Everyday Ethics

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.

As cognitive science has become increasingly sophisticated, we have been able to give much more intricate explanations of human cognition.  One important side effect of this achievement has been the debunking of folk psychology and a tendency among philosophers of mind to disregard folk accounts of human cognition as overly simplistic and not in accordance with contemporary neuroscience.  However, there is an important sense in which folk psychology continues to provide a better explanation of cognition.  Folk psychology paints a much clearer picture of the phenomenology of intentional actions.

Folk psychology is not without its legitimate problems, and we should carefully limit what we mean in trying to defend it.  After all, folk psychology has been implicated in the horrific treatment of the mentally ill throughout history, including such absurdities as burning alleged practitioners of witchcraft alive or diagnosing schizophrenics as being possessed by demons.  This legacy of folk psychology is not the one that we will seek to defend.

Despite these shortcomings, folk psychology does a remarkably good job of explaining the intentional actions of humans.  By intentional action, I mean any human action that is purposeful, that has some specifiable goal in mind.  Neuroscience has a difficult time explaining intentional actions because things like beliefs and desires are not a part of the human brain.  Modern cognitive science must reduce beliefs and desires to brain states and neurotransmitters, because these are scientifically “real,” while beliefs and desires are epiphenomenal.*

Folk psychology actually does provide a good explanation of human action, despite its reliance on these scientifically unreal entities.  For example, suppose we are trying to explain why I get up from my chair, walk to the kitchen, and look in the cabinet for the cookies.  Folk psychology has a clear and straightforward account of this.  I desired a cookie, and I believed that there were cookies in the kitchen cabinet, so I went to the kitchen and checked.

This is a perfectly coherent explanation of my intentional action, and more importantly, it captures my phenomenal experience of acting intentionally.  I felt the desire for a cookie, was motivated to act based on this desire, and acted in the particular way that I did because I believed that looking in the cabinet was the best available means of fulfilling my cookie desire.  Folk psychological explanations have the appealing quality of getting the phenomenology of intentional action right.

The neuroscientist has a big problem with this type of explanation, because the brain doesn’t physically include anything like desires or beliefs.  He or she can try reducing these phenomena to the physical processes that underlie them, and the resultant explanation wouldn’t be inaccurate or mistaken.  But it would miss an important part of why I went in the kitchen and looked in the cabinet.  Our criticism is that a complete account of human cognition will have to say something about the role of beliefs and desires in explaining intentional actions because explaining cognition ought to include explaining the phenomenology of our experiences.  Reductive explanations fail miserably in this regard.

We are left with a picture of human cognition that is difficult to resolve.  On the one hand, the brain really doesn’t include anything like beliefs or desires, and the folk psychologist can’t simply ignore this significant physical fact.  On the other hand, explaining intentional action in terms of the efficacy of neurotransmitters on certain receptors in the brain misses something deeply important about human behavior.  We won’t attempt to resolve such a deep rift in the space remaining, since doing so continues to be a significant task for the field of cognitive science.  But in our next posting, we will try to respond to a couple of criticisms of the position that in certain cases, folk psychology is worth holding onto.

*(Not all branches of cognitive science are committed to this type of reductionism, but most reject folk psychological explanations of intentionality as obviously false, and this is the target of our criticism.)

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.