Genetic screening and disability rights essay

April 2011 - Second Year - Applied Ethics - 2250 Words 

Jonathan Glover argues that parents who use genetic screening of their fetuses or embryos may still be committed to equality of respect for all. Evaluate Glover’s argument for this claim.

 [To think that a particular disability makes someone’s life less good] does not mean that the person who has it is of any less value, or is less deserving of respect, than anyone else. (Glover: 2006, p35)

In this paper I evaluate Jonathon Glover’s (Glover: 2006) argument that potential parents who use genetic screening of their foetuses or embryos and choose not to continue with pregnancy when disability is diagnosed may still be committed to equality of respect for all. My main contention is potential parents should be able to choose children with more potential to flourish than less, and that making this choice does not have to imply any lack of respect or denial of value towards anyone else, regardless of their capacity to flourish. My argument is in two parts – first, I present Glover’s (Glover: 2006) argument that we should be permitted to choose children that will flourish more than not less, and that in choosing not to have a disabled child this is the decision we could reasonably be making. I explain Glover’s (Glover: 2006) account of the relationship between disability and flourishing, and agree with his emphasis on the autonomy of the parent in making a reasoned assessment of the potential impact. I also present Glover’s (Glover: 2006) worry about ugly attitudes that may sour this assessment, and then move on to concerns of my own about the impact raising a disabled child may have on the flourishing of the broader family. In each case I argue that a reasoned assessment of impact communicates no lack of respect to the disabled. In the second part of my paper, I defend the first part from Adrienne Asch’s (Asch: 2000) expressivist argument that using the fact of the given disability as the sole criteria in determining not to continue the pregnancy does communicate a lack of respect to the disabled.

I: Choosing children that will flourish more rather than less
In ‘Choosing Children: Genes, disability, and design’, Jonathan Glover (Glover: 2006) has argued that disability limits the capacities for a child to flourish. This can help us understand what disability is. Against debates arguing disability can be a purely social construction, Glover’s (Glover: 2006) definition of disability posits there must be a failure or limitation of functioning, and that failure or limitation must impair capacities for human flourishing. Our capacity to flourish sets limits on what goals we can achieve in our lives, what desires we can fulfil, and this is true of all people, regardless of disability.  Having an impaired capacity to flourish is not the same thing as having a life worth living or not being worthy of equal respect from others. But we can still quite reasonably prefer that our own capacity to flourish is not impaired, nor the capacity to flourish of others, and this extends to preferring that our children have more capacity to flourish than less by not having a disability. (Glover: 2006)

We cannot conclude the full picture of a foetus or embryos potential to flourish as a child from a genetic screening. There is much we cannot know about what desires, talents, and personality of the child will be, regardless of what general features might be correlated with disabilities like Spina Bifida, Cystic Fibrosis, Down syndrome, or other. Some disabilities will only mildly limit the capacity to flourish, some will majorly limit it, and we recognize too that accounts will vary between groups of people with a given disability as to how much the condition has limited them. But we can reasonably believe that, other things being equal, the limits on our capacity to flourish are greater with disability.

Glover's (Glover: 2006) account stresses the autonomy of the potential parents in choosing to have children with more rather than less flourishing. I think he is right to emphasise the discretion of the parents in making this choice. We usually endorse the right to decide how financially secure they should be before having a child, and how many children to have, believing they should have autonomy over these decisions which impact the flourishing of the child that will be born, themselves, and any other children(Glover: 2006, p34). The expectations the parents have may not always pan out, but we think it is possible to make a reasonable assessment and to make decisions based on that (Glover: 2006, p34). In emphasising autonomy and discretion, Glover’s (Glover: 2006) is a permissive account: there is a lot of flexibility for the parents here – Glover (Glover: 2006) does not argue for a duty to maximise the children’s potential to flourish, or that it is wrong to choose to continue a pregnancy (or intentionally cause one to be) below some objective standard of flourishing.

But Glover (Glover: 2006) allows that in making an assessment of the impact disability will have on the child’s capacity to flourish, there are right reasons and wrong reasons that could guide the parents. Ugly attitudes and prejudice are commonly held against those with disabilities (Glover: 2006, p30). When we think of a disability as a person’s main feature, when we shy away from people with disability, and when we resist accounts of positive experiences had by people with disability and their families, we cling to ugly beliefs (Glover: 2006). These types of beliefs sometimes culminate in pressure from the medical profession not to continue a pregnancy, or obstruct the potential parents from making a reasonable assessment.

We need to send a clear signal that we do not have the ugly attitudes to disability. It is important to show that what we care about is our children’s flourishing: that this, and not shrinking from certain kinds of people, or some horrible projects of cleansing the world of them, is what motivates us. (Glover: 2006, p35)

If we are serious about valuing the capacity to flourish, we must stamp out these ugly attitudes. But it does not follow that because some have ugly attitudes, no potential parents can make a reasonable assessment of the impact a disability will have on their embryo or foetus’ potential to flourish. It does not follow that there would always be belief that the disabled are not equally valuable or equally deserving of respect.

 I would like to add to Glover’s (Glover: 2006) account by arguing the importance of considering the impact of having a disabled child on the rest of the family’s flourishing. I feel is an integral consideration for potential parents. We think it is reasonable for parents to delay parenting until they have achieved some of their own personal goals, such as travel and education, and to continue to pursue their own personal goals alongside being a parent. We think it is reasonable for parents to consider their other children when making reproductive choices – Parents with two or three children may feel sure they are capable of loving more children, but assess that more would require time and energy that would result in a loss to the children they already have. And we think it is reasonable for parents to value their romantic relationships, and to need time and energy to promote them. Raising a child with disability is bound to carry an additional cost in time and energy compared to a ‘normal’ child, though this will vary widely according to the disability and the particular child.  Parents should be able to make an assessment of what this extra time and energy will be, and determine for themselves if their individual circumstances can permit this extra time and energy. To judge that they cannot is not to render a judgement against people with the disability. 

I am also adamant that it is fair to consider the financial impact raising a child with disability may have on the family’s flourishing. The parent’s ability to earn an income may be reduced by the time commitment necessary in attending to the child’s needs. The costs of healthcare and education may be massively higher for the disabled child compared to a ‘normal’ child. Essential services for the disabled child may involve significant travel, at a cost of both money and time. The reduced income and increased expenses increase the sacrifices the parents and any other children must make, and it may be necessary to support the disabled child financially well into their adult life. When public health care, carer’s allowances, disability payments are available these are often woefully insufficient to meet the needs. To some it is terribly vulgar to raise financial obstacles as a reason not to proceed with a pregnancy, but that does not dispute that financial obstacles are incredibly real. Financial struggle increases the stress of an already stressful situation, which not only affects the flourishing of the parents and other children, but also has a flow on affect to the flourishing of the disabled child. And when the financial resources the parents are able to muster are inadequate to provide for the disabled child’s needs, the disabled child suffers here too. No part of the financial worries of raising a disabled child are unreasonable, there is no part of them that convey attitudes of disrespect towards the disabled.

II: Responding to the Expressivist argument

The support for prenatal diagnosis and selective abortion contravenes the goals of people with disabilities for full acceptance and inclusion in our society. (Asch: 2000, p234)

A disability diagnosis from a pre birth genetic screening gives us one fact about the child that would be born – that it is likely to have the particular disability. Adrienne Asch (Asch: 2000, p235) worries that when we let this one fact speak to the whole of the child’s potential, we are making a decision to terminate based solely on a first impression; we do not seek to learn about the talents, desires, and personality the child could have, or envisage the joys raising the child could bring to the lives of the parents.

 Asch (Asch: 2000, p235-236) argues in ‘letting one part stand for the whole’ and dominate the decision to continue or not continue the pregnancy, we make a judgement that applies to any person living with that disability. The message is: the fact of your disability trumps any other facts about you. Giving birth to you was wrong. Your life is not worth living. The disabled person is left feeling that they must defend their right to exist, and that they constantly have to remind people that they are ‘more’ than just their disability (Asch: 2000, p236). Glover (Glover: 2006, p30) offers a case study where these feelings are expressed: disability rights commissioner and chair of the Social Care Institute for Excellence Jane Campbell recounts being in hospital with severe pneumonia. Campbell has spinal muscular atrophy, and was so worried that doctors would assume she would not want to be resuscitated if she fell unconscious; she kept herself awake for 48 hours. Her husband brought to the hospital a photo of her in university gown being awarded her degree, a reminder to the staff that she was more than just her disability, that she had a life worth being saved. (Glover: 2006, p30) 

 I think this is a haunting account and it shows that Asch’s (Asch: 2000, p235-236) criticism should be considered. It is the strongest from a group of claims by disability rights advocates labelled the expressivist argument. The central claims of expressivist arguments is that genetic screening for disability reinforces prejudice against the disabled and communicates the message that they are not worthy of the same respect as others. The argument works by speculating that when the relevant fact to a child’s potential flourishing is the disability, the relevant fact in determining a person’s actual flourishing is the disability. Glover (Glover: 2006) and Asch (Asch: 2000) seem in agreement that this can commonly occur, when people refuse to see passed a disability and to the genuinely complex dimensions of the person, but Glover (Glover: 2006, p33-34) also maintains (and I agree) that this is not always the case. It doesn’t always follow that we would transfer our projection about flourishing with a particular disability to actual people who have that disability. When we make a decision on a limited set of information, it does not necessarily follow that we would make the same decision when given a broader set of information.

And though we cannot deny Asch’s (Asch: 2000, p235-236) assertion that one fact is being used to determine the child’s entire potential for flourishing, it does not follow from this that the potential parents would not consult more facts if they could. This is simply the only fact that is available to estimate the child’s potential to flourish before the child is born. Once the child is born, we have more facts at hand, but any judgement that the child should (other things being equal) not have been born cannot be acted on. I am certain that many parents facing a diagnosis of disability after pre birth genetic screening genuinely struggle as they seek to determine a reasoned assessment of the impact the disability would have on the child’s flourishing, and the flourishing of themselves and their family. If there was a crystal ball into the future that could give them more facts about the child that would be born, they would look into it.  Working only from the facts at hand does not convey a lack of respect for a broader set of facts that is not available.

I do believe the expressivist is right to worry about ugly attitudes, prejudice, and misinformation that may influence a parent’s assessment regarding the potential flourishing of the child and family, particularly when these attitudes are disseminated by the medical profession. I believe it is the persistence of these ugly attitudes that has kept the expressivist critique in public debate. But as Glover (Glover: 2006, p29-36) has argued, a consistent commitment to flourishing demands that we combat these ugly attitudes. There is no contradiction between preferring, on balance, not to have a disabled child in favour of another child who has more potential to flourish, and maintaining that respect towards the value and rights of the disabled must be defended.  So it seems particularly uncharitable to me when the expressivist argument is particularly uncharitable when used to question the integrity of potential parents attempting to make a reasoned judgement.

 In this passage, Asch smuggles into her ‘letting one part stand for the whole’ objection the implication that potential parents are unfairly assessing the extra burdens raising a child with disability will bring.

 The prospective mother and her partner may feel that they haven’t the financial or emotional resources to “cope” with the “extra” demands that a child with a disability would entail. Or they may already have a child with the same or another disability and feel stretched to the limit and want a child whose needs and demands will not be “special” …  that decisions still concludes that one piece of information about a potential child suffices to predict whether the experience of raising that child will meet parental expectations.

(Asch: 2000, p236 [The quotation marks are in original text; I have added the bold highlighting.])

 I was surprised to encounter this passage. Choosing to emphasise the words I have highlighted (by placing them in air quotes) is an indirect and uncharitable way to criticise of the integrity of the potential parents. Asch herself grants that disability causes stress for parents and expense for them and society (Asch: 2000, p251) and that some families experience tremendous difficulty and upheaval (Asch: 2000, p249), yet this passage suggests any estimation that this will be the case is unfairly made and biased. I think it is also an appeal to the sense that appeals to finance are a vulgar basis to choose not to continue a pregnancy, but as I have already argued, any vulgarity makes financial considerations no less real, and no more disrespectful to those with disability.  

 Conclusion
In this paper I have argued that even if some potential parents do not make reasoned assessments when choosing not to proceed with a pregnancy after genetic screening reveals disability, it is implausible and unfair to tar all potential parents with the same brush. I have drawn on and added to Glover’s (Glover: 2006) argument that potential parents should be able to choose children with more potential rather than less, and shown how it is plausible to think that some parents are making this decision when they choose not to proceed with a pregnancy where the child would be born disabled. Finally, I defended this argument from the criticism put forward by Adrienne Asch’s (Asch: 2000) that using only the fact of disability to decide not to continue pregnancy communicates disrespect to the disabled.

 References
Adrienne Asch, ‘Why I haven’t changed my mind about prenatal diagnosis: Reflections and refinements’, in Erik Parens and Adrienne Asch (eds.), Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights, Washington, Georgetown University Press, 2000.

Jonathan Glover, Choosing Children: Genes, disability, and design, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006, ch1., pp. 04-36.

The Trolley Problem Essay

 May 2010 - First Year - Introduction to Ethics 

In emergency rescue cases, like Trolley, it seems to many people that it is permissible to kill an innocent person. Explain your attitude to Trolley cases, and justify your view with reference to some of the theories we have discussed in the unit. 
 
Trolley is an emergency rescue case where a runaway trolley careens down a track. Unless the trolley is diverted, it will collide with five workers, causing their death. A bystander could flip the switch to divert the trolley, but this will kill the lone worker on the other track. Should the bystander flip the switch to save five lives? This essay considers Thomson’s (Thomson 1990) justification that it would be permissible to do so. Firstly I consider if turning the trolley is justified solely by the number of lives to be saved. This idea has disturbing implications and thus must be rejected. I introduce the idea that the right to life explains why it is wrong to kill people, even if there are favourable consequences. I explain Thomson’s account that the lone worker forfeits the right to life, and do not find it plausible that one could be bound by a promise to forfeit such an important right. I wonder if Thomson’s idea of tacit consent might instead provide an argument that infringing the right to life is justified.

My intuition is that it is permissible to turn the trolley, and this intuition is shared by many. Do the numbers at stake justify this? Other things being equal, it seems better to have five survivors than one, so perhaps it should always be permissible to have a consequentialist principle, bring about an outcome where the most will live. But this idea has disturbing implications. In the transplant case, a surgeon has five ill patients needing organ transplants. The patients are expected to die very soon as no matching donors can be found. By coincidence, the surgeon encounters a healthy patient, a perfect match for the five needed organs. The surgeon asks the healthy patient if he is willing to give his life so his organs can be used to save the five. The healthy patient refuses, should the surgeon kill the patient and take his organs anyway? Like the bystander in trolley, he could save five by killing one. I think it would be obviously wrong for the surgeon to do so. Intuitively it is deeply disturbing, even macabre, to imagine this happening. Maybe there is a number of lives to be saved that would always justify killing one, a very large number, like ten thousand or a million, but even this would be problematic to settle. Saving five lives cannot provide sufficient justification to turn the trolley.

What is wrong with killing someone, if the outcome will benefit other people? I argue we should consider more than the consequences of killing. I contend that individuals have a right to life – a high priority justified reason not to kill them. Rights are claims that protect an individual’s interests and it is usually very wrong to infringe them. Turning the trolley would appear to infringe the lone worker’s right to life; to settle its permissibility we will need to understand the mechanisms of rights thinking. Two accounts permit actions that appear to infringe rights. Firstly, a rights bearer can forfeit a right - give it away, trade it, or lose it by some wrongful action. Secondly, a rights infringement can be justified by overwhelmingly good reasons. The reasons must significantly eclipse the importance of the right; consider the earlier consequentialist consideration as an argument, saving five lives does not sufficiently eclipse the importance of the lone worker’s right to life.

Rights theorist Thomson (Thomson 1990) has an account for the permissibility of turning the trolley grounded in the idea of rights forfeiture. Before we consider it, we need to understand that consent to rights forfeiture can be assumed rather than explicitly given. This is known as tacit consent. Australian citizens tacitly consent to forfeit some freedom and property rights so the government can require them to obey laws and pay taxes. It is generally in the citizens self interest to do so; they benefit from law and order, and infrastructure like roads, schools and hospitals. Thomson argues that track workers would probably consent to a policy of turning the trolley, and this tacit consent provides grounds for permissibility. Suppose the workers were randomly allocated their stations each day, they would have a five in six chance of being on the first track, and a one in six chance of being the lone worker. The workers would likely consent to a track turning policy before they were given their stations because the policy gives each a better chance of survival, if runaway trolley circumstances arise. Thomson successfully argues tacit consent distinguishes the trolley case from transplant; sick patients may consent to the healthy being killed to save themselves, it is unlikely that healthy patients would.

Thomson’s (Thomson 1990) account requires us to accept that a promise to forfeit your right to life should be binding. I disagree. A particular track worker may indeed give up their right to life in an emergency rescue situation; a brave and selfless act. Promising you would be willing to do so, if the extremely unlikely circumstances arose, raises doubts about whether the worker would follow through with the agreement. Imagine the lone worker, faced with his co-worker’s imminent doom, shouting to the bystander “Take me instead!” and reflecting that it was a shame to have to die, but after all, he had made a promise. This is an implausible degree of altruism to attribute to the lone worker. An agreement where one party is realistically not likely to deliver is not a legitimate agreement. It does not seem plausible to say the lone worker has actually forfeited the right to life, merely because he probably would have agreed to a trolley turning policy. (Hobbes 1651)

Perhaps there is another interpretation of Thomson’s argument. Tacit consent could form part of justifying right to life infringement rather than suggesting forfeiture. The difference is significant. If the lone worker can be understood to have forfeited his right to life, there is nothing bad about the bystander redirecting the trolley. But I think it is obvious that there is still something bad, something upsetting, about taking a life in these circumstances. Justified infringement acknowledges that something disturbing has taken place but is nevertheless permissible. Saving five lives is not reason enough to justify infringement, but maybe Thomson’s argument shows that if five lives are to be saved, AND the rights bearer would have consented to the policy by which the decision was made, it can be justified. This account needs further consideration; it is not obviously beyond reproach but it is intuitively more just.

In this essay I have argued that saving five lives is not reason alone to justify turning the trolley. I have explained the lone worker has a right to life but sometimes a right to life can be forfeited or justifiably infringed. I have argued Thomson’s account of right to life forfeiture by tacit consent should not be accepted. I have not rejected Thomson’s account entirely however, I have argued we may interpret her idea of tacit consent as explaining how the right to life could be justifiably infringed in this case.

References
Thomson, J. 1990. The Realm of Rights. Excerpt reproduced in LDM Study Guide. Monash University, 2010.
Hobbes, T. 1651. Leviathan. Excerpt reproduced in LDM Study Guide. Monash University, 2010.

Philosophy of Science 4 Questions on Copernicus and Gallileo Summary

December 2010 - Second Year - Philosophy of science : 4 questions about Copernicus and Galileo (600 words)

From Osiander's Foreward to De Revolutionibus, find at least two arguments for instrumentalism. Support your answer with quotations.

In Osiander's foreward, he contrasted the attitude of philosophers, as seekers of truth, to scientists, as seekers of theories to correctly compute and predict phenomena. The method of the scientist is to seek the simplest explanation to explain the phenomena - "If the causes are devised by the imagination... merely to provide a reliable basis for computation... the astronomer will take as his first choice the hypothesis which is easiest to grasp" - so readers should not be concerned with the way Copernicus' findings challenges their religious beliefs and convictions of truth about the universe. It is an instrumentalist argument because it posits that scientists cannot know the truth and that this should not worry us, the scientists role is merely to advance plausible explanations, which can be improved upon or replaced by subsequent explanations that better fit the data.

Furthermore, Osiander  tells the reader: "These hypotheses need not be true nor even probable... If they provide a calculus consistent with the observations, that alone is enough." He is further reinforcing that the reader should not be concerned by Copernicus' theories, merely their instrumental value in explaining the path of the planets.

 Using arguments and examples from Copernicus' Preface to De Revolutionibus, explain the difference between a simple theory, a complex theory, and a coherent theory. Is a coherent theory necessarily simple?

 Simplicity and complexity are relative terms, so a theory we might consider complex compared to another could appear simple compared to yet another theory. Furthermore, a single theory might be simple in some respects, yet complex in others. So the issues we are really concerned with in this question is whether we should favour simpler theories over more complex ones, and whether coherence necessitates simplicity.

 There are two important ideas to consider. The first is a rough interpretation of Occam's razor, which is when comparing multiple theories that explain a phenomena, the theory which introduces the lesser amount of independent assumptions is the theory most likely to be correct (or to be more useful, at least). We should favour simpler theories over more complex ones but only when both theories create correct predictions. Secondly, we should seek explanatory theories that are as simple as possible but no simpler. The 'no simpler' part of this answer is critical. Even if a theory appears complex, we cannot remove components of it merely to make it simpler.  The coherence of the theory - it must make sense, create correct predictions, and not introduce contradictions - cannot be compromised for the sake of simplicity, and so sometimes a coherent theory will not seem simple at all.

In the preface to De Revolutionibus, Copernicus explained he was compelled to research the motion of the planets and the sun because the existing explanations were contrastingly simple yet incoherent or coherent yet complex- those using homocentrics producing calculations not corresponding to empirical observation, and those using eccentrics seeming to have resorted to ad hoc variations to their theories to produce correct results.

 Describe an instance where Galileo believed a theory that appeared to be contradicted by some observational evidence. Was he justified in doing so (i.e. did he have good theoretical arguments or observational evidence)?
Copernicus' theory that the earth and other planets revolved around the sun was contradicted by visual observation of Mars and Venus from Earth, by the naked eye. The calculations derived from his theory suggested that the visible size and brightness of both planets would vary considerably during their orbit,  and these variations were not confirmed by observation.

When any empirical observation produces results that do not confirm to a theory, we might think that automatically proves our theory incorrect. However, it may simply be the case that our theory is missing some detail which would explain the difference in observation. Furthermore, there may be factors influencing our method of observation, or interpretation of what is being observed, that mislead us. So we should not obviously disregard a theory backed by comprehensive supporting evidence, merely because of some exceptional observations.

In Galileo's case, hindsight certainly suggests he was justified to believe Copernicus' theory, but what can we say philosophically about his persistence with it? Galileo was able to argue against the empirical contradictions by improving the method of observation with the telescope. Using the telescope and pursuing a mathematical account of how bodies of different size would appear from a distance, Galileo was able to garner new observational data to support the theory. However, if we apply Peter Gallison's criteria to validate observational processes of directness and stability, we may question whether Galileo's telescoping findings had the stability to support the theory. It is clear at least that Galileo did seek both theoretical (mathematical account) and observational (via telescope) evidence to support Copernicus' theory.

 Explain Galileo's general solution to the problem of the apparent incompatibility of science and religion in his 'Letter to Christina'.
 Galileo's general solution the problem of an appearance of incompatibility of science and religion in his 'Letter to Christina' involves suggesting reasons why the literal interpretation of the bible may include counterfactuals as well as establishing a logical case that God would not have provided sensory perception and reason for diagnosis of scientific truth if he did not wish them to be used.

 Firstly, Galileo suggests the bible was written to be understood by the common people. The simplest and most accessible representation of information was therefore necessary, so that those with little education or sophistication could understand it and accept it. For this reason, more sophisticated individuals need to accommodate for this bias in the reading of religious texts, to look deeper than face value to interpret the true meaning.

Secondly, as a believer in God, Galileo credited God for imparting him with the sensory perception to make empirical observation, and the reasoning capacity to conduct rational inquiry. As god has provided these capacities, he must wish for human beings to use them in pursuit of scientific truth, so to deny that process is illogical.

Philosophy of Film Misc Summaries Assessment

December 2010 - Second Year - Philosophy of Film


Q1. Does Craig (the puppeteer) at the start of the film survive as Craig (trapped in Emily) at the end of the film? Why or why not? What complications are there to his survival? Give reasons. 

The movie being John Malkovich seems to presuppose that there can be physical and mental elements to the self, and suggests that one can have the experience of being self when disconnected from the physical. We encounter Craig's character at the beginning of the film as a person with a mind and a body. Later, Craig's mind is inside Malkovich and we are unaware of the whereabouts of his body. We cannot even be sure that his body hasn't been destroyed. Leaving Malkovich, Craig's mind is returned to his original body or to one that is identical to it, and later in the film Craig's mind is trapped in Emily.

When Craig is in his own body, in Malkovich, and in Emily, what is consisent in each case is Craig's mental states - his thoughts and beliefs, his memories, his desires. There is psychological continuity - Craig's mental states are persisted through time in a continuous way. I think this psychological continuity shows us that Craig has survived when he is in Malkovich and when he is in Emily.

Even though Craig survives in Malkovich and in Emily, he is not the same person. Personal identity and survival are not one and the same. Why is this, what are the markers of personal identity? Is it psychological continuity, or physical continuity, both, or something else? Personal identity is much more difficult to define than survival. At first it seems like a combination of physical and psychological continuity would be sufficient as markers for personal identity. These criteria would give the correct answer that Craig is not the same as Craig in Malkovich and Craig in Emily (though Craig survives, his physical state does not have continuity). But these criteria are problematic when we consider fission, as in the transporter case.

Suppose a transporter existed that allowed a person to be transported from Melbourne to New York in an instant. The process would work by destroying the person in Melbourne and creating a copy of their physical and mental states, in New York. We could say that physical and psychological continuity are preserved as the copy that is created is identical in every case. But suppose due to a machine malfunction two copies were created. Identity is a necessarily one to one relationship, it cannot exist for one to many, so it cannot be so that physical and psychological continuity are sufficient markers for personal identity. \

This is a problem Parfait explores when he makes his case that what matters is survival, rather than personal identity. It is persisted experience that is important, which is a sentiment that resonates with the characters of the film in two ways. Firstly, Craig is indeed surviving through the persistence of his psychological states, though his personal identity and physical states are changing. Secondly, Dr Lester is seeking survival over identity by desiring to continue his existence from other bodies, attaining a kind of immortality.


Crimes and Misdemeanors

Q3. After having got Delores murdered Judah is wracked with guilt. According to William's is this kind of guilt rational for a consequentialist? Should we take Judah's feelings into account when determining the utility of his actions?

It is rational to feel guilt when we have done the wrong thing - wrong according to the ethical framework we believe in. When our ethical framework is consequentialist, then an act is wrong when it does not maximise the type of value the framework is concerned with. When our ethical framework is classical utilitarianism, an act is wrong when it does not maximise psychological states of happiness. So if we are classical utilitarians and we bring about consequences that do not maximise happiness, we have done the wrong thing and are rational to feel guilty. If we maximise happiness and feel guilty, then we are acting irrationally.

If we try to evaluate the utility of someone else's actions, using a classical utilitarian framework, we must take their psychological states of happiness into consideration. All psychological states of happiness are relevant to our calculus, regardless of who is experiencing them. When we try to determine the utility of Judah having Dolores killed, we must consider how Judah will feel if he proceeds, just as we consider the frustrated future happiness of Dolores, and the preserved happiness of Judah's wife, family, and community. The narrative reveals to us that Judah is heavily influenced by his religious upbringing and we can foresee that if he has Dolores killed, he will feel guilty.

But we are evaluating Judah's actions from a classical utilitarian framework, a framework that plausibly says more happiness will result from Dolores being killed. By that framework, it is right to have Dolores killed - so doesn't that mean Judah's guilt is irrational? This is not the case - Judah's guilt would be irrational if he was a classical utilitarian, but he isn't. We are assessing all forseeable psychological states of happiness, regardless of who is experiencing them, so we must take Judah's guilt into consideration. It is reasonably foreseeable that Judah, with his religious upbringing, will feel guilt for having Dolores killed. He would be irrational to feel guilt if he was a classical utilitarian, but he is not, and so we must include those guilt feelings in our moral calculus.

 Q4. How does the treatment of "right" and "wrong" in Crimes and Misdemeanours refuse the resolution that is typical of Hollywood narrative cinema? 

Hollywood narrative cinema typically follows a three act formula. A situation or problem arises, the characters involved in the situation address it, and then the situation is resolved (or shifts into a new situation). Typically the third act's resolution satisfies typical moral criteria - the cheating husband gets caught, the murderer gets punished, the nice guy gets the girl. By the end of a typical Hollywood movie, good is rewarded, bad is punished, and the audience can leave with a sense of an orderly, just universe.

In Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanours, this treatment is not the case. Rabbi Ben, the character who most embodies the good, becomes fully blind. Murderous Judah, most embodying the bad, has gotten away with murder, and someone else convicted of the crime. He has even stopped feeling guilty for what he has committed and is now enjoying his life as much as before the Dolores situation eventuated. Woody Allen's character Cliff's marriage has ended, but this is hardly a dramatic resolution for him, the marriage was loveless from the beginning of the film. He had largely been a sympathetic character throughout the film despite his romantic feelings for Hally whilst still married, but he is not to be rewarded. His arrogant brother-in-law's behaviour goes unpunished, and is even rewarded by his engagement to Hally.

So Crimes and Misdemeanours is atypical in the way it does not reward and punish the characters according to any moral framework the audience would share. Instead it seems to favour an existentialist viewpoint - it posits that there is no independent or objective moral authority, and that the only meaning in life is that which human beings can freely choose for themselves. The character in the film who espouses the view is Levy, but though the film's outcome vindicates this view, we see that Levy has not been adequately comforted by this philosophy, because he chooses to end his own life.

If we were to replace the film's actual third act with a more typical one, we would see Hally and Cliff together romantically, with a hugely successful documentary on Levy's life. In the actual film, Levy's death destroyed the possibility of Cliff proceeding with his documentary at all. Rabbi Ben's sight would not have continued to worsen, and perhaps his sight would even be restored by god. Cliff's brother in law would be exposed as the arrogant and self involved womanizer he had shown the audience to be, and Judah would be imprisoned. These outcomes would leave the audience with the sense of a moral universe, but instead Woody Allen creates a tragi-comedy that reinforces existentialist themes.

 MatrixQ5.
Explain and evaluate Putnam’s argument for the conclusion that the Brain-in-a-Vat hypothesis is inconsistent? 

The brain in a vat hypothesis is a sceptical hypothesis, it proposes that what we believe we know to be true may not actually be true. We think we are having a physical experience of the world, of a blue sky, of sitting in a lecture theatre, but we may not be actually having that experience. We might really be brains in a vat, hooked up to electrodes stimulating neurons and creating the perception of the blue sky, and the lecture theatre. We might be being deceived.

Putnam has a semantic argument to demonstrate that the hypothesis is inconsistent. The argument rests on the idea that when the deceived experience had by the brain in a vat formulates the thought "I could be a brain in a vat", the thought does cannot meaningfully refer to a brain or a vat, only the image of a brain in a vat, which is something quite different.  How does language meaningfully refer to anything? Well suppose we had a towel, and we had a Chinese noun for the word towel and a French noun for the word towel. The French word, the Chinese word, and the English word "towel" all refer meaningfully to the same towel. But Putnam's argument is we do not have this meaningful reference when the brain in a vat conceives of being a brain in a vat - the brain in a vat can only conceive of being something like a brain-vat-brain in a brain-vat-vat.

Putnam's argument is that a brain in a vat cannot formulate a semantically correct idea that it may be a brain in a vat and therefore the idea is self refuting. I think he is correct here - yes, what a brain in a vat could conceive of is a separate thing from what actually is - the brain-vat-brain image refers to something different to the brain itself. The example he provides is useful - if an ant randomly traces a line in the sand which spells "Winston Churchill", it does not meaningfully refer to the actual historical figure Winston Churchill, because it is impossible for the ant to conceive of him.  But I do not think that Putnam's argument proves that we are not brains in vats, only that we cannot accurately describe the possibility that we are.

I think what we are really concerned about when we consider the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis is not whether we are precisely brains in vats (in which case, Putnam's semantic argument would certainly threaten the precision and exactness of our hypothesis) but whether what we are experiencing might not truly be reality. And this is a concern because we expect our experience to be authentic, to be objective, and feel undermined by the notion this not be the case. Chalmers matrix-as-metaphysics argument is far more useful here than Putnam's argument. Where Putnam tells us we haven't accurately described our possible predicament, Chalmers tells us we should not feel undermined. Chalmers tells us that it is our experience of reality that is important. If we are brains in vats, it is still true that we are in the lecture theatre of looking at the blue sky, it's only the metaphysical truth about what constitutes a lecture theatre or a blue sky that is different to what we first conceived.

Determinism and Moral Responsibility in Minority Report Essay

January 2011 - Second Year - Philosophy of Film Essay  


The following dilemma is presented in Minority Report:
If pre-criminals have free will then it's not clear how we can be sufficiently certain that they would have committed the crimes for which they are being punished. But, if they lack free will then it seems like we have reason to believe that they cannot be morally responsible for their actions, and thus cannot be punished.
Explain how Frankfurt and Smilansky arguments can be combined to find a way out of this dilemma. You will need to explain compatabilism and show it how makes pre-punishment morally permissible.  
In the film Minority Report (Spielberg:2003), there is a police unit responsible for arresting "precriminals" - people who it is known will commit a crime in the near future. That it can be known with certainty what persons will do suggests a determined universe, but if future is determined we should worry that persons do not have free will and should not be held responsible for their actions. In this paper I confront these issues. First I will explain why we might think there is no free will and moral responsibility in a determined universe, and why this should make punishment problematic. Then I will introduce the idea of compatabilism as a way to accommodate free will in a determined universe and make punishment permissible. Thirdly I will draw on Frankfurt's argument in advance of a compatabilist viewpoint (Frankfurt:1969), then Smilanky's explanation that compatabilists must support prepunishment (Smilansky:2007). Finally I will reflect on Smilansky's objective : in showing that compatabilist's must endorse prepunishment, he reduces their overall claim that determinism has no impact on a person's moral responsibility to absurdity  (Smilansky:2007).

If the future is determined, then it seems we do not have free will. When we think about ourselves as creatures with free will, we think of ourselves as choice makers, Each time we make a choice, we believe we could have chosen differently. I decided to take a philosophy class, but I believe that I did so freely and could have chosen to study Italian instead. But if the future is determined, then it would always have been the case that I chose philosophy and not Italian. I could not have made an alternative choice, which would mean that I do not have free will.

If we do not have free will, then the idea that we are morally responsibility for our actions seems problematic. We usually think that a person is only morally responsible for actions they freely chose to take. When someone commits an offence because they are being coerced to do so, or because they are mentally ill, then we believe that they could not have done otherwise and it does not seem right to hold them morally responsible. But if the future is determined and we do not have free will, then it is true for all actions that an agent could not have done otherwise, so if we are consistent then it does not seem right to hold any agent morally responsible, for any actions, in a determined universe.

We usually think that moral responsibility is necessary for punishment.  There may be other objectives for punishment (for example, to deter others from offending), but we think that what justifies punishing a particular person is that they are deserving of the punishment. But again this raises the problem - could the person have done otherwise? If they could not - if they did not have free will - then it seems they are not morally responsible, and if they are not morally responsible then it seems they do not deserve punishment. Again, an offender who has been coerced or is mentally ill seem relatively uncontroversial examples here. So if the future is determined, there is no free will and we cannot hold people morally responsible for their actions, or be justified in punishing them.

Minority Report is a science fiction film that suggests a determined world where future crimes can be predicted. For now I will ignore some narrative elements that question whether the future is determined at all, and focus on the moral question raised by the film's treatment of those who are foreseen to commit crimes. These offenders-to-be are prepunished. Prepunishment is punishment administered before a crime has been committed.

To be morally justified in prepunishing an offender, we must be certain the future is determined. If the future was not determined, there could be the possibility the offender-to-be would change their mind and not go through with the crime. We must also address the epistemic problem of how the future could be accurately predicted. Suppose the epistemic problem could be overcome, we still face the problem that in a determined universe a criminal cannot be held morally responsible, so how could punishment of any kind be permissible? A compatabilist perspective can be utilized here,  offering an argument that free will is compatible with a determined universe. If compatibilism is true, then an agent can be held morally responsible and can be permissibly punished. For the remainder of the paper, I will consider Frankfurt's argument advancing a compatibilist perspective (Frankfurt:1969), and Smilanky's case that compatabilism is compatible with not only punishment generally, but prepunishment specifically.

Frankfurt advances a compatabilist argument by disputing the proposition that an agent is morally responsible for what they do only if they could have done otherwise (Frankfurt:1969). To do this, Frankfurt focuses our attention on the reasons for an agent's action. He draws out examples where an agent acts in a certain way and could not have done otherwise, but that they could not have done otherwise is not their main reason for acting so. (Frankfurt:1969)

The key idea in Frankfurt's argument is that what matters for morally responsibility is why I do what I do (Frankfurt:1969). Suppose I am choosing whether to eat an orange or an apple. Unbeknownst to me, an evil demon has seized partial control of my brain and is determined that I will choose the orange. The demon is capable of directing my choice towards the orange, however will only do so if I first choose the apple. If I choose the orange outright, the evil demon will not need to intervene. Now the facts of the matter are, I can only choose the orange. If I attempt to do otherwise, the evil demon will ensure that I do in fact, choose the orange. I cannot do otherwise. And yet, suppose I don't decide to choose the apple - I go straight for the orange, and the demon does not intervene. Haven't I chosen the orange freely? Certainly my experience is of exercising free will and not being coerced. It was the reason I chose the orange rather than the presence of the demon that was necessary for me having free will.

Frankfurt argument challenges that free will requires could have done otherwise (Frankfurt:1969). His new argument is that free will requires could have done otherwise OR acted for reasons other than could not have done otherwise (Frankfurt:1969). Even if the future is determined, we do not have the experience of the determination. We have an experience of thoughts and feelings contributing to our choice makers. We act for our own reasons, and not because of some sense of coercion. All of my choices may be as certain as the certainty I would choose the orange in the above example, but that is not my experience of those choices, and it is my experience of my own agency and choice making that is necessary for free will.

Frankfurt's argument supports the idea that we can live in a determined universe and yet still experience free will, be held morally responsible, and be punished when appropriate (Frankfurt:1969). As I type this sentence, then if the future is determined it was always the case that I would type this sentence, yet my experience of it is still something I choose to do freely. Just as I can be permissibly rewarded for writing a good sentence, I can permissibly be punished for committing a crime.

Smilanky argues that if we accept that determinism is compatible with free will, we must think that prepunishment is morally permissible in a determined universe  (Smilansky:2007). The common sense view is that prepunishment is morally reprehensible because people are innocent until they commit a crime, but in a determined universe the crime will necessarily be committed, there is no special moral reason why the punishment should be administered after the crime and not before  (Smilansky:2007).  

Smilansky is not arguing that the compatabilist should always prepunish, or that prepunishment is unproblematic. He allows that there may be epistemic and pragmatic problems with prepunishment. What Smilanksy is emphasizing is that there may be circumstances where post punishment is not possible, and in these circumstances a compatibilist has no principled reason not to adopt prepunishment  (Smilansky:2007).  What is important is that the criminal is punished, when the punishment takes place in the chronological sequence of events is of no consequence  (Smilansky:2007).

We can combine Smilansky's  (Smilansky:2007) and Frankfurt's (Frankfurt: 1969) arguments to conclude that prepunishment is morally permissible in a determined universe, if we adopt a compatibilist view. But Smilansky has offered his argument not as a defense of compatabilism, but to illustrate the absurd conclusions a compatabilist must make  (Smilansky:2007). Prepunishment goes so against our strong intuitions about how persons should be treated, that it shows compatabilism is wrong to say a determined universe does not change the morally responsible status of persons  (Smilansky:2007). I think Smilansky is correct here, showing that what is meaningful to us when we speak of free will has not been captured by the compatibilist argument. Our sense of the kind of creatures we are is intrinsically linked to our idea of ourselves as choice makers. Our relationship to the future is one of expectation of many possibilities. The possibilities the future offers justify our effort as human beings, as we labour and as we labour over our choice making. A determined universe undermines that effort,  so the prospect of it lacks moral resonance as well as undermining the sense that our lives have any purpose at all.
This paper has examined the problem of prepunishment in a determined universe, prompted by the film Minority Report (Spielberg : 2003). I have explained the problems attributing moral responsibility to persons if the future is determined, and considered the argument of Frankfurt (Frankfurt : 1969) in defence of a compatibilist position. I have drawn on Smilansky's (Smilansky : 2007) argument that compatibilists must support prepunishment and presented his conclusion that this shows the compatibilist position to be absurd.
Bibliography
Frankfurt, H (1969) <span>Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility</span>, Journal of Philosophy, vol. 66, no. 23, p. 829-839.

Smilansky, S., ( 2007) <span>Determinism and prepunishment: the radical nature of compatibilism</span>, Analysis, vol. 67, no. 4, p. 347-349
Spielberg, S., (c2003) <span>Minority report [videorecording]</span>, [United States] : 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Bernard Williams Defusers of Subjectivism Summary Assessment

April 2011 - Second Year - Ethics

What is the view held by those Williams calls ‘defusers of subjectivism’?
Some people are unnerved (or made uncomfortable) by the philosophical doctrine of subjectivism, which has as one of its tenets that there are no objective moral facts. Defusers of subjectivism argue the discomfort arises from mistaken ideas of what follows from subjectivism. By correcting these mistakes, they seek to make subjectivism a more acceptable theory. Firstly, the defusers tell us, indifference does not logically follow from subjectivism. To think that it does would be to make the mistake of equating subjectivism with moral relativism. Secondly, the defusers make a more ambiguous claim: subjectivism ‘leaves everything where it was’ and does not encourage other practical consequences.

Williams offers some reasons that support ‘the defusers of subjectivism’. What are
those reasons?
A person could be indifferent because she believes (subjectively) that she is not justified in judging anyone else, but this would be to believe that there are some objective facts she doesn’t have access to, and objective facts are incompatible with subjectivism. Alternatively, she could be indifferent because she believes that no one is justified in judging anyone else, but this position requires that belief to be held in a ‘mid air position’, which is not compatible with subjectivism. The mid air position is a place for thought outside the individual’s subjective thoughts, and so it can feature facts, but not moral thought.

What is the argument that Williams supposes shows that ‘the defusing operation’
succeeds ‘in certain vital respects’?
In science when there are persistent disputes despite the same facts, concepts, and observation, it is rational for the disputers to acknowledge the matter is genuinely uncertain, when they cannot reach agreement. This reasoning, applied to moral disputes, would produce relativism. But the nature and extent of moral and factual disagreement are different. The defuser argues it is not a requirement of rationality that we apply this reasoning to moral disagreement. This contrast should not worry us - morality does not need to mirror the world of empirical facts, because it is normative rather than descriptive – it tells us how we ought change the world, not how the world is.

What remaining difficulties does Williams see for ‘defusers of subjectivism’?
The defusers have not succeeded in eliminating all practical consequences of subjectivism that might worry us. Firstly, in excluding the possibility of moral facts, it seems the subjectivist excludes constraints on moral thoughts. But we don’t think moral thoughts could be entirely creative, we think constraints are necessary (so we can reject attempts at moral thinking like ‘all jews ought to be killed’). Secondly, in arguing that morality comes from the will, but morality is something we decide, there seems to be a contradiction. Either we are psychologically attuned to act morally, or we must take action (like deliberation) to decide and then act morally.

How—if at all—might ‘defusers of subjectivism’ respond to Williams’ final
criticism?
I think defusers of subjectivism would appeal to facts about human nature as potential constraints on the kind of conclusions we could draw as moral conclusions. These types of appeal are to things about our psychology or biology that gear us towards sympathy, to temperance, to altruism. They would also appeal to these types of facts to argue that we are drawn to deliberate, and drawn to live an examined life. But these rely on strong empirical notions that may not have adequate foundation, and don’t give an obvious example of how we could excuse someone who (perhaps due to mental illness, or not) makes claims such as ‘all jews ought to be killed’ and claims moral legitimacy for these views, as they are views held subjectively.

Nagel Pansychism Summary Assessment

January 2011 - Second Year - Philosophy of Mind Summary - Pansychism (Nagel) 

Explain why (according to Nagel) one might believe in panpsychism.

Panpsychism is the view that mental substance is fundamental and ubiquitous. Like dualism, panpsychism holds that there are both mental and physical substances that are non reducible (so they are fundamental). Panpsychism differs from dualism is in claiming mental substances are everywhere or omnipresent (ubiquity: the 'pan' in 'panpsychism' means all). It is the ubiquitous part of the claim that seems so bizarre - it would mean all physical components of the universe have mental properties - including things that aren't living organisms, like a rock, and things that are very small, like a cell.

Nagel offers a four premise argument in support of a panpsychic conclusion. The first premise is material composition : living things are complex systems composed of physical matter. This seems reasonable - we have no evidence of any non material constituents. Nagel's second premise is anti-reductivism - a denial that mental states are implied by physical states. This is a denial of accounts such as the identity theory which seek to identify all mental states with physical states. The third premise - anti-eliminativism - is that mental states are real; we cannot analyse mental states (and therefore the mind body problem) away.

The fourth premise is anti-emergence. Anti-emergence is the view that all properties of systems are derived from its constituents and how they are combined (excluding the properties of it in relation to something else). New properties (like consciousness) do not somehow emerge. The anti emergence view holds that properties appearing to emerge reveal an epistemological problem - there must either be constituents we are not aware of, or some undiscovered properties of the constituents we are aware of. If anti-emergence is correct, an appearance of consciousness emerging is due to unknown properties or constituents - such as mental states being fundamental and ubiquitous.

So physical beings are experiencing mental states, and these mental states are neither directly implied from their physical states nor emerging as a result of the complexity of the arrangement of their physical matter. This means that the mental states must have been present in the constituents of the physical matter, and as they have not emerged along some causal chain, they must have been present at the absolute lowest level. Nowhere on the continuum from the smallest possible physical matter (like superstrings, or something even smaller we have not discovered) and the most complex system like human beings can a source of mental matter be located, so it must be present at the lowest possible level.

Nagel does not find panpsychism to be a wholly plausible account for the mind body problem, concluding that it should be added to the list of unacceptable solutions. It is difficult to imagine how it would work, to have the complex mental states of humans comprised of mental properties at the lowest possible level. If the ability to feel sad does not emerge somewhere on the line of complexity, then would a rock or a speck of dust have the ability to feel sad? It seems unintelligible. So the panpsychic account is not now obviously more credulous than at least some of theories denied in the four premises. We could dispute each of the above premises and end up embracing other theories - substance dualism, the identity theory, some kind of theory that denies the reality of mental states, or emergence.