2 Wrongs Don't Make a Right "Affirmative Action"

      First off let me just say that this is merely my opinion and I don't meen to offend anyone with.  I am merely making an observation from what I have read in the book "Justice" and what we have talked about in class.

     I can understand where the idea of affirmative action comes from and I think the idea is morally just.  To give people who just happen to have been born into a worse situation then others help is definitely the right thing to do.  However, I am not sure if affirmative action is the right way of doing things.  I see where people are coming from when they suggested the idea and how it appears to be an easy way of correcting a wrong that has been in our country ever since its origin.
     Three reasons the book gives for taking affirmative action into consideration when admitting students into the educational systems are correcting for the testing gap, compensating for past wrongs, and promoting diversity.  Do you see any other main important reasons for affirmative action?  The first is the idea that there is a gap that is in the scholastic aptitude testing we take to get into higher education systems.  To start off the argument against this claim I would like to recall the inconsistency of these tests and the continual complaints people give for them not actually telling the academic ability of students.  I do agree that someone from a poor public school getting the same grade as someone who went to a nice private school is much different.  Although, I think instead of affirmative action we should be working on bettering the educational system of those kids in the bad public schools.  I also think that we should be working on coming up with a better way of testing kids on something that could and will impact their lives so drastically.  What are your thoughts on what they should do?
     Next the idea that we are compensating for past wrongdoings.  I do recognize that there has been extreme anguish experienced by minorities and still is today in some places.  As to say that the government should pay for something that happened hundreds of years ago that most all of us had absolutely no direct interaction with is kind of strange to me.  If we were to go by this mindset then why don't we try to compensate the families of the hundreds of thousands of people that we actually killed while dropping the bomb on hiroshima and nagasaki?  I understand that due to the oppression that some minorities went through they are put into a bigger hole to, but we should focus on giving them better schools to start off in rather then discriminating against other people when choosing positions.  What do you think we should do?
     The last argument seems to be a very viable option, and I think it is very true that diversity does add to the learning experience.  I just think that we shouldn't allow for someone to who has worked just as hard as another person to not get into a college regardless of their race.  I think that we should work more at the root of the problem and give some lower end schools the upgrades to become like the private schools and better our educational system from their very start.  Do you agree?

    I know that there is a huge difference at times between minority and majority races, and it is very important for them to be integrated in classes.  I just think that if we wrongly give someone a position just because their ancestors were wrongly abused that does not make a right.  Any questions or comments?
   

In considering the implications of a social system which recognizes the obligations of solidarity as equally relevant in our decision making as voluntary and natural obligations and duties, we begin to solve some of the problems we have with an increasingly independent and individualistic society. If individual agents conceptualize their existence as entirely self-defined, they fail to grasp the breadth of responsibility we have for our own existence.  Although we are born and die alone, our existence is defined by forces over which we have no control. Thus, in defining your own existence, it is imperative that you recognize the constraints and benefits you enjoy as members of communities with varying degrees of influence on your life. At some point, we must rank and identify which of the obligations of solidarity hold more weight, but without recognizing them in the first place, we lose the ability to discuss or conceptualize them when dealing with moral choices involving varying degrees of obligations, or voluntary or natural duties.

When examining the weight of obligations of solidarity, the separation of the actual weight of the emotional consequences and the logical social systems that attach us to certain individuals in certain ways is imperative because it allows us to distinguish between conflicts and objectively evaluate the problems we encounter. We may recognize that we have an emotional connection to a certain individual, but recognize that based on our value systems, we may choose to harm or fail to help that person in order to achieve a greater good.  When we establish reasoning behind our value systems, and fully recognize the external and internal forces in play in such decisions, we are able to make objective choices, despite finding our individual emotional attachments running contrary to the choice we have made. The fighter pilot refused to bomb his own village, because he felt a stronger sense of duty to his immediate family than his national duty. This is a reasonable decision, both emotionally and logically. Yet if he had bombed the village, he could have still claimed himself subject to the conflicting obligations, but as having made the decision that the good of his country was greater than the negative consequences he personally may have felt in violent assault on his home.

LibertaKantianism

Libertarianism tells you what rights you have, and set up the freedoms that exist for each individual. This is hard philosophy to argue against, because it is hard remove the rights that many philosophies hold self-evident. When dealing with something like the Walt Chamberlin example (Michael Jordan example), we know that people are not equal in talents, luck, hard work, etc. There are differences that arise in people and the things that come from those are in the right of the individual. There is no aspect of morality in this, everything is defined in terms of right. Government is defines in terms of right and all human actions are determined in terms of right and will.

Libertarianism tells you what you can do, but it does not comment on what you should do. I think that its weakness comes from the fact of that it does not comment on morality. I believe that there are two aspects that need to be understood when it comes to a philosophy. The first is what it believes is the position of humans compared to other humans, and the other is role humans should play. When I say I have the right to freedom of speech, this does not mean that I should say whatever comes to my head. Yes, i do have the right, but acting on the right is a different story. This is where ideas of libertarianism can meld with ideas of philosophers such as Kant. The combination of the two may go something like the following:

People have certain rights that exist for all people. They have a right to their property, to their person, and to their liberties, and through these rights people act as free rational agents. In their range of activities, there are two centers of focus. The first is that people have a right to pursue pleasure, and they do so. The other is reason. Through reason dictates what one should do in the scope of their rights. It dictates if the action that is allowed by right, is allowed by morality. This is all basically defined by the categorical imperative.

Do you guys think what i am doing is possible? Can we combine the realm of rights and morals? For me personally, I just find libertarianism inadequate, but can not really argue against it. This is a way for me to reconcile, my Kantian views with my views on rights.

Conflicts of Owning Your Body

Today in class, we had a long discussion about whether or not we truly own our bodies. Our topics ranged from selling organs, prostitution, and someone giving up their life for the improvement of their child’s life. I think it is necessary to make the distinction that if we truly own our bodies, then each of these would be acceptable. Someone could willingly and freely offer to do any one of the aforementioned situations.  If we are not truly in control of our bodies, then our responses in those situations would be extremely limited. 

We never really achieved a consensus on whether or not we do actually own our bodies.  Some people felt that you couldn’t sell your organs and others disagreed and saw no problem with the issue.  Most of the disagreement probably stemmed from the fact that we were discussing highly controversial issues. 

On the topic of prostitution, I actually believe that it could be more beneficial to legalize the practice. That way, at least regulation could be set up to prevent the mass spread of sexually transmitted diseases.  In several others countries, prostitution is a perfectly legal and regulated business.  Dr. J asked in class if women should be allowed to offer her body for money, because, perhaps, the women believed that they would make more money by offering pleasure than filing papers. Does owning your body allow you to give it up for a price?

Another topic in Sandel’s book was the consensual cannibalism. A man accepted an ad online seek someone that was willing to be killed and eaten. When the killer was brought to trial, his lawyer argued that his client could only be guilty of “killing on request”, since the victim was a willing participant in his own death. Is it acceptable that this man willingly allowed someone else to kill him?

If we consider, for a moment, the idea of abortion, does owning her body make it ok to have an abortion? Since women would be the rulers of their bodies, is it acceptable for her to decide to deny life to a child in her womb?  By my understanding, it would seem that some would argue that abortion would be acceptable since women have the right to control their own bodies.

What do you guys think? Do you think that owning your body would provide a basis for making abortion acceptable? Or what do you think about the cannibal situation? Does owning your body allow you to let someone destroy it?

Libertarian ideology leaves it susceptible to criticism based on the idea of social interconnectedness. In that no man can be understood outside of his or her historical and social context, we must also accept a certain relationship between man and society. Just as society is responsible to man, man is responsible to his or her society. My actions will inevitably affect the lives of other human beings, whether it be friend, foe or unrelated individual, possibly in the future. The degree to which libertarian thought promotes the minimal state is contradictory to the extent of human interaction. While it is feasible to suggest that positive interaction should not be infringed upon, even understanding a minimal state only correcting negative effects of social interaction would be far more extensive than any feasible state. Thus, libertarian though must define the level of infringement, or negative impact, individuals can have on others, or society as a whole, before intervention is justified. Such a definition would itself be subjective- In that there is evidence for smoking, or littering, or cursing can negatively affect other health or wellbeing, yet we don’t consider them rights the government need to intervene to secure. While libertarian ideology is structurally sound, the system must be emplaced upon a society, and the society itself will ultimately decide where lines are drawn- and in a democratic society, there is potential for disagreements over the nature of rights that libertarian thought has no means by which to resolve.

In the example of the differences between soldiers going to war, a man selling a vital organ, and a woman dying for her child, the necessary minimum intervention that I would propose would be the prevention of the taking of a life except in circumstance of necessity, as provided in situations where a life will be lost regardless of the choice of action taken. I think it is critical to establish the value of life as equal to all other human lives and separate from the free market. While soldiers are rewarded for their choice of profession with financial compensation, the understanding of service is that it is a choice to defend the country from enemies that would otherwise take the lives of many other civilians- it is not an equal distribution in that the weight placed on military service is not only the potential to lay down your life, but also to commit acts in the defense of a society to save many more lives than those that would be lost, up to and including your own. Compensation is a practical necessity for soldiers to be members of society, and to provide some semblance of gratitude, but it is not seen as a profession generally chosen for purely selfish reasons. Obviously the reality of any motivation is that it can be dissected as selfish, and members of any profession will have made choices that benefit themselves,  but in its purest form, it isn’t always possible to rationalize the choices made in sacrifice as self-interested.

Legalizing Prostitution

Among Michael Sandel’s many arguments about justice, he expresses his views from a libertarian perspective. In Chapter 3 of his book, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to do? he points out that as humans with natural rights, people should have the liberty to do what they please with their bodies. Because one owns oneself, he or she is entitled to market oneself, placing whatever value he or she deems fit.

 In class, we discussed the issue of prostitution as an occupation. Dr. Johnson posed the question: Is it unjust for the government to decide that women cannot sell sex for a profit? My answer to the question is yes. In numerous countries around the world, prostitution is a legitimate career. Of course like any other business, there are policies in place to prevent issues such as sexually transmitted diseases or unwanted pregnancy. In fact, I would like to argue that by restricting prostitution to unlawful practices, the government is causing harm to society. The banning of sex as a service has not eliminated the practice. Instead, women who are selling themselves in addition to those willing to pay submit to an underground, “black market” business. In these businesses, legislators cannot intervene by creating regulations to create a safe exchange for both the buyer and seller. Since it is illegal, those willing to break the law, pimps for a lack of a better title, have the opportunity to run an operation that leads to other forms of criminal activity. Society cannot benefit from tax revenue and young women are subjected to exploitation. Similar to the drug trade, prostitution rings commonly use violent methods for running their organization.

In addition, libertarians would approve of legalizing prostitution based off the fact the women are their own rulers. If women cannot determine the job they wish to pursue then who can? Surely there can be no adequate defense for a government that wishes to assign jobs to its citizens. Would this not be a form of slavery as we mentioned in class?

Thus, I am wondering if the only reason that Americans have not permitted prostitution as a profession is one of moral opinion? Libertarians like Nozick would surely be angered by the fact the freedoms are being infringed upon. Are there rational reasons for why we still outlaw prostitution? Certain states are beginning to legalize recreational drugs, why can’t Americans vote to create another job? Is that not a major issue within the economic sphere?

Libertarian Argument Against Organ Sales

Today in class, we struggled to make a clear argument that we do not own our bodies.  I think it's natural, when considering issues like organ sales and consensual cannibalism, to feel uncomfortable, but an icky feeling about commercializing the human body is not a strong argument against it.  That being said, I would like to work within the logic of libertarianism to make a point against organ sales.

Let us imagine that it is not legal in the United States to sell any or all of one's organs.  By making this a part of the market, we can assume that certain things will be regulated--there will be a market price for kidneys, for example.  One glaring problem with this, to me, is that we will have now created a demand for human organs. 

It seems logical to assume that incentivizing the giving of organs would increase the supply of those organs.  This is dangerous to assume.  Sandel cites an example in another book (What Money Can't Buy, which I read in another class), of a study of blood donation in the UK and the United States.  In the UK, there is no monetary incentive to donate blood, but in the United State, one can sell his/her blood (today one can still sell plasma, at least).  What the study found was that, when offered monetary incentives, fewer people gave blood.  This seems odd, but it changed the nature of blood donation from something one does out of goodwill into something that one must be paid for.  Sandel also cites a study done in a village in Switzerland, where the citizens were asked if they would be willing to let the government store nuclear waste in their village.  Most agreed.  They were then asked if they would be willing if the government gave them all monetary compensation (I think it was around $8,000 a person).  Almost everyone now disagreed with this.  It felt, to them, like a bribe.  The point here is that incentivizing the giving of organs very likely will not increase the supply of organs for transplant (or for eccentric art collectors).  And too strong of a demand could be problematic.

If demand for organs is high enough, it can result in exploitative and coercive restrictions on the liberty of citizens.  It will change the motivation behind medical care, if there is a financial gain made whenever a patient loses an organ.  This would be dangerous if doctors could profit in the sale.  If they could not, and the organ is entirely the patient's property, doctors would have to rid themselves of the long-standing precept of medical ethics to do no harm.  Similarly, people may be coerced by the necessity of their economic situations to harm their bodies through organ sales.  Criminals may even intimidate victims into selling their organs, or steal them. 

This point could perhaps be made clearer by the example of legal prostitution--if there is a demand for prostitutes, we must become very concerned about how they are recruited.  If it were made a legal commodity, the price of sex may decrease, further diminishing the supply of "happy prostitutes."  How this supply would be filled could restrict the freedom of vulnerable women. 

The point here is that, while this argument does not suggest that we don't own our bodies, condoning this behavior puts the freedom of others at serious risk.  What do you guys think?  Can you think of an argument that would suggest we don't own our bodies?

Does Evolution Give Us Collective Ownership of Talents and Abilities?

I take issue with the idea of personally owning one’s talents. Sandel makes a “slippery slope” argument when talking about this. He says that, if we do not own our talents, we do not own ourselves. He goes on to say that this may give the political community the impression of “property rights” over the people it governs. I posit that , as a species, we collectively own all of our talents and abilities. They are the direct result of our aggregated successes and failures over millions of years of evolution. Everything that is special and miraculous about us is a collective inheritance from past generations, and we have a collective interest in maintaining and guiding it. Why should you, the lucky person that inherited a great skill, be allowed to forsake the very species that you owe your skills to? Libertarians recognize a collective ownership of the ability to reason but seem to arbitrarily draw a line between this and other collectively produced talents.  I say that we each partially own everything that our species is capable of.

Included in our genetic inheritance is the desire to maintain or improve upon our collective inheritance. This might explain our hesitancy to agree with the idea of voluntary cannibalism; we have an ingrained desire and need to preserve the species. Anything that removes from the collective ability to pass on knowledge, skills, and abilities is inherently abrasive to us. One could make the argument that we should actually desire the removal of suicidal tendencies from our species to ensure our ultimate survival, but the idea of engendering a tendency to consume fellow humans merely for sustenance or killing ourselves for money gives us an uneasy feeling such that we ban it.

This might also explain why so many of us rebel against the idea of vastly unequal distributions of wealth in society if such a distribution does not benefit everyone. Since wealth seems to play such a large role in our abilities and opportunities in the world, it feels as if it is interfering with the bettering of our species. In successive generations, wealth is allowed to augment any talents that a person may or may not have. We intrinsically feel that merit should determine opportunity because this is the only way that the species fully exercises its collective ability, but the act of receiving opportunity does not erase your debt to your species. We have allowed social constructs to distance us from this way of thinking, but I think it is present in all of us (even if it’s somewhat dormant).

What do you think?  Is there some collective ownership of our current state of affairs?

More on the Purple Heart

Our discussion from Monday about the qualifications for the Purple Heart has stayed with me this week, for several reasons.
First, it troubles me that there is indeed an association of weakness with the idea of needing psychological healthcare. This is not to say this is surprising-- this association is one upheld strongly in a traditional Southern complex. I doubt if there is any way to dissociate the concept of weakness from those struggling with mental health problems, but I do think that there is a successful means of dissociating weakness with the idea of the armed forces in general. I, for one, do not associate any one who voluntarily enters into military service to be of weak mind.
Second, the examples provided in Sandel's book were bothersome. Is it truly just that we would grant a solider a highly esteemed award for a ruptured ear-drum, but not for PTSD sustained from long-term exposure to violence? Are not both of these instances of risks assumed when agreeing to go into an active war zone?
From there, I make my ultimate point-- there needs to be degrees of severity for both physical and psychological injuries appropriately scaled for the conflict of the time. Perhaps a ruptured ear drum was something that, in a past conflict, was more serious and less frequent. That clearly is not true in the conflict in Iraq. Furthermore, I feel that there are levels of PTSD to be acknowledged based on under what circumstances the trauma occurred. The general trauma of being in active war zones is assumed by the person when they agree to serve in the armed forces. While the possibility of capture and torture by enemy forces is, I suppose, a possibility for all of those service men and women as well, perhaps that level of trauma can be considered to be significantly more than the average trauma of a soldier.
In short, I feel that there are far more nuances to this issue than have been addressed.

Privatizing Prisons and Calculating the Value of Human Life

On Wednesday, we talked about the second chapter in Sandel’s book that examines utilitarianism. One of the examples we used was privatizing prisons. I will admit that this is not an issue that I have ever spent much time thinking about. However, I found the arguments for and against it very thought provoking. Some of the pros we came up included compensatory justice and preparing prisoners for the real world. In terms of compensatory justice, the idea was that society has to pay for people to be in prison so prisoners should do work. Also, working could help prisoners to adjust to their life after prison. The cons were slightly more complex. The issue was raised about the effectively in the punitive and rehabilitative aspects if work is introduced into the mix. Also, if having prisoners work would turn into profit interests maintaining a prison population if businesses become dependent on prisoner workers. One of the last issues we touched on concerned the possible objections raised if one were to defend their defense of not privatizing prisons because it takes away the rights of the prisoners and forces them to work. This objection is particularly interesting. People have very different views on how prisoners should be treated. This led us to the question of can the value of human life be calculated and can these evaluations be used to calculate utilitarian calculus. So, can the value of a human life be calculated? We brought up examples of life insurance and car insurance and cases where victims will sue for being hurt on somebody’s property. But is the money paid supposed to be to compensate for the injury or death? It seems like the sum paid is supposed to function to fill in for the loss of income due to the injury and other aspects that were affected. This question also leads to a discussion of the idea of “an eye for an eye.” So we circle back to the question, can a human life be calculated? If so, how and is every human life worth the same in the sense that they are all lives?