Good Men Gone Bad…

Seems like every day a stand-up guy is shown to be corrupt. Joe Paterno, the much-loved f00tball coach at Penn State, was revealed to have made little effort to ensure that the paedophilic assaults of his colleague was exposed. Lance Armstrong, that most inspirational of sportsmen, has been found to have been at the centre of a massive doping ring. Jimmy Savile, national treasure, has been exposed as a serial child abuser.

The deeds of such men are not, of course, comparable. What unites them is the refusal of their admirers to believe that they’d been immoral. They had been observing their laudable behaviour for years and found this hard to square with the idea that they’d done wrong. Such reactions can be understood but can’t be justified. Good men can do bad things for the simple reason that they fail to apply their standards consistently. Joe Paterno never meant to do harm, for example, but was thoughtless enough not to engage his mind and heart as he seems to have done elsewhere.

People who behave with extreme immorality are also capable of doing a lot of good for others. Some might have self-interested reasons for this. Thieves and abusers, for example, often seek to establish themselves as pillars of their community as it ensures that they’re well-placed to seize objects of their desires and liable to be trusted even if word of their crimes leaks out. They needn’t be selfish in their efforts to do good, however. Vyacheslav Molotov was a devoted husband and Nikolai Yezhov was good to his adopted daughter. Such men are capable of approaching different situations with different faces and different hearts. They might have a formidable talent for compartmentalising different facets of their personality or there might be a more twisted explanation. Extraordinary benevolence, for example, might help them to rationalise their extraordinary callousness.

I suppose this raises the question of whether acts of virtue should actually make us feel suspicious. Even I’m not such a cynic. Corrupt men leave more of an impression on our consciousness than those who struggle through their lives attempting to virtuous but the latter, I fondly think, have numbers on their side. One needn’t – and, indeed, shouldn’t – assume that people are doing evil on the sly but one should be prepared to believe it if evidence cimes to light. Their potential for harm should not be at the forefront of one’s consciousness but the knowledge of it should be held in reserve. It’s not a pleasant thought but, then, such cases have shown us that the desire to see the world as being more pleasant than it is can blind one to foulness that might otherwise have been arrested.

It would be remiss of me not to clamber aboard a hobby horse and point out that the cases of Armstrong and Savile are further evidence of the potential for conspiracies to take place and be hidden. The former, especially. It’s kind of amusing to read an official US body speak of a “conspiracy…professionally designed to groom and pressure [people] to [commit wrongdoing]…evade detection [and] ensure its secrecy”. And a bit disturbing.

 

White Beards And White Coats…

The physicist Lawrence Krauss was interviewed in this month’s Atlantic magazine and had some harsh words for the study of philosophy…

[It's] a field that, unfortunately, reminds me of that old Woody Allen joke, “those that can’t do, teach, and those that can’t teach, teach gym.”

Krauss later admitted that he was “being provocative, as [he] tend[s] to [be] every now and then in order to get people’s attention” and went so far as to apologise. Elsewhere in the interview, however, he’d suggested that if you’re writing for the public “the one thing you can’t do is overstate your claim, because people are going to believe you”. Really? Well – with this in mind it’s worth questioning his scorn.

Here’s a question I’d put to scientists who disdain philosophy: demonstrate that science is good. One might, of course, just point at light bulbs and say, “Look! Good!” This, however, is to elide goodness with wellbeing – a contentious maneuver – and doesn’t even account for areas of science that aren’t of real consequence to the general public. No, the answer this problems demands is that one concerns ethics and such scientists find such questions awkward because they can’t justify themselves with reference to empirical data alone. In a 1995 interview, Richard Dawkins admitted as much…

If I say something is wrong, like killing people, I don’t find that nearly such a defensible statement as ‘I am a distant cousin of an orang utan’.

The second of those statements is true, I can tell you why it’s true, I can bore you to death telling you why it’s true. It’s definitely true. The statement ‘killing people is wrong’, to me, is not of that character. I would be quite open to persuasion that killing people is right in some circumstances.

Why, it’s almost as if we need a discipline that involves analysing and prescribing concepts of right or wrong. We could call it “moral…”, er – “moral philosophy”!

Scientists may find themselves unable to avoid the relevance of philosophy even closer to the lab. Krauss’ latest tome, A Universe from Nothing, is an attempt to explain how “something” can be produced from “nothing” and argues that particles may have arisen from the laws of quantum theory. Dawkins greeted it by saying…

Even the last remaining trump card of the theologian, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?,’ shrivels up before your eyes as you read these pages. If ‘On the Origin of Species’ was biology’s deadliest blow to super­naturalism, we may come to see ‘A Universe From Nothing’ as the equivalent from cosmology. The title means exactly what it says. And what it says is ­devastating.

Right. Yes. Except that as Edward Feser responds, the laws of quantum theory are not “nothing”. Krauss is aware of this, of course, but if he knows this means it’s not the “nothing” theologians have been pondering he never told Dawkins. The question of how matter could be produced from the void is a fascinating one and Krauss might answer it superbly but it isn’t that question. As galling as it is for some  scientists there are problems that cannot be solved with recourse to their justly acclaimed method and philosophy is useful in approaching them. As well as refining such concepts so we don’t have to make these tedious misunderstandings.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that the universe scientists detail for us seems, in many ways, a hideously bleak one. It arose, they tell us, thanks to unconscious quantum mechanisms and will linger in futile existence for millenia before breaking apart; ending the life of our bewildered, standardised species if hasn’t already expired. Whether that’s a fair account of our existential story is a matter for debate but as it’s a fair representation of the scientific view it shows why our perspective needs more than science. Some people get by without philosophies, sure – avoid worry and, to resurrect a phrase, enjoy their lives – but others of us need a more systematic defence of getting out of bed.

This is not a broad defence of what goes on within the study of philosophy. There are, perhaps, no fields of research that emit more bollocks. (And that includes creative writing.) Yet scientists do themselves no favours by acting so haughtily. Their studies have the advantage of being more evidently justifiable, yes, with a clearer path of progress, but they’re also limited in their scope: in terms of what they can achieve evidentially and offer emotionally. Whatever disciplines might claim to have monopolised the field of human inquiry, their rightful colonies will always be restricted. This is not to denigrate any of them, it’s just that they have different tools with which to harvest from different parts.

 

Motivated Ignorance…

Here’s another quote from Haidt…

The fundamental rule of political analysis from the point of psychology is, follow the sacredness, and around it is a ring of motivated ignorance.

Much of my cerebral life – I know, I know, but it’s better than “intellectual life” – consists of challenging such motivated ignorance: my own at least as often as other peoples’. In fact, working with this image, I’d add that if you find yourself trying to consider ideas and events that are unfamiliar to you and find yourself colliding with a wall of incredulity, automatic disapproval and impulsive rationalisation you might be held captive by your own motivated ignorance and, at the risk of stretching this allegory beyond its limits, your values might be less well-founded than you’d believed.

I will say, though, that I’ve got against nothing against ignorance in certain contexts. If enjoying a happy life is central to the motivation behind one’s existence, for example, closing oneself off from the horrors of the world is necessary. There’s got to be a reason we’ve come to think this way, after all.

 

Why Your Babies Are Unlikely To Be Agents Of Destruction…

Elizabeth Kolbert writes for the New Yorker on, among other things, antinatalism – that is, the idea that it’s immoral to bear children. I took an interest in the concept as it appealed to my juvenile sense of the transgressive but it really does trouble me. That’s not say that I’ve accepted it: I think that life, while often painful and bewildering, can also be extremely beautiful, fulfilling and, well, worth it, and while I might not have a sophisticated philosophical justification for this view it’s too important to be junked for the sake of logical rigour. The idea does pose a challenge to contemporary nonbelievers, though, and one I feel should be confronted: to establish and explain the significance of life in an unfeeling universe. “Why are we here” or, at least, “why do we stay here” is a question that’s too important to be evaded with dim “work it out for yourselves”’. (As a curious agnostic, though, it’s one that I might yet avoid.)

One thing that seems to trouble Kolbert, though, is the environmental impact of new lives. I don’t think this is an issue that need concern anyone it’s likely to concern. Overpopulation, for example, is a feature of deprived societies in Africa and America – few of which are liable to contain a lot of people who are educated or introspective enough to give this ideas the vaguest consideration. The first world societies people it might occur to dwell in are, in fact, experiencing an extraordinary decline in birth rates. English women who are considering motherhood, let alone the daughters of the e’er ageing societies of Japan or Taiwan, needn’t reach for An Essay on the Principle of Population, then. Fears that one’s spawn will contribute to climate change, peak oil and such purported threats to human life also seem unfounded. If those who are concerned about environmental matters refuse to bear children they’ll render their kind extinct! If they’re smart and conscientious enough to think like this they’re liable to bring forth and nurture smart, conscientious kids who may do things like invent helpful devices and programmes; organise campaigns; write books and generally do enough for the planet that the good they do negates the incidental harms of their consumption. (On the other hand, that’s not an argument for having kids. If a poor child was raised as a political project I suspect they’d be screwed up.)

 

Taking Swift Seriously…

A minor controversy has been incited by the publication of an essay in the Journal of Medical Ethics. I’m no stranger to far-out philosophies but I’ll admit its title made me wince: “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?” Infanticide has won qualified support before, of course: from Peter Singer, Michael Tooley and others. Yet it’s still discomfiting to hear it stated in blunt terms…

If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status of the newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither has any moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn.

Why is it discomfiting? For the obvious reason, sure – that the idea of killing newborn babies is repugnant to us – but I think there’s another reason: that I can’t deny they’ve got a point. Not, to be clear, that they’re right to say that killing newborns would be justified but that they aren’t wrong to suggest that if you’re okay with abortion it’s strange to find “after-birth abortion” disgusting. One could make an argument that the former and not the latter is allowable by drawing on rights theory, perhaps, but the difference between the capabilities of a foetus and a baby in the first days of its life are minimal enough that it’s hard to find grounds on which to say that one, but not the other, is of moral consequence.

Few people have acknowledged the significance of rejecting the premises of Christian ethics. For example, there has been no universal acknowledgement of the idea that postnatal humans have the right to life: the Greeks left babies out to die; the Japanese used to smother them and in some parts of Asia and Africa the practice of infanticide continues. Most citizens of the West would find the notion disgusting on the face of it but without ideas to enforce them these emotions, in time, could fade. Me? I think that killing newborns must be wrong. I don’t have rock-solid theoretical grounds on which to say so but just as I couldn’t give a thorough refutation of antinatalism yet remain convinced that life is valuable I’m not going renounce such a strong and fundamental conviction ‘til I’ve searched high and low and found nothing to sustain it. Still, ideas like Minerva and Guibilini’s should force us out from the ruins of doctrines we’ve philosophies or let crumble but remained in – like squatters in others’ weltanschauungen. If we can’t erect a firmer structure of values or, indeed, restore a well-founded design we’ve unfairly neglected we’re doomed to an moral wilderness, and subject to the murky whims of fashion and fancy.

The reporting of the paper in media outlets has meant the authors have endured a storm of abuse. Julian Savulescu defends them at Practical Ethics…

What the response to this article reveals, through the microscope of the web, is the deep disorder of the modern world. Not that people would give arguments in favour of infanticide, but the deep opposition that exists now to liberal values and fanatical opposition to any kind of reasoned engagement.

I deplore threats against and abuse of the authors. The notion that ethical theory can remain an idyll of “reasoned engagement”, however, is futile. Let’s say I authored a paper titled “Inconvenient theories: why should ethicists live?” Their fear and disgust at the notion that philosophers could be eliminated for proposing bothersome ideas would, unless I’m much mistaken, preclude civil discourse. And I wouldn’t blame them! Ethics will always be tangled up with our fiercest emotions – it’s what motivates us to uphold the good and thwart the bad. (Whatever they might be.)

 

Somewhat Immaterial…

Why has the Guardian fallen in love with Rupert Sheldrake? They carry an interview with that entertaining and intriguing feature of the badlands of scientific and philosophical research; which follows a warm review of his latest book by Mary Midgley and a praiseful companion piece by Mark Vernon.

I like Sheldrake. I like his nonconformism; his imagination; his bloodymindedness. This is not the same thing as agreeing with him, though. The Guardian writers seem endeared to him because they don’t like the people he’s criticising, which, again, is dubious. They’re opponents of the “narrow”, “rigid”, “crude” materialistic and atheistic scientists who are, to their chagrin, “fashionable”. Well, I’m not Richard Dawkins’ biggest fan but, still, I’m not keen on their using Sheldrake merely as a stick to beat him with. For example, Midgley writes…

Whether or no we want to follow Sheldrake’s further speculations on topics such as morphic resonance, his insistence on the need to attend to possible wider ways of thinking is surely right.

You’d think the author of a 1000+ word review could make up their mind as to whether their subject’s life work is worth “follow[ing]” or not. Vernon, meanwhile, writes…

He may not be right in the details. But he is surely right…in insisting that the materialist world view must go.

Er – no. Sorry. I’m no devotee of materialism but you can’t dismiss such theories with rhetorical flourishes. Somehow, I’m not sure Vernon would be so comfortable with someone writing, say, that Dawkins “may not be right in the details, but he is surely right in insisting that theism must go”.

It’s materialism that Vernon and Midgley have a beef with: the idea that we are “meaningless consignments of chemicals”; mere slaves to biological impulses. That is not a concept I am fond of either. The nature of human consciousness is one of the most important questions we face. But I fear that bringing in the “paranormal” muddles things. The case against materialism is not reliant on finding some new power that humans have, or some new force within the universe. It has long been made upon the premise that the scientists cannot explain what we already know about ourselves.

For example, Sheldrake says that he began to move away from naturalism after feeling that “electrical changes in the cortex didn’t seem able to fully explain Bach”. Philosophers of the mind have long been arguing against scientific reductionism on similar bases but they have not had to look for alternative causal mechanisms. They have only had to recognise its limitations. (I will admit that “morphic fields” sound sexier than “intentionality” but there we go.)

I suppose my point is that while I’ve defended theorists of the “paranormal” from unfair criticism they have got a lot of work to do to prove that such phenomena exist. Exploring the implications of the unproven is, while doubtless interesting, a little presumptuous. Sceptics of materialism should, I think, look to philosophers. For one thing, presuming that it must be threatened by a scientific discovery is a rather scientistic way of opposing scientism.

 

How Our Unprecedented Awesomeness Should Make Us Very Humble Indeed…

Okay, so, I’ve had my disagreements with “contrarians” but today I’m going to do something so perverse that even the late Christopher Hitchens would have choked on his whisky: defend the intellectual substance of Alain de Botton. Well, okay, I won’t defend all of his books. Or even all even of his recent book. Or, in fact, any of his recent book except this one point. But it is a decent point…

…without God, it is easier to lose perspective: to see our own times as everything, to forget the brevity of the present moment and to cease to appreciate (in a good way) the miniscule nature of our own achievements.

Well, okay, it’s an imperfect point. I don’t think that religions – be they true or false – have led believers to remember that their own times aren’t everything. Consider the history of apocalypticism. Or the habit of Christians at churches that I used to frequent of spying “revival” round every corner.

Yet the need for a humble perspective on our place in history is more crucial than it’s ever been, for the simple reason that we’re among the first generations who’ve gained the power to make their times, if not everything, uniquely consequential. In a matter of years – or, indeed, minutes – we can reshape populations; transform our environment and, of course, massacre eachother in unprecedented quantities. Many of the innovations that provoked such rapid technological, scientific and cultural change is and could be used in the service of bettering human lives. But their potential for harm is often just as great, and they’re so new to the e’er expanding human toolbox that it’s often hard to judge what their results will be. The last hundred years began to demonstrate how perilous this can be. From catastrophic wars to barmy economic policies to simple-minded cultural initiatives, wide-eyed ideologues have barreled down the road to Hell at an unparalleled speed. I don’t know if faith has to have anything to do with it, but concerted thought on the implications of human goals and how ambitious we could and should be is extremely relevant.

 

On Forgiveness…

I think forgiveness is important. (How could I not? I’ve spent a lot of time asking for it.) When is forgiveness due, though? God apparently extends it to all those who ask for it but, then, he’s supposedly powerful enough to rummage about in our minds so he can tell if the apology is a sincere one and if there’s a genuine desire to change one’s behaviour. We don’t have that option and, thus, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask the penitent to demonstrate their sincerity – with, say, consistently admirable deeds – before offering one’s forgiveness. Without wanting to elide political opinions and personal morality the same kinda applies to those who publically convert from some ideas to some others: you don’t just accept that they’ve become reasonable; you wait for them to explain the changes in their thoughts and see if they’re put into action.

What complicates things, as far as I can tell, is the “forget” that always seems to be attached to the idea. Must one’s forgiveness represent a wiping of the slate – an agreement to exclude a memory from one’s thoughts? I don’t see how. I think it’s well established that our actions and ideas are the products of ourselves – features of our character, shaped by our genes and our surroundings. Even if you’ve made a sincere and determined effort to change your behaviour the temptations and inclinations are liable to endure and it seems right for your companions to bear them in mind. (An extreme example: a former alcoholic. Their friends and family would have to remember that they could descend back into dipsomania. Otherwise they’re liable to pour ‘em a glass of wine and get a nasty shock as four bottles later they’re nude, wielding a croquet mallet and singing My Generation.) I guess it’s more of a process than a single deed. You forgive somebody inasmuch as you grant that there’s no resentment and acknowledge . Over time, depending on the extent to which their sins reflected their character, and how thoroughly they’ve changed to arrest them, you might just forget they happened.

This implies that one might need to hold an act against someone despite accepting their repentance. You might, for example, be initially cautious of their responses to scenarios that would have been conducive to their lesser deeds.  (To bring up an earlier example, you’d be a sod to ask a recovering alcoholic, “Mind my drink?”) At other times, while granting that someone’s sincerely regretful, you might be in no position to allow them to prove it. Take a columnist who’s spent years defying journalistic ethics. He might go out of his way to demonstrate his penitence and we might grant that he’s sincere and, yet, there’s a limited amount of column inches to be filled and lots of bright young people who’d love to have a part in filling them. Why, then, extend the privilege to someone who – as much as one might like him – hasn’t shown himself to be reliable.

 

What I Think About When I Think About Giving…

Here’s a question that’s doubtless occurred to all of us relatively comfortable Westerners: when is it right or wrong to give or not give money to the homeless? Here are my – entirely impressionistic and plausibly self-indulgent – thoughts.

The most common reason for not giving money to the homeless – moral reason, anyway; “It’s my money and I want to keep it” is presumably even more ubiquitous – is the feeling that they’ll spend it on drugs or booze. Now, I haven’t got a firm idea of the proportion of beggars who are addicts but the vaguest observation suggests that it’s high. Still, that hasn’t stopped me from donating. Even if they spend most of their income on their vices they presumably spend some of it on food and shelter. They are, after all, alive. If we don’t give money and they have less to spend my feeling is that it’s the addictions – not the basic needs – that are going to be prioritised and so they’re more liable to grow sick and die. And, of course, a living addict has a rather better chance of turning their life around than a dead person. A friend of mine gives food rather than money. This might seem patronising but, then, I think the possibility that they’ll feel condescended to is less serious than the chance that they’ll starve.

When is it wrong to not give money, then? Now I’ve made myself look good by saying that I donate, I should admit that more often than not I’ll stride by, casting the vaguest of apologies over my shoulder, for no better reason than I want the money for a drink, book or jacket. To navel-gaze over that feels self-indulgent, though. After all, whenever I spend money on drink, books and clothes I’m prioritising them over the small but valuable contribution I could make towards, say, the hungry of Africa. I just don’t have to consider that because I’m not confronted with the sight of the poor men and women. If we feel ashamed when refusing the homeless cash we should probably interrogate our broader attitude towards charity.

 

Against Political Prudery…

The Guardian’s in-house ‘70s nostalgia act Neil Clark wrote a spiteful obituary for Václav Havel, which included these claims…

Havel’s anti-communist critique contained little if any acknowledgement of the positive achievements of the regimes of eastern Europe…Or the fact that communism, for all its faults, was still a system which put the economic needs of the majority first.

Ed West of the Telegraph responded…

Imagine the uproar if a Telegraph comment piece contained the words ‘fascism, for all its faults’…

Okay, this is a poor example because Clark’s assertion is wrong as well as callous. Yet there needn’t be anything indecorous to acknowledging the merits of a thing, however bad the thing.

Years ago I spoiled a visit to the British Museum by dwelling on the thought of starving and enslaved Egyptians who’d spilled blood for artifacts I was supposed to admire. This was dumb. Yes, their system was a vicious and destructive one, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t also rich in creative and intellectual flair. Things contain multitudes. Humans more than most.

If some of the products of an otherwise abhorrent system remain valuable why should we, as Hitchens put it in his essay on Irving, “react like a virgin who is suddenly confronted by a man in a filthy raincoat”? Here’s an extreme example: I once wrote a series of posts on Unit 731 – Imperial Japan’s centre of murderous medical experimentation – and the efforts of victorious American occupiers to cover up the scientists’ crimes to get their hands on their results. (I should note – to drive home how appalling this was – that they weren’t seeking insights into medical practices but biological weaponry.) I noted how strange it was that research into frostbite – which, apparently, was obtained by freezing Chinese prisoners – is still occasionally cited in medical literature. This is creepy, yes, but if it’s useful in aiding the victims of this grim phenomenon it would be crazy to ignore it for the sake of the purity of our associations.

I’ll qualify this. If you’re saying a man, institution or philosophy has or had valuable insights and achievements, despite serious faults, you shouldn’t use a formulation as blithe as “for all its faults”. It sounds like it came from a lazy film review. If its faults were so dramatic that they have to be acknowledged before you progress to its achievements you should make clear how grave they were. This ensures the reader has an accurate perception of whatever it might be, and nullifies the charge that you’re a sly apologist. If its benefits are also inextricable from its defects this has to be accepted. It might be true, for example, that the bombing of civilians precipitated the end of World War 2. It would be dim, if that’s correct, to brush over the fact that that’s a worthwhile consequence. But, still, that’s no excuse for doing it again.