Ethics

by hilzoy

Via Andrew Sullivan, I see that The Atlantic has put E. O. Wilson’s article ‘The Biological Basis Of Morality‘ online. I had repressed all memory of this article, but it really annoyed me at the time, so much so that I wrote a letter to the editors about it. For some, um, unfathomable reason they declined to publish it, but now (heh heh) I can, and so I have put it below the fold. (Why should perfectly good snark go to waste?)

I am reliably informed that E. O. Wilson is a brilliant biologist. I would read anything he wrote about ants with interest. But it does not follow from that that he knows anything about philosophy. Of course, that’s no reason why he can’t write intelligently on it. But it is a reason why someone at the Atlantic should have gone over what he wrote to make sure it was accurate, as I’m sure they would have done had I submitted an article on insects. Apparently, no one did.

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by hilzoy

There’s a fascinating article in the NYT magazine today about the controversy over an honor killing in Syria.

“Fawaz later recalled that his wife, Zahra, was sleeping soundly on her side and curled slightly against the pillow when he rose at dawn and readied himself for work at his construction job on the outskirts of Damascus. It was a rainy Sunday morning in January and very cold; as he left, Fawaz turned back one last time to tuck the blanket more snugly around his 16-year-old wife. Zahra slept on without stirring, and her husband locked the door of their tiny apartment carefully behind him.

Zahra was most likely still sleeping when her older brother, Fayyez, entered the apartment a short time later, using a stolen key and carrying a dagger. His sister lay on the carpeted floor, on the thin, foam mattress she shared with her husband, so Fayyez must have had to kneel next to Zahra as he raised the dagger and stabbed her five times in the head and back: brutal, tearing thrusts that shattered the base of her skull and nearly severed her spinal column. Leaving the door open, Fayyez walked downstairs and out to the local police station. There, he reportedly turned himself in, telling the officers on duty that he had killed his sister in order to remove the dishonor she had brought on the family by losing her virginity out of wedlock nearly 10 months earlier.

“Fayyez told the police, ‘It is my right to correct this error,’ ” Maha Ali, a Syrian lawyer who knew Zahra and now works pro bono for her husband, told me not long ago. “He said, ‘It’s true that my sister is married now, but we never washed away the shame.’ ”

By now, almost anyone in Syria who follows the news can supply certain basic details about Zahra al-Azzo’s life and death: how the girl, then only 15, was kidnapped in the spring of 2006 near her home in northern Syria, taken to Damascus by her abductor and raped; how the police who discovered her feared that her family, as commonly happens in Syria, would blame Zahra for the rape and kill her; how these authorities then placed Zahra in a prison for girls, believing it the only way to protect her from her relatives. And then in December, how a cousin of Zahra’s, 27-year-old Fawaz, agreed to marry her in order to secure her release and also, he hoped, restore her reputation in the eyes of her family; how, just a month after her wedding to Fawaz, Zahra’s 25-year-old brother, Fayyez, stabbed her as she slept. (…)

In speaking with the police, Zahra’s brother used a colloquial expression, ghasalat al arr (washing away the shame), which means the killing of a woman or girl whose very life has come to be seen as an unbearable stain on the honor of her male relatives. Once this kind of familial sexual shame has been “washed,” the killing is traditionally forgotten as quickly as possible. Under Syrian law, an honor killing is not murder, and the man who commits it is not a murderer. As in many other Arab countries, even if the killer is convicted on the lesser charge of a “crime of honor,” he is usually set free within months. Mentioning the killing — or even the name of the victim — generally becomes taboo.

That this has not happened with Zahra’s story — that her case, far from being ignored, has become something of a cause célèbre, a rallying point for lawyers, Islamic scholars and Syrian officials hoping to change the laws that protect the perpetrators of honor crimes — is a result of a peculiar confluence of circumstances. It is due in part to the efforts of a group of women’s rights activists and in part to the specifics of her story, which has galvanized public sympathy in a way previously unseen in Syria. But at heart it is because of Zahra’s young widower, Fawaz, who had spoken to his bride only once before they became engaged. Now, defying his tribe and their traditions, he has brought a civil lawsuit against Zahra’s killer and is refusing to let her case be forgotten.”

To add the final touch of horror to this story, Zahra was kidnapped because a friend of her father’s told her that her father was having an affair, and that he would reveal it if she did not join him outside her house. That is how he was able to take her to Damascus and rape her: because she was herself trying to protect her family’s honor.

More below the fold.

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by hilzoy

Michael Gerson tries his hand at moral philosophy in today’s Washington Post:

“So the dilemma is this: How do we choose between good and bad instincts? Theism, for several millennia, has given one answer: We should cultivate the better angels of our nature because the God we love and respect requires it. While many of us fall tragically short, the ideal remains.

Atheism provides no answer to this dilemma. It cannot reply: “Obey your evolutionary instincts” because those instincts are conflicted. “Respect your brain chemistry” or “follow your mental wiring” don’t seem very compelling either. It would be perfectly rational for someone to respond: “To hell with my wiring and your socialization, I’m going to do whatever I please.” C.S. Lewis put the argument this way: “When all that says ‘it is good’ has been debunked, what says ‘I want’ remains.”

Some argue that a careful determination of our long-term interests — a fear of bad consequences — will constrain our selfishness. But this is particularly absurd. Some people are very good at the self-centered exploitation of others. Many get away with it their whole lives. By exercising the will to power, they are maximizing one element of their human nature. In a purely material universe, what possible moral basis could exist to condemn them? Atheists can be good people; they just have no objective way to judge the conduct of those who are not.”

Discussion below the fold.

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by hilzoy

In his last post, publius writes:

“Maybe I’m expanding it, but I read Klein’s argument as expressing skepticism of abstractions (and policy-by-abstractions), rather than skepticism of the individual abstract values themselves. In this sense, his foreign policy argument seems to be philosophical — he’s skeptical of theory itself.”

This is an interesting point, and an important one to get clear on. I’ll take a stab at it below the fold, so as not to distract from Katherine’s post. (Katherine: poetry. Me: analysis. At the moment, I’d rather be Katherine. Pout.)

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by hilzoy

I normally agree with Ezra Klein. Not only that, I think he’s one of the sharpest commenters out there. So I don’t like saying that I think his article on values in foreign policy is just plain wrong. Unfortunately, though, I do.

Ezra starts off with this:

“I have a confession to make: I am not a values voter. I do not want a foreign policy based upon “the idea that is America.” I do not think we should be guided in all things by such glittering concepts as liberty, democracy, equality, justice, tolerance, humility, and faith.

In fact, I’m fed up with values. Entirely. They’ve failed this country. As a lodestar, there is none worse.”

He then goes on to make the following points: First, he talks a bit about Anne-Marie Slaughter’s new book, which I haven’t read and thus cannot comment on. Then, he notes the frequency of various moral terms in Bush’s second inaugural, which I think is irrelevant to any interesting point. He notes that concepts like democracy and liberty “do not, themselves, suggest a foreign policy.” This is true, but it’s also true of any other general concept on which we might seek to base policy. To take this as an objection to basing foreign policy on values implies that we should not base our foreign policy on any general concept at all, since any general concept — the national interest, democratic values, human rights — will require some actual thought about how it is to be promoted in a complicated world. The only alternative to basing our foreign policy on something that requires such thought is not to have a coherent foreign policy at all.

Ezra then says that “the language of idealism” enables a style of argument in which one side slams another for not being moral enough to support a given policy whose consequences the slammers have not bothered to understand:

“The language of idealism enabled what my friend Chris Hayes refers to as the “moral blackmail” of the Iraq war: How could anyone who professes to believe in freedom and democracy refuse to devote a couple of tax dollars to freeing the Iraqi people from tyranny?”

Again, this is true of any general basis for foreign policy, since nothing that could serve as such a basis is immune to being advocated by idiots. Compare: “How can you say you care about our national interest when you’re not willing to spend a few dollars to gain complete control over Iran’s oil reserves by invading it and installing a friendly puppet government that the Iranian people will adore? Huh?” It’s even true of what looks like almost no foreign policy at all: a dedication to protecting ourselves from a world we regard as hostile, and with which we refuse to engage. That still requires some actual thought about how to protect ourselves, and leaves us open to what we might call the “self-defense blackmail” argument: How can anyone who professes to want to protect our country refuse to sacrifice a couple of tax dollars to strengthen our version of the Maginot line? How can they say that our plan to build deep-sea platforms from which we can pour molten pitch onto the heads of ocean-going invaders isn’t worth it? Don’t they care about America??

Ezra ends his article with this:

“What I want is not a foreign policy vision that builds from a foundation of values, but from one of consequences. Whether a policy is concordant with America’s view of itself is less important than its likely outcomes. The Paul Wolfowitzes of the world had thought plenty about values and were perfectly capable of discussing their vision of Iraq as a shining city on a Mesopotamian hill. What they hadn’t thought about were outcomes — constraints on our action and capabilities, the likely effects on others’ actions of our use of force, etc. Good thing they weren’t really pressed on the subject, lest they’d have had to conjure up a postwar plan for a reception that didn’t include candy and flowers — a plan they didn’t have. But they weren’t questioned, because they were effectively able to keep the conversation focused on values — do you care about liberty? hate tyranny? believe Arabs can be democratic? — rather than consequences.

What the Democrats’ post-Bush foreign policy vision must do is be able to outlast the Democrats. I have no doubt that President Obama, or President Edwards, or Secretary of State Slaughter can implement a values-based foreign policy I find congenial. What I do fear is what happens when their terms close, and the language that they let Americans remain accustomed to is appropriated by a far more hawkish administration. Much better for Democrats to create a foreign policy framework that a future administration would have to fight against if it wished to revive neoconservatism. Giving them language they can slip right into seems awfully accommodating.

So no more of “the idea that is America.” Let’s hear the argument that is a wise and sane American foreign policy. Let’s hear about conditions for the use of force, and the constraints surrounding it. Let’s hear the hardnosed cases for restraint and multilateralism. Don’t subsume those points beneath malleable terms like “humility” and “democracy.” Popularize the explicit arguments for how American should act. Do that, and our values will be safeguarded, even when their protectors have long since left.”

This is the most serious objection, and I’ll put my discussion of it below the fold.

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