In my last post, I mentioned the Kantian analysis of the morality of lying, something I've been contemplating a lot lately. I've been trying to understand the reasons why people tell lies. Sometimes the reasons are obvious (using a falsehood to convince someone to give you something, for example) but sometimes it can be baffling. Especially confusing to me is the blatant, obvious lie, told directly to the person best equipped to recognize it as such. I've encountered this many times, but the first I can recall was way back when I was in junior high school. I went (as I often did) to the local convenience store with a friend for our usual dose of unnecessary sugary snacks. Having made my purchase first, I went outside to wait, and while sipping on my slush, a couple of girls I didn't know arrived with their dog, who (as dogs do) immediately started sniffing at my crotch. I look at it, it looked at me, and suddenly it yipped and bit my thigh. Playfully, I suppose; it didn't draw blood or even hurt, but it did tear a small hole in my trousers.
I was startled, and said, "Your dog just bit me!"
"No it didn't," the dog's owner said.
"No, look! It tore a hole, right here!"
"You had that hole before. I saw it," she replied instantly.
That she would say such a thing surprised me even more than the dog biting me. I was so dumbfounded at the audacity of the lie that I just stood there blinking incredulously as my friend came out with his purchase, and we left.
I have thought about this incident occasionally over the years, and others like it. For quite some time, I could not make any sense of why she would have expected me to believe her testimony against my own experience. In the moment, the strategy worked by simply stunning me; I just was not prepared for so brazen a falsehood, spoken with such confidence. But I found it hard to imagine that being a viable long-term strategy, because sooner or later people will stop being surprised.
Eventually, it made sense when I realized she wasn't lying to convince me; she was lying to her friend, who would very probably trust her over a complete stranger, and feel obliged out of loyalty to back her up. She may also have been signalling to me that she was prepared to lie if I took the matter to some authority, and that I should expect her friend to support her story over mine. For her friend, it was a loyalty test.
And so I can see how a narcissist can easily fall into the habit of lying like that. Quite apart from the fact that it often works (at least with people who are unprepared for it) to deflect an accusation, there must be a sense of power and affirmation, when your friend who knows you're (probably) lying, goes along with it out of loyalty to you. When you persuade your friend to do the right thing, you can't really take all the credit for it, but if you get them to do something wrong out of loyalty to you, you know you can take it personally. It must be quite a rush.
Sunday, 29 October 2017
Thursday, 12 October 2017
Guns for Self-Defense: A Kantian Answer
I've always been fond of Kant's intensely logical approach to ethics that culminates in his categorical imperative: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."
That's pretty dense text, so let me illustrate it with probably the most famous example, his stand on lying.
Suppose you're in a situation where you might be considering telling a lie. Say, for example, you're applying for a loan, and the applications asks you to state your annual income. You know that if you put down anything less than $50,000 a year, you will be refused the loan. You also know you only make $42,000 a year. So the only way you can get this loan is if you lie about your current income.
Now, applying Kant's categorical imperative means that you should be able to wish that everyone in your situation would act exactly as you would. If you decide that you should lie on the loan application, then you're deciding that everyone ought to lie when it's the only way to get the loan. But that would mean that the loan officer would expect people to lie, and thus know that she couldn't rely on the information on the application form. And this, of course, would completely defeat the purpose of lying in the first place. Thus, you cannot rationally lie on the form while wishing that everyone else would do the same thing in your situation. You end up having to either accept that you have a moral duty not to lie, or come up with some special rule that only applies to you and nobody else. And while lots of people do indeed think they're just that special, it's kind of hard to get the rest of us to agree on who that one special exempt person should be. (And, in the case of lying, it still won't work because you need your status as the one special person to be a secret, or again, no one will believe what you say.)
Well, there's a very similar logic to the issue of carrying guns for self-defense. Just yesterday I saw (again) one of those "share if you agree!" memes urging for Canada's laws to be revised to allow people to carry concealed firearms to protect themselves. And sure, at first glance, that seems like a reasonable thing to want. If you're afraid some random stranger might attack you, naturally you're going to want to be able to arm yourself.
But what happens if you apply the categorical imperative here? You, in arming yourself against random strangers, must also wish that everyone else should arm themselves against random strangers who might attack them. And bear in mind: to them, you are one of those random strangers who might attack them.
I often hear from gun advocates that we shouldn't be afraid of them being armed because obviously law-abiding citizens aren't going to shoot you if you don't attack them first. And yet, their argument for going around armed is based on a fear that they will be attacked by a random stranger they didn't attack first.
The rule cannot be universalized. At some point they have to resort to special pleading. Their fear of random strangers is rational enough to warrant getting a gun, but our fear of random strangers is not rational enough to warrant prohibiting them from getting a gun. The problem is that there is no principled way to distinguish between good guys who just want to defend themselves and any other random stranger.
In short, if you can't trust me not to attack you, why should I trust you not to attack me?
That's pretty dense text, so let me illustrate it with probably the most famous example, his stand on lying.
Suppose you're in a situation where you might be considering telling a lie. Say, for example, you're applying for a loan, and the applications asks you to state your annual income. You know that if you put down anything less than $50,000 a year, you will be refused the loan. You also know you only make $42,000 a year. So the only way you can get this loan is if you lie about your current income.
Now, applying Kant's categorical imperative means that you should be able to wish that everyone in your situation would act exactly as you would. If you decide that you should lie on the loan application, then you're deciding that everyone ought to lie when it's the only way to get the loan. But that would mean that the loan officer would expect people to lie, and thus know that she couldn't rely on the information on the application form. And this, of course, would completely defeat the purpose of lying in the first place. Thus, you cannot rationally lie on the form while wishing that everyone else would do the same thing in your situation. You end up having to either accept that you have a moral duty not to lie, or come up with some special rule that only applies to you and nobody else. And while lots of people do indeed think they're just that special, it's kind of hard to get the rest of us to agree on who that one special exempt person should be. (And, in the case of lying, it still won't work because you need your status as the one special person to be a secret, or again, no one will believe what you say.)
Well, there's a very similar logic to the issue of carrying guns for self-defense. Just yesterday I saw (again) one of those "share if you agree!" memes urging for Canada's laws to be revised to allow people to carry concealed firearms to protect themselves. And sure, at first glance, that seems like a reasonable thing to want. If you're afraid some random stranger might attack you, naturally you're going to want to be able to arm yourself.
But what happens if you apply the categorical imperative here? You, in arming yourself against random strangers, must also wish that everyone else should arm themselves against random strangers who might attack them. And bear in mind: to them, you are one of those random strangers who might attack them.
I often hear from gun advocates that we shouldn't be afraid of them being armed because obviously law-abiding citizens aren't going to shoot you if you don't attack them first. And yet, their argument for going around armed is based on a fear that they will be attacked by a random stranger they didn't attack first.
The rule cannot be universalized. At some point they have to resort to special pleading. Their fear of random strangers is rational enough to warrant getting a gun, but our fear of random strangers is not rational enough to warrant prohibiting them from getting a gun. The problem is that there is no principled way to distinguish between good guys who just want to defend themselves and any other random stranger.
In short, if you can't trust me not to attack you, why should I trust you not to attack me?
Sunday, 1 October 2017
Another idiot. Stay calm, people.
Last night, in my home town of Edmonton, Alberta, someone smashed a car into a barricade and stabbed a police officer before running off. Later, in a rented truck, the same person (it's alleged) led police on a violent and dangerous chase, deliberately running down pedestrians before flipping the truck and finally being apprehended. It's being investigated by police as an incident of terrorism, in part because reportedly an ISIS flag was found in his car.
Again, I want to urge people to keep this in perspective. Some idiot did roughly the same amount of damage as a single drunk driver; the only difference is that maybe he was drunk on ideology instead of whiskey.
I've said most of what I ever want to have to say about this kind of thing. Here and here and here. These guys are idiots, and there's no reason to be more afraid of them than of a drunk or negligent person in any other capacity. And indeed, there's good reason not to be afraid of them, because unlike the drunk driver, the wannabe terrorist is actively trying to make you afraid; that's his whole goal. If we stop reacting as if these idiots are some huge powerful monster that Must Be Stopped, maybe they might figure out sooner that random acts of violence don't really advance their cause. (Yes, of course they must be stopped, but rewarding them by panicking in abject fear/rage is not an effective way to do that. They are basically criminals, and we have a legal system designed to deal with criminals; they're not an enemy army, as much as they may be deluded into thinking of themselves as such, and we don't need to treat them as one.)
I think all I want to add right now is to just comment on how spectacularly pathetic this sort of terrorism is, when you stop to think about it. I mean, Edmonton suffers dozens of traffic deaths and hundreds of serious injuries every year, simply as a result of basic incompetence behind the wheel. "Meet our demands, or we will crush you with our mighty incompetence!"
Look, all you devout DAESh sympathizers and wannabe martyrs. These vehicular assaults do not show you to be righteous or heroic or mighty or determined. You're literally doing what the rest of us do by accident. The message this really sends is that you are so miserable, powerless and desperate that you can't think of any better way to express yourselves than to make other people suffer unnecessarily. That's terribly sad on so many levels, not least of which is that you make it pretty much impossible for any decent person to actually help you. And the thing is, most of us actually want you to be happy and fulfilled. Happy and fulfilled people don't do that stuff.
Again, I want to urge people to keep this in perspective. Some idiot did roughly the same amount of damage as a single drunk driver; the only difference is that maybe he was drunk on ideology instead of whiskey.
I've said most of what I ever want to have to say about this kind of thing. Here and here and here. These guys are idiots, and there's no reason to be more afraid of them than of a drunk or negligent person in any other capacity. And indeed, there's good reason not to be afraid of them, because unlike the drunk driver, the wannabe terrorist is actively trying to make you afraid; that's his whole goal. If we stop reacting as if these idiots are some huge powerful monster that Must Be Stopped, maybe they might figure out sooner that random acts of violence don't really advance their cause. (Yes, of course they must be stopped, but rewarding them by panicking in abject fear/rage is not an effective way to do that. They are basically criminals, and we have a legal system designed to deal with criminals; they're not an enemy army, as much as they may be deluded into thinking of themselves as such, and we don't need to treat them as one.)
I think all I want to add right now is to just comment on how spectacularly pathetic this sort of terrorism is, when you stop to think about it. I mean, Edmonton suffers dozens of traffic deaths and hundreds of serious injuries every year, simply as a result of basic incompetence behind the wheel. "Meet our demands, or we will crush you with our mighty incompetence!"
Look, all you devout DAESh sympathizers and wannabe martyrs. These vehicular assaults do not show you to be righteous or heroic or mighty or determined. You're literally doing what the rest of us do by accident. The message this really sends is that you are so miserable, powerless and desperate that you can't think of any better way to express yourselves than to make other people suffer unnecessarily. That's terribly sad on so many levels, not least of which is that you make it pretty much impossible for any decent person to actually help you. And the thing is, most of us actually want you to be happy and fulfilled. Happy and fulfilled people don't do that stuff.
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