Everyday ethics: The Smartphone

So I had the recent fortune of being at a forum for candidates running for a public office.  I'm not going to be any more specific than that, so as not to publicly make any kind of spectacle or anything.

One of the candidates during the forum was using their smartphone to look up statistics on the internet while answering questions.  This struck me as unprofessional.  Here's someone looking unprepared, googling things on his/her phone DURING the forum.

But then I asked myself, "Am I just being a stogy old guy?"  I admit that I'm not very old (32) and I'm by no means a technophobe (although I don't have a cell phone because I don't think it would be very useful to me, but on the flip side, I've been using the internet since it was all text based and the best search engine around was the world wide web worm). 

So was I being silly?  Lets imagine that in the minds of today's youths, or in this case this particular candidate, they think, "Why research in advance?  I have the ability to research on the fly, so I'll do that, which will probably yield me better results than researching beforehand and trying to remember it all."  Which isn't to say is false.  It probably is true.  I know I've made arguments that I couldn't exactly back up with facts, but knew to be true, and challenged people to google it.  They do, and I'm right.  Is that much different?

So lets say this is the case.  Can I really knock him/her down for not being prepared in advance, when that was his/her plan?  His/her preparedness is at the tips of his/her fingers.

Its entirely possible that what s/he gets from his/her phone contradicts what s/he was going to say. S/he would have to come up with an argument on the fly to make his/her position match the data.  Of course many candidates have to do that when faced with questions.  But without being prepared, his/her argument might suffer.  But what if s/he's a fantastic arguer?  Then this really wouldn't be a "weakness" for this candidate.  Heck it might be something to encourage.

The more I think about it, the more I realize I can't find a legitimate reason to devalue this person's decision, yet I found it extremely off-putting.

Am I judging this person purely on social convention, or is there really something wrong with what this person did?

The bathroom dilemma: Yuck and Inconvenience

So last time, I presented the problem.  I've spent some time thinking about it, and in particular the false dilemma that I presented.

I presented the problem as a choice between the waterless urinal and the 1 gallon automatic flush urinal.  Many people have pointed out that I have a third option, the bushes by my office.  If I'm serious about saving water, and 2.5 minutes is too long to walk, then couldn't I water the bushes by my office as a compromise?  I did a little digging, and it turns out that it may actually beneficial to your plants (at least your tomato plants)!

But there is a pretty strong yuck factor involved in peeing in public.  So inconvenience versus yuck!  This is what ethicists are for!  First, generally, I don't think that yuck! is a justification.  If I said something like, "Peeing in public?  Yuck!"  That isn't good enough moral reason for me not to do it.  "Gays getting married?  Yuck!"  amounts to the same thing.  The argument from yuck is essentially:  This act disgusts me.  People should avoid doing disgusting acts.  Therefore I should not do this act.  Plug in anything that is disgusting and you have an argument.  But the relevancy of how an act makes us feel and whether we should do it is questionable.  I think barfing is disgusting, and cleaning up barf is probably more disgusting.  But I think I should do it (cleaning it up that is, not barfing per se).

But there is a difference between gay marriage and peeing in the bushes.  One issue has heavy "moral weight" and the other not.  I think something has "moral weight" when decisions made about x either affects a great deal of people, or affects some people in a great deal, in a significant way.  This is terribly vague I know, but I think the vagueness is necessary.  Gay marriage affects both a great deal of people, and some people in a great deal.  I'm not sure if peeing in the bushes would count in either sense.

So whats the point of this distinction?  I want to say that on issues that concern "everyday ethics," that is issues that have only a light "moral weight" do not require the same kinds of justifications as weighty moral issues.  "Yuck" may well be enough for me to  not to do something that that has little moral weight.  Why?  Yuck makes us unhappy, in a temporary sense, not in a lifelong sense.  When we engage in a something that is only yucky (cleaning up barf as opposed to torturing someone, which is both yucky and cruel), we usually don't think that this will ultimately affect our overall evaluation of our lives.  Everyday ethics deals with precisely that, a small wrong, not a wrong that will ultimately affect the overall moral evaluation of our lives.  The less weighty a moral issue, the more it can be affected by yuck!

So I'm not peeing in the bushes.  Why?  Because its not a morally weighty issue and it makes me go yuck! The burden of proof, I think, is on others to show why this is a morally weighty issue that forces me to discount yuck.   If we were talking about being a vegan versus being a vegetarian, would the yuck factor be enough to take veganism off the table?  I'm coming around to the possibility of it being morally light enough because the difference of moral weight between a vegan and a vegetarian is the difference between being a good person and a slightly better person.  But if we were talking about the difference between a vegetarian and a omnivore, even a conscientious one, the difference in weight is significantly larger because of reasonable doubts about where our food is coming from.  It turns the compassionate omnivore into a regular omnivore.

So what about the other possibility, that its too inconvenient?  If morally light issues can be overridden by yuck, could it be overridden by inconvenience?  I think it might.  But first we should compare yuck with inconvenience.  I think most people would pick something inconvenient over something yucky.  It may be inconvenient for me not to eat anything at this moment, but it sure beats eating something yucky.  So, yuck gives us better reasons to reject some moral proposition than inconvenience because it affects our lives in a greater magnitude than yuck (and remember I'm not saying that yuck or inconvenience is affecting our over all lives a great deal).  So if its merely inconvenient that I walk 2.5 minutes to the waterless urinal, then I should, since the ethical gain is worth it.  But what if I drank a cup of coffee at home, drove half an hour to work, and really needed to go?  I don't think people would typically label this an inconvenience.  We hyperbolically describe these situations as emergencies.  But what actually is happening is that we are faced with turning something inconvenient (walking 2.5 minutes) into something yucky (soiling ourselves).  The moral weight of the issue hasn't changed, but our justification for rejecting the 2.5 minute walk has.  Heck, even compared to the yuck of peeing in public and the yuck of soiling ourselves, peeing in public would be the more preferable option. 

So... unless I'm being pressed with a yucky situation, I have a moral obligation to use the waterless urinal.

Everyday Ethics: How far for a gallon?

So my last post got me thinking about how much we are willing to sacrifice for something that isn't worth all that much...  Clearly, people are willing to chip in when it isn't a big sacrifice (recycling).  The perceived gain from recycling is far greater than the actual gain. 

But there are real gains from small acts sometimes.  I think water conservation is a good example of this.  Small amounts of water saved every day could have dramatic effects on the local and extended environment.  So here's a real dilemma here for you.  The campus that I work on has recently opened a new building.  The new building is built with a green philosophy, so the men's bathrooms have waterless urinals.  However, my office is on the other side of campus.  It would take about 5 minutes to walk to the use the urinal, which would save exactly 1 gallon of water every time I did this.  A 10 minute round trip.  If I used the closest bathroom to my office, I could be done and back in probably 2 minutes.

Do I have a moral obligation to use the waterless urinal?   

Everyday Ethics: Bread at the Restaurant

So there's been a lot of discussion  recently about Oreo cookies in the blogosphere.  I don't really want to repeat much of that, but if you read Jean's blog, and read my comments there, you'll see how it inspired me with this entry. 

I was in Europe last summer.  Being a vegetarian in Paris is hard.  Being a vegetarian in London is amazingly easy.  But oddly, there was one time, in London, when Tiffany and I ran into a restaurant and couldn't find a vegetarian option that sounded appealing to us (you can only eat so much pasta).  We sat down, looked over the menu, made our selections, and the waitress replied that they were out of what we wanted (it was late).  So we decided to leave the restaurant, and picked up a veggie burger at Burger King (which was significantly different than the veggie burgers in the states). 

But the ethical dilemma here is that when we were seated, they served us some bread.  Like I pointed out in Jean's blog, we all end up paying for the bread, eaten or uneaten through what we buy at the restaurant.  We can't simply say, I'll skip the bread, and demand a 20 cent discount on our meal.  But Tiffany and I didn't buy a meal at the restaurant.  So the bread was left uneaten and since it was served it was probably thrown away (assuming the health codes are the same in the UK as in the US).  Did we steal bread?  Did we have an obligation to pay for it?

Now I'm sure there are studies that show that the bread is a hook to keep customers from leaving the restaurant after being seated without ordering something.  If not studies, then perhaps that is the true motivation for the bread.  Whatever the case, in this particular circumstance, I think we were justified in leaving without paying, since the restaurant was advertising a particular meal (on their menu outside) and didn't have it. 

So change the scenario slightly...  We sit down,  I open up the menu and have a sudden realization.  I'm not hungry.  I share the thought with my wife and she realizes she's not hungry either.  The bread is at our table and the waiter patiently waits.  Do we have to order to pay for the bread?  I could order a soda or something small.  Or is the bread truly complimentary?  Could I go from restaurant to restaurant sitting down, mulling over the menu as I snack on the bread, and retire at the end of my night not ordering anything, yet fully satisfied?  If the bread is truly complimentary, I could do that.

The bread isn't truly complimentary, as my latter scenario suggests.  I think most people would find it a little questionable, just like going to the ice cream store, sampling all the flavors and leaving without purchasing anything.  The intent to cheat the system is wrong here.  But in the more difficult scenario, I had no intention of cheating the system, I just thought I was hungry and realized I was mistaken. 

At first glance  I want to be consistent with what I said about the Oreo's (I should pay for them) then I should pay for the bread.  The service was provided for me....  But in the case of the bread, I didn't ask for it, in the case of the Oreos, I did (by taking them out of the minibar).  Had I sat down and asked for bread and not ordered anything, I think I would be doing something wrong.

Everyday Ethics: The Flu

So I'm still sick.... So what better to do than to philosophize?  Aristotle really gets it right when he says that philosophy is self-sufficient, you don't really need anything to do it, health included.

So I went to the pharmacy to pick up some more meds to dope myself up with in a losing battle to make my self feel normal.  I got to the register dropped it all on the little conveyor belt, and the nice checkstand lady started ringing me up.

Thats when it hit me.... She's putting her hands all over my medicine and food!  Now this isn't the usual concern of where has her hands been, but rather, my hands have been all over them!  Should I speak up and say something like, I have the flu, so you might want to sanitize after you get done with my purchase?
I'm very much actively avoiding other people, specifically friends and family so I don't get them sick, but what about strangers?  I can't avoid this particular stranger.  I need my food at the very least.  Shouldn't I at least extend the courtesy of a warning to her?

If I warn her, there are two possible scenarios that I envision, and both are really not about her particular reaction strangely enough.  The first is the best case scenario.  She sanitizes her hands and her station, and everyone around me (the other people in line) just go about their day like normal.  The second is that everyone freaks out, panicked in a media fueled hysteria about swine flu, as I plead vegetarianism and a complete lack of pork.  Okay so there might be some in-between there too.

If my warning will cause more harm than good, then why should I make the warning?

I find this scenario to be an awful lot like the white lie or the  "Does this make me look fat?" scenario.  A truthful answer may do a lot of harm, but there is no withholding of the truth.  In the flu case, I'm trying to prevent harm by telling the truth, but may inadvertently cause more harm then good by trying.

So like, many other cases, the white lie comes down to circumstances.  If my wife were to ask me this question while getting ready for an important meeting, I'd tell her the truth, to save her embarrassment.  But if she was just getting ready for work, where only 20-plus 3rd graders will be judging her significantly, I would tell her the lie. 

So is there a high degree of possibility that significant harm will be dealt here?  Sure.  Lots of people go to the pharmacy for all sorts of things, including the elderly, who are more susceptible to the flu than young'ins like me.  Sure there are people who might overreact, but better to overreact than to expose oneself to the flu.

So... Stay away everyone!  H1N1 death will visit you if you do not heed my warnings!  (I don't know if I have H1N1).

The End of the World

There are some thought experiments that are so common, that it rarely is thought of as a thought experiment, but rather an argument in itself.  Its the end of the world, and you and someone else are the last people on the planet.

Usually, the someone else is terribly unattractive, or there are other circumstances that affect your desire to procreate with the other person.  But the scenario itself suggests that there is some kind of obligation to continue the human species, since in normal circumstances you would never want to engage in activities that would lead to reproduction with this other person.

So do we have an obligation to continue the human species?

I'm not sure that we do.  Typically, when we speak of future generations, we're speaking about an abstract population that will very likely come into being.  But, in end of the world scenarios, the future generation will come into being only based on our present actions.  Just as I, an individual, have no particular responsibility to have children (arguably, I have some kind of responsibility not to have children because of the state of the environment, and the fact that I live in an industrialized nation...  but thats for another time.). 

Now I'm a firm believer in context, and in the situation of being the last members of my species, I may have a particular duty to continue the existence of the species.  But to say that, implies I have an obligation to the human species as a whole.  What kind of obligation is that, and why doesn't it appear on an individual basis in normal circumstances? 

The hypothetical position that I am in, is quite akin to the position of God before creation.  Before creation, God has really no obligations except to himself and to his species (assuming he has a species).  Now to place God into our scenario, he would have to be the last of his species.  Does he have an obligation to bring into existence creation?  To say that he would have an obligation to himself, is odd.  Obligations to oneself are essentially promises to oneself.  In any promisory relationship, the person the promise is made to, can release the promiser from the promise.  E.g.  I promise my wife to take her to the movies, and she's not feeling up to it.  So she releases me from the promise.  But, if I'm making promises to myself, then I can release myself from the promise.  I promise myself that I will exercise today.  But I'm not feeling it, so I release myself from the promise.  Have I broken the promise?  Only if I didn't release myself from the promise and broke it, but why would anyone do that?

So back to the end of the world.  I don't have an obligation to myself to continue the existence of the world, and I don't think I have obligations to non-existent people, otherwise I might have an obligation to procreate my children (which I don't believe I have, and I don't think most people believe that they have as well).  Its not an obligation to myself (those are meaningless), but it could be one to the species.... but the species consists of myself and the other person.  So I have an obligation to myself and the other to procreate.  If the other has a similar mindset as myself, then we can release ourselves from the obligation, and not reproduce.

Everyday ethics: The bathroom

So I was thinking about the things that we do everyday, that arn't exactly earth-shattering moral dilemmas, but have a significant moral component to them.  What do we do in these circumstances?  And there are a plethera of them.  So I'm going to try to work them out here on my blog, under the label everyday ethics.  I'm not the first person to think about these by a long shot, but I doubt that there are tons of scholarly articles on them (but in all honesty, I haven't checked).

So my first entry...  I work at a community college and I know I'm not alone in finding public bathrooms kinda gross.  But when you're on campus all day, you really don't have other options, and when you have to go you have to go.  But to the point, usually one has choices on where one goes... and there is inevitably the handicapped stall. A wide open stall, about the size of my home bathroom.  There's something nice about not being enclosed in metal all around, inches from yourself.

But the handicapped stall is for handicapped people, and I'm not handicapped.  Should I use it?  I think there is a pretty good analogy with handicapped parking spaces.  They're the closest and thus most desirable parking spaces.  Many people kind of fume about the fact that the spaces arn't utilized very much sometimes, and so whats the harm in utilizing them when in all likelihood nobody will be inconvenienced by it? 

However, the problem is the occassion when someone will be inconvenienced by it.  The fact that the other stalls are so narrow make it difficult for handicapped people to use them.  Its difficult to turn myself around in them, let alone a wheelchair.  Occupying the stall may be nice for myself, but it would be akin to putting a locked belt on a handicapped person.  We all know the sensation of NEEDING to relieve ourselves, and anything that gets in the way is just that much more painful.  Add to the discomfort the fact that one is disabled, and the stall that they would be able to utilize with more ease than the stall that they would have difficulty using is occupied, it seems like an unfair burden to place on handicapped people.

Most people are fairly good about not using the handicapped parking spots (mostly because there are fines involved, but also because most people are good people).  But I wonder how many people use the handicapped stall when given the option.  I know I used to do it.  Then, one day a handicapped person came in while I was occupying the stall...  I felt like a pretty big ass, for a skinny vegetarian.