“At the core of every moral code, there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of human history. To human nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply.”  – Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion

Setting aside for a moment some of the metaphysical questions raised about morality-as-such by Lippmann’s assertion, I think that his model of morality is a pretty accurate one, at least in so far as it applies to moral reasoning by individuals. People’s views of people, the world at large, and the story of history do seem to be the three pillars on which their moralities rest.  I think there are a few other pieces of the puzzle, but all of the ones that I can think of can pretty easily be reduced to a special case of one or more of Lippmann’s three points.  (E.g. I think you could say that hopes for and predictions of the future feature heavily into moral reasoning.  But that could easily be framed as just trying to predict or direct the next act in the story that history has told us thus far.)

It’s an interesting formulation, and one that I’m not totally done mulling over. I just wanted to throw it up here, largely to see if any of my (brilliant, erudite, charming) readers have commentary or objections to the idea. Any thoughts or comments?

Just in my city (a metropolis of just under 500,000 people), I’ve seen a huge number of species in the heart of town.  A partial list includes raccoons, foxes, marmots, skunks, geese, ducks, mice, rats, coyotes, pigeons, hawks (several species), and crows.  On a recent walk down to the river and back, I counted eight different sorts of non-human animals living, apparently comfortably, in the city.  These are all animals that have adapted from their natural environments to thrive in these new, artificial¹ ones.

What struck me on this particular walk, is that this phenomenon, i.e. species adapting to a change in environment, is the fundamental driving force of evolution.  And human beings have instigated these changes in environments all around the globe. Both intentionally (e.g. through urbanization) and unintentionally (e.g. pollution). This lead me to thinking about epic climatic and environmental shifts and the fact that all of the environmental changes that we’re seeing all around the globe have qualitatively similar analogs in geological history. Temperatures have swung wildly just in human history, and have done even more so in the millions of years that large animals have been wandering the earth.

These historical changes in environment have caused the extinctions of many species and the adaptations of others. Indeed, there’s good evidence for the notion that we have one or more of these environmental changes to thank for many facets of our biology, including our giant brains, our upright gate, and our mostly hairless bodies.² These changes, and transitively the extinctions and evolution they elicited, have been caused by a wide range of factors, from the impact of celestial objects to volcanic eruptions to tipping-point changes in the amount of plant life on the planet.

And yet the only environmental changes in the history of the planet, which people ever talk about in moral terms are the ones that we credibly have a hand in. Now this is undeniably due to the fact that we are moral agents. One simply can’t hold an asteroid responsible for changing the earth’s climate.

But to simply make the distinction that human-caused ecological changes are moral issues and other kinds aren’t doesn’t really capture the way people think about climate or environmental change. We seem to only be willing to cast a certain subset of these changes in moral terms. We seem willing to accept our agency and take the blame for big, abstract changes to the environment that don’t really have any personal impacts, but not to smaller, concrete changes which many of us find personally convenient. After all, not even the staunchest adversaries of global warming seriously suggest that urbanization is a moral issue. And those that due tend either to be derided as nutjobs or just ignored like the crazy uncle at Christmas.

Urbanization has changed the environment (at least in a local fashion) all over the globe. What’s more, it’s done so to a much greater extent than has global warming. As of a few years ago, half the people on the planet live in large urban centers. About two dozen of these urban centers now have populations over ten million people. The largest of them, the megalopolis of Tokyo, has over thirty million.³ Many of these urban centers cover thousands of square miles of territory, with suburban sprawl spreading for many more miles outward from them. All of these radically changes the local environment, putting huge stresses on species, ecosystems, and even local weather.⁴

And yet no one seriously suggests that the existence of Tokyo is a moral problem. And if anyone did, they’d immediately be pushed to the margins of the conversation. We seem to simply accept radical shifts of local environment. Huge environmental changes that we see every day (e.g. roads, sky scrapers, suburban sprawl) are considered fine, dandy, business as usual. But take a few abstract steps back and say that the globe is warming (a phenomenon that none of us can really experience directly), and suddenly, it seems, people are far enough removed from the issue to talk about it in terms of moral outrage.

Tell me that my house is an environmental change and therefore evil and I’ll ignore and deride you. Tell me that my “carbon footprint” is evil and I’ll go right out and buy a bicycle. The only real difference, it seems, is one of abstraction. It can’t possibly be one of scope, after all, since the building of a house does far more damage to the local ecosystem (effectively obliterating a portion of it) than one car does to the global ecosystem.

It seems to me, then, that it’s the abstraction that allows us to consider environmental changes in moral terms. To consider the small, concrete changes that human beings make and benefit from every day (and have been for as long as we’ve been human), seems to just cut too close to home. Sure, my modest city of a half million people displaced hundreds of square miles of natural environment, drove out many species, and dwindled the numbers of some that are decidedly imperiled. But no one in their right mind is going to say that Spokane is Evil.

“And really”, we seem to say, “what does it matter? We still have hawks in the sky, geese in the river, and raccoons in the garbage bins. Sure we changed this environment, but it’s convenient, and anyway, some of the critters seem to be doing alright by the change.

Now if only we could do something about those accursed SUV drivers and their carbon footprints, everything would be just fine.”

“Society cannot be run by the lowest common denominator.”  Amen.

1.) Imagine a being greater than which nothing can be conceived.

2.) This being exists in your imagination.

3.) It is greater (or better) to exist in reality than it is to only exist in the imagination.

4.) Therefore, if the being exists ONLY in one’s imagination, then a greater being (i.e. one that exists in reality) could be conceived.

5.) Therefore, there exists in reality a being greater than which none could be conceived.

6.) This being is God.¹

Now this argument is interesting to me because it’s a seductive one.  It’s one of my canonical examples of a specious argument that appears logical, even though it’s so logically flawed that it’s almost incoherent.  To illustrate this point, let me rattle off a few quick critiques.

a.) Point 3.) is unsupported.  Can one say it’s really greater to exist in fact than in imagination?

b.) Point 1.) is flawed because it’s very unlikely that a person can imagine something so great that nothing greater could be imagined.  Either by the original thinker or a later one.

c.) “Greatness” is not unipolar, so a thing “greater than which nothing can be conceived” misses the point.  Many dimensions of “greatness” may, in fact, be implicit tradeoffs so that they can’t both be maximized.

d.) Existence is not, strictly speaking, a predicate.  That is to say, it’s problematic to assert that “existence” is a property of the object to which it refers in the same way that size or color is.  (I get the impression that this point is still up for some debate, but I’m not aware of any compelling arguments to the contrary.  If someone else is, please do post them in comments.)

These are just the four critiques that are on the top of my head.  I doubt I can claim originality for any of them, (and definitely not for d.) ), but the point is that the flaws with the argument are numerous and fatal.  Which is why it’s interesting to me that the ontological argument, in its many forms, is still regarded by some as a valid or, at very least, compelling proof.

Going to a Catholic university, I encountered people all the time who point to this and other easily-refuted “proofs” as being linchpins of their faith.  These were people who could (and often did) routinely construct tight, well-reasoned arguments and attack my own succinctly and incisively when they were flawed.  These are people are well versed in logic and skilled in its use.  And yet their love for this weak, easily-dismissed argument remains.

As near as I can tell, this is due to some form of internal sophistry.  They need the conclusion to be true for their philosophical framework to hold and for their world to make sense.  So they develop a blindspot for arguments that have a logical form and the desired conclusion but whose premises or steps are flawed, sometimes in fatal ways.

This points to one thing that bears consideration about the argument; it is, more or less, formally sound.  That is, the problems with it are not with the individual steps in the argument² but rather it’s the premises from which the argument is made that are flawed.  My critiques above all attack the underlying assumptions of the argument, not the logical steps it employs.

Another such argument is the appeal to a first mover.  It’s another instance in which flawed premises but fairly sound logic end up producing an argument that’s equally flawed and has proven to be equally seductive.  After all, there’s nothing logically incoherent about either an infinitely regressing chain of causation OR about a chain of causation kicked off by some initial, yet natural base condition.³

It seems to me that the key factor that a lot of these seductive arguments have in common is that they’re formed in an essentially rigorous fashion.  But where a strong argument would have strong premises and strong logic, these arguments have strong logic married to premises that are either deeply flawed or, worse yet, semantically meaningless.  It’s open question to me whether “a being greater than which no other can exist” even means anything.⁴ It may be in the same semantic class as the phrase “a gnome which contains more glass jelly than any bunny rabbit.”  It’s syntactically correct, but what it’s actually describing eludes me.

If that’s the case, and the premise of the argument is based on semantically empty statements, then really, the argument’s not erroneous, so much as everything that follows from the premise is incoherent.  This, then, becomes a classic case of “Not Even Wrong“.  And if that’s the case, then I guess I shouldn’t trouble myself about it overly much.  But so long as otherwise brilliant people are turning to arguments that are, at the very best, wrong or, at worst, total nonsense in order to prop up their personal philosophies, then I’m sure I’ll have a hard time letting the issue drop.  It may well be simply my contrarian nature or it may be the pedantism inherent in all philosophy, but either way, so long as people are being seduced by these bits of pseudo-logic, I’ll have a hard time ignoring them.

UPDATE: Commenter J points me to an excellent parody of Anselm’s argument by the inimitable Julian Sanchez:

1. For every good thing that exists, I can imagine a still better version that does not exist.
2. Generalizing, extant things are always less perfect than those that exist only in the imagination.
3. God is defined as a supremely perfect entity.
4. Therefore God is purely imaginary.

² – This is especially true with later, more refined versions of the Ontological Argument which improve on Anselm’s in some meaningful ways.

³ – If you’re one of those people that asserts that whatever that natural starting condition was is what we call God, then we don’t have anything to talk about. I mean that literally.  You’ve added nothing to the conversation and have just shuffled the problem away behind a semantic curtain.

⁴ – Whether it does mean something or not, hinges largely on the definitions of “greater” and on how one resolves the seeming equivocation between existence-in-thought and existence-in-reality.

Please read that last sentence again.

Alan Kaufman – sophist, moral idiot, and fallacy factory extraordinaire – suggests that the fact that a large number of people prefer to read their books on electronic paper, is isomorphic with the facts of the murder of more than 6 million people.  This insipid, self-important ass spends hundred of words braying out the notion that the kindle amounts to a “Concentration Camp of Ideas”.  He does so in all apparent sincerity and self-belief.

I contend that any person who cannot tell the difference between an e-book reader and the murder of 6 million Jewish, Romani, Disabled and other minority individuals is at best a moral cripple and at worst a full-on sociopath.

Now I originally sat on this for a few days, because I thought it best if I were able to regard it with a calm, detached, intellectual air.  I thought that the best way to address this would be to reasonably and rigorously point out the massive holes in his reasoning.  But after thinking on it awhile, it occurred to me that what Kaufman is attempting here isn’t logic.  It isn’t reason.  It’s sophistry.  Kaufman’s not trying to put forth an argument of merit, rather he’s trying put forth most damning accusation possible, and then paint it over with a thin veneer of false respectability.  He draws a connection between something personally dislikes (e-books) and one of the most evil acts of the 20th century, not because such an argument is true, but rather because if it were true, it would be damning to the object of his ire.  After that, any sops to reason he throws into his essay are an after-thought.  Though calling them any kind of thought might be a bit overgenerous.

So I came to the realization that in the face of such sophistry, there can be no reasoned response.  Arguing with a Sophist isn’t just tilting at windmills, it’s tilting at the very wind itself.  The more you try to wield logic and evidence in an effort to defeat them, the more they’ll simply flit about to raise the banner of whatever argument seems expedient to them at the time.

I don’t think Kaufman truly believes that the Kindle and the Holocaust are morally equivalent.  To be honest, I don’t think that Kaufman believes much of anything of all.  Rather I think he feels that he dislikes the Kindle and, lacking even the most basic flickerings of intellectual honesty or moral sense, he jumped to the most hyperbolic argument he could come up with to express his disdain.  That he could defend this hyperbole by hiding behind the shield of iconoclasm (as he does in the comments) was simply bonus, I imagine.

So when it comes down to it, Kaufman’s essay isn’t an argument.  It’s a simpering cry.  A cry for attention, a cry for relevance, and a cry of fear over the fact that the world is moving forward.  And the fact that Kaufman, with his broken morals and his insipid, sophistic thinking, can do nothing to stop it.

He quotes Will Wilkinson who, in his twitter feed, posts two messages to the effect that we ought not absolve soldiers of blame for fighting in unjust wars.  By implication, then, we ought not celebrate the efforts and sacrifices of American soldiers who fight in America’s conflicts unless those conflicts themselves are wholly just.

So how can a libertarian, or a person with libertarian sympathies mark a holiday commemorating the soldiers that serve one’s nation, and do so regardless of how just or unjust the conflicts in which they fight?  Personally, my answer is twofold.  First of all, on a personal and emotional level, I come from a family with a proud tradition of military service.  There have been American servicemen in my family for at least the past three generations, possibly more.  My father was a Navy man, my brother a Marine.  They’re proud of their service and I’m proud of them.  This provides me the motivation for the observance of Veteran’s day.

Of course personal emotional appeals are not arguments.  As a libertarian, I have certain ideological obligations, one of which is to personal responsibility.  This would seem to imply that soldiers ought be held accountable for fighting in unjust conflicts.  On closer examination, however, I don’t think this is a necessity and, in fact, is a pretty shallow way of looking at the problem.

First of all, soldiers are under particularly immediate and brutal control of the state, which can and does punish them for refusing orders.  These punishments can include the state murdering the soldier for refusing to participate in a conflict in which he’s been ordered to fight.  See, for instance, the sad fate of Eddie Slovik, who was executed by firing squad for desertion in 1945.  A soldier’s refusal to fight a war (either due to concerns over the unjust nature of the conflict or, as in Slovik’s case, to baser concerns) carries with it the risk of severe punishment by the state.  In this sense, the lot of the soldier is one of inherent coercion.  They don’t have the option of simply recusing themselves from a conflict.

Eddie Slovik’s lot in life highlights another important aspect of the stories of many soldiers: he was drafted.  Not only was he subject to the above-mentioned brutal coercion, but he wasn’t even there by his own free choice.  This, in fact, was the lot of literally millions of men in the 20th century alone.

So where, then, does this leave an idealogically committed libertarian?  Many soldiers sign up out of a genuine desire to serve their country and their society.  Many soldiers sign up either in times of peace or during morally justifiable conflicts.  In doing so, they sign themselves over to the state and place themselves at risk of serious repurcussions if they refuse the orders of the state.  In essence, after having signed up for laudable reasons, they are placed in the unenviable position of having to either a.) fighting an unjust war or b.) facing the wrath of the state.  The blame, then, for their coerced conduct in unjust wars is perhaps better reserved for the state that, in essence, tells them “fight this war, or be severely punished.”

Unenviable choices, to be sure.  The case gets even worse for those who have been forced into service by the state by a draft.  They don’t even place themselves under the military coercion of the state voluntarily.

I think this means that the vast majority of soldiers don’t have an honest say in whether they serve in just or unjust conflicts.  Many, in fact, don’t have any choice at all in whether or not they serve.  And yet they perform a necessary social function and one of the few that I believe is the proper role of the state: the defense of the citizens from foreign aggression.  It makes sense to me to be grateful for those that fulfill this duty.

Another point raised in Jonathan’s email, and also in a Jacob T. Levy post to which Jon linked, was that Armistice Day marks the end of a bloody war that was based largely on petty nationalism and horrendous, pigheaded stupidity.  And I guess to me, it makes sense to celebrate the end of such things.  Just because the war was the result of the short-sighted arrogance of the few doesn’t invalidate the desire to celebrate the end of a conflict of millions of lives.  Should we always be mindful of the fact that the war was the result largely of petty nationalistic grudges?  Yes.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t also mark the occasion of its end with a somber rememberance of the human cost of such a folly.

(Side Note: for a thorough, though occasionally dry, explication of the run up to the first World War, I highly recommend Laurence Lafore’s The Long Fuse.)

Jonathan also goes on to point out that some commanders used the impending Armistice to launch last-minute assaults, trying to take as much turf as possible.  I don’t think this is any sort of objection to the observance of Armistice Day or Veteran’s Day.  If anything, it serves to underscore the hideous brutality that was being put to an end in Compiègne.  That thousands of men were lost in the final hours due to the heinous actions of their commanders doesn’t nullify the fact that World War I was a prolonged and terrible conflict, the end of which is a fitting occasion for celebration and observance.

So in short, by all means, let’s thank our veterans for doing our duty.  But let us also reproach the state that sends them into unjust conflicts.  Let us try our damnedest to change the state so that we don’t get involved in any unjust conflicts that they will need to fight.  Let us never again reinstate the draft, so that we won’t have any more poor Eddie Sloviks.  As libertarians, let us do the best we can to hammer the state back into its constrained and enumerated responsibilities and powers.

But in doing so, let’s not blame soldiers for the sins of the state.

Which is, in a way, a bit of a slog.  I’m much more interested in Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophy, and while I’m glad I know the Ancients, it’s been hard to motivate myself to learn them inside and out in the fashion that one has to for Comps.  Still, once I get the first Comp out of the way, the second one should be much more pleasant.

And then?  Well, then who knows really.  I think that there’s enough material that could go in my thesis that, if I got a burst of inspiration I could probably flush it out to book length.  But given how sick I am of the topic now, it would probably have to sit for awhile.  I also want to do a doctoral degree SOME day (hopefully focusing in AI or Robotics).  Probably after I’ve let formal academics go for awhile so that I can recover.

For now, though, I’m face-down in Plato, Aristotle, et al.  From there it’s on to Augustine, Aquinas, and those.  Then it’s Comp #1, and then on to the more interesting (to me) stuff.

In closing, I’ll leave you all with a quote from one of my favorite Ancients who is, regrettably, not on the Comps list. 

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger) scripsit:

“Kindly remember that he whom you call your slave sprang from the same stock, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives and dies. It is just as possible for you to see in him a free-born man as for him to see in you a slave.” (Epistle 47)

Go go gadget 0-based list!

0.)  So this blog’s been faltering largely because I’ve been focusing on Other Things.  Work’s taken up epic amounts of time. When I haven’t been working, I’ve been trying to get a thesis done and to study for my comps.  I WILL finish this M. Phil.  I will.  Period.  And so between Thesis stuff and work and daily chores and errands and such, time’s been scant of late.

1.)    And when I haven’t been working or thesising or studying for comps or doing chores and errands or sleeping, I’ve been totally addicted to Red Faction: Guerrilla on the XBox 360.  The single player campaign’s pretty decent.  Story holds no surprises for people who played the first two of the series.  (Other, of course, than the “what? I already freed Mars.  I have to do it again?” factor.  Seriously, guys, three revolutions is enough.  Let’s try to make this one stick, alright?)

What’s been particularly addictive, however, is the multiplayer.  The game-modes that make use of the destructive buildings make for a fun, variable game play experience.  The deathmatch modes are fun, but not particularly new.  Some of the maps have some balance issues (one, in particular, is a “first one to rocket launcher wins” sort of map), and some of the weapons are either useless or too powerful.  But really, the gameplay in all of the multiplayer modes is at least solid, and in some cases (Siege, in particular) pretty damned awesome.

2.)  Shooting’s flagging.  I don’t have the time or the money to be as competitive as I’d like, so I’ve scaled from “practicing for competition” schedule back to the “maintain high competency” schedule.  A couple hundred rounds twice a month.  I’m not going to win the Bianchi Cup, but I can keep them in the 10 ring at conversational distances just fine.

On that note, I’m going to be scaling my armory down a bit.  I now have one pistol (my XD 45) I can use for carry and the occasional competition.  And while I LOVE my CZ-75, I shoot the XD more accurately and not much slower than the CZ.  So while the CZ was originally going to be my competition gun, I think I might sell it off.  Similarly, I think my Heritage Arms .22 revolver may get sold.  It has been a lot of fun, but it was essentially an impulse buy.  I’d never shot a 22mag before, so I got it, shot it, liked it reasonably well.  Now it’s just sitting in the top of my closet.

Heck, I’m even considering selling off my Walther P22, which is a good little piece, save for the fact that it was accursed straight from the factory with sloppy sights and a magazine disconnect “safety”.

My Mosin’s down for the count with a crack in the chamber.  (And actually a piece of it missing that came flying out on extraction of a round.)  So I’ll probably break it down to parts, clean it up, and give it to my buddy Paul who has a Mosin.

Of course, if I get rid of all that iron, I’ll probably wind up immediately buying one of those new T/C Ventures in 30-06.  Seriously, those rifles are so sexy it hurts.  And they’re priced at just $500!  That is, if I can find one.

All of that would leave me with every piece I’ve thought might make up a well-stocked gun safe.  I’d have a good, reliable shotgun (Mossberg 590A), a carry pistol (Springfield XD .45), a militia rifle (Sig 556), a full power bolt action rifle (T/C Venture 30-06), and a .22 of some kind (Marlin Model 60).

3.)  Politics, politics, politics.  The health care debate is unfortunate in that it’s hiding some bigger debates we need to have in this country.  Many of them the sorts of procedural, metagovernance that gets ignored too often in favor of rabid, vapid DoSomething-ism.

Honestly, I’d like to give you an incisive, well-thought out rebuttal to the actual material of the bill as proposed.  But, like much of Congress, I haven’t read it.  I haven’t time.  Of course I have the excuse that I have a job.  That IS their job.  Of course, it’s not like they have time.  These days legislation is about DOING SOMETHING NOW NOW NOW OR WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE JUST FUCKING PASS SOMETHING ALREADY.

“Do something, even if it’s wrong” is all fine and good in one’s personal life, but it’s a shitty way to run a government.

So anyway, I’ll just leave you with two thoughts, one practical and one principled, on socialized medicine in general.  First, the inimitable P. J. O’Rourke who quips: “Think healthcare is expensive now?  Just wait ’til you see what it costs when it’s free.”  And on the principled side of things, I’ll turn the proverbial mic over to Marko Kloos:

“Health care is great, and I wouldn’t want to be without access to it.

But a “human right”?  Hippie, please.

I have no doubt that the owner of the thusly-stickered car considers him- or herself to be educated, informed, and thoroughly on top of things.  By proclaiming health care a “right”, however, he or she demonstrates a rather galling unfamiliarity with the nature of rights.

Let’s get the most obvious point out of the way first.  You cannot have a right to something that necessitates a financial obligation on someone else’s part. “

4.) I’m becoming increasingly fond of the topical blog format. I’m also becoming somewhat sick of my chosen-in-the-spur-of-the-moment blog title. I doubt I’ll split the blogs again, because really, if that’s the case, then where will it stop? I mean, I could easily have a music blog, a politics blog, a gun blog, a science/geekery blog, and a blog for everything else. And that thought annoys even me, and I love my own writing.

I think I’ll probably just play with the way I use this blog first. Probably rename it, probably start on the stylistic changes that have been LONG overdue. I’m currently in arears to my graphic designer, so I won’t be asking for any new graphics until I pay her what I owe her. Or until she agrees that me helping her haul her furniture into her new 3rd-floor walkup was sufficient payment.

5.) And now, off to Thesis work. I’m 60 pages in, with lots of material left on the cutting room floor, as it were. It’s depressing to think that I’ve got probably another 20 pages to go knowing that I very well might have cut that much, if not more, out. Still. Them’s the breaks I guess.

I leave you with this video of an absurdly awesome cigarette trick courtesy of a crazy old juggler:

Updated 2009.7.7: Somehow WordPress managed to eat the link to Marko Kloos’ blog post.  Fixed.

“It seems to me that if anything is plain in this confusing world it is that human progress, in the highest and soundest sense, depends upon liberty–that men cannot function effectively when their functioning is conditioned.  I am thus wholly in favor of the Bill of Rights, and only wish that it were wider in scope.  I believe that its guarantee should be enforced jealously and to the letter, even at the cost of a considerable amount of folly and turmoil, even if a certain proportion of guilty men go free.  I’d rather see a thousand bootleggers at large than one peacable and honest man molested in his inalienable rights.  I’d rather, with Thomas Jefferson, see a revolution every fifty years than a government strong enough to ill-use even the humblest and most foolish of citizens.”  – H. L. Mencken