Messiness
September 10th 2008 04:46
So I've given various examples of ethical thought experiments, and one quality to be found among many of these is simplicity. Details are pared down -- and, after all, this is rather the point.
Compare the "controlled conditions" of normal, empirical experiments, where you're trying to limit potential factors.
To balance out the simplicity, here's two messier problems.
1. A person you barely know is involved in modern-day slavery. She is required to work as a prostitute to pay off a "debt".
You're not sure whether to believe her.
Taking what she says at face value, it strikes you as objectively unfair. However, this person refuses all help, refuses to cooperate in any way with authorities, and, on the whole, actually enjoys her job and her circumstances. In addition, she tells you that any report to authorities will make her situation worse, and will endanger both her and you.
What can or should you do? How far do your responsibilities go?
Is it up to you to decide whether a report to authorities does or doesn't make the situation worse?
If you decide to report, is that all you should do, is that the end of your responsibilities? Or do you go to the newspapers, or spend money (how much money?) buying out her contract? Do you go Taxi Driver or hire the A Team (as, perhaps, you might be more inclined towards if this were your mother or sister)?
What place do you give to this person's free choice, in contrast with your beliefs about their situation?
Are your future feelings relevant? -- for instance, does it matter that you might think back on what you could have done, but didn't?
Are the person's qualities relevant? Does it matter how "good" they are, whether you like them, whether they could "make more of themselves"...?
2. A 40-year-old is a committed pacifist. He has protested against Australian military involvement in Iraq, he has refused Defence Force work in his IT job, and he believes it is an extreme horror for one human being to kill another.
This person takes on voluntary work, being a mentor to "problem" teenagers. Such teenagers have been identified as "problem" for whatever reason -- perhaps they have issues with drugs or theft; perhaps they're from extremely disadvantaged backgrounds; perhaps they have psychological disorders. At any rate, they're thought to need an adult figure to whom they can chat, once a week, and they undergo the process voluntarily.
The pacifist is assigned such a teenager -- a 14-year-old, let's say -- and is given a one-paragraph description. The teenager writes, in his self-introduction: "I want to enter this mentoring program because I really want to join the army, navy, or air force, and I want to discuss my options with someone."
What should the pacifist do? Should he tell the teenager not to join the military? Should he try to put his beliefs aside, and discuss the pros and cons of army vs navy? Is it impossible for him to be unbiased? Should he express what he believes, and leave it up to the teenager to decide -- or, given the power discrepancy between 40-year-old and 14-year-old, would this be an improper violation of the teenager's autonomy? Or should he simply ask for the case to be reassigned, or would this somehow be cowardly?
Perhaps the teenager needs "rescuing" from the military; or perhaps the military would be good for the teenager, given that he's been identified as high-risk.
Some comments:
* To be machinely rational, you might have to do a lot of moral philosophy before being able to answer questions like what factors are or aren't relevant, what counts as a good or a bad reason...
To be humanly rational, one should not be, cannot practically be, machinely rational -- but still must find some way of resolving, answering, deciding...
* In everyday moral situations, there are different perspectives and tests available. For instance, the "What would Jesus do?" test, the "Will I regret this?" test, the "How would I want to be treated?" test, the "What if everyone did this?" test...
How to decide which test to use, which perspective to view from...?
* In contrast with the purity of thought experiments, real life can throw up multiple concerns and directives. You're concerned about virtue and courage, but you're also concerned about achieving the best result, and you're also concerned about not violating people's autonomy, and you're also concerned...
On what basis should one simply ignore any of these concerns?
And how is one to hierarchize or balance these concerns?
* In thought experiments (and in many narratives -- movies, novels), you have clear options. You can pull the lever to make the train go this way, or you can pull it to make it go that way.
In real life, you don't always have an obvious menu of alternatives, but there are any number of things you can do -- with perhaps no limit beyond your creativity.
* When given a standard thought experiment, one often wants to ask for further information about this or that, and can only be told "that detail is unknown" or "consider that detail irrelevant".
In real life, not only are the details there, but they change and complicate things. They introduce all sorts of uncertainties -- for instance, you may have to estimate the probability of this or that happening, or give weightings to how certain you are of this or that fact.
And it may be difficult to establish facts. In a thought experiment you assume an action was "voluntary": in real life, did the women in R v Tang really "consent" to their situation? Well, "consent" can be a tricky thing to pin down...
In Ethics without ontology (2004), Hilary Putnam speaks of multiple strands that go into his ethical thinking:
-- a Levinasian strand: "For Levinas, the irreducible foundation of ethics is my immediate recognition, when confronted with a suffering fellow human being, that I have an obligation to do something";
-- a Kantian strand: "... the Categorical Imperative (not, indeed, as a practical guide -- as a guide it scarcely goes beyond the Golden Rule -- but as a powerful statement of the idea that ethics is universal, that, insofar as ethics is concerned with the alleviation of suffering, it is concerned with the alleviation of everyone's suffering, or if it is concerned with positive well-being, it is concerned with everybody's positive well-being)";
-- an Aristotelian strand: "Aristotle's ethics is concerned with the question, 'What is the nature of the most admirable human life?'"
These strands have often been regarded as conflicting. "But," says Putnam, "that is not the way I see things. The tension is real, but so is the mutual support."
One should not try to deny the ethical significance of any of the strands, or to opt for one or another of the strands to the exclusion of the rest, or to replace all strands with some other principle (like "maximizing the good"). "My image would be of a table with many legs. We all know that a table with many legs wobbles when the floor on which it stands is not even, but such a table is very hard to turn over".
Compare the "controlled conditions" of normal, empirical experiments, where you're trying to limit potential factors.
***
To balance out the simplicity, here's two messier problems.
***
1. A person you barely know is involved in modern-day slavery. She is required to work as a prostitute to pay off a "debt".
You're not sure whether to believe her.
Taking what she says at face value, it strikes you as objectively unfair. However, this person refuses all help, refuses to cooperate in any way with authorities, and, on the whole, actually enjoys her job and her circumstances. In addition, she tells you that any report to authorities will make her situation worse, and will endanger both her and you.
What can or should you do? How far do your responsibilities go?
Is it up to you to decide whether a report to authorities does or doesn't make the situation worse?
If you decide to report, is that all you should do, is that the end of your responsibilities? Or do you go to the newspapers, or spend money (how much money?) buying out her contract? Do you go Taxi Driver or hire the A Team (as, perhaps, you might be more inclined towards if this were your mother or sister)?
What place do you give to this person's free choice, in contrast with your beliefs about their situation?
Are your future feelings relevant? -- for instance, does it matter that you might think back on what you could have done, but didn't?
Are the person's qualities relevant? Does it matter how "good" they are, whether you like them, whether they could "make more of themselves"...?
***
2. A 40-year-old is a committed pacifist. He has protested against Australian military involvement in Iraq, he has refused Defence Force work in his IT job, and he believes it is an extreme horror for one human being to kill another.
This person takes on voluntary work, being a mentor to "problem" teenagers. Such teenagers have been identified as "problem" for whatever reason -- perhaps they have issues with drugs or theft; perhaps they're from extremely disadvantaged backgrounds; perhaps they have psychological disorders. At any rate, they're thought to need an adult figure to whom they can chat, once a week, and they undergo the process voluntarily.
The pacifist is assigned such a teenager -- a 14-year-old, let's say -- and is given a one-paragraph description. The teenager writes, in his self-introduction: "I want to enter this mentoring program because I really want to join the army, navy, or air force, and I want to discuss my options with someone."
What should the pacifist do? Should he tell the teenager not to join the military? Should he try to put his beliefs aside, and discuss the pros and cons of army vs navy? Is it impossible for him to be unbiased? Should he express what he believes, and leave it up to the teenager to decide -- or, given the power discrepancy between 40-year-old and 14-year-old, would this be an improper violation of the teenager's autonomy? Or should he simply ask for the case to be reassigned, or would this somehow be cowardly?
Perhaps the teenager needs "rescuing" from the military; or perhaps the military would be good for the teenager, given that he's been identified as high-risk.
***
Some comments:
* To be machinely rational, you might have to do a lot of moral philosophy before being able to answer questions like what factors are or aren't relevant, what counts as a good or a bad reason...
To be humanly rational, one should not be, cannot practically be, machinely rational -- but still must find some way of resolving, answering, deciding...
* In everyday moral situations, there are different perspectives and tests available. For instance, the "What would Jesus do?" test, the "Will I regret this?" test, the "How would I want to be treated?" test, the "What if everyone did this?" test...
How to decide which test to use, which perspective to view from...?
* In contrast with the purity of thought experiments, real life can throw up multiple concerns and directives. You're concerned about virtue and courage, but you're also concerned about achieving the best result, and you're also concerned about not violating people's autonomy, and you're also concerned...
On what basis should one simply ignore any of these concerns?
And how is one to hierarchize or balance these concerns?
* In thought experiments (and in many narratives -- movies, novels), you have clear options. You can pull the lever to make the train go this way, or you can pull it to make it go that way.
In real life, you don't always have an obvious menu of alternatives, but there are any number of things you can do -- with perhaps no limit beyond your creativity.
* When given a standard thought experiment, one often wants to ask for further information about this or that, and can only be told "that detail is unknown" or "consider that detail irrelevant".
In real life, not only are the details there, but they change and complicate things. They introduce all sorts of uncertainties -- for instance, you may have to estimate the probability of this or that happening, or give weightings to how certain you are of this or that fact.
And it may be difficult to establish facts. In a thought experiment you assume an action was "voluntary": in real life, did the women in R v Tang really "consent" to their situation? Well, "consent" can be a tricky thing to pin down...
***
In Ethics without ontology (2004), Hilary Putnam speaks of multiple strands that go into his ethical thinking:
-- a Levinasian strand: "For Levinas, the irreducible foundation of ethics is my immediate recognition, when confronted with a suffering fellow human being, that I have an obligation to do something";
-- a Kantian strand: "... the Categorical Imperative (not, indeed, as a practical guide -- as a guide it scarcely goes beyond the Golden Rule -- but as a powerful statement of the idea that ethics is universal, that, insofar as ethics is concerned with the alleviation of suffering, it is concerned with the alleviation of everyone's suffering, or if it is concerned with positive well-being, it is concerned with everybody's positive well-being)";
-- an Aristotelian strand: "Aristotle's ethics is concerned with the question, 'What is the nature of the most admirable human life?'"
These strands have often been regarded as conflicting. "But," says Putnam, "that is not the way I see things. The tension is real, but so is the mutual support."
One should not try to deny the ethical significance of any of the strands, or to opt for one or another of the strands to the exclusion of the rest, or to replace all strands with some other principle (like "maximizing the good"). "My image would be of a table with many legs. We all know that a table with many legs wobbles when the floor on which it stands is not even, but such a table is very hard to turn over".
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Comment by Lady Henrietta Muddling
Potter in a Harry
Or do you write so much for some other reason than teaching people the path to simplicity?
Comment by Damo
For the Sake of Argument
My Apologetics
I think that the test is pretty simple.
You pick a side in the conflict based upon your understand of what is right or wrong then do something.
If you are wrong then you will go down as a spectacular fool. If you are right then you win.
Everything else becomes internal white noise.
Comment by Nonymous
Philosophy Blog
I've mentioned this before, but there's an episode of the Simpsons where Bart runs for class president, against Martin Prince.
Cue montage of scenes, including:
[Bart standing up on a table, finger pointing at Martin, denouncing him.] "He says: there are no easy answers. I say: he's not looking hard enough!!!" [Class applauds and cheers.]
There are two extremes: on the one hand, masturbatory overcomplication, making mountains out of molehills, perhaps resulting in talk talk talk and academic inaction (and, as Martin found, this is harder to sell to an electorate); on the other hand, unthinking fanaticism, or crude, fascistic, oversimplifying.
I might well tend towards the former... wankers rather than fundamentalists...
I don't think I'm alone though. I think most people have plenty of doubts about many of their moral decisions, and I think this is a good thing. Arendt says something like: in the time of the Reich, doubters were more trustworthy, morally speaking, than people full of cerrtainty.
This post wasn't intentionally comic, but what does intention matter -- entirely up to you to be amused, or bored, or whatever, if you can be bothered to read at all.
Well... I've always thought of this blog more as a diary than anything else; it's more a case of collecting my own thoughts rather than teaching anyone anything.
The main thought I wanted to express is that real life moral problems are much more complex than philosophers sometimes make out... Clearly I haven't convinced you of this
Personally, I do find the two example situations difficult to resolve. And they're straight from real life, incidentally -- people I know have faced / are facing them...
What would you do in these situations? And is your choice attended by no doubts or uncertainties?
Well, if I'm reading you right, you're talking about situations where people have two choices ("pick a side"), and ask themselves, "Should I do what I believe is right, or should I do what I believe is wrong?". You suggest that they should act on their convictions of what's right.
I don't think I'm talking about that sort of situation.
Among other things, in the two examples above:
-- what the "sides" are is unclear; there are any number of possible actions the person could take;
-- it's not always a matter of conflicting sides, one right and one wrong, but there can be questions about how far you should go, how much you should do;
-- most importantly, the people here don't have convictions about what to do; they're genuinely unsure what to do; so telling them "Do what you understand is right" doesn't help them.
One more thought...
Aquinas wrote about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Now, to many people today, who don't believe in angels, such a question is a non-question. So whether something is a genuine problem or not depends on what beliefs you hold.
Regarding the two examples in my post, which I've claimed are difficult situations... Well, they're going to be difficult or easy depending on what beliefs you hold, what obligations you feel, etc...
Comment by Morgan Bell
Deep Pencil
Current Business News
Movie Train
Artist Quirk
firstly, the way you have highlighted the word "debt" makes me feel like there is some question as to whether the "debt" is genuine - was that your intention?
if i was sitting at a bus-stop and a junkie started chatting to me and said they were a had become a sex worker who services their dealer to pay off (genuine) drug debts, but they enjoyed it, and they explicitly stated they were not seeking any help and would not welcome it, i would do nothing
i would listen to their story and let them go on with their day in peace
if the same person looked distressed and asked for help i would assist them with finding a whoever they chose to help them - whether it be a hospital, womens shelter, their parents, a friend, the police etc
my decision would rest entirely on their answer to the question "do you want me to help you?" yes/no
example 2
i think most people are pacifists in varying degrees, even Army officers, in the sense that they do not approve of excessive force, that violence should be avoided until it is the last option
the vast majority of people would completely agree
where this man differs from the average pacifist is that he mistrusts the armed forces, and presumably sees them as agitators rather than peace-keepers
in order for him to present all the pros and cons of a military career i think it would be acceptable for him to inform the young man that he is "anti-army" and that many people in this world are, and explain his reasons . . . then he MUST arrange for the young man to speak with someone who will present the other side of the argument (eg: an army recruitment agent) . . . this is his professional responsibility and he is negligent in his duties if he doesnt comply
if i was the 40yo i would question the young man about WHY he found the army such an attractive option . . . it may be for the salary, the discipline, the respect, the education, to work with weapons, to work with other men, to serve the community, to work in a physically challenging job, to travel etc . . . if he took the time to define the critera the young man was looking for in a job he may be able to suggest an alternative like becoming a fire-fighter, or a civilian pilot, or a construction worker, or a park ranger etc
Comment by Nonymous
Philosophy Blog
Basically, yes. I suppose this post was supposed to be read in the context of the previous post on slavery.
What if they were distressed, but were not looking for help?
Your way of resolving the situation is probably as fair as any, but I don't think it's an answer that everyone could come to. Without giving you a proper reply, I think there's plenty of situations where people need to be saved from themselves. After all, the choices you form under situations of duress are not always "real" choices. Consider the situation of the "contented slave", or consider battered housewives. People grow accustomed to their chains.
If someone tells you, "My husband beats me up every night. I don't like it, but I don't want you to do anything about it", how would you react? I want to suggest that a lot of people would have difficulty here, and can't simply tell themselves "Well, it's her choice. So my conscience is clear."
Well, I don't know if this is a fair parallel, but consider a different circumstance. It's 1935, the young man in question is considering joining the Hitler youth, and the 40-year-old is passionately anti-Nazi. One might argue that it's his professional responsibility to present both sides of the choice, but is that his moral responsibility? What ought he do?
Comment by Morgan Bell
Deep Pencil
Current Business News
Movie Train
Artist Quirk
i immediately thought of battered housewives when you gave the first example (perhaps as a westerner domestic slavery is the circumstance i am most familiar with)
if i was sitting as a bus-stop and a woman i had never seen before was bruised and beaten and told me of her abusive husband i would tell her she didnt have to put up with it and tell her there are services available etc
i would ask the question "do you need any help?", if she said no i would leave her alone
if it was my sister i would physically remove her from the situation regardless of her own opinion so she could think about her choices in a neutral space surrounded by family . . . even then beyond a certain point of intervention the choice to return or not would ultimately be hers
i think the scale of your reaction and involvement goes up exponentially with how close or well-known the person is to you
i think in Nazi Germany joing the army wasnt based on any morals, given the economic climate and the dangers of going against the regime there were very little other options . . . but all things being equal if the 40yo man and young boy were sitting in Australia and he had every opportunity open to him and the Nazi party re-surged in Germany today and were recruiting internationally for their army, the 40yo man can only give his opinions and refer him to the Nazi website (or wherever) to get the other perspective and choose for himself . . . i think it is morally wrong to push anyones hand by witholding information, and it is condescending to presume they dont have the morals and intelligence of their own to make the right decision given all the facts
Comment by Damo
For the Sake of Argument
My Apologetics
Just to take up the issue angels dancing on the head of a pin. My understanding of that line is that it was ridiculing the way some philosophical questions tend to focus upon pointless unanswerable questions. The real answer in such a case is who cares.
On the messiness of making choices, I find that the process of making any hard choice do follow similar rational lines. Regardless of whether it has the morality stamp of approval or not.
I am yet to see a choice that cannot be broken down to yes or no for each alternative. Or do or do not do.
Even if there are twenty equally attractive choices, you will still say yes or no to each in turn. I you are only allowed to select one then you either decide or do not decide. Failure to make a choice is still a decision to do nothing.
The problem is that many hard choices are so because have a level or risk attached to them. What if you make the wrong choice?