Julie asked:

What would a Divine Command Theorist do or say in a “Lifeboat Ethics” situation?

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

First off, I want to say that this is a really good example of a type of scenario that poses a serious challenge to divine command theory — although one that can be met if we are prepared to bite the bullet.

What is divine command theory? You can start by looking at these three answers:

https://philosophypathways.com/books/philosophy-q-and-a.html#euthyphro

God and morality: Euthyphro’s dilemma

Divine command theory revisited

I am going to assume that we are dealing with the version of divine command theory defended by Peter Geach (first answer, above). If you can get hold of it, I recommend reading Geach’s chapter, ‘The Moral Law and the Law of God’ in his book God and the Soul (1969) which is the best I have seen on this topic. (I found this on Google, but the link seems to have disappeared.)

What would be an example of a ‘lifeboat ethics’ situation, as you call it?

Here’s one possibility. The ship has gone down, survivors are in the water clinging to bits of debris. You are in charge of a lifeboat. You can’t rescue everyone — the boat is too small, there is not enough time — so you have to make hard choices. The obvious course of action is to go for the nearest survivors first. That’s the plan that promises to maximize the number of lives saved.

Now, we can tweak this by supposing that you know the identities of the survivors. All lives are equally valuable, according to divine command theory, regardless of whether there may be beneficial consequences in saving one individual, say, a famous scientist working on a cure for cancer, in preference to another, say, the ship’s cook. If the cook is nearer to the boat, then you go for him first, even if that risks the scientist’s life.

But maybe you would do this anyway, regardless of whether or not you subscribe to the divine command theory of ethics. At least, it’s not clear. Regardless of which course of action you choose, you are doing good, you are saving lives.

So let’s look at a different case. The lifeboat is overfull and about to sink. The only way to save the lives of the people on the lifeboat is if at least two of those on board go back in the water. If they do that, their death is inevitable. You might consider sacrificing yourself, but that still leaves one to go. You have to make the decision. But, as divine command theory states, taking the life of an innocent individual is absolutely forbidden regardless of the consequences.

Draw straws? That would be acceptable, provided all those on board are willing to abide by the draw. However, it only takes one recalcitrant individual to scupper that plan. ‘Look, you agreed to draw straws and you got the short straw. So, jump already!’ Would you?

Divine command theory forbids taking the life of an ‘innocent’ individual. The person holding the short straw, quaking with fear, is ‘guilty’ only of breaking a promise — to commit suicide. That seems insufficient ground for the use of lethal force although the point could be debated.

At this point, it is possible — indeed, highly likely — that the other survivors on the boat will take the law into their own hands. If they do, and despite your best efforts you are unable to stop them, then the problem is solved. There’s no blood on your hands. But there is no guarantee that this will happen.

The only remaining possibility is to persuade just one person to sacrifice him or herself. You’ve already made the decision to go overboard. Maybe, at the last possible moment, before the boat starts sinking, someone will jump. But if they don’t, then the lifeboat sinks and you all die.

I am not putting this forward as a ‘refutation’ of divine command theory. It is simply what has to happen, if one makes the decision never to do wrong — never to do an action forbidden by divine law — regardless of the consequences.

Eddie asked:

Is randomness mind dependent? Can any random process possibly be generated in a deterministic world?

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

In the first year of my BA at London University in the early 70s I had a part-time job as a clerk in the OPCS, the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys in Holborn, London (which later in 1996 became the Office of National Statistics). I was in a small office with four or five clerks and a Senior Executive Officer (SEO). Our job was the most boring imaginable. We had to select addresses from the Electoral Register and compile address lists for interviewers to visit for the UK Government’s ‘General Household Survey’.

For the statistics gathered to be reliable, it was essential that the selection was done randomly. It would have skewed the statistics badly if we’d skipped all the East European sounding names, or names from the Indian sub-continent — or houses with twee names like ‘The Nook’ or ‘Rose Cottage’ — or on the other hand gone out of our way to select them. (I’m not saying this was never done. We were very bored.)

According to our SEO, a young woman who had joined the Civil Service after gaining her degree in Statistics, the only correct way to do the selection was use a mathematical formula to generate random numbers. Using a haphazard method, like throwing dice for example, wasn’t always a reliable way of generating random numbers because you need to be 100% sure that the numbers you produce would not appear to support a prediction.

An example of the dangers of relying on a haphazard method would be a penalty kicker in soccer who before the match uses a coin spin to decide which way he will kick the ball, right or left. He spins his lucky penny a few times: heads for left, tails for right. Unfortunately for him, the last six throws have all landed heads. And this time it’s heads again. The goal keeper, noting the kicker’s seeming predilection for going left in recent games, dives left and saves the goal and the match.

As time was pressing and none of us was sufficiently competent in maths (this was before computers) our SEO said it would be OK to select the last digits from telephone numbers in a telephone directory page opened ‘at random’. I hardly ever saw anyone do this. We just thought up two numbers in our heads. The first number n was the nth address on the Electoral Register for the district the interviewer was due to visit. The second number m was the number of addresses to skip before selecting the m+1th address.

Provided this relatively lazy procedure was followed, with no cheating, then the selection probably would have been sufficiently random for the purpose intended. Our SEO had a story to tell her boss. There was always an open telephone directory in the room so we could claim that we’d got our numbers from there.

What is the point of this story? Randomness is a practical concept, which applies differently in different areas of activity. In statistics, you want your results to be reliable, because policy decisions may depend on the outcome. In a game, you want your actions to be unpredictable. In a lottery, you want the result to be fair with no possibility of cheating. And so on. In none of these areas, or other examples you can think of, is randomness merely ‘mind dependent’. That is because in each case, there are consequences in the real world.

However, randomness in the sense I have described, isn’t purely ‘objective’ either. With sufficient knowledge (you might need to have powers approaching those of a Laplacian Super-Mind) you could predict any supposedly random selection or sequence — in a deterministic world, as you say, otherwise the bets are off.

Mary asked:

When is it ethically acceptable to rob Peter to pay Paul?

Answer by Paul Fagan

Often, this saying is used where distributions of wealth are considered to be a zero-sum game: nobody really benefits from an act of ‘robbery’ as resources are merely moved around. However, if one or more parties could benefit from an act of redistribution then this becomes an easier question to answer: under certain circumstance, some political philosophies would not hesitate in redistributing Peter’s property in order to make Paul’s life, or the lives of both parties, better. Some simple examples are provided to demonstrate this.

For instance, imagine Peter and Paul live quite happily on a desert island. Peter is the island’s landlord, and using his own efforts produces two bushels of corn with the land, and this provides enough for both parties to subsist.

However, if all of the land were given to Paul, he would be able to produce four bushels of corn. This would enable the island to subsist, produce some surplus grain and allow the island to trade with nearby islands to acquire other goods. Now, if Paul could not come to an arrangement with the landlord, whereby he could lend or lease the land, then some utilitarians, seeing how this second scenario benefits the island materially, would wish to see Peter’s landholdings given over to Paul.

A third scenario may be favoured by egalitarians who would wish to see equal holdings of land. They may favour a situation where Peter’s property in land is distributed equally between the two islanders. This would be likely to yield 3 bushels of corn and although more productive that the initial arrangement, would not be as productive as the second. However, if you value the equal distribution of land over everything else you would be content with this this arrangement.

So there you have it, some political philosophers would be quite ready to ‘rob’ Peter to pay Paul. That said, one should be warned that other political philosophies would vehemently oppose the enforced distribution of any goods held by an individual, and some libertarians may even consider a redistribution of a person’s goods to be akin to an assault upon the person (and the reader may like to visit my recent article on this site, entitled Nozick’s libertarianism and self-ownership). The libertarian Robert Nozick was adamant that only voluntary donations should ever be redistributed: in his Anarchy, State and Utopia Nozick felt that the vast majority of persons would voluntarily contribute to schemes to rid society of an ‘evil’ such as poverty for example, as people desire to be part of the solution to such problems (Nozick 1974: 265-7).

Although this may seem to be a very simplistic question to ask, it actually opens up a hornet’s nest for political philosophers and yields a variety of answers (and should the reader have time to spare, then a visit to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on ‘Distributive Justice’ may prove to be enlightening: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice-distributive/). However, in concluding, as most societies continue with some form of redistribution between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’, then it may be a deeply held ethical view amongst human beings that acts of redistribution, similar to those demonstrated, hold great value.

JimJim asked:

Visual size is illusory: it shrinks in all three dimensions. Before we correct for this, not only do the railroad tracks meet in the distance, but a train travelling down them gets shorter, narrower, and smaller. So my question is: how far away must a visible object be for us to see it real size?

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

The premise of your question is false. There are visual illusions, which require a special setup to work, but in general things appear the size that they are, no larger or smaller.

You can verify this for yourself easily. Pick an object on the far side of the room and walk towards it. Does the object (a framed picture, say) ‘get larger’ as you move towards it. Of course not. Hold out your arm and look at your hand. Now move your index finger towards your eye. At what point does your finger appear bigger than it is? At no point.

The notion, e.g., that a train travelling away from us ‘gets shorter, narrower, and smaller’ is based on a overly simplified model of perception. When you look at the train as it travels into the distance, the image projected upside down onto your retina gets smaller and smaller. But what you see, what you perceive, isn’t that image. You see the train. Moreover, you see it as a train, that is to say, an constructed object of a kind that maintains its size over time. (I’m ignoring the fact that a train gets longer or shorter if you add or subtract carriages.)

There are common objects that get larger and smaller. A balloon, for example. Let’s say we are watching a clown walking the road with a large balloon. The balloon has a puncture, and is visibly shrinking, getting smaller and smaller as we look on. The clown turns towards us and shakes his head, sadly. Being able to tell when things actually get bigger or smaller is a pretty important ability, don’t you think?

In order to explain this, a distinction is sometimes made between what we ‘actually see, with our eyes’, and the perceptual judgements based on what we see. So, in your example of the train, we ‘actually see’ the train get smaller, but this is then corrected by our judgement.

There are special cases where this is true. The moon in the sky doesn’t look that large. But then when you take into account the information that the moon is a quarter of a million miles away, a quick calculation shows that it must be pretty big if we can see it at all at that distance.

Then there are artificially constructed experimental setups where a man walking across a room appears to get smaller because the ‘room’ in question is designed with a false perspective: we see the room as rectangular, but in fact the far wall is twice the size of the near wall.

In each of these cases, judgement is required to correct what we see, or seem to see. But these are necessarily exceptions to a rule: The rule being that our faculty of perception (eyes, optic nerve, brain — not forgetting our capacity to physically manipulate the objects that we see) is ‘designed’ by evolution to produce veridical appearances. We need accurate information coming through the senses on which to base our judgements. That’s how perception works.

The concept of perception applies not only to the five senses but also to things like understanding what a person is saying. We perceive meaning. Sometimes we can be wrong, and often those errors can be corrected by judgement. But judgement needs something to work on on. Language isn’t a cacophony of sound, or squiggles on a screen or on paper that we then have to interpret — although, as in the special case it can be, e.g., if you don’t ‘know the language’ and have to work what the person is saying from a phrase book.

A good question to ask in alleged cases of perceptual illusion is, How would things look otherwise? Discussing ancient beliefs about the cosmos, one of Wittgenstein’s students once remarked about the fact that the sun appears to go round the Earth. ‘And how would it look if the Earth appeared to go round the sun?’ was his reply. — I’ll leave you with that question to think about.

Cena asked:

If crisis came, can humans build houses in the sky?

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

From a technological standpoint, it it is perfectly conceivable that human beings could live permanently in habitats floating in the sky and held aloft either by giant impermeable Helium bags, or possibly jet thrusters (as in the TV series Altered Carbon, 2018 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2261227/) although the latter would require a substantial permanent energy source.

Another possibility, explored in the movie Elysium (2013) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535108/ is a giant orbiting structure — the ‘Stanford torus’, proposed in a 1975 NASA study — which could provide an Earth-like environment for tens or hundreds of thousands of human beings.

The first option might not be available in the event of a nuclear war, as the Earth’s atmosphere would be contaminated. On the other hand, either option could be used in the event of an ecological catastrophe that rendered the surface of the Earth uninhabitable, although underwater cities have also been proposed.

From a philosophical standpoint, the main question is an ethical one. The population of the Earth is around 7 and a half billion. When the crisis comes, if it comes, it could be double or treble that.

Realistically, only a small fraction of that total number would have the chance to enjoy life in the clouds, or in orbit. That’s the problem.

The scenario has been visited many times in science fiction. In a way, it exists now. A relative few enjoy a nice life, while for the many day-to-day existence is gruelling, requiring unrelenting toil. But even if the problem of poverty could be permanently solved, that would not do anything to address the challenge of deciding who gets the chance to escape after the Sun flares, or the missiles fall.

Should it be a lottery? Or should only the best and brightest be offered the chance to survive? If you’re testing ethical theories against intuition, that question is every bit as effective as the more frequently discussed Trolley problem.

If the only consideration is the future of the human race, one might opt for the ‘best and brightest’. But who is to choose, and on what basis? How do you balance IQ against musical talent, for example, or sporting prowess? Far easier, and fairer (for the many) would be a lottery, but this would bring its own negative consequences. The great and the good would have to take their chance along with the hoi polloi — a prospect that you may well find repugnant. Imagine waving good bye to Einstein, or Mother Theresa, or the Beatles. ‘Sorry chaps, your numbers didn’t come up.’

In the absence of the political will to make that hard decision and enforce it, the default option is the one explored in ‘Elysium’. The ones who get to go are those who can afford the ticket. So, Beatles yes, Mother Theresa no.

I’m not going to end this with some specious nonsense about ‘hoping it never happens’. It probably will. So maybe it would be a good idea to start discussing the problem now.

Chris asked:

True or False? — Sartre is a believer in radical free will. His ontology of free will is similar to the ontology of free will offered by the substance dualists.

Answer by Gershon Velvel

True and false.

Sartre has a view of freedom which fully merits the description ‘radical’. However, if Sartre’s ontology of free will was really ‘similar’ to the ontology of free will offered by the substance dualists then he would be a substance dualist. And he most certainly is not.

Sartre is not a dualist or a monist. A monist believes in one basic substance: matter, or the subject matter of physics. In Sartre’s metaphysics (as developed in Being and Nothingness) there is absolutely nothing to say about what ‘is’, as such. Rather, there are two fundamentally different ways of approaching ‘what is’: under the category of the ‘For-itself’, and under the category of the ‘In-itself’.

Who is doing this ‘approaching’? The For-itself. The In-itself is inert. It doesn’t ‘do’ anything or ‘approach’ anything. We, that is to say human beings — each of us individually an exemplification of the ‘For-itself’ — make sense of reality by applying one or the other fundamental category.

But this is where things get tricky. Because each of us, although an exemplification of the ‘For-itself’ is also an exemplification of the ‘In-itself’. We possess physical bodies, and the molecules and cells that make up our physical bodies obey the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology without room for exception.

Descartes, by contrast, held that there is a loophole in the laws of physics which allows an immaterial soul to interact with the body’s ‘animal spirits’, the physical conduit for all perception and action. For obscure reasons, this interaction was supposed to take place in the pineal gland. — I don’t think that this is such a bad theory, if you explore all the options, but it is not a theory that Sartre would ever have considered. He didn’t need to.

And yet, despite this, Sartre states, unequivocally, that if human beings are free then determinism is false. (I don’t have the reference to hand, but he says this in more than one place in Being and Nothingness.)

I think he is wrong about this. In order to make the point about freedom that he is making, it isn’t necessary to say anything about the thesis of determinism. It’s completely irrelevant. I suspect that Sartre identifies determinism with the much more dubious claim that, in principle, any physical system is predictable. And that would wreck his account of freedom. It is perfectly possible to hold that determinism is true, but that some physical systems (e.g. those that have a brain) are unpredictable in principle.

Given unpredictability in principle, this is all Sartre needs to defend ‘radical’ freedom. His fundamental point about decision and action is that every situation is necessarily unique. There is not, and could not be, any kind of ‘template’ that one could apply (e.g. ‘This is an X-type situation, and I am a Y-type person, therefore I must do Z’). Anyone can choose to do anything within his or her physical capacity, in any situation, regardless of any choices made in the past. That’s all just water under the bridge.

There are two reasons why our actions generally do not cause any surprise to those observing us. The first is the anodyne point that most of the time there is no reason for us to deviate from what we have done on previous occasions. As Aristotle noted, habit is the basic building block of character. F.H. Bradley in Ethical Studies considers the example of someone who chooses to do the ethically right thing despite strong disincentives, while a friend remarks, ‘I’m surprised that you did that.’ The angry response is, ‘You should have known me better!’

The second, connected reason is that the vast majority of the choices that confront us every day are not life changing. But when they are life changing, that is when Sartre would say, we have to be vigilantly on guard against the bad faith of believing that there is such a thing as ‘what a person like me would do’, or ‘what a person in my position would do’. You are on your own, without a rule book. It is up to you to come up with an original and creative solution to the problem that now confronts you.