Saturday, January 31, 2015

I Love Selfies


It's 3 am and I'm thinking about...selfies. I guess it's hard not to think about selfies when everywhere you look you see articles, blog posts, comments and expert opinions that argue that there's something mentally wrong with you if you decide to take your own picture. Well, of course that there's something wrong if there is no one out there to hold that camera for you and instead you have to do it yourself. But this disorder doesn't have a fancy name. It's called loneliness and it's associated with depression. Also, it can be a real monster for some, though not for everybody. Ultimately, selfies are the loner's pictures. I, for one, like them. And that's mainly because they show that there is still a desire to (re)connect with other people, even if this means posting your smile or lack of on a social network. The fact that we now have such a thing as group selfies doesn't mean that everybody went crazy or that one-person selfies are insignificant. This just shows that the entire practice has acquired a social and cultural dimension as well, which is unfortunately based on irony and public shaming of one of the oldest feelings in the world.

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Moral Challenges and Biases


Do numbers count?


Would you kill a chicken for no reason?
If you were forced to choose, would you kill a man or a chicken?
If you were forced to choose, would you kill a man or a pregnant woman?
If you were forced to choose, would you kill a pregnant woman carrying twins or a pregnant woman carrying triplets?
If you were forced to choose, would you kill a pregnant woman or 10 chickens?
If you were forced to choose, would you kill a pregnant woman or 1 million chickens?
If you were forced to choose, would you kill a pregnant woman or 1 billion chickens?
If you were forced to choose, would you kill a pregnant woman or all the existing chickens?
If you were forced to choose, would you kill 2 pregnant women or all the existing chickens?
If you were forced to choose, how many pregnant women would you be willing to kill in order to save all the existing chickens?


Does proximity count?


If two people of two different races were drowning and you could only save one, would you opt for the one who shared your skin color or the other?
If two people of two different nationalities were drowning and you could only save one, would you opt for the one who shared your nationality or the other?
If two people were drowning and you could only save one, would you opt for the one that lived in your state/county or the other, who didn't?
If two people were drowning and you could only save one, would you opt for the one that lived in the same city as you did or for the other, from a neighboring city?
If two people were drowning and you could only save one, would you opt for your lifelong neighbor or for the other, who just moved on your street?
If two people were drowning and you could only save one, would you opt for your best friend or a work colleague that you never really talk to?
If two people were drowning and you could only save one, would you opt for your best friend or your newly born brother?
If two people were drowning and you could only save one, would you opt for your best friend or father?
If two people were drowning and you could only save one, would you opt for your father or mother?
If you were in a sinking boat with the person you care most about and you could only save one, would you save yourself or the other?


Do intentions and character count?



Tom, hating his wife and wanting her dead, puts poison in her coffee, thereby killing her. Jane also hates her husband, and would like him dead. One day her husband accidentally puts poison in his own coffee, thinking it is cream. Jane realizes this, and has the antidote that could save him, but does not hand it over and her husband dies. Is Jane’s failure to act as bad as Tom’s action? (adapted from Judith Jarvis Thomson)



The sheriff of Nottingham has captured Robin Hood and has him imprisoned in the tower. He sends a message to Maid Marion that if she sleeps with him he will release Robin and return him to her. She agrees to this and Robin is released, however he is furious over her infidelity and refuses to have anything to do with her. Little John, Robin’s best friend has long had a crush on Maid Marion and asks her to come away with him, which she does. Rank these participants in order from the most moral to the least moral.



You witness a man rob a bank, but instead of keeping the money for himself, he donates it to a local orphanage. You know this orphanage has been struggling for funding, and this money will allow the children to receive proper food, clothing and medical care. If you report the crime, the money will be taken away from the orphanage and given back to the bank.
What should you do?


Does luck count?

Two people leave a party and drive home well over the legal limit.  One makes it home safely and the other knocks down and kills a pedestrian.  Is one more morally blameworthy than the other?


Do thresholds count?


Mary is in a hospital lounge waiting to visit a sick friend. A young man sitting next to Mary explains that his father is very ill. The doctors believe that he has a week to live at most. He explains further that his father has a substantial life insurance policy that expires at midnight. If his father dies before midnight, this young man will receive a very large sum of money. He says that the money would mean a great deal to him and his family, and that no good will come from his father’s living a few more days. After talking with him Mary can tell this man is in desperate need of the money to feed his family. The man asks Mary to go up to his father’s room and smother his father with a pillow. Should Mary kill this man’s father in order to get money for the man and his family?


Answering these questions might prove to be a good exercise in self-awareness, aimed at unraveling the moral biases behind your thoughts and behavior. It would be interesting and equally helpful to understand why, for instance, you would be willing to kill 10 chickens, but not a billion, or a billion but not all the existing chickens in order to save a human life. All these are hypothetical, over the top dramatic situations, which are most likely absent from what we'd call a normal kind of day. However, they will help you notice those subtler ethical challenges that all of us encounter every now and then and, hopefully, they will reveal the biases behind your moral decisions.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

What is the Root of All Evil?






I believe it is love. The love for specific others and for yourself make you love less the rest of the people, make you undermine their worth and create distorted images that can match your view of reality. It's a reality in which shared love fails to mean love. Look at marriages and long-term relationships, for instance. You cannot love your partner and someone else at the same time without being unfaithful to, ultimately, both of them. This is one very special type of love, you might say. It's romantic love, which in most cases demands emotional exclusivity in order to exist. Other types of love are different and will not be diminished through sharing.

I will have to disagree with this thought. You cannot love your friends, for instance, and their enemies at the same time, although you personally find them quite pleasing. Loving the enemies of your friends will mean, in the simplest terms, ceasing to love your friends. We place the people we love on high pedestals and whenever someone threatens to shake those pedestals, we retaliate. We love our children, so we are not going to love those who compete with our children. We love ourselves and, thus, it seems normal not to nurture the same feelings towards people who hurt us, willingly or not, who make us doubt ourselves and our values, who are menacingly striving for the very same thing that we desire as well.

Briefly put, we become mean and willing to perform evil actions when we protect ourselves or our loved ones from the rest. The root of all evil is in the love for particulars, whom we end up appropriating and transforming into parts of our selves. This isn't at all bad news. It shows that human nature, in itself, is not evil. Ultimately, what other known feeling could be more noble and seductive than love? In this specific story, it seems that the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions. In order to redeem ourselves from our loving mistakes, we should not aim at loving less, but more. Counter-intuitive much? Only when we have managed to find that sparkle which is worth being admired and fostered in every human being, will we have uncovered the most fertile ground for unconditional, unparticular love, which is probably the highest kind of human emotion.

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Noncombatant Immunity and Terrorism


The principle of noncombatant immunity, also known as the “principle of discrimination”, emphasizes the idea that there should be a distinction between the participants in war (such as soldiers, for instance) and noncombatants - mainly, the civilian population. The principle encompasses both a permission, as well as a prohibition: the permission to attack enemy combatants and the prohibition to kill noncombatant civilians. Its roots can be traced back to various theoretical structures, such as the principle of punishment, self-defence or the survival of the collective. 



Classical just war theory identifies the soldiers and the military, in general, with the combatants. On the other hand, civilians are perceived as noncombatants, as they are not directly involved in the conflict and do not represent a great danger to their opponents. This constitutes the moral perspective on the issue and it is mainly centered around the idea of threat in war. Conversely and embracing the legal point of view, combatant status is granted to those persons who satisfy a specific set of criteria, such as “distinguishing themselves visibly at a distance by some conventional sign, carrying their arms openly, subordinating themselves to a hierarchy of authority and command, and obeying the laws of war.” (McMahan, Killing in War)

With the advent of terrorism, is the integration of soldiers in the category of combatants and of civilians in that of noncombatants still accurate? Or, better said, has this classification ever been strong and clear enough as to provide a meaningful set of guidelines with respect to the proper conduct in war? Opinions are divided. While there are some that argue for the validity of the distinction in this precise connotation, others tend to be more skeptical. Their main arguments have been synthesized in the two following differentiations regarding the demarcation line between combatants and noncombatants:


1) The intentionality of the participation in war: innocence v. non-innocence v. moral culpability;

2) The justness of the cause of the war, which is applicable to civilians only.


An individual can be considered innocent if she does not represent a threat in war. A non-innocent person is one that “can be engaged in an objectively unjust proceeding while being blamelessly ignorant of its unjust character.” (Arneson, Just Warfare Theory and Noncombatant Immunity). By using “blamelessly ignorant”, negligence and recklessness are ruled out. Conversely, the morally culpable constitutes a threat both objectively, as well as subjectively. In this sense, she is performing an action for the cause of the war and, at the same time, she is also aware of the finality of her acts. 

Civilians may bear responsibility for a war and be transformed into combatants not only through commission (like supporting the war through labor or propaganda), but also through omission. In the latter sense, Jeff McMahan talks about the duty to oppose unjust wars. This duty can come under two forms. We can have, on the one hand, an unjust war if the country which declares the war does not rely on a just cause. In this sense, one would have to oppose the declaration of war itself.

The second possibility refers to the situation when a state is being attacked by another state/organization that has a just cause for going to war. As both belligerents cannot have a just cause, but only one of them, it would follow that the attacked country is fighting an unjust war. In this case, should one add to the duty to oppose the unjust war the duty to oppose the action that constitutes the cause of the war? Probably yes, as failing to oppose the action that triggers the conflict may perpetuate the existing injustices and, thus, provide sufficient grounds for the future outburst of other wars. 

The major problem that one can encounter with respect to the criterion of the justness of the war’s cause is that of the quantity and quality of the information received by the population on this topic. Due to possible information asymmetries between civilians and their government, it is difficult to tell whether the former have the necessary amount of information in order to form a correct judgment regarding the justness of the war’s cause. In this way, it could be possible for people to believe that they are fighting for a just cause, when, in reality, they are not. Consequently, they would fail to comply with the duty to oppose this type of war. Can they be morally blamed for this?

Even if it is hard to identify the ideal type of the combatant and the noncombatant, one irrefutable point that the principle of noncombatant immunity makes is the following: there are some individuals who should not be killed in war in virtue of their noncombatant status. The problem with terrorism is that terrorists aim at making absolutely no discrimination regarding their targets. 

Terrorists consider that all their victims are morally culpable and, hence, in a position to be attacked. This can be deduced from the randomness of their targets. In this sense, they plan attacks in crowded places, such as airports, subways and the like. Although there are divergent opinions on what a combatant is, there is a general consensus that children cannot constitute legitimate targets in war under any circumstance. By setting no limits to the war theater, terrorists disregard this basic moral and military imperative. Similarly, terrorists do not discriminate between the citizens of their targeted country and foreigners. Thus, when engaged in a military conflict with another country/ countries, one should limit one’s attack to the direct opponents and avoid involving third parties. This principle is rooted in the ideas of war accountability and unnecessary harm. Yet, terrorists fail to comply with it. Interestingly enough, many terrorist acts happen in airports, which are, by definition, places of international transit that gather individuals of diverse nationalities and citizenships.

The principle of noncombatant immunity, one of the founding blocks of the just war theory, poses a great problem to the moral permissibility of terrorism as a type of warfare. In the end, I would like to finish this post with a beautiful and more relevant than ever Leo Tolstoy quote:


[There are] men who assert that the contradiction between the striving and love for peace and the necessity of war is terrible, but that such is the fate of men. These for the most part sensitive, gifted men see and comprehend the whole terror and the whole madness and cruelty of war, but by some strange turn of mind do not see and do not look for any issue from this condition.