Justice with Michael Sandel: This Land is My Land / Consenting Adults

Okay, I've had some notes for a while, but haven't gotten to revising and putting up something well written. Instead I'm just going to concede and put this up as is.

Locke's arguments:

First: There are unalienable rights to life, liberty, and property.

A quote Dr. Sandel displays:

"...every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his."

John Locke

Questions I have:

How are any of the three concepts Locke lists unalienable? In nature, anyone can take another life, can subject another to slavery, and can force someone off the land they may claim. In order for any one to claim these rights, there must be an entity to enforce them. I am not sure this need be government, but I am not sure what other entity would do this.

Somewhat related to the first question is how much of the concept of property is strictly cultural? Was there any concept of ownership prior to domesticating farm animals (forgive me if my historical accuracy on that topic is not entirely accurate, I'm just thinking off the top of my head)?

Second idea: Consent

He discusses how anybody can be the judge and executor of the laws of nature as if those actions are justified, but those of the "aggressor" are not. I think this is a little problematic because who's to say the "aggressor" didn't already feel attacked by the other.

One girl brings up another point I've thought of when thinking of consent and the social contract. Especially at this point in time, where I don't think there is a whole lot of land left that isn't claimed by one government or another. How does one decide to leave the social contract?

Justice with Michael Sandel: How much is a life worth?

In this week’s lecture Michael Sandel asks the broad question to what extent is Bentham’s utilitarianism a good way for a society or an individual or a company to make decisions. The tool he uses is “cost-analysis”, or the process of weighing the benefits against the detriments for decision making. The cost-analysis for a company is primarily financial while the cost-analysis for an individual is weighing what action will deliver the greater pleasure. Here, Sandel asks the audience to consider what is most pleasurable; for instance, the instant gratification of a low-brow comedy, or the thought-provoking words of Shakespeare. He then suggests that education is essential to cultivating the higher human faculties which make such a distinction possible. In the end, the “cost of a life” remains unsettled.

To open the discussion I will pose the question, “what is a life worth” to this audience. Who has the right to decide what a life should be a worth (i.e., a company, a government)? What factors should be considered for putting a price on life: how much the person contributed or has left to contribute to society, how many dependents does this person have, how rich or poor is this person, is this person’s life at risk due to personal choices or circumstances outside his/her control?

I’m interested to hear a doctor/future doctor’s take on this, as it seems highly likely similar decisions are made daily in hospitals across the world.

Justice with Michael Sandel: The Morality of Murder

For reference - a link to to lecture and associated readings:
The Morality of Murder and Cannibalism

I'm not entirely sure how we should arrange these discussions, but I suspect as we go on, we'll come to some normal format for the initial posts, much like our book reviews. For now I'll just start by formulating my thoughts/responses to the lecture and readings. Feel free to respond to anything you think worth discussing or bringing up any other points you think are worthy of discussion.

In regards to the lecture, I guess I had a few main thoughts. First among these is that the initial scenario suggested is extremely simplistic. In terms of making a point or starting a discussion, I consider that a perfectly valid method. However, where I think it becomes problematic is in the transition to asking what is the right thing to do. Framing the initial problem as a simple scenario and asking what's right or wrong implies a simple answer. I don't think that's necessarily the case. An example of this is shown shortly thereafter in the second scenario Dr. Sandel presents. The question is asked, are the men in the lifeboat guilty of murder, and people are supposed to answer whether they consider these men guilty of murder or not, essentially as if they were on the jury for them. I'm having a difficult time articulating what I want to say, so I'll just roll with it as is. The thought I had while listening to that discussion is that I consider there to be a difference between saying what is the right and wrong thing to do, and convicting another person of commiting the wrong thing to do. In the situation described, I don't think it was necessarily right to kill the weakest member. However, I don't think I could convict another person to murder for that act. I think that's a moment of extreme duress of which no member of the jury could have the faintest knowledge unless they'd been in one just like it themselves. In that regard, was any member of the jury truly one of the defendant's peers? To me the scenario and consequential trial are much more complicated than the initial discussion point.

Another thought I had was that in all the discussions, the audience was essentially considered to be an observer rather than an active participant. No consideration was given in the train scenario with the fat man over the bridge that the person making the decision jump in front of the train themselves. But going back to the train scenario, I think the manner in which the questions were framed make it a little difficult. For the changing tracks part of the question, why is it framed as murdering the one at all? Essentially the person is faced with the choice of one dies or five die. Given the circumstances, it seems to me that turning toward the one is more a matter of minimizing an accident than it is killing one to save five. Whether or not that is just semantics, I can't really say.

Going on to the Bentham reading on utility, I thought the argument presented was also a little simplistic. It kind of needs to be, but at the same time, to categorize things into either pain or pleasure, along with a scale of how much they provide doesn't seem like an easy thing to do, along with who determines these things if making community level actions. The way the paper is written, it seems there is no value in pain, and always value in pleasure. Similarly, evil is framed as in the manner that it produces pain so it is to be avoided, but no consideration is given to the pleasure one might enjoy in certain kinds of evil.

Also, is utilitarianism then an argument against minority rights within a democracy? Hypothetically if five can gain at the expense of three, is that the just thing to do?

Sorry this post isn't very well organized, but I still had a busy week last week even after I was done with finals, and didn't want to delay any further in getting this initial post up.

What is the proper course of action for past transgressions?

Wellesley professor unearths a horror: Syphilis experiments in Guatemala

I don't have a lot of time to write this up very formally, but I thought this was a noteworthy article that was forwarded to everybody in SPH by another student.

My question is what is a government to do 70 years after the fact? Obama has apologized for this to the Guatemalan government, but if I remember correctly (I read this a few days ago), there was also a question of possible reparations of some sort. Personally, I don't really see what good it would do. The impression I got was that there were unlikely to be any descendants of these people. In that case, the suffering inflicted can not be undone or assuaged. The horror some may experience now is unlikely to be any higher than you or I might experience reading about this. And with a Guatemalan government complicit in the act at the time, how are the United States any more guilty than they?

What are your thoughts?

Political Trackers: Potentially benefitting society, but more likely not.

Here's a recent article on political trackers from the Star Tribune:

http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/101038219.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUycaEacyU

I haven't really heard of these people before, but it doesn't really surprise me given the ease of recording and disseminating video now.

One of the goals of tracking as listed in the article is ensuring politicians keep the same message instead of telling different groups what they want to hear, which seems to be a good thing. However, if it's more a witch hunt for the "gotcha" moment as is also mentioned, I wouldn't view it as favorably. Since people are rarely as noble as they like to make out, I tend to think it's more of the latter than the former.

Either way, I'm a bit skeptical of this tactic. It seems regardless of the intent, if this is employed successfully, the end result will be encouraging political parties to get candidates that can maintain a strict public persona without any hiccups or flaws, which is likely to mean that they're good at being fraudulent. The less politicians are able to be human and err (in normal ways, I'm not referring to corruption or anything like that), the worse off we are.

Thoughts?

MR OBAMA, TEAR DOWN THAT MOSQUE!

Before I say anything, I just want to make it clear that it is somewhat amazing to me that this even makes national news as it should have stayed in the confines of the Lower Manhattan Zoning Office, thank FoxNews in all likelihood for that.

The Problem of Evil: An Argument Against the Existence of God

The Problem of Evil

Consider the following three claims:

a) God is omnipotent (i.e., all powerful), omniscient (i.e., all knowing), and omni-benevolent (i.e., wholly and perfectly good).
b) God exists.
c) There is unnecessary evil in the world.

Most theists who believe in the Judeo-Christian God accept these three statements, but they are logically contradictory (i.e., that can’t all be true) so one of them must be rejected. Statement c) looks pretty difficult to deny—just consider the recent earthquake in Haiti. The rejection of b) would be the atheistic (or perhaps some species of agnostic) response. Theists have tried to respond to this problem in several ways which I’ll discuss below.

The Apologists Response: The most straightforward tack is to claim that God allows evil in the world and we can't possibly know the reasons for which he allows such evil to exist. For instance, some claim that maybe the Holocaust was a necessary evil for some future reasons or future good that we're not aware of. This strategy claims that the three statements are only apparently contradictory but can be rendered consistent. But this doesn't work because God would be, nonetheless, allowing such evil and harm to persist when he doesn't have to. And this doesn't seem to be characteristic of an omni-benevolent God. In order to emphasize this point, it’s worth noting that we all seem to be able to conceive of a world with less evil in it; we all seem to be able to think of a possible world in which things go better than this one. And if this is the case, then it seems God has failed in some way (since he has perfect knowledge, is all powerful, and is wholly good) by allowing evil in this world when he need not.

The Theodicy Response: Some theorists have tried to give some sort of reason for why God would allow evil in the world in order to explain away the apparent contradiction in the above statements. There are many different reasons one could give but a popular response is that God values giving man free will over creating a world with less evil. (Alvin Plantiga—a contemporary philosopher at Notre Dame gives this response.) Therefore, the theodicy continues, it's the existence of free will that has led to such evil in the world. But again, it seems as though God is nonetheless allowing evil to persist in this world when he wouldn't have to. In addition, this doesn’t seem to explain the existence of evil and suffering brought on by natural disasters.

Rejection of a) Response: One might try to reject a) claiming that their idea of God isn't exactly the Christian God. But if this is the case, it doesn’t look like a God who lacks one of the three main features (omnipotence, omniscience, or omni-benevolence) is worthy of our praise. One would need to explain what the difference is between this God and the conception of God in statement a), then further argue that he is a God that is worthy of our praise.

I’m interested in hearing other responses to this argument against the existence (and the possibility!) of God.

Google to potentially pull out of China

In case you haven't read yet, apparently Google had some Gmail accounts hacked into (or at least it was attempted) of Chinese human rights activists. As a result, Google may stop filtering their searches for Chinese citizens.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html

So a few questions:

What is the potential profit loss for Google in this scenario?

Should they have filtered the internet for China originally?

What kind of company steps into their void (American, Chinese, another country; established, new, something in between)?

How does this affect Chinese citizens in the short and long run?

The World According to Monsanto

I watched a documentary on topdocumentaryfilms.com last night about Monsanto (a food company which was scrutinized in Food Inc.). (1) This company, using only that documentary to judge mind you, appears to be the most evil corporation perhaps ever. The most amazing thing is that this company is not simply working within our borders, but it seems to have supplanted itself as a powerhouse for food (their soybeans in particular) all over the globe. The documentary makes the claim that they are trying to control all of the food across the world.

I'd strongly suggest watching that documentary, in the meantime I'll post some of the wikipedia article:

It's 10 pages long and mostly about various corruption cases and scandals. The most interesting part is this:

"Corporate governance

Current members of the board of directors of Monsanto are: Frank V. AtLee III, John W. Bachmann, Hugh Grant, Arthur H. Harper, Gwendolyn S. King, Sharon R. Long, C. Steven McMillan, William U. Parfet, George H. Poste, Robert J. Stevens.

Former Monsanto employees currently hold positions in US government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), United States Environmental Protection Agency‎ (EPA) and the Supreme Court. These include Clarence Thomas, Michael Taylor, Ann Veneman, Linda Fisher, Michael Friedman, William D. Ruckelshaus, and Mickey Kantor.^[19] Linda Fisher has even been back and forth between positions at Monsanto and the EPA." (2)

1) The World According to Monsanto. A documentary on topdocumentaryfilms.com http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-world-according-to-monsanto/

2) Monsanto. A wikipedia article. Accessed December 8, 2009.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto

Stormfront.org

After reading the Wikipedia page for Fight Club and seeing that some of the more major literary critics completely missed the usury bit, I took the search to google and ~6 down was a site called Stormfront.org. The '.org' is White Power. On their forums I found some very philosophical people, highly educated and as well versed in cognition as I am (and I might add even more articulate). And they are neo-Nazis. I soon received a Trojan Virus storm and have not visited the site since. These guys are smart and their web-counter was over 100,000. Palahniuk was not meaning for his work to be used in this way. Fight Club had nothing to do with eugenics, it had to do with power and slavery. It's clear how these ideas could be manipulated or taken in the wrong direction (made possible by those who do not value human life in the way which ironically their own God intended), but let's hope history does not repeat itself in this regard.

Do NOT visit this site. It is heavily guarded.

Authorship rules

Was Osha breaking them?

http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html

"Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3."

Since the paper was never published, I guess not. What has been done in the past however, e.g. Bilal, was to publish several years after his exit from the lab without giving him notice of the pre-publication procedures and therefore not allowing him to participate in the writing process. This has is how she justifies putting him in the "Acknowledgemet" section.
P11: "All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgments section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support."

Rosh was wrong about the gays!?

Utah scientists hard at work:
http://videos.howstuffworks.com/sciencentral/696-reversing-sexual-orientation-video.htm

We know from embryology that we all start out as women (see SRY gene for more details) so the line between heterosexuality and homosexuality is fuzzy from the beginning. Also recall Ron White's standup where he says he prefers porno where the guy has a big throbbing $#%@ instead of a small one. There's a bit of woman in each man and probably a bit of man in each woman.

Rosh's argument was that homosexuality is a choice. It almost certainly isn't a (conscious) choice. What's interesting here is that even if it's largely genetic, it may be changeable through gene manipulation. And then this becomes an ethical question: would we want to change the genetics of babies before they are born (which would actually be the mother/father) to favor heterosexuality? Let's discuss this aspect of the nematode experiment.



Also, what's up with that scientist's hair? I didn't think that sort of hair was allowed in Utah.




Note: Labeled under human science even though experiment was carried out on pseudocoelomates.

::Cough Cough Sneeze::

"What are the mid-range and long-term outlooks for production and distribution of the U.S. influenza vaccine supply?

Both the mid–term and long-range outlooks for the U.S. influenza vaccine supply appear very positive. Six companies are currently licensed to produce influenza vaccine in the U.S. market (sanofi pasteur, Inc., MedImmune Vaccines Inc., Novartis Vaccines, CSL Biotherapies, GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, and ID Biomedical Corporation), many of whom are working to expand their production capacities." (1)

MedImmune was acquired by AstraZeneca in 2007, (2) ID Biomedical was acquired by glaxo in 2005. (3)

Pay attention to the fear propagated in the news and you could get rich (see graph above of glaxosmithkline stock since flu scare in march of this year).

1) Seasonal Influenza Vaccine Supply and Distribution in the United States, Center for Disease Control Webs

2) AstraZeneca to acquire MedImmune for $58 per share in a fully recommended, all-cash transaction with a total enterprise value of $15.2 billion, MedImmune Corp Website

07/04/23/astrazeneca-to-acquire-medimmune-for-58-per-share-in-a-fully-recommended-all-cash-transaction-with-a-total-enterprise-value-of-15-2-billion

3) GlaxoSmithKline To Acquire ID Biomedical Corporation, Pharmaceutical Processing Web

Justice Scalia:Strict Constitutionalist or crazy person?

Recently Supreme Court Justice Scalia wrote in his dissent of the Troy Davis Case:

“This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”

Troy Davis was convicted of murder with no evidence except for 8 witness (incident took place outside of a bar). Now, 7 of the 8 witnesses have legally withdrawn and reversed their testimonies saying they were coerced by police officials to identify Davis as the killer. Davis is on death row and right now the Supreme Court has never heard a case to overturn a proper habeas court ruling without DNA evidence.

Some would argue Scalia is being a “strict Constitutionalist” because there is nothing in the Constitution about overturning this court case.

When Sonia Sotomayor was being confirmed we hear a lot of, “Justices interpret the Constitution, they don’t change it.” And “empathy is not something a judge should have when making decisions.”

I would argue this is an instance where the Justices must change the law and have empathy. How strict of a Constitutionalist are you? Shouldn’t we change something this obvious?

Prison Populations: What is our societal problem

Rates in general seem to be growing disproportionately for one group. This is rate per 100,000 people so it is not incidence. If our society were in balance I would suspect we would see a flat line for all rates (more people equals more criminals but rate would stay the same). Starting in the 90’s there was the start of the war on drugs but it also seems that violent crimes increased. Is this the influence of 90’s rap (half kidding)? Or is our bi-modal (two Americas) society becoming further separated and leading to increased violence? What is our role as citizens knowing that the rate of criminality is increasing? dispo

Erik Prince as in Prince of Darkness?

Is this man a Christian zealot who sees himself on some sort of crusade?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_Worldwide#Blackwater_and_allegations_of_links_to_the_Christian_right

We should make sure to watch how this plays out over the next year or so. Iraqi courts probably can't try him or any of the other alleged murderers and there may not be a sufficient chain of evidence to prosecute him here. If he manages to evade the law, what's stopping a person with the kind of mentality he apparently has and his means from finding a way to kill innocents again?

Freedom of speech, or censorship via sales

I was just thinking the other day about artists/celebrities who speak out on controversial issues, and the proper way to respond to statements you may disagree on as a private citizen. The two examples that come to mind are the Dixie Chicks speaking out against George Bush at the beginning of the Iraq war (in retrospect, I think one of the bravest stances I've seen, given their audience), or Tom Cruise railing against psychiatry.
How does one express support for, or voice disagreement with a celebrity who makes a stance on an issue outside of their line of work without doing it through sales? Having lived with depression for a number a years, I couldn't have disagreed more with Tom Cruise's stance that it's all false, and that they're trying to control us, etc. Knowing I'll never have the chance to debate him on it, the only recourse I thought I had was to stop seeing his movies (and I have pretty much done that, with two exceptions - M:I3 when my roommate Jon talked me into going, and Tropic Thunder, which I got from the library). The Dixie Chicks perhaps stand as the best example of this in recent memory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks#Political_controversy

The problem with this angle is that people aren't necessarily going to buy albums/movies/etc of people whose views they support, so it becomes a one-way street in which it's a bad idea for entertainers to speak publicly on anything controversial (or take a controversial stance on a normal issue) . In essence, it becomes censorship of anything you oppose. I don't want to endorse censorship, even though I think ignorance (or since Cruise claims to have done all the research on psychiatry, just drawing incorrect conclusions) broadcast through celebrities often carries too much weight, and is harmful to many people. I don't want entertainers to be afraid or discouraged from taking potentially unpopular stances, because of the power they have to do good things (see George Clooney, Don Cheadle), so what other options are there?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics

I'd like to discuss Memetics. Of all the things presented in God Delusion, this was the most original to me (but apparently has been a field of study for 30+ yrs now). It's very easy to understand if you think of brains as computers. Some information is easily programmable and thus easily passed on while other information is more difficult to code and thus less likely to evolve on any wide scale. There are broad and important implications to this work in my opinion. I need to read more books by more modern memeticists. But let's discuss this.