affirmative action is a discrimination against the blacks

affirmative action is a discrimination against the blacks and other minorities. Logic goes like this: once AA is enacted, the blacks will leave an impression on the public that now they are the beneficiary of affirmative action. People tend not to trust black people because they feel those blacks receive their position as a privilege but not as qualified candidates. Such atmosphere of suspect will spread and even the qualified blacks will be questioned about their professionality, implicated by those who get a position unqualifiedly. Let me continue to use previous example in the first paragraph to illustrate this point. After hiring process, this company successfully meets the standard of hiring 10% blacks of all staff, even some of them are unqualified or inferior to other whites. In this company, different tasks from different clients are equally allocated to analyst programmers and then send back to their respective clients after completion. But one client finds out that there are always some bugs existed while he was operating the programs completed by one of the black staff in this company. This client begins to be suspicious of this company’s qualification and entrust his programs to other companies. This company thus lose a client this way and its benefits begin to decline. A malign circle begins since then. Decrease in the number of clients leads to decline in profits, decline in profits results in reduction on wages and reduction on wages causes the outflow of talents. In fact, we can not deny the fact that majority of staff, including the blacks, are qualified and complete their clients’ tasks perfectly. But since the imperfection caused by the unqualified black influences this company’s reputation, those qualified staff are indirectly implicated. This is a kind of discrimination against those majority of qualified blacks, although they are not directly targeted to. Furthermore, from this action itself, it emphasizes the conception of majority and minority, race, sex and other ethnical group and perpetuate the alienation and resentment diverse groups thus increasing racial tension.  Because in order to have this action well understood and enacted, clear distinguish should be the first step. Otherwise, once the target of one policy is confused, there is no way to ensure the well implementation of it. So emphasis on different groups and clear classification have already made fusion of various groups much harder and impossible. The conception of racism doesn't fade away but rather enhanced, and ultimately the society will carry on racism, which is a terrible stereotype related to race. Martin Luther King once said, "I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." From this point of view, affirmative action not only fails to achieve the equality of difference race, but rather enhances inequality between different races and creates double discrimination.

Yixuan Wang

Are tariffs on imports morally justified?

I was thinking whether placing tariffs on imports by the government is morally the right thing to do. Amongst the arguments in favour of imports are the benefits to the people on the importing country as they get to enjoy a better and diversified range of products and the profits earned by the foreign companies who are selling to the importing country. Among  the arguments against imports include the excess competition generated by the incoming foreign products in the domestic market which results in many domestic firms to get driven out. Also, the government does not get to earn revenue from tariff which it could utilize it on the citizens of its own country. Now, since there are chances of many domestic firms being driven out of the industry meaning that many poeple will lose jobs, it might seem that according to the egoisitic welfare consequentiliast, tariffs are justified where the agent in consideration is someone from the domestic country who risks losing his or her job. Obviously, a job results in welfare.  However, that being said, with tariffs, the same person who is in risk of losing his job, misses out on the better and diversified range of imported products. So, the agent stays the same but there are contrasting effects on the agent which makes it difficult to anticipate what the egoistic welfare consequentialist will eventually have to say about the moral status of tariffs on imports. Also, what about the overall effects of tariffs on the intrinsic value simpliciter of the universe accorging to universalistic welfare consequentialists?  

Value of Life

In my paper I argue for the desire-satisfaction theory. One of the main counter arguments I encounter

is that a person can desire something that appears negative for them. An example of this would be

someone desiring to self-harm, self-sacrifice, or commit suicide. I argue that another objection to the desire theory is the self-harm, and self-sacrifice “paradox”. The line of argument for this states that if a person self harms, or self sacrifices then it cannot possibly benefit them because they are hurting themselves and that is what they desire thus posing a serious dilemma to desire theorists.[1] I disagree. I do not see a dilemma here, if a person is feeling deep remorse that can only be relieved in their mind by self-harming then by self-harming and fulfilling their desire then they have released their negative feelings and feel happy, even though it did cost a physical injury. Also, a person who self-sacrifices believes that they are going to be rewarded in the afterlife when they sacrifice themselves, and therefore feel that they are happier after they fulfill their self desire through their actions. My argument against these being a paradox is simple. There are medications that are designed to help people who feel they must self-harm, and there is no proof of an existence of an afterlife. So I argue that both these people are being irrational, and are qualified out of the desire theorists explanation that states “If something has fulfilled our informed, self-regarding desires, and we are pleased as a result of this, then that thing is good for us.”[2] These decisions represent ill-informed decisions, and therefore do not qualify under the framework for the desire theory that has been laid out. Suicide also falls under this case, a person contemplating suicide cannot possibly be informed about how to better their life, and therefore cannot be considered to be an informed self-regarding desire.

---

[1] FOE 56

[2] FOE 54

Should Physician-Assisted Suicide be permitted or not in the US

It is debatable whether PAS is legally permitted or not. In my opinion, PAS is morally impermissible as the physicians could have the intention to kill the patients.

Let us consider a case to see whether it is a PAS or not.

The patient suffers from emphysema and related heart problems and she wants to refuse any forms of hydration and die. She asked the doctor to support her plan but the physician refuse to do that.

The nature of Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS) is enabling suicide by providing the deadly means that the patients use to kill themselves. If a doctor provides the deadly means that the patient could use to kill herself, it is considered PAS due to the nature of it. For example, it is illegal for doctor to offer any deadly means such as giving the patient a gun or any lethal medical prescriptions which could cause her to commit suicide. In fact, the patient did not ask the doctor to give her any lethal prescriptions or other deadly means and she has not received any deadly means from the doctor. The doctor has no intention to kill the patient on his part as her physician, he is not aiding in the intentional self-killing of the patient. Instead, the patient decides to stop drinking and refuses any form of medical hydration by her free will. Therefore, doctor’s cooperation should not be considered as PAS due to the nature of his cooperation.

I have 2 questions/issues:

1. In my paper, I have tried to argue that autonomy is intrinsically valuble for itself and that it should be a part of the objective list. That being said a possible objection from a hedonisnt to me would be that whenever I had experienced autonomy, there was also the presence of pleasure and hence my life increased in goodness, all else equal. So now, whenever I am having autonomy, I am quickly jumping to the conclusion that it is autonomy which makes my life better. According to the hedonist, I am mistakenly attributing the increased goodness in life to autonomy. So, how would respond to the hedonist if you are arguing in favor of autonomy?

2. We had discussions regarding fetuses as potential human beings in class and whether it is morally right to do abortion. If I am correct, we could not tell when exactly does a fetus achieve personhood. So if I am not mistaken, an abortion carried out after the fetus achieves personhood is morally wrong.
Now I was actually wondering what happens to moral status of the abortion when the abortion is carried out exactly at the time the fetus is achieving personhood, meaning it is in a transition phase. Any ideas?

Thoughts on whether fetuses are "potential human beings"

For the purposes of discussion, I had an idea to use an analogy of a comatose patient to explore whether fetuses count as actual human beings or just potential human beings. Granted, the idea is kind of rough so I just wanted to see how it would work in practice.

A comatose patient is identified as a "John Doe", which means the hospital does not know the person's identity.Suppose that he has no attachments to anyone; he has no living relatives or friends, and he is amnesiac. Further suppose that the doctors can reliably speculate that John Doe will emerge from the coma in approximately eight to ten months. However, the costs of treating a comatose patient are relatively high. Should the hospital pull the plug on the comatose patient since no one has any attachments to him? Or should the hospital keep the comatose patient alive?

If you answered that the comatose patient should be kept alive, then presumably you should answer that a fetus should be kept alive as well. As a comatose patient who is amnesiac and without attachment, John Doe is basically like a fetus in the following ways: (i) he has approximately the same limited cognitive functioning more or less (ii) he has no attachments to anyone, (iii) he has no memory of experiences (iv) and if someone killed him, he presumably would not feel much pain.

Perhaps the real issue with abortion are the costs that are imposed on the pregnant woman. If these costs are dealt with, perhaps the issue of aborting fetuses may not be necessary. What if people were legally required to treat pregnant women no different from other women? That is, what if a person could be prosecuted for child abuse if he/she discriminated against a pregnant woman, because it would start a chain of events that would lead to abortion?

What do you think? 

Sophie's Choice

I'm addressing kind of an interesting moral dilemma for my final paper. Basically, I'm evaluating the moral implications of Sophie's choices in the movie "Sophie's Choice." For those of you not familiar with the movie, Sophie and her two children are in a concentration camp and a Nazi gives her two choices. She can either 1) Choose one of her children to be killed and the other one will be spared. Or 2) She can refuse to choose either of her children to be sacrificed and the Nazi will kill both of them.

Obviously this is a really morbid moral dilemma and neither decisions seems particularly great. I'm basically arguing (kind of un-popularly) that the best thing for Sophie to do is to refuse to sacrifice either of her children, which effectively leads to both of their deaths. My basic argument is that Sophie is faced with two conflicting obligations. The first is the obligation to save as many children as possible and the second is to refuse to betray or abandon either of her children. Essentially, I think that the second obligation is more important (because of the idea of trust. If Sophie chooses to sacrifice one of her children, she is betraying the trust that she shares with her children) and ultimately trumps the first obligation and she should therefore choose the second of the Nazi's options.

Most people hear this and get really upset and don't understand how I could condone the loss of two innocent lives when one could have been prevented. This is the most simple explanation of my thought process. If Sophie chooses one of her children to be killed, she has directly caused that child's death because it was her decision. If she refuses to choose either of her children to be sacrificed, she is sticking with her children and the only person who can be blamed for the death of the children is the Nazi who chose to kill the children. I'm also using Immanuel Kant's theories regarding the universalizability of the maxim as well as the notion that you cannot treat humans as mere means to further support my argument (I think that Kant would arrive at the same conclusion).

Obviously this is a really simplified version of my argument and I'm leaving out a ton of details and reasoning. But does anyone have any thoughts about my argument? Even if you don't agree with me, I think that it's thought provoking at the very least.

Some thoughts on Thomason's "A Defense of Abortion".

In A Defense of Abortion, Thomason argued that the pregnant woman has the right to choose whether to abort the baby. She give a very good analogy. She assumes that the woman body is just like the room. You feel the room is stuffy, then you therefore open a window to air it but a burglar climbs in. And you have installed bars on the windows, in precisely to prevent burglars from getting in. But the burglar got in only because a defect in the bars. It would be absurd to say that you would give the burglar a right to the use of the house. You have tried everything to avoid pregnancy but eventually you are still pregnancy. Then Thomason claims that abortion should be permissible in this case. However, I have a worry: what if you opened the windows intentionally and you didn't even installed the bars? And then a burglar climbs in? Would this be the case that the burglar would have the right to stay in the room? Any thought?

Is Animal Testing Permissible?

I'm developing my prompt around animal testing and making an argument that Animal Testing is  permissible for the sake of the human race, mainly due to the amount of value humans can contribute to the world compared to animals. Here is a basic argument:

1. Human lives have more valuable than animal lives. (I go detailed into explaining this, bringing in potential value to the world and contributions to a progressive society)
2. Humans gain benefit from animal testing.
3. Animal testing is permissible.


Of course, opposing arguments would take this type of form:

1. Animals have feelings and can feel pain.
2. Animal testing harms animals.
3. It is wrong to cause harm to beings with feelings.
4. Animal testing is wrong.

I'm thinking a good chunk of my paper will be devoted to answering objections because there are many, many reasons why people think animal testing is not permissible. Yet, it is hard to beat the point that human lives have the potential to contribute more value than animal lives.

Thoughts?

An objection to abortion

I'm currently working on the final paper, and my thesis is that abortion should be permissible. However, I have trouble responding to one of the possible objections. I'd be grateful for any thoughts.

A couple has just married. During their honeymoon, they decided to have a baby. A couple months later the woman managed to get pregnant. Unfortunately, the husband cheated during her pregnancy and asks for divorce. Desperate and depressed, the woman decides to give up this fetus. The question is: should we allow the woman have an abortion simply because she regrets her decision? If we allow her to do that, this seems quite problematic since she has the responsibility to take care of it. 

Establishing objective theory of welfare as the most appropriate theory

We have covered the objective theory of welfare, namely the objective list before the midterms. Objective list, as we all know, contains some basic elements which is intrinsically valuable for life. Among the elements, happiness seems to be one which should be make the list before any other element. Most of us concur that happiness makes our life better in itself. However, the desire satisfactionists and the hedonists might not fully agree with this. So, what arguments would someone who is endorsing happiness would put forward when people object to happiness being intrinsically valuable? Also, what is biggest objection to both desire satisfactionists and hedonists from the point of view of people in favor of the objective list theory of welfare?

In case any of you are redditors...

Peter Singer did an AMA yesterday about a new book of his on utilitarianism. Some interesting things came up I thought, if anyone feels like checking it out.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/32lnif/im_peter_singer_australian_moral_philosopher_and/

Counterarguments to the Euthyphro Argument

In anticipation of the Euthyphro dilemma section of FOE Part II, I have been working on a rough draft of a counterargument to the Euthyphro argument. Basically, the Euthyphro argument (in Chapter 5 of FOE) says that God does not have authorship of morality: "If God has reasons to support his commands, then these reasons, rather than the divine commands, are what make actions right or wrong." (Premise 3) In an attempt to counter this, I have created two rough drafts of counterarguments....

Counterargument 1: God's authority and reasons mutually reinforce each other in a way that is inextricable....

(1) Since God created the universe, the universe is God's domain.
(2) Denizens of domains are under the authority and protection of their ruler's laws.
(3) Ergo, whenever people commit actions that can harm the citizens of a country, their actions are wrong for two reasons simultaneously: contravening the authority of the ruler's laws and violating the protection from harm that the ruler decreed for his denizens
(4) In the same manner, since humans are denizens of God's domain, we are under the authority and protection of God's moral law
(5) Therefore, when people commit actions that can harm others, their actions are wrong (immoral) for two reasons simultaneously: contravening the authority of God's moral law and violating the protection from harm that God decreed for his denizens
(6)  Since contravening the authority of the moral law of God (rebelling against him) is one reason why immoral actions are wrong, the negative consequences of inflicting harm (violating protection from harm) are not the only thing that makes actions right or wrong.
(7) Thus, God does have authorship of morality, because actions are made right or wrong from the inextricable conjunction of the following two reasons: Protecting humans from harm and God's sovereignty as ruler of the domain that is the universe.

Counterargument 2: God designed humanity's capacity for selflessness (morality)....

(1) Because God is morally perfect, all of the universe was entirely good when he created it.
(2) As part of that design, God designed human beings with the intellectual capacity to override violent and selfish impulses, so we could live with another in love and peace.
(3) Although it's difficult to refine that capacity for selflessness, it is something we ought to strive for because it leads to peace.
(4) When we succumb to violent and selfish instincts, we stray away from fulfilling that capacity of selflessness.
(5) Therefore, violent and selfish actions are also immoral, because they vitiate God's good design for us.
(6) Ergo, since God designed our capacity for selflessness and since it is that capacity that we ought to fulfill, God has authorship of morality.

A Contradiction in the Desire/Satisfaction Theory?

What if there was a person whose only and all-consuming desire was to have a bad life? According to the desire/satisfaction theory, if that person's desire was fulfilled, would that person have a good life, or a bad life?

Autonomy and Hedonism

Something that we discussed in class about particular objections to the hedonistic theory to what constitutes a good life is that you can obtain happiness and pleasure without having the autonomy, or agency to make your own choices. Shafer-Landau makes the argument that autonomy is intrinsically valuable, in that that it’s not merely the happiness we obtain from having autonomy that gives us a good life. Its autonomy in it’s own right that gives value and is essential to a good life. Is it possible to break down some of Shafer-Landau’s examples that support this conclusion that he puts forth? Is it possible to discern whether or not autonomy is intrinsically valuable? Could it be that it’s the perception of the lack of autonomy (rather than the autonomy itself, or intrinsically) is what causes this man pain or lack of unhappiness? 

SL brings up the scenarios in The Brave New World, where the citizens lose their autonomy to experience upsetting or painful things in their life by taking the drug, soma, and other avoidance mechanisms put forth by the governmental agencies. SL argues that the loss of autonomy is intrinsically valuable, and despite experiencing only pleasure in this world, it is still not enough for a good life. However, what if this new world seems worse off not because of the lack of autonomy but rather the lack of diversity or expression we see in our world today? In other examples that SL provides, he discusses how the independence of the people is crushed, which would lead to a less happy life, which is something we would perceive as a life that is not as good. But what if it is not the lack of autonomy that is abhorrent but rather the morality of taking away someone’s autonomy? It seems apparent that it is morally wrong to take away someone’s autonomy but what if someone willingly gives it up? There is no reason to say that this person is will be less happy without autonomy, but if someone who appreciates and values their autonomy is forced to give it up it is understandable that they would have less happiness in their life.

Consider the case where an average person seems to be living “the good life,” which is full of whatever the person would consider qualities of the good life. However, the person feels like he has no control over what is happening in his life; everything happens is destiny (even if these are good things). In reality, the person does have the autonomy to make the decisions in his life; he just doesn’t perceive that he does. This perceived lack of control over his life is what makes this person unhappy. Could it be argued that the perception of autonomy is what would make the person happy? Not the autonomy itself? Or, to take it one step further, does this scenario suggest that some pain or displeasure is essential quality to the good life (as some have argued in class) even if it may be due to one’s own choices?

Survival Lottery: Do Numbers (Utilitarian value) Really Justify Violating People's Right to Live?

With the Survival Lottery, making a distinction between morality and utility may be important. Killing person A to save persons Y and Z has more utilitarian value than letting Y and Z die; one more person lives than would have otherwise. In terms of numbers alone, the survival lottery has utilitarian value.

However, utilitarian value is not the same as moral rights. Person A has a moral right to live. In order to determine whether the Survival Lottery is morally acceptable, we have to ascertain whether utilitarian value -- in this case, a higher number of living persons --  actually justifies the violation of person A's moral right to live. 

Consider self-defense killing. Killing a person in self-defense is justifiable because the assailant is guilty of trying to violate the victim's right to live. Before anything related to an attempted killing, both persons (the not-yet assailant and the future victim) have a moral right to live. However, by trying to rob the victim of his life, the assailant's moral right to live is justifiably suspended until the victim's life is secured. 

Persons Y and Z (organ patients) are in an unfair and tragic situation, true. They don't have malevolent intent to kill person A; they simply want viable organs from some source. Yet, the Survival Lottery is still just premeditated murder; it involves a pre-established plan to kill people in order to obtain organs. Despite the fact that their situation is unfair, it does not justify the killing of person A, because person A is innocent in this affair. Consider the following analogy. 

A group of sociopathic criminals take control of a building and randomly take two people hostage at gunpoint. The hostages did nothing to deserve being captured; they were simply unlucky. Despite their efforts, the security guards are unable to rescue the hostages. To satisfy a dark need for control, the terrorists deliver an ultimatum: they will release the hostages unharmed only if either the security guards (or bystanders) will kill one person at random. Desperate to live, the hostages ask for someone to save them by killing some random person. The hostages don't have a malevolent intent to kill someone; they just want to be released. Does this situation give anyone there the moral right to kill someone? 

In this analogy:

hostages = patients

criminals = organ diseases

security guards  = doctors

one person at random = person A's group.

 If acquiescing to the criminals' demand in order to save the hostages is morally wrong in this analogy, then acquiescing to the dire circumstances of organ disease by killing person A for organs should also be morally wrong.

Some Thoughts on the Survival Lottery

I want to explore a situation assuming we have "perfectly" instituted the Survival Lottery. In particular, the decision to use third parties for organ harvesting and not those who are already in need of organs. I am not going to address the morality of any other action associated with the Lottery.


We have persons A, X, Y, and Z.

Persons X, Y, and Z are all in need of an organ transplant. Without one, they will die.

Person A does not need an organ transplant to live.

All persons have organs that are compatible with each other.

With each person, I will associate two numbers.

The first is their Value, or how much their life is worth. Because all people have the same Value, we can give all people the same number. Every person's Value will be equal. We can say that each person has a Value equal to 1.

The second is that person's Cost. Cost is measured as the Value that was sacrificed in order to save that person's life. Alternatively, it is the measure of how many people had to die in order for that person to live. For example, If three people sacrificed themselves so that another may live, then the survivor's Cost would be equal to 3. The Cost does not have to be a whole number. If one person dies so that two people may live, then both of the survivors would have Costs equal to 0.5.

When there are multiple people, we can add these numbers together. If there are five people in a room, then we can say together, they have 5 Value. If two of those people had separate cases where a person sacrificed their lives for their sake, and everyone else did not, then the total Cost of those five people would be 2.

Intuitively, it appears that it would be preferable if Cost were a smaller number than Value.

We have seen that Harris rejects the objection to 3rd party involvement. He claims that it would be unfair to deliberately select "life-givers" among those who are in need of organs. We would be biased against the "unlucky". I think he is wrong, and that using dying people's organs would save more lives, (provided that the health of the harvestee would have no impact on the transplant).

What I want to show is that choosing to use the organs of those who are dying of organ failure, would be better, save more lives, than using an otherwise healthy person's.


Case 1.

A is picked by the lottery to be killed in order to save the lives of Y and Z. X is ignored in this case and his fate will be determined by other circumstances.

Person A - Dead
Person Y - 1 Value, 0.5 Cost.
Person Z -  1 Value, 0.5 Cost

Total - 2 Value, 1 Cost

In this case, at the cost of 1 human life we saved 2 lives.


Case 2.

X is deliberately chosen to be killed to save the lives of Y and Z. A is left alone. The outcome of this case will be:

Person A - 1 Value, 0 Cost
Person X - Dead
Person Y - 1 Value, 0.5 Cost
Person Z - 1 Value, 0.5 Cost

Total - 3 Value, 1 Cost

In this case, we achieved a higher Value, for the same Cost. We were more efficient when it came to saving lives.

You may argue that Person A is alive as a direct result of Person X being chosen instead. Even if that were the case, which it could be, the Value of Person X's life would then be split three ways. Persons A, Y and Z would all have Costs of 1/3 and the total Cost would not change.


It could be said that comparing these two cases would be improper without considering X's numbers in case 1. So let's do that. If X dies, then that would clearly make case 1 worse than case 2. You would rather have 3 people live than only 2. If X is to survive however, then both cases would have equal value: 3. However, the total Costs would be different. X can only survive if another person dies to give up his organs (in this scenario). If X survives, then it would necessarily mean that X has incurred some Cost greater than 0. Thus the total Cost in case 1 would be higher than in case 2. It is impossible for case 1 to have a higher Value/Cost ratio than case 2.

What does it matter that case 2 achieves a higher Value/Cost ratio than case 1?

It matters because the sacrifice of a single life can save more lives when the value/cost ratio is higher than when it is lower. If it is more morally right to chose the option that saves more lives, then it would be morally correct to chose the option with a higher Value/Cost ratio.

Therefore, when determining which person to use for harvesting organs, it would be morally right to select ones who are already in need of an organ.

What does everyone else think? Whose organs should we harvest?

Singer and Ethical Intuitions

I wanted to post something up here to think about regarding Singer's use of intuitions in his `Solution to World Poverty'. He relies on the intuition that we would usually think it would be wrong for Bob not to direct a train from a child to his car, or that we would harshly judge someone who would not risk some loss of clothing articles to save a drowning child. Moreover, these intuitions seem to be very universal.

He then argues that these intuitive obligations translate to an obligation to help children in need in far away places. What I wanted to think about was that THAT intuition does not seem widespread at all. That is, people usually don't go around judging people for buying movie tickets instead of donating the money. Does that fact in itself undermine his argument at all, or is that just irrelevant?

More to the point: In the case of the drowning child nearby the intuition that we ought to help is supposed to pick out something morally significant that can do work in a moral argument. But the intuition 'Nothing wrong going on here' in the case of people buying movie tickets is presumably supposed to not do any moral work or serve as a premise for a moral argument. But what reasons do we have to judge one intuition as "morally insightful" and the other as maybe misguided or unreflective?

Just something I thought I'd raise, I wonder what people think about it.