"Early Tests for Alzheimer’s Pose Diagnosis Dilemma"

The New York Times published an article on the ethical dilemma doctors are facing over whether to tell patients they have an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. Hospital ethics committees have unanimously found patients shouldn't be told, but doctors are struggling with that decision.

read the article

Study Guide 02

Toleration in Virginia

A faculty member from the University of Virginia talks about their Honor Code and toleration (excerpted from a review of The Honor Code in the NYT Sunday Book Review).

[Note: "WIERD" = Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic]

At the University of Virginia, for example, we have a student-run honor
system, created in 1842 by a few hundred sons of Virginia planters whose
families vigilantly tracked one another’s reputations and arranged marital and
commercial alliances accordingly. In that world, a gentleman could not tolerate
a stain upon his honor, and neither could a community of gentlemen. We therefore
have a “single sanction” based on a psychology of purity: any dishonorable
behavior contaminates the whole community, so any violation of the honor code is
punishable by expulsion.

Today, however, the university’s 21,000 students come from all over the
world, and concerns about purity are mostly confined to the cafeteria. The moral
domain has shrunk — as it must to accommodate the individualism, mobility and
diversity of a WEIRD society — to its bare minimum: don’t hurt people, treat
them fairly but otherwise leave them alone. Students at Virginia work hard and
care about their grades, but when they learn about fellow students’ cheating,
they usually do nothing. They understand that cheating harms others (in courses
graded on a curve), but because WEIRD moral calculus involves only individuals
(not the honor of the group), they feel that expulsion is too harsh a
punishment. And because they do not feel personally dishonored by a cheater,
it’s not clear to them why they should step forward and press charges. The
result is that our purity-based single sanction, still in force long after the
death of its natal honor world, increases students’ willingness to tolerate
dishonorable behavior.

McChrystal Lesson Learning

Follow up on the McChrystal episode: "Army Walks Tightrope On Ties With Political Bosses." A discussion begins about whether a military officer should remain apolitical or merely nonpartisan.

No mention of Gen Petraeus' views on the role of the military to provide "brutally honest" assessments to civilian leadership, nor on why he doesn't vote.

(List of articles on McChrystal's resignation here)

Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics Essay Contest

Here's a great opportunity for military ethicists to contribute to the field of ethical study...

The Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics Essay Contest is an annual competition designed to challenge college students to analyze the urgent ethical issues confronting them in today's complex world. Students are encouraged to write thought-provoking personal essays that raise questions, single out issues and are rational arguments for ethical action.

Suggested topics for 2011:

- Articulate with clarity an ethical issue that you have encountered and analyze what it has taught you about ethics and yourself.

- Reflect on the relationship between religion and ethics in today's world, making sure to draw on your own life as a guide.

- What does your own experience tell you about the relationship between politics and ethics and, in particular, what could be done to make politics more ethical?

For more information, click here.

Reich Lecture Assignment

Assignment 4 – Reich Lecture [50 pts]

Due: Lesson 25 (18 Oct 10)


ASSIGNMENT: Using material from Gen Wakin’s Reich Lecture and the assigned reading (Wakin, “The Ethics of Leadership” in EMP), write a two-page (500 word) essay addressing the social and ethical consequences of intellectual inadequacy among military leadership. Case studies (Gen Wakin will provide some in his lecture) will be helpful in illustrating and supporting your position. You may also use examples from your own experience.

GRADING: This assignment will be graded on your ability to analyze and distill facts from the sources (20 pts), to take a position and make a sound supporting argument (20 pts), and to communicate effectively (10 pts).

Relativism

The “handout” for our upcoming discussion of relativism (on M23) consists of two short entries from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP). First, read the section entitled “Metaphysical Issues: Objectivism and Relativism,” on the Ethics page. Then, read the entry on relativism. Finish these before the Rachels’ article, as they will help to place the latter in context.

Science & Religion on Morality

Just in time for our section on religion and ethics, the NYT has published a review on Sam Harris' new book, How Science Can Determine Human Values. The review takes issue with Harris' position, that science can uncover the source of human morality, but along the way it provides a fair mapping of what's at stake in the larger debate, as well as tying in strands from realism, relativism, and utilitarian theory.

GR Study Guide: Lessons 1-19

Review topics are broken down into the three divisions of the course: classical theory, officership, and the just war tradition. Certain topics will overlap, for example, Stoicism applies to all three divisions.

Recap - Lesson 10

After the quiz, we looked at the philosophical underpinnings of cynicism. What makes us cynical? In general, the answer has to do with having higher expectations for something than what reality entails or delivers. That's in line with Anisthenes' school - the Cynics - who believed virtue was the only good, its essence lying in self-control and independence. Following Anisthenes' disposition, the doctrine developed into a coarse opposition to social customs and opinions. Eventually, he drove away his followers, and the terms cynic and cynicism have had negative connotations ever since. Today, the cynic is characterized by a belief that human conduct is wholly motivated by self-interest, and the cynic always seems to expect the worst from his fellow humans, the baser manifestations of human conduct and motivation.

In class, we focused on cadet cynicism. For the sake of balance, here's an editorial written by a faculty member at another service academy whose experience has obviously fallen short of his expectations.

Applying JWT to Cyberspace

NPR aired a story this morning (part 1 of 2) discussing whether and how just war criteria may be applied to a cyber attack. Policy makers fear the anonymity of the cyber world may make it difficult or impossibel to catch those who vilate the laws of cyber war.

"It is a near certainty that the United States will scrupulously obey whatever is written down, and it is almost as certain that no one else will," says Stewart Baker, a former NSA general counsel and an assistant secretary of homeland security under President George W. Bush.

Recap – Lessons 7-9

Socrates’ turn to ethical questions on how one should live a good life was characterized by (1) the subjects of his inquiry, for example, in The Republic, the question what is justice?; and (2) the technique he employed – dialectic – which provided an example of how one should authentically seek knowledge. Compared to the technique employed by the sophists, which was to “win” an argument without particular regard for the truth, dialectic was both more collaborative and more open-ended. It could also be more frustrating, as the discussions rendered by Plato didn’t always yield a definitive conclusion, and we’re often left to develop our own answers.

That was the case after our first reading from The Republic. Your answers to the question, what is justice?, clustered around the notions of it being external and based on punishment and reward. As we read, Socrates dealt with similar formulations from Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, and Glaucon. Each fell short of providing a satisfactory conception. Glaucon proposed perhaps the greatest challenge to any conception of justice by retelling the story of Gyges Ring: what would you do if you could get away with anything?

To answer, Socrates and his companions undertake an elaborate thought experiment where they build a city from scratch, the goal being to first identify where justice resides in the city, then to find analogues in the individual. Our second reading from The Republic described the virtues – wisdom, courage, and moderation – as they appear in both the city and the soul. Justice, it’s finally agreed, is harmony among these virtues, with each performing its function to sustain that balance.

Since justice is internal and not purely motivated by reward and punishment, Socrates and Plato have to take up the final task of answering why one should be just. By way of explaining, Socrates relates the allegory of the cave, which you skillfully rendered for your third assignment. As a metaphor for Plato’s theory of knowledge (the divided line), the story relays the struggle entailed for humans to break free from the comforts of illusion. There’s also a caution: sharing newly acquired wisdom may be hazardous to your health. The allegory also contains a mystery, which some of you identified: who freed the prisoner, and what was his/her status?

Recap – Lessons 5-6

We looked at the arguments made to justify the invasion of Iraq with an eye toward whether or not they were good, i.e., persuasive. That led to a discussion about what happens when a military officer disagrees with the stated policy of our civilian leadership and the decisions of our Commander-in-Chief. Pretty clear consensus that once those decisions are enacted in the form of directives from senior military leadership, we either follow orders or resign. Then we took it a step further: what about those officers who stay and obey yet still disagree? Do they get to state their opinion – privately – to family, friends, or subordinates? Mixed feelings on this, with many of you thinking we should suppress our opinions and toe the line, period-dot. Others observed we can’t help but form opinions, and suppressing them when someone asks would be tantamount to BS. In both cases, the effect on the morale of our subordinates was the primary motivator: toe the line so as not to discourage our Airmen, vs. be honest, because our Airmen will recognize BS.

Following Martin Cook’s comparison of two superpowers – the United States after the Cold War and ancient Athens after the Persian Wars – we explored some analogues between the Peloponnesian War and OIF. We looked at the difference between preemptive and preventive justifications for going to war (jus ad bellum), at the types of coalitions each conflict spawned, and at the harsh realism of the Athenians vs. the false dilemma embedded in our own policy, both of which resulted in a “with us or against us” stance toward other nations.

We also talked about the effects of war. For Athens, the Peloponnesian War ushered in the end of her domination of the Greeks, the “brief, shining moment” that marked the beginning of Western culture. The effect of OIF on the U.S. is still unwritten. As Secretary Gates recently told reporters, “the problem with this war for, I think, many Americans is that the premise on which we justified going to war proved not to be valid — that is, Saddam having weapons of mass destruction.” He added, candidly: “It will always be clouded by how it began.”

History will clarify what good comes out of OIF. From the Peloponnesian War, one positive outcome we identified was the re-focusing of philosophy into ethical realms of inquiry. Philosophy had already existed in an early form prior to the war. Its path out of the ancient Greek religion, what we now call mythology, appears when the earliest philosophers, the pre-Socratics, sought naturalistic explanations for life’s everyday challenges. They formed explanations based on their observations of nature, as opposed to relying on the presence of gods and the gods’ interaction with humanity to explain how and why the world worked. Even then, the pre-Socratics couldn’t wholly escape the religious context of their time, and many of their explanations retained mythic qualities. It wasn’t until Socrates developed his style of street philosophy that the ancient, mythopoeic ethic (based on punishment and reward) would begin to be challenged.

Quotes from The Republic

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. - Alfred North Whitehead

Before we leave Socrates and Plato, if we ever really do, I thought I’d share some of my favorite quotes from The Republic...

[352d] …the argument is not about just any question, but about the way one should live.

[334b] “No, by Zeus,” (Polemarchus) said. “But I no longer know what I did mean.”

[363d] …the finest wage of virtue is an eternal drunk.

[350e] “…if you want to keep on questioning, go ahead and question, and, just as with old wives who tell tales, I shall say to you, ‘All right,’ and I shall nod and shake my head.”

[387d] …the decent man will believe that for the decent man—who happens to be his comrade—being dead is not a terrible thing.

[403a] “It’s ridiculous,” (Glaucon) said, “if the Guardian needs a Guardian.”

[457a] The women guardians must strip, since they’ll clothe themselves in virtue instead of robes, and they must take common part in war …

[459d.] There is a need for the best men to have intercourse as often as possible with the best women.

[338d] “You are disgusting, Socrates.”

[474a] “Socrates, what a phrase and argument you have let burst out. Now that it’s said, you can believe that very many men, and not ordinary ones, will on the spot throw off their clothes, and stripped for action, taking hold of whatever weapon falls under the hand of each, run full speed at you and do wonderful deeds.”

The Republic - Reading Guide II

How to use the reading guide:

The second reading from The Republic is broken down into sections of argument (using the Stephanus pagination). Identify the main points of each section and follow the flow of the overall dialogue as the participants move from one argument to the next.

What is Justice?

Here are the results from the discussions last class on how you would define justice:

Justice is...

1st Period – getting what one deserves in terms of punishment and reward; karma

2nd Period – the fair, balanced and reasonable distribution of “stuff”

3rd Period – the fair dispersal of rewards and punishment

4th Period – the perception of what’s due; the permissibility of making honest mistakes

So for the most part, justice is something external that is done to you, and it’s evenhanded.

When we talked about the Ancient Greek religion (what we refer to now as the Greek myths), we talked about how the myths coalesced into a shared heritage of ancestral memories relayed down generations and later, how they formed patterns of belief that gave meaning to life and formed the basis of moral codes.

One of those patterns might be reflected in your conception of justice, the mythopoeic ethic. In Greek mythology, the “moral of the story” often revolved around punishment and reward: please the gods and be rewarded; oppose the gods and standby for punishment.

Perhaps there’s some resonance between your conception of justice and your life here at the Academy. We’ll see what Socrates has to say about that…

The Republic - Reading Guide I

How to use the reading guide:

The first reading from The Republic is broken down into sections of argument (using the Stephanus pagination). Identify the main points of each section and follow the flow of the overall dialogue as the participants move from one argument to the next.

EXTRA CREDIT: BS and the Honor Code

We have a theme running through what you’ve written for assignment #2: the second question (Does the Honor Code deal with BS as defined by Frankfurt?) seems to have elicited more response – either the Code doesn’t address BS directly but doesn’t need to (for various reasons), or the Code does deal with BS when it’s egregious. The root argument in both of these positions runs something like: when BS approaches a certain point, a perception of lying on the part of the receiver, the Code kicks in, regardless of the BSer’s intent.

On several of your papers, I’ve written a comment to the effect that an example or case that illustrates that line – where BS crosses into lying – would strengthen the root argument.

So give me one. Everyone’s eligible, regardless if you chose this question or the other (on intent/state of mind). Give me a “Cadet X”-type scenario where the BSer sticks to Frankfurt’s definition but also “activates” the Honor Code’s definition of lying. For the sake of clarity, here are your terms of reference:

BS (Frankfurt) – pointless, unnecessary, insincere, or empty speech or act; not necessarily false, but always deceptive or phony in the sense that the speaker’s enterprise is to convey some sense of authenticity, while s/he is ultimately unconstrained by a concern for truth and is indifferent to how things really are.

Lying (Honor Code) – making an assertion with an intent to deceive or mislead.

Limit your case to 1-2 paragraphs. Max points – 10 – based on the outcome, a good, plausible scenario. Email it to me by 0000 hrs., 23 Aug.

The Next Generation of BSers

NYT has an article today ("The Language of Fakebook") on a pair of YA authors supplementing their story, “My Darkling,” with a Facebook page for their fictional character. According to the Times, the fake Facebook page does a good job of replicating real pages by copying the phony, persona-injected postings that mark real teen (and for that matter, adult) pages. Here's an excerpt; as you read it, think of Frankfurt’s definition of BS:

“My Darklyng” offers a brilliant commentary on how fictional teenagers are
on Facebook. Their stylized, mannered projections of self are as invented as any
in a novel. There are regional differences, of course, to the mannerisms but
there are certain common tics: Okayyyyyyyyy. Ahhhhhhh. Everything is extreme:
So-and-so “is obsessed with.” So-and-so “just had the longest day EVERRRRRR.”
They are in a perpetual high pitch of pleasure or a high pitch of crisis or
sometimes just a high pitch of high pitch. Holden Caulfield might have called it
“phoniness.”

A 14-year-old I talked to about this sent me a message that pretty much
sums it up: “I write more enthusiastically on Facebook than I actually am in
real life. Like if I see something remotely funny I might say
‘HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA,’ when really there is no expression on my
face.”

Frankfurt Interview

Click on the image to watch Harry Frankfurt interviewed on "The Daily Show" (March 2005).