just a quick note to say that I ended up citing faraci's post (and its comments) on thought experiments and metaphysical impossibility in a paper I'm writing on Locke and personal identity. thanks to everyone involved as it tied up what would have otherwise been a loose end for me. :)
Has anyone else used ideas from the blog for papers?
If there is any convention for citing blog posts please let me know
cheers
peter k
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Saturday, June 02, 2007
X-Phi: Parfit's baby (help!)
Ladies and gents, a call for help.
In Wall's class, we discussed the case of Parfit's baby. The case is this:
A doctor tells a husband and wife that if they decide to have a child within the next two weeks, that child will be born with some deformity, or some problem (say, with only one leg). This deformity/problem will not make it the case that life is not worth living, but will make life more difficult than otherwise for the child. However, if they wait a month, they will have a perfectly healthy baby. The parents are too impatient, and for no good reason decide not to wait. Sure enough, a baby is born without a leg.
The questions are: 1) Are the parents blameworthy? (Yes, No, Who knows?), and 2) Does the child, many years later, have a grievance against her parents? (Yes, No, Who knows?).
I think most people will answer 1) Yes, they are blameworthy (they really should have waited to give their child the best possible future) and 2) Yes, the child does have a grievance or reason to be angry.
The problem with the second answer is that, if the parents had waited, it would not be the *same* child, but a different one. The child with one leg would not be alive if the parents had waited. But we've agreed that that child's life is still worth living, so the child herself would rank living-with-one-leg-fewer higher than not-living-at-all (and maybe all of us have reason to give this ranking than some other).
This leaves us with tough options. Do we keep our original intuitions and try to explain away the apparent problem? Do we claim that most people are mistaken when they say that the child has a grievance (and maybe lean on the indeterminacy of identity in pre-birth cases to explain the error)? Or some other option?
I would like to run an experiment with this question, and one other. This other question is intended to be structurally identical to the first, with only one major difference--the persons in the scenario have a past, and a clear identity. I could use help formulating this second question, so I'll give you what I've got so far.
It is the year 2,200. Scientists are looking at all the people who have (properly) cryogenically frozen themselves, all two of them, Jones and Smith, and are ready to defrost them. Alas, they can only defrost one at a time, through a process that lasts a year. Alas, alas, they also know that the equipment used to freeze them will soon fail, making it impossible to defrost more than one person. Looking at the frozen Jones and Smith, they see that Jones is missing a leg, while Smith is perfectly healthy and perfectly fine. Knowing that Jones' life will not go as well as Smith's, but will still be worth living, they decide to defrost Jones.
The questions are the same: 1) Are the scientists blameworthy? (Yes, No, Who Knows?) and 2) Does Jones have a grievance? (Yes, No, Who Knows?).
I suspect that in this case most will answer "Yes" to 1, but "No" to 2. That would present us with an asymmetry.
My questions to you are: 1) Are there differences in the second case that muck up this possible experiment? That is, is the second case different in more than one relevant respect (that being the pre-existence of Jones and Smith in the past, versus the "newness" of the child)? (If so, can it be adjusted or changed?) and 2) What do you have to say about these cases?
In Wall's class, we discussed the case of Parfit's baby. The case is this:
A doctor tells a husband and wife that if they decide to have a child within the next two weeks, that child will be born with some deformity, or some problem (say, with only one leg). This deformity/problem will not make it the case that life is not worth living, but will make life more difficult than otherwise for the child. However, if they wait a month, they will have a perfectly healthy baby. The parents are too impatient, and for no good reason decide not to wait. Sure enough, a baby is born without a leg.
The questions are: 1) Are the parents blameworthy? (Yes, No, Who knows?), and 2) Does the child, many years later, have a grievance against her parents? (Yes, No, Who knows?).
I think most people will answer 1) Yes, they are blameworthy (they really should have waited to give their child the best possible future) and 2) Yes, the child does have a grievance or reason to be angry.
The problem with the second answer is that, if the parents had waited, it would not be the *same* child, but a different one. The child with one leg would not be alive if the parents had waited. But we've agreed that that child's life is still worth living, so the child herself would rank living-with-one-leg-fewer higher than not-living-at-all (and maybe all of us have reason to give this ranking than some other).
This leaves us with tough options. Do we keep our original intuitions and try to explain away the apparent problem? Do we claim that most people are mistaken when they say that the child has a grievance (and maybe lean on the indeterminacy of identity in pre-birth cases to explain the error)? Or some other option?
I would like to run an experiment with this question, and one other. This other question is intended to be structurally identical to the first, with only one major difference--the persons in the scenario have a past, and a clear identity. I could use help formulating this second question, so I'll give you what I've got so far.
It is the year 2,200. Scientists are looking at all the people who have (properly) cryogenically frozen themselves, all two of them, Jones and Smith, and are ready to defrost them. Alas, they can only defrost one at a time, through a process that lasts a year. Alas, alas, they also know that the equipment used to freeze them will soon fail, making it impossible to defrost more than one person. Looking at the frozen Jones and Smith, they see that Jones is missing a leg, while Smith is perfectly healthy and perfectly fine. Knowing that Jones' life will not go as well as Smith's, but will still be worth living, they decide to defrost Jones.
The questions are the same: 1) Are the scientists blameworthy? (Yes, No, Who Knows?) and 2) Does Jones have a grievance? (Yes, No, Who Knows?).
I suspect that in this case most will answer "Yes" to 1, but "No" to 2. That would present us with an asymmetry.
My questions to you are: 1) Are there differences in the second case that muck up this possible experiment? That is, is the second case different in more than one relevant respect (that being the pre-existence of Jones and Smith in the past, versus the "newness" of the child)? (If so, can it be adjusted or changed?) and 2) What do you have to say about these cases?
Monday, May 14, 2007
The lego Bible
While I ponder Ben's last post, here's something I told him about a few weeks ago. The Lego Bible. It's hard to stop once you get going. For more lego creativity you might google "lego porn" but I'm far too ashamed to provide you with the link here.
Monday, April 30, 2007
An Intersection of Social and Distributive Justice?
In a recent article in the New York Times entitled "For $82 a Day, Booking a Cell in a 5-Star Jail," I learned that some offenders in California can apply to and, with the permission of a judge, pay between $75 and $127 per day to serve jail sentences at cleaner, quieter facilities with more inmate privileges. Offenses must be minor, as the article's author notes, "Carjackers need not apply." The standard profile for an offender is a male in his late 30's who has been convicted of DUI and sentenced to a month or two.
There are several reasons why one might think this was a good idea. For minor offenders, entry into the California jail system is entry into an overcrowded world of gangs, racial violence, and hardened offenders. The article mentions that many areas with the system are under judicial review. One can see the benefit to the county of not hardening minor offenders, and certainly the idea of offsetting prison expenses where possible seems like a good idea.
Nonetheless, critics argue, this seems to compromise the "blindness" of justice since not all offenders can afford this "5-Star" treatment. Imagine two minor offenders, each with no prior record, and each convicted of a 90 day DUI offense. That each might serve that sentence at a better or worse facility according to one's ability to pay seems to some a violation of equality under law.
My own sense is that this is probably okay for two reasons. First and most importantly, if sections of the existing jail system are broken and others are not, then I see no reason to propose a duty to stay in the worse relative to the better. Justice makes no demand that we submit to an unjust punishment when a just one is available, and I would argue that the additional hardships incurred dysfunctional prisons constitute an additional punishment that distorts the justice of the original sentence. If the injustice of that additional punishment were inescapable and universal, then one might factor it into one's sentencing and adjust sentences accordingly. However, that the hardships and privileges varies within the same system means that there can be no requirement from justice to serve one's sentence in a dysfunctional facility when a properly functioning facility is available.
This is not to endorse the increased privileges at these facililites. The upper limit of such privileges should be no higher than that in a normal and/or dysfunctional prison if we intend that the justice in punishment is blind. Pay-to-stay prisoners should not be allowed out of the prison to work, and laptops and iPods should not be available to them either as long as these privileges are not afforded to conventional prisoners. Indeed, there might be good reasons to afford additional entertainment privileges to conventional prisoners if one thought it might pacify violent impulses and possibly afford short-term relief for some of the dysfunctions related to prison violence. That speculation aside, if the pay-to-stay prisons more closely approximated what we thought an ideal prison should look like, with privileges perhaps constrained to selected books and materials with which to write, then it would be even clearer that justice does not require that we submit to an unjust punishment when a just one is available.
Lacking such duty, one could say there was no reason to settle the questions of limited space by ability to pay rather than, say, by random assignment within the same profile of minor first-time offenses. However, this raises other questions, which brings us to my second reason. If normal inmates do not have to pay to stay in jail, then these inmates should not either if we're really talking about justice being blind. That they do, and that they must apply to do so, means that the inmates release consent to be treated unequally in the matter of their property (conceived of as a political right) in exchange for a right to serve their sentence in a properly functioning penal setting. In other words, I argue that contrary to the appearance of a merely economic transaction, this is a modification of the social contract that lasts for the specified duration of the inmate's sentence. The additional funding to the penal system that allows for the hiring of more guards or improvements to the facilites is a public good, and forcing an inmate to incur this greater burden without their consent would be just as partial an application of justice as the original worry suggests.
There are several reasons why one might think this was a good idea. For minor offenders, entry into the California jail system is entry into an overcrowded world of gangs, racial violence, and hardened offenders. The article mentions that many areas with the system are under judicial review. One can see the benefit to the county of not hardening minor offenders, and certainly the idea of offsetting prison expenses where possible seems like a good idea.
Nonetheless, critics argue, this seems to compromise the "blindness" of justice since not all offenders can afford this "5-Star" treatment. Imagine two minor offenders, each with no prior record, and each convicted of a 90 day DUI offense. That each might serve that sentence at a better or worse facility according to one's ability to pay seems to some a violation of equality under law.
My own sense is that this is probably okay for two reasons. First and most importantly, if sections of the existing jail system are broken and others are not, then I see no reason to propose a duty to stay in the worse relative to the better. Justice makes no demand that we submit to an unjust punishment when a just one is available, and I would argue that the additional hardships incurred dysfunctional prisons constitute an additional punishment that distorts the justice of the original sentence. If the injustice of that additional punishment were inescapable and universal, then one might factor it into one's sentencing and adjust sentences accordingly. However, that the hardships and privileges varies within the same system means that there can be no requirement from justice to serve one's sentence in a dysfunctional facility when a properly functioning facility is available.
This is not to endorse the increased privileges at these facililites. The upper limit of such privileges should be no higher than that in a normal and/or dysfunctional prison if we intend that the justice in punishment is blind. Pay-to-stay prisoners should not be allowed out of the prison to work, and laptops and iPods should not be available to them either as long as these privileges are not afforded to conventional prisoners. Indeed, there might be good reasons to afford additional entertainment privileges to conventional prisoners if one thought it might pacify violent impulses and possibly afford short-term relief for some of the dysfunctions related to prison violence. That speculation aside, if the pay-to-stay prisons more closely approximated what we thought an ideal prison should look like, with privileges perhaps constrained to selected books and materials with which to write, then it would be even clearer that justice does not require that we submit to an unjust punishment when a just one is available.
Lacking such duty, one could say there was no reason to settle the questions of limited space by ability to pay rather than, say, by random assignment within the same profile of minor first-time offenses. However, this raises other questions, which brings us to my second reason. If normal inmates do not have to pay to stay in jail, then these inmates should not either if we're really talking about justice being blind. That they do, and that they must apply to do so, means that the inmates release consent to be treated unequally in the matter of their property (conceived of as a political right) in exchange for a right to serve their sentence in a properly functioning penal setting. In other words, I argue that contrary to the appearance of a merely economic transaction, this is a modification of the social contract that lasts for the specified duration of the inmate's sentence. The additional funding to the penal system that allows for the hiring of more guards or improvements to the facilites is a public good, and forcing an inmate to incur this greater burden without their consent would be just as partial an application of justice as the original worry suggests.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Is Free Speech a Claim Right?
Jon Miles and I have had a running conversation about free speech rights, and recently our attention turned to the Dixie Chicks. In 2003, they criticized the president during a concert in Britain, and immediately felt a backlash from country music fans and radio stations who refused to play their music. Lipton pulled their sponsorship from the Chicks' 2003 world tour, and Wal-Mart pulled their music from its shelves. In response, they produced another album featuring the single "Not Ready to Make Nice," and effectively recreated their fanbase after being embraced by the Hollywood Left. Their new patrons in Hollywood apparently felt so moved by the whole thing that they recently lionized the Chicks in a documentary called "Shut Up and Sing" that Jon and I watched at the suggestion of Steve Wall.
Where all this interests me is with respect to the response offered by the Chicks. Their belief, so the documentary illustrates, is that Wal-Mart and the radio stations who refused to play their music were censuring their right to free speech. This was curious to me. Does someone else's free speech right require my participation in their speaking? I presented Jon with the following thought experiment inspired by a discussion with Corwin Carr.
Let's say that I'm a music distributor of some sort, that I'm very liberal, and that I'm very good at what I do. In fact, I have a large majority share of the market, and in some places there are no other outlets for some artists if I do not bring their music to the market. Recently, a popular female music group from Maryland called, say, the Yankee Babes, offered critical comments on Nancy Pelosi's recent visit to Syria. "We're with you good people," they say to an audience in Austin, "and we're ashamed that the Speaker of the House is from Maryland." (Yes, Speaker Pelosi has lived in and represents California, but she was born in Maryland, and I couldn't pass up the Yankee Babes thing.) Their comments are met with wild applause from that crowd, but I am offended, and do not feel at liberty by my conscience to continue distributing their music. Even if doing so would be lucrative for me, it would also make me complicit in publishing speech that I do not endorse, even if I do endorse the right itself. Let us further remove any financial contingencies, and suppose that I satisfied the opportunity costs incurred for the products produced and sitting in my warehouses. The Yankee Babes are financially no worse off than if they'd spent the time to produce an album that no one bought.
Have I censured free speech? It seems strange to say so since the right in question exists in parallel with, and is perhaps even thought to be an expression of, the liberty to order one's life and live according to the dictates of one's conscience. Speech rights are normally understood as negative rights that entail that I not interfere with the speaker's speaking, but if my participation is required for speech to reach an audience, does the right to free speech become a claim right such that others are entitled to it? This seems to confuse the right to speak with the right to be heard, the latter being what my participation as a distributor furnishes. The right to speak as a political right seems to entail claim rights only for the public spaces and forums that belong to everyone. Arguing that free speech rights entitle one to the activity or property of another seems therefore to argue against the principle those rights exist to protect.
Nevertheless, the Dixie Chicks seem to think that this is what happened to them. Unless and until I (or one who roughly agrees with me) gain the participation of others willing to distribute these arguments to at least as wide an audience, I'm concerned that this wider notion of the right to free speech will create many of the same problems it was originally intended to solve.
Where all this interests me is with respect to the response offered by the Chicks. Their belief, so the documentary illustrates, is that Wal-Mart and the radio stations who refused to play their music were censuring their right to free speech. This was curious to me. Does someone else's free speech right require my participation in their speaking? I presented Jon with the following thought experiment inspired by a discussion with Corwin Carr.
Let's say that I'm a music distributor of some sort, that I'm very liberal, and that I'm very good at what I do. In fact, I have a large majority share of the market, and in some places there are no other outlets for some artists if I do not bring their music to the market. Recently, a popular female music group from Maryland called, say, the Yankee Babes, offered critical comments on Nancy Pelosi's recent visit to Syria. "We're with you good people," they say to an audience in Austin, "and we're ashamed that the Speaker of the House is from Maryland." (Yes, Speaker Pelosi has lived in and represents California, but she was born in Maryland, and I couldn't pass up the Yankee Babes thing.) Their comments are met with wild applause from that crowd, but I am offended, and do not feel at liberty by my conscience to continue distributing their music. Even if doing so would be lucrative for me, it would also make me complicit in publishing speech that I do not endorse, even if I do endorse the right itself. Let us further remove any financial contingencies, and suppose that I satisfied the opportunity costs incurred for the products produced and sitting in my warehouses. The Yankee Babes are financially no worse off than if they'd spent the time to produce an album that no one bought.
Have I censured free speech? It seems strange to say so since the right in question exists in parallel with, and is perhaps even thought to be an expression of, the liberty to order one's life and live according to the dictates of one's conscience. Speech rights are normally understood as negative rights that entail that I not interfere with the speaker's speaking, but if my participation is required for speech to reach an audience, does the right to free speech become a claim right such that others are entitled to it? This seems to confuse the right to speak with the right to be heard, the latter being what my participation as a distributor furnishes. The right to speak as a political right seems to entail claim rights only for the public spaces and forums that belong to everyone. Arguing that free speech rights entitle one to the activity or property of another seems therefore to argue against the principle those rights exist to protect.
Nevertheless, the Dixie Chicks seem to think that this is what happened to them. Unless and until I (or one who roughly agrees with me) gain the participation of others willing to distribute these arguments to at least as wide an audience, I'm concerned that this wider notion of the right to free speech will create many of the same problems it was originally intended to solve.
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