In discussing my last entry with a friend I realized I hadn’t explained very well what particularly disgusted me about the position Kucinich and friends had taken. Particularly my sense was that they were indulging their emotions which said ‘this is wrong and I shouldn’t compromise.’ This would be fine if they felt this way pursuant to some principled moral theory or at least would hold to that same position if the consequentialist harms of doing so were more emotionally salient. However, my strong sense is that if it came to a vote for funding the war and they knew Bush had taken a commitment pill to keep our troops in harms way whether they were supplied or not (if you prefer had an absolute unshakable religious conviction) and the effect of their voting not to fund the war was to leave the troops in Iraq without ammo they would vote for funding. In short their ‘principled’ refusal to vote to fund an ‘unjust’ war is an emotional luxury they can afford because the harms of taking this position are neither immediate nor very emotionally salient.

Besides the sort of simplistic rhetoric offered in defense of their supposedly principled refusal to vote for the war (can’t invade a sovereign country etc..) doesn’t hold up under even the most casual analysis. In short this sort of stance is motivated by emotional gut feelings not a principled moral stance. It is this substitution of emotional feeling for moral principle that caused my disgust and motivated me to post about this issue rather than the hundreds of other issues that our representatives take silly stances on.

My conception of moral virtue is that what makes someone virtuous or not is their ability to subordinate emotional reactions to rational (moral) analysis. One does not (directly) control (even in a subjective way) what emotions you feel. One does not so much choose to feel rage, gratitude, sexual attraction as find these feelings impinging on one’s consciousness. Thus it makes no more sense to praise or blame someone for the emotions they feel than for the situations that are beyond their control they find themselves in. In other words the man with the strong fetish for young boys (pedophile) who resists that temptation is a far better person than the otherwise similar individual who doesn’t feel it at all.

I think we all feel share this intuition and agree that we should judge the character of a man by how they deal with their temptations not by the number of temptations they feel. We ought to treat moral emotions in exactly the same way. The man whose immediate emotional reaction when someone insults his wife is that ‘this man must be punished’ is no worse than the man whose immediate moral reaction is ‘I must forgive this man.’ Admittedly what emotional reactions someone has may given evidence as to their moral virtue because practice and habit sculpt these emotions so having the ‘right’ emotional reactions may be indicative of a practice of placing moral reason first. However, the conventionally moral person who ‘just knows’ that certain things are right and others are wrong because of training in childhood is no different than the person who ‘just knows’ that one slaps a woman when she gives you lip. Being lucky and being trained to have the right sort of values doesn’t make one a better person. The persons reacting to ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ moral emotions are in exactly the same epistemic state so are equally virtuous.

Hence it really disgusts me when people pass off indulging their moral emotions as virtue rather than vice. The real moral virtue is the ability to analyze your reactions to something and suppress them if you conclude they counsel the wrong action. Of course all this bit about moral virtue is really just a complicated description of my emotional reaction to things. To the extent there are moral facts they are only facts about which states of affairs are better than others. Moral virtue is something that we choose to define not something the universe hands to us. It isn’t even really relevant to which states of affairs are better.

This is the reason I am so hostile to supposed deontic justifications for actions or moral positions. When taken by real moral philosophers I disagree strongly (both with their conclusions and the deference they give moral feelings) but I can respect what they are doing. However, when used by almost anyone else it is usually an excuse to just go with one’s moral feelings without analysis.

So they just did a little segment on NPR (well Chicago public radio) about the difficulty democrats are having rounding up votes for their supplemental on the war. Amazingly they are having difficulty getting the votes for it both ways (see nytimes article). Some democrats are uncomfortable with the ‘mandated’ withdrawal date of August 2008 while others object to funding what they view as an unjust war. Whatever you think about the withdrawal questions at least one of these two groups are behaving idioticly or wagering lives (Iraqi and US) for personal political gain.

It can’t be the case that scuttling this bill will both result in a bill that mandates and earlier withdrawal and one that doesn’t tie the president’s or his commanders’ hands. A failed bill would result in a shit to one side or the other so one side must be acting against their stated interest in refusing to vote for the bill. Now it’s logically possible that both sides reasonably believe that if this bill fails their side will gain the upper hand but it’s not really plausible. There are a massive number of republicans who are unwilling to support this bill because of the mandated time table and all but the most far left democrats are unwilling to play chicken with the president and leave the troops in Iraq without any funding. So it seems pretty obvious what the effects of not passing this bill would be, passing a replacement bill with no mandate for withdrawal. But even if I’m wrong in my judgement it strains credibility to believe that the far left democrats and the conservative democrats have such different information that they can both reasonably believe it is to their benefit to scuttle this legislation.

Sure it could be that this is just a public position to win votes and if it came down to the wire Kucinich and his anti-war band would vote yes but I think they are totally serious about refusing to fund ‘an unjust war.’ In short it appears they are putting simplistic emotions (and maybe electoral gain) above serious analysis of what is likely to save lives and help the Iraqi people. Maybe I’m wrong but I get the strong sense that they would vote against this supplemental even if they were guaranteed the effect would be to pass a no strings attached bill. Yet I am positive they would not vote to pass a no strings attached bill knowing that the alternative would be this bill.

I realize that average people who don’t have the time, inclination, or information to really think through these issues might think in these sort of simplistic emotional arguments (it’s an unjust war don’t vote to fund it) but I’m ashamed that congressmen would as well. I guess I knew better but it is still annoying and disappointing.

First though I thought i would pass along this amusing short video commenting on Chomsky. I don’t have enough background to comment on this particular dispute but it mostly matches my opinion of Chomsky, namely that he is either deeply delusional or intellectually deceptive in his political claims (perhaps both). Meaning that every speech or remark I have heard Chomsky make on political matters has been very rhetorically stirring but logically defective in ways that Chomsky should be smart enough to notice.

Anyway the point of this post is really to make a request. Can anyone link me to substantive arguments, preferably by experts, that the Iraq troop surge is likely to make matters worse in Iraq? Almost everything I see opposing the troop surge either does so for totally irrational reasons (they are against the Iraq war and this is part of it) or out of blatant American selfishness (it will cause more US troops to die). This seems like a very important issue and I would like to have an informed opinion but I really don’t know where to turn for information.

Note I’m not interested in arguments that just say the troop surge is unlikely to work. I know that and everyone knows that. I’m interested in the question of whether the troop surge increases the chances of avoiding a civil war in Iraq by say at least 2%. I’m also not interested in whether another tactic (negotiating with the Iranians) would have been preferable but whether a troop surge is more likely to work than doing what we are doing now or withdrawing.

If anyone has some good sources I would be much appreciated.

Two more quick comments.

First, while I’m not quite convinced I’m open to the argument that sleeping with someone is implicitly understood in our society to incur a commitment to mutual support for any resulting child. Thus I even think a case could be made that it is perfectly fair to require men to pay child support after one night stands. However, if this is the tack you are going to take then you have to allow (at a minimum) for explicit signed agreements repudiating the man’s responsibility. UPDATE:[ On further thought I've decided that the reaction of 'that's unfair' that many men still have to the idea of being required to pay child support for accidental pregnancies after one night stands shows that our society does not (widely enough) implicitly understand a one night stand to involve such an agreement. However, allowing signed contracts otherwise may be a good compromise between pragmatics (most won't sign) and fairness.]

Most of my objections to the current system would disappear if you allowed a man and woman to sign a (simple) contract before having sex absolving one or the other of having to care for an resulting child. I still think the social default should be to assume that casual sex should not produce children but that is just a minor matter once you allow agreements.

Secondly, even when I am deemed liable for another person’s injuries it only seems fair to make me pay what is reasonably necessary to treat these injuries. If I accidentally cut someone with my knife I should have to pay their costs to visit the doctor and purchase antibiotics plus a bit for pain and suffering. If they turn out to be a Christian Scientist it would not be fair for me to pay for their wrongful death because they refused to take antibiotics for their infection. In short fairness requires me to take responsibility for the consequences of my actions to a reasonable person not to bear the burden of their crazy religious beliefs. If we apply this same reasoning to the case of accidental pregnancy it is hard to see why the man should be expected to pay more than the cost of an abortion (especially as I believe early abortions are safer than pregnancy).

However, once again I’m willing to be flexible on this point as long as their is a relatively easy (can be signed in a couple minutes in the hotel room without attorneys or notaries) way for a man and women to sign documents changing the presumptions.

– UPDATE: I think it’s important that society view getting an abortion as the default choice for unplanned pregnancy. Not only because this would prevent many children from being raised by unprepared and perhaps ungrateful parents but because it would alleviate much of the stress of the decision from the woman. The morality of bringing new life into this world is a complex topic and having abortion be the clear societal default would save them the pain of having to mull over this during the tumultuous time after an unplanned pregnancy.

Hence my motive for treating someone not getting an abortion after accidental pregnancy the same as someone who refuses anti-biotics based on crazy religious. Namely ensure they have the right to do so if they wish (it’s their body) but not make others liable for their choice (they pay for the kid/greater sickness). However, on reflection it is unclear to me what the significance of this is when right now this isn’t the clear societal default.

In any case it doesn’t change my overall conclusion. Making men pay for child support after a one night stand is unfair. Yet it is quite possible that such a policy is necessary for overall welfare. If so we should balance fairness against the interests of having two people financially responsible for the child by allowing written contracts to alter the rules about who has to pay but leaving the default (unfairly) that the man must pay child support if it is his child even if it was just a one night stand.

So as I was afraid the lost post seems to have lead naturally back into the question of whether men should have to pay child support for children accidentally conceived in one night stands. However, before I dive into this topic and see if I can upset some more people let me clarify one point. Fairness, as I mean the term, is a defeasible good. All other things being equal the fair outcome is the mandated one but if the fair outcome is much worse than the unfair outcome it may be morally obligatory to insist on the unfair outcome. For instance if you are in a city under siege and running out of food fairness might require that you give everyone an equal share of the remaining food. Pragmatics might require that you give good only to the strong and kill the weak. It is a nasty thing when you must sacrifice fairness for total welfare but sometimes it must be done. Thus when I defend the thesis that fairness dictates that men not be required to pay child support for the accidental children of one night stands it doesn’t settle the question of whether we should make them pay child support in these circumstances.

Now on to the question of what fairness requires in a one night stand. Once again I defend the claim I offered in my last post: In informed consensual voluntary activities both parties assume responsibility for any harm to themselves and their bodies absent any agreement otherwise. Of course one can come up with situations where an information asymmetry or dirty dealing undermine this default but neither applies any longer in the canonical one night stand situation. I personally think that our current attitude on the man’s responsibility is a hold over from a time when we assumed any short term sexual encounter between a man and woman involved dirty dealing on the man’s part but that is neither here nor their.

Last time I may not have provided sufficient examples so let me do so now. Anytime two people agree to box both boxers are responsible for their own injuries. This holds true even if one boxer has a medical condition that makes the activity more risky for him. If two (equally) drunk college kids try to unsuccessful replicate a stunt they saw on jackass we expect each kid to pay for their own medical bills no matter who took the more dangerous part of the stunt. If you have the flu and knowing this your friend comes over to visit anyway you don’t become liable for his medical bills if he gets sick (though if you are a nice person you might feel bad and offer). This seems to be a (reasonable) generally applicable moral rule. If two equally informed people consensually enter into some risky activity that requires both of their participation they are both responsible for their own injuries.

Just to make sure that no one thinks there is something special about sex that undermines this presumption consider the situation with STDs. If a man and woman, both fully aware of the others sexual history (suppose they are famous porn stars) have unprotected intercourse and one accidentally infects the other with HIV the infector is not liable for the medical bills of the person they infected. Of course if there is a serious information asymmetry (say the guy knew he was HIV positive and didn’t say anything) this presumption can be rebuffed but it is the presumption. Since pregnancy and child rearing are such emotional issues it seems the best guide we can have to what is fair in that case is the generally applicable rule.

Now people who argue that it is fair for the man to be liable for child support often say things like, “If you don’t want a kid then use a condom,” or the very revealing, “If you weren’t prepared for the consequences you shouldn’t have had sex.” Immediately the form of this argument should jump out at you as invalid. After all the same form of argument would justify drawing and quartering men who got women pregnant (if they weren’t prepared for the consequences then they shouldn’t have…). These arguments are simply part of the wrong debate. They only explain why it is fair to subject an individual to a widely known general rule (men must pay child support) but don’t even speak to why that rule is fair in the first place. However, it is enough to observe that each one of these arguments applies equally well to the case where one party accidentally infects the other with HIV despite the fact that our intuitions point in exactly the opposite direction in that case. Moreover, the asymmetry of risk can’t explain the difference either as our intuition about STDs remains even though we know that for some diseases one sex or the other is at considerably more risk.

I don’t think it is a coincidence that we fail to apply our generally applicable rule about personal responsibility when it looks like someone might ‘get away’ with having consequence free sex. At the psychological level much of what is going on here is resentment that men might be able to have free casual sex without even risking consequences. Regardless of what people say intellectually casual sex is still regarded as something morally upstanding people don’t do and there is a certain inclination not to let people ‘get away’ with it. However, this is a subject for another post.

So what is the upshot of all this? Even if widely accepted this reasoning wouldn’t change much for people in relationships. Once people are in a dating relationship I think it is fair to understand them to have made an implicit commitment to deal with any accidental children together. However, have they made an explicit commitments (like I will get an abortion if I get pregnant) this would nullify that implicit commitment (the woman could certainly choose not to get an abortion but the guy wouldn’t be obligated to pay child support). Given the difficulty of establishing who said what to whom when it might be reasonable only to acknowledge written contracts as overcoming the implicit commitments we take to come with a relationships. However, it certainly should be possible for a couple to sign a legally binding contract that specifies that the guy will not be financially or legally responsible for the child. Even if you don’t like my reasoning this should be possible if for no other reason than to let women choose to be single parents.

As far as one night stands the effect accepting this argument would have depends on the facts on the ground. It could very well be that changing the law to make women solely responsible for children of one night stands would significantly increase the number of abortions and decrease the number of unplanned pregnancies. Given that women have more control over whether they have a child (both knowledge of their fertility and the choice to get an abortion) giving them all the responsibility might reduce the number of accidental births. If so then surely we should change the law so that men are not responsible for child support as the result of one night stands. On the other hand if the effect of changing the law would only be to leave more babies without fathers or even increase the rate of unplanned pregnancies we have a tough choice to make between fairness and welfare.

In short I think the current legal rules (except for a few unusual cases) are mostly defensible but ONLY as an unfair system necessary to increase total welfare. What irks me about the defenders of this system is their insistence as presenting it not only as the right solution but as fair despite it’s incongruity with our generally applicable notions of fairness.

Developing effective easy to use male contraception seems like a useful thing to do. Given the current laws that ridiculously require men to shoulder paternal responsibilities even if the woman assures them she can’t get pregnant before sex there are many men who could benefit from controlling their own fertility. Those of us dating forgetful, slightly irresponsible girls could benefit as well :-). However, there is this strange attitude that it is unfair for women to have to manage birth control. For instance this NY times article about male contraceptives ends with the following quote:

Whatever form male contraception eventually takes in this country, it is likely to find an eager audience.

“On some level,” Mr. Kleinman said, “it is just about fairness to women.”

Now certainly if they discovered a reliable method of male contraception that was less of a burden than the pill (or IUD if it is less reliable) is for women than every guy in a relationship who isn’t an ass should start using it. However, this isn’t a matter of fairness but simple consideration. If one party in a relationship incurs large medical bills both whichever party can pay them off the most easily should do so whether or not they are the one who was ill. Similarly no matter who dirtied the dishes the person who doesn’t mind doing them should clean them while their partner who hates doing the dishes should contribute in some other way. The question of fairness just doesn’t apply to individual acts in a relationship but only to the overall distribution of the shared benefits and rewards each party brings to it. Women may often get the short end of the stick in relationships but this is neither the result of nor particularly affected by who ends up handling the birth control.

So to examine the fairness question we need to look at more fleeting contacts like one night stands. Here many people would argue that because the man is a partner in the sex act he should be equally responsible for all of the consequences. Yet is this really a generally applicable rule we follow? If I don’t ask the women I’m sleeping with if she’s married am I equally at fault for breaking up her marriage because she couldn’t have cheated without someone to cheat with? Surely not! We sensibly assign people responsibility for consequences in their own lives even when they acted with another person to bring those about. All other things being equal it is the person with the most knowledge or control over the situation we hold accountable for the consequences not anyone whose actions were causally necessary for that results.

At it’s most basic level a women’s fertility is just susceptibility to a certain form of parasitic infection by a man’s sperm. What differentiates pregnancy from a mono infection is the fact that many people want to get pregnant and it exacts a much greater cost. So what do our intuitions about fairness say about people who are particularly susceptible to mono? Say that I have an immune deficiency which makes mono a grave health risk and if I want to kiss or share utensils with anyone I must either take a daily pill with mild side effects (in most people) or have them do the same. Now women I ask on dates might try to show they are nice by offering to take the pill inside of me but surely it would not be unfair for them to expect me to take the pill to protect against my vulnerability. If this example isn’t convincing try replacing mono with flu and kiss with touch. Surely it isn’t remotely reasonable to think that fairness requires everyone who wants to touch me or shake my hand to take prophylactic pills because of my vulnerability to infection when I could do the same. Yet in these cases the person doing the kissing or touching is just as necessary to produce the infection as the man is to getting the girl pregnant.

The fact that the ability to get pregnant is viewed as desirable only strengthens my argument. One might feel that your poor friend who is so vulnerable to flu has enough of a burden and you should take the prophylactic pill rather than him. However, if the same mutation that made your friend so vulnerable to flu gave him super powers and he deliberately choose to endure taking his prophylactic pill rather than give up his super powers there would be no question that fairness placed no burden on you to be the one who took the pill. In general we think the person who gains the benefit ought to be the one who endures the costs of that benefit. Yet as most women view the ability to get pregnant as a benefit the same argument applies equally well here.

At this point the best you can do is somehow argue that women are in total worse off than men as they must choose between dealing with birth control and giving up biological offspring all together. Of course this argument only works if women would really prefer it if it was the man who carried and nursed the baby gaining the special closeness to the child that relationship brings. Some women would prefer this but I suspect most would not. However, if you are going to try and expand the argument this way it becomes a question of which gender is more screwed over by biology and the evidence clearly indicates that it is men who are at the disadvantage. In the only two ways that truly matter, quantity and quality of life, women consistently do better than men. Not only do women live longer than men on average they self-report themselves as being happier than men as well. Of course self-reports aren’t perfect but it is the best evidence we have [UPDATE: removed incorrect fact about depression].

Moreover, it is hard to see why the man is morally obligated (more than just the nice thing to do) to ensure birth control is used because of the possible effect on the woman while a woman is not morally obligated to get an abortion after a one night stand just because knowing he has a child will have a significant effect on the man’s life. Ultimately the man’s feelings are his responsibility and impose no obligation that the woman get an abortion (w/o prior agreement) and similarly (absent agreement) the effect on the woman’s body of their consensual act is her responsibility. Since the woman has the most control and knowledge over her body the default should be that she is responsible for the effects on her body and the man the effects on his body. If the man has a heart condition that makes having vigorous sex a risk for him then by default it’s his responsibility to manage that risk just like it’s the woman’s default responsibility to manage her own body including the risk of pregnancy.

Of course none of this changes the fact that nice people try to help each other out. If a woman suspects that the guy she is with might have a heart condition the nice thing to do might be to offer to get on top so he doesn’t have to exert himself. Similarly if the guy knows that the woman might get pregnant he would be a dick not to offer to use a condom. However, there is nothing unfair about the default expectation we use everywhere else that each person in a consensual act is responsible for the consequences to themselves. Of course since men are often more eager to have one night stands than women it would be perfectly reasonable for women to demand that men take care of birth control as part of the deal of getting to sleep with them but that’s another matter entirely.

The attitudes we have about the man being responsible for the woman getting pregnant are relics of an anti-feminist past. If we started from the assumption that women freely choose to have one night stands just like men and there was nothing wrong with this I think the obvious model that everyone takes responsibility for the consequences to their own bodies/lives wouldn’t even be up for debate. It’s only the vague residue of puritan ethics whispering in our ear that sex outside of marriage is evil and that the perpetrators must therefore share the punishment or that women are not truly responsible for their own actions that cause us to come up with different standards for sex than other activities.

If you don’t agree with this last part then explain why sex seems to be viewed differently than other consensual acts? With disease, boxing or sports the default position is always that each person assumes responsibility over what might happen to their body. What makes pregnancy different?