To Josh: Zygotes are 'rational moral agents'? Really?

[The following post is a reply meant for the comments on this prior post, in which Josh Brahm, pro-life activist, attempts to argue for the idea in the subject line, among other things. After the internet ate up my original short and sweet reply, I wrote a much longer one and decided to post it here, for Josh and anyone else who cares.]

“I agree that typically speaking, people think of levels of consciousness as connected with personhood, but I think that’s an incorrect view.”

I think you’ve missed a really fundamental point: it’s not simply that some people have a theory of personhood in which consciousness figures, which you are free to disregard as you choose. It’s rather that the very meaning of ‘person’ connects with consciousness or capacity therefore, or, if you like, with rational moral agency. If this, or something like it, isn’t what you mean when using the word ‘person,’ then you would do well to either stipulate what you do mean (here, "a kind of thing" would not do), or use another word; otherwise, it would look as if you were attempting to introduce and then trade on an ambiguity. (That is, you recognize that the ordinary concept of ‘person’ carries moral heft; you decide to use that word for a concept altogether different from the ordinary concept; and you expect the ordinary felt moral heft of the ordinary concept of ‘person’ to “carry over” to the new concept in its application, or at least for it not to be noticed that the question of the moral weight of the new concept is now likely to be an open question.)

If we do take person to mean “rational moral agents,” all the basic problems I outlined in the prior comment remain: this description simply does not apply to zygotes, even if 1) we think that zygotes are a separate kind of substance, or 2) we are left with morally difficult cases, or 3) it is difficult to precisely analyze the concept in just any way that might be demanded. There is no reason to say that zygotes are rational moral agents, and lots of reason to say that they aren’t: zygotes don’t act or have the capacity for action (so they’re not agents); zygotes don’t behave or have the capacity to behave in any way that supports moral description; and, if a zygote exemplifies your idea of rationality, well, this conversation wouldn't be happening at all. Certainly, zygotes are potential rational moral agents, slightly closer (in some sense) to personhood than the DNA you wantonly discard when cutting your hair or scratching your nose. But none of that, we should agree, argues in favor of the pro-life position (or against scratching your nose or cutting your hair).

I understand that you are concerned that the denial of a proposition like “all humans are persons” would entail morally impermissible results, like infanticide, or failure to care appropriately for comatose patients. About this: 1) as far as the particular narrow question is concerned, so what if morally impermissible results are entailed?--that doesn’t show the truth or falsity of the proposition in question; 2) there might be other reasons, not having to do with personhood, that would get you the moral results you want in the cases you cite (so it’s not clear that you would have to pay the moral costs you anyway suppose); 3) as an incidental aside since it doesn't matter for the main argument, at least in the comatose case, it might be that the patient is a person, for all she is comatose; if there is something in the meaning of 'person' that rules it out, I don’t see what it is—the patient can certainly be thought of (in a way a zygote can’t) as having capacities for a certain (high) level of consciousness.

What else? 1) I agree that persons are valuable as the very things they are. I think that was why or partly why I said that ‘person’ (in the ordinary sense) was a value concept in the first place—-because it necessarily picks out something of value. 2) The difficulty of saying in advance just how much consciousness (or capacity for consciousness) personhood demands doesn’t show much of anything, least of all that personhood is a concept divorced from consciousness in the way I indicated. There are plenty of concepts for which it is notoriously difficult to give exhaustive necessary and sufficient conditions (knowledge and heap are two examples from philosophy that spring immediately to mind), but that fortunately doesn’t rob the concepts of their meaning or indicate that there concepts pick no things out in the world, nor does it indicate that the concept does not individuate a kind of thing. So I am agreed that ‘person’ picks out a kind of thing; and one of the things I meant when denying personhood to the zygote was that zygotes are different kinds of things than I or you.

So I think what remains here is your (weird, obviously mistaken) professed judgment that zygotes literally are rational moral agents, and hence, persons. The substance theory of persons does not lessen the strangeness of this judgment, even if the theory is true: as a defense of this judgment, it amounts to pounding the table and saying the word "is" loudly. ("The zygote just IS a person"-- and then in a whisper, "even if it has never shown any capacity which that concept necessarily picks out, like rationality or agency.")

A weird idea from the New Republic

The New Republic reviews a book on bioethics, and, although the review overall doesn't seem so bad (not having read the book myself), the reviewer unfortunately attempts a little casual moral skepticism:

For most of us, the very idea of “right” answers to complex moral and philosophical dilemmas such as euthanasia, embryonic stem cell cloning, or organ remuneration is absurd on its face. After all, deriving an “answer” depends upon which type of moral theory one favors.

It is one thing to be a moral skeptic, but the reason for skepticism offered here is just deeply weird--as if there is something about having or favoring a particular moral theory which necessarily renders moral judgments illegitimate. Why in the world would that be? It's an odd idea.

And, incidentally, as concerns the relevance of moral theory to particular moral judgment, it might be worth pointing out that serious ethicists/moral philosophers can agree on quite a lot of particular cases despite differing moral theories. For example, a wide-ranging debate/discussion between Michael Sandel and Peter Singer, two very differently oriented moral philosophers, didn't uncover a single disagreement about the preferrability or dispreferability of any particular example action, as I recall. (Although there were disagreements about the strength of the preference or the reason to prefer or disprefer.)

There is a serious question about direction of fit, here, though. Should ethical theories fit particular moral judgments, or should moral judgments fit particular ethical theories? In other words, does theory really determine judgment in the way that the writer supposes? My short answer is that the ethical theory should fit the ethical judgment (in much the same way that a scientific theory should fit the empirical data), with the caveat that where a (serious) theory calls the judgment into question, that judgment ought to be analyzed and reflected upon. It may be, as well, that an occasional anomalous judgment will not call a successful theory into question. Ultimately, however, we can't escape our ethical judgments; in fact, this is just what makes ethical theorizing so hard: no theory will be any good unless it consistently "captures" our particular ethical judgments across a wide variety of cases.

Of course, we might say that a theory is "prescriptive" and not "descriptive," but a prescriptive theory's felt authority depends first on its being seen to have descriptively captured lots of our particular moral judgments.

The Moral Relevance of the Fact that a Fetus is a Living Human

I was forwarded a link to a small grenade in the wider abortion debates, this one from the pro-life side, although it highlights a confusion which cuts across both sides of the debate. It seems there are pro-choicers who argue that pre-abortion fetuses are not living humans. Which, as the above pro-lifer correctly pointed out, is simply wrong as a matter of what is ordinarily meant by the biological concepts of 'human' and 'living.' Clearly pre-abortion fetuses are living humans.

The confusion here which cuts across both sides of the debate is in thinking that any of this matters very much with respect to the ethics of abortion. It doesn't. The concepts 'human' and 'life' are simply biological concepts, not value concepts capable of doing any interesting moral work. What makes particular humans special, to the degree that any are, is that they bear morally relevant qualities like rationality and personhood--not that they have a particular DNA sequence locating them within a particular species on the tree of life. And obviously, rationality and personhood are value-concepts: any creature with qualities of personhood and rationality is special, because personhood and rationality are special and valuable.

I suspect that theistic pro-lifers who (wrongfully) insist that 'human' is a value concept are just trying to hide their real, deeper commitments, which is the view that all humans possess things called souls, and that souls are necessarily valuable. And pro-choicers who insist that pre-abortion fetuses are not human are just mistakenly buying into the assumption that 'human' is a value concept.

Since I'm on the topic and on a roll, a couple other things about the abortion debate:

If abortion is a practice standing in need of some justification, that justification simply can't be that abortion results from some choice. We need to think that the choice was the right choice, and what makes a choice the right choice will have to do with considerations beyond the bare fact of its being a choice. In fact, most pro-choicers have these sorts of considerations in mind, considerations like the mother's quality of life, the mother's health, the likely quality of the child's life if born, etc., etc. So, while the "pro-choice" label has its rhetorical uses, it doesn't do much to illuminate the core ethics of the situation, if there are any such ethics.

This raises perhaps the most basic question of all: is abortion a practice standing in need of some special justification for reason of what it does to the fetus? If the fetus represents nothing of value whatsoever, then we shouldn't think that abortion even requires a justification. I don't think it's entirely implausible to deny any value to the fetus, as such (as opposed to its value as an imagined part of an existing family, it's being wanted or desired, etc.); it's certainly hard to identify what that value, if anything, could possibly be (particularly if you are going to deny the existence and/or value of souls).

However, in fact, and not for any identifiable theoretical reason, I do think that abortion is a practice standing in need of some justification; we don't celebrate abortion, and I don't think many women feel completely indifferent about abortion (although some of that lack of indifference could come from wrongful social guilt-conditioning). Moreover, if I found that a woman aborted her fetus solely because the fetus would, if born, have grown up to be a freckled red-head, or of the 'wrong' gender, I think I (and most readers) would definitely think a little worse of that person. This then makes me think that there is something there of value. (Although, fair to say, a something-I-know-not-what.)

(On the other hand, perhaps my intuitions here can be accounted for alternatively; perhaps what I really object to in the abortion-for-reason-of-red-headedness case is the mother's thought that there is something to be preferred about not being a red-head; this displays a certain shallowness which is objectionable for its own sake.)

However, I think this is mostly consistent with the view that abortion could be justified given some consideration or reason, however weak. "Wrong hair color" and "wrong gender" simply seem like mistaken reasons. Given a "real" reason, like the mother's health, or the child's likely quality of life, or the inability of the mother to care for the child, or the inconvenience (and risk) of pregnancy, I don't find myself with any clear sense of moral objection. And sometimes I feel that abortion represents a positive moral requirement: a pregnant 9-year-old victim of incestuous rape positively ought to get an abortion by all means, and it's a moral embarrasment for any ethical theory to say that abortion in such a context is wrong.

And, lastly, all of the above question can be separated in some degree from the question of what legal policy we ought to have with respect to abortion. Even if abortion requires some reason to be moral, it may be worth assuming that most women electing abortion will have such a reason, or that it wouldn't be worth the trouble in checking that they do.

How to be a Western-style Lefty Cultural Relativist

I am something of an NPR junkie, by reason of their willingness to cover news, issues, and culture in a more-or-less intelligent and in-depth way. Still, occasionally NPR becomes infuriatingly soft-headed. Like today. I don't recall the program, but it was about the need to avoid the hegemony of Western medical science in the field of psychiatry: the suggestion was that its principles are or can be wrong for other cultures. Accompanying this was a fair amount of insistence on the equal value of all cultural perspectives, and the (somewhat inconsistent) insistence that us Westerners have a lot to learn from other cultures.

So, just to be clear: I have no special knowledge of psychiatry but am willing to assume, pace Tom Cruise, that it has a legitimate place in legitimate medicine. (Or not, as may be appropriate.) I have no opposition to cultural sensitivity. I think doctors generally should be aware of the unique characteristics of their patients's conditions, including culturally-derived characteristics, where those conditions are relevant to treatment.

But listening to the NPR program, the guests and callers insisted on more than this, and the seeping cultural relativism made me realize the essential maxim of a certain sort of Western-style lefty. It can be summed up nicely in a sentence:

"All cultures have equal value, except mine, which is less equal in any way that matters."

Appearing as a paragon of admirable sensitivity and restraint, the contained idea is both self-contradictory and masochistic. And also stupid; to take the the example at hand, if psychiatry has any generally valid principles, then its principles are valid everywhere; and if psychiatry lacks generally valid principles, then it deserves suspicion here as much as anywhere. Anything else is selling somebody short, it seems to me. Either us hegemonic Westerners will be contenting ourselves with a second-rate science, or those noble foreigners won't be getting the full benefit of our first-rate science. And there is the cost of cultural relativism: it always sanctifies some culture's losing-out on real progress of one sort or another.

The Value of Equality

A couple things have me contemplating the place of 'equality' as a value. First is a call for the elimination of private schools on the ground that it perpetuates inequality (especially when you are talking about the most elite private schools). Second, in my Wills class I am reading legal scholars who propose disallowing great wealth from being inherited or gifted, since this perpetuates inequality between the lucky few recipients and the rest of us poor schmucks.

My initial instinct in both cases is that, while there is nothing wrong about the appeal to equality as a value, something has gone wrong here in the implicit way equality is being conceptualized by these proposals. In particular, I read these proposals as aiming to achieve equality by making someone worse off without necessarily making someone else better off, and that seems like an expression of a really bad moral principle. You may be sick and I healthy, and thus we are unequal with respect to a good (health); if I am made sick, then we will be equal with respect to that good (neither of us will have it); but it seems to me a mistake to say that this gives any reason, even a very weak one, to make me sick. Now, maybe if my being sick would achieve some independent good (like making you healthy), then we might have a (weak) reason to make me sick; but not otherwise.

I could be wrong that the proposers actually were reasoning in this way; maybe they do have the idea of redirecting resources in a way that increases the total good, and wouldn't have made their proposals without this idea. Let's hope so. But it would still be worth explaining what is wrong with the accused view, both for the sake of clarity, and so that, when somebody does reason in the accused way, we will be able to explain their mistake.

Explaining equality is actually pretty hard. What makes equality itself valuable? Why should we value equality in the way we do? What is that way anyway? For that matter, what is equality? A rule for distributing goods? If so, how could equality then itself be a good? Is there something about equality that makes human lives go better? I haven't thought much about this, but I'd like to take a stab here at puzzling out loud-

First, to articulate an equality principle which should get everyone on board: all things being equal, we ought to prefer that goods be distributed equally among everyone. (Let's just call this the equality principle.) I mean 'goods' broadly: wealth, opportunity, health, intelligence, friendship, beauty, 2.5 kids -- in short, whatever stuff it is that makes a human life go well is a 'good.' If we imagined that the gods controlled a single fixed stock of all goods, if we imagined that nobody had any prior right to any part of that stock, and if we asked what the gods should do with this stock, the answer would be that they ought to just distribute those goods equally among everyone where there would be no greater good lost. The "no greater good" lost is an important caveat, but it is intuitive: for example, we probably want the gods to occasionally bestow disproportionate special genius on some people who will use that genius for the greater benefit of all; losing the occasional special genius could be a loss of the greater good.

Of course, for many of these goods, absolute equality is unlikely to ever actually be achieved anytime soon, nor should we particularly aim for it. Beauty, for example, is unevenly distributed as a matter of basic biology, but given the high cost of systemic tinkering with basic biology to ensure equality of beauty among humans, we do and should (for the time being) accept some disproportional distribution of beauty. Of course, this intuition is captured by the "all things being equal" provision of the equality principle: that provision means that we're not obligated to pay any cost to achieve equality. Another example: private property engenders inequality of wealth, but as economic thinkers have long recognized, it also has good consequences by incentivizing people to efficiently provide goods and services to others. So then there's some reason to allow some inequality of wealth. (If we adopt a rights-based conception of property, there might be other reasons as well.) So, by itself, the equality principle probably doesn't require that we abolish private property.

The equality principle is a rule for the distribution of goods, but is not itself a good as that concept has been stipulated. Having goods is what makes a life go better, not distribution itself. So, in preferring equality, we don't prefer it because it is a good in the specified sense, but for some other reason.

This is actually really puzzling. If equality itself doesn't necessarily make particular human lives better, then why value it intrinsically? Maybe the fuss about 'equality' is just an attempt to get at something else-- solidarity, for instance. We imagine that if goods were distributed equally, then people would have a greater feeling of solidarity with each other; and this feeling is really what we want. Or maybe the demand for equality is just meant to ensure that unlucky or poor people have some minimum level of goods; maybe if this minimal level were met, we would not care so much about remaining disparity.

The cost of either of these accounts is that, if adopted, we'll lose any sense of equality's intrinsic value, although it will retain instrumental value. And, depending on your intuitions, that may really seem like a cost; you may still think that equality is valuable for its own sake, even though it doesn't necessarily make particular human lives go better. (Also, the equality principle would need to be modified to something like: "Pursue equality unless its goal has already been achieved, and only if the pursuit of equality does not cost too much in light of the value of that goal.")

The only other option I see by way of preserving the intuition of the intrinsic value of equality is that, when viewing all of humanity as a whole, we simply find that the picture of humankind with sufficient goods equally shared is a particularly beautiful picture. If so, then might be all the reason we need to prefer equality, and in an intrinsic way.

Also, the dual-aspect nature of the particularly beautiful picture explains why we have the intuitions we do about my sickness hypo: to make a healthy person sick deprives someone of a good without leaving them "sufficient goods" for their life to go well. On the other hand, we would not necessarily feel bad about depriving a rich person of some of their money if the rich person retained sufficient goods for his happiness, and the act made the world more equal by boosting another (poorer) person's position.

Of course, achieving the beautiful picture isn't everything; we want it achieved in the right way, so that, for example, rights or rules of substantive justice aren't violated in the process. Also, it would probably be the "wrong way" to achieve the picture by destroying goods. Goods are valuable, and to destroy or disprefer something of value is perverse. Given a choice between a two-person world in which there are 100 total units of good divided equally (50 units per person), and a two-person world in which there are 110 total units of good divided unequally (60 units for one person, 50 for the other), which world ought we prefer? I think the latter.

[End of ruminating.]

Song of the Week: Ohio Summers

As a way of combatting the general gloom that settles on these parts around this time of year, I offer a campfire song written with Elijah Blower that celebrates the summer:



Download here.

A Response to M.E. on Nature and Moral Reasons

(This reply was too long to post in the comments on the previous thread, so, since I run this blog, I'm putting it here instead. New readers should read the prior post to get oriented.)

Thanks for the very thoughtful post! I had a couple thoughts, more or less unordered:

1) It may be that those who condemn homosexuality are appealing to some principle with which you disagree. It may be that those who condemn homosexuality are appealing to some principle or concept which they cannot explicate very well. But neither of these facts, if facts, are themselves general reasons that show that the principles or concepts involved are necessarily illegitimate. So if this is all we have by way of resources to wield against the gay opponents, then our skepticism ought to be weakened- maybe to something like (pretending to talk to an opponent now): "I don't quite understand how your proposed account works. Can you help me?" or "I fail to see or understand the reason you've purported to give me." Not "Your judgment is necessarily illegitimate."

2) However, I read you to actually mount a substantive argument. To hastily schematize your main argument, it would go something like this:

a) There is an is / ought gap, such that all concepts must fall (or have separable sub-parts which fall) on one or the other side of this gap.
b) If the concept of 'nature' falls on the descriptive / is side of the gap, then it (or those relevant sub-parts of the concept) can't prescribe / have any proper place in prescription (on pain of confusing the is/ought distinction).
c) If the concept of 'nature' falls on the 'ought' side of the is / ought gap, then the appeal to 'nature' as a reason is simply question-begging.

So, two questions arise here- first, what should we think about the status of the supposed is / ought gap? and second, what should we think about the question-beggingness of the appeal to 'nature'?

On the second question first, assuming your position for the moment on the is/ought gap, I wonder if you haven't actually unintentionally mounted an argument that, if successful, cuts against a whole heck of a lot of purportedly moral concepts. At first blush, it seems to me that a parallel argument to the above could be run for the concept of 'justice,' say, or 'equality' or 'rights' -- all concepts which figure in ordinary moral reasoning. If I've understood your argument and if it's sound, then to the extent that any of these concepts describe, they cannot prescribe, and to the extent that they prescribe, they beg the normative question at issue in a way that renders the judgment illegitimate. If I'm right, then unless you mean to be a global skeptic about all our moral concepts, you'll want to think that something has gone wrong with the argument.

I suppose one way out is to say that moral principles do beg moral questions when applied in some context(if they're any good as real moral principles, how could they not? of course any decent principle will cut some ice and pressure us to go one way at the expense of another way) -- and that this does not necessarily illegitimate the principles or judgments involved. I'd rather not now attempt a philosophical account of how this could possibly work without generating theoretical internal contradiction; but we had better hope it could work, because it looks like any principle or moral concept is bound, in application, to beg some prescriptive question. But maybe you mean that there is something specially question-begging about the appeal to 'nature' as a moral concept that critically distinguishes it from the question-beggingness of other moral concepts or principles when applied. But what would that be?

On the is / ought gap- I don't think this is a hard distinction. There are concepts which seem to be mixed concepts in that they have both descriptive and normative aspects which can't be disentangled. Take the concept of "need." Empirical facts clearly have to do with identifying anything as a 'need'-- when we say I "need" to respirate, we pick out something in the world revealed by experience. But we also, at one and the same time, by making such an ascription, represent a reason for certain kinds of actions / which can guide ethical judgments. It would be wrong for you to deprive me of oxygen because of my need to respirate. True, to say it is a 'need' begs the question that I ought to respirate as against the position that I ought not. But it's clearly the right judgment for all that!

So, anyway, I do believe there can be mixed concepts that "bridge" the is-ought gap, and when I refer to the normative sense of 'nature,' in fact I mean such a mixed concept.

3) To say there is nothing that could be unnatural is just to say that 'natural' is meaningless-- a concept without an opposite, which individuates and picks out nothing particular. But this seems wrong. Maybe it is that we have a hard time explicating what we mean by 'nature' in the relevant sense; but so what? It's not easy to explicate (in a philosophical way) what we generally mean by 'justice' or 'rights' or 'equality' or 'need' either. That doesn't make those concepts necessarily illegitimate.

I agree that there is one negative thing we can say about the relevant normative concept of 'natural' (assuming with me arguendo that there is such a concept)- the concept clearly is not "whatever happens in virtue of biology." My three-armed baby is a biological happening, but it is unnatural for babies to have three arms.

4) Speaking of, what did you think of my three-armed baby example? Assuming that like me you praise and blame the parents for making one choice or another in the hypo, or given that you think there is an objectively right choice to be made, what is the reason or principle which grounds or explains the judgment? A sense of what is 'natural' seems like a good candidate to me. We have a sense of the way children should be, by nature, and it is this sense which guides the sort of judgments and actions we would have and recommend in the hypo.

A Raging Debate on Nature and Morality

For those who care and keep track of these things, I am engaged in an online debate over at the Philosopher's Playground regarding the idea of nature in moral reasoning. Actually, I think I'm now entrenched in 2 or 3 related simultaneous debates. The two threads are here and here.

The issue isn't merely academic. There are people who oppose homosexuality (as such) and gay marriage (as an expression of homosexuality) on the ground that it is "unnatural." From one perspective (including mine), it would be good to be able to come up with some conclusive objection to this sort of opposition. This motivates a philosophical project to show that any appeal to "nature" in moral reasoning is necessarily illegitimate: if the concept itself is necessarily illegitimate, then the anti-gays may confidently be dismissed. The problem, however, is that that philosophical project--the project of justifying strong skepticism of the idea of nature as possibly having a proper place in moral reasoning--fails in philosophical terms. (For my arguments about this, see the above threads.) There are / could be (more or less uncontroversial) cases in which we legitimately seem to appeal to an idea of nature as a reason for action. (Again, see threads.) Given this, and given that we take our ethical judgments in these cases seriously, it seems wrong (or simply dogmatic, at least) to insist that there can be no normative, action-guiding concept of 'nature.'

Insults: A Users' Guide- and a bit on Sam Harris, Karen Armstrong, and religion

Like skepticism, insulting is easy to do poorly and difficult to do well. And, worse, done poorly, insulting is more than just obnoxious- it's positively hurtful-- to others, to yourself, to the ideas (if any) at stake. In short, insulting is a dangerous tool to be used carefully.

Nevertheless, there are conditions under which insulting might be appropriate. So if you are daring and might venture to insult, here are the basic rules you ought to follow, the necessary conditions to appropriate insulting:

The usual key for successful insulting is to aim at the bad idea, and not the person. The other key is to reserve insults for those rare times when you have something important to say and need the special sort of rhetorical punch insulting provides. The other other key is that insulting should always be public (if conveyed in a purely private conversation, it's probably improperly personal). And also, it shouldn't be done by anyone ever under the age of 25. You can't do it right until you're closer to thirty than twenty; and, truth be told, even that is probably pushing it. And you should always mean something substantive with the insults; it needs to have a point beyond the insulting itself, which is just a rhetorical tool or device. Finally, insulting is best reserved as a response to some unusually bad idea or viewpoint-- bad enough as to be or nearly be disreputable for decent, honest, accountable discourse.

For an example of insulting done well, I admiringly point you to Sam Harris's response to Karen Armstrong's recent essay in Foreign Policy. If you read this and think that Sam Harris is simply being spiteful or mean to a nice person like Karen Armstrong (as does Karen Armstrong), then you've failed to grasp the key point, which is an important one. Summed up, the point is this: it is all well and good to insist that there are benign forms of religion (as does Karen Armstrong), and perhaps even to insist that "true" religion is necessarily benign (as does Karen Armstrong). But this insistence should not encompass blindness towards the uglier and nastier forms of religion, about which some response other than 'don't antagonize fundamentalists so much' is required (as offers Karen Armstrong). Maybe it's concerning that Sam Harris doesn't see the pretty side of religion (if indeed that's the case); but it's more concerning that Karen Armstrong doesn't see the ugly side, since that is the socially urgent side. Harris's letter, because it is insulting, makes this point rather forcefully, and it is a point needing to be forcefully made. So, I say to Sam Harris- kudos for insulting done well.

Finally, one last warning or caveat: if you do ironic insulting (i.e., sarcasm), you should be aware that there is a certain proportion of the population that is congenitally irony-deficient. This says nothing about the intelligence of those people; I've known brilliant people who just can't get irony. But you've got to keep this risk in mind- if you insult ironically, it is certain that you will be seen by some portion of your audience as an ass. They might be wrong, but there it is. Sam Harris, of course, doesn't care at this point- he's not out to make friends with those who are incapable of understanding his point. But you may not be so oriented, so beware!

How to be Skeptical

In the vein of general advice to the world, I offer here some thoughts on how to be a skeptic. Being skeptical is the sort of thing most people naturally do badly, but which they could do well with just a little guidance. So, this post offers the needed guidance.

So, let’s say you want to be a skeptic; that is, suppose that in some conversation, you want to strike a skeptical pose. Maybe you want to be a skeptic about the professed goodwill of some politician you don’t like, or maybe you want to be a skeptic about the possibility of objective morality, or maybe you want to be a skeptic about the existence of the external world, or about the existence of a benevolent deity, or about the well-reasoned-ness of some legal case. It doesn’t much matter just what you want to be a skeptic about; whatever the subject, in any conversation, you have the right to skepticism.

However, you should know that there are better and worse ways of being a skeptic. Moreover, screwing this up makes the difference between being an interesting thinker and a freshman ass, so it is important to get things right. So here are a few tips worth following to improve your skepticism:

1. Be motivated- You should understand your rhetorical reason (your reason as a participant in a conversation) for assuming the skeptical pose. Are you aiming to disagree with a substantive thesis of your interlocutor? Are you aiming to encourage your interlocutor to look at things a certain (different) way? Are you merely assuming a skeptical pose for the sake of a larger argument?
   
   As an example of this last, Rene Descartes kicks off his famous Meditations by assuming global external-world skepticism; Descartes’s philosophical aim was to overcome this initially-presumed skepticism and thereby reveal something about our general epistemic position. Descartes’s skepticism was motivated in a clear way as a methodological tool, and it is this fact which helps keep the Meditations from being the equivalent of a dopey latenight bull-session. (“Hey man, what if everything were a dream? I mean, like, how would we even know?”)



2. Have a reason.- Where you aren’t assuming skepticism for the sake of argument—-that is, where you mean your skepticism seriously—-it helps to have a reason for the skeptical position. This requires some minimal self-reflection on your part: you should ask yourself why you think ___ is false. If you don’t have any reason for your skepticism, or don’t have any rough idea of your reason, you can’t very well expect your interlocutor to respect your skepticism. Skepticism without reason is often the death of any interesting conversation, because, from the point of view of the other participants, you have declared your disagreement without actually offering anything to which they can respond. And you don’t want to be known as the killer of interesting conversation.



3. Be proud or humble in proportion to the strength of your reason for skepticism. You may have a better or worse reason for being skeptical. Your rhetorical confidence should be calibrated in some way to this strength or weakness. For example, a key marker of the freshman ass is to offer unmotivated skepticism without reason, and then to take himself, confidently, to have knocked down some opposing position. In reality, unreasoned skepticism is simply boring, and no kind of argument at all; anyone can question a premise in an unmotivated way without reason. It may be, of course, that you find yourself in disagreement with your interlocutor without clearly being able to articulate your reason—maybe you think their position has some weirdness about it, but you’re not sure of more than that. This is a weak sort of reason to be a skeptic; it’s fine to be a skeptic here, but be a bit humble about it: offer that you think there is some weirdness in the opposing position, but you are not sure what, exactly. On the other hand, if you have an absolute knock-out argument against the proposition to which you are skeptically opposed, you may, in your own good discretion, assume the rhetorical cock-strut.
   
   (Incidentally, if this were an advanced course in Being Skeptical, there would be some discussion of the way in which reasons about general epistemic presumptions can count as reasons for being skeptical of some particular proposition. But this isn’t that advanced course.)
   
   Incidentally, it is the thought of a failure of “fit” between rhetorical confidence and reason to be skeptical which accounts for some of the hostility (from some quarters) towards so-called “new atheists” (skeptics about the existence of God) like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Dan Dennett. The critics of the new atheists think that the new atheists’s confidence outstrips the strength of their reasons for their particular skepticism. (The aptness of this criticism is outside the scope of this posting; the point here is to illuminate something about the rhetorical situation.)

With those tips in mind, you can be an intellectually productive and interesting skeptic. Happy New Year!

Song of the Week: Sunday Drive

This (bi-)week, I offer a ballad called "Sunday Drive." It's got guitar, some wind instruments, it's pleasant, and it's probably among my best work (may or may not be saying much)- so, listen! Produced a couple weeks ago.



Download here.

The Blackwater Guards's Case, Conspiracies, and the Fifth Amendment

The Washington Post reports on the judicial dismissal of charges against the Blackwater guards who had been involved in the killing of 14 Iraqis in 2007. To properly understand this dismissal, it helps to know something about what I call the other side of the Fifth Amendment.

As most people know, the Fifth Amendment protects a defendant from being compelled to testify against himself, as by being compelled to confess to his own criminal acts. In this way, the Fifth Amendment prevents direct use of compelled, self-incriminating testimony to convict a person. Less popularly well known, however, the Fifth Amendment also prevents prosecutors from making derivative use of protected testimony. Say you make an immunized statement to prosecutors which leads to the discovery of interesting evidence against you-- perhaps you provide prosecutors with a contact who then tells the prosecutors where all the bodies are buried. Suppose further that, but for your initial immunized statement, the prosecution would not have made the critical contact (or otherwise discovered where the bodies are buried). In that case, the prohibition against derivative use of protected testimony means that the prosecution can't use the physical evidence (namely, the bodies) against you. The Fifth Amendment prevents you from being a compulsory essential link in the chain of your own conviction in that (derivative) way.

The rule against derivative use of protected testimony certainly makes life harder for prosecutors; prosecutors must be able to conduct their investigation and prove their case without making any--direct or indirect--critical use of such testimony. And to determine whether prosecutors have improperly made such use of protected testimony, courts will hold so-called "Kastigar" hearings (named after the case which made such hearings necessary).

The court in the Blackwater guards's case held such a Kastigar hearing--three weeks of it--and found the prosecution wanting. The guards had all made early statements to State department investigators, and were compelled to cooperate with those investigators under threat of losing their job. Critically, because compelled, these statements were protected testimony. Also critically, the judge found that these statements were essential to the prosecution's case. As such, the court's hands were tied: it had to dismiss the case.

Now, to debunk some of the conspiracy-mongering evident in the comments on the online Washington Post story. Contrary to various commenters, this is not necessarily a case of either, 1) a devious Bush administration sabotage of the investigation (the uniform State Dept. policy of requiring contractors to cooperate with internal investigations in such cases hardly seems like an evil master plan, and in fact probably seems like a pretty good idea in many (most?) cases); 2) a judiciary looking out for Americans at the expense of innocent Iraqis (the judge's hands were tied given his findings in the Kastigar hearing, and it is certainly not as if the judge invented Kastigar); 3) prosecutorial incompetence (although the judge paints things that way, the underlying reality is that "the other side of the Fifth Amendment" makes things difficult on prosecutors, and the reality here may be that investigators would not have been able to conduct their investigation effectively but for the cooperating testimony of the Blackwater guards themselves).

It's certainly possible that, with this dismissal, guilty men will walk. (There will be a prosecutorial appeal; the prosecutors will undoubtedly argue that the trial judge improperly found that the prosecution team relied on protected testimony.) While regrettable, however, that would not necessarily indicate a radical systemic problem: it is a cost of privileging a certain procedure for criminal conviction, in which the presumption is innocence and the burden is on a prosecution prevented from using compelled self-incriminating testimony.