Phil 108: Family, Country, and Race

Some people believe that patriotic partiality is morally permissible, while rejecting the thoroughly communitarian account of morality defended by MacIntyre. Patriotic partiality, on these views, is often taken to be similar to partiality toward one's family - and since even most who endorse what MacIntyre calls "liberal universalism" believe that family partiality is permissible, it is plausible to think, according to those who defend the compatibility of universalism and patriotism, that patriotic partiality can be justified within a universalist framework as well.

Others are skeptical of the attempt to defend patriotic partiality by suggesting that it is, in morally relevant respects, similar to family partiality. Paul Gomberg, for example, claims that patriotic partiality has more in common with racial partiality than it does with family partiality - and since racial partiality is clearly morally unacceptable, we should, according to Gomberg, reject patriotic partiality as well.

There is much that seems clearly right to me about Gomberg's claim that patriotism is quite similar to racism. After all, which country one is born in is just as morally arbitrary as what color skin one is born with. It seems obvious that neither factor should, in itself, have any impact on the degree of moral consideration that others owe to one. Furthermore, none of us have personal relationships with all of our compatriots, while one thing that might plausibly be thought to ground the permissibility of family partiality is the personal relationships that most people have with their family members. Choosing to save the life of a stranger who happens to share one's citizenship status rather than a stranger from another country for no reason other than that the former is from one's country seems at least somewhat arbitrary, in the way that choosing to save a member of one's own race merely because she shares one's race seems objectionably arbitrary. On the other hand, most people think that choosing to save a family member rather than a stranger simply because the former is a family member is at the very least permissible; some would even claim that saving the family member is required.

The challenge for those who claim that patriotism is compatible with universalism, then, would appear to be to explain why we should think that patriotic partiality is different, morally speaking, than racial partiality. There are a few things that might be said in an attempt to meet this challenge, though I admit to not finding any of them terribly convincing. First, we might think that the fact that we share a politcal community with our co-nationals makes it the case that we have a special relationship (despite in most cases lacking a personal relationship) to them that we don't have to those outside our nation, and that this relationship grounds the permissibility of giving extra moral weight to their interests. We might simultaneously deny that there is any such special relationship that we have to those who share our race, either because race is simply not a morally important category, or, more strongly, because race is an illusion altogether. The truth of the latter claim would certainly provide a distinction (though not necessarily a morally relevant one) between race and co-nationality, because there clearly are facts about, for example, citizenship status, whereas the view that race is an illusion denies that there are any facts at all about race. In addition, we might think that the fact that we do not have personal relationships with all of our co-nationals does not distinguish the grounds for accepting the permissibility of family partiality from the grounds for accepting the permissibility of national partiality. We might, for example, think that it would be permissible (or obligatory) for one to save the life of a long lost uncle that one had never met before encountering him in a life threatening situation (of course we must imagine that the potential rescuer knows of the biological relationship) rather than saving an acquantaince simply because the former is a family member. If this is correct, then we might think that in a range of cases national partiality is justified in just the same way that family partiality is, and that whether or not one has a personal relationship with those to whom she is partial is irrelevant.

Interestingly, Stephen Nathanson, who defends the view that patriotism is compatible with universalism, does not say any of these things. Instead, he claims that just as the sort of patriotism that he defends, which he calls "moderate patriotism," is acceptable, so too is what Gomberg critically referred to as "moderate racism." Just as it is permissible to give extra consideration, beyond what is owed to everyone, to some simply because they are one's co-nationals, it is permissible to give extra consideration to some simply because they are members of one's own race. "Moderate racism," on this view, is not morally objectionable, because it does not involve one in giving those of other races less consideration that is owed to everyone in virtue of the principles of universal morality.

This view essentially says that there is a minimum level of consideration owed to everyone, and that beyond that we can choose to give extra consideration to some for what seem clearly to be morally arbitrary reasons, such as that they share one's race. I'm inclined to think that this view is incorrect, but even if it is right, the way in which it justifies patriotism seems to make patriotism nothing more than morally tolerable (and only in limited circumstances). It is certainly not a virtue, and seems to be morally on a par with giving preference to some because they share one's race, or eye color, or favorite TV show, or brand of toothpaste. And if it morally no different than partialities like these, then it is not clear why we should be inclined to accept it in the first place. Given the tendency of any form of partiality, if systematically practiced, to lead to avoidable inequalities, woudn't we do better according to what we actually value (equality over partiality based on race/toothpaste brand/etc.) to simply reject the claim that national partiality is permissible?

Phil 108: MacIntyre on Liberal and Patriotic (Communitarian) Morality

Liberal morality, according to Alasdair MacIntyre, is incompatible with patriotism. This is because liberal morality, on MacIntyre's description of it, requires "neutral[ity] between rival and competing interests...each individual is to count for one and nobody for more than one," and because liberal moral principles apply equally to everyone - they are "independent of all social particularity." Patriotic morality, on the other hand, requires that the interests of one's own nation or community be privileged in one's decisions about what to do. The patriot cannot take up the standpoint of the impartial observer in, for example, disputes between her nation and another nation over resources or conceptions of the good life. Patriotic morality requires adherence to the principles that one has internalized within her community, principles that will often reflect not the equal concern for the interests of all required by liberal morality, but rather the particular values that define the way of life of the nation or community. These particular values, and the principles that are internalized as a result of immersion in a community that is in part defined by them - and which require the promotion of those values (including, perhaps, by means of going to war with other nations/communities that reject them) - are, according to MacIntyre, the only values and principles that could possibly serve as a motivational basis for moral action. If individuals are not motivated by the particular values that define their community's particular way of life, if they are constantly subjecting these values, and the socially particular moral principles to which they give rise, to rational scrutiny by attempting to determine whether they are consistent with the liberal requirement to take all to count for one and none for more than one, then the social bonds which ensure the stability, and indeed the survival of the community are liable to dissolve (soldiers, for example, are unlikely to have the attitudes necessary to consistently act in the ways necessary to ensure the country's security). Only patriotic morality, on this view, can provide the right sort of motivational basis to sustain any particular community over time. This, on MacIntyre's view, is a reason to prefer patriotic morality to liberal morality, given their incompatibility.

It is clear that one central aim of any patriotic morality, on MacIntyre's understanding, is the preservation of the nation or community's way of life, and the values that its way of life represents. The moral significance of this aim is overriding in cases of conflicts with other communities over their respective ways of life, or over resources that contribute to the sustainability of the community and its values. Nations or communities, rather than individuals, are the fundamental unit of moral concern on this view. MacIntyre's argument, then, appeals to a form of communitarianism - to the view that the nation or community is the fundamental unit of moral concern because individuals are partly constituted by the communities within which they are socialized and from which they get their values. Individuals could not be moral agents without socialization within a community, and they could not be the moral agents that they are in the absence of the community within which they were actually socialized. The patriotic moral requirement to defend one's community and its values, then, is in a sense a requirement to defend an essential part of oneself. To allow one's community and its values to be destroyed, on this view, is to allow an essential part of oneself to be destroyed, and the destruction of one's community and its values is at the same time the destruction of oneself as the moral agent that she is.

It is clear, then, why MacIntyre rejects liberal morality as incompatible with patriotism and as independently untenable. Liberal morality, as he understands it, can require one to promote the values of another nation or community over those of his own (remember, each is to count for one and none for more than one - everyone's interests are on a par, morally speaking), even if this will involve the destruction of her community. But given that we are partly constituted as moral agents by the socialization that we receive in our communities, taking the liberal requirements to be moral requirements is to assume that there is a source of moral reasons, and therefore a possible source of moral motivation, other than the values that one has acquired from her community - that does not derive from the social factors that partly constitute individuals as moral agents. Liberal morality is incoherent, on MacIntyre's view, because it can require individuals to act against, and perhaps even allow or participate in the destruction of, the community that partly constitutes one as the moral agent that she is. It can require one to undermine the source of her moral agency - in effect, to contribute to the destruction of a part of herself, and to render her without any source of moral motivation whatsoever, and therefore without any morality.

MacIntyre's argument relies heavily on the thought that the loss of one's nation or community entails the loss of the only possible source of moral motivation and moral understanding that an individual can have access to - "deprived of the life of [my] community, I would have no reason to be moral," he claims. This thought strikes me as, if not obviously false, at least extremely questionable. If my nation ceased to exist, and its values, some of which I suppose inform my moral thinking to some extent, no longer served as the basis for the sort of social life that currently structures many of my interactions with compatriots, I don't at all imagine that I would cease to be the moral agent that I am, and I certainly do not think that I would no longer have any reason to be moral. This intuitive sense that my moral agency would clearly survive the destruction of my national community leads to me to be deeply skeptical of the communitarian account of the constitution of individuals as moral agents.

There are further difficulties associated with the communitarian view. In particular, it is not clear why MacIntyre seems to privilege national community above all other forms as the one that provides the set of values and the process of socialization that inculcates those values that play an essential role in constituting individuals as the moral agents that they are. Conflicting community associations (national, religious, ethnic, ideological, etc.) can socialize single individuals to identify with conflicting values, and it's not clear why any particular type of community should be taken to be the primary one that provides the social basis for moral motivation and understanding. The value of preserving a nation as a political arrangement for the pursuit of mutual benefits may be a reason for thinking that there are very often strong self-interested reasons for acting so as to preserve one's nation as a nation, but the values that derive from other forms of community are often at least nearly as significant for the pursuit of individuals' conceptions of the good life (this is in part, of course, due to the fact that individuals' conceptions of the good life are influenced by all of the aforementioned types of community, and not just national community).

Given these reasons for skepticism about MacIntyre's patriotic communitarianism, I wonder what might be said in defense of his approach. Am I right in thinking that his view has unacceptably counterintuitive implications about individuals' moral agency? Is there a defensible way of privileging national community in the way that MacIntyre seems to want to?

Phil 108: Marquis on Abortion

Marquis' argument for the view that abortion is generally impermissible relies on the claim that what is typically wrong about killing normal adult human beings is that doing so deprives them of their futures. The fact that killing something will deprive it of a "future like ours," is, according to Marquis, "sufficient to create the strong presumption that the killing is seriously wrong" (73). This entails that killing fetuses is typically seriously wrong, regardless of whether or not fetuses are already persons. Marquis claims, therefore, that once we understand what typically makes killing normal adult persons wrong, it is clear that aborting fetuses is generally wrong, since doing so shares a property with killing persons that is sufficient for making killing persons wrong (namely, depriving the being killed of a future like ours).

This argument has substantial force. There is something that seems clearly right about the thought that at least part of what makes killing persons wrong is that doing so deprives them of their futures. It also seems clearly true that futures like ours are valuable, and that the value of such futures is something that morality must take seriously. Those who wish to defend a more permissive view about the morality of abortion must, then, respond to the challenges raised by Marquis' argument. There are, however, a number of points that can be raised that present difficulties for his view.

One thing that we might immediately notice about Marquis' account is that it seems to imply that it would be wrong for one to disconnect herself from the violinist in Thomson's famous case. After all, the violinist will, if he continues to live, have a future like ours, and so Marquis seems committed to the claim that it would be wrong to kill him. This thought is supported by Marquis' claim that "abortion, like ordinary killing, could be justified only by the most compelling reasons...abortion could be justified in some circumstances, only if the loss consequent on failing to abort would be at least as great [as the loss to a standard fetus of its future]" (73). Since the loss of nine months of life detached from the violinist is not as great as the loss of the violinist's life, it seems as though Marquis' view implies that it would be wrong to disconnect.

One might suggest that Marquis need not accept that it would be wrong to detach oneself from the violinist, despite maintaining his strongly pro-life stance on abortion. When one detaches herself from the violinist, we might think, she merely allows him to die, whereas abortion involves the deliberate killing of the fetus. Perhaps Marquis can claim that it is only wrong to deprive a being of a future like ours by killing it, and that because one does not kill the violinist by detaching oneself, but merely lets him die, detaching is permissible.

I am skeptical of the thought that Marquis can plausibly make this claim. After all, one must do something, namely detach oneself, in order to put oneself in a position to then allow the violinist to die, and by detaching oneself one ensures that the violinist will not get to enjoy the future that he would otherwise have. If a woman found herself pregnant and wanted to avoid carrying the fetus to term, it would be implausible to think that it is impermissible to kill the fetus, but permissible to take a pill that detaches it from its source of nutrition in the womb, resulting in its death in the near future due to the lack of intervention to save it. It seems clear that Marquis would deny that taking such a pill is permissible, since doing so would deprive the fetus of its future. Whether taking the pill is accurately described as killing the fetus, or whether instead a woman who takes it and then does nothing to save the fetus merely lets it die, surely must, if it makes any difference at all for Marquis, not make enough of a difference to justify divergent moral assessments.

After all, the value of a future like ours account of the wrongness of killing us is taken by Marquis to imply a strongly pro-life position on the ethics of abortion. It would be strange, given his reliance on this type of argument, if he were to allow that the invention of a pill of the sort that I described above would make acting in a way that is known will result in the death of the fetus permissible. This concession would severely undercut the pro-life implications of his argument, and therefore it seems clear that he will not want to make it.

Just as he cannot appeal to the distinction between killing and letting die in order to maintain the position that abortion is generally wrong and also accept Thomson's view that it is permissible to detach from the violinist, Marquis cannot, I think, appeal to the distinction between intending and foreseeing. For just as one might detach oneself from the violinist without intending to kill him (that is, if the violinist were to continue living after detachment one would not be at all disappointed), a woman might remove a fetus from her womb without intending its death (if it were to survive outside the womb she would not be at all disappointed). But surely Marquis wants to maintain that so long as one foresees that the fetus will die if it is removed from the womb, it is impermissible to remove it. So it looks as if he must accept this same conclusion in the violinist case.

Now Marquis may simply bite the bullet and accept that one must stay attached to the violinist. Indeed, it seems to me that he has no other plausible option. His position on abortion, in combination with the way in which this position prevents him from appealing to the doing/allowing or intending/foreseeing distinctions, leaves him with a view on which morality can make very substantial demands on individuals when the futures of others are at stake. This in itself is not necessarily a problem for his view; there is nothing intrinsically problematic about demanding views of morality's requirements, and in fact I'm inclined to think that on the whole more demanding views are more plausible than their less demanding rivals. But Marquis faces a further problem - namely that it's not clear, given the sort of argument that he provides, that he can plausibly avoid the conclusion that we have an obligation to procreate so as to bring about futures like ours.

We have seen that he must deny that the distinctions between doing and allowing and between intending and foreseeing are morally significant enough to justify detaching from the violinist so long as one either does not kill him or does not intend his death, because this would also license acting in ways that are known will result in the death of a fetus. And his account of what makes killing something wrong appeals to the value of the future that such killing would prevent from obtaining. So the reason that we must not kill an embryo is, on Marquis' view, that doing so would prevent a valuable future like ours from being enjoyed. But failing to procreate when we could also prevents a valuable future like ours from being enjoyed. So in order to deny that we have an obligation to procreate, Marquis claims that failure to procreate does not deprive any particular individual of such a future. But the fact that there is no victim in the case of failure to procreate may not be able to fully settle the question. After all, if we were to procreate, then a future like ours would obtain, and such a future would be valuable. Denying that we are obligated to bring such a future about when we can, while maintaining that we have a very strong obligation not to intervene to prevent such a future from obtaining, seems to involve endorsing a very strong distinction between the moral significance of, on the one hand, acting in a way that prevents some good that would otherwise be realized from obtaining, and on the other, failing to act in a way that would result in some good that would otherwise not obtain being realized. Indeed, claiming that an embryo can be a victim, while a sperm and egg before conception cannot, seems to be little more than an endorsement of the moral significance of this distinction; after all, it is far from intuitive that an embryo can be a victim, and Marquis' claim that it can simply rests on the thought that in the absence of the sort of intervention involved in early abortion, the embryo would have a future like ours.

It's far from clear what the reason could be to think that there is such a great deal of moral significance to the distinction between preventing a good that would otherwise be realized from being so and failing to bring about a good when one could, in particular for someone who is committed to rejecting anything close to such significance for the doing/allowing and intending/foreseeing distinctions. We might be suspicious that Marquis is simply (and only implicitly) accepting the moral significance of the distinction in order to avoid commitment to the absurd view that we have an obligation to procreate. If this is the case, then we might suspect that there is something problematic about the arguments for the future like ours account of the wrongness of killing and/or its strongly anti-abortion implications.

Phil 108: Thomson on Rights and Abortion

Thomson's aim in "A Defense of Abortion" is to argue that even if we assume that fetuses are persons with the same moral status as ordinary adults, abortion is often permissible. Her strategy is to employ a series of examples that she takes to show that we are not morally obligated to make significant sacrifices in order to save the lives of others (or to prevent them from dying). The case that has generated the most discussion is the violinist case, in which the reader is to imagine that she is kidnapped and attached to a famous violinist, who needs the use of her kidneys for nine months in order to survive. Thomson's intuition is that, while it would be nice of a person to remain hooked up to the violinist, and to thereby save his life, it is certainly not morally obligatory to do so. The violinist, on her view, has no right to the use of another person's kidneys.

We should note that although many people share Thomson's intuition, one may simply reject her claim about the violinist case. We might think that if one finds herself in the unfortunate situation of choosing whether to detach oneself from the violinist, and thereby killing him, or else sacrificing nine months of her life in order to save him, she ought, morally speaking, to remain attached. After all, although nine months of her life is a lot to give up, the violinist's life is at stake, and so he has even more to lose. If we think that morality can, at least sometimes , make very significant demands on individuals, we might be inclined to think that Thomson's violinist case is simply one such possible occasion. If this is the right view, which I think it might very well be, then if we grant that fetuses are persons with full moral status, we may not be able to resist the conclusion that abortion is always wrong, except in cases in which the mother's life is threatened.

Warren accepts Thomson's intuition about the violinist case, but claims that, as Thomson describes it, it only shows that abortion in the case of rape is morally permissible. If we also accept Thomson's intuition, then this seems right. If the violinist has no right to the use of the attached person's kidneys due to the fact that this person was kidnapped and therefore did nothing that could have granted him such a right, then a woman who has been raped has certainly done nothing that could have granted the fetus the right to be kept alive by her body, and so the fetus must not have this right.

But perhaps pregnancies that result from voluntary intercourse are such that the woman does implicitly grant the fetus that results from such intercourse the right to be kept alive by her body. Thomson considers this possibility, but claims that this is not the case by appealing to several cases involving burglars, innocent intruders, and people-seeds. The first thing to note about the appeal to cases involving burglars is that such cases may distort our intuitions if we mistakenly accept that such cases are analogous to cases of pregnancy resulting from voluntary intercourse. Burglary, after all, is (at least in most cases) wrong, and therefore it is clear that, all else equal, burglars have no right to remain in a house they have broken into simply because the house's owners did not take every possible precaution against burglars getting into the house. But if we imagine a case in which expelling a burglar from one's home is sure to result in the death of the burglar, as abortion is sure to result in the death of the fetus, it is not obvious, at least to me, that one is not morally required to let the burglar stay until he can leave without perishing. And when we alter the case in a way that makes it relevantly analogous to pregnancy as a result of voluntary intercourse, by making the intruder, like the fetus, innocent, then it is even less clear that it is permissible to expel the intruder from one's home. If a vagrant accidentally stumbles through your window during a terrible storm that is sure to kill him if he returns outside, it seems pretty clear to me that it would be wrong to kick him out of your house. If this case is analogous to pregnancy resulting from voluntary intercourse, then if we assume that the fetus is a person with full moral status it seems that we should accept that abortion is wrong if the pregnancy results from voluntary sex.

Now this position assumes that it is either the case that one can acquire a right to aid from another person without that person explicitly granting the right (the home owner doesn't grant the vagrant the right to be in her house merely by leaving the window open), or that it is the case that it can be wrong to act in a way that will result in someone's death even if the person whose life is at stake has no right that one not act in that way. It appears that Thomson is willing to accept the latter claim, but not the former. But the cases in which she is willing to accept the latter claim seem to be limited to those in which the sacrifice necessary to avoid acting wrongly is minimal - it would be wrong for Henry Fonda to refuse to cross the room to save your life, and it would be wrong for a mother to refuse to carry her fetus for a few more days if this would mean postponing a trip to Europe - and this suggests a perhaps implausible gap between what individuals can be required to do if others have rights against them and what they can be required to do in the absence of such rights.

If morality can require significant sacrifices of individuals when others have rights against them, then we require a reason to think that it cannot require such sacrifices in the absence of such rights, in particular when others' interests provide just as much reason to act in ways that benefit them. And it's not clear that anything Thomson says provides such a reason. It seems, then, that if we are inclined, as I am, to reject her very permissive intuitions about the burglar and innocent intruder cases, then we may be forced to the conclusion that abortion in the case of pregnancy resulting from voluntary intercourse is wrong, so long as we accept that fetuses are persons with full moral status. Perhaps Warren is right, then, that an argument for the permissibility of abortion in cases of pregnancy resulting from voluntary intercourse requires that we establish that fetuses are not persons, and therefore do not have the same moral status as ordinary adults.

Phil 108: Speciesism, Experimentation, and Morality

Peter Singer argues that our willingness to allow various types of experiments to be performed on non-human animals, but not on brain-damaged humans with similar capacities, reflects a pervasive "speciesist" attitude toward non-human animals. He claims that speciesism is morally equivalent to sexism and racism, and that there is no justification for failing to give the interests of humans and non-human animals equal moral consideration. He concludes, therefore, that in order to be consistent we must oppose all experimentation on animals, except for those experiments that we would also be willing to allow to be performed on brain damaged humans with similar capacities (it is important to note that the extent of the brain damage or mental disability that would be required to render a human similar in the relevant capacities to, say, a rat or a rabbit, or even most primates, would be quite significant; humans with conditions such as, for example, Down Syndrome or other forms of mental retardation, generally fall well above this threshold).

One way that defenders of experimenting on animals might respond to Singer's challenge is to simply accept that, all else equal, it would be equally morally permissible to perform the same experiments on brain damaged humans with similar capacities. I happen to find this view more plausible than most people do, and think that certain types of experiments on severely incapacitated humans might well be justifiable. These cases will, of course, be limited to experiments that are reasonably likely to contribute to the relief of serious suffering - testing new cosmetic products on both incapacitated humans and on animals is, in my view, unjustifiable.

Since most people reject the view that experimenting on severely incapacitated humans could be morally acceptable, the challenge for those who want to defend experimentation on animals is to explain what it is that justifies such experimentation in a way that does not imply that experimentation on incapacitated humans is also justifiable.

One approach is to attempt to defend speciesism against Singer's charge that it is morally equivalent to sexism and racism. But defenses of speciesism tend to do little more than restate the speciesist bias that is implicit in many of our practices, or else cite characteristics that typically distinguish humans from non-human animals, but do not distinguish severely incapacitated humans from non-human animals. The fact that most humans "engage in moral reflection...are morally autonomous...recogniz[e] just claims against their interests" (Cohen 463) does not explain why it is impermissible to experiment on humans who do not possess these characteristics. Because of this, defenses of speciesism that appeal to such characteristics of typical humans seem to clearly fail.

Steinbock attempts what seems to me to be an alternative approach to defending animal experimentation. After pointing to several characteristics that she considers morally relevant, and which humans generally have but non-human animals don't, she concludes that animals are due less moral consideration than humans. But, as we have seen, this sort of argument seems to fail in the case of humans that don't possess the cited characteristics. Steinbock recognizes this, and goes on to suggest that we ought not experiment on severely incapacitated humans (we might also read her as claiming that it would be permissible to experiment on them, but that our experimenting on animals does not obligate us to allow or support experimenting on them as well) because "we feel a special obligation to care for the handicapped members of our own species...when we consider the severely mentally retarded, we think, 'That could be me'" (Steinbock 142). It's not clear why these psychological facts about us are supposed to be morally relevant, but Steinbock claims that these feelings tend to lead us to "extend special care to members of our own species,", and that our doing so is "certainly not wrong" (142).

Why such partiality toward our own species is supposed to be so clearly justifiable is a bit mysterious to me, especially given her claim, which is at the very least controversial, a few sentences later. Recognizing the potential parallel to racism that Singer claims is exhibited by preference for one's own species, Steinbock says that "It is not racist to provde special care to members of your own race; it is racist to fall below your moral obligation to a person because of his or her race" (142). But to "provide special care" to members of one's own race is to treat people differently on the basis of race, and this strikes me as clearly racist, and therefore morally objectionable. If Steinbock's argument for the justifiability of partiality to our species relies on her intuition that partiality toward one's race is justifiable so long as one doesn't fall below a threshold of consideration for the members of other races, then it seems to me we should reject her argument. Indeed, the claim that racial partiality of this sort can be justified strikes me as less plausible than the claim that species partiality can be justified - so it is quite curious to employ the former claim in the service of an argument for the latter.

This seems to return us to something like Singer's position requiring equal consideration for all sentient beings, unless a better argument for rejecting this standard can be mounted.

Morality as a Project?

Certain views of morality's demands are sometimes attacked because, according to critics, conforming to the proposed demands would interfere with agents' abilities to have the kinds of personal projects that give shape and meaning to our lives, and according to some, without which human lives may cease to be worth living at all. Such critics don't necessarily deny that projects with explicitly altruistic aims can be the sort that can provide meaning within a life, although they are usually concerned to defend non-altruistic projects as morally acceptable, or else as providing reasons for agents that can override those provided by morality. Those who press this view seem to think, not implausibly, that part of what it is to live a distinctly human life is to have such projects, and to develop a motivational structure such that acting in ways that further one's pursuit of one's projects becomes a kind of practical necessity. Given this fact, morality must, on this view, either accommodate this fact about humans within its structure, so as not to impose demands that conflict with the pursuit of (perhaps only some of) our projects, or else give way to (some of) our projects when conflicts between its demands and the reasons provided by our projects arise (so that the reasons provided by morality will sometimes fail to be overriding).

The importance of personal projects to our individual lives is undeniable, and the tension between the reasons provided by the non-altruistic projects that most of us have and the demands of morality is a difficult issue that proponents of any objective theory of morality's demands must face. Of course it is particularly problematic for proponents of very demanding moral theories, and since I'm inclined to accept the view that morality is rather demanding, it is one that I must take on.

I certainly don't have anything close to a fully satisfactory response to this line of criticism of views of morality's demands such as mine. In fact, much of what I want to do here is to explain why certain responses are not particularly helpful. This may help to point us in more a more fruitful direction, but then again it may turn out that the conflict is simply irresolvable; if, as I'm inclined to believe, the state of the world in morally relevant respects is bad enough that we cannot, consistent with certain extremely plausible assumptions (such as that morality demands more of similarly situated individuals the worse the world is in morally relevant respects), deny that morality demands a great deal of us, it may turn out that living a moral life is, given the actual state of the world, inconsistent with living what I above called a "distinctly human life."

But why, we might wonder, should we be so pessimistic about this apparent tension. If living a distinctly human life requires that we have projects that give shape and meaning to our lives, and devotion to which promotes a certain kind of motivational structure, why can't we simply adopt as a project, perhaps as our most important project, the living of a moral life? Why can't morality itself be a project that we take on, in the same way that we might take on the project of becoming a great chef or philosopher? Perhaps in a world that is as bad in morally relevant respects as ours this is the only sort of central project that it is morally acceptable to adopt.

This suggestion is pretty clearly unacceptable. As Susan Wolf points out, morality does not seem to be an appropriate object of passion in the way that the concrete projects that most of us adopt are. To be devoted to morality itself (rather than, say, to a particular morally worthy project such as ending homelessness) would seem objectionably fetishistic, requiring a kind of alienation from one's everyday activities (whether or not such activities are particularly morally good) that is incompatible with the sort of devotion to those activities that is involved in having genuine projects. If, while engaging in work aimed at ending homelessness one were regularly considering whether or not working for educational equality would be morally better, and were one disposed to abandon working to end homelessness if that seemed to be the case, it wouldn't be clear that one could be said to have a project at all. One's actions would be done not as a part of a larger undertaking devotion to which helps to structure one's motivations and give shape to one's life, but would be mere responses to the external conditions that one observes and reflects upon in a more or less detached way. Adopting morality itself as a central project would require one to incorporate into one's motivational structure the most unattractive feature of the Kantian moral agent, namely the disposition to always act from a motive to do one's duty, and for no other reason.

Perhaps a better suggestion on behalf of the view that morality is (at least in the actual world) very demanding is that those who are well-off are morally required to have central projects that are altruistically-focused. On this view morality can require that we not incorporate certain kinds of projects into our lives, but cannot require that we be inclined to abandon the altruistically-focused projects that we have adopted when opportunities to do even more good arise. One might defend such a view on what Railton has called "sophisticated consequentialist" grounds by arguing that, in the long run, our being disposed to continue to pursue our (altruistically-focused) projects will allow us to do more good than the weaker dispositions to stick with those projects that would be required by a less sophisticated consequentialism.

This approach is, I think, better, but it still fails to address many of the most important concerns of those who claim that recognizing the significance of personal projects in our lives requires that we abandon the view that morality is extremely demanding.

As Mike points out in a comment to my previous post, one might admire those who adopt altruistically-focused projects without at the same time finding such projects attractive for one's own pursuit. Wolf's view that most of us would find the character of a moral saint unappealing might be, as I suggested, false, without it being the case that living a life centered around altruistically-focused projects could be personally fulfilling for everyone.

This is important because much of the criticism directed at demanding views of morality by those who stress the importance of personal projects focuses on the ways in which such projects enrich our individual lives, and provide us with sources of personal fulfillment that only genuine projects can. If it's true that many people could not lead fulfilling lives centered around altruistically-focused projects, then the view that morality allows individuals to have projects, but only altruistically-focused ones, does not address the problem so often highlighted by critics of demanding views of morality. Furthermore, it would, I think, be implausible to simply suggest that in fact everyone can live a fulfilling life centered around altruistically-focused projects.

While it's true that many people underestimate the personal satisfaction that can accompany altruistic actions and projects, whether one can live a fulfilling life centered around altruistically-focused projects will depend on a variety of factors, including the values that one has oneself internalized, which will very often depend significantly on the prevailing values of one's society, community, and family. It will also, relatedly, depend on the extent to which having such projects is compatible with developing meaningful personal relationships and being an involved and accepted member of one's community.

The problem, once we recognize these facts, is that it is very likely to be more difficult, and perhaps much more difficult, to live a fulfilling life centered around altruistically-focused projects in societies that are worse off in morally relevant respects than it will be in societies that are much better off, morally speaking. In societies in which altruism is less common (which also tend to be societies that exhibit greater inequality and have more individuals in desperate need), one who adopts altruistically-focused projects is likely to be more isolated from the community at large (this is perhaps especially true of one who is well-off and lives in a well-off community), and to have fewer opportunities to develop the kinds of relationships that do the most to enrich our lives. Individuals in such societies are also, of course, less likely to be taught and to internalize altruistic values, and so the thought of adopting altruistic projects will likely strike people in such societies as alien and unattractive in ways that it wouldn't strike individuals in societies that have a more altruistic or egalitarian ethos.

But this means that if we accept that the ability of individuals to structure their lives around fulfilling personal projects is important enough to outweigh the specifically moral concerns of those who believe that morality is extremely demanding, then we are committed to thinking that morality can be less demanding in societies that are worse off in morally relevant respects than in morally better societies, because in such societies individuals will be less able to live fulfilling lives structured around altruistically-focused projects. Morality will be less demanding in circumstances in which most people (including some who cite the importance of personal projects as a reason to reject the view that morality is extremely demanding) think it must be more demanding.

This suggests that perhaps we ought to reconsider the objection to demanding views of morality that cites the importance of personal projects to our ability to live fulfilling lives. But while we might conclude that the objection fails, we do not, it seems, have a satisfying response to the concerns of its proponents. Concluding that the objection fails may require us to accept that, at least in societies that are badly off enough in morally relevant respects, morality requires some individuals to live lives that are not personally fulfilling. This is not a pleasant conclusion, but it may be one that taking morality seriously requires us to accept.

On the Character of a Moral Saint

In her famous article "Moral Saints," Susan Wolf argues that the character that one would have to have in order to be a moral saint is not one that seems particularly attractive as a personal ideal. We have good reason, according to Wolf, to be glad that neither we nor those with whom we are close are moral saints, because if we or they were our lives would be in certain important respects impoverished. If we were moral saints, for example, we would be unable to pursue many of the projects that, given our unsaintliness, actually give shape and meaning to our lives. The single-minded focus on "improving the welfare of others or of society as a whole," as Wolf puts it, that would be required of a moral saint would, in part because it would eliminate the possibility of pursuing more self-regarding projects, make us less interesting and less well-rounded individuals.

While some of what Wolf says about the costs of moral sainthood seems plausible enough (after all, we surely do think that it's quite valuable for individuals to develop well-rounded characters, and that one way in which we are able to do that is by engaging in personal projects that help to form such characters), much of her description of what a moral saint would have to be like strikes me as extremely misguided. She says, for example, that

[The moral saint] will have the standard moral virtues to a nonstandard degree. He will be patient, considerate, even-tempered, hospitable...He will be very reluctant to make negative judgments of other people...A moral saint will have to be very, very nice. It is important that he not be offensive. The worry is that, as a result, he will have to be dull-witted or humorless or bland.

It is completely mysterious to me why Wolf would assume that a moral saint would have to possess these virtues to a "nonstandard degree." After all, surely there are situations that, morally speaking, call for one to react not with patience or even-temperedness, but rather with their opposites. Observing the horribly unjust treatment of others is just one obvious example of a case in which moral common sense tells us that the morally appropriate response is a certain sort of outrage, and, at the very least, a certain kind of negative judgment about the perpetrators of the injustice. The moral thing to do will not be to be "very, very nice", or to avoid offending the perpetrators of injustice. Rather, the moral saint will be much more likely than the non-saint to confront such people, and to make her disapproval of their conduct as clear as possible, in the hope that by doing so she might effect a change in their future behavior. It's true that the saint will not be any more hostile than is warranted by the situation, but plenty of situations warrant significant hostility, and I see no reason to think that a moral saint shouldn't be inclined to exhibit such hostility when it is warranted.

Returning to the role of personal projects in our lives, Wolf goes on to point out that because a moral saint will have to devote nearly all of her time to helping others,

...necessarily he is not reading Victorian novels, playing the oboe, or improving his backhand. Although no one of the interests or tastes in the category containing these latter activities could be claimed to be a necessary element in a life well lived, a life in which none of these possible aspects of character are developed may seem to be a life strangely barren.

This is much less implausible than the thoughts I quoted above, but I still think there is something importantly misguided about Wolf's thinking, not necessarily about the value of lives that include the goods she mentions, but about what we should, indeed what in some cases we do, think about the characters of those whom we might legitimately describe as moral saints. The picture that Wolf paints of the moral saint as dull, passive, and lacking the kind of well-developed character and successful nonmoral ground projects that attract us to those whom we most admire, is, it seems to me, quite far off the mark.

Rather, the kind of character that it seems most appropriate to attach the label "moral saint" to is best represented by people such as Gandhi or John Brown, individuals who, unlike most of their contemporaries, both recognized prevailing moral atrocities as such, and dedicated their lives to trying to end those atrocities. And if it is people like this who represent the ideal of a moral saint, then while many will still find the prospect of themselves living the life of a saint unappealing, few will deny, at least when looking back on the saints of the past, that those who have lived such lives possessed characters that deserve our admiration. Gandhi surely possessed a character that is worth aspiring to, and it is absurd to think that his life was "strangely barren" in virtue of his focusing on the specifically moral projects that he did rather than on developing his oboe skills or backhand (or some other such goods). On the contrary, it is the fact that he dedicated so much of his life to opposing moral atrocities that makes his a kind of character that is worth aspiring to. Many of his contemporaries may have found him a strange character that they preferred to avoid, but that is likely because they did not, as he did, recognize the prevailing atrocities for what they were, or at least did not accord them the kind of importance that they deserved (this is perhaps even more clearly the case with respect to John Brown and the other dedicated Abolitionists of his time).

Of course there are many reasons that, at any given time in history (surely including our own), many people are likely to be put off in some ways by those who come closest to being moral saints. First, and most obviously, such people will always be outside the norm of behavior and commitment, and this always makes many people uncomfortable. Second, those who come closest to being moral saints remind those of the rest of us who at least recognize the moral atrocities that the saint is fighting of how much better, morally speaking, we could (and perhaps should) be doing in our own lives, and being made to reflect on this is likely to make most people at least somewhat uncomfortable. And of course those who don't recognize the atrocities as atrocities at all (as most did not recognize slavery in the early days of the Abolition movement) will simply believe that the saint is wasting his life opposing what is the natural order of things, or what is justified for reasons that the saint does not recognize.

The problem for the moral saint is that she is often also a moral visionary, ahead of her time in recognizing the moral failures of the prevailing order of things. And so she will necessarily appear to others as a kind of strange character, as someone detached from the values and ways of life that shape the characters of her compatriots. But often enough those who appear to others in their own time as undesirable characters whom one is better to avoid will be recognized by future generations as the truly admirable individuals that they were. And surely to live a life that will have this result is not something that we should think undesirable.

More on Cullity's Argument Against The Extreme Demand

In this post I examined an argument recently put forth by Garrett Cullity against the view that morality requires us to live what he calls "altruistically-focused lives." After several helpful discussions of this issue, I'm now convinced that my argument there did not properly address certain aspects of Cullity's argument.

The claim of Cullity's that I argued against in the earlier post is:

When your interest in having (or doing) a certain thing is an interest in having (or doing) what it would be wrong for you to have (or do), that interest cannot be a good reason for morally requiring me to help you to get (or do) it.

I suggested what at the time I took to be a potential counterexample to this claim, in which by helping someone get into a prestigious music school I could ensure that someone else would pursue a career in aid work that would benefit the world's worst off people. The problem with this example is that it is not the potential music school student's interest in pursuing a music career that provides me with the morally compelling reason to help her. Helping her is required, according to my description of the case, only because doing so will, given all of the relevant circumstances, promote the interests of other people.

But Cullity can accept this. He does not consider cases of the sort that I described, but does say that one can be morally required to provide someone with a piece of information that he requires in order to pursue his aim of humiliating someone, so long as she has promised him that she would provide the information. In this case one is required to help someone get something that he needs in order to do something wrong. But the reason that one is required to do so is not the other's interest in doing what is wrong, but the fact that one promised. The person's interest in humiliating someone, on the other hand, cannot itself be a morally compelling reason for requiring me to help him do so.

So Cullity's claim is not that we can never be required to help someone get what it is wrong for her to have. It is only that one's interest in getting what it is wrong for her to have can never, in itself, provide one with a morally compelling reason to help her get it.

But since Cullity thinks that it's obvious that others' interests in achieving the fulfillments of a non-altruistically focused life can provide us with morally compelling reasons to help them obtain those fulfillments, he concludes that it must not be wrong to obtain them. That is, it must not be wrong to live a non-altruistically focused life.

It's important to get clear on precisely what sort of case Cullity must have in mind in which the interests of another themselves provide one with morally compelling reasons to help her pursue those interests. He says, for example,

...suppose that, by making some small effort - passing on a piece of information, say - you could reunite [a long-parted] family, and there was nothing to be said morally against doing so. Or suppose some small effort of yours would determine whether a gifted student is able to pursue a music career, and there was nothing to be said morally against doing so. It would clearly be wrong not to do these things. Clearly, the moral requirements of beneficence extend not just to saving people's lives, but to responding to their interests in the fulfillments that life can contain...The morally compelling reason [you] have for helping does not disappear if [you] know that the lives of the family members, or the music student, are not altruistically focused.

In these cases it is the interests of the family members in being reunited (and in the associated fulfilling relationships that they can (re)establish upon being reunited) and of the aspiring musician in achieving a fulfilling career, respectively, that are supposed to ground the moral requirement to help. We must assume that there are no other reasons, such as benefits to others that would result from helping, or any special relationship that the potential benefactor might have to the family members or musician, that ground the requirement. Even once we make clear that there are no reasons of these sorts, Cullity's thought that we are morally required to help in these kinds of situations seems compelling.

While I accept Cullity's claim that we can be morally required to help in situations like those he describes, it is important to note that someone who accepts both Cullity's view that we cannot have morally compelling reasons to help others get what it is wrong for them to have and the Extreme Demand might claim that he has unfairly built into his description of the cases that there is nothing to be said morally against helping the family and the potential musician. Such a person might claim that since it is wrong to pursue the things that the family members would pursue were they to be reunited, and since it is wrong for the aspiring musician to pursue a music career, there is something to be said morally against helping them, namely that it would be wrong for them to have the things that ground their interests in getting help. Still, so long as there is no question of helping others obtain what it is not wrong for them to have (or some other morally worthy alternative) instead of helping the family or the musician, it is simply not plausible to claim that we cannot be morally required to help them, even if we grant (which I don't necessarily think we should) that there is something to be said morally against helping.

So the way to challenge Cullity's argument is not to claim that, despite our intuitions, we are not morally required to help the family or the musician. Those intuitions are, it seems to me, clearly correct. But I do think that Cullity's argument is subject to two related responses. First, we might simply deny that we cannot have morally compelling reasons to help others get what it is wrong for them to have. If we think, quite plausibly, that it would wrong (or even if we just think it a practical impossibility) to force others to live altruistically focused lives, then to refuse to act so as to promote their interests in achieving the genuinely valuable fulfillments of their chosen non-altruistically focused lives when we could easily do so would seem pointless from a moral perspective. If the only relevant options are making some people better off or making no one better off, it's not clear why, morally speaking, we should care whether the people we can make better off would, if they were doing everything that they ought to do, choose to forgo the benefits that we are in position to help them obtain in order to help others whom we are not ourselves in a position to help. To think that we should care is to reject the following seemingly plausible (if not obvious) principle:

If at little cost to ourselves we can help make some people's lives significantly better, without thereby making anyone's life worse, we have a morally compelling reason to do so.

This principle seems to me almost undeniable. But it is important to note that it is incompatible with Cullity's principle that we cannot have a morally compelling reason to help others get what it would be wrong for them to have (unless one thinks that one's life cannot be made better by having what it is wrong for one to have). So if we accept the principle that I've suggested, we have good reason to reject Cullity's principle, and his argument that it must not be wrong to live a non-altruistically focused life is blocked (this does not, of course, show that it is wrong to live such a life).

The other way in which Cullity's argument can be challenged is by considering what other reasons (besides the interests of the family members and the potential musician in obtaining the fulfillments they would derive from being helped) might ground an obligation to help in the cases Cullity describes. We might think, for example, that it is not the interests of those whom we might help, but rather the interest that we all have in living in a society in which people act so as to promote others' interests when they can do so at little cost to themselves, that grounds our obligations in cases such as Cullity's. It would surely be an undesirable state of affairs if everyone were inclined to, for example, ask a person who requests directions to the center of town whether he is going there to aid the homeless or to eat at one of the many upscale restaurants in the area, and to refuse to provide the directions if the response is the latter (I thank Jay Wallace for providing the general structure of this example). But we might think that in cases such as this it is not (or not only) the individual's interest in eating a fine meal that grounds our obligation to help him.

It seems to me that in many cases the reasons that ground our obligations to help others will not be (or not be only) the interests that those individuals have in being helped. If this is right, then we may be able to account for such obligations without claiming that an interest in having what it is wrong to have is what grounds them, just as Cullity accounted for the obligation to provide the information that would be used to humiliate someone. I also think that in some cases it is not problematic to think that we are obligated to help someone obtain what it is wrong for her to have, given the plausibility of the principle that I outlined above. If I'm right about these matters, then Cullity's argument against the Extreme Demand is significantly weakened.

Some Links (for my UGBA 107 students in particular)

I mentioned to some of my students that they might find this post of mine from last year, in which I question the practical possibility of Milton's Friedman's vision of a society with a pure free-market economy and in which business interests stay out of politics, interesting. I encourage students (and others, of course) to post their thoughts to the thread, where some of my previous students have already weighed in. You may also want to read this post by Hanno Kaiser, which is a response to my argument, and to which I have posted a comment.

There is also a very interesting discussion going on in the thread to this post at In Socrates' Wake on several issues related to business ethics classes (the discussion continues in part two of the post here). The discussion is largely between people who teach business ethics, and the discussion has focused on issues such as why business students tend to be hostile to thinking about ethics in a serious way, how best to approach introducing new students to ethical thinking, and problems with the way ethics is sometimes taught, in particular in business schools.

These issues are all extremely interesting and important, and I'd love to hear what my students think about them as they relate to how I've approached our course so far (you can post your thoughts as comments to this post).

I must say that my own experience teaching business ethics (limited though it is) has been overwhelmingly positive, and I haven't felt the kind of frustration that others describe in the thread I linked to above. I unexpectedly fell into teaching for Berkeley's summer business ethics course last year when a last minute replacement for another GSI was needed, and so I had very little time to prepare anything. I was extremely concerned that I'd encounter a great deal of hostility to ethical thinking and little interest in seriously discussing either practical or theoretical matters, and since I had no previous teaching experience I was terrified that I wouldn't know how to break the silence.

But the reality was just the opposite. The students were incredibly enthusiastic and genuinely interested in discussing ethical issues right from the start. And they continued to engage seriously with the issues I raised even after I had them read selections from both Singer and Unger (a move which some suggest is a mistake in a business ethics course; I'm not so sure). They made my job not only much less difficult than I anticipated, but extremely enjoyable as well. And this year's class has been equally good; I've been especially impressed by the kinds of questions that students have raised about the various ethical theories that we've discussed, and their ability to raise just the objections to, for example, Unger's arguments, that Unger himself anticipated in parts of his book that I didn't assign.

Of course, even though my impression is that the course is going quite well, there are always ways that it might be made better. Any suggestions from students, past or present, would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to post anonymously or e-mail me your suggestions if you'd rather they not be public.

Jocks, Nerds, and Income Redistribution

In this comically absurd piece, Bryan Caplan argues that governments engage in income redistribution due to pressure from so-called "jocks" to prevent the "revenge of the nerds." The idea is that those who are physically stronger but mentally weaker, the people who dominated social life in high school due to their physical attractiveness and athletic ability, push for income redistribution because they tend to lose out in economic competition to those whom they looked down upon during their teen years, and succeed in getting redistributive policies enacted essentially by threatening the economically prosperous nerds. Caplan asks us to think about this in terms of what he calls "evolutionary psychology" (I wonder how many actual psychologists would sign on to this ridiculous theory):

When the best hunter in the tribe gets rich, his neighbors will probably ask nicely for a share, if they dare to ask at all. But if the biggest nerd in the tribe gets rich, how long will it take before the jocks show up and warn him that "You'd better share and share alike"?

Now it would be one thing if the picture Caplan was attempting to paint were a mere oversimplification of a more complex reality (which he parenthetically admits that it might be). This could be excused in a short piece designed to put forward a general but incomplete account. One of his assumptions, namely that society breaks down neatly into "jocks" and "nerds", is clearly an oversimplification, but it's one that it seems innocent enough to work with for at least some purposes; I'll assume the distinction in the remainder of this post, despite the relative fluidity and indeterminacy of the categories.

Caplan's overall picture is, it seems to me, wildly off the mark. In his world the "nerds" are simply out in the economic arena trying to make as much money as possible, only to have much of it stolen from them by the big bad bullies, much like their lunch money was probably stolen from them, by the very same people, back in high school. In the absence of government redistribution, the nerds could have their sweet revenge on their high school tormentors as they watched them suffer in poverty, but, alas, the jocks have managed to bully the government into preventing the total economic dominance of the nerds.

I don't know about my readers, but this picture strikes me as obviously false in almost too many ways to count (if others find it more plausible, I'd be very interested to hear about it).

First, the idea that it's the "jocks" who generally support redistribution, with the "nerds" forced, against their will, to acquiesce, seems to me to get things almost backward, though of course there are surely nerds who are vehemently opposed to redistribution (e.g. Steve Moore of the Club for Growth), and jocks who favor it. But in thinking about those with whom I went to high school, college, and the students that I've had at Berkeley, the norm is very much for those who would tend to be considered jocks to be more economically conservative, and those who would tend to be considered nerds to be more economically liberal (of course there are plenty of exceptions to this tendency as well). This point can be expanded beyond my own circle of acquaintances by thinking about some of the prominent politicians within the two major parties. Of George Bush and John Kerry, who is more likely to have been at the school football game and the post-game kegger, and who more likely to have been at home reading books and watching the news? Are we supposed to believe that Harry Reid, Bernie Sanders, and Dennis Kucinich were popular jocks, while Jeb Bush, George Allen, and Mitt Romney spent their high school years buried in books?

Also, Caplan's assumption that nerds tend to do much better economically seems far from universally true. Of course there is a positive correlation between grades and economic success, but it's also the case that many nerds choose to go into fields that are less lucrative than others that they could have pursued. They become doctors instead of businessmen, public interest lawyers instead of corporate lawyers, professors instead of consultants. Far from being disappointed by their inability (due to whatever redistribution there might be) to dominate their less intellectually inclined peers in the economic arena (as Caplan seems to be), most nerds that I know never would have thought to try, and in fact would be horrified at the very idea of it. The motivational structure that would be necessary to pursue such a goal is simply foreign to most nerds.

Interestingly, such a motivational structure is not at all foreign to the jocks who spent their high school years tormenting nerds. The same callousness that allows such individuals to make high school a living hell for others would seem to be just what is needed to pursue vast wealth within our capitalist system. Only someone who possesses this sort of callousness could feel no compassion for the suffering of the world's poor, and promote policies that encourage the exploitation of those people for the sake of massive profits for themselves. My suspicion is that many of the corporate leaders at the very top of the income distribution were not nerds at all, but instead jocks from wealthy families who had (often significant and unfair) advantages over others in getting to where they are. Furthermore, I'm not surprised that some of the corporate leaders who clearly were nerds, such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, are much more generous with their wealth and much more liberal in their politics than most of their peers.

There's no question that during their high school years many nerds have a certain amount of envy toward jocks. But most of them grow up and get over the fact that they missed out on the cool parties and whatever else jocks in high school do (I wouldn't know all that much about it, since I defected to the nerds around sophomore year). And having been at the bottom of the popularity food chain often encourages in nerds a level of compassion for the suffering of others that many jocks never develop. Some nerds, however, never get over having been nerds, and harbor a resentment toward others for the rest of their lives because of it. My best guess is that this is the psychological situation of Mr. Caplan (and perhaps Mr. Moore as well); at least this would help explain how he could put forward such a patently absurd theory of redistributive policies.

* As a sidenote, for some very interesting and far less absurd thoughts on the jock/nerd dynamic and its relation to adult life, see this essay by Paul Graham.