On the death of Andrew Breitbart (and others)

http://media.salon.com/

by Michael De Dora

As you have probably already heard, the controversial public figure Andrew Breitbart died on March 1 of a heart attack. He was 43 years old.

The main line of business for Breitbart was news, in particular, web news. Early in his career, he helped Arianna Huffington start The Huffington Post. He then proceeded to found the web sites Breitbart TV, Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism, and Big Peace. Yet he is perhaps best well known for being an advocate and commentator who supported the Tea Party movement, railed against the Occupy movement, harshly criticized liberals, and was a major force behind several public stunts — most notably the ACORN video controversy and the resignation of U.S. Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod. You can read more about Breitbart’s exploits here.

You might recall that I wrote about the last of those exploits, Sherrod’s resignation, on this blog. To refresh your memory: Breitbart posted on his website an edited clip of a longer speech by Sherrod that, without context located elsewhere in the talk, made her look racist. This led to her forced resignation by then Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. In my article, published August 2, 2010, I argued that while Breitbart was responsible for Sherrod’s downfall, a host of other actors — conservative pundits, lawmakers such as Vilsack, and the American public — were also to blame for blindly accepting the claims or bowing to the commands of a man who, for all intents and purposes, had made a career out of smearing his opponents and enemies.

So, it surprised a couple of my friends to learn that I think America — if not the world — will be better off without Breitbart. Given the arguments laid out in my previous article, outlining that Breitbart wasn’t nearly as bad as many liberals made him out to be, how could I possibly believe that? Allow me to explain.

One of the first things I read after Breitbart’s death was an article in the Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi, titled “Death of a Douche.” As you can imagine, the article was not entirely kind to Breitbart. I say “not entirely” because Taibbi does give Breitbart some credit. Then again, Breitbart would have expected, and perhaps accepted, nothing less than Taibbi’s treatment. Remember that this was the man who called the late Sen. Ted Kennedy a “villain,” “big ass motherf@#$er,” “a duplicitous bastard, “a prick,” and “a special pile of human excrement” — all in the just three hours following his death.

In the days following Breitbart’s death, I posted Taibbi’s article on a couple of social media web sites, and passed it along to friends. As I said, I received pushback, which came in three kinds:

1. “You and others are giving Breitbart too much credit. He didn’t have that much power to do harm. He didn’t get Sherrod fired.”

2. “The guy had a wife and four kids. I heard he was a good father and husband, and a nice guy. Lay off.”

3. “How could you have rooted for anyone’s death? Or even be happy that he’s dead? Are you sick?”

Whether or not my friends had read my previous article on Breitbart’s exploits — some had, most hadn’t — they were throwing my own arguments back in my face. For reference, let’s go back and read what I wrote in that August 2010 essay:

“Let me be clear: this essay is neither pardoning the behavior of Breitbart … Rather, this essay argues that while people often find it convenient to blame the media, in this case Breitbart and FOX News, for social problems, they ought to realize that it is a social problem that feeds the media. That is, Breitbart and media outlets cannot be understood apart from the social and political context in which they exist. Why does Breitbart have the power he has? Why do people listen to Breitbart? Because they agree with him.”

I continued:

“By blaming social problems on one man or one organization, we thus ignore the social reality that these men and organizations are backed by millions of Americans, and make the problem out to be much simpler than it really is. They would not exist in such powerful roles without the support of a sizable number of people.”

Here is where things get sticky:

“Contrary to what many would tell you, Breitbart and FOX News did not create the Tea Party and the extreme Right which wants to disable Obama and his administration in any and every way possible. Instead of blaming them for creating social problems, we ought to consider the complex and numerous factors that influence what we see represented and supported in the media, and ponder how much of an effort we’ve made in the battle against that with which we disagree. Anything less would wrongly simplify our problems and let everyone off the hook too easily.”

In hindsight, I admit that I used poor wording. In no way was I trying to excuse Breitbart and others for their actions. In many cases — certainly in the Sherrod case — Breitbart lied to or intentionally misled people to achieve his own goals. Without Breitbart’s actions, Shirley Sherrod would probably still have her job.

My central point was that Breitbart was not the only person responsible. He can’t create a controversy, or for that matter an entire movement, without some help. Many sections of the public were willing to be misled, perhaps because of their lack of skepticism or their prior beliefs about racism, big government, etc. This does not absolve Breitbart of his sins, it merely spreads the blame around. I hope this is now clear.

The other two points are not necessarily related to my previous article, but they are worth considering for a moment.

Regarding the second point: is there a rule written somewhere regarding how soon after a person’s death the public can discuss his or her merits (and demerits)? Is there a rule that only neutral things, or even good things are to be said, because that person’s family members or friends might be reading or watching? I certainly don’t recall these rules being in effect for the worst dictators of human history. I don’t recall them being in effect for even lesser evils, such as convicted mass murderers and terrorists. Do you recall hearing anything like: “Hey, why are you saying so many bad things about Timothy McVeigh?! He just died! And he had a family … and friends. Give it a couple of years. Stop being so mean.” I am going to guess not.

If McVeigh doesn’t work for you, try substituting Osama Bin Laden or Joseph Stalin (I’ve purposely not mentioned you know who). I hope you see my point. Sure, the people in question might have treated their significant others and friends well, and even been nice guys in private. But their actions had disastrous — or, rather, deadly — consequences for hundreds, thousands, even millions of people.

I am not comparing Breitbart to McVeigh, Stalin, or Bin Laden, who were explicitly murderous, but the facts are clear: Breitbart made a living by issuing intentionally misleading and/or inflammatory statements and behaving in a provocative manner, with the goal of destroying those who disagreed with him. He succeeded often. His statements and actions were public, and as such are perfectly fit for debate and criticism. No one knocked on his family’s door, or sent them personal letters (in fact, I extend sympathy to his family). Taibbi’s article was written in Rolling Stone, a magazine that often features public debate. It did not criticize his personal life. It criticized the (I would say radical) beliefs and actions he placed in the public square for all to see and feel. And it did this in retrospect, given his death. So, where’s the problem?

Regarding the final point, I didn’t see anyone rooting for Breitbart’s death, although I wouldn’t be surprised to learn some had. That seems disturbing. I considered Breitbart toxic, but not so much as a murderous dictator. He wasn’t killing people; he just knew how to unethically manipulate public opinion.

That said, I still think the world is slightly better off without Andrew Breitbart and his work. I wanted him to be exposed and less valued in our society - not dead. But I am not going to miss him. Are you?

A Rational Case Against the Irrationality of Tipping

[We are pleased to welcome Greg, who most recently wrote on Rationally Speaking about dietary pet views, among our staff contributors. Welcome aboard, Greg!]

by Greg Linster

http://gprs.olhblogspace.com/

At many restaurants in the United States you are served by a waiter or waitress who is paid a dismally low wage, usually one that is so low that the server wouldn’t do their job without the possibility of tips. Whatever the reason, consumers generally tend to find this situation palatable and participate in this bizarre cultural custom called tipping, where the diner leaves a tip in the 10-25 percent range based on the perceived quality of the service.

In microeconomics one of the assumptions (insert your favorite economist joke here) is that agents are rational, i.e, amongst other things, agents are utility maximizers. If real people actually behaved this way, though, they wouldn’t leave tips. Here’s why: when the check arrives the service has already been performed and either the diner gets to keep their money or they can give it to the server. What would the rational agent do? Certainly she wouldn’t just give money away that she could keep for herself — after-all, money provides a store of value and she’s a utility maximizer!

Some people object to this claim on legal grounds. While one certainly has a legal obligation to pay the bill, there is, however, no such legal requirement to leave a tip. Gauche as it might be, it’s not illegal to pay your bill at a restaurant and then leave without tipping. Therefore, economic theory tells us that a rational agent shouldn’t leave a tip at a restaurant, yet I’ll venture a guess that most people actually leave quite generous tips. How can this be?

First of all, I suspect that some rational people still tip because they feel compelled to by the non-financial benefits that come with following social norms. A failure to tip could cause one to be deemed as cheap or stingy by family, friends, or colleagues. Another reason might be because the diner frequents a restaurant often and wants good service the next time they come back. I think many people simply value these types of non-financial benefits more than they do the financial cost of the tip.

So that may explain why some people tip, but it’s still not a sufficient explanation. Here’s a little thought experiment: let’s suppose you were on a business trip in a place you’ll likely never visit again, say, Fargo, ND. Furthermore, let’s suppose you have just finished a meal at a restaurant by yourself and have just paid the bill. Here, then, is the question: would you leave a tip with no social capital at stake? If you would still leave a tip in this situation then you might not be as rational as economic theory portrays you.

Essentially, I think the cultural practice of tipping allows restaurant owners to unfairly transfer risk to the servers. In other words, a stingy, but legally compliant customer can harm the servers’ bottom line, but not the restaurants’. Additionally, there is a lot of cultural ambiguity when it comes to situations in which we are supposed to tip (including situations outside of restaurants). Foreign diners, for example, may be unaware that they are supposed to tip in the United States. What I want to argue is that both consumers and servers would benefit from abolishing the cultural practice of tipping. Abolishing tipping will help servers be exposed to less risk and it would alleviate much of the confusion about situations that do and don’t warrant tips.

For the sake of making this a dialectical argument, let’s examine some of the reasons why the cultural practice of tipping might be a positive thing. First off, servers may claim (in fact I’ve heard some friends say this) that while some customers may stiff them, others may tip very graciously. If that’s the case, I think we need to figure out the net effect. Also, it’s often believed that servers wouldn’t perform their services if there were no possibility to make a tip, but that can’t possibly be true. Many service personnel (e.g., grocery baggers and auto mechanics) adequately fulfill their duties without the presence of a tip, so I’m quite perplexed by this argument.

In line with that last point, I’ve become increasingly interested in the following question: why is there a cultural norm to tip servers at restaurants, bellhops, and taxi drivers, but not clerks at the grocery? How do these norms develop in the first place? Strangely, when I visit the grocery store my groceries usually get bagged quite well. And my car mechanic, who arguably has a much more important job in terms of protecting my safety than does a server at a restaurant, does not accept tips. He does his job astoundingly well too.

I think the explanation for this problem is rather simple, the true cost of the service, in this case bagging groceries or car maintenance, is actually reflected in the explicit price, which I conveniently know upfront. If the wages for these professions weren’t fair, people wouldn’t do the work. Shouldn’t the same thing be true of servers in a restaurant?

Let’s say that restaurant owners raised their prices by 20 percent and paid their servers appropriately according to the market signals. Servers would, then, be paid a wage that reflects the true cost of their service and skills, just like grocery baggers and auto mechanics. The restaurant owner would simply reflect this additional cost in the menu prices. The $10 meal would now cost $12.

While it’s unlikely that the irrational practice of tipping will become antiquated any time soon, I hope that I’ve demonstrated that it is, at least theoretically, problematic and that the arguments for keeping it are rather weak. Irrational as it may be, I will continue to tip quite generously until something does change.

Rationally Speaking podcast:Howard Schneider on Science News Literacy

In this episode, Massimo and Julia discuss science communication with Howard Schneider, dean of the school of journalism at SUNY Stonybrook and former editor of Newsday. A guest at previous skeptic events, including the first annual Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism, Schneider has argued in the past that skeptics lay too much blame at the feet of the media for public misunderstandings and misconceptions about science (video here).

Julia and Massimo question him on this point, and ask him for his thoughts on what can be done to improve scientific literacy. As the founder of the Center for News Literacy and the Center for Communicating Science, Schneider has plenty of thoughts to share -- including making scientists take improv classes. Should science communication involve more storytelling? And is there any way to take advantage of new, online media formats to remedy some of the weak points in the science communication process?

Michael's Picks

by Michael De Dora

* The higher a person’s income, the greater the chance that he or she will act unethically, according to a new study on the relationship between socioeconomics and ethics.

* What makes killing wrong? That’s the subject of a controversial new paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, a philosopher at Duke University, and Franklin Miller, a bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health. 

* Many people are worrying about a fresh development in the drone warfare: new drones that apparently can operate without the control of computer-chair pilots. 

* Meanwhile, the editorial board of The Daily News in Jacksonville, North Carolina, takes the American public to task over its silence on the Barack Obama administration’s use of drones in Pakistan and elsewhere. 

* The Boston Globe has just posted an interesting interview with Liane Young, an associate professor of psychology at Boston College who studies moral decision making. 

* If one of our main goals as a society is to maximize collective prosperity, and we were given the opportunity to pick between a range of moral beliefs and values, what kind should we choose? That’s the central question of a new book, The Moral Foundation of Economic Behavior, by David Rose, chair and professor of economics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

* The New York Times recently exposed the horrid conditions faced by the workers who build Apple devices in China, and the company’s apparent disregard for its workers’ troubles. According to Thane Rosenbaum, the Times article should make Apple users think twice about buying Apple products. (Here is Apple’s take.)

On suicide

by Massimo Pigliucci

Albert Camus famously wrote that “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.” It’s more than a slight exaggeration (well, there’s existentialism for ya!), but the phrase came to mind during a recent evening of web surfing, when I found myself reading a brief essay on the ethics of suicide published by a New Zealand site providing “resources for life related issues” (of which self-imposed death clearly is one). There is, of course, a long philosophical tradition of discussions about the ethical permissibility of suicide (Plato and Aristotle: against it; the Roman Stoics: in favor; pretty much everyone in the Christian tradition: against it; pretty much every Enlightenment philosopher: in favor). But what struck me as particularly interesting is the very different takes on suicide of two of the most influential philosophers all of time: David Hume and Immanuel Kant. (For a more comprehensive philosophical look at the issue see the entry in the ever more excellent Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.)

Interestingly, both philosophers approached it from a deontological (duty-based) perspective. For Kant, predictably, the verdict is negative: suicide is not morally permissible on the general grounds that it diminishes the intrinsic worth of a human being to the status of an animal. I’m not sure what to make of this, since I don’t think human beings have any “intrinsic” worth. Whatever worth we have we acquire through our social interactions, and I think I could name a fair number of human beings who are less “intrinsically worthy” than your dog.

Kant considers a common argument in favor of the morality of suicide, that it may be permissible on grounds of personal freedom, since there is no (or relatively little, of an emotional type) harm to third parties. This holds no water with Kant, because he thinks that self-preservation is the highest duty we have to ourselves. Now, it is easy to argue that self-preservation is a biological imperative, but of course this does not at all translate into a duty. The problem with Kant’s general approach is that it is not clear toward whom we have such duties, other than a vague — and metaphysically highly questionable — “universal moral law.” Indeed, a reasonable retort is that a human being ought to have the freedom to decide when pain (physical or psychological) is sufficiently unendurable that one is better off terminating one’s life (let us bracket for a moment the possibility of a mental illness, to which I will return below).

Kant also proposes what appears to be a pragmatic objection to suicide, impugning the moral character of the person who contemplates it: “He who does not respect his life even in principle cannot be restrained from the most dreadful vices.” Needless to say, there is no evidence whatsoever that this is the case, and a pragmatic argument that flies in the face of facts doesn’t represent much of a promising avenue.

Hume, on the contrary, thinks that suicide is morally permissible, also on the grounds of his analysis of duties. He talks about three types of duties: to god, to ourselves, and to others. I will skip the first category, since I don’t think there are any gods toward whom we have any duties.

In terms of duties to others, Hume claims that in committing suicide we do not harm others (again, with the partial exception of the distress we may cause to loved ones). However, we also — by necessity — cease to do any good for society, which may present a problem. Hume’s response here is that our duties to society are in proportion to the benefits we receive from society (a form of pragmatic reciprocal altruism, if you will), and since we do not receive any benefits from society after we die (obviously), it follows that we do not have any duties toward it either. More broadly, in Hume’s words, “I am not obliged to do a small good for society at the expense of a great harm to myself.”

What about duties to ourselves? Hume claims that “we have such a strong natural fear of death, which requires an equally strong motive to overcome that fear,” meaning that we do not contemplate the extreme measure of suicide lightly. And the latter — to decide to terminate our life only under extreme circumstances of duress — is the only duty we may possibly have toward ourselves.

It should be clear that I find Hume’s arguments much more persuasive than Kant’s, but the question remains of the permissibility of intervention to dissuade someone from committing suicide. This is often framed in terms of the rights of autonomous moral agents vs the positive role of a certain degree of “paternalism” (a term that should not carry an automatic negative connotation, as it too often does) on the part of society.

Clearly, if there are signs of mental illness, then intervention by friends, relatives and professionals is warranted. But one can also conceive of plenty of situations — such as chronic and unendurable pain, deep but not pathological psychological distress (for instance by an old person who lost a lifelong companion), and terminal physical illness (particularly of a progressively debilitating type), where one would have to start wondering about the motives of people who allegedly wish to help.

The basic question ought to be, it seems to me, what is the best long term interest of the agent? Most of the time this will be to live as long (and as healthily) as possible. But when this is not the case — as judged by the agent himself, provided that he is capable of sound judgment — then the duty of friends, relatives and professionals switches toward understanding, moral support, and even (at least when allowed by the law) actual material assistance.

Of course, a good number of movies have explored the dimension of assisted suicide, and I particularly remember The Barbarian Invasions, a 2003 French movie set in Montreal, chronicling the last days of a terminally ill man who decides to die on his own terms, surrounded by friends and family. It is hard to imagine a better way to go, and even harder to conceive of a reasonable and compassionate objection to this kind of affirmation of moral autonomy.

Progress in philosophy not an oxymoron

www.chsbs.cmich.edu

by Massimo Pigliucci

A little while back I tackled the perennial question of whether, and in what sense, philosophy makes progress. But that was by means of a fictional dialogue between two robots, part of my “5-minute Philosopher” series, and it’s time to revisit the topic. The occasion has been provided by a lively meetup discussion I facilitated a few weeks ago, based on an article by Toni Vogel Carey that appeared in Philosophy Now magazine.

Carey sets up the discussion by arguing that philosophy stands somewhere between science and the arts, where the first one is the common paragon of a cumulatively progressive enterprise, while within the realm of the latter the whole idea of progress appears to be ridiculous. Although there is much that I agree with in Carey’s article, this set-up strikes me as questionable, particularly because the author counts mathematics as a science. Math is certainly useful to science (and so is logic and, sometimes, even art!), but it ain’t the same thing as science. The latter is concerned with empirically based hypothesis testing, while math makes progress more like logic (a branch of philosophy!), i.e. by a deductive exploration of the consequences of sets of axioms (in logic and philosophy these are called assumptions). So math and logic represent fields clearly characterized by cumulative progress which are not science, thereby undermining the idea that science is the paragon for progressive intellectual enterprises.

Moreover, some of my fellow meetupers even questioned the idea that art doesn’t progress. Yes, as Nobel biologist Francois Jacob (cited by Carey) said, “Beethoven did not surpass Bach in the way that Einstein surpassed Newton,” but the key qualification here is in the (same) way. Beethoven explored ways of composing hitherto unknown to musicians, which has to count as progress in a meaningful (though obviously not scientific) sense of the term. I pointed out during that evening’s discussion that the invention of perspective in Renaissance painting also was an unquestionable case of progress in art, as it made possible painting in ways that were simply not available before. I’m sure other examples can be easily found, especially by historians of music and art.

The heart of Carey’s article, however, concerns three general types of progress in philosophy, each accompanied by an example. The first one is what the author refers to as “progress as destruction.” A lot of what goes on in philosophical research is showing that someone else got it wrong, thereby moving the debate onto higher ground in logical space, so to speak. Carey’s example is Edmund Gettier’s famous demonstration that Plato was wrong when he defined knowledge as “justified true belief.” Gettier did this in a very short paper, using counterexamples. The one Carey provides is actually clearer than the one originally presented by Gettier. Imagine you were watching the final of the US Open a few years back and saw John McEnroe win the match point against Jimmy Connors. Assume further that it is indeed true that McEnroe won the Open that year. Apparently, you have a belief that is both true (McEnroe did win) and justified (you saw the final play). But it turns out that — because of a technical glitch — you actually saw a replay of a similar match point that had allowed McEnroe to beat Connors the year before! Gettier would argue that you have formed a belief that is both true and justified, and yet does not amount to knowledge. Now, put away the discussion of how one could fix Plato’s definition (no one has succeeded so far), because we need to proceed to Carey’s second type of philosophical progress.

This is progress understood as clarification, the sort of thing that Wittgenstein (himself not exactly a shining example of clarity) was presumably thinking of when he said that “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” The idea is that philosophers understand certain issues better when they can analytically parse distinct meanings or applications of given concepts. Carey’s example is John Rawls’s analysis of rules within the context of rule- (as opposed to act-) utilitarianism. Rawls distinguished “summary” and “practice” concepts of rules, where the first one works as a heuristic that summarizes past decisions, while the latter examines particular cases of application of a given rule. Without getting into details, Rawls’ approach helped to make sense of the advantages of rule-utilitarianism over act-utilitarianism, at the same time that it also made clear that rule-utilitarianism is barely utilitarianism at all, and falls uncomfortably close to its chief rival, deontology (i.e., rule-based ethics).

The third and last situation considered by Carey is “progress as doubt,” in which philosophers provide a needed counter to over-enthusiastic practitioners of their own and of other disciplines (e.g., science), by pointing out just how much we really don’t know. Here David Hume’s famous problem of induction comes to mind. Hume argued very effectively that induction — on which much everyday reasoning and especially scientific inference are based — cannot be logically justified on independent grounds. (If you think you can get out of this by arguing something along the lines of “induction works” think again: that would be invoking inductive reasoning to support inductive reasoning, and you’d be open to one of the worst charges in philosophical reasoning, that of circularity.) One cannot avoid but think of Socrates, and of the Delphi Oracle’s statement that he was the wisest man in all of Greece, apparently on the basis that he knew that he didn’t know much.

There are certainly other examples one could line up following Carey’s approach. Quine’s criticism of the previously universally accepted distinction between synthetic and analytic statements; Popper’s proposal that scientific hypotheses have to be falsifiable, followed by a Duhem-Quine inspired argument showing that falsification doesn’t work; the increasing sophistication of different versions of utilitarian ethics (from Bentham to Mill to Singer); the various moves and counter-moves in the debate in philosophy of science between realists and anti-realists; and so on.

What all of these modes and examples of progress in philosophy have in common is that they use analysis to parse and explore the logical space in which philosophical discourse exists. One begins with a given set of assumptions and works out their implications, until someone points out a problem with some of those implications which requires either the addition of other postulates or the abandonment of the initial one and their replacement by another set that may work out better. In this sense, philosophical analysis, again, is much more similar to mathematics than to science, and the discipline of logic represents a great example of it, both because it is a branch of philosophy that has clearly made progress, and because it can be said to actually include mathematics, at least in the sense that math is also about the application of deductive reasoning to uncover the properties of systems of axioms. That said, of course, I do not expect my colleagues in the math department to move in with us, though they would certainly be welcome...

Okay, I turned vegetarian, almost

by Massimo Pigliucci

For some time now I have been conceding — on this blog, on my podcast, and in informal conversations — that vegetarians have the better moral (and health related) argument over most of the alternatives, with a couple of caveats. Why, then, have I kept behaving as an omnivore? Akrasia, Aristotle would say. It’s our innate weakness of the will that represents a major obstacle to human flourishing and a eudaimonic life.

Still, the inconsistency has been bothering me, despite the well known quote by
Walt Whitman: “Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” Cute, but a lousy excuse for an inconsistent personal philosophy. Better to practice what I preach and engage in a bit of reflective equilibrium, the philosophical method by which we continually adjust our beliefs and practices because of reflection on other people's arguments and on the available facts.

The final straw that caused me to embrace a different philosophy of eating happened a few nights ago, when I was watching a 2005 advocacy piece called Earthlings. Directed by Shaun Monson,  it presents a pretty brutal look at how we treat animals, not just in the sphere of food production, but also as pets, for the production of clothing, for entertaining, and for scientific research. Earthlings has a declared agenda, and not everything that is shown or said there should be taken as correct or fairly representative. Nonetheless, the piece simply translated into relentlessly disturbing images what I pretty much already knew to be the case, and had tried hard to ignore. Hence my resolution to do some reflecting and adjusting as soon as the movie was over.

Now, there are two major reasons to change your dietary habits: health and ethics. In terms of health, as Julia and I explained during the podcast episode, it turns out that vegetarians and people who eat fish and poultry have the best long term outcomes, followed by vegans and by red meat eaters, other things being equal (which they often aren’t, since vegetarians tend to take good care of themselves in general, thus making it a bit more complicated to disentangle the effects of diet per se from those of other relevant variables).

But my recent philosophical realignment has been motivated by ethics, not health practices. When it comes to the ethical domain, at the cost of simplifying things a bit, there are two issues pertinent to human use of animals: treatment and exploitation. To make the distinction clear, one could argue that keeping a pet dog or cat “exploits” them for the purposes of human companionship. Yet, most people — including yours truly — would not object to the practice as long as the animals in question are treated well (i.e., not abused, well fed, taken care of in terms of health, and even of their psychological needs). And of course domesticated animals have been bred by humans for precisely that purpose, so that one can even argue that it is in the best interest of those animals to be human pets, it aligns with their (modified) genetic instincts. To put it yet another way, the animals are getting something (a cozy, predator free and more healthy life than they would be able to pursue in the wild) in return for the companionship they provide.

An obvious objection to this line of argument is that the animals didn’t ask for this arrangement, and that the relationship is intrinsically asymmetrical. True on both counts, but we live with asymmetrical relationships all the time, for instance between employers and employees, or between parents and children (and, needless to say, children didn’t ask to be born either). Moreover, animals are simply not on the same cognitive level as humans, which means that we are the ones who have to take into consideration both our own and the animals’ interests as far as it is possible. If that smacks of paternalism, just remember that that’s precisely what you do with your children. (Yes, I know that the goal with children is different, since they will grow up and eventually become autonomous agents, though even that’s not true in the case of severely mentally or emotionally deficient ones.)

This distinction between treatment and exploitation, I suspect, is also at the root of some differences among vegetarians themselves: vegans, for instance, make the argument that eating eggs and dairy products is unethical on the grounds that they are derived by exploiting animals. Presumably, ovo-lacto-vegetarians do not find this argument entirely convincing. Indeed, the latter seem to be drawing the line at treatment, not use: they will eat cheese, milk and eggs as long as the animals are not subjected to artificial hormonal treatments and are given a reasonably healthy diet and life style (e.g., free ranging chicken and cows).

The treatment-exploitation divide, then, also helps us make sense of why some vegetarians think it is okay to use, say, horses for races, or a range of animals for transportation of people or goods. They may see these activities as relatively benign as long as the animals are well treated, as each party (again, asymmetrically) gets something out of the symbiosis. For instance, horse racing may be acceptable on the condition that the horses are well taken care of, while a rodeo is could well be unacceptable because the animals are usually abused before and during the performance. (I do admit that there are plenty of grey areas here, but I think the general picture holds.)

If I am okay with using animals, including possibly as food, as long as the good treatment criterion holds, what sort of diet should I then follow? At a minimum, a vegetarian diet (as opposed to vegan), if I take care to check that my eggs and dairy products come from free ranging animals. Indeed, one can consistently (from an ethical perspective) go further and include some meat, beginning with fish, as long as it is not the result of the type of large scale industrial practices that are so horrifically depicted in Earthlings (and as long as one also doesn’t run into environmental problems, such as the possibility of over exploitation of fisheries leading to the near extinction of some species).

If the above makes sense, or is at least more coherent than my previous fundamentally omnivorous attitude, then in practice I would have to make vegetables and fruits the larger base of my diet, followed by eggs and dairy, if I'm reasonably sure of the benign treatment of the animals involved (possibly easier for an upper middle class person living in New York around the corner from a large Whole Foods store, more difficult for others), occasionally by poultry (again, assuming free ranging etc.), and by fish (once I check out the advisability of eating a particular species based on ecological criteria — for instance using the excellent iPhone / Android app out out by the Monterey Aquarium). Pretty much all red meat will be out, and so too will be poultry, fish, eggs and dairy in the many cases in which I will not be able to ascertain that my minimal conditions for humane treatment have been met. To complicate things further, I have decided that there simply is no justification for eating animals that are capable of sophisticated cognitive processes, which includes humans — there goes my chance for cannibalism — whales, dolphins and, alas, squid and octopi. Oh well.

So, this is where the most recent round of reflective equilibrium has led me. I'm sure there is room for improvement, so by all means, take aim with your comments.

Podcast: on spirituality

www.blackisonline.com

Is "rational spirituality" a contradiction? In this episode, Massimo and Julia try to pin down what people mean when they call themselves "spiritual," what inspires spiritual experiences and attitudes, and whether spirituality can be compatible with a naturalist view of the world.

Are there benefits that skeptics and other secular people could possibly get from incorporating some variants on traditional spiritual practices -- like prayer, ritual, song, communal worship, and so on -- into their own lives?

Massimo and Julia examine a variety of attempts to do so, and ask: how well have such attempts worked, and do they come with any potential pitfalls for our rationality?

Michael’s Picks

by Michael De Dora

* A California federal district court has held that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional.

* Tony Schwartz on the Harvard Business Review on why managers should reward value, not face time.

* Ron Lindsay argues that the Catholic Church is distorting the First Amendment and the concept of conscientious objection in the birth control debate.

* The New Yorker reports on Marie Colvin, the brave news reporter who was killed last week in Syria.

* I finally saw the movie Moneyball, which stars Brad Pitt as Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane, and I absolutely loved it. Here’s the story behind the movie. It essentially represents skepticism as applied to baseball.

* Greg Laden initiates a discussion on his blog on the role of secular and skeptic organizations in political advocacy.

* Chris Mooney says scientists can further improve their communication skills by fixing bad PowerPoint habits.

* Iran has sped up its production of higher-grade enriched uranium over the last few months, according to a confidential U.N. nuclear agency report obtained by the Associated Press.

Redirecting the charitable impulse

by Ian Pollock

Being an extremely didactic dialogue, in which the rules of polite conversation are flouted for the sake of philosophy and truth. All characters are fictional; no interlocutors were traumatized in the making of this dialogue.

Mia: So, what did you get up to this weekend?

Gallant: I spent Saturday playing a basketball tournament for Balls For The Cure.

Mia: Cool, I assume that’s a fundraiser? What for?

Gallant: Testicular cancer. My uncle died of it, so I figured it’s the least I could do.

Mia: Sorry to hear about your uncle. Why raise funds for testicular cancer, though?

Gallant: Because that’s what my uncle died of.

Mia: Right, I know. What I’m saying is... let me see if I can express this properly, without pissing you off. You cared for your uncle, obviously.

Gallant: Obviously.

Mia: And it’s terrible that he’s dead. Why do you care that it was testicular cancer that killed him, though?

Gallant: That is the disease that took him away from us! What do you mean, ‘why do I care?’ Isn’t it obvious?

Mia: No, not really. He would be just as dead if he had died of heart disease. I think the bad thing about your uncle dying is, well, that your uncle suffered and then died. Not that testicular cancer in particular killed him. You’re treating his death as if it were a murder, and we had to punish the culprit — testicular cancer.

Gallant: Well, we do! That disease has taken away too many people’s lives!

Mia: Indeed it has... so has flying debris. But there are other diseases that take away or ruin people’s lives, and some of them ruin many, many more people’s lives than testicular cancer. Wouldn’t it make more sense to focus on curing or preventing the commonest ones, the deadliest ones, and the most easily remedied ones? That way we could help more people with the same amount of time, effort and money.

Gallant: You don’t understand. This isn’t about numbers. That disease took away my uncle, personally.

Mia: Okay, fair enough. I can see you want to honour your uncle’s memory. One way of doing that is by supporting testicular cancer research. That is a good idea, ceteris paribus.

Gallant: I don’t speak Latin, but thanks. I’m glad I have your permission.

Mia: Or you could think about the fact that the bad thing is that he died, not that he died of any one specific disease. You would be just as sad if he had died of a heart attack, wouldn’t you?

Gallant: I guess.

Mia: What I’m saying is that the bad thing here that we should want to prevent is suffering and death for people like your uncle, not testicular cancer per se. If testicular cancer didn’t lead to suffering and death, there would be no need to worry about it very much. So any action that prevents suffering and death is a great way to honour your uncle. Also, you presumably want to honour your uncle because he was a good person. So any action that does good in the world is also a great way to honour your uncle, even if it has nothing to do with testicular cancer in particular — maybe it’s as unrelated as funding a school in a developing nation! Just do the most good stuff, or prevent the most bad stuff, that you possibly can.

Gallant: But none of that is related to my uncle!

Mia: On the contrary, if your uncle was a good person who didn’t deserve to suffer and die, nothing could be more related to him and to his memory than promoting the good, whereas testicular cancer qua testicular cancer is totally unrelated to everything that makes your uncle worth remembering.

Gallant: Okay, look, I’ve got to go, this is my stop. See you.

Mia: I thought you said you were going to downtown...

Gallant: No, I forg... This is my stop.

Mia: Bye!

…

Mia: Sure, of course this seat’s not taken!