Everyday Ethics

The recent revelation that Tiger Woods has been engaging in not one, but numerous extramarital affairs has cast a dark shadow on a sports figure that has otherwise enjoyed messianic status.  Tiger Woods is easily the greatest golfer of his generation, and possibly the best that has ever played.  He is also an iconic figure with whom numerous businesses have opted to align themselves.  Tiger Woods moves merchandise, from golf gear to shaving gel. 

Not surprisingly, several of Tiger’s sponsors have now opted to abandon their alliance with him, citing his moral indiscretions as sufficient justification for this decision.  But is this the right thing to do?  Does the fact that Tiger Woods is not the high-quality person that we took him to be somehow negate the fact that he is an excellent golfer?  Are we guilty of a category mistake if we suggest that Tiger’s sponsorships, or his opportunities to play golf, should be taken away because of his ridiculous behavior?

There are two ethical questions at work here.  The first question is whether one should be punished in their professional life for actions in their personal life.  The second is whether it is morally justified to break a contract because of immoral behavior.  I will here argue that the answer to the first question is no, while the answer to the second question depends on the nature of the contract.

Some individuals, rightly appalled by Tiger’s actions, have suggested that the PGA should punish him, perhaps by suspending him from future tournaments.  There are two reasons for rejecting this suggestion.  There is a strong precedent against doing so, and such a response threatens to unacceptably blur the line between the public and the private sphere.

Many famous people have committed egregious actions that irreparably damage their public image.  Kobe Bryant’s recent Colorado rape trial is a prime example of this.  But no one suggested that Kobe not be allowed to play basketball.  Magic Johnson contracted HIV through extramarital sex, but he was treated with warmth and benevolence rather than scorn.  Michael Jordan had a notorious gambling problem, but he is hailed as the greatest player of all time.  Why should Tiger be treated differently?

There is a more general concern with abandoning this precedent.  Golf is Tiger Woods’s job.  There is no expectation, or requirement of employment stating that one must be a good person in order to be a good golfer.  We tend to think that whether one ought to be retained in a particular job position depends on whether they are qualified for the job, rather than whether they are a generally decent person.  Suggesting that Tiger, Kobe, Magic, or Jordan should not be allowed to pursue their profession in virtue of their personal indiscretions would amount to a unique kind of discrimination.  From the standpoint of employment qualifications, one’s sexual behavior is usually an irrelevant consideration.

This brings us to the second consideration concerning punishment in one’s professional life based on actions in one’s personal life.  We tend to think that there is an important separation between one’s public life and one’s private affairs.  When one is a celebrity like Tiger Woods, this line is blurred considerably, and one might claim that the loss of this distinction is the price one pays for fame.  However, this imposes an arbitrary constraint on a person’s individual freedoms.  If one has a right to the maintenance of a public and a private sphere, the fact that a person is famous is not obviously a reason for violating this right.

The second ethical question raised by the Tiger Woods affair scandal concerns whether it is ethical to break a professional contract based on a person’s actions in their personal life.  This is a complicated question, and I will limit the discussion to one pertinent facet of it.  If Tiger Woods was hired as an endorser because of his public image and persona, and not merely because he is a good golfer, his sponsors are justified in abandoning their professional relationship for his personal actions.

Consider the nature of the contract in question.  Companies have hired Tiger because they believe an association with him will help them to sell their products.  Tiger’s role in the contract is presumably to maintain himself as a positive force for this purpose.  If Tiger has agreed to this type of relationship, anything he does that hinders his effectiveness as a marketing tool would be a violation of the contract.  While we have reason not to punish Tiger professionally, as a golfer, for what he has done in his personal life, we also have reason to punish him professionally, as an endorser, for the same actions.

Virtue ethics is somewhat helpful in understanding this distinction.  Tiger’s extramarital affairs do not make him a bad golfer, but they do make him a bad endorser.  Different standards are at work when we evaluate Tiger the golfer and when we evaluate Tiger the endorser, and only in the latter case does his personal conduct make a relevant difference. 

We have thus reached an interesting conclusion.  First, standards of personal conduct are only relevant to one’s professional life if the nature of one’s profession dictates as much.  This leaves us with a mixed evaluation of Tiger Woods.  It seems we can endorse his lost endorsements, but not any punishment from the PGA, for his extramarital affairs. 

It also helps us to understand how other celebrity scandals have been perceived.  While Magic, Kobe, and Jordan are still good basketball players even though they are not particularly good people, someone like Bill Clinton harms his credibility as President in virtue of inappropriate personal conduct, because appropriate personal conduct is part of the President’s job description (or so it would seem).  Our own mixed reaction to Tiger suggests that he is somewhat unique, a mixture of celebrity and quasi-statesman that we want to hold to a higher standard of conduct, despite having no good reason to do so. 

First and foremost, thanks to all of you who have waited patiently while I have put this website on hold in order to deal with some personal matters.  In the past month I have become a parent, moved from Colorado to Ohio, and started a PhD program.  Needless to say, I’ve been busy.  But as life begins to settle down, it’s time to get back to the business of everyday ethics.  After all, it’s not as though ethical questions just disappeared while I’ve been away.

In fact, a very interesting ethical problem emerged last week in the form of a landmark judgment against Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company.  For the fourth time this decade, Pfizer was found guilty of encouraging the off-label prescribing of one of its products, in this case the arthritis pain medication Bextra.

While off-label prescribing is a common medical practice, it’s illegal for pharmaceutical companies to encourage it, market products for it, or educate doctors about it.  Pfizer did all of these things, mostly in the form of all-expenses paid educational conferences at lavish resorts with attractive amenities, all paid for by the company.  The judgment against Pfizer was massive:  $2.3 billion, plus ten years of government oversight regarding their marketing procedures.

One U.S. attorney cited a problematic group norm as part of the explanation for Pfizer’s continuous violations.  Pfizer, according to this attorney, is plagued by a pervasive belief that penalties are a part of doing business.  In other words, the financial payoffs of marketing off-label uses are worth the threat of punishment.  Pfizer’s employees seemingly subscribe to a kind of group relativism.  According to their group norms, Pfizer’s risks, to themselves and others, are justified by the profits that these risks produce.

I must give credit to my students at Bowling Green for pointing out that Pfizer’s group relativism doesn’t necessarily commit us to the view that their risk-taking is morally justified when it produces profit, even if we adopt group relativism ourselves.  For one thing, Pfizer’s risks affect people that don’t subscribe to Pfizer’s social norms.  Even if Pfizer thinks their actions are morally acceptable, that doesn’t mean the non-Pfizerites of greater society can’t disagree.

Further, as my students pointed out, the norm that says profit justifies harm isn’t the only norm that Pfizer subscribes to.  As a for-profit company, Pfizer has a duty to meet the needs of their shareholders, namely providing them with reasonable financial dividends.  At some point, Pfizer’s propensity for collecting hefty fines will interfere with this duty.

What does this tell us about group relativism?  One of the criticisms of group relativism is that it doesn’t allow for criticisms of a group’s moral rules by people who are not members of that group.  Pfizer’s norms are theirs, our norms are ours.  But my students have demonstrated that it is possible to criticize another group’s norms without rejecting group relativism as a theory.  None of the criticisms my students raised rely on any appeal to an objective moral theory, or even a theory other than group relativism.

This also tells us a few things about everyday ethics.  First, even individuals with minimal training are capable of sophisticated philosophical analysis, provided they think critically about relevant concepts.  Further, this example demonstrates the usefulness of using everyday examples as a vehicle for investigating and evaluating ethical theories.  By applying theories to real cases, we can better understand what those theories are and are not committed to.

In a recent article published in The American, farmer Blake Hurst attempts to make a positive case for industrial agriculture.  Hurst makes two key points, both of which reflect questionable assumptions that come to light in the face of philosophical analysis.  Hurst also provides us with an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the practical applicability of philosophical tools to real world, everyday problems.

Hurst’s first point is that farmers who use industrial techniques do so not because they are sadists, but because they are trying to maximize profits.  For example, sow stalls are utilized not to torture pigs, but to protect piglets from being harmed by their own mothers.  A live pig is worth more than a dead one, as Hurst puts it.  Farmers aren’t trying to hurt their animals; they are simply trying to make a living.

There are two assumptions at work here, the revelation of which serves to undermine Hurst’s point.  First, Hurst assumes that critics of industrial farming think it is sadistic.  But the critics are not as ill informed as Hurst assumes.  The issue is not whether or not industrial farming is sadistic, but whether it is inappropriately painful for the animals.  Further, Hurst assumes that the economic benefits of industrial techniques justify the harm that these methods cause.

Hurst’s second point is that only industrialized agriculture is capable of “feeding the world.”  Again, several assumptions are at work.  First, Hurst assumes that we ought to be trying to feed the world, whatever the costs of doing so might be.  Second, he fails to consider the negative correlations between industrialized farming and human hunger.  Industrialization breeds agricultural monism.  In other words, it’s tough to grow a variety of crops using industrial techniques, but humans can’t survive by eating nothing but soybeans, rice, and wheat all the time.

In addition, industrialized agriculture has made the conspicuous consumption of animal products ubiquitous at the global level.  Using traditional methods, there is no way the entire human population could eat the way Americans do.  Without industrial agriculture, Americans couldn’t do so either.  The problem is that globalization has made the American diet of mostly animal products the gold standard for nutritional preference across the globe.  Industrial agriculture masks the unsustainable nature of this way of eating.

In short, Hurst’s entire argument rests on a series of questionable and unsupported assumptions.  It is certainly possible to defend meat consumption, and even industrial agriculture, provided one is willing to address the pressing concerns we’ve mentioned here.  More importantly, philosophical analysis allows us to see an initially compelling argument in its true light.  By thinking critically about these sorts of everyday issues, we can begin to separate legitimate arguments from unsupported moral rhetoric.

The frequency of my postings has become somewhat lax as of late.  My wife just gave birth to our son, Brandon, on August 6th, and we have since had to move out of our apartment in Fort Collins.  We will be in transit to Bowling Green, Ohio, where I will be starting the PhD program in philosophy, until August 20th.  I will do my best to remain on schedule with postings, but may fall behind at times over the next several weeks.  My apologies, and I hope you all will bear with me until things settle down a bit.

Most people who are capable of critical thinking tend to revile the inefficiency and mindlessness of most bureaucratic institutions.  One source of this frustration stems from the blind allegiance to rule-following that bureaucracies tend to breed.  Many of us have had the unpleasant experience of being denied some reasonable request on the grounds that honoring it would be a violation of “our policy.”

Socially, this type of experience is frustrating.  Philosophically, it’s worth trying to get to the root of why this type of experience is so infuriating, and whether the results of our analysis might apply to any other areas of social discourse.  One explanation for the frustrating nature of bureaucracies is that they lead to a kind of rule-fetishism.  Our purpose here will be to articulate what rule-fetishism is, and why it is problematic for both social bureaucracies and moral judgments.

Rule-fetishism has three key features.  First, rule-fetishism requires that one zealously follow whatever rules apply to the context at hand, whether moral, social, political, or otherwise.  Second, rule-fetishism sees specific, contextual considerations as irrelevant to whether a rule applies.  Finally, rule-fetishism requires that one fail to understand why a rule applies as it does.  To be guilty of rule-fetishism, a person must zealously follow relevant rules, no matter the circumstances, and without understanding why the particular rule in question exists or applies in a given case.

Here’s an example of how this applies to bureaucratic decision-making procedures that I recently experienced.  I was trying to have a TB skin test read at the local hospital, which was not the location where I had the test administered.  When I arrived at the lab, I was told that no one in the hospital was permitted to read my test for me because it was not adminstered there.

This was a clear-cut case of bureaucratic rule-fetishism.  The hospital employees were committed to following the hospital’s policy, with no regard for relevant details, such as the fact that my doctor’s office was closed, that it was the last day my test could be read and still considered valid, and that my doctor had told me that I could have it read there.

In addition, when I questioned this policy, the hospital employees were unable to give me a legitimate reason for why they couldn’t read my test.  Any RN is qualified to read a TB test, it takes less than a minute to do so, and I was happy to pay for the service.  However, their policy is that only tests administered at their location can be read there, and they apparently saw no need to justify such a rule to anyone, including themselves.

Rule-fetishism is also problematic in the moral case, possibly even more than in the social.  It is an especially compelling concern for deontological normative theories, which claim that people have certain moral duties that apply in most, if not all cases.  Immanuel Kant’s prohibition against lying to the murderer at the front door is a great historical example of moral rule-fetishism.

In general, the concern is that if one follows moral rules zealously and absolutely, with no regard for why such rules apply, one runs the risk of making the wrong moral judgment without realizing it.  Most people think that if a murderer comes to your door and you are hiding their desired victim inside, it would be wrong to tell them that you are hiding this person, even if they asked and you were forced to lie in order to protect their potential victim.

Kant famously claimed that even in this case, it would be wrong to lie.  The prohibition against lying is to be zealously followed, and contextual considerations are irrelevant to whether the rule applies.  If one were also to follow this rule without understanding it, one would be guilty of rule-fetishism.

Not knowing why you ought to act in a particular way, but insisting that you must do so anyway is frustrating when it arises in our everyday social interactions.  But it is especially detrimental to our moral decision.  We will probably never be confronted with a murderer at our front door whose victim we are hiding, but we will undoubtedly be faced with numerous everyday moral situations where rule-fetishism might inhibit our ability to do the right thing.  It is not enough simply to follow the rules.  We must also understand why they exist, and when they do or do not apply.

It now appears that Sonia Sotomayor is going to be confirmed as the next Supreme Court Justice.  Two significant criticisms of Sotomayor’s performance during the confirmation hearings have emerged, both of which reflect opposing ideologies.  One criticism, from the political right, is that Sotomayor is a judicial activist who played the political game properly, but who remains a significant danger to the conservative agenda for precisely the reasons that initially caused the critical response to her nomination.

The other criticism, from some on the political left, is that Sotomayor lacked the strength of conviction to stand before the committee and speak to what she truly believed.  She really does think that race and gender are relevant to legal judgments, but for political reasons, she opted to play it safe and say what the committee wanted to hear.  The first criticism charges her with sneaky political maneuvering, the other with a lack of integrity.  Neither of these are a good thing for a Supreme Court justice to be guilty of, but she will probably be confirmed in spite of them.

Both of these criticisms are significant precisely because they point to a glaring problem in the way that we evaluate Supreme Court nominees.  Because they are appointed for life and are not held accountable for their rulings in any relevant way, there is a strong pressure to say whatever the political climate demands during a justice’s confirmation hearings.  In Sotomayor’s case, this meant preaching the gospel of judicial impartiality, whether or not she believes in it.

There is another criticism to be raised here, not only of Sotomayor, but also of the Senators who have pushed the issue of judicial impartiality.  Specifically, two concerns loom over this concept.  First, judicial impartiality, as these individuals have defined it, is impossible.  Second, it is necessarily a kind of partiality, making it a self-contradictory concept.

Let’s start with the first worry, that judicial impartiality isn’t possible.  This is a fairly simple claim.  If I am a wealthy white Southerner, I’m going to perceive the facts of a particular case through the eyes of a wealthy white Southerner.  That’s what I am, and it would be a serious mistake to think that social factors play no role in how one evaluates facts.

Consider an alternative example to make the point.  If I am scientifically minded, I take the fossil record to be a validation of the theory of evolution by natural selection.  If I am religiously minded and take the Bible to be a factual history of the creation of the world, I take the fossil record to be a test of my faith given by God, or perhaps an example of flood geology at work.  The same facts take on a markedly different interpretation when viewed through the lenses of wildly different life experiences.

Two further points should be made here.  First, to say that we interpret facts through social lenses is not to say that there are no facts of the matter, or that all interpretations are equally good.  But there is a serious question regarding how much we can extrapolate away from those social lenses and get at the objective facts, when they exist, whether such facts concern a scientific discovery or a court case.

The second concern is related to, but distinct from the first.  Let’s assume, for the sake of discussion, that judicial impartiality as defined is possible.  Why think it’s preferable, even if we could achieve it?  To disregard considerations of race, gender, or poverty in favor of facts that we take to be objective in a way that these factors are not is to make an evaluative, rather than an epistemological judgment.  We need a reason for weighing some facts as more important than others for our legal judgments.

In other words, why are facts about a person’s race, gender, or social class less relevant than facts about what a piece of legislation says?  The judicial impartiality being advocated is a kind of partiality, one that favors certain kinds of facts over others, and without a compelling reason for doing so.  If facts about a person’s race or gender were somehow less objective, or illusory in some relevant way, that would be one thing.  Because they are not, we have a kind of partiality disguised as judicial objectivity.

If this admittedly rough analysis is even moderately on track, the advocates of judicial impartiality have a serious problem.  Their standard of impartiality is akin to the infamous “view from nowhere” that is derided across philosophical circles.  Further, and more significantly, even if such a view were possible, it’s not clear what makes it impartial, not to mention desirable for making legal judgments.  Granting the possibility of this viewpoint does little to substantiate why it is the judicial perspective that we ought to favor.

It’s not surprising that Sonia Sotomayor chose to play the political game rather than take the risk of defending what I am fairly certain she actually does believe about the role of factors like race, gender, and social class in making good judicial decisions.  Her addition to the court will probably be a good thing precisely because she doesn’t hold to the confused concept of judicial impartiality with which she was criticized.  It is, however, unfortunate that the opportunity for philosophical growth and maturation regarding the absurdity of this concept was not taken advantage of by anyone who participated in her confirmation hearings.

A close friend of mine recently had a sudden and unexpected death occur in his family.  He was not close to his brother, whose drug-abusing lifestyle made his death somewhat less shocking than it otherwise might have been.  In spite of all this, my friend instantly recognized an obligation to help with funeral arrangements, attend to his grief-stricken family members, and generally do what needed to be done.

No one reading this is likely to be shocked by my friend’s actions.  In general, we tend to think of family commitments as something that imposes special obligations upon us.  This is one of the principal strengths of deontological ethics:  it allows special obligations to carry special normative weight.  Deontologists will often cite this theoretical advantage as an indicator of the superiority of their approach to ethical decision-making.  We all think we have special obligations to family, and the deontologist can account for this pervasive social norm.

But my friend’s unfortunate news got me thinking about the nature of our special obligations.  Why think we have them at all?  If we do have them, how might they best be accounted for?  If we don’t really have any special obligations, what explains the fact that we all seem to think that we do?

These questions are not easy, and I won’t attempt to resolve them here.  In light of the pervasive social norm that supports acting as if we have such obligations, I will set aside the first question.  The answer to it seems obvious enough for our purposes.  But the second and third questions require some trickier philosophical work.  They require that we try to find an explanation for our perceived special obligations, and then determine whether a given explanation supports such obligations as a moral fact or a mere fiction.

There are several options for explaining special obligations.  Our treatment here will be limited to familial obligations, in order to both remain connected to the experience that prompted this inquiry, and because we are better served from the standpoint of clarity if we limit the scope of our discussion.

The first possible explanation of special obligations is simply that we are socialized to believe such commitments apply to us, and that they do so independently of our preferences.  In other words, my friend might feel obligated to help with his brother’s funeral arrangements because he has internalized the appropriate social norm.  On this explanation, we don’t have any special obligations to our family beyond those which society imposes upon us.

Another possible explanation of special obligations is that we are biologically disposed to defend our progeny, and we have extended this to other members of our family as a result of the human adaptation of sociality.  On this account, my friend feels obligated to help with his brother’s funeral arrangements because humans have evolved into the sorts of organisms that have adopted preferential treatment of family members as a positive adaptation.  Special obligations are thus a kind of biological tribalism, reducible to an advantageous adaptation.

A third explanation is that special obligations are a kind of moral fact, distinct from a biological fact or a social norm.  There are many ways that this concept can be illuminated, but the general idea is that our having special obligations to our family members is a case of moral truth that is not reducible to either of the above explanations.  There is a moral fact of the matter in this case, namely that my friend really was obligated to help with his brother’s funeral arrangements, and not just because some social norm or evolutionary adaptation dictated as such.

All of the above are oversimplifications of how we might explain special obligations to our family members.  Our analysis also ignores the plausible account that tries to combine features of more than one of the explanations presented.  However, our analysis also indicates the difficulty in trying to account for even widely accepted and commonplace moral ideas.  Like so many of our everyday moral concepts, special obligations are widely accepted and adhered to by a vast majority, even if they are not readily explicable for that same majority.  Whether this lack of moral understanding is cause for concern is another matter that must be left for another day.

Last week, an FDA advisory panel recommended a number of significant changes regarding the sale and marketing of products that contain acetaminophen, which is the active ingredient in the popular over-the-counter painkiller Tylenol.  Three of their recommendations are especially significant.

First, they advised that Vicodin and Percocet be discontinued as prescription pain-relieving drugs.  They also suggested that both the maximum daily dosage listed on bottles of acetaminophen, and the size of the largest bottles available for purchase, be reduced.  Their hope is that these changes will prevent several thousand deaths and tens of thousands of E.R. visits that result every year from an overdose of acetaminophen.

The astute reader will notice that the justification for this recommendation is the prevention of harms caused by the improper use of a generally safe medication.  Some may find this objectionable, on the grounds that this justification is paternalistic.  Paternalism is the view that sometimes, the government can ban or restrict certain substances or activities in order to protect people from self-inflicted harm.

Prohibitions on illegal drugs are sometimes thought to be paternalistic, and a common reply from someone who is generally opposed to paternalism might be that this new restriction is unjustified because it is paternalistic.

This is not a sufficient reply, but it is a good place to start for analysis.  Citing paternalism isn’t enough, by itself, to undo the logic of this recommended restriction.  After all, we sometimes think paternalism is a good idea.

We don’t allow people to shoot heroin just because they want to do so, even if they aren’t hurting anyone else.  We also think it’s a good idea to closely monitor the mentally ill to prevent them from hurting themselves.  In the workplace, especially if one works around dangerous equipment, certain behaviors are prohibited precisely because they are dangerous to those who engage in them.  We seem to think that sometimes, paternalism is a good thing.

The question is whether restricting the availability of acetaminophen is the right kind of paternalism.  Three questions need to be answered here.  First, we need to know what benefits are being lost by this restriction.  Second, we need to ask ourselves whether the harm being prevented justifies the benefits that are being lost.  Finally, we need to consider how effective these measures will actually be in preventing the harms that they are intended to alleviate.

Let’s first consider what benefits are being lost.  Acetaminophen is a very cheap pain reliever and fever reducer, so it is widely available to most people.  Further, Vicodin and Percocet, which are being suggested for ban because they contain acetaminophen, are two of the most effective prescription pain relievers available.  Acetaminophen is also not an anti-inflammatory, which means persons with allergies to this class of medicines can take it for pain.  Finally, it is one of few pain medications that can be taken even by very small children.  By restricting access to acetaminophen, we are reducing the availability of three very good pain medications, as well as a fever reducer that can be used by people of all ages.

The seriousness of the harm being prevented is the next relevant consideration for our analysis.  It is certainly true that a great number of people become seriously ill and even die as a result of taking too much acetaminophen.  It is also true that acetaminophen, when taken in large quantities, can cause long-term damage to the liver.

However, in both cases we are talking about harms caused by the misuse of acetaminophen, rather than the appropriate use of acetaminophen.  Whether acetaminophen ought to be restricted when used appropriately is not the issue.  The question is whether access for appropriate use causes or contributes to inappropriate use, and also whether the harms of inappropriate use justify limiting access to acetaminophen for appropriate use.  The fact that the harms at issue are caused by poor choices, lack of education, and bad judgment by users is what makes this a question about paternalism.

Finally, whenever a legal ban or restriction is under consideration, it’s worth thinking about whether the proposed measures will have the desired effect.  It is on this point that the FDA advisory panel’s proposal fails.

First, acetaminophen is already sold with a warning label advising that no more than 4,000 milligrams be taken in a 24-hour period.  If people are already failing to follow a more lenient standard, it’s difficult to see how making the maximum daily dosage lower would have any measureable effect on use patterns.

Next, by banning Vicodin and Percocet because they contain acetaminophen, you are arguably encouraging people to take even more acetaminophen, as they now lack an inexpensive, effective opiate painkiller.  Other prescription painkillers are either much too strong for a lot of pain, such as Oxycontin, or not terribly effective, like ibuprofen in 1000-milligram tablets.  If taking 15 tablets of Tylenol is the only viable option remaining for one’s pain control, that’s probably what people are going to do.

Finally, reducing the size of the largest bottles available for purchase will have no effect whatsoever on consumption unless we also prohibit the purchase of multiple smaller bottles, and keep track of how often people buy acetaminophen.  This is the current system for purchasing products that contain pseudoephedrine.  Acetaminophen may have dangerous side effects at high doses, but it is not on par with the main ingredient in methamphetamine, and to treat it as such would be unjustifiably costly and time-consuming, not to mention a gross invasion of personal privacy.

Our intuitive response to the FDA advisory panel’s recommendations was to reject them as bad policy, and our analysis suggests that this intuition is probably right.  Even if acetaminophen’s harms did justify restricting access for appropriate usage, the suggestions made by the panel for achieving this end are not likely to work.  At best, this reasonable goal is being poorly implemented.  At worst, it is a dangerous policy with the potential to bring about even more severe consequences than it seeks to prevent.

Another boisterous 4th of July has come and gone, filled with the booms and bangs of fireworks being shot off, as well as the inevitable horrific fireworks injury that always seems to accompany this holiday.  This time, it was an exploding fireworks truck in North Carolina killing three people.  These dangerous results, as well as the threat of personal injury and fire, have led many states to outlaw fireworks in at least some form.

My own state of residence, Colorado, allows only the most timid fireworks, such as sparklers and ground snakes.  This prohibition is made more complicated by Colorado’s close proximity to Wyoming, which allows even the most dangerous fireworks to be sold.  Now that another injury-ridden 4th is behind us, I can’t help but wondering, should fireworks be illegal, and if not, why not?

The method of analysis for this question should be familiar.  We have already discussed the social problems of drugs, guns, and pornography, and the way in which a society committed to political liberalism, which the U.S. happens to be, might answer these types of questions.  Our purpose here will be to utilize past investigations as a template for answering the question of whether fireworks should be legally permitted.

To briefly review, political liberalism is committed to three core values:  autonomy, equality, and neutrality.  Neutrality is the least controversial, stating that political liberalism is neutral with regard to conceptions of the good life.  From this, we can conclude that neutrality doesn’t clearly either eliminate or allow the possibility of a liberal society that permits fireworks.

Equality is probably the least relevant of these core values in this case, because fireworks contribute nothing one way or the other to the equality of persons.  Whereas a case can be made that allowing gun ownership levels the playing field for the weaker members of society, no such argument can be made for fireworks.  But fireworks don’t inhibit equality either.  For our purposes, we can set equality aside as a relevant consideration.

This leaves us with the core value of autonomy, and the question of whether a liberal society would include possession of fireworks as essential to our autonomy.  But there is a further consideration that political liberalism must also take into account.  The harm principle, which political liberalism endorses, states that if an action is harmful to others, it can be banned.  Otherwise, it cannot.  So the question of whether a liberal society should permit fireworks depends on how significant of a liberty buying fireworks actually is, and whether the harms of fireworks outweigh the value of this liberty.

We will have to keep this analysis brief, partly because autonomy can be interpreted either widely or narrowly, as we’ve discussed elsewhere, and because we lack sufficient space for such a treatment of it.  We will also have to set aside the middle position of banning only exceedingly dangerous fireworks, and focus on the extreme views of either total or zero prohibition.  With these qualifications in place, the following seem like the most possible arguments in favor of each extreme view.

Someone who wants to ban all fireworks would probably claim two things.  First, even if banning fireworks is a violation of personal autonomy, buying fireworks is itself a very low value liberty.  Second, the harms of fireworks are extremely serious, usually involving personal injuries, fires, and deaths.  The victims are often younger children and families.  The low value of the liberty and the high cost of the harm clearly tell in favor of a total ban on fireworks.

Someone who wants to allow all fireworks will probably also make two claims.  First, banning fireworks is a violation of personal autonomy, and any violation of such a valuable right must be justified by citing the substantial harms that it would prevent.  Even if being able to buy fireworks is itself a low value liberty, the autonomy to do so is of immense value.  Second, the harms of fireworks, although serious, are extremely unlikely and thankfully rare.  Of the millions of people who shoot of fireworks on the 4th of July, very few are actually injured.  The harm that would be prevented by a ban on fireworks is not significant enough to justify such a serious infringement on personal autonomy.

Like most social and political questions, this one cannot be easily answered here.  It seems that both the proponent and the opponent of a ban on fireworks have compelling reasons in their favor.  Which side one favors will largely depend on one’s own preferences concerning the values at work in each argument.

Many people reading this will likely find it ridiculous to think that we might have good reasons to ban something that is so ingrained in our cultural traditions.  After all, fireworks are part of how we celebrate America itself.  What could be wrong with that?  But a practice being common or culturally endorsed doesn’t make it morally and socially preferable, and it’s worth thinking seriously about whether the things we take for granted as obviously acceptable really are so.

The recent film Blood Diamond is a harrowing story of struggle, loss, and redemption set against the backdrop of civil war in Sierra Leone.  Rebel fighters, determined to bring their nation to prosperity by controlling its recently emergent diamond industry, terrorize the population of Sierra Leone through excessive violence and heartless bloodletting.  The film is chilling, but also quite powerful.  It also raises an interesting moral question.  Does the history of the goods that I purchase matter morally?

This is a complicated question that we cannot hope to answer definitively here.  What we can do, however, is sketch the terrain regarding what sorts of questions are relevant to whether or not our purchases make a moral difference.  We can also use this example to remind the reader that ethics really is a part of our everyday lives, both in the things we buy, and in the movies that we watch.  So our goal will be largely expository, and we will focus on the task of clarification rather than resolution.

One compelling question about the morality of what we purchase is whether we should regard ourselves as responsible for actions that we do not commit ourselves, but that we encourage or support through our actions.  Buying a diamond is not itself an obviously immoral action.  But if the diamond industry that we are supporting is directly responsible for violence and murder, perhaps we should not support this sort of activity through our purchases.  Clarifying the moral significance of what we buy will require that we determine whether, and if so to what extent, we are responsible for actions that we support but do not commit.

We might ask why it makes sense to think we are responsible for the actions of other people at all.  This question should be familiar to anyone who has ever seen, or participated in, a debate between the alleged “social justice proponent” and the “hard-core capitalist.”  Social justice guy takes for granted that wealthy nations are responsible for injustice in the developing world, while capitalism guy says this is obviously false.  Capitalist guy will claim that whatever happens in Sierra Leone, it’s Sierra Leoneans who are doing it, not him.  Social justice guy responds that by creating a market for blood diamonds, we are effectively killing people ourselves.  What we really need is an argument for one of these positions.

Another significant question involving the morality of what we purchase is what the best course of action might be when we don’t know a particular item’s history.  Just because some diamonds are blood diamonds, that doesn’t mean this diamond is one.  But it could be, and even if it is not, doesn’t my purchasing any diamonds encourage the further pursuit of blood diamonds?  The same could be said of such seemingly mild items as coffee or soybeans.  Even if I buy “fair trade” coffee, aren’t I also supporting coffee that is not “fair trade?”  In the face of uncertainty, we might be better off avoiding morally suspect items.  On the other hand, if we don’t know that a specific item is morally suspect, perhaps we are off the hook.

All of these questions have a familiar philosophical flavor to them.  The first concerns the scope and limits of moral responsibility, while the other is about the best course of action in the face of moral uncertainty.  What is probably less familiar is the extent to which these really are everyday ethical questions.  Most of us make a handful of purchases every week, or even every day, that carry some degree of moral weight.  However one might think the above questions are best answered, by thinking critically about the morality of what we are buying, we can begin thinking about ethics not as something we study in a classroom, but as something we practice in the world.