Are Intuitions Good Evidence?

by Julia Galef

In Episode 16 of the Rationally Speaking podcast, Massimo said that despite some disagreements over particular philosophical issues, there is at least a consensus within the field about the rules of how to argue. I agree to a large extent. Philosophers more or less all concur about the rules of deductive logic and what constitutes a formal logical fallacy, as Massimo rightly pointed out. That’s not to say that no one ever makes a mistake, of course, but they do share standards of argumentation towards which they all strive. That commitment to rigorous thought is why I tend to love talking to philosophers, and it’s why I’ve ended up with an amusingly philosopher-heavy friend group.

Most philosophical arguments, however, occur not in the neat and orderly garden of formal logic, but in the wilderness outside its walls. Which means that the consensus on “how to argue” can get a little fuzzy. In particular, there’s one interesting controversy about philosophical methodology that I mentioned during the show but didn’t have time to elaborate on¹: Is it legitimate to cite one’s intuitions as evidence in a philosophical argument?

It’s an important question, because appeals to intuitions are ubiquitous in philosophy. What are intuitions? Well, that’s part of the controversy, but most philosophers view them as intellectual “seemings.” George Bealer, perhaps the most prominent defender of intuitions-as-evidence, writes, “For you to have an intuition that A is just for it to seem to you that A… Of course, this kind of seeming is intellectual, not sensory or introspective (or imaginative).”² Other philosophers have characterized them as “noninferential belief due neither to perception nor introspection”³ or alternatively as “applications of our ordinary capacities for judgment.”⁴

Philosophers may not agree on what, exactly, intuition is, but that doesn’t stop them from using it. “Intuitions often play the role that observation does in science – they are data that must be explained, confirmers or the falsifiers of theories,” Brian Talbot says.⁵ Typically, the way this works is that a philosopher challenges a theory by applying it to a real or hypothetical case and showing that it yields a result which offends his intuitions (and, he presumes, his readers’ as well).

For example, John Searle famously appealed to intuition to challenge the notion that a computer could ever understand language:

“Imagine a native English speaker who knows no Chinese locked in a room full of boxes of Chinese symbols (a data base) together with a book of instructions for manipulating the symbols (the program). Imagine that people outside the room send in other Chinese symbols which, unknown to the person in the room, are questions in Chinese (the input). And imagine that by following the instructions in the program the man in the room is able to pass out Chinese symbols which are correct answers to the questions (the output)… If the man in the room does not understand Chinese on the basis of implementing the appropriate program for understanding Chinese then neither does any other digital computer solely on that basis because no computer, qua computer, has anything the man does not have.”

Should we take Searle’s intuition that such a system would not constitute “understanding” as good evidence that it would not? Many critics of the Chinese Room argument argue that there is no reason to expect our intuitions about intelligence and understanding to be reliable.

Ethics leans especially heavily on appeals to intuition, with a whole school of ethicists (“intuitionists”) maintaining that a person can see the truth of general ethical principles not through reason, but because he “just sees without argument that they are and must be true.”⁶ Intuitions are also called upon to rebut ethical theories such as utilitarianism: maximizing overall utility would require you to kill one innocent person if, in so doing, you could harvest her organs and save five people in need of transplants. Such a conclusion is taken as a reductio ad absurdum, requiring utilitarianism to be either abandoned or radically revised – not because the conclusion is logically wrong, but because it strikes nearly everyone as intuitively wrong.

British philosopher G.E. Moore used intuition to argue that the existence of beauty is good irrespective of whether anyone ever gets to see and enjoy that beauty. Imagine two planets, he said, one full of stunning natural wonders – trees, sunsets, rivers, and so on – and the other full of filth. Now suppose that nobody will ever have the opportunity to glimpse either of those two worlds. Moore concluded, “Well, even so, supposing them quite apart from any possible contemplation by human beings; still, is it irrational to hold that it is better that the beautiful world should exist than the one which is ugly? Would it not be well, in any case, to do what we could to produce it rather than the other? Certainly I cannot help thinking that it would."⁷

Although similar appeals to intuition can be found throughout all the philosophical subfields, their validity as evidence has come under increasing scrutiny over the last two decades, from philosophers such as Hilary Kornblith, Robert Cummins, Stephen Stich, Jonathan Weinberg, and Jaakko Hintikka (links go to representative papers from each philosopher on this issue). The severity of their criticisms vary from Weinberg’s warning that “We simply do not know enough about how intuitions work,” to Cummins’ wholesale rejection of philosophical intuition as “epistemologically useless.”

One central concern for the critics is that a single question can inspire totally different, and mutually contradictory, intuitions in different people. Personally, I’ve often been amazed at how completely I disagree with what a philosopher claims is “intuitively” the case. For example, I disagree with Moore’s intuition that it would be better for a beautiful planet to exist than an ugly one even if there were no one around to see it. I can’t understand what the words “better” and “worse,” let alone “beautiful” and “ugly,” could possibly mean outside the domain of the experiences of conscious beings. I know I’m not alone in my disagreement with Moore, yet I’ve also talked to other well-respected professional philosophers who claim to share his intuition.

It’s common, in fact, for philosophers’ intuitions to diverge. If we want to take philosophers’ intuitions as reason to believe a proposition, then the existence of opposing intuitions leaves us in the uncomfortable position of having reason to believe both a proposition and its opposite. “We all know from even casual philosophical discussion that philosophers don’t always share one another’s intuitions,” Rutgers’ Alvin Goldman writes. Just to pick one of myriad examples, here is the eminent Hilary Putnam reacting to David Lewis’ appeals to metaphysical intuitions: “[F]ar from sharing these intuitions, I feel that I don’t even understand what they mean,” he complained.⁸ And Cummins and Weinberg both propose that the degree of disagreement on intuition may be understated by selection bias. “I suspect there is overall less agreement than standard philosophical practice presupposes, because having the ‘right’ intuitions is the entry ticket to various subareas of philosophy,” Weinberg says.

But the problem that intuitions are often not universally shared is overshadowed by another problem: even if an intuition is universally shared, that doesn’t mean it’s accurate. For in fact there are many universal intuitions that are demonstrably false. Consider our intuitive notions about math. It seems intuitively obvious that there must be more rational numbers than positive integers – because, after all, there are an infinite number of rational numbers between any two positive integers. Yet we can prove that set of rational numbers is the same size as the set of positive integers.

Our naïve beliefs about physics are no better. People who have not been taught otherwise typically assume that an object dropped out of a moving plane will fall straight down to earth, at exactly the same latitude and longitude from which it was dropped. What will actually happen is that, because the object begins its fall with the same forward momentum it had while it was on the plane, it will continue to travel forward, tracing out a curve as it falls and not a straight line. “Considering the inadequacies of ordinary physical intuitions, it is natural to wonder whether ordinary moral intuitions might be similarly inadequate,” Princeton’s Gilbert Harman has argued,⁹ and the same could be said for our intuitions about consciousness, metaphysics, and so on.

We can’t usually “check” the truth of our philosophical intuitions externally, with an experiment or a proof, the way we can in physics or math. But it’s not clear why we should expect intuitions to be true. If we have an innate tendency towards certain intuitive beliefs, it’s likely because they were useful to our ancestors. But there’s no reason to expect that the intuitions which were true in the world of our ancestors would also be true in other, unfamiliar contexts, such as objects being dropped from airplanes. (Or the emergence of consciousness from a complex system of unconscious components.)

And for some useful intuitions, such as moral ones, “truth” may have been beside the point. It’s not hard to see how moral intuitions in favor of fairness and generosity would have been crucial to the survival of our ancestors’ tribes, as would the intuition to condemn tribe members who betrayed those reciprocal norms. If we can account for the presence of these moral intuitions by the fact that they were useful, is there any reason left to hypothesize that they are also “true”? The same question could be asked of the moral intuitions which Jonathan Haidt has classified as “purity-based” – an aversion to incest, for example, would clearly have been beneficial to our ancestors. Since that fact alone suffices to explain the (widespread) presence of the “incest is morally wrong” intuition, why should we take that intuition as evidence that “incest is morally wrong” is true?

The still-young debate over intuition will likely continue to rage, especially since it’s intertwined with a rapidly growing body of cognitive and social psychological research examining where our intuitions come from and how they vary across time and place. I’ll be following it with interest – as a metaphilosophical question, its resolution bears on the work of literally every field of analytic philosophy, except perhaps logic. Can analytic philosophy survive without intuition? (If so, what would it look like?) And can the debate over the legitimacy of appeals to intuition be resolved with an appeal to intuition?

[Note: Massimo will publish a response to this friendly attack in a couple of days, as soon as he has figured out what his intuitions about Julia's arguments are.]
[Julia's Note: This was certainly meant as friendly, but not as an attack! I'm just explaining an interesting controversy in the field.]

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(1) My disagreement with Massimo in the show begins around 20:30 and seems, in retrospect, to be primarily due to my characterization of appeals to intuition as a “rule of inference” among philosophers. Massimo (I believe) took “rule of inference” to refer to a formal rule of deduction, and replied that philosophers do not disagree about formal logic, whereas I was using “rule of inference” to mean, basically, “philosophical methodology.”
(2) George Bealer (1996). A priori knowledge and the scope of philosophy.
(3) Sosa, E. (1998). ‘Minimal Intuition’, in M. De Paul and W. Ramsey (eds.), Rethinking Intuition, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
(4) Timothy Williamson (2004). Philosphical 'Intuitions' and Scepticism About Judgement.
(5) Talbot, Brian (2009). How to Use Intuitions in Philosophy.
(6) Harrison, J. (1967). “Ethical Objectivism,” In P. Edwards (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Vols. 3-4, pp. 71-75).
(7) Moore, G. E. (1903). Principia Ethica.
(8) Putnam, Hilary (1995). Renewing Philosophy.
(9) Harman, G. (1999). “Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the fundamental Attribution Error,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (New Series), 119: 316–31.

Massimo’s Picks

by Massimo Pigliucci

* Mind over matter? Doubtful, and there are nasty consequences when people think you are sick because you didn't try hard enough...

* The latest Rationally Speaking podcast: is anthropology a science?

* Once again, Jon Stewart nails Fox and O'Reilly exactly where they should be nailed.

* The problem with scientific quests for immortality, at least in the past.

* The unexamined life is not worth living. But hurry up, you only have a total of 1000 months to examine it.

* I don't like the way you think about math, so I'm going to pee on your office door!

* Glenn Beck targets CUNY professor. If something happens to her, is he going to be responsible?

* Philosophy Talk: do people in different cultures have different conceptions of self?

* A French intellectual writes about happiness, and even appears to be happy!

* Leave it to The Economist to argue that a reason to worry about income inequality is that the rich get stressed...

* Montaigne, empathy, and mirror neurons.

* Let's get this straight: it is a matter of fact that right and left rhetoric are not "just as bad."

* Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. So a new book examines the lives of 12 philosophers, beginning with Socrates.

Is a Humane Killing Ethical?

by Scott Berjot-Stafiej

My name is Scott Berjot-Stafiej. I am a volunteer for the Center for Inquiry—New York and general advocate of science, critical thinking, and assorted other buzz words with which the readers of RS most likely associate. Recently, my good friend Michael DeDora wrote an article called "Vegetarianism: moral stance or mere preference?" I deeply respect Michael and yet, as is the case with many of the people I respect, I sometimes disagree with him. The following article underlines that disagreement in regard to being a vegetarian.

Let me begin by stating that Michael and I agree on the vast majority of our ethical stances — vegetarianism included. Both of us view ethics to principally affect questions of well-being; both of us believe it is important for the ethical system by which we live to be internally consistent; and as vegetarians, we don’t view our ethical values to be human centric.

Like Michael, I see no shortage of reasons to be vegetarian. One may point to problems with the meat industry’s treatment of workers, negative environmental effects caused by meat production, or even arguments from an economic perspective. While these are potentially poignant and important points, they are not my primary motivation for vegetarianism. My motivation, and the argument to which I will restrict this article, is merely the value I believe we should attribute to many non-human animals (here on out, just animals).

I chose the title question of this article — Is Humane Killing Ethical? — because, according to Michael, one may promote animal quality of life and, in a humane way (i.e., with a minimum amount of mental or physical suffering), kill animals without substantial ethical qualms. I disagree.

Michael summarizes his argument as follows:

"Kant argued that every human being is deserving of respect (i.e., moral concern) because of its cognitive faculties — its autonomy, ability to reason, make free choices, and plan for the future. Vegetarians would have us expand this to non-human animals. But there is no reason to suppose that animals have such capacities, and I see little reason — judging from scientific evidence and philosophical thinking — to give them the benefit of the doubt."

My first disagreement comes from what I believe to be an unintentional over-simplification. What I assume Michael means with the above statement is that animals exhibit the mentioned capacities to a lesser degree than humans, not that they don't exhibit them at all. Virtually all of the traits described may be found to some degree in the animal kingdom: dolphins have been known to hoard trash at the bottom of a pool when there was the prospect of future reward for gathering it; certain fish have shown memory of a year or more and have used memory of negative experiences to develop ways of becoming less easy to catch; ravens make tools; rats solve puzzles; many mammals socialize, etc. While it is relatively certain that most animals have a far less defined sense of self, it is, I believe, scientifically uncontroversial to say that many animals have the ability to reason and make projections at least to a degree.

The next question, and where I believe the substance of our disagreement lies, is “how should we respond to a difference in degree for each of the cognitive faculties Kant (and Michael) views to be worthy of moral concern? To simplify our discussion, I’ve framed what I view Michael’s argument to be using the following symbols:

Reason (R) + Enjoyment/Happiness (E) + Suffering (S) + Projection (P) = Value of Life/Rights attributed to Life (V)

or

R+E+S+P = V

(Note: If readers feel like singing the RESP acronym in their heads to a certain tune by Aretha, they will not be alone.)

The first thing I’d like to point out about this ethical equation is that, in our current ethical system, different rights are attributed to an entity based upon each variable. Relatively few rights are attributed based upon R, for example. It’s not because I can think critically, that I can marry my wife or own a house. We don’t get out of our cars at intersections and solve rubric’s cubes to determine who has the right of way. However, we may grant someone the right to vote based upon their mental faculties (however low we may set the bar for those faculties). Each variable within the equation comes with different ethical considerations.

If we explore the variables of RESP by adjusting them in degree, we may see how our sentiments regarding the right in question — the right to life — are affected within our current ethical system. If someone, for example, has congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP — an inability to feel pain), do we put into question their right to make decisions about their life? No, we do not. To even raise the question would seem silly. A person with CIP has the same ownership of his/her life as a person without.

What about one’s ability or inclination to project into the future? Do we value the particularly ambitious or hopeful over those hedonists who live only for the moment? Again, no.

Adjusting or even removing the other two variables yields the same result. Thus, we find that the RESP equation is sufficient in determining many rights (i.e., quality of life, social freedoms, etc), but it is not effective in determining the right to life even in our current ethical system. Thus, it seems a new variable must be proposed to account for our current ethical values.

What I feel Michael has neglected in this ethical equation is a sentient being’s will to live. I will argue here that the mere desire to continue existing justifies us granting the right to do so. Since RESP cannot fully account for those we currently grant the right to live, it should not matter that a chicken has no capacity to reflect, “I’ll never see my eggs hatch” or “I’ll never teach my son to crow,” when being herded for slaughter. If a sentient creature has some range of experience, however different in scope or degree that experience may be from our own, we should attribute to it the right to continue that experience should it so desire (all else held constant).

That caveat — “all else held constant” — is important for reasons my wife quickly underlined to me. After I explained my argument, she commented, “what about cockroaches? They’re sentient to a degree; do you think we should kill them?… If you stop killing cockroaches I may, in fact, divorce you.” This point is salient not only for the health of my marriage, but also because the will to live is not the only consideration once we attempt to apply our ethics practically. While respecting the will to live would, in fact, grant cockroaches the right to life in theory, other ethical considerations such as hygiene and human communal well-being could arguably trump a cockroach’s life.

Similarly, if there is a starving village in some under-developed country, and a pig is the most cost and time effective means of solving that issue, then I would say turn on the grill and have a BBQ. The point of my argument is simply to demonstrate that animal life has an ethical value in itself, when divorced of other considerations. That value should, where possible, be weighed. This value alone, I would argue, is sufficient to claim that everyone in a developed nation should be a vegetarian.

Michael worries that “vegetarianism risks degenerating from a moral stance to the level of preference," but the base assumptions of any ethical system always boil down to a societal preference, no matter the justifications we assign them. We, as a society, prefer to live in a system that increases well-being and diminishes suffering; this is not a morally relativist stance. It is merely a recognition that the vast majority of people are referring to well-being when they make noises about ethics. In the same way, when we make similar noises in regard to the right to life, I argue that what we are really talking about is the value of a creature’s will to live.

We could arbitrarily limit our sphere of ethical consideration in regard to this question to the human species. However, I find no coherent reasons for doing so. If what we are valuing, in fact, is RESP and the will to live, as I argue we are, then we should recognize those values wherever we find them. Not doing so would be to ignore the long history of ethical progress.

Throughout the history of philosophy, we look out at the world and say, “that being is more like me than I have previously recognized, and thus, I should grant it rights in so much as it has the capacity to appreciate that right.” We extended equal rights to women and racial minorities; we have begun extending the right to marry to sexual minorities; etc. While I would not argue for the “desegregation of a barnyard” or “access to university level education for all schools of fish” — precisely because animals don’t have the capacity to appreciate such rights — awarding animals a basic right to live due to their inherent desire to do so, and not due to secondary considerations, seems to me the next expansion of our sphere of consideration.

In closing, I’d like to thank Massimo and Michael, for providing me the opportunity to disagree with them.

A new eugenics?

by Massimo Pigliucci

Eugenics was the idea, proposed initially by Francis Galton (Darwin’s cousin), that humanity should apply its ingenuity — and particularly the new science of heredity — to its evolutionary betterment. After all, we have put quite a bit of thought and effort into improving plants and animals, why not turn the same degree of attention to our own species?

Because we would be playing God, is a common objection. But arguably we have been playing god since we invented fire, and besides, there are no gods, so that argument isn’t going to fly. Still, it soon became apparent that eugenics was a horrible idea. Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th several states had passed eugenic-inspired laws in the United States, three of which were upheld by the Supreme Court, resulting in the forced sterilization of 60,000 people. In writing the US Supreme Court decision in 1927 (which passed with a stunning 8-1 vote), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. infamously said that “three generations of imbeciles are enough,” referring to the family tree of the plaintiff, Carrie Buck, who had been declared “feeble-minded” by the State of Virginia. The law allowing that state to enforce sterilization remained on the books until 1974.

And of course, we all know to what heights (so to speak) the Nazis brought the whole idea of eugenic betterment of the human race. Interestingly, and somewhat logically, even, some of the Nazis tried at Nuremberg actually cited the American laws on eugenics in their defense. It didn’t work.

There is much more to be said about the history of eugenics, of course, but this minimal background suffices to bring us to an interesting article I read recently, penned by Julian Savulescu for the Practical Ethics blog. Savulescu discusses an ongoing controversy in Germany about genetic testing of human embryos. The Leopoldina, Germany’s equivalent of the National Academy of Sciences, has recommended genetic testing of pre-implant embryos, to screen for serious and incurable defects. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has agreed to allow a parliamentary vote on this issue, but also said that she personally supports a ban on this type of testing. Her fear is that the testing would quickly lead to “designer babies,” i.e. to parents making choices about their unborn offspring based not on knowledge about serious disease, but simply because they happen to prefer a particular height or eye color.

Here is where Savulescu’s article becomes interesting. He infers from Merkel’s comments (and many similar others) that people tend to think of selecting traits like eye color as eugenics, while acting to avoid incurable disease is not considered eugenics. He argues that this is exactly wrong: eugenics, as he points out, means “well born,” so eugenicists have historically been concerned with eliminating traits that would harm society (Wendell Holmes’ “three generation of imbeciles”), not with simple aesthetic choices. As Savulescu puts it: “[eugenics] is selecting embryos which are better, in this context, have better lives. Being healthy rather than sick is ‘better.’ Having blond hair and blue eyes is not in any plausible sense ‘better,’ even if people mistakenly think so.”

He has a point, I think. And there is another, related aspect of discussions about eugenics that should be at the forefront of our consideration: what was particularly objectionable about American and Nazi early 20th century eugenics is that the state, not individuals, were to make decisions about who could reproduce and who couldn’t. Savulescu continues: “to grant procreative liberty is the only way to avoid the objectionable form of eugenics that the Nazis practiced.” In other words, it makes all the difference in the world if it is an individual couple who decides to have or not have a baby, or if it is the state that imposes a particular reproductive choice on its citizenry.

So far so good, but then Savulescu expands his argument to a point where I begin to feel somewhat uncomfortable. He says: “[procreative liberty] involves the freedom to choose a child with red hair or blond hair or no hair.” But wait a minute, Savulescu has suddenly sneaked into his argument for procreative liberty the assumption that all choices in this area are on the same level. But while it is hard to object to action aimed at avoiding devastating diseases, it is not quite so obvious to me what arguments favor the idea of designer babies. The first intervention can be justified, for instance, on consequentialist grounds because it reduces the pain and suffering of both the child and the parents. The second intervention is analogous to shopping for a new bag, or a new car, which means that it commodifies the act of conceiving a baby, thus degrading its importance. I’m not saying that that in itself is sufficient to make it illegal, but the ethics of it is different, and that difference cannot simply be swept under the broad rug of “procreative liberty.”

Let me make this clear: commodification isn’t the kind of thing that laws ought to regulate. If people want to buy more bags or cars, or prefer red to blue bags or cars, so be it, there is not much of an ethical issue involved, and certainly no legal one. But designing babies is to treat them as objects, not as human beings, and there are a couple of strong philosophical traditions in ethics that go squarely against that (I’m thinking, obviously, of Kant’s categorical imperative, as well as of virtue ethics; not sure what a consequentialist would say about this, probably she would remain neutral on the issue).

Commodification of human beings has historically produced all sorts of bad stuff, from slavery to exploitative prostitution, and arguably to war (after all, we are using our soldiers as means to gain access to power, resources, territory, etc.). Do we really want to expand commodification’s range to our next generation from the moment of conception?

And of course, there is the issue of access. Across-the-board “procreative liberty” of the type envisioned by Savulescu will cost money because it requires considerable resources. Genetic screening for major diseases is a good thing both for the individuals involved and for society at large, so it is easy to see how it should be paid for by public health care systems (not in the US, naturally, but certainly in Europe). But designing babies would obviously be entirely a matter of aesthetic choice, not supportable via public funding, and therefore accessible only to those parents who could afford it.

Now, imagine that these parents decide to purchase the ability to produce babies that have the type of characteristics that will make them more successful in society: taller, more handsome, blue eyed, blonde, more symmetrical, whatever. We have just created yet another way for the privileged to augment and pass their privileges to the next generation — in this case literally through their genes, not just as real estate or bank accounts. That would quickly lead to an even further divide between the haves and the have-nots, more inequality, more injustice, possibly, in the long run, even two different species (why not design your babies so that they can’t breed with certain types of undesirables, for instance?). Is that the sort of society that Savulescu is willing to envision in the name of his total procreative liberty? That begins to sounds like the libertarian version of the eugenic ideal, something potentially only slightly less nightmarish than the early 20th century original.

Vegetarianism: moral stance or mere preference?

by Michael De Dora

I became a vegetarian in early 2008 because, after a good deal of thought, I decided that eating non-human animals was immoral. I judged that using animals for the sake of pleasure was wrong, and I adopted the moral stance of vegetarianism. Nearly three years later, I am still a vegetarian. Yet the moral basis for my position has changed. Allow me to explain.

I made the switch from omnivore to vegetarian on or around Feb. 18, 2008. That day marked the largest ground beef recall in United States history, after the government learned that cattle unfit for consumption were entering the food supply. Undercover videos shot by the Humane Society showed factory workers kicking and prodding cows with forklifts to get them into the slaughterhouse. I did more research into how animals are treated at factory farms, and my conscience was shaken. How could we treat sentient animals in such ways? I quickly concluded that the factory farming system is inherently bad, as it treats animals as commodities not worthy of moral concern, and I became a vegetarian. I haven’t eaten meat since that day.

However, I now see a flaw in my reasoning. I equated the treatment of animals to the killing of animals. My concern was not the act of killing, but the suffering these animals would endure (and even that is a complex debate, of course, for not all non-human animals have the same capacity to feel pain). I never had a reason to oppose the consumption of animals per se, I only objected to treating them poorly.

Many vegetarians (and vegan, but let’s stick with one position) argue that we should not use animals as a means to some end, but as inherently important, worthy of certain rights and protections. This is a morsel from Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy. Kant argued that every human being is deserving of respect (i.e., moral concern) because of its cognitive faculties – its autonomy, ability to reason, make free choices, and plan for the future. Vegetarians would have us expand this to non-human animals. But there is no reason to suppose that animals have such capacities, and I see little reason – judging from scientific evidence and philosophical thinking – to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Here, then, is where we reach an interesting juncture: if there are no compelling ethical reasons to not kill animals for food, then vegetarianism risks degenerating from a moral stance to the level of preference.

Then again, there may be other compelling reasons in favor of the vegetarian stance. An immediate and undeniable one is the manner in which meat is typically produced, as it relates to the animals themselves.* In the U.S., factory-farmed animals are treated horribly. This matters because of the fact that animals are sentient – that is, they can feel or perceive pain. Thus, one could argue that eating meat is immoral given how the meat is produced. This would once again make vegetarianism a moral stance. This is now the basis of my vegetarianism. In fact, I have realized that it was all along.

Of course, vegetarians like myself can’t just sit out the meat-eating game and claim the highest moral ground. We also need to go out and make our moral case. The means by which humans produce meat for mass consumption are largely immoral, but they need not be so. And I think the key is to focus on improving how we “use” sentient animals. Simply put, we ought to treat the animals that we do eat well before they are killed. Not only do I think this is the correct moral argument to make, but it also seems that it would be more acceptable to society because it’s not really asking very much.

Yet, even if these changes were made, I think I still wouldn’t eat meat. That would no longer be because I think it is morally wrong – it would be because I simply don’t prefer it any longer.

* I specify that this consideration centers on animals because this could also lead to a discussion of the damage that mass meat production does to the environment. This is an important issue, but I didn’t have the time to expand on it in this essay. More here. But notice that we need not completely cut off meat production to make significant improvements in this area.

Michael’s Picks

by Michael De Dora

* Research suggests that while most Americans identify as “conservative,” they do not identify with conservative ideas.

* Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, we learn that the Vatican ordered Irish bishops to not report child abuse.

* This is an old essay, but I just discovered it: Austin Dacey argues that secularists are mistaken in supposing that as religion collapses, a new institution must arise to serve the same social functions as religion.

* Tea Partiers like to think they are torchbearers for the ideals of the Founding Fathers. Bill Maher sets the record straight.

* The editors at Newsweek write that an assault-weapons ban would not violate the Second Amendment.

*Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald details how the Obama administration has deceived the American public about WikiLeaks.

* More evidence that Sarah Palin’s political career is all but over.

* An amusing comic about string theory, from XKCD.

New 5-minute Philosopher video: What about metaphysics?

Simplicio: Hello, Hypatia. I would like to talk to you about something we left unexamined last time

Hypatia: Hi Simplicio. You mean when we were talking about how philosophy makes progress?

S: Exactly. You said that perhaps even metaphysics makes progress. But you did not sound very sure.

H: Yes, you picked up on something interesting there, Simplicio. You know, I think metaphysics is a difficult field of philosophy, and even philosophers themselves have strong opinions about its worth.

S: But isn't metaphysics one of the classic areas of inquiry in philosophy? Perhaps one of the most fundamental, from which much else philosophy stems?

H: Yes, historically that is certainly the case. The word itself comes from the fact that Aristotle wrote the books on what today we call metaphysics after he wrote those on physics. And as you know, "meta" simply means beyond. This is somewhat appropriate, because much of the discussion in modern times hinges on what exactly science has to say about metaphysics, and if the latter can be reduced to physics.

S: Okay, but before we get into that, can you remind me of some of the typical issues studied by metaphysicians?

H: Well, metaphysicians are concerned of course with the existence of god, and indeed with the very concept of existence. They are also interested in the difference between universals and particulars, in the idea of causation, and in the concept of time. They discuss free will, personal identity, and the difference between realism and anti-realism.

S: Wow, that is quite a lot. I seriously doubt we will be able into all of that today

H: Indeed, but perhaps we can pick on a few examples that show how metaphysics has interesting things to say, and where it can't do without a strong input from science.

S: Yes, that sounds like a reasonable approach. What do you think is the question in metaphysics where scientists have the most to contribute?

H: That would be the concept of time. It seems that these days one simply cannot seriously talk about time without getting into deep discussions of general relativity and perhaps even of quantum mechanics. Clearly, that is an area where physicists have a lot to say.

S: True, but don't you think that philosophers can also contribute? For instance, we can ask whether time travel is physically possible, which is again a question for physicists. But we can also investigate the logical puzzles that arise from time traveling, and perhaps even think about the coherence of the very idea of traveling in time.

H: That's right, Simplicio. For example, philosopher David Lewis published some interesting discussions about backward causation and causal loops.

S: Ah, yes, I remember! Backward causation happens for instance if I should punch a time traveler before he gets into his time machine and goes backward in time. The bruise from my punch would form before I actually punched him!

H: Yes, while an example of causal loop would be a situation where someone goes back in time to tell his younger self how to build a time machine, so that he can go back in time to tell his younger self how to build a time machine, and so on.

S: Wow, my head spins!

H: Exactly. Anyway, these are interesting discussions about the logic of time travel, and physicists and philosophers can get together for a better understanding of the underlying concept of time itself.

S: Okay, what about an example of metaphysics where science has relatively little to say?

H: Well, there are several, actually. My favorite candidates are the concept of causation, that of free will, and that of personal identity. Causation, for instance, is something that science takes for granted, but philosophers have come up with different theories of what it means.

S: Right, beginning with David Hume's analysis, we have the regularity theory as well as the counterfactual theory. My understanding is that these are accounts of causation, not theories in the scientific sense, right?

H: Yes, they are meant to investigate what we mean and how we think when we talk about causality. The same goes for theories of personal identity or free will.

S: This is interesting, because it gets to the root of the difference in the use of theory in science and philosophy, right?

H: Good point, Simplicio. In science a theory is an empirically verifiable set of statements about how the world works. In philosophy perhaps we should use the word "account" instead, to indicate that we are interested in how to think about certain concepts, as well as in the implications of certain ways of thinking about those concepts.

S: Well, it would be interesting to hang around and discuss free will or personal identity, but it's getting late. Until next time, Hypatia.

H: Always glad to see you, Simplicio.

Julia's Picks

by Julia Galef

* David Chalmers’ The Matrix as Metaphysics is a great read if you haven’t already discovered it – he makes a pretty convincing case that being a brain-in-a-vat wouldn’t actually be as big of a deal as we might have thought.

* A Philosopher of Religion Calls it Quits: An article I wrote for Religion Dispatches about philosopher Keith Parsons’ decision to abandon the field. Indirectly, it’s also about differing approaches to philosophy; are we asking questions of the form “Is X true?” or the form, “If X were true, what would follow?”

* A good article from the NY Times about the controversy over what statistical methods researchers should be using, stirred up by the recent publication – in a top psychology journal – of a paper purporting to provide evidence of ESP. 

* This is a great interview with Andrew Gelman, an excellent and insightful statistician and political scientist at Columbia (and a former professor of mine). He’s talking about the top five statistics-related books he would recommend to laypeople, and why.

* I asked my friend at Ask A Mathematician, Ask A Physicist whether it's possible to prove cats are waves. Answer: Yes.  Also from AAMAAP, the mathematician answers the question, “What is 0^0?” – a reminder that sometimes, there is no right answer in math. 

* Joshua Greene’s fMRI famously showed a difference between emotional versus cognitive moral judgments. But this well-argued paper by Selim Berker, The Normative Insignificance of Neuroscience, makes a good case for why the neuroscientific findings are irrelevant to moral philosophy.

Massimo’s Picks

by Massimo Pigliucci

* The dark side of oxytocin: hormone of love, but also hormone of tribal warfare.

* How do we know if a country is still stuck in the Middle Ages? Apparently, we look at what its lawyers do.

* The ESP debacle shows why Bayesian analysis is superior to frequentism.

* Even Scientific American sometimes manages to make little sense...

* Should members of Congress be more protected from gun violence than the rest of us?

* Once more Jon Stewart proves himself to be the sanest person in America.

* Do philosophers have a particularly hard time with love? Let's philosophize about it.

* The philosophy of the abortion debate, easy, right?

* Talk about a fact free America...

* Silverman, O'Reilly and Colbert: why humor is so much better than vitriol in making the case for atheism.

Political discourse must improve, but let’s not overreach

by Michael De Dora

In the aftermath of last week’s shooting in Tuscon, Arizona, some people have been quick to heap some degree of responsibility for the horrendous event on right wing leaders like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Sharron Angle, and Michelle Bachmann. A good number of Americans claim violence-charged rhetoric practiced by those four public figures is at least partially responsible for creating the vicious environment that led Jared Lee Loughner to critically wound Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, injure more than a dozen, and kill six others.

The harsh rhetoric (and symbolism) people speak of is exemplified by the following. Palin once told her supporters “Don’t Retreat; Reload!,” and also created a map with a gun target on Giffords’ district. Beck has consistently used war-like language. Angle agreed with an interviewer that there are “domestic enemies” in Congress and remarked that concerned citizens might turn to “Second Amendment remedies,” following that by stating that Harry Reid was the first person that needed to be taken out. And Bachmann has called for her supporters to be “armed and dangerous.”

We have no reason to believe that any of the above is causally linked to the shooting. This is not necessarily because evidence does not exist. We simply do not yet know, as the investigation is just getting underway (I suspect we will never know, if only because it is very difficult to directly link political rhetoric to a single crime). So, for the sake of this essay let’s consider that the rhetoric from Palin, Beck, Angle, and Bachmann, is not tied to the Giffords shooting whatsoever.** Let’s focus on the rhetoric and its impact on political discourse.

There are three main problems with the form of speech we are considering. First, while this rhetoric might not be directly linked to last week’s act, it certainly doesn’t do anything to lessen the chances of violence. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has aptly described it as “eliminationist rhetoric,” in which others are not merely wrong, but are no longer within our circle of moral concern. It is not hard to ponder the potential consequences of thinking this way. Even if the shooter was driven by some other motive, the aforementioned leaders have created a hyper-charged political environment that increases the chances of people engaging in violent political acts (though these acts might never happen due to a range of other factors, like being foiled by law enforcement). Research seems to bear this out.

Second, eliminationist rhetoric creates an environment where lawmakers and their families are scared for their lives. Politico.com reported via FBI documents that threats against members of Congress were up by 300 percent in the second half of 2010. In Arizona specifically, political leaders and judges were consistently getting death threats (read more here and here). This undoubtedly influences a politician’s ability to speak his or her mind about any issue, especially hot-button ones.

Which brings me to the third problem: this rhetoric is inherently dangerous in an open democracy that depends on citizens constantly being in dialogue. It does not create the atmosphere where we might have constructive political discourse that could help us solve some of our daunting problems.

We are not forced to accept this landscape. We can change things. We live in a sharply divided social climate, but we have more in common than we think (for more on this point, I suggest the introduction of this book). And while we might stoutly disagree with others, we can’t let ourselves so easily place fellow Americans – fellow human beings – outside the domain of our moral concern. We can state our disagreements over ideas without so much personal aggression. Indeed, we have no other choice if we truly desire to make a better country.

But let us not go too far and only be willing to accept a political discourse that is nice and neat. The problem with so-called eliminationist rhetoric is not that it is ugly; it is that it goes well beyond ugly. As Keith Olbermann said, “the (current) rhetoric has devolved and descended, past the ugly and past the threatening and past the fantastic and into the imminently murderous.” It would be one thing if the four people mentioned above were passionately engaged in serious and heated political debate about significant issues. Instead, they have stepped well beyond that confine.

Politics has always been, and will remain, both intense and partially if not mostly unpleasant. This is the very nature of political interactions. We bring our most important beliefs and values to the political square, and firmly promote and defend them in an effort to create the social and political order we want. In doing this, we must face people, principles and laws that we strongly disagree with. Sometimes we use insults and poor wording. Some of this is understandable, if not justified; some of it is neither. But this state of affairs is acceptable so long as we are still focused on discussing the matters that most influence our national life. Within that framework, we can accept some ugliness, and a few mistakes. The recent problems have emerged because people have often stepped well outside that framework.

Yet despite the fact that American politics is and will remain unpleasant, we can afford to turn a soft corner on language use. Words matter, and while our language can never be perfect, we need not be monsters. Recognition of this distinction would be the first step in the right direction. Even FOX News President Roger Ailes has told his employees to “tone it down.” Unfortunately, it took the murder of six people, and the injuries of more than a dozen others, to wake Americans from their zombie-like walk into the rhetorical abyss. Hopefully, we will awaken before it is too late.

** Still, Palin’s reaction to the shooting is telling. Immediately following the tragedy, the Web site hosting the gun scope map, www.takebackthe20.com, was taken down (as of this writing, it is still down).

Some further further thoughts about in-your-face atheism

by Dave Silverman, President, American Atheists

[A response to Massimo’s post about the recent AA ad campaign, following up on Ed Buckner’s response]

Here you go Massimo. A civil response to a civil attack.

Thanks for handling this issue as you did. You're a gentleman (who is sometimes wrong), and I respect that.

I want to start this article by thanking Massimo for his civil tone and frank honesty. The billboard about which he writes has generated a substantial amount of discussion, and many of its detractors have been anything but civil, instead devolving into ad hominem and personal attacks against American Atheists or me. It is my hope that the entire movement can learn how to attack ideas without attacking people from Massimo.

I also want to state categorically that Massimo is still counted as one of my friends, a friend of the organization (of which he is a Life Member), and a serious player in the movement. As we all know, atheists don’t always agree, and we will never progress without acceptance of our own diversity.

I have learned over the past three months (as American Atheists’ new President) that it is an unhealthy and wasteful use of my time to debate online. I write this reply for Massimo, but I hope all viewers will understand that I cannot get into a back-and-forth on this.

First and foremost, yes, all religions are scams. I find it difficult to grasp that there is really any disagreement here, since it is so blatant. They promise an afterlife (which we all know doesn’t exist) and further promise that adherence to some set of rules, which include giving money or power to the preaching church, will somehow improve that afterlife, which is of course a false promise. While some groups claim to be ‘nontheistic religions,’ we specify on our web site that these groups are not included in this assertion. Theistic religions are all scams.

It makes no difference if the purveyors know they are peddling falsehood – it’s still happening, but some scams are multi-leveled. For example, homeopathy is a scam, always, whether the so-called practitioner believes in it or not. Homeopathic practitioners are either liars or victims, and the same goes with clergy, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that promises are being made and never kept, and the buyers/believers are the victims.

But the billboard doesn’t go that far. It challenges people to consider whether THEY know they’re all scams, without making the global statement itself. The implication here is “we know it, and we dare you to admit you do, too,” and frankly, I think Massimo missed the mark here on what it says and the meaning it conveys. He is inferring what is not implied.

Massimo’s second and third assertions are really both the same – that this is just an overall bad strategy from multiple angles. I respectfully challenge this as complete supposition and assumption, unsupported by any facts.

The good news is I do have facts. I have the fact that our membership is up 20% since November. I have the fact that we’ve seen a surge in purchases and donations. I have a nearly sold-out regional convention – in Alabama. I have more new members in the local Alabama group than they’ve gotten in the past 9 months combined. I have literally hundreds of emails to American Atheists from people who our message has reached, from all over the world, who truly appreciate our efforts. So, quite frankly, the assertion that we are “driving people into the closet” is simply an assumption Massimo uses to support his conclusion that the strategy is faulty. That’s not factual. We are succeeding quite well.

But American Atheists is not only about itself, we are about the whole movement. The biggest, A-number-one problem in this whole movement is (say it with me now) awareness — the closeted or unconnected atheist’s ignorance of organized atheism. Please don’t make the mistake that we have eliminated this major issue! This is our immediate need, and our common target market, and the problem cannot be solved without using the press.

Press coverage of a billboard substantially increases the value proposition and must be considered when weighing its success. I have reports or mentions on O’Reilly, Colbert, Olbermann, and every major TV news outlet in Alabama as well as many in other states, all from this SCAMS billboard. If we include the first “You KNOW it’s a Myth” billboard, we can add every major news network several times over, including ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Colbert (again), Saturday Night Live, and national news in 6 other countries. This amounts to over $10M in total coverage, much of which hits our direct market, NOT including web logs and discussion boards ($millions more), all from two billboards!

All of this raises awareness, and benefits the whole movement. We won’t get that kind of play with the ‘nicey-nicey’ billboards. We will get it by pushing the envelope of political correctness by challenging the assertion that religion deserves respect, and that religious practice is anything but an exercise in self-delusion.

Let’s not get out of hand when we talk about our message. Massimo makes it sound like our motto is ‘American Atheists: F@ck your God.’ So please take a moment to reflect. Are we really being THAT offensive? No. We said religion is a scam, and the parishioners are its victims. That’s the message that got out. No profanity. No hate. No insults. Not negative, not raunchy, not even angry. I’m sorry, I cannot believe that our message drove anyone away that wasn’t already leaving.

So Massimo’s assertion that this is bad PR is simply wrong. We have all the numbers and active feedback we need to back it up – people do, in fact, know they’re all scams. He doesn’t like our campaign – but he is not the target market! The target markets are the closeted atheists and the press, with whom the billboards are home-runs, thank you very much.

This is not to say that Massimo’s comments have gone unheard. We can all see the nuances that separate us on a philosophical level, and we will take this into account as we continue forward.

However, the billboards and other ad campaigns will continue. American Atheists is never going to shy away from telling the blunt and honest truth about the greatest scam in history: religion.

Disagree if you wish, Massimo, that’s OK (remember, our principle difference here is “all” vs. “some” religions are scams). The next time we get together we’ll talk about the 99% of things on which we DO agree. First round is on me.

To everyone else, I urge you to donate your money and time to the movement, and get the organizations with which you most identify to start/ramp up their own ad campaigns. This movement is diverse, and we will never all agree on approach. Instead, we should delight in this diversity, and make it clear to newcomers that atheism has many facets and faces, many angles and attitudes. We are one movement with the same goal, but if we are to succeed (and we will), we must look outward for a fight.

I’ll be on the front lines.

Sincerely,

David Silverman

President, American Atheists, Inc