Avatar and philosophy

So my proposal to the forthcoming Avatar and philosophy volume was accepted!  Just like all my other official publications, its on ethics.  Specifically, what we can learn about our treatment of animals from the Na'vi. 

But I want to write about something besides animals and ethics here...  So if you haven't seen Avatar yet, and you don't want it spoiled, stop reading now.

So Jake at the end of the movie undergoes permanent relocation into his Avatar by a tree (it looks way better in the movie than this makes it sound).  Is Jake dead?  One might be inclined to say that his body is dead, but Jake isn't.  This presupposes a couple of things.... That Jake either has a soul that now inhabits his avatar, and that is why he is alive, because his soul is still around.  Or that Jake's consciousness/identity continues to persist in the avatar, and that is why he is alive.

If its the first, that Jake has a soul, then nobody really ever dies, assuming souls are the traditional immortal entity.  So we're just wrong when we say that ANYONE dies.  I think this is a little far-fetched, not to mention metaphysically problematic.  But the other alternative is just as problematic...  We could argue that Sigourney Weaver's character is not dead, just inside the aforementioned tree (I'm betting that in the future sequels [Cameron has already said he envisioned a trilogy] that she comes back via the tree).  Or we could argue that people who lose their memories or have a break in their consciousness (coma) have died and returned to the living.

It is easy to talk about biological death, but its much more difficult to talk about death of an identity...  Do identities die?  And isn't that what we normally talk about when we talk about people?  When I think of my wife, I'm not thinking of my wife's body.... I'm thinking of her identity.  Are they one and the same?  I don't think they're the same, but I find the problem of personal identity maddening on almost every level.... I guess thats why I'm so attracted to identity puzzles.

Miscarriages may become illegal

A law in Utah criminalize miscarriages, making it a felony homicide.  That means a woman could conceivably be put in prison for life because she has a miscarriage. 

Now I understand the intentions behind the bill...  It seems rather irresponsible to purposely bring about a miscarriage.  But this seems to criminalize spontaneous miscarriages that 1 out 4 pregnancies naturally result in without being irresponsible.  There has to be a better way to word this bill to exclude normal miscarriages, and include the irresponsible ones. 

The Black Blog

So I have a pretty dark blog.  I wonder if it hurts people's eyes when they read my blog.  That is generally why people write on light backgrounds with dark writing...  To ease eye strain.

But why a dark blog?  I'm trying to save energy.  Not too long ago, a few people calculated what the energy savings would be if Google changed their homepage from a white background to a black background.  The energy savings would be something like 8.3 Megawatts of power per day. 

The more we become conscious about our energy use, the more we realize that we use a whole lot of energy when we're not even trying to. 

The moral status of plants

Its hard to talk about animal welfare without inevitably having people try to drag you down the slippery slope of the rights of plants.  If animals get equal consideration of interests, what about plants?

Its pretty tempting to say that a carrot being chopped, diced, then boiled, sauteed or just eaten alive, would be morally wrong.  But there are pretty clear relevant differences between plants and animals, the biggest being that animals are conscious, plants are not.  The burden of proof are on the defenders of vegetables that plants are conscious, not on me to show you that they are not.  But if you insist, consciousness as we know it, requires at the very least a central nervous system e.g. brain, that they lack completely.  Show me a plant with a brain, and then perhaps we can discuss the rights of the veggie.

BUT....  Switzerland has recently built it into their constitution that the moral status of plants must be considered.  So what is an ethicist to say about the moral status of plants? 

In April, the team published a 22-page treatise on "the moral consideration of plants for their own sake." It stated that vegetation has an inherent value and that it is immoral to arbitrarily harm plants by, say, "decapitation of wildflowers at the roadside without rational reason."

There are a couple of points here that we need to parse out here.  First:  vegetarion has inherent value.  I'm not sure that it does.  Life for life's sake isn't particularly compelling to me, otherwise I would be happy when I find weeds in my lawn.  There's more vegetation!  I remember listening to the Ig Nobel awards (A satirical awards show that gives awards for the strangest research) last year, and hearing about the paper for the first time.  The recipient of the award said that if you ever had a house plant and felt bad about it dying, then you understand the inherent value of vegetation.  But I don't think I feel bad because of the plant's death, I feel bad because I've lost the aesthetic value of the plant, and its been replaced with something that creates ugliness. 

I do find that it is wrong to arbitraily harm plants...  But not because of an inherent value in plants, but because of the environmental impact (however small) that it will have.  If its a small impact, then the wrongness may be only a small one, that can be overlooked.  But done at a massive scale, the wrongness scales exponentially.  (Sheesh I really am a consequentialist arn't I?)

All of this is for a point however.  Switzerland doesn't want genetically modifiied crops in their country.  If GM crops are created, and typically they are created infertile so they can't spread their genetically modifiedness (its a word.... now.) around to other crops.  But if plants have dignity, then it would be wrong to deprive them from reproduction.

This is all dancing around the notion of the sanctity of life.  Tampering with life is wrong, strong period.  But this notion is pretty archaic in today's society.  We tamper with ourselves, just as much as we tamper with other beings, be it plastic surgery, cybornetic implants, or flu shots, we tamper with the way we function, and the way we are.  Peter Singer has a pretty good book that gets to the heart of this issue (unsanctifying human life).

If consequentialism gives us some reasons for protecting kinds of life from harm and not others, does that mean that some animals could conceivably be harmed just like plants?  Sure.  In fact, I'm not terribly sure I can muster a strong defense for keeping Panda Bears around on the planet beyond that they please humans aesthetically.... but ultimately that may be enough for a consequentialist.  If Pandas were to mutate into a non-aesthetic beast of a creature that did nothing but eat bamboo, and had no predators and no other ecological niche to fill, then extinction wouldn't be a loss at all. 

Reason vs intuition

I get a lot of puzzled looks from students in my classes.  Sometimes its because I'm just weird.  Others times is because I present them something that is perfectly rational, but wildly non-intuitive.  So because its non-intuitive, the reasoning must be wrong.  They'll throw up objections and try to refute the argument, and I respond successfully, but they'll still reject the argument. 

Sometimes they'll just throw out reason.  The arguments are dumb!  Apparently dumb arguments are any argument whose conclusion are non-intuitive.  Why is it so difficult to accept that our intuitions can be wrong?  Its not a new experience that our intuitions are wrong.  I would venture to argue that all of our intuitions have been wrong several times in our lives.  Unfortunately, in those times when we've been wrong, often an experience refutes the intuition, instead of reason/argumentation.  In philosophy, we often can't just appeal to experience, in part because sometimes the experience itself is what is in question.

But I am comforted that philosophy isn't the only discipline to suffer from this problem.  Mathematics has its share of non-intuitive conclusions, that are firmly backed by reason.  For example: .999999999999...(an infinite string of 9s) is equal to 1.

Now intuition might tell us that it's not equal to 1, but only really close to one.  But in fact, 1 and .9999999999... are the same number, just two different ways of writing it.  2/2 is 1, 4/4 is 1 and .999999999... is 1. 

A simple proof can be done of this:
1/3 = .33333333333333333...
2/3= .66666666666666666...

1/3 + 2/3= 3/3 =1
.33333333333...+ .66666666666...=.99999999999...

By the rule of transitivity of identity, 1 =.999999999999...

Now if you're acquainted with who I am, you'll know I'm terrible at math, so maybe I'm making a mistake....  But I'm not mistaken.  I refer you to this blog post which has two follow up posts linked on the original post that explicates the proof in great detail. And the blogger has to deal with the same intuitive vs rational argument that I deal with on a regular basis in my courses.  So why is there such a resistance to give up our intuitions, and is there a better way to get people to give up their intuitions when dealing with something that can't be experienced?

Looting

Okay my arm still hurts, and I don't know why....  I'm going to make an appointment to see the doctor today...

But back to looting.  Most people think that looting in general is wrong.  It would be wrong for me to take my class to Wal-Mart and by shear force of numbers overwhelm them and take their goods.  (I'm stipulating that looting is a group action.  You can't loot by yourself, you loot with other people.  Looting by yourself is just stealing or shoplifting....)

However, when we are faced with drastically different circumstances, is looting okay?  Some might simply say, "yes... because my survival is at stake."  But clearly this isn't going to be a good enough justification, ethically speaking.  To abide by some moral obligations, I may have to sacrifice my own life to fullfill them e.g. jumping on a grenade that threatens to kill the members of my platoon.

I want to say that looting is morally permissible under the following condition.... that those around you fail in their obligation to refrain from looting.  I see looting as a group responsibility.  Some group responsibilities decrease in obligation because many are failing to follow their duty.  E.g. if many people are walking on the grass, when there is a sign that is posted to not walk on the grass... as people fail in the duty, the obligation to not walk on the grass begins to erode.  Once people have pounded a pathway through the grass, its rather irrelevant that I continue to walk around the grass, rather than on the pounded pathway.

Now as people loot, the obligation for you to refrain from looting also gets pounded away.  The owner of the property will inevitably have ownership of all of his useful property looted. Now, it would be LESS advantageous for a single person to horde a great deal of resources in a disaster scenario, than for the resources to be spread amongst many people.  Aid will eventually come, whats needed is to bridge the interim time between the disaster and the response.  100 cans of beans is in all likelihood more than enough to get by on.  In fact, it would deprive others from being able to survive the interim, if you horde more than you need.  So once the looting begins, each individual who loots actually increases the utility of the act (looting).

One might respond that they have been responsible...  They piled up supplies before the earthquake in an event of an emergency.  Then arguably, one could still loot, and give the looted supplies to those who could benefit from them, and did not have the capability of looting because they were injured or trapped. 

Of course this all assumes life or death scenarios.  Looting wouldn't be permissible if the San Jose Sharks failed to win the Stanley Cup..... Again....

augh!

I'm in some serious pain.  I'm not sure what exactly I did to my shoulder/back/neck, but its been hurting for a while now.  So I'm going to try to lay off the computer for a while... which is rather difficult for me.

So....  I'll give you guys something to discuss:

Looting after an 8.8 earthquake.  Go.