An article that you may find interesting

I found this article on Raw Story and immediately thought about the harm principle.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/idaho-republican-backs-faith-healer-parents-if-i-want-to-let-my-child-be-with-god-why-is-that-wrong/

In case you don't want to read it, the essential summary is that  Republican Idaho State Representative Christy Perry is arguing against banning faith healing, saying at one point that "'Children do die.  I’m not trying to sound callous, but (reformers) want to act as if death is an anomaly. But it’s not — it’s a way of life.'”  This comes on the heels of a bill by Democratic representative that would ban faith healing and allow prosecution of parents whose use of faith-healing caused death or severe disability to their children.

 Obviously Representative Perry doesn't adhere to the harm principle, but her claim acts as a prompt for the discussion of whether the harm principle applies to American law. Assuming that children are at least partially controlled by their parents, Perry is arguing that government shouldn't even have a right to stop a parent from letting their child die.

I have two separate questions regarding her claim:
1) Is there any possible argument we can use under the harm principle to support this representative's argument?
2) If the state rep. is indeed right that the government should not play a role in deciding whether parents can let their children die from lack of health care, thereby refuting Mill's harm principle, then would the ideal government for her logically be anarchy?

As I'd like to bring this up in class on Thursday, I'm going to refrain from giving my own answers but I'm interested in seeing what others think about it.

On Suicide

The discussion in class today had me, oddly, thinking about whether we can apply non-identity problem to suicide.

This may sound far-fetched, but if you apply the non-identity problem to the concept we described in class today in which it is intrinsically better to live than not to live at all so long as you live a marginally positive life (if someone knows the exact term for it, please tell me because I couldn't find it in my notes), then you effectively cannot commit suicide so long as you are able to have children.  Essentially, my argument is that by committing suicide, an individual is depriving a possibly infinite number of descendents from existing by terminating his or her life before an offspring can be born.  Because of the infinite positive utility that could exist from him refraining from killing himself, there is no possible reason for that individual to commit suicide because there is no way their suffering is causing an infinite amount of negative utility.

Creationism vs Evolution in Schools

   The purpose of this blog is to simply make a clarifying point about the discussion we had in class about creationism being taught in schools with evolution. We were discussing Mill's possible commitment to this idea because of his commitment to free speech. The point was brought up of how self-growth and recognition of an arguments value was what is important for Mill (at least in my understanding). In response to this I argued that creationism should be taught in schools then but it seems I wasn't clear as to what I meant. When I argued that we should teach creationism as well it seems that I was understood as saying The Bible for example should be taught along side evolution with equal merit being presented. In other words the teacher would say they are equally true. However this is far from my actual point. It is my understanding that Mills defense of free speech is for improving our current beliefs or improving the ability to make an argument. In order for a belief to be truly flushed out and well defended you have to be introduced to counter arguments. This allows one to further understand the strengths of his own argument and where he needs more evidence. So my point of claiming that creationism be taught along evolution was not saying that we should teach it with equal scientific merit or in equal amounts of time but simply bring up its features. If we want to teach children to make good arguments we shouldn't limit them to never hearing counter arguments for this will limit their ability to defend their own arguments. So what I was purposing or rather defending was that we can teach something without committing ourselves to the argument or even committing significant time. Perhaps after evolution for one class you go over counter arguments and their strengths and weakness without making any value statements on them. I think Mill would have to defend this because of his statement in chapter about a person being allowed to find his own conclusions (page 25). What seems to matter to Mill is a person developing his own opinions after hearing opposing opinions and building upon these new found arguments. There is no reason to hide the giant amount of evidence that evolution will have as compared to the others or lack of evidence of the others. These would be simply presented at face value and let the individuals determine the worth of the arguments. For this reason I think Mill would be committed to at least teaching opposing arguments in schools. Whether or not this would be possible with human bias is another discussion.

Mill's consequentialism

During class on Tuesday we got into some pretty deep philosophical thought about consequentialist theories. I got a little confused when we got to the part about actions, in terms of those used by Mill in On Liberty, and opinions. From what I am understanding about opinion is that Mill believes we all should voice our opinion and that trying to keep others opinions down is an immoral act. I was just wondering if this idea is correct for what Mill wanted to say and what was Mill's conclusion about our actions. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Religion as a microcosm of limitations to liberty

While there are many things we can discuss from this week's reading (specifically the first three chapters of On Liberty), the most striking thing I have found thus far is just how adequately Mill summarizes religious intolerance even amongst the most progressive societies.  (The section in question is on pages 8-12).

To preface, Mill discusses earlier in the chapter how in a democratic society, public opinion can hold sway over individual liberty because, via the democratic system, the desires of the majority are enacted by the government.  This concept, as he suggests repeatedly, is incompatible with his belief that you cannot interfere with an individual's liberty except for the self-protection of another individual or society as a whole.

But as he points on pages 11 and 12, people are outrageously stubborn when it comes to their religious beliefs; either they are highly intolerant towards the beliefs or they are so indifferent that they abhor the discussion of religion.  What is true in Mill's era is true today, as this is a common characteristic of both American society and our democratic government, for conservative states often use Christian values as the basis for policy decisions even though their constituents are not universally of their religion. (You can go further and state that extreme secularism is being pushed by some liberal governments in order to infringe on the rights of the religious.)

Is it possible for a society to completely progress to a point where we suppress our desire to limit the rights of those that disagree strongly with the majority, especially when it comes to religion?  I personally believe not, and therefore we can never reach a stage where the only liberties infringed upon by the lawmaking body are those which cause harm to others.

I post this purely to provoke discussion.

Here's a link to a nice overview of the lead hypothesis (with references and links): article about the lead hypothesis.  There's also a discussion of it in the Cosmos episode "The Clean Room" which you can stream on Netflix (it's episode 7 of the new series, not the old Carl Sagan one).  This also looks relevant, although I haven't seen it: documentary on lead.  Interestingly, that film apparently makes the case that lead is still extremely pernicious, for reasons quite independent of violent crime.  Here's a blurb from the "About the Film" section of the site to which I just linked:

The question on many minds today: what is the source of the sudden, alarming rise in the number of American children with ADD, ADHD, Autism Spectrum symptoms and similar neurological disorders—expensive impairments/disabilities that create challenges for families and cost our society more than $50,000,000,000 annually?  [JT: presumably the answer the film defends is that lead has something to do with it.]

Alternatives for Parents Deemed Inadequate

        Regarding the ProPublica article, I think that the two options for mentally ill parents, either getting to keep their children in their full custody (if they are deemed sufficiently mentally healthy) or having their children fully adopted away into other families (if they are not deemed adequately mentally healthy) are inadequate to deal with the variety and individuality of cases that go through the system on a regular basis. I think there are many people who fall in between being able to take care of children on their own and being downright dangerous to children (which is what should be required if the state is to prevent biological parents who want to see their children from seeing them). For example, a person with mild to moderate mental development issues might not be able to hold down a steady job to support a child nor be able to understand and satisfy all of the needs of a child, but that person is unlikely to be dangerous to a child with appropriate provisions and under supervision. Because of this, there is no reason to completely take a child away from many mentally ill and developmentally challenged people, but appropriate steps must be taken to ensure that a child is being cared for adequately.

            Therefore, I would propose a system in which people with mild to moderate mental health issues who might be denied their children in the status quo take parenting classes and are able to see their children on a regular basis. The classes might involve, depending on the needs of each individual parent, basic life skills training, tips on how to respond appropriately to the various needs of children, and therapy to alleviate emotional stress. While parents go through the process of learning how to care for children, they would get to visit their children regularly in loosely supervised visits (a child services specialist might be placed in the room of the parents with their children, but not hovering over parents’ shoulders). The children would live full-time in stable foster homes (in that they would not be moved around from home to home because they would have to stay in the same vicinity as their biological parents). Then, depending on the capabilities of individual parents after they completed classes satisfactorily, parents would be either reunited with their children on a full-time basis with the expectation that the parents care for children fully or they would continue to see their children regularly while the children resided in a stable foster home. If parents were deemed fully competent to care for their children, they would be reevaluated regularly to ensure that every child received adequate care.

            This solution, contrary to the status quo, allows parents to receive the emotional satisfaction of seeing, caring for, and loving their children without jeopardizing the health or well-being of children. Right now, the rights and welfare of both parents and children are being ignored (as parents are being prevented from seeing their children and children are being bounced around from foster home to foster home with no stable adult figures). This proposal seems to fill the gaps in the system. Thoughts?

Over punishment might not work

In Greene and Cohen's paper, they talked about certain objections to a consequentialist approach of legal punishment. A particular worry is that the approach will justify draconian penalties. For example, the government might impose death penalty to ones who break parking rules so as to deter future violation. I agree with retributivists that it is wrong to kill people for minor misbehavior; however, even from a consequentialist perspective, imposing heavy penalties on minor crimes will not serve as deterrence. In fact, it might incentivize people to commit more serious crimes.

Suppose the government imposes death penalty on double parking, and it's common knowledge that once a policeman sees you violating the parking law, he will arrest you and the judge will sentence you to death. Now think about the incentive of Adam, who just violated the law and unfortunately, saw a policeman coming to him. If he does nothing and gets arrested, he will be dead for sure. But if somehow he manages to kill the policeman and bury his body, he has a chance to survive. Killing and burying a police officer is no doubt a felony, but given that the person has already committed a "serious" crime (serious due to the consequence of death), the marginal penalty imposed on Adam for an extra felony is...zero. On the other hand, the marginal benefit for him is a chance to live. So it's theoretically possible that punishing people for minor misbehavior actually leads to more serious crimes, which is not at all a good consequence.

Quantum Mechanics and Determinism

In the piece that we read about neuroscience, Greene and Cohen casually mention that Quantum Mechanical Theory is not deterministic. While this fact does not pose a threat to the argument contained in the paper, as Prof. Tresan pointed out in class, it is still an immensely important discovery in the field of physics. The link below gives a thorough look at the topic. 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/

(I know it is long, but you can skip to Section 4 for a more concise read.)