Revisiting Online Intellectual Virtues

Philosophy

http://social-epistemology.com ISSN: 2471-9560 Revisiting Online Intellectual Virtues Lukas Schwengerer, University of Duisburg-Essen, email@example.com –––––––––––––––––– Schwengerer, Lukas. 2021. "Revisiting Online Intellectual Virtues." Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 10 (3): 38-45. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-5JX. 38 10 (3): 38-45. 2021. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-5JX Paul Smart's and Robert Clowes's "Intellectual Virtues and Internet-Extended Knowledge" (2021) in response to my "Online Intellectual Virtues and the Extended Mind" (2020) raises some important questions for the proposal of intellectual virtues in an online environment. These questions aim both at the motivation for a virtue responsibilist reaction to the Internet, and at my success of combining virtue responsibilism and cognitive integration. Moreover, they suggest that there might be a better way to take up virtue responsibilist ideas when we focus on how people judge online sources to be trustworthy. I am in much agreement with the general directions of their questions, but I take the lessons to be slightly different. In general, I remain more hopeful for the role of online intellectual virtues as proposed by Heersmink (2018). The structure of this reply closely follows Smart's and Clowes's presentation. I will first reassess the motivation behind online intellectual virtues. Then, second, I address worries about whether we can avoid the generalized extended knowledge dilemma by choosing a multidimensional framework for cognitive integration. Finally, I will discuss Smart's and Clowes's positive proposal in the third part. How Important are Online Epistemic Hazards in the Call for Intellectual Virtues? My initial contribution paints a picture that is well-known in discussions of epistemic aspects of the Internet. I start by observing that the Internet as an epistemic source brings about some epistemically harmful consequences: misinformation (Lynch, 2016), reproducing harmful stereotypes (Noble, 2018), filter bubbles and echo chambers (Simpson, 2012; Miller and Record, 2013; Nguyen, 2020; Cinelli, De Francisci Morales, Galeazzi, Quattrociocchi, and Starnini, 2021). Barely any mentioning of the positive sides of the Internet as a source of knowledge. With the Internet as an epistemically hostile place in mind, I then propose online intellectual virtues as the antidote that can help us bypass all the epistemic hazards. These online intellectual virtues are instances of more general intellectual virtues (e.g., curiosity, open-mindedness, etc.) applied to an online environment. These virtues are suggested to safeguard us from the epistemic hazards found on the Internet. Smart and Clowes rightfully ask us to stop for a moment and reconsider whether this is an adequate characterization of the Internet. Should we start with all the epistemic hazards in mind? Are we selling the epistemic benefits too short by focusing on all these hazards? They suggest that we should look at different ways the Internet can be used, and that it is not so obvious whether the Internet in general can be classified as an epistemically hostile environment if we look closely enough. I agree with their suggestions. Moreover, I agree that evaluating the Internet as an epistemic source is a difficult task that cannot be done by locking in only on Google Search. So in this regard, my discussion of online intellectual virtues and the extended mind was incomplete. Smart and Clowes also point out that even for Google Search it is difficult to assess which epistemic hazards are present. Here we are confronted with a general methodological problem when we deal with Google Search and the speed at which it can change. What was empirical evidence in 2016 cannot be reproduced anymore. Whenever a problematic search L. Schwengerer 39 result is published and discussed the algorithms change soon afterwards, often in a way that makes it impossible to tell from the outside what exactly changed. Did the algorithm become better at avoiding stereotypes, or did it just become better at hiding well-known instances of prejudice? This is a challenge for me (and Heersmink 2018) to the extent that we motivate online intellectual virtues as a response to empirically evidenced problems. There are at least two plausible ways to go from here. First, we can generalize from previous problems to the likelihood of yet to be discovered problems. Given that so far we have always found problems sooner or later, we should adopt online intellectual virtues as a safeguard. I am unsure whether this is a good way to go. I prefer a different route. We can, second, provide an argument for online intellectual virtues that is independent of epistemic hazards on the Internet. Let me sketch such an argument. Intellectual virtues, such as intellectual carefulness, are thought of as acquired character traits that can be described as a mean between two vices. Being intellectually timid, afraid to form beliefs even when it would be appropriate, is a vice. Being intellectually careless, too quick in forming beliefs even when it is inappropriate, is a vice on the other extreme. The intellectually careful agent shows the right amount of care given the concrete situation at hand. What exactly the right amount of care is will be difficult to tell, but clearly, in an epistemically hostile environment much more care is called for than in an epistemically friendly environment. However-and this is the important point-even epistemically friendly environments call for intellectual carefulness. Intellectual virtues are not meant exclusively for hostile environments. They aim to characterize epistemic agents and their performances in general. An intellectually careful agent will be appropriately careful given the environment. If they were overly careful in an epistemically friendly environment, they would not act virtuously. This discussion of intellectual carefulness generalizes to online intellectual virtues. Once we see these as virtues that aim for a mean between two vices and we recognize that this mean is dependent on the concrete situation, it becomes clear that we need online intellectual virtues even if there were no epistemic hazards on the Internet. We do not need these online intellectual virtues only as a safeguard against hazards, but we need them to engage with the Internet in a virtuous way in general. Suppose Wikipedia is an epistemically friendly part of the Internet because of mechanisms that ensure the reliability of Wikipedia, as can be argued with Halfaker and Riedl (2012) and Tollefson (2009). To make full use of this favorable environment a user needs to be appropriately trusting of Wikipedia. If a user is overly skeptical of Wikipedia they will miss out on many true beliefs. What the virtuous user needs is the right amount of carefulness, which in this case amounts to not questioning Wikipedia too frequently. Being overly skeptical is being too careful and hence intellectually vicious. This gives us an argument for online intellectual virtues based on the Internet as an epistemically friendly environment. An intellectually virtuous user of Wikipedia will be no more and no less careful than is appropriate, and will be so at least partially in virtue of their background knowledge of Wikipedia. Smart and Clowes are right to push back against the overly pessimistic picture of the Internet that often motivates online intellectual virtues. But the lesson to take away is not that we should give up on online intellectual virtues, but rather that all this doom and gloom 40 10 (3): 38-45. 2021. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-5JX about the Internet was not necessary to motivate online intellectual virtues in the first place. Even the most favorable environments require virtuous agents. Avoiding the Generalized Extended Knowledge Dilemma With this new motivation for online intellectual virtues in place, I can now look at the challenge posed by Smart and Clowes to my attempt of combining these virtues with Heersmink's (2015) multidimensional approach to cognitive integration. Given that Clark's and Chalmers's (1998) version of the extended mind thesis does not go well with online intellectual virtues, I suggested that Heersmink's version fares better. Heersmink proposes a multitude of dimensions on which we can evaluate the integration of an artifact: Information Flow, Reliability, Durability, Trust, Procedural Transparency, Informational Transparency, Individualization, Transformation. Whereas Clark and Chalmers require the automatic endorsement of information that is provided by the external artifact, Heersmink is not committed to such a condition. In his framework, an artifact can be overall highly integrated without high integration on the trust dimension, and hence without automatic endorsement. As long as the artifact is still sufficiently integrated on the non-trust dimensions we can have an overall extended mind. My suggestion was that this is exactly what we look for to combine online intellectual virtues with a version of the extended mind thesis. An agent with online intellectual virtues can cognitively integrate a website highly on most dimensions without much integration on the trust dimension. Tentatively stated, "there might be room for combinations of agents and artifacts that still count as showing an overall high degree of cognitive integration while being virtuous epistemic agents" (Schwengerer 2020, 8). Smart and Clowes doubt that this approach succeeds and provide two examples to illustrate their reasoning. In a nutshell, they worry that the dimensions besides trust also bring about problems for virtuous agents, which they capture in the generalized extended knowledge dilemma. The Extended Knowledge Dilemma (Generalized) The properties that work to ensure that an external resource can be treated as a candidate for cognitive incorporation are also, at least in some cases, the very same properties that work to undermine or endanger the positive epistemic standing of the technologically-extended agent (Smart and Clowes 2021, 17). If they are right, then just making sure that integration on the trust dimension stays appropriately low will not be enough to make us virtuous agents. In the worst case, we also need less integration on other dimensions to be virtuous, effectively giving up on having extended minds. I remain more hopeful. If I want to endorse both online intellectual virtues and a version of the extended mind thesis I need at least to limit the scope of the generalized extended knowledge dilemma. The L. Schwengerer 41 multidimensional approach provides the theoretical tools to do just that. If some of the dimensions can be epistemically neutral, then they can contribute to cognitive integration without endangering the epistemic standing and intellectual virtues. Implicitly I made such a suggestion when I proposed to keep integration on the trust dimension low, but be highly integrated on the other dimensions of Heersmink's framework. I committed myself to the idea that only the trust dimension is relevant for online intellectual virtues. Smart and Clowes argue that other dimensions are epistemically relevant as well, pointing to individualization and the relation of processing fluency to the transparency dimensions. I agree that individualization and fluency affect agents and their intellectual virtues, but I think there is a way to conceptualize this effect without giving up on the possibility of extended agents with online intellectual virtues. I can analyze the effect at least in two different ways: (1) Individualization and transparency directly influence our epistemic states, and therefore they make us less intellectually virtuous. (2) Individualization and transparency influence trust and trust influences our epistemic states. Hence, properties belonging to the trust dimension make us less intellectually virtuous. Smart and Clowes seem to opt for (1), but the same processes can be conceptualized according to (2). And following my suggestions in Online Intellectual Virtues and the Extended Mind (2) still gives a person enough room to be intellectually virtuous and have an extended mind. If different dimensions become epistemically efficacious only by going through the trust dimension then it would be in principle possible to keep integration on the trust dimension appropriately low, while ranking highly on all other dimensions. All we need to do is to stop the influence of non-trust dimensions on the trust dimension. This leaves me with two main questions: Why should we take (2) over (1)? And even if it is in principle possible to keep integration on the trust dimension appropriately low, is it also possible in practice? The former question is difficult to answer in a general manner. Partially this is the result of some vagueness with the notion of trust involved.1 Heersmink introduces the trust dimension as follows: The notion of trust in the literature on EMT concerns our attitude towards the truth value of information. When we trust information, we typically think it is true. When we distrust information, we either think it is false or we are not sure whether it is true (Heersmink 2015, 587). Heersmink provides further analysis of explicit and implicit trust but does not give us a more concrete, general definition. My short characterization of this dimension follows Heersmink and holds that trust captures the degree to which one takes the information provided by an artifact to be correct (Schwengerer, 2020, p. 7). If we accept this conception of the trust dimension it seems to be the only dimension that is related to an assessment of truth. If this 1 Coincidentally a reviewer for my initial paper (2020) already pointed to this vagueness of the notion of trust in play in the extended mind debates. I think they are right that the notion of trust is often underspecified. Perhaps Nguyen's (Forthcoming) notion of trust as an unquestioning attitude might be a good option to go. 42 10 (3): 38-45. 2021. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-5JX is right, then any change to assessing the truth value of information functions via the trust dimension. That might give us the first indication in favor of (2). A different approach in favor of (2) can be motivated by looking at the empirical evidence that Smart and Clowes themselves point out. They (as Smart 2018a already did in his) worry about processing fluency effects that show that a procedural transparency dimension influences our judgments and therefore our epistemic states.2 It is well established that the speed and ease of processing information influences epistemic states (Alter and Oppenheimer, 2009). But processing fluency effects cannot establish (1). Instead, the empirical evidence (e.g. Reber and Schwarz 1999) for epistemically relevant processing fluency effects point to a change in judgments of truth due to processing fluency. Applying this to interactions with an artifact in Heersmink's framework, I take it that the causal origin of processing fluency effects can be located in the dimension of procedural transparency. However, the effect itself is not located in the procedural transparency dimension. The change in judgments of truth is part of the trust dimension-it changes the degree to which one takes the information provided by an artifact to be correct. Hence, there is no need to adjust the procedural transparency dimension, as long as we find ways to keep integration on the trust dimension appropriately low. The threat of the generalized extended knowledge dilemma can thus be avoided. I remain hopeful that a similar strategy can be applied to other proposed examples of dimensions other than trust directly influencing the epistemic states of an extended agent. For instance personalization of Google Search can qualify as high individualization, but is in itself no problem as long as the trust dimension is kept appropriately low. Only if individualization leads to an inappropriate integration on the trust dimension intellectual virtues are threatened. So far I have been defending that in principle intellectually virtuous extended agents are possible. But perhaps Smart and Clowes are more worried that this possibility cannot be achieved in practice. Even if (2) is the best way to go, we still often end up with higher integration on the trust dimension than is appropriate because some of the other dimensions increase trust in an artifact in a way that is not warranted. The result is an extended, but not particularly virtuous agent. Here I agree with the worries. For extended agents to be intellectually virtuous we need to prevent the trust dimension from being inappropriately manipulated by the other dimensions. We need to find ways in which we can stop or compensate that high integration on a non-trust dimension can increase integration on the trust dimension. This is an open challenge, but I remain hopeful that it can be met.3 A Different Place for Virtue Responsibilism? Smart and Clowes suggest an alternative place for virtue responsibilist accounts. They propose that intellectual virtues are relevant for judgments on the trustworthiness of artifacts 2 Roughly, the degree of fluency and effortlessness in interacting with an artifact. 3 And I am working on my own attempt in "Promoting Vices: Designing the Web for Manipulation" (unpublished manuscript). L. Schwengerer 43 and therefore play a role in deciding whether we should cognitively integrate an artifact. Hence they state: In short, we see a role for intellectual virtue in the acquisition of a particular kind of knowledge, namely, knowledge about the trustworthiness (or reliability) of particular online systems for particular epistemic purposes. It is this knowledge that makes the automatic endorsement of online content epistemically justified. [...] We can accept that intellectual virtue plays a causal (developmental) role in the formation of extended epistemic systems, but we do not need to see the exercise of intellectual virtue as an intrinsic part of the operation of such systems (Smart and Clowes 2021, 18). I agree that intellectual virtues are important to acquire knowledge about the trustworthiness of particular online systems-or artifacts more generally. Hence, I am on board with their positive proposal. However, I take this to be a supplemental approach to online intellectual virtues as proposed by Heersmink (2018) and myself. Intellectual virtues can be important for both knowing which online systems to trust, and for engaging with these systems in an epistemically appropriate way. And there is a clear path on how these two interact. Think back to intellectual virtues as traits located at a mean between two vices, such as intellectual carefulness between timidness and carelessness. Intellectual virtues have no static mean, but rather depend on the situation one is in. Some situations demand that one is more careful, some call for being less careful. The intellectually virtuous agent is as careful as the situation demands. However, this requires a judgment on how careful one ought to be in the situation. And this is the place for knowledge about the trustworthiness of particular online systems. So I suggest thinking of our engagement with online systems in two steps, in both of which intellectual virtues find a home. First, intellectual virtues have a role in acquiring knowledge about the trustworthiness of a particular online system. Then, second, intellectual virtues have a role in regulating our operation of the online system guided by the prior judgment of how trustworthy the system is taken to be. Conclusion I want to end with one final consideration that Smart and Clowes bring up and that only found its way in the final sentence of my initial paper (Schwengerer 2020, 10): online intellectual virtues can help us to navigate epistemic hazards in an online environment, but they must not become an excuse for us to ignore engagement with the Internet on a societal level. Smart and Clowes worry that "[t]he virtue responsibilist assumes that it is individual citizens who ought to be responsible for their own cyber-epistemic well-being" (Smart and Clowes 2021, 9). I do not think this is quite fair to virtue responsibilist, although I do agree that the position sometimes presents itself implicitly with individualist leanings, and that there is a risk that these leanings lead to an unproductive way to approach the epistemology of the Internet (cf. Smart 2018b, 53). I explicitly reject those leanings. Virtue responsibilism does not need to shift responsibility only to individuals. Instead, it can and should be just one part of an overall strategy to understand and improve our epistemic relation to the Internet. Virtue responsibilism does not stop us from also demanding 44 10 (3): 38-45. 2021. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-5JX governmental regulations of online systems.4 What we aim for is not only that our engagement with websites is virtuous. We also want the Internet to be an epistemically friendly environment, one in which being virtuous allows for a trusting attitude. Regardless of whether we have online intellectual virtues, an epistemically friendly online environment requires a different kind of intervention-a change in society, not individuals. Overall there is much agreement between Smart and Clowes and me. They provide an important contribution that pushes back on some assumptions that need much more attention. We need a broader focus on epistemological aspects of the Internet, and we should not overemphasize epistemic hazards. Moreover, the virtue responsibilist approach to the Internet has to do more work to show that it can be combined with a version of the extended mind thesis. I am hopeful that this can be done, and that Heersmink's multidimensional framework provides us with the theoretical grounds to achieve that. But there is a large gap between what a framework allows in principle, and whether we can be intellectually virtuous extended minds in practice. Nevertheless, it is worth a try. References Alter, Adam L., and Daniel M. Oppenheimer. 2009. "Uniting the Tribes of Fluency to Form a Metacognitive Nation." Personality and Social Psychology Review 13 (3): 219-235. Cinelli, Matteo, Gianmarco De Francisci Morales, Alessandro Galeazzi, Walter Quattrociocchi and Michele Starnini. 2021. "The Echo Chamber Effect on Social Media." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 118 (9): 1-8. Clark, Andy and David Chalmers. 1998. "The Extended Mind." Analysis 58 (1): 7-19. Halfaker, Aaron and John Riedl. 2012. "Bots and Cyborgs: Wikipedia's Immune System." Computer 45 (3): 79-82. Heersmink, Richard. 2018. "A Virtue Epistemology of the Internet: Search Engines, Intellectual." Social Epistemology 32 (1): 1-12. Heersmink, Richard. 2015. "Dimensions of Integration in Embedded and Extended Cognitive Systems." Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 13 (3): 577-598. Lynch, Michael Patrick. 2016. The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. Miller, Boaz and Isaac Record. 2013. "Justified Belief in a Digital Age: On the Epistemic Implications of Secret Internet Technologies." Episteme 10 (2): 117-134. Nguyen, C. Thi. forthcoming. "Trust as an Unquestioning Attitude." Oxford Studies in Epistemology. Nguyen, C Thi. 2020. "Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles." Episteme 17 (2): 141-161. Noble, Safiya Umoja. 2018. Algorithms of Oppression. New York: New York University Press. Reber, Rolf and Norbert Schwarz. 1999. "Effects of Perceptual Fluency on Judgments of Truth." Consciousness and Cognition 8: 338–342. Schwengerer, Lukas. 2020. "Online Intellectual Virtues and the Extended Mind." Social Epistemology. 1-11. doi: 10.1080/02691728.2020.1815095. 4 E.g., The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation L. Schwengerer 45 Schwengerer, Lukas. "Promoting Vices: Designing the Web for Manipulation." Unpublished Manuscript. Simpson, Thomas W. 2012. "Evaluating Google as an Epistemic Tool." Metaphilosophy 43 (4): 426-445. Smart, Paul R., and Robert W. Clowes. 2021. "Intellectual Virtues and Internet-Extended Knowledge." Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 10 (1): 7-21. Smart, Paul R. 2018a. "Emerging Digital Technologies: Implications for Extended Conceptions of Cognition and Knowledge." In Extended Epistemology edited by J. Adam Carter, Andy Clark, Jesper Kallestrup, S. Orestis Palermos and Duncan Pritchard, 266-304. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smart, Paul R. 2018b. "(Fake?) News Alert: Intellectual Virtues Required for Online Knowledge!" Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 7 (2): 45-55. Tollefsen, Deborah P. 2009. "Wikipedia and the Epistemology of Testimony." Episteme 6 (1): 8-24.


Xenotransplantation, Subsistence Hunting and the Pursuit of Health: Lessons for Animal Rights-Based Vegan Advocacy

Philosophy

Volume 21, Issue 1 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Spring 2018 Between the SpecieS Xenotransplantation, Subsistence Hunting & the Pursuit of Health: Lessons for Animal RightsBased Vegan Advocacy Nathan Nobis Morehouse College ABSTRACT I argue that, contrary to what Tom Regan suggests, his rights view implies that subsistence hunting is wrong, that is, killing animals for food is wrong even when they are the only available food source, since doing so violates animal rights. We can see that subsistence hunting is wrong on the rights view by seeing why animal experimentation, specifically xenotransplanation, is wrong on the rights view: if it's wrong to kill an animal to take organs to save a human life, it's wrong to kill an animal to eat that animal to save a human life or improve human health. I discuss these arguments' implications for animal rights-based vegan advocacy, insofar as some people claim that they don't feel their best on vegan diets and so their eating meat is morally justified. I argue that such an attempt to justify consuming animal products fails on Regan's rights view, but discuss some attempts to morally excuse such violations of animals' rights. These attempts are inspired by Regan's attempts at potentially excusing animal rights advocates' using medications developed using animals. Nathan Nobis 198 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Vol. 21, Issue 1 Introduction Communities that survive by subsistence hunting probably rarely, if ever, encounter vegan or animal rights advocacy. But a common question asked of vegan advocates is, "What if you were somewhere where there was literally nothing else to eat but animals? Would eating animals be wrong then?" I suspect that many vegan advocates dodge the question, observing that our finding ourselves in such a situation is very unlikely, and very unlike most of our present circumstances where vegan foods are readily available. They might also urge postponing the question until we found ourselves stuck, say, at the North Pole, when it's a "live" issue for us. They might also respond that just as we don't need to decide whether and when human cannibalism is ever morally permissible to know that it's wrong in ordinary circumstances, we also don't need to answer this question to know that we should eat vegan when we easily can. And some might respond that, no, it wouldn't be wrong, in those challenging circumstances to eat animals: perhaps the view would be that "all (or many) bets are off" in such extreme circumstances: ordinary moral rules no longer apply. I argue, however, to the contrary, that killing animals for food, even in circumstances such as these, is wrong: subsistence hunting is wrong. At least that's what animal rights advocates, following Tom Regan, should think. I then discuss the impact this finding should have for vegan and animal rights advocacy insofar as some, more than a few, people claim to not feel their best on vegan diets and so argue that their eating meat or other animal products is justified. Nathan Nobis 199 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Vol. 21, Issue 1 Xenotransplantation and Animal Rights To see why subsistence hunting – that is, roughly, the killing of animals for food when there is literally nothing else for human beings to eat besides those animals – is wrong, we can consider the animal rights basic perspective on animal experimentation, the using of animals in medical contexts to try to benefit human beings. As Tom Regan reviews in his essay "Empty Cages: Animal Rights and Vivisection": Experimental procedures include drowning, suffocating, starving, and burning; blinding animals and destroying their ability to hear; damaging their brains, severing their limbs, crushing their organs; inducing heart attacks, ulcers, paralysis, seizures; forcing them to inhale tobacco smoke, drink alcohol, and ingest various drugs, such as heroin and cocaine. (2012, 108) Experimentation clearly harms animals, especially since they are nearly always killed at the end of the experiments. The animal rights perspective on animal experimentation is, of course, that it is wrong because it violates animals' rights to their lives and bodies, at least. And it's wrong even if done "humanely" and with a painless death: healthy, or potentially healthy, animals are done no favors by being killed before their natural times. And it's wrong even if human beings, even lots of human beings, benefit from it. That is the animal rights position: so-called "animal welfare" positions deny some or all of this in permitting animal experimentation if certain conditions are met. According to the animal rights view, for example, animal experimentation in development known as "xenotransplantaNathan Nobis 200 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Vol. 21, Issue 1 tion," the "harvesting" or theft of organs from animals such as pigs and primates to transplant to human beings who will likely die without an organ transplant, is wrong (Begley, 2017). This is because it violates the animal's rights whose organ is taken and so dies as a result. While it is very unfortunate when a human person needs a new organ to survive and that organ is not available from a human donor (and no artificial organ is available), that does not justify violating any animal's rights, just as it would not justify stealing an organ from a human patient in the next room, even if that organ theft victim will survive the loss. Regan provides a theoretical explanation for why such organ theft, in both human and animal cases, is wrong: doing so treats others as mere things for one's own personal benefit (Regan 2004; 1983). Even if it's a one-time operation, never to be done again, organ theft treats someone else as a mere resource to be used for the benefit of others. Fundamentally, it's a disrespectful action that denies the victim's inherent value. There are limits to what we may do to save our own lives, even when we are "under attack" not by any moral agent or even a moral patient but a disease or our own bodies' malfunctions, and violating others' rights is never a morally acceptable response to the attack. For example, if my child is gravely ill, I cannot perform a fatal experiment on my neighbor's healthy child to even successfully save my own child's life, especially if the parents don't consent, and even if they do, since this violates that child's rights. Subsistence Hunting We are now able to see why subsistence hunting is wrong. Animal experimentation of many kinds is wrong since it violates animals' rights. And if animal experimentation of various Nathan Nobis 201 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Vol. 21, Issue 1 kinds is wrong, for reasons like those that Regan (and others) develops and defends, then it is also wrong to kill animals for food even when there is nothing else to eat. If it's wrong to kill an animal to save your life from a likely fatal medical problem by taking a pig's or primate's organ(s) to save your life, then it is also wrong to kill an animal to save your life from starvation. If you can't permissibly kill a pig to get an organ to transplant to save your life, then surely you can't permissibly kill the pig to get an organ to eat to save your life. One's "needs," even one's needs for what's needed for life itself, need not justify violating another's rights, as Judith Thompson made clear in her famous discussion of abortion (Thompson, 1971): even if someone needs to use another's kidneys to stay alive, they do not have a right to the use of those kidney's and nobody violates their rights by not allowing them to use their kidneys: a person's own right to life is not a right to others' bodies, even if that body is needed to preserve one's own life. This all seems to imply that substance hunting is wrong: hunters do not have a right to animals' lives and bodies, even if those lives and bodies are needed to sustain the hunters' lives. So, unless communities that depend on subsistence hunting can find something else to eat that doesn't involve violating rights, they will have to move to stop violating animals' rights in these ways. Or they would have to perish, it seems. While this may seem harsh, it is perhaps comparable to a country where, for whatever reason, nearly all the citizens are in desperate need of organ transplants or else they will die. A neighboring country could be raided and its citizens' organs taken, and those people killed in the process. But that would Nathan Nobis 202 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Vol. 21, Issue 1 be profoundly wrong, as it would involve massive rights violations. So, unless another solution can be found, it appears that the organ-needy persons would have to perish. This reminds us that respecting rights can be personally demanding and have high personal costs, but this is a simple consequence of the idea of rights: some actions must be done (or must not be done) "though the heavens fall" for individuals or communities. A contrary position, that self-preservation or communitypreservation can be justified at literally any cost to others is indefensible. And we can't forget that, in this case, violating rights would have high personal costs to those whose organs are stolen and their lives taken. In the only passage from Regan highly applicable to subsistence hunting that I can find, since he only discusses "sport" hunting, he writes this concerning the potential permissibility of killing animals for food: If it were the case that these [essential] nutrients [that meat provides] were not otherwise available [from nonanimal sources], then the case for eating meat, even given the rights view, would be on solid ground. If we were certain to ruin our health by being vegetarians, or run a serious risk of doing so . . and given that the deterioration of our health would deprive us of a greater variety of number of opportunities for satisfaction than those within the range of farms animals, then we would be making ourselves, not the animals, worseoff if we become vegetarians. (Regan, 2004/1983: 337, emphasis mine). Regan's response to this reasoning is just to observe that the factual claim concerning nutrition is false: we don't need to eat Nathan Nobis 203 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Vol. 21, Issue 1 animal products to be healthy. So, he responds that meat-eating could be justified, if the facts were different from what they are, but that they are not. Regan does not, however, engage the hypothetical "What if?" and underlying moral reasoning behind his argument that eating meat could be permissible. This is unfortunate since what he says seems to be, at least, inconsistent with the animal rights perspective on xenotransplantation. Consider some comparable claims: If we were certain to ruin our health, or lose our lives, by not taking organs from healthy animals, or run a serious risk of doing so . . and given that the deterioration of our health, and loss of our lives, would deprive us of a greater variety of number of opportunities for satisfaction than those within the range of farms animals, then we would be making ourselves, not the animals, worse-off if we refrained from taking organs from animals. If it were the case that these organs from xenotransplantation were not otherwise available, say from human donors or artificial organs, then the case for xenotransplantation, even given the rights view, would be on solid ground. Rejecting such reasoning is at the core of the rights view: indeed, it distinguishes the rights view from, say, utilitarian and other so called "welfarist" perspectives: animals rights must be respected, even if that makes human persons worse off. So, what Regan says about eating meat appears to be inconsistent with the rights view. I do grant that if every human being had to eat meat to survive, as opposed to a few isolated individuals with peculiar biological needs for meat, and that's Nathan Nobis 204 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Vol. 21, Issue 1 the way it always has been, that might make the case feel different: in this world, it would seem unavoidable that we routinely engage in rights violations. This recognition, however, might prompt us to vigorously find some other food sources that don't involve rights violations, or we might realize that we are making a choice to violate rights that we don't really have to make, and act accordingly, whatever that might be. Rights are not absolute, however; Regan acknowledges that they are prima facie in nature and that there can be circumstances where violating rights is justified. Indeed, his comments about the "solid ground" for killing animals for food might be an application of a misinterpretation of his own "worse-off principle," which is meant to provide guidance in cases where we must violate rights: Special considerations aside, when we must decide to override the rights of the many or the rights of the few who are innocent, and when the harms faced by the few would make them worse-off than any of the many would be if any other option were chosen, then we ought to override the rights of the many. (Regan 2004; 1983, 308) This principle prioritizes those who are made worse off by an action, whatever their numbers, when we must violate rights: if we must either minorly violate the rights of a 1000 people or majorly violate the rights of one person, we should minorly violate the rights of a 1000: the numbers don't matter. The problem though, if this principle is supposed to justify the potential for meat-eating being justified, is this: in cases of xenotransplantation, or substance hunting, there are alternatives that don't involve any rights violations, namely, not stealNathan Nobis 205 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Vol. 21, Issue 1 ing organs and not killing animals for food. That may, or, for the sake of argument, will result in human deaths. And those human beings might very well be worse off for that than any animals would be, if they were killed. But nobody's rights were violated. So the worse-off principle does not apply to cases of xenotransplantation, or any typical animal research, or subsistence hunting, contrary to Professor Regan's remarks, since they are not cases where any rights must be violated. Vegan Advocacy I have argued that subsistence hunting is wrong, if animal experimentation is wrong, for animal rights reasons. Few readers of this essay, however, likely encounter subsistence hunters or have much, if any, influence over them. We do, however, encounter people who claim to just not feel good, or not feel their best, on vegan diets, or have medical conditions that make eating vegan and staying healthy enough very difficult or impossible. At least one successful vegan advocacy organization, Vegan Outreach (VeganOutreach.org), very much acknowledges this concern and very much avoids a false message that every person who eats vegan will be healthy and feel their best: sometimes that is true, but sometimes it is not, and that fact must be acknowledged, respected and thoughtfully engaged (Adams, Breitman, and Messina, 2017). Some people who claim to not feel their best on vegan diets may be not telling the truth, or haven't tried very hard, or would benefit from skilled nutritional guidance. But it's surely possible that some people have sincerely tried hard, have sought expert guidance on how to meet their nutritional needs, and yet still do not feel well on a vegan or vegetarian diet. It's not only possible that there are such persons, there probably really are such persons: they've tried their best, but they still don't feel Nathan Nobis 206 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Vol. 21, Issue 1 well on vegan diets. In personal conversation, Regan told me that he knew of a man who he (Regan) sincerely believed just felt very poorly if he did not eat meat. If subsistence hunting is wrong, and it's wrong to kill animals to maintain one's life (as it would be wrong to xenotransplant and take a healthy animal's organ to save one's life), then it would presumably be wrong to kill animals to maintain one's health, in the vague sense of "feeling good." If it's wrong to kill animals to stay alive, which presumably is usually more important than just feeling good, then it's also wrong to kill animals to feel good and healthy. This is not to minimize or trivialize the importance of feeling good: living with chronic pain, or chronic fatigue, or any other condition that profoundly worsens someone's quality of life, and perhaps entire worldview, can be very bad for that person and those around him or her. But that doesn't seem to justify violating anyone's rights to try to improve the situation, including violating animal rights, and so it would be wrong to kill animals for food, even if doing so is genuinely necessary to promote or preserve one's health and feeling well. At least that's what the rights view suggests, it seems. Or does it? Perhaps not. In Regan's (2012) essay, "Animal Rights Advocacy and Modern Medicine: The Charge of Hypocrisy," he considers the charge that animal rights advocates who use prescription drugs, or other medical treatments, developed using animals are "hypocrites" or not insofar as they demand that animals' rights not be violated, yet benefit from drugs, the development of which involves violating animals' rights. Regan acknowledges that the issue is complex, and his discussion is Nathan Nobis 207 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Vol. 21, Issue 1 rich and full of insight and wisdom. And it is applicable to the questions at hand. Regan does not advocate that animal advocates simply let themselves die to avoid supporting drug companies' violating animal rights. Presumably, although he does not discuss the issues, he would also not encourage animal advocates to starve themselves to death to avoid supporting any killing of animals for food. It should be made immediately clear, however, that the potential of someone dying because they refuse to eat anything that directly involves violating animals' rights is far more unrealistic than anyone dying from not supporting the pharmaceutical industry. This is because it seems likely biologically impossible that anyone must eat recently killed conscious, sentient, "subject of a life" animals to stay alive and healthy. It's hard to believe that such a person couldn't survive and be healthy eating bivalves or other non-conscious animals, insects, the eggs laid by chickens who live good lives, or roadkill, or animals who recently died of natural causes, among other options. So, an "eat-animals-or-die" case is unlikely compared to a "useanimal-tested-medications-or-die" case, especially in contexts where a variety of foods are available: there will nearly always be a way to avoid death without eating what can be called "whole" animals. Anyone who lives by subsistence hunting, however, might not have these options though: they would have to eat whole animals or perish unless they are willing to move to a vegan-friendly location (or become cannibals, presumably a morally impermissible option). Nathan Nobis 208 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Vol. 21, Issue 1 With these qualifications in mind, let's see if what Regan argues about the pharmaceutical case can be extended to anyone who must eat whole animals or else perish or be unhealthy. Regan tentatively and cautiously argues that it can be permissible for animal rights advocates to take medications developed with the use of animals. This is because the animal experimentation involved in the drug development is accidental to the development of the drug, not essential: the animal use did not causally contribute to the drug's development; indeed, given misleading results from animal research, the drug may have been developed in spite of any results from animal research (287-8). This type of justification could be used to try to explain why it's not wrong to continue to use buildings made from slave labor – the buildings were in fact made by slaves, but they could have been made without them – and why using items made by Nazis using the bodies of their victims is wrong – those items could not have been made without brutal, inhumane violations of rights. So it has general plausibility, and so perhaps justifies animal advocates taking prescription drugs, even though animals' rights are violated in their development. It doesn't seem though that this justification could plausibly be applied to cases where someone must eat whole animals to stay alive or healthy. One could say that it is merely accidental that the needed nutrients are found only in the body of a subject-of-a-life animal, not essential, and so it's not wrong to kill these animals to eat them. This claim could be supported by observations about the development of "clean" meat, that is, meat developed apart from any animal's body, to try to argue that meat and animals are indeed separable: you can have meat without animals. To me, however, this is an implausible stretch of the principle since, in current actual cases, (a) the nutrients Nathan Nobis 209 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Vol. 21, Issue 1 and the body of the animal and (b) the life of the animal are basically inseparable. This is akin to a murderer claiming that the experience of murdering that he or she seeks are separable from the effects on the victim, that there is merely an accident connection between the two, and so murder is not wrong, which is an awful and absurd attempt at a justification. A drug and the animal experimentation that was involved in development are separable in a way that an animal and his or her consumed body or body parts are not: the latter is a constitutional relation, not a causal or temporal relation. So it does not seem that Regan's justification of animal advocates using pharmaceuticals can be extended to the eating of animals, even when necessary to preserve one's life or health. Recall though that Regan does not discuss this exact issue, as far as I know. And, again, we can only suspect that he would argue that it can be permissible for animal advocates to eat animal products when it is genuinely necessary for them to be healthy and feel good enough and that they are not hypocrites for doing so. Presumably, he wouldn't argue that anyone in such circumstances must just die or be very ill when eating whole animal products would prevent that. One of the arguments that Regan discusses in favor of animal advocates using pharmaceuticals is that if they are dead or ill then they cannot effectively advocate for animal rights (285-7). So, to continue advocating for the respect of animal rights, perhaps it can be permissible to partake in some practices that violate animal rights. Regan's reservation about this argument is that some means to promote, and even secure, animal rights would be wrong: for example, Regan states that torturing animal researchers' children to end animal research would be wrong. This argument in favor of using pharmaceuNathan Nobis 210 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Vol. 21, Issue 1 ticals doesn't seem to recognize any moral constraints in seeking animal rights: Regan concludes "what is effective might well be morally wrong" (287) and this argument doesn't recognize that. In reply, perhaps the argument could be augmented with a constraint that if and only if the supported rights violation is not worse than the rights violation that might be prevented in the long run by the initial supported rights violation, or is a very similar rights violation, then supporting that rights violation is permissible. So, for example, someone's supporting animal research, and the animal rights violations involved, is permissible if doing so will enable that someone to help lessen these types of violations of animal rights. Torturing children, however, would not be permissible, even if doing so would lessen violations of animal rights, as a worse type of rights violation. This response, however, is subject to many concerns: it seems to involve "using" one group to benefit another, which rights are supposed to make wrong, and it introduces complications concerning how to compare the relative badness of different rights violations. So this is not a trouble-free amendment to the argument. But rejecting it, or something like it, is problematic also. It is hard to believe that any animal advocates dying for the sake of animal rights in any way helps the cause of animal rights, at least at present. Indeed, anyone dying for animal rights is a setback, both in terms of both the attractiveness of the movement to outsiders, potential advocates, and in terms of the numbers and morale of current advocates. So while there surely are limits to what can be done to promote animal rights, perhaps supporting some violations of animal rights can be permissible if and only if those rights violations are not worse than the animal Nathan Nobis 211 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Vol. 21, Issue 1 rights violations we are seeking to end, given broader animalrights related goals. Regan also emphasizes that the context of our decisions is not our own creation: we are thrown into a world full of massive rights violations, animal and human, and must make the most of it to try to lessen these rights violations and work for the respectful treatment of all. Since the context of our decision is not self-created, and certainly not created with a peaceable kingdom in mind, perhaps acts of self-preservation are excusable and understandable, even if they involve some participation in rights violations, if doing so is more likely to increase the respect for animal rights than not, in the long run. Although it is hard to explain why, it appears then that, perhaps,a some actions that involve violating animals' rights, such as human beings' using drugs developed using animals and eating animal products when they genuinely must do so for good or better health (or life), might be morally permissible, or at least excusable, if doing so will better enable the person to advocate for animal rights and the rights violations we benefit from are not worse than those we try to seek to lessen or eliminate. This proposal might likely apply to many more mundane actions that invariably results in harms to animals, such as driving and common ways of growing and harvesting crops, at least. Arguably these literally avoidable actions violate animal rights, and perhaps the proposal developed above helps justify them. Finally, although Regan does not discuss this, but perhaps this is a situation where the "impotence of the individual" might make a positive difference for animal advocates: in most cases, if an animal advocate were to eat meat, or other Nathan Nobis 212 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Vol. 21, Issue 1 animal products, it is unlikely that purchase and consumption will cause more animals rights to be violated. If so, then eating animal products might be a kind of "free riding" that does not cause more rights violations but allows for some human being to be in a better position to advocate for animals. The same might be said about pharmaceuticals developed using drugs, although this defense is harder to apply to xenotransplantation, if a specific animal is killed for an organ for a specific individual: then an individual's actions might plausibly make a causal difference to the fate of some particular animal. This justification, however, is problematic in that it opens the door to anyone justify their behavioral indifference to animal rights because, they insist, their actions won't make a positive difference for animals. We surely want to try to resist that type of reasoning about all sorts of social justice issues. But, on the other hand, it does seem to simply be true that individual actions often don't obviously make the concrete differences we hope they would: that truth should likely not be denied and perhaps it sometimes makes a difference to, at least, how confident we should be about the morality of our actions. Although it is hard to explain why, it appears then that some actions that involve violating animals' rights, such as using drugs developed using animals and humans eating animal products when they genuinely must do so for good or better health (or life), might be morally permissible, even though they involve violating animals' rights, if doing so will better enable the person to advocate for animal rights. Whether these rights violations could be justified only if they better enable to someone to advocate for animals is an interesting question: if "yes," that answer might, surprisingly, result in it being permissible for animal advocates to occasionNathan Nobis 213 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Vol. 21, Issue 1 ally support violating animals' rights, but wrong for foes of animals to do the same action: that is an interesting result, and surely one that it would be hard to use to develop policy, as well as a bit paradoxical: animal advocates can sometimes support animal rights violations, since they will go on to promote animal rights, but those indifferent to animal rights, and oppose it, cannot? Promoting such a view to the public would surely not work, so perhaps everyone should be viewed as a potential animal advocate and treated accordingly as if they were an actual advocate (a problematic proposal in itself, insofar as rarely should potential things of a kind be treated as actual things of that kind). Conclusion In conclusion, vegan advocates are often asked "What if you were somewhere where there was literally nothing else to eat but animals? Would eating animals be wrong then?" The basic options for response are to either dodge the question, answer "yes," or answer "no." I have argued that the "no" answer, that it would be permissible to eat animals in these circumstances is contrary to animal rights perspectives: in particular, that reasoning would justify xenotransplantation. I have argued that the "yes" answer, however, faces challenges but that there may be complicated, but plausible, ways to at least morally excuse people supporting some violations of animals' rights, especially if their doing so better enables them to advocate for animals. Perhaps the best and wisest response, for most people, in most contexts, is to dodge the question, as perhaps Professor Regan did, so that none of us get distracted from the core, immediate, and pressing questions and challenges about animal rights that confront each of us as we are and where we are, now. Nathan Nobis 214 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Vol. 21, Issue 1 Notes For helpful comments, I am grateful to Robert Bass, Rick Bogle, Bob Fischer, Rupert McCallum and Josh Milburn and two anonymous reviewers for this journal. After developing the main arguments for this paper, I read Jason Hanna's excellent paper, "A Moral License to Kill? Animal Rights and Hunting," in Mylan Engel and Gary Comstock, eds., The Moral Rights of Animals (Lexington Books, 2016). He also argues that the animal rights explanation for the wrongness of animal experimentation suggests the wrongness of subsistence hunting. Hanna's paper offers some arguments that are similar to mine, but for generally overall different purposes, and readers are very much encouraged to read his very insightful paper. I also observe that Mark Rowlands in Animals Like Us argues that subsistence hunting is permissible, since it satisfies "vital" human interest (161), but that animal experimentation never is, even though it could occasionally satisfy a "vital" human interest (144-50). His arguments are subject to the critique above. References Adams, Carol J., Breitman, Patti & Messina, Virginia. 2017. Even Vegans Die: A Practical Guide to Caregiving, Acceptance, and Protecting Your Legacy of Compassion. Brooklyn: Lantern .Begley, Sharon. "She's hellbent on solving the organ shortage with 'designer pigs.' Just don't keep her waiting." 2017. STAT News, April 6. https://www.statnews. com/2017/04/06/crispr-pig-organs-transplant-luhan-yang Nathan Nobis 215 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Vol. 21, Issue 1 Hanna, Jason. 2016. "Animal Rights and Hunting." In The Moral Rights of Animals, eds. Mylan Engel and Gary Comstock, 257-77. Lexington Books. Regan, Tom. 2004. The Case for Animal Rights, updated version. First edition, 1983. University of California Press. Regan, Tom. 2012. "Animal Rights Advocacy and Modern Medicine: The Charge of Hypocrisy." In The Ethics of Animal Research: Exploring the Controversy, edited by Jeremy Garrett, 267-291. Regan, Tom. 2012. "Empty Cages: Animal Rights and Vivisection." In The Ethics of Animal Research: Exploring the Controversy, edited by Jeremy Garrett, 107-124. Rowlands, Mark. 2002. Animals Like Us. Verso. Thomson, Judith Jarvis. 1971. "A Defense of Abortion." Philosophy & Public Affairs: 47-66.


Editorial Introduction to the First Edition of Cosmos and History

Philosophy

Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, vol. 1, no. 1, 2005, p. 1-2. EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION OF COSMOS AND HISTORY Arran Gare and Paul Ashton This first edition of Cosmos and History fulfils the intention of its editors to provide a forum for philosophically oriented thinkers from all disciplines to grapple with the broader questions of who we are, what is society, what is life and what is the nature of the cosmos, and to show the implications of such questions for how we set about creating the future. The very diversity of the papers in this edition should signify to potential contributors the existence of a journal that does not accept the normal disciplinary boundaries, boundaries which are increasingly closing off channels of inquiry, insulating prevailing assumptions from questioning and leaving those who dare to cross these boundaries without an audience and without a place to publish. At the same time this ambition has exposed the editors to some problems. The most important is getting referees for papers. The effect of dividing up research in academia between one thousand five hundred disciplines and sub-disciplines is that it is difficult to find scholars to judge the work that does transcend these divisions. For this reason some excellent papers submitted for the first edition will have to be published in the second edition. As part of this project we will also be accepting a limited number of articles that appear in languages other than English, provided we can secure appropriate reviewers. At this stage, it is difficult to identify any unifying theme in the papers published, although we believe that a careful reading of them indicates an underlying commonality of interest. There is a common appreciation of the need to develop radically new ways of thinking. As the journal evolves and people respond to those papers that have been published, however, we believe themes will emerge. We hope these themes will open new horizons and embolden contributors to relate such fundamental thinking to major ethical, political and social conflicts. That is, the journal will overcome the strange view that ethical and political disputes can be understood without considering fundamental conceptions about the place of humanity in the cosmos and the dynamics of history. It is our conviction that there is an intimate relationship between fundamental philosophical issues, science and social praxis, and that it is when these relations are appreciated that intellectual inquiry, empirical research and political praxis are at their most vigorous and creative. This is illustrated by periods of great intellectual achievement, as in Ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, and late eighteenth and early www.cosmosandhistory.org 1 EDITORIAL 2 nineteenth century Germany. The divorce of intellectual inquiry from political and practical concerns in the long run leads to intellectual stagnation, although this may take some time. While it is the intention of the editors to give at least some place in each edition to papers on any topic, in the future it is likely that we will have special editions concentrating on particular topics. In such cases we will announce this beforehand and call for papers. In this way we hope to reach a different audience for contributors by publishing anthologies based on these topics. In the meantime, the future of the journal remains open. Arran Gare Philosophy and Cultural Inquiry Swinburne University Australia Paul Ashton Liberal Arts/Philosophy Victoria and LaTrobe University Australia


Elusive Victories: The American President at War, by Andrew J. Polsky

Philosophy

June 2013 1 2013–043 Andrew J. Polsky, Elusive Victories: The American Presidency at War. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2012. Pp. vii, 445. ISBN 978–0–19–986093–7. Review by Edmund F. Byrne, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (email@example.com). Political scientist Andrew Polsky (Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center) was moved to study US presidents at war by the George W. Bush administration's invasion of Iraq. "Bush demonstrated what my research identified as a fundamental characteristic of wartime presidential power: presidents begin conflicts with extraordinary freedom of action, only to see it dissipate quickly" (353). Polsky believes the "two presidency thesis" (that presidents address domestic and foreign policy separately) is false, because presidents do not have more leverage in foreign than in domestic affairs. The book has an avowed "distinctly conservative cast" (353); while liberals say presidents have too much power, Polsky's analysis "suggests ... that presidents have too little power, not too much" (352)-not due to lack of resources but lack of time and the need to rely on subordinates. To defend this "too little power" thesis, Polsky presents secondary-source case studies of men who occupied the White House during wars they started, continued, or tried to end. These studies show that no outcome of a war has fulfilled a wartime president's aspirations. So be it. But do they show that more power might have been the difference in solving or avoiding any president's problems? Political constraints aside, we must ask whether a president should have waged the war in question at all; whether achieving his goals justified war, given its costs; and whether failure to accomplish goals is regrettable only with respect to his legacy or his party's success at the polls, or viz-à-viz inherently worthy and important human values. Such queries remain on the periphery of Polsky's account. Unlike some professional political scientists, he does not limit his evaluation of presidential candidates to, say, electability, but he does generally avoid moral issues. For example, he says next to nothing about how a president's financial backers are "succeeding" during any given war, apart from the more political concerns of the White House occupant (see, however, 15–16, 161–62, 355–56, 392n66). This shortcoming aside, the book is valuable in other respects. The classification and discussion of the problems each president faced and solved (or not) are pedagogically helpful and make fascinating reading. Before laying out the problems, Polsky first articulates some pertinent "puzzles" in need of solution: why are there no political restraints on presidents' exercise of power at the outset of hostilities? why do they struggle so to achieve the national objectives they have set forth? why do they have difficulty with non-military challenges, especially at war's end? why are their domestic agendas routinely undermined? and why do they lack strategic options once a war is underway (6–11)? To deal with these puzzles, Polsky identifies six challenges each war president faced: first, to decide whether to go to war or accept it as inevitable; second, to lay the foundations for a successful war; third, to identify the nation's political objectives; fourth, to ensure that the military had a strategy to attain those objectives; fifth, to advance political goals diplomatically; and, sixth, to sustain domestic political support for the war (22–25). The presidents Polsky assesses are Abraham Lincoln (Civil War), Woodrow Wilson (World War I), Franklin Roosevelt (World War II), Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon (Vietnam), and George W. Bush and Barack Obama (Iraq and Afghanistan). Lincoln scores highest for his performance on the first five challenges. Bush scores lowest on all counts. In between, most of the others get passing marks for challenges 1– 5, subject to nuances for Johnson and Nixon and for Obama regarding the first. None dealt particularly well with the sixth. Polsky bases these evaluations on the judgments of historians or (regarding Bush and Obama) journalists and political insiders. With an asterisk after insider information, he seeks to be objective by political science standards. Yet he fails to mention the constraints that derive from obligations to Byrne 2 Michigan War Studies Review 2013–043 funding sources. Nor does he specify the sort of mental acumen, fund of knowledge, and moral character a commander in chief should possess. This silence is problematic, for four reasons. First, none of the evaluated presidents had any military training or experience (unless Bush gets points for his nominal Reserve service); nor did they all have qualified military advisers. Second, Lincoln and his successors had to adapt to the use of new, ever more destructive military technology of which they had no great understanding. (In this regard, Obama is almost a caricature, skeet shooting at Camp David while expanding his remote-controlled drone attacks.) Third, although some presidents had considerable military experience during the period Polsky covers-namely, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and, to a lesser extent, John Kennedy, the only one with military experience that Polsky considers is Jefferson Davis of the CSA (55–60). Some examination of these crossover individuals might have furnished a kind of control group to ensure some degree of scientific objectivity, 1 since (fourth), the target presidents all had political motives for seeking and holding on to the White House and hoped their war would further those objectives. So, as Polsky indicates, whatever they did or did not do regarding wars waged on their watch, they always took into account what they and their advisers felt to be politically, including electorally, advantageous. Polsky has clarified this prioritizing of the political over the military in comments since the publication of his book: "As a political leader ... a president needs to balance the wishes of his military subordinates against his larger political objectives. He has to weigh future casualties against the prospect that the losses would produce a better political outcome.... Barack Obama ... has demonstrated ... his grasp of one vital principle. Military strategy and operations must serve a political goal." 2 There is, in other words, "a recurring logic to presidential leadership ... grounded in the vitality of a dominant partisan political order and a president's relation to that order." 3 Political scientist Stephen Skowronek has analyzed this process in The Politics Presidents Make, 4 a book Polsky cites (370n20, 372n46) and says "has long shaped mine." 5 Besides Skowronek, however, Polsky relies mostly on historians and journalists. 6 Though he rarely addresses the question of source credibility, he does, however, note that scholars disagree about Johnson's comfort level in the area of foreign policy (402n18), and writes of the Iraq War that "Because few documents ... have been declassified to date, analysts have relied heavily on several fine works by journalists as well as a number of memoirs by former members of the Bush administration. Both should be regarded with caution. Many insiders who speak to reporters seek favorable treatment in their books, while memoirs often have a self-exculpatory purpose, especially when the authors have become the target of criticism" (413n1). 1. He toys with the idea of such a comparison in "A Conversation with Andrew Polsky, Author of Elusive Victories, Part II," Lawyers, Guns, and Money (18 Sep 2012) – www.miwsr.com/rd/1311.htm . 2. "Obama v. Romney on Afghanistan Strategy," OUPblog (23 May 2012) – www.miwsr.com/rd/1312.htm . 3. "A Conversation ..." (note 1 above), Part I (10 Aug 2012) – www.miwsr.com/rd/1313.htm . 4. Subtitle: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton (Cambridge: Harvard U Pr, 1997). 5. Note 3 above . 6. These include, for Lincoln: James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (NY: Oxford U Pr, 1988); also, for Jefferson Davis: William J. Cooper Jr., Jefferson Davis, American (NY: Knopf, 2000). For Wilson: Kendrick A. Clements, The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson (Lawrence: U Pr of Kansas, 1992), John Patrick Finnegan, Against the Specter of a Dragon (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1974), David F. Trask, "The American Presidency, National Security, and Intervention from McKinley to Wilson, 1789–1889," in Richard H. Kohn, ed., The United States Military under the Constitution of the United States, 1789–1989 (NY: NYU Pr, 1991) 290–316, and Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919 (NY: Random House, 2002). For Roosevelt: Donald Cameron Watt, How War Came (NY: Pantheon, 1989), Jonathan C. Utley, Going to War with Japan, 1937– 1941 (1985; rpt. NY: Fordham U Pr, 2005), Warren F. Kimball, Forged in War (NY: Morrow, 1997), Eric Larrabee, Commander in Chief (1987; rpt. Annapolis: Naval Inst Pr, 2004), David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear (NY: Oxford U Pr, 1999), and Andrew Roberts, Masters and Commanders (NY: Harper, 2009). For Johnson and Nixon: Gary R. Hess, Presidential Decisions for War, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U Pr, 2009), Larry Berman, Lyndon Johnson's War (NY: Norton, 1989) and No Peace, No Honor (NY: Free Press, 2001), and James S. Robbins, This Time We Win (NY: Encounter Books, 2010). For Bush: Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II (NY: Pantheon, 2006), Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco (NY: Penguin, 2006) and The Gamble (NY: Penguin, 2009), Gideon Rose, How Wars End (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2010), Bob Woodward, Bush at War (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2002), State of Denial (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2006), and The War Within (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2008). For Obama: Bob Woodward, Obama's Wars (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2010). Byrne 3 Michigan War Studies Review 2013–043 This cautionary note fades to naught when Polsky can bolster his points with documentary evidence. But information, especially when political in nature, obtained from a source with vested interests, however highly placed, does not necessarily merit unquestioning belief. This is less true, however, when the pertinent documents were not meant for public consumption (thank you, Freedom of Information Act), as shown by Polsky's account of how Roosevelt maneuvered the United States into World War II. He writes that FDR wanted to enter the war against Germany rather than Japan and, though Pearl Harbor required a focus on the latter, Hitler quickly resolved his need to prioritize the Pacific by declaring war against the United States (133–49). This may not be a fairy tale, but it is startlingly oblivious of documents showing that Roosevelt knew well in advance precisely what the Japanese were planning and in effect facilitated their "ignominy." 7 Without implying that everything else in the book is beyond controversy, I will now summarize some of Polsky's assessments of presidential abilities in time of war. Lincoln and Roosevelt came closest to meeting all the specified challenges (200). The others all fell short because of "the impossibility of the challenges" (340). Lincoln tolerated horrendous casualties, initiated expanded emergency powers and executive privilege, and planned inadequately for the postwar, post-emancipation nation. Wilson sought the unattainable, a world made "safe for democracy," while undermining civil liberties in its pursuit; he was thwarted by unpersuaded allies abroad and hostile politicians at home. But, on the credit side of the ledger, he did manage to stagger US participation in World War I to allow time to train the troops properly. Johnson, Nixon, and, to some extent, Obama made poor decisions regarding wars not primarily of their making. "Bush mismanaged nearly all of the tasks a wartime president faces" (323), for example, by delegating authority in occupied Iraq to the utterly unqualified Paul "Jerry" Bremer (298–303) and his incompetent "Coalitional Provisional Authority" staff. Lincoln and Roosevelt were the best at changing military leadership as circumstances dictated. For example, except for Robert E. Lee, few of Jefferson Davis's generals were reliable. Once he had chosen Gen. John J. Pershing, Wilson relied on him without hesitation, as did Nixon and Henry Kissinger (less reasonably) on Alexander Haag, and Bush (still less reasonably) on Donald Rumsfeld. (The book was published before scandals involving top military personnel in the Obama administration became public.) Roosevelt, convinced of the importance of warplanes and ships, including aircraft carriers, for military success, ramped up US production accordingly. Johnson stuck with Gen. William Westmoreland long after his insistence on "search-and-destroy" missions (as opposed to winning hearts and minds) had proved misguided. In military strategy, each president was an activist at least on occasion, some (Lincoln and now Obama with his drones) more than others. Davis failed to adopt and capitalize on the tactics of asymmetric warfare. Roosevelt was consistently involved in strategic planning (195) and adroitly reconciled the quest for unconditional German surrender with Stalin's desire for a second front in Europe and Churchill's fixation on regaining or preserving British colonial interests in the Mediterranean and elsewhere (172–76, 194). He also acquiesced in the rapacious land-grabbing by the Soviets and others, but laid the groundwork for permanent peace via the United Nations and new financial institutions (181–88). None of the target presidents consistently maintained popular support for war. Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, and (reluctantly) Johnson implemented conscription; Bush and Obama did not. Bush accepted Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's vacuous claim that large numbers of troops were unneeded for America's hypermodern, efficient war machine, then resorted to multiple redeployments to sustain personnel levels. All of Polsky's chosen presidents controlled the media to some degree, suppressing negative assessments of their war-making. Bush used "cooked" intelligence and the nation's desire to avenge 9/11 to make his case, while curtailing civil liberties through the USA Patriot Act and the newly established Department of Homeland Security. Intense political pressure undermined Roosevelt's New Deal during the war (160– 68). Johnson scaled back many of his policies in order to salvage his Great Society, but could not overcome antiwar protests and looming electoral challenges (235–47). Nixon tried expanded excursions and bombing 7. See Robert Stinnett, Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000); also Justin Raimondo, "Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt Knew," Antiwar.com (7 Dec 2012) – www.miwsr.com/rd/1314.htm . Byrne 4 Michigan War Studies Review 2013–043 missions to demonstrate US prowess to the North Vietnamese, who knew time was on their side and negotiated accordingly. Polsky has written an engaging and perceptive book. But is it good political science? This is a hard question to answer, given the extreme specialization of work in this academic discipline. A broader issue is the indifference of the social sciences as a whole to the study of war. 8 Since wars often reflect (explicit or implicit) political objectives, Polsky correctly warns us that future presidents pursuing non-military solutions to international problems will face a structural problem: "Wars are instruments of national policy with political objectives, and some of those goals can be achieved by other means ranging from diplomacy to economic sanctions.... [T]he cost-human, economic, and political-will likely be far less than war.... [But absent] more effective non-military tools to influence foreign policy outcomes ..., the disproportionate allocation of resources toward the military encourages presidents to opt for military solutions" (355–56). In other words, the critical policy priorities that American presidents should espouse are often frustrated by the institutional imperatives of their office. 8. For a seminal discussion of this subject, see Hans Jonas and Wolfgang Knöbl, War in Social Thought: Hobbes to the Present, trans. Alex Skinner (Princeton: Princeton U Pr, 2013 [German ed. 2008]). For a good economic, rather than political, approach to the study of war, see, e.g., Hugh Rockoff, America's Economic Way of War: War and the US Economy from the Spanish-American War to the Persian Gulf War (NY: Cambridge U Pr, 2012).


Liftoff to freedom

Philosophy

Liftoff to Freedom Political thought and commentary by Mark F. Sharlow STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES What would a truly free society be like? This is one of the most important questions the human mind can ask. We can learn much about freedom by studying today's democracies and the great liberation movements of the past. Among those movements were the American Revolution, the drive to disband the Soviet Union, and the struggle for democracy in many other nations. Liberty has seen many successes, but still we must ask whether today's democratic nations represent the highest possible degree of freedom. Even democracies can suffer under the burden of unnecessary laws and unjust limits on liberty. Throughout history, political thinkers have proposed blueprints for better societies. This document is such a proposal. It sets forth three principles that, in the author's opinion, would be basic to any fully free society. Present-day societies, even admirably free ones, do not follow all of these principles. However, many societies in today's world have made progress in the right directions. The people of the world can work to make societies better, and can hope to realize these three ideals more fully in the future. Nonviolent democratic change is the key to achieving this goal in our time. We state these three principles here without supporting philosophical arguments, though such arguments can be made. The main argument for these principles is the evidence of personal conscience. Those who love freedom and who detest government cruelty are likely to find these principles reasonable. Principle 1. Maximum Freedom The power of the state to compel individual behavior must be limited to the least power possible. The well-known phrase "government by the people" is the key to the nature of a proper government. The only legitimate powers of governments are powers derived from the people. This means powers derived from the rights of individual people - not from some supposed collective called "the people." For example, you have a right to defend yourself, and every other citizen individually has a similar right of self-defense. Therefore, you and other citizens may hire a police force to defend yourselves. Such a police force would perform a role that individuals justly could perform for themselves, if the individuals were physically able to do so. Governments may justly exercise only those powers that individuals may justly exercise on their own. A government limited to such powers would be a genuine "government by the people." In a fully free society, free associations among people would carry out many of the roles of today's governments. The most crucial of these functions, from a humanitarian standpoint, is providing help from those in need. This help could come from associations formed and supported by residents of a community, instead of from an inefficient government-run welfare system. Voluntary alliances among people who care are likely to do this important job better than can any government.[1] Also, people who wished to have certain social programs, such as a strong welfare safety net, could form communities that have these programs. Under a limited government, it will be fairly easy to form new voluntary communities with the rules and policies that people want.[2] Note that these two ways of administering programs are not the same as the dangerous, uncertain "privatization" taking place in some countries today. It is unwise to let for-profit business concerns take complete control of vital humanitarian tasks; those businesses were created for other purposes. Voluntary associations and community-based agreements are naturally suited for these tasks, and could do these jobs better. The view that government power should be as limited as possible is known as libertarianism.[3] The minimal-government position that I am taking here is, in its basics, a standard libertarian position. Contrary to some opinions, libertarianism is not an ideology of unbridled big business, robber barons, and social Darwinism. When put into practice correctly, libertarianism is a philosophy for the liberation of every individual. However, I do not necessarily agree with all the beliefs of organizations that identify themselves as libertarian. There are many different varieties of libertarianism.[4] The kind I am proposing is, perhaps, the most humane version of libertarianism. Principle 2. Capitalism for the Individual In today's world, many people take it for granted that you must be an employee to support yourself. Only a few realize that you are not truly free if you have to ask someone else's permission to support yourself. In present-day societies, most people cannot survive without being given a job by someone else. For most, the only other alternatives are charity, welfare, or starvation. Most of us take this way of life for granted, as if there were no other way. But if you think seriously about it, you will realize that this way of living is an infringement of your freedom. Your possibility of supporting yourself is at the mercy of job markets, which can suddenly discard you and your family into the hell of poverty through no fault of your own. Even the most diligent and dependable employee is not safe. This economic system is bad for companies as well as for workers. Because of the threat of poverty, many workers have to take jobs that they would not take except out of fear. Thus, companies often end up with workers who have no real interest in their jobs. This situation also causes most of the traditional hostilities between labor and management. Employers would be much better off with employees who chose their jobs willingly. In a truly free society, everyone would have the power to support himself or herself, if necessary, without working for someone else. Everyone would own private property; everyone would own a privately owned piece of the means of economic production. The people would not own the means of production in a collective way, as they supposedly do under socialism. Instead, each person would own his or her means of subsistence and production. For example, you could own the assets of a one-person business, or enough land to allow survival by farming. People could seek conventional jobs if they wanted to do particular work or to earn more money. (Most people have these wishes; therefore, most people probably would take jobs.) However, no one would have to beg for a job to survive. This system would be pro-people and pro-business at the same time. The idea of universal economic self-sufficiency forms the basis of the economic line of thought called distributism or distributivism.[5] Distributists favor widespread individual ownership of the means of production. On that point, they are right. However, a truly free society need not, and cannot, adopt all the ideas of the distributists. The economic path that I am proposing here is libertarian first, though it shares the distributists' goal of universal self-sufficiency. Universal self-sufficiency would make real capitalism possible for the first time! In the economies of so-called capitalist countries today, a small rich social stratum owns most of the means of production. Distributist thinkers have pointed out that this system really should not be called capitalism.[6] Real capitalism begins when everyone is an owner of significant private property, including enough of the means of production to survive. The ideal way to realize this goal is to ensure that everyone has enough land and other private property to live independently. This would be possible in a society deliberately formed by people who support universal land ownership. Communities of this kind could exist within a libertarian nation. No one would be forced to join such a community, but people could join them voluntarily.[7] In today's situation, it would be difficult to extend this kind of freedom to everyone. We should strive for this level of freedom, but attaining it will take time. In the mean time, we can pursue a quicker path to universal selfsufficiency: the deregulation of one-person businesses. This means abolishing most of the government rules that stand in the way of tiny, one–person businesses. This would make it possible for anyone, no matter how poor, to better his or her lot by starting a very small business - much as immigrants in the early United States started pushcart businesses. To make this change, we would have to abolish most regulatory rules for very small businesses, and bar most civil lawsuits against such businesses. Only the most basic and necessary laws (such as laws against cheating customers or selling bad products) would remain in place. These reforms make up a path to real capitalism, and are natural parts of the libertarian agenda. Today, some people use "libertarianism" as an excuse for freeing large corporations from the rule of law. This is not what real libertarianism is about. The complete unleashing of big companies could lead to massive oppression of the people and serious environmental destruction. Not all large companies would act that way, but some would. Real libertarianism would begin with deregulation of one-person businesses - in other words, the liberation of human beings to support themselves and to forge their own destinies. This would make people free and self-supporting. Later, it would be possible to reduce government regulations for other businesses - but not to the extent of letting those businesses run roughshod over people's rights. (No business of any size, and no individual, has a right to ignore the rights of others through such acts as fraud and intimidation.) Also, the state-created corporations of today could be transformed gradually into companies not created by the state, but operated through systems of contracts. This change, long ago proposed by libertarian economists [8], would reduce economic inequality while protecting all legitimate business interests. When society is libertarian and when individuals and families are self-sufficient, wealth accumulation will become natural and normal. There will be no forced redistribution of anyone's wealth. Although some might become richer than others, no one will have to be extremely poor. Libertarianism plus universal self-sufficiency equals true capitalism - capitalism for everyone. This true capitalism is better than socialism, and is better than the false capitalism that we have today. The libertarian ideal in its fullest form can come to pass only if citizens are self-sufficient. Only universal self-sufficiency can ensure that job markets are truly free markets. Principle 3. The End of Punishment as We Know It Present-day societies depend on punishment as the primary means of preserving social order. Even in so-called "advanced" societies, many legal punishments are incredibly cruel. Some governments mete out long prison sentences even for minor offenses. Often, prison sentences, and the criminal records associated with them, lead to the end of any hope of a worthwhile future for the person imprisoned. Often these sentences lead to the ruin of the prisoner's entire family. Indeed, the effect of the prison sentence on the prisoner's family is one of the greatest terrors of punishment. This proves that imprisonment is a form of collective vengeance against families; such vengeance always is unjust. Also, the conditions inside prisons, even in "advanced" countries, often are too horrible for nonprisoners to imagine. A nation that gruesomely destroys human beings to hurt them and their families, or to terrorize future offenders, is not yet a fully civilized nation - no matter how technically or economically developed that nation may be. Although it may seem radical to say so, governments have no business handing out punishments with the aim of making the offender suffer. The chief legitimate aims of criminal justice are: (1) to confine dangerous criminals so they will not pose a threat to society, and (2) to win back offenders to a more honest way of life. These goals sometimes are called incapacitation and rehabilitation. It is morally permissible for the government to perform these two tasks, because these tasks are simply extensions of people's rights to defend themselves. Incapacitation and rehabilitation are strong enough measures to stop dangerous criminals and to protect people from crime. Retribution and deterrence are not morally acceptable aims for criminal justice. If we limit the power of criminal justice systems to rehabilitation, combined with confinement of some offenders when necessary to protect the innocent, this will spell the end of punishment as we know it. One could think of the result of this change as a new, constructive type of punishment. However, it would be more accurate to call it the abolition of punishment. People of conscience should strive to replace punishment with a new, positive form of criminal justice centered on rehabilitation. The belief that punishment should be abolished in favor of constructive, positive measures may be called antipenalism. The Three Keys to True Freedom: LIBERTARIANISM UNIVERSAL SELF–SUFFICIENCY ANTIPENALISM Notes [1] For a discussion of this possibility, see David Boaz, Libertarianism: A Primer (1st paperback ed.; New York: The Free Press, 1998), chapter 7. [2] David Boaz makes this suggestion in Libertarianism: A Primer (cited in note 1). He suggests (pp. 286-289) that communities with various economic and social systems, including welfare systems, could exist under a libertarian government. [3] David Boaz's book, Libertarianism: A Primer, which I cited in note 1, discusses the subject of libertarianism in an introductory fashion. [4] My position definitely is not the same as the philosophy of Ayn Rand, who mixed up libertarianism with atheism and other irrelevant doctrines. A libertarian does not have to be a follower of Rand, and can be religious or not. [5] Early key distributist thinkers included G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. By endorsing a few of these authors' ideas, I do not mean to endorse all of their ideas. In particular, I do not agree with the overall conservatism of their teachings. [6] G.K. Chesterton did this in his book, The Outline of Sanity (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1927), pp. 5-8. [7] See note [2] above. [8] Murray N. Rothbard, Power and Market (2nd ed.; Kansas City: Sheed Andrews and McMeel, 1977), pp. 79-80. Page updated 9/21/09. Minor edits and change to PDF format, 2022. Page copyright © 2007 Mark F. Sharlow. Graphic images displayed on page, copyright © 2007 Mark F. Sharlow. All rights reserved.