Principle of reciprocity and liability transparency

I outlined a scenario before about two nations going to war. One of these nations is an unjust invader of another nation's territory. Call the aggressive unjust nation "Eveville," and the nation they invade "Utopia." Meanwhile, Eveville has a neighboring country call it, "Switzerland" that is neutral in the matter. In the following scenario, the situation is a little different than the original blog's but the situations are still similar and I will draw two distinctive lines of possible ways of thinking about the right of two nations to defend itself from each others military acts when both nations are just actors.

Now most (excluding hardlined pacifists) would argue that Utopia has a right to defend itself against unjust invasion and occupation even if it uses deadly means. I agree. Assume that we are right. Now Utopia is a poor country and the only means of defense they have is using crude weapons which may foreseeably harm the citizens of Switzerland (the weapons used may go astray or the damage done extend to and kill a few Swiss) when implemented in defense against their neighbors Evevillians upon the later's invasion. Let's assume that Utopians have no other plausible means defend themselves.

The question is, does the Swiss have a right to "defend" themselves against the Utopians in their defensive measures which may unintentionally but foreseeably harm the Swiss? I will call the Utopians in this scenario an "innocent threat" because they pose a threat to the Swiss but in doing so, they are merely acting innocently because their intention is only to defend themselves against the aggressive military actions of the Evevillians.

To summarize, the Evevillians launch an unjust attack on the Utopians. Utopians then counter attack but that counter caries significant risk of death to many of Eveville's neighbors, the neutral Swiss. The question is does the Swiss have a right to attack Utopia to try and stop Utopian's defense of itself against Eveville?

Now some may say that the Swiss has a right to defend themselves against the (defensive) actions of the Utopians even by deadly means if the risk their citizens will be killed by a stray or overextending defensive measure is used by the Utopians against the Evevillians. But does the Utopians have a right to then attack Switzerland to counter this counter measure? Some may say that that is also permissible. In other words, some would say that both are permissible to attack each other. But some would go on to say that though both are permitted to attack each other, only one side may be justified. This would depend on how great the harm posed by the invasion of Utopia is. If the harm is greater than the the calculated risk of unintentional harm inflicted on the Swiss, only the Utopians are justified in attacking the Swiss to prevent them from defending themselves against.

I want to now propose a principle here called the principle of reciprocity. This principle is based on counterfactual reasoning. If the Swiss were in the same position, the "same shoes," ceteris paribus, as the Utopians, i.e., they were being unjustly attacked by the Evevillians, would they think it justified to defend themselves even at great cost to a neutral country (say, the Utopians which has the reversed relationship to the Swiss in this counterfactual)?

If the answer is 'yes', then there is reciprocity and the Swiss may not justly attack the Utopians to stop their defensive attack on the Evevillians. If the answer if 'no' then they may. This principle has a distinctly contractarian flavor. What is permissible and justified depends on what parties would do if they had switched roles, if "the shoe was on the other foot".

But I think there are other options besides the principle that we should also consider. Perhaps we could also think that the Swiss do not have the right to attack the Utopians but do have a right to attack Eveville for it is Eveville that initiated this spiral of violence forcing Utopia into a defensive position but also putting the Swiss in grave danger of a defensive attack that overextends the harmful effects to them as a neutral neighbor. So the Swiss cannot maintain their neutrality because the aggressive unjust behavior directed at others also ultimately will affect it in adverse ways. In other words, perhaps the Swiss ought to see Eveville's attack on Utopia as "transferring" to its own territory, as an indirect attack on Switzerland. Thinking it as an indirect attack on its own nation will then destroy its conception as a neutral neighbor and thereby force it to see itself as a participant in being unjustly attacked. This will then give it the right to attack Eveville or to assist Utopia in her defensive actions.

I prefer the last conception of just war. My example shows with this tricky dilemma of the limitations of an isolationist and neutral mindset in the modern world. Injustices to one country often has multiplier and chain effects of violence that extends to others not directly involved and that these multiplier and chain effects pose serious problems for international justice. Modern warfare, by its very nature, almost always includes significant innocents at risk whether they be just combatants, civilians of just nation, or civilians of even a non-attacked neutral country.

Moral intuitions

I've been thinking about moral intuitions lately. Many of our normative judgments seems to ultimately be based on our intuitions. We can give and give reasons but all reasons must come to an end. That end point is usually some moral intuition. It's curious that so many of our moral intuitions overlap not just within society but across societies.

However, here, I'd like to point out that many of our moral intuitions may be motivated by forces outside of our consciousness. This insight was realized by Nietzsche and Freud (in some of his philosophical writings which are remarkably good for an amateur philosopher).

The subconscious may have its own forces which motivate and produce intuitions in us and because these motives are not subject to the light of consciousness, we may not be aware of their moral legitimacy. They may have flaws, things we would not want to follow through on. They may even be considered immoral if we realize what they are. I made remarks in another post along these lines though there, I did not mention the subconscious. But the subconscious may provide the conceptual resources to really express what I was trying to get at.

Some of our judgments may be based off of intuitions that though ostensibly on the surface noble, may actually be a form of a masked subconscious forces that are not. What if, say, we find out that our demand for rights of the individual have large components that are simply motivated by self-interest motives?

Coyne on the Templeton Prize

The Templeton Fund scholarship offered a prestigious prize of about 80 thousand bucks per year over 2 years to study free will and God's omniscience and this was awarded to a philosopher at the Uni. of Riverside. Well, the biologist Jerry Coyne went ballistic. He displayed the kind of arrogance towards philosophy that many non philosophers have and which I have mentioned elsewhere. You can read his rants here and here. I guess some of it is jealousy and some of it is just plain ignorance of philosophy. I responded to his argument in a blog defending the Templeton research project.

I haven’t read Coyne’s responses to all his critics but I did read the notorious first anti-philosophy blog and one of its follow-ups. Let’s call his argument what it is: silly.

He may have elaborated on it so that it is a better argument but I just can’t see any way to make it sound. 

His main argument simply seems to be that we need to think deeply about non existent beings such as god and all philosophical problems related to god. This reasoning seems to suggest that non existent beings are irrelevant to the pursuit of anything worthwhile such as the pursuit of truth. 

But that assumption is clearly false. Examples from science, a subject that Coyne should be familiar with shows this falsity. Scientists make use of all sorts of fictional objects (in clear-eyed understanding that they do not existent) in their thought experiments. Things and events they know to be non existent. 

Just a few famous examples from physics: 

-Newton’s bucket. Newton knew that our universe does not contain a single object (the bucket filled with liquid). But the thought experiment illustrated interesting points that advanced science. 

-Maxwell’s Demon. Again, Maxwell knew that there is no such demon; that wasn’t the point. the thought experiment illustrated interesting points that advanced science. 

-Schrodinger’s Cat. Again, no physicist takes such a being seriously. It is merely meant to demonstrate a point about the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics. 

-Objects with mass riding on a beam of light. Used by Einstein when he fully knew that such actions are impossible.

-Time machines. Most theoretical physicists do not believe they are physically possible and yet there are plethora of papers in physics journals using these fictional objects to demonstrate points about our very real world. 

Additionally, there are also objects that are very well possibly non existent but worth considering anyway such as strings and even time (which may be illusory according to many physicists today). But if these things turn out to be not real, they would still be considered useful fictions that advanced science. The conceptual tools developed in thinking about them makes it worthwhile to develop even if it turns out they don’t exist. 

The most obvious example of a useful fiction is the mathematical world assuming physicalism is true as most scientists (and I’d imagine Coyne) would proclaim allegiance to that doctrine. Numbers may not exist as such but they are useful for the advancement of knowledge. 

But Coyne may respond that in all these cases, there is some criterion or criteria distinguishing the putatively non real but useful objects from their non-useful counterparts. But then the onus is on him to show what that criteria is (I’m sure philosophers of science would love to know. What a time-saver for scientists that would be!). 

Coyne may respond that no such criteria is necessary for it is just plain obvious that imaginary things like god are too silly to be useful to advance knowledge about our world while imaginary things like rotating buckets in otherwise empty universes, Maxwell demons, etc are not. But because his intuition is not shared among many others including philosophers, his intuition shouldn’t be taken any more seriously. 

Here’s a more positive reason Coyne is wrong. The point of the Templeton project is free will in the face of certain kinds of certain knowledge (of future events, etc). The notion of god is merely a rhetorical device. 

It may very well be possible that one day technology will allow prediction to be very accurate so that we can have what was once thought to be god-like epistemic faculties. If that is the case, it is useful to think deeply about free-will and moral responsibility in counterfactual terms to illustrate the conceptual structure of the concepts now important to us. God is only used derivatively to analyse the important concepts that need elucidating.

Coyne misses the whole boat in thinking the god is the primary object to be analysed in this project; it’s not. Free will, moral responsibility, the nature of time and knowledge about time is, things that even a scientists should admit are well worth investigating. If fictional objects helps facilitate that venture as Newton’s bucket, Maxwell’s Demon, etc has for science, then so be it.

Made the philosophers carnival

For the second time with my post on philosophical progress.

Rosenberg on naturalism

Alex Rosenberg has a piece in The Stone and this talk with Owen Flanagan about naturalism. His The Stone piece was pretty bad. It was a response to Timothy Williamson's piece but the only strategy Rosenberg employs to defend naturalism in response to the rather straightforward arguments of Williamson seems to either bite the bullet big time and to use an ostrich approach viz, pretend the argument doesn't exist (Williamson's rejoinder seems to echo my sentiments on it as well).

Here's my comment to the Flanagan/Rosenberg debate:

I’ve read Rosenberg’s piece in the NYTs and seen this episode but I am still not clear on what kind of naturalism he is advancing.

Anyway, here’s another thought I had while watching. Regarding Rosenberg’s responses to the moral issues Flanagan raised, it doesn’t seem to me that Rosenberg’s explanation will do the kind of work needed for any kind of theory required for a normative outlook in the world. Rosenberg says something like it may be natural to behave morally and that provides all the normativity we need. (I hope I’m accurate in capturing his expressed views and apologize if I got them wrong).

But then the problem is why ought we follow our natural moral instincts? I can imagine someone saying in response, “because we want to” but I don’t think this will do because of this. It is reasonable to me that we also have many natural instincts that may be detrimental to morality (such as instincts to rape or murder in some circumstances). It becomes difficult to see why we ought to follow or cultivate some of our instincts (namely the moral ones) rather than others (the ones detrimental to morality). A response here is that since most of our instincts are moral in nature, we ought to follow that and ignore any instincts that may go contrary and cause discord with the majority of our instincts.

But what if the classical Chinese philosopher Hsun Tzu, e.g. is correct and that the majority of human natural instincts are not moral but selfish and immoral? In fact, the thesis that humans are by nature essentially wicked is supported by at least some empirical evidence. Then ought we follow our evil instincts, ignoring our moral ones and murder, rape, etc?

However, may rebuttal can actually be stated more convincingly when one accepts the seemingly obvious assumption that people, even if they happen to be mostly innately good, can cultivate their wicked side so as to become mostly bad people. The question is why shouldn't we cultivate our evil instincts so that they overwhelm the good aspects if the kind of naturalism Rosenberg is advocating is true? There seems to be no normative force behind it and that is a reductio counting against it. The extra assumption is plausible especially when you consider cases like Robert Alton Harris, who had been a seemingly normal boy, once very sensitive to the suffering of others (even cartoon characters such as Bambi according to his sister), but under severe child abuse, became one of the most notorious psychopaths ever on California's death row.

[Update]

I've included another comment on the talk:

I also found Rosenberg’s answer to the political stuff intriguing but very much lacking in argumentation relying on major assumptions.

For example, he says that punishment and distributive justice itself is a leftist notion and says that his form of naturalism justifies a less punitive and more egalitarian society in terms of distributive justice. His reasoning is that [deterministic] causation makes free will and hence moral responsibility impossible. But he then goes on to say that we cannot abandon our (in P.F. Strawson’s words) reactive attitudes due to their naturalness. But presumably some of our natural reactive attitudes are retributive and its unclear that they would be assuaged by the realization that we are unfree beings without punishing (or rewarding people in the case of our inclinations to praise).Moreover, Rosenberg relies on these assumptions

1. that naturalism implies that determinism is true

2. that determinism makes free will and moral responsibility impossible

The first is an open question. Philosophers of science and physicists are not convinced that all our actions are determined. As to 2. most philosophers are compatibilists. Also even if the world were not deterministic, most philosophers would probably believe in free will since there are also libertarians and most compatibilists theories of free will does not depend on the truth determinism/indeterminism, either would do. It seems that Rosenberg would need to offer a serious rebuttal and defend the small minority of philosophers (12%!)who do not believe in free will.

More on the feelgood topic of abortion

We all know that sex selective abortion is wrong. At least most of us. But why is it wrong? It has been suggested that it causes sex imbalance so that many men will not be able to find wives and this causes social instability and other undesirable social effects. But that is not all is it? Let's say that there is a way to ameliorate or eliminate whatever social problem this causes. Say that there is a way to have the surplus men marry women from countries with an imbalance of females. Then would we say that sex selective abortion is permissible? If not why not?

One response is that people shouldn't be able to select for traits like sex or any other physical trait like eye color and height and so forth. That's a possibility and it does have some ground for support.

But I suspect that many people would say that sex selective abortion as it is practiced around the world constitute violence or even "gendercide" against girls and women and that this is the primary reason it is wrong. If this is the primary or only reason someone thinks sex selective abortion is wrong (assuming that the first reason can be solved by the out-marriage, e.g. and that the second objection does not hold for the person) then this person seem to need to offer an explanation why that is if they also hold that fetuses/embryos, zygotes are not persons worthy of a right to life. If unborn human organisms are not girls or women and do not have a right to life, sex selective aborting them is not a crime of murder against persons and hence not gendercide.

Now some may swallow the bullet and say that it may not be gendercide against females persons but it does constitute some kind of symbolic crime against women in the sense that pornography does so. It is a crime of psychical violence perpetrated against born women and girls by vitiating the status of females or by treating females as less than equal to males despite the fact that the actions are directed towards fetuses and not actual persons. But I'm not sure this is a persuasive move.

Review of the movie Source Code

Here. Pretty good but not anything like the awesome Moon by the same director Duncun Jones.