Deontology vs. Consequentialism Part 2

Yesterday I summarized the main criticisms with both of these two ethical systems. The problems with deontology as outlined, when I began to realize them, are the reasons I rejected that system. It is now incumbent on me to explain how I answer the criticisms of consequentialism.

As I wrote, consequentialists tend not to be concerned with motivations and intentions. Certainly we do not put the same emphasis on intentions that deontologists do, but that does not mean we ignore them completely. Intentions are, after all, an indicator of what a person is likely to do in the future, or for that matter, has likely done in the past. The bad that will result from the future actions of a person who always has bad intentions may very often outweigh any good that occasionally results from them, and therefore from a consequentialist point of view it may make quite a lot of sense to condemn or put a halt to these actions at an early stage.

The flaw in the second criticism I mentioned yesterday lies in the fact that consequentialism is not in itself a complete ethical system any more than deontology without its specific rules is. In programming terms, both are “base classes”. The complete ethical system most consequentialists favor is utilitarianism, that philosophy that has as its prime directive the objective of maximizing total pleasure/happiness/value/preferences (different varieties of utilitarians prefer different words here).

To we utilitarians, this moral rule is the only one that matters; the morally correct decision in any situation is the one that best maximizes utility. While we don’t believe in natural law, divine justice, or any other kind of etheric transcendentalism, that does not necessarily mean we throw out some constructs that have proven themselves to be useful to a utilitarian end. Given that human beings often cannot make the complex calculations called for, it is reasonable, when in doubt, for us to follow imperatives such as “Do not tell a lie”. They are handy rules of thumb to the extent that they maximize utility. Whenever it is apparent that they do not, they should be readily discarded. This is in short, the rules of deontology in the discriminating service of utilitarianism.

Deontology vs. Consequentialism Part 1

Which of these two main ethical systems do you favor?

Deontology — The morality of an action is determined by duty; adherence to given rules.

Consequentialism — The morality of an action is determined by the specific results of that action.

A deontologist will condemn a thief on the basis that he has broken the moral imperative that commands one not to steal. A consequentialist will condemn the thief on the basis that his actions, the forceful removal of another’s property, have caused real harm.

It may seem that both ethical systems follow their own method to arrive at the same conclusions, and most of the time this is probably so, but the difference is important.

You can easily imagine a scenario in which following a moral imperative brings about negative consequences. The classic example is strict adherence to the rule “Do not tell a lie” when a Nazi is knocking on your door to ask if there are any Jews hiding in your basement, and one happens to be. A deontological system must either insist that the right moral action in this context is the one that ends up bringing about a horrific result or else provide for a means of resolving conflicts between different imperatives. That they generally lack a clear means of doing the latter is a common criticism of these ethical systems. In fact, it is asserted by some, you discover when you peel the layers that these systems are actually resolving conflicts on a consequential basis, and are as such nothing more than consequentialism in disguise.

A major criticism of consequentialism, on the other hand, is that it is not concerned with motivations or intentions. An action performed with the best of intentions is deemed morally wrong by the consequentialist when the results are sour. Conversely, an action performed with sinister intentions is deemed morally right when it brings about positive results. That the actions of the person who seeks to do evil should be applauded while the actions of the person who seeks to do good should be condemned rubs most of us the wrong way.

Another criticism that has been leveled at consequentialism is that it appear only to be useful when judging actions after they have already been performed and the results are in, rather than as a means of dictating what the right action is that a person ought to perform.

Now can you guess which of the two philosophies I prefer? You’ll find out tomorrow when I defend that system.

T. Roosevelt on W. Wilson

“Under these circumstances our allies and our enemies, and Mr. Wilson himself, should all understand that Mr. Wilson has no authority whatever to speak for the American people at this time. His leadership has just been emphatically repudiated by them.”

Spoken in 1918 subsequent to Wilson’s departure for Paris to negotiate directly in the Peace Conference, in the context of substantial Republican gains in the Congressional election. Wilson was the first President to leave the White House to travel abroad during a term in office, a practice so routine today that we hardly notice it. It goes to show that open criticism of a standing President by a former one–and addressed to America’s enemies no less!–is not anything new.

Japanese have sex the least

You already know they have one of the lowest birth rates in the world, but would it surprise you to learn that Japan, with its enormous sex industry (approximately equal to its defense budget in size), its love hotels, its porno comics in every convenient store, is according to this survey the nation where the fewest respondents report having sex weekly? Interestingly enough, the place where they screw around the most, Greece, has the exact same birth rate as the place where they screw around the least.

I had some thoughts on why this might be so but don’t really have anything hard to back up my speculation so maybe I’ll leave the cultural analysis to someone else. (If you’re thinking there might be a reverse correlation with which nations have the longest working hours, you’d be wrong; Greeks, Poles, etc work pretty hard actually)

H/T to Hey! Neat! JP

New seven wonders of the world

In case you might not know, New7wonders is where you go to vote on your picks. As the only remaining of the original seven, the Great Pyramids have been allotted an honorary seat.

The thing I’m wondering about is what will/should peoples’ criteria be? The magnitude of the engineering feat given the time when the structure was built? The number of expletives you can apply to it? I’m tempted to vote for Saint Basil’s Cathedral simply for being the prettiest of them all.

On the verge of unraveling the secret

Again. Perhaps. Well gosh darn it, I hope so! After thousands of years of everyone scratching their head it would be about time.

Of the many theories put forth as to how the Great Pyramid was built, the outlandish ones have been problematic for being too outlandish while the conventional ones have been problematic for being too conventional. (theories which purport that construction was accomplished by means of some since forgotten knowledge of some notion of zero-point energy, which cross into the realm of conspiracy theory, have particularly fascinated me) But the real problem is that there has been no real way to verify any of these theories.

The French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin has put forth a theory that is promising in that it is quite possibly verifiable. It has already passed at least a couple falsification tests.

Houdin claims that a straight external ramp was used to move blocks into position for construction of the lower third of the structure, and an upward spiraling internal ramp was used for the rest. The reason a spiraling ramp could not have been external as previously hypothesized is that it would not have been possible for the corners and edges to be put into place until the end of the project, and calculations based on the corners would have been necessary in order to even have gotten to that point.

Measurements of the density of portions of the pyramid by means of a microgravimetry test conducted two decades ago have not revealed any hidden chambers some have speculated might exist… other than a certain anomaly that the team which made the measurements ignored at the time — vacant space in the shape of a spiraling ramp. Not only did Houdin predict this, he believes an internal ramp is still there! Were we to remove a few blocks we would perhaps uncover it, and then at last the mystery of how the Great Pyramid was built would be settled beyond reasonable doubt.

It’s worth removing a block or two to find out, don’t you think? Who knows, maybe we’ll even find Saddam’s WMD cache in there?
(And that might be exactly what it would take to get Egyptian authorities to go along with the plan)

Roots of Libertarianism

Tech Central Station has an informative piece up about the background of Libertarianism and how it diverged from Conservatism. Many names you’ll know come up in the recounting of that history, and perhaps some you won’t — Read, Mises, Lane, Friedman, Welch, Rand. It’s interesting to learn about the disputes and disagreements between them. The basis over which Ayn Rand quarreled with the Foundation for Economic Education, for instance.

On the fault line that emerged between Libertarianism and Conservatism the author writes:

When it came to Buckley’s nascent National Review, forger of the modern conservative consensus, a onetime chairman of FEE’s board, expressing Read’s attitude, admitted that he had “a little bit the fear that too much attention may be paid to being anti-Communist and not enough to being against communism.” To Read and those who hewed to his libertarian line, the warmaking powers of the state were one of the most horrible things about it, and they did not believe it was a proper duty of the American government to go abroad to destroy international communism, or to legally crush domestic communism.

This became one of the clearest dividing lines between nascent conservatism and libertarianism, with the Buckley side mocking libertarians’ effete and useless disengagement from the Cold War, scoffing at them for evading serious geopolitics for little intellectual seminars on demunicipalizing garbage service.

Libertarian distrust of government to the extreme point of condemnation of almost any substantial involvement by government in the weighty geopolitical matters that abound throughout the world was the major reason I stopped calling myself Libertarian. (Not that the Conservative label fits me either)

Saddam’s WMD bunkers found?

“There are no WMDs in Iraq and therefore the war is wrong!”

The statement is a nest of fallacies and on so many levels that scornful dismissal seems the only appropriate response to it. To begin with, the “no WMD” assertion is not even factually correct. Chemical weapons have been found in Iraq post-invasion, albeit not the stockpiles everyone was expecting, those weapons Saddam Hussein once possessed and used with devastating results on Iranians and Iraqis alike which have never been accounted for. Securing WMD production so that the Ba’athist regime would never again become a threat to the region or to anyone else was as much an objective of the mission as locating whatever of his arsenal was then in house.

We also know from the testimony of Iraqi officials and scientists documented in the Kay Report that Saddam was committed to acquiring nuclear weapons. Given that containment was breaking down, evidenced by his many infractions of the Gulf War cease-fire agreement, things had been moving for some time in the direction of a scenario in which the only possible courses of action for concerned members of the free world were 1. Allow the probability that Saddam would regain his pre-1991 status (or worse) and 2. Take military action.

But none of the above is the primary reason I supported OIF then and continue to support it now. In fact, the considerations, motivations, deliberations, implications, justifications are so many and so diverse that different people naturally emphasize different reasons. I count twenty-three clauses in the Joint Resolution to Authorize Force in Iraq, and it bears mentioning that this is not an exhaustive list. Some of the strategic reasoning behind the decision is subtle and goes beyond the scope of my short fisking here.

Which is not to say that there aren’t contrary opinions on the decision to go to war that I can respect. However, at this point, when somebody repeats that “no WMD” mantra you can safely assume he/she is, at best, willfully misinformed.

I review these things in order to stress that one’s feelings about the casus belli of the war ought not be significantly affected whenever a story like this one surfaces, even should that story at some date turn out to have been credible.

Having served for 12 years as an agent in the US Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, Mr Gaubatz, a trained Arabic speaker, was hand-picked for postings in 2003, first in Saudi Arabia and then in Nasariyah in Iraq. His mission was to locate suspect WMD sites, discover threats against US forces in the area and find Saddam loyalists, and then send such intelligence to the Iraq Survey Group and other agencies.

Between March and July 2003, he says, he was taken to four sites in southern Iraq — two within Nasariyah, one 20 miles south and one near Basra — which, he was told by numerous Iraqi sources, contained biological and chemical weapons, material for a nuclear programme and UN-proscribed missiles. He was, he says, in no doubt whatever that this was true. This was, in the first place, because of the massive size of these sites and the extreme lengths to which the Iraqis had gone to conceal them…

There is every reason to be skeptical about one man’s testimony when the reports that document his claims all seem to be missing.

….The American administration failed to act on his information, ‘lost’ his classified reports and is now doing everything it can to prevent disclosure of the terrible fact that, through its own incompetence, it allowed Saddam’s WMD to end up in the hands of the very terrorist states against whom it is so controversially at war.

Yet this part almost sounds plausible:

The Republicans won’t touch this because it would reveal the incompetence of the Bush administration in failing to neutralise the danger of Iraqi WMD. The Democrats won’t touch it because it would show President Bush was right to invade Iraq in the first place. It is an axis of embarrassment.

It would be in character with our beloved political parties, wouldn’t it?

H/T to Provoking the Muse

Geeky picture of the day

There may have been a time when I lived on Nintendo, but unlike these people I can’t say that I’ve ever lived in one.

Why reform doesn’t happen

Here’s a story about a Chinese couple filing a lawsuit in a US District Court against Yahoo for the company having provided information that Chinese authorities used to sentence the man to prison (for his writings online). I don’t see what can come from this other than a symbolic gesture. If imprisoning and torturing people for expression of ideas is the law in China, and if United States trade law honors Chinese law as I believe it does (somebody with more legal expertise than myself correct me if I am wrong here), then what case do they have?

Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky in his famous book The Case For Democracy argued that to encourage reform in oppressive states the West should make relations with those states dependent on the degree to which they honor basic human rights. In so doing we utilize one great advantage a free society enjoys over an oppressive one–it is invariably more prosperous. The reasoning is that the oppressive society needs the technology and assistance of the free society more than the free society needs anything the oppressive society has to offer.

Obviously the West lacks any will whatsoever to carry out Sharansky’s idea, as one can plainly see from looking at relations with China, or Saudi Arabia, or hell, Iran. Read this Opinion Journal piece on EU dealings with Iran and ask yourself what incentive the Ayatollahs have to ever change their ways.