Have a wonderful break and happy holidays! :o)

Blog Period 26 Begins, Sort Of

The WHOLLY OPTIONAL new blogging period (the twenty-sixth one, covering Wednesday, December 6th, through pretty much forever) starts here.

This is the official separator post beginning the new period -- just add water.

MY problem with Unger that self righteous bigot.

In examples involving trolleys and tracks Unger perpetuates the hateful and offensive stereotype of the mustachioed villain who ties people to train tracks. It is plainly evident that Unger has a vendetta against bearded men. My guess is that Unger's altruism is a way to get back at Santa Claus (a bearded man) who did not get him the one toy above all others that he wanted for Christmas that year. If Unger couldn't have it, then no one else could either. So he became a philosopher to try to infect the world with his noxious doctrine, hoping to put Santa Claus, Coca-Cola and the toy companies out of business. If everyone lives a Spartan lifestyle and gives all their surplus wealth to UNICEF, CARE or Oxfam then they have no need for gifts or material comforts of any kind and then Santa will for the first time know what it is like to be unwanted and useless. A diabolical plot to be sure, but then we all know that Unger is the real villain . Don't worry Santa , I won't let the bad man hurt you.

So I guess it is pick on Unger day...

I also have a problem with Unger’s approach to this subject matter. He makes assumptions about the reader’s intuition, and more often than not I find myself disagreeing. Quite a few of us have had this reaction to his intuitions. I wonder if maybe we react differently because we are more acquainted with thinking about philosophy and ethics; maybe our minds, when thinking about cases like he has us do, instantly evaluate them rather than just intuitionally react to them. Or maybe we have, over time, changed our intuitions through study and discussion.

In the book Unger mentions how people can be psychologically inclined to react one way or another to a set of cases. He says how we often subconsciously want our reactions and intuitions about one case to match up with how we react to the other cases we have been presented. He says that he switches his cases around, he does not present them in the typical way, so he can get our real reactions to them. This sounds like a smart move, but I think that my intuitions would have told me the same thing either way. Also, my intuitions did not sync up with what he presented as the typical response. I am curious as to how he ascertains what the normal, common sense intuition is.

One of my problems I think is that I often think that both options are morally impermissible, as Tom called it a negativist. Especially in these harm cases, but even in the stealing cases, this puts me at odds with Unger. He would probably think me to be rather morally cold in some of these cases! But, overall, I often find him unconvincing and hard to read due to him making such assumptions. I think he would do better to be a little more sensitive to other views, but also, as Kelly said in class yesterday, a book can only be so long.

My problem with Unger...

I apologize in advance for this blog because I do not think that it is going to be arguing against Unger's theories as much as how he writes his book. I have been struggling to read this book thus far because Unger's style of writing bothers me in general. He has a way of leading the reader in a way that does not let anyone think for themself. In talking about a theory, he tends to mention that it is the correct way of thinking a number of times before he even discusses what the theory is. This bothered me from the start, but it became more of an issue for me in reading these two chapters for class today. I, like Kelly, had problems with how Unger saw Preservationist thinking in certain cases. It bothers me enough that Unger keeps telling me what I think when he's correct. However, when he spends pages talking about how I supposedly think and I do not agree with it, I find it nearly impossible to read. I agreed with Kelly in that no matter which case, the Heavy Skater or the the Switches and Skater, I felt that it is wrong to make the skater go in front of the trolley. Furthermore, I felt that even as a runner with 60 lives in danger and my foot as the only solution, someone is morally allowed to take my foot. Unger needs to find a case in which he does not play the number game and in which the same is at stake for all people involved. However, he does not provide such a case that causes Preservationists a large problem for the constraint against doing harm in this chapter. Furthermore, when he claims to find problems, he is not really speaking for my Preservationist intuitions.

Blog Period 25 Begins

The new blogging period (the twenty-fifth one, covering Monday and Tuesday, December 4th and 5th) starts here.

This is the official separator post beginning the new period -- best if used before January 2007.

Living Low and Crime High

For thanksgiving this year, I spent the entire first half of the holiday (along with my entire family and many other members of my church) delivering hot turkey meals to homeless people in downtown Philadelphia (wherever we could find them...in subways, under overpasses, begging on the sidewalk, train tunnels, etc). Most of these people have lived pretty long lives, and are just on hard times, and could greatly appreciate a warm meal (especially on the cold semi-rainy day that thanksgiving turned out to be). They may have lead lives of crime, or drugs, or any other number of things. They are in many cases no way innocent. But they were in need. However, they are in no way as needy as the innocent children in wherever UNICEF needs to send those hydration salts. They are not among the most needy individuals on the planet. But as a combined effort, our parishioners informed us, we fed over 1000 homeless.
Am I right in thinking that one of the consequences of Unger’s arguments, is that what my church and my family did was morally atrocious? We could have better spent the money for all that food. Merely granting a night of warm bellies for some overaged degenerate bums is not even close to what we could have accomplished through UNICEF saving hundreds of innocent lives. (Maybe I’m falsely attributing a strict utilitarian view to Unger, but the way it seemed in class today with arguments over donating money to cancer patients instead of Unicef, it seemed the Ungerian argument was of that sort of bend...even so, I still have an objection to the stealing thing I’m going to address in the next paragraph).
If Unger is right, and it is good for us to steal from others to help those in greater need, we should have TAKEN meals from those bums that had them (they would not be too terribly hurt by it, for they’ve lived fairly long lives as it is, one meal won’t make or break them, and they are not doing anything to morally pull their weight in the world anyway) and we should have used any money we could get from those meals to serve the innocent young dying of starvation. How far does this stealing thing go? If there is no serious damage done to taking small sums from mass amounts of homeless people (as opposed to one large sum from a single rich person)...according to Unger, It’s morally good to do that too. It’s okay to take the poor lady’s last three pennies...she can go without a meal for another week. We’ve got hydration salts to buy for kids across the world!
In Unger’s conclusion to chapter three, he says “When needed to lessen the serious suffering of innocent enough people, it’s morally GOOD to engage in what’s typically objectionable conduct, like lying, promise-breaking, cheating, stealing, and so on.” Why not add to the list stomping on the homeless. Or stealing from lesser charities where the money wouldn’t do as much severe good, (like say, the special Olympics). How about killing (in a pleasant painless way) your elderly cancer-ridden neighbor and selling all her things on the black market, where it can make substantially more money that can be put toward UNICEF than if you sold it back to the store...you would be putting her out of her misery anyway. PLUS you stop two serious cases of suffering with one stone. She will no longer have a long and painful death. Her death was needed to save as many innocent children as possible. Your intuitions that it is bad to kill your elderly neighbor are misguided. The liberationist view clearly shows that it is just as good to kill her as it is to steal the yacht or the money from the rich guy. Killing in this sense is always morally good behavior, because it lessens serious suffering of the innocent(on two counts!).
Maybe killing is too harmful for Unger to let it be passed by his need for relief of suffering. But is it really THAT harmful in the case of the cancer ridden elderly? I'm still concerned about my new found moral goodness in stealing from the poor. They couldn't suffer too badly, or even nearly as much as the kids who are dying of easily curable diseases. Perhaps even the small amount of suffering these people would undergo would be more than Unger meant would be allowable. However, if we are morally required to give until it HURTS, I see no reason why poor should not be required to do so as well. And since it doesn't cause them severe suffering (it doesn't HURT in a significant sense), they should shovel over the dough.
I'm pretty sure Unger isn't unable to come back from any of this. In fact, i'm more sure he'll have plenty to say in reply. But I had to write about SOMETHING and this (probably unfair attack) is the only thing I could impassion myself to write about.

Blog Period 24 Begins

The new blogging period (the twenty-fourth one, covering Wednesday and Thursday, November 29th and 30th) starts here.

This is the official separator post beginning the new period -- performed in the style of the original artists!

Blog Period 23 Begins

The new blogging period (the twenty-third one, covering Monday and Tuesday, November 27th and 28th) starts here.

This is the official separator post beginning the new period -- not just a separator post, but an adventure.

To Jen and Michelle

Before I begin I'd like to dedicate this post to Jen Ming who is always reminding me to post and to Michelle "Doubting Thomas" Heayn who flat out believed that I would forget to post this week. Hopefully this will be a good one.

My goal here is to try and figure out what exactly about unversalizability does not make it a sufficient condition for a moral rule or set of moral rules to be valid. As I understand the lay of the land morality deals with oughts and I suppose I want to say that ought implies can. See during class and before I've been of the mind that ought does not necessarily imply can but now I'm not so sure. It seems that if morality says that you ought to do something that the something should be within one's power to do and also it should be something that everyone is able to do(or would be able to do). But I do not think that it is enought that the rule is applicable to everyone, I do think that it is necessary for it to be universal. I think perhaps the way it might work is that if a rule is moral then it is universal. Its Universalizability is not an antecedent but it might yet be a foundation of morality.

"You shall not kill." If this is infact a moral rule then it is one that is universal because of some other factor. Still this doesn't get away from the fact that this is a necessary quality or property of morality and it doesn't help show me that it isn't the only one. Perhaps some statement about the nature of the good is necessary such that:

1. Humans are creations of God in his own image.
2. God is Good.
3. Therefore that which is created in the image of God is also Good by virtue of being created by the Creator who is Good and being created in his image etc.

It is clear then that the above priniciples apply to all people. There is a clear statement of the Good so then one can infer the following maxim:

4. We should not kill other humans.

It seems that if each of us ought to not kill and it also seems the case that we are all infact able to not kill. But this is a test of universality and I'm still not sure how to separate it out from the nature of morality.