Do paradoxes or puzzles or aporias really arise in ethics? No. They are incompossible with reality which is what ethics must be rooted in to actually be ethical rather than a waste of time. The appearance of a puzzle is merely an indication that some obvious error of reasoning or understanding of facts has occurred.
Tim Sommers, expressing the current academic imbecility in this regard, writes in 3Quarks
When I ask students what they were most interested in, or at least what they remember most, from their “Introduction to Ethics” or “Intro to Philosophy” class, it’s remarkable how many offer the same answer. It seems they all remember Robert Nozick’s “Experience Machine.” Here it is.
The Experience Machine
Suppose you were offered the choice between continuing on in your life just as it is, or being plugged into a machine which would give you whatever sensations or experiences you prefer, while also causing you to forget that these experiences are caused by the machine and not the real world. Would you plug in?
No. Machines go wrong. Also, the guy telling you this story probably wants to cut off your arms and legs and use your head as an anal dildo.
Nozick's Experience Machine is no different from the portal to Paradise in the back of the van of the sicko who preys on the gullible.
On the other hand, if this is a commercially available product endorsed by experts and with proper consumer rights protection, Tardean mimetics and positional considerations will dictate your decision. If your boss does it, you do it- or pretend to have done it when on holiday. After all, the same thing happens when we have a dream. A 'guided dream' would be nice enough though the novelty might wear off quite soon.
Independent of their philosophical significance, such thought experiments are just fun.
Not if you have to teach that shit or pass an exam in shit involving it.
So, I thought, sometimes you just want the frosting and not the whole cake; and I designed and taught a course I called, “Life’s a Puzzle: Philosophy’s Greatest Paradoxes, Thought Experiments, Counter-Intuitive Arguments, and Counter Examples.”
The only puzzle here is why anyone would pay money for instruction in this shite. The answer probably has to do with information asymmetry and incentive incompatibility and the scandal represented by Student Loans.
Here I present a few examples. I am not going to comment much or offer my – or anyone’s – proposed solutions (for the most part). It’s just the carnival ride without the line. (But keep in mind there are a variety of ways all of these can be presented and some of the differences are substantive.)
Let’s start with another from Nozick, since he was a modern master of the genre.
The Department for the Redistribution of Eyes
Imagine that, roughly half of the time, people are born without eyes and, roughly half of the time, people are born with two eyes. Suppose eye transplants are cheap and relatively painless. Would a compulsory eye redistribution program run by the government, that forced people with two eyes to give one to someone with none, be morally permissible?
It would be impossible. The sighted would kill anyone who tried to fuck with them. On the other hand it would be morally permissible to appoint me head of the compulsory eye distribution program on a fat salary. This is because I won't redistribute shit. It is morally permissible to be a useless asshole and putting a useless asshole in charge of something which is compulsory but stupid and useless is a second best solution. This is also why people teaching compulsory but useless non-STEM subject shite are so wholly worthless.
Nozick says it would be wrong because we own ourselves.
But taxes on property are morally permissible. They are the price we pay for civilization. Conscription is not just morally permissible, it may be the pre-condition for morality to exist.
If it is wrong, are there any other plausible explanations – other than self-ownership – for why such an eye redistribution scheme is wrong? Or is there some version of such a scheme that might not be unethical? (Robert Nozick)
Consequentialism provides a good enough answer. Suppose an alien Cyclops race is about to invade our planet. They will spare only the one-eyed. It is is a pre-condition for the survival of humanity- both individually and collectively that the redistribution scheme go ahead.
Ship of Theseus
Here’s an ancient one with an early modern twist. If Theseus has a ship that he maintains over time by having rotting planks, rusting nails, and torn sails replaced, is it still the ship of Theseus once half of the original parts have been replaced? What about when 75% of the original parts have been replaced? What about all of them?
Yes. 'Ship of Theseus' is a Kripkean rigid designator.
Hobbes added this twist. What if Theseus’ brother has been assiduously collecting the discarded parts from the ship of Theseus from the beginning and reassembling them into a ship of his own? When the brother has a complete ship composed entirely of all the original parts, does he now have the ship of Theseus? (Plutarch plus Hobbes)
No. That's the ship of the brother of Theseus no matter how it was assembled.
Jackson’s Knowledge Argument
Suppose Mary has perfectly normal color vision but is confined to a black and white room and never glimpses color. Nonetheless, she studies color in all its aspects – from the physical to the neurological and psychological. In fact, she believes that she knows everything there is to know about color. One day she gets out of the room and actually sees red for the first time.
Does she now know something she didn’t know before?
If she says so- sure. Why not?
If so, does that mean that a complete physical description of the world leaves something out? What does it leave out? (Frank Jackson)
But a complete physical description of the world would- by definition- answer that very question. This is because thinking beings exist on the physical plane.
The Original Position
Suppose you don’t know what economic or social class you are in, your race or gender, you don’t even know if you are talented or hardworking – or not so much. You don’t know your religion, if you have one, nor do you know your own views on morality or justice. In short, you don’t know who you are or what your position in society is or what you believe in. You know that you are somebody and there is some stuff that everyone wants and so you know that you should grab as large a share as possible. But you could be the luckiest or the worst-off. If you have to pick the principle used to divide things up, from a purely self-interested point of view, what principle would you pick?
If you are being forced to pick something you need to figure out what the guy doing the forcing wants you to do. Say 'everything should belong to you, Master. I will be your obedient slave.' Then knife him if you have the chance.
More generally, you should never choose anything binding on you save for consideration. A contract without passing of consideration is not a contract. Rawls had shit for brains.
For example, some say that we should/would agree to whatever maximizes the well-being of all (utilitarians).
but that is unknowable
Some argue that everyone should get a “sufficient” amount (sufficientarians/some advocates of UBI)
but this could be done after the fact through collective insurance
or that there should be an upper limit on wealth and income (limitarians).
in which case you have to have emigration controls, otherwise the more talented exit leaving everyone worse off.
Rawls, who came up with this thought experiment
because he was misled by economic models which ignored Knightian Uncertainty. In the real world, everybody understand that they be hit by a bus or their pension fund could be embezzled and so they are prepared to pay into a Social Insurance scheme.
and called it being in the “original position” behind the “veil of ignorance”, says we should/would choose to make the least well-off person as well-off as possible (the difference principle) – since you could be that person.
This is mad. It is obvious that if this principle were applied then there would be 'moral hazard'. Everybody would want to be the poorest. Nobody would do any work. The correct solution is 'due to Knightian Uncertainty (which obtains even absent any veil of ignorance because we don't know the future) the correct course is 'regret-minimization'. This means refusing to agree to anything absent consideration. Also, just permit collective insurance with adequate moral hazard provision- i.e. do what happens in the real world anyway.
(And, maybe, because the maximin strategy (maximize your minimum share) is the rational strategy under conditions of uncertainty, according to game theory.) (John Rawls)
The silly sausage didn't get the difference between quantifiable risk- where all possible states of the world and where expected utility can be calculated- and Knightian Uncertainty. To be frank, neither did Frank Knight whom Rawls had read. But all this proves is that economists are as stupid as philosophers.
The New Riddle of Induction
Since every emerald you have seen so far is green, you might infer that the next emerald you see will also be green. But what if it’s “grue” instead? Grue means that something is green until some time in the future and then it will be blue. Until that time, every emerald you observe is just as grue as it is green. Even if inductive inference works, how do we know which terms we should use when making inductions? What’s wrong with “grue”? There are things like leaves, flowers, and even minerals that change color over time. (Nelson Goodman)
The terms we use solve a coordination game. Green is a focal solution for emeralds. Grue isn't- but has come to denominate a discoordination game played by useless cretins.
Also there is no 'induction' here because neither is there a base case nor is there a way of showing if the n-th observation is green then the n+1th observation must be the same color. How fucking ignorant are academic philosophers?
(By the way, the old riddle of induction, to oversimply, is that we are justified in thinking if we drop something it will fall because every time we have dropped something so far it falls. But there’s no deductive argument proving the future will be like the past in that way.
Because induction involves identifying a base case and showing that if the nth observation has y property then so must the n+1th observation. How this is done is through a Structural Causal Model which will also enable us to improve outcomes, not just predict them. We have lab grown emeralds and it may be that some could be cultured to be 'grue'. As our SCMs get better, deductive arguments will give us more confidence in 'inductive' predictions.
And an inductive argument for that conclusion would be circular or question-begging.
Not if it is based on an SCM which has current 'cash value'.
The new riddle emphasizes that, in fact, we only expect the future to be like the past in some ways.
because of the relevant SCM
How do we know which ways?
By looking at the usefulness and reliability of the SCM
(Bonus. What do you make of Quine’s claim that, “Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind”?))
A foolish claim. Reproductive behavior is largely hard-wired. Stupider creatures are likely to go for quantity rather than quality and just try to broadcast their seed as widely as possible.
Teleportation
From “The Fly”, to “Star Trek”, to “The Boys” and the Marvel Universe (Nightcrawler, Dr. Strange, etc.), teleportation has been a staple of popular entertainment. It usually works like this. You are broken down into your constituent parts and, then, either those bits of you are transported somewhere else and put back together at this new location or just the information travels and you are reassembled out of atoms already at your destination. The trouble is that being “broken down into your constituent parts” is usually called death.
No. Not having any brain or heart or lung function is called death. Teleportation just means instantaneous transport. One moment you are here, the next moment you are somewhere far away.
It seems that you are not so much “teletransported”, as Derek Parfit called it, as killed and then copied elsewhere.
Parfit was as stupid as shit. It was obvious that 'teleportation' was just magic tarted up with some pseudo-science. One might speak of an Einstein-Rosen bridge or wormholes or something of that sort but no killing or copying would be involved. On the other hand, a duplicator might coz your doppleganger to bang your wife coz he thinks he is actually you and then you discover OMG he actually is you! But then he comes onto you and you know he isn't you coz there's no way you is a fag except OMG! you is totes gay! Meanwhile, it turns out your wife is actually your dog whom Daddy said had been sent away to live on a farm. Evil scientists turned her into a woman who kept licking your face till you married her. Now she is happy to be turned back into a dog who belongs to a Gay couple who run a b&b in the Catskills.
So, would you get into a teleporter?
No, but you might have fun pushing the nerdy Scientist into one. Also you could max out his credit cards.
Is what happens in the teleporter the same as ordinary death? Why not?
Parfit says that while a teleporter does kill you and copy you, “going on” in this way is just as good as “going on” in the ordinary way.
Because he was as stupid as shit. On the other hand, I personally have been martyred many times in my jihad against the Iyengars. They keep killing me but my life just goes on in the ordinary way.
I would go further. If possible, I think you should use teleporters that don’t destroy the original so as to make multiple copies of yourself since it could be better for you if there were more of you. (Derek Parfit)
There was a film where this happens with Michael Keaton. It wasn't very good.
Slice and Patch
You need a surgery today that only Dr. Slice and Dr. Patch can perform. And they can only perform it together. No use getting sliced without getting patched. And vice versa. Unfortunately, Slice has a golf game scheduled. Luckily, for him, so does Patch. Patch also knows that Slice has a game scheduled. Of course, it’s neither’s fault if the other doesn’t show up. And if the other doesn’t show up, being there alone is useless. Since both know the other will not be there, and that they can’t help alone, neither shows up. If you die, whose fault is it?
Golf. The thing was invented by Scottish toffs who wanted an excuse to get away from their wives and look up each other's kilts.
On the other hand, if you be gangster and Slice and Patch hate each other, both will show up hoping that you die but the other gets the blame.
If you simply say, well, it’s the fault of both, even though considered independently it’s neither’s fault, then you have to be ready to defend some kind of collective responsibility.
This is easily done. We would speak of the responsibility of the Medical fraternity to better coordinate their activities.
Can we have an obligation to do something, that depends on others acting?
We do have such obligations. There's a little thing humans have called the language faculty. We are supposed to use it to coordinate our activities. Doctors and other professionals have elaborate codes of conduct regarding what information they must share with each other and the sacrifices they must make to coordinate their activities.
Even when we have good reason to believe that they won’t? (David Estlund.)
Estlund is estoooopid. Imagine a soldier who says 'I have good reason to believe all the other soldiers wouldn't show up for battle coz the enemy keeps trying to kill us. So I ran away thinking I could do little good to alter the outcome of the war all by myself.' Do you really think this guy will be let off by the Court Martial?
Philosophical Zombies
It seems to some that it is logically possible that there could be a being just like us that behaves just as we do, but has no conscious experience or inner life at all.
In which case it is not just like us at all. Thus this proposition is logically equivalent to saying 'x is not x'- i.e. lying.
The lights are on and nobody’s home. You might deny that this is physically possible. But some philosophers argue that it only needs to be logically or conceptually possible, and not physically possible, to show that we are more than merely physical beings.
But we don't know what 'physical beings' might be.
So, is it logically or conceptually possible? If so – or not – what does that show?
It is nonsense. It shows that academic philosophers are stoooopid.
(Also, consider LaMDA, the Google AI that convinced Blake Lemoine that it is sentient.
Fuck off! Google AI didn't do shit. Its programmers did.
It could probably also pass the Turing test with most people, but almost everyone seems to agree that it obviously has no self-awareness, no inner life. Is it a philosophical zombie? Or evidence that one could exist?)
Its an expensive piece of tech used by a very rich enterprise to further its own ends.
(It’s a little unclear who gets the most credit (blame?) on this, but Saul Kripke and David Chalmers are front-runners.)
Artificial life- takwin in Arabic- is an old idea. The Golem has no soul but probably does have some intentionality. Does God view us as a type of Golem?
Swampman and the Ant
Suppose Alex Holland is walking through a swamp. He stops to lean on a tree. He and the tree are both struck by lightning simultaneously. He disintegrates, but, improbably, an exact replica of him is created by the lighting out of elements from the tree. Alex’s replacement, call them Swampman, has no idea what just happened.
Till I wave my magic wand. This also causes you to give me all your money.
Many people think that part of what gives your words meaning is that they are connected in the right way to the external world.
Nobody really thinks that. What gives words meanings is the need to coordinate our actions.
For example, the way I use water is caused by my experiences with water and wetness.
Then you have to go for a colonoscopy and have to experience an enema. The way we use things tends to be mimetic and not based on our own experience.
But then, since Swampman has no previous interaction with anything, his words, by hypothesis otherwise identical to what Alex’s words would have been, actually have no meaning. Can that be right? (I bet you didn’t think that was where I was going with that.)
This is silly. Nobody thinks that words have some magical link to physical objects though it is true that if you step on a crack you will break your mother's back.
Compare. Suppose you notice an ant meandering and leaving a discernable path in the sand. Suppose further that path looks exactly like a drawing of Winston Churchill. Is it possible that it is a drawing of Churchill? Why not?
It may be. Some guy may have laid down a path which the ant was bound to follow. But that is immaterial. The Legislature may designate as a protected monument and stipulate that it is the picture of the great British Statesman, not the similar looking porn star of the same name. In that case, for all legal purposes, it is a drawing of Churchill.
(Swampman belongs to David Lewis and Allan Moore, Hillary Putnam owns the ant.)
Can you be morally responsible even if you could not have done otherwise?
Many people believe that if the world is deterministic
it makes no sense to speak of 'beliefs' or 'desires' or 'intentions'. Nothing supervenes on our decisions- not what we believe or what we intend or what we desire. Indeed, there is no such thing as communication or comprehension.
there can be no free will
either 'will' is meaningless or it is wholly free, if it exists at all
and no moral responsibility
there may be. It would just arise deterministically.
since no matter what we do things will happen the way they were always and already causally determined to happen.
But this outcome could obtain even if nothing at all were deterministic. We might just be shit at affecting outcomes.
One way to characterize the incompatibility of free will and determinism is this. How can we be morally responsible when we could not have done otherwise?
Because moral responsibility may be assigned by a superior being who might punish us severely if we give Him any backchat.
Well, suppose Kathy intends to kill her roommate Joe. She secretly installs a device in their mutual friend Geoff’s brain so that when she presses a button his arms shoot forward automatically. She then lures them both to the top of a cliff and waits for Joe to step in front of Geoff so that she can press the button forcing Geoff to push Joe off the cliff. But right before she pushes the button Geoff pushes Joe off the cliff anyway.
Geoff seems morally responsible in this case.
He is morally responsible. He pushed a guy of a cliff. Kathy is morally responsible for invasive brain surgery and conspiracy to kill.
Yet, Geoff could not have done otherwise.
He could have patted the guy on the back instead of pushing him. On the other hand, if he had started masturbating causing the other guy to step back and topple over the cliff face his moral culpability would be reduced. He might still be punished for a lewd and repugnant act. However a good lawyer could get him off a murder charge coz some men like being jizzed on. Manslaughter, on the other hand, is a possible verdict.
Had he failed to push Joe off the cliff, Kathy would have made him do it.
No. Kathy would have done it through him. If I am unconscious and you hurl my body at somebody to injure that person then I have done nothing reprenensible. You have.
It would seem one can be morally responsible even if they could not have done otherwise.
This simply does not follow.
So, if determinism is incompatible with free will,
it must be the case that no deterministic procedure could cause that conception to be entertained.
it’s not because we can only be morally responsible when we could have done otherwise. (Harry Frankfurt)
This too does not follow. We may it is unfair to be held morally responsible for something we could not avert- but that is merely an assertion. Moral responsibility may nevertheless obtain for some specific purpose. That is a question for theodicy. A karmic theory would put the blame on some action in a previous life. Others may speak of predestination.
Newcomb’s Problem
You’re going to be on a game show where you are given a choice involving two boxes. One box is transparent and has $1,000 in it. You can’t see into the other box, but it either has a million dollars or nothing.
The show features a mysterious perfect predictor. If the predictor predicts you will take both boxes, then the opaque box contains nothing. If the predictor predicts you will only take the opaque box, then it has a million dollars in it. The thing is, the predictor is perfect. It’s never been wrong before. What should you do?
Take the opaque box.
Obviously, you should just take the opaque box that will, therefore, have a million dollars in it. But, no, wait, when it comes time to make your choice the money is already in the box – or it isn’t. There’s nothing that can change whether it is or it isn’t at that point.
How do you know. The thing might be rigged. Alternatively, the guy is a 'mentalist' and you have already been primed in some subtle way. Anyway, you can always torture and kill the predictor if he is wrong.
If you take both you at least get a $1,000 and maybe $1,001,000. Take both. Obviously. (Newcomb, of course. William Newcomb. I mean it would be weird if someone not named “Newcomb” came up with Newcomb’s problem, right?)
Unless he was an enemy of Newcomb and wanted people to think he was stupid. The point about Newcomb and Kavka type problems is that they illustrate the advantage of having strategic beliefs. But hypocrisy and sycophancy have been around since monkeys learnt to walk upright. More generally, it is advantageous to believe what it is to your advantage to believe.
The Violin Player
Suppose you wake up one morning to discover that a rogue group of music lovers have, without your consent, attached you physically to world renowned violin player.
fuck you'd care why they had done so? Your grievance would be against having been kidnapped and used in some sort of freakish medical experiment.
You blame yourself (at least a little). You heard that music lovers were searching the area looking to find someone physiologically compatible to hook the violinist up to, yet you drank heavily and passed out with all your doors and windows open.
So, you were kidnapped before you could be sodomized or chopped up for medical spare parts.
Now, the music lovers tell you that you are the only compatible candidate they could find, and that if you just stay attached to the violin player for nine months the violinist’s life will be saved. But if you unhook yourself sooner the violinist will die almost immediately. Do you have a moral obligation to remain so attached?
No. But you may pretend to be an even bigger music lover whom they can trust. Meanwhile you figure out a way to kill them and steal all their money. Maybe you could sell the violinist's shrunken head and penis. There's probably a dark web market for such things.
Keep in mind that the violinist is clearly a person in the moral sense – and even an exceptional person – given their world-class violin playing.
But he is an evil bastard coz he let himself be stitched up to an innocent drunkard.
So, even if a fetus is also a person in the moral sense, if you are not morally obligated to stay hooked up to the violin player for nine months, even where unhooking causes his death, then why are you obligated to carry a fetus for nine months, even if not doing so results in its death? (Judith Jarvis Thompson)
Coz you've got a womb. This means you are a woman. God hates you. Get used to it.
On the other hand a guy who goes around punching pregnant women in the tummy to cause them to miscarry is generally considered to fall short of the moral ideal.
Does abortion pose an ethical puzzle? Not to me. Women and women alone should get to decide. People or Corporations who cause women to miscarry, on the other hand, should be severely punished for the crime of 'garbhahatya' which the Vedas consider to be a sin equal to that of killing a spiritual preceptor.
No comments:
Post a Comment