Universal Education is a Right

In this post, I explore various philosophical justifications for why education—specifically universal (worldwide) education—is not a right. Then I argue for a reevaluation of our notion of rights that allows us to conceive of universal education as a right.

The Natural Rights position

“Education is not a natural right,” claim adherents of this position. (This isn’t to say that everyone who believes in natural rights thinks education isn’t one—just that some of them do.) These natural rights advocates believe that our rights (such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) derive from God or from Nature. And, they say, education is not one of those God-given or Nature-conferred rights.

Those who believe in God will treat their religions beliefs as nonnegotiable, and from such beliefs they can justify virtually any position (look to slavery advocates who used the Bible as evidence, for example). Because religious belief too easily precludes rational discourse, I will not try too hard to convince the theist. For those who believe that Nature confers negative rights, or that rights inhere naturally in humans, I say that such a position is extremely problematic for three reasons. First there is an epistemological issue: Hume’s “is-ought” problem says that we cannot derive normative claims from empirical claims; since empirical claims about the world are all that we can reliably know, we can’t determine the validity of normative claims (which includes rights claims). Second there is an ontological problem: What do natural rights look like? What are they made of? How can nature dictate laws about how we should behave? And are those laws really laws if they’re not enforced by nature? Third there is good evidence for thinking that our ideas about morality and rights result from cultural norms and evolved psychological adaptations (cooperating in repeated iterations of prisoner’s dilemmas, i.e. acting altruistically when it’s not immediately advantageous, is an evolutionarily stable strategy). There: three good reasons to reject the idea of natural rights.

The “Education is a negative right” position

“I think everyone has a right to education; I just don’t think our government is obligated to pay for it.” This attitude reflects the belief that education is a negative right—one that cannot be trampled on, but also one that no party has a duty to provide. For example, the right to free speech is often conceived of as a negative right: no one is allowed to take away your free speech, but no one is compelled to give you printing materials or a megaphone either. Taking education as a negative right, then, frees one from admitting that one’s government is obligated to ensure noncitizens’ education.

One problem with this position is that it’s unclear where the dividing line between negative rights and positive rights lies. In many cases, the government must treat a supposedly negative right as a positive one. For example, my right to be free from violence seems to be a negative right, but for that right to mean anything in practice, the government must provide a police force and a military. Another example is due process: we tend to think that the government is obligated to provide an attorney for indigent defendants, because doing so is the only way to ensure that defendants actually receive due process. Applying this to education, it seems meaningless to say that education is a right if there’s no practical way for a person to exercise that right, other than the government providing it or ensuring it some other way.

Another problem is that it’s little arbitrary to call education a negative right. What is the principle that explains which rights are negative and which are positive? I don’t think there can be any such principle. Please comment if you want to propose one!

The Social Contract position

Many Americans would say education is a right, one so important that our government is obligated to provide even to those who cannot afford it. But they hesitate to extend that right to those living outside our borders.

This attitude can be justified by appealing to social contract theory, according to which the rights of citizens and the obligations of their government are established through a social contract. The reason Americans have a right to education while noncitizens do not is that Americans consent to being ruled by their government in exchange for their government fulfilling certain duties—one of which is providing some degree of education to citizens.

I won’t argue that this social contract position is wrong (even though I think it’s fraught with problems), because I think the social contractarian is correct in believing essentially that rights are what we say they are. As a result, social contract theory allows us to extend rights to noncitizens if we so choose. For example, it’s okay for a social contractarian to demand that his government intervene in order to stop genocide in a foreign country—as long as the majority (or some supermajority) of citizens agree that such intervention is permitted by their social contract. Since social contract theory allows us to confer rights on foreigners, all that’s left to do is convince the social contractarian that he should want to confer the right to education to noncitizens. I save this for later.

The “Rights don’t exist” position

Those who agree with my response to the natural rights position might be inclined to conclude that rights don’t exist. But all that my arguments demonstrate is that our old conception of rights (as being derived from nature) is problematic. We can reconceptualize rights to be how we want people to be treated. What’s appealing about this approach is that it allows us to say that people do have a right to life and liberty. It allows us to criticize people who act in ways we find repulsive. And it restores structure to how people interact, giving us the means to craft a society we find tolerable.

Why education should be a right

Rights are what we want them to be. This is where we seem to be left after rejecting the traditional notions of rights, and where we ended in “The Social Contract position.” So I guess now it’s my job to convince you that you should want education to be a right for everyone, because that’s all it should take for you to then believe universal education is a right.

Luckily, I don’t think there’s much work to do. If you believe in liberty, then you should believe in the importance of removing barriers to liberty. (And you probably know that education is one of the best ways to do this.) If you believe in reducing suffering—and you recognize that educating a populace is the best way to eliminate cruel and outdated practices, to reduce the spread of disease, to ensure proper nutrition, and to raise the standard of living—then you should believe in the importance of education. If you believe in equal treatment of individuals, regardless of race, ethnicity, or religion, then you should believe that the rights Americans have should extend to non-citizens.

Don’t let dumb philosophical positions dictate your stance on how people should be treated. Just be consistent and fair. Taking this more simplistic and humble attitude will mean better outcomes for everyone.

Thoughts from Junior Year

Introduction

Each blog entry I write, I feel tremendous pressure to do enough research to make sure what I’m saying isn’t nonsense. While this approach bolsters my credibility (at least I hope I’ve sounded credible), it limits what topics I can write about. It also narrows the scope of each entry. So I’ve decided that this time I won’t be as focused or comprehensive as I have in other posts. This entry is a survey of what I’ve been thinking about over this past year. These topics are important to me; they reflect who I am, or at least who I am becoming. And I hope you can gain something from reading it too.

Motivation

This past year has been my most intense period of reflection and research in pursuit of establishing a framework for understanding my existence. Who am I, and what should I be doing? These are the two questions I would like to answer before I die, and in my opinion they are the two most important questions each person must answer for himself or herself. Two rules will guide my pursuit. First, live deliberately. I must constantly reassess my priorities and make sure that how I spend my time properly reflects those priorities. Second, be relentless. I cannot afford to care about the opinions of others or the cost of my inquiry. I must fight laziness, apathy, and complacency. I cannot give up until I determine how to define myself, what to believe, and how to live.

Some of the following issues lie at the heart of my journey to discover who I am and what my purpose is. Other issues are less theoretical but more practical, and therefore offer useful guidance for how to live, regardless of what axiomatic beliefs I settle on. What each of these themes share is their profound influence on me over this past year.

Identity

What defines someone? What distinguishes him or her from other people? What makes that person valuable?

The best I can do is offer a working framework of identity, one based on layers. (And feel free to disagree with this model, but if you do, tell me how you would change it.) On the deepest layer, each person is unique and has inherent dignity and value. This layer is the primitive that grants each individual some intrinsic identity and self-worth by simple virtue of his being a human being. On the second layer rests that person’s capacity to define himself and his willingness to change. This layer gives each person agency over his own identity. The third layer is that person’s values and beliefs. The fourth layer is that person’s actions. Each layer is a reflection of the last. The purpose of including multiple layers is to emphasize that a man is not simply the sum of his actions; to fully understand someone we must examine all the layers and give each its due respect.

Right now, I define myself only as someone capable of change. I am willing to learn, to embrace new ideas, and to apply other people’s lessons to my own life. I’m also determined that I will eventually define myself. But as you probably can tell, I don’t yet know what to believe. I haven’t established the axiomatic values from which all my future actions will stem. I am incomplete, and this incompleteness drives me to discover—or create—the missing pieces.

People define themselves over a lifetime whether they do so consciously or not. If that’s the case, it’s probably better to do so consciously, so that you have no regrets about who you end up becoming.

Practical Epistemology

If you’ve read my last post, you’ll better understand what I wish to convey in this section. Essentially what I’ve concluded is that no amount of academic inquiry—at least given our limited knowledge—can settle the most important questions. Are there really ways we should or should not be acting? Can faith be rationally justified? Is the universe deterministic? Do we have free will? While a good understanding of what other people have to say on these topics is essential to deciding what to believe, other people cannot answer these questions for you. There just isn’t enough information. So what do we do?

We choose. We pick sides. How we decide which side to choose is another question (one that I’m working on). But it’s clear to me that for these important issues, I simply have to stake out a position.

Some issues I plan to contemplate regarding choosing sides:

• When should I be atheist or agnostic about a proposition? If there is no evidence for something, should I not believe it, or should I admit that I don’t know?
• If I decide to remain agnostic about something, when is it necessary to choose a position?
• How do I go about deciding how to choose sides?
• Am I willing to accept that life is devoid of value and meaning?
• Will my inability to accept this sort of life be enough to move me to action and self-sacrifice?

Faith

This section is a subset of “Practical Epistemology,” but one important enough to warrant its own treatment. I won’t go into any objective analysis of faith, but instead I want to share my understanding of faith and its role in my life.

Faith is one potential answer to everything I’m looking for. Faith in God can give me answers to who I am and what my purpose is. And I think faith is binary: either you have some faith, or you have none, because some is all you need. Willingness to take even the smallest leap is the axiom upon which all other beliefs can rest. The only question is whether I’m willing to take that small leap. I’d love nothing more than to have faith. But that is easier said than done.

Do I believe in God? I don’t know. I’d like to believe, but I don’t know if I really do. Isn’t it weird how much I don’t know myself? This paradox forces me to ask what the nature of faith is. Is it a blind leap? Is it an irrational conviction given as a gift by God? Can faith be an act of the will? I’ve asked many believers about the nature of faith, yet they can explain surprisingly little about what faith is or where it comes from. I guess I have to keep searching.

Another thing I’ve asked myself is why God would deliberately withhold faith from me. I believe I have been earnestly seeking God, and from everything I’ve heard, God answers the door for those who knock. So I am left with three possibilities: the first is that I am not looking hard enough, in which case I should do more to be a better Christian and further seek God. (Should it really be this hard?) The second possibility is that God has a reason for withholding faith. Perhaps He wants me to experience living without faith so that when I return, I will fully appreciate his presence in my life. The third possibility is that God does not exist. I think disbelief in God is the most rational course of action given the evidence and arguments we have. But the fact that I’m willing to say, “Fuck the evidence,” and turn to God (if only he would grant me the opportunity!) makes it even more frustrating that I still have not felt his presence.

I’ve talked to a decent number of people about this problem. The more I think about it, the fewer people I think can help me. But I won’t give up, and I’d be very grateful to hear your advice and be in your prayers.

Compassion

Everything I’ve said until now has been a little depressing. Something positive I have learned, perhaps the most important lesson of my year, is the importance of compassion. Specifically:

• The best way to live life (if there is one) is to care about something other than yourself.
• The best way to achieve happiness is to care about something other than yourself.

If these two things are true, how could there be any other key to living life? Near the end of my last post, I mentioned the possibility of two roads converging: different beliefs might lead to the same lifestyle. I truly think that whatever one’s beliefs are, caring about others more than oneself is the best way to exercise those beliefs. The most rational course of action for the hedonist is to lose himself in compassion. The same is true for the Christian. This has been one of my most important realizations.

If you need some convincing, check out these TED videos:

http://www.ted.com/talks/bob_thurman_says_we_can_be_buddhas.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psychology.html

One last thought: a guiding question I ask when pondering how to live is, “On my deathbed, would I be content with how I lived, to the extent that I could accept death gracefully?” One day over spring break, I realized that the only way I could knowingly end my earthly existence in peace was if what I cared about wasn’t my own life. What’s truly important is the relationship I have with others—the genuine investment in their well-being—in other words, love. I think love is the recognition that I alone am not worth dedicating an entire lifetime to.

Personal judgment

A few years ago I read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. In one of the chapters, Lewis mentions that God wants all of us to be perfect. Any reasonable person knows this is an unreasonable goal. But why shouldn’t we all strive for perfection, even if true perfection is unobtainable?

Let’s approach this from a different angle: why is it ever the case that we sometimes do things we shouldn’t be doing, or aren’t doing the things we should? Frankly it’s intolerable that for any person there exists a discrepancy between what he is doing and what he should be doing.

There are two approaches to resolving this. The first is to discipline oneself to do what needs to be done. The second is to reevaluate what one should be doing and to discard unproductive or unreasonable expectations. Both are needed, but the second is often neglected—and that’s the point of this section.

What defines what someone should be doing? Throughout the school year, upon returning to my room with no clear agenda, I'd ask, “What should I be doing right now?” The inevitable answer would be “work.” So I would either study (grudgingly) or procrastinate (guiltily). Both sucked. I realized that the only person telling me what I should be doing at any given moment was myself. There weren’t any ethical implications of my doing work now as opposed to later, so really, there was no right answer. In fact the question would be better framed as "What do I want to do?" rather than "What should I do?" With this mindset, I didn't have to feel guilty for not doing work when I didn't want to. Moreover I still got everything done—just on a more comfortable schedule.

Recognizing when not to judge myself has been a big lesson of this year. Being responsible for myself means that I alone get to decide what's best for me, even when that goes against ingrained habits. As a result I am not only happier but also less dissatisfied with myself. In short, redefining what I should be doing has helped me reconcile who I am with who I want to be.

Success

I know little of true success, but I have a feeling that 100% of how my future unfolds will be a consequence of my own attitude: my confidence and my persistence. I recently asked my sister if she thought she'd make a good teacher (her prospective career). She responded with an assertive “yes.” I needed only that confidence to be convinced. And I believe this is true for everyone, so here is my advice (and if you decide to believe anything I say, let it be this): Have unshaking, even irrational faith in yourself. Live deliberately. And live relentlessly. You will own the fuck out of life.

How Should I Live?

This is the most fundamental question of human existence. To think that one can figure out the answer on one's own is ignorant and arrogant. Fortunately people have been studying this question for thousands of years, and some have even written down their thoughts, contributing to the branch of philosophy known as ethics.

Ethics is the study of morality. At the heart of morality in relation to our agency is the word “should” or “ought”: ethics addresses how we should act and how we should live. But if we are to rely on morality as a guide for living, we should know what morality is. We must engage in meta-ethics.

This post is about determining whether morality is real and objective. Do ethical statements (like “you should do X”) actually express truth, or are there no objectively right and wrong ways of behaving? Before beginning, I want to say two things. First, this entry involves only a subset of meta-ethics, so it is far from comprehensive. But I think the coverage is sufficient to address what I see as the central problem in ethics and various ways of responding to that problem. Second, the fact that this topic is philosophical in nature should not deter readers from considering it seriously. We often dismiss philosophy as high-minded and irrelevant to real living, but philosophy is simply the study of those questions most central to our existence that have not been answered. The reason philosophy makes little progress is that the answerable questions have been delegated to other academic fields, like the natural sciences. That said, let us begin.

What reason do we have for thinking that morality is real (a position called moral realism)? The primary reason seems to be our shared moral intuitions, like the intuition against murdering. But evolutionary psychology can likely account for these intuitions. Moral instincts are part of an evolutionarily stable strategy to cooperate in ways that seem disadvantageous to ourselves, because doing so aids our survival. (Oversimplified game theoretical description: cooperating is better than defecting in repeated iterations of a prisoner’s dilemma.) Genes coding for cooperative behavior (the “golden rule”) increased survival for organisms in which those genes resided, so those genes were passed down to us. In the end, then, what compels us to behave altruistically is merely an evolved instinct that arose via random processes to enhance genetic fitness. As a result, we need some other reason independent of our intuitions for being moral realists.

Here lies the central problem that plagues moral realism: if morality is real, where does it come from? Realists don’t have a good explanation for where normative grounding comes from. David Hume highlighted this difficulty when he said we cannot derive an ought from an is. If all we can dependably believe are propositions about existence (derived from our empirical observation and reasoning), how can we argue for the validity of normative claims?

One way to respond is to take the anti-realist position: there are no moral truths. It is never the case that we should or should not do X, because normativity does not exist. Anyone who believes otherwise is deluded. What motivates the anti-realist are the presumption that we should not believe in things whose existence we lack evidence for, and the apparent absence of evidence of moral facts. We seem to be justified in believing only material facts, like those describing the observable universe, so if there is no bridge from material facts to moral facts (Hume's is-ought problem), we must conclude that moral facts do not exist.

The opposite position is moral realism, which states that ethical sentences are either true or false. Thus there are objective moral facts. (One might be: “inflicting unnecessary suffering is wrong.”) Moral realism is intuitively appealing because it lets us say that some actions are simply wrong in themselves. But we should be careful not to conflate intuition with reason, especially since our moral intuitions are evolutionary in nature and therefore not evidence for realism. With that in mind, I present three defenses of moral realism.

Robert Nozick gives an interesting and plausible explanation for where morality comes from, one that rests on the concept of value. He argues that entities can have intrinsic value, and the degree of intrinsic value is measured by the degree of “organic unity” exhibited in those entities. Two things contribute to organic unity: the diversity of the material present, and the degree to which that diversity is unified. The greater the diversity, and the more unified that diversity is, the greater organic unity and thus value that entity contains. What makes this theory believable is that its conclusions are quite consistent with our intuitions of what is inherently valuable. For example, it says humans have greater value than other animals, which have greater value than plants, which have greater value than rocks. An entire ecosystem might have great value because some of its components (animals, plants, etc.) do; nonetheless, the ecosystem’s relative lack of unity among its constituents reduces its value (compared to, say, the unity among neurons in a brain). Nozick’s theory also explains how intrinsic value can arise without the existence of “value atoms,” or foundational bits of intrinsic value. Calculating the value of a whole requires accounting for the sum of the values of each of its parts as well as the degree of unity exhibited: V(X) = O(X) + ∑ V(parts of X), where X is the whole, V is the value function, and O(X) is the degree of organic unity exhibited by X. Thus even if all parts of X have no value, the relationship among those parts create O(X) value, giving X nonzero value.

Because some entities have inherent value, the natural corollary is that we should preserve and respect value, and perhaps even work to create value. Thus an “ought” is created once we have the capacity to affect, create, and destroy value. One might point out that Nozick’s ethical theory requires an additional axiom that says, “Value should be respected;” thus normative grounding actually comes from this axiom, not from value. Nonetheless, the nature of value already subsumes this axiom: we can define intrinsic value as that which should be respected for its own sake. This definition does not contradict our use of organic unity as merely the measure of intrinsic value.

Therefore, one way to be a moral realist is to subscribe to Nozick’s ethical model built on value. The existence of intrinsic value grounds all other value (intrinsic and instrumental), thereby creating normativity and giving truth to ethical propositions like, “You should do X.” We can even choose another metric for measuring value (besides organic unity) while maintaining the use of value as foundational for ethical behavior.

Other moral realists lack a comprehensive meta-ethical model while still arguing that the case against moral realism isn’t closed. Here are two more explanations for how “ought” statements can be true. Although these explanations sound plausible, strikingly absent is any reason or evidence for believing that they are actually true.

The first explanation deals with emergence. No one can deny that something amazing happens when sentience arises in a universe of elementary particles, each unaware of its own existence. If emergence can account for sentience, which didn’t exist for billions of years, then perhaps emergence can account for normativity. In other words the apparent gap between is and ought—the gap between nonmoral and moral claims—is not a conclusive refutation of moral realism, because it might be explained by emergence. This same inferential gap is present in many other fields of study: SEP says that we feel comfortable making biological or psychological claims even though we cannot derive these claims from nonbiological or nonpsychological premises. Perhaps once we understand how life, consciousness, and agency emerge from bits of matter that have none of these properties, we can see how obligations to exercise that agency in certain ways can similarly emerge.

The second explanation argues that we should treat ethics as we treat mathematics and logic. Math and logic, unlike science, can make true and false statements, but their connection to truth is a priori, not empirical. That is, we look within the system for truth, not outside the system for independent evidence or grounding. Nevertheless it’s difficult to identify what makes math true, because we don’t really understand the metaphysics of math. Platonists will say that a triangle is an eternal, unchanging, abstract but real entity. Logicists say that math is reducible to logic; but then the question becomes, “What is logic?” Empiricists say math is real, but its truths are obtained only via empirical observation, not deductive logic. (Other schools of thought in philosophy of mathematics refute the realism of math.) The point, however, is that IF morality is more like math than science, then it’s reasonable to be a realist about morality insofar as it’s reasonable to be a realist about math.

How do we make sense of the arguments and evidence before us? As stated earlier, evolutionary psychology poses a real threat to moral realism, because it says that our initial reason for believing in moral objectivity—our intuitions—is not a good reason. But there are other ways of defending moral realism, including the model proposed by Nozick and the two (less ambitious) explanations given above. Nonetheless, Nozick does little to justify the existence of value, and other explanations sound promising but remain too nebulous. Does this mean we must defer to being anti-realists?

I don’t know. It’s very difficult to analyze how convincing and how warranted the various positions presented in this post are, and what conclusion we should draw when putting them together. We must better understand the history, methods, biases, and assumptions involved in the human pursuit of truth. Figuring this out is a tricky matter, and our situation is nothing short of an epistemic crisis.

We have three things to do. First: we must continue studying the question of moral realism in hopes we might find a plausible answer. Second: we must take a step back and contemplate how we should pursue truth in life. It seems that adopting an empirical approach to truth leads to naturalism (the view that nature is all that exists), and that naturalism leads to physicalism (the view that only physical things exist). Within these viewpoints is a diversity of thought, but admittedly such theories feel constraining. Empiricism leads only to truths we can sense, but what if there are other kinds of truth relevant to our existence? How can we discover them in a reliable manner? Third: we must explore where the various realist and anti-realist positions lead (assuming each is correct). For example, as an anti-realist I might decide that the aim of my life will be to maximize personal happiness. Or as a realist, I might decide that value inheres in individuals, and as a result I should treat others as ends in themselves. Perhaps the roads of realists and anti-realists will converge, leading proponents of both to the same behavior.

I hope that no one underestimates the gravity of our situation or the work that remains to be done. Finding these answers is the single most important thing we can do, given our current situation (in which we understand almost nothing about ourselves or the life we should be living). This is precisely what our education was for. Let us not waste it.

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.