Existence and substance

For a chair to exist is simply for a particular bunch of particles, or maybe larger chunks like pieces of wood, to be arranged chairwise (which may refer both to physical arrangement and to the purpose). To put it in Thomistic terms, a chair's esse, its to be, is the arrangement of a bunch of things. Notice that the esse of a chair, then, does not mention the chair—for a chair to exist is for some other things to have a particular arrangement. The chair, thus, is a second class citizen of Thomistic ontology: claims of the existence of the chair can be reduced to claims about the arrangements of particles or chunks. Chairs are not substances.

What is the esse of a contingent substance? Aquinas does not tell us as far as I know. But we can speculate that the esse of a substance is one of the following:

1. participating in God's esse
2. being caused
3. being caused by complex of causes C.

(Perhaps some of these come to the same thing.) Whichever of these is right (my current favorite is (3), which neatly fits with the essentiality of origins), in each case the esse of a substance is expressed in a way that includes that substance—it is the subject of the participating or the subject of the being caused. On the other hand, the esse of the chair was something else's being arranged a certain way, with the chair itself not playing a role in its esse. Is this the defining feature of a substance (contingent or not), that it plays a role in its esse, that for it to be is not just for something else to be a certain way? Maybe.

Undergraduate moral relativism and tolerance

One of the puzzling features of undergraduate moral relativism is that students seem to think that their moral relativism in some way either supports or is required by a notion of tolerance for other people's practices and beliefs. This is puzzling because, after all, if relativism is true, then if I believe or society believes (depending on whether the relativism is individual or social) that someone's variant practices and beliefs should be squelched and the person should be punished for them, then this is the right thing for me or for society to do. In fact, this consideration is a good reason to abandon relativism.

Still, it is a good question why it is that students hold together the doctrines that (a) moral relativism is true, and (b) moral relativism connected with tolerance. Do we just want to say that they are massively irrational[note 1], or that this is just an effect of original sin, or is there a more proximate and specific explanation?

I want to offer two different hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that students confuse together the concepts of culpability and wrongness. A person may do wrong, but not be culpable for it if she does not know that what she is doing is wrong and she is not culpable for this ignorance. Conversely, a person may do the right thing, under at least one description, but still be culpable, if she erroneously believes it to be wrong. A certain tolerance goes together with considerations of inculpability. If someone is engaging in some immoral activity but doing so inculpably, then it makes sense to be tolerant, provided that undue harm to society does not result. From the claim that the Nazis believed what they did was right, the relativist laboring under a confusion between culpability and wrongness concludes that what the Nazis did was not wrong (for them). However, interestingly, in one's own case, what one believes to be wrong and what is culpable come very close (there is still a gap since one can do what oen believes to be wrong but be non-culpable on grounds of internal or external compulsion), and hence the confusion does not significantly affect a lot of first-person deliberative behavior. Thus, a typical individual relativist still tries to figure out what is the right thing to do, and consults with others, even though this makes no sense given that whatever she believes to be right is guaranteed to be right.

The second hypothesis is different. Consider first a relativism about an area of life that does not expressly involve ethics, say esthetic or gustatory relativism (what is beautiful or tasty to me may not be beautiful or tasty to you, and there is no objective, mind-independent beauty or tastiness). This kind of relativism does support quite a bit of tolerance. If Century Sundae is not tasty to you in the way it is to me, I should not impose it on you, and I should be tolerant of your desire to eat the mildly repellent (to me) Chunky Monkey. Here, the relativism is sufficiently limited that it does not undercut, but instead supports, tolerance.

As a result of this, one might conclude that relativism in general supports tolerance about the praxis that is relatively evaluated. However, in the special case where the relativism is moral relativism, this does not hold. The reason that esthetic or gustatory relativism supports tolerance is because of objective moral principles concerning respect for differing preferences and views. But once the relativism becomes moral relativism, these principles are undercut, a fact one might easily miss.

Or maybe they are not entirely undercut. After all, if one is a "nice" person who believes that one should be tolerant of people with differing practices, then individual relativism renders this belief self-justifying. But of course individual relativism would equally render the opposite belief self-justifying.

Plato on knowledge and teaching

For a long time, based largely on the Meno, I've been under the impression that Plato interdefines knowledge and teaching. Here is the idea:

1. Teaching is the imparting of knowledge.
2. Knowledge is what can be taught to every one who is willing and has sufficient learning abilities.

If this is right, then Platonic knowledge is never essentially private. It cannot be essentially indexical, since you cannot believe the same thing I do when I believe that I am six feet tall, arguably. Nor can it be of something essentially temporal: I cannot teach you that I am presently writing this post, because by the time you learn it, it may no be longer true, and hence it may not be knowledge. Neither can knowledge be of culturally relative facts. That this piece of jewelry is beautiful is something I may simply be unable to teach a Spartan, and she may be unable to teach me that that amphora is elegant.

Platonic knowledge thus must be of a non-indexical, atemporal, non-relative reality. And all this follows from Plato's understanding of teaching.

Moreover, teaching is not indoctrination. It is not the mere transmission of opinion or even the turning of knowledge into opinion. It is the imparting of knowledge, so that she who is taught can herself in turn teach. The evidence that the teacher has must itself be evidence that can be imparted to the student. Thus, the evidence, too, must be non-indexical, atemporal and non-relative, accessible to people of all times, cultures and social classes (think of the slave boy) who have sufficient ability. This does not require the theory of recollection--a divinely implanted faculty or knowledge that we receive by illumination at conception will do the trick, too--but does seem to require something special and universal like it.

Furthermore, a part of what it is to teach is to show how the knowledge withstands Socratic questioning--this questioning, thus, is a part of the teaching process, and the knowledge must be something that can survive this.

Or so, on this reading, Plato thinks. Whether it is all true is another question.

Latin trinitarianism and the perfection of love

Oddly enough, some social trinitarians have argued that perfect being theology supports their view (see Dale's discussion). I shall argue that perfect being theology supports Latin trinitarianism very nicely.

Perfection strongly suggests the presence of perfect interpersonal love.[note 1] Therefore, perfection considerations make it plausible that there is more than one divine person exhibiting perfect interpersonal love. Moreover, love has two kinds of perfections.

The first perfection of love is that of generous giving and receiving—this is the perfection of beneficence. There, the perfection is the greater the greater the gift. The gift of divine existence seems the greatest gift possible. So, at least one divine person has an existence that is a gift of the other, and this person receives this existence gratefully. Note that in generous love, there is no need for any quid pro quo and so the love can be made mutual by gratitude. Moreover, it might be stretching our ability to know about perfection with much confidence, but it is at least plausible that for every pair x and y of divine persons, x and y are related by such giving and receiving, so that either y receives divine existence from x or vice versa (but not both at pain of vicious circularity). Interestingly, this condition is only satisfied by Christian Trinitarianism if the Catholic doctrine of the double procession of the Holy Spirit holds (otherwise, there is no such giving and receiving relation between the the Son and the Holy Spirit).

The second perfection of love is the unitive. All love involves a certain minimal union of mind and will (we try to see things from our beloved's point of view, and we are apt to particularly pursue those goods that our beloved particularly wills), and all love is directed at a union that is more than minimal, a union that is a consummation of the love. The perfection of love will be a consummated love, a love that achieves a perfect union. An absolutely perfect union of love will be one where there is the maximum of unity that still allows for the most perfect kind of love. The most perfect kind of love is interpersonal, so the union of love must maintain a distinction of persons. But, it is plausible (assuming this is at all possible), that everything else but the relations distinguishing the persons, will be in common in the perfect union of love.

In particular, the perfect union of love will, plausibly, involve one mind and one will. Not just in the extended sense in which we talk of two human beings being one mind and one will, but in the literal sense of having in common a mind that is numerically one and a will that is numerically one. (Maybe we can even get the divine simplicity claim that the mind will be identical with the will, but I don't want to insist on that at this point.) This one mind and one will is essentially indivisible, for perfect love will seek an indivisible unity.

We thus get numerically one divine ousia, including numerically one mind and numerically one will, and yet more than one person.

Interestingly, while above I took the route of perfection of union, the route of perfection of generosity can also be used here. Generosity can be perfected in at least two ways. One is with the value of the gift—a better gift is one that perfects generosity more. The other is with the intimacy of the gift-giving—with how close the gift is to the giver. Thus to give money is ceteris paribus less generous than to give an heirloom, and to give an heirloom is ceteris paribus less generous than to give a kidney. The most perfect gift will be one that is both of maximum value and of maximum intimacy on the part of the giver. The divine nature is of maximum value. There are now prima facie two ways for perfect generosity to be exhibited. One way is for the divine giver to make another God, another person with another, qualitatively identical, divine mind and will (or ousia). But this does not exhibit perfect intimacy in the generosity. That intimacy will be perfectly exhibited when the divine mind and will given are the very same divine mind and will that the giver has, when the very same life that the giver has is given to the receiver.

And it is only in a perfectly intimate generosity that reciprocation by gratitude is perfected. For the closer the gift to the heart of the giver, the more the recipient's generosity means to the giver, and when the gift is the giver's own mind and will, the giver's own life to be shared, the generosity can be a deep affirmation of the giver, and indeed is a recognition that one prefers to have one's life as gift than to have it on one's own, and that recognition is a willingness to share that is in principle generous. It is, indeed, a kind of giving back.

Objection: Social trinitarians claim to believe in the unity of God and hence will claim that their doctrine of the Trinity is compatible with everything I said above.

Response: If social trinitarianism is to be distinct as a doctrine from Latin trinitarianism, it, I think, has to claim that Latin trinitarianism posits too much unity in God. But if this claim is made, then the above argument works—for the above account posits the maximum of unity in God apart from the distinction of persons, which is precisely what Latin trinitarianism gives. Of course, if social trinitarianism (which, in general, is kind of hard to define) turns out to be compatible with Latin trinitarianism, then there might be no disagreement here at all.

Business idea: Professionally pressing family archival CDs and DVDs

This is not a philosophy post, so feel free to skip. Last night, I was backing up 16gb of family photos and videos once again. I have most of it also backed up on CD-Rs and DVD-Rs, but now I'm copying it onto two more hard drives. Apparently, home-burnt CD-Rs and DVD+-Rs degenerate because they are ink-based. Nobody knows in just how long they degenerate, because it would require long-term study. Commercial CDs and DVDs have a metal layer that has physical pits in it, but there is no consumer device that makes them.

I wish someone made a business of transferring home video DVD+-Rs and home photo CD-Rs onto professionally pressed DVDs and CDs for archival purposes (and maybe keeping a copy on the business's backup server in case one's own give out). As more and more people have a lot of their family memories on digital media, I think there would be significant amounts of money to be made.

I googled to see if anybody does this sort of thing. Couldn't find anybody. Here is a niche—maybe the invisible hand will fill it? Currently, you can't get professionally pressed CDs in quantities less than, I think, about 250.

Consensual killing

In an earlier post this week, I argued that if one accepts the Interest Thesis (IT) that what makes a killing of an innocent person wrong is that it goes against the victim's interests, one needs to hold that it is never in the interests of a person to be killed. Hence, if IT holds, the justification of euthanasia in terms of the interests of the patient/victim fails. I ended the post by mentioning an account on which a person's consent is what makes it acceptable to kill the person, without settling the question whether that would be a good account. I will now try to settle this in the negative.

Why would x's consent make it permissible to kill x? Consent (and I use the term to mean "valid consent", consent satisfying whatever kinds of freedom and knowledge conditions are needed) is tied to autonomy. Generally speaking, when consent makes it permissible to do something which is impermissible without the consent, that is because doing the action without the consent is a violation of the person's integrity. Is killing a person without her consent a violation of the person's integrity? That claim seems to have a lot of plausibility.

But why does non-consensual killing violate a person's integrity? Here, we have to be careful. It won't do to say that such killing makes it impossible for the person to fulfill her life's autonomous projects. For it might be that the person's life is in such a miserable state that she has no projects that are interrupted by the death. She may want death, but still not consent to death. It need not even be an autonomous project of hers to continue living, just a morally driven determination not to consent to death.

Perhaps we want to say that non-consensual killing violates a person's autonomy because death is always a very serious harm and we should not intentionally impose very serious harms on innocent people without their permission. But I think we can simplify this principle to just say: "We should not intentionally impose very serious harms on innocent people", and then all intentional killing of the innocent is forbidden. Moreover, even if we don't go for this simplification, if we think death is a very serious harm, then we are apt to think that someone requesting death is irrational or constrained by circumstances, both of which endanger the validity of the consent. At this point it will be really implausible that it is the lack of consent that makes murder be wrong—for the serious badness of death is entering into the story.

Or maybe, in line with the element of formalism in Kantian ethics, we will say that the reason it is wrong to kill someone without her consent is that it is wrong to significantly change a person's life without her consent.

But this change principle is inapplicable and/or false. First of all, it's not clear that terminating a life counts as "changing a life". Moreover, if it counts, then so does beginning a life. But a couple does not need consent from their future child to conceive that child. Second, there are many significant life changes that it is permissible to impose on a person. It would not be impermissible for me to offer you a billion dollars, if I had it and if I had no morally obligatory alternatives for my largesse. But the offer would significantly change your life, and it would do so without your consent. For either you would accept the offer, in which case your life would significantly change (assuming you're not already very rich), or you would reject the offer, in which case your life would also significantly change, for instance because for the rest of your life you would from time to time be reflecting on your decision and wondering if it was the best one. Nor would I need to ask a person her permission before offering her a life-changing argument. Granted, she would have to consent to the change of life, but if the argument were powerful, her life would be forced to change: either she would have to act in accordance with the argument or else she would have to become the sort of person to whom arguments do not matter. Examples like this can be multiplied.

An argument against presentism

Presentism holds that only presently occurring events exist. You and I are watching an exciting game of tennis. Our particular interest is drawn by Federer's next serve which is at a match point. With eager anticipation I speculate about how the serve will go. Federer is serving. You briefly respond to my remark during the serve itself, saying that my speculation doesn't look right. Federer has served and wins the match. We continue disagreeing about the serve for the next fifteen minutes. Such a conversation is perfectly natural.

It seems essential to understanding how the conversation goes that we are all the time talking of the same serve. I claimed before the serve that it was going to be and then continue to maintain that it was a beautiful topspin. You claim that the serve was a poorly executed topspin-slice which only won the game by a fluke.[note 1]

It is difficult, however, for the presentist to maintain that we are talking about the same thing. After all, my initial remark, according to presentism, is about the future existence of a serve (note that on open-future presentism, it is not even yet the case that the serve will exist). Your next remark is about an existing serve. My next one is about a serve having existed. What unifies the topic of these remarks? After all, they are only a disagreement if they concern the same serve.

Moreover, consider the state of affairs that I am claiming to obtain, the state of affairs of the serve being an excellent topspin. Let us suppose I am right. Then it seems I am continually pointing to the same state of affairs throughout the conversation. I am certainly not changing my mind—I am too pigheaded for that. Consider now the truthmaker of my claim.

There are two kinds of presentist views about the truthmakers of claims apparently about past or present events. On a Bigelow kind of view, these truthmakers are presently existing but tensed concrete (i.e., non-abstract) states of affairs. On this view, I am initially claiming the obtaining of the concrete state of affairs of an excellent topspin being about to soon be served. You respond, during the serve, with a denial of the occurrence of the concrete state of affairs of an excellent topspin being presently served. I pigheadedly affirm the obtaining of an excellent topspin having been served. How is there any disagreement here? I first maintain the occurrence of one state of affairs, to which you respond with the denial of the occurrence of a second, and then I respond with an affirmation of the occurrence of a third? It seems plain that according to this kind of presentist we are talking about three different states of affairs, one of which (the one talked about during the serve itself) includes a serve, and the other two of which do not (since there are no past or future serves according to presentism).

Moreover, while the point is most vividly made concerning conversation that straddles the time of the event talked about, the point also can be made in regard to a distant past event. Suppose you and I are discussing the Battle of Waterloo. What makes it be the case that we're talking about the same battle? We can't just be talking of the present state of affairs of there having been such-and-such a battle. For there were many battles in the past. Rather, we're talking of the present state of affairs of there having been a battle x seconds ago. But the x keeps on changing, so the state of affairs we're talking about keeps on changing on us.

The second kind of presentism, ably defended by Merricks, holds that there are no truthmakers for typical past and future tensed propositions. Then my first claim, made before the serve, has no truthmaker. Your denial of the claim, during the serve, is the denial of a claim that in fact does have a truthmaker—the presently occurring serve. And then my subsequent re-affirmation is the re-affirmation of a claim that, again, does not have a truthmaker. Plainly you and I are not talking about the same thing, since there is no truthmaker homogeneity (two propositions are truthmaker-homogeneous iff they both lack truthmakers or they both have truthmakers of the same kind) between what I say and what you deny.

Killing, the victim's interests, and euthanasia

This post is based on the argument of the previous. I am going to argue for the following (material) conditional:

1. If killing an innocent person is wrong because it goes against the victim's interests, then killing an innocent person always goes against the victim's interests.

The Interests Thesis (IT) is that killing an innocent person is wrong because it goes against her interests. The Bad Life Thesis (BLT) is the thesis that it is possible for an innocent person to have such miserable prospects that it is not against her interests to be killed. The conditional (1) can be seen either as providing a reductio of IT or else an argument against BLT. I suspect there are philosophers who accept IT and BLT, for instance accepting IT as a way of countering Marquis-type arguments against abortion and accepting BLT in defense of euthanasia. I think that even if one rejects euthanasia, as I do, BLT has some plausibility (I recall the story about some saint praying for death when very ill—it's wrong to kill the innocent, but perhaps not irrational to pray for death), so overall one might take this argument to provide evidence against IT.

My argument for (1) is very simple:

2. If x is an innocent person who does not consent to being killed, then it is wrong to kill x even if it were in x's best interest to be killed. (Premise)
3. If IT, then it isn't wrong (barring special circumstances such as promises) to kill someone when it is not against her interests to be killed. (Premise)
4. If BLT, then it is possible to have an innocent person such that it is not in her interest to be killed and the "special circumstances" clause in (3) does not apply. (Premise)
5. Therefore, if IT, then not BLT.

There is something tricky in (4), but if one thinks that the special circumstances in (3) involve the existence of additional positive features of the situation that make a killing be wrong (one might say that those are features that make the killing wrong—say, as the breaking of a promise—but don't make the killing murder), I think (4) will be plausible. Could lack of consent be such a special feature? But I don't think it would be a special feature: it would mean that we are gutting IT, and replacing it with the view that what makes killing wrong is that it goes against the person's consent.

Now, the standard justifications of euthanasia involve the claim that euthanasia can be in the interests of the victim/patient. But if BLT is false, then these justifications fail. If there is no other kind of justification, then euthanasia is wrong.

One might try to justify euthanasia by saying that killing someone who validly consents to being killed is not wrong. But this is not a justification of euthanasia as such, but a justification of helping anybody who validly consents to being helped in suicide, whether the suicide is a case of euthanasia or not. I take it to be an essential feature of euthanasia that it be a killing construed to be in the best interests of the innocent victim/patient.

Objection: We need to ask the patient whether she consents to being euthanized because we cannot presume to judge for her whether death is in her interest. Her opinion has a merely epistemic role here.

Response: This confuses consent with opinion, a performative with an assertion. It can be perfectly rational to say: "I know that having A done to me is in my best interest, but I do not consent to having A done to me." And if someone tells us that being killed would be in her best interest but nonetheless does not consent to being killed, it is uncontroversially wrong to kill her. Why would someone think that A is in her best interest but not consent to A? Well, she might think it's immoral to consent to A. Or she might have made a promise to someone never to consent to A, without making any promise to avoid A.

An argument concerning abortion

Note: Portions of the argument below sound like I accept consensual euthanasia. I don't: intentionally killing juridically innocent persons, whether they consent or not, is wrong. But I don't make use of this belief in the argument, and my argument is in large part aimed at people who do not share this belief of mine on euthanasia.

This post is divided into three sections, the first giving a standard argument against abortion, the second giving a standard response, and the third arguing that the standard response is unsatisfactory, at least if one allows that one can rationally desire to die, a thesis that I am not sure of, but that few people who are not already pro-life will deny.

Part I: A standard argument against abortion: This takes two steps. First, one shows that a typical fetus would have a future of the same sort that we do were she not killed. This may involve metaphysical arguments to establish that the future is indeed the fetus's future in the sense that the fetus is identical with the adult human being. (I argue like this here.) The second step is to show that at least one of the reasons that it is wrong to kill you or me is that it would undeservedly deprive you or me of this sort of future, so that it is wrong to kill a typical fetus for exactly the same reason.

Part II: One standard response: Grant, at least for the sake of discussion, the claim that the fetus would have a future like ours, but deny that the undeserved deprivation of a future life like ours makes the killing wrong. Instead, what makes it wrong to kill someone is that doing so goes against the person's interests, which are defined in terms of the desires that the person has (on a crude version of the response) or would have in ideal mental circumstances (on a less crude version of the response), desires whose fulfillment requires the continuation of life. The reason for going for the "ideal desire" view is some version of the example of the suicidal teenager: it is wrong to kill the suicidal teenager even if the teenager lacks all future-directed desires. But, one argues, in ideal mental circumstances, the teenager would want to live, so a better story is the ideal desire one.

Part III: A response to the response: It is not the case that what makes it wrong to kill x is that x actually or ideally has desires that require the continuation of life. For suppose George does not actually or ideally desire the continuation of life. He is miserable, abandoned by all friends, no longer capable of engaging in any of his past projects, in the grip of a painful terminal illness. It seems not that implausible to suppose that George could rationally desire to die, so that he not only actually but also ideally has the desire to die. We may also suppose that he has no fulfillable ideal desires incompatible with the desire to die. Now some strongly pro-life people will deny the idea that one can rationally desire to die, but I suspect there are very, very few pro-choice philosophers who will dispute this. Moreover, even someone completely opposed to euthanasia can hold that it is rational to have the desire to die as long as one adds that it is wrong to act on that desire (other than maybe by praying for death).

So, to recap, we suppose, and few pro-choicers will deny us this assumption, that George rationally, consistently and ideally desire to die. By the response in Part II, what makes it wrong to kill people is actual or ideal desires that require future existence. But George doesn't have such desires, and hence it follows that is not wrong to kill him. But this is absurd.

A reader might say: "So, you've shown that if you accept Part II, you accept the permissibility of euthanasia. Almost everybody who is pro-choice already accepts the permissibility of euthanasia, so this is no reductio." But that would be a mistake. For I did not say that George consents to being killed. All I said is he desires death. It is one thing to desire something and another to consent to it (see this post). And I suspect that most pro-choice folks will agree that it is wrong to kill a non-consenting innocent adult, even if that adult desires to be killed. For it is the consent rather than the desire that matters here. Why would George not consent? Here, a myriad of possibilities is available, including religious views, views about the sanctity of life, views about the way that killing him would dehumanize the killer, etc.

So it is not enough to establish the lack of actual or ideal desires presupposing future life to show that a killing is permissible. Step II fails.

Could we say that the fetus consents to being killed, so that we could say that it is permissible to kill someone lacking actual or ideal desires presupposing future life if the victim consents to being killed? No: the fetus plainly does not consent. Could we say that the fetus would consent if it could be asked? We have no reason to suppose that. In the typical case, the fetus would be asked to give up a future like ours with no compensating benefit to the fetus, and there is no reason to suppose a positive answer to a deal like that. Alternately, perhaps, we could handle the consent question in the way we handle it in practice: appoint a proxy. But note that a proxy cannot have a potential conflict of interest, and in the case of abortion, the mother does have a potential conflict of interest—if she's considering abortion, this is not unlikely to be the case because she takes the pregnancy to conflict with her interests or the interests of her significant other or of her other children. Rather, the proxy has to be one who considers primarily what is good for the individual that she is a proxy. I suspect that, given "future like ours" considerations, in typical cases such a proxy will not agree to abortion.

Could we instead say that the fetus does not dissent from being killed, and it's permissible to kill someone who (a) lacks actual or ideal desires presupposing future life, and (b) does not dissent from being killed? That requirement seems too weak. It would be wrong to shoot George without positive consent from him (if he's capable of giving it) or presumed consent or proxy consent, I think.

A final option (Frank Beckwith suggested something like this): Perhaps the pro-choice opponent can say that having (actually or ideally) desires, or desires of a certain sort, is part of what makes one a person, and so it is not the case that killing someone who has the desire for life is wrong because it goes against that desire, but what makes it wrong to kill is that it is a person who is non-consensually killed. If one takes this view, then it seems one gets a completely different account of the wrongness of killing from that given in Part II. It is not the having of desires presupposing future life that makes it wrong for one to be killed (at least if innocent), but, simply what makes it wrong to kill x is that x is a non-consenting person. Her desires are beside the point: only the consent matters here. However, this account of what is wrong with killing is inferior to the Marquis account in Part I. For it fails to show how killing someone is different from doing other things that the person does not consent to, such as patting on the shoulder. Patting on the shoulder may be wrong without consent (though probably not always wrong), but is clearly much less of an evil than killing someone. Nor is it that the victim actually or ideally has ideally a stronger desire not to be killed than not to be patted, or that she more strongly dissents from being killed than from not being patted, since neither of these might be true, at least if we assume that one can rationally desire to be dead.

So it seems to me that it is hard to rescue Part II, and hence the Marquis argument's claim that if a fetus has a future like ours then it is wrong to abort the fetus survives.

An asymmetric forking model of free will

In the following, "free" shall refer to the kind of indeterministic freedom present in full-blown libertarian human choices, choices that are free in and of themselves (think of Kane's Self-Forming Actions; I prefer the term "primarily free" as opposed to "derivatively free") rather than in virtue of proceeding deterministically from habits developed by earlier free actions, in normal circumstances (e.g., without any backwards causation, prophecy, etc.) I want to offer a model for a free choice between A and B.

Note first that if any time t it is determined that the agent will freely choose A (respectively, B), then the agent has already freely chosen A by time t. This is the basic postulate of the kind of libertarianism that interests me. (I leave it as an exercise to the reader to verify that the postulate is unaffected by Frankfurt cases.) Only the free choice of A determines that the agent freely chooses A.

Suppose now that in the actual world, which I will call w_A, the agent freely chooses to do A rather than B, and suppose the two choices are incompatible. When I talk of choosing, I shall fix one particular choice-situation. Let F_A be the set of times t at which it is still nomically possible that the agent will not choose A. Let t_A be the latest time with the property that every t<t_A is in F_A (i.e., t_A is the supremum of F_A). Note that if t>t_A, then it is determined at t that the agent chooses A. By the basic postulate it follows that the agent has chosen A before every time t such that t>t_A. So, t is the time at which the decision is complete.

In the asymmetric forking model, we consider in addition to w_A a world w_B and suppose that:

1. The agent freely chooses B in w_B (in the relevant choice circumstance where she is choosing between A and B);
2. w_B matches w_A up to but not including time t_A;
3. There is a time t_B with the property that at every time t<t_B, it is not yet determined in w_B that the agent will choose B, and at every time t>t_B it is the case that the agent has already chosen B;
4. If w_B and t_B satisfy (1)-(3), then t_B>t_A.
5. The objective probability in w_A (respectively, w_B) that the agent will choose A (respective, B) tends to a high value (perhaps even 1) as t approaches t_A (respectively, t_B) from below.

Condition (4) makes this incompatible with the symmetric forking model: no choice can be simultaneously modeled by the symmetric and asymmetric forking models. Observe that condition (5) means that in w_B, the situation looks like this: First the probability of choosing B goes to some low value (because the probability of choosing A increases) as the time t increases to t_A. Then eventually the probability of choosing B goes to some high value as the time t increases to t_B, finally hitting 1 at every time later than t_B (and maybe at t_B itself). In other words, the agent inclines strongly towards A, and then finally chooses B.

I think something like this model is needed if we insist (a) that one cannot be ignorant of one's free choice and (b) that one cannot observe things that happen over very tiny intervals of time. In my previous post, I argued that the symmetric forking model fails desiderata (a) and (b). Let me now show how the asymmetric forking model might satisfy them. The idea is simply that if one is in w_A, one may introspectively notice the probability of one's making choice A increase (though staying below 1) to a high value, and this increase might take a significant amount of time during which one is settling on A. This awareness of the high value of the probability of making choice A could be sufficient to guarantee knowledge of the choice (though this does assume that one can know that one won't win the lottery, which is controversial) in w_A. Note that even if one perishes shortly after t_A (cf. the world w*_A in my previous post) it is still true that one knew with high probability by time t_A, and maybe even shortly before t_A, that one would choose A.

Now here is an interesting thing. If indeed (a) and (b) are met, the following takes place in w_B. As one approaches time t_A, one forms with high credence the belief that one is choosing A. But then one doesn't choose A, and soon one changes one's mind, and comes instead to know with high credence that one is choosing B.

Observe another interesting feature of this model. Suppose that w*_B is like w_B but one stops existing or one's freedom is taken away at some point of time between t_A and t_B. Then, in w*_B one does not choose A and one also does not choose B. It is an interesting question whether in w*_B, the agent is responsible for not having chosen A. The answer seems affirmative. After all, had he chosen A by around time t_A, he would have been responsible for that. Why shouldn't he be responsible for not making the choice of A? But if so, then one can be responsible for something that is not a choice (it is presumably not the case that around t_A the agent has chosen not to choose A—that would, I think, yield something like the problematic symmetric forking model for the choice between A and not choosing A). This would be interesting.

Moreover, I think that if (a) and (b) are true, then something very much like the asymmetric forking model must be satisfied by all full-blown libertarian choices if (a) and (b) are to hold. But somehow I am not sure I like the asymmetric forking model that much—I am really not sure it matches the phenomenology in all cases, in respect of the kind of bouncing of probabilities that we've got in w_B. So, it seems to me that perhaps sometimes either something like the symmetric forking model holds or at least sometimes the asymmetric model holds but without anything like (5). If so, this is an argument against the conjunction of (a) and (b), and, plausibly, evidence against (a), the claim that we must be aware of our free choices.

The claim that we make full-blown free choices unconsciously is an interesting one. It's interesting, for instance, that some neurological work that has been used as an argument against the existence of free will presupposes that free choices would be conscious. If we have a good independent argument against this consciousness hypotheses, that neurological work will no longer provide any evidence against our account of free will.

Alternately, one might deny (b). For non-naturalists, it isn't that hard to do that!

The symmetric forking model of free will

Until very recently (the last hour!) I thought the following was quite a good model of what typically happens when a normal human agent x freely chooses between actions A and B: There are worlds w_A and w_B and a time t such that

1. w_A and w_B coincide at all times earlier than t;[note 1]
2. w_A and w_B have the same laws, and x is a normally functioning agent in both worlds in respect of the decision between A and B; and
3. At all times later than t, it is true at w_A that x has already freely chosen A, and it is true at those times at w_B that x has already freely chosen B.

From (1), we can conclude that at no time earlier than t is the case at w_A or w_B that the agent has already chosen between A and B, but by (3) at all times later than t this is the case. Call (1)-(3) the Symmetric Forking Model.

It is, I think, prima facie plausible, at least to libertarians, that at least some normal human choices satisfy the Symmetric Forking Model.

However, it now seems to me that the following three propositions are incompatible (though we may need to tweak them slightly to get this result—I am just sketching this):

4. The Symmetric Forking Model holds of some normal human's choice.
5. There is a certain tiny but positive amount of time e such that a normal human cannot be aware of distinctions between events where the person gets to observe the distinction for an amount of time less than or equal to e.
6. Necessarily, if one has freely chosen A, then one was aware of the choice of A as a choice of A.

Why are these incompatible? Well, start with the Symmetric Forking Model and form worlds w*_A and w*_B which coincide with w_A and w_B, respectively, up to time t+e, but where our agent x is miraculously made unconscious at time t+e. Then, by (5) (with a bit of handwaving), the agent in w*_A cannot be aware of having chosen A and the agent in w*_B cannot be aware of having chosen B. For the agent does not get to observe the difference between choosing A and choosing B before t, since the two worlds coincide up to t, and hence only gets to observe the difference between t and t+e, which by (5) will not be enough.

The plausibility of (5) and (6) is enough to make me have serious doubts about (4). On the other hand, I can also see how the plausibility of (4) might be seen as casting doubt on (6). I am in fact suspicious of (6), so I do not think it is absurd to hold on to (4) but reject (6), if there is good reason to hold on to (4).

One might think that libertarianism commits one to (4). But that, I now think, is false. For one might have a case where the alternative to making at t the choice to do A is not making another choice, but temporizing and taking longer to make up one's mind.

I think it is an interesting challenge for a libertarian to construct a model of free choice compatible with (5) and (6). I have some somewhat inchoate ideas in this direction. But that may be fodder for another post.

[Edited to rename "Forking Model" to "Symmetric Forking Model", to distinguish this model from a different model that hopefully will figure in tomorrow's post.]

Defeating evil

In recent years, some theists have proposed that it is not enough to say that God allows evil that greater good may come of it (with whatever qualifiers and precise formulation that needs). Rather, God defeats evil. I have suggested once that when x forgives an evil that was done to her, this is a good sufficiently to justify God's permitting the evil. In fact, I think a stronger claim holds: when we forgive an evil done to us, we thereby defeat that evil. Interestingly, even though the claim that an evil has been defeated strikes me as logically stronger than the claim that a greater good has come from the evil, it can sometimes be the case that we can directly see that the defeat claim is true and then infer from that that a greater good has come. Here is such a case. I think of Jews in one block of a concentration camp who get up an hour before everybody else at, so that they can all take turns praying using the one set of tefillin and one prayer shawl that they have hidden, risking their lives and sacrificing their meager sleep to praise the Lord. This, it seems clear to me, defeated at least some of the Nazi evils done to them: the Nazis strove to dehumanize them, but instead as a result they rose—by God's grace surely—to the greatest heights of humanity. (This kind of reminds me of what I say about poetic justice here.)

Let me end on a different, somewhat lighter note. Here is a proposed sufficient condition for defeat of an evil, that probably does not apply to the above cases. An evil E is defeated in respect of a victim x if x is able to properly and whole-heartedly laugh at E. (Here it's worth remembering Isaac's name. Literally: "He laughs (or will laugh)". Who is "He"? Probably God: "God laughs at his enemies" seems to be the image.)

Deep Thoughts X

The future has not yet come.

Could a perfect act-utilitarian make assertions?

I suspect in the end the answer to my title question may be positive, but I want to run through an argument that makes it problematic that a perfect act-utilitarian, i.e., someone who always figures out the maximum utility and acts in according to it, could make assertions. I am making no claims of soundness or validity for the argument.

Making assertions is a norm-governed practice. An essential part of what it is to engage in a norm-governed practice is to accept the norms as applicable to oneself. What exactly the norm of assertion is—what conditions are such that making an assertion that p is appropriately—is controversial. Proposals made have included truth, belief, justified belief and knowledge. All of these have something to be said for them. But the following does not: "The norm of assertion is the maximization of utility." The practice of uttering that which the uttering of maximizes utility is not the practice of assertion. The perfect act-utilitiarian is governed by the norm of utility-maximization in all actions. Therefore, she does not accept the norm of assertion. Therefore, she does not engage in the practice of assertion. Therefore, she does not make assertions.

Deep Thoughts IX

The past is over.