| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Women's Health-Nazi Plan | ||||
|
||||
Applied Ethics
August 04, 2011
Stephen Colbert on Birth Control
June 30, 2011
The Drug Legalization Debate
There are a couple of episode of South Park that address the drug legalization debate. In "Major Boobage," the kids figure out that you can get high from sniffing cat pee.
The town overreacts and bans all cats. In a more recent episode,"Medicinal Fried Chicken," they took on the medical marijuana debate.
It's pretty clear where the folks that make South Park stand on the issue. They take a pretty libertarian view towards a lot of these social issues whether it's homosexuality, political correctness or drug legalization. Still, there are those that disagree. For example, the DEA is not a big fan of drug legalization and James Q. Wilson argues against it by appealing to utilitarian considerations.
Cut all of these three prices—the cash cost, the risk of not getting a decent quality, and the absence of searching and running risks—and the total price reduction would not be by a factor of 20 but probably by a factor of 50. Consumption will go up dramatically.
Now what happens? Here is where the only meaningful debate can exist. Do you think that there will be a decrease in drug crime? Maybe—if the crime committed by users seeking money to buy drugs and the dealers protecting their right to sell drugs falls by an amount greater than the increase in crime committed by addicted users who are no longer capable of holding a job. Not all coke or heroin addicts are incapacitated, but a significant fraction—perhaps one-fifth, perhaps more—are. Say we have 1 million users now, with 200,000 of them so dependent on the drug that they are useless for any activity, including holding a job. Now suppose after legalization we have 5 million users, with 1 million totally zonked.
We can support the 1 million on welfare, though I think the political chance of that is utterly remote. Or we can let them fend for themselves by stealing. They may well steal more than the 200,000 steal when the price of drugs is much higher. Take a guess. But remember that after we create the 1 million, we can't turn the clock back. We shall have them forever.
I don't think he makes his case because it's not at all clear what he predicts will, in fact, occur. If marijuana is legalized, taxed, and regulated like alcohol, then underage access and use might go down. Secondly, it's not exactly clear that even if there is increased experimentation that it will lead to more people on welfare. The argument basically relies on a negative stereotype of recreational drug users and doesn't ofer much in the way of establishing the causal connection between experimentation and welfare. The increase in tax dollars might eleviate some of that problem even if it does occur. Plus, we could redirect some of the DEA's budget. So, it's just not clear to me that the harm argument against legalization is cogent. It doesn't seem any better off than the harm argument offered against same-sex marriage. For a pro-legalization argument based on liberty principles, see Thomas Szasz's "The Ethics of Addiction."
June 25, 2011
New York Gay Marriage Legalization Transformed National Debate: Legal Experts
NEW YORK (Reuters) - When New York became the sixth and by far the largest state to legalize same-sex marriage, following a grueling overtime session in the state Legislature Friday, it immediately transformed the national debate over the issue, legal experts said.
With a population over 19 million -- more than the combined population of the five states that currently allow gay marriage, plus the District of Columbia, where it is also legal -- New York is poised to provide the most complete picture yet of the legal, social and economic consequences of gay marriage.
"I think that having same-sex marriage in New York will have tremendous moral and political force for the rest of the country -- in
part because New York is a large state, and in part because it hasn't come easily,'' said Suzanne Goldberg, a professor at Columbia Law School.The New York Assembly passed same-sex marriage legislation twice before, in 2007 and 2009, but in both cases it stalled in the state Senate, as it nearly did again this week. The bill passed late Friday after legislators agreed on language allowing religious organizations to refuse to perform services or lend space for same-sex weddings.
The argument from nature is being rejected one state at a time. But, some philosophers, sadly, still cling to it.
June 24, 2011
Anonymous: From Civil Disobedience to "Cyberwar"?
The release was credited as being a part of it and LulzSec's ongoing Operation Anti-Security. The operation is a new cyber campaign led by the two hacking collectives designed to protest and combat any and all institutions or governments attempts to censor or moderate the internet.
Already its brother-in-arms LulzSec has taken credit for attacks and hacks on Arizona law enforcement, the U.K.'s Serious Organised Crime Agency and two Brazilian Government owned websites.
Anonymous is yet to release a formal statement outlining its reasons for the hack.
via uk.ibtimes.com
Anonymous' DDoS attacks against PayPal, Visia, etc., they claimed were in retaliation for these companies cutting off WikiLeaks under government pressure. You know, like AT&T did with the Bush Administration. At any rate, on the standard version of civil disobedience this is a stretch since it requires the disobedient to accept punishment. Anonymous is, well, . . . . You see the problem. Nevertheless, they had, I think, a legit beef and we might argue a little bit over whehter accepting punishment is a necessary condition for civil disobedience. Now, with the rise of LulzSec things have changed. If Anonymous was engaged in "civil disobedience" before changed to something more like "cyberwar" against companies and governments that censor the internet. Some of these latest hacks aren't anything like a 21st century verion of the sit-in, as Anonymous has described it's previous DDoS attacks regarding WikiLeaks. It's not just relatiation or a plea for reconsideration or justice like in civil disobedience. This should be a good case study for information and computer ethics and political philosophy. It sure is interesting to see some of the debate over the morality of these hacks carried out within Anonymous itself. The key moral question: Do these information leaks harm innocents? It seems pretty clear that with hacks like the Sony thing there's a great potential for haming innocents here. They released personal information for a lot of people that just happen to use Sony's service. They aren't responsible for Sony's poor internet security, but they're all in danger of identity theft, etc. That's a lot of potential collateral damage to point out a security flaw and it seems different than the Brazil hack.
June 08, 2011
Anthony Weiner's cybersex relationships: If it's only online, is it still cheating? - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine
Ten days into Weinergate, this is where we stand. The congressman has admitted to fooling around with women online, but he refuses to acknowledge that this was unfaithful. What's worth debating now isn't what he did, but what it means. Increasingly, sexual adventures outside of marriage are taking place online. Is this cheating? Or is it something less, as long as you don't touch one another?
via www.slate.com
What is "cheating" or "infidelity"? Here's how I generally think of cheating and infidelity. It's the romantic/sexual engagement of another person outside an relationship without the consent of your partner. It's a matter of engaging somebody outside your relationship and behind their back in a way that they partner does not consent to. It's not really a matter of whether the romantic/sexual engagement was carried out in person, over the phone, through the mail or online. If Weiner has an open marriage, then fine. But, if he doesn't, then it's cheating. Some may want to define cheating merely in terms of physical contact or specific types of phsycial contact. (Fergie used to think it only counted as cheating if it was sex with another guy outside of her marriage. Girls were fair game.) But to me, the it doesn't even have to be physical to count as cheating. Even if you're just pursuing romantic or sexual engagement with another and witout consent of your partner, but you're being unfaithful. I think that captures more of what we ordinarily mean by cheating than defining it merely in terms of phsycial contact.
June 07, 2011
Man posts billboard claiming ex had an abortion, tells courts 'free speech!'
A New Mexico man is fighting a free speech battle over a giant billboard that he set up claiming his ex-girlfriend had an abortion.
Greg Fultz, 35, put up a billboard in mid-May that shows him cradling the black silhouette of a baby with the message, "This Would Have Been a Picture of My 2-Month Old Baby If the Mother Had Decided To Not KILL Our Child!"
The towering sign is next to the main road through Alamogordo, N.M., where Fultz lives.
Fultz's ex-girlfriend, Nani Lawrence, took him to court for harassment and violation of privacy.
What a dick.
May 29, 2011
May 02, 2011
Killing Terrorists and Innocents
Here's Jamieson/Regan's "terrorist tank" thought experiment from "On the Ethics of the Use of Animals in Science":
"Imagine that a terrorist has possession of a well-armed tank and is systematically slaughtering 45 innocent hostages whom he has fastened to a wall. Attempts to negotiate a compromise fail. The man will kill all the hostages if we do nothing. Under the circumstances, there is only one reasonable alternative: blow up the tank. But, there is a complication: the terrorist has strapped a young girl to the tank, and any weapon sufficient to blow up the tank will kill the child. The girl is innocent. Thus to blow up the tank is the harm an innocent, one who herself stands no chance of benefiting from the attack. Ought we to blow up the tank?"
Although the details are not exactly the same, killing Osama Bin Ladin also raises the question of whether it is ever permissible to kill someone who is, at least arguably, an innocent.
Osama bin Laden used one of his wives as a human shield during the firefight with U.S. forces at the compound in Pakistan where he was killed, the White House’s counterterrorism chief said Monday.
The woman died along with bin Laden, one of his sons and two other men in a daring U.S. raid that John Brennan described as one of the “gutsiest calls” by a president in recent memory.
Thought experiments matter.
April 21, 2011
Gay Students, Conservative Christian Campuses
According to this story in the NYT, gay student groups are popping up on conservative Christian college campuses like Baylor.
WACO, Tex. — Battles for acceptance by gay and lesbian students have erupted in the places that expect it the least: the scores of Bible colleges and evangelical Christian universities that, in their founding beliefs, see homosexuality as a sin.
Decades after the gay rights movement swept the country’s secular schools, more gays and lesbians at Christian colleges are starting to come out of the closet, demanding a right to proclaim their identities and form campus clubs, and rejecting suggestions to seek help in suppressing homosexual desires.
Many of the newly assertive students grew up as Christians and developed a sense of their sexual identities only after starting college, and after years of inner torment. They spring from a new generation of evangelical youths that, over all, holds far less harsh views of homosexuality than its elders.
But in their efforts to assert themselves, whether in campus clubs or more publicly on Facebook, gay students are running up against administrators who defend what they describe as God’s law on sexual morality, and who must also answer to conservative trustees and alumni.
Facing vague prohibitions against “homosexual behavior,” many students worry about what steps — holding hands with a partner, say, or posting a photograph on a gay Web site — could jeopardize scholarships or risk expulsion.
“It’s like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object,” said Adam R. Short, a freshman engineering student at Baylor University who is openly gay and has fought, without success, for campus recognition of a club to discuss sexuality and fight homophobia.
The best reason why Baylor and these other universities should drop these sorts of prohibitions and discriminatory practices is because there are not really any good arguments against homosexual acts. A small minority of philosophers might claim otherwise, but their arguments are not probative. Moreover, if you follow the argument from nature to its logical conclusion then you'd have to discriminate against people that use birth control. You could revise the argument so that the purpose of sex is broader than mere reproduction, but doing so is likely to imply the inclusion of some homosexual acts within the scope of moral permissibility. So, it's not even clear that homosexual acts are immoral from a natural law perspective.
April 16, 2011
Christian Sexual Ethics: Reproduction, Homosexuality, and Contraception
The most popular argument given against the moral permissibility of homosexual acts is the argument from nature. According to this argument, any sex act that is inconsistent with reproduction is likewise immoral. It thus also implies contraception is immoral. For a recent example of this line of reasoning see Alexander Pruss's article "Christian Sexual Ethics and Teleological Organicity." A recent study showed that a lot of religious women are using contraception.
A new report from the Guttmacher Institute, the nonprofit sexual health research organization, shows that only 2 percent of Catholic women, even those who regularly attend church, rely on natural family planning.
The latest data shows practices of Catholic women are in line with women of other religious affiliations and adult American women in general.
"In real-life America, contraceptive use and strong religious beliefs are highly compatible," said the report's lead author Rachel Jones.
She said most sexually active women who do not want to become pregnant practice contraception, and most use highly effective methods like sterilization, the pill, or the intrauterine device (IUD).
"This is true for Evangelicals and Mainline Protestants, and it is true for Catholics, despite the Catholic hierarchy's strenuous opposition to contraception," Jones said.
Nearly 70 percent of Catholic women use sterilization, the birth control pill or an IUD, according to the Guttmacher Institute research.
The numbers are slightly higher among women who identify as Evangelicals or Mainline Protestants, research showed.
Seems like contraception might be a bigger moral problem than homosexuality.
Recent Comments