A theory of discrimination [3]: Relating discriminatory factors with context

In this post I'm going to argue for why we should be taking the base-$\Omega$ thesis and how we can utilise this notion to suggest the fundamental discriminatory premise.

Recall that the motivation of base Omega is the idea of 'innocent until proven guilty'. That is, taking a neutral definition of discrimination as just differential different on the basis of a factor, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such treatment. That is to say that a factor such as racial discrimination is not problematic unless we are able to provide a reason for why it is. The main reason that I am inclined towards this position is the notion of onus. It seems to me there are so many seemingly unproblematic cases of discrimination such that if we do discriminate unjustly, there must be a justification. Base-$\Delta$ theories would of course respond that there is something intrinsically wrong about such differential treatment. I can't however see why this must be the case; we must it seems rely on some additional premise to tell us why there is an issue here. There's the argument of equality, but I view this argument as complex as opposed to trivially true.

Practically there are for and against arguments for Base-$\Omega$. The main advantage is that it is practically attainable. We could in theory consider our current state as $\Omega_0$ and then reason as to why it would be wrong to discriminate based on factors such as race, sex, orientation etc. Base-$\Delta$ theories must assume an initial state $\Delta_0$  that is extremely distant from our current state. In return they are able to pick out the salient discriminatory factors. It seems to me that pragmatically, Base-$\Omega$ is in a stronger position since its initial state is something we can directly engage with.

Now, a first observation is that what counts as problematic or unjust discrimination appears to depend on context. It seems reasonable for women to be barred from men's toilets, it also seems reasonable for basketball teams to discriminate on the basis of height, or universities to discriminate on the basis of education. We can thus consider a binary relation D(c,f) which says that it is justified in context (c) to discriminate on the basis of factor (f). Now there's three things to consider:

1) The set $C$ such that $c \in C$.
I.e. which contexts can we consider

2) The set $F$ such that $f \in F$.
I.e. which factors we can can discriminate on the basis

3) The connection between $c$ and $f$.

Question 1) seems pretty simple. It seems as if we can discriminate in any context (assume Base-$\Omega$) as long as there's no specific reason not to. The best example would be to consider some arbitrary context $c$ and consider an extremely trivial factor, e.g. Deciding whether to go heads or tails on the basis of the coins colour. Irrational perhaps, but certainly nothing problematic it appears. It might be argued that this example doesn't actually affect anyone whilst discriminatory practices are contingently harmful. The response is simply to imagine that your choice of heads / tails for some reason dictates who gets a job, except you don't anything about said people.
Thus $C$ is the set of all contexts.

Now $F$ seems much more difficult. We have a vague intuition about for example racism that it is fundamentally problematic. Whilst some would argue that it is essentially about power structures and systemic oppression, there still appears to be a fundamental notion of discrimination on the basis of race. Further this itself seems wrong, almost perhaps regardless of context. Perhaps this suggests to us that it is unjust for the set $F$ to contain race. We can repeat this intuition with other factors such as sex or sociological economic status. I've already addressed a number of counter examples to these cases, but I won't deny there still seems to be some sort of intuition that it is wrong to treat people differently on some of these factors. The key relating factor here seems to be the inability to change; the fact that one is unable to control their race seems to preclude one from treating them differently on that basis. This contrasts (plausibly) with discriminating on the basis of education; in theory one can change their educational attainment.

Whilst somewhat intuitive, here's a few problems. The first is of course the existence of counter examples; we do think it is okay to discriminate on the basis of sex or gender in the case of toilets. The second is that some of these factors seem in theory changeable but this doesn't seem to change the ethical impact. For example, it is in theory possible for someone to change their sex (perhaps their race) as well as their socio-economic lives. Yet we still retain this notion of inability to change in the process of why the discrimination is back. Further imagine a case where a woman is discriminated and she decides to have a sex change to become a guy. It sounds terrible to imagine that our society would in some way endorse this, in the same way that we wish to improve our level of education. In this sense, the 'inability to change' doesn't obviously preclude these properties from belonging to the set $F$. Whilst the argument is not fully complete, I think this provides us with sufficient intuition to imagine that $F$ includes the set of all properties. Saying this, there is something extremely plausible about the idea of 'protected characteristics' such that it is useful to consider them in a separate subset $P \subset F$.

Finally the important question: what is relation between $C$ and $F$ in any specific token case of $D$? An answer to this question will tell us how fixing a context C will tell us which subset of factors are okay to discrminate on the basis on. It will also tell us by fixing a factor f, which contexts it is fine to discriminate on that basis of.

In cases like this, it seems reasonable to start by looking for intuitions across a variety of cases. Lets start by fixing factor f as gender and consider which contexts seem permissible. A few cases that we seem to have made our mind up of:

1) It is wrong to discriminate on the basis of gender in the context a normal corporate hire.

2) It is permissible to discriminate on the basis of gender in the context of changing rooms (bathrooms somewhat more contentious)

3) It is fine to discriminate on the basis of gender when expressing sexual preferences.

4) It is wrong to discriminate on the basis of gender when hiring a new professor of philosophy.

Now I'm sure there is a lot to say about the opposite conclusion for each of these cases, but I think this helps develop some intuitions. Now let's try fixing context c as a normal corporate hire.

1) It is fine to discriminate on the basis of education

2) It is fine to discriminate on the basis of performance in assessment centers (although we would need a greater analysis of what this is)

3) It is wrong to discriminate on the basis of race

4) It is wrong to discriminate on the basis of sexuality.

Whilst it might seem 'obvious' in some sense, there is a rather apparent conclusion that one can draw from these cases. It seems that at least with the case of our 'protected characteristics', it is wrong to discriminate on that basis unless there is something significantly relevant about them for that context. That is, gender seems fundamentally relevant to the expression of sexual preferences and at least for pragmatic reasons, relevant for changing rooms (although easily contended). It is however wrong to discriminate on the basis of gender, race, sexuality etc in cases where they don't hold great relevance; e.g. in the context for assessment centers, academia and so on. The idea of course seems to be that in certain cases, these factors seem critical for achieving the fundamental goal of that context. The goal in education seems to be achieving the best professors and thus educational attainment seems important but not gender. The goal for corporate hire is finding the most suitable employee so perhaps promising performance in assessments is important but not race.

Note that there is some incredibly important premise that must be at work here. Whilst I claim that these factors are not significantly relevant, I have not actually proved it or even argued for it anyway. In fact, I don't believe it myself, that is I believe that some of these 'protected characteristics' are sometimes relevant and I think it's plausible to think that in some cases, significant.

Anyhow, for the purpose of this discussion, it seems that we must make the following key assumption:

Principle of distributional equality: Across protected characteristics such as race, gender, sexuality all groups have the same talent distribution.

What this means is roughly this: for a lot of our contexts that are not explicitly related to protected characteristics there is a desire to 'maximise utility' which in this sense is maximising 'talent'. I.e. achieving the best candidate for our specific situation. This assumption is saying that 'talent' is not essentially related to these characteristics. The word essential here is important: due to social reasons certain factors are statistically correlated. For example being black is correlated with lower education achievement. However the principle here is claiming that this is not necessarily connected, only contingently. As a result, we should not look at a candidates race to infer their education, instead we should look at the education of the hire directly since this is the relevant factor to discriminate on.

A theory of discrimination [2]: A basis to discriminate

Last post on this topic I concluded with the notion of our base equilibrium state $\Delta_0$, and then consider transformations to $\Delta_1, \Delta_2 . . . $ that reflect different instances of discrimination that we perceive to be permissible. I'm going to discuss these the motivations of this idea, as well as a natural analogue. 

This theory of starting from base equilibrium $\Delta_0$ I call the Base-$\Delta$ theory of discrimination. We start from nothing and we gradually formalise and build up on these principals. This of course is motivated by the following thesis:

Base-$\Delta$ thesis: Unless provided a sufficient reason we ought not discriminate.

Base-$\Delta$ theories utilise the notion that on the whole discrimination is unfair unless there is a reason to think it is justified. In other words, we take the (theoretical) base equilibrium where there are no instances of discrimination, and we engage in our transformative practice by slowly adding factors that we can discriminate with, each time providing certain reasons. 

There is of course another stance that should also be considered, a stance I call the Base-$\Omega$ theory of discrimination. Here we start from our current state, and we gradually characterise the instances of discrimination that we view as unacceptable. This is motivated by the following thesis:

Base-$\Omega$ thesis: Discrimination is not in principle problematic, singular instances of discrimination are wrong only if we are provided by sufficient reason.

Here we think that there isn't anything fundamentally wrong with differential treatment unless we can provided some special case. In other words, whilst the Base $\Delta$ theory views discrimination as 'Guilty until proven innocent', the Base-$\Omega$ theory views discrimination as 'innocent until proven Guilty'.

Both of these theories revolve around this notion of iterated states $\Delta_0, \Delta_1, . . \Delta_n$ and $\Omega_0, \Omega_1 . . . \Omega_m$ where we engage in a type of reflective equilibrium. In other words they provide an algorithm that in theory should lead to the same outcome. I don't expect anyone to ever actually execute this algorithm, but I think it provides us with a good founding. At the least I believe that both ideas are 'sound' in the sense that each iteration is 'justice preserving' thus any correct iterations should lead to a just society. So both of these theories provide us a way to reach the idealised state for a given situation, with different starting points. The Base $\Delta$ theory provides us with a method where each $\Delta_i$ is justified, whilst the Base $\Omega$ theory allows us to practically start from our current position and slowly move towards the ideal (but we might not know how 'good' our current case is).

What can we expect from this idealised state that is to be termination point for both theories? Well we would expect it to be a state of the world where discrimination exists on varying levels, over different factors. Yet there is some sort of causal relation between the factors and the intended outcomes (which are all justified in some sense). 

Theistic Atheism: God transcends possible worlds

In this final post I am going to explain why I have a belief in God and what grounds such a belief.

The first thing to say is that I call this belief a 'faith' type belief because I don't believe my reasons for justification are sufficient to meet the standards of the statistical irrationality criterion that I have discussed in my earlier posts. That is not to say that my beliefs are without justification - I just recognise that there are certain steps that perhaps appeal to certain intuitions that I have that others might not. I like to think of beliefs as having argumentative value on different levels; the belief I intend to expose here is one that I find interesting and observe, but I would not be confident that others would be convinced. Remember as well that I posited that there are no inherent issues with having such faith based beliefs. In accepting that this belief holds such a status I also renounce my ability to use such a belief as the basis of rational argument.

So to start, I would say that I find it very difficult to grasp what are the key aspects of God. The essence of God, one might say. How does one characterise what a God means or even could mean. Different religions have their own meanings, but I think one of the fundamental intuitions is that a God is something 'out there'. By this, I intend to capture the notion that there is something special or supernatural about a God. They go beyond normal understandings or limitations. This at least, is how I think about God.

The next question of course is why I believe that such a being exists. The reason is because I believe in a degree of Modal Realism; a possible world semantics. Essentially I think that there are infinitely many possible worlds that are extremely similar to ours. When I flip a coin, the coin can be heads or tails. Suppose in our 'actual' world, the coin lands on heads, then this is the history that we are tracing. Yet I think that there exists these additional worlds when in fact that the coin flipped tails, and a new history was created. Essentially, I think of these worlds as all existing on some form of timeline, where at every instance or decision, a new branch is created and new worlds are created.

How would I go about convincing rationally one of this position? I think it is difficult, although there are certainly many attempts at doing so. Some of these arguments may in fact be quite convincing. My belief in modal realism however I take to be a faith since I find the whole notion just interesting and perhaps my justification is insufficient on a statistical rationality grounds.

Anyhow, my thought is that in these infinitely many possible worlds, there are also infinitely many counterparts of ourselves that exist in these worlds. Now, I also think that most of these worlds will be unable to access each other, largely based on intuitions that it seems we have not met any extra-world beings. By this, I mean that there are essentially rules that ordinary beings will have to obey in terms of possible worlds. In normal situations, we are unable to transcend worlds or affect individuals in other worlds. The possible worlds are distinct and unconnected in some sense even if they have a similar basis.

I also believe in the idea that we can have a number of different universes, a multiverse if you will. This bears some strong similarities with our possible worlds semantic expect it perhaps also leaves open the existence of worlds or universes that seem to obey fundamentally different rules. The possible worlds that I discussed earlier generally refers to 'close worlds', which makes sense if I'm basing it on a world that occurs or is even created when I flip a coin. The two worlds that arise from the coin flip are of course going to be extremely similar in that they have the exact same history up until that point. Different universes allows for the rules to change a bit more.

I think furthermore, that because these different universes can exist, that it is possible that special beings, 'out there' can exist. The possibility is that these special beings are able to in some sense tr transcend the possible worlds. These beings might be able to come to different universes and might not be limited by the same rules that ordinary agents such as ourselves are subject to. Due to this, we might call such beings 'supernatural', or even Godly.

Thus when I say that I believe in God, I refer to a belief that there exists these beings that could exist in other worlds or universes, that may have the special ability to transcend such possible worlds or universes and enter others (not necessarily ours).

To someone reading this, this might sound completely absurd. I think that there are actual reasonable arguments that can be made to convince about this claim, but I don't see it as my responsibility to do so. The reason is because I believe this, but do not intend to use it as a justification for other things because the 'Gods' are rather different. In religions, that might want to justify their God's existence to convince others to do certain things (e.g. to worship him). They might say that their God is omniscient, omnibenevolent etc. I make no such claims about the God(s) that I describe. I do not know if they have any special knowledge, love or if I will ever experience them. I see no special reason to worship them or talk to them via prayer. I simply believe in their existence, in a faith based manner.

One main reason is because I find these notions of modal realism and multiverses rather uncertain. I do not have a grasp myself of the extent to which I believe such claims. My characterisation of Godlike being is also vague because I do not know the requirements for a God, if there even is such a set. Instead, I am merely attempting to capture intuitions about something 'out there', 'supernatural'.

Theistic Atheism: Faith is a type of belief

This is the second part of my exposition of Theistic Atheism. Recall that the position holds that one ought to be an atheist on the grounds of a statistical rationality view of belief, yet one can plausibly still hold the belief that God exists regardless. In this post I'm going to discuss how one believe in God whilst being Atheist under the statistical rationality view of belief.

The first thing to note is that belief's don't necessarily require justification. It seems at least, that I can believe that Earth is round, or that 2+2 = 5, regardless of whether it is justified or not. Now, simultaneously, it seems that a belief that possesses this type of justification (making certain reference to internalist theories of knowledge) are virtuous in some sense. To some people, it might be argued that a person can only be rational if their beliefs are justified or at least obey a certain type of logic.

The statistical rationality view can be thought of as providing a framework for rational argument and justified beliefs. It is not the only framework, and perhaps not the best one for dealing with most cases. Yet I think it has a certain intuitive strength when tasked with assessing a belief in God. There is a strong intuition by many who would identify as Atheists, that whilst they may not be able to directly prove the non existence of God, they are still allowed to reject God, or at the least the variety of religions that surround it. A note here that some Atheists adopt the position in order to express a negative attitude towards religions, whilst maintaining an agnostic position with regards to God's existence. I assume in this essay that the Atheist we are dealing with has a negative stance towards God's existence, beyond an agnostic position.

So the statistical rationality view was how I justified that rationally I think that we should adopt the Atheist position. When we're trying to discuss God's existence, I simply don't think there is enough evidence for us to accept an alternative hypothesis that God exists. Thus on these grounds, one rationally ought to be an Atheist. A key word here; ought. We note that there are many things we ought to do, but we nevertheless might not do. Perhaps I ought to clean my bed everyday, or to get up early in the morning. It does seem however that perhaps by definition, to say that I ought to have this belief on these grounds, suggests that there is something wrong in not doing so. That I am being in some sense, doxastically irresponsible. Thus at the moment, there still seems to be something questionable about having a belief in God, if one adopts this Atheist rationale.

To resolve this, at least rationally, I seem to have to appeal to a contextualise argument. Essentially I would argue that it's fine for me to adopt the Atheist position on grounds of rationality, and it's also fine for me to believe in the existence of God, as long as this second belief is on different grounds. Thus here I appeal to the notion of faith. 

Faith I define as a belief that is not necessarily grounded in rationality. One can have a faith that there are flying pigs circling the moon, that there is an alien conspiracy or that there is a floating man in the sky. Faith does not require the type of justification that statistical rationality does. There is not this supposedly objective measure of evidence that is required for me justify this belief. I can justify a faith using any reasons, or even no reasons at all.

 Now, note that whilst I can plausibly have a faith in any claim, the status of of my faith belief appears to be much weaker when expressed to others. For example suppose I had a faith that homosexuality was immoral. Whilst it seems reasonable for me to believe this myself even perhaps without justification, I encounter a significant difficulty when I try to convince others of my position. It might even be thought that a direct expression of my faith is a political statement and is unjustified, especially due to my (possible) inability to provide arguments. The main thing is that because is without justification, it seems that I also lose the ability to use such a belief as justification for other actions. That is, again if I had a faith that homosexuality was immoral, in virtue of this belief being ungrounded in rationality, such a belief would not properly justify an action such as a potential choice to send all homosexuals to prison. If I wanted to justify this action, my belief of homosexuality being immoral would need to be justified rationally.

So broadly speaking, when I say that I have faith in God, the claim is actually rather meaningless from an outsiders perspective. Because with regards to them, I need no justification when discussing my faith to them, and I am also not entitled to use this faith as any justification for an action that would affect other agents. This doesn't take anything away from my ability to believe of course. I can still believe in God given the 'contextual' modifier of faith, and simultaneously adopt the Atheist position when confronted with doxastic demands of rationality. To sum things up, one could be an Theistic Atheist if their theistic belief, and their atheistic belief belong to different belief classes, generally one rational and the other simply faith based.

This sounds rather complicated. So here's perhaps a simpler example. Consider a football fan, who hopes that their local team will win. Now we ask the fan whether their team actually will win, and what they actually believe. The fan responds that when discussing this topic seriously, if you look at the statistics of all of the other teams and engage in a degree of analysis, the odds of the local team winning are rather slim. Thus when we are discussing a type of belief that demands such evidence, the fan says that the local team is unlikely to succeed. Yet plausibly, the fan still has a degree of belief in his teams victory. Even though he knows the odds are against him, the fan still believes in his team. His faith in his teams victory goes against the rational evidence, and he certainly doesn't think he'd have the ability to convince someone else (especially one who is less emotionally invested) into believing in the local teams victory. Yet he believes regardless.

In my final post, I'm going to discuss my reasons for actually believing in a God on grounds of faith and why I call it faith as opposed to any other term. To conclude this post, I want to briefly discuss whether one is justified in having beliefs that appear to belong to different classes - statistical rationality and faith. I think the justification for rational beliefs is rather uncontentious, so the main issue is whether we think one justifiably have faith based beliefs. Rephrased we ask whether there is any issue with one having a belief that they know is purely faith based and may lack rational justification. I think the thing to note is that many faith based beliefs are non entirely without justification, it just happens to be justification that would be insufficient to convince a present non believer. Yet it seems that we have many such beliefs that one might class as faith on a daily basis. Many of our emotions for example seem to belong to this category. One might of course view emotions in a rather negative light as opposition to the sort of cold logic of rationality that we have discussed, but I think such a view is mistaken. At the least there doesn't seem to be anything innately wrong with one having emotions, and to deny this seems to dismiss an inherently human element of ourselves. I'll discuss the importance of emotions in another post, but for now I hope I have provided some intuition on why we should not immediately object to people having faith based beliefs, as long as they do not use such belief in justifying actions that would actually affect other agents.    
      

Theistic Atheism: Rejecting the alternative hypothesis

In this post I am going to express my view on God's existence and the particular religious stance I have. The position that I endorse I have called theistic atheism, which to many sounds fundamentally contradictory. I argue however that one can hold beliefs for multiple reasons, and that one can justifiably hold what one might take to be 'contradictory' beliefs if such beliefs belong to what I would view as different belief classes.

Briefly, my thesis is that the way an atheist rejects the existence of God is not based on asserting God's non existence but instead that there is insufficient evidence. As a result, their belief belongs to what I call Class SR (for statistical rationality). At the same time, a theist who believes in God will using a different type of belief known as Class F (Faith), which use an entirely different type of justification. Due to this, it is possible for one to be both an Atheist in that there is insufficient evidence for proving that God exists, but simultaneously recognise that they belief in God regardless.

I recognise that there are a number of claims going down here and thus I will split this essay over a few posts. In this post I am going to discuss what I take to be an Atheistic position and why we should adopt a Class SR approach.

Before we begin, let me make an important note. I use an extremely liberal notion of God here; I won't assume that God necessarily has traits such as omniscience, omnipotence etc. I don't assume uniqueness, accessibility or being a creator. Instead I will use a broad notion of God as something that is in some sense supernatural. Many will likely be critical of such a vague definition, which I think would be justified. I do however think that most of us will be able to have a sufficient intuition on what I mean by supernatural. For now, just think about your favourite God from literature and grant them the benefit of doubt that their existence is not an immediately contradictory notion.    
 
Now, Atheists often ask believers why they believe in God. The Atheists ask what evidence the believers have to justify their position. "How can you prove that God exists?" The atheist might question. Suppose now that the believer responds "How can you prove that God does not?". We might think that it is impossible to empirically detect whether God exists, especially when certain versions of God includes its ability to be 'beyond the understanding of humans'.

Whilst some will take such a discussion to be direct reason to be agnostic, I think such a position is hasty. There is of course a debate with regards to defining these different positions. However I think it is fair to characterise the Agnostic position as one where a person believes that nothing can be known about the existence or nature of God. In some sense one might think this is decidedly neutral. The atheist however often agrees with the claim that they can not prove that God does not exist, yet they seem to nevertheless express a negative stance towards the existence of God. One might think that such atheists are being irrational, and that we should instead all be agnostics. I think however that the atheists are instead adopting a certain standard for their belief, that I call statistical rationality.

Let us carry on the conversation. The Atheist might respond to the believer by asking the believer whether they think that there is a Giant Squid in outer space. The Atheist tells the believer that even though the believer is unable to verify whether the Squid exists or not, surely they do not need to remain neutral towards Giant Squids in outer space. One could carry on by inventing further ludicrous objects that might exist somewhere we lack the resources or ability to verify and yet one does not need to be neutral about each of such objects. The Atheist instead claims that whilst we are unable to show that the Giant Squid doesn't exist in outer space, the lack of any evidence or plausible reasons to suspect its existence is enough for us to express a negative attitude towards its existence. In a similar way, the lack of evidence of God or inability to prove God's existence (or so it is claimed) is sufficient for one to take the position of Atheism; to reject the existence of God.

So to clarify, what I am arguing is essentially that the Atheist position is one where doesn't think there is sufficient evidence to believe in the existence of God, and due to this rejects the position. The claim here is that the Atheists think that the onus in some sense lies on the believer to prove that God exists. If there is insufficient evidence or reason to think this, then one should be an Atheist. This position is incredibly similar to what one might do when they engage in hypothesis testing. Essentially if one wishes to argue for a position that deviates from the 'base' or 'null' position, then they need sufficient evidence for that. If they fail to achieve that level of evidence, then there is insufficient reason to deviate from the null hypothesis. I've discussed it before, but imagine a multiple choice (4 choices) test with 100 questions. Perhaps the teacher thinks that their students have learnt the material. However if the average mark is 25, then the teacher's position doesn't seem to be backed by the data. Only once it reaches a certain point (dependent on the level of rigour) perhaps in the 30s or 40s would we think her claim reasonable.

Joining these things together, the Atheist position is the following:
1) The null hypothesis is that God's lack of existence, with the alternative hypothesis that God does exist
2) There is insufficient evidence to be swayed towards the alternative hypothesis.
3) As a result, one should not deviate from the null hypothesis and thus should reject the notion of God.

Now there are some important things to note in this argument. I've already justified 3, which I think follows directly from 1) and 2). Claim 2) also seems quite reasonable; there just isn't enough evidence to confirm that God exists. Whilst some might claim that various natural phenomena could only be the result of God, there seems to be reasonable scientific explanations that argue otherwise. The Atheist position relies on a certain type of belief system that prides itself on evidence or logical reasoning, and thus will naturally bias itself towards supporting scientific explanations. The theist that denies 2) will often argue for evidence of God that is difficult to verify scientifically under the approach that Statistical Rationality would think necessary. There are of course difficulties in deciding what we mean by 'swayed'. In statistics we would of course be referring to a confidence level, but such notions might not translate directly in our discussion. As a result we will need to assume a reasonable level, with agents that are largely epistemically responsible with respect to scientific explanations. Given all these factors  It think that 2) is fair.

Thus the difficult is now in justifying 1). We can note that one could easily reverse the argument if we were able to show that the Null hypothesis ought to be God's existence, and the alternative the lack of. Plausibly we would be unable to provide sufficient evidence to support God's lack of existence and thus we would adopt the null. Now the question is whether such a reversal is tenable. What we are really asking is whether we should adopt the existence of God as a tenable 'initial position'. I think that there is considerable reason to think that it is not. The null hypothesis is what we want to be our 'base', before we start positing additional theories. Although we are willing to allow for certain 'obvious' intuitions, the existence of a God does not seem to be one of them. One might be willing to allow in the past for the people to claim that there must be something 'supernatural' out there, on the basis of things like the Sun. Yet now there are explanations of Sun movements, rain etc without requiring such a theory. In this sense, I think that whilst we might not be able to prove that God does not exist, we are able to show that we would not need a supernatural being to explain certain natural factors. One might counter arguing that it is actually a God that is controlling the rain or who made the sun in this way, but I think this proposes an additional claim, which would seem to have to go through the exact same process; why should we posit this additional complexity of there being a God over a different explanation? The main point is that because we don't need to posit the existence of a God to explain certain things, why should it be our null position? Presumably our null position should be the simplest or most 'obvious' explanation for a phenomena?

I think that 1) is actually rather difficult to justify. To some, it is an obvious position. To those more sceptical, I hope to have provided some initial motivating reasons in thinking it.    

Anyhow, I have now characterised the Atheist position, and the reasoning that might motivate one to adopt it. I can say that I personally take this position in that I don't think there is sufficient evidence for us to think that God exists. In the next post I will go on to expand my position in terms of faith based belief.  
     

Moral Skepticism

A short post for today discussing the scepticism we have towards concepts of morality. Now the original purpose of this blog was actually about expressing skepticism towards a number of common held beliefs. In face the name of the blog derives from a moral error theory. It's unusual in that moral skepticism, in comparison to other types of skepticism, seems very popular.

I think the popularity of moral skepticism for non philosophers arises from two main views, or claims:

1) The notion of cultural relativism and moral subjectivity; what one person thinks is moral is different to what another person thinks is moral. In certain cultures we have certain activities that are promoted, some of which would seem immoral to some of us. The claim is often that we shouldn't take some form of moral high ground in assuming our system is better than there's.

2) A rejection of God. This is important because often proponents of objective morality justify their belief on the basis of an arbiter called God that decides the objectivity of morality. For those who reject the existence of a God who explains this objectivity, it might be difficult to think how morality could otherwise be objective.

Taking these main points together, certain people might argue that since morality differs between people, it must be subjective.

I won't discuss responses to this argument in this post (I'm undecided myself actually). Instead I'm going to note a few rather interesting things in play here.

The first thing to note is that this does not mean that one must forsake a notion of morality. Indeed very few proponents of the view would actually conclude from this that morality is a broken notion and that we are free to do anything. It is common instead to provide a debunking argument that explains why we might think that there is some type of objective morality, even if there is not. This is a second order notion; it is independent of the argument of whether morality is objective or not. Note that the subjectivists can claim that their own individual morality exists, but this is usually too weak for practical purposes; most of them continue to believe in a moral system to judge the actions of others, and such a view would not allow this. Common types of debunking arguments are to claim that morality is somehow socially constructed. Perhaps it is just a way for those in power to control us, or perhaps it is induced in order to produce social optimum.

Another thing to note is that moral objectivism does not necessarily depend on the existence of a God. Typically we think of moral objectivity as simply being mind independent. All we'd be saying is that certain moral properties are instantiated in some sense. That an action could in theory take the property of being bad. This does not commit us to thinking that our own view of morality is the correct one. It's certainly possible that we're all wrong. Of course this view also has certain dangers such as moral luck.

My second observation is a comparison to epistemic scepticism. One might be familiar of Descarte's evil demon where Descartes discusses the possibility that all his senses could be manipulated by some kind of evil demon. As a result, he is very limited in terms of what he actually knows as he is unable to verify whether he is being deceived or not. Applying this type of argument, since we are unable to verify whether we are being deceived or not, we are unable to confirm whether or not we have hands. As a result it might be claimed that we do not know that we have hands. Now what I find rather interesting is that a lot of epistemology deals with tackling scepticism; finding some way to maintain our common sense views. When I discuss such notions with others they seem to be on this side. They recognise the argument and understand the logic, but they too wish to deny it. They just aren't willing to accept the claim that they don't know if they have hands. This phenomena is rather interesting. Many people will try and argue against epistemic skepticism but seem willing to embrace ethical skepticism.

I wonder what it is that draws people towards this view, especially given that moral subjectivity in some sense seems completely counter intuitive. What is perhaps equally bizarre is why so many philosophers are so desperate to counter it.

Group membership problem

One may be familiar with the terrorist attacks that occurred today. One might also be aware of possible reactions to the attack in blaming a particular religion and / or their followers. There's often a reaction movement against the claim that this is the fault of the religion itself, or the fault of the individuals of the religion. It is argued that the religion itself is not at fault because despite self identification of the perpetrator, 'real' members would not commit such an act. This type of argument (call it SIP), if successful, would also absolve responsibility from the other members of the religion.

I think this type of argument has certain merits and directs us towards asking some really important questions:

1) Given a group of individuals, how can I tell whether a given individual belongs to the group? I call this the Group Identification Problem (GIP)

2) Suppose that an individual belongs to a group, to what extent are the other members of the group responsible for the actions of the individual? I call this the Group Responsibility Problem. (GRP)

Let's abstract some details from our original problem. We have an agent $A$ who commits a extremely bad action (I don't think many will dispute that terrorist acts are bad) $Y$. Agent $X$ claims that action $Y$ is on behalf of (and is motivated by) group $G$ (or its corresponding beliefs $B_G$), which they also claim to be a member of.

Now the SIP argument which is presented obviously wants to distance the action of agent $A$ from the group $G$. Let's consider the case sensitive responses to GIP and GRP. Broadly speaking, the claim is that any agent who happens to commit an action like $Y$ can not be a member of $G$. Plausibly it might also be argued that
even if agent was genuinely a member of group $G$, it was not on behalf of the Group (or not motivated correctly by $B_G$. Further, even if it was on behalf of the group this would not (or might not) place blame on the other members of the group who did not act in this way.

Now in the case specific sense, these arguments might well be correct. Yet remember that we would like to understand why this may the case; we would like to develop a universal theory for resolving GPI and GRP. Let's focus first on GIP.

What does it mean to belong to a group? In certain groups there are formal membership criterion's (for example you'd have to pay for membership to a Gym ) whilst others are less discrete, relying on the endorsement of certain beliefs or actions (e.g. A vegetarian or a Christian).

Now with regards to the formal membership criterion case, it seems rather easy to respond to GIP. The group basically has a reductive characteristic function, where we can easily verify if a member is of the group or not. In this case, we can avoid the subjectivity (or at least in the vast majority of cases).

The second type of case is much harder because it experiences what we might call Membership vagueness. It is vague with regards to whether a member belongs to the group. For example, suppose that we have a person who claims to be a Labour supporter. Plausibly, we think it is possible to support labour without having to be a member of the Labour party. In fact being a member seems to be neither a necessary nor sufficient condition. Now, suppose that this individual claims to like all of the current Labour policies except one of them. Is it true that this person is actually a labour supporter?

Or another example, is it possible for someone to be a Christian but not believe everything in the Bible literally? Presumably it is, unless one really wishes to an extremely strict belief system that also holds that the universe was created in 7 days. So it seems that plausibly someone could be Christian and not believe everything from the Bible. Now, what if someone claims to be a Christian but does not believe that Jesus was the Son of God (or is holy in some sense), although is willing to accept the different ethical lessons. In this case it seems that it would wrong to say that said person was a Christian. I think this example captures something rather important. We might think that Christianity and its associated group has certain critically important parts of it, that one must adopt if they are to be part of the group. We can call this the Group Essence.

So plausibly it can be argued that one can not be a Christian without in some way endorsing Jesus or believing his existence. Is this enough? Possibly, although some would argue that you would also need to accept a number of his teachings. What seems reasonable however is to think that in order to be part of a group, one must minimally satisfy the Group essence (whatever this is); it is a necessary condition (and possibly sufficient).

Another important thing we should ask is whether self identification is even relevant. Does it make a difference whether I self identify to being a member of a group, or is GIP entirely solved by external factors (including Group Essence). Consider the following example: suppose I endorse gender equality but I feel that the entire feminist movement is destructive because they go about achieving gender equality incorrectly. Instead I identify as Egalitarian. It might be reasonably claimed that anyone who agrees with gender equality is in virtue of this, feminist. That is, the Group Essence of being a feminist is believing in gender equality and in this instance it is also a sufficient condition.

Intuitively, there seems to be something rather harsh about such forceful membership. Plausibly we might think that certain branches of men's rights movements are fundamentally motivated by achieving gender equality (resolving instances when men are discriminated against on the basis of gender), does this mean that anyone who is feminist is also committed to being a member of this Group?

A final factor that affects GIP is a question of sincerity (conscious or unconscious). Suppose I claim that I satisfy the conditions of being in the group, and then I go about and do something that lies in contrary to the Group Essence. Does this mean that I would be excluded from the group on that basis? Or am I still a member, just a bad one at that? I think most people would believe the former; that if I go against the group essence that I'm not part of the group. Unfortunately however there are difficulties when we allow for human interpretation to dictate what goes against Group Essence. If I a feminist and I organise a woman's networking event on the grounds of gender equality (but don't allow men to participate) am I going against the Group essence? Presumably not, but there certainly seems to be argument. How about if I am a Christian but I commit different sins? Does that strip me away from my Group membership? Or are such sins irrelevant to the Christian Group essence?

I've discussed some very difficult issues in resolving GIP. What is the Group essence? Does self identification matter? If I go against Group principals do I lose group membership? It is important to consider such problems, although unfortunately they do make a resolution to GIP rather difficult.

Let's return back to our SIP argument and see if we can make any headway. The first thing is we need to ask is what is the Group essence of a given religion? (Note if there is formal membership criterion then this could just be the group essence and it would be necessary and sufficient). If a member commits an action on behalf of Group beliefs as well as self identifies, does this grant them group membership? Does interpretation matter here; i.e. If they interpret the group beliefs in a certain destructive manner, would this affect whether they belong to the Group? I think in response to this final question, we are probably forced into a 'reasonability' criterion, where the interpretation must be reasonable. Note that I am in general skeptical about questions about interpretation; it seems to me that it is often used (in connection with context dependence) as a universal defence of problems with certain ideas that are historically based (but still referred to). There seems to be a certain common sense required where we are to take 'obvious' interpretations as also 'reasonable'. (I.e. If a book told me that killing was wrong, then it is a reasonable interpretation to understand this in the literal sense.)

Because I don't intend to write a 10000 word essay, I'm going to discuss the remaining issues, including all of GRP in another post. In terms of what I think though, group membership should be rather relaxed in our specific case. Given that it is so simple to become a member of a religion, it seems incorrect to exclude such members who commit destructive acts from the group. I do accept that this depends on the Group essence, although I am skeptical whether they betray it, given reasonability constraints of interpretation.

What I do think however is that even if such individuals belong to a specific Group (in this case religion), this need not necessarily mean that the group itself is at fault, or the other members of the group. What it does suggest to me however is that the beliefs that motivate the members may be problematic.

Reductive Analysis

In Mathematics we often create or consider different structures and properties that can be reductively understood in terms of others. For example, the definition of finite set in Set theory can be formally understand as the property that holds when every injective function on the set is bijective, and when it satisfies a well order. Mathematics thrives on being able to build these sort of links between difference branches. We can connect algebra and topology by understanding fundamental groups.

Given the similarity between Mathematics and Philosophy, we might hope that we can employ the same sort of notions in resolving Philosophical problems. If we could reduce a philosophically difficult concept into a series of other conditions that we do understand, we can reductively understand the original concept. This approach is extremely tempting to apply when we seem to deal with certain topics that have an intuitive basis and seem to imply other notions.

For example, it seems that we have an intuitive understanding of what it means to Know. We link certain ideas with knowledge; truth, belief, infallibility, mental states, abilities. It seems reasonable to suggest that we could attempt to understand Knowledge by trying to see how these other concepts relate to how we use or apply the concept of knowledge. Certainly it seems plausible to think that if I know that $P$, then it must be the case that I believe that $P$, or that it is true that $P$. To think this is to suggest that they are necessary conditions for knowledge, which implies an important logical relationship. The thought might go that if we could find these different necessary conditions for knowledge then perhaps we would be able to find sufficient conditions for knowledge. From here, we might be able to even develop a reductive analysis of Knowledge by turning it into a series of conjunctive properties. That is, we'd be be able to say that "I know that $P \iff \phi$".

In this way, we'd in theory be able to take our concept of knowledge that we are struggling with, and simply check whether it satisfies some different conditions in $\phi$, that we presumably do understand. As one can see, finding such a reductive analysis for these concepts would be incredibly helpful as it would allow us to quickly pinpoint the salient conditions. I personally think however that as tempting as this is, reductive analysis is a dangerous road to go down.

Unlike in Mathematics where we are bound by certain rules and are able to at completely independent of reality, Philosophy lies in a strange position where it lacks these axiomatic rules to stand upon. The only thing it plausibly has is the basis of informal logical argument, and even this might lie on shaky ground.  This isn't to think that no concepts can be reduced - A bachelor is reductively analysable to unmarried adult male. I think however that philosophical concepts that have a reductive analysis are in fact in a rarity, and that it is the wrong approach to search for this analysis. Mathematics perhaps can be build upon a series of necessary and sufficient conditions because it uses formal logic as a foundation. There does not seem to be an obvious reason why the same would apply to philosophical notions that can often depend on heuristic notions.

Perhaps one is aware of the attempts to reductively analyse the concept of Knowledge. An initial attempt was to postulate the tripartite analysis; to think that one has knowledge if one has a justified true belief. Whilst we might intuitively think that this is plausible, there appear to be a number of issues in our way. The first is that such a claim doesn't seem to be analytic in that it doesn't just follow from the definition of Knowledge. So it seems that we are unable to verify that this claim is true via pure logic. In particular one might think that such approach is circular given our task is to understand the notion of Knowledge (which would then fuel development of a definition). Thus without this foundation, it seems that we must use other tools that depend on informal reasoning and argument to assess the validity of our reduction of Knowledge

One common way that Philosophers do this is by considering different thought experiments that is meant to elicit different intuitions. In response to our Tripartite analysis, we might consider the case of a broken clock, with its hands stuck at 2pm. Now when we look at the Clock it says it is 2pm, and presumably this justifies us in thinking that it is 2pm. Imagine however that the instance we look at the clock, it actually is 2pm. It seems now that we have satisfied our three conditions (justified true belief), yet it seems rather odd to think that we actually know that it is 2pm. Plausibly this suggests that our reductive analysis is missing something. Although since our method of verification is not purely logical, such an assertion is also not direct. It seems to rely on an element of judgement, and it is not at all obvious how we ought to assess this.

Regardless, such a thought experiment seems to suggest that the notion of knowledge can not be reduced to these three conditions. Yet this does not deny that such conditions are irrelevant, even if they might not be logically related. One might think that it is possible to construct further examples that would challenge our intuitions that knowledge relies on belief or even truth. What is rather interesting is that we seem regardless justified in suggesting that notions of truth, belief and justification are still pertinent to Knowledge. In stark contrast with Mathematics, counter examples do not seem to entirely render invalid different relations. It seems that we can consider different concepts and say that they are related to others without them having any logical relationship in terms of necessary or sufficient conditions

Thus I think that our attempts to understand Philosophy via reduction is missing something foundational about concepts that lack necessary connection via logical stability. Many concepts miss out on generating if and only if connections, yet our study of such notions still seem to capture important details of ideas, perhaps even their intrinsic nature. The way they are linked is just not via a logic that an be universally processed in the way that Mathematics can. It is different, and I think we're missing something in our philosophical investigation if we fail to respect this.

What is the burden of proof? [1]

We have often heard about the notion of a burden of proof or an 'onus'. In legal contexts it seems as if prosectors have the burden of proof to prove the guilt of the defendant. That is, we assume that the defendant is innocent unless the prosecutor has provided sufficient evidence to do otherwise. In scientific contexts, we can consider burden of proofs in terms of null hypothesis': when one asserts a claim $C$ we conduct an experiment and only accept $C$ if it falls within some boundary such that it is almost implausible that it is due to luck. Note that the scientific and statistical position is quite interesting in that we maintain a 'null hypothesis' which we assume to be correct unless there is contrary evidence that $C$ is true.

It is not obvious however what exactly is the null hypothesis or what I would like to call the base position. Condition the fairly standard example where a student has a 100 question multiple choice (4 choices each) test. It seems the null hypothesis is that the student is just going to guess thus the null hypothesis would be that the student will average (obviously probablility says this is an average) at around 25 marks. Thus we set some sort of significance level and say we'd accept the alternative hypothesis if the evidence is in favour of this alternative hypothesis and that the probability of this evidence being like this due to luck is less that the significance level. Excusing the element of judgement in terms of significance level, we focus on the discussion on the null hypothesis. It seems here that:

$N : \mu = 25$, whilst $A: \mu \not = 25$ where $A$ is the alternative hypothesis that the student is not just guessing. Now it is fairly obvious that once we have accepted the initial position of 'student is just guessing' then we can conclude that our base position is that the student will on average score 25 marks. The question here is why do we assume that the student is just going to guess? How about a situation where we assume that a student who studied adequately would score $75$? It seems that we would also be able to take as a null hypothesis that $\mu = 75$ and that the alternative hypothesis would be a student did not study adequately and scored less than 75. The assumption of this null hypothesis seems to depend on the context of the situation. That is, it is not necessarily obvious that in any given situation there is only one null hypothesis. Should we null hypothesis that a student is guessing or should we null that they studied and hence their answers are not guesses? Does it make a difference if the one proposing the test claims either position? Does this affect who gets the priveledge of the null hypothesis?

A discussion of Paradoxes

What is a paradox? I'd like to think of it as a theory that seems to be inconsistent, but is justifiably inconsistent. We might think that only theories that are consistent (does not prove a contradiction) ought to be interesting, but there are certain ideas or notions that are just fundamentally intuitive and that one might think we ought to accept. Perhaps the most famous paradox is the Liars paradox, generated by a correspondence theory of truth. If we think that a sentence is true if and only if it corresponds in some sense factually to the reality (and false otherwise), how do we assess whether the statement "this sentence is false" is true?

Paradoxes are useful because they help us assess the really interesting and relevant parts of our argument. Their existence typically drives development in the theory, allowing us to modify our current theory in order to remove such problems. With regards to the liars paradox, one solution is to think that our language can only be considered on different levels, and that a given sentence is only able to make truth valuations of sentences on a lower level. As a result it is not possible for the sentence to evaluate it's own truth. Other solutions we might be looking for are to reject the correspondence theory of truth in favour of a new theory.

On thing to note is that paradoxes typically apply only upon our intuitions and do not really exist in a formal sense, mathematical sense. This is because we typically require a mathematical system to be logically consistent. If it is not, then the paradox causes the Mathematical system to change. Perhaps the most famous example of this is Russells Paradox and it's impact on set theory. Suppose that we think everything is a set, and that there is an axiom that allows us to consider the set of all things that satisfy some property $\phi$. Thus we can consider the set $R = \{x : \neg ( x \in x)\}$, that is the set of things that do not belong to themselves. However, since we assume everything is a set, $R$ must also be a set and thus we can consider whether $R$ belongs to $R$. If we follow our logic, the system is necessarily inconsistent. At least in terms of set theory, our solution is to reject the axiom so that we are able to consider the set of all things that satisfy $\phi$. We are only able to consider the set of all thins that satisfy $\phi$ already considering a bounding set.

Now the paradox that I wanted to discuss today is the Paradox of intolerance. The paradox itself works as follows: it seems that a tolerant person is likely to antagonistic views with regards to intolerance. However this seems to imply that they are acting intolerantly to those that are intolerant, which itself appears intolerant. 

Essentially what we are interested in is whether this is justified. At least according to the paradox it seems as if a tolerant agent should be tolerant to all other agents, regardless of their own tolerance. However intuitively it seems for various reasons, including self preservation, a tolerant agent has a degree of obligation to respond negatively to those that would express intolerance in a manner that causes harm to others. For it seems minimally plausible for someone to be tolerant but wish to prevent a Nazi from killing Jews. 

How ought we respond to the paradox? Well the initial response is to consider tolerance as a bounded concept. One has a right to be intolerant towards those who are they themselves intolerant. However this seems a bit odd : what if the intolerant individual is not causing any harm or what if they barely expressing their intolerant views? Instead perhaps we should modify our theory such that we should only be intolerant to those whose intolerance would negatively affect others around them.

Now consider a slightly more difficult issue. According to our theory above, one is allowed to react intolerantly towards someone who is representing Nazi like views. Thus in this sense we might be allowed to limit their freedom of speech, and not allow them to express their beliefs. Let us call this situation A. Now consider a situation B where anyone who is acting intolerantly towards someone else who is expressing Nazi like beliefs can be silenced by a group one level higher. After all the people who are acting intolerantly with respect to others with Nazi like beliefs are they themselves negatively hurting those around them who are themselves expressing Nazi like beliefs. Whilst I think most peoples intuition is that situation B is wrong, the justification for why it is wrong is not particularly simple. I think most justifications hinge upon the notion that the group who are expressing Nazi like beliefs are inherently wrong, and thus it is fine to silence them. However it is not obvious why this is the case. We could at least imagine a possible world where a Nazi like belief is justified and where there is something fundamentally wrong with silencing them.

Note that in my above argument I think it is important to consider each belief and action separately. We can perhaps express moral values upon each statement, but these moral values do not hold in the modal sense. It is not necessarily necessary the case that certain actions are wrong. By this I mean that it possible that Nazi like views are actually necessarily wrong, but we don't know this yet, and thus for sake of our discussion of universal theories we should take this into account.

Anyway the problem here is that there are those who wish to espouse being tolerant of others views, but wish to justify intolerance in certain cases (notably to those who are already intolerant). I wish to say that there is a fundamental difficulty in assessing whether they are justified in being intolerant of others. Perhaps you think my example of a Nazi like belief is extreme. How about a religious view? If a religious person expresses beliefs that say I am going to go to hell (as a result of their religion, even if they are personally friendly to me), am I justified in being intolerant of them?

 Further difficulties arise because a lot of our judgements about being intolerant of intolerance arise from somewhat utility based arguments; considering the total amount of suffering by allowing an intolerant view to be expressed. Yet many responses are they themselves irrational. Should we justify being intolerant to certain views that cause irrational reactions? How about it is revealed that a significant majority group of people get fundamentally offended each time anyone makes a feminist remark on the news. Should we silence people from making feminist views? Perhaps someone makes the argument that the feminist view is intolerant of those who wish to live in a status quo of a patriarchy. Does this provide me justification?

On final thing to reiterate is that the examples I've used here are simply that: examples. I don't necessarily endorse any of the views espoused here, I have simply chosen them because they seem to correspond to some intuitions. And yes, I have had to make a degree judgement here as to what view is intuitive and what is not. I think that's permissible.

Universal Theory

We might think of Mathematics as to some extent, the generalisation of singular sentences. Most of these sentences possess a certain logical structure, and whilst these singular cases interest us, we would like to understand the general and universal theory behind them. 

As a basic example, we might be familiar with the solution to an equation $5x - 10 = 0$ as being 2. Our method for finding this happened to be by first adding 10 to both sides and then dividing both sides by 5. Now, why is this justified? Mathematically the answer relates to abstract algebra (in particular Rings). More generally, Mathematics allows us to provide a general solution to an equation of the form $ax + b =0$ as being $-\frac{b}{a}$ assuming $a \not = 0$. Why is this useful and important? Well it means that we have a general method that works in every situation (that our conditions apply under). 

Now note that we can have multiple levels of generalisation, and indeed I think there is a very strong reason to do so. Consider the claim 'it is morally wrong to kill the child named Rob'. Suppose for hypothesis that we think this claim to be true. This is a singular instance of a moral claim. However we wish to have something that is a lot more powerful than that. We're obviously not always going to be talking about Rob, we might be talking about George or Ann who may or may not be children. We would ideally want a moral theory that is more universal. A theory where we could make claims such as 'it is morally wrong to kill children' or 'it is morally wrong to kill anyone named Rob'. The more general the claim there is the sense in which it is more useful. In mathematics we wish to remove as many superfluous factors in a given situation as a possible. It is the same in making general philosophical claims. By aiming for generality we are able to only consider the meaningful and salient features. By making the claim that is morally wrong to kill a person we are able to consider a far larger branch of situations. Further we are able to pinpoint that the relevant factor is personhood instead of that person's name. 

However one can make claims that are even stronger than universal. We can make a claim that is necessarily true. The purpose of necessity is that there is a sense in which a claim must always be true. It's not just due to stars aligning in a certain manner. To say that it is necessarily true than killing a person is morally wrong is to commit to the idea that it is not possible in anyway for killing a person not to be morally wrong. In every world and possible situation, the action is wrong. 

Nevertheless, one might argue that our practical situations are individual instances, and that a universal theory misses out on specific factors. I think that for the purpose of justifying our actions, we need to depend on this universal theory. If I kill a child called Rob, maybe we can agree it is morally wrong. however I think that if we wish to punish me, we need some type of explanation. 

If I choose not to hire a woman because she might become pregnant, presumably I have done something wrong. However we must ask why is this the case? What are the salient features of the situation that make it wrong? Perhaps one responds that it is because she is female, but this doesn't seem particular adequate. Why does her gender matter in this situation? Why does it impede on my right to hire people as I wish? So let's go even more general: perhaps it is because as a female she must pay a disproportionate physical price if she does get pregnant and hence it is unfair to punish her. Or perhaps it is because as a female, she is already discriminated against and as a society we wish to move forwards from this. Regardless of the reason, we have managed to analyse the reasons a bit deeper. We are explaining the issue in terms of discrimination or disproportionate costs. It seems under these claims, it doesn't really matter so much if the person is a woman or not, only if they fall under some these categories.

The power of the universals allow us to move forward from just considering the singular case of not hiring a woman. It allows us to explain what the problematic features are, and why they are problematic. In cases of sexism it provides us an explanation for what we can do if the genders were say reversed. It allows us to be consistent with our theory. By considering how our theory functions under different circumstances we are able to provide stronger justification with what we should do in this circumstance.

Is it rational to think rationally? [1]

Whilst this might seem like an odd title, I think it represents an interesting and non trivial issue. One might be aware that a similar question is often asked in terms of utiliarianism. Can one be a utilitarian without applying a utilitarian calculus in all our actions? Or alternatively, is it possible that one can maximise utility in their actions by specifically not applying this utility maximising method in terms of making decisions? 

I make this comparison because there appears to be some sort of link between acting rationally and acting to maximise utility. Now we ought to recognise that utilitarianism often aims for a degree of agent neutrality where the utility of each agent is valued equally. I think it would be a mistake to say the same about rationality. In fact, it seems reasonable to think that rationality might even lead us to an egotistic view of utility where we ought to prioritise what benefits us over others.

Philosophically, rationality is thought of as acting in relation to reason, that is, acting in accordance to certain facts about reality. For now let us ignore the issues of whether facts can exist; assume they can. Presumably we typically act in ways that benefits ourselves, and to act in reason we might think is to apply a degree of logical thought and to use evidence to help act in the best way as to benefit our aims. Rationality is often focused around logical thought and there seems to be a specific focus on valuing different factors in different way. Suppose that there exists a set of actions $A$ each with induced reasons $A_1, A_2 . . $ . We might think of a rational agent is able to effectively assess which action to take according to the individual reasons attributed to it. Now it appears as if rationality is flexible in relation to goals. That is, while we might criticise a person for a having a given goal it appears as if we are still able to say that they have acted rationally in relation to that goal. 

For example, suppose that we are hungry. Let $A$ be {Find food, listen to music, go to sleep}. We might think a rational agent would be one who would be able to look at the reasons for each and conclude that the action of Finding food is the best action. Further we have some inclination that rationality is linked somewhat with intelligence. That a more intelligent agent should be more likely to pick out the optimal action in a given set. In seems as if it is possible to make claims that one person is 'more rational' than another, even though rationality can be used in its own right. In this sense it appears we can think of rationality both in terms of a minimal standard as a well a a scale.

Suppose we adopt this type of definition of rationality in terms of actions and reasons. So each agent $X$ has a certain goal(s) $X_G$ and a set of possible actions $A_X$. Each action $A^X_1, A^X_2 . . $ has attached to it a number of reasons attached to it. Each agent is endowed a Decision function $v_X$ which takes a set of Actions and their induced reasons and outputs a specific action. A rational agent is one whose Decision function is effective in attaining $A_G$ given the available actions and decisions. A more rational agent is one whose decision function is more effective

Time to revisit our question. Is it rational for an agent to think rationally? Note that this a meta claim where the agent must decide on a general strategy in terms of how they make decisions. These strategies could to be 'act nice', 'act that maximises overall utility' and 'act to benefit another'. Note that these strategies are different from the agents actions, although we might think of a rational strategy as one that most aligns with the persons goal. Now it might at first glance appear that the answer is obviously yes. By adopting a strategy that tells you to in each individual case optimise your action in relation to a goal it seems as if this would lead to the optimal goal overall.

However note that there are cases where there appears to be certain value in taking actions that one might traditionally think to be irrational. As a very basic example we might consider the prisoners dilemma where it might be argued that rational decision making leads to an in optimal outcome. Note however that this case can be resolved by going towards a super rational position where agents know that others are rational. In our traditional case however (and I think in real life) this seems to be an unfair assumption. Doe's this mean we ought to assume that other agents are irrational and act in accordance to this? 

There are other cases where our rational evaluation seems ineffective. There is something cold about the notion of rationality that it has difficulty when dealing with issues when emotions are involved. 

I will continue this type of post at a later date.

Why is it so hard to discuss what is fair?

A short post today (casual 4am blog posts), one can think of this as part 1.5 of the theory of discrimination. I want to talk about why effective discussion on topics of fairness are so difficult.

In philosophical discussions, there is often a plea towards some initial intuitions. We often think that our intuitions are our stable position. If someone proposes a theory that seems to fail to accord with such intuitions then this theory must be seriously convincing in order to overturn another theory that seems to work with such intuitions. It might be argued that many of our intuitions are actually fundamentally wrong. For example it is commonly thought that raising children is a good thing, but there are some strong arguments to suggest that this simple act is morally wrong. Regardless, for now let us assume that when discuss a philosophical topic, in this case fairness there exists some reliance on intuitions.

Now, the problem here is that fairness is an unfortunately emotive topic that seems to be biased towards certain sides. I discussed earlier that whilst we wish to begin with a $\Delta_0$ (see below for notation explanation) where we treat everyone equally, we quickly move away from this simply because people seem to have different needs. Discussions of fairness, one might think, are really discussions of how we justifiably treat people differently. Fairness can be considered a distribution function $F$ over a finite number of agents $X = A_1, A_2 . . . A_n$. We wish to decide how we should distribute utility, or a specific resource to these different agents, knowing that they each have specific needs. Whilst on might want to do this mathematically, it might be thought that such mathematical calculations fail to really take into account the full picture of the person. It treats them too much as mundane silent and perfectly rational agents.

This leads to what we might think to be a philosophical discussion of $F$, yet also a discussion that it is difficult to engage in without bias. Here's a basic example: we have two agents $M, W$ and let us suppose that agent $W$ is pregnant, with $M$ being the other party (assume only two agents). Who ought to be able to decide whether the child will be born? A $\Delta_0$ would mean that both parties have equal decision in this process, whilst we might consider a $\Delta_1$ where we justify agent $W$ as having greater right or say in the matter.

A difficulty lies here in that when we engage in such discussion of fairness for $M, W$ it is very difficult to approach such discussions without prior bias, largely because our reasoning relies on this notion of intuitions. A person might identify more with $W$, or more with $M$ and be unable to really think as objectively as we might wish them to do. We want to be charitable towards other views, to really take what they are saying into consideration and to take their argument in their strongest position. Yet, I would argue that even this is not enough. The opposing argument is still unfortunately tainted by some degree of bias, and thus it is still hard to really see the bigger picture. What we really have to do is to adopt some sort of principle of self negativity, where we have to really do what we can to criticise our own argument and to see as many sides as possible. This, it might be thought, is impossible. Can one really try their very best to find the flaws in their own work? Perhaps, but I am skeptical (some meta claims might be made here!).

The problem is really that when we approach a topic, we have our own specific biases and we choose our own specific side. Ideally when we engage with ideas, we are approaching each idea with the same base line. For a given person $K$, suppose we fix this baseline as $L$. Now suppose $K$ supports a specific side of a debate. We wish to have an effective discussion so we want $K$ to really be able to consider the other side of the argument, using the exact same base line $L$. Unfortunately, I claimed that this was not possible. The best approximation we might think is another agent presenting the other side of the argument. However this other agent has their own personal ideas and intuitions and possess a different base line. As a result, it is really difficult to approach what they are saying in such an objective and 'fair' manner.

Notational points: I plan to keep my notation relatively consistent, and ideally standard (but a lot of these ideas are my own). For reference, $\Delta_0$ refers to a 'initial position' where we treat everything with pure equality (equal distribution of everything). $\Delta_1 . . $ refers to modified versions of this position where we begin to use certain factors to justify differential treatment.

A theory of discrimination [1]

Discrimination is often associated with words such as sexism, racism which typically think to be quite negative. On a basic level, we might think of discrimination to be the differential treatment of an individual or group on the basis of some characteristic. Whilst many would take discrimination to only refer to negative treatment, I think this only leads to confusion. It might be thought that treatment is relative - if we provide preferential treatment to a given group (e.g. ethnic minorities) this indirectly counts as negative differential treatment to those who do not satisfy this group.

Now, perhaps the most interesting question is why we think discrimination to be bad. Or to to be more precise, why do we think that racism, or sexism or discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or class to be morally wrong. Our immediate intuition I think is based around some notion of equality. We think that it is morally wrong for someone to take into account someone elses gender or race when deciding how to treat them, on the basis of equality.

There are two main issues with this type of claim. The first is that it fails to capture the whole picture. We might think it is permissible to treat men and women differently in terms of having gender specific toilets or changing rooms. Or we might agree with the UK law that allows restaurant owners to make hiring decisions based on perceived race, in the case of themed restaurants. Whilst some might think that you should never take into account these characteristics, I think this is an extreme position.

The second issue is how we ought to think about equality. I think most would agree that equality defined on the basis of purely equal treatment is ineffective and perhaps even immoral. If I have $5$ pieces of medicine, $5$ ill people and $5$ healthy people it is stupid to think that on the basis of equality I ought to give each person half a piece, regardless of whether they need it or not. Instead, I think that we should only consider equal treatment as our 'initial equilibrium', call it $\Delta_0$. For someone to use a certain factor to discriminate against another, the onus is on them to provide justification of why such a factor is relevant. 

Consider the case of university that has to select which students to admit into their universities. We start at $\Delta_0$ where all students are admitted with the same chance, regardless of any characteristics. Now, we argue that academic achievement ought to be a relevant factor. That is, the university ought to be justified in using academic achievement as a means of discriminating between candidates. If we accept this claim, then we move on $\Delta_1$. We could in theory add new factors leaving us with a sequence of different states. The key importance is that one must justify why they are using such a factor. No factor is taken from granted.

This serves as a good point to conclude this post. This is intended to be part of a series of posts since this topic is quite complicated. In my next post I am going to discuss the type of justification required in order for us to justifiably discriminate.

Why the morality of abortion is non trivial

I am somewhat surprised that I have come to talk about this topic, but I feel like it needs to be discussed. Given how contentious the issue is, I am surprised to see so many people assume that it has a trivial answer. I've seen people group questions of abortions in the same category of questions of racism, or homophobia, when their fundamental basis is quite different. Perhaps a close link can be made with sexism, and I think there are certainly some interesting arguments in this area. Whether they are sufficient is another question, and I certainly don't think it is as obvious as people make it out to be.

Whilst this post is largely reactionary against 'pro-choice' supporters, I think I'm going to try and respond to both sides. The reason is that I think this issue is a lot more philosophically complex than people make it out to be, certainly not to the point that an answer could be thought obvious. Compared to an essay, in this blog I'm not really going to take a specific side, my aim is simply to show that these questions are hard and that we should be considerably more sceptical about how think about them. Note that I'm only going to discuss the morality of abortion, as opposed to whether it ought to be legal (I think it should be, but these questions are quite different).

First, let us consider the pro-choice side, which I take to be the prevailing consensus at the moment (and the main target of this post). Philosophically, I think the most interesting arguments are those that discuss the autonomy of the mother over own body. It is commonly argued that the mother has a right to her own body, and thus she can choose how she ought to use it. Whilst a certainly appealing rhetoric, this claim is not enough to justify their cause. Suppose that we think a foetus to be a person, that has a much value as you and I. Should a mothers right to her own body automatically override said child's right to life? Taking it another way, is it trivial to think that my right to own body is a significant enough moral factor to override another's right to life? There are certainly some sophisticated arguments supporting this, but I certainly don't think this is obvious. 

Due to this, a number of pro-choice arguments focus around stripping the foetus person-hood away from it. If the foetus lacks said person-hood, then it seems to lack this right to life and thus there does not seem to be anything morally troublesome about aborting it. Now this process is also quite difficult. Some poor arguments revolve around claims about the difficulties in 'drawing a line'. Whilst I certainly agree, this in itself is not enough to claim that no such line exists. Many would think it permissible to abort a 8-cell zygote, whilst few would think it permissible to abort an 8 month old foetus. A reasonable claim is to think the foetus becomes a person at the point it can feel pain. Whilst it is not obvious how this line is justified, we might think at least that a foetus aborted before this point will not suffer. One should still note that under this argument, it might be justified in aborting older foetuses as long as we used anaesthesia.

The strongest argument from the pro-life side seems to be this presumed right to life of the child. One might think that a person's right to life ought to have greater moral weight than a woman's right to her body, and hence abortion is simply a discussion of whether the foetus is a person. A fantastic paper from Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that even if a foetus is a person, in certain conditions the mother may still be permitted to have an adoption. Her central argument is based around an issue of consent from the mother. If the mother gave consent to the child to use her own body then it seems she has waived her own right to the body and thus it is impermissible for her to have an abortion. On the other hand, if the mother was forced into pregnancy (or took significant efforts against it but was very unlucky) then an abortion is allowed. In certain cases (for example in self defence) we are justly able to take the life of a person. The difficulty here is in showing that abortion is such a case.

Of course Thomson's claims are not without flaws, and one might make arguments towards a special relationship between a mother and her child. It might be argued that due to said relationship she has an obligation to protect the life of said child, even if she did not initially give consent to it. Still, the existence of arguments of this form is very significant as it further shows that the issue is non-trivial. Even when we grant the foetus the rights of a person, it still seems there are cases where abortion is morally permissible.

As I said, I'm not really trying to argue for one side or the other. I just want people to be a bit sceptical about these sort of things. Whilst I think it women do have a right to their own body, I don't think that this necessarily implies that an abortion is permissible. It is an important factor to be sure, but the question is much deeper than that. Please stop thinking that someone who is against abortion is simply against female autonomy. There are very valid reasons to be either.