Everyday Ethics

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.

The media frenzy surrounding Michael Jackson’s death has led to an outpouring of goodwill and positive reflections regarding both his musical career and his status as a social icon.  What has been strangely absent has been a condemnation of Jackson’s strange obsession with young boys, including numerous allegations of sexual inappropriateness.  Reflecting on this curiosity leads to a significant question about how to show proper respect for the passing of a man like this.  The question is simple.  Does showing respect for a dead artist, as an artist, mean ignoring their moral transgressions?

What does it mean to show respect for the dead?  In this case, it seems to mean that we reflect upon some of the incredible musical achievements of Michael Jackson’s career.  It also seems to mean taking stock of the social relevance of such an iconic figure.  But part of what made Michael Jackson what he was includes this very dark chapter.  Why is discussing this taboo?

The Kantian concept of respect for persons says that we show respect for persons by treating them as an end in themselves, not merely as a means.  This isn’t terribly helpful in the case of things like media tributes to Jackson, because the media’s job is to sell advertising.  So they use Jackson as a means to an end whatever they do.  It might be said that no media tribute could be properly respectful, because the very nature of our media makes this impossible.

What about our personal reflections on the life and death of Michael Jackson?  Does one judge wrongly if one reminisces positively about Jackson, in spite of the fact that he is most likely guilty of sexual predation upon young boys?  Possibly.  Let’s grant for the sake of discussion that Jackson was an enormous musical talent, and that his body of work represents great art.  Is there anything wrong, or possibly contradictory, with remembering him as an artist, even while condemning him as a man?

Pondering this question has now led us to a significant debate in aesthetics.  Do moral considerations, whether they concern the artist or the artistic object itself, have any relevance to whether a thing qualifies as a work of art?  Can something be beautiful even if it is immoral?

The moralist takes the view that immoral art, or art created by an immoral person, should be regarded as less worthy of artistic appreciation, in virtue of these moral considerations.  For example, if a painting depicts the violent rape of a young woman, the immorality of the subject matter means that the painting is less worthy of being judged as “beautiful,” even if it is otherwise a masterpiece.

One who denies moralism takes the opposite view.  Moral considerations are irrelevant to what makes such a painting worthy of being called “beautiful.”  Whether it is the painting’s form, the social commentary that it makes, or some other considerations, the moral repugnance of such a painting has nothing to do with the painting’s beauty.

It’s not obvious which of these positions is the right one, and even less clear whether the Michael Jackson example is illuminating or further complicates the matter.  On the one hand, if Jackson’s music is great art because of its musicality and widespread appeal, who made it shouldn’t make any difference to our judgment that Jackson’s music is great art, nor to our positive memories of him as a musician.

On the other hand, there is something troubling about simply ignoring the fact that this great music is the work of a person who most likely sexually violated numerous young boys for his own disturbed enjoyment.  Does this change anything about the music itself?  No.  But does it change the context of our evaluation and the appropriateness of a negative judgment of Jackson as an artist?  Possibly.

We have nothing more than intuitions to guide us thus far, and we may ultimately do no better than this.  But we can be certain about two things.  Michael Jackson’s death marked the loss of someone who created something that was beloved by millions for several decades.  But it also marked the death of a disturbed human guilty of horrific moral atrocities.  Perhaps we disrespect Michael Jackson the artist when we bring this up so soon after his death.  But we disrespect his victims by acting as though his actions are irrelevant to how he is remembered.  Personally, I prefer to show respect for the living, even at the expense of disrespect for the dead.

Beginning next week, everyday-ethics.org will feature new content only once per week, on Wednesdays.  Our current publishing schedule has been twice per week, Wednesdays and Saturdays.  Despite this change, we remain committed to providing high-quality content that is both relevant to our readers and that engages substantive philosophical issues.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Best,

Eli Weber

Founder, everyday-ethics.org

It has become rather cliché to reply to questions concerning one’s religious views by responding, “Well, I’m not religious, but I’m very spiritual.”  This claim has always baffled me, because I have no idea what it means to be religious, but not spiritual.

Religion is clearly a spiritual activity, so it seems odd to try to pull these apart.  You certainly couldn’t be religious, yet not spiritual, at least not in a way that was genuine and whole-hearted.  So the real question is what it means to be spiritual, yet not religious.  At the request of one of our readers, we will try to shed some light on this puzzling new social custom.

Before we begin, it should be specified that this brief piece couldn’t even pretend to be definitive with regard to this topic.  I am certain there are many ways that one could separate the religious and the spiritual, and I am no authority on either of these topics.  But that’s the beauty of doing philosophy.  One need not be an authority on the referent of a term in order to try to explicate what that term might mean.

Since the meaning of the term “religion” is better known to us, we will first try and clarify what it means to be religious.  We might start by considering the class of traditions that qualify as religions.  Some are big, while others are much smaller.  Most include both a particular specified belief set and a particular specified set of practices that go with it.

Virtually all religions subscribe to the existence of something transcendent, whether this is an alternate reality or a divine being.  This transcendent something is always regarded as special in some way and worth of our positive affections.  (Buddhism is tricky here, but many forms of Buddhism believe in gods and goddesses, and all schools of Buddhism share the view that nirvana is a transcendent experience)

The trouble has already begun, because in order to capture what is common to all religious traditions, we have to define a religion in a way that makes it exceedingly ambiguous, and thus unhelpful in creating a clear distinction between religion and spirituality.  After all, someone who is “spiritual” probably has a belief system and set of practices that go with it, and it would be tough to call yourself spiritual without believing in anything called a “spirit.”  So it seems like someone who is merely spiritual meets this loose definition of someone who is religious.

However, if one is spiritual, yet not religious, this belief system and set of practices is not specified by an external tradition.  The spiritual person can continue to identify as spiritual, whatever their beliefs and practices are.  But a person who was Catholic, for example, would have a hard time continuing to identify as a Catholic if they thought that heaven was simply a folktale to frighten children into behaving, rather than a central tenet of their faith.

So maybe this is part of the distinction between being religious and being spiritual.  The religious person has their beliefs and practices handed to them by their tradition, while the spiritual person picks and chooses their beliefs and practices from what is available to them.  Further, the religious person qualifies as being a member of their respective tradition by way of having the necessary beliefs and engaging in the necessary practices.  But the spiritual person need only believe in something transcendent in order to qualify as spiritual.  In fact, the spiritual person may need to do nothing more than self-identify as such.  There are no set criteria for what makes a person spiritual; if you say you are, you are.

We will refrain from going further at this time, but an additional component that is relevant to this distinction might be that a religious person claims a specified group affiliation, while the spiritual person either refrains from doing so or specifically rejects any such affiliation.  But whatever this distinction ultimately amounts to, one thing remains clear.  One can be spiritual without being religious, but cannot be genuinely religious without also being spiritual.

Most college students will at some point have to pass a course in something called “critical thinking.”  Often this class is taught in the philosophy department, and is accompanied by an introduction to very basic, formal logic.  This typically includes the types of logical fallacies that we all tend to make in everyday conversation, as well as some basic principles of sound reasoning.

Most students struggle with this type of class, and few instructors make an effort to explain why critical thinking might be important to their future lives as bankers, pastry chefs, or whatever career aspirations they happen to have.  The following is thus an attempt to demonstrate why being able to think critically really does make a difference to the kind of life one is able to lead.

Scene I, Act I

Eli walks into the CSU library, he walks to the circulation desk.

Eli:  Hi, I think you have a book on hold for me.

Guy:  Do you have a library card? (Scans card) Here we go…just a minute

Guy goes and gets book for Eli

Guy:  Wait, I see here you are no longer a student.  We need to open a community account.  Fill out this form.

Eli completes form, Guy enters data into computer.

Guy:  Oh, wait…Your book was requested on your old account, so I can’t check it out to you on your new account.  The computer won’t let me.

Eli:  What?

Guy:  You requested this book on your student account, which is closed now because you’ve graduated.  The request is attached to that account, and I can’t override it or move it to the new one.  But maybe the Interlibrary Loan people can help you.  It’s just down there…

Guy points down the hall, Eli turns and walks in the direction of Guy’s pointing.  Eli enters ILL office.

Lady:  Hello, can I help you?

Eli:  I hope so.  I requested this book and now.. (Eli proceeds to explain the problem)

Lady:  Oh.  Yeah.  Unfortunately, you requested this book using Prospector, and that service isn’t available to community members at this library.

Eli:  Oh, I can’t use Prospector if I’m not a student here?

Lady:  Well, you can use it, just not at this library.  You would need to choose a public library as your pick-up location.

Eli:  Come again?

Lady:  Prospector is available for community members, but they can’t specify CSU as their pick-up location, because Prospector is only available at CSU for students.  So unfortunately, I can’t let you check out this book.

Eli:  Really?  Even though I requested the book when I was a student, and because I can’t predict the future, had no way of knowing that I wouldn’t still be one when it arrived?

Lady:  I’m sorry.  I know.

Eli:  Even though I’m here, the book is here, I want the book, I have an account that allows me to take the book?  Just because I’m at this location I can’t take it?  Didn’t you guys spend money to get this book here for me?

Lady:  I’m really sorry, but yes, that’s the situation we’re dealing with.  But you can request it again and specify a public library.  (Types information about book into her computer).  Oh, but there’s a long wait for this book because it’s new.  Gosh, I’m really sorry.  It might be a while before you can check this out.

Eli:  Wow.  I’m speechless.

I really was speechless.  To be fair, this lady may not have been allowed to check this book out to me, even if she had wanted to.  But that’s precisely the problem.  Often times, our bureaucratic machines are designed so that people are prevented from making reasonable decisions based on the circumstances in front of them.  Perhaps I had no right to the book.  But it seems that there was at least a case to be made for giving me the book anyway, and it would be nice if people were given the authority to assess information critically and then make decisions about what seems reasonable to do under the circumstances.

On the other hand, whoever decided that library personnel were not to make decisions about this sort of thing probably had some reason for doing so.  It’s likely that the principal reason was the prevention of silly and ridiculous decision-making by library employees.  So why does critical thinking matter?  Because if you don’t demonstrate that you know how to do it, people will take away your ability to do it, even when you want to.  The freedom to make meaningful decisions in the workplace is an important part of feeling satisfied with your employment, not to mention your daily life.  When we fail to demonstrate critical thinking skills, we give others all the justification they need for taking this privilege away.

As the Obama administration settles into its role in the White House, the issue of whether “advanced interrogation techniques” used by the Bush White House has resurfaced, with many calling for a formal investigation of the former President and his subordinates.  The debate largely centers around two key disagreements:  whether certain techniques, like water boarding, constitute torture, and whether torture is sometimes morally justified.

The first question is philosophical insofar as we must first define torture before we can classify specific acts as torture.  But the second is quite clearly a debate about normative theory, and explicating this will be the focus of our discussion here.

On the one hand, some former members of the Bush administration have made the argument that aggressive interrogation techniques, including water boarding and other acts defined as torture by the Geneva Conventions, led to the recovery of invaluable information that saved American lives.  For the sake of discussion, we will simply grant that this is the case.  This amounts to a consequentialist justification for acts of torture.  If the suffering of one individual, and even the negative sentiment toward the U.S. that followed once it was revealed that the U.S. was engaged in such acts, is outweighed by the benefits of avoiding massive casualties that were made preventable by the acquired information, torture is justified in a given case.

On the other side, opponents of the former President, as well as human rights groups, have joined together to advance the argument that certain actions are never acceptable, regardless of what  consequences might follow.  This is an appeal to the rights of persons, whether terrorists or not.  If persons have inalienable rights, like freedom from torture, simply because they are persons, torture would not be justified even if valuable information was gained and this information did save peoples’ lives.  For the strict deontologist, certain rights cannot be violated, regardless of consequences.

To be fair, the ethical debate is more complicated than this, and one can grant that persons have certain rights in most cases while also holding that those rights can be violated when the consequences tell in favor of doing so.  One must be willing to accept the negative aspects of a view like this, but it probably best captures the format that our own government utilizes in these types of cases.  Our social morality is both deontological and consequentialist.  U.S. citizens have rights that are largely inalienable, but sometimes we violate them for the sake of exceedingly desirable consequences.

Perhaps the best next step in resolving this issue is for each side to consider the theoretical underpinnings of their view, and see if they agree with the position that they are defending.  Do people like Dick Cheney really think good consequences justify horrific acts?  Does Nancy Pelosi really think that certain rights can never be violated, no matter what the cost?  More importantly, what do you think?  It’s unlikely that our elected leaders will realize that this debate is about theoretical ethics, but that certainly doesn’t mean you cannot do so.

Although it has fallen off the map recently, the ethics of stem cell research continues to be an exceedingly popular topic in bioethics.  There is much fervor on both sides of the debate.  Proponents of stem cell research view its prohibition as a kind of medical and social malpractice, while its detractors equate it with infanticide.  Both of these views are extreme, but they are also beside the point.  There are no legitimate ethical issues regarding the harvesting of surplus embryos for stem cell research.

Before explaining how this rather bold claim could be true, I need to restrict its application.  Whether it would be morally acceptable to produce embryos for the sole and expressed purpose of harvesting stem cells from them is a complicated question that is easily as messy as the ethics of abortion, if not more so.  However, much of the current debate concerns whether or not surplus embryos originally intended for implantation into infertile couples ought to be utilized for stem cell harvesting.  This is the landscape of the present discussion, and it includes no genuine moral concerns.

The alleged case against utilizing existing embryos for stem cell harvesting helps to support the position that there is nothing ethically questionable about doing so.  First, one might argue that an embryo is essentially a person, and that we violate its right to life by harvesting embryonic stem cells from it.  A similar case is sometimes made with regard to unborn fetuses and their right to life.  We ought not harvest stem cells from embryos because we violate their right to life when we do so, and this right trumps any rights in favor of stem cell harvesting.

A similar type of argument might claim that we are using these embryos as a means to our end, thus violating the Kantian notion of personhood and its accompanying rights.  This argument and the one above turn on several key points.  Most important is the claim that an embryo is a person in the moral sense, a being that is capable of baring rights.  This would have to be personhood in the moral sense, not just the biological, since it’s not clear why simply being a human equates with moral standing or the possession of rights.  The case for regarding a fetus as a person in the relevant sense will not be discussed in detail here.  But it is a dubious one, to be sure, and to stretch it further to a cryogenically frozen embryo borders on the absurd.

An embryo has no accompanying uterus to house and nurture it, no potential future human life, and no maternal support system that could conceivably keep it alive.  The biological features of a fetus are not sufficient to argue for its “personhood”.  Certain environmental features and future potentialities must also be present, and a frozen embryo doesn’t have these.  Appeals to an embryo’s personhood fail.  The ethical issues surrounding stem cell research cannot be deontological, because they don’t directly involve a being that has rights of its own.

The ethical issues surrounding stem cell research also cannot be consequentialist, because the consequentialist evaluation tells for expanding, not restricting stem cell research.  If we harvest embryonic stem cells from surplus embryos, there are two possible outcomes.  Either this will lead to improvement in the lives of people with horrific, debilitating illnesses and injuries, or it won’t.  The potential benefit is both high and likely, while the consequences are minimal, and any that appear genuinely problematic are either unlikely or fantastical.  The consequences of harvesting embryonic stem cells clearly tell in favor of doing so.

Finally, and most problematic for those who oppose stem cell research on moral grounds, the fact that surplus embryos are currently either disposed of or stored indefinitely does not clearly represent a course of action that coincides with the purported moral significance of these embryos.  If embryos are persons in the moral sense, surely we should not throw them out as biowaste or incinerate them.  But we probably shouldn’t just keep them in storage forever either.  If we grant an embryo’s right to life, or it’s status as a person, we are not let off the ethical hook by continuing to either throw these “persons” in the trash or storing them like we would a block of cheese.  If surplus embryos are persons with a right to life, it’s not clear what we ought to do with them.

The ethics of embryonic stem cell research is a “sexy” topic in both bioethics and mass media, and with good reason.  The development of practical applications for embryonic stem cells is a golden calf for the medical sciences, carrying with it a level of promise not often seen.  And the moral issues are out there, once the conversation turns away from the benign question of whether we ought to harvest surplus embryos to the more challenging problem of whether we ought to produce and utilize this surplus intentionally.  But until that shift happens, the public debate regarding the ethics of embryonic stem cell research will remain nothing more than a publicity stunt.

I’m no fan of going to the dentist, mostly based on having a storehouse of painful memories involving my childhood dentist forcibly removing countless teeth from my tiny jaw without providing sufficient anesthesia.  As a result, I put off having my wisdom teeth removed for approximately ten years.  When I finally decided to have them removed last Wednesday, I was terrified at the prospect of what I expected to be the most painful experience of my life.

The experience could not have differed more from my expectations.  I was under IV sedation, and was also given local anesthesia because, as the oral surgeon pointed out, “we want to do more than just put you to sleep; we want you to not feel this.”  Considering that he had just finished informing me of how difficult this particular extraction was going to be, and that it would include two bone grafts in order to maintain the structural integrity of my jaw, I considered his affinity for shielding me from pain to be good news and a welcome strategy.

The result of this double dose of anesthesia was a largely pain-free procedure that left me in much better shape than I would’ve expected.  Thus far, my recovery has also included minimal pain, as the pain medication I was prescribed has been more than adequate.  The combination of a skillful surgeon and a commitment to sufficient treatment of pain has made this experience much better than I would’ve expected.

There has, however, been an interesting philosophical side effect of this procedure.  I’m not sure what to think about the reality of pain in this particular case.  Had I not received any anesthesia, this would have been an incredibly painful procedure.  Since I was properly anesthetized, it was not.  I had no felt experience of pain.  Does this mean I was not in pain, or merely that my pain experience was blocked?  Can this procedure be called painful if there was no pain experience?  Can we rightly call something painful in the absence of a felt experience of pain?  I honestly have no idea.

Pain has at least two components.  First, it is a physiological phenomenon.  Certain receptors in the brain are triggered by neurotransmitters that are released in response to painful stimuli.  But pain is also a phenomenal experience.  Pain feels bad.  An essential aspect of pain is that it hurts.  The interesting philosophical question is whether both components are necessary in order for pain to be present.

My wisdom teeth experience suggests one interpretation.  I did not actually feel any pain during my procedure, and this fact alone makes it seem crazy to claim that I was in pain even though I didn’t feel any pain.  Even if the physiological phenomenon of pain was occurring, the felt experience of pain was absent.  This suggests that the felt experience of pain is a necessary condition for pain, while the physiological phenomenon of pain is necessary but not sufficient.  This interpretation is neutral with regard to whether felt experience is a sufficient condition for pain.

Fibromyalgia, a painful medical condition whose source is unknown, supports a different interpretation of pain.  Fibromyalgia sufferers report severe physical pain despite the absence of the physiology associated with felt pain experience.  This suggests that the felt experience of pain is a necessary and sufficient condition for pain, while the physiology of pain is neither necessary nor sufficient.  What’s not clear is whether the necessary and sufficient conditions of pain are better represented by my wisdom teeth extraction, fibromyalgia, or something else entirely.

We are thus left with no clear account of the necessary and sufficient conditions for pain.  In some cases, we have the physiology of pain, but no felt experience.  In other cases, we have the felt experience, but no physiology.  And in both cases, it’s not at all clear what is sufficient for attributing pain to a given scenario.  This is problematic from a medical standpoint because it’s not clear how to understand conditions that exhibit only some of the factors that are typically associated with pain.

We will not attempt to resolve this question here, though from an ethical standpoint it is tempting to claim that the felt experience of pain is sufficient for attributing pain to an experience, regardless of what is happening at the physiological level.  Felt pain experience is morally significant because it hurts.  As a philosopher, it’s important to be able to recognize the real-world implications of philosophical questions.  But pondering these questions can become a distraction, which impairs our ability to recognize the right thing to do.

While it is both worthwhile and philosophically interesting to try to establish the necessary and sufficient conditions for pain, I think my oral surgeon actually has the right idea.  As he rightly put it, “we want you to not feel this.”  As the beneficiary of this attitude toward pain, I’m inclined to agree.

Sonia Sotomayor, Barack Obama’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, made a statement during a law lecture at UC Berkeley that has been the subject of considerable scrutiny from both the media and members of Congress.  Of particular interest, and the topic of our discussion here, is the extent to which evaluating this statement has devolved into an exercise in misinterpretation and manipulation of meaning.

The statement in question is the following:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

To be fair, this claim was made in reference to sexual and race discrimination cases, rather than the more troubling interpretation that follows from applying this statement to legal decisions in general.  Our question is a simple one:  what does this statement actually mean?

Opponents of Sotomayor’s nomination have interpreted it as a racist statement.  How might this be racist?  Sotomayor is saying that a Latina female, drawing on her experience as a woman and a minority, would make a better decision than a white male more often than she would make a worse one.  But that isn’t racist, that’s just pointing out that under some conditions, race and sex can be a kind of qualification.  Sotomayor’s statement is no different than pointing out that if you need an undercover cop to work Chinatown, you ought to hire a Chinese person.  Sotomayor’s comment is interesting, it might be problematic from a legal standpoint, but it’s not obvious how it’s racist.

Proponents of Sotomayor’s nomination, on the other hand, have substantially reinterpreted this comment in order to avoid scrutiny.  A recent article from Slate.com, for example, saw fit to point out that it was “obvious” that a Latina woman would have different experiences than a white male, and would make different judgments as a result.  Maybe so, but “different” and “better” are not synonyms.  Sotomayor said a Latina woman would make a better decision.  Better implies different, but that doesn’t give these words the same meaning.  To be better, you must also be different; you need not be better in order to be different.

Sotomayor has herself contributed to the slaughtered meaning of this statement, an unsurprising event in the volatile political climate of Supreme Court confirmation hearings.  In order to address concerns raised about her reliance on her background in making important legal decisions, Sotomayor stated that regardless of background, a justice must rely “completely” on the law in making legal decisions.  That’s probably a good strategy for having her nomination confirmed, but it further confuses the meaning of her initial statement.  If being a Latina woman is helpful in making better legal decisions, it can’t also be the case that a justice relies on the law “completely” when they make those same decisions.  Once again, meaning has been sacrificed in the name of politics.

What’s the moral of the story?  It’s not that we should or shouldn’t support Sotomayor’s nomination, nor a revelation of what the intended meaning of this statement actually was.  What is clear, however, is that meaning is subject to social manipulations and political objectives, regardless of what words and phrases actually mean outside the context of this auspicious maneuvering.  So the next time you hear political pundits and assorted talking heads quibbling over some statement that a public figure has made, think about two things:  what the statement actually means and what the statement cannot possibly mean.  This will help separate meaning from political make-believe.

In a prior article, we defended the position that when it comes to describing the phenomenology of human intentional actions, folk psychology offers a more accurate account than reductive neuroscience.  This is not to say that we ought to abandon biological accounts of mind, only that the limitations of these accounts suggest that we ought to give the explanatory fecundity of folk psychological explanations a second look.

Despite the cogency of this position, many cognitive scientists reject folk psychology as exceedingly primitive and ultimately an inhibitor to the kinds of explanations of mind that cognitive science is really after.  It is therefore beneficial to consider a couple of relevant objections to the inclusion of folk psychology in the science of mind, and to offer a reply to these criticisms.

There are two important criticisms of the folk psychological explanation of intentional actions that we will consider here.  First, one might argue that the folk psychological explanation of intentionality is akin to the intentional stance advocated by Daniel Dennett, and that the intentional stance is itself problematic because it grants license to attribute intentionality to objects that obviously do not have it.

Dennett’s view states that we can settle the question of whether a being has something like a conscious mind that includes intentionality by examining that being’s behavior.  If inferring intentionality leads to accurate explanations of a being’s behavior, we can reasonably infer that this being has intentional states.  For example, we can settle the problem of other minds by simply looking at the behavior of other people.  If the action of other humans makes sense as an instance of intentional action, we can infer the presence of intentional states.

The criticism of this view is that many “behaviors” can be explained by positing intentionality in beings that clearly do not have it.  For example, I can explain what my toaster is doing when it heats my bread by inferring that the toaster wanted to toast my bread, that it’s toasting actions are driven by the goal of turning bread into toast.

But this is ridiculous.  Toasters are artifacts, and their structure is such that we have no reason to infer consciousness or intentionality.  Dennett’s intentional stance doesn’t allow for this distinction to be drawn, indicating a problem in inferring intentionality simply on the basis of behavior that is explained in terms of intentionality.

A reasonable reply to the critic of Dennett is that we can limit Dennett’s intentional stance to biological entities.  The problem this strategy creates with regard to intentionality and artificial intelligence will have to be set aside for now, since it is an open question whether artificial intelligence qualifies as a kind of consciousness.  For our purposes, it is sufficient to point out that the intentional stance, when limited to biological instances of intentionality, is actually a very good way of figuring out whether a being has anything like a conscious mind.

Consider the following.  Humans seem like a clear example of organisms that possess intentionality, and the intentional stance does give us an avenue for resolving the question of other minds.  Further, evaluating behavior in terms of intentionality gives us a good reason for thinking that most non-human animals also have conscious experiences that include intentionality.

Bears tear up logs because they are pursuing the goal of eating the ants that live inside.  Female lions move their cubs away from danger in order to achieve the goal of keeping them alive.  Inferring intentionality from actions that appear intentional gives us a coherent and simple explanation of animal behavior, and limiting this to biological entities prevents concerns with inferring consciousness to entitites that clearly do not possess it.

The second criticism of folk psychology, which flows from this reply, is that inferring intentionality from organism behavior that makes sense as intentional is a clear case of anthropomorphism.  Even if my own human intentional behavior is an indicator of intentionality, it is an inferential leap to think that this applies to all human behavior, never mind the leap required to claim that animals like bears and lions also have intentional states.

Further, limiting this type of explanation to biological entities requires the specious assumption that mind is a uniquely biological phenomenon.  Folk psychological explanations of intentionality beg the question; they explain intentional behavior by inferring the existence of intentional states, rather than arguing for them.  The concern with regard to both artifacts and non-human animals is that we have the appearance of intentionality, but no argument for thinking that this behavior corresponds to intentional states in a conscious mind.

The response to this criticism is remarkably simple.  Each of us can be relatively certain that our intentional behavior can be adequately explained by reference to our intentional states, and it’s reasonable to assume that this is true of other humans, because testimony is generally a valid form of epistemic justification.  Phylogenetic continuity supports the inference to intentional states in non-human organisms, while also supporting the exclusion of artifacts as having intentional states.

Stated more simply, it would be biologically surprising if intentionality suddenly emerged with homo sapiens.  Most phenotypic expressions of mental characteristics exist on a continuum, and we need some reason to think intentionality is an exception to this rule.  Because artifacts are not a part of any biological continuum, we need a reason to include them in the class of beings capable of intentional states, rather than a reason to exclude them as Dennett’s critics claim.

This is by no means a vindication of folk psychological explanations of intentional actions.  It remains possible that over time, neuroscience will be able to give an entirely biological account of intentional action that has no need for discussion of beliefs and desires in order to account for the phenomenology of human intentional actions.  In some sense, the question of whether folk psychology ought to be a part of this explanation depends first upon what it is we are trying to explain.

Our point is that if cognitive science is truly the science of the human mind, this must include an account of the phenomenology of conscious experience, including the phenomenon of intentional actions that result from the desires we have and our beliefs about how to satisfy them.

More importantly, the biological sciences, from which a good deal of neuroscience draws, tends to support the notion that phenomenal consciousness includes things like beliefs and desires to do explain the behavior of both humans and non-human animals.  Folk psychology is simply another way of explaining what many biologists already know to be the case, and many cognitive scientists would be wise to recognize this.