Everyday Ethics

As an ethicist, I am often troubled by the failure of most people to recognize the ethical implications of their own actions.  Many of the things we do are actually strong indicators of our ethical views, and we ought to be careful about demonstrating what we actually believe.  In some cases, our actions speak louder than our words, but they don’t say what we really mean when it comes to ethics.

I experienced a fine example of an inadvertent expression of ethics this weekend, during a camping trip to the Moab area.  My wife and I drove over to Moab on Saturday morning, found a campsite, and set up our tents.  We chose a site that was in a nicer part of the campground, and that seemed ideal for our camping preferences.  We piled into the car and drove back to town so that we could call our friends and let them know where we were located, since we didn’t have cell phone service in the campground.

We returned to an entirely different scene than the one we had left only a short time before.  Our quiet, peaceful campsite was now a mass of activity.  A large group of mostly older teens now resided in the campsite next to us, and they proceeded to create a ruckus that far exceeded their numbers.  Only two parents were present, neither of whom displayed any interest in controlling their children or encouraging any semblance of appropriate behavior.  We became nervous that perhaps this was not such a good campsite after all.

As the night pressed on, we patiently dealt with horseshoes and soccer balls flying into our camp, followed closely by a drunken young person muttering a half-hearted apology, before continuing the same ill-advised activity that had caused the initial intrusion.  Despite this, we had a reasonably pleasant time, until it began to rain.  It was getting late anyway, so we retired to our tent with the hope that the poor weather would encourage our inebriated neighbors to follow suit.

Unfortunately, they did not do so, and what followed was two hours of loud, obnoxious chatter that never subsided for more than a few moments.  I’ve done a fair amount of camping, and this went well beyond the limits of reasonable campfire conversation.  Finally, at midnight, two hours after quiet hours had officially begun, I walked over to their campsite and politely asked them to keep it down.

Their reaction was unfortunate, but not surprising.  They informed me that they would do what they wanted to, and that my eight-month pregnant wife and I could leave if we didn’t like it.  I mentioned that quiet hours had begun long ago, and that I was really only asking them to follow the rules.  This was met with a barrage of mocking and insults.  Having no further recourse, I returned to my tent with the hope that their sense of decency might ultimately prevail if I allowed them time to consider how their actions were affecting others.

My purpose here is not to evaluate the actions of my camping neighbors.  Clearly, they were in the wrong and should have known it.  Rather, I want to consider what their actions told me about their ethical views, in order to highlight the importance of acting in a way that is consistent with one’s ethics.

Their actions clearly demonstrate two ethical beliefs, a prioritizing of hedonistic self-interest over all other considerations, and a lack of respect for persons.  These individuals saw their desire to get drunk and be obnoxious as more important than all other considerations, including the well-being of others, special considerations like the needs of pregnant women, and institutionalized regulations.  Further, their actions suggested that respect for persons is not a part of their ethical view.  They acted entirely from an unsophisticated version of desire fulfillment ethics.

Should we assume that these individuals really believe that their hedonistic desires are all that matters, and that respect for persons is irrelevant to appropriate conduct?  Possibly.  Some people actually hold such beliefs, although few who do recognize that this ethical viewpoint requires that you allow for everyone else having the same beliefs, and for the consequently lousy treatment that you receive from others as a result.

But for many others, hedonistic desires are not the only thing that’s relevant to what we ought to do, and respect for persons is a cornerstone of numerous ethical viewpoints.  Inconsistency between beliefs and actions in ethics is an epidemic, and it would be specious to assume that these individuals actually hold the ethical beliefs that their actions suggested.  However, it’s not unreasonable to attribute certain ethical views to people based on their actions, and it is this point that becomes important for our purposes.

I was tempted, despite my philosophical training, to label my rude camping neighbors as ethically deficient, based on what their actions told me about their ethics.  I might have been wrong about them, but I wouldn’t have lacked reasons for making this judgment.  So if being an ethical person matters to you, and if you want your actions to reflect your ethics, it’s worth taking the time to think about what your daily actions say about your ethical beliefs.  After all, ethics is about what we do, not just what we claim to believe.

Last week, I wrote an article discussing the ethics of purchasing foreclosed homes.  I suggested that there is something ethically suspect about doing so, and that when we do this, we run a very real risk of using others as a means to our ends.  Several individuals replied to this article by arguing that the violation of the original contract to purchase the home gets them off the hook ethically.  This is not a surprising reply, but it’s worth exploring a bit further in order to understand what this response amounts to, and why it remains somewhat suspect.

First, let’s briefly review the argument that buying a foreclosed home is ethically questionable.  The argument, roughly, is that when one purchases a foreclosed home, one uses a person solely as a means to their end.  The new buyer benefits at the expense of the old one, and fails to show regard for the original buyer’s interests.  If this is an accurate description of purchasing a foreclosed home, there is some concern that this action is ethically problematic.

The reply from some of you was that because the original buyer violated a contract that they entered into with the financer, the purchasing of a foreclosed home is not an example of using a person solely as a means to an end.  However, merely citing the violation of the contract doesn’t show that the original  buyer isn’t being used solely as a means to an end.  There are two further points that one would need to make in order to complete this argument.

One might argue that the original buyer also benefits from this situation.  After all, foreclosure gets people out from under a debt that they can no longer handle, and the fact that people are willing to purchase these homes means that the economy remains healthier that it otherwise would’ve been.  The original buyer benefits both from the foreclosure, and from the economic health that results from these homes being sold to others.  Thus, we are off the hook ethically because we show concern for the original buyer’s interests. Because the original buyer also benefits, it is acceptable to buy a foreclosed home.

The other possibility would be to argue that once the home has been foreclosed on, the original buyer no longer has an interest in the home.  This is where the point regarding contracts holds more weight.  One might argue that in violating the purchase contract, the original buyer forfeited their interest in the home.  They are not being used as a means to an end because the home is no longer among their interests.

Both of these replies are problematic.  The first one has two concerns.  First, the original buyer benefits from foreclosure, but not necessarily from having their foreclosed home purchased.  In addition, this reply is an argument for the general permissibility of purchasing foreclosed homes, but it’s not clear that it would necessarily justify particular cases.  It might be that this is permissible in general, but objectionable in certain instances.  The fact that economic health is generally beneficial does not mean that it necessarily benefits all individuals who have lost their home to foreclosure.

The second reply is more obviously a contractual point, and also more problematic than the first.  The original buyer of a foreclosed home has no doubt invested money into the home, and they do not recoup any of this money as a result of foreclosure.  It would seem that their interest in the home remains even if their contractual entitlement to the home itself no longer exists.

Kudos to those of you who are thinking critically about this issue, and congratulations to those who have been able to purchase a home thanks to the prevalence of foreclosures.  The point I want to make is not that this is some sort of deep moral dilemma that we ought to be up in arms about.  Rather, I want to point out that even “great financial opportunities” have ethical components, and that it’s not always the case that the business savvy decision is also the ethical one.  It might be ethically acceptable to purchase foreclosed homes, or it might be a complicated contextual question that largely depends on the given situation.  Whatever the case, the question is not as easy to answer as it first seemed.

In a previous article, I discussed the recent proposal from the Obama administration, which suggested that billions of dollars might be saved and the needs of students better served if the U.S. government took over all educational lending.  The interesting side effect of this proposal is that it brings to the forefront a social conversation about positive rights.  My purpose here will be to briefly review how a case for a positive right to a college education might be defended, then consider how this might apply to another controversial positive right, a right to accessible health care.

I will assume a relatively strict requirement for positive rights, one that is debatable, but that would likely be accepted by persons who opposed the granting of numerous positive rights.  Even if we assume that positive rights can only result from agreements or contracts, we can still make the case for a positive right to a college education.  The agreement that American citizens will be provided with an education already exists, and we lack a good argument for why high school should be the stopping point for providing this benefit.

First, we need to establish the claim that the positive right to an education already exists in virtue of some social agreement.  Consider the following.  American citizens pay taxes, and the implicit agreement between citizen and government is that we pay taxes in exchange for the provision of services that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive, inefficient, or something along those lines.  By paying taxes, or simply by remaining citizens, we are accepting the agreement of services in exchange for our tax money.  One of those services is the provision of a free education.

Next, we need some reason to think that one’s right to an education, which is contractually established, ceases once we obtain a high school diploma.  I see no obvious reason for thinking this, and several for rejecting it.  A high school diploma is useful for some individuals pursuing certain professions, and it does help to establish a minimum standard of intellectual proficiency in society.  But for many of us, the amount of training associated with obtaining a high school diploma is woefully inadequate.  Further, the academic standard in high schools is presently so low that one can legitimately question how useful a minimum standard of this type really is.

If this analysis is on the right track, it seems one can easily make the case that people are entitled to a free college education, not just more affordable student loans, and that this is a right that we have all already agreed to.  The case for a right to accessible health care, however, is another matter, and we will close by briefly considering why the argument for a positive right to health care cannot proceed in the same manner.

There is no obvious contractual agreement between taxpayer and government for the provision of anything other than emergency medical services, which is not the same thing as a right to health care.  One could perhaps argue that we have a positive right to free emergency care, but even this would be a stretch.  The positive right to health care cannot be the result of a contractual agreement, at least not yet.

However, not everyone takes the position that positive rights can only stem from contractual agreements.  For example, some argue that people have a right to feed themselves.  This can be construed as a negative right of non-interference, but it could also be presented as a positive right to have sufficient food provided by others.  This right might be established by pointing out that humans need food in order to live, and that they suffer greatly when they do not receive it.  The prevention of widespread suffering is a good reason for granting a positive right to sufficient food.

One might be tempted to argue that a right to health care is like this.  After all, disease and injury that is untreated also leads to a massive amount of pain and suffering.  If this is a good reason in one case, perhaps it is a good reason in another, and one might try to argue by analogy for a positive right to health care.  Many individuals invoke a right to health care as justification for certain political and social changes that they think are important.

What’s worth noticing, whatever your view, is that a positive right to health care must be argued for, rather than simply granted by proclamation.  Numerous advocates of this right fail to take the need for a supporting argument seriously, and until they do, the debate over a positive right to health care will remain polarized and ineffectual.

A recent proposal by the Obama administration suggested a bold new direction for the way that student loans are administered in the United States.  Citing a potential savings of billions of dollars, Obama suggested that the U.S.  simply eliminate the middleman, the student loan industry itself, and make educational lending an agreement between students and their government.  Opponents of big government were appalled, claiming that this proposal represented yet another step toward the kind of socialist government that terrifies them.  Before analyzing this reaction, we ought to say a bit about why any president would propose such a massive alteration to the business of educational lending.

First, a college education has become absurdly expensive in the last decade.  It is now not uncommon for students to graduate with a bachelor’s degree and $100,000 in student loan debt.  The old adage that student loan debt is “good debt” ceases to apply when you are talking about 100K.  Student loan debt is certainly more manageable than other types of debt, but that does not make it good.

Further, it is becoming increasingly difficult, especially with the current economic situation, for students to get the funds that they need.  Add to this the significant role of education in future life success, plus the fact that the U.S. is now woefully behind even somewhat lackluster European and Asian nations in terms of both quality and quantity of college graduates, and you have a great deal of social pressure to make a college education more accessible.

Obama’s solution is simple.  The U.S. government releases billions of dollars in guaranteed funds to a small number of student lending companies.  These companies control the industry, but they also eat up a substantial chunk of that funding through administrative costs and other expenses.  If the government could eliminate this waste, it would free up more money for lending.  The easiest way to do this is to eliminate the lenders themselves, and make the U.S. government the sole student loan provider.

As I stated above, the reply from critics of this proposal primarily focused on concerns about whether the government ought to have this kind of control over who gets money for college.  The concern, as it always seems to be with anything Obama does, is that this is part of some master plan to convert the U.S. to a European –style socialism, with expansive safety nets and government programs and high taxes to pay for them.

My reply to this off-target concern is twofold.  First, look at the list of international quality-of-life rankings.  The frontrunners are all European-style socialist democracies.  Second, present the argument that socialism is intrinsically bad, or that it will necessarily produce bad consequences.  I have yet to hear this argument, or a reply to the fact that residents in these nations leave qualitatively better lives.

Political shenanigans aside, the concerns about big government, and about the cost of student lending for that matter, miss a crucial point.  There is a burgeoning debate concerning several positive rights that many Americans believe exist, but that are not well protected in our current system.  One of those is a right to education.

As we’ve discussed earlier, a right to an education is a positive right because it confers a benefit on its bearer.  The right to at least some kind of education is already established by the contractual nature of taxes and public education.  We pay taxes, and it’s agreed that government will provide the opportunity for our children to get an education of reasonable quality.  It seems that we’ve already enshrined some semblance of this right into our national creed.

Two questions follow.  First, does this right to an education extend to a college education?  And if it does, are we granting this right adequate protection when we make college prohibitively expensive for some, and encourage others to take on a home mortgage worth of debt to obtain it?  This is where positive rights become exceedingly tricky.  The right to an education requires the conferral of certain benefits, and it’s an open question whether that ought to include a free college education.

I won’t pursue this question in detail here, but two final points are worth making.  First, once we confer a positive right to an education and require that taxes be paid to fund it, which we’ve done, we need an argument for why this wouldn’t include a free (or much less expensive) college education.  In other words, the burden of proof in this case is on those who would deny this right, rather than those who promote it.  In addition, notice how our elected officials have again failed, however unconsciously, to recognize the really interesting and important political questions that an issue raises, in order to focus on partisan bickering and rhetoric.  It seems they’ve missed the point again.  Sadly, I’m not surprised.

Cloning has been a hot-button social issue ever since the announcement that Dolly the sheep had been successfully cloned.  Visions of Frankenstein’s monster loom in the minds of people who are suspicious of new scientific technology, and there is a strong religious argument against cloning.  However, fans of science fiction have dreamed of the day when Jurassic Park might become a reality.  This became an even more vivid question upon the discovery of a preserved baby mammoth, complete with tissue and intact internal organs.

National Geographic recently wrote a feature article on the discovery of this mammoth, with a supplemental piece on whether we ought to pursue mammoth cloning.  The article was totally inadequate, largely because it failed to raise the relevant moral questions.  Thus, our purpose here will be to do a better job than National Geographic was able to.  We will pursue the tough questions associated with deciding whether we ought to clone the mammoth.

One of my philosophy professors, Dr. Bernie Rollin, is highly critical of those who oppose cloning on moral grounds.  In his view, criticisms of the ethics of cloning tend to take two forms.  Some oppose cloning because it is “against nature,” as though humans have not been manipulating the genetics of other organisms for centuries.  To state Dr. Rollin’s reply simply, if there is something intrinsically wrong with cloning, it’s not clear what.

The other common criticism of cloning tends to be religious, that cloning is a form of “playing God” that makes it morally objectionable.  Even if this criticism were legitimate, a religious concern is not necessarily a social concern unless it can be reformulated in secular terms.  This cannot be done with regard to cloning.  There are legitimate concerns associated with cloning, but they are based on worries about potential consequences, rather than because there is something intrinsically wrong with cloning.

What consequences might we be concerned about?  The most significant ones, in my view, have to do with harm to the animals.  First, if the case of Dolly is any indication, the cloning of a mammoth will result in dozens of failed precursors, many of whom have debilitating health problems, from which they suffer greatly.  Further, the cloned mammoth will be the only one of its kind, and it will be subjected to a life that lacks both social companionship and an acceptable habitat.  The “mammoth steppe” has not existed for a long time, and it is unlikely that an animal like the mammoth would be happy in confinement.  A further worry there is that we have no idea how to properly house a mammoth, because no one has ever done so before.

Dr. Rollin takes the position that if these concerns could be adequately addressed, and we could be sure that negative consequences were kept to a minimum, there is no reason not to pursue cloning extinct animals like the mammoth.  I want to propose a counterpoint.  Lacking a reason against something is not a reason to do it.  If the argument for mammoth cloning is simply “No bad consequences, then why not?” we don’t yet have a good argument for doing this.

In addition, there are good reasons against cloning extinct animals, even if the consequences to the animal could be minimized.  First, I question whether we can ever have certainty that the animal will not suffer as a result of the process of being cloned.  Second, consider who might pursue cloning a mammoth.  One possibility is for food production, the other is as a kind of scientific spectacle.  In both cases, the animal is being exploited for our benefit.  We already do this to millions of animals.  Why create another animal simply for the sake of treating it as poorly as we treat other animals?  Even if the animal lives a good life, it would be created to serve as a means to our own end.

There are two lessons that we can take from considering whether we ought to pursue the cloning of the mammoth.  First, we should be critical of any argument that cites a lack of reasons against something as the equivalent of a reason for it, even when this argument comes from a respected philosopher.  Second, and more importantly, even when the negative consequences of certain actions have been accounted for, we must look at the reasons in favor of pursuing some action.  Even if there are no bad consequences, if we fail to consider how we are treating other morally relevant beings, we risk a moral failing of the deontological kind.  The absence of bad consequences does not always entail moral acceptability.

The housing crisis and the economic mess that followed have led to an interesting, but ethically suspect financial opportunity.  Many homes are now on the market at deeply discounted prices, either because they have been foreclosed on or because their owners are simply trying to get out from under a massive mortgage payment.  Either way, the opportunity is there for the savvy investor to purchase a valuable commodity priced well below its actual (or potential) value.  Economically, this makes a lot of sense.  Ethically, there is cause for concern.

What specifically is the worry?  These homes are available because, at the risk of oversimplification, something bad has happened to their owners.  Thus, investors have the opportunity to turn someone else’s misfortune into a benefit for themselves.  In other contexts, we might question this action.  For example, knowingly purchasing stolen property at a lower price than one would otherwise pay is a case of benefitting from someone else’s misfortune, and we generally disapprove of this action.  In evaluating the ethical acceptability of purchasing foreclosed homes, we might examine this example and try to determine precisely what wrong is being committed.

In the case of buying stolen goods, there are two possible explanations for what wrong is being committed.  First, one might argue that we are further victimizing the victim.  The person whose property was taken has already been harmed by the theft, and purchasing this property further harms them, perhaps by making their property more difficult to recover.  This is a likely reply that many people might give in explaining the harm of purchasing stolen property, and although it has potential, it requires further explanation in order to get to the heart of the matter.

When we buy property that we know is stolen, we are using people as a means to our end.  In other words, we are failing to take their suffering into account.  Buying stolen property fails to demonstrate appropriate respect for other persons.  Though indirectly, it involves using the victim of theft as a means to our end.  It is right to identify this as a further victimization of the victim, but we need to be clear about precisely what the harm is that we are committing when we do this.  Buying stolen property is a lack of respect for persons.

If the harm of buying stolen property is a failure to show proper respect for persons, we are now in a better position to evaluate the question of whether purchasing foreclosure homes is ethically suspect.  This is a tricky question.  On the one hand, we are clearly using this business opportunity as a means to our end, and there isn’t a sense in which we are showing respect for those who have lost their homes.  There is thus a plausible deontological argument against purchasing foreclosure homes on the grounds that it requires us to violate our duty to respect other persons.

On the other hand, there is a relevant disanalogy between purchasing stolen goods and purchasing foreclosure homes.  Stolen goods involve the actions of a third party who directly victimizes another person.  It is often through no fault of their own that people are robbed; they might simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Foreclosures are not like this.  There is no third-party involvement, and in many cases the owner is directly responsible for having their home foreclosed upon.  Buying stolen property is a victimizing of the victim, but buying a foreclosure home is simply taking advantage of someone else’s mistake.

It’s not clear from this early analysis whether buying a foreclosure home is the moral equivalent of buying stolen goods.  If it is, we are guilty of using persons as a means to our end when we buy deeply discounted homes.  But if it isn’t, we are merely shrewd businesspersons capitalizing on the mistakes of others.  I will not attempt to provide an answer here, but rather close with a question.  If someone else’s error makes them susceptible to being used as a means to our end, does their mistake negate or weaken the generally immoral nature of this action?  Once we answer that question, the issue of whether it’s ethical to purchase foreclosure homes falls easily into place.

Justice is a funny thing.  Sometimes justice is about retribution, other times it’s better understood as a type of reconciliation.  Economically, justice also takes two distinct forms.  Some accounts of economic justice focus on an equal and fair distribution of goods, and many people point to the role of historical and social factors in shaping the uneven economic landscape that we see today.  This is worth thinking about, but conceals an important additional consideration.  Not everyone is equally capable, in terms of their natural ability to do certain things, and an economic scheme that places no weight upon merit would seem to be somewhat incomplete.  Questions of justice should also be understood as questions about merit.

What exactly is merit?  One way of thinking about merit is through the concept of desert.  For example, if I have an agreement that my employer will pay me $400 per week for completing certain tasks, and I complete them adequately, I deserve $400 from my employer.  Many rights also imply some form of this concept.  The right to freedom of speech or the right to a fair trial imply some notion of desert, because these are rights that are seemingly deserved in virtue of certain features that all people, or all citizens, share.

The idea of something being merited also carries normative force.  If I deserve to be paid a certain wage in exchange for doing work, I ought to be paid, and a wrong is committed if I am not given what I deserve.  Here the relevance of merits to justice should become clearer.  By failing to consider merit in our account of justice, we risk violating important rights that are morally significant.

Merit and economic justice are especially relevant to things like the economic bailouts that the U.S. government recently authorized.  Many taxpayers feel that they deserve a say in how their tax money is spent, and that at least some companies receiving bailout funds do not deserve them.  Some might go so far as to say that struggling companies deserve to fail.  Others might respond that the importance of a strong economy and the value of economic health merits whatever action is necessary to bring it about.  Whichever side one falls on, it is clear that we cannot talk about things like economic bailouts without talking about merit.

The most important consideration, one that is often overlooked by those who favor a merit-based conception of economic justice over an equality-based account, is that although merit is important, it’s not obvious that it is maximally important.  Many proponents of a merit-based view suggest that because equality-based distributions of goods would violate a person’s right to keep what they deserve, we cannot support an equality-based distribution of economic justice.  It’s not obvious that this is true, and a case can also be made that equality is more important than merit.

Whatever position one advocates, it’s important to note two things.  First, one must be prepared to accept certain consequences of their view, even if they are undesireable.  One must also be prepared to explain why what they value is more important than other considerations.  Asserting the importance of merit over equality, or vice versa, requires an argument to support it.  Often, one is best served by seeking a synthesis of important factors, rather than struggling to find an argument that justifies what is really only part of the relevant picture.

We live in a CYA world. Most people are pretty focused on their own self-interest, and this is a very natural thing to do. We don’t like to have bad things happen to us, and when we have the opportunity to protect ourselves, we usually feel like it’s okay to do so. But often, CYA is not the most ethical strategy, and walking the line between self-preservation and doing the right thing can be exceedingly difficult. The temptation to justify otherwise questionable conduct in the name of CYA is strong, and even exceedingly moral people have trouble resisting it.

Consider the following example. My wife and I will be moving to Ohio in August so that I can start a PhD program at Bowling Green State University. She is also pregnant, and her due date is a couple weeks before our moving date. This means that she will not be returning to her job after going on maternity leave. She recently had to sit down with her boss and discuss when she would be returning, so that they could plan accordingly.

The temptation toward CYA was compelling in this case. Had she refrained from revealing that we would be moving, she could have gone on maternity leave, kept her insurance, and received 60% of her pay for six weeks. However, had they asked her the direct question “when are you planning to return to work,” the only way to retain these benefits would’ve been to lie. Otherwise, her last day of work would not be the day that she goes on maternity leave, it would just be her last day, with no maternity benefits, and no more insurance.

The dilemma, one that we both struggled with, was whether it was acceptable to lie, either directly or by withholding relevant information, in order to serve our own interests in this case. We both decided that it was not, and she opted to tell them the truth. Interestingly, one of her motives for doing this was to avoid the stress of having to maintain the lie over a period of several months. Not only is doing the wrong thing troubling at the time, sometimes it can be very stressful over a longer stretch. What seems to be in your best interest often proves not to be, once this is taken into consideration.

Just today we learned that her company is hoping to allow her to go on maternity leave anyway, even though they know she won’t be coming back. So in this case, doing the ethical thing appears to have been the best decision, though it doesn’t always work out this way. Many companies would’ve jumped at the chance to avoid paying maternity leave and insurance for an employee that they knew wasn’t returning, and I feel fortunate that my wife’s company is not among this group.

The more challenging dilemma is when the best consequences for you are achieved by covering your ass, rather than being ethical. Whatever you happen to decide in these cases, keep in mind that a desire to protect yourself does not change your ethical responsibilities, and opting to cover your ass can often have unpleasant consequences as well. The fact that something isn’t the best deal for you doesn’t mean it isn’t the right thing to do.

Rights talk is a common theme in contemporary moral discourse.  We speak freely of having all sorts of different rights.  Our rights may or may not include a right to freedom of speech, life, non-interference, equal pay for equal work, etc.  If somebody cares about it, you can bet someone, somewhere, has described it as a right.  What’s not always mentioned, but well worth getting clear about, is whether certain rights are positive or negative, as well as why this makes a difference to our moral decision-making.

Some rights are negative rights.  Negative rights are typically rights to not be subjected to certain conditions, such as a right to freedom of speech or autonomy.  Negative rights are often some varietal of a right to non-interference.  They impose duties on others to leave you alone and let you do things that are important to you, like speak your mind or make your own decisions.  They also carry a great deal of normative weight, in that we place great importance upon not violating the negative rights of other people.

Some of our rights are not negative, but positive.  Positive rights are usually rights to receive some benefit, such as a right to an education or accessible health care (both of which are controversial types of positive rights).  Positive rights differ substantially from negative rights.  First, negative rights are usually based on something about the bearer.  Humans have a negative right to autonomy because humans are the sorts of creatures that make choices that matter to them.  But positive rights are often not based on things about the bearer.  Some positive rights, like a right to be paid for work that you do, are based on agreements.  Other positive rights are based on idealized conceptions of human interaction, such as a right to health care or clean water.

Most importantly, positive rights are less stringent than negative rights.  While I do you great harm by violating your right to autonomy, it’s not necessarily true that I do you comparable harm by violating your right to health care.  Your right to autonomy clearly correlates to a duty of non-interference for me, but it’s less obvious what my duties are, if any, in virtue of your right to accessible health care.  Positive rights less obviously correlate to identifiable duties for others, and violating them is often seen as preferable to violating a person’s negative rights.

Why does this distinction matter?  There are at least two important implications.  First, rights often come into conflict with one another.  When you are making a difficult moral decision that will lead to the inevitable violation of someone’s rights, it might be helpful to identify what sorts of rights are at risk.  If you have the option, you may be better off violating someone’s positive right rather than a much more stringent and cherished negative right.

The other important implication for this distinction is in the realm of public policy.  There is very little resistance to the enshrinement of negative rights into law.  Most of them are already protected, and any that are not safeguarded are usually held in sufficiently high esteem that resistance to granting them the force of law is not significant.  But positive rights are far trickier, and few politicians make the distinction between positive and negative rights, often because of the rhetorical strength of disguising a positive right as a negative one.

For example, many politicians are pressing for a universal health care system, from the claim that people have a right to health care.  This is a convincing statement if one treats a right to health care like a negative right.  Unfortunately, there is no obvious sense in which health care can be a negative right, because there is nothing about being a person that clearly entails a negative right to health care.  However, this does not mean that we cannot have a positive right to health care.  Positive rights can be the product of agreements.  If a society agrees that everyone has a positive right to health care, they are essentially creating this positive right.  However, because positive rights are less stringent, it is an open question what sorts of duties a right to health care would impose on others.

Whatever your views may be on the subject of a negative or positive right to health care, it is clear that the distinction makes a difference for how we think about rights in general.  Not only can this distinction help us to resolve difficult moral dilemmas, it is also a useful tool for recognizing when rights talk is being employed as a rhetorical mechanism for political gains.

In a world of mass media, instant communication, and a myriad of differing opinions about dozens of topics, disagreement is an unavoidable aspect of our lives.  Couple that with the innate desire of many people to “win” in cases of conflict and the widespread lack of reasoning skills that plagues our society, and the stage is set for an ethical faux pas.  As someone who trades in reasons and argumentation, I often find myself especially frustrated by disagreements with unreasonable people, and the temptation is to stoop to their level and respond with the same ignorant contempt that they utilize as a substitute for actual reasons.

Let me begin by clarifying who I am referring to when I talk about “the unreasonable.”  The unreasonable are people who are not capable of understanding what a rational argument is, yet insist on replying to whatever challenge you raise against them.  For example, if you say “the position advocated by person X, which you are endorsing, claims Y, which is not supported by the fact of Z,” the unreasonable will respond by saying “X is much smarter than you, and you just don’t understand Y.”  Notice that this reply is nothing more than an ad hominem attack, and that it utterly fails to account for the conflict between claim Y and the fact of Z.  Further, the unreasonable will feel genuinely vindicated by this non-response.

This is exceedingly frustrating for reasonable people, because we tend to think that reasons make a difference, and that when someone challenges your view with a legitimate argument, you ought to respond with an argument of your own.  The self-righteousness of the unreasonable, coupled with the insulting and derogatory nature of their typical responses makes it tempting to set your own standard of civility aside, and explain to them specifically why they are not only wrong, but also mildly retarded.

Despite the temptation, it is probably best to avoid putting the unreasonable in their place, for the following reasons.  First, it won’t do any good.  These people are not capable of intelligent, rational thought, and cracking the edifice of their ignorance is impossible by even the most compelling reasons.  Explaining to the unreasonable that they are failing to respond to your argument will only feed your frustration further, for the simple fact that they will continue to not understand, and to utilize the same obnoxious response strategy.

Further, and more importantly, being treated poorly by someone is not sufficient justification for treating him or her poorly in return.  I have an acquaintance with whom I’ve been engaging in a discussion about political and social philosophy.  I began by pointing out several glaring contradictions in the view of the individual whom he frequently cites.  Because he is unreasonable, his response was to inform me of how much smarter this person is than me, accuse me of elitism (somewhat inexplicably), and inform me that I am simply not capable of understanding this person’s philosophy.

As a philosopher, I find it hard to believe that I am simply incapable of understanding any philosophy.  It is my job, after all, and I’m rather good at it.  More importantly, this reply fails to address any of the philosophical problems that I raised in my initial criticism.  My temptation was to explain to this person that he is an undereducated buffoon whose personal issues motivate his tendency to respond to all challenges with personal insults.  However, this clearly wouldn’t be a very nice thing to do.  His disrespectful treatment of me does not justify my treating him in a comparably disrespectful manner.

Resisting the temptation to chastise the unreasonable is a difficult thing to do, but consider the consequences if every unreasonable person was justifiably replied to with a comparable degree of contempt and irrationality.  The very institution of reasonableness would be corrupted beyond repair.  Those of us who are reasonable have a duty to maintain a certain degree of propriety in our personal conduct, even if the unreasonable refuse to return the favor.  If what the reasonable really want to do is encourage the unreasonable to change their ways, the best way to do this is to demonstrate that no amount of ridiculous conduct justifies their behavior.