Everyday Ethics

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.

Editor’s Note:  Several individuals have commented, rightly, on the dubiousness of the claim that Jackson is most likely a child molester.  There is evidence on both sides of this question, and it is open whether Jackson is guilty of such acts. Everyday-ethics.org officially intends this example to be a vehicle for philosophical discussion, rather than to imply or suggest any factual truths regarding Mr. Jackson’s guilt or innocence. We also wish to discourage further comments regarding the factual legitimacy of this claim, since the philosophical questions elucidated by the claim are independent of whether the claim is true.  It should henceforth be treated as a hypothetical example.

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.