It is more like that: a trolley car rides on a track and a mile away a bunch of kids are playing on the tracks. Should you push a person next to you to stop the trolley and save the kids?

Or, we have intelligence report that a bunch of kids is playing on the tracks one mile away.

Or, if the person next to you is a clear no-goodnik, should we push him on the tracks because there COULD be some kids playing on the tracks somewhere? Wouldn't we be better off with the no-goodnik gone, regardless of the actual situation on the tracks? Should we nudge the intelligence to explore the possibility of kids playing on the tracks?

Or, shouldn't we just nuke the trolley? Think about all those kids that could be harmed in the future! With some planning, we will be far away and the no-goodnik right there.

Many of the foreign policy choices are MUCH simpler that advertised. At least, from the ethics point of view.

-- primum nuk'em projectum trumanus

At least in medical ethics, situations A and B would usually be approached, for a small number of people, through Aquinas' Principle of Double Effect. For larger populations, this is a constant problem in medicine: you expect to get a certain number of reactions with treatment, but with no treatment, a certain number will die.

In foreign policy, do we learn and develop new techniques as we do in medicine? For example, without antibiotics, typhoid has a 20-30% fatality rate, and it's a painful illness even for the survivors. For many years, we gave chloramphenicol, extremely effective against typhoid, but that will cause fatal anemia in somewhere between 1 in 10,000 and 100,000 patients. Now, we can use the much less toxic fluroquinolones, ceftriaxone, or trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole -- all of which can cause different, but less frequent reactions.

With respect to Rwanda, I cannot accept American responsibility unless there's a total giving up on the UN in peace enforcement -- a discussion of its own -- and putting the US in charge. A competent general on the scene wanted to preemptively take out (even guard) some weapons stores and radio stations, but was told not to move by UN military command, until it was too late. Part of the problem seems to be that many diplomats do not understand the difference -- the vital difference -- between peace enforcement and peacekeeping. People get killed in peace enforcement.

Apropos of the NSA surveillance, while I think the Administration was totally wrong not either to seek legislation or get a FISA Court warrant, nothing that's gotten into the engineering literature -- and more than many people think has gotten there -- suggests that they are doing classic wiretaps. What they do seem to be doing is traffic analysis on Call Detail Records.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

You frighten me. 

Morality is about what is right or wrong not what is good, better or best.   Choosing what may be the greater good or lesser evil is secondary to choosing what is good (right) or evil (wrong). 

In Situation A, the trolley driver is not choosing whether or not to kill.  S/he is forced to kill by circumstance; therefore, there is no moral choice.  And killing one or many is not necessarily immoral.  Murder is.

The onlooker in Situation B has the choice of whether or not to kill.   If s/he chooses to kill another onlooker to save the five workers, then s/he commits murder, an immoral choice.  One person presumed the right to deprive another of life.  It is irrelevant how many lives were saved. 

It would be a very, very slippery slope to begin basing morality on the quantities or even the qualities of lives saved to those sacrificed. 

May I suggest a look at the body of ethics associated with "Just War Theory", going back to St. Augustine of Hippo, with major classical contributors being Aquinas and Grotius? I'm deliberately picking sources before the US existed, so there is no bias.

If one accepts that war is ever moral, the reality is that there will be innocents killed. If I take your position most literally, all war is illicit. You do, however, use the more precise term "murder" than "kill", and Augustine and others define Just War as something in which killing is not necessarily murder.

This is quite different than the attribution to Machiavelli of "If you are moral, you cannot be a Prince. If you would be a Prince, you must not be moral." Note that he speaks here of amorality rather than immorality.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Of course, Sandel's examples – by now quite well known - are recycled from the works of dozens of other moral philosophers who have addressed the same thought experiment. The main original source of the train examples is Judith Jarvis Thomson, so far as I know, although perhaps Thomson derived them from others.

You're brief description of the sanctions regime is highly tendentious. The whole point of sanctions is to cause pain, a lot of it, in the hope that widespread popular disaffection will eventually cause the collapse of the government, or bring about some other desired change in that government’s policies.

No “smart sanctions” regime that has ever been derived is smart enough to target only the ruling elite. You can’t just blame Saddam for a decade of sanctions that killed half a million. Even if he hadn’t worked the sanctions, the losses would have been comparable. And the fact that he would try to manipulate the sanctions would have been well-known to any competent Middle East policy maker. When Madeline Abright was asked whether killing all those Iraqis was worth it, she didn't say: "Who would have guessed Saddam would manipulate the sanctions?" Instead she said, "Yes."

So the consequences of the sanctions on Iraq were predictable. And as they multiplied, the US found itself in a prestige trap. The longer the sanctions continued, the lower the US reputation sank in the world. But rather than cut our losses, and prevent yet greater loss of life, policy makers kept prolonging the sanctions, in an increasingly desperate attempt to wipe the egg off their own faces, and achieve their “win”. And of course, Saddam was laughing at them. Oh, the shame!

So then, by 1998, US policy makers had decided that a more aggressive course of action was called for. They explicitly committed themselves to the regime change policy that had previously been only implicit, and they began to prepare for an eventual military showdown. I have heard all the moralizing excuses, and security-based rationales for this invasion. But I think in the end our leaders, in both parties, were prepared to invade a country, kill tens of thousands of Iraqis, maim tens of thousands more, blow a lot of stuff up and unleash a Pandora’s box of Middle East tensions because they were embarrassed. Those Iraqis lost their lives so that Washington prima donnas could save their reputations. But the prima donnas miscalculated, so they even screwed that up.

The threat from Iraq was exceedingly minimal, and was judged to be so even by our own CIA. Even those who thought Saddam possessed a few residual WMDs had mostly calculated that Iraq was contained, weak, in a box, and a minor threat. And most of the supposed atrocities of Saddam’s regime were in the past, having occurred during a period in the early nineties when his regime faced open revolts from the Kurds in the north and the Sunnis in the south. So the pressing need for invasion wasn’t there, either morally or strategically.

On the other hand, any amateur knows that wars are expensive, even quick one, and that lighting a military match in the highly combustible Middle East is a very, very dangerous thing to do. So, invasion: only modest upside; very risky and costly downside – it should have been a no-brainer. But that phrase also pretty well characterizes our leaders in Washington: no-brainers.

We could have made a Qaddafi-like deal with Saddam that would have rehabilitated Iraq, normalized its relations with the rest of the world, restored its economy, helped its people immensely and satisfied all of our legitimate security concerns. Of course Saddam would still have been there, and that would have been a humiliating outcome for the policy makers who had their reputations personally invested in the existing policy of sanctions, regime change and war.

But thanks for the condescending lesson. You sound like a parent on career day explaining to the second graders: “here’s what foreign policy professionals do.” Enjoy the rest of your ideas-fest in Aspen. I hope the food is good.

I have engaged in plenty of these academic moral discussions, having been a philosophy professor myself for 18 years. But I also live in the real world, and see that actual decisions are based on a lot of thoroughly selfish and entirely non-philosophic factors. I never had a very high regard for Washington’s bureaucrats and politicians. But the last five years have pushed my estimations of the gang who make up the foreign policy establishment to a new and undreamt-of low. They are criminally incompetent, morally obtuse, willfully ignorant, self-satisfied, elitist brats – deeply convinced of their own moral enlightenment, superior talents and divine right to rule the world. They're religion is l'etat, c'est nous> They are as smug, vain, insular, inbred and undemocratic - despite their democracy promoting pretensions - as any elite that has ever governed an empire.

Here's another principle to follow:

Anytime somebody starts talking about "ethics" or "morality", you are being scammed.

Very good post.

The one part I would disagree with is the notion that the US invaded because it was "embarassed." I think Greg Palast has more compelling reasons with his "get the oil off the market" concept.

I don't think the neocons ACCIDENTALLY screwed up the war in Iraq - I think that was their intention all along. Their rosy predictions about how it would go really didn't reflect their real opinion - that was just rhetoric to con people into supporting their real agenda. I think they didn't know OR CARE how it would go - as long as the end result was no oil coming out of Iraq, and military bases for further adventures in Iran and elsewhere. Only if the whole thing had been a disaster on the level of the US military being wiped out and Saddam retaining power would it have been considered a "failure" by the neocons - and that was never possible.

It may be that various policy wonks were "embarassed" and went along with this for their own reasons, but the major policy decisions of any government are usually decided for hard, cold facts of economics and power rather than emotional reasons - not that those "facts" aren't cherry picked for emotional reasons, of course. For humans, EVERYTHING is emotion. But the end result of any move is enhancements in someone's pocketbook or level of power - which are themselves emotional reasons, of course. But you see the point.

If I take your position most literally, all war is illicit.

I don't think that is what I said and I know it isn't what I was trying to say.

It has been quite a few years since I read Augustine, Aquinas or Machiavelli and I've no real interest at present in rereading them.  I realized quite a few years ago that 1) I am older than most of these authors were when they wrote their great works; 2) my own education and experience in many areas is broader than theirs; 3) if they are above average in intelligence, so am I, at least according to the standard tests;  4) most of them are male and I'm not; and 5) the time had come for me to figure out what I thought and believed based on my own education, experience and reasoning.  Now that may sound very egotistical but shouldn't there be a point in everyone's life when they take what they've learned and try to sort it all out for themselves?

I don't know why you interpret what I wrote as "all war is illicit" since I specifically said at one point that killing one or many is not necessarily immoral.  And yes, there can be a Just War, but they are rare.   WWII would probably qualify for the USA since both the Japanese and Germany declared war first.

To hopefully clarify my main point:

Both Situations A & B in the original post imply there is a moral distinction between killing one or many based solely on the number of people that will be killed.  I dispute that implication.  A moral choice is between right and wrong.  How can a quantity be right or wrong?

The secondary choice, whether it is better to kill one or five, is one of relative value?  Are five people intrinsically worth more than one?  I doubt it.

yeah Bentham or Mill......

But the trolley driver will not be murdering anyone.  Killing, yes. Murdering, no.  And if the onlooker chooses not to push the second onlooker in front of the trolley, s/he will not be murdering the five workers even though they will be killed.

It may be that various policy wonks were "embarrassed" and went along with this for their own reasons, but the major policy decisions of any government are usually decided for hard, cold facts of economics and power rather than emotional reasons - not that those "facts" aren't cherry picked for emotional reasons, of course.

I don't really believe that TH, especially now that I am in the business world instead of the academic world. There is indeed a sizeable amount of cold hard analysis going on. But I believe there are also a bunch of fools and bunglers in government, and that many crucial decisions are made on an impulsive, irrational and sentimental basis.

I assume the Iraq decision was causally overdetermined by a variety of factors. Some of the people whose job it is to think about oil supplies wanted it; some of the people whose job it is to think about the dollar wanted it; some of the people whose job it is to think about Israel wanted it; some of the people whose job it is to think about US military basing and strategic positioning wanted it; some of the people whose job it is to think about defense procurement and the long term political and economic viability of the US military wanted it; some of the people whose job it is to think about training succeeding generations of officers and maintaining combat readiness wanted it. Some of the people who think about grand strategy, US primacy and the need to periodically instill fear in the natives wanted it. Some of the people who think about the best way to re-elect a president wanted it.

And that's just inside the government. All of these groups inside the government correspond to various political constituencies, lobbying groups and financial backers - some public spirited, some representing, single peculiar interests and some completely corrupt and self-seeking. And a lot of them wanted the war too.

Of course, one can find members of all these groups who didn't want the war. Some were very experienced hands. But evidently the pro-war forces were much stronger, better organized and had formed a dominant coalition within the government, with outstanding access to the president. Where they couldn't succeed through regular channels, they succeeded through stovepiping, the Office of Special Plans, etc. The war party also dominated the media.

But where these decisions are made, I wouldn't discount the influence of stupidity, emotionalism, laziness, impulse, inertia, pique and all the other components of irrationality and human folly - including pride, shame and embarrassment.

Look at Bush himself. Bush is an extraordinarily stupid, crude and brutal man. Take away his suits, family money and trappings of power, and he is little more than a bumbling, grunting and superstitious troglodyte. I suspect he is barely literate. He is proud of his "gut-based" decision-making practices. To the extent we have been granted glimpses of his own particular decision-making processes, it is not a pretty picture. He is an insecure simpleton who wants to be a "big man" and a "war president". It's not about oil and Israel and US strategic needs for him - he's not that smart.

Before the war, I looked into the products of various think tanks and academic departments about possible courses of action toward Iraq. Those who argued that we should end the sanctions, make some kind of deal and work toward normalization were barely registered on the national radar screen during the prewar debate. In my view the major reason for this neglect was not its absence of strategic sense, but the fact that that, on that approach, Saddam would be seen as "winning” - and that would be intolerable. Of course, the policy gurus would always say it was the "prestige" of the country they were worried about. But frankly I think US prestige would have fared just fine from a dramatic turn toward sensibility and practicality, and away from a dead-end obsession which was frustrating people around the globe. The prestige in jeopardy was the prestige of the policy-makers themselves.

And then look at all those fawning Democrats. Democratic foreign policy discourse is overwhelmingly preoccupied with avoiding the "appearance of weakness". A lot of Democrats are basically decent folks: city councilors and mayors and aldermen who made it to Washington, have no experience with military affairs, and who lack the brutality and murderous, sadistic impulses of their counterparts on the right. But they are obsessed with what other think of them, intimidated by all the stars and bars floating around Washington, and constantly working to prove their manhood. If you want to get a Democratic man to bend over for you, just start using words like, "weak", "coward", "soft" "sissy", "draft-dodger", "cut and runner" or the like, and he'll cave. And many Democratic women are in the same bind, apparently feeling they have to engage in acts of belligerence, and affect martial language and bravado, to prove they can hack it at the top in a brutal warlike business. The Truman Project is a creation of soft-at-heart Democrats trying to project an image of hardness by manipulating certain symbols and language. It's doomed to failure by its inauthenticity.

I blame the public for the bad decision on Iraq as well. In 2002, an awful lot of Americans still just wanted to march off and kill some Arabs, any Arabs, to satisfy their racist hatred and cravings for vengeance. They didn't need to be talked into anything. WMDs? You bet! No WMD's? Who cares! And Saddama bin Laden? He bombed the towers, right? Let's just nuke all those towel-head sand niggers and turn Saudi Iraqistan into a parking lot.

And finally, yes, I agree that there are some thoroughly vile neocons of the full-bore Michael Ledeen sort around. They believed that we are destined to have a major Middle East war that will sort everything out, crush Arab and Muslim resistance to Western power and political ideals, and secure Israel's position in perpetuity. They believed the war ought better to come sooner rather than later, while we are strong and the Muslims are weak. And they are willing to do whatever it takes to sow the necessary chaos and drag the US into the big war to fix Israel's "Muslim problem."

But a bunch of neocons are gradualists who really believed this would be an easy war, leading to a firm and powerful US presence in Iraq that would then be able to intimidate Iran and Syria, and eventually Saudi Arabia and even Egypt into total capitulation by gradual stages. They sincerely miscalculated.

The subject who fails/refuses to act in your example is a "monster" -- a Caliban so unusual in human experience as to deserve our pity as much as our censure.

In the event his failure to act makes proof of his subjective state unavailable to the onlooker, and since a judgment that "murder" has taken place demands proof of that state -- generally, by implying knowledge of the positive law -- he hasn't committed murder. In the absence of some such formal requirement of observable "action" we wind up with arbitrary verdicts and the scapegoating of social misfits.

Reminds me of Dracula quoting someone in "Blade: Trinity":

"Kill one man, you're a murderer.
Kill a million, you're a king.
Kill them all, a god."

Or as a sci-fi writer once put it, "The only difference between killing twenty people and twenty million is the effect on the emotions of the survivors."

As an amoralist, I don't argue from a moral basis on anything. However, from the point of view of "correctness", both propositions - 1) that pointless killing is wrong because it is just that - pointless, and 2) killing X + N persons is even more pointless than killing X persons - are both correct.

"But where these decisions are made, I wouldn't discount the influence of stupidity, emotionalism, laziness, impulse, inertia, pique and all the other components of irrationality and human folly - including pride, shame and embarrassment."

We agree to agree, apparently.

There's no doubt all that is true. I'm just saying their targets were selected for specific reasons unconnected with the emotions involved. Not in all cases, of course - the Zionist fanatics in Israel had their reasons; the neocon reasons weren't the same but overlapped; and a lot of other people just wanted money and/or power. But the reasons for hitting Iraq, and eventually hitting Iran are specific and unrelated to emotional considerations.

For the US people, of course, it was ALL emotion.

And I still don't think the neocons thought it would be easy. Some of them might have, but I suspect that was merely rhetoric on their part to sucker people in to the agenda. Most of them really didn't know or care if it would be easy or not. Why should they? THEY weren't going to do any of the fighting and dying - or pay for the cost, either.

Just for fun, I compared PNAC's Statement of Principles with the Truman Project's values:

From PNAC

The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership. Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences:

• we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;

• we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;

• we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;

• we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.

From the Truman Project's list of values:

• Promoting democracy and freedom protects American national security.
• Robust military and intelligence capabilities protect American national security.
• Strong alliances protect American national security.
• Legitimate international behavior protects American national security.
• Free trade protects American national security.
• Promoting development abroad protects American national security.
• Comprehensive policy coordination protects American national security.

Not sure I see a hell of a lot of difference, except PNAC got there a decade earlier. Both organizations want to promote American democratic values and capitalism globally. Both see military power as a key component of that mission. If there is a difference, it seems to me that the Trumanites drink their scotch watered while the neocons take it neat.

I think your case B is one in which the person could shove an innocent bystander in front of the runaway trolley and by doing so save the lives of five people down the road. Is that correct? Well under Kantian deontology he is forbidden to act, but under at least some versions of Act Utilitarian calculus it might be his duty to do so IF there is no other option open to him/her. If we define "murder" as the deliberate taking of a innocent life" then by that definition he did commit murder, however, paradoxically, under some versions of Act Utilitarianism, in such a case murder is right. Also under some versions of intuitionism the action in question might be an obligation. I think calling it "murder" or justified homicide" or whatever is besides the point. What we want to determine is whether the action is justified and/or obligatory. And as far as I know pre-theoretic intuitions differ on this.

I think we are getting hung up on the concept "murder" defined as the deliberate taking of an innocent life. Let us grant that person in situation B meets all these conditions, still, in many people's eyes he did the right thing (assuming that there was no other way to save the five workers down the road.) So applying the label of "murderer" to him/her might be semantically correct, still semantics is not what carries moral force. Our man in B is intentionally killing an innocent man in order to save five other innocent men. The issue is not whether the concept "murderer" applies to him, the issue is whether what he/she did was right under the circumstances. Again, pre-theoretic intuitions differ on this and numerous other similar cases.

Staying strictly within the framework of Situation B, how on earth could the onlooker determine that sacrificing one to save five would be a greater benefit to society or humanity?  Isn't that the utilitarian criterion?

And could you point me to a source to backup your statement, "Also under some versions of intuitionism the action in question might be an obligation"?

I agree that that intelligence sources and methods need to be protected, and certain aspects of policy discussion would reveal such. Yes, there have been leaks from Congress, and if Congress is ever going to regain its Constitutional authority, it needs to deal draconically with leakers.

Given those constraints, I find no reason other than blind partisan faith or cowardice for Congress not to examine proposals for the use of force quite closely, in executive session as appropriate.

There is an interesting branch of military theory, mostly dealing with combat between advanced forces such as NATO and the Warsaw Pact, which suggested that doctrines had to be developed that accepted the other side had decent strategic and some tactical intelligence of all your dispositions. In the case of fighting an opponent such as Iraq in 1991, this theory morphed somewhat, such that the first goal of the air campaign was taking out command, control, communications and intelligence. Yes, there were some creative techniques, such as Poobah's Party, which could, to some extent, have been countered by the Iraqis. It may be a reality of modern war, however, that some things previously secret have to be assumed known to the enemy -- certainly broad aims that could be debated, perhaps in executive session, in Congress.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

This debate maybe shows the futility of arguing principles in the abstract. What we need is not a debate about principles but a decision-making process that ensures all the viewpoints are fairly aired and that a decision is reached in a careful and (in our system) democratic manner. In the end, our representatives vote to decide what we do. Let's just make sure they have all the information ahead of time so they can make an informed decision.

By the way, if we were voting on this particular challenge, I'd cast my vote with Emma. I'm not throwing one person under a train to save five. Sorry, but deciding to kill one person offends my moral sensibilities more than failing to save five.

.. or 'democracy'...

Unfortunately, the issue is one in ethics and when in ethics talk ethics otherwise you are not addressing the subject matter. Of course the person CHOSE to kill the person, You can also--believe it or not--choose NOT to act. You ARE hung up on formalism which is a respectable theory in ethics but which in this case seems to render dubious judgement.
But nevermind....

"neither side really is explicit about intent to intervene"

Exactly - that's the problem - neither side is explicit.

Which means they're lying through their teeth.

"doctrines had to be developed that accepted the other side had decent strategic and some tactical intelligence of all your dispositions."

That should be anyone's first assumption - that the enemy knows ALL your plans. The goal is to develop plans that the enemy can't counter EVEN if he knows them.

Hard to do, of course. In reality, you certainly should assume the enemy knows your capabilities and force structure. The problem is that if everybody knew the enemy's capabilities, most wars would never start in the first place, as it would be obvious who would win - except, of course, as you note, in cases with approximately equal capabilities.

In Iraq in 1991, nothing Schwartzkopf did in the end wasn't predicted in Time magazine six months before. Saddam simply didn't have the generals capable of countering Schwartzkopf's plans - probably because he'd been too busy shooting them over the years for disloyalty.

This debate maybe shows the futility of arguing principles in the abstract.

that's funny.  All Principles are Universal and all Universals are abstractions.

All so very true...

However too bad the ethics debate is usually peverted by those who actually mean ...."the end justifies the means"....particulary when the end is to their particular benefit.

Spoken like a true "philosopher" and "ethicist" - someone who has never heard of science, mathematics, economics, the neurosciences, cultural anthropology, evolutionary psychology, and numerous other disciplines that address the actual facts of human behavior and the results of same - not to mention actual logic.

"Ethics" and "morality" are bullshit. What is real is the behavior of humans, the actual causes of that behavior, and the economic effects of that behavior. What is real is science and technology. What is real are the facts of life and death and, most importantly, PURPOSE.

I have yet to hear of a single "philosopher" who comprehends any of that.

A "philosopher" is a priest without a particular divinity to hawk - except maybe words in themselves.

spoken like a true rationalist. Facts are facts so proceed accordingly: believe that recourse to scientific certainty means what you say is disopinionated truth: military science says the Maginot Line cannot fail to stop the Germans, chemists say that thalidomide is a known and safe remedy for morning sickness, nuclear scientists say that the radiation cloud from Chernobyl will not touch western European nations, freudian psychoanalysts say homosexuality is definitvely a mental illness, economists say that the global balance of trade is the certain outcome of deregulated capital, oh yes, and that Iraq can be reconstituted as a democracy in six weeks.

Spare me your appeals to knowing "what is real" and your notion that philosophy (by which I assume you mean philosophy not in the tradition of analytic philosophy) and ethics are somehow 'bullshit' by way of comparison to the fruits of ultilitarian intention. Scientific methodology has been as irresponsible and as much a part of the problem as it has been beneficial in the last several hundred years.

A priest is someone who has abnegated responsibility for their actions to vast mechanisms of the divine. A philosopher is an enquirer.

I would not be so sure that scientists don't often fall into the category of the former, especially when presenting moral order as derived from their notion of what is a "natural order".

I'm tempted to say that hope is not a plan.  Damn; I said it.

Having spent an inordinate amount of time on side issues, I want to address the proposal that America should maintain its leadership position but use it for good ends. I suppose that's the gist of the proposal. And who can argue with that?
It is not even a philosophical position but merely a foreign policy proposal.
So I would say it is hard to see where ethics fits into this discussion in the first place. It isn't as if we are discussing whether the planet should be ruled by cosequentialism or, some form of deontology. That's not on the agenda. What is put in front of us is Michael Sandel's two examples which--I assume--have some relevance to how we--as world leaders--should handle similar situations that might arise on a global scale. As we see from the rest of the contributors to this threat, opinions on the A case and the B case are all over the board.
My advice is to go with a consequentialist solution to these problems. However, I fear that in the hands of Foreign Policy decision-makers, it can well be used to justify almost anything. Take Iraq, we could say the invasion of that country--although it has caused the deliberate killing of innocent people (the B case), it is still justified because of some long-range scenario that has it that millions of future deaths will be avoided. Or even--if you want to be cagier--that by invading Iraq we will make America stronger in the long run and since America is a force for the good, we guarantee a better life for future generations of earthlings. So, no, I don't buy the application of A and B to foreign policy. A and B are very clearly defined problems. a) We know the alternatives we have. 2) We know the outcomes of each alternative, 3) we can calculate the utility distributions of each outcome. In foreign policy, we know none of these things. Plus we do know from historical data that all foreign policy decision-makers will always couch whatever they do in a "rosy scenario".
If we are going to move off the dime in foreign policy discussions from all the variants of Realism out there, we will need to explore how ethics can indeed apply–in a practical way-- to this realm.
I’m a multipolarist, but that’s not a philosophical position (ethical or otherswise), it is my best guess on what would bring the maximum amount of stability to the human race. I would like to hear the arguments AGAINST multipolarity and why the folks in Aspen think these problems are serious enough to opt for American hegemony in perpetuity.

An ad hominem attack on the scientific method, nothing more.

The failures of science and technology - and their perversion by corporate interests - are irrelevant to the basic value of the scientific method and technological development.

Cherry-picking your examples doesn't help, either.

Spare me your appeals to pointless navel-gazing and word-twisting for egotistical reasons, which is what passes for philosophy these days.

"ad hominem" attack on scientific reasoning? Um, kay. scratching my head over what precisely you mean by that one (science isn't actually a "person", you realize). Do you mean that methodology should be considered beyond criticism in a practical context? Isn't that what you were just doing two posts ago?

Both philosophy and scientific method fall under the rubric of rational and empirical critique, and- another shocker- aren't mutually exclusive methods to one another, anyway- which is why your original dismissal of philosophy seems arbitrary.

Challenging "philosophy" as somehow divorced from reality as opposed to your litany of supposed "hard" sciences, and then turning around and excusing those hard sciences many practical failures, by appealing to some sort of "basic", or idealized, state perverted by corporate interests is logically inconsistent. By what criteria do you claim one ideal is inherently 'bullshit' and another ideal must ethereally be held beyond noisome questions?

I'm not a luddite, but I have no illusions that the hard sciences shouldn't be looked at skeptically as a lingua franca that has been used disingenuously throughout the 20th century by those who would rather not be held to scrutiny.

The attack you made on simply having a conversation on ethics and 'philosophy' suggests an pose of moral superiority by possession of superior information. Millions were harmed and died in the last century by various individuals who said exactly what you are saying, so justify why your advocacy of hard scientific method, morality and ethics be damned, is desirable.

Good, better, best/ Never let it rest/ Until your good is better/ And your better is the best.

Any other questions, class?

It's rediculous anyway.  A body wouldn't stop a trolly- it would just push the carcass along.  Trolly's have breaks - it it wasn't off the chain, it wouldn't be out of control. There are no switch tracks on trolly systems, only turn-arounds.  Hey, guess where I was born?  That's right, San Francisco.  Mom tells me I got off the trolly once on a turn around (that's "the end of the line" in trolly talk.)

Neoboho

Howard, you like the deeper parts of strategy, so consider this:  In 1970 I joined with the Pit River Tribe of Northeastern California in their land claims struggle.  Ostensibly the leadership was from Richard Oakes and Mickey Gimmel, both Alcatraz veterans, but the real power and guidance came from the chairman of the Madesi Band of Pit Rivers, Raymond Lego.  The one thing he held dear was the power of truth - as a political strategy.  He prevented 'secret meetings" and in fact invited the Feds to all of our meetings.  He felt the cause of his people was so righteous that there was absolutely nothing to hide. 

The upshot was that we had our day in court, which actually was about 70 days.  The govenment's case was full of holes, and the level of subtrefuge govenment officials employed to get us was outrageous.  In the pretrial negotiations, the conservative judge agreed to the restraint that none of us defendants would be allowed to testify to our motive.  Can you grasp that?  Since we were charged with assaulting federal officers, which is a criminal felony with a maximum sentence of eleven years in a federal penitentiary, we could not present a motive argument.   Halfway through the trial the jury foreman jumped up and shouted out "My God, why won't you let these people talk about why they were there!"  The magistrate later commented that it was the first time he witnessed a juror freak out.  At any rate, all we had to do was tell the truth, and the government's case collapsed and we were all acquited - and we had a big party with the jurors afterwards.

Open Government!  There is no power greater. Raymond Lego was inspired by Ghandi and M.L. King.

Neoboho

More seriously, though, kosmo, I agree that there is value in ethics. It can help you ensure that your arguments are consistent and well-developed. But it can't prove anything (or much) because first principles in ethics are really not provable--they are matters of opinion.

I find the examples Rachel presented trivial. In situation A, the trolley driver sees that whatever course of action he takes will result in death. He therefore tries to minimize the damage his trolley will cause and swerves away from the large crowd to the smaller group. In situation B, however, one person could sacrifice his life to save the lives of five. The priniciple I apply here is that no one has the authority to decide if that sacrifice is justified except the person making the sacrifice. Therefore, some third-party can't decide to sacrifice the one person's life to save five lives. Only the person who is making the sacrifice can make that decision--only he "owns" his own life. No one else can take that ownership away from him (at least while acting ethically). Dostoevsky, of course, handled a similar ethical dilemna masterfully in Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov makes the calculation that killing the pawnbroker would benefit humanity. He probably was right from a maximum utility standpoint. But we all know the story . . .

The amoralist position "You should NOT make moral judgements". "should" is an evaluative term, so in the very formulation of the amoral position you make a moral prescription.
TH you are really kidding yuourself when you say that you don't make moral jdgements. You do it all the time. All of us do. You can't escape it. Man is an evaluating animal. So all ethics, at its most basic form, is an attempt to systematize the common moral judgements we humans make all the time under some principle. It is inescapable.
Take for exaple someone who is competent in English. He/she is capable of producing an indefinite number of grammatical sentences and does so. Grammarians are scienist who observe the phenomena and try to systematize it under some grammatical theory. TH This is the way the world works. You might say it is futile to theorize, but theorizing is hard wired into our brains.

"My advice to those who are disinclined to do serious philosophy is this:(to totally misuse Wittgenstein) "Whereof you cannot speak, thereof you must remain silent""

I'd say that applies doubly to most so-called "philosophers" - and if I remember correctly, particularly to Wittgenstein.

"But it can't prove anything (or much) because first principles in ethics are really not provable--they are matters of opinion."

Exactly my point. In Transhumanism, there is a first principle which is NOT a matter of opinion. That is survival. This is where Transhumanism blows all the previous "philosophies" away.

The "ethicists" and "moralists" are busy dreaming up rules to behavior that are based on their belief systems - which in turn on based on nothing concrete at all, just logical arguments based on "axioms" or "predicates" that have no real world basis. Most of the so-called "philosophers" of the 20th Century based most of their systems on some concept they dredged up that seemed to be some sort of "primary" to them.

It's like a lot of mathematics. You can make a mathematical system which is entirely consistent logically but which has no basis in reality at all. It might even be useful in some cases in the real world - but it still has no basis in real world physics or cosmology.

Much of so-called "philosophy" - whether from the ancient philosophers or the modern ones - is on a par. They may be perfectly logical, consistent and comprehensive, generate tons of books from generations of followers - and still be entirely worthless in the real world of humans and physics. And the problem with believing that they aren't worthless is what leads to practical behavior in the real world which results in individual and social and international failures which costs lives and impede the progress of the species.

And Ellen, why should we discard the word ‘philosopher’ (sic) simply because people get a hissy over it. kosmotropic

No; rather --

-- Because "philosophy is dead" -- Nietzsche killed it; see Heidegger.

-- Because any advance, howsoever tiny, will come in the fields of linguistics and mathematics and not in "philosophy."

-- Because the word is imprecise and introduces confusion (Note: kosmotropic's anachronistic error in ascribing investigations and inventions of natural philosophers and mathematicians to "philosophers").

-- Because there are better words available (I suggested three; doubtless, there are others).

-- Because deploying the word in conversation exhibits a lack of rigor and leads to an uninteresting and corrupt language game, an exercise in one-upsmanship.

okay, I understand more specifically what you mean by the term 'philosopher'- you mean other philosophies than transhumanism, and in particular sophistry, or the employment of reason that treats reality as an abstraction. I agree that that tendency has been a current in western thought at least since Plato, who politically I tend to associate with an attraction to social models run by an elite that governs on the basis of possessing superior knowledge, which, whether or not the term 'morality' is also ascribed, is felt as social control from a sort of preisthood. Social legitmacy is conferred through membership in some sort of privileged corporate, which I see as the opposite of responsible individualism, because it conflates information with knowledge. Not even the scientific method makes claim to knowing; it represents the limits of our understanding of what is rationally ascertained to not yet be knowable. There is no evidence to support the claim the world was created in 4004 B.C., there is no evidence to deny many observations supporting belief in evolution, etc.

As for the scientific method and attacking it or not, I'm not "ad hominem" attacking the existence of it, I'm attacking your implication that it is the supreme governing social value to the unquestioned exlusion of all other human capacities. The characteristic of most people on earth to possess a notion of right and wrong that usually is not rationally derived is only one casualty. Frankly, I don't think ethics are rationally justifiable, either, I just don't consider that in itself to be necessarily threatening whereas you do. I readily agree that unbound assertion of ethic to the exclusion of practicality has the potential to slip into "morality", by which I mean transcendental good intentions, that find expression among Christianists, Islamists, and various other ideologies you rightly declaim, but from which you brush off the complicity of science and technology in abetting in practical terms: My rockets go up, who cares where they come down, that's not my department said Werner von Braun.

When you say that this is imperfectly practiced science due to human foible, but the method itself is sound, and that strict adherence to this method unfettered by ethical consideration is the only principle guiding appropriate human response, I don't what you're advocating other than some basic ultilitarian principle that gives me no clue how you would respond were you the conductor in this hypothetical runaway-trolley thought exercise, without having been ordained with the heretofore mysterious knowledge of your "PURPOSE". Would pressing the "Transhumanist Ejection Pod' button be one, or not? Why not?

More importantly, in the context of foreign policy, where would you stand on Cheney's principle that Fact 1: the purpose of the national security apparatus is to protect the survival of Americans against all possible threats of mass death, Fact 2: whether or not a group largely unknown to said apparatus posseses an atomic capability is also unknown, Conclusion: reconciling facts one and two justifies greatly expanded intelligence gathering capabilities and lower standards of what constitutes the knowledge sufficient for action. Is the problem he was correct in principle but a 'bad scientist' in overlooking certain sets of information that affected the practical outcome? My problem is that he lied to the American public, before we even get to considering the practicalities. Whether or not my problem is shared by other individuals (mere primates even!) enough to serve as a social counterforce is reflected after fair voting has occured with knowledge of the lie.

Final point, transhumanism may not yet be an ideology, but the way you describe it sounds as if it's headed that way to the extent you imply that it should become the sole principle of political choice. When anyone characterizes an "ism" as "stay-out-of-my-way" superior to all others, "blows away other philosphies" and all notion concepts of ethics and morality by laying claim to the possession of incontrovertible Truth, and that the rest of humanity are "mere primates" who obstruct progress, I nod and smile politely, and wonder whether, when it's safe to say we may be dealing with an ideologue (see Cheney, Dick).

I don't believe for a second "stay out of our way" means the same thing as "don't tread on me".

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