Phil 108: Family, Country, and Race

Some people believe that patriotic partiality is morally permissible, while rejecting the thoroughly communitarian account of morality defended by MacIntyre. Patriotic partiality, on these views, is often taken to be similar to partiality toward one's family - and since even most who endorse what MacIntyre calls "liberal universalism" believe that family partiality is permissible, it is plausible to think, according to those who defend the compatibility of universalism and patriotism, that patriotic partiality can be justified within a universalist framework as well.

Others are skeptical of the attempt to defend patriotic partiality by suggesting that it is, in morally relevant respects, similar to family partiality. Paul Gomberg, for example, claims that patriotic partiality has more in common with racial partiality than it does with family partiality - and since racial partiality is clearly morally unacceptable, we should, according to Gomberg, reject patriotic partiality as well.

There is much that seems clearly right to me about Gomberg's claim that patriotism is quite similar to racism. After all, which country one is born in is just as morally arbitrary as what color skin one is born with. It seems obvious that neither factor should, in itself, have any impact on the degree of moral consideration that others owe to one. Furthermore, none of us have personal relationships with all of our compatriots, while one thing that might plausibly be thought to ground the permissibility of family partiality is the personal relationships that most people have with their family members. Choosing to save the life of a stranger who happens to share one's citizenship status rather than a stranger from another country for no reason other than that the former is from one's country seems at least somewhat arbitrary, in the way that choosing to save a member of one's own race merely because she shares one's race seems objectionably arbitrary. On the other hand, most people think that choosing to save a family member rather than a stranger simply because the former is a family member is at the very least permissible; some would even claim that saving the family member is required.

The challenge for those who claim that patriotism is compatible with universalism, then, would appear to be to explain why we should think that patriotic partiality is different, morally speaking, than racial partiality. There are a few things that might be said in an attempt to meet this challenge, though I admit to not finding any of them terribly convincing. First, we might think that the fact that we share a politcal community with our co-nationals makes it the case that we have a special relationship (despite in most cases lacking a personal relationship) to them that we don't have to those outside our nation, and that this relationship grounds the permissibility of giving extra moral weight to their interests. We might simultaneously deny that there is any such special relationship that we have to those who share our race, either because race is simply not a morally important category, or, more strongly, because race is an illusion altogether. The truth of the latter claim would certainly provide a distinction (though not necessarily a morally relevant one) between race and co-nationality, because there clearly are facts about, for example, citizenship status, whereas the view that race is an illusion denies that there are any facts at all about race. In addition, we might think that the fact that we do not have personal relationships with all of our co-nationals does not distinguish the grounds for accepting the permissibility of family partiality from the grounds for accepting the permissibility of national partiality. We might, for example, think that it would be permissible (or obligatory) for one to save the life of a long lost uncle that one had never met before encountering him in a life threatening situation (of course we must imagine that the potential rescuer knows of the biological relationship) rather than saving an acquantaince simply because the former is a family member. If this is correct, then we might think that in a range of cases national partiality is justified in just the same way that family partiality is, and that whether or not one has a personal relationship with those to whom she is partial is irrelevant.

Interestingly, Stephen Nathanson, who defends the view that patriotism is compatible with universalism, does not say any of these things. Instead, he claims that just as the sort of patriotism that he defends, which he calls "moderate patriotism," is acceptable, so too is what Gomberg critically referred to as "moderate racism." Just as it is permissible to give extra consideration, beyond what is owed to everyone, to some simply because they are one's co-nationals, it is permissible to give extra consideration to some simply because they are members of one's own race. "Moderate racism," on this view, is not morally objectionable, because it does not involve one in giving those of other races less consideration that is owed to everyone in virtue of the principles of universal morality.

This view essentially says that there is a minimum level of consideration owed to everyone, and that beyond that we can choose to give extra consideration to some for what seem clearly to be morally arbitrary reasons, such as that they share one's race. I'm inclined to think that this view is incorrect, but even if it is right, the way in which it justifies patriotism seems to make patriotism nothing more than morally tolerable (and only in limited circumstances). It is certainly not a virtue, and seems to be morally on a par with giving preference to some because they share one's race, or eye color, or favorite TV show, or brand of toothpaste. And if it morally no different than partialities like these, then it is not clear why we should be inclined to accept it in the first place. Given the tendency of any form of partiality, if systematically practiced, to lead to avoidable inequalities, woudn't we do better according to what we actually value (equality over partiality based on race/toothpaste brand/etc.) to simply reject the claim that national partiality is permissible?

Phil 108: MacIntyre on Liberal and Patriotic (Communitarian) Morality

Liberal morality, according to Alasdair MacIntyre, is incompatible with patriotism. This is because liberal morality, on MacIntyre's description of it, requires "neutral[ity] between rival and competing interests...each individual is to count for one and nobody for more than one," and because liberal moral principles apply equally to everyone - they are "independent of all social particularity." Patriotic morality, on the other hand, requires that the interests of one's own nation or community be privileged in one's decisions about what to do. The patriot cannot take up the standpoint of the impartial observer in, for example, disputes between her nation and another nation over resources or conceptions of the good life. Patriotic morality requires adherence to the principles that one has internalized within her community, principles that will often reflect not the equal concern for the interests of all required by liberal morality, but rather the particular values that define the way of life of the nation or community. These particular values, and the principles that are internalized as a result of immersion in a community that is in part defined by them - and which require the promotion of those values (including, perhaps, by means of going to war with other nations/communities that reject them) - are, according to MacIntyre, the only values and principles that could possibly serve as a motivational basis for moral action. If individuals are not motivated by the particular values that define their community's particular way of life, if they are constantly subjecting these values, and the socially particular moral principles to which they give rise, to rational scrutiny by attempting to determine whether they are consistent with the liberal requirement to take all to count for one and none for more than one, then the social bonds which ensure the stability, and indeed the survival of the community are liable to dissolve (soldiers, for example, are unlikely to have the attitudes necessary to consistently act in the ways necessary to ensure the country's security). Only patriotic morality, on this view, can provide the right sort of motivational basis to sustain any particular community over time. This, on MacIntyre's view, is a reason to prefer patriotic morality to liberal morality, given their incompatibility.

It is clear that one central aim of any patriotic morality, on MacIntyre's understanding, is the preservation of the nation or community's way of life, and the values that its way of life represents. The moral significance of this aim is overriding in cases of conflicts with other communities over their respective ways of life, or over resources that contribute to the sustainability of the community and its values. Nations or communities, rather than individuals, are the fundamental unit of moral concern on this view. MacIntyre's argument, then, appeals to a form of communitarianism - to the view that the nation or community is the fundamental unit of moral concern because individuals are partly constituted by the communities within which they are socialized and from which they get their values. Individuals could not be moral agents without socialization within a community, and they could not be the moral agents that they are in the absence of the community within which they were actually socialized. The patriotic moral requirement to defend one's community and its values, then, is in a sense a requirement to defend an essential part of oneself. To allow one's community and its values to be destroyed, on this view, is to allow an essential part of oneself to be destroyed, and the destruction of one's community and its values is at the same time the destruction of oneself as the moral agent that she is.

It is clear, then, why MacIntyre rejects liberal morality as incompatible with patriotism and as independently untenable. Liberal morality, as he understands it, can require one to promote the values of another nation or community over those of his own (remember, each is to count for one and none for more than one - everyone's interests are on a par, morally speaking), even if this will involve the destruction of her community. But given that we are partly constituted as moral agents by the socialization that we receive in our communities, taking the liberal requirements to be moral requirements is to assume that there is a source of moral reasons, and therefore a possible source of moral motivation, other than the values that one has acquired from her community - that does not derive from the social factors that partly constitute individuals as moral agents. Liberal morality is incoherent, on MacIntyre's view, because it can require individuals to act against, and perhaps even allow or participate in the destruction of, the community that partly constitutes one as the moral agent that she is. It can require one to undermine the source of her moral agency - in effect, to contribute to the destruction of a part of herself, and to render her without any source of moral motivation whatsoever, and therefore without any morality.

MacIntyre's argument relies heavily on the thought that the loss of one's nation or community entails the loss of the only possible source of moral motivation and moral understanding that an individual can have access to - "deprived of the life of [my] community, I would have no reason to be moral," he claims. This thought strikes me as, if not obviously false, at least extremely questionable. If my nation ceased to exist, and its values, some of which I suppose inform my moral thinking to some extent, no longer served as the basis for the sort of social life that currently structures many of my interactions with compatriots, I don't at all imagine that I would cease to be the moral agent that I am, and I certainly do not think that I would no longer have any reason to be moral. This intuitive sense that my moral agency would clearly survive the destruction of my national community leads to me to be deeply skeptical of the communitarian account of the constitution of individuals as moral agents.

There are further difficulties associated with the communitarian view. In particular, it is not clear why MacIntyre seems to privilege national community above all other forms as the one that provides the set of values and the process of socialization that inculcates those values that play an essential role in constituting individuals as the moral agents that they are. Conflicting community associations (national, religious, ethnic, ideological, etc.) can socialize single individuals to identify with conflicting values, and it's not clear why any particular type of community should be taken to be the primary one that provides the social basis for moral motivation and understanding. The value of preserving a nation as a political arrangement for the pursuit of mutual benefits may be a reason for thinking that there are very often strong self-interested reasons for acting so as to preserve one's nation as a nation, but the values that derive from other forms of community are often at least nearly as significant for the pursuit of individuals' conceptions of the good life (this is in part, of course, due to the fact that individuals' conceptions of the good life are influenced by all of the aforementioned types of community, and not just national community).

Given these reasons for skepticism about MacIntyre's patriotic communitarianism, I wonder what might be said in defense of his approach. Am I right in thinking that his view has unacceptably counterintuitive implications about individuals' moral agency? Is there a defensible way of privileging national community in the way that MacIntyre seems to want to?

Phil 108: Marquis on Abortion

Marquis' argument for the view that abortion is generally impermissible relies on the claim that what is typically wrong about killing normal adult human beings is that doing so deprives them of their futures. The fact that killing something will deprive it of a "future like ours," is, according to Marquis, "sufficient to create the strong presumption that the killing is seriously wrong" (73). This entails that killing fetuses is typically seriously wrong, regardless of whether or not fetuses are already persons. Marquis claims, therefore, that once we understand what typically makes killing normal adult persons wrong, it is clear that aborting fetuses is generally wrong, since doing so shares a property with killing persons that is sufficient for making killing persons wrong (namely, depriving the being killed of a future like ours).

This argument has substantial force. There is something that seems clearly right about the thought that at least part of what makes killing persons wrong is that doing so deprives them of their futures. It also seems clearly true that futures like ours are valuable, and that the value of such futures is something that morality must take seriously. Those who wish to defend a more permissive view about the morality of abortion must, then, respond to the challenges raised by Marquis' argument. There are, however, a number of points that can be raised that present difficulties for his view.

One thing that we might immediately notice about Marquis' account is that it seems to imply that it would be wrong for one to disconnect herself from the violinist in Thomson's famous case. After all, the violinist will, if he continues to live, have a future like ours, and so Marquis seems committed to the claim that it would be wrong to kill him. This thought is supported by Marquis' claim that "abortion, like ordinary killing, could be justified only by the most compelling reasons...abortion could be justified in some circumstances, only if the loss consequent on failing to abort would be at least as great [as the loss to a standard fetus of its future]" (73). Since the loss of nine months of life detached from the violinist is not as great as the loss of the violinist's life, it seems as though Marquis' view implies that it would be wrong to disconnect.

One might suggest that Marquis need not accept that it would be wrong to detach oneself from the violinist, despite maintaining his strongly pro-life stance on abortion. When one detaches herself from the violinist, we might think, she merely allows him to die, whereas abortion involves the deliberate killing of the fetus. Perhaps Marquis can claim that it is only wrong to deprive a being of a future like ours by killing it, and that because one does not kill the violinist by detaching oneself, but merely lets him die, detaching is permissible.

I am skeptical of the thought that Marquis can plausibly make this claim. After all, one must do something, namely detach oneself, in order to put oneself in a position to then allow the violinist to die, and by detaching oneself one ensures that the violinist will not get to enjoy the future that he would otherwise have. If a woman found herself pregnant and wanted to avoid carrying the fetus to term, it would be implausible to think that it is impermissible to kill the fetus, but permissible to take a pill that detaches it from its source of nutrition in the womb, resulting in its death in the near future due to the lack of intervention to save it. It seems clear that Marquis would deny that taking such a pill is permissible, since doing so would deprive the fetus of its future. Whether taking the pill is accurately described as killing the fetus, or whether instead a woman who takes it and then does nothing to save the fetus merely lets it die, surely must, if it makes any difference at all for Marquis, not make enough of a difference to justify divergent moral assessments.

After all, the value of a future like ours account of the wrongness of killing us is taken by Marquis to imply a strongly pro-life position on the ethics of abortion. It would be strange, given his reliance on this type of argument, if he were to allow that the invention of a pill of the sort that I described above would make acting in a way that is known will result in the death of the fetus permissible. This concession would severely undercut the pro-life implications of his argument, and therefore it seems clear that he will not want to make it.

Just as he cannot appeal to the distinction between killing and letting die in order to maintain the position that abortion is generally wrong and also accept Thomson's view that it is permissible to detach from the violinist, Marquis cannot, I think, appeal to the distinction between intending and foreseeing. For just as one might detach oneself from the violinist without intending to kill him (that is, if the violinist were to continue living after detachment one would not be at all disappointed), a woman might remove a fetus from her womb without intending its death (if it were to survive outside the womb she would not be at all disappointed). But surely Marquis wants to maintain that so long as one foresees that the fetus will die if it is removed from the womb, it is impermissible to remove it. So it looks as if he must accept this same conclusion in the violinist case.

Now Marquis may simply bite the bullet and accept that one must stay attached to the violinist. Indeed, it seems to me that he has no other plausible option. His position on abortion, in combination with the way in which this position prevents him from appealing to the doing/allowing or intending/foreseeing distinctions, leaves him with a view on which morality can make very substantial demands on individuals when the futures of others are at stake. This in itself is not necessarily a problem for his view; there is nothing intrinsically problematic about demanding views of morality's requirements, and in fact I'm inclined to think that on the whole more demanding views are more plausible than their less demanding rivals. But Marquis faces a further problem - namely that it's not clear, given the sort of argument that he provides, that he can plausibly avoid the conclusion that we have an obligation to procreate so as to bring about futures like ours.

We have seen that he must deny that the distinctions between doing and allowing and between intending and foreseeing are morally significant enough to justify detaching from the violinist so long as one either does not kill him or does not intend his death, because this would also license acting in ways that are known will result in the death of a fetus. And his account of what makes killing something wrong appeals to the value of the future that such killing would prevent from obtaining. So the reason that we must not kill an embryo is, on Marquis' view, that doing so would prevent a valuable future like ours from being enjoyed. But failing to procreate when we could also prevents a valuable future like ours from being enjoyed. So in order to deny that we have an obligation to procreate, Marquis claims that failure to procreate does not deprive any particular individual of such a future. But the fact that there is no victim in the case of failure to procreate may not be able to fully settle the question. After all, if we were to procreate, then a future like ours would obtain, and such a future would be valuable. Denying that we are obligated to bring such a future about when we can, while maintaining that we have a very strong obligation not to intervene to prevent such a future from obtaining, seems to involve endorsing a very strong distinction between the moral significance of, on the one hand, acting in a way that prevents some good that would otherwise be realized from obtaining, and on the other, failing to act in a way that would result in some good that would otherwise not obtain being realized. Indeed, claiming that an embryo can be a victim, while a sperm and egg before conception cannot, seems to be little more than an endorsement of the moral significance of this distinction; after all, it is far from intuitive that an embryo can be a victim, and Marquis' claim that it can simply rests on the thought that in the absence of the sort of intervention involved in early abortion, the embryo would have a future like ours.

It's far from clear what the reason could be to think that there is such a great deal of moral significance to the distinction between preventing a good that would otherwise be realized from being so and failing to bring about a good when one could, in particular for someone who is committed to rejecting anything close to such significance for the doing/allowing and intending/foreseeing distinctions. We might be suspicious that Marquis is simply (and only implicitly) accepting the moral significance of the distinction in order to avoid commitment to the absurd view that we have an obligation to procreate. If this is the case, then we might suspect that there is something problematic about the arguments for the future like ours account of the wrongness of killing and/or its strongly anti-abortion implications.

Phil 108: Thomson on Rights and Abortion

Thomson's aim in "A Defense of Abortion" is to argue that even if we assume that fetuses are persons with the same moral status as ordinary adults, abortion is often permissible. Her strategy is to employ a series of examples that she takes to show that we are not morally obligated to make significant sacrifices in order to save the lives of others (or to prevent them from dying). The case that has generated the most discussion is the violinist case, in which the reader is to imagine that she is kidnapped and attached to a famous violinist, who needs the use of her kidneys for nine months in order to survive. Thomson's intuition is that, while it would be nice of a person to remain hooked up to the violinist, and to thereby save his life, it is certainly not morally obligatory to do so. The violinist, on her view, has no right to the use of another person's kidneys.

We should note that although many people share Thomson's intuition, one may simply reject her claim about the violinist case. We might think that if one finds herself in the unfortunate situation of choosing whether to detach oneself from the violinist, and thereby killing him, or else sacrificing nine months of her life in order to save him, she ought, morally speaking, to remain attached. After all, although nine months of her life is a lot to give up, the violinist's life is at stake, and so he has even more to lose. If we think that morality can, at least sometimes , make very significant demands on individuals, we might be inclined to think that Thomson's violinist case is simply one such possible occasion. If this is the right view, which I think it might very well be, then if we grant that fetuses are persons with full moral status, we may not be able to resist the conclusion that abortion is always wrong, except in cases in which the mother's life is threatened.

Warren accepts Thomson's intuition about the violinist case, but claims that, as Thomson describes it, it only shows that abortion in the case of rape is morally permissible. If we also accept Thomson's intuition, then this seems right. If the violinist has no right to the use of the attached person's kidneys due to the fact that this person was kidnapped and therefore did nothing that could have granted him such a right, then a woman who has been raped has certainly done nothing that could have granted the fetus the right to be kept alive by her body, and so the fetus must not have this right.

But perhaps pregnancies that result from voluntary intercourse are such that the woman does implicitly grant the fetus that results from such intercourse the right to be kept alive by her body. Thomson considers this possibility, but claims that this is not the case by appealing to several cases involving burglars, innocent intruders, and people-seeds. The first thing to note about the appeal to cases involving burglars is that such cases may distort our intuitions if we mistakenly accept that such cases are analogous to cases of pregnancy resulting from voluntary intercourse. Burglary, after all, is (at least in most cases) wrong, and therefore it is clear that, all else equal, burglars have no right to remain in a house they have broken into simply because the house's owners did not take every possible precaution against burglars getting into the house. But if we imagine a case in which expelling a burglar from one's home is sure to result in the death of the burglar, as abortion is sure to result in the death of the fetus, it is not obvious, at least to me, that one is not morally required to let the burglar stay until he can leave without perishing. And when we alter the case in a way that makes it relevantly analogous to pregnancy as a result of voluntary intercourse, by making the intruder, like the fetus, innocent, then it is even less clear that it is permissible to expel the intruder from one's home. If a vagrant accidentally stumbles through your window during a terrible storm that is sure to kill him if he returns outside, it seems pretty clear to me that it would be wrong to kick him out of your house. If this case is analogous to pregnancy resulting from voluntary intercourse, then if we assume that the fetus is a person with full moral status it seems that we should accept that abortion is wrong if the pregnancy results from voluntary sex.

Now this position assumes that it is either the case that one can acquire a right to aid from another person without that person explicitly granting the right (the home owner doesn't grant the vagrant the right to be in her house merely by leaving the window open), or that it is the case that it can be wrong to act in a way that will result in someone's death even if the person whose life is at stake has no right that one not act in that way. It appears that Thomson is willing to accept the latter claim, but not the former. But the cases in which she is willing to accept the latter claim seem to be limited to those in which the sacrifice necessary to avoid acting wrongly is minimal - it would be wrong for Henry Fonda to refuse to cross the room to save your life, and it would be wrong for a mother to refuse to carry her fetus for a few more days if this would mean postponing a trip to Europe - and this suggests a perhaps implausible gap between what individuals can be required to do if others have rights against them and what they can be required to do in the absence of such rights.

If morality can require significant sacrifices of individuals when others have rights against them, then we require a reason to think that it cannot require such sacrifices in the absence of such rights, in particular when others' interests provide just as much reason to act in ways that benefit them. And it's not clear that anything Thomson says provides such a reason. It seems, then, that if we are inclined, as I am, to reject her very permissive intuitions about the burglar and innocent intruder cases, then we may be forced to the conclusion that abortion in the case of pregnancy resulting from voluntary intercourse is wrong, so long as we accept that fetuses are persons with full moral status. Perhaps Warren is right, then, that an argument for the permissibility of abortion in cases of pregnancy resulting from voluntary intercourse requires that we establish that fetuses are not persons, and therefore do not have the same moral status as ordinary adults.

Phil 108: Speciesism, Experimentation, and Morality

Peter Singer argues that our willingness to allow various types of experiments to be performed on non-human animals, but not on brain-damaged humans with similar capacities, reflects a pervasive "speciesist" attitude toward non-human animals. He claims that speciesism is morally equivalent to sexism and racism, and that there is no justification for failing to give the interests of humans and non-human animals equal moral consideration. He concludes, therefore, that in order to be consistent we must oppose all experimentation on animals, except for those experiments that we would also be willing to allow to be performed on brain damaged humans with similar capacities (it is important to note that the extent of the brain damage or mental disability that would be required to render a human similar in the relevant capacities to, say, a rat or a rabbit, or even most primates, would be quite significant; humans with conditions such as, for example, Down Syndrome or other forms of mental retardation, generally fall well above this threshold).

One way that defenders of experimenting on animals might respond to Singer's challenge is to simply accept that, all else equal, it would be equally morally permissible to perform the same experiments on brain damaged humans with similar capacities. I happen to find this view more plausible than most people do, and think that certain types of experiments on severely incapacitated humans might well be justifiable. These cases will, of course, be limited to experiments that are reasonably likely to contribute to the relief of serious suffering - testing new cosmetic products on both incapacitated humans and on animals is, in my view, unjustifiable.

Since most people reject the view that experimenting on severely incapacitated humans could be morally acceptable, the challenge for those who want to defend experimentation on animals is to explain what it is that justifies such experimentation in a way that does not imply that experimentation on incapacitated humans is also justifiable.

One approach is to attempt to defend speciesism against Singer's charge that it is morally equivalent to sexism and racism. But defenses of speciesism tend to do little more than restate the speciesist bias that is implicit in many of our practices, or else cite characteristics that typically distinguish humans from non-human animals, but do not distinguish severely incapacitated humans from non-human animals. The fact that most humans "engage in moral reflection...are morally autonomous...recogniz[e] just claims against their interests" (Cohen 463) does not explain why it is impermissible to experiment on humans who do not possess these characteristics. Because of this, defenses of speciesism that appeal to such characteristics of typical humans seem to clearly fail.

Steinbock attempts what seems to me to be an alternative approach to defending animal experimentation. After pointing to several characteristics that she considers morally relevant, and which humans generally have but non-human animals don't, she concludes that animals are due less moral consideration than humans. But, as we have seen, this sort of argument seems to fail in the case of humans that don't possess the cited characteristics. Steinbock recognizes this, and goes on to suggest that we ought not experiment on severely incapacitated humans (we might also read her as claiming that it would be permissible to experiment on them, but that our experimenting on animals does not obligate us to allow or support experimenting on them as well) because "we feel a special obligation to care for the handicapped members of our own species...when we consider the severely mentally retarded, we think, 'That could be me'" (Steinbock 142). It's not clear why these psychological facts about us are supposed to be morally relevant, but Steinbock claims that these feelings tend to lead us to "extend special care to members of our own species,", and that our doing so is "certainly not wrong" (142).

Why such partiality toward our own species is supposed to be so clearly justifiable is a bit mysterious to me, especially given her claim, which is at the very least controversial, a few sentences later. Recognizing the potential parallel to racism that Singer claims is exhibited by preference for one's own species, Steinbock says that "It is not racist to provde special care to members of your own race; it is racist to fall below your moral obligation to a person because of his or her race" (142). But to "provide special care" to members of one's own race is to treat people differently on the basis of race, and this strikes me as clearly racist, and therefore morally objectionable. If Steinbock's argument for the justifiability of partiality to our species relies on her intuition that partiality toward one's race is justifiable so long as one doesn't fall below a threshold of consideration for the members of other races, then it seems to me we should reject her argument. Indeed, the claim that racial partiality of this sort can be justified strikes me as less plausible than the claim that species partiality can be justified - so it is quite curious to employ the former claim in the service of an argument for the latter.

This seems to return us to something like Singer's position requiring equal consideration for all sentient beings, unless a better argument for rejecting this standard can be mounted.

Phil 138: Free Speech Posts

Here are a few previous posts of mine about the issue of free speech:

The Case of the Mohammad Cartoons: Free Speech, Offense, and Moral Responsibility
Free Speech and the Campus Left
Attacks on Free Speech from the Left and Right
Free Speech and the Campus Left Yet Again
Once More on Free Speech

Phil 138: Relevant Prior Posts

Here are some previous posts of mine that address issues that we've discussed in my 138 sections:

Can Mental States Function Causally?
The Background and Realism
Language and Collective Intention
Cultural Identity as a Status Function
More on Cultural Identity as a Status Function
Is the Opacity of the Nature of Social Reality a Bad Thing?

Comments are, of course, appreciated.

UGBA 107: Relevant Prior Posts

I hope to be posting some new thoughts soon, but for now I thought I'd post links to some of my older posts that might be of interest. Of course I'd appreciate any comments you might have about them:

Capitalism, Utopianism, and Democracy
More on Capitalism, Utopianism, and Democracy
Why Value Democracy (a response to a comment on Capitalism, Utopianism, and Democracy)
Homosexuality and Hiring Practices
More on Homosexuality and Hiring Practices
Are Libel Laws Constraints on Free Speech? (see my earlier posts linked to in this one for more background on my views on free speech)
On John Mackey's Yahoo Postings
Jocks, Nerds, and Income Redistribution

Here are a few posts directly related to our discussion of Singer's argument today:

Cullity's Argument Against the Extreme Demand
Commitment Goods and the Demands of Morality
What is a Moral Demand?
Fairness and the Demands of Beneficence
A Constraint Against Imposing Unrequired Sacrifice?

You might also look at the two-part post from another blog that I link to in the second paragraph of this post, which discusses several issues related to business ethics classes. The discussion is largely between people who teach business ethics, and focused on issues such as why business students tend to be hostile to thinking about ethics in a serious way, how best to approach introducing new students to ethical thinking, and problems with the way ethics is sometimes taught, in particular in business schools.

UGBA 107: Paper Topics

As Alan mentioned in lecture today, your paper topics are due to me by next Wednesday, July 16th. Please e-mail me with a brief description of the topic that you plan to write on by that date. I'll reply to your e-mail and let you know if I have any suggestions regarding your topic. Thanks!

UGBA 107: Reading for Monday, July 14th

Here are the sections to focus on from the three chapters of Living High and Letting Die that I handed out today:

Chapter 2: Sections 1-3, 5, 7-9, 13-14, 16-18
Chapter 3: Sections 1-4, 7-10
Chapter 6: Sections 1-2

See everyone Monday!