AnalPhilosopher

Everyone has seen Rodin's statue The Thinker. That may have been an appropriate symbol for another age, but it's not for ours. Today's statue would show a person talking on a cellphone. It would be called The Talker.

When I walk across campus at The University of Texas at Arlington, just about every other person I see, student or professor, has a hand to his or her ear. The eyes are cast downward, with an occasional glance upward to take one's bearings. What are these people talking about? To whom are they talking, and why?

I asked these questions of a colleague. He said the typical conversation would probably go like this:

A: "What's up?"
B: "Nothin'. Just got out of chem class. Where are you?"
A: "Headed for the dorm. Gotta study for a logic exam."
B: "Talk to you later."
A: "Bye."

The time spent yakking is time not spent thinking (or worse, spent not thinking). I fear for the future of thought. I really do. Television has already destroyed our attention spans. Now there are cellphones to deliver the coup de grace to reflection. We have become a society of zombies.

While I'm ranting about cellphones, has it occurred to anyone besides me that they enslave their users? If you're always in touch, you're always accessible. Marilyn Frye defines power as access to others. (See Marilyn Frye, "Some Reflections on Separatism and Power," in her The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory [Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press, 1983], 95-109, at 103.) If you're always accessible to others, no matter where you are, whom you're with, how you feel, what you're doing, or how important it is, you're beholden to them. They own you.

Please don't dismiss me as a Luddite. I'm no technophobe. But I'm no technophile, either. Technology isn't our master. It's our servant—as Thoreau long ago pointed out. I predict that cellphones will one day be seen for what they are: leashes. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be leashed to anyone.

How many times have you heard it said (see here, for example) that the United States is the only civilized (industrial, first- or second-world) nation with the death penalty? I have never understood the import of this statement. Either capital punishment is justified or it's not. If it is, then we should pay no attention to the fact that other nations disallow it. They are mistaken and misguided. If it isn't, then we should disallow it for that reason, not because other nations disallow it. Either way, it's irrelevant what other nations think, say, or do.

There are only two reasons I can think of for paying attention to what other nations do. The first is that uniformity is inherently good. But this sweeps far too broadly. I don't hear the people who make the claim about capital punishment say that we should adopt the diets, sports, sexual practices, mannerisms, and laws of other nations. How could we? There is no uniformity in these areas. The second is that the other nations may be on to something with respect to capital punishment. Perhaps we can learn from them. But this goes back to what I said earlier. We must ultimately decide for ourselves whether capital punishment is justified. This requires examining all the reasons for and against it. That most or all other nations have concluded that it's unjustified doesn't establish that it is unjustified.

The United States has always been a special place, morally speaking. We have a written constitution. We have a Bill of Rights. We assign a high value to the individual. What critics of the death penalty don't understand is that it is precisely because of the high value we assign to each individual that we execute convicted murderers. (For attempts to explain American exceptionalism that entirely miss this point, see here and here.) The value of a thing is expressed in its cost. The cost of taking innocent human life is death.

Don't dismiss this as sloganeering. The two greatest liberals in modern history, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), a deontologist and a consequentialist, a retributivist and a utilitarian, a German and an Englishman, a rationalist and an empiricist, defended capital punishment. I'm not suggesting that we should allow it because they supported it. That would be as fallacious as the argument that we should disallow it because Europeans reject it. I'm suggesting that the reason they supported it is their firm belief in the worth, dignity, and inviolability of the individual.

Eleven years ago today, Sophie was born in a horse barn in Red Oak, Texas. Her father was a purebred English Springer Spaniel and her mother a purebred Brittany Spaniel. We've been together for all but the first two months of her life. She is my friend, my protector, my confidant, and my faithful companion. We have rambled close to 10,000 miles together. Despite her advancing age and sore leg (on which she had surgery several years ago), she is alert and playful. Happy birthday, Sophie! I love you, stinker.

Conclusions about religious and moral matters are ones on which we are so obviously liable to bias because, whatever conclusions we reach (whether religious or atheistic), they have consequences about the sort of life which is worth living; and we may be reluctant to accept them because they clash with our current life-style.

(Richard Swinburne, Is There a God? [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996], 123)

David Brooks has a brilliant new column in The New York Times. It's great to see liberalism in decline. Liberals aren't taking it well, either, as Paul Krugman's increasingly hysterical semiweekly columns show. I would take issue with one aspect of Brooks's column, however. He fails to grasp that conservatives are not libertarians. There is nothing in conservatism, as a political philosophy, that rules out costly governmental programs. Conservatives are not necessarily advocates of minimal government. What we have seen since Ronald Reagan was elected is a coalition of conservatives and libertarians. They worked together to acquire and solidify power. But now that the movement has succeeded, we will begin to see the philosophies split. Libertarians will press for smaller, leaner government; conservatives will tax and spend as necessary to achieve their substantive aims. Here is philosopher Roger Scruton:

It seems, then, that the conservative attitude in fiscal matters will be opposed to the attempt to bend taxation permanently and directly to some external aim of redistribution. This does not mean that conservative politicians will subscribe to the view that the only legitimate use of tax is to secure the revenues of the state: they too will be prepared, when necessary, to use it as an instrument of social control. But they will do so only rarely, and in the interests of continuity rather than social revolution. (Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism, rev. 3d ed. [South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2002], 102)

Making the lives of the elderly secure promotes continuity. It is a way of keeping faith and of linking generations. The new Medicare program is expensive, but that, in itself, does not make it nonconservative.

Andrew Sullivan is one of my favorite commentators. I love his writing on the war in Iraq—and I've told him so. But he has a blind spot when it comes to homosexual marriage. Today, for example (see here), he criticizes Princeton philosopher Robert P. George, who wrote a column about the recent Massachusetts homosexual-marriage case. George made a point that I made the other day in this blog, namely, that the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the United States Constitution (Article IV, Section 1) will be used to make all states recognize homosexual marriages entered into in any state.

Sullivan's reply to George, like his e-mailed reply to me, is dismissive, condescending, and dogmatic. He simply asserts that the Full Faith and Credit Clause "never has" been applied to marriage. But what does this show? Does it follow from the fact that something hasn't been done that it can't or won't be done, or even that it's unlikely to be done? And shouldn't Sullivan address the question why it hasn't been done? Perhaps it hasn't been done because nobody asked that it be done. Courts don't go around interpreting and applying constitutional provisions without being asked to do so by a litigant!

What makes Sullivan's dismissive remarks so ludicrous is that he is not a lawyer. George is. I am. The New Jersey judge I quoted the other day is. So here we have a nonlawyer making a confident legal judgment that at least three legal specialists reject. That alone should tell you something. I argued in a recent blog entry that Sullivan can show his good faith by supporting a constitutional amendment to the effect that the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not apply to homosexual marriage. If he is so confident that the Clause doesn't apply, or will never be applied, he should have no problem with this amendment. All it does is ensure that what he thinks won't happen doesn't happen.

If I were cynical (or more cynical than I am), I'd say that Sullivan has a hidden agenda. He wants all states to be forced by the Full Faith and Credit Clause to recognize homosexual marriages entered into in places such as Massachusetts. He wants a judicial coup along the lines of Roe v. Wade, which is the consummate anti-federalist case. He wants to deny citizens of the various states the right to make up their own minds, democratically, about whether to allow homosexuals to marry. Come clean, Andrew. Your dogmatism is showing.

Self-deprecating humor is endearing, so let me tell a joke about philosophy. I heard it from Daniel Wikler many years ago when he gave a lecture at The University of Arizona.

A boy in Wisconsin had arranged his first date. He was a nervous wreck. He liked the girl a lot and didn't want to lose her. What worried him is that he would clam up during the date, making her think he was boring. So he asked his father for advice. "Don't worry, son," said the father. "If you just remember the three 'Fs'—food, family, and philosophy—you'll never be at a loss for words.

"Thanks, dad!" said the son. Sure enough, while at dinner with his date, the son clammed up. Then he remembered his father's advice. He thought for a second and looked up brightly. "Do you like potato sausage?" he asked. The girl, looking bored, said no. "Hmm," he thought. Family. He furrowed his brow, looked up, and asked, "Do you have a brother?" "No," she said with a sigh. "This isn't going well," thought the boy. "What's that third 'F'?" Ah yes, philosophy. After thinking for a moment, he blurted, "If you had a brother, would he like potato sausage?"

Faithful readers of this blog know that one of my long-standing interests is the moral status of nonhuman animals. I've posted entries on that topic in this blog. From now on, most of my blogging on animal ethics will be in my communal blog, Animal Ethics. There is a permanent link to it on the left of this page, so please click it regularly to see what's new. I just wrote a longish entry in which I list some of the issues I'd like to discuss with my fellow bloggers. Speaking of whom, there are now three of us: Mylan Engel Jr, Angus Taylor, and me. I'm awaiting word from three or four others. I think six or eight bloggers would be a good number, but three or four will do. I'm not aware of any other site that is devoted to the philosophical dimension of human interactions with animals. If you know of such a site, please let me know. It would be nice to cross-link with it.

[T]o say that television is entertaining is merely banal. Such a fact is hardly threatening to a culture, not even worth writing a book about. It may even be a reason for rejoicing. Life, as we like to say, is not a highway strewn with flowers. The sight of a few blossoms here and there may make our journey a trifle more endurable. The Lapps undoubtedly thought so. We may surmise that the ninety million Americans who watch television every night also think so. But what I am claiming here is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience. Our television set keeps us in constant communion with the world, but it does so with a face whose smiling countenance is unalterable. The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining, which is another issue altogether.

(Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business [New York: Penguin Books, 1986 (1985)], 87)

I ran 20.8 miles this morning at White Rock Lake in Dallas. The sunrise was spectacular. Birds were everywhere, doing their bird thing. The temperature was in the mid-thirties at the start but had climbed into the upper fifties or low sixties by the finish. This evening I do the Jingle Bell 5K race in downtown Fort Worth. In between, I get to eat, nap, eat some more, watch a little football, and, most importantly, blog. Blogito ergo sum! I hope all of you are having a safe, enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday, as Sophie, Shelbie, and I are.

Let's get serious. Have you heard critics of the war in Iraq describe it as a "war of choice" as opposed to a "war of necessity"? What does this mean, and why is it a criticism?

A war of necessity is presumably a war that we have no choice but to wage. This would include, at a minimum, wars of self-defense, but also what lawyers (international and otherwise) call "anticipatory self-defense." It's interesting that some of the people who insist that only a war of self-defense is justified defend women who kill their abusive husbands by stealth. You can't have it both ways. Either it's sometimes permissible to pre-emptively attack an assailant or it's not. No reasonable person can doubt that Saddam Hussein had evil intentions toward the United States, or that he would have attacked us had he been able to. The links between Hussein and terrorists are becoming increasingly clear, although one suspects that no amount of evidence to that effect will ever persuade the critics.

Let's ignore self-defense for the time being. I want to explore (at least tentatively) the concept of a war of necessity and its contrast, a war of choice. A war of choice is a war that is unnecessary. But unnecessary given what? Judgments of necessity always presuppose an end or goal. If I say that it's necessary for you to take the Law School Admission Test, I assume (perhaps because you have told me as much) that your goal is to attend law school. Without the goal, the test—a means to the goal—is unnecessary. Whenever someone says that X is necessary (or unnecessary), it makes sense to ask, "Given what end?" A thing can be necessary for me, given my ends, but not for you, given yours.

So we need to ask why the war in Iraq was unnecessary, for saying that it's unnecessary is saying that it subserves no proper end. It was certainly necessary if the Iraqi people were to be liberated from a brutal dictatorial regime—i.e., if we had liberation as our end. No reasonable person thinks that anything would have changed in this regard if the United States hadn't invaded Iraq. Even after Saddam Hussein died, his sons (one or both of them) would have taken over, continuing the reign of terror for decades to come. They had been groomed for precisely this role. They were mass-murderers, like their father.

People who say that the war in Iraq was unnecessary are therefore saying that the end of liberating the Iraqi people was not important or worthy. But how can one say this without disregarding or discounting their interests? Those who say this must be counting only the interests of Americans. Given our interests, they seem to be saying, the war was unnecessary. This, with all due respect, is selfishness. But leave that aside. Is it so clear that American interests weren't implicated? Saddam Hussein had a nuclear program. Nobody disputes that. Perhaps it had been dismantled by the time of the invasion, but he had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to revive it at any time. Do the critics think that a world in which Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapon (or other weapons of mass destruction) would not threaten American interests?

It's all very puzzling. Those who supported the war in Iraq, such as me, should not deny that it was a war of choice. That plays into the critics' hands. It was a war of choice, and the choice was a good one for all concerned: for Americans (present and future), for Iraqis (present and future), and for other residents of the Middle East. (Okay, it wasn't such a good choice for Saddam Hussein and his Baathist thugs.) Some of us thank goodness that we have a president with backbone, a moral compass, and a willingness to risk much to achieve great things. Yes, some Americans have paid the ultimate price during the war, and more will surely die before order is restored; but that has always been the case when much was at stake. Americans have never shied away from sacrifice in a noble cause.

As for Europeans—the French, the Germans, the Belgians—they should thank their lucky stars that they have George W. Bush and tens of thousands of brave American soldiers to protect them. A nuclear-armed Iraq would have made all of their lives fearful. Perhaps, now that I think of it, that would be a good thing; it might remind them that evil knows only one language: force. It might make them less squeamish. One would think that this, after all, was the lesson of the twentieth century: that weakness, squeamishness, and vacillation abet and encourage violence. Americans, who have already saved the world once, know better.

Two hours ago, in a fit of what I hope is not baseless enthusiasm, I created a new blog, Animal Ethics. This one will be communal. Or so I hope. I have invited a few fellow philosophers (alliteration!) to come aboard. As I explain on the blog (see here), I hope it becomes a clearinghouse for information and argumentation about the moral status of nonhuman animals. Please visit the site, send comments and suggestions, and spread the word. Thank you.

Ranting, in the sense of using bombastic language or preaching noisily, is fun. I do it. Brian Leiter does it. Andrew Sullivan does it. Everyone does it. Even intellectuals do it. Blogging, I am afraid, lends itself to ranting. But is there anything more to ranting than fun? Does it have any redeeming intellectual or social value?

I say no. Who cares what Brian Leiter thinks or values? Seriously. I like Brian. He's intelligent; he's witty; he's a good writer; and he has important things to say about legal theory. I learn from him. But when he expresses his opinions about political or moral matters, why should I attend to them? This goes for my opinions as well. Why should he or anyone else give a damn what I think or say?

I hate to break it to you, but I'm not your moral authority. I'm nobody's moral authority. I don't believe in moral authorities. The mere fact that I believe this or value that gives nobody else any reason to believe or value it. I'm no wiser than anyone else, despite my years of study. If anything, I'm less wise because of my years of study. My philosophical training equips me to pay attention to certain things, such as consistency and ambiguity, but it doesn't inflate or enlarge my values. Brian Leiter and I have similar training—law and philosophy—but we disagree about fundamental evaluative matters. He's on the political left and I'm on the right. (One difference may be that I used to be on the left. I doubt that Brian was ever on the right, although he probably will be one day, as he matures and gains experience.) Even if training in a field such as philosophy made one wise, how would one choose between people with the same training (such as Brian and me) who have different views and values?

If blogging is to survive as anything more than self-indulgent ranting, it must engage readers. It must seek to persuade them, rationally. But it can do this only if it begins where they are, with the beliefs and values they already have (or are presumed to have). Suppose you think the war in Iraq unjustified, but I think it justified. One thing we might do is fling our opinions at each other. I say the war is justified. You say it's not. I repeat what I said, only louder. You repeat what you said, louder still. I repeat what I said, this time with an implication that you're stupid. You repeat what you said, this time with an implication that I'm a shill for the Bush administration.

What does this accomplish? Precisely nothing. What I must do, if I aim to persuade you, is show you that your belief in the unjustifiedness of the war conflicts with other of your beliefs. I must show you that certain of your other beliefs (or principles) commit you to believing that the war is justified. You, by the same token, must show me that certain of my other beliefs (or principles) commit me to believing that the war is unjustified. This process requires patience, intelligence, understanding, and civility. I must talk with you (or simply listen to you) long enough to understand your belief structure. I must find out which of your beliefs are basic and which derivative. I must elicit your principles, your standards of evidence, and so forth. You, in turn, must elicit these items from me.

There is no guarantee that this process will result in agreement. We may find, after a long discussion (in which, among other things, we resolve factual disputes), that we have divergent basic values. But unless we try to reach agreement, we will never know whether this is so. This is why it is so frustrating, for a philosopher, to observe contemporary political debate (especially contemporary televised political debate, wherein thinking appears to be disallowed). Almost no attempt is made by the person arguing to ascertain the beliefs or values of his or her interlocutors. Each party to the "debate" ends up shouting at the other (or ranting). It is all very sad. Actually, it's worse than sad; it's tragic. We can and should do better. Philosophers—progeny of the great Socrates—can and should lead the way.

[T]here are two central goals of an undergraduate college education in the liberal arts: to produce students who can reason and argue for themselves, conducting a Socratically "examined life," and also to produce students who are, to use the old Stoic term, "citizens of the entire world."

The first idea speaks for itself. It demands the searching criticism of traditional belief, conducted in an atmosphere of open debate and genuine receptivity. Indeed, the Socratic commitment to the life of reason not only does not require reverence for traditional norms, it requires their most vigilant scrutiny, and a determined openness to new argument and new evidence. And far from requiring the abandonment of logic and standards of rigor, as some conservatives charge, this critical posture of the mind rests precisely upon logic and a respect for standards of argumentation—a point that some anti-traditionalists on the left have not always sufficiently grasped.

The second idea holds that we live in a world that is complex and various, that has a history of still greater complexity—and that in order to be good citizens in such a world, we must make ourselves competent in that complexity, able to grapple with that variety and historical many-sidedness. We will need to know, in other words, whatever is required in order to converse and to argue intelligently with people who come from ways of life other than our own. We will also need to be able to convey our respect for our fellow world-citizens by taking them and their lives seriously. Our students will go out to take many roles in this world, participating in discussions where progress can be made only with information, sensitivity, and sound argument. They must be pedagogically prepared for this, both by learning many things and by coming to know what they don't know.

(Martha Nussbaum, "The Softness of Reason: A Classical Case for Gay Studies," The New Republic: A Journal of Politics and the Arts 207 [13/20 July 1992]: 26-35, at 30)

Mylan Engel Jr is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. We met in graduate school at The University of Arizona in the mid-1980s. A few years ago, to my surprise, Mylan, who works primarily in epistemology, published an essay on the moral status of nonhuman animals, "The Immorality of Eating Meat." I had no idea that he was interested in the topic. I do not exaggerate when I say that this essay is the best thing I have ever read on the moral status of nonhuman animals. Mylan just gave me permission to upload it to my university webspace and provide a permanent, prominent link to it on my blog. (See the green area to the left.) The file is large, so please give it a few seconds to load after you click the link. Be forewarned: If you read the essay—and I hope you do—you will become a vegetarian. Either that or you will have to live with the awful knowledge that you are not living up to your moral principles.

AnalPhilosopher is getting about 150 site visits a day. The number was higher (about 200 a day) after the publication of my latest column on Tech Central Station, so I assume I'll get another spike with the next column. I wish I had a better feel for my audience. I get e-mail, of course, but to date I haven't put a comments section on my blog. What's strange about a blog is that you never know who's reading it. But if you don't know who's reading it, how do you know how to pitch it or what to write about? What can I reasonably assume about the intelligence, education, values, and interests of my readers? I thought I should explain what I take myself to be doing.

Some of my readers are highly educated professionals, such as my philosophical colleagues. Just as I enjoy reading the daily posts of Brian Leiter and Andrew Sullivan (see their links at the left of this page), I assume (and hope!) that my fellow philosophers—and scholars in related areas, such as law—enjoy reading my posts. Maybe I'm delusional (megalomaniacal), but that's my hope. I've received feedback (almost all positive, in case you're wondering) from colleagues far and wide. But I don't want the blog to be accessible only to those who already have professional training, in or out of philosophy. I want to reach out to those who are interested in philosophical topics or a philosopher's "take" on things but haven't done any formal study in the area. I want to show the power and promise of thinking philosophically (which is to say rigorously) about various issues.

For example, I've written several blog entries on the moral status of nonhuman animals. Nothing I've written to this point on that topic would be new to a philosopher who works in this area; but the feedback I've received suggests that some people have never even thought about such matters, much less thought through them systematically. Many readers have said that they find my posts interesting, provocative, and challenging. Others probably find them frustrating, disappointing, and infuriating. Some readers ask for book recommendations. I like that. I'm a teacher at heart, and I love explaining things. The best teachers teach people how to teach themselves.

When you think about it, how could someone write for an audience as diverse as my family members (most of whom are in Michigan), my far-flung friends (or ex-friends), my athletic buddies, my philosophical colleagues, colleagues in other disciplines, my students (yes, I gave them my blog address), various acquaintances (including some I "met" online), and strangers? It's laughable. But maybe I can find that happy middle ground wherein I challenge some readers while giving professionals and specialists a new way to look at something familiar. In the end, I must admit, this blog is a self-indulgence. I love to write, and I'm interested in everything. Okay, not opera. I hope that you—the individual reading this—find at least some of what I say interesting. Please spread the word.

Thanks to all of you for reading my blog. I enjoy writing in it every day. I am constantly making notes about things to discuss. Feel free to send e-mail to me if you have comments, questions, or suggestions. My address is listed to the left of this entry, in the green area. It's not clickable and I had to leave the "at" symbol out to keep spammers from "harvesting" my e-mail address. Just type the address and peck away. I respond to all e-mails, although sometimes not right away. (Remember: I'm anal-retentive. E-mail must be processed in the order in which it was received.)

A few weeks ago, I published a column on Tech Central Station entitled "The Natural History of Bush-Hating." I used New York Times columnist Paul Krugman as my example of someone who hates President Bush, and listed what I consider four signs of hatred. I said in my column that Krugman could weaken the inference to hatred if he would, from time to time, say something positive about the president. Today, when I saw Krugman's title, "The Good News," and read his first sentence, I thought we might get such a column. Alas, it turns out to be another Bush-bashing piece. Instead of weakening the inference to hatred, it strengthens it.

Wedding, n. A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become supportable.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

For better or for worse (I think for worse, but that's another post), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the face of the animal-liberation movement. Another group that makes headlines is the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). Animal liberationists such as me are often dismayed—and sometimes outraged—by the tactics used (encouraged, condoned, tolerated) by these organizations. One such tactic is violence (understood as intentional or reckless damage to person or property). Is violence ever justified as a means to protecting animals?

As is so often the case, the answer is, "It depends." It depends, specifically, on one's theoretical outlook. Let me mark out the ground. Act-consequentialists evaluate actions on a case-by-case basis. That act is right (they say) that maximizes overall good, taking all interests into account and counting all individuals (including the agent, or person performing the action) equally. That an act is of a certain type, such as "lie," "broken promise," "killing the innocent," or "torture," is irrelevant. That is to say, there is no presumption either for or against the doing of any particular type of act. Only the consequences of concrete (token) actions matter.

Deontologists deny this thesis. Deontologists say that the type of act one performs has (or can have) moral significance. Certain acts are wrong in themselves, independently of their consequences. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), for example, held that lying, qua lying, is wrong. But it's not always noticed that there are two types of deontologist. Some are absolutists. They say that no amount of good consequences brought about or bad consequences prevented can justify committing one of the prohibited acts. Kant was an absolutist deontologist. He held that one must not lie, period. Lying is always and everywhere wrong, whatever the circumstances and whatever the consequences. (Do you see why the adjective "absolutist" is appropriate?)

Other deontologists are nonabsolutists. Let's call them "moderates," since they do not lie at one of the extremes of the theoretical spectrum. Moderate deontologists are deontologists, because they think that certain act-types are wrong in themselves, but they believe that acts of those types may be performed if enough good will be produced (or bad prevented) as a result.

Think in terms of thresholds. Absolutist deontologists have an infinitely high threshold. Nothing can reach it. Act-consequentialists have no threshold. There is no presumption against any type of act. Moderate deontologists have a finite threshold. It gets complicated here, because moderate deontologists can have different thresholds. One moderate deontologist may have a low threshold that allows lying if and only if it produces X units of good (or prevents X units of bad). Another may have a higher threshold, one that allows lying if and only if it produces X+10 units of good (or prevents X+10 units of bad). If you want to think numerically, the absolutist deontologist is at 100 (on a scale of 0 to 100); the act-consequentialist is at 0; and moderate deontologists fill the gap between 1 and 99. If someone tells me that he or she is a deontologist, I don't know much. He or she could be a weak moderate deontologist, and hence very close to the act-consequentialist, or an absolutist deontologist—or anything in between.

In case you're wondering whether anyone these days is a deontologist, the answer is yes. Emphatically yes. All of the following contemporary moral philosophers (some of them, alas, recently deceased) are deontologists in my sense (either absolutist or moderate): John Rawls, Thomas Nagel, Robert Nozick, Ronald Dworkin, Charles Fried, G. E. M. Anscombe, Bernard Williams, Alan Donagan, and John Finnis. These are among the most highly regarded of contemporary philosophers. Nor should one think that deontology is incompatible with atheism. Nagel is an atheist. Anscombe and Finnis are theists. Deontology has nothing to do with belief in a supernatural being.

Let us return to the question whether violence is ever a morally permissible tactic. The act-consequentialist will not rule it out. If an act of violence is the act, of all those available to the agent, that maximizes overall good, then it is the right thing to do. The end justifies the means. Everyone has heard this slogan. Now you know who subscribes to it and lives by it: act-consequentialists. Think about what the slogan means. It means that no path (means) to the end of maximizing overall good is ruled out. If torture is necessary to maximize overall good, then torture is justified. If lying is necessary to maximize overall good, then lying is justified. No means are forbidden. That an act is of a particular type (a lie, a broken promise, a killing of the innocent, a case of torture) is of no moment, morally speaking.

The absolutist deontologist rules out violence categorically. No amount of good can justify it. Evil may not be done that good may come. Moderate deontologists endorse a presumption against violence, but they differ, as we saw, in how strong the presumption is. Those who are close to absolutist deontologists will require that the violent act produce a great deal of good, or prevent a great deal of bad, in order to be justified. If the only way to save 10,000 innocent people is by blowing up a building that contains one innocent person, it might be justified, but not, say, if only ten people will be saved by killing the one. A moderate deontologist with a weak presumption (i.e., a low threshold) might allow the killing of one to save ten. An act-consequentialist would allow the killing of one to save two, or even the killing of one to save one, if the one saved has a longer expected lifespan (or a greater capacity for happiness) than the one killed. See the difference?

What this shows is that what one thinks about the moral permissibility of violence depends on one's theoretical outlook. I would be remiss if I ended the post here, because I have not done justice to act-consequentialism. I said that the act-consequentialist believes that the end justifies the means. But even act-consequentialists can adopt rules of thumb. Experience shows that acts of violence do less good than they are expected or hoped to do by those who perpetrate them. They also do more bad. And most people abhor violence, so any individual or group who is interested in social change would do well to use it only as a last resort, to avoid alienating or antagonizing those who are sympathetic to the group's ends. There are almost always other, more effective means to the end of social change.

Peter Singer, the famed (but in some quarters reviled) author of Animal Liberation (New York: Avon Books, 1975), which has been called the bible of the animal-liberation movement, believes that violence should be a last resort. He won't rule it out categorically, because he's an act-consequentialist, but he thinks that it is rarely (if ever) justified. Here is his discussion of violence in the second edition of Animal Liberation (New York: The New York Review of Books, 1990):

It would be a tragic mistake if even a small section of the Animal Liberation movement were to attempt to achieve its objectives by hurting people. Some believe that people who make animals suffer deserve to have suffering inflicted upon them. I don't believe in vengeance; but even if I did, it would be a damaging distraction from our task of stopping the suffering. To do that, we must change the minds of reasonable people in our society. We may be convinced that a person who is abusing animals is entirely callous and insensitive; but we lower ourselves to that level if we physically harm or threaten physical harm to that person. Violence can only breed more violence—a cliché, but one that can be seen to be tragically true in half a dozen conflicts around the world. The strength of the case for Animal Liberation is its ethical commitment; we occupy the moral high ground and to abandon it is to play into the hands of those who oppose us. (pages xii-xiii)

Singer is a wise man.

Note that in a particular case, each of the moral theorists I have described can condemn violence. Suppose someone kills the proprietor of a chicken farm in order to get publicity for the cause of animal liberation. The act-consequentialist would condemn it for the reasons Singer gives: It is counterproductive; it is not the act, of all those available to the agent, that maximizes overall good. The absolutist deontologist would condemn it because it's a case of killing the innocent (a species of violence), and no amount of good consequences produced or bad consequences prevented can justify killing the innocent. (Don't protest that the chicken farmer isn't innocent. He may not be to you, but he is to the absolutist deontologist, and we're talking right now about how the absolutist deontologist reasons about violence.) The moderate deontologist would condemn it because the amount of good consequences produced or bad consequences prevented are insufficient to justify it. This shows that theories can converge, or overlap. That they sometimes converge, however, doesn't make them the same theory. All it takes is one case of divergence to show this, and there are, take my word for it, many cases of divergence.

[P]hilosophy can no more show a man what he should attach importance to than geometry can show a man where he should stand.

(Peter Winch, Moral Integrity, Inaugural Lecture in the Chair of Philosophy Delivered at King's College London 9 May 1968 [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968], 25)

An acquaintance/friend from Down Under forwarded a message he received. I'm not sure whether the message was in response to one of my blog entries or to the acquaintance/friend's commentary on it. The message-writer asked (I paraphrase) why anyone would care one iota about turkeys (and presumably other nonhuman animals). That's a good question. We know, first of all, that different people care about—or value—different things. Some people care about sports; some don't. Some people care about their mother tongue; some don't. Some people care about amassing wealth; some don't. Some people care about animals; some don't.

Would it make sense to say to someone who doesn't care about X, "You should care about X"? I believe it does. But the "should" is hypothetical, not categorical (in Immanuel Kant's sense). If someone tells me that he or she doesn't care about nonhuman animals, I will say, "You should care." What I mean is that, given other things the person values, it's irrational not to care about nonhuman animals. I suspect that the person who says he doesn't care about turkeys cares about pain. His pain. The pain of his children. The pain of other humans. But why care about pain? Isn't it because pain is intrinsically bad (i.e., bad in and of itself)? Pain is pain, and therefore bad, whoever experiences it. Why should it matter whether the being who experiences the pain comes in a human package or a nonhuman package? And if pain is bad, then one must have a powerful reason to inflict it. Liking the taste of animal flesh is not a powerful reason. My liking the taste of human flesh would not justify raising and killing humans. I believe there's an inconsistency in this person's beliefs. Either he doesn't know it or he knows but doesn't care.

As I said in an earlier post, not everyone has the time or training to identify inconsistencies. It's conceivable (barely) that someone not care about having inconsistent beliefs, but most people do care. Inconsistent beliefs create an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance. Also, anyone who cares about truth, which is essential to knowledge, which is intrinsically as well as instrumentally good, should care about inconsistency, because an inconsistent set of beliefs must have at least one false member. Consistency may not be sufficient for truth (there can be a consistent set of false beliefs), but it's necessary (there can't be an inconsistent set of true beliefs). A person who cares about truth, therefore, should care about consistency. Note the hypothetical nature of this imperative. If you care about truth, then you should care about consistency.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the message-writer cannot be brought to care about turkeys or other nonhuman animals. Does it follow that anything may be done to them? Of course not. I don't much care for people (I admit it; I'm a misanthrope, like Arthur Schopenhauer), but I have a moral obligation not to harm them, and maybe an obligation to prevent harm to them if I am in a position to do so with little or no cost to myself. Caring is rooted in love; justice is rooted in respect. One can respect someone without loving him or her. This is why it is scurrilous to describe Peter Singer and other animal liberationists as "animal-lovers." Singer's argument is not rooted in love for animals; nor can anything be inferred from it about his attitude toward animals. For all we know, he has no fondness for animals. His argument is rooted in respect for them. We have obligations to animals. We can wrong them. They have valid claims on us. That they cannot make demands on us (i.e., assert their claims) is irrelevant. Babies can't make demands on us.

So even if the message-writer doesn't care about turkeys, he can have duties to them. Where do these duties come from? His own principles (as I said earlier). I believe that if he thinks things through carefully, without bias or prejudice, he will see that he thinks it is wrong to inflict pain. He may try to cabin this judgment, making it applicable only to humans; but now he generates an inconsistency. He will have to explain why only certain pains (those of humans) count. I have never heard a convincing argument to the effect that being human (a member of homo sapiens) is a morally significant property. How could it be? Homo sapiens is a biological construct, not a moral category.

My (unsolicited) advice to readers is this: Think through your principles. Take the time. Consult a philosopher if necessary. Ask whether your principles allow you to eat animal flesh. If, as I suspect, they do not, then you have three options: First, you can abandon (or modify) the principles; second, you can stop eating animal flesh; third, you can live with inconsistent beliefs. Good luck.

I keep hearing that people don't like negative campaigning, but the discussion then shifts to personal attacks, as if that's what negative campaigning means. I think these are different matters. One can engage in negative campaigning without attacking anyone personally (although it's hard to imagine a personal attack that does not constitute negative campaigning).

A positive campaign consists in setting out (or displaying) one's background, character, principles, and policies. The candidate says, in effect, "Here's what I stand for; here's who I am; here's what matters to me; here's what I will work to achieve; here are my values." A positive campaign makes no reference to what one's opponent(s) stand(s) for.

A negative campaign, in contrast, consists in setting out—and then criticizing—one's opponent's background, character, principles, and policies. It is other-directed rather than self-directed. It runs another down rather than building oneself up.

I believe that the opposition to negative campaigning, so understood, is that it is insulting to the electorate. The candidates must think that unless they run the other(s) down, the voters will not be able to figure out for themselves how and why the candidates' principles and policies differ. The voters are being treated like children. Most voters are intelligent enough to understand such differences. They want to hear what each candidate will do upon being elected. Having heard this, they will compare the views and decide how to vote.

If I (god forbid) were a candidate for public office, I would set out my principles and policies as clearly as I can and let the chips fall where they may. I would not even address the views or values of my opponent(s). If what I say appeals to the voters, they will elect me; if not, they won't. I retain my pride and self-respect; the voters feel as though they are treated like adults (because they are). The system itself is cleansed of negativity. Politics becomes noble again. All of us are better (and better off) for it.

[Spinoza] appears not to have known dogs at all. The revolting proposition with which the above-mentioned twenty-sixth chapter begins: Praeter homines nihil singulare in natura novimus, cujus mente gaudere et quod nobis amicitia, aut aliquo consuetudinis genere jungere possumus [Besides human beings, we know of no individual being in nature whose mentality could give us pleasure, and with whom we could be united through friendship or through any kind of association], is best answered by a Spanish man of letters of our day (Larra, pseudonym Figaro, in Doncel, c. 33): El que no ha tenido un perro, no sabe lo que es querer y ser querido. (Whoever has never kept a dog does not know what it is to love and to be loved.) The deeds of cruelty which, according to Colerus, Spinoza was accustomed to practise on spiders and flies, for his own amusement and amid hearty laughter, correspond only too closely to his propositions that are here censured as well as to the aforesaid chapters of Genesis. By virtue of all this, Spinoza's Ethica is throughout a mixture of the false and the true, the admirable and the bad.

(Arthur Schopenhauer, "Fragments for the History of Philosophy," in his Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, trans. E. F. J. Payne [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974 (1851)], 1:29-136, at 73 [italics in original; footnote omitted])

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, a national holiday. The first Thanksgiving was in 1621 in Plymouth Plantation. The recently settled Pilgrims had had a rough winter, during which many of them died. When October came, and the harvest, they invited various Indians to a feast. The feast was not just a token of appreciation for the considerable help the Indians had given them; it was meant to thank God—the big Indian in the sky—for the wonderful bounty of the land.

The Thanksgiving holiday clearly has religious origins. Does this mean that only a theist can celebrate it? No. That is a conceit. For some people, even certain theists, the holiday has long since lost its religious significance. But there is another way to celebrate Thanksgiving without abandoning the thanks-giving concept. Atheists and agnostics have much to be thankful for. I am thankful to my fellow Americans, past and present, for bequeathing such a free (yet ordered) society to me. They owed me nothing. They gave me much. While I cannot literally thank those who no longer exist, I can express thanks (without the uptake) and vow to do for others what these generous individuals did for me. That is, I can work to ensure that the next generation, and those following it, have the same legacy of individual liberty and material prosperity that I have had, and that provide the basis of my happiness.

I can also give thanks to particular others, such as my parents. They did not write my term papers, read my casebooks, take my bar exams (Michigan and Arizona), or write my Ph.D. dissertation, but they made it possible for me to do these things. Thank you, Mom and Jerry. Thank you for giving me a safe, structured environment; thank you for giving me a love of books; thank you for taking me on vacations, which fired my imagination; thank you for supporting me through every harebrained scheme I concocted (including abandoning a legal career for the will-o'-the-wisp of philosophy); thank you for making me feel special; thank you for having such high expectations of me; and thank you for supplying my material needs for so many years. Thank you, in short, for loving me. Love is the most powerful force in the world, as these lines by Pete Townshend so beautifully convey:

Love conquers poses.
Love smashes stances.
Love crushes angles into black.

(Pete Townshend, "Stop Hurting People," All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes [1982])

So yes, an atheist can—and should—celebrate Thanksgiving. I, for one, have much to be thankful for, and I don't mind saying so. I hope you do, too; and I hope you show it by both word and deed.

I apologize to Andrew Sullivan for quoting his private correspondence. He said (in another—and more respectful—e-mail message) that it's not "fair" (oops! I did it again, but only to rectify a wrong) and he's right. I don't think I betray any confidences when I say that Sullivan's view is that the Full Faith and Credit Clause is not likely to be applied to homosexual marriage. He couldn't seriously maintain that it can't be, or that it will, to a certainty, never be, only that it probably won't be.

I disagree. I think the Clause is likely to be applied to homosexual marriage, probably on the first challenge. Mark my words. But let's get beyond this factual or legal dispute (I'm not sure which it is) and get to the philosophical heart of the matter. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Sullivan is right: that the Full Faith and Credit Clause is not likely to be applied to homosexual marriage. Suppose the probability is only one in ten. That ten-percent probability is what bothers federalists. We could wake up one day and find that every state in the union is required to recognize homosexual marriages because one state has. Federalists want assurance that no state will ever be given this power over the others.

If Sullivan is so confident that the Clause will never be applied to homosexual marriage, he should support a constitutional amendment to that effect. It would be breathtakingly simple:

Article IV, Section 1 of this Constitution shall not be construed to apply to homosexual marriages [or "to marriages other than those between a man and a woman"].

For the life of me, I don't see the harm in such an amendment. I realize that amending the Constitution is serious business and should never be undertaken lightly. I'm really just trying to see whether Sullivan is arguing in good faith. I don't think he is. He presents himself as a federalist, but I can't get him to accept the implications of federalism. All I get is optimism that no court will ever apply the Full Faith and Credit Clause to homosexual marriage. Forgive me, but I'm not the least bit optimistic on this score. Indeed, I'm downright pessimistic, as any self-respecting federalist ought to be.

Not to belabor this, but all I want to know from Andrew Sullivan is whether he takes the second position I set out in an earlier post. Here it is:

2. It [homosexual marriage] should not be disallowed in any state.

If he does, fine; we know where he stands. He would be disavowing federalism. He would be insisting that every state recognize homosexual marriages provided any state does. What I object to is his presenting himself as a federalist when he's not. Andrew?

Andrew Sullivan honored me by replying (by e-mail) to my latest post on homosexual marriage. He says the premise of my argument—that the Full Faith and Credit Clause requires states such as Texas to recognize homosexual marriages entered into in states such as Massachusetts—is "factually wrong." Why is it wrong? Because, he says, the Clause "has never applied to marriage, doesn't apply to marriage and never will apply to marriage."

Sullivan is probably right that it "has never applied to marriage," but that's because nobody has tried. He's wrong, however, in saying that it "doesn't apply," if that expresses a view about the Clause's meaning. Here, for those who haven't read the United States Constitution lately, is the Full Faith and Credit Clause (Article IV, Section 1):

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.

On its face, the Clause applies to marriage, including homosexual marriage. That the matter has never come before a court doesn't imply that it can't or won't, or that, if and when it does, it will be resolved in a way that satisfies federalists.

What Sullivan is saying is that people who take a different position than he does on homosexual marriage should rely on his untrained and inexpert legal judgment. This is preposterous! Sullivan could show his good faith in this debate simply by endorsing a Constitutional amendment to the effect that the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not apply to homosexual marriage. What has he to lose from this endorsement? He already thinks the Clause doesn't apply to homosexual marriage and that it will never be applied to homosexual marriage. Then why not let the Constitution say that? Why not put his money where his mouth is?

By the way, I'm not off in the woods by myself when I say that the Full Faith and Credit Clause, on its face, applies to homosexual marriages. Here is a retired New Jersey judge, writing in a legal periodical. He is sympathetic to homosexual marriage, so he can't be dismissed as a biased observer on the meaning of the Full Faith and Credit Clause. Make up your own mind. As for Andrew Sullivan, I wish he'd come clean. He seems increasingly to want to force homosexual marriage down the throats (sorry for the pun) of all Americans. It's not enough (for him) that it be available for Massachusetts residents; it must also be available for residents of Texas, Alabama, New Mexico, Montana, and so forth.

Addendum: Sullivan replied to my e-mailed reply to his e-mail, in which I accused him (respectfully) of avoiding the issue. I included a link to the New Jersey judge's essay. Within minutes, which could not have been enough time for him to read the essay, Sullivan wrote back: "he's wrong. you're wrong. i'm avoiding nothing. andrew." Sounds dogmatic to me, but hey, people are allowed to be dogmatic, ignorant (of the law), and evasive. My respect for Sullivan (not to mention his credibility on the matter of homosexual marriage) is rapidly eroding. This saddens me greatly, because I had heretofore thought highly of him.

Here are two positions on homosexual marriage:

1. It should not be allowed in any state.
2. It should not be disallowed in any state.

Those who take the first position would like to amend the United States Constitution to define "marriage," for legal purposes, as the union of a man and a woman. This would prevent any state, including Massachusetts, from allowing homosexuals to marry. I am not concerned, here, with the motivation of those who support this amendment. Many supporters are probably motivated by religious considerations, but this need not be the case. Someone could have nonreligious moral grounds (or even nonmoral grounds) for supporting it. We should focus on the position, not the motivation for taking it.

Some of those who oppose a Constitutional amendment such as the one described appear to take the second position on homosexual marriage. They believe (rightly, in my opinion) that if even one state, such as Massachusetts, allows homosexual marriage, every other state will be forced by the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution (Article IV, Section 1) to recognize it. This has the effect of preventing any state, such as Texas, from disallowing homosexual marriage, since homosexuals who desire to marry will simply go to a state that allows it, marry, and come home.

The problem with the two positions is that they're extreme. Federalists reject both of them. Federalists believe that states should be free to both allow and disallow homosexual marriage. I argued in my earlier post on this topic that the way to do this—probably the only way—is to amend the Constitution so that it makes the Full Faith and Credit Clause inapplicable to homosexual marriage. Since the Constitution is supreme (see Article VI), no state could ignore the provision. Texas would not have to recognize marriages entered into in states such as Massachusetts. If enough Texans want to allow homosexuals to marry, fine; they are free to do so. But it would be a political question, not one for the courts.

Is it objectionable that states be allowed to take different positions on homosexual marriage? I don't know why it would be. We have a federal system, not a unitary government. National uniformity may be desirable or even essential in some areas, but marriage is not one of them. As things now stand, states can have different abortion laws, provided they don't violate the central right defined in Roe v. Wade. This is as it should be. There are of course people who think that uniformity is intrinsically good, and that there is (therefore) a presumption in its favor, but this is antithetical to federalism. I wish Andrew Sullivan, who argues so forcefully against the first position set out above, would argue just as cogently against the second. In other words, I wish Sullivan would embrace federalism. As it stands, he appears to want to deny Texans (for example) the right to disallow homosexual marriage.

Perhaps the analogy I have (occasionally) drawn between philosophical discussion and political discussion may be of help. One of my colleagues [the late Robert Nozick] is a well-known advocate of the view that all government spending on 'welfare' is morally impermissible. On his view, even the public school system is morally wrong. If the public school system were abolished, along with the compulsory education law (which, I believe, he also regards as an impermissible government interference with individual liberty), then the poorer families could not afford to send their children to school and would opt for letting the children grow up illiterate; but this, on his view, is a problem to be solved by private charity. If people would not be charitable enough to prevent mass illiteracy (or mass starvation of old people, etc.) that is very bad, but it does not legitimize government action.

In my view, his fundamental premisses—the absoluteness of the right to property, for example—are counterintuitive and not supported by sufficient argument. On his view I am in the grip of a 'paternalistic' philosophy which he regards as insensitive to individual rights. This is an extreme disagreement, and it is a disagreement in 'political philosophy' rather than merely a 'political disagreement'. But much political disagreement involves disagreements in political philosophy, although they are rarely as stark as this.

What happens in such disagreements? When they are intelligently conducted on both sides, sometimes all that can happen is that one sensitively diagnoses and delineates the source of the disagreement. Often, when the disagreement is less fundamental than the one I described, both sides may modify their view to a larger or smaller extent. If actual agreement does not result, perhaps possible compromises may be classed as more or less acceptable to one or another of the parties.

Such intelligent political discussion between people of different outlooks is, unfortunately, rare nowadays; but it is all the more enjoyable when it does happen. And one's attitude toward one's co-disputant in such a discussion is interestingly mixed. On the one hand, one recognizes and appreciates certain intellectual virtues of the highest importance: open-mindedness, willingness to consider reasons and arguments, the capacity to accept good criticisms, etc. But what of the fundamentals on which one cannot agree? It would be quite dishonest to pretend that one thinks there are no better and worse reasons and views here. I don't think it is just a matter of taste whether one thinks that the obligation of the community to treat its members with compassion takes precedence over property rights; nor does my co-disputant. Each of us regards the other as lacking, at this level, a certain kind of sensitivity and perception. To be perfectly honest, there is in each of us something akin to contempt, not for the other's mind—for we each have the highest regard for each other's minds—nor for the other as a person—, for I have more respect for my colleague's honesty, integrity, kindness, etc., than I do for that of many people who agree with my 'liberal' political views—but for a certain complex of emotions and judgments in the other.

But am I not being less than honest here? I say I respect Bob Nozick's mind, and I certainly do. I say I respect his character, and I certainly do. But, if I feel contempt (or something in that ballpark) for a certain complex of emotions and judgments in him, is that not contempt (or something like it) for him?

This is a painful thing to explore, and politeness normally keeps us from examining with any justice what exactly our attitudes are towards those whom we love and disagree with. The fact is that none of us who is at all grown up likes and respects everything about anyone (least of all one's own self). There is no contradiction between having a fundamental liking and respect for someone and still regarding something in him as an intellectual and moral weakness, just as there is no contradiction between having a fundamental liking and respect for oneself and regarding something in oneself as an intellectual and moral (or emotional, etc.) weakness.

I want to urge that there is all the difference in the world between an opponent who has the fundamental intellectual virtues of open-mindedness, respect for reason, and self-criticism, and one who does not; between an opponent who has an impressive and pertinent store of factual knowledge, and one who does not; between an opponent who merely gives vent to his feelings and fantasies (which is all people commonly do in what passes for political discussion), and one who reasons carefully. And the ambivalent attitude of respectful contempt is an honest one: respect for the intellectual virtues in the other; contempt for the intellectual or emotional weaknesses (according to one's own lights, of course, for one always starts with them). 'Respectful contempt' may sound almost nasty (especially if one confuses it with contemptuous respect, which is something quite different). And it would be nasty if the 'contempt' were for the other as a person, and not just for one complex of feelings and judgments in him. But it is a far more honest attitude than false relativism; that is, the pretense that there is no giving reasons, or such a thing as better or worse reasons on a subject, when one really does feel that one view is reasonable and the other is irrational.

(Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], 164-6 [italics in original])

A hypocrite, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed., is "One who falsely professes to be virtuously or religiously inclined; one who pretends to have feelings or beliefs of a higher order than his real ones; hence generally, a dissembler, pretender." The Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide (1999) defines "hypocrite" as "a person given to hypocrisy." "Hypocrisy" is then defined as "the assumption or postulation of moral standards to which one's own behavior does not conform; dissimulation, pretense."

The word "hypocrite" is what philosophers call a thick moral term. Like "liar" and "coward," it has badness built into it. But each of these terms has descriptive meaning as well, unlike, say, "good" and "bad," which the late philosopher R. M. Hare called terms of general commendation and condemnation (respectively). Thus, calling someone a hypocrite is doing two things: describing and prescribing. The utterer both conveys information and makes an evaluation—a negative evaluation. To see that hypocrisy had badness built into it, imagine asking someone to describe him- or herself. Are you likely to find "liar," "coward," or "hypocrite" among the descriptors?

Nobody wants to be a hypocrite. But when you think about it, it's easy to avoid hypocrisy. All you have to do is refrain from professing to be "virtuously or religiously inclined." If you don't profess these things, you can't falsely profess them. Or, to use the second definition, don't assume or postulate moral standards. If you don't assume or postulate moral standards, your behavior can't possibly fail to conform to them. If hypocrisy is failure to practice what one preaches, then one can avoid it by not preaching. If hypocrisy is failure to live up to one's moral standards, with or without preaching, then one can avoid it by not having moral standards. A nihilist cannot, logically, be a hypocrite.

There are many things in life like this. If I choose not to have children, I ensure that I never experience the anguish of losing a child. If I choose not to ride my bicycle, I ensure that I never get injured in a bicycle crash. If I choose not to marry, I ensure that I never suffer the agony and embarrassment of divorce. But most people think the risks of these activities are outweighed by the benefits. Isn't it the same with morality? Again, most people think so. Christians, for example, profess to love their neighbors as themselves. This is a demanding requirement. Does any Christian live up to it? Almost certainly not, especially if "neighbor" is construed to include all of humanity. Because Christian moral standards are so demanding, Christians open themselves up to criticism as hypocrites. But this can have a salutary effect: The pressure to avoid hypocrisy pushes them to do better, to be better Christians.

One does not have to be a Christian to have high moral standards, of course. Consequentialists subscribe to a secular version of the Christian doctrine about loving one's neighbor as oneself. They, too, fall woefully short. So do deontologists such as Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). But I would argue that in all of these cases it is better to have high moral standards and fall short of them than not to have high moral standards at all. For one thing, there is the standing possibility of incremental movement toward perfection (as defined by the standard). I may be a better Christian, consequentialist, or deontologist tomorrow than I am today, and better next week than tomorrow. The standard serves as a beacon to guide me. It makes moral growth possible. It also helps us make sense of the concept of backsliding. To backslide is to move away from, rather than toward, one's goal. If each slide backward is met with two steps forward, then, however haltingly, one makes moral progress.

I believe it would be a better world for all concerned, including nonhuman animals, if each of us became a hypocrisy-sniffer. Most of us are already good at it, although all too often the term "hypocrite" is used as a weapon rather than as a means of enlightenment and inspiration. Each person, especially our children, should be encouraged to have high moral standards—and to strive mightily to live up to them. By risking hypocrisy, we make great moral gains possible.

Robert Wright is too smart and too good a writer to be my age (forty-six). He sickens me. You can't go wrong reading Wright. Start here.

This is a hard case for death-penalty abolitionists. If John Muhammad doesn't deserve to die for his ruthless murders, then nobody does.

The finest achievement for humanity is to recognize our predicament, including our insecurity and our coming extinction, and to maintain our cheerfulness and love and decency in spite of it, to prosecute our ideals in spite of it. We have good things to contemplate and high things to do. Let us do them.

(Richard Robinson, An Atheist's Values [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964], 157)

I've been deluged with requests to name the three best moral philosophers in the world. Actually, nobody asked, but here's my list:

Samuel Scheffler (UC-Berkeley)
Shelly Kagan (Yale)
Michael Slote (Miami)

If you're good, I'll give you a summary of the main debate in normative ethical theory. Stay tuned.

We can define a platitude, echoing David Lewis, as a judgment that only the philosophers (and the morally incompetent or utterly vicious) among us would think of denying.

(Jeffrey Stout, Ethics After Babel: The Languages of Morals and Their Discontents [Boston: Beacon Press, 1988], 212-3)

I've been taken to task, and rightly so, for being cryptic in my comment about raising and killing animals. Philosophers do not like to be cryptic. (Okay, some do. Nietzsche did. But analytic philosophers don't, and I'm an analytic philosopher.) Here's what I said: "If you aren't prepared to raise and kill a turkey, don't eat one. It's that simple." Let me unpack this. I assume that many or most of my readers (including you) subscribe to principles that, when conjoined with the facts of modern meat production, entail that eating animal flesh is wrong. Not imprudent, mind you. Wrong. Morally. One important task of the philosopher is to draw out the implications of various principles. We're trained to do this. We're good at it. Infuriatingly good.

Most people have full, busy, comfortable lives. They work hard during the week, recreate on Saturday, and worship on Sunday. They like to think that they (1) have stringent moral principles and (2) live up to them. Unfortunately, they don't spend time, as philosophers do, checking their beliefs and actions for consistency with their principles (or, for that matter, checking for consistency among their principles). It falls to philosophers to hold people to their principles. This is what got Socrates into trouble. It is what gets Princeton philosopher Peter Singer into trouble. People don't like having their weaknesses, foibles, and shortcomings pointed out to them. They don't like being told, even indirectly, that they're hypocrites. So they take it out on the messenger. That's fine; philosophers are thick-skinned. Philosophy attracts people whose skin is already thick and then thickens it some more. Some philosophers revel in the abuse. It makes them feel closer to their idol, Socrates, the Athenian gadfly.

What I was trying to say in my blog entry is that each of us should take responsibility for his or her actions. If it's wrong for me to do X, then it's wrong for me to have X done for me. I'm assuming, for the sake of argument, that it's wrong for me to raise an animal in a way that inflicts suffering on it. But if it's wrong for me to do this, then it's wrong for me to have someone do it for me, for a fee. This is what happens when you buy a packaged turkey (or other meat item) in a grocery store. I believe that if people had to raise and kill the turkey themselves, they wouldn't do it. Is this because they're squeamish? For some people, yes. But it could also be because the person hasn't thought through the moral implications of buying turkey. The turkey, unbeknownst to the purchaser, was made to live an abysmal life, one that involved pain, deprivation, confinement, and frustration of natural urges.

Let me repeat: I am not (here) arguing for the claim that it is wrong to eat animal flesh, although I believe it is. I'm assuming that it's wrong in order to see what, if anything, follows from it. What I'm saying is that you are responsible for what you allow to be done in your name (for what you cause to be done) and not just for what you do. When you buy a packaged turkey or any other animal product, you are buying (morally speaking) all of the pain, deprivation, confinement, and frustration that its presence in the store involved. Taking responsibility for your purchase requires learning the awful facts of modern meat production. It requires facing up to the ugly reality that lies behind the clean, shiny cellophane.

By the way, one writer asked whether my claim applies to other foodstuffs, such as rice. Yes. While rice itself is nonsentient, and therefore not something that has interests, it must be planted, harvested, transported, and processed. You should find out how the rice you purchase was produced. What if it was planted or harvested by slaves or children, or by people who have no alternative but to work long hours under inhumane conditions? What if the rice you purchase involved destruction of the local environment, including animal habitat? The same principle applies: You are responsible for what you allow to be done. A morally upright consumer is a knowledgeable consumer. Acquiring the relevant knowledge is costly, sometimes very costly. But who said living a morally upright life would be easy—or cheap?

We did not invent our mother-tongue, any more than any other language that we have learned: we inherited it. It was created over centuries by generations of our forebears; and most of them, whether well or poorly educated, literate or illiterate, treated it with respect. All languages are the co-operative creations of human beings; they are marvellous instruments for the expression and communication of thought and feeling, and vehicles for private thought. Each generation makes changes in them, but all have the responsibility for handing them on to the next generation in at least as perfect a condition as that in which they themselves inherited them. Disrespect for one's language is ingratitude to our forebears and selfishness towards our descendants.

(Michael Dummett, Grammar and Style for Examination Candidates and Others [London: Duckworth, 1993], 116)

I howled with laughter when I heard Dick Gephardt say (in today's televised presidential debate) that the Republican party represents "special interests." His party—the Democrat—is the party of feminists, teachers, union members, environmentalists, senior citizens, African-Americans, homosexuals, the poor, the disabled, pacifists, and various and sundry do-gooders, each of whom has a narrow, self-serving agenda. The Democrat message is simple: "If you elect me, I'll take money from them and give it to you." It would be funny if it weren't so despicable.

If you would like to read my latest scholarly publication—a defense of ethical egoism—click here.

Every decision you make, including what to eat, has costs and consequences. If you eat the flesh of an animal, then you are responsible not just for its death but for how it was made to live. That you yourself didn't do the killing is irrelevant, although it has the convenient effect of hiding the awful costs of your action from you. If you aren't prepared to raise and kill a turkey, don't eat one. It's that simple.

Addendum: Here are replies to the New York Times column to which I linked.

I keep hearing, from the likes of Andrew Sullivan, that federalism—the doctrine of states' rights—is incompatible with a constitutional amendment that prohibits homosexual marriage. It is said that a true/good/real federalist would allow states to do as they please with respect to homosexual marriage. By supporting a constitutional amendment that prohibits such marriages, however, one is choosing not to allow states to do as they please.

Is this right? Does federalism entail opposition to a constitutional amendment? Yes and no. It entails opposition to the constitutional amendment described (one that prohibits homosexual marriage), but it does not entail opposition to all amendments. Indeed, as I shall argue, it requires a particular amendment.

The problem, from a federalist point of view, is that Article IV, Section 1 of the United States Constitution requires that "Full Faith and Credit . . . be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State." Suppose Massachusetts allows homosexuals to marry on the same terms as heterosexuals. If the effects of such a decision cou