethics: Can the Moral Philosopher Help?" chap. 1 in his Essays on Bioethics [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993], 1-14, at 2 [essay first published in 1977])

Seven months ago, I wrote a column for Tech Central Station in which I tried to explain why liberals think conservatives are stupid. President Bush in particular has been called everything from a moron to an ignoramus. It's a lie, of course. Liberals love calling President Bush a liar, but they lie repeatedly about his intelligence. See here. I'll put President Bush up against Michael Moore, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Janeane Garofalo, or Paul Krugman any day of the week (and twice on Sunday).

May I suggest a sincerity test for those who challenge President Bush's intelligence? Disclose your own test scores. Wouldn't it be embarrassing for President Bush's critics to learn that he's more intelligent than they are? By the way, I'm not suggesting that intelligence is the sole or even the main criterion for being president. Bill Clinton is, by all accounts, intelligent, but he's morally retarded. The presidency requires character and leadership abilities, which President Bush has in spades and which no Democrat president has had in my lifetime.

This is what passes for serious discourse among the liberal intelligentsia. Please be forewarned. It contains harsh language.

Responsibility, n. A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.

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

Liberals are apoplectic at the prospect of another Ralph Nader presidential candidacy. (See here.) They know that he will drain more votes from the Democrat than from the Republican candidate, and in a close election, as in 2000, it could make the difference. But liberals have a far greater worry than Nader. It's Howard Dean. He may well get the Democrat nomination; but suppose he doesn't. Do you think for a moment that he will line up behind the nominee? And if he doesn't, his supporters will either drop out of the process or vote for Ralph. Dean has alienated establishment Democrats. He shows no signs of conciliation. As I was telling my mother the other day, he's the kid who, when things go badly on the sandlot, takes his bat home, knowing that the others will have to stop playing. Dean is arrogant, selfish, and angry. If he bolts the party and runs as an independent, President Bush will be reelected in a landslide. Expect liberals to begin appeasing Dean soon. I doubt that it'll work, but it's their only hope. They must not let the nut bolt.

The best show in the house these days is the ongoing "debate" between Paul Krugman, the Ivy League economist-cum-New York Times columnist, and Donald Luskin. Krugman rants twice a week (Tuesdays and Fridays). Luskin takes him apart shortly thereafter. Here is a sample of the dismantling. Notice Luskin's calm (even playful) demeanor, his insistence on ascertaining the facts, and his charity toward Krugman. (Example: On contested factual matters, Luskin cites data provided by individuals and organizations of whom/which Krugman has spoken highly.) Krugman has none of Luskin's admirable argumentative (or, so far as I can tell, personal) qualities. What's interesting is that Krugman refuses to engage Luskin. He called Luskin a "stalker" during a recent television appearance. You can see why Krugman would do this: One does not engage stalkers; one hides from them. Krugman is a despicable coward, hiding behind his mother's skirt. Princeton (and the Times) must be very proud of him.

Only an unreconstructed racist would oppose heteroracial marriage, i.e., marriage between individuals of different races. Why should the race of the individuals who wish to marry prevent them from marrying? But can't the same be said of homosexual marriage? Why should the sex of the individuals who wish to marry prevent them from marrying? Prima facie, heteroracial and homosexual marriage stand or fall together. If it is wrong to prevent people of different races from marrying—as most people concede it is—then it is wrong to prevent people of the same sex from marrying.

This is not the only argument for homosexual marriage, and it may not be the strongest, but it's a common one. The usual objection to the argument is that there's a relevant disanalogy between heteroracial and homosexual marriage. The disanalogy is that a heteroracial couple, but not a homosexual couple, can produce offspring. Marriage, it is said, is about children—about ensuring, to the extent possible, that the next generation of citizens is well-educated, healthy, happy, responsible, and productive. The various rights and responsibilities that make up the legal institution of marriage—mainly, but not solely, financial—are calculated to realize this important social goal. Marriage may be a partnership between individuals, but it is a special partnership, for, unlike business partnerships, it typically brings new dependent beings into existence.

The objection just stated elicits a standard reply, one you have probably heard several times. It is said that if the point of marriage were to provide for children, it would be restricted to those heterosexual couples who can and will procreate. But this, it is quickly added, is not done. Any heterosexual adult couple, however immature or unserious—think of Britney Spears and her "boyfriend"—is deemed fit (eligible) for marriage. No question is asked about the ability or willingness of the individuals to have children. People who are known to be infertile are allowed to marry. People who are fertile but have no intention to reproduce, or, more strongly, who intend not to reproduce, are allowed to marry. Married couples who have not reproduced are allowed to stay married, taking advantage of its many benefits. Doesn't this give the lie to the assertion that marriage is about children? And if it's not really about children, then the fact that homosexual couples cannot produce children is no reason to prohibit homosexual marriage.

Unfortunately, the discussion rarely proceeds beyond this point, but it should. I believe there is a powerful rejoinder to the reply. It begins by noting the difference between law and morality. Compared to law, morality is pure. It takes no account of practical matters. For example, what would a moralist say about the drinking age? Legally speaking, all and only people above a certain age (say, eighteen) are eligible to drink alcohol. Does this mean that everyone eighteen or older is mature and responsible enough to handle alcohol? No. Does it mean that everyone younger than eighteen is immature and irresponsible? No. The line is admittedly imperfect. Morally speaking, all and only mature individuals should be allowed to drink. But the law cannot work with such a nebulous standard. It needs something concrete and ascertainable, such as chronological age. The law, here as elsewhere, needs bright lines.

What this shows, if we reflect on it, is that law cannot always directly implement moral mandates. Morality is ideal. Law is real. Morality is abstract. Law is concrete. Morality is pure. Law is impure. Morality is oblivious to cost. Law is obsessed with cost. Law must be practical in ways that morality is not. It must draw bright, workable, efficient lines. It must be sensitive to enforcement costs. It must concern itself with precedential effects, with foreseeable errors in interpretation and application, and with other messy real-world considerations. Law does not have the luxury of armchair hairsplitting or logic-chopping. Law is for proles, not archangels.

Imagine the cost of inquiring into the maturity of each person who wishes to drink alcohol. It would be prohibitive. It is much cheaper (and easier) to use chronological age as a surrogate (false target) for maturity, since the former is more easily ascertained. And it's not arbitrary, either, since we know that there is a correlation, albeit an imperfect one, between the two variables. Older people tend to be more mature and responsible than younger people. The typical eighteen-year old is more mature than the typical seventeen-year old.

Suppose the point of marriage is, as I suggested, to protect and nourish children. Ideally—morally—this would exclude heterosexual couples who either cannot or will not produce offspring. It would also include homosexual couples who have (or plan to have) children. Morally speaking, this would tie marriage to what justifies it.

But this creates at most a presumption in favor of homosexual marriage. More particularly, it creates a presumption in favor of marriage for homosexual couples who are raising children. But presumptions, by their nature, can be rebutted, and here, I think, the hypothesized presumption is easily rebutted.

First, while not all heterosexual married couples reproduce, most do. Probably the overwhelming majority do. And the vast majority of those who don't reproduce can if they choose. But few homosexual couples have children. Whatever children they have are either adopted or the product of other relationships. The line between heterosexual and homosexual is not perfect, to be sure, but then neither is the line between people eighteen years of age or older and those who are not yet eighteen. If we do not think that the imprecision of the drinking age renders that law irrational or unjustified, why should we think that the imprecision of the marriage law renders it irrational or unjustified?

Second, and no less significantly, the costs of implementing a law that limits marriage to those with the ability and will to reproduce are prohibitive. Think like a lawyer rather than a moralist. Would individuals have to express their intention to procreate in a legally binding document? Would they have to prove that they are fertile? Would their marriage be annulled if they haven't reproduced by a certain time? How much time? Two years? Five years? Ten years? Would agents of the state be required to gather evidence of good-faith efforts to reproduce? (Let's not go there.) The privacy costs alone are staggering, and surely enough to make such a law unacceptable. Just as age is a satisfactory surrogate for maturity in the case of drinking, heterosexuality is a satisfactory surrogate for childbearing in the case of marriage.

The upshot is this. Defenders of traditional (heterosexual) marriage should not abandon the argument to those who advocate homosexual marriage. They should link marriage to childrearing and, in response to the claim that not all heterosexual couples can or will reproduce, insist that this has moral but no legal significance. Indeed, I'm willing to concede that there is a good moral case for homosexual marriage—where children are involved. But a good moral case is not necessarily a good legal case. The law is eminently justified in drawing imperfect lines. It does so everywhere, and usually without complaint. It should not apologize for drawing the marriage line between heterosexuals and homosexuals.

If nothing else, I hope to have shown that homosexual marriage raises a host of practical issues that are not usually discussed, but that need to be. Since those who argue for homosexual marriage (Andrew Sullivan, for example) are asking that the law allow it and not just defending its moral permissibility, they have an obligation to discuss the messy details that lawyers grapple with on a day-to-day basis. They need to get their heads out of the clouds and put their feet firmly on the ground.

Have you ever known someone who's intelligent and insightful but who fails to see something obvious? It makes you wonder what's going on. Andrew Sullivan, whom I admire and respect, has a blind spot about homosexual marriage. I have tried to engage him on it, but he refuses, as if doing so might expose his blindness. I'm going to try again. Here is Sullivan's take on President Bush's State of the Union Address. Here is my letter to him:

21 January 2004, 9:27 A.M. Andrew: Your blindness on the issue of homosexual marriage continues to puzzle me. President Bush's position on homosexual marriage is clear: It's the federalist position. Each state should decide for itself whether to allow homosexual marriage. You might say that this is how things stand. It's not. It's only a matter of time before a state like Massachusetts allows homosexual marriage, and then it's only a matter of time before a judge in some other state, like Texas, rules that Texas must recognize those marriages under the Full Faith and Credit Clause. This will force homosexual marriage on Texans, who have not voted on it. That's what President Bush doesn't want, and that's what he's prepared to fight with a constitutional amendment. But obviously he doesn't want to amend the constitution unless it's necessary! He's waiting to see whether a judge does what I mentioned. This is why he keeps saying "If necessary". Perhaps you don't think any judge will ever use the Full Faith and Credit Clause to force homosexual marriage on other states. President Bush hopes you're right. I hope you're right. But if it happens, he will do what any self-respecting federalist would do: fight for states' rights. That you can't see this boggles my mind. It's as if you have a blind spot about homosexual marriage. kbj

Make up your own mind.

It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate. I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner. She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way.

I wanted desperately to meet her, but I knew I'd have to make bones about it since I was travelling cognito. Beknownst to me, the hostess, whom I could see both hide and hair of, was very proper, so it would be skin off my nose if anything bad happened. And even though I had only swerving loyalty to her, my manners couldn't be peccable. Only toward and heard-of behavior would do.

Fortunately, the embarrassment that my maculate appearance might cause was evitable. There were two ways about it, but the chances that someone as flappable as I would be ept enough to become persona grata or a sung hero were slim. I was, after all, something to sneeze at, someone you could easily hold a candle to, someone who usually aroused bridled passion.

So I decided not to risk it. But then, all at once, for some apparent reason, she looked in my direction and smiled in a way that I could make heads or tails of.

I was plussed. It was concerting to see that she was communicado, and it nerved me that she was interested in a pareil like me, sight seen. Normally, I had a domitable spirit, but, being corrigible, I felt capacitated—as if this were something I was great shakes at—and forgot that I had succeeded in situations like this only a told number of times. So, after a terminable delay, I acted with mitigated gall and made my way through the ruly crowd with strong givings.

Nevertheless, since this was all new hat to me and I had no time to prepare a promptu speech, I was petuous. Wanting to make only called-for remarks, I started talking about the hors d'oeuvres, trying to abuse her of the notion that I was sipid, and perhaps even bunk a few myths about myself.

She responded well, and I was mayed that she considered me a savory character who was up to some good. She told me who she was. "What a perfect nomer," I said, advertently. The conversation become more and more choate, and we spoke at length to much avail. But I was defatigable, so I had to leave at a godly hour. I asked if she wanted to come with me. To my delight, she was committal. We left the party together and have been together ever since. I have given her my love, and she has requited it.

(Jack Winter, "How I Met My Wife," The New Yorker [25 July 1994])

I hope you didn't bet the farm on the basis of my Iowa prediction. I had Howard Dean winning with 28% of the vote. He finished third with 18%. I had John Kerry and Richard Gephardt finishing tied for second with 22% of the vote. Kerry romped to victory with 38%, while Gephardt struggled home with 11%. I had John Edwards finishing fourth with 19%. He finished a surprising second with 32%. Howard Dean isn't out of the running yet, but he must have alienated and frightened many Americans with his out-of-control behavior during the concession speech. See here and here. (Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the links.)

Be honest. Would you want this man in the Oval Office, with his finger near the button? Would you want him as your doctor? Would you want him coaching your son's Little League team? Would you want to have a fender-bender with him? Would you even want him living in your neighborhood? Yikes! The man needs professional help, and it doesn't take a professional to see that.

It's nice to see that I'm not the only person who thinks Paul Krugman is vile. See Andrew Sullivan's take.

To the Editor:

Re "Despite Gain in Degrees, Women Lag in Tenure in 2 Main Fields" (news article, Jan. 15):

The improving number of women and minorities among engineering Ph.D.'s is heartening news.

But engineering's male cast is far more than an academic problem. The lack of diversity at the design table has had societal costs: environmentally hazardous facilities disproportionately located in low-income areas, cars designed without consideration of female drivers' proportions and safety needs, and the profligate use of nonrenewable resources like fossil fuels, to name only a few.

Good design begins in the classroom. With diversity of thought, perspective and experience, engineering's inequities—and clear dangers—can be averted.

DOMENICO GRASSO
Northampton, Mass., Jan. 16, 2004
The writer is director, Picker Engineering Program, Smith College.

This is the philosophical equivalent of a scream, or perhaps a scream and a whine. Edifying, isn't it? I'll bet Paul Krugman's Princeton colleagues are real proud of him. (By the way, my diagnosis of hatred is starting to look pretty good, wouldn't you say? Krugman can't even wait for President Bush to act. He criticizes what he thinks or hopes the president will do—and always, always, ascribes the worst possible motives to the president.)

Here is the syllabus for my Seminar in Research Methods and Philosophical Writing.

1929, January 15. Michael Luther King Jr, later renamed Martin, born to schoolteacher Alberta King and Baptist minister Michael Luther King. Boyhood in Sweet Auburn district.

1948. King graduates from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, with a B.A. degree.

1951. King graduates with a B.D. degree from Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania.

1953, June 18. King marries Coretta Scott in Marion, Alabama. They will have four children: Yolanda Denise (b. 1955), Martin Luther King III (b. 1957), Dexter (b. 1961), and Bernice Albertine (b. 1963).

1954, September. King moves to Montgomery, Alabama, to preach at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

1955. After coursework at New England colleges, King finishes his Ph.D. degree in systematic theology.

1956, January 26. King is arrested for driving 30 mph in a 25-mph zone. On 30 January, King's house is bombed.

1957, January. Black ministers form what became known as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King is named first president one month later. In this typical year of demonstrations, King traveled 780,000 miles and made 208 speeches.

1958. King's first book, Stride Toward Freedom, published. This is his recollection of the Montgomery bus boycott. While King is promoting his book in a Harlem book store, an African-American woman stabs him.

1959. King visits India. He had a lifelong admiration for Mohandas K. Gandhi, and credited Gandhi's passive-resistance techniques for his civil-rights successes.

1960. King leaves for Atlanta to pastor his father's church, Ebenezer Baptist.

1962. King meets with President John F. Kennedy to urge support for civil rights.

1963. King leads protests in Birmingham for desegregated department-store facilities and fair hiring. In April, arrested after demonstrating in defiance of a court order. While in jail, King writes "Letter from the Birmingham City Jail." This eloquent letter, later widely circulated, became a classic of the civil-rights movement. On 28 August, 250,000 civil-rights supporters attended the March on Washington. At the Lincoln Memorial, King delivers his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

1964. King's book Why We Can't Wait published. King visits with West Berlin Mayor Willy Brant and Pope Paul VI. On 10 December, King wins Nobel Peace Prize.

1965, January 18. King successfully registers to vote at the Hotel Albert in Selma, Alabama, and is assaulted by James George Robinson of Birmingham. In February, King continues to protest discrimination in voter registration, is arrested and jailed. Meets with President Lyndon B. Johnson and other American leaders about voting rights for African-Americans. On 16-21 March, King and 3,200 people march from Selma to Montgomery.

1968, April 4. King is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, by James Earl Ray. He was thirty-nine.

1986, January 20. First national celebration of King's birthday as a holiday.

My five-week winter break, during which I ran my eleventh marathon, is over. Tomorrow morning I begin my thirtieth semester as a professor at The University of Texas at Arlington. (I taught for a year at Texas A&M University in 1988-1989, while I was ABD.) By mid-May, when the spring semester ends, I'll have completed fifteen years at UTA. It doesn't seem possible. My courses this spring are Ethics (two sections) and Seminar in Research Methods and Philosophical Writing.

I love teaching. It's the perfect complement to writing, which is my true love. I almost wrote "research and writing," but philosophical research consists in thinking, not in poring over books and articles. Believe me, I've done enough of the latter. My other two specialties, law and history, are heavy on research. If you've ever compared philosophical, legal, and historical publications, you know what I mean. Legal and historical publications are heavily documented. Some philosophical publications have only a handful of citations. My philosophical publications are amply documented, perhaps reflecting my legal and historical training.

My spring teaching schedule (Tuesday and Thursday mornings) will put a damper on this blog, but I hope to post at least one substantive item each day, plus the usual newspaper letter, quotation, or link. I'm averaging over 200 site visits a day, with spikes after my Tech Central Station columns appear. Thanks for visiting my blog. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Blogito ergo sum!

If you scroll to the bottom of this blog, you will see a new feature: weather conditions in my neck of the woods. It's been cold in these parts, but hey, I'm a Michigan boy. I can handle it. It makes for good running—and foot-warming, soul-satisfying fires. Sophie and Shelbie like it, too, even though they're Texas girls. If you'd like a weather box such as this on your website, or if you'd like to have the temperature displayed in the tray of your computer screen, click on the weather box in the appropriate place and follow directions. If I can figure it out, so can you.

Here is Andrew Sullivan's take on Iowa.

The following e-mail exchange may be of interest. Here is a letter I received:

Hi; thanks for the blog, I enjoy it immensely. Two questions: 1. You have lumped "virtue ethics" with deontology in this entry. Is that the right thing to do, according to virtue theorists? I used to think so; you might say that an action is ethical because the action conforms to justice, charity, etc. So the action is judged on the type of action it is. I think about it as "action-based" ethics versus purely "consequence-based" ethics. I've read a little further, and people seem to be disagreeing with me; they want virtue ethics to be a third approach, rather than just part of the "action-based" approach. Do you know why? 2. Regarding objective and subjective consequentialism, let me pose the following example. I have a choice between actions A and B. A: certainty of no benefit and no harm. B: 50% chance of $100 benefit, 50% chance of $10 harm. If the benefit and harm were only to myself, then it seems B would be the correct decision, regardless of the actual outcome (given my risk preference; if I were more risk averse than I am, then A could be the best decision). If I lose, I would have made a good decision, but ended up with a bad outcome. Do most consequentialists think otherwise? That the action couldn't be judged right or wrong before seeing the actual outcome? The most persuasive argument for consequentialism for me was Singer's; he argued in "Practical Ethics" that we should use "personal-preference-consequentialism" to make our own decisions involving only ourselves, so it is quite plausible that we should use preference-consequentialism when making decisions affecting others. If Singer was an objective consequentialist, then the argument falls apart; no one, in making personal decisions, should judge the quality of a decision solely by the quality of the actual outcome, should they? Sincerely, X

Here is my reply:

X: Thanks for writing, and thanks for reading my blog. You ask good questions. (1) With regard to virtue ethics, almost everyone views it as a theory of goodness or badness in persons rather than as a theory of rightness or wrongness in actions. Virtue theorists think the emphasis on action is misplaced. They say we should revert to the Greek ideal of evaluating persons, with actions evaluated only secondarily. Ethics is about what sort of people we should be, not about how we should act. As I tell my Ethics students, Aristotle would be dumbfounded if he saw what contemporary moral philosophers are doing. He would say that they are obsessed with action. Recently, Michael Slote has offered a virtue-based theory of rightness. He says that the motive with which one acts is not just a reflection on what sort of person one is, but the determinant of rightness in action. The book I'm referring to is Morals from Motives [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001]. (2) The choice between objective and subjective consequentialism must be based on metaethical considerations. For example, if you think that morality is action-guiding (practical), you will be attracted to subjective consequentialism, because it focuses on what is known at the time of action. If you think that morality is knowledge-conferring (theoretical), you will be attracted to objective consequentialism, because it focuses on the criterion of rightness. Take care. kbj

Keep those cards and letters coming!

I have been deluged with requests (okay, asked once by a single colleague) to predict the outcome of tonight's Iowa Democrat caucus. Here goes:

Howard Dean: 28%
John Kerry: 22%
Richard Gephardt: 22%
John Edwards: 19%

Of one thing I am sure. Whatever the outcome, all four of these candidates will claim victory. Enjoy the show—and then tomorrow night watch President Bush's State of the Union speech to see how small, silly, and insignificant the Democrat candidates appear. President Bush is a man among boys.

To the Editor:

Re "Cancer 'Prevention' Is Big Seller, but Medical Experts Are Divided" (front page, Jan. 11):

In a recent review of decades of research, the Institute of Medicine concluded that we could prevent 100,000 cancer cases a year by 2015 if more people adopted an overall healthy lifestyle. To get there, though, means helping people to get screened, quit smoking, exercise more, eat better and keep their weight in check.

Are there still things we need to learn about cancer prevention? Of course. But not to act on the valuable information that we already have would be a great disservice.

Resources are well spent on cancer prevention efforts, and the benefits reach well beyond cancer. Healthy lifestyles also lower the risk of diabetes, stroke and heart disease.

GRAHAM COLDITZ, M.D.
Director, Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention
Boston, Jan. 14, 2003

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was "well timed," according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied." We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger" and your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"; then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the blackness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

(Martin Luther King Jr, "Letter from the Birmingham City Jail," chap. 29 in The Right Thing to Do: Basic Readings in Moral Philosophy, 3d ed., ed. James Rachels [Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003], 282-9, at 284-5 [letter first published in 1963])

Some of you may have read my recent Tech Central Station column, "How to Argue." A couple of philosophy professors told me that they plan to assign it to their students (as I will mine), so I thought I'd post a clean version of it on my blogs. Click here to read it. There is a permanent link to the essay on the left side of each blog. My other blog, in case you don't know, is Animal Ethics. I try to post at least one item on Animal Ethics each day. I hope you visit both blogs regularly. Please don't stop visiting just because I make you mad. If I weren't making you mad from time to time, I wouldn't be doing my job. I'm sure I make even my mother mad. Right, Mom?

A final remark. Justice as fairness is not a complete contract theory. For it is clear that the contractarian idea can be extended to the choice of more or less an entire ethical system, that is, to a system including principles for all the virtues and not only for justice. Now for the most part I shall consider only principles of justice and others closely related to them; I make no attempt to discuss the virtues in a systematic way. Obviously if justice as fairness succeeds reasonably well, a next step would be to study the more general view suggested by the name "rightness as fairness." But even this wider theory fails to embrace all moral relationships, since it would seem to include only our relations with other persons and to leave out of account how we are to conduct ourselves toward animals and the rest of nature. I do not contend that the contract notion offers a way to approach these questions which are certainly of the first importance; and I shall have to put them aside. We must recognize the limited scope of justice as fairness and of the general type of view that it exemplifies. How far its conclusions must be revised once these other matters are understood cannot be decided in advance.

(John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1999], 15 [first edition published in 1971])

Think of the United States government as a huge all-purpose machine, or vehicle. It can be put to any of a number of uses, depending on the inclinations and skill of the driver. What seems to infuriate Democrats is that they're no longer driving the vehicle. They enjoyed driving for eight years. They went wherever they wanted, often laughing at those who tried to impede their progress. Now they have to watch as President Bush and the Republicans drive the vehicle. They hate it that he's putting the machine to uses they disfavor, such as space exploration, liberation of oppressed peoples, prescription-drug benefits, and marriage counseling.

Some people persist in thinking of Republicans as advocates of small government. That's simply how it appeared when they were out of power. Their aim for eight years was to put impediments in the way of Bill Clinton, who was driving the vehicle. A better way to think of the parties is as contestants for access to the vehicle. Both parties want to spend money. They just want to spend it in different ways, to different ends. And they get it in different ways. Democrats tax; Republicans borrow. The government—the vehicle—is the prize. Get control of it and you go where you want. Democrats had their time in the driver's seat; now it's the Republicans' turn.

My study leads to the conclusion that there are three principal sources of immoral behavior: lack of moral concern—the cause either of morally indifferent or amoral wrongdoing, depending on whether the agent is conscious or unconscious of his own wrongdoing; bad preferences (or values)—the cause of wickedness, whether conceived of as perverse or as preferential wickedness; and lack of rational self-control—the cause of either moral weakness or moral negligence, depending on whether the agent's desires and emotions prevent him from acting on his moral judgment or prevent him from seeing (or judging) that his act is wrong in the first place.

(Ronald D. Milo, Immorality [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984], xi)

Childhood, n. The period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth—two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.

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

A reader forwarded a link to a five-week old essay by Richard Dawkins and R. Elisabeth Cornwell, which I had not seen and probably wouldn't have without his assistance. Here is a sample:

Neuroscientists such as Jay Geidd, of the US National Institutes of Health, have shown that the brain undergoes major reconstruction from the onset of puberty which continues until 20 or beyond: especially the frontal lobes or prefrontal cortex, the very bit that enables us to think in the abstract, weigh moral dilemmas and control our impulses. It's been called the part of the brain that makes us human. Frontal lobe damage causes severe personality changes and sudden emotional outbursts. Patients often can't control inappropriate or antisocial behaviour, can't plan for the future, or see the consequences of their behaviour.

Another paragraph could just as easily be describing liberals as children:

As Geidd says, "[It's] not that the teens are stupid or incapable. . . . It's sort of unfair to expect them to have adult levels of organisational skills or decision-making before their brain is finished being built." In Jensen's words, "[Parents] have to function like a surrogate set of frontal lobes." The child psychologist Charles Nelson of the University of Minnesota says much the same thing, after explaining the erratic and moody teenage behaviour which bedevils even the most adoring parents: "[Adolescents] are capable of very strong emotions and very strong passions, but their prefrontal cortex hasn't caught up with them yet. It's as though they don't have the brakes that allow them to slow those emotions down."

For "children," read "liberals." For "parents," read "conservatives."

President's new toy

So our childish, insensitive, unelected (no, I'm not over it) president has found a new toy in his White House romper room. While a lot of us would love to see him on Mars—"and beyond"—it's too bad he didn't think of Mars before he ransacked our nation's candy store to share with his bloated buddies and sent a generation of potential astronauts sprawling dead in the desert of Iraq. In your worshipful, pathetic Page One photograph of him, he's not "peering into space"—he's squinting because he is so nearsighted.

Charlotte Schofield, Dallas
[italics in original]

I am a speciesist. Speciesism is not merely plausible; it is essential for right conduct, because those who will not make the morally relevant distinctions among species are almost certain, in consequence, to misapprehend their true obligations. The analogy between speciesism and racism is insidious. Every sensitive moral judgment requires that the differing natures of the beings to whom obligations are owed be considered. If all forms of animate life—or vertebrate animal life?—must be treated equally, and if therefore in evaluating a research program the pains of a rodent count equally with the pains of a human, we are forced to conclude (1) that neither humans nor rodents possess rights, or (2) that rodents possess all the rights that humans possess. Both alternatives are absurd. Yet one or the other must be swallowed if the moral equality of all species is to be defended.

(Carl Cohen, "The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research," in Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical Ethics, 6th ed., ed. Ronald Munson [Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2000], 538-44, at 541 [essay first published in 1986])

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry.

In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, we have no theory. I propose to begin the development of a theoretical understanding of bullshit, mainly by providing some tentative and exploratory philosophical analysis. I shall not consider the rhetorical uses and misuses of bullshit. My aim is simply to give a rough account of what bullshit is and how it differs from what it is not—or (putting it somewhat differently) to articulate, more or less sketchily, the structure of its concept.

(Harry G. Frankfurt, "On Bullshit," chap. 10 in his The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988], 117-33, at 117 [essay first published in 1986])

Here are the voting percentages by age for the November 2000 presidential election (taken from this site):

18-24: 36.1%
25-34: 50.5%
35-44: 60.5%
45-54: 66.3%
55-64: 70.1%
65+: 69.6%

I'm glad that only one of every three college-age people votes. People this age don't have enough knowledge or experience to participate in the electoral process. In fact, I'll go further and say that the voting age should be thirty. By this time, a person has finished his or her formal education (including graduate or professional school) and has entered the workforce. By thirty, most people have begun families and become homeowners (or at least renters). This gives them a stake in the community. That should be a prerequisite for taking part in the political process.

Moral, adj. Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right. Having the quality of general expediency.

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

To the Editor:

David Brooks's point that 57 percent of Americans favor a candidate who sees the Iraq war as necessary ("The Bush Democrats," column, Jan. 13) is perhaps the most essential fact of the entire 2004 election.

If the Democratic Party is to avoid committing electoral suicide in November, it needs to nominate a presidential candidate who combines socially progressive domestic programs with a sharp-edged understanding of the legitimate role of military force in an increasingly unstable yet "globalized" world.

Democratic caucus and primary voters would be wise to weigh this basic reality very carefully as they head to the polls.

RICHARD SALTMAN
Dunwoody, Ga., Jan. 13, 2004

A number of critics of my Tech Central Station columns have rejected consequentialism on the ground that the agent cannot or does not know all the consequences of his or her actions, especially on a matter as complex as the war in Iraq. Who knows how things will turn out? The best-case scenario would be peace, democracy, and prosperity throughout the Middle East. The worst-case scenario would be civil war in Iraq and an increase in terrorism throughout the world. There are, of course, many intermediate possibilities.

Consequentialism, according to one of its adherents, is the doctrine that, "morally speaking, consequences are the only things that matter" (Shelly Kagan, Normative Ethics [Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998], 60). More particularly, "an act is morally right (or permissible) if and only if it produces the best consequences" (ibid., 61). To deny consequentialism is to assert not that consequences don't matter, but that they're not the only things that matter. Let us define "deontology" as the denial of consequentialism, which means that everyone is either a consequentialist or a deontologist. Either you believe that consequences are the only things that matter, morally, or you believe that something other than, or in addition to, consequences matters.

What else could matter? To a deontologist, that an act is of a certain type matters. For example, that I have made a promise is a reason for me to keep it, even if keeping it will not have the best consequences. That I have broken the law is a reason for me to be punished, even if punishing me will not have the best consequences. That an act is of the type "killing an innocent person," "breaking a promise," "lying," "torturing," or "cheating" is a morally relevant consideration. To a consequentialist, that an act is of any of these types is morally irrelevant (except as an indicator of what its consequences might be). Acts are evaluated individually, in terms of their consequences. Whether a lie is wrong has nothing to do with its being a lie; it is wrong, if it is, because it does not produce the best consequences.

Consequentialism is a theory of the rightness and wrongness of actions. It is not a theory of the goodness or badness of persons or of the worthiness or unworthiness of motives. Actions, persons, and motives can and should be evaluated separately, by different (but related) criteria. A person who brings about the best consequences acts rightly, but may not be praiseworthy (and may even be blameworthy), if the motive with which the act was performed was something other than universal benevolence. It always makes sense, to a consequentialist, to say that a bad person did the right thing or that a good person did the wrong thing, or that so-and-so did the right thing for the wrong reason (motive) or the wrong thing for the right reason (motive).

Consequentialism comes in two varieties: objective and subjective. Objective consequentialism evaluates actions by their actual consequences. Subjective consequentialism evaluates actions by their expected consequences. This is a distinction some of the critics of consequentialism fail to grasp. They assume subjective consequentialism, find fault with it, and conclude that consequentialism is unacceptable. But most consequentialists are objective consequentialists. Whether the war in Iraq was right, according to objective consequentialism, depends on its actual consequences. That we do not yet know these consequences just means that we do not yet know whether the war was right.

This does not prevent us from evaluating President Bush, who instigated the war in Iraq. We can evaluate him, morally, by asking what he knew when he acted. A rational consequentialist agent assigns probabilities to the various outcomes and maximizes expected benefit. Not all expectations are realized, of course, so it's possible for an act to be rational but wrong (just as it's possible for an act to be irrational but right).

The alternative to objective consequentialism is subjective consequentialism. According to this view, an act is right (not merely rational) when it maximizes expected benefits. One virtue of this type of consequentialism is that it allows evaluation of actions at the time they are performed. One vice is that it forces us to say that certain actions are right even though, in fact, they produced less than the best consequences. What we expect to turn out doesn't always turn out, after all.

To return to the war in Iraq, an objective consequentialist says that it is too early to tell whether the war was right, but that we can and should evaluate President Bush in light of what he knew at the time he made the decision to go to war. We may conclude that he acted rationally, in the sense that he did what looked like it would produce the best results, or that he acted irrationally. A subjective consequentialist says that it is not too early to tell whether the act was right. Whether it was right depends on whether "all the available evidence supported the belief that [it] would have the best results" (ibid., 65).

What the foregoing shows is that what one says about the war in Iraq—how one evaluates it—depends on one's moral theory. Consequentialism should not be dismissed on the ground that the agent cannot or does not know all the consequences of his or her actions. Not all versions of consequentialism require such knowledge. It should also be pointed out that this is not a special problem for consequentialism. Recall that consequentialism is the view that, morally speaking, consequences are the only things that matter. The denial of this is not the view that consequences are irrelevant, but that they are not the only things that matter. Any theory that takes consequences into account—which is almost every theory, including those I have characterized as deontological—must decide between objective and subjective versions.

(By the way, I am not a consequentialist. I am a deontologist. See my recent essay "Deontological Egoism." I am defending consequentialism from what I believe to be an unfair attack.)

I knew that link would draw you out. I read somewhere that more than half of all baseball fans think Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame. [A recent survey of Major League players shows that an overwhelming majority (74.2%) believe Pete should be in the Hall. (See here; scroll down to question 15.) (See also here.)] I assume it's for the same reason I believe he should be in the Hall: He was a wonderful player, one of the best ever. A Hall without Pete is pointless. We don't want the Hall to be a pantheon of saints. In fact, we want our baseball heroes to be just a bit bad, just a little over the edge. I don't know the mechanics of how it will happen, but if fans orchestrate a boycott, it will get people's attention. It could snowball, with boycotts, say, every Friday night throughout the season. The owners will demand that the commissioner put Pete in the Hall. Money talks. The game belongs to the fans, right? Baseball writers should never have had a say in Hall selection. If you read the baseball writers in the DMN [Dallas Morning News], for example, you'll see that they're vain, envious idiots. They hate Alex Rodriguez because he makes so much money. What the hell does that have to do with anything?

Keith, Are you serious? Do you think the fans who[m] Pete [Rose] repeatedly lied to for 14 years are going to boycott the game because he could hit a baseball and slid headfirst? There is also the matter that now they know he bet on baseball and most don't think he's come clean yet. I'm sure some feel as you do but do you really believe the numbers are large enough now to have any impact whatsoever? Also, don't you have a linkage problem? If and when he gets reinstated, how do you orchestrate his election to the Hall? Of course, the Hall's criteria need to be changed so that character isn't an issue. Is a fan boycott going to affect the [baseball] writers who all have made up their mind one way or the other? It ain't going to happen right away, at least if the opinion polls are any guide and his chances of election with the VC [Veteran's Committee] are slim and none at present. I think as time goes by and folks like [Bob] Feller pass on to the maker Rose's chances will improve. By the way, [Mike] Schmidt, Rose's great advocate, has little or no influence with the Hall of Famers because he hasn't managed to make one induction weekend since his own induction in '95. By the way a friend sent me a positive column about Rose and his outreach to a kid during his playing days which I'd be happy to send you if you give me your mailing address.

[T]he reason contemporary philosophers are not listened to is that they often are not saying anything—at least they are not saying anything of even the merest practical application or importance. Indeed, that most recent philosophy is of no practical consequence seems to be something to boast about of late.

(Edward Regis Jr., "The Layman and the Abdication of Philosophers," Metaphilosophy 6 [January 1975]: 117-26, at 122)

Fans must organize. Designate certain days for a boycott of Major League games. Choose days on which every team plays. When attendance falls to twenty or forty percent of what it would otherwise be, the commissioner and the owners will get the message. Organizing should be easy, now that we have the Internet.

To the Editor:

As Maureen Dowd points out (column, Jan. 15), the time has come for Judith Steinberg Dean to emerge from her own career to be with her husband in his campaign for the presidency.

To have one's partner by one's side is of prime importance to the candidate. It is also important to many voters.

My husband, Jonathan B. Bingham, a New York Democrat, who died in 1986, was elected to Congress nine times. Our lives became inextricably braided, with his career taking precedence during our marriage's middle years, and with my career, as an author and playwright, taking precedence during the later ones.

There are two kinds of career: those, like science, in which the spouse's input is marginal, if not irrelevant; and those, like politics and diplomacy, in which the spouse's input may be crucial.

Dr. Dean switched from the first to the second kind, and it's no wonder that his wife wasn't ready to abandon her patients.

But I hope that at least for the next half-year, she will shift her priorities. Whether her husband wins or loses, I predict on the basis of experience that neither of them will regret it.

JUNE BINGHAM
Bronx, Jan. 15, 2004

To the Editor:

What does Maureen Dowd find "startling" about the photograph of Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean, in which, Ms. Dowd writes, the wife of the presidential candidate appears "uncoiffed, unadorned, unstyled and unconcerned about not being at her husband's side" (column, Jan. 15)?

Is it really so perplexing that Dr. Steinberg would prefer healing the sick to taking part in a media carnival?

ANDY BUCK
Brooklyn, Jan. 15, 2004

Vote, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

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

Several readers are incredulous that I voted for—and plan to vote for—Ralph Nader. Here's a sample, which came in overnight:

Keith: The guy who wrote that piece has a point. No matter how real, how authentic you find Nader you could not possibly bring yourself to vote for him if you held true to your principles. I recall his candidacy quite vividly and though I also found him to be quite authentic in that I believed that he believed in everything he said, there was nothing even remotely close to any conservative principles. Nader was in fact further to the left of Gore and that is saying something. So how do you explain this cavity? I am sure there are many true believing honest politicians on both sides, but that doesn't mean both sides are right.

Let me explain. I live in Texas. The person who gets the most votes in this state gets all of Texas's electoral votes. Here's how things turned out in 2000:

George W. Bush: 3,796,850 votes
Al Gore: 2,429,329 votes
Ralph Nader: 137,716 votes

Bush won by 1,367,521 votes. Suppose I had voted for Bush rather than Nader. Then Bush would have won by 1,367,522 votes. My vote had no effect on the outcome. It affected only the final digit of the vote total. Nor was there any chance, antecedently, that it would affect the outcome. So let's get that behind us.

But how could I vote for Nader? Aren't I a conservative? Actually, I wouldn't have called myself a conservative three years ago. I had conservative values, to be sure, but it was only in the past year or so that I self-consciously classified myself, and began to refer to myself, as a conservative. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that I shared more values with Bush than with Nader. (Gore was always a nonstarter for me. I don't think he's competent to be a dog catcher, much less leader of a great nation.) How could I vote for Nader? Isn't that irrational or self-defeating?

No. There are many reasons to vote for a person. Two obvious reasons are (1) that you agree with his or her principles and policies and (2) that you admire his or her character. Admittedly, I disagree with Nader on many important principles and policy matters. His vision of a just world differs significantly from mine. But I admire him personally. Why should this not count for something? I admire Nader because of his selflessness. Like Mother Teresa, he has devoted his life to causes larger than himself. He is a secular saint. (See here.) He has integrity. He stands for something. How refreshing that is, especially after eight years of Bill Clinton!

It might be objected that I should vote for principles and policies and not for persons. But why? That, and not my voting record, is what needs to be justified. Perhaps one day I'll get a chance to vote for someone who's as personally admirable as Ralph Nader and whose principles and policies are more nearly in line with mine. Until that happens, I'll have to decide what's more important: the person or the principles/policies.

Aha, you say. Aren't you a moral vegetarian? You said your vote doesn't matter, but your decision not to eat meat doesn't matter, either. Just as many animals will be raised and killed whether you eat animal flesh or not. If moral vegetarianism is justified in spite of its inefficaciousness, then so is a vote for the person who embodies your principles and policies. In both cases, you are doing what you think is right, independently of whether you think it will make a difference.

I beg to differ. Over the course of a lifetime, my decision not to eat meat will result in lives saved (even if just one cow) and in suffering avoided. My decision to vote for Ralph Nader every four years, even if I did it for the rest of my life, would not get him elected or prevent the election of someone whose values I share. The decision not to eat meat is accumulative (aggregative); the decision to vote for one candidate rather than another every four years is not. Relevant disanalogy.

Paul Krugman says, in today's New York Times column (see here), that all of the Democrat candidates for president are "moderate" (indeed, "quite moderate") and that President Bush is "a radical." I guess from where he sits on the lunatic left, that's how things appear. By the way, now that Howard Dean is imploding, Krugman is reaching out to Wesley Clark. It sounds to me like Krugman is campaigning for a cabinet position, which is, of course, another reason (a sufficient reason) to vote against the Democrat nominee.

This essay by George McGovern is a few months old, but worth reading.

Arguments can be grouped under two headings: arguments for or against the market on grounds of efficiency, and arguments on moral grounds. In many cases this rough distinction is unproblematic. Some advocates of the market contend, for example, that only this form of social organization is compatible with respect for certain alleged natural rights, such as a right to private property or a right against coercion. Others make the case for the market solely on the grounds that it allocates resources and distributes products most efficiently, eschewing any attempt to establish its moral superiority. Evidently the two types of arguments can point in opposite directions. It is quite consistent to argue that the market is so morally defective that it ought to be reformed or even abandoned, even if doing so would result in a loss of efficiency. Similarly, one may acknowledge moral deficiencies of the market, and nonetheless consistently conclude that they are not so grave as to require us to forgo its efficiency in favor of a less efficient, but morally preferable system. We shall see, however, that many parties to the debate assert or assume a happy congruence between efficiency and moral values.

(Allen Buchanan, Ethics, Efficiency, and the Market [Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985], 3-4 [italics in original])

Al Gore's defeat by George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election is evidence for the existence of a loving, just, miracle-working deity. See here.

Andrew Sullivan has joined the crowd of nonthinkers who decry budget deficits on the ground that they are an imposition on future generations. Here's what he wrote today:

LET THE KIDS PAY FOR IT: I'm talking about this $170 billion foray into space. After all, the next generation will be paying for a collapsed social security system, a bankrupted Medicare program, soaring interest on the public debt, as well as coughing up far higher taxes to keep some semblance of a government in operation. But, hey, the president needed another major distraction the week before the Iowa caucuses, and since he won't be around to pick up the bill, why the hell not? Deficits don't matter, after all. And what's a few hundred billion dollars over the next few decades anyway? Chickenfeed for the big and bigger government now championed by the Republicans. This space initiative is, for me, the last fiscal straw. There comes a point at which the excuses for fiscal recklessness run out. The president campaigned in favor of the responsibility ethic. He has governed—in terms of guarding the nation's finances—according to the motto: "If it feels good, do it." I give up. Can't they even pretend to give a damn?

The deficit is a legitimate issue, one that should concern all of us. But it should be debated forthrightly, on its merits, not by appealing to pity for future generations. If we're going to bring future generations into the discussion, we must address benefits as well as costs. Think of the wonderful world handed on a platter to every newborn. No child paid for libraries, highways, medicines, or agricultural technology, but every child benefits significantly from these things. The issue is not whether future generations will bear certain costs, but whether the costs they bear will exceed the benefits they receive. I've seen nothing to indicate that they will.

To the Editor:

Re "Bush Sought to Oust Hussein From Start, Ex-Official Says" (news article, Jan. 12):

Why should Paul H. O'Neill, the former Treasury secretary, or anyone else be surprised that President Bush wanted to remove Saddam Hussein long before 9/11? Regime change in Iraq was the desire of the American government before Mr. Bush took office. He simply followed through where Bill Clinton and the United Nations did not.

As for Mr. O'Neill's (and others') distaste for our "really huge leap" to pre-emption, someone should tell him that we didn't attack an innocent country. We removed a brutal dictator who had it coming. We freed 25 million people and are installing representative government. If that's pre-emption, let's have more of it around the world.

MARK R. GODBURN
Great Barrington, Mass., Jan. 12, 2004

Alert readers will have noticed the absence of the Amazon.com box to the left, the one that allows readers to donate money. You're probably wondering (1) why I put it on my blog, (2) how much money it brought in, and (3) why it's gone.

1. I put it on my blog because I saw that others had done the same and thought it might put money into my coffer. My reason for keeping this blog has nothing to do with money. Anyone who thinks it does doesn't know me. I kept a journal for fifteen years. Did that have anything to do with money? I have a voluminous correspondence. Does that have anything to do with money? I keep this blog because I love to write. But hey, if people are willing to give me money for doing something I love, I'll take it! I could donate it to the North Texas Humane Society, for example. That I collect money doesn't mean that I must spend it on myself.

2. How much money did the box bring in? One dollar. I'm serious! And that dollar was donated by my mother! I asked her to make a donation to see whether it worked. It did. So, in more than two months of blogging, I "earned" one dollar. Thanks, Mom! Actually, Amazon.com hasn't deposited the dollar in my checking account yet, so I may never see it. I wonder how much money other bloggers receive. Maybe nobody is receiving any. In a way, that's good. Blogging should be done for the love of it, not for pecuniary gain. I'm not criticizing others, just stating an ideal.

3. As for why the box is gone, I came to the conclusion that I would never receive (m)any donations, so if I kept the box on my blog, I would be giving Amazon.com free advertising (not to mention cluttering up my blog). Also, I always felt funny about begging for money on this site. Now I feel better. Amazon.com got a lot of free advertising from me. I hope Jeff Bezos appreciates it.

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

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

I must admit you have me confused. You write an absolutely wonderful TCS article My Journey to Conservatism and then a few days later state you are going to vote for Ralph Nader if he runs. You almost nonchalantly mention that he isn't running under the Green Party tag even though the only reason he isn't is because they don't pick their candidate until June which he thinks is too late. Have you actually read the Green Party platform? I would say no judging by your comments on your blog. They are for abortion on demand, redistribution of wealth, sustained economic theory (a quaint new term for socialist ideals), would turn us into a direct democracy (though we are already well on our way) which in my view is just a step up from fascism and communism. I could go on forever, they want 30 hour work weeks but want employees paid for 40 still, they want Universal healthcare and more money for education which anyone without blinders on knows that isn't the problem since we spend more on education then any other industrialized country in the world yet we are still mid pack in education across the board. Is this the kind of world you want to live in? Is this where your journey to conservatism has led you? I would think anyone claiming they love liberty, freedom and personal responsibility would oppose this party with their last breath, but I guess I'm wrong if you're going to vote for Nader. I would suggest you take a refresher course and read the Greens platform because it matters not what party Nader runs under he is still a Green.

I was just watching Scarborough Country on MSNBC. The guests were U.S. Representative Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) and a Republican strategist named Jack. (I forget his last name.) Sanchez has thrown her support to Howard Dean, so Jack asked whether she agrees with Dean that Americans are no safer as a result of Saddam Hussein's removal from power. She rambled on and on about Dean, but didn't answer the question. It was clear that she was avoiding it. When she stopped talking, Jack asked again. Sanchez replied that we're not safe. But of course we're not safe. Was the toppling of one Middle Eastern tyrant supposed to make us safe? Is there any single thing that anyone, even Howard Dean, can do to make us safe? The question is whether we're safer. Only an idiot (or a Bush-hater) could answer that question in the negative.

Addendum: Adam Gilbert sent a link to the transcript of this Scarborough Country episode. (See here.) The Republican Strategist is Jack Burkman. The exchange between Sanchez and Burkman occurs in the second half of the transcript, so scroll down. I think you'll enjoy it. (Thanks for the link, Adam.)

A presumption of those who urge the boycott of meat on moral grounds is that, if they can obtain our agreement that eating meat is wrong, we shall change our diet accordingly. They presume, that is, that we take morality seriously and so are concerned to behave according to our moral beliefs. For it is not merely a change in our views about meat-eating but also a change in our diet or eating practices which they seek.

The overwhelming majority of us not only eat meat but also very much enjoy it; if our present diet is to be changed, therefore, the case for changing it is going to have to be powerful enough to overcome our great love of meat dishes. This does not entail that the case in question will be a moral one; but unless we are in some way compelled to become vegetarians, it is difficult to think of a more powerful case than a moral one to effect the desired change, given that this case must breast the current of our enormous liking for meat. Obviously, the power of such a case, as I have said, depends upon our taking morality seriously, since only if we do so can moral claims hope to overcome our love of meat.

Importantly, the aim of those who urge the boycott of meat on moral grounds, of, that is, moral vegetarians, is not necessarily to rid us of our liking of meat (though doubtless they hope this will come in time) but to have us abstain from meat, even if we persist in liking it.

(R. G. Frey, Rights, Killing, and Suffering: Moral Vegetarianism and Applied Ethics [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983], 3-4)

1. Martha Stewart's popularity.

2. Why people want to keep wild animals as pets.

3. Antipathy to guns.

4. How anyone could watch golf or soccer.

5. Deconstruction.

Ralph Nader, one of my heroes, is considering another run for president, although probably not on the Green Party ticket. (See here.) I'm sure I'll vote for him for a third consecutive time. Run, Ralph, run!

That the social sciences are in their infancy has come to be a platitude amongst writers of textbooks on the subject. They will argue that this is because the social sciences have been slow to emulate the natural sciences and emancipate themselves from the dead hand of philosophy; that there was a time when there was no clear distinction between philosophy and natural science; but that owing to the transformation of this state of affairs round about the seventeenth century natural science has made great bounds ever since. But, we are told, this revolution has not yet taken place in the social sciences, or at least it is only now in process of taking place. Perhaps social science has not yet found its Newton but the conditions are being created in which such a genius could arise. But above all, it is urged, we must follow the methods of natural science rather than those of philosophy if we are to make any significant progress.

I propose, in this monograph, to attack such a conception of the relation between the social studies, philosophy and the natural sciences. But it should not be assumed on that account that what I have to say must be ranked with those reactionary anti-scientific movements, aiming to put the clock back, which have appeared and flourished in certain quarters since science began. My only aim is to make sure that the clock is telling the right time, whatever it may prove to be. Philosophy, for reasons which may be made more apparent subsequently, has no business to be anti-scientific: if it tries to be so it will succeed only in making itself look ridiculous. Such attacks are as distasteful and undignified as they are useless and unphilosophical. But equally, and for the same reasons, philosophy must be on its guard against the extra-scientific pretensions of science. Since science is one of the chief shibboleths of the present age this is bound to make the philosopher unpopular; he is likely to meet a similar reaction to that met by someone who criticizes the monarchy. But the day when philosophy becomes a popular subject is the day for the philosopher to consider where he took the wrong turning.

(Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy, 2d ed [Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1990 (1st ed. 1958)], 1-2 [italics in original])

Don Marquis's essay "Why Abortion Is Immoral" (The Journal of Philosophy 86 [April 1989]: 183-202) is a beautiful piece of philosophy, but one thing he does puzzles me. He uses the labels "anti-abortion" and "pro-choice" to describe the two positions he discusses. What puzzles me is that only the second label is self-chosen. People in what Marquis calls the "anti-abortion" camp typically describe themselves as "pro-life," not "anti-abortion"; yet, people in what Marquis calls the "pro-choice" camp typically describe themselves as "pro-choice." He lets one camp, but not the other, label itself.

The puzzle would be easily solved if Marquis were arguing that abortion is morally permissible. We could chalk it up to bias. Marquis (we might conclude) is using a favorable label for those with whom he agrees and an unfavorable label for those with whom he disagrees. This happens all the time in politics. That it happens all the time doesn't make it acceptable, of course, and surely philosophers should not use rhetoric to advantage.

Let's back up. In general, is it better to be for something ("pro") or against it ("anti")? Don't say that it depends on what you're for or against. Any position can be characterized as for something or against something. If I'm for vegetarianism, then I'm against meat-eating. I could call myself pro-vegetarian or anti-meat-eating. Which am I likely to choose? I submit that, other things being equal, people would rather be for something than against something. So there's a built-in preference for "pro" as against "anti." "Pro" is positive, optimistic, and progressive; "anti" is negative, pessimistic, and regressive.

This explains (in part) why those in the "anti-abortion" camp prefer the label "pro-life." It describes what they're for, not what they're against. If I'm right about this, then simple fairness would dictate that each camp be labeled with "pro" rather than "anti." Call them "pro-life" and "pro-choice." If nothing else, this allows the camps to choose their labels. There's something fair about that.

But fairness isn't the only value. Journalists, for example, want to be accurate as well as fair. Are the labels accurate? One label that is clearly inaccurate is "pro-abortion," for it implies that those to whom the label is applied think abortion a good thing. I don't know of anyone who thinks that abortion is a good thing. Didn't Bill Clinton, who defended abortion rights, say that he wanted abortion to be "safe, legal, and rare"? Why would he want abortion to be rare if he thought it was a good thing? It's a bad thing. But it ought to be legal nonetheless (so the thinking goes).

People such as Bill Clinton call themselves "pro-choice," since what they're in favor of is not abortion but the right to choose an abortion (without fear of prosecution).

Is "pro-life" an accurate label? I've heard it said, mockingly, that not all people who are "pro-life" are pro-life, for some of them (perhaps many or most of them) support capital punishment. This is unfair. The term "pro-life" is used almost exclusively in the context of abortion, so it clearly refers to the life of the (innocent) fetus, not to that of a convicted murderer. Calling oneself pro-life is saying that one is in favor of protecting the fetus's life as against the woman (and her accomplices) who would kill it. I believe the label is accurate.

To return to the puzzle, why would Marquis use the terms "anti-abortion" and "pro-choice" when only the latter is self-chosen and the former is no more accurate than "pro-life"? We've ruled out bias, since Marquis's argument will appeal to the "anti-abortionists" rather than the "pro-choicers." It may simply be that he didn't think about the labels. But he should have. Another explanation is that he tried not to alienate his audience. His audience consists of people who don't think abortion is immoral. He's trying to persuade them that it is. The last thing he would want to do is rile up his audience by using a label they disclaim, such as "pro-abortion." Better to use their chosen label, "pro-choice."

But this explains why he used "pro-choice" rather than "pro-abortion." It doesn't explain why he used "anti-abortion" rather than "pro-life." He seems to have gone out of his way to antagonize so-called pro-lifers! Perhaps this is his way of distancing himself from them and from their arguments. He does say, early in the essay, that "most philosophers affiliated with secular institutions of higher education believe that the anti-abortion position is either a symptom of irrational religious dogma or a conclusion generated by seriously confused philosophical argument." Perhaps using a disfavored label is his way of saying, "Don't lump me in with these wackos; I'm making a respectable secular argument."

I remain puzzled.

Addendum: A reader (a friend from my Tucson days) says that "pro-life" is unacceptable because it implies, falsely, that the other side is anti-life. But this argument cuts both ways. "Anti-abortion" would then be unacceptable because it implies, falsely, that the other side is pro-abortion. This can't explain why Marquis used asymmetrical labels.

Some readers may take offense at my use of 'he' to denote the arbitrary person. Let me assure these readers that I share their goal of inclusiveness in language and differ with them only about the means to that goal. My view is that traditional usage in this case makes English more inclusive, not less.

The rule governing traditional usage is that when 'he' denotes the arbitrary person, its gender is purely grammatical, not semantic, and hence carries no implications as to the referent's sex. So understood, 'he' no more denotes a man, because of being masculine, than the German 'die Person' or the French 'la personne' denote a woman, because of being feminine.

The alternative practices that are currently recommended as inclusive—such as saying 'he or she' or alternating 'he' with 'she'—actually threaten to rob the language of its capacity, for gender-neutral reference to persons. These practices imply that 'he' by itself excludes women; which implies that the grammatical and semantic gender of English pronouns are inseparable; which implies that a speaker of English cannot refer pronomially to the arbitrary person at all, but only to the arbitrary woman or man. If this view ever comes to govern English usage, the language will become quite awkward for anyone who wishes to discuss persons in abstraction from their sex.

This book is about agency, which is an important aspect of personhood. The concepts of agency and personhood do not just include both genders; they are blind to the question of gender altogether. I therefore feel compelled, in discussing agents and persons, to use the only personal pronoun in English that is similarly gender-blind—namely, 'he'.

I am not insensitive to the drawbacks of this usage. Obviously, the use of 'he' as the genderless pronoun entails the risk that the word will be misunderstood, on occasion, as semantically masculine. Furthermore, the choice of 'he' as the genderless pronoun may be traceable to some prejudice on the part of our linguistic ancestors, such as a belief that the classic specimen of humanity, is male. I regret both of these possibilities, but I think that their unpleasantness is outweighed by the value of having a generally recognized means for referring to the arbitrary person. I comfort myself with the thought that we manage to live with many other words that are equally flawed, both by ambiguity and by politically suspect etymology.

(J. David Velleman, Practical Reflection [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989], 4 n. 1)

Radicalism, n. The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the affairs of to-day.

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

1. You have to work hard to be poor in this land of opportunity.

2. Baseball is the greatest sport ever invented.

3. Nobody needs a tattoo.

4. Biology, not physics, is the master science.

5. If there is an afterlife, it is reserved for vegetarians.

My big brother is forty-nine today. It doesn't seem possible. Just yesterday we were making paths through the woods, and the day before that we were swimming in the ponds on Rupprecht Road (without Mom's knowledge or permission!), and the day before that we were exploring the marshes near our house in Metamora. It must have been hard being an oldest child. Everything had to be learned from scratch, through trial and error. For me, the second-born, it was easy. Just emulate Glenn. I always looked up to him, always admired him, always respected him, always feared him, and always loved him, even though I never told him these things. I hope he knew. I hope he knows. Happy birthday, big brother!

Texas A&M University has decided (see here) to exclude not only race but family connection in its undergraduate admissions. I have no problem with that, but I hope the reason for excluding family connection was not that consistency required it. I argued recently (see here) that there are reasons for excluding race that do not apply to family connection. In other words, there's a relevant difference between race and family connection that would justify treating them differently.

You needn't be conservative to think that the war in Iraq was justified. All you need is intelligence and compassion. See here.

The basic idea behind the distinction between the scientific and the ethical, expressed in terms of convergence, is very simple. In a scientific inquiry there should ideally be convergence on an answer, where the best explanation of the convergence involves the idea that the answer represents how things are; in the area of the ethical, at least at a high level of generality, there is no such coherent hope. The distinction does not turn on any difference in whether convergence will actually occur, and it is important that this is not what the argument is about. It might well turn out that there will be convergence in ethical outlook, at least among human beings. The point of the contrast is that, even if this happens, it will not be correct to think it has come about because convergence has been guided by how things actually are, whereas convergence in the sciences might be explained in that way if it does happen. This means, among other things, that we understand differently in the two cases the existence of convergence or, alternatively, its failure to come about.

(Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985], 136)

I don't think I'm particularly timid, but this man frightens me. Twice a week. His hatred of President Bush is palpable. I thank my lucky stars that the American people, with their good sense, stand between him and power.

U.S. 292,367,592
World 6,341,684,358

00:04 EST Jan 13, 2004

Only 4.6% of the people in the world live in the United States. Put differently, for every American, there are 20.6 nonAmericans.

A reader forwarded a link to a survey of blogs. See here. Only one percent of blogs are created by people in their forties, like me. Most people that age are probably busy with children (or grandchildren).

Bluish can of steel
What promise do you hold?
Salty flesh so ripe

Can of metal, slick
Soft center, so cool, moistening
I yearn for your salt

Twist, pull the sharp lid
Jerks and cuts me deeply but
Spam, aah, my poultice

Silent former pig
One communal awareness
Myriad pink bricks

Clad in metal, proud
No mere salt curing for you
You are not bacon

And who dares mock Spam?
You? you? you are not worthy
Of one rich pink fleck

Like some spongy rock
A granite, my piece of Spam
Sunlight on my plate

Little slab of meat
In a wash of clear jelly
Now I heat the pan

Oh tin of pink meat
I ponder what you may be:
Sphincter, ear or snout?

In the cool morning
I fry up a slab of Spam
A dog barks next door

Pink tender morsel
Glistening with salty gel
What the hell is it?

Ears, snouts and innards
A homogeneous mass
Pass another slice

Old man seeks doctor
"I eat Spam daily," he says.
Angioplasty

Hardly natural
Tortured shape, elastic food
A small pink coffin

Pink beefy temptress
I can no longer remain
Vegetarian

Dog, n. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship. This Divine Being in some of his smaller and silkier incarnations, takes, in the affection of Woman, the place to which there is no human male aspirant. The Dog is a survival—an anachronism. He toils not, neither does he spin, yet Solomon in all his glory never lay upon a door-mat all day long, sun-soaked and fly-fed and fat, while his master worked for the means wherewith to purchase an idle wag of the Solomonic tail, seasoned with a look of tolerant recognition.

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

To the Editor:

"Young Doctors and Wish Lists: No Weekend Calls, No Beepers" (front page, Jan. 7) discusses the pragmatic trend among medical residents, half of them women, who are choosing specialties with what is called a "controllable lifestyle."

One doctor, a woman, is quoted as saying: "I want to have a family. And when you work 80 or 90 hours a week, you can't even take care of yourself."

If only more men would now wake up and recognize that grueling, alienating workweeks serve neither a profession, patients, clients, the production of well-made products, nor families.

T. GARY MITCHELL
Princeton, N.J., Jan. 7, 2004

Philosophy is essentially a hairsplitting form of religion; and this will always alienate people who dislike finding split hairs in their religion.

(Richard Robinson, An Atheist's Values [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964], 12)

What do I mean when I say that feminism has harmed women? Let's begin with the concept of harm. Following Joel Feinberg, I understand harm as a wrongful (i.e., right-violating) setback to interest. Everyone has an interest in life, liberty, bodily integrity, property, and reputation. These are the bases of happiness, which everyone seeks. If I take your life, I set back your interest not only in living but in everything that presupposes life, which is of course everything else. If I say false and disparaging things about you, I set back your interest in your (good) reputation.

One way in which feminism has harmed women is by telling them that they can "have it all." Usually this means having both a fulfilling, remunerative career and an emotionally rich, fulfilling family life. It is said that men have always been able to have both of these things, whereas women have always had to choose one. This (it is said) is unfair. Why should women have to make a choice that men don't have to make? Why should men have it all while women have only part of it?

For a long time, I bought into this way of thinking. I believed that women were being shafted. But now I think otherwise. Is it true that men have always been able to have both a fulfilling career and a rich, fulfilling family life? No. Men, too, have had to choose one. Most men choose the career. Does this prevent them from having children? No. But for most men, it prevents them from being an engaged, hands-on father. Men who are working full-time aren't able to spend as much time as they would like with their children: teaching them, caring for them, imparting values to them, doing things with them.

In truth, nobody can "have it all." What a strange concept, when you think about it! There are only twenty-four hours in each day. Everyone's energy and resources are limited. Doing one thing precludes the doing of other things. (Economists call this "opportunity cost.") I'm sure you've had the sensation, as I have, of doing too many things at once, or of having too many demands on your time. What happens? You do some of the things, perhaps all of the things, poorly. You become a jack of all trades and a master of none. Is that what feminism wants for women: a life with both a career and a family life, but in which neither is done well? That is a recipe for disaster.

Many men are coming to see the costs of having a demanding, fulfilling, remunerative career; or rather, they're no longer willing to bear the costs. I know men who are willing to undertake less-demanding careers in order to be able to spend time with their children. I salute this. It is a recognition that one cannot have it all. It is a way of prioritizing. Unfortunately, not every occupation makes this possible. Men are still forced to choose, in many cases, between work and family.

A whole generation of women has been told by feminists that they can have it all. What has this done to them? It has raised their expectations, for one thing. When they find that juggling a career and family life is difficult, they blame men—or society generally. But men are in the same predicament. The only difference is that nobody—no "masculist" movement—told men that they can "have it all." Men accepted their fate without complaint. Every boy takes it for granted that he will not be a hands-on father, in large part because he didn't have one.

No discussion of happiness can be complete without consulting biology. Men and women, for biological reasons, have different attitudes toward hands-on parenting. Women are nurturers and men are providers. This doesn't mean that no woman wants a career and that no man wants a rich, fulfilling family life. It describes tendencies. Men are primed to find satisfaction in providing for their families. Women are primed to find satisfaction in nurturing their children. By inducing women to undertake careers that interfere with their family lives, feminism thwarts a powerful biological urge. This, in turn, generates frustration, unhappiness, and, when conjoined with the belief that men are responsible for the unhappiness (as feminism preaches), anger and resentment.

Much has been written about powerful but childless women (see here, for example) and about the difficulty for women of juggling career and family (the supermom phenomenon). I will simply gesture to that literature here. My point is that if there is blame to be assigned, a large part of it should go to feminism. Feminism has lied to women and, by raising their expectations, wrongfully set back their interest in happiness. It has told women that men have it all and that, to be truly equal with men, they should have it all as well.

Men have not had it all; nor can women. It's a pipe dream. The sooner women realize this, the better off they will be, for they will develop more realistic and reasonable goals. I take heart from the fact that young women today (including many of my students) are less likely than their mothers to describe themselves as feminists. I believe they grasp the one-sidedness of feminism.

Beltway pundits are in a dither about former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's "revelation," in a book he's promoting, that the Bush administration decided before the attacks of 9-11 to topple Saddam Hussein. Am I missing something? Regime change was discussed during the Clinton administration. If President Bush had no plan to deal with Hussein at the time he took office in January 2001, he would be criticized for, well, not having a plan. The man can't win. All the attacks of 9-11 did is crystallize the danger Americans face from Middle Eastern tyrants and terrorists. As I have argued ad nauseam in my Tech Central Station columns (see here, for example) and in this blog, there were ample grounds for removing Saddam Hussein from power. The humanitarian ground alone was sufficient. The attacks of 9-11 did not create those grounds. All the attacks did is demonstrate the urgency of showing tyrants and terrorists that the United States means business.

Richard Allen Posner, from whom I have learned so much for so long, is sixty-five years old today. Happy birthday! Here is Judge Posner's diary from Slate, an online publication.

I've just finished replying to those who wrote to me about my Tech Central Station column "My Journey to Conservatism." There must have been over a hundred letters. One writer thought it was wonderful satire, which put a smile on my face. Many people said that their experiences mirrored mine. Some asked for permission (which I granted) to share the essay with others, including their children. Some said they were proud that their children were already conservative. But if you read my column carefully, you'll see that I frown on this. Young people should be liberal. Everyone should be both a liberal and a conservative at some point in his or her life. Getting inside an ideology and probing around in it is the best way to learn it. Learn liberalism when you're young, because, in all likelihood, you'll be conservative by the age of forty, when life's experiences have deepened (and broadened) your understanding.

I hope all of you who asked for Don Marquis's abortion essay are able to find it. (See here.) It's worth the effort and expense. I apologize again for making a promise I couldn't keep. I hope you understand.

Commitment to one central claim unites all forms of anarchist political philosophy: all existing states are illegitimate. I take this thesis to be an essential, if not the defining, element of anarchism. Anarchist commitments to this thesis are usually motivated by prior commitments to voluntarism (to the great moral importance of autonomy or free choice or self-determination, etc.), with existing states then characterized as fundamentally nonvoluntary or coercive; to egalitarianism (to equal rights or equal opportunities or equal access to basic goods, etc.), with existing states then characterized as fundamentally hierarchical, sexist, classist, or otherwise inegalitarian; to the values of community (to the great moral importance of shared ends or feelings of solidarity or sympathy, etc.), with existing states then characterized as alienating or divisive; or to some combination of these positions. Anarchist theories may also be motivated by the perception of inadequacies in all purported defenses of state legitimacy without the necessity of their making any prior commitment to particular values (which the state is seen as frustrating). That is, some anarchisms are driven by a general skepticism about the possibility of providing any argument that shows some or all existing states to be legitimate—a skepticism perhaps taken to be justified simply by the systematic failure of political philosophy to this point to produce any good argument of this sort.

Philosophical anarchism, as a form of anarchism, is of course committed to the central anarchist thesis of state illegitimacy, and, like other kinds of anarchism, philosophical anarchism generally is motivated either by the kinds of commitments or by the kind of skepticism I have just summarized. What is distinctive about philosophical anarchism, I suggest, is its stance with respect to the moral content (or practical force) of judgments about state illegitimacy. Philosophical anarchists do not take the illegitimacy of states to entail a strong moral imperative to oppose or eliminate states; rather, they typically take state illegitimacy simply to remove any strong moral presumption in favor of obedience to, compliance with, or support for our own or other existing states. To make plain the structure of this position, I propose to provide a reasonably general view of the possible range of anarchist positions by specifying certain distinctions along which anarchist positions divide. I do not pretend that the divisions I describe are exhaustive, but I do think that they are the most salient and important divisions.

Perhaps the most basic division between anarchist theories (and also between philosophical anarchist theories) is that between what I call a priori anarchism and a posteriori anarchism. A priori anarchism maintains that all possible states are morally illegitimate. Some essential feature of the state or some necessary condition for statehood—say, the state's coercive character or its hierarchical nature—makes it impossible for there to be something that is both a state and legitimate. A posteriori anarchism, by contrast, maintains that while all existing states are illegitimate, this is not because it is impossible for there to be a legitimate state. Nothing in the definition of the state precludes its legitimacy; rather, existing states are condemned as illegitimate by virtue of their contingent characters. A posteriori anarchists may defend an ideal of legitimacy that existing states simply fail to live up to or approximate—for instance, a voluntarist or egalitarian or communitarian ideal of the state—or they simply may be unconvinced by purported a priori arguments for the impossibility of the legitimate state.

(A. John Simmons, "Philosophical Anarchism," chap. 6 in his Justification and Legitimacy: Essays on Rights and Obligations [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001], 102-21, at 103-5 [essay first published in 1996] [footnotes omitted])

A couple of days ago I wrote a blog entry entitled "Testing Liberal Sincerity," which prompted this letter (quoted in pertinent part):

Dear Dr. Jackson-Burgess, You wrote: "If you oppose the death penalty, vow to oppose the execution of anyone who murders your spouse, your parents, or your children—and sign a document to the effect that your own murderer must not be put to death." I'm an opponent of the death penalty, but I admit that if someone murdered my spouse I might want the murderer executed. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm insincere or that I'm a hypocrite—or even that I no longer hold myself to my vow. In the same way, if I succumbed to temptation and cheated on my spouse, I could still sincerely profess that marriage vows were a good idea even though I'd broken them.

I'm confused. If you "might want the murderer [of your spouse] executed" in the hypothetical situation, then presumably you think it would be right to do so. But if it's right to do so in one situation, why is it not right to do so in all relevantly similar situations, including those in which you are not personally involved? Why would you deny to others what you allow to yourself?

If moral philosophers agree on anything, it is that a judgment, to be a moral judgment, must be universalizable. (Aesthetic judgments are also universalizable, but, unlike moral judgments, they are not overriding.) "Universalizable" means capable of being universalized. It would be irrational, for example, to assert all of the following:

1. Act A is wrong.
2. Act A is like act B in all morally relevant respects.
3. Act B is not wrong.

It is irrational to assert these propositions because they cannot all be true. They compose an inconsistent set. If acts A and B are alike in all morally relevant respects, then the same moral judgment must (logically) be made about them. Either both are wrong are neither is wrong.

The hard case for universalizability is when you, the person making the judgment, are adversely affected by the action. It prevents you from making exceptions for yourself. It enforces sincerity (nonhypocrisy). I support capital punishment, for example. I believe it is justified for certain murders. To be consistent, I must support it even in the case in which I am the murderer (or in which someone I love is the murderer). Those who oppose capital punishment must (to be consistent) oppose it even when the victim is a loved one.

The point I was making in my blog entry is this. Liberals talk a good game. They love emoting about the poor. Then help the poor! Don't coerce others into helping the poor by taking their wealth against their will. If you think global warming is a problem, then change your life. Most liberals I know are hypocrites. They live lives of luxury and comfort, but rail against the indifference of others to the less fortunate. If every liberal (or even just the whiny liberals) disposed of a little wealth, all of the problems they complain about would disappear overnight. But they don't want this. They want to live their comfortable lives and force those who don't share their values to help implement them. Liberals are little totalitarians, which is why conservatives must constrain, thwart, and foil them.

You heard it here first: Bush-Cheney v. Dean-Edwards.

Man, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.

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

Hello. I read your blog sometimes, as well as your recent article at TCS about your journey to conservatism. I appreciate that you don't lapse into judgmental moralizing, or using fear of change/fear of wrath of God/fear of everything as an excuse to avoid outright stating that you think your opinion is the only valid opinion in the universe (reasons why I avoid National Review Online like the plague). I think you're right that many young people become liberal as they age, but many in their teens and 20's today are conservative and are tired of what society expects them to be.

Here's the background for my question. I'm in my mid-20's. I am pro-gun (I don't care for the term "pro-gun" because it implies anyone who has this position wants to go out and shoot up the streets). I don't believe in racial preferences. I think that hate-crimes laws are agonizingly difficult to enforce and probably do more harm than good. I am pro-life, except in extreme cases such as incest or if the mother's life is at stake. I am not overly religious but I do believe in God and I don't think all symbols of him should be banned from any school or public area. I am pro-death penalty. I supported a well-reasoned plan in Iraq and for the most part, don't think the administration has done a bad job.

But I'm gay. It's not a phase or a byproduct of an unhappy childhood (I had a pretty good childhood), or an attempt to be hip, or an excuse for promiscuity. I dated women and I have no desire for them on an emotional or physical level, which I do for men. I don't want to ruin families. I'd like to find a partner and eventually, if that possibility is ever legal in the US, be married. I don't need the term "married", as long as there are some strong legal benefits which my partner and I can share ("family" groups always say, "they have wills," but with gay couples, wills are thrown out by courts more often than many seem to realize). Nor do I demand that every state accept my desire to be married/unioned/whatever. Someday I would like to raise a child, but I can admit that children who are raised by happy straight couples will probably be best off (I don't agree with the mindset that any straight couple is better than a gay couple . . . and Andrea Yates' children probably would not either).

I understand why people see marriage is in danger of extinction. I understand why most of the public is frightened by the sudden advances of a group of people they tend to think of as pets [pests?], menaces, or cases for pity.

My problem is that I am increasingly unable to support a party which endorses a viewpoint that I and all like me are a step away from dog-and-corpse-rapers, or are mentally deranged pedophiles who want to spread disease wherever we go. I know that many Democrats/Independents feel this way, and even some liberals. But it is the GOP who are in bed with the main purveyors of this theory, who laud this viewpoint (see: [United States Senator Rick] Santorum), and I know that if these groups had their way, I would be in a world of torment. I don't want "special" rights. I simply want people to take me for my opinions and my views, not the gender I am drawn to. I want to be seen as a human being, not a criminal or a charity case. I don't want a theocracy or government run solely on corporate interests and/or intrusion into private lives. I don't want to feel like the party I belong to expects it's [sic] followers to immediately and unswervingly accept every decision or policy made by that party, and to viciously attack anyone who does not accept every decision or policy. I don't want to be among a party who feel that, because they think the Bible says so, I am a menace to society.

Do you think that it is possible for a gay man to be a part of the Republican party without violating his own core principles? Or would I be like that sad man who was desperate to work for Pat Buchanan's '96 campaign, even though Buchanan's people repeatedly told him no open gays had a place in his organization? Do you feel, as many do, that any homosexual who supports Republican candidates is an idiot, delusional, a Jew for Hitler, etc.? Is there any home in the GOP for gays and lesbians who aren't ashamed of themselves and who yearn for politicians who support them? Do you think the party is changing or moving forward in terms of acceptance of gays, or regressing? Should I vote for Democrats, even if I do not agree with some of their other positions? In the Presidential race, I support Bush's policies (guest workers, some federal judiciary nominees, and slashing overtime pay aside) more than I do most of the Democratic candidates (and Bill "don't ask me about DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act]" Clinton proved how much some Democrats do for gay rights), but is it wrong to wish for a more even balance of parties in Congress?

BTW, do you think that the Federal Marriage Amendment will get through, or you don't think it's likely? With every fiber of my being I hope that this does not go into the Cons[t]itution, because I know it would only be the beginning of an evangelical-driven persecution.

Sorry to have taken up so much of your time. [Name Withheld by Request]

As an invisible minority, gays cannot fight for the right to be open about being gay, unless gays are already open about it; and gays cannot reasonably be open about being gay, until gays have the right to be openly gay. One would hope that once society was made aware of this paradox, if society had any sense of decency and fair play, it would on its own move to establish civil rights for gays.

(Richard D. Mohr, "Invisible Minorities, Civic Rights, Democracy: Why Even Conservatives Should Support Gay Rights," chap. 6 in his Gays/Justice: A Study of Ethics, Society, and Law [New York: Columbia University Press, 1988], 162-87, at 187 [essay first published in 1985])

Are you religious? Specifically, do you believe in a supernatural being, an afterlife, and salvation? If so, how do you make sense of the diversity of religions? Can more than one religion be true? If so, how? They seem to make logically incompatible claims. If more than one religion can be true (logically), how many are true (in fact)? Among those who say that only one religion is true (it's usually the speaker's own), there is a split of opinion on whether those who subscribe to a false religion can be saved. Some say yes, some say no. Religious diversity is a hot topic among philosophers. Here, if you're interested in such matters, are the main positions, together with readings for each:

Exclusivism (one true religion; one path to salvation):

Borland, James. "Religious Exclusivism." Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 33 (March 1990): 3-11. Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, edited by Michael Peterson et al., 495-502. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Plantinga, Alvin. "Pluralism: A Defense of Religious Exclusivism." In The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith, edited by Thomas D. Senor. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995. Reprinted as chap. 10 in The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity, edited by Philip L. Quinn and Kevin Meeker, 172-92. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Inclusivism (one true religion; many paths to salvation):

Rahner, Karl. "Religious Inclusivism." In Christianity and Other Religions, edited by John Hick and Brian Hebblethwaite. Glasgow: Collins, 1980. Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, 2d ed., edited by Michael Peterson et al., 549-59. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Pluralism (more than one true religion; many paths to salvation):

Hick, John. "Religious Pluralism." In Problems of Religious Pluralism, edited by John Hick. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, 2d ed., edited by Michael Peterson et al., 560-70. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Hick, John. "Religious Pluralism and Salvation." Faith and Philosophy 5 (October 1988): 365-77. Reprinted as chap. 3 in The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity, edited by Philip L. Quinn and Kevin Meeker, 54-66. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Hick, John. An Interpretation of Religion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.

Notice that exclusivism and inclusivism have something in common, viz., asserting that there is one true religion. Inclusivism and pluralism have something in common, viz., asserting that there are many paths to salvation. Exclusivism and pluralism have nothing in common. If you're an exclusivist, you must find fault with both pluralism (an extramural squabble) and inclusivism (an intramural squabble). That is to say, you must show that pluralism is wrong about more than one religion being true and that that precludes salvation for adherents of other (false) religions.

If you oppose the death penalty, vow to oppose the execution of anyone who murders your spouse, your parents, or your children—and sign a document to the effect that your own murderer must not be put to death.

If you oppose the privatization of education or defend the teachers' unions, send your children to public schools.

If you're concerned about the environment, including global warming and oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, sell your SUV and get a fuel-efficient vehicle. Better yet, ride your bicycle to work. And while you're at it, buy a smaller house and get rid of the energy-hogging appliances.

If you're white and you believe preferences should be given to nonwhites in college admissions, stand aside (or have your child stand aside).

If you think it's scandalous how little society does for the poor, do something for the poor. Tonight.

If you like National Public Radio, pay for it.

If you think the enemies of this nation can be reasoned with, volunteer to be the one to initiate the conversation.

If you think corporations are evil, disgorge all the fruits thereof. You don't have a heck of a lot left, do you?

It should be illegal to be this funny. I have tears streaming down my face.

[O]ne conclusion seems plain. George Armstrong Custer does not deserve the indictment that history has imposed on him for his actions at the Little Bighorn. Given what he knew at each decision point and what he had every reason to expect of his subordinates, one is hard pressed to say what he ought to have done differently. In truth, at the Little Bighorn "Custer's Luck" simply ran out. Although the failures of subordinates may have contributed and the strength and prowess of the foe certainly contributed, Custer died the victim less of bad judgment than of bad luck.

(Robert M. Utley, Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier [Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988], 202)

I greatly enjoy your blog (and appreciated the pointer to the Marquis paper on abortion—as a Christian myself and already convinced of the anti-abortion case on moral grounds).

That said, I stumbled on the second item of your "this i believe" list. [See here. —kbj] As one who is currently resident in the USA for a couple of years (indeed, now father to a little US citizen), but who has studied and read history widely, lived in four different countries, and travelled widely, I nonetheless struggle to see your first belief as relentlessly inevitable. There is much to admire about this country—for example, I'm often staggered by the rarely-failing courtesy and generosity of its people individually. Nonetheless, in the negative column there are quite a few items too:

- slavery

- racial discrimination, sanctioned by statute and judiciary, that was pervasive as little as 40 years ago

- the belated entry into World War II, brought about not as an act of generous alignment with the Allies, but as a result only of a Japanese attack, and then of Hitler's foolhardy declaration of war on the US

- the horrific loss of life in the Civil War (connected to slavery of course, though on my reading of history mainly about holding the Union together)

- events like the war in Spain in 1898, completely unprovoked and with the spurious excuse of the "attack" on the USS Maine

Of course, to be a little sceptical of the idea that no thinking person could disagree that the US is the greatest (morally speaking) nation in the history of the world, doesn't deny that it would rank well up the scale. Personally, I'm an Anglophile (tho not a Brit myself), and struggle to see how, taking a rather longer history into account and rather more periods of adversity (the US, for example, has been sufficiently isolated to never have faced direct military attack on its east coast heartland), the UK could be beaten to the honour. That's just my view of course, but I can allow that a reasoned case can be made to the contrary. One could make, perhaps, a less ambiguous case for New Zealand, Australia, or Canada—but they are small and distant. That has given them a free-rider option they've rarely taken, but equally they've never been tested as to how they would cope with the mantle of leadership.

regards
Michael Reddell

If you like linguistic humor, as I do, then you like funny headlines, and if you like funny headlines, you'll like this blog. (Thanks to Donald Luskin for the link.)

Kill, v.t. To create a vacancy without nominating a successor.

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

The following letter appeared in today's New York Times:

To the Editor:

A Jan. 3 letter writer who taught at Wellesley in the 1950's laments the failure of the movie "Mona Lisa Smile" to show that Wellesley students in the 1950's were encouraged to pursue careers.

I was a member of the class of 1970 at Bryn Mawr College, another of the academically rigorous Seven Sisters colleges and the only one with its own graduate school. Bryn Mawr's founding legend was "only our failures only marry," and the administration took pride in the number of alumnae with graduate degrees.

Yet until elementary and middle schools provide the after-school enrichment activities that so many parents want for their children, the logistics of child care will be more of an impediment for working mothers than the attitudes of undergraduate professors.

MARIAN SCHEUER SOFAER
Palo Alto, Calif., Jan. 4, 2004

Nice slogan, eh? What does it say about stay-at-home wives and mothers? Do you see why Hillary Clinton looks down on women who stay home and "bake cookies"? They're failures!

What is it with The New York Times? Everything President Bush does—every visit to the troops, every speech, every policy initiative, every appointment—is said (or implied) to have been done for political purposes. Everything he does that improves his electoral prospects had to have been done in order to improve those prospects. Here is the latest example, involving the space program. Notice how early in the story (the fifth and sixth of twenty-three paragraphs) the cynicism rears its ugly head. This is called poisoning the well. (One drop of poison in a well ruins all the water.) The reader is alerted at the outset that the president's motives are less than pure (indeed, self-serving), so that everything that comes after is read cynically. This is despicable. It is a textbook case of advocacy journalism. The Times has become a left-wing, Bush-hating rag—which is sad, because it used to be respectable.

I wrote in my latest Tech Central Station column that I was persuaded of the immorality of abortion by reading Don Marquis's essay "Why Abortion Is Immoral," The Journal of Philosophy 86 (April 1989): 183-202. You may be wondering how this happened. Was there some fact of the matter of which Keith was unaware, but which Marquis documented? Did Marquis describe the abortion experience in such vivid detail that it made Keith see or appreciate something that was previously invisible to him? Did he persuade Keith to adopt or modify a moral principle?

No, no, and no. What Marquis did is make me think. He made me reflect not on the content of my beliefs and values—which hasn't changed—but on their structure. He encouraged me to think theoretically and systematically. By 1989, the abortion debate had grown stale, at least among philosophers. The debate focused on the question whether a fetus, at any stage, is a person, with a right to life. To answer this question, one needed a theory of the person. On some accounts, fetuses (some or all of them) have what it takes to be a person. On other accounts, they lack what it takes. Each side proceeded to show (or try to) that the other side's theory of personhood had unacceptable implications.

Marquis avoided this stale debate about personhood. In an attempt to find common ground among the disputants, he asked what it is that makes killing a normal adult human being wrong—for all of us believe that it's wrong to kill a normal adult human being. Once we get clear on what it is that makes it wrong to kill a normal adult human being, we can apply the theory to fetuses. To be honest, I had never thought systematically or carefully about what makes killing wrong. I became convinced, having taught Marquis's essay several times in my Ethics courses, that his theory of the wrongness of killing is correct. What I mean by that is that it accounts for my own judgments in a wide range of cases. (I'm a moral skeptic; i.e., I deny the existence of objective moral values.)

Marquis's essay is brilliant for many reasons. First, it has no religious presuppositions. For many people, abortion is a religious issue as well as a moral and legal one. But one can accept Marquis's premises and reasoning whether one is a theist, an agnostic, or an atheist. He speaks to everyone. Second, his argument does not rest on a contentious claim about personhood. He advances no theory of what a person is. This, as I said, broke the aforementioned stalemate. Third, he does not write from a distinctively feminist or anti-feminist position. Feminism plays no role in his argument. His essay is nonideological, as all philosophical essays should be.

The abortion debate is dismaying for many reasons, the main one being that it is heavy on rhetoric. Just think of the arguments about which labels are appropriate: "pro-life," "pro-choice," "pro-abortion," "anti-abortion," &c. People adopt positions for political or social reasons rather than for moral reasons. For a long time, I thought there was just one position an educated, intelligent person could take on abortion. To think that abortion is wrong, much less that it should be illegal, was to align oneself with religious fundamentalists and other unsavory people. I wanted to run with a different crowd: the forward-looking, liberated, feminist crowd. Reading Marquis's essay reminded me of why I was attracted to philosophy in the first place. He cut through the rhetoric. He appealed to his readers' intelligence and good will. He came at the issue with no ideological or religious presuppositions. He tried to persuade rationally, not move emotionally.

Everyone should read Marquis's essay. If you want to read it, please see my earlier post, "Mea Culpa," for details on how to acquire it. If nothing else, you will come away from the essay with a newfound respect for philosophy—and for the life of reason to which philosophers, as such, are committed.

Incredibly, President Bush is still being blamed for causing sixty percent of Americans to believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks of 11 September 2001. Chris Matthews of MSNBC's Hardball discussed the matter with Democrat presidential candidate Richard Gephardt on this evening's program. (I get the sixty-percent figure from Matthews. I was listening from my study, but I believe that's what he said.)

Excuse me, but I never heard President Bush say that Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks. But suppose he implied it. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that he strongly implied it, not once, but several times. After all the discussion there has been about the attacks and about the war in Iraq, is he still responsible for what people believe? Does he have the power to make people believe something against their will and against all available evidence? And didn't he come out and say, a few weeks ago, that there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks? What must he do, beyond this, to avoid responsibility for people's unjustified beliefs? If President Bush said that Santa Claus exists, would he be responsible for people's believing it? Do people have minds of their own? Aren't people responsible for what they believe?

I received the following letter:

While I admire Richard Swinburne a great deal as a philosopher, he probably needs a fact checker when he speaks outside his discipline. Fish brains are like human brains only in the most basic of senses. For Swinburne to say that fish feel pain is simply not something that is strongly supported by science. This year's study by the Roslin Institute and the University of Edinburgh is the first I know of to even suggest that fish may feel pain. Yet this study follows on the heels of one by James D Rose, a professor of zoology and physiology at the University of Wyoming, published in the American journal Reviews of Fisheries Science, which concluded that awareness of pain depends on functions of specific regions of the cerebral cortex which fish do not possess.

To which I replied:

David DeGrazia summarizes the research on pages 108-12 of Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996]. "To conclude," he writes, "given the convergence of various kinds of evidence, it is parsimonious to attribute pain, and consciousness generally, to most or all vertebrate species and probably at least some invertebrates such as cephalopods" (page 111). I think Swinburne, who, by the way, studied philosophy of science for ten years before doing philosophy of religion, comes to the same conclusion.

Make up your own mind.

At which stage of the evolutionary process did animals first start to have souls and so a mental life? We do not know. But fairly clearly their behaviour shows that the mammals do have a mental life. My view is that all the vertebrates have a mental life, because they all have a brain similar to the human brain, which, we know, causes a mental life in us, and their behaviour, too, is best explained in terms of their having feelings and beliefs. Dogs and birds and fish all feel pain. But there is no reason at all to attribute a mental life to viruses and bacteria, nor in my view to ants and beetles. They do not have the kind of brain which we do, nor do we need to attribute feelings and beliefs to them in order to explain their behaviour. It follows that at some one particular moment in evolutionary history there appeared something utterly new—consciousness, a mental life, to be analysed in terms of souls having mental properties.

The reluctance of so many philosophers and scientists to admit that at a particular moment of evolutionary history there came into existence, connected to animal bodies, souls with mental properties seems to me to be due in part to the fact that, if such a thing happened, they are utterly lost for an explanation of how it came to happen. But it is highly irrational to say that something is not there, just because you cannot explain how it came to be there. We should accept the evident fact; and if we cannot explain it, we must just be humble and acknowledge that we are not omniscient. But I am going on to suggest that, although there cannot be an inanimate explanation, of the kind characteristic of the natural sciences, of the occurrence of souls and their mental life, the theist does have an explanation.

(Richard Swinburne, Is There a God? [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996], 79-80)

I came across Jason Van Steenwyk's blog while reading Andrew Sullivan's blog. Van Steenwyk is a United States Army officer serving in Iraq.

To the Editor:

Re "Rose, in New Book, Admits Betting on His Team" (front page, Jan. 6):

Those who watched Pete Rose play baseball know he was possibly the best player they ever saw play the game. There is no one in the game today who measures up to the intensity, consistency and sheer excitement he displayed on the field.

Rose's absence from the Hall of Fame does not detract from his accomplishments, but it does weaken the credibility of the Hall itself. Admitting him would actually serve the Hall in its mission to acknowledge the best who ever played.

The notion that baseball should acknowledge Rose only after he is sufficiently contrite is ridiculous. These demands are petty coming from professional baseball, that "perfect" place of $5 hot dogs and cities taken hostage to keep their beloved teams from leaving for more money.

PAUL J. DONNELLY
Haddonfield, N.J., Jan. 6, 2004

1. Morally speaking, the United States of America is the greatest nation in the history of the world.

2. People who hesitate to affirm 1, and a fortiori those who deny it, have either never traveled or never read history.

3. George F. Will (the son of a philosopher) is a national treasure. (See here for his latest column.)

4. Philosophy is by far the best preparation for a legal or political career.

5. Dogs are superior to cats.

A little over a month ago (see here), I coined the term "cynical fallacy" to describe the following inference:

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

Here is an instance of the fallacy.

summum bonum (literally: the highest good) Traditionally either God or happiness has been considered the highest good by philosophers. Recently, tenure.

(A. P. Martinich, Philosophical Writing: An Introduction, 2d ed. [Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996], 195 [first edition published in 1989] [italics and boldface in original])

I enjoy hearing from readers of my blogs and Tech Central Station columns. I'm still in the process of replying to the latest batch of letters—those prompted by "My Journey to Conservatism." Some of the readers asked whether I have read various authors, such as C. S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton. They say that I sound as though I crave religion. They think these authors might lead me to it.

I appreciate the thought—and the concern for my soul—but my conservatism has nothing to do with theism in general or Christianity in particular. (By "theism" I mean, simply, belief in a supernatural person.) Certainly there is no entailment relation between the two. One can be a conservative without being a theist and one can be a theist without being a conservative. Are most theists conservative (in politics)? I don't know. Are most conservatives theists? I don't know. But it's only an accident if either is the case. One reader said that, "Conservatism and Christianity go together like cake and ice cream—delicious!" That may be so, but I'm allergic to ice cream (really).

Another mistake people make—one I've been meaning to write about—is thinking that theism is essential to morality. It is not. All of my atheistic friends are deeply committed to morality. In fact, they are more committed than my theistic friends. It's also a mistake to think that unless one is a theist, one cannot believe in objective moral values. All of the atheists I know (but certainly not all atheists) are moral objectivists. That is to say, they believe that moral values exist independently of human beings and can be discovered by human reason. Atheism does not entail any of the following: nihilism, relativism, subjectivism, existentialism, egoism, or skepticism. Dostoevsky's character Ivan said that if God is dead, everything is permitted. He was wrong.

Yesterday I asked a theistic reader whether anything could happen that would cause him to become an agnostic or atheist. I wanted to find out whether his theism is grounded in reason. I told him, to show my good faith in asking the question, that lots of things could happen that would cause me to become a theist. He replied, proudly, that nothing could cause him to become an agnostic or atheist. He added that he was glad to hear that I'm "searching" for God.

I'm not searching for God; nor does anything I said to him (or in this blog) suggest that I am. I've said several times in this blog that I'm tone-deaf (allergic!) to religion and that the idea of a disembodied person, much less of a disembodied person with supernatural powers, is preposterous. Belief in God has the same status to me as belief in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. My point was that I'm not dogmatic about any of these beliefs. I have an open mind. Here's something that could happen, right now, to cause me to become a theist: My computer monitor turns into a large, croaking frog. If there's a god, let it happen!

Didn't happen. Does my conducting this experiment mean that I'm "hoping" to "find" God? Not at all! It shows that I'm not a dogmatic atheist. My beliefs are grounded in reality. My correspondent, on the other hand, is a dogmatic theist, for he admitted that nothing whatsoever could happen to shake his faith. That, to me, is epistemically irresponsible. Theists should be open-minded. They should be open to argumentation and evidence. As David Hume wrote in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), "A wise man . . . proportions his belief to the evidence." Hume, by the way, was a conservative.

In the light of the foregoing considerations, reasonable and decent people living in affluent circumstances would be well-advised to reject [Peter] Singer's rampant moralism. Such people are not murderers, killers, or immoral if they do not donate what they earn beyond the basic necessities to alleviate the suffering of people in absolute poverty. Singer has given no acceptable reason for his claims that affluent people are morally obligated to change radically their lives and society, that ethics requires the equal consideration of the suffering of all people regardless of whether they are responsible for their suffering, and that the mere existence of absolute poverty creates an obligation to alleviate it. What Singer has given is a shoddy argument that plays on the emotions of decent people who regret, as they should, the existence of so much suffering in the world.

It will be asked: is regret enough? Should not people do something? In answer, consider, for instance, an American family of four: two parents and two children. They have an annual income of $100,000, which makes them affluent. Taking various exemptions into account, they are likely to pay about $30,000 in federal and state taxes and in their contributions to Social Security and Medicare. In addition, they have to pay property and school taxes, as well as sales tax on various articles they buy. It is not unreasonable to estimate that all in all they pay about $35,000 in various forms of taxes. Approximately 60% of the federal and state budget is spent on welfare programs. (The figure is higher in other affluent countries.) We may say, then, that roughly 60% of their total annual taxes of $35,000, that is $21,000, is spent on welfare programs. So the answer to the question of whether they should not do something is that they are doing something: they are spending about one-fifth of their income, one dollar out of every five, on helping others. This is more than double the tithe Singer regards as the morally acceptable minimum. Of course, they may do more. Generosity, pity, charity, benevolence, and the like may lead them to give more. But as to the supposed obligation to give more—an obligation that it would be immoral not to meet—the case for it has not been made.

(John Kekes, "On the Supposed Obligation to Relieve Famine," Philosophy 77 [October 2002]: 503-17, at 516-7 [italics in original; footnotes omitted])

Note from AnalPhilosopher: For a more recent essay by Singer, see here.

I read three blogs each day, without fail: those by John Ray, Donald Luskin, and Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan has a link to this column by Jonah Goldberg. It's worth reading, not least because it's funny. Politics and humor go together, you know.

The Gallup Organization polled Americans about happiness. Among other findings, the poll discloses that Republicans are happier than Democrats. Why might this be? There are three possibilities. First, happy people gravitate to the Republican party (or unhappy ones to the Democrat party). Second, being a Republican makes one happy (or being a Democrat makes one unhappy). Third, some third factor causes both degree of happiness and party membership. Any ideas? (Thanks to John Ray for the link.)

I have two words for conservative critics of President Bush's immigration plan: Al Gore.

The Dallas Morning News, which I have the misfortune to read on a daily basis, contains an editorial opinion today on race-based college admissions. Some of you may know (but others may not) that Texas A&M University (full disclosure: I taught there for a year in 1988-1989, while ABD) decided that while it may, legally, use race in admissions, it will not. I applaud this decision, as should all well-intentioned, right-thinking, fair-minded individuals.

The editorial argues that Texas A&M's decision to exclude race is inconsistent with its long-standing legacy-admissions program. According to the editorial, "Texas A&M last year admitted 312 white freshmen from families of A&M graduates—freshmen who wouldn't have gotten in otherwise." Suppose that's correct. What, if anything, follows about race-based admissions programs? "To our mind," the editorial continues, "it is wildly inconsistent for the university to reject race as an admission factor and then to consider family DNA to be perfectly acceptable."

Is Texas A&M being inconsistent? (I'll ignore the adverb "wildly," for I don't know what, if anything, it adds.) It would be inconsistent if the following were the university's operative principle: Only merit (as demonstrated by such things as high-school grades and test scores) may be used in admissions. Legacy admissions clearly conflict with this principle, for they are not, by the university's own admission, merit-based. So either Texas A&M is inconsistent or this is not its operative principle. Of these two choices, why would the editorial writer(s) assume the former? That is uncharitable. A charitable critic would have concluded that there must be some other operative principle—and then tried to articulate it. (Always assume that those with whom you disagree are rational.)

Obviously, Texas A&M does not endorse the principle about merit; nor does any other college or university, to my knowledge. It endorses a less-sweeping principle, such as "Race may not be used in admissions." Is there a relevant difference between race and being the child, grandchild, or sibling of a Texas A&M graduate? Of course there is. There are several.

First, race is divisive (what lawyers call "invidious"). There is and always has been (will be?) a great deal of prejudice against people on the basis of race, perhaps because it is easily discerned. If we institutionalize the use of race in distributing burdens and benefits, we increase rather than decrease racial animus. The best way to ease racial tensions is to eliminate race from public life. Not allowing race to play a role in university admissions is one aspect of this. Legacy status, by contrast, is not divisive. Indeed, the idea of discrimination on the basis of legacy status is laughable.

Second, there is nothing in the United States Constitution that prohibits discrimination on the basis of familial relations or legacy status. There are several amendments—the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth—addressed specifically to race. The United States Supreme Court treats race as a "suspect classification." It does not treat legacy status as suspect. By forswearing the use of race, Texas A&M University is acting in the best spirit of our Constitution. It is also respecting the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits (among other things) race-based discrimination in higher education. There are laws against race-based discrimination. There are no laws prohibiting legacy admissions.

It might be objected that the United States Supreme Court recently allowed the use of race in university admissions, provided the use doesn't amount to a quota. The reply to this is that the Court allowed race to be used but did not mandate it. Texas A&M University has decided not to use it. The university does, however, show preference for both "low-income and first-generation college students." This, in my view, is perfectly appropriate, indeed desirable. We as a society must stop distributing benefits and burdens on the basis of race, however well-intentioned such programs may be. It is unconstitutional. It is illegal. It is self-defeating. It is wrong.

(I might point out that African-Americans and other nonwhites are not only eligible for legacy admission at Texas A&M, but are admitted under that program at the same rate as whites. According to the editorial, thirty-three African-Americans and Hispanics were admitted under Texas A&M's legacy program in the past year.)

Worse than crocodiles

Re: "Baby's first croc feeding sends viewers into frenzy," Saturday news story. The only way the Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, could have acted more carelessly would have been if he dangled his son over Michael Jackson.

Mrs. C. E. McClay, Garland

Is it just me, or does John Kerry sound as though he deserves the Democrat presidential nomination?

Woman, n. An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication. It is credited by many of the elder zoologists with a certain vestigial docility acquired in a former state of seclusion, but naturalists of the postsusananthony period, having no knowledge of the seclusion, deny the virtue and declare that such as creation's dawn beheld, it roareth now. The species is the most widely distributed of all beasts of prey, infesting all habitable parts of the globe, from Greenland's spicy mountains to India's moral strand. The popular name (wolf-man) is incorrect, for the creature is of the cat kind. The woman is lithe and graceful in its movements, especially the American variety (Felis pugnans), is omnivorous and can be taught not to talk.—Balthasar Pober.

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

Kenneth Silber, a fellow TCS columnist, has a thoughtful reply to my TCS column here.

I'm grateful for the outpouring of support for my writing. The response to yesterday's TCS column, "My Journey to Conservatism," was overwhelming. I have something like ninety e-mail messages in my inbox. I have just replied to the first ten. If I reply to ten messages each day, I'll be done in a few days. Then it won't seem like work. If you're one of the writers, please be patient. If you asked for a copy of Don Marquis's essay "Why Abortion Is Immoral," please see the post from yesterday entitled "Mea Culpa." It explains why I can't send it.

A couple of readers didn't like my claim, in the column, that "feminism has done real damage to women, despite its protestations to the contrary." Let me explain what I meant and go some way toward supporting it.

I begin with a fact. Men and women are different. If you deny this fact, you are in the grip of ideology. Read some biology. Start with Robert Wright's magnificent book, The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1995 [1994]). Of course, saying that men and women are different isn't to say that they're different in every respect. It's to say that there they're not alike in every respect. If men and women have different brains and hormones, as biology tells us they do, then it stands to reason that they have different minds. They think differently (to some extent); they have different complexes of feeling and desire; they have different sources of joy and frustration. Anyone with any sense knows this. As Robert Wright says, it takes a real effort not to notice how different men and women are.

Feminism was a necessary social movement. Women are as capable of performing most tasks as men, but they were (and perhaps in some cases still are) denied opportunities. This was (is) wrong. Occupations should be open to everyone and should be based on ability. If a woman can serve in combat, she should be able to. If a woman can play Major League baseball, she should be able to. If a woman can perform surgery, try cases, head a corporation, or conduct scientific experiments, she should be able to. Feminism's great achievement, for which all of us should be grateful, was to open doors. It gave women choices.

But somewhere along the way a particular door got closed. Women who had the opportunity to be stay-at-home wives and mothers and who chose to do so were treated with contempt by feminists. It was not a choice they were supposed to make. What self-respecting, liberated woman would stay home when she could have a career? What self-respecting, liberated woman could find fulfillment changing diapers, engaging in baby talk, cooking, cleaning, chauffeuring, and caring for her family?

Feminism denigrates stay-at-home wives and mothers. They are embarrassments to the movement, reminders of a day when women had no choice but to stay home. But that time has passed! Women have choices! Isn't it time to start respecting, even celebrating, the choices they make?

I had a long talk recently with my sixty-nine year old mother. I owe everything to her, as I've said in this blog before. She raised four sons by herself following a divorce in which she received no child support. My father left the state to avoid having to pay. Somehow we survived—without going on welfare. My mother was and is a proud, self-sufficient woman. (Farm girls tend to be that way.) She taught her sons—by word and by deed—that it was disgraceful to be dependent on others. Once she remarried, she undertook to be a stay-at-home mother. During my feminist years, I was vaguely ashamed of my mother. She was able to work outside the home, but didn't have to, so she didn't. But now I realize the importance of what she was doing. She was building persons. Citizens. She was performing the most important tasks of all! She and my stepfather worked equally hard; they just worked at different tasks.

Feminists, to their discredit, look down on my mother. She was not ambitious by their standards. Her lack of interest in a career had to signify false consciousness or, worse, lack of intelligence. She had been oppressed for so long that she didn't think she was capable of anything besides raising a family. She settled for less.

With all due respect, this is outrageous. My mother was as ambitious as any CEO. She just didn't have the same ambitions. She was well aware of what she might have done, but chose to do what she did. She was not oppressed; she was gloriously free. She knew that her happiness lay in raising her children and being a good wife. Was she supposed to do something that made her less happy? Is that what feminism is about? If so, then feminism is an ass. Thank you, Mom, for making the choices you made. Thank you for helping me become the person I am. I'm sure my brothers would say the same. Feminism made it possible for you to do other than as you did. That was important. Feminism should not proceed to tell you what makes you happy, what fulfills you, or what has meaning to you. Feminism needs to back up and get its bearings.

I'm not ashamed to say it: Baseball has been my life (or a large chunk of it) since 1967, when I was ten. My family happened to live next to a kid, Roger Young, who loved baseball. I had never heard of it. Just listening to Roger talk about the game, as we played catch in his yard, hooked me, and my life has been much the better for it. Thank you, Roger, wherever you are.

Only someone whose dream was to be a Major League baseball player, as mine was, will understand what I am about to say. The two greatest traumas in my life, apart from the loss of friends and relatives, were baseball-related. The first was when someone younger than I was (I think it was Alan Trammell) played a Major League baseball game. I knew then that the baseball gods had not blessed me. The second was when no Major League player was as old as I was. The game—my beautiful, beloved, noble game—had passed me by. I had gone in one end and out the other.

My team, naturally, was the Detroit Tigers. Although we lived in rural Michigan, nearly a hundred miles from Tiger Stadium, I made it to a game or two each year, sometimes with my family, sometimes with the school, sometimes with the Little League. The Tigers blessed me with two World Series titles: one in 1968, before I realized what it signified (and before I deserved it), and the other in 1984, by which time, tragically, I had moved to Arizona to attend graduate school (and by which time, I like to think, I deserved it). My Tigers have not lost a World Series in my lifetime, and if there is a god they never will. Some people, such as those who root for the Boston Red Sox, have never experienced the joy of winning a World Series. I pity them. I have experienced the joy twice in my short life. I can die happy.

All of which is prolegomenon to my defense of Pete Rose, who finally, after fourteen years of denial, admitted to wagering on baseball games while managing the Cincinnati Reds. Did Pete Rose break the law? That is a legal question. If he did, he should pay the price for his misdeeds. Did he cheat and lie? Those are moral questions. I believe he did, and in the process knowingly and willfully hurt the game he and I so love. I condemn him for these transgressions in no uncertain terms. Should he be allowed back in the game, perhaps as manager? That is a moral and prudential question best left to baseball officials. If it were up to me, I would banish Rose from the game.

But on one question I have never wavered. Should Pete Rose, Charlie Hustle, the all-time hit leader, be in the Hall of Fame? The answer is emphatically, unequivocally yes. No player in the history of the sport has won more games. Nobody tried as hard to win or exuded such love of the sport. It was obvious to everyone watching, friend or foe. In my mind's eye, I can still see Pete at the plate, crouching, eyes riveted on the pitcher. As the pitch arrives, Pete uncoils, slashing the ball to the opposite field. Off he races, hair flying, arms pumping, legs churning. The helmet pops off as he rounds first base. And then, in a furious burst of energy, he lunges—headfirst!—for second base, arriving just before the ball. He jumps up, calls time, and brushes himself off while reaching for his helmet.

This was one plate appearance in one game of a long season in a long career. Everything was done perfectly, with full effort, with maximum intensity and enthusiasm. If I had a son, and maybe one day I will, he will learn that nobody played the game harder or better than Pete Rose. He will be taught to play the game the way Pete played it. He will also learn—because I am his father—of Rose's legal and moral transgressions and their consequences. He will learn about integrity, honesty, and character. He will learn that he is less important—not more important—than the institutions and practices of which he is a part. He will learn to respect the game, its people, and its history. He will also learn to distinguish moral character from playing ability—what takes place off the field from what takes place on it. He will learn that good people can play badly and that bad people can play well, indeed superbly, like Pete Rose. If Charlie Hustle is not in the Hall of Fame by then, my son will know that it is a meaningless institution.

I take the opening account of creation in Genesis seriously, but not, I hasten to add, literally. I take it seriously because I believe this is the point from which our spiritual understanding of God's plans in and hopes for creation must begin, and against which our well-considered judgments about the value of creation finally must be tested. It is therefore predictable that I find it significant that God is said to judge each part of creation "good" before humans came upon the scene and that humans were created by God (or came upon the scene) on the same day as the nonhuman animals to whom I have been referring—those whose limbs are severed, whose sensory organs are brutally removed, and whose brains are ground up for purposes of scientific research, for example. I read in this representation of the order of creation a prescient recognition of the vital kinship humans share with these other animals, a kinship I have elsewhere endeavored to explicate in terms of our shared biographical presence in the world, a view which, quite apart from anything the Bible teaches, is supported by both common sense and our best science.

But I find in the opening saga of creation an even deeper, more profound message regarding God's plans in and hopes for creation. For I find in this account the unmistakable message that God did not create nonhuman animals for our use—not in science, not for the purpose of vanity products, not for our entertainment, not for our sport or recreation, not even for our bodily sustenance. On the contrary, the nonhuman animals currently exploited in these ways were created to be just what they are: independently good expressions of the divine love that, in ways that are likely always to remain to some degree mysterious to us, was expressed in God's creative activity.

The issue of bodily sustenance is perhaps the most noteworthy of the practices I have mentioned since, while humans from "the beginning" were in need of food, there were no rodeos or circuses, no leghold traps or dynamite harpoons in the original creation. Had it been part of God's hopes in and plans for creation to have humans use nonhuman animals as food, it would have been open to God to let this be known. And yet what we find in the opening saga of creation is just the opposite. The "meat" we are given by God is not the flesh of animals, it is "all plants that bear seed everywhere on the earth, and every tree bearing fruit which yields seed: they shall be yours for food" (Gen. 1:29 [NEB]).

The message could not be any clearer. In the most perfect state of creation humans are vegans (that is, not only is the flesh of animals excluded from the menu God provides for us, even animal products—milk and cheese, for example—are excluded). And so I believe that, if we look to the biblical account of "the beginning" as more than merely one among many considerations, but instead as an absolutely essential source of spiritual insight into God's hopes in and plans for creation, then, like it or not, we are obliged to find there a menu of divinely approved bodily sustenance that differs quite markedly from the steaks and chops, the roasts and stews most Christians are accustomed to devouring.

(Tom Regan, "Christians Are What Christians Eat," chap. 8 in his The Thee Generation: Reflections on the Coming Revolution [Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991], 143-57, at 149-50 [italics in original] [essay first published in 1990])

Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

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

Readers of my TCS column know that I offered to send a copy of Don Marquis's 1989 essay "Why Abortion Is Immoral." When I made the offer, I expected one or two requests, in which case I would have sent the JSTOR version that I have on my hard drive for personal use. But so many people asked for the essay that I decided not to send it to anyone (for legal reasons). Dr Marquis tells me that, to his knowledge, it is not posted online. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have made the offer. But there's good news. First, if you have access to a university library, you can track down The Journal of Philosophy and make yourself a copy. The publication details are in my column. Second, the essay is widely reprinted (at least fifty times, according to Dr Marquis). Here is one place in which it's reprinted in its entirety:

Susan Dwyer and Joel Feinberg, eds., The Problem of Abortion, 3d ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1997).

Again, I'm sorry. I hope you're not too disappointed. If it's any consolation, the book I just recommended contains many classic philosophical essays on abortion, not to mention a "Legal Appendix" that contains excerpts from Roe v. Wade, the 1973 United States Supreme Court case that has been so controversial.

Addendum: Make sure you order the third edition, not the second. Only the third edition contains Marquis's essay.

Addendum 2: I have no financial or other interest in this book, but my beloved teacher and dissertation director, Joel Feinberg, is one of its editors. Full disclosure.

My TCS column struck a nerve, evidently. I'm being overwhelmed by e-mail, almost all of it favorable. I will try to respond in due course. For the time being, let me provide links to several essays and books by my conservative philosophical heroes, Roger Scruton and John Kekes:

Roger Scruton, "Godless Conservatism" (1996)

Roger Scruton, "Why I Became a Conservative" (2003)

Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism, rev. 3d ed. (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2002) (first edition published in 1980)

John Kekes, "What Is Conservatism?" (1997)

John Kekes, Against Liberalism (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997)

John Kekes, A Case for Conservatism (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998)

Oh, my goodness! Now a Houston radio station wants me to discuss conservatism. I must decline. I'm a writer, not a talker (except in the classroom).

Donald Marquis (pronounced MAR-qwess) is Professor of Philosophy at The University of Kansas. Fifteen years ago, he shook up the philosophical world by arguing from nonreligious premises to the immorality of abortion. (Don Marquis, "Why Abortion Is Immoral," The Journal of Philosophy 86 [April 1989]: 183-202.) The essay is not available online (as far as I can tell), but it is available from JSTOR, to which you should have access if you are a college student or a professor. I did, however, find a twenty-six minute interview between Dr Marquis and another philosopher, Hugh LaFollette of East Tennessee State University. I believe you will enjoy listening to it. Click here. You will need RealOne Player. Here are some other philosophical materials on abortion (compiled by Dr LaFollette).

I guess my seventeenth Tech Central Station column is up, because the e-mail is pouring in. Let me get the link. Here it is.

IV. What other agents then are there, which, at the same time that they are under the influence of man's direction, are susceptible of happiness? They are of two sorts: 1. Other human beings who are styled persons. 2. Other animals, which, on account of their interests having been neglected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists, stand degraded into the class of things. [footnote 1]

[footnote 1] Under the Gentoo and Mahometan religions, the interests of the rest of the animal creation seem to have met with some attention. Why have they not, universally, with as much as those of human creatures, allowance made for the difference in point of sensibility? Because the laws that are have been the work of mutual fear; a sentiment which the less rational animals have not had the same means as man has of turning to account. Why ought they not? No reason can be given. If the being eaten were all, there is very good reason why we should be suffered to eat such of them as we like to eat: we are the better for it, and they are never the worse. They have none of those long-protracted anticipations of future misery which we have. The death they suffer in our hands commonly is, and always may be, a speedier, and by that means a less painful one, than that which would await them in the inevitable course of nature. If the being killed were all, there is very good reason why we should be suffered to kill such as molest us: we should be the worse for their living, and they are never the worse for being dead. But is there any reason why we should be suffered to torment them? Not any that I can see. Are there any why we should not be suffered to torment them? Yes, several. See B. I. tit. [Cruelty to animals]. The day has been, I grieve to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

(Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, The Hafner Library of Classics, Number Six [New York: Hafner Press, 1948 (first published in 1789; this is the 1823 edition)], chap. XVII, sec. 1, subsec. IV, pp. 310-1 [italics and third set of brackets in original; footnote within footnote omitted])

My goodness, the Internet is fast! An alert reader has already sent this—by historian T. R. Fehrenbach. Thank you!

My latest column on Tech Central Station, "Dodging the Issue," elicited a flurry of responses. Several readers took issue with the following sentence:

I have never seen such ill-will [sic; should be "ill will"] toward a sitting president.

I was referring, of course, to President Bush. Here is a representative letter (received this morning):

Dear Dr. Burgess-Jackson: I enjoyed your piece on TCS about the president's critics and their seeming unwillingness to debate the "morality" of the war in Iraq. I have lots of reasons to criticize Bush and his policies (mostly because he is not a free-trader, not fiscally responsible and quite inconsistent on FP) but I am dismayed to find myself frequently defending him against critics who just seem to hate the guy. However, you wrote, "I have never seen such ill-will toward a sitting president." Were you out of the country during the Clinton era? Regards, Mark Brooker [reprinted by permission]

Thanks for writing, Mark (and others). I really do believe that President Bush has come in for more virulent criticism than President Clinton. That was not a slip of the pen or a rhetorical flourish. I have no proof of this, of course, but let me say a few things to show my good faith in asserting it.

First, I voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. I did not vote for George W. Bush in 2000. That shows, I think, that I'm not blinded by ideology to the point where I could not see criticism of President Clinton if it existed. I would have noticed it, believe me. My vote for President Clinton was my first (and still my only) vote for the winning presidential candidate. I did not become disenchanted with him until two or three years into his first term.

Second, I don't think the ill will toward President Clinton was as broad or as deep as the ill will toward President Bush. To be sure, there were always critics of President Clinton, and some of them were nasty. I recall talking to a student in my office in about 1993. He told me the most outlandish things, such as that Clinton ran a cocaine business in Arkansas. Others claimed that he had murdered people. The critics were on the fringe. They were laughable, and therefore easily dismissed as cranks. Today, vehement criticism of President Bush appears in mainstream journalistic outlets. Jonathan Chait wrote a long essay in The New Republic on why he hates President Bush. (See here.) Did you see any essays like that about President Clinton? The language is far coarser than during the Clinton presidency. Perhaps the Internet has something to do with this, for there are no editors on the Internet. People say whatever they please, with no filters.

Third, I don't recall anyone questioning President Clinton's intelligence. That is about the meanest, vilest thing you can say about a person. Yet that is the most common criticism made of President Bush. In my opinion, there is nothing to it. I would wager a year's salary (keep in mind that I'm a college professor) that President Bush's IQ is as high as former President Clinton's. One of my first TCS columns (see here) was about why liberals think conservatives are stupid. The belief that conservatives are less intelligent than liberals is itself a manifestation of low or questionable intelligence.

So I stand by my claim: I have never seen such ill will toward a sitting president as I see toward President Bush. I wonder whether my view is shared by longtime nonpartisan political observers—historians, for example.

To the Editor:

Re "A Wounded United Nations" (editorial, Jan. 2):

You are certainly correct that we need the United Nations to be an effective partner. But the United Nations cannot be useful in a world where the harsh realities are measured in coffins, unless and until it grows a spine and demonstrates that it can be an effective partner when the going gets a little bit tougher than a harshly worded memo.

RUSS MITCHELL
Irving, Tex., Jan. 2, 2004

Though I confess to being a partisan in the dispute about whether there is a defensible divine command theory, it does seem to me that so far the defenders have had the better of the argument. I think it safe to say that none of us now knows that all divine command theories are false, and so I believe it would be premature to cut off debate among philosophers about their strengths and weaknesses. Of course a successful defense of a theory against attempts at refutation by showing that they fail provides no positive reason for thinking that the theory is true. So foes of divine command theories might concede that they have so far proven to be defensible, remain convinced that they are all false, and only regret that no one has yet been ingenious enough to figure out how to refute them all. But friends of divine command theories can derive modest comfort from the fact that no knockdown philosophical argument is presently known that conclusively refutes them all.

(Philip L. Quinn, "The Recent Revival of Divine Command Ethics," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50, Supplement [fall 1990]: 345-65, at 350)

Interested in which syndicated columnists are most partisan? Go here. (Thanks to Donald Luskin for the link.) By the way, I've been meaning to write something about Ann Coulter. She's an embarrassment to conservatism. We conservatives should not hesitate to repudiate her "manipulative rhetoric." Conservatism needs no rhetoric to make its case. Logic suffices.

Academe, n. An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught.

Academy, n. (from academe). A modern school where football is taught.

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

1976 A Justification of Rationality. Albany: State University of New York Press.

1980 The Nature of Philosophy. APQ Library of Philosophy. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield.

1988 The Examined Life. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press; University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992.

1989 Moral Tradition and Individuality. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

1990 Facing Evil. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

1993 The Morality of Pluralism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

1995 Moral Wisdom and Good Lives. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

1997 Against Liberalism. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

1998 A Case for Conservatism. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

2000 Pluralism in Philosophy: Changing the Subject. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

2002 The Art of Life. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

2003 The Illusions of Egalitarianism. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

I'm forty-six years old. Twenty years ago this morning, on a cold, snowy day, I was sworn in as an attorney in Mount Clemens, Michigan. I had passed the Michigan Bar Examination the previous July, but was busy studying philosophy at The University of Arizona. I had no plans to practice law in Michigan, or elsewhere, but it was important to me that I be admitted to the bar, so I arranged to be admitted during my first visit to Michigan (over the holidays). The flight from Tucson to Detroit, by way of Phoenix and Milwaukee, was my first. That's right: I didn't fly until I was twenty-six years old.

My mother and stepfather must have thought I was crazy, abandoning a legal career for something as nebulous as philosophy. What the hell is philosophy, anyway? But they supported me every step of the way, including driving me (with a trailer of belongings) to Tucson. They must have sensed that I knew what I was doing. I did. My life as a professor of philosophy is as satisfying as I thought it would be, if not more so. I would gladly do it all over again. Thanks, Mom and Jerry, for supporting me. I will always remember it and be grateful for it.

Read this and you'll see why John Kekes is one of my philosophical heroes. You might also take the time to read this.

For generic pronouns, I use the following conventions. Male gender pronouns will be used for references to a professor. Female gender pronouns will be used for references to the student.

(A. P. Martinich, Philosophical Writing: An Introduction, 2d ed. [Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996], 7)

His grotesque pedantry, the unreadable dullness of much of his writing, his vanity, his eccentricity, his solemnity, the pathos of his private life, his dogmatism, his authoritarianism, his philosophical fallacies, all that is bizarre and utopian in his character and writings, need not blind us to his merits.

(Isaiah Berlin, "Historical Inevitability," chap. 2 in his Four Essays on Liberty [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969], 41-117, at 42 [essay delivered as the Auguste Comte Memorial Trust Lecture on 12 May 1953 and first published in 1954])

Believe it or not, I wrote a term paper with that title in a graduate philosophy course at Wayne State University (while I was in law school). The professor, Bruce Russell, must have thought I was crazy, but he allowed me to do it, for which I am grateful. Today I received an interesting e-mail from Steve Walsh, who gave me permission to reproduce it here (with his name):

Professor Burgess-Jackson, I've just begun reading at the Animal Ethics blog and am writing in the hope that you can point me in the right direction. Intrigued by some of the posts about vegetarianism, veganism, and the other general attempts to persuade against eating meat, I am curious to find more writing on this topic, but with a specific idea in mind. I've always thought of the various forms of life as a sort of linear continuum: amoebas at one end and human beings at the other. Along the way we have bacteria, virus, fungus, plants, insects, and animals; more or less in that order from lesser (left) to higher (right). We (I?) distinguish these different forms by such things as sentience (perceived), self-consciousness, communication ability, mobility, and appearance. With this in mind I have always evaluated the morality of killing from a very simple point of view: everything to the right of the animals (ie; humans) is morally unacceptable and everything to the left of humans is morally okay. Whether I actually kill things (directly or indirectly) depends on my perceived utility of doing so. Thus using disinfectants to kill bacteria, taking anti-viral medications, using anti-fungal solvents has never been a problem. My killing of insects & other critters depends on whether they are being a nuisance or otherwise serving no immediate purpose (mosquitoes, spiders, bees, ants, rodents). With my continuum in mind, the question, in a couple of different forms, that I am trying to answer is this: what is the difference between killing animals and plants for food? What is the difference between killing animals for food and killing bacteria to prevent illness? I know you get a ton of mail but if you could suggest some reading on this topic I would appreciate it. Regards, Steve

Thanks for writing, Steve. Your question is a good one. Here is how philosophers put it: Which entities have moral status, and why? Assuming that some entities have moral status and others do not, what's the morally relevant difference? What is it that all the entities with moral status have that all the entities without moral status lack?

For some philosophers, the morally relevant difference is sentience, or the capacity to suffer. This is Peter Singer's view. He says that being sentient is both necessary and sufficient for having interests. (In other words, the class of sentient beings and the class of beings with interests is the same class.) Compare a stone and a mouse. There is nothing I can do to the stone that matters to it. It can't feel pain. It can't be deprived of liberty. But a mouse can feel pain, and pain is bad, so what I do to the mouse matters to it. Since the mouse has interests (specifically, an interest in not suffering), it has moral status. This is not to say that the mouse has the same interests as a human. I have an interest in participating in the political system. The mouse does not, since it cannot. Also, I'm a moral agent. The mouse is a moral patient. It can be acted on, morally, but cannot act, morally. I am responsible for my conduct in a way that a mouse is not. Strictly speaking, I am both a moral agent and a moral patient. The mouse is only a moral patient.

Since plants are not sentient, they lack interests, according to Singer. He devotes two pages of Animal Liberation to the topic. The reason he addresses it is to cut off a certain objection to the idea that nonhuman animals have moral status. Someone might reason as follows:

1. If nonhuman animals have moral status, then so do plants.

2. If plants have moral status, then humans will (have to) starve.

Therefore,

3. If nonhuman animals have moral status, then humans will (have to) starve (from 1 and 2).

4. It can't be the case that humans will (have to) starve.

Therefore,

5. Nonhuman animals do not have moral status (from 3 and 4).

Singer rejects 5, so, since the inferences appear to be valid, he must reject one or more of the premises: 1, 2, or 4. He rejects 1. (This is not to say that he accepts 2; he could reject it as well.) Nonhuman animals can have moral status even though plants (and perhaps some rudimentary animals, such as oysters, worms, and insects) do not. The difference, as I said, is sentience. "There is no reliable evidence that plants are capable of feeling pleasure or pain" (Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 2d ed. [New York: The New York Review of Books, 1990], 235).

Singer goes on to ask what would follow if we became convinced that plants feel pain. It wouldn't follow that we must starve. What would follow is that we should minimize the amount of pain we cause in the course of preserving our lives. Since plants would presumably feel less pain than nonhuman animals, we would have a moral obligation to eat plants instead of animals. Indeed, if we truly cared about plants, he said, we would give up meat, which requires far more plants than we would need if we ate the plants directly. Meat is wasteful.

Singer's view is not the only view. Another is that plants, like animals, have moral status (even rights, provided we understand the concept properly). Not because they're sentient, but because they have a good of their own. Here is Paul W. Taylor:

Once we separate the objective value concept of a being's good from subjective value concepts, there is no problem about understanding what it means to benefit or harm a plant, to be concerned about its good, and to act benevolently toward it. We can intentionally act with the aim of helping a plant to grow and thrive, and we can do this because we have genuine concern for its well-being. As moral agents we might think of ourselves as under an obligation not to destroy or injure a plant. We can also take the standpoint of a plant and judge what happens to it as being good or bad from its standpoint. To do this would involve our using as the standard of evaluation the preservation or promotion of the plant's own good. Anyone who has ever taken care of flowers, shrubs, or trees will know what these things mean. (Paul W. Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986], 67-8)

As the title of Taylor's book suggests, he advocates an attitude of respect for nature: for each living organism (animal or plant) as well as for entire populations and biotic communities. Actions are right to the extent that (and only to the extent that) they express or embody this "ultimate moral attitude" (page 84).

Now obviously something must give, for if every living organism has an inherent worth that must be respected, and if respect means not killing or using an organism, then no human will survive. (Remember: Nonhuman animals are not moral agents, so they are not morally responsible for what they do. The question is how humans should conduct themselves.) So Taylor must provide rules that minimize and resolve conflicts between organisms. Here are his four rules:

1. Nonmaleficence. This prohibits the doing of harm.

2. Noninterference. This requires us to leave organisms and ecosystems alone.

3. Fidelity. This forbids humans to break trust with individual animals (by hunting them, for example).

4. Restitutive justice. This requires restoration of the "balance of justice" when one of the previous rules has been broken.

Taylor goes on to provide priority rules for when these first-order rules conflict. Rule 1, for example, takes priority over the others. This is similar to the medical injunction, primum non nocere (first, do no harm).

Conflicts between organisms are inevitable. As Taylor puts it, "Not only must humans make use of the natural environment and thereby compete with animals and plants that might also need that environment as their habitat and food source, but humans must also directly consume some nonhumans in order to survive" (page 257). So Taylor rejects premise 2 of the argument presented earlier. The person who adopts an attitude of respect for nature (called biocentrism) will not automatically prefer the interests of humans to the interests of other organisms (called anthropocentrism). He or she will strive to accommodate all interests. This will mean limiting human population, reducing consumption, and being wise in the use of technology. Biocentrism sees humans as just another species, with no special claim on the earth's resources.

It might be thought that this leaves us where we were, with humans doing as they please. It does not. Most people say that nonhuman animals and plants have no moral status, whereas humans do. Taylor says that all organisms have moral status. This shifts the burden to those who would harm other organisms. What didn't need justification now needs justification. Most people are anthropocentrists. Taylor's biocentrism would require vast changes in our lives and in society. Compare the changes in thought, attitude, and behavior toward slaves before and after they were freed. Before they were freed, certain things could be done to them with impunity. After they were freed, these things could not be done. Becoming a member of the legal or moral community makes a great deal of difference to how one is (may be) treated.

I haven't begun to plumb the depths of Taylor's fine book. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in this topic.

Analytic philosophy is not so much a school of thought as a style or method. It is a style of philosophizing which seeks to be rigorous and careful, which at times makes use of ideas and techniques from logic, and which is aware of what is happening in science. It is, in particular, alert to linguistic considerations, not because of an interest in language for its own sake, but because it is through language that we grasp the concepts we use, and it is by means of language that we express our beliefs and assumptions. One of the principal methods of analytic philosophy is analysis of the concepts we employ in thinking about ourselves and the world: not surprisingly, this is called 'conceptual analysis'.

Most philosophy done in the English-speaking world is analytic philosophy. . . . The name 'analytic philosophy' is sometimes used to distinguish the rigorous style of philosophizing just described from other styles of philosophizing, for example from so-called 'Continental Philosophy', by which is meant—variously—the philosophical work done in France, Germany, and elsewhere in continental Europe since the beginning of the twentieth century. Thus the thought of Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, the Frankfurt School, Foucault, Derrida, and others (a highly various assortment which it is not at all helpful to collect under a single label) is so named. There are indeed substantial differences both of interest and method between analytic and 'Continental' philosophy, but there is also some overlap. In just the same way as a certain amount of 'Continental' philosophy is done in the English-speaking world, so there is increasing interest in analytic philosophy in continental Europe.

(A. C. Grayling, "Editor's Introduction," in Philosophy: A Guide Through the Subject, ed. A. C. Grayling [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995], 1-6, at 5-6)

I've been getting a lot of e-mail about my latest TCS column, "Dodging the Issue," in which I complain about the paucity of discussion of the morality of war. Some of the letter writers take up the challenge. I wish I could respond to all of them, or even some of them, but I can't. If I did, I'd have no time for writing or for the other things that need to be done. For those who wish to begin thinking systematically about the morality of war, let me make some recommendations. Jonathan Glover devotes a long chapter (nineteen) of Causing Death and Saving Lives (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1977) to war. This is a very good book—one I have come back to many times over the years. Robert L. Holmes's On War and Morality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), which I used in a graduate course several years ago, is a book-length defense of moderate pacifism (the view that "war in the modern world is not morally justified" [page 14]). Along the way, Holmes elaborates and criticizes traditional just-war theory, which sets out criteria both for going to war (jus ad bellum) and for conducting war (jus in bello). Anyone thinking seriously about the morality of war must come to grips with just-war theory, which is the most sophisticated body of thought on the matter. One need not be Catholic, or even religious, to be a just-war theorist. Holmes's book has a lengthy bibliography that will lead readers further into the literature.

The following letter appeared in today's New York Times:

To the Editor:

Re "Pork Shortage for the Homeless" (editorial, Dec. 27):

On Christmas Eve, I awoke in my warm, cozy apartment overlooking the park, pleasantly anticipating a family gathering to celebrate the day. Looking out at the park, I saw an old, homeless man. Stooped, he shuffled slowly down the street in the rain, pulling a bag-filled cart behind him.

That image is burned in my brain. How can this be? Today? In America?

DEBORAH BAXTER
Albany, Dec. 27, 2003

Did the letter-writer help the man? If not, why not? Welfare has undermined people's willingness to help others. That used to be called "charity." Liberalism, which makes every need a public responsibility, has destroyed the word's meaning.

The impact of Peter Singer's writing is due as much to his gift for moral rhetoric as to the quality of his arguments. Reading his 1972 paper 'Famine, Affluence, and Morality,' one felt intellectual interest in the argument, but also guilt for not having contributed more money to relieve starvation. Many otherwise sober citizens, after reading his 1975 book Animal Liberation, became vegetarians. It is difficult to say just how this effect is achieved. There is no preaching; somehow a sense of moral urgency is conveyed through the statement of the theoretical arguments themselves. I know of no other writer whose work combines intellectual analysis and moral persuasion so compellingly.

(James Rachels, "Sociobiology and the 'Escalator' of Reason," review of The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology, by Peter Singer, The Hastings Center Report 11 [October 1981]: 45-6, at 45)

I just found this essay by John B. Judis ("Kant and Mill in Baghdad") while googling. It appears to have been published in early June, about the time my first column for Tech Central Station appeared (on 5 June). I wish I had been aware of it at the time I wrote my column. Judis's ostensible purpose is to discuss the morality of war in Iraq, but he can't resist taking cheap shots at President Bush. Still, it's a welcome contribution to what should be a vigorous public debate. Much ink has been spilled discussing President Bush's motives and stated reasons for going to war; let's set all that aside and focus on the principles of just war. In other words, let's focus on the rightness or wrongness of the act rather than the goodness or badness of the agent performing it.

It ought to be seen as surprising and scandalous that philosophers—some of whom, in the UK and other societies, hold eminent positions and have considerable influence both socially and financially—have made so little effort to promote their subject in a practical way. Some may regard such promotion as virtually impossible, taking the view that we are up against invincible ignorance. Others may think it in some way improper, degrading to the subject, to hire a good advertising or public-relations agent, or to use any but the most stringently rational and non-emotive methods to advance the cause of philosophy. Others again may simply not be very interested—and it is, in fact[,] an important question whether the missionary and pragmatic zeal required for selling philosophy can co-exist, in the same person, with the patience and scholarship required for doing it well. I do not—not, at least, without further research—wish to accuse my colleagues in the profession of moral slackness. At the same time there does seem to be some sort of conceptual connection between thinking philosophy important for all men and doing something to promote it; and I end [this book] with the hope that all who think it important will do rather more than they have done hitherto.

(John Wilson, What Philosophy Can Do [Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble Books, 1986], 153)

Howard Dean's rivals for the Democrat presidential nomination are mean and unfair, says New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who lays down the rules for how they should treat the frontrunner. (See here.) It sounds to me as though Krugman is campaigning for a cabinet position in the Dean administration. For the usual thorough critique of Krugman, see Donald L. Luskin's page. Somebody has to keep this demagogue honest. ("Demagogue" =df. "a political agitator appealing to the basest instincts of a mob" [The Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide, 1999].)

Have you heard of Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia? If not, go here. The section on "neutral point of view" (here) is fascinating. I wish journalists would read it.

In case you missed it, here is Robert J. Samuelson's column on why President Bush is hated. My take is here.

A study of the competitors in the annual "Marathon runs," held at Boston during the last few years, has just been reported. . . . The men were examined just before and just after a run of twenty-four miles. While in some the pulse rate was not much increased, it usually was high, even 180 being recorded. In practically all cases the hearts, already hypertrophied from training, became more or less dilated, often with systolic murmurs. The temperature was invariably raised, and a leucocytosis corresponding in intensity and type with that observed in inflammatory diseases, generally over 20,000, was constant. The urinary examination indicated an active renal hyperemia, albumin, casts and blood being found at first, but these abnormal substances all disappeared in a week. An interesting finding was the decrease of urea for the first twenty-four hours following the race.

All of these changes indicate that in violent athletic exercise there is produced a great mechanical strain on the heart, and the presence in excessive amounts of the "toxins of fatigue" that cause much the same results as acute infection, namely, leucocytosis, fever, and renal injury. That repeated exercise, such as prolonged training in successive years, may lead to permanent injury of the heart or kidney is unquestionable—how frequently such is the case is altogether a different question, needing statistics of athletes after their period of active training, which statistics are obviously difficult of accumulation. The pathogenesis of interstitial myocarditis is too obscure to permit of dogmatic statements, but we know that when a tissue suffers atrophy of its parenchyma cells the interstitial tissue usually takes their place, and this fibrous tissue in contracting lessens the blood supply so that further atrophy follows, and thus a vicious circle is established. When an athlete subsides into a quiet life his hypertrophied heart muscle may readily undergo such change, and there is abundant evidence that it does. Constant hammering of a hypertrophied heart on the arteries can not well help shortening the existence of the "vital rubber" in their coats. G. Frank Lydston, writing under the title of "Briefs on Physical Training," calls attention forcefully to the grave results that have been observed to follow in later years the athletic excesses of youth, not only in damaged cardio-vascular systems, but also in disturbed metabolism as manifested in "lithemia," whatever that may be. "The man who gets a great deal out of himself physically before the age of 30 is bound to 'go back' after that period. The man who attains supremacy on borrowed energy—energy borrowed from his physiologic bank—is called on to pay his note sooner or later. He can not do so and goes into physiologic bankruptcy."

If in our fondness for the excitement of athletic contests we are leading to injury of the vital powers of young men, if we are encouraging a system that decreases their prospects of longevity, we may seriously stop to consider if the game is worth the candle. . . .

("The Dangers in Competitive College Athletics," JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 40 [11 April 1903]: 992-3, reprinted in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 289 [16 April 2003]: 2004 [footnotes omitted])

Year, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.

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

Happy new year, everyone! It's a day of endings and beginnings, a time for reflection on what has passed and anticipation of what is to come, so perhaps I won't be thought a crank by addressing the topic of procreation.

Having a child is an action (or series of actions); as such, it can and should be evaluated, morally. It's not just any action, either. What other action is so momentous, in terms of its consequences? You are bringing a new person into the world, a person who will affect many others over the course of his or her lifetime. Your responsibility for this new being will end only with the onset of autonomy; and strictly speaking, it won't end even there, for while your children will eventually be responsible for their conduct, the nature of that conduct will always reflect your influence (or lack thereof). Your children are copies of you.

For some reason our society refuses to evaluate procreation. I have never understood this. It is the exact opposite of what should be the case. When I see children having children, I condemn it. Being a proper parent requires not just physical and emotional maturity, but knowledge (both knowledge-that and knowledge-how) and financial resources. These take time to develop and acquire. It is irresponsible to bring a child into the world when you are not equipped to provide for all of his or her needs: emotional, physical, educational, financial. But it happens every day. Why is it not condemned?

One reason we don't condemn it is the sense that procreation is beyond control, or at least not fully in one's control. But why is that? Are we mere animals, acting on instinct? Do we have no choice in the matter? Shouldn't the decision to have sexual intercourse be thoroughly scrutinized, given that it can issue in new persons? Perhaps if society were more judgmental in this realm, there would be more thought given to one's sexual life.

Legal philosophers have long debated whether punishing negligence makes sense, since, by definition, the person who acts negligently doesn't intend to harm anyone. But as H. L. A. Hart and others have argued, this is a mistake. If negligence is punished (or, in the case of morality, condemned), it will provoke greater thought and greater care. If I know that I will be held accountable for carelessness while gardening, I will implement routines to ensure that I don't leave my hose running (since it could flood the neighbor's yard). If I know that I will be held accountable for children I bring into the world, I will implement routines to ensure that I don't accidentally procreate. The idea is to make people more thoughtful, more attentive, more careful.

Another thing society might do to discourage irresponsible parenthood is to force parents to bear the full costs of their offspring. Why should those of us who are conscientious and responsible have to subsidize the careless? Why should I have to work to help irresponsible people raise their children? It will be said that this is cruel. The children will suffer, and it's not their fault. But what's the alternative? The current no-fault system of parenting is unfair to those who are responsible. It provides a windfall to the irresponsible. If you want less of something, tax it. If you want more of something, subsidize it. We subsidize irresponsible childbearing in this country. Is anyone surprised that we get a lot of it?

This is a difficult problem. On the one hand, we want to discourage irresponsible childbearing; we want there to be less of it. But on the other hand, we don't want to punish the innocent children of irresponsible parents. Whatever we do, there is a cost. I just wish we would acknowledge the costs, for otherwise any decision we make is irrational. (Rational decision-makers take all costs and benefits into account.) People who favor the no-fault system we have, with transfer payments to poor parents, should acknowledge the unfairness of such a system to those who act responsibly. People who favor a system without subsidization of poor parents should acknowledge the harm it does to innocent children.

I believe we have swung too far to the no-fault side. Each of us should do his or her part to condemn irresponsible parenthood as a way of deterring it. That means condemning irresponsible sexual intercourse. If you're not prepared to raise a child, you should not be having sex, for that is how children come into existence. Can we agree on this? Sex is not a birthright. It is not something one has regardless of circumstance. It is an awesome privilege. Like any privilege, it must be earned. It is earned by assuming responsibility for its consequences. If you want the pleasures of sexual intercourse and the benefits of parenthood, then put yourself in a position in which you alone bear the costs. Otherwise you violate my rights.