Reflections on Color, Touch, and Time: How Human Experience Deceives Us

UV image of the sun X-ray image of the sun

Until recently, whenever I saw breathtaking images of nebulae or galaxies shot in the x-ray, ultraviolet, or infrared range, I’d be somewhat disappointed that the object depicted in the photo wasn’t how that object actually “looked." (Only images taken in the visible spectrum illustrate how the objects would appear to our eyes.) What I now realize is that there isn’t one objective way that things appear. In fact, my former bias in astronomy is just one consequence of the subjective understanding of reality to which I am confined.

Take color, for example: wherever we look, there is color. Indeed color is so ubiquitous that we tend to think of it as an inherent dimension of reality. Everyday objects seem to an extent to be defined by their color. But what is color? Color is merely our interpretation of the portion of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum that spans from 380 to 750 nm, the “visible spectrum.” Interestingly, there is nothing inherent about this spectrum of radiation that endows it with giving off these hues, since the visible spectrum is defined to be those EM wavelengths visible to the human eye. Therefore, snakes that see in the infrared region have a different visible spectrum; looking through a thermal camera would give us a sense of how snakes perceive the world. Other animals such as insects and birds see in the ultraviolet spectrum. The feathers of some birds shine much brighter with UV radiation than with visible radiation (light). It’s easy to assume that what we can’t see isn’t real (or isn’t as real as what we can see), but on the contrary, the sun’s cancer-causing UV rays and our bodies’ infrared heat waves are just as real as the yellow sunlight and yellow (or brown, white, or black) skin we see with our eyes. Moreover, chances are that there is really nothing “yellow” about 580 nm light; another animal might see the sun as being what we would call purple or green or blue.

Human sight isn’t the only subjective filter through which we experience reality; our sense of touch is just as biased. We often forget that every solid object consists of over 99% empty space. Microscopic forces between molecules add up to emergently manifest as “hardness.” If we were 1000 times stronger, perhaps hardness would not be a meaningful concept, because we could deform and obliterate any object we wanted. Conversely, if we were small insects, water would be considered “hard” since its surface would be walkable. To gain a more objective view of hardness and softness, it might help to look at the universe as consisting mostly of space, but with regions of varying density. The phone sitting on my desk is a density region where atoms gather slightly closer to each other than do the atoms in the surrounding air. The earth itself is a larger density region floating in space, which itself is not completely empty either. Such a perspective demonstrates the difficulty of truly understanding the universe in an objective sense (if there exists one).

The same conclusion can be drawn for our senses of taste, smell, and hearing. Humans cannot imagine how dogs experience the rich array of smells available to them, in the same way that dogs are incapable of imagining the myriad hues of color by which we experience the visible spectrum. Furthermore, bats and whales use sonar to map out their surroundings in a manner analogous to our faculty of sight. The point is that our understanding of the world is completely biased. Our "reality" is merely a subjective interpretation of the universe, one that we cannot escape. This revelation both astonishes and terrorizes me.

To further illustrate this, it might be useful to examine our perception of time. In this TED presentation (I strongly suggest you watch it; it partially inspired this post and I’ve seen it twice), Richard Dawkins claims that relativity might be easier to comprehend had we evolved in an environment in which we moved at near-light speeds. To us earth-bound creatures, our velocity is of such small magnitude that we never experience noticeable differences in the rate at which time flows (although we wouldn’t notice it unless we compared our environment to slower-moving ones). Quite possibly I already assume too much: perhaps time doesn’t exist at all. Some scientists and philosophers suggest that time is simply the way living organisms interpret change. If this is true, the past and future are not real; there is only an ever-changing present. (For more on time, read this Discover article—the other inspiration for my post.)

If you’re having difficultly comprehending a universe without time, you’re supposed to have trouble. This is because we are built to experience time, whether or not it exists. (As an aside to the religiously-inclined, St. Augustine proposed that God exists outside of time, and hence God can know the past and future all at once. Then one could best understand heaven not as extending eternally into the future, but rather as existing as an eternal present.)

Discarding basic assumptions about how we perceive the world is as fun as it is mind-boggling. Actually, the fun is derived precisely from the boggling of one’s mind. But as I admitted, the recognition that my universe is merely a subjective interpretation of the real thing completely terrifies me. I’m deeply troubled by how much I don’t know. While I can try taking comfort in believing that no objective understanding of the universe exists, I don’t believe it. I want to see the world the way God sees the world. But most likely I will never know; it is not my place. In the meantime, I like to think that my biased view of reality gives it meaning I can appreciate. Life is so much more beautiful with color, isn’t it?

Animal Harm

The timing could not be worse. Halfway through my quest to gain fifteen pounds, I've come to the conclusion that eating meat is wrong. Here's why:

Many animals feel pain. More importantly, the animals we eat feel pain. Vertebrates have central nervous systems that allow for the transmission and processing of pain via neurotransmitters and the cerebral cortex. Some animals even possess the ability to emotionally respond to suffering, a requirement that animal rights critics contend is necessary to truly appreciate pain in the way humans do. So there is strong evidence to suggest humans are not unique in their ability to suffer.

The question then becomes, "Is the pain inflicted on animals justified by the marginal utility gained by humans?" The answer seems to be “no.” Would torturing an animal be morally permissible, given that the torturer derives great joy from doing so? If not, what distinguishes this case from eating meat? It's difficult to draw a relevant distinction between the desire to have a meaty taste in one's mouth and the desire to assert one's dominance over other creatures. But in both cases, animals suffer far more than humans gain in pleasure. Robert Nozick draws the analogy of someone who enjoys swinging a bat: it would be unacceptable for a man to swing a bat if the only place to do it were in front of a cow, even if he really, really enjoyed it. So in terms of utility trade-offs, eating meat doesn't seem to outweigh the suffering inflicted in obtaining that meat.

One might construe this analysis to assume that equal weight should be given to the preferences of humans and animals (a position of many philosophers, notably Peter Singer). Yet even if humans have greater inherent value than animals, the case against eating meat is still strong. First, the analogies mentioned still hold, so consistency requires that meat eating and bat swinging (at a cow) both be morally permissible or both be morally impermissible. Since my intuitions against swinging a bat at a cow are much stronger than my intuitions in favor of eating meat, I tend to think both actions are unethical, rather than ethical. Second, our alleged right to eat animals cannot derive merely from relative comparisons of value (from humans simply having greater value than other animals). Let me explain. If higher-intelligence aliens were to come to earth, would they be morally justified in eating us, assuming that we taste good? That most people would say “no” demonstrates that regardless of how intelligent aliens might be, their intelligence does nothing to depreciate the inherent value of humans that gives rise to our right not to be eaten. Therefore a more coherent understanding of the relationship between humans and animals is required.

Some people try to draw a relevant distinction at rationality: humans are rational, animals are not, and only rationality confers rights; hence humans have rights and animals do not. But this position is too simplistic: do the mentally retarded, comatose, or infantile have rights? To be more precise, do they have natural rights that inhere in their very existence, despite their lack of rationality? If so, rationality cannot be the sole standard for determining who can be eaten. A more reasonable approach (one consistent with the arguments in the previous paragraph) is to stay that different factors can contribute to one’s overall value, which in turn determines what rights one has. These factors include sentience, self-awareness, rationality, being alive, existing in reality, etc. Being real and alive are prerequisite, though perhaps not sufficient in themselves, to grant rights. (Still, would snapping one’s fingers to destroy a far-off planet blossoming with exotic plant life be, in a sense, wrong?) Sentience and the ability to feel pain add further value, enough to require that others have warrant before inflicting pain on creatures with these attributes. This explains why slamming a bat into a cow’s head would be immoral.

Rationality indeed adds further value, distinguishing humans from other animals. Nonetheless, it is not apparent why this additional value conferred on humans should depreciate the preexisting value of other animals gained from their sentience, or elevate the importance of trivial human pleasures like taste. Cannot animals also taste and experience the same wonderful sensations we do? Rationality does nothing to meaningfully distinguish our taste from animals’ tastes. From this perspective, if we accept that the value of our taste sensation roughly equals that of other animals, and that the total value of an animal is greater than the value of its taste sensation, then we must conclude (by transitivity) that an animal’s life is more important than the pleasures of human taste. Essentially, the framework I am proposing argues this: living beings have differing degrees of value and hence differing degrees of rights; yet in order to preserve respect for an animal’s inherent value (derived from its sentience or some other attribute), humans should treat animals with the same respect that we afford ourselves in areas that humans and animals are identical. Therefore, since human taste is worth no more than animal taste, human taste is worth no more than animal life. Killing animals for self-preservation, however, is always justified because the total value of a human life is greater than the value of an animal’s life. And we can still prefer the suffering of animals to an equal (or somewhat smaller) degree of human suffering, because a fixed degree of physical pain would arguably generate more harm to humans than it would to other animals. For example, a blow to the head might cause a severe mental handicap for both a baby and a chimp, but the baby has much more to lose since its potential is so much greater. Similar arguments can be made for virtually any other instance in which equal pain is inflicted on a human and a nonhuman animal. My point in mentioning these instances of self-preservation and minimization of harm to humans is to illustrate that this framework of understanding is a reasonable one; it produces answers that conform to our strongest intuitions.

I should mention one objection that often arises. Some people argue that one person's refraining from meat eating will have no impact on the number of animals killed for food; thus eating meat is permissible under a utilitarian framework. But my argument was deontological, not utilitarian. And complicity in a moral harm is still immoral under a deontological understanding of ethics, even if that complicity has no consequential impact. If I assist in a murder, I am morally culpable regardless of whether or not that murder would have been committed without my help. So while my eating meat might not directly contribute to more suffering, my complicity in that suffering is still unethical.

I hope I've made a convincing case for why eating animals, or at least those that people eat most, is wrong. I myself have been convinced by people who have written in favor of animal rights. But as a lover of meat, I am now forced to ask myself, “What should I do?” and this is where I’m caught in a syllogism: morality itself is an attempt to answer the question of what people should do. So insofar as my question is, “What should I do?" the answer necessarily is, “That which is moral.” As a result, I think I’m stuck being a vegetarian. With any luck, one of you might convince me that I’m wrong. Please try, because I start Monday.

The Price of Faith

What does it mean to have religious faith? In this post I will argue that belief in God often forces believers to submit reason to faith. Then I will defend the importance of recognizing this surrender of rationality and explore the implications of this recognition.

The first sacrifice of reason is belief in God’s existence. There is little to no evidence supporting theism, and science is increasingly rendering unnecessary God as an explanation for observed phenomena. (While scientific explanations can never disprove God, they can undermine cosmological arguments for His existence.) Personal encounters with God can best be explained by human psychology; that individuals of completely differing religions claim to have experienced God illustrates they cannot all be right. At this point, there isn’t much affirmative reason to believe in God. But there is one very good reason to believe God doesn’t exist: the problem of evil. If God is omniscient, benevolent, and omnipotent, then God must 1) know of all suffering that occurs, 2) prefer that this suffering not occur, and 3) have the power to end this suffering. The presence of evil, including war, famine, and natural disasters, therefore requires that God cannot exist. Attempts to resolve the problem of evil could compose an entire book, but in short, I know of no convincing argument against this problem.

Having faith forces us to surrender rational thinking in other areas. In Genesis, God told Abraham to sacrifice his son Issac, forcing Abraham to suspend both the rational and the ethical. On September 11, terrorists killed nearly 3,000 Americans because they chose faith over reason. These examples are extreme, but they highlight the same forfeiture of reason that all believers make. Christians reject evolution despite its being the best supported theory to explain the diversity of life. They fervently defend the immorality of homosexuality simply because their scripture says so. A surprising number even reject or manipulate geological studies in support of the Young Earth theory. Reason cannot support these beliefs.

Having faith has forced me to accept things I consider contrary to reason, or at least my understanding of reason. If God commanded me to kill someone, I would hopefully have the courage to do it. On account of my faith, I also accept that homosexuality is sinful. I believe that miracles happen, and I believe that love is something that transcends any rational understanding of it and can only exist as a consequence of God. (I plan to dedicate a future post to investigating the nature of love.)

I have argued that belief in God sometimes requires submitting rationality to faith. This submission, however, is not blindly following dogma and ignoring reason to make belief easier. True faith requires understanding what one is giving up, and willfully choosing adherence to religious belief despite recognizing the compelling force of reason against such belief. Only then can a believer call his faith a meaningful choice.

Recognizing areas of conflict between faith and reason should be seen as a healthy exercise. People are understandingly hesitant and afraid to give up views they’ve long held (or views they think their religion forces them to hold), but I think that honestly evaluating one’s beliefs can strengthen one’s faith. How much of Christianity would be undermined if evolution actually did take place? If the Earth were, say, 4.6 billion years old instead of 10,000? Would one's personal relationship with God change if there were never a worldwide flood, never a Tower of Babel, never a Garden of Eden? What if even nonbelievers went to heaven? I don’t necessarily consider these hypothetical situations true, but I think it’s important that we identify which tenets are essential to our faith and which tenets we are willing to let reason overrule. As said earlier, doing so legitimizes our religion by making it a more informed choice. And it allows us to define our faith in a way we are comfortable with so that we might actually live that faith and truly be called a disciple.

Conservation Efforts

Achieving environmental sustainability has increasingly become a major concern for many people. In light of this, I decided to share two interesting observations I've come across regarding conservation efforts.

1. Water conservation

California is experiencing a water shortage. The state has responded by sponsoring efforts to reduce household consumption of water, such as discouraging wasteful practices via commercials and charging higher water rates for those whose monthly use exceeds that of last year.

A 2007 Becker-Posner post questions the efficacy of such measures. Becker points out that households account for only 8% of total water usage, compared to 40% for agriculture and another 40% for power generation. Moreover, water used in the home has a reutilization rate of about 75%, meaning that ¾ of water consumed by residents is returned to the water cycle and available for future use. Agricultural water use has a 40% reutilization rate.

To put these numbers into perspective, imagine that California residents somehow reduce their water consumption by 50%. The amount of water saved, after accounting for reutilization, equals that which would have been saved by reducing agricultural water use by a mere 4% (approximately). In other words, for every 1% in savings achieved by the agricultural industry, residents would have to save 12% of their respective water use to make equal gains.

As a result, Becker proposes implementing a price rate that increases with consumption, so that the largest water consumers pay higher rates on their water than small consumers do. This scheme would incentivize more efficient farming practices like drip irrigation and lead to real reductions in water waste. While the plan would also increase the price of crops for consumers, these costs would be partly offset by residents' benefiting from water rates lower than what they would be without such a pricing mechanism for farms (since less household conservation would be necessary). Even more important to remember is the drastically reduced likelihood of a true drought occuring with this mechanism in place.

2. Fuel efficiencies

This one comes from a Freakonomics blog. I’ll illustrate it with a hypothetical:

Imagine that you own a small business that uses two vehicles equally: a large truck with 10 mpg and a small sedan with 20 mpg. You have enough money to trade in either the truck for one that gets 20 mpg, or the sedan for one that gets 1000 mpg (that’s right, 3 zeroes). Assuming both cars will still be driven the same distance, what should you do?

You probably guessed that I wouldn't be asking if the answer weren't “trade in the truck.” You're right. Understanding why requires a reevaluation of how we think about fuel efficiency. The standard metric of efficiency is miles per gallon, which tells us how far we can go on one gallon of gas. But people don't think this way. They drive only as much as they need to and then ask, “How many gallons did that take?” So the metric we really care about is gallons per mile (gpm), the inverse of mpg.

To illustrate this, let’s look at the new fuel efficiencies of both cars: the 10 mpg truck used to take 0.10 gpm, but now with 20 mpg it would take 0.05 gpm; the 20 mpg sedan used to take 0.05 gpm, but now with 1000 mpg it would take 0.001 gpm. If both cars drive 100 miles each week (the distance driven is an arbitrary constant), the truck would save 5 gallons each week, while the car would save 4.9 gallons each week. So you would save more money by upgrading the truck. In fact, given that the truck doubles its fuel efficiency in mpg (from 10 to 20), it doesn’t matter what the new sedan's mpg is, because the truck will always save more gas. Try it out if you don't believe me!

You can play around with the original numbers to produce different results, but the point is that improvements in mpg become less meaningful at higher mpg’s. So trading your 4Runner for a Ford Escape is probably a better value than trading your Accord for a Prius. Pretty interesting, right?

Musings of a Superhero

If you could be a superhero, what would your superpower be?

I recently stumbled upon this useful list of superpowers (read: I searched for "superpowers" and clicked on the Wiki link). Some powers are pretty lame: prehensile/animated hair allows one to "animate and lengthen one's hair," while sonic scream allows one to "generate vocal sounds of a higher amplitude than a normal human." Come to think of it, maybe Susan Boyle is a superhero.

On the other hand, there are also some pretty awesome powers I had never considered, like probability manipulation, resurrection, and omniscience. Regarding probability manipulation, it's not clear what its limits are. Can one change the probability of an impossible event (one with a 0% chance of happening) to 1? Then anything one wanted would be possible, which seems a little abusive. Maybe one could manipulate the likelihood of only those events with a non-zero probability of occurring, keeping the impossible impossible. Yet quantum physics tells us that there is a non-zero probability of virtually anything happening (like walking through a wall); therefore this rule doesn't seem good enough. Perhaps one could only increase the probability of an event by some scale factor, so if the probability of walking through a wall is 10^(-1000), exercising this superpower would change that probability to only 5 x 10^(-1000) (multiplying the original probability by 5). Meanwhile, this supowerpower would allow events with a 20% chance of happening to occur with 100% certanty (assuming 5 is the scale factor).

I had long believed that my superpower of choice was time travel. In practice, time travel would allow me to achieve both teleportation and near-omniscience. For teleportation to a location on the same land mass (like somewhere in North America), I could simply walk or drive to that location and turn back time when I arrived; this way the "teleportation" would be instantaneous. Moreover, turning back time wouldn't change one's physical location (at least I don't think it would), so I'd still be in the same place I had traveled to. For water crossings, I could steal a boat or plane to reach my destination, and upon arrival, turn back time to erase any record of wrongdoing. (Note that I could also use the airplane method for long-distance land crossings.) "What if I crash?" you might ask. Simple: right before I crash, I'll turn back time! No problem is too difficult for time-traveling Jon.

Time travel would also allow me to achieve near-omniscience, because I could learn about anything on the earth, regardless of its location (remember teleportation) or its time. I could voyage back in time to see dinosaurs, cavemen, and anything else interesting, and I could leap forward in time to foresee future events, like the inevitable android takeover of human civilization.

Lastly, time travel would make me the most powerful human alive (if I so chose). Money would be easy to come by (just win the lottery), and my ability to accurately predict the future would generate the nationwide faith necessary to win me the Presidency. But I'd probably be too busy riding brontosauruses to run for President or do anything else that requires real work.

Time travel has its own problems, though. It's not clear whether I could change the past (the grandfather paradox). If I could, I would likely be doing so in a parallel universe. The problem is that I wouldn't want to enter a parallel universe, because the people just wouldn't be the same (would my mother in a parallel universe really be the same person she is in this one?). Perhaps it would be impossible to re-enter my original universe; if that were the case, traveling in time would be forever saying goodbye to the people I knew and loved.

There are other cons against time travel (like facing God's judgment for stealing hundreds of airplanes, abusing dinosaurs, etc.), but I think dooming myself to live as a lonely cosmic traveler is enough to make me reconsider which superpower is really the best.

Maybe one of you can choose omniscience, and then from your infinite knowledge let me know which power I should have. Until then, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on which superpower you'd choose and why yours owns the shit out of everyone else's.

Posting Promises

Thanks to everyone who has been reading. I hope it's been bearable.

After some thinking, I've realized that one of my biggest goals in writing this blog is to promote understanding among my peers and myself. And I don't at all mean this in a condescending way, so let me explain. I often feel there exists a lot of divisiveness in the world: in the news where our country is depicted as vehemently split on a controversial issue (like abortion, coincidentally!), on talk radio where commentators throw disparaging and vacuous insults at members of an opposite political party, and in everyday life when people assume that those who disagree with them must be stupid (why else would they have opposing views?).

Disagreement is necessary and constructive, but it often leads to divisiveness that fuels unconstructive hostility and obscures the essence of the conflict, making progress all but impossible. I think this sort of divisiveness is so prevalent for a few reasons. It's difficult to understand other people's core values when they differ so fundamentally from one's own, and it's just as difficult to charitably evaluate an opponent's reasoned arguments on their merits. Meanwhile, it's much easier to stubbornly defend one's position merely for the sake of winning the debate than to admit misjudgment.

When I debate for my school, I debate to win. But when it comes down to things that matter and people that matter, I discuss these issues because I actually believe what I'm defending and want to learn what people I respect believe too. That way, I (and hopefully this goes for you too) can identify where the true disagreement lies, and, more often than not, come to the realization that there isn't much disagreement at all. That's the kind of understanding this blog is meant to promote--the kind that eradicates the divisiveness I so hate.

That said, I want to lay out some promises regarding this blog. I will always write honestly and avoid arguments I don't believe in or find convincing. And I will consider each reader's comments seriously, giving well-thought-out responses when appropriate. In doing so, I will do my best to keep an open mind and admit wrong when it is due.

Hopefully these guidelines for myself will help to foster an environment of trust, open discourse, and mutual respect. I'm truly grateful to have good friends who take the time to read this, and I hope to see more comments from you in the future!

-Jonathan

The Ethics of Scott Roeder

On May 31, 51-year old Scott Roeder shot and killed George Tiller, a doctor who specialized in performing the latest late-term abortions that other doctors refused to provide. Most pro-life supporters have vehemently spoken out against Roeder's actions, expressing their refusal to condone efforts like his. I think, however, that Roeder's killing of Dr. Tiller was morally defensible.

I won't try to prove that abortion is murder (in the moral sense, not the legal one). But I think it is sufficient to show that Roeder had good reason to believe that the abortions performed by Dr. Tiller were indeed murder. Everyone recognizes that killing a newborn fetus is wrong. We would probably say that killing a fetus two weeks before birth is also wrong (because what's so different between a 38-week old fetus and a 40-week old newborn?). Tiller conducted abortions on fetuses after the 21st week of gestation (during the 2nd trimester), when fetuses are generally considered viable. Moreover, viability seems to be a sufficiently reasonble line to draw saying that "fetuses after this point have the right to life." If the fetus can be removed from the womb after 21 weeks and survive independently of the mother, it is a separate human being and no longer merely an extension of the mother. Furthermore, if a 21-week old fetus were removed from its mother, it wouldn't make sense to say that only 19 weeks later (the presumable date of childbirth) would it gain the right to life. Therefore, that late-term abortions violate a viable fetus' fundamental right to life is an eminently defensible position.

The question now becomes whether murdering Dr. Tiller was a justifiable response to Tiller's medical practices. I'd ask, "Would murdering Adolf Hitler during World War II to stop the genocide of Jews be morally permissible?" I think so. But Hitler was responsible for far more deaths than Tiller could conceviably be. So what about just murdering a Nazi officer who ran a death camp that killed hundreds of Jews? I think (and hope you would agree) that this too would be permissible.

"Wait," you say, "the Nazi's knew they were doing something wrong by killing innocents, but Tiller didn't think he was doing anything wrong, so even if he was committing murder he wasn't aware of it." Yet I contend that Tiller's lack of mens rea isn't sufficient to condemn Roeder's actions. To illustrate, look to what philosophers call the "trolley problem": Imagine standing beside trolley tracks and noticing that five people are trapped on the track. A trolley is quickly approaching, and the only thing you can do is flip a switch that would divert the trolley onto another track. Trapped on the other track is one person, who will die if you flip the switch. The trolley problem asks: is it morally permissible to flip the switch?

Most people would answer "yes," illustrating their belief that it is okay to take the life of an innocent person if doing so saves the lives of five. If your answer is "no," then surely you would say "yes" at some other point: what if one thousand people were trapped on the track? I think that anyone who were actually in this position would feel compelled to flip the switch to save the thousand. So at some point (maybe between saving five and saving one thousand lives; the exact numbers aren't so important), people base their decision on utilitarian calculations. And that's exactly what Roeder did. He flipped the switch. He prevented hundreds of fetuses from being aborted, because Dr. Tiller was the end-of-the-line doctor who performed the abortions that other doctors wouldn't. With Tiller gone, those 21-week old fetuses will go unaborted and continue living to see childbirth.

If you've read closely, you'll notice that I haven't argued that Roeder was right. I don't know if late-term abortions really are murder, and I don't know if utilitarianism is the correct moral theory. But I do think those positions are entirely reasonable ones to take, and given this, it seems that Scott Roeder's killing of Dr. Tiller was indeed a morally defensible action.

Gay Marriage

One of my favorite topics of discussion is same-sex marriage, so it seemed a natural starting locatiton for the substantive portion of this site.

Short background: most liberals think that gays should be allowed to marry. Conservatives split into two camps: those who think gays should not be entitled to marriages or civil unions (the legal equivalent to marriage but without the word "marriage"), and those who think gays should be entitled to only civil unions. Still others believe that the state should not sanction marriage at all and instead recognize only civil unions to couples, regardless of sex.

I tend to think that the only philosophically tenable positions are the first and last (those affording equal rights to straight and gay couples). To see why, let's analyze the role of the government and the basis of legitimate laws.

Recognize that whenever the government passes a law, it is using its sovereign power to produce a certian outcome in line with that law by coercing citizens into acting accordingly (lest they face criminal sanctions). Clearly this infringes on individual liberty, so we try to ensure that each law actually serves legitimate purpose (otherwise it would be an unjust restraint on freedom). There are three possible reasons for wanting to make something illegal: 3rd party harms, paternalism, and moral repugnance. I will quickly review each of these and then examine where in these justifications laws banning gay marriage fit.

3rd party harms: the term "3rd party harms" (or "neighborhood effects") refers to the adverse consequences of an action on a party other than the actor. Laws designed to prevent 3rd party harms include those against murder, theft, rape, assault, etc, because they deter and punish those who commit these actions against other people (the victims). 3rd party harms are the most uncontroversial justifications for laws, because everyone agrees that the government should serve to protect citizens from each other.

Paternalism: paternalism refers to the idea that the government sometimes knows better than individual citizens and should therefore act in their interest (imagine a father forcing his daughter to do her homework because he knows the long-term benefits will outweigh the temporary displeasure of doing it). Paternalistic laws serve to protect only the actor from himself, not to protect others from the actor (as laws protecting against 3rd party harms do). The best example of paternalism is seatbelt laws (my not wearing a seatbelt hurts only me, yet the government believes it has a duty to protect me by forcing me to wear a seatbelt). Libertarians think that laws should not be paternalistic, while most liberals and conservatives would accept some degree of state paternalism. In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill writes "That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." Thus, Mill argued that only laws protecting against 3rd party harms were valid, and laws based on paternalism (or moral repugnance, or any other reason) were illegitimate.

Moral repugnance: this one is easy. People have moral aversions to incest, bestiality, necrophilism, and yes, homosexuality. These reactions can be based on religious doctrine, personal preference, or both. People find such activities so revolting that they decide to legislate bans against the activites (only until 2003 did Texas legalize homosexual sodomy). I think (and most legal philosophers would agree) that moral repugnance is an entirely illegitimate basis of law--but more on that later.

Upon what justifications does prohibition of gay marriage rest? Advocates of the ban often argue that there are 3rd party harms incurred by gay marriage, specifically that children with gay parents have difficulty growing up and face stress, confusion, etc. I find this argument unconvincing. There is no reason or evidence to indicate that gays are inherently or empirically worse parents than straight people. Moreover, it seems obvious that growing up in a poor, single-parent household is far worse for a child than growing up in a family with two (presumably loving) same-sex parents could be. If the first case is indeed worse, then consistency requires that conservatives also support banning poor, unmarried individuals from having children. And I'm sure they wouldn't. So to the extent that "harm to the child" is a valid 3rd party harm in this case (I don't think it is), even conservatives would be forced to concede that this amount of harm isn't sufficient to justify a ban. (I'm also disappointed with those on the religious right who use this argument, because they lack the intellectual honesty to admit that their aversion to same-sex marriage is based on religious doctrine and personal repugnance, not on genuine concern for those helpless, doomed children adopted by gay parents.) One last possible 3rd party harm is the erosion of the value of marriage: advocates of this argument claim that gay marriage destorys the value of straight marriages. But because these advocates derive the value of their marriage from their religion, not the state, it seems that the value of heterosexual marriage remains in the hands of churches (who are free to sanction whatever marriages they choose), not in the hands of the government.

The next possible basis for a gay marriage ban is paternalism, but clearly the ban has nothing to do with paternalism, since gay couples are only better off by being allowed to marry: they are happier, perceived as a more legitimate union to the public, and entitled to the legal benefits of marriage (such as survivor benefits, joint filing of taxes and bankruptcy, tax exemptions, family visitation and child custodial rights, and access to various family-only services).

The only remaining reason for banning gay marriage is moral repugnance. Christian conservatives find homosexuality morally impermissible, and gay marriage even more so. I think, however, that it is wrong to conflate personal morality with legal jurisprudence, for a few reasons. First, it seems unjust to impose religious or moral beliefs on others through the government, especially if others' lack of adherence to these beliefs doesn't affect the Christian voters themselves (no 3rd party harms). Second, moral repugnance has historically led us astray by producing laws that we now find unjust: look to laws condoning slavery, racism, subjugation of women in the household and in politics, etc. (and note that all of these were explicitly or implicity condoned in the Bible). Reliance on moral repugnance as a justification for laws allows people to evade making rational justifications for those laws. Why should incest be illegal? Because it's gross? Immoral? That simply isn't good enough. And while there do exist good reasons for prohibiting incest, most people never recognize them because they are content to think that morality alone is enough to justify a legal ban. Third, using the law is not the right way to spread or enforce one's religious beliefs. Would a Christian support a law banning divorce or adultery (the 7th commandment)? What about a law prohibiting bearing false witness (lying, the 9th commandment)? What about simply being envious (the 10th commandment)? Even disregarding the practical problems of implementation, I don't think that Christians would support such laws, and they would be right in not doing so. In the same way that Jesus didn't want the Roman Empire to become a theocracy that forced its citizens to obey God's word, he probably wouldn't want the United States to become one either. Christians ought to spread the Gospel through interacting with others on a personal level, thorugh love and compassion--not through force. And remember that advocating a law against gay marriage is advocating the use of government coercion to regulate behavior. So while Christians want people to be moral, that morality should be a product of free will, not one of government force and societal discrimination.

In the Beginning...

Welcome, and thanks for taking the time to visit this page. I hope you like what you read (and maybe even bookmark the page). I started this blog a year ago but never got around to actually using it. After reading countless blogs of professors, lawyers, philosophers, and other people smarter than me, I realized that blogging could be a great way to discuss topics that I care about and about which others might care as well. The purpose of this site is to challege readers to think critically about interesting and important issues that they might not have previously given much thought to, and maybe even help people figure out what they might be passionate about. I can't give an outline of topics that will be covered, although you will probably see posts on recent news, legal issues, science and technology, philosophy and religion, and anything else I happen to find interesting. Please, please, please comment on posts with your own opinions, questions, or criticism (you can even do so anonymously), because comments are half the fun of reading a news article or blog! And feel free to email me with suggestions about the site as a whole. I don't know how regularly I'll update, but I can promise that as long as there are visitors, I will continue writing. Thanks again, and happy reading!