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In Reasons and Persons, Parfit describes the repugnant conclusion (Universe Z). This is when some theory commits us to claiming that a monstrously enormous population with a barely positive quality of life is an improvement on a smaller population with a relatively high quality of life. The repugnant conclusion sets the scence for much of part 4 of the book. I'm not so sure the repugnant conclusion is repugnant. Why?

I confess that it's hard to provide positive justification for its desirability. However, it's noteworthy that one person with many interests served and many fewer problems is desirable. The repugnant differs from this only in terms of the location of those served interests and problems. And why would we think that that is relevant?

But another thing I can do is remove some of the justification for thinking that the repugnant conclusion is undesirable. By removing the arguments against it, I hope to level the ground somewhat, so we can truly judge its merits. Let's look at some quotes from Parfit.

"my [example] is [not] something that we cannot imagine. We can imagine what it would be for someone's life to be barely worth living. And we can imagine what it would be for there to be many people with such lives. In order to imagine Z, we merely have to imagine that there would be very many" (p389, emphasis in original)

I've always thought it pretty obvious that people are terrible with large numbers. I can imagine 10 people adequately, but even 100 and I find personal illustrations hard to imagine. Once we get to 1000, 100,000, or "10 billion" for A (p388) - Parfit's example of a small population - it becomes far from clear that we're capable of imagining Z. That gives some small reason to think that our intuitive judgements on the badness of universe Z might be off.

The above remark focus on the description of the quantity of the lives in the repugnant concusion, or Z. But there are greater problems with how we understand the quality of lives in Z. Again, here's Parfit:

"[...] Z might be best. Z is some enormous population whose members have lives that are not much above the level where life ceases to be worth living. A life could be like this either because it has enough ecstasies to make its agonies seem just worth enduring, or because it is uniformly of poor quality. Let us imagine the lives in Z to be of this second drabber kind" (Reasons and Persons, p388)

I don't think Parfit is being fair to the inhabitants of universe Z here. The inhabitants of Z, by hypothesis, have a positive quality of life. A life of uniformly poor quality does not seem to meet this condition. A fairer phrase would be a life of uniformly acceptable quality - and that sounds far more desirable to have many instances of.

A further illustration of this same point comes later. He considers Kafka's view, which is that only lives above "The Bad Level" in value are worth creating from an impartial point of view. The Bad Level is some level in quality of life above the level at which lives are worth living for their owner. Parfit seems to imagine that this only forestalls the problem:

"Lives that are not much above the Bad Level cannot be well worth living, or close to being well worth living. [...] [lives just above the bad level] though worth living, are gravely deprived, crimped and mean" (p436)

But again, this seems like an unfair description. If lives just worth living are described as "poor", then lives above the bad level should be better than this, even by Parfit's own standards. But "deprived, crimped and mean" doesn't sound like a life better than "poor", let alone better than a life I'd minimally want to lead.

More generally, I wonder if Parfit is getting misled by the everyday use of terms like "life worth living". In practice, we're reluctant to apply this term to anything but the very worst of lives. But this is for all sorts of practical reasons that simply don't apply at this theoretical level - telling someone their life isn't worth living is offensive, unproductive, and overconfident. But at the theoretical level, these considerations are not relevant; "lives worth living" should apply to lives best describable as at least "acceptable"; and certainly should not be applied to lives described as "poor", "deprived" and so on.

The repugnant conclusion consists of an unimaginably high number of people living lives they feel positive about. Is that really so bad?

"Everyone directs their conduct by directing it to desired or valued ends. Ethics, or moral philosophy, in its most inclusive sense, seeks to articulate, in rationally systematic form, the rules or principles involved. (In practice ethics has generally been confined to conduct in its moral aspect and has largely ignored the large part of our actions that we guide by considerations of prudence or efficiency, as if these were too base to deserve rational examination)"

- "Philosophy", The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Second Edition, p702 - My emphasis.

I'll perhaps put forward my own views on this in the future. For now, I'd love to hear from everyone, though especially from those who aren't hardcore moral philosophers, whether or not they think this sounds correct.

There are various prima facie reasons not to get married. But what (secular) reasons are there in favour of getting married?

One obvious (cynical) reason is that in many countries it confers various legal advantages, ranging from tax breaks to inheritance entitlement. This does give some reason to get married, but it doesn't really seem to capture the spirit of the thing. I certainly wouldn't want to explain to my partner's family that the main reason I got married was to have a guarantee of material goods should their daughter pass away.

Another reason would be because you wanted the lovely ceremony. But weddings are expensive, and commit you to expenditure on various things (e.g. the priest) that you probably don't actually want if you're only there for fun. If you merely wanted a party, I think you could spend your money more efficiently than on marriage.

A better suggestion: it's symbolic of your great love for one another. But again, there are alternative means to this end, and I can't see any obvious reason to think that marriage is the most efficient means. Why not do something more personal, and more unique to your personal relationship? That might better symbolise your particular relationship.

Here's another reason. It forestalls imprudence. You might know in your calmer moods that you want to be with your partner for the rest of your life, but in darker periods your commitment might lapse in various ways. You might therefore want to constrain yourself by getting married, thereby securing your relationship from momentary future lapses of judgement. This might hold true for some people (though, again, not a reason I'd like to explain to either my partner or her parents), though not for all. Some people don't find that their judgement lapses in this particular fashion. For those people, there is no need to get married to forestall imprudence.

Are there any other more compelling reasons?

Your life is worth living[1] if, and only if, it is better that you have come to exist than that you never existed at all. Further, a life can be worth living even if it ends brutally. If I were murdered tomorrow, my final thoughts, if I chose to think on this subject, would be that I was glad that I was born. My brutal death would not outweigh the joy that life has given me.

It follows pretty straightforwardly from the above that, if farm animals live lives worth living, there is a pro-tanto reason to eat meat. Meat eating causes many animals to exist, who, it's possible, are glad that they were caused to exist.

(I imagine it's often the case that farm animals do not live lives worth living. Farms breed animals profitably, not humanely. But it also seems plausible that sometimes they do. Free range animals, for example, are intuitively likely to be happy. If my remarks here are true, there is pro-tanto reason to be free-range farming carnivores, factory farming vegetarians.)

I see two objections to this line of argument.

First, it might be objected that a better option would be to breed the same number of animals and not brutally kill them. This would be a little worse for us, but much better for the animals.

I think this is irrelevant. In considering what we ought to do, we need only consider possible options. It might be better if we reared large numbers of animals in altruistic animal theme parks purely for their benefit, but this is not going to occur in the near future, and therefore it's not an option we need consider.

Second, it might be objected that an analogous argument applies to humans. If it turns out that human meat is tasty (who knows?), why not breed humans for food in this manner? This might be thought to be a reductio ad absurdum.

The first objection serves as a rejoinder to the second. It is possible that we can rear humans without eating them, and it's therefore true that that is what we ought to do.

Of course, there are other, better arguments in favour of vegetarianism. It's bad for the environment, excesses of meat are bad for you, and it's bad for your wallet. But the key point is that, with respect to animal cruelty, free range cows ought to be grateful to burgers.

[1] For you. Lives may be worth living because of the benefit they bring to others, but this doesn't seem to be relevant here.

Re-setting up my blog brings to the fore certain issues related to good blog design.

1) Is there good reason to use a taxonomy/categorization system? Beyond the many moments of humour Daniel Davies' categories system provides, I don't think I've ever actually used this system on any blog I've read. Do others use them? When?

2) What's the optimal length/method for creating a blogroll/links block? Some people seem to opt for a limitless list of anyone readable, but I tend to think this puts less total traffic through than a shorter list. I previously listed blogs I had subscribed to, but I don't like how that system makes it public when I've stopped reading someone's blog. I've now settled for a top 5 (plus a charity or two), though I can't decide if that's too strict.

3) In general, what information should the sidebars contain? I've opted to keep mine as minimalist as possible, whereas others seem to fill their pages with gazillions of random things: recent visitor locations, recent referrers, "TTLB ecosystem", google search box, subscribe buttons for hundreds of feedburner type sites, donate buttons (does anyone actually get income from these?), and so on. What's necessary? What's genuinely helpful for readers?

Feel free to raise any other blog format related issues you feel are important.

(For long-time readers, this version seems to me clearer than my previous attempts)

(1) Humans have trait X if, and only if, there is an evolutionary explanation for the presence of trait X.
(2) There is no evolutionary explanation as to why humans would make correct non-inferential moral judgements.
Conclusion:
(3) Humans do not make correct non-inferential moral judgements. (Less formally: Moral intuitions are unreliable)

Three key points to note:

(i) There's a large amount of biological evidence in favour of (b). The literature in biology does not explain the development of moral psychology by reference to awareness of moral facts. Given this independent evidence, (b) is not merely an assumption, nor does it beg the question.

(ii) The argument only concerns our non-inferential moral judgements. It is silent on our ability to reason towards correct moral judgement.

(iii) The argument applies only to our moral faculties because (b) does not hold true for our other traits. There are, for instance, very good reasons why human sight and logic would evolve to reflect the truth: they enable us to observe danger/food/mates/etc., and to reason about how to respond to these different situations appropriately. Again, the biology literature confirms this. For instance, explanations for the evolution of the human eye refer to how it would be advantageous to correctly observe the size/shape/distance/speed/colour/etc., of the objects around us.

Has the sociology or psychology of philosophers ever been studied? Philosophy students and teachers must make a fairly interesting societal group, and there are almost certainly various norms and cultural habits that we hold esoterically.

In addition to mere curiosity, we might be able to find interesting biases that affect how philosophy tends to be done, and thereby make room for their correction. Sexism in philosophy is an issue that has been raised recently, and no doubt there are other prejudices and biases at work in the profession.

Relatedly, Richard Chappell suggested that having failed to study History of Philosophy is no great loss. However, analogously, history of philosophy can help us spot biases as to how philosophy is done. For instance, if philosophers are usually merely people of their time, this gives us reason to doubt some of the opinions of philosophers in the present.

More broadly than each of these points, I tend to think that human bias is understudied by philosophers. We like to think of ourselves as good at thinking, but this cannot be true if we do not take the time to understand common human biases.

(The sadly-now-late Susan Hurley originally got me thinking about this with her paper The Public Ecology of Responsibility (.doc), which makes for depressing reading in terms of the human irrationality it highlights)

Discussion of abortion often (though not always) revolves around the question of at which point a fetus becomes a person.

But this may be the wrong question to ask. What we really want to know is at which point a human being becomes a person. It's possible that fetuses never become persons. Perhaps humans become persons only after birth. I don't endorse this view, but I do believe that it's worth considering.

Most people are agreed that birth is not the borderline between non-person and person. The time of birth does not depend solely on how developed the fetus is, and that makes it a bad candidate for the borderline. But given that birth is not the borderline, why assume that the borderline must be before birth? Personhood might hinge on all sorts of traits. There's no reason, in advance of discussion, to assume that the relevant traits are ones that appear before birth rather than after. Development isn't something that occurs only during pregnancy, and it's therefore possible that the important stages of develpoment occur, say, during early childhood, or potentially even adolescence.

Just to be clear, I reiterate: I'm not defending the truth of such a view, merely defending the possibility of the truth of such a view. No doubt it's repulsive, but is it false?

Various people (e.g. Rawls, Scanlon, Richard Chappell) endorse a view something like the following: Truth in non-empirical matters is defined as the result of a priori inquiry. We aren't discovering independent a priori truth; we're creating it by looking at what the rules for a priori inquiry allow.

But it seems to me that there's a problem with this view, appealing as it is. What guarantee do we have that the rules for a priori inquiry are determinate enough that we will be left with only one possible conclusion?

No-one is entirely clear on what the rules for a priori inquiry are - the only requirement for reasoning might be consistency, or some fairly weak definition of coherence, or some fairly stringent definition of coherence. Unless we know in advance that the a priori requirements on reasoning are towards the more stringent end of this scale, we can't know that only one result of a priori inquiry is possible. And if there's more than one acceptable result of a priori inquiry, then, on this view, there's more than one truth. Would such a view be tenable?

(In contast, views which claim that we're discovering independent truth can merely claim that indeterminate rules for reasoning would leave us ignorant as to what the (singular) correct answer is)

Philosophers face a dilemma.

On the one hand, we ought to make clear that we all know that philosophy is a very difficult subject; all sorts of views are hard to argue either for or against. We therefore ought to be very careful with what we say, and clarify it sufficiently so that our level of ignorance and lack of confidence is clear.

On the other hand, it's a pain to prefix every sentence you write with "I tend to think that...", or "In my opinion...". It's much easier to write a sentence or two acknowleging one's own ignorance at the start of a piece, and ignoring the issue thereafter. Or, better yet, have a tacit understanding that when discussing philosophy, uncertainty permeates the air.

It seems to me that philosophers tend to opt for the last option (Or: "Philosophers opt for the last option."). This has the advantage of making books and articles much easier to read for trained philosophers, and the disadvantage of potentially alienating non-philosophers from the subject matter.

So this post is a warning: I also tend to opt for the last option, and therefore note that I'm never as certain as my posts might suggest. It also serves as an argument as to why popularisation of philosophy might be tricky. Let's hope someone can find a better compromise than I can.