tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/john-stuart-mill-6600/articlesJohn Stuart Mill – The Conversation2024-01-11T13:25:07Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2183322024-01-11T13:25:07Z2024-01-11T13:25:07ZIn the ‘big tent’ of free speech, can you be too open-minded?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567876/original/file-20240104-29-nyvlra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C6%2C2142%2C1386&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In the 'big tent' philosophy of free speech, the more views, the better. But how does that hold up in practice?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/small-red-illuminated-circus-tent-at-night-royalty-free-image/1479473992?phrase=circus+tent&searchscope=image%2Cfilm&adppopup=true">imageBROKER/Manuel Kamuf via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>People often extol the virtue of open-mindedness, but can there be too much of a good thing?</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://honors.wayne.edu/profile/ae9123">college dean</a>, I regularly observe campus controversies about the Israel-Hamas war, race relations and other hot-button issues. Many of these concern free speech – what students, faculty and invited speakers should and shouldn’t be allowed to say. </p>
<p>But free speech disputes aren’t merely about permission to speak. They are about who belongs at the table – and whether there are limits to the viewpoints we should listen to, argue with or allow to change our minds. As <a href="https://clasprofiles.wayne.edu/profile/ae9123">a philosopher</a> who works on “<a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/bulr99&div=79&id=&page=">culture war” issues</a>, I’m particularly interested in what free-speech disputes teach about the value of open-mindedness.</p>
<h2>Talking together in the ‘big tent’</h2>
<p>Free-speech advocates often find inspiration in the 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill, who argued for what we might call a “big tent” approach: engaging with a variety of viewpoints, including those that strike you as mistaken. After all, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=AjpGAAAAcAAJ&q=editions%3AHMraC_Owoi8C&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false">Mill wrote</a>, you could be wrong. And even if you’re right, the clash of opinions can sharpen your reasons.</p>
<p>Some critics believe that Mill’s arguments haven’t worn well, especially in an age of demagoguery and “fake news.” Do I really need to listen to <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/flat-earthers-what-they-believe-and-why/">people who believe the Earth is flat</a>? <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/one-in-five-young-americans-believes-the-holocaust-is-a-myth-poll-finds/">Holocaust deniers</a>? My relatives’ crackpot conspiracy theories at the holiday dinner table? Whose benefit would such openness serve?</p>
<p>The primary argument for the big tent approach is rooted in <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/intellectual-humility-125132">intellectual humility</a>: properly recognizing the limitations to what each of us knows. In one sense, it is a recognition of human fallibility – which, when combined with hubris, can have disastrous results. </p>
<p>More positively, intellectual humility is aspirational: There’s a lot yet to learn. Importantly, intellectual humility does not mean that one lacks moral convictions, let alone the desire to persuade others of those convictions.</p>
<p>Having spent several decades advocating for same-sex marriage – including participating in dozens of campus debates and two <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/debating-same-sex-marriage-9780199756315?cc=us&lang=en&">point-counterpoint</a> <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/debating-religious-liberty-and-discrimination-9780190603076?q=corvino&lang=en&cc=us">books</a> – I’m convinced of the value of engagement with “the other side.” At the same time, I’m acutely aware of its costs. All things considered, I believe that the marketplace of ideas should err on the side of a big tent.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">John Corvino and Maggie Gallagher in 2012, during one of their many debates about same-sex marriage.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>The limits of listening</h2>
<p>The contemporary <a href="https://phil.ucalgary.ca/profiles/jeremy-fantl">philosopher Jeremy Fantl</a> is among those concerned about the big tent’s costs. In his book “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-limitations-of-the-open-mind-9780198807957?cc=us&lang=en&">The Limitations of the Open Mind</a>,” Fantl notes that some arguments are cleverly deceptive, and engaging with them open-mindedly can actually undermine knowledge. Imagine a hard-to-follow mathematical proof, its flaw difficult to spot, that indicates 2 + 2 = 5.</p>
<p>Interestingly, Fantl sees his stance as consistent with intellectual humility: No one is an expert on everything, and we’re all unlikely to spot fallacies in complex deceptive arguments outside our expertise.</p>
<p>There’s another worrisome cost to engaging with deceptive counterarguments: Some of them harm people. To engage open-mindedly with Holocaust denial, for example – to treat it as an option on the table – is to fail to express appropriate solidarity with Jews and other victims of the Nazi regime. More than giving offense, engaging those views could make someone complicit in ongoing oppression, possibly by undermining education about genocide and ethnic cleansing.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567921/original/file-20240104-23-bjn7x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Four people seen from the back stand facing a black wall covered in old black-and-white photo portraits." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567921/original/file-20240104-23-bjn7x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567921/original/file-20240104-23-bjn7x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567921/original/file-20240104-23-bjn7x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567921/original/file-20240104-23-bjn7x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567921/original/file-20240104-23-bjn7x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567921/original/file-20240104-23-bjn7x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567921/original/file-20240104-23-bjn7x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Holocaust survivors stand in 2023 in front of photos that belonged to incoming prisoners at the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz Birkenau II.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/holocaust-survivors-are-seen-in-front-of-personal-photos-news-photo/1246610702?adppopup=true">Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>What about closed-minded engagement – that is, engaging with opposing viewpoints simply in order to refute them publicly? </p>
<p>Fantl grants that such engagement can have value but worries that it is often ineffective or dishonest. Ineffective, if you tell your opponents from the outset “You’re not going to change my mind” – a conversation-stopper if anything is. Dishonest, if you pretend to engage open-mindedly when you’re really not.</p>
<h2>Learning while convincing</h2>
<p>In my view, Fantl misunderstands the goals of engagement and thus sets up a false contrast between open- and closed-mindedness. There’s a space between these two extremes – and that may be where the most constructive conversations happen. </p>
<p>Consider again my same-sex marriage advocacy. When I debated opponents such as <a href="https://www.focusonthefamily.com/contributors/glenn-stanton/">Glenn Stanton</a> of Focus on the Family and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2013/03/22/175064250/as-support-for-gay-marriage-grows-an-opponent-looks-ahead">Maggie Gallagher</a> of the National Organization for Marriage – a prominent nonprofit group opposing same-sex marriage – did I strongly believe that I was right and they were wrong? Of course I did. And of course they believed the reverse. Did I expect that they would convince me that my position on same-sex marriage was wrong? No, never – and neither did they.</p>
<p>In that sense, you can say I wasn’t open-minded. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I was open to learning from them, and I often did. I was open to learning their concerns, perspectives and insights, recognizing that we had different experiences and areas of expertise. I was also open to building relationships to foster mutual understanding. In that sense, I was quite open-minded. </p>
<p>Audience members who approached the debates with similar openness would commonly say afterward, “I always thought the other side believed [X], but I realize I need to rethink that.” For example, my side tended to assume that Maggie’s and Glenn’s arguments would be primarily theological – they weren’t – or that they hated gay people – they don’t. Their side tended to assume I didn’t care about children’s welfare – quite the contrary – or that I believe that morality is a “private matter,” which I emphatically do not.</p>
<h2>Reason and respect</h2>
<p>At the same time, there were prominent figures whose position on the marriage question did change.</p>
<p>David Blankenhorn, founder of the think tank the Institute for American Values, had been <a href="https://www.encounterbooks.com/books/the-future-of-marriage/">a same-sex marriage opponent</a> for many years, albeit one who always recognized some good on both sides of the debate. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/opinion/how-my-view-on-gay-marriage-changed.html">Eventually he came to believe</a> that instead of helping children, as he had hoped, opposition to same-sex marriage primarily served to stigmatize gay citizens. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567895/original/file-20240104-29-ff6to8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A close-up shot of one person's hands slipping a gold and blue ring onto another person's finger." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567895/original/file-20240104-29-ff6to8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567895/original/file-20240104-29-ff6to8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567895/original/file-20240104-29-ff6to8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567895/original/file-20240104-29-ff6to8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567895/original/file-20240104-29-ff6to8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567895/original/file-20240104-29-ff6to8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567895/original/file-20240104-29-ff6to8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A couple exchanges rings at their wedding held at West Hollywood Park in California in June 2008.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/same-sex-couple-exchagnes-rings-at-their-wedding-held-at-news-photo/539890754?adppopup=true">Ted Soqui/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>So sometimes the clash of opinions can surprise you – just as Mill suspected.</p>
<p>Does this mean that I recommend seeking out Holocaust deniers for dialogue? No. Some views really are beyond the pale, and regular engagement has diminishing returns. There are only so many hours in the day. But that stance should be adopted sparingly, especially when experts in the relevant community are conflicted.</p>
<p>Instead, I recommend following Blankenhorn as a model, in at least three ways. </p>
<p>First, concede contrary evidence even when that evidence is inconvenient. Doing so can be difficult in an environment where people worry that if they give the other side an inch, they’ll take a mile. Blankenhorn’s opponents would often gleefully seize on his concessions, for instance, as if a single positive point settled the debate. </p>
<p>But keeping beliefs proportionate to evidence is key to moving past polarized gridlock – not to mention discovering truth. Indeed, Blankenhorn has since <a href="https://braverangels.org/">founded an organization</a> with the explicit goal of bridging partisan divides. </p>
<p>Second, strive to see what good there is on the other side, and when you do, publicly acknowledge it. </p>
<p>And third, remember that bridge-building is largely about relationship-building, which creates a space for trust – and ultimately, deeper dialogue. </p>
<p>Such dialogue may not always uncover truth, as Mill hoped it would, but at least it acknowledges that we all have a lot to learn.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218332/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Corvino does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. This article was produced with support from UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center and the John Templeton Foundation as part of the GGSC's initiative on Expanding Awareness of the Science of Intellectual Humility.</span></em></p>Intellectual humility doesn’t mean anyone can change your mind, a philosopher writes – but it might mean learning from the ‘other side’ in surprising ways.John Corvino, Dean of the Irvin D. Reid Honors College and Professor of Philosophy, Wayne State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2053882023-05-30T22:50:04Z2023-05-30T22:50:04ZWith so many people speaking ‘their truth’, how do we know what the truth really is?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528957/original/file-20230530-15-ao3pyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5379%2C3573&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Academy Awards boss Bill Kramer recently <a href="https://nz.news.yahoo.com/oscars-boss-bill-kramer-applauds-150147102.html">applauded comedian Chris Rock</a> for speaking “his truth” about being slapped by Will Smith at the 2022 Oscars ceremony, he used a turn of phrase that is fast becoming a part of everyday speech around the world.</p>
<p>Take <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/06/harry-meghan-oprah-interview">Oprah Winfrey’s interview</a> with Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle, for example. Oprah asked, “How do you feel about the palace hearing you speak your truth today?”</p>
<p>Or consider Samantha Imrie, a juror in the civil lawsuit over Gwyneth Paltrow’s role in a 2016 ski accident with Terry Sanderson. Asked about Sanderson’s testimony, <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/gwyneth-paltrow-utah-ski-collision-trial-juror-samantha-imrie-reveals-why-actress-won/AV5O32FOYZAXTD4DY6ECWUCCQY/">Imrie replied</a>, “He was telling his truth […] I do think he did not intend to tell a truth that wasn’t his truth.”</p>
<p>But what does it mean for someone to speak “their truth”? Perhaps it’s time to reconsider how we use this expression, given it can be easily misinterpreted as endorsing a problematic view of what it takes for a claim to be true.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528959/original/file-20230530-25-n1uxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528959/original/file-20230530-25-n1uxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528959/original/file-20230530-25-n1uxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528959/original/file-20230530-25-n1uxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528959/original/file-20230530-25-n1uxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528959/original/file-20230530-25-n1uxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528959/original/file-20230530-25-n1uxyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Speaking ‘his truth’: Gwyneth Paltrow speaks with retired optometrist Terry Sanderson after her skiing accident trial, March 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span>
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<h2>Truth relativism</h2>
<p>On its face, speaking about “my truth” or “your truth” suggests that <a href="https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-think-about-truth-in-a-philosophically-informed-way">truth is relative</a> to an individual. Philosophers call this view “truth relativism”. It says that when someone makes a claim, that claim is made true or false by what they believe or how they feel, rather than by the way the world actually is.</p>
<p>A problem with relativism is that it seems to leave reasoned debate without any clear goal. Suppose, for example, we are discussing whether the New Zealand government’s <a href="https://www.dia.govt.nz/Three-Waters-Reform-Programme">Three Waters Reform Programme</a> will “maintain and improve the water service infrastructure”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-cant-americans-agree-on-well-nearly-anything-philosophy-has-some-answers-193055">Why can't Americans agree on, well, nearly anything? Philosophy has some answers</a>
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<p>Presumably our goal is to determine whether it’s <em>true</em> that the reform will maintain and improve the water service infrastructure. However, if there is no truth to identify here – only “your truth” and “my truth” – then it isn’t clear why we should have this discussion at all.</p>
<p>What’s the alternative to truth relativism, then? To reject relativism is to grant that at least some of our claims are true or false because the world – which exists independently of our minds, languages and cultures – is a particular way.</p>
<p>For instance, because lemons are more acidic than milk chocolate, the claim that lemons are more acidic than milk chocolate is true, and the claim that milk chocolate is more acidic than lemons is false. Likewise, since <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-vaccine-opponents-think-they-know-more-than-medical-experts-99278">vaccines don’t cause autism</a>, the claim that vaccines cause autism is false, and the claim they don’t cause autism is true.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528961/original/file-20230530-21-3skvr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528961/original/file-20230530-21-3skvr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528961/original/file-20230530-21-3skvr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528961/original/file-20230530-21-3skvr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528961/original/file-20230530-21-3skvr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528961/original/file-20230530-21-3skvr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528961/original/file-20230530-21-3skvr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">‘I have spoken my truth’: Meka Whaitiri after announcing her intention to stand as a candidate for Te Pāti Māori.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span>
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<h2>Truth and respect</h2>
<p>You can stick with this straightforward view about truth and still recognise that everyone deserves to be heard and respected. As John Stuart Mill <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/#LibeFreeSpee">pointed out in his book</a> <em>On Liberty</em> (1859), if we fail to consider a wide range of perspectives, even those views that may ultimately turn out to be false, it is more likely we will be unable to discover important truths about the world.</p>
<p>This means that valuing truth should actually encourage you to engage with points of view that differ from yours.</p>
<p>It’s also worth noting that, in some cases, people who claim to speak “their truth” may not actually be endorsing relativism. This might be said of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3pJBurhbZM">announcement</a> by Meka Whaitiri that she intended to join Te Pāti Māori.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/always-sticking-to-your-convictions-sounds-like-a-good-thing-but-it-isnt-122911">'Always sticking to your convictions' sounds like a good thing – but it isn't</a>
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<p>Offering a heartfelt explanation of her reasons for the decision, she concluded by directly addressing her Ikaroa-Rāwhiti constituents: “I have spoken my truth.” But she also explained:</p>
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<p>The point here, whanau, is Māori political activism. It’s part of being Māori. It comes from our whakapapa. And we as Māori have a responsibility to it. Not others — we. Today, I’m acknowledging that whakapapa. I’m acknowledging my responsibility to it, and it’s calling me home.</p>
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<p>This suggests that in speaking “her truth”, Whaitiri was in fact outlining her <em>reasons</em> for joining Te Pāti Māori. Her main objective was to underscore the significance of whakapapa, rather than to defend truth relativism.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/alternative-facts-a-psychiatrists-guide-to-twisted-relationships-to-truth-72469">'Alternative facts': A psychiatrist’s guide to twisted relationships to truth</a>
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<p>Whaitiri’s reasons are certainly strong ones, though framing them in terms of “my truth” could lead others to misinterpret them. Moreover, if Pākehā responded to Whaitiri by saying “this is her truth, not our truth”, then we would be back again with the problem of relativism. </p>
<p>We need to value people’s unique identities, experiences and reasons for doing things, and we also need to value truth. Truth is a central goal of reasoned debate, and that’s something we will certainly need when addressing the many pressing issues currently facing Aotearoa New Zealand and the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205388/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What does it mean to say, ‘I have spoken my truth’? Can the truth really be relative – and how can we have reasoned debates if it is?Jeremy Wyatt, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of WaikatoJoseph Ulatowski, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of WaikatoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1969752023-01-06T13:12:06Z2023-01-06T13:12:06ZHow philosophy can help mothers avoid judgment, guilt and shame<p>Parenting is tough: the lack of sleep, the baby that cries for hours for no reason, the toddler that has a tantrum for all too many reasons. But being a mother is often especially hard.</p>
<p>This isn’t just because mothers often <a href="https://theconversation.com/dads-are-more-involved-in-parenting-yes-but-moms-still-put-in-more-work-72026">do the lion’s share of hands-on child raising</a>. It is because motherhood can come with an additional layer of judgment, guilt and shame. </p>
<p>The way people tend to think about motherhood can lead to intense pressure on mothers. It can also lead to some mothers feeling they have to criticise others’ decisions in order to defend their own.</p>
<p>In this way, mothers can be pitted against each other when they most need mutual support. Philosophy can’t make mothers’ lives easier by providing a cure for sleep deprivation. However, using the methods of analytic philosophy, we can identify problems in common thinking about motherhood. </p>
<p>This can help us to understand what might cause this judgment, guilt and shame. It might also help mothers help each other.</p>
<p>There are some hot-button topics in parenting conversations that almost always seem to go wrong: giving birth, <a href="https://feelingsaboutfeedingbabies.co.uk">feeding your newborn</a>, introducing solid food, using “sleep training” so that your baby sleeps for longer. When these topics are discussed, we see intense disagreements and angry accusations. </p>
<p>Some people may imply – or even just say - that some mothers are selfish. Some may imply that other mothers are foolish martyrs suffering for no good reason.</p>
<p>The same features are repeated across different topics.</p>
<ol>
<li><p><strong>Polarisation.</strong> Mothers are often divided into two conflicting sides. We think about breastfeeding versus formula, caesarean section versus “natural” birth, and sleep training versus co-sleeping (sleeping in the same bed as your baby).</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Blind spots.</strong> Each side can be convinced that more guilt, shame and judgment is aimed at them. Those who sleep train may say: “Everyone keeps talking about shaming people for co-sleeping, but I see a lot more people judging us for sleep training.” Those who co-sleep may say the opposite.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Demands for justification.</strong> People can feel entitled to demand that others justify their decisions. If you cannot provide a good enough justification, then you may be seen as a bad mother. Some people may say things like: “It’s fine to use formula if you have a medical reason you can’t breastfeed. But most people are just too lazy.”</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Defensive attack.</strong> People who feel as if they are being accused of being bad mothers may respond by trying to show that the other side is wrong. Someone who feels as if they are being criticised for having a c-section might argue that women who want to give birth at home are misguided and reckless.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>These issues are almost inevitable in hot-button topics. However, discussion of almost any parenting decision can turn toxic and start following these bad patterns. I’ve seen it happen in a discussion of baby shoes.</p>
<p>So what makes these conversations go so wrong, and how can philosophy help?</p>
<h2>Philosophical mistakes</h2>
<p>These problems happen partly because of several connected philosophical mistakes in our thinking about motherhood.</p>
<p>First, we often mix up <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/phpr.12355">maternal reasons and maternal duties</a>. Reasons are very important but quite difficult to define. Some philosophers think that reasons are the most basic building blocks of what we should or ought to do. They can’t be explained in terms of anything else.</p>
<p>We say that reasons “count in favour” of doing things. The fact that ice cream tastes good counts in favour of eating it. It is a reason to eat it.</p>
<p>A duty is something that you morally have to do. Philosophers going back to the 19th-century thinker <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/milljs/">John Stuart Mill</a> have argued that duties are connected with guilt and blame. </p>
<p>I argue that duties are also connected with justification. If you don’t do your duty, people are entitled to ask you to give a justification. If your justification is not good enough, they can blame you and you should feel guilty. </p>
<p>We need to recognise that mothers can have reasons that aren’t duties. I can have a good reason to do something (so I am not a fool for putting in a lot of effort) without there being a duty to do that thing (so someone who makes a different choice doesn’t need a justification to avoid guilt and blame). </p>
<p>We can respect the marathon runner’s reasons without thinking people who do not run a marathon should feel guilty. We should be able to do the same with a mother’s reasons to, say, have a planned c-section or avoid sleep training.</p>
<p>Second, we assume that there is one single way to be a good mother. Family situations can be very different. Different things work for different children. </p>
<p>But, more importantly, mothers do not all need to think and feel the same. Different mothers can have different values and still be good mothers. These differences might seem obvious, but a philosophical analysis of common reasoning about motherhood shows that people often implicitly assume that there is only one way to be a good mother.</p>
<p>These are mistakes about motherhood rather than parenthood in general. We do not seem to see the same mistaken patterns of reasoning about fathers. We seem to be able to recognise that fathers have reasons without duties and that different fathers might have different values.</p>
<p>Other factors that pit mothers against each other are attitudes to female bodies and the lack of accommodation for parents in society. Breasts are seen as sexual. Mothers might feel that they have to justify breastfeeding, especially outside the home, by arguing that they have to do it because it is a maternal duty. In defending themselves, they can <a href="https://internationalbreastfeedingjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13006-019-0217-x">unintentionally end up shaming those who use formula</a>. </p>
<p>Similarly, the pressure to bounce back to work may pit mothers who do not sleep train against those who do. Mothers who do not sleep train may need support. They might feel they need to justify their needs by arguing that no good parent can sleep train.</p>
<p>Philosophy can help mothers by pointing out how mistakes in our thinking about motherhood pit mothers against each other. Once we recognise the patterns, we can try to avoid repeating them. We can try to react with empathy if we know why someone might be being defensive. </p>
<p>It’s not a simple fix. These mistakes about motherhood are deeply ingrained in our society. They influence how we think, even if we reject them intellectually. Recognising them as mistakes will not solve everything. But it is a good start.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196975/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fiona Woollard's current research is part of the Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy (BUMP) project funded by European Research Council. She has previously received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council; the Economic and Social Research Council (through the University of Southampton ESRC Impact Acceleration Account); the Southampton Ethics Centre and the Mind Association. She was previously awarded a Non-Residential Fellowship in Philosophy of Transformative Experience at the Experience Project, funded by the Templeton Foundation, University of Notre Dame and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has previously collaborated with the NCT and the Breastfeeding Network. She is an ordinary member of the NCT in a private capacity. She has not received funding from any bodies associated with the marketing or production of infant formula milk.</span></em></p>A philosopher offers advice on how mothers could stop being pitted against each other.Fiona Woollard, Professor of Philosophy, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1904252022-09-13T05:01:44Z2022-09-13T05:01:44ZThe certainty of ever-growing living standards we grew up with under Queen Elizabeth is at an end<p>Much has been written about how, with the passing of the Queen, we have lost one of our last continuing links to the second world war.</p>
<p>We have, but we have also lost something even more profound – the link she gave us back to when the kind of world we know began.</p>
<p>On Tuesday last week Queen Elizabeth appointed a new prime minister of Britain, Liz Truss, who was born in 1975.</p>
<p>Seven decades earlier, Elizabeth II ascended to the role alongside Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who was born in 1874. </p>
<p>That her first and last prime ministers were born a century apart is remarkable enough. But it is particularly significant that the thread of her reign extended all the way back, through Churchill, to the 1870s. That’s when it is possible to argue the expectations we grew up with began.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483913/original/file-20220912-20-ru3jh9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483913/original/file-20220912-20-ru3jh9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483913/original/file-20220912-20-ru3jh9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483913/original/file-20220912-20-ru3jh9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483913/original/file-20220912-20-ru3jh9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483913/original/file-20220912-20-ru3jh9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483913/original/file-20220912-20-ru3jh9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483913/original/file-20220912-20-ru3jh9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.hachette.com.au/brad-de-long/slouching-towards-utopia-an-economic-history-of-the-twentieth-century">Slouching Towards Utopia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As the new UK Prime Minister was sworn in last week, University of California, Berkeley economist Bradford DeLong published his long-awaited <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/brad-de-long/slouching-towards-utopia-an-economic-history-of-the-twentieth-century">Slouching Towards Utopia</a>. </p>
<p>It’s an account of what he calls “<a href="https://youtu.be/Nen0pG89fSk">the long 20th century</a>”, a century he says began in 1870.</p>
<p>Why 1870, and not 1901, or even a century earlier at the start of the industrial revolution?</p>
<p>Because, DeLong says, right up until the 1870s living standards hadn’t changed much.</p>
<p>More importantly, living standards hadn’t changed much since the dawn of recorded time.</p>
<h2>Until 1870, we weren’t much better off</h2>
<p>In the millennia leading up to the birth of agriculture, what humans were able to produce barely increased at all.</p>
<p>In the 10,000-odd years between the year minus-8000 and the industrial revolution in 1500, our ability to produce food and other things increased tenfold, still not enough to be noticed over our (short) lifetimes.</p>
<p>Our ability to produce more than doubled again between 1500 and the 1870. But so did population, which kept most people desperately short of calories – and in near continual childbirth in an attempt to produce surviving sons – while necessitating smaller farm sizes that blunted the benefits of mechanisation.</p>
<h2>From the 1870s, life got a lot better – fast</h2>
<p>Then, from the decade of Churchill’s birth, things went spectacularly right. </p>
<p>Delong writes that in 1870 the daily wages of an unskilled male worker in London, the city then at the forefront of economic growth, would buy him and his family about 5,000 calories worth of bread. In 1600 it had been 3,000 calories. </p>
<p>He says today the daily wages of such an unskilled worker would buy 2,400,000 calories worth of bread: nearly 500 times as much.</p>
<p>The population grew, but our ability to produce things grew far faster. It grew to the point where, even in our lifetimes, we could see things getting better.</p>
<p>In the words of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHnJp0oyOxs">Billy Joel</a>, every child had “a pretty good shot to get at least as far as their old man got”. </p>
<h2>Unimaginable change in one lifetime</h2>
<p>From the 1870s on, continual improvements in living standards became a birthright – not for everyone, but for humanity as a whole.</p>
<p>As did the development of once unimaginable products. The motor car, the radio, the television and the computer became ubiquitous during Queen Elizabeth’s life.</p>
<p>With more to go around, it became easier to share rather than take things. Democracies grew to the point where they became natural.</p>
<p>Economically, DeLong credits the development of research labs, modern corporations and cheap ocean transport that “destroyed distance as a cost factor”. </p>
<p>From the 1870s onwards, people were able to get what they wanted from where it was made, and were able to seek better lives by travelling to where they were needed.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Nen0pG89fSk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">University of California, Berkeley Professor Bradford DeLong’s economics lecture on ‘Slouching toward Utopia’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Most economists didn’t see it coming</h2>
<p>The market economy was necessary for this explosion in living standards, but not sufficient. People had bought and sold things for prices for millennia, but the prices had little to work with.</p>
<p>Almost no one saw such an extraordinary change coming. </p>
<p>The leading economist of the 1870s, John Stuart Mill, wrote it was “questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being”. They had merely “enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment”.</p>
<p>Mill wanted population control. He wanted the expanding “pie” to be split among the people we had, rather than the hordes that would grow to cut each slice back to size.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/gdp-is-like-a-heart-rate-monitor-it-tells-us-about-life-but-not-our-lives-172762">GDP is like a heart rate monitor: it tells us about life, but not our lives</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The fathers of communism, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, saw things more clearly.
They expected technology and the taming of nature to produce so much wealth that there would one day be more than enough to go around, making the problem one of how to make sure it went around. </p>
<p>DeLong sees the long 20th century that began in 1870 as an ever-shifting battle between those who wanted the market to determine the distribution of wealth (believing it was the best way to grow the pie), against those who believed such unfairness wasn’t what they signed up for. </p>
<h2>The end of certainty</h2>
<p>How long did that “long 20th century” last? DeLong thinks it ended in 2010, making it a long century of 140 years. Since the global financial crisis, we have been unable to return economic growth to anything like the pace of those 140 glorious years.</p>
<p>Today, DeLong says material wealth remains “criminally” unevenly distributed. And even for those who have enough, it doesn’t seem to make us happy – at least “not in a world where politicians and others prosper mightily from finding new ways to make and keep people unhappy”.</p>
<p>DeLong sees “large system-destabilizing waves of political and cultural anger from masses of citizens, all upset in different ways at the failure of the system of the twentieth century to work for them as they thought that it should”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/beyond-gdp-changing-how-we-measure-progress-is-key-to-tackling-a-world-in-crisis-three-leading-experts-186488">Beyond GDP: changing how we measure progress is key to tackling a world in crisis – three leading experts</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Not only are we not near the end of the Utopian rainbow, Delong says the end of the rainbow is “no longer visible, even if we had previously thought that it was”.</p>
<p>King Charles III inherits a future with no guarantee of ever-increasing living standards, no guarantee human ingenuity will prevail over global warming, and no guarantee democracy will prevail.</p>
<p>It’s almost impossible to predict what the rest of this century has in store. But that’s how it was in the 1870s too – when even the brightest minds of the time couldn’t imagine what was to come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190425/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Martin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From the 1870s on, continual improvements in living standards became a birthright – not for everyone, but for humanity as a whole. King Charles III inherits a different future.Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1815762022-04-21T19:12:38Z2022-04-21T19:12:38ZIf Elon Musk succeeds in his Twitter takeover, it would restrict, rather than promote, free speech<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459170/original/file-20220421-16-bc4elu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4626%2C3074&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A lawsuit filed on April 12 alleges that Tesla CEO Elon Musk illegally delayed disclosing his stake in Twitter so he could buy more shares at lower prices.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On April 25, following several weeks of speculation, Twitter announced that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/25/twitter-elon-musk-buy-takeover-deal-tesla">it had reached an agreement to sell the company to Tesla CEO and multi-billionaire Elon Musk</a>. In mid-April, Musk made public <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-21/musk-is-exploring-launching-a-tender-offer-for-twitter">his desire to acquire Twitter</a>, make it a private company, and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-14/elon-musk-launches-43-billion-hostile-takeover-of-twitter">overhaul its moderation policies</a>. </p>
<p>Citing ideals of free speech, Musk claimed that “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/18/musk-twitter-free-speech/">Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square, so it’s just really important that people have the, both the reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the law</a>.”</p>
<p>While making Twitter free for all “within the bounds of the law” seems like a way to ensure free speech in theory, in practice, this action would actually serve to suppress the speech of Twitter’s most vulnerable users.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_NbpH9GdBcQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">CBC’s The National looks at Elon Musk’s attempt at a hostile takeover of Twitter.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My team’s research into online harassment shows that when platforms fail to moderate effectively, the most marginalized people may withdraw from posting to social media as a way to keep themselves safe.</p>
<h2>Withdrawal responses</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://harassment.thedlrgroup.com/">various research projects since 2018</a>, we have interviewed scholars who have experienced online harassment, surveyed academics about their experiences with harassment, conducted in-depth reviews of literature detailing how knowledge workers experience online harassment, and reached out to institutions that employ knowledge workers who experience online harassment. </p>
<p>Overwhelmingly, throughout our various projects, we’ve noticed some common themes:</p>
<ul>
<li>Individuals are targeted for online harassment on platforms like Twitter simply because they are women or members of a minority group (racialized, gender non-conforming, disabled or otherwise marginalized). The topics people post about matter less than their identities in predicting the intensity of online harassment people are subjected to.</li>
<li>Men who experience online harassment, often experience a different type of harassment than women or marginalized people. Women, for example, tend to experience more sexualized harassment, such as rape threats.</li>
<li>When people experience harassment, they seek support from their organizations, social media platforms and law enforcement, but often find the support they receive is insufficient.</li>
<li>When people do not receive adequate support from their organizations, social media platforms and law enforcement, they adopt strategies to protect themselves, including withdrawing from social media.</li>
</ul>
<p>This last point is important, because our data shows that there is a very real risk of losing ideas in the unmoderated Twitter space that Musk says he wants to build in the name of free speech. </p>
<p>Or in other words, what Musk is proposing would likely make speech on Twitter less free than it is now, because people who cannot rely on social media platforms to protect them from online harassment tend to leave the platform when the consequences of online harassment become psychologically or socially destructive.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459166/original/file-20220421-25-n2wpxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a woman holding a mobile phone has her forehead on a table" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459166/original/file-20220421-25-n2wpxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459166/original/file-20220421-25-n2wpxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459166/original/file-20220421-25-n2wpxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459166/original/file-20220421-25-n2wpxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459166/original/file-20220421-25-n2wpxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459166/original/file-20220421-25-n2wpxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459166/original/file-20220421-25-n2wpxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Research shows that when people receive online harassment on a social media platform, they are likely to withdraw from using it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Arenas for debate</h2>
<p>Political economist John Stuart Mill famously wrote about <a href="https://www.michaelrectenwald.com/essays/john-stuart-mill-the-marketplace-of-ideas-and-minority-opinion">the marketplace of ideas</a>, suggesting that in an environment where ideas can be debated, the best ones will rise to the top. This is often used to justify opinions that social media platforms like Twitter should do away with moderation in order to encourage constructive debate. </p>
<p>This implies that bad ideas should be taken care of by a sort of invisible hand, in which people will only share and engage with the best content on Twitter, and the toxic content will be a small price to pay for a thriving online public sphere.</p>
<p>The assumption that good ideas would edge out the bad ones is both counter to Mill’s original writing, and the actual lived experience of posting to social media for people in minority groups. </p>
<p>Mill advocated that <a href="https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/roundtable/vol3/iss1/4">minority ideas be given artificial preference</a> in order to encourage constructive debate on a wide range of topics in the public interest. Importantly, this means that moderation of online harassment is key to a functioning marketplace of ideas.</p>
<h2>Regulation of harassment</h2>
<p>The idea that we need some sort of online regulation of harassing speech is borne out by our research. Our research participants repeatedly told us that the consequences of online harassment were extremely damaging. These consequences ranged from burnout or inability to complete their work, to emotional and psychological trauma, or even social isolation. </p>
<p>When targets of harassment experienced these outcomes, they often also experienced economic impacts, such as issues with career progression after being unable to complete work. Many of our participants tried reporting the harassment to social media platforms. If the support they received from the platform was dismissive or unhelpful, they felt less likely to engage in the future.</p>
<p>When people disengage from Twitter due to widespread harassment, we lose those voices from the very online public sphere that Musk says he wants to foster. In practice, this means that women and marginalized groups are most likely to be the people who are excluded from Musk’s free speech playground. </p>
<p>Given that our research participants have told us that they already feel Twitter’s approach to online harassment is limited at best, I would suggest that if we really want a marketplace of ideas on Twitter, we need more moderation, not less. For this reason, I’m happy that <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/04/15/twitter-pushes-back-on-elon-musks-takeover-with-poison-pill/">the Twitter Board of Directors is attempting to resist Musk’s hostile takeover</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181576/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jaigris Hodson receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Canada Research Chairs Program. </span></em></p>Elon Musk’s attempt to take over Twitter uses free speech as the motivation, but research shows that unregulated online spaces result in increased harassment for marginalized users.Jaigris Hodson, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Royal Roads UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1783952022-03-15T12:11:57Z2022-03-15T12:11:57ZWhy celebrities have a moral responsibility to help promote lifesaving vaccines<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451656/original/file-20220311-23-1q74rbp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=99%2C9%2C5918%2C3996&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many celebrities have expressed concerns about bodily autonomy while refusing COVID-19 vaccination.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-joe-rogan-experience-podcast-on-spotify-displayed-on-a-news-photo/1238156274?adppopup=true">Photo Illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the heated debate about vaccine mandates, celebrities have not hesitated to raise their voices. Most prominently, Serbian tennis star <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60354068">Novak Djokovic</a> has stated he would rather not participate in tennis tournaments than get the vaccine required to play. And <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/60199614">Joe Rogan</a> has used his highly popular podcast to spread vaccine misinformation, saying the vaccine could alter one’s genes.</p>
<p>While some resistance is based on misinformation or distrust of the vaccines, some is rooted in concerns about bodily autonomy. In January 2022, actor <a href="https://www.glamour.com/story/anti-vaxx-celebrities-cant-stop-telling-on-themselves">Evangeline Lilly</a> attended a rally protesting vaccine mandates in the name of bodily sovereignty, claiming she was “pro-choice” and stating, “I believe nobody should ever be forced to inject their body with anything, against their will.” Comedian <a href="https://twitter.com/RobSchneider/status/1413884214726971394">Rob Schneider</a> echoed this reasoning, proclaiming “My body, my choice” in a tweet. Actor <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2022/02/anti-vaxx-celebrities-are-coming-out-of-the-woodwork.html">LaKeith Stanfield</a> expressed in a now-deleted Instagram post that vaccines should be solely a matter of “personal choice.” These celebrities oppose the state’s or other institutions’ requiring them to get the vaccine and claim that it should be up to individual choice. </p>
<p>This claim is of particular interest to me as an <a href="https://trulli.faculty.ucdavis.edu/">ethicist</a> who has recently co-authored an <a href="https://www.academia.edu/71072699/Can_My_Body_My_Choice_Anti_Vaxxers_Be_Pro_Life">academic paper</a> assessing the anti-vaccine mandate activists’ appropriation of the “my body, my choice” argument from the abortion-rights movement. In that paper, I argue that those who oppose vaccine mandates for reasons of bodily autonomy have yet greater reason to oppose abortion restrictions, because they entail far greater impositions on bodily autonomy. Thus, being against vaccines for reasons of bodily autonomy but opposing abortion is not a coherent position.</p>
<p>The celebrity claim to “my body, my choice” in opposing vaccination is another matter. Celebrities have great influence over others, that can have consequences that go beyond their own health. </p>
<h2>‘Do no harm’ principle</h2>
<p>Anyone can get infected with COVID-19 and risk transmitting the virus to others. Spreading COVID-19 risks causing them <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-with-medical-conditions.html">severe harm</a>, including death, hospitalization, or long-term sickness and disability. </p>
<p>Indeed, celebrities themselves have been the victims of COVID-19. The disease has taken singer and songwriter <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/04/07/750894794/john-prine-obituary">John Prine</a>, former Secretary of State <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/former-secretary-state-colin-powell-dies-covid-complications-n1281746">Colin Powell</a> and, <a href="https://variety.com/2022/music/news/howard-stern-meat-loaf-family-vaccines-1235163384/">reportedly</a>, the legendary entertainer <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/howard-stern-meat-loaf-anti-vax-covid-vaccine-1290644/">Meat Loaf</a>. </p>
<p>While liberal societies such as the U.S. generally privilege the freedom to make individual choices, even if ill-advised, they also endorse a prohibition on harming others. According to philosopher John Stuart Mill, people are allowed to do as they wish except when they could harm one another.</p>
<p>There are two components to Mill’s <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/#HarPri">harm principle</a>. First, there is a duty not to harm others. But second, Mill claims that enforcing this duty is the only legitimate reason to limit people’s liberties. </p>
<p>The first part, the duty not to harm, is not contentious. It is in people’s rational best interest to endorse a mutually respected rule of not harming one another. The second part is controversial. The political libertarians endorse it; other liberals reject it. </p>
<p>But even if one thinks, as Mill and the libertarians do, that the government prerogative to interfere with individual liberties is restricted to enforcing the duty not to harm, <a href="https://jme.bmj.com/content/44/1/37.long?casa_token=_2F73scGFEAAAAAA:vZIKE5Byo-bf-Q2H52JqJ-6HxK6lqGeaD5gsRtEe0DNfmljqMJC5Tnx2dnoRDiCTOoC3hUZXig">vaccine mandates can still be justified</a>. In other instances, people endorse the state’s right to limit liberties that risk imposing harm on innocent others. Driving with worn brake pads greatly increases the risk of causing an accident and injuring or killing someone. The government can rightly restrict people, by threat of fine or other penalty, from driving with a car in disrepair.</p>
<p>Likewise, someone who is infected with COVID-19 risks spreading it to someone who could die or be seriously ill from it. While vaccination does not guarantee that one will not become infected or transmit the virus to others, a three-dose course of vaccines <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health-news/by-the-numbers-covid-19-vaccines-and-omicron">greatly decreases the odds</a> of infection and thus <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.o298">reduces transmission</a> rates. Further, vaccines are <a href="https://factly.in/all-these-nations-are-providing-covid-19-vaccinations-free-of-charge-to-their-citizens/">low cost or free</a> and very <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/safety-of-vaccines.html">low risk</a>. For the same reasons as above, the government can rightly deny people access to certain activities if they refuse to get vaccinated. </p>
<p>The “my body, my choice” claim fails to recognize that some people’s choices, such as failing to get a low-risk, effective vaccine against a deadly disease, impose unjustified risk of harm on others that the government has a right to prevent. Even libertarians should by their own commitments agree. This requirement applies to all individuals, whether famous or not. </p>
<h2>Promoting good</h2>
<p>When it comes to what the state can do, celebrities are not special. But some celebrities seem to be overlooking the possibility that they have special moral responsibility in light of their stature. For better or worse, many people look up to celebrities as people to admire and to emulate. Celebrities can influence others to also get vaccinated.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451658/original/file-20220311-14-19872a3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A mural on a building depicts a man with a tennis racket, with writing in Cyrillic script across the top." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451658/original/file-20220311-14-19872a3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451658/original/file-20220311-14-19872a3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451658/original/file-20220311-14-19872a3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451658/original/file-20220311-14-19872a3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451658/original/file-20220311-14-19872a3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451658/original/file-20220311-14-19872a3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451658/original/file-20220311-14-19872a3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Tennis player Novak Djokovic has refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/mural-depicting-serbian-tennis-player-novak-djokovic-is-news-photo/1237787230?adppopup=true">Vladimir Zivojinovic/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>There is strong reason to think that in some circumstances we do have the responsibility to help others and promote the good. That is, morality is not limited to just not causing harm. Philosopher <a href="https://petersinger.info/">Peter Singer</a> <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265052">famously argued</a> that someone who walks by a shallow pond and finds a child at risk of drowning in the pond is morally required to wade in and pull the child out. After all, the risk to the rescuer is so minor – perhaps ruining some nice shoes. But the benefit to the child is life itself.</p>
<p>Thus, people have some duties to do good for others in addition to the duty not to harm. As Singer argues, when so great a thing as life itself is at stake, people have a moral duty to do what they can to save lives if the cost to them is not overly burdensome.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-150ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>The situation with COVID-19 is similar in morally relevant ways. Encouraging others to get vaccinated and setting an example by doing so oneself is low cost, given the low-risk profile of the vaccine. But in doing so, one can literally save lives.</p>
<p>Celebrities are uniquely positioned to do this promotional lifesaving work at low cost. Singer’s principle suggests they are obligated to do so. Celebrities claiming “my body, my choice,” in my view, are mistaken on both these fronts.</p>
<p>The well-accepted duty not to harm is the ground for justified vaccine mandates. Celebrities are well positioned and thus morally responsible to help promote lifesaving vaccines.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178395/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tina Rulli does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An ethicist argues that choices made by celebrities could impose unjustified risk of harm on others.Tina Rulli, Associate Professor, Philosophy, University of California, DavisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1586872021-04-20T12:27:55Z2021-04-20T12:27:55ZThere are plenty of moral reasons to be vaccinated – but that doesn’t mean it’s your ethical duty<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395054/original/file-20210414-19-u7zbpw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5413%2C3579&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ethicists disagree on whether people are morally obligated to take small actions that – on their own – contribute only slightly to the collective good.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/health-worker-gives-an-injection-of-the-astrazeneca-oxford-news-photo/1232305092?adppopup=true">Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With the news that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/world/adults-eligible-covid-vaccine.html">all U.S. adults</a> are now eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, the holy grail of infectious disease mitigation – herd immunity – feels tantalizingly close. If enough people take the vaccine, likely <a href="https://www.jhsph.edu/covid-19/articles/achieving-herd-immunity-with-covid19.html">at least 70%</a> of the population, disease prevalence will slowly decline and most of us will safely get back to normal. But if <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/04/07/984697573/vaccine-refusal-may-put-herd-immunity-at-risk-researchers-warn">not enough</a> people get vaccinated, COVID-19 could stick around indefinitely.</p>
<p>The urgency of reaching that milestone has led some to claim that individuals have a <a href="https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-updates-new-yorkers-state-vaccination-program-33">civic duty</a> or <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/04/06/remarks-by-president-biden-marking-the-150-millionth-covid-19-vaccine-shot/">moral obligation</a> to get vaccinated.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.travisrieder.com/">moral philosopher</a> who has written on the <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1111/japp.12099">nature of obligation</a> in other contexts, I want to explore how the seemingly straightforward ethics of vaccine choice is in fact rather complex.</p>
<h2>The simple argument</h2>
<p>The discussion of whether or not one should take the COVID-19 vaccine is often framed in terms of individual self-interest: The benefits outweigh the risk, so you should do it. </p>
<p>That’s not a moral argument. </p>
<p>Most people likely believe that others have wide latitude in determining how they care for their own health, so it can be permissible to engage in risky activities – such as motorcycling or <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/why-are-so-many-base-jumpers-dying">base jumping</a> – even when it’s not in one’s interest. Whether one should get vaccinated, however, is a moral issue because it affects others, and in a couple of ways. </p>
<p>First, effective vaccines are expected to decrease not only rates of infection but also <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/fully-vaccinated-people.html">rates of virus transmission</a>. This means that getting the vaccine can protect others from you and contribute to the population reaching herd immunity.</p>
<p>Second, high disease prevalence allows for more genetic mutation of a virus, which is how <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-covid-variants-have-changed-the-game-and-vaccines-will-not-be-enough-we-need-global-maximum-suppression-157870">new variants</a> arise. If enough people aren’t vaccinated quickly, new variants may develop that are more infectious, are more dangerous or evade current vaccines. </p>
<p>The straightforward ethical argument, then, says: Getting vaccinated isn’t just about you. Yes, you have the right to take risks with your own safety. But as the British philosopher <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/#HarPri">John Stuart Mill argued</a> in 1859, your freedom is limited by the harm it could do to others. In other words, you do not have the right to risk other people’s health, and so you are obligated to do your part to reduce infection and transmission rates.</p>
<p>It’s a plausible argument. But the case is rather more complicated.</p>
<h2>Individual action, collective good</h2>
<p>The first problem with the argument above is that it moves from the claim that “My freedom is limited by the harm it would cause others” to the much more contentious claim that “My freedom is limited by very small contributions my action might make to large, collective harms.” </p>
<p>Refusing to be vaccinated does not violate Mill’s <a href="https://ethics.org.au/ethics-explainer-the-harm-principle/#:%7E:text=The%20harm%20principle%20says%20people,English%20philosopher%20John%20Stuart%20Mill.">harm principle</a>, as it does not directly threaten some particular other with significant harm. Rather, it contributes a very small amount to a large, collective harm. </p>
<p>Since no individual vaccination achieves herd immunity or eliminates genetic mutation, it is natural to wonder: Could we really have a duty to make such a very small contribution to the collective good?</p>
<p>A version of this problem has been well explored in the climate ethics literature, since individual actions are also inadequate to address the threat of climate change. In that context, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-019-09990-w">a well-known paper</a> argues that the answer is “no”: There is simply no duty to act if your action won’t make a meaningful difference to the outcome. </p>
<p>Others, however, have explored a variety of ways to rescue the idea that individuals must not contribute to collective harms.</p>
<p>One strategy is to argue that small individual actions <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1088-4963.2011.01203.x">may actually make a difference</a> to large collective effects, even if it’s difficult to see. </p>
<p>For instance: Although it appears that an individual getting vaccinated doesn’t make a significant difference to the outcome, perhaps that is just the result of uncareful moral mathematics. One’s chance of saving a life by reducing infection or transmission is very small, but saving a life is very valuable. The expected value of the outcome, then, is still high enough to justify taking it to be a moral requirement.</p>
<p>Another strategy concedes that individual actions don’t make a meaningful difference to large, structural problems, but this doesn’t mean morality must be silent with regard to those actions. Considerations of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2014.885406">fairness</a>, <a href="https://philosophybites.com/2013/06/dale-jamieson-on-green-virtues.html">virtue</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2018.1448039">integrity</a> all might recommend taking individual action toward a collective goal – even if that action did not by itself make a difference. </p>
<p>In addition, these and other considerations can provide <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2020.1848188">reasons to act</a>, even if they don’t imply an obligation to act. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395100/original/file-20210414-23-15vj73o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo walks past students getting vaccinated at Suffolk County Community College" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395100/original/file-20210414-23-15vj73o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395100/original/file-20210414-23-15vj73o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395100/original/file-20210414-23-15vj73o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395100/original/file-20210414-23-15vj73o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395100/original/file-20210414-23-15vj73o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395100/original/file-20210414-23-15vj73o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395100/original/file-20210414-23-15vj73o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said New Yorkers over age 16 have ‘no more excuses’ for not getting the vaccine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/gov-andrew-cuomo-speaks-with-students-from-suffolk-county-news-photo/1312151383?adppopup=true">Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>The contours of obligation</h2>
<p>There is yet another challenge in justifying an obligation to get vaccinated, which has to do with the very nature of obligations.</p>
<p>Obligations are requirements on actions, and, as such, those actions often seem demandable by members of the moral community. If a person is obligated to donate to charity, then other members of the community have the moral standing to demand a percentage of their income. That money is owed to others. </p>
<p>The relevant question here, then, is: Are there moral grounds to demand another person get vaccinated?</p>
<p>Philosopher <a href="https://gufaculty360.georgetown.edu/s/contact/00336000014Ri94AAC/margaret-little">Margaret Little</a> has argued that very intimate actions, such as <a href="http://www.doi.org/10.1023/A:1009955129773">sex and gestation</a> – the continuation of a pregnancy – are not demandable. In my own work, I’ve suggested that this is also true for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.12099">deciding how to form a family</a> – for example, adopting a child versus procreating. The intimacy of the actions, I argue, make it the case that no one is entitled to them. Someone can ask you for sex, and there are good reasons to adopt rather than procreate; but no one in the community has the moral standing to demand that you do either. These sorts of examples suggest that particularly intimate actions are not the appropriate targets of obligation.</p>
<p>Is getting vaccinated intimate? While it may not appear so at first blush, it involves having a substance injected into your body, which is a form of bodily intimacy. It requires allowing another to puncture the barrier between your body and the world. In fact, most medical procedures are the sort of thing that it seems inappropriate to demand of someone, as individuals have unilateral moral authority over what happens to their bodies.</p>
<p>The argument presented here objects to intimate duties because they seem too invasive. However, even if members of the moral community don’t have the standing to demand that others vaccinate, they are not required to stay silent; they may ask, request or entreat, based on very good reasons. And of course, no one is required to interact with those who decline. </p>
<h2>The upshot</h2>
<p>I am certainly not trying to convince anyone that it’s OK not to get vaccinated. Indeed, the arguments throughout indicate, I think, that there is overwhelming reason to get vaccinated. But reasons – even when overwhelming – don’t constitute a duty, and they don’t make an action demandable.</p>
<p>Acting as though the moral case is straightforward can be alienating to those who disagree. And minimizing the moral stakes when we ask others to have a substance injected into their body can be disrespectful. A much better way, I think, is to engage others rather than demand from them, even if the force of reason ends up clearly on one side. </p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Travis N. Rieder does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A moral philosopher explains why the ethics of getting or refusing the COVID-19 vaccine are more complex than it might seem.Travis N. Rieder, Director of the Master of Bioethics degree program at the Berman Institute of Bioethics, Johns Hopkins UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1446612020-09-11T12:19:59Z2020-09-11T12:19:59ZPhilosophy and psychology agree - yelling at people who aren’t wearing masks won’t work<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357277/original/file-20200909-14-1rx5dym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=372%2C40%2C6297%2C4325&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Masks Up, Surf City, banner campaign in Huntington Beach, Calif.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/pedestrians-dont-heed-the-masks-up-surf-city-banner-news-photo/1228408046?adppopup=true">Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is strong <a href="https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/06/417906/still-confused-about-masks-heres-science-behind-how-face-masks-prevent">scientific evidence</a> that wearing a mask reduces the risk of transmitting the coronavirus. Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization recommend wearing them. </p>
<p>Indeed, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/23/most-americans-say-they-regularly-wore-a-mask-in-stores-in-the-past-month-fewer-see-others-doing-it/">many people believe</a> it is important to take precautions to reduce the risks we pose to others and wear masks. They conclude that wearing a mask <a href="https://time.com/5815299/coronavirus-face-mask-ethics/">is the right thing to do</a>. </p>
<p>As a <a href="http://harvey.cc.binghamton.edu/%7Enhassoun">professor of philosophy</a> working on <a href="https://theconversation.com/ending-the-pandemic-will-take-global-access-to-covid-19-treatment-and-vaccines-which-means-putting-ethics-before-profits-141763">global health ethics</a>, I believe the conflict between mask wearers and non-wearers raises some important ethical questions: </p>
<p>Is it acceptable to comment on others’ apparent irresponsibility when they choose not to wear a mask or try to shame them into wearing one? Is this approach effective?</p>
<h2>Moral outrage</h2>
<p>There is psychological <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2349">evidence</a> to show that people express <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ulterior-motives/200901/moral-righteousness-in-trying-times">moral righteousness</a> – act from an outraged sense of justice – when they are uncertain and afraid.</p>
<p>When people are anxious, they often try to regain composure by clinging strongly to their moral norms. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2349">Some studies</a> also show that such moral outrage may be “self-serving” – a way to bolster one’s own moral status. </p>
<p>But there is also reason to believe that <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-motivates-moral-outrage-75035">moral outrage</a>, whatever its psychological source, can be an important lever for bringing about positive change – such outrage was, for instance, essential for ending slavery. </p>
<p>The righteous outrage of abolitionists who tried to end slavery in the mid-1800s was justified even if they would not have been so outraged in different circumstances – say, where the country had not been on the brink of civil war. </p>
<p>Martin Luther King’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/20/691298594/the-power-of-martin-luther-king-jr-s-anger">struggle for civil rights</a> was motivated as much by anger at injustice as by love. For King, anger was part of a process that included forgiveness and led to constructive action.</p>
<h2>Refusal to wear masks</h2>
<p>To decide whether outrage is an appropriate response to even the most selfishly motivated refusal to wear a mask, consider the consequences of such outrage.</p>
<p>Those who follow 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill believe people should act so as to maximize the positive and minimize the negative <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/">consequences</a> of their actions, for the benefit of the greatest number of people.</p>
<p>But even those who reject Mill’s views and follow another philosopher, Immanuel Kant, believe that consequences matter. On <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/">Kant’s</a> view we need to understand how to help people adhere to the moral law because he thought that what matters most is one’s goodwill or motive.</p>
<p>But in these times, masks have become <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/06/25/face-masks-america-divided/">politicized</a> in the U.S. Therefore, some might well argue that the gains made through the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/cloth-face-cover-guidance.html">number of lives saved</a> may not outweigh the consequences of further <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/01/masks-politics-coronavirus-227765">polarizing our political system</a>.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there might be those who argue that this polarization is well worth the risk. Recent studies have found that masks <a href="https://www.ucdavis.edu/coronavirus/news/your-mask-cuts-own-risk-65-percent/">cut down the risk of infection to the wearer by as much as 65%</a>. </p>
<h2>Listening carefully</h2>
<p>But this need not be a choice between further polarization and risk reduction. </p>
<p>Epidemiologist <a href="https://www.populationmedicine.org/jmarcus">Julia Marcus</a> argues that shaming people who do not wear masks <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/dudes-who-wont-wear-masks/613375/">will not work to anyone’s advantage</a>. People can better convince others to wear masks if they share the fear, loss and uncertainty that <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-the-time-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-what-should-you-say-to-someone-who-refuses-to-wear-a-mask-a-philosopher-weighs-in-142898">motivates their concern</a> rather than use their outrage to shame others.</p>
<p>As Kant argued, everyone should treat other people with respect. This applies no matter what side of the political fence people occupy. <a href="https://www.pdcnet.org/resphilosophica/content/resphilosophica_2013_0090_0003_0413_0438">We all share needs</a> for safety, economic security and health. Evidence suggests that shame can undermine, rather than promote, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3083636/">moral motivation</a>. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if people share their feelings and candidly explain their <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/think-act-be/202005/why-are-masks-triggering-conflict-and-rage">fears</a> and aspirations to others, they might better motivate positive change.</p>
<h2>Show empathy</h2>
<p>Trying to understand why people might be resistant to wearing a mask might be a good place to start. For example, some people may be worried that a mask may <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/07/01/886299211/why-some-people-dont-wear-masks">not allow for a free flow of oxygen into their lungs</a>, even though such concerns may not be valid. Some people also find it hard to breathe with a mask on if they are running or exercising in another way. All these concerns can be acknowledged and discussed. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Similarly, everyone should remember that some people have good reasons not to wear a mask. People <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/helping-people-with-autism-spectrum-disorder-manage-masks-and-covid-19-tests-2020061020089">may have underlying health conditions</a> like autism or anxiety disorders that make wearing a mask difficult.</p>
<p>Even when someone refuses to wear a mask only to make a <a href="https://scroll.in/article/961017/an-ethnographer-tries-to-understand-the-anti-lockdown-protests-erupting-across-the-us">political statement</a>, it is important to hear why it matters so much to them. As Kant argues, it is important to understand different perspectives.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357296/original/file-20200909-16-18e1mxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357296/original/file-20200909-16-18e1mxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357296/original/file-20200909-16-18e1mxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357296/original/file-20200909-16-18e1mxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357296/original/file-20200909-16-18e1mxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357296/original/file-20200909-16-18e1mxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357296/original/file-20200909-16-18e1mxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357296/original/file-20200909-16-18e1mxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Are anti-maskers afraid that their businesses wouldn’t be allowed to open any time soon due to the fear of the spread of COVID-19?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/dolores-garrity-a-hair-salon-owner-demands-that-gov-larry-news-photo/1210378865?adppopup=true">Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is possible that people who have lost jobs might see masks as a threat that would further <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/think-act-be/202005/why-are-masks-triggering-conflict-and-rage">delay the reopening of the economy</a>.</p>
<p>Everyone should also remember that in our daily lives, <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractualism/">each of us undertakes activities that pose at least a little risk to others</a>. Day-to-day activities such as <a href="https://time.com/5810782/grocery-store-safety-coronavirus/">grocery shopping</a> or even <a href="https://www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronavirus/can-you-get-coronavirus-from-talking-to-someone">having conversations with friends or neigbors</a> carry a small risk of virus transmission.</p>
<p>Focusing on facts – rules that states, cities or private employers put in place to protect people – <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Mask-the-rage-How-to-talk-to-people-who-don-t-15273357.php">rather than blaming</a> others might be a more effective way to convince them.</p>
<p>People on <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/8/7/21357400/anti-mask-protest-rallies-donald-trump-covid-19">both</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/us/Epidemiologists-coronavirus-protests-quarantine.html">sides</a> of the mask debate have found reasons to turn this into a most contentious issue. Perhaps listening carefully and with empathy might help everyone understand that we all really are in this together.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144661/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Hassoun does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many of us believe that outrage is an appropriate response to what appears to be a selfishly motivated refusal to wear a mask, but is it?Nicole Hassoun, Professor of Philosophy, Binghamton University, State University of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1435162020-08-06T18:58:07Z2020-08-06T18:58:07ZBrain scientists haven’t been able to find major differences between women’s and men’s brains, despite over a century of searching<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350524/original/file-20200730-27-xlocql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=212%2C206%2C3804%2C3347&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Are there innate differences between female and male brains?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/human-brain-illustration-royalty-free-image/1190796464">SebastianKaulitzki/Science Photo Library via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Leer <a href="https://theconversation.com/el-cerebro-de-los-hombres-y-las-mujeres-realmente-es-diferente-144257">en español</a></em></p>
<p>People have searched for sex differences in human brains since at least the 19th century, when scientist <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.347573">Samuel George Morton poured seeds and lead shot into human skulls</a> to measure their volumes. <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/558415/gender-and-our-brains-by-gina-rippon/">Gustave Le Bon found men’s brains</a> are usually larger than women’s, which prompted <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076948">Alexander Bains</a> and <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_31/July_1887/Mental_Differences_of_Men_and_Women">George Romanes to argue</a> this size difference makes men smarter. But <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27083/27083-h/27083-h.htm">John Stuart Mill pointed out</a>, by this criterion, elephants and whales should be smarter than people.</p>
<p>So focus shifted to the relative sizes of brain regions. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037%2Fh0076948">Phrenologists suggested</a> the part of the cerebrum above the eyes, called the frontal lobe, is most important for intelligence and is proportionally larger in men, while the parietal lobe, just behind the frontal lobe, is proportionally larger in women. Later, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037%2Fh0076948">neuroanatomists argued</a> instead the parietal lobe is more important for intelligence and men’s are actually larger.</p>
<p>In the 20th and 21st centuries, researchers looked for distinctively female or male characteristics in smaller brain subdivisions. As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=OaEmJXAAAAAJ">behavioral neurobiologist</a> and <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674736900">author</a>, I think this search is misguided because human brains are so varied.</p>
<h2>Anatomical brain differences</h2>
<p>The largest and most consistent brain sex difference has been found in the hypothalamus, a small structure that regulates reproductive physiology and behavior. At least one hypothalamic subdivision is larger in male <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/0006-8993(78)90723-0">rodents</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0750-19.2019">humans</a>. </p>
<p>But the goal for many researchers was to identify brain causes of supposed sex differences in thinking – not just reproductive physiology – and so attention turned to the large human cerebrum, which is responsible for intelligence. </p>
<p>Within the cerebrum, no region has received more attention in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/s0149-7634(96)00049-8">both race and sex difference research</a> than the corpus callosum, a thick band of nerve fibers that carries signals between the two cerebral hemispheres. </p>
<p>In the 20th and 21st centuries, some researchers found the <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3733478/">whole corpus callosum is proportionally</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03332028">larger in women</a> on average while others found <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.7089533">only certain parts</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/112.3.799">are bigger</a>. This difference drew <a href="http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,974689,00.html">popular</a> <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/anne-fausto-sterling/sexing-the-body/9781541672895/">attention</a> and was suggested to <a href="http://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1316909110">cause cognitive sex differences</a>.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/7.1.48">smaller brains have a proportionally larger corpus callosum</a> regardless of the owner’s sex, and studies of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/s0149-7634(96)00049-8">this structure’s size differences have been inconsistent</a>. The story is similar for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0750-19.2019">other cerebral measures</a>, which is why trying to explain supposed cognitive sex differences through brain anatomy has not been very fruitful.</p>
<h2>Female and male traits typically overlap</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351128/original/file-20200804-18-1bml5sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Chart showing that male traits in blue and female traits in pink overlap quite a bit." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351128/original/file-20200804-18-1bml5sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351128/original/file-20200804-18-1bml5sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351128/original/file-20200804-18-1bml5sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351128/original/file-20200804-18-1bml5sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351128/original/file-20200804-18-1bml5sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351128/original/file-20200804-18-1bml5sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351128/original/file-20200804-18-1bml5sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A chart showing how measurements that often differ between sexes, like height, substantially overlap.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ari Berkowitz</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even when a brain region shows a sex difference on average, there is typically considerable overlap between the male and female distributions. If a trait’s measurement is in the overlapping region, one cannot predict the person’s sex with confidence. For example, think about height. I am 5’7". Does that tell you my sex? And brain regions typically show much smaller average sex differences than height does.</p>
<p>Neuroscientist <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1509654112">Daphna Joel and her colleagues examined MRIs of over 1,400 brains</a>, measuring the 10 human brain regions with the largest average sex differences. They assessed whether each measurement in each person was toward the female end of the spectrum, toward the male end or intermediate. They found that only 3% to 6% of people were consistently “female” or “male” for all structures. Everyone else was a mosaic.</p>
<h2>Prenatal hormones</h2>
<p>When brain sex differences do occur, what causes them?</p>
<p>A <a href="https://doi.org/10.1210/endo-65-3-369">1959 study</a> first demonstrated that an injection of testosterone into a pregnant rodent causes her female offspring to display male sexual behaviors as adults. The authors inferred that prenatal testosterone (normally secreted by the fetal testes) <a href="https://doi.org/10.1210/endo-65-3-369">permanently “organizes” the brain</a>. Many <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-019-01376-8">later studies showed this to be essentially correct</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1073858419867298">though oversimplified</a> for nonhumans.</p>
<p>Researchers cannot ethically alter human prenatal hormone levels, so they rely on “accidental experiments” in which <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/governing-behavior/202006/our-biology-is-not-binary">prenatal hormone levels or responses to them were unusual</a>, such as with <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/fixing-sex">intersex people</a>. But hormonal and environmental effects are entangled in these studies, and findings of brain sex differences have been inconsistent, <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674063518">leaving scientists without clear conclusions for humans</a>.</p>
<h2>Genes cause some brain sex differences</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349758/original/file-20200727-37-4wgrfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A zebra finch showing male plumage on one side and female plumage on the other side." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349758/original/file-20200727-37-4wgrfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349758/original/file-20200727-37-4wgrfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349758/original/file-20200727-37-4wgrfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349758/original/file-20200727-37-4wgrfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349758/original/file-20200727-37-4wgrfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349758/original/file-20200727-37-4wgrfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349758/original/file-20200727-37-4wgrfm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A half male, half female zebra finch, 2003.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pnas.org/content/100/8/4873.figures-only">Copyright 2003 National Academy of Sciences</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While prenatal hormones probably cause most brain sex differences in nonhumans, there are some cases where the cause is directly genetic.</p>
<p>This was dramatically shown by a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0636925100">zebra finch with a strange anomaly</a> – it was male on its right side and female on its left. A singing-related brain structure was enlarged (as in typical males) only on the right, though the two sides experienced the same hormonal environment. Thus, its brain asymmetry was not caused by hormones, but by genes directly. Since then, direct effects of genes on brain sex differences have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.22-20-09005.2002">also been found in mice</a>.</p>
<h2>Learning changes the brain</h2>
<p>Many people assume human brain sex differences are innate, but this assumption is misguided.</p>
<p>Humans learn quickly in childhood and continue learning – alas, more slowly – as adults. From remembering facts or conversations to improving musical or athletic skills, learning alters connections between nerve cells called synapses. These changes are numerous and frequent but typically microscopic – less than one hundredth of the width of a human hair.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350636/original/file-20200731-16-15z1z5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Man studying massive maps of London" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350636/original/file-20200731-16-15z1z5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350636/original/file-20200731-16-15z1z5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350636/original/file-20200731-16-15z1z5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350636/original/file-20200731-16-15z1z5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350636/original/file-20200731-16-15z1z5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350636/original/file-20200731-16-15z1z5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350636/original/file-20200731-16-15z1z5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Some London taxi drivers do not use GPS – they know the city by heart, a learning process that takes three to four years on average.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/student-ponders-while-drawing-routes-on-a-map-of-london-in-news-photo/166336979">Carl Court/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Studies of an unusual profession, however, show learning can change adult brains dramatically. London taxi drivers are required to memorize “<a href="https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/taxis-and-private-hire/licensing/learn-the-knowledge-of-london">the Knowledge</a>” – the complex routes, roads and landmarks of their city. Researchers discovered this learning <a href="http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2011.11.018">physically altered a driver’s hippocampus</a>, a brain region critical for navigation. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.070039597">London taxi drivers’ posterior hippocampi</a> were found to be larger than nondrivers by millimeters – more than 1,000 times the size of synapses. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>So it’s not realistic to assume any human brain sex differences are innate. They may also result from learning. People live in a fundamentally gendered culture, in which parenting, education, expectations and opportunities differ based on sex, from birth through adulthood, which inevitably changes the brain.</p>
<p>Ultimately, any sex differences in brain structures are most likely due to a complex and interacting combination of genes, hormones and learning.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143516/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ari Berkowitz receives funding from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>Attempts to find brain structures responsible for supposed cognitive sex differences have not succeeded.Ari Berkowitz, Presidential Professor of Biology; Director, Cellular & Behavioral Neurobiology Graduate Program, University of OklahomaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1392412020-05-28T12:13:18Z2020-05-28T12:13:18ZEveryday ethics: Should I allow my kids to visit Mom despite her high risk status?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338031/original/file-20200527-20223-15olnd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5391%2C3597&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Visiting parents during the pandemic poses new risks.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Virus-Outbreak-Contact-Tracing/f48f48d1dbab498cb3b87561300c747d/6/0">AP Photo/Rick Bowmer</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>A lot of people are facing ethical decisions about their daily life as a result of the coronavirus. Ethicist <a href="http://www.leemcintyrebooks.com/">Lee McIntyre</a> has stepped in to help provide advice over the moral dilemmas we face. If you have a question you’d like a philosopher to answer, send it to us at <a href="mailto:us-ethicalquestions@theconversation.com">us-ethicalquestions@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
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<p>I read your last article advising against <a href="https://theconversation.com/everyday-ethics-should-i-visit-my-mother-138779">visiting a mother against her wishes</a> and it left me wondering, what if Mom wants to be visited? My wife is very high-risk – she suffers from COPD, has congestive heart failure and is on oxygen 24/7. But she has told our children to visit because she would rather die than not be able to see them. Even social distancing has broken down, and our son was horrified when his mom wanted a hug. He is afraid of giving her COVID-19, as she would likely not survive another hospitalization on a ventilator (she’s had two over the past two years). Should she be forcing herself on her children? - Alan Bolick </p>
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<p>I am so sorry to hear about your wife’s ill health and agree that it would be best for her not to be exposed to any risk of contracting COVID-19. But it sounds like she’s got other priorities. Literally, she is willing to risk her life in order to see her children. So should they respect her choice and simply bow to her autonomy? </p>
<p>The tricky thing here is that it’s not just your wife’s autonomy that is at stake. It’s clear that your children are terrified of giving their mom COVID-19. If your son is “horrified” at the prospect of a hug, the guilt he might feel upon giving your wife a life-threatening illness could be devastating. </p>
<p>Put aside for a moment the idea that your wife could expose her children to coronavirus – that’s unlikely and not really what this is about. But she is exposing them to the possibility of a lifetime of remorse if they happen to be the one who gives her the illness that kills her. Is she okay with that? </p>
<p>Respect for individual autonomy is a foundational idea in ethics. Even John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant – two philosophers who stood on either side of the debate over whether morality should be judged by measuring consequences – agreed on the importance of <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/aut-norm/">autonomy as a core component</a> of human well-being. Even if your wife feels it is “worth it” for her to take a risk, your children clearly don’t feel the same way. As such, she may not be respecting their autonomy while thinking of her own. </p>
<p>One solution might be for your kids to go on <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/06/coronavirus-how-to-self-quarantine/">complete quarantine</a> for a set period of time – the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/if-you-are-sick/quarantine-isolation.html">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends 14 days</a> from the last potential of exposure – with absolutely no contact with any other human being, and then spend as much time with your wife as circumstances allow. This would severely reduce the risk of infection, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/01/824903684/the-science-behind-a-14-day-quarantine-after-possible-covid-19-exposure">according to public health experts</a>, and would apparently mean more to your wife than life itself. Knowing this, might your kids be willing to make this sacrifice? </p>
<p>Knowing how much it would mean to their mom, maybe so.</p>
<p>[<em>You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-help">Read The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139241/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lee McIntyre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A mother with underlying conditions wants to hug her children even if means risking her own life with COVID-19. Should they abide by her wishes or keep their distance?Lee McIntyre, Research Fellow, Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1360352020-04-15T12:12:07Z2020-04-15T12:12:07ZA philosopher answers everyday moral dilemmas in a time of coronavirus<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327743/original/file-20200414-117567-kwroh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=38%2C9%2C2033%2C1373&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Who should get the groceries?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/pandemic-times-shopping-a-young-woman-wearing-a-royalty-free-image/1214324353?adppopup=true">Alex Potemkin/iStock / Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327254/original/file-20200410-174608-3elamt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Like a lot of people, we here at The Conversation are facing ethical decisions about our daily life as a result of the coronavirus. Here ethicist <a href="http://www.leemcintyrebooks.com/">Lee McIntyre</a> answers some of our editors’ queries. If you have a question you’d like a philosopher to answer, send it to us at <a href="mailto:us-ethicalquestions@theconversation.com">us-ethicalquestions@theconversation.com</a></em></p>
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<p><strong>I’m 65 years old. My son, who is 32, has offered to pick up the groceries. But he has asthma. I’m in a quandary as to who should go?</strong></p>
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<p>One of the leading ethical theories is “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/">utilitarianism</a>,” which says that moral decisions and actions should be made on the basis of their consequences. </p>
<p>Although this idea stretches back to antiquity, it was 19th-century philosophers <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bentham/">Jeremy Bentham</a> and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/">John Stuart Mill</a> who articulated the most developed form of this theory, arguing that ethical judgments were a matter of assessing “the greatest good for the greatest number.” </p>
<p>In balancing risk, you are anticipating likely consequences, which is a very utilitarian thing to do. But, as an ethicist, I would urge you to be careful. </p>
<p>Please consider whether you have all of the relevant information. It has now been shown that although at a much lower risk, <a href="https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-and-covid-19-younger-adults-are-at-risk-too">younger people too can become dangerously sick</a> with COVID-19. And with <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/asthma.html">asthma as an underlying condition</a>, that raises the stakes for your son. </p>
<p>You must also take into account your own risk profile: age, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/underlying-conditions.html">underlying health</a> and other factors.</p>
<p>But, according to the utilitarian, you’ve still got to deal with another issue. Your son may be younger than you, but that means he’s also got many more life years to enjoy. According to <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/">utilitarian theory</a>, if something were to happen to him, it would be a greater tragedy than if it happened to you, because he has more overall “utility” at stake. </p>
<p>Perhaps you could hire Instacart and have someone else’s son or daughter, presumably without asthma, deliver your groceries? But here is where it gets tricky. According to the <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/">utilitarian</a>, you cannot prefer your own or your son’s happiness over that of a stranger. </p>
<p>It’s all about the “greatest good” for all concerned. If you think the ethical thing is to maximize happiness, then it shouldn’t matter whose happiness we are talking about.</p>
<p>Utilitarianism offers a method for thinking through this problem, but not an answer. You’ll have to think through each outcome – taking everyone’s happiness, health, age and risk into consideration. </p>
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<p><strong>I have a renter in my house who isn’t obeying social distancing rules and goes out all the time. What should I do?</strong></p>
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<p>As the renter lives in the same house you do, his or her behavior is endangering your health, which warrants some action. </p>
<p><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/egoism/">Ethical egoism</a> – which says that the ethical thing is that which brings about the greatest happiness for oneself – is a relevant ethical theory in this situation. You might think that your renter is an egoist, because he or she is presumably only concerned with his or her own welfare.</p>
<p>But that might open the door for you to claim that you are an egoist too. If you believe that it’s ethical for someone to care only about himself or herself, then perhaps you are justified in evicting the renter. But first you might want to check why he or she is going out. Perhaps it’s to take care of someone else.</p>
<p>So, first I’d have a talk with the renter and point out that – in a communal environment, especially in times of a public health crisis – everyone’s actions affect everyone else. </p>
<p>If that doesn’t work, you might guiltlessly embrace egoism as your own moral philosophy and say to the renter “if you don’t stop endangering my health, there will be consequences … for you.” </p>
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<p><strong>I don’t have a car and I have flu-like symptoms. Should I take a cab or Uber to go to the hospital?</strong></p>
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<p>Absolutely not, unless you plan to tell the driver in advance what you are doing. Eighteenth-century philosopher <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/">Immanuel Kant</a> said that the guiding principle behind ethical behavior was to follow the “<a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/kantview/">categorical imperative</a>.” This says that everyone should act as if their behavior could form the basis for a universal law of human conduct. </p>
<p>So just ask yourself: What would happen if everyone who likely had COVID-19 just thought of themselves and took a cab or Uber? The disease would likely spread, which would be disastrous for many people beyond just you. The utilitarian too would agree. </p>
<p>A better course of action might be to call the hospital and ask for their help in arranging how to get there. If that fails, you could always call an ambulance. You might balk at the expense, but the alternative is to pass that expense, in the form of a life threatening illness, on to others – without their consent. And according to Kant, that is not an ethical thing to do. </p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklysmart">You can get our highlights each weekend</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136035/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lee McIntyre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In these times of fear and uncertainty, many of us face daily decisions regarding the right thing to do. An ethicist offers guidance on how to think through them.Lee McIntyre, Research Fellow, Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1227002019-10-07T12:01:39Z2019-10-07T12:01:39ZWhat’s so wrong about lying in a job interview<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295642/original/file-20191004-118260-766wj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A few things to know before you head out for a job interview.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/doubtful-unconvinced-african-american-hr-manager-1368244226?src=PBTlYOlK7W0Gxac4JRQ0mw-1-6"> fizkes/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Getting a new job is tough.</p>
<p>I know this not just because of my own research as a professor studying <a href="https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/annals.2016.0121">the intersection of business and ethics</a>, but also because of the countless candidates I interviewed for major firms in my previous career. It’s this experience I bring to mind as I consider a question I’ve seen and heard asked recently: When is it ethical to lie in a job interview?</p>
<p>Philosophers and ethicists have identified many schools of thought around what makes a certain action ethically “good” instead of “evil.”</p>
<p>Here are three, from my perspective, that can guide us as to what is right or not about lying in job interviews.</p>
<h2>1. What if everyone lied?</h2>
<p>Let’s start with an approach called <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological">deontology</a>. Deontologists believe what makes something good or evil is the structure of the act itself. </p>
<p>The philosopher Immanuel Kant <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=XT1ZAwAAQBAJ">summed this up</a> in his “principle of universalizability,” which summarizes ethics down to a simple question: “If everybody did the same thing, would the action defeat its purpose?”</p>
<p>For instance, if everybody stole, then the concept of property would be meaningless. Therefore, stealing is immoral. If everyone disrespected one another, then nobody would have any respect, so disrespecting others is immoral. </p>
<p>And coming back to job interviews, if everyone lied, then nobody could be trusted, and hiring decisions would become even more arbitrary and random. In essence, deontology explains that lying is always wrong because if everyone lied, human communications would break down entirely. </p>
<h2>2. Is greater good an argument?</h2>
<p>But what if someone had a good reason to lie in a job interview? Perhaps the person was out of a job and had children to support. In that case, he or she might consider that lying during an interview was outweighed by the greater good of providing for one’s family. </p>
<p>This approach uses a more <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism">consequentialist</a> point of view, in which it’s not the nature of the act that makes it moral or immoral, but the consequences of it. </p>
<p>Philosophers like <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/milljs/">John Stuart Mill</a> and <a href="https://www.utilitarianism.com/bentham.htm">Jeremy Bentham</a>, for example, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=V3qqW2Ni6hUC">argued</a> that <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=qeVFNvlsVH0C">if an act produces</a> a meaningful good for a meaningful number of people, while limiting harm to others, then the act must be a moral one. </p>
<p>Consequentialism suggests that even a seemingly evil act can be morally right if it leads to good outcomes for the most people. In this philosophical approach, one might justify stealing from the rich to give to the poor, or even killing someone who was a threat to others. </p>
<p>So how does this relate to a job interview?</p>
<p>There’s no way to perfectly judge this, but the answer, I argue, will generally be no. The benefits of personally gaining a job and income must be weighed against the harm caused to the individual who would have received the job had the lie not been told. That is, if you obtain a job by lying, you’re denying it to the more qualified person who would have otherwise earned the job.</p>
<p>Individuals have to also factor in the harm they are doing to their new coworkers, their managers and the owners of the company, who may be counting on them to have skills or experience they don’t have. </p>
<h2>3. Will it really benefit you?</h2>
<p>Finally, individuals have to examine the degree to which the job will realistically benefit them in the long term. To address that, let’s look at a third moral standard: that of the <a href="https://www.upscsuccess.com/sites/default/files/documents/Ethical_Theory_An_Anthology_%40nadal.pdf#page=211">ethical egotist</a>. The ethical egotist has a rather different approach to morality, believing that the right thing to do is whatever helps him or her get ahead. </p>
<p>Abstract rules of morality are less important to the egotist than doing what’s best for themselves. It is from this perspective that lying in a job interview <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joes.12204">most often occurs</a>, </p>
<p>Therefore, the only question on the ethical egoist’s mind would be how much benefit they could receive from lying in a job interview. Research indicates that even from this perspective, it’s not a good idea to lie.</p>
<p>When people lie in a job they are most often inflating their match with the job’s requirements and claiming skills they don’t really have. A review of research in 2005 identified nearly 200 studies concluding that <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2005.00672.x">people were less happy</a> when there were in a job that did not fit them. They also performed poorly.</p>
<p>In short, lying in a job interview increases the chance that people might end up right back on the job market. And in today’s digital world, <a href="https://www.topechelon.com/blog/placement-process/candidate-lying-in-job-interview/">there is also a high risk</a> of being found out. </p>
<p>Yet, some people do lie in job interviews and <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-you-have-to-lie-in-a_b_8180016">there</a> <a href="https://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/things-you-should-always-lie-about-in-a-job-interview.html/">are</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/lies-you-can-tell-in-a-job-interview-2015-6">many</a> <a href="https://www.bustle.com/articles/113132-7-times-its-ok-to-lie-in-a-job-interview">articles</a> that push people into believing that on some things, it can be the right thing to do. </p>
<p>But according to the research, there’s no moral perspective – not even looking out for your own good – that supports the idea of lying in job interviews.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This piece is part of our series on ethical questions arising from everyday life. We would welcome your suggestions. Please email us at <a href="mailto:ethical.questions@theconversation.com">ethical.questions@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122700/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>G. James Lemoine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What makes an action ‘good’ or ‘evil’? And are there situations under which lying for a job interview might be justified?G. James Lemoine, Assistant Professor Organization and Human Resources Department, University at BuffaloLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1170852019-05-16T21:01:05Z2019-05-16T21:01:05ZAre we witnessing the death of liberal democracy?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274456/original/file-20190514-60560-hzguyf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3500%2C2331&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to the White House on May 13, 2019. Strongmen like Orbán are increasingly gaining ground as the death knell sounds for liberal democracy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>All over the world, alarm bells are ringing for democracy. Everywhere we find strongmen in charge, enraged citizens and a desperate search for explanations and remedies. <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-philippines-midterm-elections-duterte-20190514-story.html">Rodrigo Duterte</a>’s Philippines. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/13/trump-latest-viktor-orban-hungary-prime-minister-white-house">Viktor Orbán</a>’s Hungary. <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-to-repel-netanyahu-s-attack-on-democracy-the-israeli-left-must-find-its-inner-rage-1.7241480">Benjamin Netanyahu</a>’s Israel. Maybe something’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/05/13/american-conservatives-are-new-fellow-travelers/?utm_term=.c5b2453d86e2">even going wrong in the United States.</a></p>
<p>In 1992, <a href="https://en.hromadske.ua/posts/francis-fukuyama-on-identity-dignity-and-threats-to-liberal-democracy">political theorist Francis Fukuyama</a> declared there was finally a solution to the riddle: “Who should rule, and why?” The answer: liberal democracy.</p>
<p>A generation later, Fukuyama’s declaration is not wearing well.</p>
<p>As it turns out, the structural flaw that would hobble liberal democracy had actually been identified 30 years earlier, <a href="https://doi.org/10.7202/1032806ar">in a study called <em>Possessive Individualism</em></a> by University of Toronto political scientist Crawford Brough Macpherson.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274457/original/file-20190514-60545-142mb2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274457/original/file-20190514-60545-142mb2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274457/original/file-20190514-60545-142mb2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274457/original/file-20190514-60545-142mb2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274457/original/file-20190514-60545-142mb2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274457/original/file-20190514-60545-142mb2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274457/original/file-20190514-60545-142mb2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274457/original/file-20190514-60545-142mb2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An undated photo of Macpherson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Creative Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He pointed out that liberal democracy was a contradiction in terms. From the 16th century to the 20th, classical liberals of the British tradition had argued for the rights of the “individual.” In theory and practice, though, they only counted a person as an individual (almost always male) who had command over himself and his possessions, including human ones.</p>
<p>For all his inspiring words about government created by and responsive to “the people,” supposedly liberal philosopher John Locke, <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/does-lockes-entanglement-with-slavery-undermine-his-philosophy">investor in the slave trade,</a> had a narrow view of who got to be considered a rights-bearing individual.</p>
<p>The key was property. Society was little more than an agreement among the privileged to respect each other’s property rights.</p>
<h2>Hardly pro-democracy</h2>
<p>These liberals were not democrats, but after the rise of industrial capitalism, they had to respond to growing populations of working people with their own, often democratic, ideas. Generations of liberals, <a href="https://mises.org/library/john-stuart-mill-and-new-liberalism">with John Stuart Mill at the helm</a>, struggled to reconcile their assumptions about free-standing individuals who owned property with the democratic demands of the exploited and excluded.</p>
<p>Until the 1960s, a softer, gentler liberalism seemed to gain ground. The privileges of propertied individuals were preserved, but at a price: welfare programs, unions, public education, housing and health and, worst of all, taxes.</p>
<p>Still, liberals ultimately had to choose between democracy and capitalism. They might find themselves defending both the rights of workers to unionize and of factory owners to fire them, for example. Which should prevail? Macpherson feared the fall-back answer for liberals, whatever their democratic posturing, would often be the owners.</p>
<p>Macpherson’s critics painted him as “yesterday’s thinker.” Didn’t he realize, they asked, that liberals had found a sweet spot — harmonizing the public and the private, the people and the propertied, the many and the few?</p>
<h2>Macpherson’s prescience</h2>
<p>Today, more than three decades after his death, Macpherson’s diagnosis — that the acquisitive drive of unfettered capitalism poses a stark challenge to liberty and democracy — seems very prescient.</p>
<p>Liberal democracy has fallen into a world crisis.</p>
<p>Liberal democrats were working to make democracy safe for property, but to their right were hard-nosed businessmen, economists and politicians working on an extreme makeover of liberal democracy that came to be called “neo-liberalism.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-exactly-is-neoliberalism-84755">What exactly is neoliberalism?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Outraged by infringements on capital, determined to roll back socialism and seeing the market as near-infallible, this determined cadre of conservative intellectuals created a movement of reactionary resistance.</p>
<p>Regulations impeding the free flow of capital were demolished. Once-powerful labour movements were eviscerated.</p>
<p>Liberated from effective regulation, financial institutions developed global chains of indebtedness and speculation which, even after the crisis of 2007, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/aug/06/decade-after-financial-meltdown-underlying-problems-not-fixed">have attained pervasive influence</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-americas-labor-unions-are-about-to-die-69575">Why America's labor unions are about to die</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>After three decades of pious liberal hand-wringing, the world is set <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-un/global-temperatures-on-track-for-3-5-degree-rise-by-2100-u-n-idUSKCN1NY186">to warm by three to five degrees</a> Celsius by 2100, a catastrophe <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/18/ending-climate-change-end-capitalism">attributable to unregulated capitalism.</a></p>
<h2>Liberal toolbox of no use</h2>
<p>The propertied patterns underlying these civilization-threatening developments cannot be grasped, let alone resisted, using a liberal toolbox.</p>
<p>In the possessive individualism of classical liberalism, we find the seeds of today’s democracy crisis. A devotion to property over people is democracy in chains and a planet in peril.</p>
<p>Countless people experience the precariousness wrought by this extreme makeover of the world’s liberal order. A neoliberal world, by design, offers minimal security —in employment, social stability, even in reliable networks of knowledge helping us reach reasoned understandings about the world in the company of our fellow citizens.</p>
<p>People longing for security confront, instead, an unintelligible, turbulent world seemingly bent on destroying any prospect of it. Insecurity breeds acute and often angry anxiety. <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.2105%2FAJPH.2017.304187">It prompts a search for sanctuary</a> in anti-depressants, opioids and alcohol. A deliberately starved state sector leaves only a few short steps between you and social and economic ruin.</p>
<p>Even the reasoned consideration of factual evidence recedes in a neoliberal world where every institution — newspapers, universities, the state itself — is rethinking itself in neoliberal terms. This very precariousness is represented, not as culturally and psychologically damaging, but as freedom itself.</p>
<p>In this climate, a pervasive culture of militarism offers beleaguered individuals at least the solace of an imagined national community. Our daily work may be regimented, pointless and insecure, but at least we can imagine, beyond it, a world of collective noble endeavour and selfless courage in defence of the nation.</p>
<p>In this militarized culture, many people are plainly looking for strongmen who can stand up for the nation. And around the world, including our corner of it, they’re finding them.</p>
<h2>Responding to nationalism</h2>
<p>The sovereign political paradox of our time is that a global army of people — precarious, harried, anxious, angry, disenfranchised and above all divested of all social rights to reasonably secure and prosperous livelihoods — <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/political-science/2018/nov/20/why-is-populism-suddenly-so-sexy-the-reasons-are-many">is responding avidly to nationalist movements</a> that, on closer inspection, are likely offer them more extreme versions of the hardships they are already enduring.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274458/original/file-20190514-60537-1ojl7wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274458/original/file-20190514-60537-1ojl7wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274458/original/file-20190514-60537-1ojl7wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274458/original/file-20190514-60537-1ojl7wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274458/original/file-20190514-60537-1ojl7wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274458/original/file-20190514-60537-1ojl7wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274458/original/file-20190514-60537-1ojl7wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nationalism is gaining in popularity. In this April 2016 photo, a man walks during a protest in Stone Mountain, Ga.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/John Bazemore)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Macpherson challenge — to liberate democracy from its neoliberal chains by rethinking property relations right down to their foundations — is daunting, but not unprecedented.</p>
<p>There will be conflict, pain and sacrifice in the long revolution to retrieve democracy and the liberties once sincerely defended by liberals. There will also be excitement and energy. The 21st century is already echoing with cries of dynamic, often youthful participants in such struggles, as they challenge the extreme makeover that has so convulsed contemporary life and placed liberal democracy in question.</p>
<p>They know the hour is late. The stakes could not be higher.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117085/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian McKay does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Liberal democracy is in trouble, and the seeds of its demise can be found in the property rights so cherished by so-called liberals generations ago.Ian McKay, Director of the Wilson Institute for Canadian History, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1024672018-10-15T10:27:59Z2018-10-15T10:27:59ZAmericans spend $70 billion on pets, and that money could do more good<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240288/original/file-20181011-154549-1hqfyqr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pet spending in the U.S. is estimated to have exceeded US$72 billion.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnjoh/176127182/in/photolist-gyGty-6pF5L7-4WBk4p-62u1qU-f5fKMs-ofduMU-x4ge-72wAMx-7yLUkf-6rz2yW-4RyKa8-V4gL2N-6cC8BX-deWgGK-7ipmou-5nwoNv-8x8qL-dtuBwN-oEChbN-bGaaiB-dGuYUs-8ySLR-6xzUx-92B3Gi-ET5jiy-dHV2PG-ahkYxm-x1YT-U2egZw-kHNNb-7fiVKr-6WhWs3-6oBLdN-4eJV4q-fie5x-2jv7h7-TTA6aR-tniX5-x4sB-cTecpb-g4Tr5c-21qGSk-7qgT8f-9q2Fmz-854w2A-cp4JuU-5mFfMV-5L829B-5fkpjF-yeCQ">star5112</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sylar, the border collie, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/after-making-his-owner-rich-this-border-collie-gets-to-live-in-a-500000-pet-mansion-in-beijing/2018/07/22/53ac442a-7faf-11e8-a63f-7b5d2aba7ac5_story.html?utm_term=.3f39b28d0f26">has his own mansion</a> along with a trampoline and indoor pool. The dog’s adorable features, along with his notable intelligence, earned his owner’s devotion along with many social media fans. </p>
<p>Sylar’s mansion, where other pets can visit and indulge in expensive spa-like treatments such as massages, drew the media’s attention to the increased spending in China on pet-related services. The Chinese are forecast to spend about <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mariannacerini/2016/03/23/chinas-economy-is-slowing-but-their-pet-economy-is-booming/#1f8b563e4ef7">US$2.6 billion on their pets by 2019</a> – a 50 percent increase from 2016. </p>
<p>This, however, pales in comparison with what Americans spend on their pets annually. This year alone, pet spending in the U.S. is <a href="https://www.americanpetproducts.org/press_industrytrends.asp">estimated to exceed $72 billion</a>, which is <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?year_high_desc=true">more than the combined GDP</a> of the 39 poorest countries in the world. </p>
<p><iframe id="FNFRY" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/FNFRY/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Of course, these expenditures are not distributed equally among all pets. Sylar, like other celebrities, lives in the lap of luxury, while many of his fellow creatures experience hunger, homelessness, abuse and other deprivations.</p>
<p>How are we to think about the ethics of spending so much money on pets when it could be used to alleviate the suffering in the world? </p>
<h2>The utilitarian tradition</h2>
<p>Ethicists have long grappled with questions of right and wrong. One of the most notable ethical traditions – <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/">utilitarianism</a> – has had a lot to say about how other sentient beings, besides humans, should be treated along with how resources ought to be distributed among them. </p>
<p>According to utilitarianism, an action is right if it produces the best overall consequences, out of all possible actions, for all those who are affected. In other words, in its simplest form, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Principles_of_Morals_and_Legislation.html?id=gBCY_wur98EC">the goal is to maximize happiness</a> and to minimize suffering. </p>
<p>Some philosophers, such as <a href="https://philosophy.fas.harvard.edu/people/thomas-m-scanlon">Thomas Scanlon</a>, argue that ethics is about what humans <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674004238&content=reviews">“owe to each other.”</a> But utilitarianism broadens the scope of the moral community to include the interests of all sentient beings, including those of nonhuman animals. As Jeremy Bentham, one of the earliest proponents of utilitarianism, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Principles_of_Morals_and_Legislation.html?id=gBCY_wur98EC">wrote in 1789</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The question is not, ‘Can they reason?’ nor, ‘Can they talk?’ but ‘Can they suffer?’” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The classical utilitarians not only advocated for the interests of nonhuman animals, but also for the interests of all humans, including prisoners and women. Both Bentham and 19th-century philosopher <a href="https://www.utilitarianism.com/jsmill.htm">John Stuart Mill</a> <a href="http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/mill1869.pdf">made such</a> <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bentham-project/who-was-jeremy-bentham">arguments</a> centuries before it was fashionable to do so. </p>
<p>This was captured in <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/etudes-benthamiennes/182">Bentham’s motto</a>, “Everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one.” </p>
<h2>How to create the most good</h2>
<p>Bentham’s philosophy later gave rise to Peter Singer’s principle of <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780061711305/animal-liberation/">equal consideration of interests</a>, which states when determining right and wrong, all those whose interests are affected should be included in the ethical decision-making process, and those interests ought to be weighed equally. </p>
<p>In fact, Singer’s equal consideration of interests can be used not only to make a case against racism and sexism, <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780061711305/animal-liberation/">but also against “speciesism”</a> – the idea that the interests of humans count for more than the interests of other species.</p>
<p>It is tempting to think that people arguing for the principle of equal consideration of the interests of animals would be in favor of pet mansions and costumes. But would they? </p>
<p>The answer to this question can be found in Singer’s view called “effective altruism,” which is based on the premise that many affluent people spend a lot of money on nonnecessities such as pet costumes or the latest technological gadget. According to one estimate, about <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/27/halloween-isnt-just-for-humans-anymore-as-millions-are-getting-their-pets-in-on-the-action.html">$440 million of pet spending in the U.S. was on Halloween pet costumes</a> alone. If that money was instead donated to a good cause, then more good or utility could be produced.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240290/original/file-20181011-154545-u1xq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240290/original/file-20181011-154545-u1xq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240290/original/file-20181011-154545-u1xq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240290/original/file-20181011-154545-u1xq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240290/original/file-20181011-154545-u1xq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240290/original/file-20181011-154545-u1xq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240290/original/file-20181011-154545-u1xq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Effective altruism maintains that people should reflect on how allocation of their resources such as their money and time impact other sentient beings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/worldbank/5094194869/in/photolist-8La5E2-zZZyp-4yYBqg-8dCqEk-hkciNK-iYzAZV-hkcig2-azKft9-6KXii7-7yYB4j-CeN6Ei-8YEoMM-5LVxkc-azGA5D-oNYjuA-hgtTjh-5BwaSn-gMFaWv-oQzmtt-7yMKv-3eALhT-8bLBzF-6D3ea2-V2nn3L-UQr2W3-pvrX2z-TNopRy-djL6y7-62xTdz-oQziQ2-jZcoX8-pMWkdx-oQrLj-djMuuW-UZH2KB-pN1QHU-jZew87-62xynr-8rRB9e-eeenv2-jZbSAP-874T8g-cKsCHw-dAEYE4-28ZX5Zx-dr7AoX-9VDxY4-cVzWF1-V41GsW-jPY8in">World Bank Photo Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When thinking about creating the <a href="https://www.effectivealtruism.org/">most good possible</a>, effective altruism maintains that people should reflect on how the allocation of their resources such as their money and time impacts other sentient beings. </p>
<p>Some suggestions endorsed by this approach are to donate to <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/peter_singer_the_why_and_how_of_effective_altruism#t-574424">efficient charities</a> that aim to improve global health initiatives such as stopping the spread of diseases like malaria. In fact, some specialists have developed methodologies and <a href="https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities">lists of recommended charities</a> to help people figure out <a href="https://80000hours.org/articles/problem-framework/">what cause to support.</a> </p>
<h2>Do pets need mansions or Halloween costumes?</h2>
<p>Those persuaded by the moral argument behind the effective altruism movement may want to allocate their resources differently. </p>
<p>If a fraction of worldwide pet spending, say 25 percent, was allocated elsewhere – for instance, to mitigating the suffering of millions of farm animals or to preventing malaria by providing mosquito nets – more good could certainly be done. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240297/original/file-20181011-154549-1a508az.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240297/original/file-20181011-154549-1a508az.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240297/original/file-20181011-154549-1a508az.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240297/original/file-20181011-154549-1a508az.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240297/original/file-20181011-154549-1a508az.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240297/original/file-20181011-154549-1a508az.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240297/original/file-20181011-154549-1a508az.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">According to one estimate, Americans spend millions of dollars on Halloween costumes for their pets each year.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrew_d_miller/2989558652/in/photolist-5ybgCG-6b39C-pnMiLP-do7Rym-FZ4CsP-ZE4jFP-do7QNW-aEPYn9-5D11Ai-3AnfJ1-oVumAJ-pxe1WH-dmkAaX-dENzyP-7bUVZL-aAuq6B-CPUed7-rCZsc-78QpE3-5wDTkZ-7QmaPT-5u2fhh-7bWho4-d9ZkRm-8PneFC-3ak6aY-94XrCT-aEL8R2-dpCMnw-3AmxnG-dmTdon-3JLGmo-8RiLEY-riQ7p-7cFBph-3AoXyL-3JLqMd-gUUUe9-pPdTYv-h3ffMb-azcofM-3JA5N6-3JNvoW-7cBF7r-asgvVu-951trQ-3JGDbH-dmkyNk-59oxyk-pYxGMh">Andrew Miller</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As an ethicist, pet owner and vegetarian, I don’t deny that the interests of animals matter, and while Sylar is indeed one privileged pup, his lifestyle comes with costs to others and to the planet itself.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This piece is part of our series on ethical questions arising from everyday life. We would welcome your suggestions. Please email us at <a href="mailto:ethical.questions@theconversation.com">ethical.questions@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102467/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sandra Woien does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>American spending on pets is more than the combined GDP of the 39 poorest countries in the world. What if even a small percentage of this spending was allocated to reducing suffering, asks a philosopher.Sandra Woien, Lecturer of Philosophy, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1013012018-08-31T10:44:27Z2018-08-31T10:44:27ZWant to live longer? Consider the ethics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233952/original/file-20180828-86126-1rw930s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Telomeres, a part of DNA that hold the key to biological aging.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/telomere-growth-longer-length-dna-medical-611922089?src=cStGUiKO4G39KUYpIPiWvA-1-0">Lightspring/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Life extension – using science to slow or halt human aging so that people live far longer than they do naturally – <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/aging-is-reversible-at-least-in-human-cells-and-live-mice/">may one day be possible</a>. </p>
<p>Big business is taking this possibility seriously. In 2013 Google founded a company called <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603087/googles-long-strange-life-span-trip/">Calico to develop life extension methods</a>, and Silicon Valley billionaires Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel have invested in <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/29/-jeff-bezos-is-backing-this-scientist-who-is-working-on-a-cure-for-aging.html">Unity Biotechnology</a>, which has a market cap of US$700 million. Unity Biotechnology focuses mainly on preventing age-related diseases, but its research could lead to methods for <a href="https://www.nasdaq.com/article/can-unity-biotechnology-find-a-cure-for-age-cm956706">slowing or preventing aging</a> itself.</p>
<p>From my perspective <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/new-methuselahs">as a philosopher</a>, this poses two ethical questions. First, is extended life good? Second, could extending life harm others?</p>
<h2>Is living forever a good thing?</h2>
<p>Not everyone is convinced that extending life would be good. In a 2013 survey by the <a href="http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2013/08/Radical-life-extension-full.pdf">Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life project</a>, some respondents worried that it might become boring, or that they would miss out on the benefits of growing old, such as gaining wisdom and learning to accept death.</p>
<p>Philosophers such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/jun/13/guardianobituaries.obituaries">Bernard Williams</a> have shared this concern. In 1973 Williams <a href="http://resourcelists.st-andrews.ac.uk/items/75AD40A1-A3D3-0F78-163C-E8851C80C650.html">argued that</a> immortality would become intolerably boring if one never changed. He also argued that, if people changed enough to avoid intolerable boredom, they would eventually change so much that they’d be entirely different people.</p>
<p>On the other hand, not everyone is persuaded that extended life would be a bad life. I’m not. But that’s not the point. No one is proposing to force anyone to use life extension, and – out of respect for liberty – no one should be prevented from using it.</p>
<p>Nineteenth-century philosopher <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/">John Stuart Mill</a> <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm">argued that society must respect individual liberty</a> when it comes to deciding what’s good for us. In other words, it’s wrong to interfere with someone’s life choices even when he or she makes bad choices. </p>
<p>However, Mill also held that our liberty right is limited by the <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/#HarPri">“harm principle.”</a> The harm principle says that the right to individual liberty is limited by a duty not to harm others.</p>
<p>There are many possible harms: Dictators might live far too long, society might become too conservative and risk-averse and pensions might have to be limited, to name a few. One that stands out to me is the injustice of unequal access.</p>
<p>What does unequal access looks like when it comes to life extension?</p>
<h2>Available only to the rich?</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233954/original/file-20180828-86135-x5x1tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233954/original/file-20180828-86135-x5x1tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233954/original/file-20180828-86135-x5x1tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233954/original/file-20180828-86135-x5x1tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233954/original/file-20180828-86135-x5x1tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233954/original/file-20180828-86135-x5x1tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233954/original/file-20180828-86135-x5x1tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Will life extension increase inequality?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/wealthy-couple-classic-convertible-308973545?src=tR9N13P-uGaqJT9ChsU3pg-1-7">Nejron Photo/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many people, such as philosopher <a href="https://www.manchester.ac.uk/research/john.harris/">John Harris</a> and those in the Pew Center survey, worry that life extension would be <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/288/5463/59">available only to the rich</a> and make existing inequalities even worse. </p>
<p>Indeed, it is unjust when some people live longer than the poor because they have better health care. It would be far more unjust if the rich could live several decades or centuries longer than anyone else and gain more time to consolidate their advantages.</p>
<p>Some philosophers suggest that society should prevent inequality by <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8519.00287">banning life extension</a>. This is equality by denial – if not everyone can get it, then no one gets it.</p>
<p>However, as philosopher <a href="http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/rarneson/">Richard J. Arneson</a> notes, “leveling-down” – <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/A+Companion+to+Contemporary+Political+Philosophy%2C+2+Volume+Set%2C+2nd+Edition-p-9781405136532">achieving equality by making some people worse off</a> without making anyone better off – is unjust.</p>
<p>Indeed, as I argue in <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/new-methuselahs">my recent book on life extension ethics</a>, most of us reject leveling-down in other situations. For example, there are not enough human organs for transplant, but no one thinks the answer is to ban organ transplants.</p>
<p>Moreover, banning or slowing down the development of life extension may simply delay a time when the technology gets cheap enough for everyone to have it. TV sets were once a toy for the wealthy; now even poor families have them. In time, this could happen with life extension.</p>
<p>Justice requires that society subsidize access to life extension to the extent it can afford to do so. However, justice does not require banning life extension just because it’s not possible to give it to everyone.</p>
<h2>Overpopulation crisis?</h2>
<p>Another possible harm is that the world will become overcrowded. Many people, including philosophers <a href="https://www.utilitarian.net/singer/">Peter Singer</a> and <a href="https://phil.ucalgary.ca/profiles/walter-glannon">Walter Glannon</a>, are concerned that extending human life would <a href="https://doi.org/10.1076/jmep.27.3.339.2978">cause severe overpopulation</a>, pollution and resource shortages.</p>
<p>One way to prevent this harm, as <a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/walter-glannon/genes-and-future-people/9780813345512/">some philosophers have proposed</a>, is to limit the number of children after life extension. </p>
<p>This would be politically very difficult and very hard on those who want longer lives, but trying to ban life extension would be equally difficult, and denying people longer lives would be just as hard on them – if not more so. Limiting reproduction, as hard as that may be, is a better way to follow the harm principle.</p>
<h2>Will death be worse?</h2>
<p>Another possible harm is that widespread life extension might make death worse for some people.</p>
<p>All else being equal, it is better to die at 90 than nine. At 90 you’re not missing out on many years, but at nine you lose most of your potential life. As philosopher <a href="http://jeffersonmcmahan.com/">Jeff McMahan</a> argues, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-ethics-of-killing-9780195169829?cc=us&lang=en&">death is worse the more years it takes from you</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233955/original/file-20180828-86129-13ys4tx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233955/original/file-20180828-86129-13ys4tx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233955/original/file-20180828-86129-13ys4tx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233955/original/file-20180828-86129-13ys4tx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233955/original/file-20180828-86129-13ys4tx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233955/original/file-20180828-86129-13ys4tx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233955/original/file-20180828-86129-13ys4tx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What will be the right measure of age?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/smiling-aged-businesswoman-glasses-looking-colleague-1027563301?src=keTJkbAWjq5GI06k0170hw-1-17">fizkes/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Now imagine that people living in a far wealthier neighborhood don’t have to die at 90 or so. They can afford life extension, and will live to 190. You can’t afford it, and you are dying at 80. Is your death not so bad, for you’re losing only a few years, or is your death now far worse, because – if only you had life extension – you might live to 190? Are you losing 10 years, or are you losing 110 years? </p>
<p>In a world where some people get life extension and some don’t, what’s the right measure for how many years death takes from you?</p>
<p>Perhaps the right measure is how many years life extension would give you, multiplied by the odds of getting it. For example, if you have a 20 percent chance of getting 100 years, then your death is worse by however many years you’d get in a normal lifespan, plus 20 years. </p>
<p>If so, then the fact that some people can get life extension makes your death somewhat worse. This is a more subtle kind of harm than living in an overpopulated world, but it’s a harm all the same.</p>
<p>However, not just any harm is enough to outweigh liberty. After all, expensive new medical treatments can extend a normal lifespan, but even if that makes death slightly worse for those who can’t afford those treatments, no one thinks such treatments should be banned.</p>
<p>I believe that life extension is a good thing, but it does pose threats to society that must be taken seriously.</p>
<p>
<section class="inline-content">
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248895/original/file-20181204-133100-t34yqm.png?w=128&h=128">
<div>
<header>John K. Davis is the author of:</header>
<p><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/new-methuselahs">New Methuselahs
The Ethics of Life Extension</a></p>
<footer>MIT Press provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.</footer>
</div>
</section>
</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101301/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John K. Davis is a Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Fullerton. His research on life extension ethics was partially supported by a grant from The Templeton Foundation through the Immortality Project.
MIT Press provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.</span></em></p>Several companies are trying to develop life extension methods that could enable some people to live far longer. There are some ethical dilemmas.John K. Davis, Professor of Philosophy, California State University, Fullerton Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/997792018-07-23T14:35:49Z2018-07-23T14:35:49ZThere is little moral basis for cannabis consumption remaining a crime<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228566/original/file-20180720-142423-odxlkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Recent high-profile <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/18/drug-laws-epilepsy-cannabis-oil-billy-caldwell-sajid-javid">media coverage</a> has prompted public recognition that cannabis in particular forms <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/medical-cannabis-legalise-uk-prescribe-epilepsy-dame-sally-davies-doctors-a8429231.html">can have beneficial medical effects</a> for some conditions such as epilepsy.</p>
<p>There are two main chemicals found in the plant that are used in medical cannabis – Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which is the psychoactive element that produces the high, and Cannabidiol (CBD) which has no psychoactive effects. Medical cannabis has a higher CBD content so there is no THC-induced euphoria, which is what recreational users of cannabis are after.</p>
<p>Cannabis use for whatever reason is illegal in the UK, although recently licences have been issued for treatment of people with severe forms of epilepsy; medical cannabis can <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/19/war-on-drugs-medical-cannabis-children-alfie-dingley">reduce the frequency and severity</a> of seizures. There is also a plethora of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/23/criminalise-cannabis-pain-bill-reform">anecodotal evidence</a> that cannabis has successfully eased the symptoms of other conditions such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s and cancer. </p>
<p>This raises a philosophical question that is crucially important when looking at public policy in areas such as drugs: when is it justifiable for the state to prohibit and punish particular sorts of behaviour?</p>
<p>It is wrong if someone is punished for a crime they did not commit. It is also wrong if someone is punished for an action that shouldn’t be a crime in the first place, whether or not they are guilty of that crime. It would surely be wrong, then, to try to conduct a fair trial for an alleged crime unless it is fair and just that the alleged action is actually a crime.</p>
<p>For instance, it would be hard to justify giving someone a fair trial for, say, committing adultery or consuming a particular drug unless it is fair and just that it is a crime to commit adultery or take that drug.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SXwWzaQ9Aiw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Liberty</h2>
<p>In his famous essay On Liberty, philosopher <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/mill_john_stuart.shtml">John Stuart Mill</a> offers a <a href="https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/mill/liberty.pdf">moral justification</a> for legally prohibiting and punishing particular actions.</p>
<p>He rejects the idea that public opinion can settle the matter. What he calls “the tyranny of the majority” is for him a subtle kind of oppression. He asks: what are “… the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual?” According to Mill: “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” He specifies that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We may challenge people in such circumstances, according to Mill, and try to persuade them of the error of their ways. But as long as they are rational adults acting voluntarily, we should allow them to make their own mistakes. Only actions that harm other people should be crimes, according to Mill. That said, not all harmful actions should, in his view, be crimes.</p>
<p>Mill is aware that any of our actions might indirectly affect and possibly harm other people:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>With regard to the … constructive injury which a person causes to society, by conduct which neither violates any specific duty to the public… or to any individual except himself, the inconvenience is one society can afford to bear for the sake of the greater good of human freedom.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One way of expressing the point is to say that there is a difference between harming people and harming them wrongfully. Not all harm that we suffer is an infringement of our moral rights.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228577/original/file-20180720-142420-kpxlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228577/original/file-20180720-142420-kpxlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=885&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228577/original/file-20180720-142420-kpxlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=885&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228577/original/file-20180720-142420-kpxlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=885&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228577/original/file-20180720-142420-kpxlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1112&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228577/original/file-20180720-142420-kpxlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228577/original/file-20180720-142420-kpxlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1112&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that only actions that harm others should be considered crimes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/john-stuart-mill-18061873-252141700">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For instance, it would be beside the point to claim that because such drug takers are likely to become ill and indirectly affect other people adversely through, say, their need for medical treatment by the NHS, it should be a criminal offence to consume cannabis.</p>
<p>As citizens, we do not have a moral duty to act in such ways that the policies devised by politicians remain affordable and feasible. Rather, politicians should devise policies that are affordable and feasible, given how people actually behave. </p>
<p>To punch someone on the nose is not only harmful it is wrongful. People have a moral duty not to punch us on the nose and we have a corresponding moral right not to be punched. However, we do not have a moral right to demand that others refrain from doing anything that might require medical treatment or any other sort of publicly financed services.</p>
<h2>A sense of proportion</h2>
<p>Much of our current legislation is not in accordance with Mill’s principle. We punish people for taking drugs that are harmful to them. The more harmful the drugs, the more severe our punishments. The punishments, particularly if they involve prison, are likely to be just as harmful (or even more harmful) as the drugs themselves. The cost of the imprisonment is likely to be more of a burden to society than the cost of prisoners’ crimes. This all does seem very curious.</p>
<p>But objections might be made to Mill’s position. The prohibition regarding cannabis might possibly be morally justifiable on quite different grounds from those rejected by Mill. There might be a moral justification other than that suggested by Mill for making particular actions crimes. </p>
<p>For instance, what constitutes “harm” is debatable. Some might think that he does not convincingly suggest how we should distinguish between that which is wrongfully harmful and deserving of legal punishment, and that which is merely harmful. It might, for example, turn out that the activities of prominent and energetic Brexiteers or Remainers turn out to be far more harmful than those of, say, pickpockets and burglars. But it does not follow that such campaigners should be prosecuted as criminals. </p>
<p>Some actions such as, say, the defilement of corpses or voyeurism, where the people who are being watched remain unaware, might reasonably be crimes whether or not they cause harm. Perhaps not all crimes have victims.</p>
<p>Still, whether or not his argument is totally satisfactory, Mill’s “harm principle” offers a good starting point for a consideration of the crucially important but neglected question of the moral basis of the criminal law. And particularly when it comes to the issue of cannabis consumption.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99779/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hugh McLachlan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Society persists in criminalising the use of cannabis but it is morally indefensible.Hugh McLachlan, Professor Emeritus of Applied Philosophy, Glasgow Caledonian UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/976312018-06-24T16:32:25Z2018-06-24T16:32:25ZThe strange origins of the free speech warriors<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223900/original/file-20180619-126543-negd48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The recent crop of so-called free speech warriors. From left to right: Gad Saad, Ben Shapiro, Lindsay Shepherd and Jordan Peterson.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">From left to right: (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz/AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli/Lindsay Shepherd, still from YouTube video/THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many free speech warriors today base their position on a proclamation articulated by Oliver Wendell Holmes, the early 20th century United States Supreme Court justice. </p>
<p>In his dissenting opinion in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/279/644/case.html">United States vs. Schwimmer (1929)</a>, Holmes wrote that “if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate.” </p>
<p>A similar idea was expressed decades earlier by author Evelyn Beatrice Hall who, interpreting enlightenment philosopher Voltaire’s attitude to disagreeable ideas, <a href="https://ia802604.us.archive.org/20/items/friendsofvoltair00hallrich/friendsofvoltair00hallrich.pdf">wrote</a>: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”</p>
<p>The modern origins of these views can be further traced back to John Stuart Mill and, specifically, his essay <a href="https://www.utilitarianism.com/ol/one.html">On Liberty</a>. With great conviction, Mill explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If the arguments of the present chapter are of any validity, there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered… If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Seemingly in the same tradition, today’s free speech warrior argues that all speech, no matter how offensive or immoral, should be protected from any kind of regulation or persecution. Individuals who make the most hateful statements must be allowed to speak or we endanger the right and capacity of everyone else to properly express their ideas, whether they are controversial or not.</p>
<h2>Logic of free speech warriors</h2>
<p>Canada’s best-known free speech warriors are Concordia professor <a href="http://leaderpost.com/news/local-news/gad-saad-believes-in-free-speech-at-almost-all-costs">Gad Saad</a>, University of Toronto professor and self-help guru <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxs7C-30TLQ">Jordan Peterson</a> and his acolyte, Wilfrid Laurier teaching assistant <a href="https://www.macleans.ca/lindsay-shepherd-wilfrid-laurier/">Lindsay Shepherd</a>.</p>
<p>Along with their U.S. counterparts, such as podcasters <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/outspoken-conservative-ben-shapiro-free-speech-place-college/story?id=50610394">Ben Shapiro</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjkhBVvw7RI">Dave Rubin</a>, they explain their advocacy as a way to counter the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj5JXrpwsZs">well-publicized</a> and growing crisis of political correctness censorship, particularly on North American <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NxQYxd29iU">university campuses</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223901/original/file-20180619-126531-1t4ymbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223901/original/file-20180619-126531-1t4ymbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223901/original/file-20180619-126531-1t4ymbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223901/original/file-20180619-126531-1t4ymbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223901/original/file-20180619-126531-1t4ymbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223901/original/file-20180619-126531-1t4ymbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223901/original/file-20180619-126531-1t4ymbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters demonstrate against the appearance of Ben Shapiro on the campus of the University of California Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., in September 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Josh Edelson)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Notably, while some of the above are cagey about their political leanings, almost all of their efforts are directed toward protecting what might often be considered conservative viewpoints and ideas. </p>
<p>Whether speaking out against <a href="https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/bill/C-16/first-reading">Bill C-16</a>, which adds gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act, feminism, the “breakdown” of the traditional family and unwavering support for the state of Israel, this group can be fairly placed on the right of the political spectrum.</p>
<h2>Free speech has progressive origins</h2>
<p>This is quite strange because the intellectual and cultural origins of the free speech warriors would normally be described as quite liberal and progressive — as in the case of the Oliver Wendell Holmes’ opinion.</p>
<p>The defendant in that case, Rosika Schwimmer, was a prominent feminist and pacifist who was denied citizenship to the United States because she refused to take the oath of allegiance because it conflicted with her beliefs. </p>
<p>Voltaire was a leading philosopher and advocate of progress and cosmopolitanism. John Stuart Mill was a leading liberal philosopher — an opponent of slavery and an early male advocate of women’s rights. During his time as a Liberal MP in the British Parliament, he introduced the first women’s suffrage petition in 1866.</p>
<h2>Not really liberal</h2>
<p>The free speech warriors sometimes argue that they reside within the liberal tradition because, for them, what we call liberalism is actually a warped version of the original. Often labelling themselves as “classical liberals,” they describe a libertarian “limited government” revision of what it means to be a liberal.</p>
<p>In truth, thinkers such as Mill were far from being libertarians and, what’s more, would never have embraced the borderline absolutist position of today’s free speech warriors. </p>
<p>Based in what is called the “<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/825731.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A0742b599ec6715a4aaf120239f99c2c9">harm principle</a>,” Mill argued for a “big government” approach to situations in which the exercise of liberty might result in harm to others or even to the individual practising it. </p>
<p>In <em>On Liberty</em>, he argues that parents of poor moral fibre may have their children removed from the home, and calls for similar state intervention to stop the harms caused by gamblers, prostitutes and the drug addicts. Even more broadly, he decides that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The uncultivated cannot be competent judges of cultivation. Those who most need to be made wiser and better, usually desire it least, and if they desire it, would be incapable of finding the way to it by their own lights.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words, the ignorant and immoral must not have unhindered freedom as they lack the judgement to exercise it responsibly. </p>
<h2>Like all rights, free speech has limits</h2>
<p>This is similar to the ideas that back Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. <a href="http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/page-15.html">Section One</a> describes the protected rights and freedoms of citizens as subject to “such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” </p>
<p>This “limitations clause” permits such things as <a href="http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/page-73.html#docCont">hate propaganda legislation</a> that makes certain kinds of speech illegal.</p>
<p>One of the favourite whipping boys of the free speech warrior crowd, German-American philosopher <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/why-campuses-are-ditching-free-speech/article34356708/">Herbert Marcuse</a>, would likely cast their advocacy as “<a href="http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/1965MarcuseRepressiveToleranceEng1969edOcr.pdf">repressive tolerance</a>,” a “sort of tolerance that strengthens the tyranny of the majority against which authentic liberals protested.” </p>
<p>By this measure, their unflinching support for people to express sexist, racist, homophobic and anti-trans opinions is actually a guise to maintain or return to a more conservative society, where women are primarily mothers and wives, immigration is rolled back, same-sex marriage is prohibited and legislation like Bill C-16 is withdrawn.</p>
<p>Free speech warriors, then, do not really fit within the liberal tradition at all. They have instead co-opted the liberal origins of the freedom of speech while not being liberal themselves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97631/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Edward Tabachnick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Though the cultural origins of free speech are progressive, there is nothing actually liberal about the current crop of free speech warriors in the Canada and the United States.David Edward Tabachnick, Professor of Political Science, Nipissing UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/954482018-04-30T04:53:56Z2018-04-30T04:53:56ZJohn Stuart Mill’s marginalia tells us much about the great thinker’s mind<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216622/original/file-20180427-175077-su6fv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John Stuart Mill</span> </figcaption></figure><p>In <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3044429.pdf">The Man of the Year Million</a>, originally printed in the Pall Mall Gazette on November 6 1893, then-journalist H. G. Wells imagines the descendants of humanity as “enormous brains” with bodies “shrivelled to nothing, a dangling, degraded pendant to their minds”. Wells’ facetious vision of an explicitly cerebral future may be scientifically suspect, but it is accurate with respect to the reputation of pre-eminent 19th-century logician, liberal, and cultural and social critic John Stuart Mill.</p>
<p>Remembered principally by philosophers for his <a href="https://archive.org/details/anexaminationsi06millgoog">System of Logic and Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy</a>, by political scientists for his <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlP.html">Principles of Political Economy</a> and <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5669/5669-h/5669-h.htm">Considerations on Representative Government</a>, and by literary scholars for his <a href="https://www.utilitarianism.com/millauto/">Autobiography</a> and for <a href="https://www.utilitarianism.com/ol/one.html">On Liberty</a>, Mill’s carefully cultivated image of himself as a mind – exhaustively educated, disinterestedly logical, and meticulously organised – persists nearly 150 years after his death.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215885/original/file-20180423-75100-1psw6sm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215885/original/file-20180423-75100-1psw6sm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=674&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215885/original/file-20180423-75100-1psw6sm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=674&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215885/original/file-20180423-75100-1psw6sm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=674&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215885/original/file-20180423-75100-1psw6sm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215885/original/file-20180423-75100-1psw6sm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215885/original/file-20180423-75100-1psw6sm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Spines of books in JS Mill’s personal library, all transcribed in Mill Marginalia Online.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Somerville College Oxford</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And yet, Mill’s humanity ought to count for more than a degraded pendant to his place in intellectual history. An anxiously precocious child, he grew into a complicated, endearing – and sometimes amusing – adult. These less well-remembered features of his prodigious intelligence have recently begun to reemerge from the title pages, endpapers, flyleaves and textual margins of his personal library.</p>
<p>Donated to <a href="https://www.some.ox.ac.uk/">Oxford University’s Somerville College</a> in 1905, Mill’s book collection from his house in Blackheath has history – including Mill’s personal history – literally inscribed on thousands of its pages. Like many serious readers, Mill read with pen or pencil in hand, marking passages he found interesting, protesting against premises and conclusions he judged facile, and sometimes summarising his own thoughts in annotations on unprinted pages.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215886/original/file-20180423-75093-p99ht1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215886/original/file-20180423-75093-p99ht1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215886/original/file-20180423-75093-p99ht1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=187&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215886/original/file-20180423-75093-p99ht1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=187&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215886/original/file-20180423-75093-p99ht1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=187&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215886/original/file-20180423-75093-p99ht1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215886/original/file-20180423-75093-p99ht1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215886/original/file-20180423-75093-p99ht1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Somerville College Oxford.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mill Marginalia Online home page.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Collectively known as marginalia, these unfiltered records of Mill’s original reactions to his books are the subject of an international collaboration between Somerville College and the University of Alabama. The digital component of this effort, <a href="http://millmarginalia.org/">Mill Marginalia Online</a>, aspires to digitise all handwritten marginalia in Mill’s library and, in doing so, to reconstruct the sometimes messy process of reading, the initial gut-level reactions, of one of the leading minds of Victorian England.</p>
<h2>Great thinkers</h2>
<p>“This is all my eye” – Mill’s expression of scepticism never made it into his overwhelmingly <a href="http://thegreatthinkers.org/tocqueville/commentary/js-mill-m-de-tocqueville-on-democracy-in-america/">positive review</a> of Alexis de Tocqueville’s <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/816/816-h/816-h.htm">Democracy in America, Part II</a>. It is, nevertheless, clearly legible on page 170 of volume three as Mill’s first reaction to the French thinker’s somewhat imprecise distinction between what he called democratic and aristocratic centuries.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215887/original/file-20180423-75110-14v1bfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215887/original/file-20180423-75110-14v1bfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215887/original/file-20180423-75110-14v1bfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215887/original/file-20180423-75110-14v1bfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215887/original/file-20180423-75110-14v1bfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215887/original/file-20180423-75110-14v1bfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215887/original/file-20180423-75110-14v1bfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215887/original/file-20180423-75110-14v1bfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alexis de Tocqueville’s De la Democratie en Amerique, vol. 3, p. 170, inner margin, Mill’s personal copy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Somerville College Oxford</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mill had, in 1835, introduced England to the first two volumes of Tocqueville’s chef-d’oeuvre, and the men traded friendly and intellectually engaged letters on the subject of democracy over the next five years, as the Frenchman prepared the latter half of his treatise. In recognition of their growing mutual regard, Tocqueville even sent Mill an inscribed copy – it was on the basis of this French edition that Mill penned his second, 1840 review.</p>
<p>And it is in the margins of these same two volumes that Mill recorded comments that might well have tested their friendship. Thus, in response to the aristocratic Frenchman’s thesis, on page 323 of volume three, concerning what we might today call “vocational determinism”, in this case the degrading effects of a life spent “making heads for pins,” Mill wrote “all this mu[st] be taken wi[th] great reserve[ation]. It is not tr[ue] as here state[d]” (I have filled in any missing letters).</p>
<p>What was true, Mill thought, was Tocqueville’s observation, on page 128 of volume four, that Americans were thin-skinned and quick to take offence in response to criticism. Originally marked with a marginal double score (two vertical lines made in the outer margin of p. 128), this passage received fuller attention in Mill’s annotation on the volume’s back flyleaf:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This feeling has nothing to do with democracy – Wait, until the Americans by their great deeds, in arms, arts, science and literature, have taken a place among the great nations of the earth, and they will no longer be quarrelsome, and doubtful of their position – They will then be as proud haughty and self satisfied as the English – But not before – …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s hard to tell whether Tocqueville’s “insatiably vain” Americans or Mill’s “haughty and self-satisfied” British middle classes come off worse in this annotation. Either way, such caustic humour may surprise those accustomed to the measured reasonableness of Mill’s mature publications.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215888/original/file-20180423-119528-12xdcb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215888/original/file-20180423-119528-12xdcb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215888/original/file-20180423-119528-12xdcb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215888/original/file-20180423-119528-12xdcb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215888/original/file-20180423-119528-12xdcb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215888/original/file-20180423-119528-12xdcb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215888/original/file-20180423-119528-12xdcb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215888/original/file-20180423-119528-12xdcb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alexis de Tocqueville’s De la Democratie en Amerique, vol. 4, back flyleaf, JSM’s personal copy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Somerville College Oxford</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With roughly 10,000 examples of marginalia spread across well over 100 titles, Mill Marginalia Online offers numerous, previously unknown points of entry into Mill’s refreshingly versatile and perennial active mind. In addition to Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, significant works by <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/bacon_francis.shtml">Francis Bacon</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Carlyle">Thomas Carlyle</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Auguste-Comte">Auguste Comte</a>, <a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/ralph-waldo-emerson">Ralph Waldo Emerson</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Maine">Henry Maine</a>, <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/percy-bysshe-shelley">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/August-Wilhelm-von-Schlegel">August Schlegel</a> and many others bear revealing marks and annotations in Mill’s distinctive hand.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215895/original/file-20180423-133865-1014l3z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215895/original/file-20180423-133865-1014l3z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215895/original/file-20180423-133865-1014l3z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215895/original/file-20180423-133865-1014l3z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215895/original/file-20180423-133865-1014l3z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215895/original/file-20180423-133865-1014l3z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215895/original/file-20180423-133865-1014l3z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215895/original/file-20180423-133865-1014l3z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Arnoldus Vinnius’s Institutionum Imperialium, pp. 674-75, interleaved material, Mill’s personal copy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Somerville College Oxford</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Mental acrobatics</h2>
<p>Also hinted at in the Mill collection are aspects of his personality and personal life that may never be fully known. For instance, tucked between pages 674 and 675 of <a href="http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=3225997&partId=1&people=17918&peoA=17918-2-70&sortBy=producerSort&page=1">Arnoldus Vinnius</a>’s Institutionum Imperialium – a weighty and much-reprinted history of Justinian law – are two paper dolls, with a third waiting between pages 866 and 867.</p>
<p>Two of these bodies in motion have obviously been commercially produced and then either punched or cut from the pages on which they were printed. The bottom of the two acrobats is even more evidently homemade, although no less painstakingly shaped and coloured. I would guess that their presence in the Vinnius has less to do with the book’s subject matter than with its size and the solidity of its binding – it was an excellent choice for keeping one’s dolls flat and safe.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215897/original/file-20180423-133881-1vkbgcw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215897/original/file-20180423-133881-1vkbgcw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215897/original/file-20180423-133881-1vkbgcw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215897/original/file-20180423-133881-1vkbgcw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215897/original/file-20180423-133881-1vkbgcw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1315&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215897/original/file-20180423-133881-1vkbgcw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1315&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215897/original/file-20180423-133881-1vkbgcw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1315&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Arnoldus Vinnius’s Institutionum Imperialium, pp. 866-67, interleaved material, Mill’s personal copy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Somerville College Oxford</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the question is, whose dolls were they? Printed in 1665, the book is old enough to have been in the Mill family library when the young John Stuart was tutoring his sisters. Left in the library at Blackheath after his death, it might also have served as a toy depository for Harriet Taylor Mill’s daughter Helen (Mill’s stepdaughter) about whose childhood relationship with Mill we know very little. And need these three objects have had only one owner, or could they have been passed down and around, as playthings sometimes are?</p>
<p>The questions posed by these inclusions assume greater intellectual, as opposed to biographical significance, when we examine the handmade figure more closely. Inverted both back to front and top to bottom, we can see that this doll was crafted from a manuscript – one that bears Mill’s handwriting. The partial word written across the torso could be “government” and that underneath it may be “leaves”. It’s too little for an identification, but more than enough to wonder whether this manuscript was volunteered for doll duty or had been fortuitously scavenged.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215898/original/file-20180423-133872-lq5ayd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215898/original/file-20180423-133872-lq5ayd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215898/original/file-20180423-133872-lq5ayd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215898/original/file-20180423-133872-lq5ayd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215898/original/file-20180423-133872-lq5ayd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215898/original/file-20180423-133872-lq5ayd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215898/original/file-20180423-133872-lq5ayd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215898/original/file-20180423-133872-lq5ayd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Close-up on Arnoldus Vinnius’s Institutionum Imperialium, pp. 674-75, inverted interleaved material, JSM’s personal copy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Somerville College Oxford</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Future conclusions</h2>
<p>What is certain is that these dolls – and every other example of human/book interaction in the roughly 1,700-item personal library of Mill’s – will be catalogued, digitised and rendered fully searchable within Mill Marginalia Online. All of us who work on the project are acutely aware that we cannot know what the research questions of the future might be. </p>
<p>So, rather than limiting our data by type or frequency or what we – today – perceive as its significance, we are striving to record everything that we find, to remove ourselves as much as possible from the results – and to welcome the future by refusing to foreclose upon it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Albert Pionke does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The great thinker left thousands of comments in the margins of his personal library. Now these are being digitised and catalogued.Albert Pionke, Professor of English Literature, University of AlabamaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/899402018-01-11T14:55:05Z2018-01-11T14:55:05ZGood luck banning fake news – here’s why it’s unlikely to happen<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201634/original/file-20180111-60744-dbtkb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pants on fire. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/stop-corruption-concept-spreading-lies-symbol-528138850?src=G2jnaTaVzGcpQZm26So8EQ-1-13">Lightspring</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>French president Emmanuel Macron’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/03/emmanuel-macron-ban-fake-news-french-president">recent pledge</a> to make a new law to tackle perceived fake news has <a href="https://www.thenational.ae/world/europe/macron-faces-criticism-after-proposal-to-combat-fake-news-1.693883">touched nerves</a> in some corners with its potential impact on freedom of expression. </p>
<p>Fake news is nothing new – there have probably always been news reports that were deliberately inaccurate. But it was arguably rarer in the days before the internet because it tended to be prevented by media regulators, defamation law and newsroom editorial controls. </p>
<p>To some extent, that’s still true; in the UK, for example, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/rulings-and-resolution-statements/?page=1&perPage=20">has handled</a> 28,645 complaints regarding inaccuracy since being set up four years ago, ruling that its accuracy provision has been breached in 174 cases.</p>
<p>Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites have been largely free from this regulation, however, due to concerns about individual freedom of expression. Web-only publishers have managed to avoid most traditional media regulation, too. Since social media in particular has grown rapidly, fake news has become less controllable and more sensational. </p>
<p>This has been particularly noticeable in politics, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/french-voters-deluge-fake-news-stories-facebook-twitter-russian-influence-days-before-election-a7696506.html">such as</a> in the recent French and American presidential elections, even if the impact of fake news <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/%7Egentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf">is difficult</a> to ascertain. When you talk about clamping down on fake news, you are basically therefore talking about regulating online press and social media – the question is how far regulation should extend, and how. </p>
<h2>The current set-up</h2>
<p>Traditional media regulation is rather complex and fragmented. In the UK, the press sector is mainly voluntarily self-governed by IPSO, which uses the <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/editors-code-of-practice/">Editors’ Code of Practice</a> to adjudicate on complaints by victims.</p>
<p>As far as fake news is concerned, Article 1 of the Code requires that the press must not publish “inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text”. The remedies are limited, however; offenders are <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/editors-code-of-practice/">normally asked</a> to make corrections or publish apologies. The decisions are also not legally enforceable, though in practice publishers almost always observe them. </p>
<p>In UK broadcasting, the regulator is <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk">Ofcom</a>. Here, fake news is <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code">covered by</a> section five of the Broadcasting Code. This requires broadcasters to report the news with “due accuracy and due impartiality”, breach of which will result in legal actions against them, financial penalties, or, in the most serious cases, a suspension or revocation of their broadcasting licence. </p>
<p>Social media has been exempt from these regulations. Web publishers are in theory regulated by IPSO, but in practice the regulator has few web-only members. All online statements are still subject to defamation law, however – as well as <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/1/contents">criminal law</a> if the inaccurate information contains racial or religious hatred or other offensive elements. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201636/original/file-20180111-101489-p7gjsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201636/original/file-20180111-101489-p7gjsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201636/original/file-20180111-101489-p7gjsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201636/original/file-20180111-101489-p7gjsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201636/original/file-20180111-101489-p7gjsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201636/original/file-20180111-101489-p7gjsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201636/original/file-20180111-101489-p7gjsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201636/original/file-20180111-101489-p7gjsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tweet tweet.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/alushta-russia-november-21-2014-man-232484764?src=nGs1XrJFD-D2kp-D0Pl9qg-1-35">Denys Prykhodov</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In addition, there is regulation at EU level in the form of the <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/revision-audiovisual-media-services-directive-avmsd">Audio-Visual Media Services Directive 2007</a>. It has harmonised member states’ laws in this area, establishing a regime that distinguishes between scheduled “audio-visual services” like the BBC, “on-demand services” like Netflix, and “user-generated social media” like Twitter. </p>
<p>In particular, audio-visual services – also known as “linear services” – are obliged to take editorial responsibility, while social media is excluded from this obligation. The press, whether newspapers or online publications, and private blogs are not even covered by the directive, except for their audio-visual elements. </p>
<p>In view of the increasing influence of online content, the European Commission <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/revision-audiovisual-media-services-directive-avmsd">recently amended</a> the directive. This slightly enhances the obligations for online media by encouraging self-regulation or co-regulation of online platforms. As far as accuracy is concerned, the amended directive requires online platforms to behave responsibly, but this is a rather principled provision without too much specific content. </p>
<p>In short, as far as fake news is concerned, the EU regulations still leave social media and web publishing relatively unregulated. Again, the best resorts are general defamation law or criminal law. </p>
<h2>What to do</h2>
<p>President Macron’s proposal sets a goal of regulating fake news no matter where it is published. He has provided little detail about how he would do this. </p>
<p>One option would be to introduce content regulation to the online sphere, but that would raise a number of questions. For one, from a legal point of view, it’s not easy to define what fake news is. The very term suggests intent, but how to separate this from the fact that the media has <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199899/ldjudgmt/jd991028/rey01.htm">long been allowed</a> to make mistakes to perform its democratic functions – so long as it has made responsible attempts to investigate the facts of the reports?</p>
<p>Second, the freedom of expression question refuses to go away. You expect a higher degree of free speech on social media because these sites are an essential alternative source of news free from the control of corporate powers. Enhance the regulation of this sphere and you are in danger of stifling lively online debate. </p>
<p>Indeed, <a href="http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf">article 10</a> of the European Convention on Human Rights protects free expression, only allowing restrictions on public interest grounds. Any attempt to restrict political speech may lead to the intervention of the European Court of Human Rights – to which the UK might well remain a party after Brexit. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201637/original/file-20180111-101483-a6x00i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201637/original/file-20180111-101483-a6x00i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201637/original/file-20180111-101483-a6x00i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201637/original/file-20180111-101483-a6x00i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201637/original/file-20180111-101483-a6x00i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201637/original/file-20180111-101483-a6x00i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201637/original/file-20180111-101483-a6x00i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201637/original/file-20180111-101483-a6x00i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Milling about.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill#/media/File:John_Stuart_Mill_by_London_Stereoscopic_Company,_c1870.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Along with a feeling that social media is less influential than traditional media, the importance of free speech on social media appears to have so far persuaded the UK against trying to introduce regulation. </p>
<p>One of the underlying justifications for free speech was put forward by the great liberal thinker John Stuart Mill. He <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/130/">argued convincingly</a> more than 150 years ago that unrestricted discussion helps the discovery of truth. Accept this and you’re back to the status quo: so long as fake news does not cause any other apparent harms to individuals, as opposed to the political climate, perhaps no more regulation of social media is needed beyond general defamation law and criminal law. </p>
<p>Perhaps all we should or even can do is to take heart from Mill that the truth will eventually surface from the debate – and that a robust online environment will therefore self-correct.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89940/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zhongdong Niu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Emmanuel Macron is the latest to talk about reining in fake news. It can’t be done.Zhongdong Niu, Lecturer in Law, Edinburgh Napier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/770102017-05-08T19:44:36Z2017-05-08T19:44:36ZTax on ‘unearned gains’ is the missing piece of the affordable housing puzzle<p>With housing prices <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/apr/04/reserve-bank-head-warns-house-price-speculation-is-a-risk-to-australian-economy">still consistently in the news</a>, could the ideas of 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill help improve affordability? </p>
<p>In 2015, some landowners near the <a href="http://nbhsredev.health.nsw.gov.au/project/northern-beaches-hospital/">proposed Northern Beaches hospital</a> in Sydney were offered more than <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/northern-beaches/developers-are-targeting-homes-near-the-planned-new-northern-beaches-hospital-offering-millions/news-story/e9eed1f7361ffde4d1019e3645f61aae">twice the area’s normal market value</a> for their properties. They stood to make large windfall profits from zoning changes and <a href="http://www.rms.nsw.gov.au/projects/sydney-north/northern-beaches-hospital/">infrastructure upgrades</a> associated with the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/revealed-the-real-2-billion-cost-of-privatised-northern-beaches-hospital-20150430-1mxgqd.html">A$1 billion-plus public investment</a> in the hospital.</p>
<p>While many may say “good luck to them”, Mill – a champion of individual freedom – may well have questioned those windfall profits by asking: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Who is entitled to the increase in land value created by planning approvals, new infrastructure, population growth or the general development of town and cities?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For Mill, the answer would have been that the increase, which he called the “unearned increment”, rightly <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlP64.html">belongs to the community</a> rather than the individual landowner. Until well into the 20th century, many political leaders, including <a href="http://s420649894.websitehome.co.uk/SLRG/attachments/article/10/What%20Winston%20Churchill%20said%20about%20Land%20and%20Taxes.pdf">Winston Churchill</a>, agreed with Mill.</p>
<h2>What’s this got to do with housing affordability?</h2>
<p>The main reason Australians invest in property is the expectation of <a href="https://www.ahuri.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/2963/AHURI_RAP_Issue_115_What-motivates-households-to-invest-in-the-private-rental-market.pdf">future (after-tax) capital gains</a> (that is, unearned increments) rather than rental income. Consequently, they are willing to pay more than the price that reflects rental income. </p>
<p>The current taxation system, while imposing some tax on capital gains, <a href="http://www.acoss.org.au/images/uploads/Fuel_on_the_fire.pdf">encourages this strategy</a>, mainly through negative gearing and a discount on capital gains tax. The federal government’s 2014 <a href="http://fsi.gov.au/publications/final-report/">Financial System Inquiry</a> concluded:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The tax treatment of investor housing, in particular, tends to encourage leveraged and speculative investment in housing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Could recouping more of Mill’s unearned increments through a higher capital gains tax on investor housing help make housing more affordable?</p>
<p>The Henry tax review accepted that a tax on land value would <a href="https://taxreview.treasury.gov.au/content/FinalReport.aspx?doc=html/publications/Papers/Final_Report_Part_2/chapter_c2-1.htm">reduce the price</a> buyers were willing to pay. The same principle would apply to a tax on capital gains from land, which could be seen as a type of deferred land value tax. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand also expects that increasing taxes on <a href="http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/-/media/ReserveBank/Files/Publications/Speeches/2015/action-needed-to-reduce-housing-imbalances.pdf?la=en">capital gains from property</a> would reduce pressure on housing prices.</p>
<h2>How to recoup more of the ‘unearned increment’</h2>
<p>A federal capital gains tax (CGT) was introduced in Australia in 1985, with capital gains <a href="https://www.ato.gov.au/General/Capital-gains-tax/">added to other income</a>. Since 1999, capital gains may qualify for a <a href="https://www.ato.gov.au/General/capital-gains-tax/cgt-exemptions,-rollovers-and-concessions/">50% discount</a> for taxation purposes.</p>
<p>Capital gains are taxed at the individual’s tax rate, providing an incentive to time the sale of the asset or use other means to minimise the impact of the CGT.</p>
<p>Therefore, to be more effective in reducing land prices, CGT on property would need to be reformed so it applies at a flat rate (without deductions) rather than being part of general income. Notably, this reformed CGT would capture some of the land value increases resulting from planning approvals.</p>
<p>The flat tax rate could be progressively increased from a lower rate during an adjustment period. Each step in the transition could be evaluated for its effect on prices.</p>
<p>Because Mill’s unearned increments relate to land only, the property CGT would be levied on the increase in the unimproved value of the land (indexed for inflation). That is, it would exclude the value of improvements. The principal residence would continue to be excluded, and tax would be payable only when the property was sold.</p>
<h2>Capital gains tax or land value tax?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://taxreview.treasury.gov.au/content/FinalReport.aspx?doc=html/publications/Papers/Final_Report_Part_2/chapter_c2-1.htm">Henry review</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-land-value-tax-could-fix-australasias-housing-crisis-49997">other commentators</a> agree that a land value tax would reduce property prices. This tax would necessarily include all landowners.</p>
<p>In comparison, the proposed CGT reform would also be likely to reduce land prices, but would, in practice, affect investors only. Relocating homeowners would not be affected as the lower prices would be on both sides of the buying-selling equation.</p>
<p>In summary:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Housing not only provides shelter but is also a form of investment.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-financialisation-of-housing-and-what-can-be-done-about-it-73767">Favouring investment over shelter</a> – as current tax policies <a href="http://fsi.gov.au/publications/final-report/">do</a> – tends to raise property prices and to <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/800_Renovating_Housing.pdf">crowd out</a> some of those wanting to own their own home and so have a better chance of putting down roots in their selected local community.</p></li>
<li><p>Making housing more affordable, such as by more effective taxing of capital gains, would promote a more “<a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Former_Committees/hsaf/report/c02">cohesive and just society</a>”, as a 2008 Senate inquiry into housing affordability found.</p></li>
<li><p>Most investors are motivated by expectations of future after-tax capital gains and so moderating those expectations by raising the tax on capital gains from land is likely to reduce the price investors would be prepared to pay.</p></li>
<li><p>A period of transition would be needed to allow property investors to adjust to the new arrangements.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>As Mill observed, these capital gains are created by others – governments, immigrants and other private investors – so there is an ethical basis for effectively taxing these “unearned” gains.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77010/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Feeney is affiliated with the Gold Coast and Hinterland Environment Council as a volunteer </span></em></p>Who is entitled to the increase in value created by planning approvals, new infrastructure, population growth or urban development? For John Stuart Mill, the answer would have been the community.Brian Feeney, Adjunct Fellow, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/647972016-09-11T20:10:12Z2016-09-11T20:10:12ZExplainer: what is free speech?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137007/original/image-20160908-16611-1mwcnit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill was a leading thinker on free speech.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">London Stereoscopic Company</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Who can say what to whom in Australia? In this six-part series, we look at the complex idea of freedom of speech, who gets to exercise it and whether it is being curtailed in public debate.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The term “free speech” is not ideal. The “free” part skews in favour of those who oppose regulation and the “speech” part puts the focus on the spoken word, even though the discussion embraces wider communication including art, writing, films, plays, flag burning and advertising. </p>
<p>It might, therefore, be better to drop the term “free speech” to highlight that the debate is really about whether or not we should regulate the communication of ideas, thoughts and beliefs.</p>
<p>This analysis, however, is not the place to rewrite the terms of reference. So I will use the term free speech with the caveat that “free” does not mean a lack of regulation, and “speech” covers a variety of activities. </p>
<h2>Justifying free speech</h2>
<p>It is not enough to say “three cheers for speech!”, because if we don’t know why speech is important we don’t know if it is worth protecting.</p>
<p><a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/">John Stuart Mill</a> thought that freedom of thought and discussion (he doesn’t use the term “free speech”) is valuable because it brings us closer to the truth, which in turn promotes utility. <a href="http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/Encyclopedia/Meiklejohn.html">Alexander Meiklejohn</a> suggests speech is important because it allows for democratic self-government. And <a href="http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/rarneson/Courses/SCANLONfreeexpression.pdf">Thomas Scanlon</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/politics">C. Edwin Baker</a> argue that free expression is justified because it promotes autonomy. </p>
<p>These are the three heavyweight contenders in the debate about why speech is important.</p>
<p>The important thing to notice about all of them is that the justification offered in favour of speech also allows for some limitations. If expression is justified because it promotes truth, we have no grounds for defending it when truth is undermined. Speech that damages democratic processes will find itself unprotected by the self-government thesis. And if the autonomy argument is compelling we will not want to protect speech that undermines this goal. </p>
<p>The heated debate about “political correctness” (a term I dislike), or PC, demonstrates this nicely. The usual claim is that PC stifles free speech. This accusation is difficult to quantify. PC might, for example, limit the speech of white men but enhance that of minorities; I would need more data before reaching a conclusion. </p>
<p>But the complaint itself tells us something about the complex nature of speech. Why complain at all? The usual answer is that communication is being muted by PC. This seems to be an argument that we should oppose PC in the name of free speech itself. To make this claim we need to show why speech is important (enter justification here). Once we offer a justification we again have an argument for why speech can be limited. </p>
<p>Perhaps combining the three justifications discussed above will allow for lots of unregulated speech. This doesn’t seem to work because the three accounts often clash. Justifying speech because it promotes truth, for example, seems to allow silencing many a politician (oh joy!) and hence interfering with political speech.</p>
<p>These difficulties suggest that any persuasive <em>argument</em> about speech (as opposed to saying “three cheers”) has to embrace the fact that speech can, and indeed should, be limited. An even more confronting conclusion is that giving reasons for why speech is important makes us reveal underlying values that seem to be even more fundamental than speech itself. </p>
<h2>Which speech deserves special protection?</h2>
<p>Having (hopefully) established that speech is not unconditionally good, the next task is to determine what the appropriate limits should be.</p>
<p>This will depend in large part on why speech is justified in the first place. The autonomy account will offer different protections than the truth/utility account which in turn will differ from the self-government justification. </p>
<p>Mill, for example, tells us that truth is best promoted by allowing a great deal of communication. But he is willing to shut down speech if it leads to unacceptable harm. This argument faces difficulties, one being harmful speech might lead us towards truth.</p>
<p>His justification for speech seems to clash with his reason for limiting speech. Mill was a pretty smart guy, but even he struggled to provide a coherent and consistent position on free speech. </p>
<p>The thing to keep in mind is that the justifications we use to defend speech will always prioritise some forms of communication over others, and this will be our guide to picking out speech most in need of protection. This again suggests that speech is not valuable in and of itself.</p>
<h2>Should some speech acts be punished?</h2>
<p>What should we do with speech that is not protected by our favoured justification? The answer depends on balancing the speech act in question against other values.</p>
<p>If the speech is not causing harm we might want to leave it alone. Others might think that harmless but grossly offensive speech should be punished. If speech reveals wartime secrets to the enemy we might want to put the person in prison. </p>
<p>Engaging in hate speech in Europe can quite possibly lead to the same outcome. Libel will incur civil rather than criminal charges. And Mill suggests that in many instances the appropriate punishment for speech is “social disapprobation” rather than legal penalty. </p>
<p>The reason why the argument over free speech has not been put to bed long ago is that people bring different sets of values to the discussion. The debate does not takes place in a vacuum and arguments have to be assessed against social norms, values and institutions. Speech is a social phenomenon because it requires speakers and listeners to engage with one another. The “problem” of free speech does not exist for the person stranded on a deserted island.</p>
<p>Even people with the same values can disagree on the facts of the matter. They might accept Mill’s argument that speech can be limited if it causes harm but disagree over whether hate speech, for example, is captured by the harm principle.</p>
<p>The topic quickly becomes devilishly difficult. The one thing I can say with confidence is that it is unlikely a one-size-fits-all principle will help us navigate the treacherous waters of free speech.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64797/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David van Mill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The concept of ‘free speech’ is devilishly difficult, and depends greatly on a person’s political and philosophical viewpoint.David van Mill, Associate Professor in Political Science and International Relations, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/439142015-06-26T06:21:08Z2015-06-26T06:21:08ZIs the ‘nanny state’ so bad? After all, voters expect governments to care<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86491/original/image-20150626-18237-1wj3edb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Libertarians have a deeply atomising picture about communities, states, even about what it is to be human.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/arselectronica/14697349890/">Ars Electronica/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Independent senator David Leyonhjelm has <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/david-leyonhjelm-declares-war-on-nanny-state/story-fn59niix-1227415288323">launched</a> a parliamentary inquiry into what he calls “the nanny state”. He objects to what he sees as government interference with the freedom of people to make choices, including, if they want, bad choices. </p>
<p>“It’s not the government’s business unless you are likely to harm another person,” he says. “Harming yourself is your business.” </p>
<p>Leyonhjelm is a libertarian: someone who believes that individual liberty is paramount and should be restricted in as few ways as possible. But you don’t need to be a libertarian to feel some sympathy for his call for the government to butt out. </p>
<h2>Liberty and choice</h2>
<p>The principle he invokes – that it is the business of government to interfere only when we risk harming others – is actually a cornerstone of liberal thought. It’s often called Mill’s principle, after <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill">John Stuart Mill</a>, the famous liberal, utilitarian and early feminist. </p>
<p>In his seminal text, <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/130/">On Liberty</a>, Mill wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Leyonhjelm seems to invoke exactly this principle in decrying the nanny state.</p>
<p>Mill thought government interference in our choices was oppressive even if that interference was genuinely for our own good. Leyonhjelm agrees, though he also says as a matter of fact that we usually make better decisions for ourselves than the government would. </p>
<p>Most of us would probably agree that there ought to be limits on how much governments can interfere with our choices for our own good, and that we are often better judges in our own case than outsiders could be. But agreeing with this much leaves plenty of room for debate. </p>
<p>How much interference is too much? Are there domains in which we are not good judges of our own good and might benefit from – even welcome – outside interference?</p>
<p>There’s a large body of psychological literature on how good people are at making decisions that aim at their own well-being. The record is not encouraging: people regularly make choices that they think will make them happier but actually will not. </p>
<p>We have major problems with what psychologists sometimes call <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affective_forecasting">affective forecasting</a>: we think we know how happy something will make us, but we’re wrong. This leads us to make bad choices with regard to money, in particular: people think that a pay rise, or <a href="http://apps.webofknowledge.com/home.do;jsessionid=55B867B93BBCE527D6B68F62C9E518EB?UT=WOS%3aA1978FM23000013&IsProductCode=Yes&mode=FullRecord&product=WOS&SID=T1tfcc3Pfkmne5HD3Nw&smartRedirect=yes&SrcApp=Highwire&DestFail=http%3a%2f%2fwww.webofknowledge.com%3fDestApp%3dCEL%26DestParams%3d%253Faction%253Dretrieve%2526mode%253DFullRecord%2526product%253DCEL%2526UT%253DWOS%253AA1978FM23000013%2526customersID%253DHighwire%26e%3dhH2zexpHRGS6PGgAE_lYJX79xEo.NgJm6EwhlKCknceKK53d.SavxjG.Ty779rBu%26SrcApp%3dHighwire%26SrcAuth%3dHighwire&Init=Yes&action=retrieve&SrcAuth=Highwire&Func=Frame&customersID=Highwire&DestApp=WOS&DestParams=%3faction%3dretrieve%26mode%3dFullRecord%26product%3dWOS%26UT%3dWOS%3aA1978FM23000013%26customersID%3dHighwire%26smartRedirect%3dyes">winning the lottery</a>, will increase their happiness, but if they’re already comfortably well off, the money makes little or no difference. </p>
<p>And that’s not because nothing can be done to increase our happiness: memorable <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2013/08/05/want-to-buy-happiness-purchase-an-experience/">experiences</a>, for instance, do lead to increases in well-being. </p>
<p>We also routinely make decisions we later regret. For instance, in countries where there’s no real national health system and no compulsory insurance – countries of the sort that Leyonhjlem wants Australia to emulate – people routinely go under-insured, and often pay a high price for it. </p>
<p>Part of the reason for this is that we tend to think of ourselves as much less likely to become seriously ill than we actually are. In terms of health, then, government interference may save us from ourselves.</p>
<h2>Your kind of society</h2>
<p>While Mill’s harm principle is very attractive, it may well be that it’s psychologically unrealistic. It was formulated at a time when optimism in the power of rationality was at its peak and scientific psychology was in its infancy. We now know that we are less rational than we had hoped and that we often make better decisions collectively than we would by ourselves.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86485/original/image-20150626-18254-qttq8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86485/original/image-20150626-18254-qttq8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=297&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86485/original/image-20150626-18254-qttq8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=297&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86485/original/image-20150626-18254-qttq8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=297&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86485/original/image-20150626-18254-qttq8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86485/original/image-20150626-18254-qttq8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86485/original/image-20150626-18254-qttq8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ulysses tied himself to the mast so he wouldn’t be seduced by the sirens’ song, but most of us don’t need to be as dramatic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/freeparking/523448963/">freeparking/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many people who recognise that they are apt to make bad decisions in the heat of the moment take steps to prevent themselves doing so. In <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html">The Odyssey</a>, for instance, Ulysses tied himself to the mast so he wouldn’t be seduced by the sirens’ song. </p>
<p>Many of us do something similar, if less dramatic. We salary-sacrifice into superannuation not merely to take advantage of higher interest rates but to put the money out of our own reach. We deliberately buy a smaller tub of ice-cream so the hassle of going out and buying more will prevent us from bingeing, and so on. We impose restrictions on ourselves. </p>
<p>In a democracy, voting for a nanny state may also be a way of imposing restrictions on ourselves. A minority of people may not like that, but that’s just how democracy works. So long as the restrictions are not unduly burdensome (how hard is to put on a seatbelt?) they don’t have much call on our sympathy.</p>
<p>We don’t want government interfering with our fundamental freedoms, even for our own good. One of our most fundamental freedoms is the freedom to live in accordance with our own conception of the sort of society we want to live in. </p>
<p>Leyonhjelm’s proposal is not philosophically neutral. He has deep-seated philosophical views about the community, the state, even about what it is to be human. He thinks of human beings, in classical liberal fashion, as essentially independent individuals, each choosing for him or herself and bound to one another only by chosen ties. It is this deeply atomising picture he hopes to impose on us all. </p>
<p>We may choose to fight and vote for a different conception of what it is to be human; one in which we are each deeply bound to and interdependent on one another, and in which we may rightly ask each other to bear certain burdens. </p>
<p>That, too, is not a neutral conception of a flourishing human life, but it doesn’t pretend to be. Both pictures will be found attractive by many of us. Contemporary Australia represents a compromise between them and perhaps is all the better for it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Neil Levy receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Templeton Foundation. He has previously received funding from the Wellcome Trust.</span></em></p>David Leyonhjelm’s parliamentary inquiry into what he calls “the nanny state” reflects a view of human beings as essentially independent individuals. But that’s not kind of society most of us want.Neil Levy, Professor, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/365472015-01-29T01:44:27Z2015-01-29T01:44:27ZHow do we decide if offending someone is unethical or not?<p>Causing offence to others often causes hurt. Such actions have been condemned as unethical, even immoral behaviour in a civilised society. There have been many examples.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/body-issues-20120913-25taz.html">Bill Henson photographs</a> of naked children <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/archives/80days/stories/2012/01/19/3415368.htm">created much opposition</a>. The <a href="http://www.dw.de/the-rushdie-fatwa-25-years-on/a-17425932">Salman Rushdie fatwa</a> is another. The <a href="http://www.complex.com/style/2013/10/controversial-art-exhibitions/piss-christ">“Piss Christ”</a> photograph depicting a crucifix submerged in a glass of urine created <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/andres-serrano-piss-christ-triggers-religious-fury-and-court-battle-in-1990s-trials/story-fnat7dag-1226591823318">“religious fury”</a> and the Catholic Church unsuccessfully sought a court order to suppress it. </p>
<p>Mel Gibson’s controversial 2004 film, <a href="http://ncronline.org/news/art-media/decade-later-passion-still-raises-questions-anti-semitism">The Passion of the Christ</a>, attracted charges of anti-Semitism and the actors were forced <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2004/03/23636/">to seek protection</a>.</p>
<p>Now we have the <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlie-hebdo-editors-double-down-on-their-principles-in-first-issue-since-attacks-36269">cartoons of Charlie Hebdo</a>. Are they unethical? Is it OK to give offence to others, especially to religions? Or is it just plain wrong?</p>
<p>It has been a long unanswered question for this writer. It was most recently examined when I was a speaker in an <a href="https://visualarts.net.au/media/uploads/files/NAVA_FutureForward_Program_Online_1.pdf">Association of Visual Arts</a> panel discussion on ethical boundaries in the visual arts. </p>
<h2>Ethical behaviour and the link to harm</h2>
<p>In attempting to answer questions about the ethics of giving offence, first we have to define ethical behaviour. Unfortunately, philosophers have been waging this argument for more than 2000 years and still have not reached agreement.</p>
<p>This examination will search many moral philosophies, first using the most common ethical guideline, the version of <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Utilitarianism.html?id=Ju4oAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y">Utilitarianism</a> developed by British philosopher John Stuart Mill. His overriding rule is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The moral rules which forbid mankind to hurt one another … are more important to human well-being than any maxims. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is also my personal ethical guideline, as I have <a href="https://theconversation.com/telling-right-from-wrong-why-is-utilitarianism-under-attack-30559">argued in The Conversation</a>. Mill claims his version incorporates the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule">Golden Rule</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Do unto to others as you would want done for yourself. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>As such, Mill is also saying that we should prevent or alleviate harm that is being suffered by others.</p>
<p>But is giving offence the same as harming someone? If you search the philosophers, you can find a dozen interpretations where a harm would clearly be a wrong.</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Gert#Ten_moral_rules">Bernard Gert</a> gives us several: causing pain; depriving freedom; depriving others of pleasure; deceiving; telling untruths. Even an indirect harm through a misleading advertisement that nobody reads is a wrong.</p>
<p>Joel Feinberg in <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Harm_to_Others.html?id=z3DC0qYNAwIC">Harm to Others</a> tells us that the harm has to be wrong – that is, it violates someone’s rights. It also has to be universally disliked, an unpleasant experience that causes disgust, revulsion, shock, shame, embarrassment, anxiety, etc. It has to be serious, too. </p>
<p>Finally, Feinberg requires that the interests of those who wish to avoid offensive behaviour be weighed against the interests of those who wish to engage in it.</p>
<p>Mill argues that causing mental anguish is sufficient. He labels his utilitarianism “The Greatest Happiness Principle”, which is telling us that we should not cause unhappiness. Mill’s <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/mill/john_stuart/m645o/">On Liberty</a> is also the first, and greatest, advocacy for free speech:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But none of the great philosophers clearly tells us whether to insult somebody – to offend a religion and its leader – is to cause harm. Or even whether it is unethical. </p>
<h2>A question of purpose</h2>
<p>Immanuel Kant, esteemed by many, has another philosophical guideline that can possibly help us in a version of his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative#The_Second_Formulation">categorical imperative</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In short, Kant is saying: “Do not use other people for your own purposes.”</p>
<p>But we do not know what was the purpose of Bill Henson or those parents who pushed their children into being photographed naked by Henson. If it was to boost their own public image, then the children were being used. It is then wrong.</p>
<p>Kant’s <a href="http://thinkjustdoit.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/pl-431-kants-formulations-of.html">other version of the categorical imperative</a> is that we all have to agree that to be moral, an act is universally acceptable:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>You may get an indication that photographing children naked is likely wrong by asking at your next dinner party whether any parents would allow their 12-year-old daughter to be photographed naked and the photographs put on display.</p>
<p>The media are ambivalent about cartoons or photographs that offend a religion.
The Economist’s editor-in-chief, John Micklethwaite, <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21638118-islamists-are-assailing-freedom-speech-vilifying-all-islam-wrong-way-counter">argues in his leader</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The magazine was targeted because it cherished and promoted its right to offend: specifically to offend Muslims. That motive invokes two big themes. One is free speech, and whether it should have limits, self-imposed or otherwise. The answer to that is an emphatic no. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Others – such as the UK’s Telegraph and the New York Post – disagree and <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/world/charlie-hebdo-cartoons-media-around-the-world-chart-different-courses-20150108-12k90p.html">published photos</a> of Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier holding one of the offending front-page cartoons, but either cropped the photo or blurred part of the image.</p>
<p>The Associated Press distributed no images that included the cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. This was in keeping with its longstanding policy on offensive images, AP vice-president Santiago Lyon <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/news-organizations-wrestle-with-whether-to-publish-charlie-hebdo-cartoons-after-attack/2015/01/07/841e9c8c-96bc-11e4-8005-1924ede3e54a_story.html">said</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We’ve taken the view that we don’t want to publish hate speech or spectacles that offend, provoke or intimidate, or anything that desecrates religious symbols or angers people along religious or ethnic lines.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Thus the media, perhaps even the rest of us, do not meet Kant’s criterion of universality. So is offending others a wrong – an unethical act? </p>
<p>The answer has to be “only you know”. For it is only you who knows what your intentions are.</p>
<p>If they are to use the denigration of others for your own purposes, be that to sell your magazine, or photographs, or publicise your name, then it is unethical. If it is an offensive action where your purpose is obvious to all of us, and that is to benefit yourself, then it is unethical. It is wrong. Otherwise free speech must override.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Editor’s note: Peter will be answering questions between 11am and noon AEDT on Friday January 30. You can ask your questions about the article in the comments below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36547/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Bowden does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Causing offence to others often causes hurt. Such actions have been condemned as unethical, even immoral behaviour in a civilised society. There have been many examples. The Bill Henson photographs of…Peter Bowden, Honorary Research Associate in Philosophy; Lecturer in Ethics and Engineering , University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/166822013-08-03T06:32:54Z2013-08-03T06:32:54ZFuming with outrage: Nazis, nannies and smoking<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28582/original/xfk4jv68-1375499421.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If you treat smoking as a purely personal choice you're not giving enough weight to the impact of dying young.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">stolenscript/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A few years ago I saw <a href="http://www.kjukken.dk/rygekampagnen.php">a poster</a> stuck to the wall of a train station in Copenhagen. The poster was <a href="http://ekstrabladet.dk/flash/dkkendte/article1046636.ece">a protest paid for by a prominent Danish musician</a> against new regulations against smoking in public. At the top was a sarcastic “Congratulations on the smoking ban” followed by the German phrase “Gesundheit Macht Frei” (good health makes you free).</p>
<p>You might think invoking “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeit_macht_frei">Arbeit Macht Frei</a>,” the slogan above the gates at Auschwitz, to complain about not being able to smoke in bars is pretty tasteless. More likely than not, it’ll also distract from the message you’re trying to send.</p>
<p>So, lesson learnt, defenders of smoking: no more comparing smoking ban proponents to Nazis, okay?</p>
<p>Enter <em>The Australian’s</em> <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/butt-out-of-individual-choices/story-fnc2jivw-1226689776522">Adam Creighton</a>, comparing the Rudd government’s increase on tobacco excise to <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/3d78d24a-c068-11df-8a81-00144feab49a.html">the anti-smoking campaigns of Nazi Germany</a>. This should end well.</p>
<p>Now, to his credit, Creighton isn’t just running a lazy “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum">argumentum ad Hitlerum</a>” i.e. “You know who else hated smoking?” Rather, he’s claiming that Australia’s attempts to discourage smoking are “being sold with the same flawed economic and moral arguments that underpinned Nazi Germany’s policies.” Which arguments are these?</p>
<h2>Individuals and the State</h2>
<p>What the Nazis and the Italian Fascists believed, roughly, is that individuals only have significance and purpose through and in the State. This sort of totalitarianism is indeed repugnant, not just because of the suffering it causes, but because of the distorting and reductive view of the moral value of human beings it presents.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28581/original/qcm424n2-1375497449.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28581/original/qcm424n2-1375497449.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28581/original/qcm424n2-1375497449.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28581/original/qcm424n2-1375497449.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28581/original/qcm424n2-1375497449.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28581/original/qcm424n2-1375497449.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28581/original/qcm424n2-1375497449.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">poolski/Flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Against this, Creighton appeals to the liberal <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/#HarPri">harm principle</a>, as championed by figures like John Stuart Mill. Again, very roughly, this principle states that we’re only entitled to interfere in the actions of others where those actions cause harm to other people. You are morally permitted to do whatever you like so long as you’re not harming anyone else in the process.</p>
<p>So according to defenders of smoking, coercive attempts to reduce smoking infringe on an area that, so long as no-one else is affected, is properly a matter of free individual choice. Creighton accepts that restrictions on smoking in public are legitimate given the dangers of second-hand smoke, but punitive measures designed to stop people smoking are not: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>government should butt out of individuals’ decision to smoke privately, or to engage in any other behaviour that might entail personal costs without harm to others.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Part of the reason Mill’s harm principle is intuitively satisfying is that individual liberty does matter. Both classical liberalism and its more radical libertarian offshoot respond to genuine and important features of the moral landscape: all else being equal it’s better if we let people do what they want. At its best, strident liberalism is a healthy bulwark against excessive paternalism and coercion.</p>
<p>But these positions also rely on a hopelessly atomistic picture of what human beings are. They see each of us as a free, rational, self-contained, self-directed agent, an independent, sovereign individual living alongside other sovereign individuals, entering into free contracts for mutual benefit.</p>
<h2>Where does harm end?</h2>
<p>Philosophers have spent a lot of time taking that view of human nature apart: we are far less free, transparent-to-ourselves and rational than liberalism (and the economic theories it underpins) assumes. We’re also far more radically interconnected and dependent upon others. Our borders are considerably more porous than the sovereign individual model would suggest.</p>
<p>But even within his own liberal worldview, Creighton’s argument runs into serious problems. For one thing even Mill had to allow that there are some harms you’re not permitted to inflict even upon yourself, such as selling yourself into slavery or committing suicide. </p>
<p>If you wrestle a gun away from a would-be suicide, we don’t take you to be committing assault – but surely killing yourself is an essentially “private” matter if anything is? If we’re allowed to stop people throwing themselves off bridges, why aren’t we entitled to at least make it harder (if not impossible) for them to kill themselves with tobacco?</p>
<p>And is smoking only a harm to the individual? The harm principle notoriously runs into problems with questions like this. Creighton insists that things like the “psychological costs of premature death” are “purely personal costs” and so none of the state’s business. </p>
<p>But of course death does not only affect the person who dies; deaths ramify through families, friendship circles, workplaces, social networks – just where does the private end and the public begin?</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28580/original/gc3rc7mw-1375497336.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28580/original/gc3rc7mw-1375497336.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28580/original/gc3rc7mw-1375497336.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28580/original/gc3rc7mw-1375497336.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28580/original/gc3rc7mw-1375497336.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28580/original/gc3rc7mw-1375497336.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28580/original/gc3rc7mw-1375497336.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>There’s more</h2>
<p>And then there’s this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Amazingly - given smokers choose to smoke – popular estimates of “net costs” ignore any personal benefit smokers might derive from smoking. And they disregard the offsetting savings from substantially lower health and age-pension costs as a result of smoking-induced premature deaths.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>You read that right: we should factor in the money we save from smokers dying early as a benefit.</p>
<p>And therein lies the problem: casting this wholly as a private, personal freedom issue is basically a refusal to take the moral gravity of premature death seriously. That, in turn, involves denying that persons have an intrinsic worth, beyond whatever economic or social value they might happen to have – to understand the value of persons you have to understand what is lost to the world when they die, and vice versa.</p>
<p>Those who complain about a “nanny state” trying to stop people from getting themselves killed are ignoring the significance of death and the responsibilities that generates. And an outlook that thinks we should weigh that human tragedy against the money it saves us has long since lost any right to call itself morally serious.</p>
<p>None of this should be read as a plea to ban smoking: prohibition doesn’t exactly have a glittering history of success anyway. To reiterate, personal freedom matters, and we often need to leave people alone to make their own objectively dreadful choices.</p>
<p>But that right of non-interference may not be absolute, as the suicide and slavery examples show; and there is plenty of scope for policy moves designed to discourage people from harming themselves.</p>
<p>Of course, ideally we wouldn’t need to interfere in people’s lives at all. If you don’t want a nanny telling you what to do, maybe it’s time to grow up.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/16682/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patrick Stokes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A few years ago I saw a poster stuck to the wall of a train station in Copenhagen. The poster was a protest paid for by a prominent Danish musician against new regulations against smoking in public. At…Patrick Stokes, Lecturer in Philosophy, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.