Broadening harms considered in research ethics

In typical lab research ethics, the following types of ethical considerations count against an experiment:

1. risks of harm to the world outside the lab

2. risks of harm to persons in the lab

3. risks of pain to conscious entities in the lab.

(The categories overlap: the persons in the lab are conscious entities, and pain harms them. Likewise, the persons in the lab have lives outside the lab, and harm to them in the lab can imply harm to what is outside the lab.)

Now, note that the harms to the world outside the lab can include things that neither harm persons nor cause pain to conscious entities, such as damage to a non-conscious ecosystem. Thus, an experiment that risks the escape of microbes that could cause the world-wide extinction of a plant species would be ethically problematic, even if there were only negligible risks of harm to persons or pain to conscious critters. Further, note that non-pain harms to persons in or out of the lab certainly do count against an experiment—that is why consent is so important.

But I think the above categories of harms are too narrow, as they leave out:

4. risks of non-painful harms to conscious non-persons in the lab

5. risks of harms to non-conscious non-persons in the lab.

As the extinction point shows, we do worry about such risks when they concern what is outside the lab. We should, I think, likewise worry about them when they are in the lab.

The premature death of a plant or insect is a bad thing, even if plants or insects are not conscious (I have no idea whether insects are): a good thing has been erased from the world before its time. Likewise, disabling an insect in an experiment is a bad thing, even if it does not cause pain to the insect. Indeed, depriving an organism, of whatever sort, of the kind of environment where it thrives is a a bad thing.

I am not saying that we shouldn’t experiment on plants. But the fact that a living thing is harmed, regardless of whether it is a person or it feels pain, is an ethical consideration against the experiment. This ethical consideration may be outweighed by the epistemic or pragmatic value of the information gained from the experiment. But for the experiment to be worthwhile, it needs to be so outweighed. It’s not automatic that a non-pain harm to a non-person is outweighed by information gains. Some information might be too trivial.

The ethics of plant care

If someone devotes a significant part of their life to affectionately caring for plastic flowers, there is something wrong with them. Not so in the case of real, living plants. This points to me to the idea that life as such, and not just conscious life or the life of animals, is a valuable thing.

I don’t want to say that it’s always bad to affectionately care for artifacts. When the artifacts have an intimate and significant connection with human beings, as in the case of a chair that grandma made or a work of art, such affectionate care can make sense. But having an affectionate care for plants makes sense even in the absence of a connection to human beings.

What about microscopic forms of life? Can it make sense to fondly feed a bacterium? I think so, but I agree that the case is less clear.

A schematic argument against naturalistic reductions

Here is an argument schema.

1. If X is reducible to the natural, then likely the vast improvement of natural science over the last three hundred years would have led to a much better knowledge of X.

2. If X is not reducible to the natural, then it is not likely that the vast improvement of natural science over the last three hundred years would have led to a much better knowledge of X.

3. The vast improvement of natural science over the last three hundred years has not led to a much better knowledge of X.

4. So, probably, X is not reducible to the natural.

Some options for X:

• ethics

• aesthetics

• value in general.

I think the best response would be to dispute (1), by saying that (1) is only plausible if we know how to do the reduction. The mere existence of a reduction, when we do not know how to run it, is not enough.

Maybe. But I still think we get some evidence against reductionistic theories in ethics, aesthetics and value in general from fact that great progress in science hasn’t led to great progress in these areas.

Berkeley and authority over bodies

A friend asked me how Berkeley can be refuted. I am fond of ethical insights as epistemically primary. Here is an ethical insight: I have a special authority over my body. But on Berkeley’s view, my body is co-constituted by my ideas and everybody else’s ideas. My ideas are a part of me, yours are a part of you, and so my body is partly constituted by my parts and partly by your parts, Now it is difficult to see why I have special authority over it.

One might say that I have more in the way of perceptions of my body than you do, because I have kinesthetic sensation, introspection, etc. While that is typically true, it is only typically true. If you are doing neurosurgery on me, and I am unconscious, then my body is not constituted at all by my ideas at the time, and you have a lot of perceptions of my body that I never do.

Wronging others

Alice is about to inherit a large some of money and then she hears that she has a long-lost sibling with whom she’d have to share. So she hires an assassin to kill the sibling. Happily, the “assassin” turns out to be a police officer who promptly arrests Alice for attempted murder. Bob happens to be in exactly the same position and acts the same way. However, Bob actually has a long-lost sibling, while Alice has been misinformed.

Legally, it may be that Alice can get off on the grounds of the doctrine of impossible attempts. But morally speaking, Alice and Bob are both just as guilty as if they had successfully committed murder. And, further, they are equally guilty (barring some other differences between the cases).

However, Bob wronged and violated the rights of his long-lost sibling. This is true even though the assassination failed, because one is wronged and has one’s rights violated by an attempt on one’s life.

Alice did not wrong or violate the rights of any long-lost sibling since she does not have any such sibling.

It is correct, as a matter of the description of the situation, that Bob wronged a sibling, and Alice did not. But this fact does not add to the wrongfulness of Bob’s action. This suggests that the patient-centered concept of wronging someone does not actually carry much ethical weight.

Maybe.

But maybe what we should say is this: Bob’s action was indeed more wrong than Alice’s, but Alice is no less culpable than Bob.

If we say this, then we may want to push the reasoning further. Suppose Carl is subjectively in a situation like Alice and Bob, but (a) like Bob, Carl does have a long-lost sibling, and (b) the assassin is real and actually kills the sibling. I used to think that attempted murder was no less wrong than a successful one. But if we are to mae a distinction between Alice and Bob, perhaps we can make a similar distinction between Bob and Carl. What Carl did was more wrong than what Bob did, even though Bob is just as culpable as Carl.

I am not sure, though. Consider this. Imagine that all three malefactors are in their right minds, acting freely, with no excuses available. In that case, each one of them is fully culpable for each wrong they did. But the following principle seems pretty plausible:

1. If X and Y are fully culpable for wrong actions A and B, respectively, and B is more wrong than A, then Y is more culpable than X in regard to these respective actions.

It follows that if we think that Bob did something more wrong than what Alice did, then Bob is more culpable than Alice.

But maybe (1) is false. Or maybe we can say this. Carl is only culpable for an attempted murder, but isn’t actually culpable for the successful murder, because culpability only attaches to attempts. Neither option seems attractive. So I am back to where I was: Alice’s action is not less wrong than Bob, and Bob’s is no less wrong than Carl’s. The stuff about violating rights and wronging what one owes others, that’s all true, but it doesn’t actually affect the degree of wrongness.

A problem for non-command divine command theories

Some divine “command” theories do not ground obligations in commands as such, but in divine mental states, such as his willings, intentions or desires. It’s occurred to me that there is a down-side to such theories. Independently of accepting a divine command theory of any sort, I think the following is plausible (pace Murphy):

1. All humans have a duty to obey any commands from God.

But if obligations are grounded in divine mental states, there is the following possibility: God commands one to ϕ even though God does not will, intend or desire that one ϕ, and so I am not obligated to ϕ. The actuality of this possibility would not fit with (1). In fact, the case of the Sacrifice of Isaac appears precisely such: God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, but did not will, intend or desire for Abraham to do so. God only willed, intended and desired for Abraham to prepare to sacrifice Isaac.

In my previous post, I was happy with the corollary of the divine intention account of duty that Abraham did not have a duty to sacrifice Isaac. But given the plausibility of (1), I should not have been happy with that.

The command version of divine command theory obviously verifies (1). So do natural law theories on which obedience to God is a part of our nature (either explicitly or as a consequence of some more general duty).

Against divine desire theories of duty

On the divine desire version of divine command theory, the right thing to do is what God wants us to do.

But what if God’s desires conflict? God does’t want us to commit murder. But suppose a truthful evildoer tells me that if I don’t murder one innocent person, then a thousand persons will be given a choice to murder an innocent person or die. Knowing humanity, I can be quite confident that of that thousand people, a significant number, maybe as much as a fifty or more, will opt to murder rather than be murdered. Thus, if I commit murder, God’s desire that there be no murder will be violated by one murder. If I don’t commit murder, God’s desire that there be no murder will be violated by about fifty or more murders. It seems that in this case murder fulfills God’s desires better. And yet murder is wrong.

(Some Christians these days have consequentialist inclinations and may want to accept the conclusion that in this case murder is acceptable. I will assume in this post that they are wrong.)

Perhaps we can say this: Desires should be divided into instrumental and non-instrumental ones, and it is only non-instrumental divine desires that define moral obligations. The fact that by murdering an innocent person I prevent fifty or so murders only gives God an instrumental desire for me to murder that innocent.

But this line of thought is risky. For suppose that God’s reasons for wanting the Israelites to refrain from pork were instrumental. What God really wanted was for the Israelites to have a cultural distinctiveness from other peoples, and refraining from pork served to produce that. On the view that instrumental desires do not produce obligations, it follows that the Israelites had no obligation to refrain from pork, which is wrong.

Perhaps, though, another move is possible. Maybe we should say that in the scenario I gave earlier God knows that his desires will be better served by my committing murder, but he does not want me to do so, whether instrumentally or not. For we need not suppose that whenever a rational being desires y and sees that x is instrumental to y then the rational being desires x. This does indeed get us out of the initial problem.

But we still have a bit of a puzzle. For suppose that someone you love has multiple desires and they cannot all be satisfied. Among that person’s desires, there will be desires concerning what you do and desires concerning other matters. Is it the case that in your love for them, their desires concerning what you do should automatically take precedence over their other desires? No! Suppose Alice and Bob love each other. Now imagine that Bob would really like a certain expensive item that he cannot afford to buy for himself, but that Alice, who is wealthier, can buy for him with only a minor hardship to her. We can now imagine that Bob’s desire that Alice spend no money is weaker than his desire for the expensive item. In that case, surely, given her love for Bob, Alice has good reason to buy the gift for Bob, and it is false that Bob’s desire concerning what Alice does (namely, his desire that she not spend money) take precedence over Bob’s stronger desire concerning other matters (namely, his desire for the item). It would be a loving thing for Alice, thus, to transgress Bob’s desire that she not spend money.

But presumably God’s desire that I not commit murder is weaker than God’s desire that fifty other people not commit murder. Thus, it seems that committing the murder would exhibit love of God—assuming that God’s desires is all that is at issue, and there are no moral obligations independent of God’s desires. Hence, there is a tension between love for God and obedience to God on the divine desire version of divine command theory. And that’s a tension we should avoid.

Ethics and multiverse interpretations of quantum mechanics

Somehow it hasn’t occurred to me until yesterday that quantum multiverse theories (without the traveling minds tweak) undercut half of ethics, just as Lewis’s extreme modal realism does.

For whatever we do, total reality is the same, and hence no suffering is relieved, no joy is added, etc. The part of ethics where consequences matter is all destroyed. There is no point to preventing any evil, since doing so just shifts which branch of the multiverse one inhabits.

At most what is left of ethics is agent-centered stuff, like deontology. But that’s only about half of ethics.

Moreover, even the agent-centered stuff may be seriously damaged, depending on how one interprets personal identity in the quantum multiverse.

Consider three theories.

On the first, I go to all the outgoing branches, with a split consciousness. On this view, no matter what, there will be branches where I act well and branches where I act badly. So much or all of the agent-centered parts of ethics will be destroyed.

On the second, whenever branching happens, the persons in the branches are new persons. If so, then there are no agent-centered outcomes—if I am deliberating between insulting or comforting a suffering person, no matter what, I will do neither, but instead a descendant of me will insult and another descendant will comfort. Again, it’s hard to fit this with the agent-centered parts of ethics.

The third is the infinitely many minds theory on which there are infinitely many minds inhabiting my body, and whenever a branching happens, infinitely many move into each branch. In particular, I will move into one particular branch. On this theory, if somehow I can control which branch I go down (which is not clear), there is room for agent-centered outcomes. But this is not the most prominent of the multiverse theories.

Being a (counter)example

Consider a case where there is a spectrum of behaviors such that without considering influence on others A is bad, B is moderately good and C is the best. It seems likely (by analogies to the studies on political opinions hardening in the face of opposition) that sometimes when people see someone engaging in behavior radically different from theirs, this strengthens their commitment to their own behavior. Thus, someone who does A upon seeing someone do C might be hardened in doing A. One might easily think about the person doing C: “That behavior is really out there, and so only crazy people don’t do A”. On the other hand, seeing someone do B might actually shift one’s behavior away from A.

And so we can imagine a case where although C is best when one doesn’t consider influence on others, the difference between B and C is sufficiently narrow, that overall it is better to do B, because one is more likely to influence others for good by doing B rather than the “crazy” C.

On the other hand, no doubt there are cases where seeing the radicality of another’s behavior, and the contrast between that radicality and one’s behavior, could shake one up. Thus, when I was a teenager, I was converted from some of my sins upon reading Augustine’s Confessions and seeing the contrast between my sinful ways and the radical holiness that Augustine strove for. Had Augustine only striven for B in contrast to my A, I perhaps wouldn’t have been converted. But he strove for C, and that impressed me.

What’s the lesson? I don’t know. Maybe just this: Absent specific data about the likely influence of one’s actions in a particular case, maybe we do best to do what’s best without considering the influence.

A constraint on metaethics

Suppose that we lived lives like ours in a world (possible or not) whose metaphysics included nothing like moral duties except that there was a loving God and he issued commands. If in that world we used the phrase “morally wrong”, that phrase would refer to the property of being forbidden by God.

Or suppose that we lived lives like ours in a world (possible or not) whose metaphysics included nothing like moral duties except that we had Aristotelian forms and they specified what the will should will, the phrase “morally wrong” would refer to the property of being contrary to what our form says the will should will.

But suppose now we lived in a world where there was nothing like moral duties, no God, no forms, but buried underground and unseen by humans there was a stone tablet that arose from a random volcanic process millions of years ago. On these tablets by chance there were markings that looked just like French sentences, and when interpreted as French sentences, they stated imperatives, like the Golden Rule, that that fit very well with our intuitions about what are the core moral duties. I doubt that the phrase “morally wrong” would refer to the property of being contrary to what the stone tablet would enjoin if it were interpreted as French. (I am careful in my wording, because strictly speaking the stone tablet, being the product of random processes, does not contain any sentences—it only contains markings that look like sentences of French.)

Suppose my intuition is right. What is the difference between the third case and the first two? Here is a hypothesis. In the divine command world, presumably our beliefs about what we call “morally wrong” have some sort of a connection to the commands of that God. In the Aristotelian world, our beliefs about the “morally wrong” presumably come in some way from the Aristotelian forms. But in the stone tablet world, the “morally wrong” beliefs have no connection to the stone tablets, except that the stone tablets happen to fit them.

This suggests an important constraint on metaethics: our beliefs about the morally wrong had better have a real connection—perhaps even a real causal connection—with their grounds. If this constraint is right, then evolutionary debunking arguments against morality cut more deeply than is recognized: if the arguments correctly show that our “moral concepts” lack a relevant connection with any grounds, then our “moral beliefs” not are not knowledge, but they are in fact just nonsense.

Of course, I want to turn this around: given that our moral beliefs are not mere nonsense, it follows that they have a real connection with grounds, and this undercuts the idea that we are mere products of completely unguided evolution.

Epistemology and the presumption of (im)permissibility

Normally, our overt behavior has the presumption of moral permissibility: an action is morally permissible unless there is some specific reason why it would be morally impermissible.

Oddly, this is not so in epistemology. Our doxastic behavior seems to come along with a presumption of epistemic impermissibility. A belief or inference is only justified when there is a specific reason for that justification.

In ethics, there are two main ways of losing the presumption of moral permissibility in an area of activity.

The first is that actions falling in that area are prima facie bad, and hence a special justification is needed for them. Violence is an example: a violent action is by default impermissible, unless we have a special reason that makes it permissible. The second family of cases is areas of action that are dangerous. When we go into a nuclear power facility or a functioning temple, we are surrounded by danger—physical or religious—and we should refrain from actions unless we have special reason to think they are safe.

Belief isn’t prima facie bad. But maybe it is prima facie dangerous? But the presumption of impermissibility is not limited to some special areas. There indeed are dangerous areas of our doxastic lives: having the wrong religious beliefs can seriously damage us psychologically and spiritually while having the wrong beliefs about nutrition and medicine can kill us. But there seem to be safe areas of our doxastic lives: whatever I believe about the last digit in the number of hairs on my head or about the generalized continuum hypothesis seems quite safe. Yet, having the unevidenced belief that the last digit in the number of hairs on my head is three is just as impermissible as having the unevidenced belief that milk cures cancer.

Perhaps it is simply that moral and epistemic normativity are not as analogous as they have seemed to some.

But there is another option. Perhaps, despite what I said, our doxastic lives are always dangerous. Here is one way to suggest this. Perhaps truth is sacred, and so dealing with truth is dangerous just as it is dangerous to be in a temple. We need reason to think that the rituals we perform are right when we are in a temple—we should not proceed by whim or by trial and error in religion—and perhaps similarly we need reasons to think that our beliefs are true, precisely because our doxastic lives always, no matter how “secular” the content, concern the sacred. Our beliefs may be practically safe, but the category of the sacred always implicates a danger, and hence a presumption of impermissibility.

I can think of two ways our doxastic lives could always concern the sacred:

1. God is truth.

2. All truth is about God: every truth is contingent or necessary; contingent truths tell us about what God did or permitted; necessary truths are all grounded in the nature of God.

All this also fits with an area of our moral lives where there is a presumption of impermissibility: assertion. One should only make assertions when one has reason to think they are true. Otherwise, one is lying or engaging in BS. Yet assertion is not always dangerous in any practical sense of “dangerous”: making unwarranted assertions about the number of hairs one one’s head or the general continuum hypothesis is pretty safe practically speaking. But perhaps assertion also concerns the truth, which is something sacred, and where we are dealing with the sacred, there we have spiritual danger and a presumption of impermissibility.

A vicious circularity in one kind of moral relativism

It’s just occurred to me that simple moral relativism on its face just makes no sense as a metaethical position. It holds:

1. What it is for an action to be morally required is that one believes the action to be morally required.

But here we have an account of a property, namely moral requirement, where the account makes use of that very property.

Here’s another way to put the point. The moral relativist presumably also accepts:

2. What it is for an action to be morally forbidden is that one believes the action to be morally forbidden.

Now, claim (1) says the same thing about the morally required as (2) says about the morally forbidden. Thus, (1) cannot be a correct account of the morally required, since the morally required and the morally forbidden are different. A correct account of X cannot say about X the same thing that a correct account of Y says about Y when X and Y are different!

In other words, the morally relativist metaethicist needs some replacement for “believes the action to be morally required/forbidden” in (1) and (2) that does not employ the concepts of the morally required and forbidden.

Related point: Here is a way to see that (1) is not the right definition of moral requirement. Suppose I am wrong about what I believe, and so I believe that I believe that A is morally required, but in fact I don’t believe that A is morally required. (Perhaps I would like to be the sort of person who believes that A is morally required, and by wishful thinking I come to believe that I believe it, but in fact my actions belie my alleged belief, and I don’t actually believe that A is morally required.) But if to be morally required is defined as to be believed to be morally required, then believing that A is believed to be morally required is believing that A is morally required. So, I cannot have a case where I am wrong in believing that I believe that A is morally required. But clearly I am fallible in my introspection!

A better move, then, for the relativist seems to be to replace beliefs with other attitudes, such as:

3. What it is for an action to be morally required is that one have an attitude of moral disapproval towards refraining from the action.

On this version of relativism, our moral beliefs can be incorrect. For it is quite possible for our attitudes of moral disapproval to fail to match our moral beliefs. And this is especially true if (3) is the right account of moral requirement. For we can easily be self-deceived about whether in fact we exemplify an attitude of moral disapproval, and hence we can be self-deceived about whether the action is wrong. The moral relativist now owes us an account of moral disapproval that does not depend on first order moral concepts, and that’s tough, but at least we don’t have a vicious circularity like in (1).

Intention and Christian ethics

Some ethicists think that the permissibility of an action typically does not depend on the intentions with which the action is done. (We obviously need “typically”. It is possible to make promises as to one’s intentions. And saying “This statement is intended” is permissible only if one intends to say it.)

Here is a deep reason why Christians cannot agree. Perhaps the deepest Christian ethical commitment is to something like this:

• An action is permissible if and only if it is loving (possible weaker variant: it is not unloving).

But whether an action is loving or unloving typically depends on intentions.

Do promises sometimes make otherwise wrong actions permissible?

Consider a variant of my teenage Hitler case. You’re a hospital anesthetist and teenage Hitler is about to have an emergency appendectomy. The only anesthetic you have available is one that requires a neutralizer to take the patient out of anesthesia—without the neutralizer, the patient dies. You know (an oracle told you) that if teenage Hitler survives, he’ll kill millions. And you’re the only person who knows how to apply anesthesia or the neutralizer in this town.

You’re now asked to apply anesthesia. You have two options: apply or refuse. If you refuse, the surgeon will perform the appendectomy without anesthesia, causing excruciating pain to a (still) innocent teenager, who will still go on to kill millions. Nobody benefits from your refusal.

But if you apply anesthesia, you will put yourself in a very awkward moral position. Here is why. Once the surgery is over, standard practice will be to apply the neutralizer. But the Principle of Double Effect (PDE) will forbid you from applying the neutralizer. For applying the neutralizer is an action that has two effects: the good effect of saving teenage Hitler’s life and the evil effect of millions dying. PDE allows you to do actions that have a foreseen evil effect only when the evil effect is not disproportionate to the good effect. But here the evil effect is disproportionate. So, PDE forbids application of the neutralizer. Thus if you know yourself to be a morally upright person, you also know that if you apply the anesthesia, you will later refuse to apply the neutralizer. But surely it is wrong to apply the anesthesia to an innocent teenage while expecting not to apply the neutralizer. For instance, it would be clearly wrong to apply the anesthesia if one were out of neutralizer.

So, it seems you need to refuse to apply anesthesia. But your reasons for the refusal wiil be very odd: you must refuse to apply anesthesia, because it would be morally wrong for you to neutralize the anesthesia, even though everyone is no worse or better off in the scenario where you apply anesthesia and neutralize it than in the scenario where the operation happens without anesthesia. To make the puzzle even sharper, we can suppose that if teenage Hitler has the operation without anesthesia, he will blame you for the pain, and eventually add your ethnic group—which otherwise he would have no prejudice against—to his death lists. So your refusal to apply anesthesia not only causes pain to an innocent teenager but causes many deaths.

The logical structure here is this: If you do A, you will be forbidden from doing B. But you are not permitted to do A if you expect not do B. And some are much better off and no one is worse off if you do both A and B than if you do neither.

Here is a much more moderate case that seems to have a similar structure. Bob credibly threatens to break all of Carl’s house windows unless Alice breaks one of Carl’s windows. It seems that it would be right for Alice to break the window since any reasonable person would choose to have one window broken rather than all of them. But suppose instead Bob threatens to break all of Carl’s windows unless Alice promises to break one of Carl’s windows tomorrow. And Alice knows that by tomorrow Bob will be in jail. Alice knows that if she makes the promise, she would do wrong to keep it, for Carl’s presumed permission of one window being broken to save the other windows would not extend to the pointless window-breaking tomorrow. And one shouldn’t make a promise one is planning not to keep (bracketing extreme cases, which this is not one of). So Alice shouldn’t make the promise. But no one would be worse off if Alice made the promise and kept it.

I wonder if there isn’t a way out of both puzzles, namely to suppose that in some cases a promise makes permissible something that would not otherwise be permissible. Thus, it would normally be wrong to apply the neutralizer to teenage Hitler. But if you promised to do so (e.g., implicitly when you agree to perform your ordinary medical duties at the hospital, or explicitly when you reassured his mom that you’ll bring him out of anesthesia), then it becomes permissible, despite the fact that many would die if you kept the promise. Similarly, if Alice promised Bob to break the window, it could become permissible to do so. Of course, we better not say in general that promises make permissible things that would otherwise be impermissible.

The principle here could be roughly something like that:

1. If it would be permissible for you to now intentionally ensure that a state of affairs F occurs at a later time t, then it is permissible for you to promise to bring about F at t and then to do so if no relevant difference in the circumstances occurs.

Consider how (1) applies to the teenage Hitler and window-breaking cases.

It would be permissible for you to set up a machine that would automatically neutralize Hitler’s anesthesia at the end of the operation, and then to administer anesthesia. Thus, it is now—i.e., prior to your administering the anesthesia—permissible for you to ensure that Hitler’s anesthesia will be neutralized. Hence, by (1) it is permissible for you to promise to neutralize the anesthesia and then to keep the promise, barring some relevant change in the circumstances.

Similarly, it would be permissible for you to throw a rock at Carl’s window from very far away (out in space, say) so that it would only reach the window tomorrow. So, by (1) it is permissible for you to promise to break the window tomorrow and then to keep the promise.

On the other hand, take the case where an evildoer asks you to promise to kill an innocent tomorrow or else she’ll kill ten today, and suppose that tomorrow the evildoer will be in jail and unable to check up on what you did. It would be wrong for you to now intentionally ensure the innocent dies tomorrow, so (1) does not apply and does not give you permission to make and keep the promise. (Some people will think it’s OK to make and break this promise. But no one thinks it’s OK to make and keep this promise.)

Principle (1) seems really ad hoc. But perhaps this impression is reduced when we think of promises as a way of projecting our activity forward in time. Principle (1) basically says that if it would be permissible to project our activity forward in time by making a robot—or by self-hypnosis—then we should be able to accomplish something similar by a promise.

The above is reminiscent of cases where you promise to ignore someone’s releasing you from a promise. For instance, Alice, a staunch promoter of environmental causes, lends Bob a large sum of money, on the condition of Bob making the following promise: Bob will give the money back in ten years, unless Alice’s ideals shift away from environmentalism in which case he will give it to the Sierra Fund, notwithstanding any pleas to the contrary from Alice. The current context—Alice’s requirements at borrowing time—becomes normative at the time for the promise to be kept, notwithstanding some feared changes.

I am far from confident of (1). But it would let one escape the unhappy position of saying that in cases with the above structure one is required to let the worst happen. I expect there are counterexamples to (1), too. But perhaps (1) is true ceteris paribus.

Arbitrariness and contingency

I’ve come to be impressed by the idea that where there is apparent arbitrariness, there is probably contingency in the vicinity.

The earth and the moon on average are 384400 km apart. This looks arbitrary. And here the fact itself is contingent.

Humans have two arms and two legs. This looks arbitrary. But it is actually a necessary truth. However there is contingency in the vicinity: it is a contingent fact that humans, rather than eight-armed intelligent animals, exist on earth.

Ethical obligations have apparent arbitrariness, too. For instance, we should prefer mercy to retribution. Here, there are two possibilities. First, perhaps it is contingent that we should prefer mercy to just retribution. The best story I know which makes that work out is Divine Command Theory: God commands us to prefer mercy to just retribution but could have commanded the opposite. Second, perhaps it is necessary that we should prefer mercy to retribution, because our nature requires it, but it is contingent that we rather than beings whose nature carries the opposite obligation exist.

Now here is where I start to get uncomfortable: mathematics. When I think about the vast number of possible combinations of axioms of set theory, far beyond where any intuitions apply, axioms that cannot be proved from the standard ZFC axioms (unless these are inconsistent), it’s all starting to look very arbitrary. This pushes me to one of three uncomfortable positions:

• anti-realism about set theory

• Hamkins’ set-theoretic multiverse

• contingent mathematical truth.

Ethics and complexity

Here is a picture of ethics. We are designed to operate with a specific algorithm A for generating imperatives from circumstances. Unfortunately, we are broken in two ways: we don’t always follow the generated imperatives and we don’t always operate by means of A. We thus need to reverse engineer algorithm A on the basis of our broken functioning.

In general, reverse-engineering has to be based on a presumption of relative simplicity of the algorithm. However, Kantian, utilitarian ethics and divine command ethics go beyond that and hold that A is at base very simple. But should we think that the algorithm describing the normative operation of a human being is very simple? The official USA Fencing rule book is over 200 pages long. Human life is more complex than a fencing competition. Why should we think that there are fundamental rules for human life that can be encompassed briefly, from which all other rules can be derived without further normative input? It would be nice to find such brief rules. Many have a hope of finding analogous brief rules in physics.

We haven’t done well in ethics in our attempts to find such brief rules: the Kantian and utilitarian projects make (I would argue) incorrect normative claims, while the divine command project seems to give the wrong grounds for moral obligations.

It seems not unlikely to me that the correct full set of norms for human behavior will actually be very complex.

But there is still a hope for a unification. While I am dubious whether one can find a simple and elegant set of rules such that all ethical truths can be derived from them with no further normative input, there may be elegant unifying ethical principles that nonetheless require further normative input to generate the complex rules governing human life. Here are two such options:

• Natural Law: Live in accordance with your nature! But to generate the rules governing human life requires the further information as to what your nature requires, and that is normative information.

• Agapic ethics: Love everyone! But one of the things that are a part of love is adapting the form of one’s love to fit the the persons and circumstances (fraternal love for siblings, collegial love for colleagues, etc.), and the rules of “fit” are extremely complex and require further normative input.

Why do the basic human goods hang together as they do?

According to prominent Natural Law theories, the human good includes a number of basic non-instrumental goods, such as health, contemplation, truth, friendship and play. Now, there is a sense in which the inclusion of some items on the list of basic goods is more puzzling than the inclusion of others. There does not seem be anything deeply mysterious about the inclusion of health, but the inclusion of play is puzzling.

Yet there is an elegant metaphysical explanation of why these goods are included in the human good, and this explanation works just as well for play as for health:

1. The human good includes play (or health) because it is a fundamental telos in the human form to pursue play (or health).

This explanation tells us what makes it be the case that play is a basic human good. But I think it leaves something else quite unexplained. Compare to this the unhelpfulness of the answer

2. Because its molecules have a high mean kinetic energy

to the question

3. Why is my phone hot?

Now, in the case of my hot phone, the reason (2) is unhelpful is because when I am puzzled about my phone being hot, I am puzzled about something like the efficient cause of the phone’s heat, and (2) does not provide that.

That’s not quite what is going on the case of play. When we ask with puzzlement:

4. Why is play a basic non-instrumental human good?

we are not looking for an efficient cause of play being a basic human good. Indeed, it is dubious that there could even be an efficient causal answer to (4), since it seems to be a necessary truth that play is a basic human good, since this is grounded in the essential teleological structure of the human form. I think that when we ask (4), we are not actually clear on what sort of an explanation we are looking for—but if the puzzlement is the kind I am thinking about, the desired explanation is not the one given by (1).

We do become a bit less puzzled about play being a basic human good once it is pointed out to us how play promotes various other human goods like health and friendship. When we ask questions like (4), a part of what we are looking for is a story of how play hangs together with the other basic goods. If, as many Natural Lawyers think, there is a greatest human good (e.g., loving knowledge of God), then we hope that a significant part of the story will tell us how the good of play fits with that greatest good.

But now we have a curious meta-question:

5. Why is it that telling a story about how play hangs together with the other basic goods contributes to an answer to (4), given that play’s promotion of other basic goods seems to only make play be an instrumental good?

Here is another part of the story that helps with (5). Not only does engaging in play promote the other goods, but engaging play as an end in itself promotes the other goods more effectively. Playing Dominion with a friend purely instrumentally to friendship just wouldn’t promote friendship as effectively as playing in a way that appreciates the game as valuable in and of itself. Thus, a part of our story is now that it would be beneficial vis-à-vis the other goods if play were in fact to be non-instrumentally good, as then it could be pursued as an end in itself without this pursuit being a perversion of the will (it is, I take it, a perversion of the will to pursue mere means as if they were ends).

But it is still puzzling why even this enriched story is an answer to our question. The enriched story might make us wish that play were intrinsically good, but it doesn’t make play be instrinsically good. How does the enriched story help with our question, then?

I think that here is one of those places where Natural Law needs theism. It is a good thing for God to make beings whose basic goods exhibit unity in diversity. Thus, amongst the infinity of possible kinds of beings that could have been created, God chose to create beings with the human form in part because the basic goods encoded in the teleological structure of that form hang together in a beautiful way. God could have instead created beings where play was merely instrumentally good, but the teleological structure of such beings, first, wouldn’t exhibit the same valuable unity in diversity and, second, such beings would not as effectively achieve the other basic goods: for either they would be perversely pursuing a means as an end, or they would be missing out on the benefits of pursuing play as an end.

In other words, the story about how the goods hangs together provides a genuine answer to questions like (4) given God’s wise selection of the natures to be instantiated. It is difficult to see a plausible alternative story (here's an implausible one: there are no possible natures where goods don't hang together; here's another implausible one: we live in the best of all possible worlds). Thus, answering questions like (4) seems to call for theism.

Bizarre consequences in bizarre circumstances

In strange physical circumstances, we would not be surprised by strange and unexpected behavior of a system governed by physical laws.

Under conditions a device was not designed for, we would not be surprised by odd behavior from the device.

Nor should we be surprised by bizarre behavior by an organism far outside its evolutionary niche.

Therefore, it seems that we should not be surprised by how an entity governed by moral or doxastic laws would behave in out-of-this-world moral or evidential circumstances.

In particular perhaps we should be very cautious—in ways that I have rarely been—about the lessons to be drawn from the ethics or epistemology in bizarre counterfactual stories. Instead, perhaps, we should think about how it could be that ethics or epistemology is tied to our niche, our proper environment, and we should be suspicious of Kantian-style ethics or epistemology grounded in niche- and kind-transcending principles, perhaps preferring a more Aristotelian approach with norms for behavior in our natural environment being grounded in our own nature.

Analogies to ectopic pregnancy

The standard Catholic view of tubal pregnancy is that it is permissible to remove the tube with the child. The idea seems to be that the danger to the mother comes from the potential rupture of the tube, and hence removal of the tube is removal of that which poses the danger, and the death of the child is a non-intended side-effect, with the action justified by double effect. I’ve always been queasy about this reasoning, but I now have two related analogies that make me feel better about this.

Case 1: There are two astronauts on a spaceship, with no oxygen left in the air. The astronauts are wearing spacesuits with oxygen tanks. The oxygen tanks are sufficient for the astronauts to survive until they get home: 50% of the oxygen can be expected to be used up before getting home. However, one of the tanks is rigged by a malefactor with an explosive device such that if more than 20% of the oxygen is used, it will explode, killing both astronauts. The astronaut wearing that particular spacesuit is unconscious and cannot be consulted. It is not feasible to disarm the bomb or to swap tanks. The conscious astronaut removes the explosive tank from the other astronaut’s space suit and throws it into space, knowing that this will result in the unconscious astronaut dying from lack of oxygen. The intention, however, is to remove the item that will dangerously rupture if it is left in place. It is not the intention to kill the other astronaut. This is true even though it is the other astronaut’s breathing that would trigger the tank’s explosion.

The proximate source of the danger is the oxygen tank. But the more distant source is the breathing. It seems very plausible that it makes a moral difference whether the conscious astronaut shoots the unconscious astronaut to stop their breathing (wrong) or removes their tank to expel the danger (right action). This seems a legitimate case of double effect reasoning.

Case 2: Much as in Case 1, but (a) there is intense radiation outside the spaceship’s shielding, so that getting pushed into space even while wearing a spacesuit on will be fatal, and (b) there is no way to separate the tank from the astronaut. Thus, the other astronaut picks up the explosive tank, and throws it far into space. The tank is connected to the unconscious astronaut, so the unconscious astronaut flies out with the tank, and is killed by radiation. The tank never explodes, because the oxygen doesn't get depleted

Again, this seems a perfectly legitimate case of double effect reasoning.

What about the alternative of removing the child from the tube, which orthodox Catholic ethicists tend to reject (unless done in the hope reattaching in the correct place)? Well, the child is connected to the tube via a placenta. The placenta is to a large degree an organ of the child. As I understand it, removal of the child from the tube would require intentionally cutting the placenta, in a way that is fatal to the child. This directly fatal intervention seems akin to slicing the astronaut to remove them from the suit. This seems harder to justify.

Natural Law and the problem of contradictory moral norms

Given a Natural Law ethic, we could imagine a type of creature whose nature is such that even under normal circumstances, it is subject to incompatible moral obligations. We see such conflicts between creatures: the flourishing of the wolf is the languishing of the sheep. But we could imagine a being which has central instances of moral flourishing that also constitute central instances of moral languishing. Perhaps the being’s nature requires both mercy of it and a strict unrelenting justice. Or perhaps it requires both impartial justice and a favoring of kin.

Given that it is much easier to come up with conflicting systems of rules than with harmonious ones, we might well expect that the natures of moral creatures would have such conflicts of characteristic virtues. Thus, given Natural Law ethics, the absence of such general moral contradictions in us is something to be explained.

Given theistic Natural Law ethics, we can give two explanations. First, we could say that divine goodness is less likely to cause such natures to be instantiated. Second, all natures are ways of participating in God. Perhaps there just are no essentially contradictory ways of participating in God, and so such natures are impossible. (Note that this is compatible with the existence of exceptional circumstances where there are contradictory moral norms.)

Along similar lines, note that the Natural Lawyer has to face the same abhorrent action objection that the Divine Command Theorist does. It seems that the Natural Lawyer has to endorse conditionals like:

• If our nature were to command torture of the innocent, then such torture would be morally required.

But a theistic Natural Lawyer could say (parallel to what typical Divine Command Theorists do) that it is impossible for our nature to command such a thing, either because it would be contrary to God’s goodness to instantiate such a nature or because such a nature is impossible.

I am collecting ways in which Natural Law, and Aristotelian metaphysics in general, requires theism…