Gender Ethics

Those in support of the prohibition against women participating in direct combat often appeal to the fundamental (biological, physiological) differences between men and women. These differences, in turn, provide the bedrock for assumptions about the differences between gender (a social construct) that lead to policy.

One author questions some recently employed science that purports to mark out the biological differences:

No one disputes that the sexes differ physiologically, in hormones and anatomy, or that there are sex differences in the brain related to men’s and women’s different reproductive processes. The eternal question is, and has been, so what?

Here's an interesting point with regards to women in combat:

Over and over, if you watch what people do rather than what they say they would do, and vary the situations in which they do it, gender differences fade to the vanishing point. As Fine puts it, “Pick a gender difference, any difference. Now watch very closely as – poof! – it’s gone”.

Since broadswords and hand-to-hand combat are on the decline in favor of stand-off, button-operated lethality, do the physical differences between men and women matter anymore?

Plato didn't think so.

Read the Times of London review here.

How Painful is the Cutting Edge?

Two explorations on the military's efforts to keep up with itself:

First, the executive summary of the 2010 McCain Conference, "New Warriors and New Weapons: The Ethical Ramifications of Emerging Military Technologies." The summary provides ethical concerns in the areas of unmanned systems, soldier enhancements, nonlethal weapons and cyberwarfare. Link here (scroll past the info/registration for this year's conference).

Second, Tim Kane's article in The Atlantic, "Why Our Best Officers Are Leaving." Get past the hyperbolic title and you'll find a recurring argument: "the military personnel system—every aspect of it—is nearly blind to merit." Link here.

How We Do Philosophy

Excerpt from "The Philosophical Novel" by James Ryerson (NYT):

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, whose latest novel is “36 Arguments for the Existence of God,” treats philosophical questions with unabashed directness in her fiction, often featuring debates or dialogues among characters who are themselves philosophers or physicists or mathematicians. Still, she says that part of her empathizes with (Iris) Murdoch’s wish to keep the loose subjectivity of the novel at a safe remove from the philosopher’s search for hard truth. It’s a “huge source of inner conflict,” she told me. “I come from a hard-core analytic background: philosophy of science, mathematical logic. I believe in the ideal of objectivity.” But she has become convinced over the years of what you might call the psychology of philosophy: that how we tackle intellectual problems depends critically on who we are as individuals, and is as much a function of temperament as cognition. Embedding a philosophical debate in richly imagined human stories conveys a key aspect of intellectual life. You don’t just understand a conceptual problem, she says: “You feel the problem.”

Read the article here.

Allegory of the Cave Assignment

PHL 310 – Ethics

Assignment 3 – Draw Plato’s Cave [25 pts]

Due: Lesson 8 (25 Jan 11)


ASSIGNMENT: You will invariably run across people in your career, both up and down the chain, who just don’t get it. They need a picture.

From your reading assignment, take the description of the cave [514a – 521a] and, on one 8 ½” x 11” piece of printer/copier paper, draw it. Socrates describes several important features of the cave. Make sure you get them all.

Remember, your task is to simplify a complicated image for someone who isn’t getting it. Use labels if you need to (i.e., if your stick people might be mistaken for fish in trees), but don’t write paragraphs.

GRADING: This assignment will be graded on your ability to distill basic facts from the source, determining what is pertinent to get the message across, and to represent the major features in Socrates’ description (15 pts). Neatness and overall artistic ability will also be evaluated, insofar as they contribute to the clarity/communication of your rendition (10 pts).

NOTE: If your work is not only complete, but also aesthetically pleasing and suitable for display, I’ll offer 5 pts extra credit in return for the piece. You’ll know you’re eligible if you see “+5” next to your grade.

Military Mentor Program Under Scrutiny

USA Today's investigative series "Four Stars for Hire," has tracked the emergence of a senior mentor program across the military, where retired generals have taken taxpayer-funded jobs advising active duty leaders while still retaining jobs with private defense contractors. The series raised concerns over the lack of transparency and no oversight to prevent the generals and their private employers from using knowledge they obtain as mentors in seeking additional government contract work.

Reacting to USA Today's investigation, congressional leaders pressured the Pentagon to adopt the same public disclosure of private income rules that active duty military officers follow and apply them to the senior mentors.

In the latest report, seven retired admirals and generals hired by the military to act as mentors decided to quit those jobs rather than comply with new regulations.

Links to articles in the series:

18 Nov 2009 - How some retired military officers became well-paid consultants

18 Nov 2009 - Military mentors paid well for advice (lists the retired flag officers)

19 Nov 2009 - Inquiries look into use of retired generals as advisers

19 Nov 2009 - McCain wants review on defense work by retired brass

7 Dec 2009 -  Army mentoring deals bypass ethics law

14 Dec 2009 - Retired officer's dual roles for Pentagon raise questions

8 Aug 2010 - Pentagon revises military mentor rules

16 Nov 2010 - Pentagon stops shielding senior mentors from disclosure

20 Jan 2011 - Military 'mentors' quit over disclosure rules

TMI

Advances in technology have surpassed the human capacity to process data. Under more benign conditions, that's a good thing; computers can process in seconds or minutes what might take us hours. But in war, where we insert a human in the loop of an otherwise automated killing system, humans are sometimes overwhelmed.

Across the military, the data flow has surged; since the attacks of 9/11, the amount of intelligence gathered by remotely piloted drones and other surveillance technologies has risen 1,600 percent. On the ground, troops increasingly use hand-held devices to communicate, get directions and set bombing coordinates. And the screens in jets can be so packed with data that some pilots call them “drool buckets” because, they say, they can get lost staring into them.

“There is information overload at every level of the military — from the general to the soldier on the ground,” said Art Kramer, a neuroscientist and director of the Beckman Institute, a research lab at the University of Illinois.

The military has engaged researchers like Mr. Kramer to help it understand the brain’s limits and potential. Just as the military has long pushed technology forward, it is now at the forefront in figuring out how humans can cope with technology without being overwhelmed by it.

If you're inundated with data and you misprocess an important piece, should you be held accountable?  Read the NYT article here.

Platonic Dialogue

We believe Plato adopted a dramatic style of writing - the dialogue - to produce a particular effect upon and within his readers. Dr. Lane Cooper describes the process as follows:

"The type of writing which Plato chose for his medium of expression, the dialogue, is one that enables an author to approach the truth from various sides, and by gradual stages. In the preliminary stages the speakers may offer tentative expressions of the truth, or half-truths, or positive untruths. The argument advances by elimination of the false and a convergance upon whateversurvives the test of dialectic. The result may or may not be expressly stated in sober prose. In general we may believe that the ultimate truth is seldom reached in the discussion proper, but is finally caught together and embodied in ... the imaginative part of a whole (namely, the dialogue)." 

Types of Fallacies

Formal – inference that fails because of poor logical form

affirming the consequent – (conditional) deductive fallacy: p→q, q, \ p. Example: “If she was a cadet, she’d be successful. She’s successful, so, she must’ve been a cadet.”

begging the question – using your conclusion as an implicit premise, or the truth of x is assumed within the original premise of x. Example: “I am not a liar.”

equivocation – using one word in more than one sense. Example: “Hot dogs are better than nothing. Nothing is better than steak. Therefore, hot dogs are better than steak.”

denying the antecedent – (conditional) deductive fallacy: p→q, ~p, \ ~ q. Example: “Give someone a gun, they might kill. Don’t give them guns, no killing.”

Material – the material of an argument – the premises – are faulty, making unwarranted claims and leading to unsound conclusions

ad hominem (to the person) – attacking the person rather than his/her argument; highlighting character to question a person’s judgment. Example: “My opponent is a…”

appeal to ignorance – arguing that a claim is true just because it hasn’t been shown to be false. Example: “There’s no intelligent life in the universe because no one has found any.”

complex question – answer makes a commitment to some other claim; two questions cluged together to where a single answer makes an unintended commitment, regardless of how a person answers (agreeing or disagreeing). Example: “You spend a lot of time online, do you enjoy all that pornography?”

composition/division – attributes from a small number are generalized to a broader group (composition)/ the parts of a system are assumed to all have characteristics of the whole system (Division). Examples: “Hydrogen and oxygen are gasses at room temp so H2O must be as well” (composition); and “You’re at USAFA, where you go to learn to fly, so you can fly” (Division).

false dilemma – reducing options under consideration to just two, often in sharp opposition; “either, or.” Example: “You’re with us or you’re with the terrorists.”

post hoc, ergo propter hoc – assuming causation merely on the basis of succession of time. Example: “I’m not feeling so good… must be the Mitches.”

straw man – caricaturing a view to make it easily refutable, or attacking the weakest point and declaring the entire argument flawed. Example: “They say character is so important, so show me this ‘character.'”

weak analogy - comparing X (in question) to Y (known, with desired property Z) to forge a connection – X is like Y which is Z-ful, therefore X is Z-ful. Example: “Four degrees are like dogs. They respond best to clear discipline.”

Diversions – push the discussion away from the subject and direct it toward other issues to make the audience forget or become unwilling to rejoin the topic. Successful diversions make it difficult to get back on track; counter by appealing to the audience’s sense of fair play.

humor – sarcasm and other forms of ridicule. Example: (Debating evolution) “Is the monkey on you grandmother or grandfather’s side?”

finger pointing – appeals to a sense of fairness. Effect is to (1) sidestep a grievance, (2) create sympathy, and (3) cause audience to measure one misdeed against another. Example: “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

wicked alternative - comparing X in opposition to Y when Y is not the opposite of X. Example: “The British Health System doesn’t work, so we should reject “Obamacare.’”

Extra Credit – Essay: Frankfurt & the Honor Code

ASSIGNMENT: Read Frankfurt’s essay On B.S. From that and our discussion in class, assess whether and how Frankfurt’s work may apply to the Honor Code. Could the work on b.s. offer some improvements to the Honor Code, or not so much?

Select one of the following topics and write a two-page (500 word) essay answering the associated question(s).

1. Like the Honor Code, Frankfurt takes into consideration the speaker’s state of mind. Does his work add anything to the concept of intent as outlined in the Honor Code?

or

2. Does the Honor Code deal with B.S. as defined by Frankfurt?

This isn’t an “agree or disagree” type assignment. Your assessment should be based on the strength of the argument Frankfurt makes in relation to the question you’re answering. Remember that your own argument (your answer to the question) should be based on solid reasons/premises, one of which will be an explicit definition of b.s.

GRADING: This assignment will be graded on your ability to analyze Frankfurt’s work (10 pts.), the development of your own line of argumentation (10 pts.), and your ability to communicate both clearly (5 pts.).

Army Deploys Soldiers Accused of Felonies

"Deploying troops accused of felonies is one of a growing list of accomodations, ranging from airport body scans to uncharged detainees at Guatanamo Bay, that the United States has made in the past decade to fight terrorism. And it is one with an ironic twist:The effor to impose civil order abroad is eroding the rights of some at home."

Read the article here.