Elizabeth Jackson on Faith and Reason

I wrote Philo and Faith a few weeks ago, and not finding many others who shared my ideas, I felt lonely about my conclusions.  But I just stumbled upon this excellent paper by Elizabeth Jackson that remedies that loneliness.  

It's well worth the read and sure to be a well from which I draw often:  
https://philpapers.org/rec/JACFAR?fbclid=IwAR0sKzh6LUn_Gl0HUBKv52NV5i_EKN05WqlRNkpje9c437CzQtdcBFuPZMs

George's Kantian Argument Against Homosexual Behavior

I haven’t done the research to really figure out the origins of this argument, though I have my suspicions that it stems from Germain Grisez.  I’ll check later.  I’ve previously called it a Kantian argument for obvious reasons, but it’s possible that it stems more from a Personalist perspective.  Dunno.

This argument can be found in In Defense of Moral Law, ch. 9, sec. I.  George and Lee also use this argument in Conjugal Union and Body-Self Dualism in Contemporary Ethics and Politics.

Here’s the argument: 
It is wrong to use a human as a mere extrinsic instrument.
Humans are identical to their bodily selves.
In a sexual activity, the body is striving towards bodily union, but the intentional mental act in a masturbatory practice is to use the bodily act as an instrument to strive towards pleasure.
Homosexual acts are a masturbatory practice as no bodily union is possible.
So both in masturbation and in homosexual acts one is using one’s body as an instrument.
So one is using a human as an extrinsic instrument in these acts.
So these acts are wrong.

More research needs to be done on why, exactly, it’s wrong to use a human as a mere extrinsic instrument and why masturbatory practices are examples of this sort of use.  Lee and George seem to suggest in parts of the argument that only a unitive striving towards a real good can unite two people into a single subject, thus avoiding using one another as a mere means.  I might follow up on that line of thought later.

One positive aspect of this argument is that it coheres well with our language and protests surrounding people being “merely used” for pleasure in sexual acts.  Anyway, here’s a link from SEP on the topic: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/persons-means/

Part III - Alcohol and Marijuana Use: Are They on Ethical Par?

In this post I want to discuss marijuana's use as a medicinal drug.  

I’m inclined to think that many purported medical justifications for marijuana are often a trojan-horse for its recreational use.  I ask my readers to use the Hedonator thought-experiment to probe their intentions in their use of marijuana, and if it reveals that they use it in pursuit of a high, then its use is illicit.  

I have a general skepticism of drugs meant to deal with mental or spiritual problems.  While I think they can be justified in certain extreme situations, I think this justification should only come after prolonged counseling and other attempted solutions.  Depression is, generally, a perception of a sorrow, and sorrows are the result of some bad-state-of-affair in life, such as loneliness.  Before resorting to a drug, I think we should first attempt to solve the extra-mental cause of the sorrow (if there is one).

It also seems to me that other drugs for mental health are probably going to be healthier and more effective than marijuana.  This is an empirical point and requires empirical support.  However, given that these other drugs do not provide a high, proportionality would demand their use over that of marijuana.  

As for the use of marijuana as an analgesic, a similar point can be made as that of the last paragraph.  If there are other analgesics that do not produce a high, they should be used instead.  But, if on consideration and in light of medical consultation, marijuana is chosen as the best and most effective analgesic with the least bad consequences, its use can be justified.  But the high that it produces cannot be chosen or intended or else its use is illicit.  Of course other issues can also direct the choice over which analgesic to use, whether marijuana or some other type:  effectiveness in treating pain, risk of addiction, withdrawal symptoms, other potential health concerns, and so on.

If the intoxication is being used as a means or an end to dealing with an illness then R-PDE prohibits its use.  If the intoxication of weed is a separate mechanism from its medicinal benefits then it’s medicinal use could be justified on R-PDE.

One more note:  Marijuana addiction and withdrawal is a real problem, and many marijuana users who withdraw for a few days experience a number of negative symptoms, including restlessness, depressed mood, and stomach pain.  These negative effects should be factored into the proportionality criterion when calculating the benefits of marijuana use over other drugs.  Moreover, some users report that “only marijuana” can solve these withdrawal symptoms. But they’re wrong.  Time will solve the problems as well.  But other medications can be used so as to lessen the withdrawal symptoms.

This is essay is merely meant to be a suggestive sketch.

Part II - Alcohol and Marijuana Use: Are They on Ethical Par?

I wanted to explore this topic with Revised PDE (R-PDE) in mind.  What does Pruss’s discussion of R-PDE have to say about the ethics of alcohol and marijuana use?

Grant that drunkenness is inherently wrong.  It can’t be intended as a means or an end.  It can’t be a part of one’s action plan.  But it can be foreseen as a consequence of one’s action plan.

Drinking alcohol to enjoy its taste and aesthetic qualities is a good.  Let’s say that I have an action plan with the goal of enjoying an alcoholic drink.  Is drunkenness something accomplished for the sake of enjoying the alcoholic drink?  Not necessarily.  For drinking alcohol does not necessarily lead to drunkenness.  Nor is drunkenness being used as a means for enjoying the alcohol.  So drunkenness is not necessarily accomplished in the typical use of alcohol.

Still, with drunkenness being an intrinsically wrong foreseen effect, the consumption of alcohol can be defeated via the proportionality criteria.  So R-PDE can prohibit alcohol consumption on two grounds: Insofar as it is being consumed to produce drunkenness, and, via the proportionality criteria, if an increasing drunkenness begins to defeat the proportional good of ingesting a good drink.

Weed usage and alcoholic usage for purposes of getting drunk is forbidden; however, insofar as alcohol gets one drunk on an increasing scale and can be taken without much of a intoxicating effect for a few drinks, then it’s permissible until the proportionality condition of R-PDE defeats it.  With marijuana being less of a tiered drug and producing more of an immediate effect of intoxication, it’d presumably defeat the proportionality criterion quickly or immediately, and so would be forbidden.  

Insofar as one could smoke marijuana without becoming intoxicated it’d be permissible; and presumably the only type of motivation for such a practice would be something akin to enjoying it’s “good bud” aesthetic qualities; but these would presumably be defeated quite quickly by the proportionality condition of PDE insofar as one quickly becomes intoxicated.  It's my inclination to think that marijuana usage would quickly disappear if this were the only motivation (I think this is the result of the Hedonator thought-experiment); while alcohol usage would carry on as it has for centuries if the “good drink” motivation were its only motivation.

I think the Hedonator device is merely illustrating the usual intent with which a marijuana user ingests marijuana, and to intend to become intoxicated is willing an inherent wrong, so should be avoided. The Hedonator thought-experiment only has one purpose:  To illustrate the reasons for which the typical pot smoker smokes vs the typical reason why an alcoholic user drinks.

Objection: What about the case of alcohol used for analgesic purposes?  The intent of the action is to dull pain.  But the means to dull the pain is drunkenness.  So it seems R-PDE may disallow anesthesia, which seems like the wrong result.  

But whether it’s the drunkenness of the mind that is the means by which the pain is dulled is not something we should take for granted.  It could be that the dulling of the pain is a separate mechanism from the drunkenness, and so drunkenness would fall under foreseen consequence and is not something accomplished by the action.  

Alcohol and Marijuana Use: Are They on Ethical Par?

I’ve seen a growing resort to a tu quoque type argument by the proponents of recreational marijuana use.  Something close to the following is usually how the argument goes:  If drinking alcohol for recreational purposes is permissible, so too should the use of recreational marijuana be permissible.

Those that reject the tu quoque typically reply with two sorts of responses:  (a) Alcohol does not provide an immediate high and can be used in moderation without producing a high at all; while marijuana cannot do this, and (b) marijuana has worse health effects than alcohol.  Both of these responses need to be adequately supported and both are fine ways to argue if they are so supported.

But I want to explore a different method of defeating the tu quoque, a method that I take to be more persuasive.  

Alcohol is or can be put to use in a good drink.  It’s an essential ingredient to achieving both a kick to the drink as well as a desirable warmth to it.  It’s nourishing and can be relished for its aesthetic qualities.  It often possesses a vast sophistication in its production.  As G.K. Chesterton remarked, “It is quite a mistake to suppose that, when a man desires an alcoholic drink, he necessarily desires alcohol.” This fact about alcohol is attenuated by the following example: There’s nothing odd about a friend asking whether we would want juice, a soft drink, or wine.  Alcohol can be consumed primarily as just a good drink with its potential intoxicating effects being unnecessary to its consumption, both in terms of the intent of the consumer as well as in terms of the actual usage not necessarily producing intoxication.

But wait.  The marijuana proponent can retort:  There’s an established connoisseurship regarding the production of cannabis.  People mix it with brownies, cultivate certain strains, comment on its taste, and so on. Does this not show the fruitlessness of the prior paragraph’s line of reasoning? To show that the answer to this question is a negative, consider the following thought-experiment:

Imagine a device called the “Hedonator.”  Pushing the button on this device sends signals to the brain that produce an emotional high.  That’s the purpose of the device.  Now imagine that the producers of this device begin to manufacture it in aesthetically pleasing wood boxes, they package it with detail and beauty and they give it a pleasant aroma. Now imagine that the Hedonator fails to produce the high upon a press of the button.  The user of this device would feel disappointed, as if it were not working. For it’s the purpose of the Hedonator to produce the high.  The secondary aesthetical details are just incidental to the device.

Marijuana use, I think, is clearly an analogue of the Hedonator.  

By contrast, the use of alcohol does not parallel the Hedonator.  It hydrates and it tastes good, and when these are achieved, the consumer is not disappointed (if he is using alcohol licitly).  The consumer can affirm the goodness of the alcohol upon immediate consumption without waiting for an intoxicating effect.  It’d be a bit jarring for the consumer of alcohol to complain that they ‘didn’t feel anything yet’ upon drinking, while we'd find it perfectly natural for a marijuana user to make this comment upon ingesting impotent weed.  This fact reveals the intent in a typical type of use of alcohol versus the intent to ingest marijuana.  

So the reason people use marijuana is in pursuit of an illicit high, while the typical reason people consume alcohol is in pursuit of an appreciation of alcohol’s tastes and aesthetic qualities.  Of course, if a person uses alcohol in a manner similar to the Hedonator, in pursuit of drunkenness, then they are using it illicitly.  

Most of this is just a straight adaptation from Miravalle’s excellent book “How to Feel Good and How Not To."

Selective Outline on a PDE Paper

Selective Outline of The Accomplishment of Plans: a New Version of The Principle of Double Effect by Alexander Pruss

I. Traditional PDE

Traditional PDE holds that an action is permissible if it satisfies these conditions:  

NWO:  The action is not wrong otherwise, i.e., it is not wrong for any reason other

than perhaps the violation of the prohibition against working evil as it applies in

the case of the foreseen evil in question.

GI:  The good effect is intended

ENI:  The evil effect is not intended, either as a means or an end

Prop: There is a proportionally grave reason for permitting the evil effect

II. Closeness Cases

Closeness Case:  Intending something so close to an evil that it basically is that evil. Threatens to make “intention” merely a psychological game.

Bennett’s terror bombing example: Rather than intending the civilians death, you intend that they seem-to-be-dead.  But the best way to accomplish their seeming to be dead is to kill them, so killing them is chosen as a means and is thus not a counterexample to Trad PDE.

For an action to be intended, it must satisfy EC:

EC:  The intention is part of the explanation for why the agent did the action.    

For a closeness case to violate Trad PDE it must satisfy: ENI, NWO, and must be wrong.  

EC enables us to give two Closeness Cases that are counterexamples to Trad PDE:
1.  Killing the first mammal for charity, but the mammal happens to be a man.  He only intended to kill a mammal, and not a man.  This seems right given the scenario.

2.  The ruthless CEO example shows that her giving orders to do “whatever it takes” can be evil despite her not intending the bombing of her rivals.

The intended death of the mammal is identical to the intended death of the zookeeper.  But that’s not right, because intention is intensional.  Cicero and Tulley example.  These counterexamples show that Trad PDE needs an extensional concept.

Trad PDE is too interiorized.  What is wrong should primarily be an object thing out in the world, and not so dependent upon intention.

III.  Accomplishment; it’s meaning

Accomplishment depends on the concept of action plan.

Action plan: Explain an action

 When we act, the action plan includes the ends as well as the things to be accomplished for the sake of the ends.

Whether something in the world counts as my accomplishment in a particular action depends on whether the thing was a part of the actualization of my plan. 

An action plan includes an intention; willing a universal or a process.  And the accomplishment of that intention can involve an unintended particular that exemplified the intended universal.  This unintended accomplishment of the intended action plan in fact made use of the deaths of the rival’s employees.  So the action plan was accomplished by these deaths.

So “accomplish” is being used extensionally. What one accomplishes is an accomplishment, and if x and y are identical, and x is one’s accomplishment, so is y. Accomplishments are, thus, coarse-grained. When Marcus killed Cicero in order to benefit Tully, what he accomplished was also the death of Tully. But Marcus’ plan was accomplished only in part: Cicero was killed, as planned, but Tully did not benefit. And as was already said, foreseen effects that go beyond the plan are not an accomplishment; the feeding of the worms by Tully’s body, for instance.

IV. Revised PDE

Revised PDE (R-PDE): An action that results in an evil is permissible if and only if it satisfies NWO, GI and PROP, and the evil was not accomplished in the action.

This solves the two counter-examples, as the death of the man and the bombing of the competition are the accomplishments of the agents.

In the case of a successful action, everything intended is also accomplished, but typically not conversely. Thus talking about accomplishment instead of intention in the PDE will yield a stricter principle in the case of successful actions—a principle that will permit fewer actions.

There are still unintended events that can result from an action plan that do not count as accomplishments of that action plan.  The feeding of the worms due to the death of Tully, for example, is not an accomplishment.

V. The Problem of Event Individuation

Event Individuation Problem:  
    Coarse-Grained:  Turning switch, causing a noise, causing an explosion are all the same event.
    Fine-Grained: At least as many events as there are non-synonymous descriptions of events.

Neither of these help the PDE. A fine-grained analysis makes the PDE too permissive; the bomber could say he only intended to flip a switch and not bomb the office.

Neither will a coarse-grained analysis work.  For the tactical bomber would be intending the bombs to explode and also that they kill the civilians, which isn’t right.

Does this problem affect Revised PDE?  Not if we properly understand the coarse-grained approach.  The blowing up of the bomb is not literally the same event as the death of the civilians, as the blowing up of the bomb is the cause of the death of the civilians, and no event causes itself.  So on R-PDE, the tactical bomber accomplishes the cause of the death of the civilians, and not the death of the civilians.  

For this defense to work, it must be argued that the cause of the death of the civilians is not intrinsically evil.  Most causes of death are only instrumentally evil and not intrinsically evil.

Even though the death of the civilians is entailed by the cause of the death of the civilians, it does not follow that one has accomplished the death of the civilians, for one does not accomplish all of the entailments of an action plan.  

The death of the civilians do nothing to contribute to the success of the tactical bomber’s plans and thus do not constitute an accomplishment of her’s.

VI. Other Types of Closeness Cases

Less-Close Case Objections: 

Throwing the fat man in front of the trolley; it seems wrong.  Yet it seems like we could say that we accomplished the cause of his death and not his death and hence justify it on R-PDE.  

These cases may violate NWO;  we can’t accomplish putting someone in grave danger without their consent.  

One has (typically) acted wrongly when one has accomplished a grave endangerment, but when the endangerment is merely caused by what one has accomplished, with the accomplishment itself not being innately dangerous, then it is not necessarily wrong.

Consider a trolley redirection vs throwing the fat man.  

1. The throwing of the fat man is the grave danger and is accomplished by one’s action.  

2. In redirecting, all that is accomplished is the trolley taking a different path, and taking a path is not inherently dangerous. It is only dangerous when we add the fact that there are innocents in the way, but this fact is not accomplished by one’s action.

It is not part of one’s action that they placed the bystanders on the track, but it is part of the action plan that the fat man was thrown.

So in redirecting, one has accomplished not the danger itself, but a cause of danger.  And this seems permissible given the prior reasoning.

VII. Constitution-Defense of PDE

Suggestion: Intending to crush the fetus skull but not kill the fetus does not work, because crushing the skull constitutes killing the fetus.

R-PDE can say that crushing the skull endangers the fetus and make use of the prohibition against accomplishing an endangerment.  Or, it could say that the skull crushing is intrinsically evil.

Constitution defense has problems anyway.  It’s the crushing of the brain that kills the fetus and not the crushing of the skull. At most, the skull crushing is only partly constitutive of the death of the fetus. Etc. And we have general reasons to not prohibit actions that are partly constitutive of evil, so the constitution defense won’t work.