Essay

Write a minimum 5 pages reflection critical analysis’ essay entitled “Is morality relative or are there objective moral truths?” This essay should explore the ethical, scientific, historic and socio-cultural dimensions of the readings. You have to read two readings
(links you will find below the assignment description), one written by Ruth Benedict, “The Case for Moral Relativism” and a second written by Louis P. Pojman entitled “The Case Against Moral Relativism.”

What position do you hold regarding the essay’s question? Do you agree or disagree with the positions stated in the two readings? In order to prove your thesis make reference to the required readings from Unit 1 and 2
, to the Instructor’s Lecture
, as well as to two readings included in this assignment. In the Instructor’s Lecture you have an additional bibliography.

Refer to Essay’s Rubrics in order to see the grading system.

In your essay you should:

Use both readings as well as the rest of the required readings included in the Learning Modules.
Give answers to the following questions:

Regarding Benedict’s paper:

Is Benedict correct in saying that our culture is “but one entry in a long series of possible adjustments”? What are the implications of this statement?
Can we separate the descriptive (or fact-stating) aspect of anthropological study from the prescriptive (evaluative) aspect of evaluating cultures? Are there some independent criteria by which we can say that some cultures are better than others? Can you think how this project might begin?
What are the implications of Benedict’s claim that morality is simply whatever a culture deems normal behavior? Is this a satisfactory equation? Can you apply it to the institution of slavery or the Nazi policy of anti-Semitism?
What is the significance of Benedict’s statement, “The very eyes with which we see the problem are conditioned by the long traditional habits of our own society”? Can we apply the conceptual relativism embodied in this statement to her own position? (taken form Pojman L.P., Vaughn L., The Moral Life, New York 2007, p. 165.)

b. Regarding Pojman’s paper:

Is Pojman correct in thinking most American students tend to be moral relativists? If he is, why is this? What is the attraction of relativism? If he’s not correct, explain your answer.

Explain the difference between subjective ethical relativism and conventionalism.

Sometimes people argue that since there are no universal moral truths, each culture’s morality is as good as every other, so we ought not to interfere in its practices. Assess this argument.

Does moral relativism have a bad effect on society? Reread the tape-recorded conversation between serial murderer Ted Bundy and one of his victims (pages 171-172) in which Bundy attempts to justify the murder of his victim on the basis of the idea that all moral values are subjective. Analyze Bundy’s discussion. How would the relativist respond to Bundy’s claim that relativism justifies rape and murder? What do you think? Why? (taken form Pojman L.P., Vaughn L., The Moral Life, New York 2007, pp. 190-191.)

Here are the readings :

http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/heathwood/pdf/benedict_relativism https://interbb.blackboard.com/courses/1/201413.1648/messaging/users/_21111_1/attachments/42d595b4d22c47ef9bb6374cf1e389e9/PojmanCase%281%29

ADefense of Ethical Relativism

RUTH BENEDICT

From Benedict, Ruth “Anthropology and the Abnormal,” Journal of General Psychology, 10, 1934.

Ruth Benedict (1887-1948), a foremost American anthropologist, taught at

Columbia University, and she is best known for her book Pattern of Culture

(1935). Benedict views social systems as communities with common beliefs

and practices, which have become integrated patterns of ideas and practices.

Like a work of art, a culture chooses which theme from its repertoire of

basic tendencies to emphasize and then produces a grand design, favoring

those tendencies. The final systems differ from one another in striking ways,

but we have no reason to say that one system is better than another. Once a

society has made the choice, normalcy will look different, depending on the

idea-practice pattern of the culture.

Benedict views morality as dependent on the varying histories and

environments of different cultures. In this essay she assembles an

impressive amount of data from her anthropological research of tribal

behavior on an island in northwest Melanesia from which she draws her

conclusion that moral relativism is the correct view of moral principles.

MODERN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY has become more and more a study of

the varieties and common elements of cultural environment and the consequences

of these in human behavior. For such a surly of diverse social orders primitive

peoples fortunately provide a laboratory not yet entirely vitiated by the spread of a

standardized worldwide civilization. Dyaks and Hopis, Fijians and Yakuts arc

significant for psychological and sociological study because only among these

simpler peoples has there been sufficient isolation to give opportunity for the

development of localized social forms. In the higher cultures the standardization of

custom and belief over a couple of continents has given a false sense of the

inevitability of the particular forms at have gained currency, and we need to turn to

a wider survey in order to check the conclusions we hastily base upon this near-

universality of familiar customs. Most of the simpler cultures did not gain the wide

currency of the one which, out of our experience, we identify with human nature,

but this was for various historical reasons, and certainly not for any that gives us as

its carriers a monopoly of social good or of social sanity. Modern civilization, from

this point of view, becomes not a necessary pinnacle of human achievement but

one entry in a long series of possible adjustments.

These adjustments, whether they are in mannerisms like the ways of showing

anger, or joy, or grief in any society, or in major human drives like those of sex,

prove to be far more variable than experience in any one culture would suggest. In

certain fields, such as that of religion or of formal marriage arrangements, these

wide limits of variability are well known and can be fairly described. In others it is

not yet possible to give a generalized account, but that does not absolve us of the

task of indicating the significance of the work that has been done and of die

problems that have arisen.

One of these problems relates to the customary modern normal-abnormal

categories and our conclusions regarding them. In how far are such categories

culturally determined, or in how far can we with assurance regard them as absolute?

In how far can we regard inability to function socially as abnormality, or in how far

is it necessary to regard this as a function of the culture?

As a matter of fact, one of the most striking facts that emerge front a stud of

widely varying cultures is the ease with which our abnormals function in other

cultures. It does not matter what kind of “abnormality” we choose for illustration,

those which indicate extreme instability, or those which are more in the nature of

character traits like sadism or delusions grandeur or of persecution, there are well-

described cultures in which these abnormals function at ease and with honor, and

apparently without danger or difficulty to the society.

The most notorious of these is trance and catalepsy. Even a very mild mystic is

aberrant in our culture. But most peoples have regarded even extreme psychic

manifestations not only as normal and desirable, but even as characteristic of

highly valued and gifted individuals. This was true even in our own cultural

background in that period when Catholicism made the ecstatic experience the mark

of sainthood. It is hard for its, born and brought up in a culture that makes no use

of the experience, to realize how important a role it may play and how many

individuals are capable of it, once it has been given an honorable place in any

society….

Cataleptic and trance phenomena are, of course, only one illustration of the fact

that those whom we regard as abnornials may function adequately in other cultures.

Many of our culturally discarded traits are selected for elaboration in different

societies. Homosexuality is an excellent example, for in this case our attention is

not constantly diverted, as in the consideration of trance, to the interruption of

routine activity which it implies. Homosexuality poses problem very simply. A

tendency toward this trait in our culture exposes an individual to all the conflicts to

which all aberrants are always exposed, and we tend to identify the consequences

of this conflict with homosexuality. But these consequences are obviously local

and cultural. Homosexuals in many societies are not incompetent, but they may be

such if the culture asks adjustments of them that would strain any man’s vitality.

Wherever homosexuality has been given an honorable place in any society, those

to whom it is congenial have filled adequately the honorable roles society assigns

to them. Plato’s Republic is, of course, the most convincing statement of such a

reading of homosexuality. It is presented as one of the major means to the good life,

and it was generally so regarded in Greece at that time.

The cultural attitude toward homosexuals has not always been on such a high

ethical plane, but it has been very varied. Among many American Indian tribes

there exists the institution of the berdache, as the French called them. These men-

women were men who at puberty or thereafter took the dress and the occupations

of women. Sometimes they married other men and lived with them. Sometimes

they were men with no inversion, persons of weak sexual endowment who chose

this role to avoid the jeers of the women. The berdaches were never regarded as of

first-rate supernatural power, as similar men-women were in Siberia, but rather as

leaders in women’s occupations, good healers in certain diseases, or, among certain

tribes, as the genial organizers of social affairs. In any case, they were socially

placed. They were not left exposed to the conflicts that visit the deviant who is

excluded from participation in the recognized patterns of his society.

The most spectacular illustrations of the extent to which normality may be

culturally defined are those cultures where an abnormality of our culture is the

cornerstone of their social structure. It is not possible to do justice to these

possibilities in a short discussion. A recent study of an island of northwest

Melanesia by Fortune describes a society built upon traits which we regard as

beyond the border of paranoia. In this tribe the exogamic groups look upon each

other as prime manipulators of black magic, so that one marries always into an

enemy group which remains for life one’s deadly and unappeasable foes. They look

upon a good garden crop as a confession of theft, for everyone is engaged in

making magic to induce into his garden the productiveness of his neighbors’;

therefore no secrecy in the island is so rigidly insisted upon as the secrecy of a

man’s harvesting of his yams. Their polite phrase at the acceptance of a gift is,

“And if you now poison me, how shall I repay you this present?” Their

preoccupation with poisoning is constant; no woman ever leaves her cooking pot

for a moment unattended. Even the great affinal economic exchanges that are

characteristic of this Melanesian culture area are quite altered in Dobu since they

are incompatible with this fear and distrust that pervades the culture. They go

farther and people the whole world outside their own quarters with such malignant

spirits that all-night feasts and ceremonials simply do not occur here. They have

even rigorous religiously enforced customs that forbid the sharing of seed even in

one family group. Anyone else’s food is deadly poison to you, so that communality

of’ stores is out of the question. For some months before harvest the whole society

is on the verge of starvation, but if one falls to the temptation and eat up one’s seed

yams, one is an outcast and a beachcomber for life. There is no corning back. It

involves, as a matter of course, divorce and the breaking of all social ties.

Now in this society where no one may work with another and no one may share

with another, Fortune describes the individual who was regarded by all his fellows

as crazy. He was not one of those who periodically ran amok and, beside himself

and frothing at the mouth, fell with a knife upon anyone lie could reach. Such

behavior they did not regard as putting anyone outside the pale. They did not even

put the individuals who were known to be liable to these attacks under any kind of

control. They merely fled when they saw the attack coming oil and kept out of the

way. “He would be all right tomorrow.” Brit there was one man of sunny, kindly

disposition who liked work and liked to be helpful. The compulsion was too strong

for him to repress it in favor of the opposite tendencies of his culture. Men and

women never spoke of him without laughing; he was silly and simple and

definitely crazy. Nevertheless, to the ethnologist used to a culture that has, in

Christianity, made his type the model of all virtue, he seemed a pleasant fellow….

… Among the Kwakiutl it did not matter whether a relative had died in bed of

disease, or by the hand of an enemy, in either case death was an affront to he wiped

out by the death of another person. The fact that one had been caused to mourn was

proof that one had been put upon. A chief’s sister and her daughter had gone up to

Victoria, and either because they drank bad whiskey or because their boat capsized

they never came back. The chief called together his warriors, “Now I ask you,

tribes, who shall wail? Shall I do it or shall another?” The spokesman answered, of

course, “Not you, Chief. Let some other of the tribes.” Immediately they set up the

war pole to announce their intention of wiping out the injury, and gather a war

party. They set out, and found seven men and two children asleep and killed them.

“Then they felt good when they arrived at Sebaa in the evening.”

The point which is of interest to us is that in our society those who on that

occasion would feel good when they arrived at Sebaa that evening would be the

definitely abnormal. There would be some, even in our society, but it is not a

recognized and approved mood under the circumstance. On the Northwest Coast

those are favored and fortunate to whom that mood under those circumstances is

congenial, and those to whom it is repugnant are unlucky. This latter minority can

and acquiring other that are difficult for them. The person, for instance, who, like a

Plains Indian whose wife has been taken from him, is too proud to fight, can deal

with the Northwest Coast civilization only by ignoring its strongest bents. If he

cannot achieve it, lie is the deviant in that culture, their instance of abnormality.

This head-hunting that takes place on the Northwest Coast after a death is no

matter of blood revenge or of organized vengeance. There is no effort to tie tip the

subsequent killing with any responsibility on the part of the victim for the death of

the person who is being mourned. A chief whose son has died goes visiting

wherever his fancy dictates, and he says to his host, “My prince has died today, and

you go with him.” Then lie kills him. In this, according to their interpretation, he

acts nobly because he has not been downed. He has thrust back in return. The

whole procedure is meaningless without the fundamental paranoid reading of be-

reavement. Death, like all the other untoward accidents of existence, confounds

man’s pride and can only be handled in the category of insults.

The behavior honored upon the Northwest Coast is one which is recognized as

abnormal in our civilization, and yet it is sufficiently close to the attitudes of our

own culture to be intelligible to its and to have a definite vocabulary with which we

may discuss it. The megalomaniac paranoid trend is a definite danger in our society.

It is encouraged by some of our major preoccupations, and it confronts us with a

choice of two possible attitudes. One is to brand it as abnormal and reprehensible,

and is the attitude we have chosen in our civilization. The other is to make it an

essential attribute of ideal man, and this is the solution in the culture of the

Northwest Coast.

These illustrations, which it has been possible to indicate only in the briefest

manner, force upon us the fact that normality is culturally defined. An adult shaped

to the drives and standards of either of these cultures, if lie were transported into

our civilization, would fall into our categories of abnormality. He would be faced

with the psychic dilemmas of the socially unavailable. In his own culture, however,

he is the pillar of society, the end result of socially inculcated mores, and the

problem of personal instability in his case simply does not arise.

No one civilization can possibly utilize in its mores the whole potential range of

human behavior. Just as there are great numbers of possible phonetic articulations,

and the possibility of language depends on a selection and standardization of a few

of these in order that speech communication may be possible at all, so the

possibility of organized behavior of every sort, from the fashions of local dress and

houses to the dicta of a people’s ethics and religion, depends upon a similar

selection among the possible behavior traits. In the field of recognized economic

obligations or sex tabus this selection is as nonrational and subconscious a process

as it is in the field of phonetics. It is a process which goes on in the group for long

periods of time and is historically conditioned by innumerable accidents of

isolation or of contact of peoples. In any comprehensive study of psychology, the

selection that different cultures have made in the course of history within the great

circumference of potential behavior is of great significance.

Every society, beginning with some slight inclination in one direction or

another, carries its preference farther and farther, integrating itself more and mole

completely upon its chosen basis, and discarding those type of behavior that are

uncongenial. Most of those organizations of personality that seem to us most

uncontrovertibly abnormal have been used by different civilizations in the very

foundations of their institutional life. Conversely the most valued traits of our

normal individuals have been looked on in differently organized cultures as

aberrant. Normality, in short, within a very wide range, is culturally defined. It is

primarily a term for the socially elaborated segment of human behavior in any

culture; and abnormality, a term for the segment that particular civilization does

not use. The very eyes with which we see the problem are conditioned by the long

traditional habits of our own society.

It is a point that has been made more often in relation to ethics than in relation

to psychiatry. We do not any longer make the mistake of deriving the morality of

our locality and decade directly from the inevitable constitution of human nature.

We do not elevate it to the dignity of a first principle. We recognize that morality

differs in every society, and is a convenient term for socially approved habits.

Mankind has always preferred to say, “It is a morally good,” rather than “It is

habitual,” and the fact of this preference is matter enough for a critical science of

ethics. But historically the two phrases are synonymous.

The concept of the normal is properly a variant of the concept of the good. It is

that which society has approved. A normal action is one which falls well within the

limits of expected behavior for a particular society. Its variability among different

peoples is essentially a function of the variability of the behavior patterns that

different societies have created for themselves, and can never be wholly divorced

from a consideration of culturally institutionalized types of behavior.

Each culture is a more or less elaborate working-out of the potentialities of the

segment it has chosen. In so far as a civilization is well integrated and consistent

within itself, it will tend to carry farther and farther, according to its nature, its

initial impulse toward a particular type of action, and from the point of view of any

other culture those elaborations will include more and more extreme and aberrant

traits.

Each of these traits, in proportion as it reinforces the chosen behavior patterns

of that culture, is for that culture normal. Those individuals to whom it is congenial

either congenitally, or as the result of childhood sets, are accorded prestige in that

culture, and are not visited with the social contempt or disapproval which their

traits would call clown upon them in a society that was differently organized. On

the other hand, those individuals whose characteristics are not congenial to the

selected type of human behavior in that community are the deviants, no matter how

valued their personality traits may be in a contrasted civilization.

The Dohuan who is not easily susceptible to fear of treachery, who enjoys work

and likes to be helpful, is their neurotic and regarded as silly. On the Northwest

Coast the person who finds it difficult to read life in terms of an insult contest will

be the person upon whom fall all the difficulties of the culturally unprovided for.

The person who does not find it easy to humiliate a neighbor, nor to see

humiliation in his own experience, who is genial and loving, may, of course, find

some unstandardized way of achieving satisfactions in his society, but not in the

major patterned responses that his culture requires of him. If he is born to play an

important role in a family with many hereditary privileges, he can succeed only by

doing violence to his whole personality. If he does not succeed, he has betrayed his

culture; that is, he is abnormal.

I have spoken of individuals as having sets toward certain types of behavior,

and of these sets as running sometimes counter to the types of behavior which are

institutionalized in the culture to which they belong. From all that we know of

contrasting cultures it seems clear that differences of temperament occur in every

society. The matter has never been made the subject of investigation, but from the

available material it would appeal that these temperament types are very likely of

universal recurrence. That is, there is an ascertainable range of human behavior

that is found wherever a sufficiently large series of individuals is observed. But the

proportion in which behavior types stand to one another in different societies is not

universal. The vast majority of individuals in any group are shaped to the fashion

of that culture. In other words, most individuals are plastic to the moulding force of

the society into which they are born. In a society that values trance, as in India,

they will have supernormal experience. In a society that institutionalizes

homosexuality, they will be homosexual. In a society that sets the gathering of

possessions as the chief human objective, they will amass property. The deviants,

whatever the type of behavior the culture has institutionalized, will remain few in

number, and there seems no more difficulty in moulding the vast malleable majori-

ty to the “normality” of what we consider an aberrant trait, such as delusions of

reference, than to the normality of such accepted behavior patterns as

acquisitiveness. The small proportion of the number of the deviants in any culture

is not a function of the sure instinct with which that society has built itself upon the

fundamental sanities, but of the universal fact that, happily, the majority of

mankind quite readily take any shape that is presented to them.

Héctor E. López-Sierra, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Humanistic Studies Faculty

Metropolitan Campus

Inter American University of Puerto Rico

Measuring Morality: What is

Right and Wrong?

Introduction

• One can say that every ethical value involves some
standard of behavior, and every standard is defined in a
prescriptive manner.

• Ethical standards are expressed in terms of “ought” and
“should,” or “ought not” and “should not.” They transcend
the language of description, speaking not only of “what is,”
but rather “what should be.”

• Where do we find such standards? What kinds of sources
are available to us upon which to build an ethical system?
The options are as follows:

1. “Oughts” are derived from what “is.”

• Definition:

– Mortimer Adler: An attempt “to get conclusions in the imperative mood
from premises entirely in the indicative mood.” This view presupposes the
origination of value is found in the facts, the observation of nature.

– G. G. Simpson: What is ethically right is related in some way to what is
materially true. A man runs a red light. He cannot draw a conclusion of
whether or not to run the red light without having an earlier presupposition
or standard in place concerning that ethical choice: “One shouldn’t run red
lights.”

• Example:

– Behaviorism: All of our actions are the result of either our genetic make-up
or our environment. This system presupposes that nothing exists beyond
the material realm. What is called mind is reduced to physical and chemical
reactions. We cannot act upon the world; rather, the world acts upon us.

• Critique:

– There can be no human responsibility for actions. Behaviorists themselves
appeal to a standard of justice when wronged. Contrary to the contention of
the behaviorists, there are both philosophical reasons and scientific
evidence to support the belief that we do possess an immaterial substance.

Critique…

• To have true moral values, people must get them from somewhere other

than the actual world of description. This view destroys the very concepts of

good and evil, because “what is” contains both.

• To speak of good and evil becomes non-essential. Charles Manson said, “If

God is one, what is bad?” Baudelaire lamented, “If God exists, he is the

Devil.”

• This view does not answer the question of predatorial/survival life in nature.

All that we call “human” would be destroyed if people practiced this natural

ethic consistently and universally. Not many hold this view seriously. T. H.

Huxley admitted that, although evolution is true, it leads to bad ethics. Even

evolutionists choose not to live in such a world. Instead, they philosophically

smuggle Christian ethics arbitrarily into their system and hold it romantically

upon their naturalistic base.

2. The Consensus Ethic (Majority Rule)

• Definition:

– Whatever a cultural group approves of is deemed right; whatever

the group disapproves of is wrong. In America, we find the most

popular expression of cultural relativism demonstrated in the

opinion poll.

• Example:

– Utilitarianism-This moral theory seeks to maximize, by your

actions, the greatest good for the greatest number of people. The

emphasis is on the group, not the individual.

• Critique:

– Bentham and Mill could not agree on whether to evaluate on a

quantitative or qualitative basis. The questions we need to ask are:

What is good? or Good for whom? Justice, does it matter? Is it as

or more important than the good of the group?

Critique…

• Ethics by majority may actually have little to do with morality. For
example, if 55% of the German people assented to the
extermination of Jewry by Hitler and his henchmen, then their
actions were “right,” and other cultures should have withheld any
criticism of German sovereignty in their own internal affairs.

• Cultural relativism is really “status-quoism,” providing no strong
motive for social change. It is also capricious over time. For
example, in 1859, slavery in the United States was socially
acceptable and abortion was illegal. Today, the reverse is true.

• Those who prefer this ethical foundation must face one very
dangerous fact: If there is no standard by which society can be
judged and held accountable, then society becomes the judge.
When that happens, no one is safe–minorities, the unborn, the
elderly, the handicapped, and perhaps even the blond-headed or the
left handed!

3. The Arbitrary Ethic (Power)

• Definition:

– An individual or elitist group sets itself up as arbiter of values and
uses the necessary force to maintain these values. As
democratic consensus rules from below, arbitrary absolutists rule
from above.

• Example: Marxism:

– The will of men (party) decides on the values based on
subjective principles of dialectic materialism. Lenin would call
any action useful to the party moral action; he would call it
immoral if it is harmful to the party.

• Critique:

– The arbiter can be a dictator, a parliament, a supreme court, a
political party, or any elite configuration which has the power to
impose its will upon the populace.

Critique…

• What is enforced is based solely upon what the arbiter decides will be
enforced. The Catholic Inquisitors summarily tortured and executed
unrepentant heretics. Soviet Russia was ruthlessly governed by an all-
powerful Central Committee.

• It is important to remember that such arbiters can make something legal but
not moral. The 1972 Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion is the most
pertinent contemporary example. The judges, choosing to ignore medical,
legal, and religious precedents on the true humanity of the unborn, made an
arbitrary, pragmatic decision. This ruling was legal, but not necessarily
moral.

• The great flaw in this approach is that it presupposes great trust in those
who govern. History has not confirmed the wisdom of placing such
confidence in those who wield absolute power. The balancing of power in
the U.S. Constitution between the various branches of government reflects
the wariness of its framers in giving undue authority to any federal entity.

• Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. It leads to despotism,
and tyranny.

4. The True Absolute (Transcendence)

• Definition:

– C. S. Lewis has here identified the “three parts of morality,” the first two of
which humans are well-acquainted with: internal moral deficiencies and
conflict with others through ethical choices. It is the third part for which all
humans long: namely, some objective standard to which all humans must
adhere. Such a standard necessarily transcends the world of description.
It presupposes that God exists and has spoken or revealed such standards.

• Example:

– The Ten Commandments provide the boundaries for the definition of
humanness; any act contrary to this true absolute is a violation of our
humanity. Further, these standards are not merely external principles, but
rather the very essence of the nature and character of God.

• Critique:

– Some things are right; some are wrong, and objectively so. This ethical
system is based on normative principles rather than subjective utilitarian
ones. It also provides a basis for conviction: what was right yesterday will be
right today. The individual is protected against the whole of society–wicked
kings, pragmatic judges, corrupt politicians, decadent populace. There is
also a true and legitimate motive for fighting evil, an objective basis for
social change.

5. Natural Law and Divine Providence

• Definition:

– Thomas Aquinas plays in the natural law tradition. Every encyclopedia
article on natural law thought refers to Aquinas.

– For Aquinas, there are two key features of the natural law:

1) God„ is the giver of the natural law, the natural law is just one
aspect of divine providence.

2) Human’s role as recipient of the natural law, the natural law
constitutes the principles of practical rationality, those principles by
which human action is to be judged as reasonable or
unreasonable; and so the theory of natural law is from that
perspective the preeminent part of the theory.

• Example:

– The Bible as the main resource for natural law.

• Critique:

– The Natural Law is primarily a Christian oriented discourse; which does not
represent the views of other world religions, such as Hinduism.

Bibliography for Moral Actions

• Adams, R. M. (1988). Common projects and moral virtue. Midwest Studies in
Philosophy, 13, 297–307.

• Alston, W. P. (1967). Motives and motivation. In P. Edwards (Ed.), The encyclopedia
of philosophy (Vol. 5, pp. 399–409). New York: Macmillan.

• Blum, L. A. (1980). Friendship, altruism, and morality. London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul.

• Brandt, R. B. (1988). The structure of virtue. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 13, 64–
82.

• Brandt, R. B. (1996). Facts, values, and morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

• Gibbard, A. (1990). Wise choices, apt feelings. A theory of normative judgment.
Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard University Press.

• John, O. P. & Gosling, S. D. (2000). Personality traits. In A. E. Kazdin (Ed.),
Encyclopedia of psychology (Vol. 6, pp. 140–144). Oxford–New York: Oxford
University Press.

• McInerny, R. (1997). Ethica Thomistica: The Moral Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas.
Washington: The Catholic University of America Press.

• Pervin, L. A. (2000). Personality. In A. E. Kazdin (Ed.), Encyclopedia of psychology
(Vol. 6, pp. 100–106). Oxford–New York: Oxford University Press.

• Slote, M. (2001). Morals from motives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Smith, A. (1994). Theorie der ethischen Gefühle. Hamburg: Meiner. (Original
erschienen 17906: The theory of moral sentiments)

• Wright, G. H. v. (1983). Practical reason. Philosophical papers (Vol. 1): Oxford: Basil
Blackwell.

Bibliography for Natural Law and Ethics

• Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae..

• Darwall, Stephen. 2006. The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability .
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

• Duns Scotus, John. 1997. Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality. Ed. Allan Wolter. Washington,
DC: Catholic University of America Press.

• Finnis, John. 1980. Natural Law and Natural Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Finnis, John. 1998. Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Hare, John E. 2001. God’s Call. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

• Hobbes, Thomas. 1994. Elements of Law: Natural and Politic. Ed. J. C. A. Gaskin. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. Cited as EL by chapter and section number.

• Irwin, Terence. 2000. “Ethics as an Inexact Science: Aristotle’s Ambitions for Moral Theory.” In
Brad Hooker and Margaret Little, eds. Moral Particularism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Kaczor, Christopher. 2002. Proportionalism and the Natural Law Tradition. Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America Press.

• Lisska, Anthony. 1996. Aquinas’s Theory of Natural Law: An Analytic Reconstruction. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.

• Locke, John. 1988. Essays on the Law of Nature. Ed. W. von Leyden. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

• MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1999. Dependent Rational Animals. Chicago: Open Court.

• Moore, Michael. 1982. “Moral Reality.” Wisconsin Law Review [1982], pp. 1061-1156.

• Porter, Jean. 2005. Nature as Reason: A Thomistic Theory of the Natural Law. Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans.

• Thompson, Michael. 2004. “Apprehending Human Form.” Modern Moral Philosophy, Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 47-74.

Issues in Ethics

1
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EDITION

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.

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Philosophical Musings and Essays

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C O N T E N T S

I. Morality as a Mental State

II. Affiliation and Morality

III.

Nature, Aesthetics, Pleasure, and Ethics

IV.

On Being Human

The Encroachment of the Public

VI.

And Then There Were Too Many

VII.

Eugenics and the Future of the Human Species

VIII.

The Myth of the Right to Life

IX.

The Argument for Torture

The Aborted Contract

XI. In Our Own Image –

The Debate about Cloning

XII.

Ethical Relativism and Absolute Taboos

XIII.

The Merits of Stereotypes

XIV. The Happiness of Others

XV. The Egotistic Friend

XVI. The Distributive Justice of the Market

XVII. The Agent-Principal Conundrum

XVIII.

Legalizing Crime

XIX. The Insanity of the Defense

XX. The Impeachment of the President

XXI. The Rights of Animals

XXII.

Just War or a Just War?

XXIII.

Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice

XXIV.

Euthanasia and the Right to Die

XXV. The Auth

XXVI. About “After the Rain”

Morality as a Mental State

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

INTRODUCTION

Moral values, rules, principles, and judgements are often

thought of as beliefs or as true beliefs. Those who hold

them to be true beliefs also annex to them a warrant or a

justification (from the “real world”). Yet, it is far more

reasonable to conceive of morality (ethics) as a state of

mind, a mental state. It entails belief, but not necessarily

true belief, or justification. As a mental state, morality

cannot admit the “world” (right and wrong, evidence,

goals, or results) into its logical formal definition. The

world is never part of the definition of a mental state.

Another way of looking at it, though, is that morality

cannot be defined in terms of goals and results – because

these goals and results ARE morality itself. Such a

definition would be tautological.

There is no guarantee that we know when we are in a

certain mental state. Morality is no exception.

An analysis based on the schemata and arguments

proposed by Timothy Williamson follows.

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Moral Mental State – A Synopsis

Morality is the mental state that comprises a series of

attitudes to propositions. There are four classes of moral

propositions: “It is wrong to…”, “It is right to…”, (You

should) do this…”, “(You should) not do this…”. The most

common moral state of mind is: one adheres to p.

Adhering to p has a non-trivial analysis in the more basic

terms of (a component of) believing and (a component of)

knowing, to be conceptually and metaphysically analysed

later. Its conceptual status is questionable because we

need to decompose it to obtain the necessary and

sufficient conditions for its possession (Peacocke, 1992).

It may be a complex (secondary) concept.

Adhering to proposition p is not merely believing that p

and knowing that p but also that something should be so,

if and only if p (moral law).

Morality is not a factive attitude. One believes p to be true

– but knows p to be contingently true (dependent on

epoch, place, and culture). Since knowing is a factive

attitude, the truth it relates to is the contingently true

nature of moral propositions.

Morality relates objects to moral propositions and it is a

mental state (for every p, having a moral mental relation

to p is a mental state).

Adhering to p entails believing p (involves the mental

state of belief). In other words, one cannot adhere without

believing. Being in a moral mental state is both necessary

and sufficient for adhering to p. Since no “truth” is

involved – there is no non-mental component of adhering

to p.

Adhering to p is a conjunction with each of the conjuncts

(believing p and knowing p) a necessary condition – and

the conjunction is necessary and sufficient for adhering to

One doesn’t always know if one adheres to p. Many moral

rules are generated “on the fly”, as a reaction to

circumstances and moral dilemmas. It is possible to

adhere to p falsely (and behave differently when faced

with the harsh test of reality). A sceptic would say that for

any moral proposition p – one is in the position to know

that one doesn’t believe p. Admittedly, it is possible for a

moral agent to adhere to p without being in the position to

know that one adheres to p, as we illustrated above. One

can also fail to adhere to p without knowing that one fails

to adhere to p. As Williamson says “transparency (to be in

the position to know one’s mental state) is false”.

Naturally, one knows one’s mental state better than one

knows other people’s. There is an observational

asymmetry involved. We have non-observational

(privileged) access to our mental state and observational

access to other people’s mental states. Thus, we can say

that we know our morality non-observationally (directly) –

while we are only able to observe other people’s morality.

One believes moral propositions and knows moral

propositions. Whether the belief itself is rational or not, is

debatable. But the moral mental state strongly imitates

rational belief (which relies on reasoning). In other words,

the moral mental state masquerades as a factive attitude,

though it is not. The confusion arises from the normative

nature of knowing and being rational.

Normative elements exist in belief attributions, too, but,

for some reason, are considered “outside the realm of

belief”. Belief, for instance, entails the grasping of mental

content, its rational processing and manipulation,

defeasible reaction to new information.

We will not go here into the distinction offered by

Williamson between “believing truly” (not a mental state,

according to him) and “believing”. Suffice it to say that

adhering to p is a mental state, metaphysically speaking –

and that “adheres to p” is a (complex or secondary) mental

concept. The structure of adheres to p is such that the non-

mental concepts are the content clause of the attitude

ascription and, thus do not render the concept thus

expressed non-mental: adheres to (right and wrong,

evidence, goals, or results).

Williamson’s Mental State Operator calculus is applied.

Origin is essential when we strive to fully understand the

relations between adhering that p and other moral

concepts (right, wrong, justified, etc.). To be in the moral

state requires the adoption of specific paths, causes, and

behaviour modes. Moral justification and moral

judgement are such paths.

Knowing, Believing and their Conjunction

We said above that:

“Adhering to p is a conjunction with each of the conjuncts

(believing p and knowing p) a necessary condition – and
the conjunction is necessary and sufficient for adhering to

p.”

Williamson suggests that one believes p if and only if one

has an attitude to proposition p indiscriminable from

knowing p. Another idea is that to believe p is to treat p as

if one knew p. Thus, knowing is central to believing

though by no means does it account for the entire

spectrum of belief (example: someone who chooses to

believe in God even though he doesn’t know if God

exists). Knowledge does determine what is and is

not

appropriate to believe, though (“standard of

appropriateness”). Evidence helps justify belief.

But knowing as a mental state is possible without having a

concept of knowing. One can treat propositions in the

same way one treats propositions that one knows – even if

one lacks concept of knowing. It is possible (and

practical) to rely on a proposition as a premise if one has a

factive propositional attitude to it. In other words, to treat

the proposition as though it is known and then to believe

in it.

As Williamson says, “believing is a kind of a botched

knowing”. Knowledge is the aim of belief, its goal.

Affiliation and Morality

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

Also Read:

The Business of Torture

I. Practical Considerations

The problem of the “ticking bomb” – rediscovered after

September 11 by Alan Dershowitz, a renowned criminal

defense lawyer in the United States – is old hat. Should

physical torture be applied – where psychological strain

has failed – in order to discover the whereabouts of a

ticking bomb and thus prevent a mass slaughter of the

innocent? This apparent ethical dilemma has been

confronted by ethicists and jurists from Great Britain to

Israel.

Nor is Dershowitz’s proposal to have the courts issue

“torture warrants” (Los Angeles Times, November 8,

2001) unprecedented. In a controversial decision in 1996,

the Supreme Court of Israel permitted its internal security

forces to apply “moderate physical pressure” during the

interrogation of suspects.

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http://samvak.tripod.com/brief-torture01.html

It has thus fully embraced the recommendation of the

1987 Landau Commission, presided over by a former

Supreme Court judge. This blanket absolution was

repealed in 1999 when widespread abuses against

Palestinian detainees were unearthed by human rights

organizations.

Indeed, this juridical reversal – in the face of growing

suicidal terrorism – demonstrates how slippery the ethical

slope can be. What started off as permission to apply mild

torture in extreme cases avalanched into an all-pervasive

and pernicious practice. This lesson – that torture is habit-

forming and metastasizes incontrollably throughout the

system – is the most powerful – perhaps the only –

argument against it.

As Harvey Silverglate argued in his rebuttal of

Dershowitz’s aforementioned op-ed piece:

“Institutionalizing torture will give it society‘s

imprimatur, lending it a degree of respectability. It will

then be virtually impossible to curb not only the

increasing frequency with which warrants will be sought

— and granted — but also the inevitable rise in

unauthorized use of torture. Unauthorized torture will

increase not only to extract life-saving information, but

also to obtain confessions (many of which will then prove

false). It will also be used to punish real or imagined

infractions, or for no reason other than human sadism.

This is a genie we should not let out of the bottle.”

Alas, these are weak contentions.

That something has the potential to be widely abused –

and has been and is being widely misused – should not

inevitably lead to its utter, universal, and unconditional

proscription. Guns, cars, knives, and books have always

been put to vile ends. Nowhere did this lead to their

complete interdiction.

Moreover, torture is erroneously perceived by liberals as a

kind of punishment. Suspects – innocent until proven

guilty – indeed should not be subject to penalty. But

torture is merely an interrogation technique. Ethically, it is

no different to any other pre-trial process: shackling,

detention, questioning, or bad press. Inevitably, the very

act of suspecting someone is traumatic and bound to

inflict pain and suffering – psychological, pecuniary, and

physical – on the suspect.

True, torture is bound to yield false confessions and

wrong information, Seneca claimed that it “forces even

the innocent to lie”. St. Augustine expounded on the

moral deplorability of torture

thus:

―If the accused be

innocent, he will undergo for an uncertain crime a certain

punishment, and that not for having committed a crime,

but because it is unknown whether he committed it.”

But the same can be said about other, less corporeal,

methods of interrogation. Moreover, the flip side of ill-

gotten admissions is specious denials of guilt. Criminals

regularly disown their misdeeds and thus evade their

penal consequences. The very threat of torture is bound to

limit this miscarriage of justice. Judges and juries can

always decide what confessions are involuntary and were

extracted under duress.

Thus, if there was a way to ensure that non-lethal torture

is narrowly defined, applied solely to extract time-critical

information in accordance with a strict set of rules and

specifications, determined openly and revised frequently

by an accountable public body; that abusers are severely

punished and instantly removed; that the tortured have

recourse to the judicial system and to medical attention at

any time – then the procedure would have been ethically

justified in rare cases if carried out by the authorities.

This proviso – “if carried out by the authorities” – is

crucial.

The sovereign has rights denied the individual, or any

subset of society. It can judicially kill with impunity. Its

organs – the police, the military – can exercise violence. It

is allowed to conceal information, possess illicit or

dangerous substances, deploy arms, invade one’s bodily

integrity, or confiscate property. To permit the sovereign

to torture while forbidding individuals, or organizations

from doing so would, therefore, not be without precedent,

or inconsistent.

Alan Dershowitz expounds:

“(In the United States) any interrogation technique,

including the use of truth serum or even torture, is not

prohibited. All that is prohibited is the introduction into

evidence of the fruits of such techniques in a criminal trial

against the person on whom the techniques were used. But

the evidence could be used against that suspect in a non-

criminal case – such as a deportation hearing – or against

someone else.”

When the unspeakable horrors of the Nazi concentration

camps were revealed, C.S. Lewis wrote, in quite

desperation:

“What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the

wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazis at

bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have

practiced? If they had no notion of what we mean by

Right, then, though we might still have had to fight them,

we could no more have blamed them for that than for the

color of their hair.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New

York: Macmillan, paperback edition, 1952).

But legal torture should never be directed at innocent

civilians based on arbitrary criteria such as their race or

religion. If this principle is observed, torture would not

reflect on the moral standing of the state. Identical acts are

considered morally sound when carried out by the realm –

and condemnable when discharged by individuals.

Consider the denial of freedom. It is lawful incarceration

at the hands of the republic – but kidnapping if effected by

terrorists.

Nor is torture, as “The Economist” misguidedly claims, a

taboo.

According to the 2002 edition of the “Encyclopedia

Britannica”, taboos are “the prohibition of an action or the

use of an object based on ritualistic distinctions of them

either as being sacred and consecrated or as being

dangerous, unclean, and accursed.” Evidently, none of this

applies to torture. On the contrary, torture – as opposed,

for instance, to incest – is a universal, state-sanctioned

behavior.

Amnesty International – who should know better –

professed to have been shocked by the results of their own

surveys:

“In preparing for its third international campaign to stop

torture, Amnesty International conducted a survey of its

research files on 195 countries and territories. The survey

covered the period from the beginning of 1997 to mid-

2000. Information on torture is usually concealed, and

reports of torture are often hard to document, so the

figures almost certainly underestimate its extent. The

statistics are shocking. There were reports of torture or ill-

treatment by state officials in more than 150 countries. In

more than 70, they were widespread or persistent. In more

than 80 countries, people reportedly died as a result.”

Countries and regimes abstain from torture – or, more

often, claim to do so – because such overt abstention is

expedient. It is a form of global political correctness, a

policy choice intended to demonstrate common values and

to extract concessions or benefits from others. Giving up

this efficient weapon in the law enforcement arsenal even

in Damoclean circumstances is often rewarded with

foreign direct investment, military aid, and other forms of

support.

But such ethical magnanimity is a luxury in times of war,

or when faced with a threat to innocent life. Even the

courts of the most liberal societies sanctioned atrocities in

extraordinary circumstances. Here the law conforms both

with common sense and with formal, utilitarian, ethics.

II. Ethical Considerations

Rights – whether moral or legal – impose obligations or
duties on third parties towards the right-holder. One has a
right AGAINST other people and thus can prescribe to
them certain obligatory behaviors and proscribe certain
acts or omissions. Rights and duties are two sides of the
same Janus-like ethical coin.
This duality confuses people. They often erroneously
identify rights with their attendant duties or obligations,
with the morally decent, or even with the morally
permissible. One’s rights inform other people how they

MUST behave towards one – not how they SHOULD, or

OUGHT to act morally. Moral behavior is not dependent
on the existence of a right. Obligations are.
To complicate matters further, many apparently simple
and straightforward rights are amalgams of more basic
moral or legal principles. To treat such rights as unities is
to mistreat them.

Take the right not to be tortured. It is a compendium of

many distinct rights, among them: the right to bodily and

mental integrity, the right to avoid self-incrimination, the

right not to be pained, or killed, the right to save one’s life

(wrongly reduced merely to the right to self-defense), the

right to prolong one’s life (e.g., by receiving medical

attention), and the right not to be forced to lie under

duress.

None of these rights is self-evident, or unambiguous, or
universal, or immutable, or automatically applicable. It is

safe to say, therefore, that these rights are not primary –

but derivative, nonessential, or mere “wants”.

Moreover, the fact that the torturer also has rights whose

violation may justify torture is often overlooked.

Consider these two, for instance:

The Rights of Third Parties against the Tortured

What is just and what is unjust is determined by an ethical

calculus, or a social contract – both in constant flux. Still,

it is commonly agreed that every person has the right not

to be tortured, or killed unjustly.

Yet, even if we find an Archimedean immutable point of

moral reference – does A’s right not to be tortured, let

alone killed, mean that third parties are to refrain from

enforcing the rights of other people against A?

What if the only way to right wrongs committed, or about

to be committed by A against others – was to torture, or

kill A? There is a moral obligation to right wrongs by

restoring, or safeguarding the rights of those wronged, or

about to be wronged by A.

If the defiant silence – or even the mere existence – of A

are predicated on the repeated and continuous violation of

the rights of others (especially their right to live), and if

these people object to such violation – then A must be

tortured, or killed if that is the only way to right the wrong

and re-assert the rights of A’s victims.

This, ironically, is the argument used by liberals to justify

abortion when the fetus (in the role of A) threatens his

mother’s rights to health and life.

The Right to Save One’s Own Life
One has a right to save one’s life by exercising self-

defense or otherwise, by taking certain actions, or by

avoiding them. Judaism – as well as other religious, moral,

and legal systems – accepts that one has the right to kill a

pursuer who knowingly and intentionally is bent on taking
one’s life. Hunting down Osama bin-Laden in the wilds of
Afghanistan is, therefore, morally acceptable (though not

morally mandatory). So is torturing his minions.

When there is a clash between equally potent rights – for
instance, the conflicting rights to life of two people – we
can decide among them randomly (by flipping a coin, or
casting dice). Alternatively, we can add and subtract

rights in a somewhat macabre arithmetic. The right to life

definitely prevails over the right to comfort, bodily

integrity, absence of pain and so on. Where life is at stake,

non-lethal torture is justified by any ethical calculus.

Utilitarianism – a form of crass moral calculus – calls for
the maximization of utility (life, happiness, pleasure). The
lives, happiness, or pleasure of the many outweigh the

life, happiness, or pleasure of the few. If by killing or

torturing the few we (a) save the lives of the many (b) the

combined life expectancy of the many is longer than the

combined life expectancy of the few and (c) there is no

other way to save the lives of the many – it is morally

permissible to kill, or torture the few.

III. The Social Treaty

There is no way to enforce certain rights without

infringing on others. The calculus of ethics relies on

implicit and explicit quantitative and qualitative

hierarchies. The rights of the many outweigh certain rights

of the few. Higher-level rights – such as the right to life –

override rights of a lower order.

The rights of individuals are not absolute but “prima

facie”. They are restricted both by the rights of others and

by the common interest. They are inextricably connected

to duties towards other individuals in particular and the

community in general. In other words, though not

dependent on idiosyncratic cultural and social contexts,

they are an integral part of a social covenant.

It can be argued that a suspect has excluded himself from

the social treaty by refusing to uphold the rights of others

– for instance, by declining to collaborate with law

enforcement agencies in forestalling an imminent disaster.

Such inaction amounts to the abrogation of many of one’s

rights (for instance, the right to be free). Why not apply

this abrogation to his or her right not to be tortured?

The Aborted Contract And the Right to Life

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

The issue of abortion is emotionally loaded and this often

makes for poor, not thoroughly thought out

arguments. The questions: “Is abortion immoral” and “Is

abortion a murder” are often confused. The pregnancy

(and the resulting fetus) are discussed in terms normally

reserved to natural catastrophes (force majeure). At times,

the embryo is compared to cancer, a thief, or an invader:

after all, they are both growths, clusters of cells. The

difference, of course, is that no one contracts cancer

willingly (except, to some extent, smokers -–but, then

they gamble, not contract).

When a woman engages in voluntary sex, does not use

contraceptives and gets pregnant – one can say that she

signed a contract with her fetus. A contract entails the

demonstrated existence of a reasonably (and reasonable)

free will. If the fulfillment of the obligations in a contract

between individuals could be life-threatening – it is fair

and safe to assume that no rational free will was involved.

No reasonable person would sign or enter such a contract

with another person (though most people would sign such

contracts with society).

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Judith Jarvis Thomson argued convincingly (“A Defence

of Abortion”) that pregnancies that are the result of forced

sex (rape being a special case) or which are life

threatening should or could, morally, be terminated. Using

the transactional language: the contract was not entered to

willingly or reasonably and, therefore, is null and

void. Any actions which are intended to terminate it and

to annul its consequences should be legally and morally

permissible.

The same goes for a contract which was entered into

against the express will of one of the parties and despite

all the reasonable measures that the unwilling party

adopted to prevent it. If a mother uses contraceptives in a

manner intended to prevent pregnancy, it is as good as

saying: ” I do not want to sign this contract, I am doing

my reasonable best not to sign it, if it is signed – it is

contrary to my express will”. There is little legal (or

moral) doubt that such a contract should be voided.

Much more serious problems arise when we study the

other party to these implicit agreements: the embryo. To

start with, it lacks consciousness (in the sense that is

needed for signing an enforceable and valid contract). Can

a contract be valid even if one of the “signatories” lacks

this sine qua non trait? In the absence of consciousness,

there is little point in talking about free will (or rights

which depend on sentience). So, is the contract not a

contract at all? Does it not reflect the intentions of the

parties?

The answer is in the negative. The contract between a

mother and her fetus is derived from the larger Social

Contract. Society – through its apparatuses – stands for

the embryo the same way that it represents minors, the

mentally retarded, and the insane. Society steps in – and

has the recognized right and moral obligation to do so –

whenever the powers of the parties to a contract (implicit

or explicit) are not balanced. It protects small citizens

from big monopolies, the physically weak from the thug,

the tiny opposition from the mighty administration, the

barely surviving radio station from the claws of the

devouring state mechanism. It also has the right and

obligation to intervene, intercede and represent the

unconscious: this is why euthanasia is absolutely

forbidden without the consent of the dying person. There

is not much difference between the embryo and the

comatose.

A typical contract states the rights of the parties. It

assumes the existence of parties which are “moral

personhoods” or “morally significant persons” – in other

words, persons who are holders of rights and can demand

from us to respect these rights. Contracts explicitly

elaborate some of these rights and leaves others

unmentioned because of the presumed existence of the

Social Contract. The typical contract assumes that there is

a social contract which applies to the parties to the

contract and which is universally known and, therefore,

implicitly incorporated in every contract. Thus, an explicit

contract can deal with the property rights of a certain

person, while neglecting to mention that person’s rights to

life, to free speech, to the enjoyment the fruits of his

lawful property and, in general to a happy life.

There is little debate that the Mother is a morally

significant person and that she is a rights-holder. All born

humans are and, more so, all adults above a certain age.

But what about the unborn fetus?

One approach is that the embryo has no rights until certain

conditions are met and only upon their fulfillment is he

transformed into a morally significant person (“moral

agent”). Opinions differ as to what are the conditions.

Rationality, or a morally meaningful and valued life are

some of the oft cited criteria. The fallaciousness of this

argument is easy to demonstrate: children are irrational –

is this a licence to commit infanticide?

A second approach says that a person has the right to life

because it desires it.

But then what about chronic depressives who wish to die

– do we have the right to terminate their miserable lives?

The good part of life (and, therefore, the differential and

meaningful test) is in the experience itself – not in the

desire to experience.

Another variant says that a person has the right to life

because once his life is terminated – his experiences

cease. So, how should we judge the right to life of

someone who constantly endures bad experiences (and, as

a result, harbors a death wish)? Should he better be

“terminated”?

Having reviewed the above arguments and counter-

arguments, Don Marquis goes on (in “Why Abortion is

Immoral”, 1989) to offer a sharper and more

comprehensive criterion: terminating a life is morally

wrong because a person has a future filled with value and

meaning, similar to ours.

But the whole debate is unnecessary. There is no conflict

between the rights of the mother and those of her fetus

because there is never a conflict between parties to an

agreement. By signing an agreement, the mother gave up

some of her rights and limited the others. This is normal

practice in contracts: they represent compromises, the

optimization (and not the maximization) of the parties’

rights and wishes. The rights of the fetus are an

inseparable part of the contract which the mother signed

voluntarily and reasonably. They are derived from the

mother’s behaviour. Getting willingly pregnant (or

assuming the risk of getting pregnant by not using

contraceptives reasonably) – is the behaviour which

validates and ratifies a contract between her and the

fetus. Many contracts are by behaviour, rather than by a

signed piece of paper. Numerous contracts are verbal or

behavioural. These contracts, though implicit, are as

binding as any of their written, more explicit,

brethren. Legally (and morally) the situation is crystal

clear: the mother signed some of her rights away in this

contract. Even if she regrets it – she cannot claim her

rights back by annulling the contract unilaterally. No

contract can be annulled this way – the consent of both

parties is required. Many times we realize that we have

entered a bad contract, but there is nothing much that we

can do about it. These are the rules of the game.

Thus the two remaining questions: (a) can this specific

contract (pregnancy) be annulled and, if so (b) in which

circumstances – can be easily settled using modern

contract law. Yes, a contract can be annulled and voided if

signed under duress, involuntarily, by incompetent

persons (e.g., the insane), or if one of the parties made a

reasonable and full scale attempt to prevent its signature,

thus expressing its clear will not to sign the contract. It is

also terminated or voided if it would be unreasonable to

expect one of the parties to see it through. Rape,

contraception failure, life threatening situations are all

such cases.

This could be argued against by saying that, in the case of

economic hardship, f or instance, the damage to the

mother’s future is certain. True, her value- filled,

meaningful future is granted – but so is the detrimental

effect that the fetus will have on it, once born. This

certainty cannot be balanced by the UNCERTAIN value-

filled future life of the embryo. Always, preferring an

uncertain good to a certain evil is morally wrong. But

surely this is a quantitative matter – not a qualitative one.

Certain, limited aspects of the rest of the mother’s life will

be adversely effected (and can be ameliorated by society’s

helping hand and intervention) if she does have the

baby. The decision not to have it is both qualitatively and

qualitatively different. It is to deprive the unborn of all the

aspects of all his future life – in which he might well have

experienced happiness, values, and meaning.

The questions whether the fetus is a Being or a growth of

cells, conscious in any manner, or utterly unconscious,

able to value his life and to want them – are all but

irrelevant. He has the potential to lead a happy,

meaningful, value-filled life, similar to ours, very much as

a one minute old baby does. The contract between him

and his mother is a service provision contract. She

provides him with goods and services that he requires in

order to materialize his potential. It sounds very much like

many other human contracts. And this contract continue

well after pregnancy has ended and birth given.

Consider education: children do not appreciate its

importance or value its potential – still, it is enforced upon

them because we, who are capable of those feats, want

them to have the tools that they will need in order to

develop their potential. In this and many other respects,

the human pregnancy continues well into the fourth year

of life (physiologically it continues in to the second year

of life – see “Born Alien”). Should the location of the

pregnancy (in uterus, in vivo) determine its future? If a

mother has the right to abort at will, why should the

mother be denied her right to terminate the ” pregnancy”

AFTER the fetus emerges and the pregnancy continues

OUTSIDE her womb? Even after birth, the woman’s body

is the main source of food to the baby and, in any case,

she has to endure physical hardship to raise the

child. Why not extend the woman’s ownership of her body

and right to it further in time and space to the post-natal

period?

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Contracts to provide goods and services (always at a

personal cost to the provider) are the commonest of

contracts. We open a business. We sell a software

application, we publish a book – we engage in helping

others to materialize their potential. We should always do

so willingly and reasonably – otherwise the contracts that

we sign will be null and void. But to deny anyone his

capacity to materialize his potential and the goods and

services that he needs to do so – after a valid contract was

entered into – is

immoral.

To refuse to provide a service or

to condition it provision (Mother: ” I will provide the

goods and services that I agreed to provide to this fetus

under this contract only if and when I benefit from such

provision”) is a violation of the contract and should be

penalized. Admittedly, at times we have a right to choose

to do the immoral (because it has not been codified as

illegal) – but that does not turn it into moral.

Still, not every immoral act involving the termination of

life can be classified as murder. Phenomenology is

deceiving: the acts look the same (cessation of life

functions, the prevention of a future). But murder is the

intentional termination of the life of a human who

possesses, at the moment of death, a consciousness (and,

in most cases, a free will, especially the will not to

die). Abortion is the intentional termination of a life

which has the potential to develop into a person with

consciousness and free will. Philosophically, no identity

can be established between potential and actuality. The

destruction of paints and cloth is not tantamount (not to

say identical) to the destruction of a painting by Van

Gogh, made up of these very elements. Paints and cloth

are converted to a painting through the intermediacy and

agency of the Painter. A cluster of cells a human makes

only through the agency of Nature.

Surely, the destruction of the painting materials

constitutes an offence against the Painter. In the same

way, the destruction of the fetus constitutes an offence

against Nature. But there is no denying that in both cases,

no finished product was eliminated. Naturally, this

becomes less and less so (the severity of the terminating

act increases) as the process of creation advances.

Classifying an abortion as murder poses numerous and

insurmountable philosophical problems.

No one disputes the now common view that the main

crime committed in aborting a pregnancy – is a crime

against potentialities. If so, what is the philosophical

difference between aborting a fetus and destroying a

sperm and an egg? These two contain all the information

(=all the potential) and their destruction is philosophically

no less grave than the destruction of a fetus. The

destruction of an egg and a sperm is even more serious

philosophically: the creation of a fetus limits the set of all

potentials embedded in the genetic material to the one

fetus created. The egg and sperm can be compared to the

famous wave function (state vector) in quantum

mechanics – the represent millions of potential final states

(=millions of potential embryos and lives). The fetus is

the collapse of the wave function: it represents a much

more limited set of potentials. If killing an embryo is

murder because of the elimination of potentials – how

should we consider the intentional elimination of many

more potentials through masturbation and contraception?

The argument that it is difficult to say which sperm cell

will impregnate the egg is not serious. Biologically, it

does not matter – they all carry the same genetic

content. Moreover, would this counter-argument still hold

if, in future, we were be able to identify the chosen one

and eliminate only it? In many religions (Catholicism)

contraception is murder. In Judaism, masturbation is “the

corruption of the seed” and such a serious offence that it is

punishable by the strongest religious penalty: eternal ex-

communication (“Karet”).

If abortion is indeed murder how should we resolve the

following moral dilemmas and questions (some of them

patently absurd):

Is a natural abortion the equivalent of manslaughter

(through negligence)?

Do habits like smoking, drug addiction, vegetarianism –

infringe upon the right to life of the embryo? Do they

constitute a violation of the contract?

Reductio ad absurdum: if, in the far future, research will

unequivocally prove that listening to a certain kind of

music or entertaining certain thoughts seriously hampers

the embryonic development – should we apply censorship

to the Mother?

Should force majeure clauses be introduced to the

Mother-Embryo pregnancy contract? Will they give the

mother the right to cancel the contract? Will the embryo

have a right to terminate the contract? Should the

asymmetry persist: the Mother will have no right to

terminate – but the embryo will, or vice versa?

Being a rights holder, can the embryo (=the State) litigate

against his Mother or Third Parties (the doctor that

aborted him, someone who hit his mother and brought

about a natural abortion) even after he died?

Should anyone who knows about an abortion be

considered an accomplice to murder?

If abortion is murder – why punish it so mildly? Why is

there a debate regarding this question? “Thou shalt not

kill” is a natural law, it appears in virtually every legal

system. It is easily and immediately identifiable. The fact

that abortion does not “enjoy” the same legal and moral

treatment says a lot.

In Our Own Image

The Debate about Cloning
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

There are two types of cloning. One involves harvesting

stem cells from embryos (“therapeutic cloning”). These

are the biological equivalent of a template. They can

develop into any kind of mature functional cell and thus

help cure many degenerative and auto-immune diseases.

The other kind of cloning is much derided in popular

culture – and elsewhere – as the harbinger of a Brave, New

World. A nucleus from any cell of a donor is embedded in

an egg whose own nucleus has been removed. The egg is

then implanted in a woman’s womb and a cloned baby is

born nine months later. Biologically, the cloned infant is a

replica of the donor.

Cloning is often confused with other advances in bio-

medicine and bio-engineering – such as genetic selection.

It cannot – in itself – be used to produce “perfect humans”

or select sex or other traits. Hence, some of the arguments

against cloning are either specious or fuelled by

ignorance.

It is true, though, that cloning, used in conjunction with

other bio-technologies, raises serious bio-ethical

questions.

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Scare scenarios of humans cultivated in sinister labs as

sources of spare body parts, “designer babies”, “master

races”, or “genetic sex slaves” – formerly the preserve of B

sci-fi movies – have invaded mainstream discourse.

Still, cloning touches upon Mankind’s most basic fears

and hopes. It invokes the most intractable ethical and

moral dilemmas. As an inevitable result, the debate is

often more passionate than informed.

Right to Life Arguments

According to cloning’s detractors, the nucleus removed

from the egg could otherwise have developed into a

human being. Thus, removing the nucleus amounts to

murder.

It is a fundamental principle of most moral theories that

all human beings have a right to life. The existence of a

right implies obligations or duties of third parties towards

the right-holder. One has a right AGAINST other people.

The fact that one possesses a certain right – prescribes to

others certain obligatory behaviours and proscribes certain

acts or omissions. This Janus-like nature of rights and

duties as two sides of the same ethical coin – creates great

confusion. People often and easily confuse rights and their

attendant duties or obligations with the morally decent, or

even with the morally permissible. What one MUST do as

a result of another’s right – should never be confused with

one SHOULD or OUGHT to do morally (in the absence

of a right).

But is the egg – alive?

This question is NOT equivalent to the ancient quandary

of “when does life begin”. Life crystallizes, at the earliest,

when an egg and a sperm unite (i.e., at the moment of

fertilization). Life is not a potential – it is a process

triggered by an event. An unfertilized egg is neither a

process – nor an event. It does not even possess the

potential to become alive unless and until it merges with a

sperm. Should such merger not occur – it will never

develop life.

The potential to become X is not the ontological

equivalent of actually being X, nor does it spawn moral

and ethical rights and obligations pertaining to X. The

transition from potential to being is not trivial, nor is it

automatic, or inevitable, or independent of context. Atoms

of various elements have the potential to become an egg

(or, for that matter, a human being) – yet no one would

claim that they ARE an egg (or a human being), or that

they should be treated as one (i.e., with the same rights

and obligations).

Moreover, it is the donor nucleus embedded in the egg

that endows it with life – the life of the cloned baby. Yet,

the nucleus is usually extracted from a muscle or the skin.

Should we treat a muscle or a skin cell with the same

reverence the critics of cloning wish to accord an

unfertilized egg?

Is this the main concern?

The main concern is that cloning – even the therapeutic

kind – will produce piles of embryos. Many of them –

close to 95% with current biotechnology – will die. Others

can be surreptitiously and illegally implanted in the

wombs of “surrogate mothers”.

It is patently immoral, goes the precautionary argument,

to kill so many embryos. Cloning is such a novel

technique that its success rate is still unacceptably low.

There are alternative ways to harvest stem cells – less

costly in terms of human life. If we accept that life begins

at the moment of fertilization, this argument is valid. But

it also implies that – once cloning becomes safer and

scientists more adept – cloning itself should be permitted.

This is anathema to those who fear a slippery slope. They

abhor the very notion of “unnatural” conception. To them,

cloning is a narcissistic act and an ignorant and dangerous

interference in nature’s sagacious ways. They would ban

procreative cloning, regardless of how safe it is.

Therapeutic cloning – with its mounds of discarded fetuses

– will allow rogue scientists to cross the boundary between

permissible (curative cloning) and illegal (baby cloning).

Why should Baby Cloning be Illegal?

Cloning’s opponents object to procreative cloning because

it can be abused to design babies, skew natural selection,

unbalance nature, produce masters and slaves and so on.

The “argument from abuse” has been raised with every

scientific advance – from in vitro fertilization to space

travel.

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Every technology can be potentially abused. Television

can be either a wonderful educational tool – or an

addictive and mind numbing pastime. Nuclear fission is a

process that yields both nuclear weapons and atomic

energy. To claim, as many do, that cloning touches upon

the “heart” of our existence, the “kernel” of our being, the

very “essence” of our nature – and thus threatens life itself

– would be incorrect.

There is no “privileged” form of technological abuse and

no hierarchy of potentially abusive technologies. Nuclear

fission tackles natural processes as fundamental as life.

Nuclear weapons threaten life no less than cloning. The

potential for abuse is not a sufficient reason to arrest

scientific research and progress – though it is a necessary

condition.

Some fear that cloning will further the government’s

enmeshment in the healthcare system and in scientific

research. Power corrupts and it is not inconceivable that

governments will ultimately abuse and misuse cloning and

other biotechnologies. Nazi Germany had a state-

sponsored and state-mandated eugenics program in the

1930’s.

Yet, this is another variant of the argument from abuse.

That a technology can be abused by governments does not

imply that it should be avoided or remain undeveloped.

This is because all technologies – without a single

exception – can and are abused routinely – by governments

and others. This is human nature.

Fukuyama raised the possibility of a multi-tiered

humanity in which “natural” and “genetically modified”

people enjoy different rights and privileges. But why is

this inevitable? Surely this can easily by tackled by

proper, prophylactic, legislation?

All humans, regardless of their pre-natal history, should

be treated equally. Are children currently conceived in

vitro treated any differently to children conceived in

utero? They

are not.

There is no reason that cloned or

genetically-modified children should belong to distinct

legal classes.

Unbalancing Nature

It is very anthropocentric to argue that the proliferation of

genetically enhanced or genetically selected children will

somehow unbalance nature and destabilize the precarious

equilibrium it maintains. After all, humans have been

modifying, enhancing, and eliminating hundreds of

thousands of species for well over 10,000 years now.

Genetic modification and bio-engineering are as natural as

agriculture. Human beings are a part of nature and its

manifestation. By definition, everything they do is natural.

Why would the genetic alteration or enhancement of one

more species – homo sapiens – be of any consequence? In

what way are humans “more important” to nature, or

“more crucial” to its proper functioning? In our short

history on this planet, we have genetically modified and

enhanced wheat and rice, dogs and cows, tulips and

orchids, oranges and potatoes. Why would interfering

with the genetic legacy of the human species be any

different?

Effects on Society

Cloning – like the Internet, the television, the car,

electricity, the telegraph, and the wheel before it – is

bound to have great social consequences. It may foster

“embryo industries”. It may lead to the exploitation of

women – either willingly (“egg prostitution”) or

unwillingly (“womb slavery”). Charles Krauthammer, a

columnist and psychiatrist, quoted in “The Economist”,

says:

“(Cloning) means the routinisation, the

commercialisation, the commodification of the human

embryo”.

Exploiting anyone unwillingly is a crime, whether it

involves cloning or white slavery. But why would egg

donations and surrogate motherhood be considered

problems? If we accept that life begins at the moment of

fertilization and that a woman owns her body and

everything within it – why should she not be allowed to

sell her eggs or to host another’s baby and how would

these voluntary acts be morally repugnant? In any case,

human eggs are already being bought and sold and the

supply far exceeds the demand.

Moreover, full-fledged humans are routinely “routinised,

commercialized, and commodified” by governments,

corporations, religions, and other social institutions.

Consider war, for instance – or commercial advertising.

How is the “routinisation, commercialization, and

commodification” of embryos more reprehensible that the

“routinisation, commercialization, and commodification”

of fully formed human beings?

Curing and Saving Life

Cell therapy based on stem cells often leads to tissue

rejection and necessitates costly and potentially dangerous

immunosuppressive therapy. But when the stem cells are

harvested from the patient himself and cloned, these

problems are averted. Therapeutic cloning has vast

untapped – though at this stage still remote – potential to

improve the lives of hundreds of millions.

As far as “designer babies” go, pre-natal cloning and

genetic engineering can be used to prevent disease or cure

it, to suppress unwanted traits, and to enhance desired

ones. It is the moral right of a parent to make sure that his

progeny suffers less, enjoys life more, and attains the

maximal level of welfare throughout his or her life.

That such technologies can be abused by over-zealous, or

mentally unhealthy parents in collaboration with

avaricious or unscrupulous doctors – should not prevent

the vast majority of stable, caring, and sane parents from

gaining access to them.

Ethical Relativism and Absolute Taboos
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

I. Taboos

II. Incest

III. Suicide

IV. Race

V. Moral Relativism

I. Taboos

Taboos regulate our sexual conduct, race relations,

political institutions, and economic mechanisms – virtually

every realm of our life. According to the 2002 edition of

the “Encyclopedia Britannica”, they are “the prohibition

of an action or the use of an object based on ritualistic

distinctions of them either as being sacred and

consecrated or as being dangerous, unclean, and

accursed.”

Jews are instructed to ritually cleanse themselves after

having been in contact with a Torah scroll – or a corpse.

This association of the sacred with the accursed and the

holy with the depraved is the key to the guilt and sense of

danger which accompany the violation of a taboo.

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In Polynesia, where the term originated, “taboos could

include prohibitions on fishing or picking fruit at certain

seasons; food taboos that restrict the diet of pregnant

women; prohibitions on talking to or touching chiefs or

members of other high social classes; taboos on walking

or traveling in certain areas, such as forests; and various

taboos that function during important life events such as

birth, marriage, and death.”

Political correctness is a particularly pernicious kind of

taboo enforcement. It entails an all-pervasive self-

censorship coupled with social sanctions. Consider the

treatment of the right to life, incest, suicide, and race.

II. Incest

In contemporary thought, incest is invariably associated

with child abuse and its horrific, long-lasting, and often

irreversible consequences. But incest is far from being the

clear-cut or monolithic issue that millennia of taboo

imply. Incest with minors is a private – and particularly

egregious – case of pedophilia or statutory rape. It should

be dealt with forcefully. But incest covers much more

besides these criminal

acts.

Incest is the ethical and legal prohibition to have sex with

a related person or to marry him or her – even if the people

involved are consenting and fully informed adults.

Contrary to popular mythology, banning incest has little to

do with the fear of genetic diseases. Even genetically

unrelated parties (a stepfather and a stepdaughter) can

commit incest.

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Incest is also forbidden between fictive kin or

classificatory kin (that belong to the same matriline or

patriline). In certain societies (certain Native American

tribes, or the Chinese) it is sufficient to carry the same

family name (i.e., to belong to the same clan) to render a

relationship incestuous. Clearly, eugenic considerations

have little to do with incest.

Moreover, the use of contraceptives means that incest

does not need to result in pregnancy and the transmission

of genetic material. Inbreeding (endogamous) or

straightforward incest is the norm in many life forms,

even among primates (e.g., chimpanzees). It was also

quite common until recently in certain human societies –

the Hindus, for instance, or many Native American tribes,

and royal families everywhere.

Nor is the taboo universal. In some societies, incest is

mandatory or prohibited, according to one’s social class

(Bali). In others, the Royal House started a tradition of

incestuous marriages, later emulated by the lower classes

(Ancient Egypt). The list is long and it serves to

demonstrate the diversity of attitudes towards this most

universal practice.

The more primitive and aggressive the society, the more

strict and elaborate the set of incest prohibitions and the

fiercer the penalties for their violation. The reason may be

economic. Incest interferes with rigid algorithms of

inheritance in conditions of extreme scarcity (for instance,

of land and water) and consequently leads to survival-

threatening internecine disputes.

Freud said that incest provokes horror because it touches

upon our forbidden, ambivalent sexual cravings and

aggression towards members of our close family.

Westermark held that “familiarity breeds repulsion” and

that the incest taboo – rather than counter inbred instincts –

simply reflects emotional reality. Both ignored the fact

that the incest taboo is learned – not inherent.

We can easily imagine a society where incest is extolled,

taught, and practiced – and out-breeding is regarded with

horror and revulsion. The incestuous marriages among

members of the royal households of Europe were intended

to preserve the familial property and expand the clan’s

territory. They were normative, not aberrant. Marrying an

outsider was considered abhorrent.

III. Suicide

Self-sacrifice, avoidable martyrdom, engaging in life

risking activities, refusal to prolong one’s life through

medical treatment, euthanasia, overdosing, and self-

destruction that is the result of coercion – are all closely

related to suicide. They all involve a deliberately self-

inflicted death.

But while suicide is chiefly intended to terminate a life –

the other acts are aimed at perpetuating, strengthening,

and defending values or other people. Many are appalled

by the choice implied in suicide – of death over life. They

feel that it demeans life – i.e., abnegates its meaning.

Life’s meaning – the outcome of active selection by the

individual – is either external (i.e., God’s plan) or internal

(i.e., the outcome of an arbitrary frame of reference).

Our life is rendered meaningful only by integrating into an

eternal thing, process, design, or being. Suicide makes life

trivial because the act is not natural – not part of the

eternal framework, the undying process, the timeless cycle

of birth and death. Suicide is a break with eternity.

Sidgwick said that only conscious (i.e., intelligent) beings

can appreciate values and meanings. So, life is significant

to conscious, intelligent, though finite, beings – because it

is a part of some eternal goal, plan, process, thing, design,

or being. Suicide flies in the face of Sidgwick’s dictum. It

is a statement by an intelligent and conscious being about

the meaninglessness of life.

If suicide is a statement, than society, in this case, is

against the freedom of expression. In the case of suicide,

free speech dissonantly clashes with the sanctity of a

meaningful life. To rid itself of the anxiety brought on by

this conflict, society cast suicide as a depraved or even

criminal act and its perpetrators are much castigated.

The suicide violates not only the social contract – but,

many will add, covenants with God or nature. Thomas

Aquinas said that – since organisms strive to survive –

suicide is an unnatural act. Moreover, it adversely affects

the community and violates the property rights of God,

the imputed owner of one’s spirit. Christianity regards the

immortal soul as a gift and, in Jewish writings, it is a

deposit. Suicide amounts to the abuse or misuse of God’s

possessions, temporarily lodged in a corporeal mansion.

This paternalism was propagated, centuries later, by

Blackstone, the codifier of British Law. Suicide – being

self-murder – is a grave felony, which the state has a right

to prevent and to punish for.

In certain countries this still is the case. In Israel, for

instance, a soldier is considered to be “military property”

and an attempted suicide is severely punished as “a

corruption of a army chattel”.

Paternalism, a malignant mutation of benevolence, is

about objectifying people and treating them as

possessions. Even fully-informed and consenting adults

are not granted full, unmitigated autonomy, freedom, and

privacy. This tends to breed “victimless crimes”. The

“culprits” – gamblers, homosexuals, communists, suicides,

drug addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes – are “protected from

themselves” by an intrusive nanny state.

The possession of a right creates a corresponding

obligation not to act to frustrate its exercise. Suicide is

often the choice of a mentally and legally competent

adult. Life is such a basic and deep set phenomenon that

even the incompetents – the mentally retarded or mentally

insane or minors – can fully gauge its significance and

make “informed” decisions, in my view.

The paternalists claim counterfactually that no competent

adult “in his right mind” will ever decide to commit

suicide. They cite the cases of suicides who survived and

felt very happy that they have – as a compelling reason to

intervene. But we all make irreversible decisions for

which, sometimes, we are sorry. It gives no one the right

to interfere.

Paternalism is a slippery slope. Should the state be

allowed to prevent the birth of a genetically defective

child or forbid his parents to marry in the first place?

Should unhealthy adults be forced to abstain from

smoking, or steer clear from alcohol? Should they be

coerced to exercise?

Suicide is subject to a double moral standard. People are

permitted – nay, encouraged – to sacrifice their life only in

certain, socially sanctioned, ways. To die on the

battlefield or in defense of one’s religion is commendable.

This hypocrisy reveals how power structures – the state,

institutional religion, political parties, national movements

– aim to monopolize the lives of citizens and adherents to

do with as they see fit. Suicide threatens this monopoly.

Hence the taboo.

IV. Race

Social Darwinism, sociobiology, and, nowadays,

evolutionary psychology are all derided and disparaged

because they try to prove that nature – more specifically,

our genes – determine our traits, our accomplishments, our

behavior patterns, our social status, and, in many ways,

our destiny. Our upbringing and our environment change

little. They simply select from ingrained libraries

embedded in our brain.

Moreover, the discussion of race and race relations is

tainted by a history of recurrent ethnocide and genocide

and thwarted by the dogma of egalitarianism. The

(legitimate) question “are all races equal” thus becomes a

private case of the (no less legitimate) “are all men equal”.

To ask “can races co-exist peacefully” is thus to embark

on the slippery slope to slavery and Auschwitz. These

historical echoes and the overweening imposition of

political correctness prevent any meaningful – let alone

scientific – discourse.

The irony is that “race” – or at least race as determined by

skin color – is a distinctly unscientific concept, concerned

more with appearances (i.e., the color of one’s skin, the

shape of one’s head or hair), common history, and social

politics – than with heredity. Most human classificatory

traits are not concordant. Different taxonomic criteria

conjure up different “races”. IQ is a similarly contentious

construct, although it is stable and does predict academic

achievement effectively.

Thus, racist-sounding claims are as unfounded as claims

about racial equality. Still, while the former are treated as

an abomination – the latter are accorded academic

respectability and scientific scrutiny.

Consider these two hypotheses:

I. That the IQ (or any other measurable trait) of a given

race or ethnic group is hereditarily determined (i.e., that

skin color and IQ – or another measurable trait – are

concordant) and is strongly correlated with certain types

of behavior, life accomplishments, and social status.

II. That the IQ (or any other quantifiable trait) of a given

race or “ethnic group” is the outcome of social and

economic circumstances and even if strongly correlated

with behavior patterns, academic or other achievements,

and social status – which is disputable – is amenable to

“social engineering”.

Both theories are falsifiable and both deserve serious,

unbiased, study. That we choose to ignore the first and

substantiate the second demonstrates the pernicious and

corrupting effect of political correctness.

Claims of the type “trait A and trait B are concordant”

should be investigated by scientists, regardless of how

politically incorrect they are. Not so claims of the type

“people with trait A are …” or “people with trait A do …”.

These should be decried as racist tripe.

Thus the statement “The traits of being an Ashkenazi Jew

(A) and suffering from Tay-Sachs induced idiocy (B) are

concordant” is true 1 of every 2500 times.

The statements “people who are Jews (i.e., with trait A)

are (narcissists)”, or “people who are Jews (i.e., with trait

A) do this: they drink the blood of innocent Christian

children during the Passover rites” – are vile racist and

paranoid statements.

People are not created equal. Human diversity – a taboo

topic – is a cause for celebration. It is important to study

and ascertain what are the respective contributions of

nature and nurture to the way people – individuals and

groups – grow, develop, and mature. In the pursuit of this

invaluable and essential knowledge, taboos are

dangerously counter-productive.

V. Moral Relativism

Protagoras, the Greek Sophist, was the first to notice that

ethical codes are culture-dependent and vary in different

societies, economies, and geographies. The pragmatist

believe that what is right is merely what society thinks is

right at any given moment. Good and evil are not

immutable. No moral principle – and taboos are moral

principles – is universally and eternally true and valid.

Morality applies within cultures but not across them.

But ethical or cultural relativism and the various schools

of pragmatism ignore the fact that certain ethical percepts

– probably grounded in human nature – do appear to be

universal and ancient, if not eternal. Fairness, veracity,

keeping promises, moral hierarchy – permeate all the

cultures we have come to know. Nor can certain moral

tenets be explained away as mere expressions of emotions

or behavioral prescriptions – devoid of cognitive content,

logic, and a relatedness to certain facts.

Still, it is easy to prove that most taboos are, indeed,

relative. Incest, suicide, feticide, infanticide, parricide,

ethnocide, genocide, genital mutilation, social castes, and

adultery are normative in certain cultures – and strictly

proscribed in others. Taboos are pragmatic moral

principles. They derive their validity from their efficacy.

They are observed because they work, because they yield

solutions and provide results. They disappear or are

transformed when no longer useful.

Incest is likely to be tolerated in a world with limited

possibilities for procreation. Suicide is bound to be

encouraged in a society suffering from extreme scarcity of

resources and over-population. Ethnocentrism, racism and

xenophobia will inevitably rear their ugly heads again in

anomic circumstances. None of these taboos is

unassailable.

None of them reflects some objective truth, independent

of culture and circumstances. They are convenient

conventions, workable principles, and regulatory

mechanisms – nothing more. That scholars are frantically

trying to convince us otherwise – or to exclude such a

discussion altogether – is a sign of the growing

disintegration of our weakening society.

The Merits of Stereotypes
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
Also Read:

The Science of Superstitions

The trouble with people is not that they don’t know but

that they know so much that ain’t so.

— Henry Wheeler Shaw

Do stereotypes usefully represent real knowledge or

merely reflect counter-productive prejudice?

Stereotypes invariably refer in a generalized manner to –

often arbitrary – groups of people, usually minorities.

Stereotypes need not necessarily be derogatory or

cautionary, though most of them are. The “noble savage”

and the “wild savage” are both stereotypes. Indians in

movies, note Ralph and Natasha Friar in their work titled

“The Only Good Indian – The Hollywood Gospel” (1972)

are overwhelmingly drunken, treacherous, unreliable, and

childlike. Still, some of them are as portrayed as

unrealistically “good”.

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But alcoholism among Native Americans – especially

those crammed into reservations – is, indeed, more

prevalent than among the general population. The

stereotype conveys true and useful information about

inebriation among Indians. Could its other descriptors be

equally accurate?

It is hard to unambiguously define, let alone quantify,

traits. At which point does self-centerdness become

egotism or the pursuit of self-interest – treachery? What

precisely constitutes childlike behavior? Some types of

research cannot even be attempted due to the stifling

censorship of political correctness. Endeavoring to answer

a simple question like: “Do blacks in America really

possess lower IQ’s and, if so, is this deficiency

hereditary?” has landed many an American academic

beyond the pale.

The two most castigated aspects of stereotypes are their

generality and their prejudice. Implied in both criticisms is

a lack of veracity and rigor of stereotypes. Yet, there is

nothing wrong with generalizations per se. Science is

constructed on such abstractions from private case to

general rule. In historiography we discuss “the Romans”

or “ancient Greeks” and characterize them as a group.

“Nazi Germany”, “Communist Russia”, and

“Revolutionary France” are all forms of groupspeak.

In an essay titled “Helping Students Understand

Stereotyping” and published in the April 2001 issue of

“Education Digest”, Carlos Cortes suggest three

differences between “group generalizations” and

“stereotypes”:

“Group generalizations are flexible and permeable to new,

countervailing, knowledge – ideas, interpretations, and

information that challenge or undermine current beliefs.

Stereotypes are rigid and resistant to change even in the

face of compelling new evidence.

Second, group generalizations incorporate intragroup

heterogeneity while stereotypes foster intragroup

homogeneity. Group generalizations embrace diversity –

“there are many kinds of Jews, tall and short, mean and

generous, clever and stupid, black and white, rich and

poor”. Stereotypes cast certain individuals as exceptions

or deviants – “though you are Jewish, you don’t behave as

a Jew would, you are different”.

Finally, while generalizations provide mere clues about

group culture and behavior – stereotypes purport to proffer

immutable rules applicable to all the members of the

group. “Stereotypes develop easily, rigidify

surreptitiously, and operate reflexively, providing simple,

comfortable, convenient bases for making personal sense

of the world. Because generalizations require greater

attention, content flexibility, and nuance in application,

they do not provide a stereotype’s security blanket of

permanent, inviolate, all-encompassing, perfectly reliable

group knowledge.”

It is commonly believed that stereotypes form the core of

racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of

xenophobia. Stereotypes, goes the refrain, determine the

content and thrust of prejudices and propel their advocates

to take action against minorities. There is a direct lineage,

it is commonly held, between typecasting and lynching.

It is also claimed that pigeonholing reduces the quality of

life, lowers the expectations, and curbs the

accomplishments of its victims. The glass ceiling and the

brass ceiling are pernicious phenomena engendered by

stereotypes. The fate of many social policy issues – such

as affirmative action, immigration quotas, police profiling,

and gay service in the military – is determined by

stereotypes rather than through informed opinion.

USA Today Magazine reported the findings of a survey of

1000 girls in grades three to twelve conducted by Harris

Interactive for “Girls”. Roughly half the respondents

thought that boys and girls have the same abilities –

compared to less than one third of boys. A small majority

of the girls felt that “people think we are only interested in

love and romance”.

Somewhat less than two thirds of the girls were told not to

brag about things they do well and were expected to spend

the bulk of their time on housework and taking care of

younger children. Stereotypical thinking had a practical

effect: girls who believe that they are as able as boys and

face the same opportunities are way more likely to plan to

go to college.

But do boys and girls have the same abilities? Absolutely

not. Boys are better at spatial orientation and math. Girls

are better at emotions and relationships. And do girls face

the same opportunities as boys? It would be perplexing if

they did, taking into account physiological, cognitive,

emotional, and reproductive disparities – not to mention

historical and cultural handicaps. It boils down to this

politically incorrect statement: girls are not boys and

never will be.

Still, there is a long stretch from “girls are not boys” to

“girls are inferior to boys” and thence to “girls should be

discriminated against or confined”. Much separates

stereotypes and generalizations from discriminatory

practice.

Discrimination prevails against races, genders, religions,

people with alternative lifestyles or sexual preferences,

ethnic groups, the poor, the rich, professionals, and any

other conceivable minority. It has little to do with

stereotypes and a lot to do with societal and economic

power matrices. Granted, most racists typecast blacks and

Indians, Jews and Latinos. But typecasting in itself does

not amount to racism, nor does it inevitably lead to

discriminatory conduct.

In a multi-annual study titled “Economic Insecurity,

Prejudicial Stereotypes, and Public Opinion on

Immigration Policy”, published by the Political Science

Quarterly, the authors Peter Burns and James Gimpel

substantiated the hypothesis that “economic self-interest

and symbolic prejudice have often been treated as rival

explanations for attitudes on a wide variety of issues, but

it is plausible that they are complementary on an issue

such as immigration. This would be the case if prejudice

were caused, at least partly, by economic insecurity.”

A long list of scholarly papers demonstrate how racism –

especially among the dispossessed, dislocated, and low-

skilled – surges during times of economic hardship or

social transition. Often there is a confluence of long-

established racial and ethnic stereotypes with a growing

sense of economic insecurity and social dislocation.

“Social Identity Theory” tells us that stereotypical

prejudice is a form of compensatory narcissism. The acts

of berating, demeaning, denigrating, and debasing others

serve to enhance the perpetrators’ self-esteem and regulate

their labile sense of self-worth. It is vicarious “pride by

proxy” – belonging to an “elite” group bestows superiority

on all its members. Not surprisingly, education has some

positive influence on racist attitudes and political

ideology.

Having been entangled – sometimes unjustly – with

bigotry and intolerance, the merits of stereotypes have

often been overlooked.

In an age of information overload, “nutshell” stereotypes

encapsulate information compactly and efficiently and

thus possess an undeniable survival value. Admittedly,

many stereotypes are self-reinforcing, self-fulfilling

prophecies. A young black man confronted by a white

supremacist may well respond violently and an Hispanic,

unable to find a job, may end up is a street gang.

But this recursiveness does not detract from the usefulness

of stereotypes as “reality tests” and serviceable

prognosticators. Blacks do commit crimes over and above

their proportion in the general population. Though

stereotypical in the extreme, it is a useful fact to know and

act upon. Hence racial profiling.

Stereotypes – like fables – are often constructed around

middle class morality and are prescriptive. They split the

world into the irredeemably bad – the other, blacks, Jews,

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Hispanics, women, gay – and the flawlessly good, we, the

purveyors of the stereotype. While expressly unrealistic,

the stereotype teaches “what not to be” and “how not to

behave”. A by-product of this primitive rendition is

segregation.

A large body of scholarship shows that proximity and

familiarity actually polarize rather than ameliorate inter-

ethnic and inter-racial tensions. Stereotypes minimize

friction and violence by keeping minorities and the

majority apart. Venting and vaunting substitute for

vandalizing and worse. In time, as erstwhile minorities are

gradually assimilated and new ones emerge, conflict is

averted.

Moreover, though they frequently reflect underlying

deleterious emotions – such as rage or envy – not all

stereotypes are negative. Blacks are supposed to have

superior musical and athletic skills. Jews are thought to be

brainier in science and shrewder in business. Hispanics

uphold family values and ethnic cohesion. Gays are

sensitive and compassionate. And negative stereotypes are

attached even to positive social roles – athletes are dumb

and violent, soldiers inflexible and programmed.

Stereotypes are selective filters. Supporting data is

hoarded and information to the contrary is ignored. One

way to shape stereotypes into effective coping strategies is

to bombard their devotees with “exceptions”, contexts,

and alternative reasoning.

Blacks are good athletes because sports is one of the few

egalitarian career paths open to them. Jews, historically

excluded from all professions, crowded into science and

business and specialized. If gays are indeed more sensitive

or caring than the average perhaps it is because they have

been repressed and persecuted for so long. Athletes are

not prone to violence – violent athletes simply end up on

TV more often. And soldiers have to act reflexively to

survive in battle.

There is nothing wrong with stereotypes if they are

embedded in reality and promote the understanding of

social and historical processes. Western, multi-ethnic,

pluralistic civilization celebrates diversity and the

uniqueness and distinctiveness of its components.

Stereotypes merely acknowledge this variety.

USA Today Magazine reported in January a survey of 800

adults, conducted last year by social psychology

professors Amanda Diekman of Purdue University and

Alice Eagly of Northwestern University. They found that

far from being rigid and biased, stereotypes regarding the

personality traits of men and women have changed

dramatically to accurately reflect evolving gender roles.

Diekman noted that “women are perceived as having

become much more assertive, independent, and

competitive over the years … Our respondents – whether

they were old enough to have witnessed it or not –

recognized the role change that occurred when women

began working outside the home in large numbers and the

necessity of adopting characteristics that equip them to be

breadwinners.”

The Happiness of Others

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

Is there any necessary connection between our actions and

the happiness of others? Disregarding for a moment the

murkiness of the definitions of “actions” in philosophical

literature – two types of answers were hitherto provided.

Sentient Beings (referred to, in this essay, as “Humans” or

“persons”) seem either to limit each other – or to enhance

each other’s actions. Mutual limitation is, for instance,

evident in game theory. It deals with decision outcomes

when all the rational “players” are fully aware of both the

outcomes of their actions and of what they prefer these

outcomes to be. They are also fully informed about the

other players: they know that they are rational, too, for

instance. This, of course, is a very farfetched idealization.

A state of unbounded information is nowhere and never to

be found. Still, in most cases, the players settle down to

one of the Nash equilibria solutions. Their actions are

constrained by the existence of the others.

The “Hidden Hand” of Adam Smith (which, among other

things, benignly and optimally regulates the market and

the price mechanisms) – is also a “mutually limiting”

model. Numerous single participants strive to maximize

their (economic and financial) outcomes – and end up

merely optimizing them.

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The reason lies in the existence of others within the

“market”. Again, they are constrained by other people‘s

motivations, priorities ands, above all, actions.

All the consequentialist theories of ethics deal with

mutual enhancement. This is especially true of the

Utilitarian variety. Acts (whether judged individually or in

conformity to a set of rules) are moral, if their outcome

increases utility (also known as happiness or pleasure).

They are morally obligatory if they maximize utility and

no alternative course of action can do so. Other versions

talk about an “increase” in utility rather than its

maximization. Still, the principle is simple: for an act to

be judged “moral, ethical, virtuous, or good” – it must

influence others in a way which will “enhance” and

increase their happiness.

The flaws in all the above answers are evident and have

been explored at length in the literature. The assumptions

are dubious (fully informed participants, rationality in

decision making and in prioritizing the outcomes, etc.).

All the answers are instrumental and quantitative: they

strive to offer a moral measuring rod. An “increase”

entails the measurement of two states: before and after the

act. Moreover, it demands full knowledge of the world

and a type of knowledge so intimate, so private – that it is

not even sure that the players themselves have conscious

access to it. Who goes around equipped with an

exhaustive list of his priorities and another list of all the

possible outcomes of all the acts that he may commit?

But there is another, basic flaw: these answers are

descriptive, observational, phenomenological in the

restrictive sense of these words. The motives, the drives,

the urges, the whole psychological landscape behind the

act are deemed irrelevant. The only thing relevant is the

increase in utility/happiness. If the latter is achieved – the

former might as well not have existed. A computer, which

increases happiness is morally equivalent to a person who

achieves a quantitatively similar effect. Even worse: two

persons acting out of different motives (one malicious and

one benevolent) will be judged to be morally equivalent if

their acts were to increase happiness similarly.

But, in life, an increase in utility or happiness or pleasure

is CONDITIONED upon, is the RESULT of the motives

behind the acts that led to it. Put differently: the utility

functions of two acts depend decisively on the motivation,

drive, or urge behind them. The process, which leads to

the act is an inseparable part of the act and of its

outcomes, including the outcomes in terms of the

subsequent increase in utility or happiness. We can safely

distinguish the “utility contaminated” act from the “utility

pure (or ideal)” act.

If a person does something which is supposed to increase

the overall utility – but does so in order to increase his

own utility more than the expected average utility increase

– the resulting increase will be lower. The maximum

utility increase is achieved overall when the actor forgoes

all increase in his personal utility. It seems that there is a

constant of utility increase and a conservation law

pertaining to it.

So that a disproportionate increase in one’s personal utility

translates into a decrease in the overall average utility. It

is not a zero sum game because of the infiniteness of the

potential increase – but the rules of distribution of the

utility added after the act, seem to dictate an averaging of

the increase in order to maximize the result.

The same pitfalls await these observations as did the

previous ones. The players must be in the possession of

full information at least regarding the motivation of the

other players. “Why is he doing this?” and “why did he do

what he did?” are not questions confined to the criminal

courts. We all want to understand the “why’s” of actions

long before we engage in utilitarian calculations of

increased utility. This also seems to be the source of many

an emotional reaction concerning human actions. We are

envious because we think that the utility increase was

unevenly divided (when adjusted for efforts invested and

for the prevailing cultural mores). We suspect outcomes

that are “too good to be true”. Actually, this very sentence

proves my point: that even if something produces an

increase in overall happiness it will be considered morally

dubious if the motivation behind it remains unclear or

seems to be irrational or culturally deviant.

Two types of information are, therefore, always needed:

one (discussed above) concerns the motives of the main

protagonists, the act-ors. The second type relates to the

world. Full knowledge about the world is also a necessity:

the causal chains (actions lead to outcomes), what

increases the overall utility or happiness and for whom,

etc.

To assume that all the participants in an interaction

possess this tremendous amount of information is an

idealization (used also in modern theories of economy),

should be regarded as such and not be confused with

reality in which people approximate, estimate, extrapolate

and evaluate based on a much more limited knowledge.

Two examples come to mind:

Aristotle described the “Great Soul”. It is a virtuous agent

(actor, player) that judges himself to be possessed of a

great soul (in a self-referential evaluative disposition). He

has the right measure of his worth and he courts the

appreciation of his peers (but not of his inferiors) which

he believes that he deserves by virtue of being virtuous.

He has a dignity of demeanour, which is also very self-

conscious. He is, in short, magnanimous (for instance, he

forgives his enemies their offences). He seems to be the

classical case of a happiness-increasing agent – but he is

not. And the reason that he fails in qualifying as such is

that his motives are suspect. Does he refrain from

assaulting his enemies because of charity and generosity

of spirit – or because it is likely to dent his pomposity? It

is sufficient that a POSSIBLE different motive exist – to

ruin the utilitarian outcome.

Adam Smith, on the other hand, adopted the spectator

theory of his teacher Francis Hutcheson. The morally

good is a euphemism. It is really the name provided to the

pleasure, which a spectator derives from seeing a virtue in

action. Smith added that the reason for this emotion is the

similarity between the virtue observed in the agent and the

virtue possessed by the observer.

It is of a moral nature because of the object involved: the

agent tries to consciously conform to standards of

behaviour which will not harm the innocent, while,

simultaneously benefiting himself, his family and his

friends. This, in turn, will benefit society as a whole. Such

a person is likely to be grateful to his benefactors and

sustain the chain of virtue by reciprocating. The chain of

good will, thus, endlessly multiply.

Even here, we see that the question of motive and

psychology is of utmost importance. WHY is the agent

doing what he is doing? Does he really conform to

society’s standards INTERNALLY? Is he GRATEFUL to

his benefactors? Does he WISH to benefit his friends?

These are all questions answerable only in the realm of

the mind. Really, they are not answerable at all.

The Egotistic Friend

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

What are friends for and how can a friendship be tested?

By behaving altruistically, would be the most common

answer and by sacrificing one’s interests in favour of one’s

friends. Friendship implies the converse of egoism, both

psychologically and ethically. But then we say that the

dog is “man’s best friend”. After all, it is characterized by

unconditional love, by unselfish behaviour, by sacrifice,

when necessary. Isn’t this the epitome of friendship?

Apparently not. On the one hand, the dog’s friendship

seems to be unaffected by long term calculations of

personal benefit. But that is not to say that it is not

affected by calculations of a short-term nature. The

owner, after all, looks after the dog and is the source of its

subsistence and security. People – and dogs – have been

known to have sacrificed their lives for less. The dog is

selfish – it clings and protects what it regards to be its

territory and its property (including – and especially so –

the owner). Thus, the first condition, seemingly not

satisfied by canine attachment is that it be reasonably

unselfish.

There are, however, more important conditions:

a. For a real friendship to exist – at least one of the
friends must be a conscious and intelligent entity,

possessed of mental states. It can be an individual,

or a collective of individuals, but in both cases this

requirement will similarly apply.

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b. There must be a minimal level of identical mental
states between the terms of the equation of

friendship. A human being cannot be friends with

a tree (at least not in the fullest sense of the word).

c. The behaviour must not be deterministic, lest it be
interpreted as instinct driven. A conscious choice

must be involved. This is a very surprising

conclusion: the more “reliable”, the more

“predictable” – the less appreciated. Someone who

reacts identically to similar situations, without

dedicating a first, let alone a second thought to it –

his acts would be depreciated as “automatic

responses”.

For a pattern of behaviour to be described as “friendship”,

these four conditions must be met: diminished egoism,

conscious and intelligent agents, identical mental states

(allowing for the communication of the friendship) and

non-deterministic behaviour, the result of constant

decision making.

A friendship can be – and often is – tested in view of these

criteria. There is a paradox underlying the very notion of

testing a friendship. A real friend would never test his

friend’s commitment and allegiance. Anyone who puts his

friend to a test (deliberately) would hardly qualify as a

friend himself. But circumstances can put ALL the

members of a friendship, all the individuals (two or more)

in the “collective” to a test of friendship. Financial

hardship encountered by someone would surely oblige his

friends to assist him – even if he himself did not take the

initiative and explicitly asked them to do so. It is life that

tests the resilience and strength and depth of true

friendships – not the friends themselves.

In all the discussions of egoism versus altruism –

confusion between self-interest and self-welfare prevails.

A person may be urged on to act by his self-interest,

which might be detrimental to his (long-term) self-

welfare. Some behaviours and actions can satisfy short-

term desires, urges, wishes (in short: self-interest) – and

yet be self- destructive or otherwise adversely effect the

individual’s future welfare. (Psychological) Egoism

should, therefore, be re-defined as the active pursuit of

self- welfare, not of self-interest. Only when the person

caters, in a balanced manner, to both his present (self-

interest) and his future (self-welfare) interests – can we

call him an egoist. Otherwise, if he caters only to his

immediate self-interest, seeks to fulfil his desires and

disregards the future costs of his behaviour – he is an

animal, not an egoist.

Joseph Butler separated the main (motivating) desire from

the desire that is self- interest. The latter cannot exist

without the former. A person is hungry and this is his

desire. His self-interest is, therefore, to eat. But the hunger

is directed at eating – not at fulfilling self-interests. Thus,

hunger generates self-interest (to eat) but its object is

eating. Self-interest is a second order desire that aims to

satisfy first order desires (which can also motivate us

directly).

This subtle distinction can be applied to disinterested

behaviours, acts, which seem to lack a clear self-interest

or even a first order desire. Consider why do people

contribute to humanitarian causes? There is no self-

interest here, even if we account for the global picture

(with every possible future event in the life of the

contributor).

No rich American is likely to find himself starving in

Somalia, the target of one such humanitarian aid mission.

But even here the Butler model can be validated. The first

order desire of the donator is to avoid anxiety feelings

generated by a cognitive dissonance. In the process of

socialization we are all exposed to altruistic messages.

They are internalized by us (some even to the extent of

forming part of the almighty superego, the conscience). In

parallel, we assimilate the punishment inflicted upon

members of society who are not “social” enough,

unwilling to contribute beyond that which is required to

satisfy their self interest, selfish or egoistic, non-

conformist, “too” individualistic, “too” idiosyncratic or

eccentric, etc. Completely not being altruistic is “bad” and

as such calls for “punishment”. This no longer is an

outside judgement, on a case by case basis, with the

penalty inflicted by an external moral authority. This

comes from the inside: the opprobrium and reproach, the

guilt, the punishment (read Kafka). Such impending

punishment generates anxiety whenever the person judges

himself not to have been altruistically “sufficient”. It is to

avoid this anxiety or to quell it that a person engages in

altruistic acts, the result of his social conditioning. To use

the Butler scheme: the first-degree desire is to avoid the

agonies of cognitive dissonance and the resulting anxiety.

This can be achieved by committing acts of altruism. The

second-degree desire is the self-interest to commit

altruistic acts in order to satisfy the first-degree desire. No

one engages in contributing to the poor because he wants

them to be less poor or in famine relief because he does

not want others to starve. People do these apparently

selfless activities because they do not want to experience

that tormenting inner voice and to suffer the acute anxiety,

which accompanies it.

Altruism is the name that we give to successful

indoctrination. The stronger the process of socialization,

the stricter the education, the more severely brought up

the individual, the grimmer and more constraining his

superego – the more of an altruist he is likely to be.

Independent people who really feel comfortable with their

selves are less likely to exhibit these behaviours.

This is the self-interest of society: altruism enhances the

overall level of welfare. It redistributes resources more

equitably, it tackles market failures more or less

efficiently (progressive tax systems are altruistic), it

reduces social pressures and stabilizes both individuals

and society. Clearly, the self-interest of society is to make

its members limit the pursuit of their own self-interest?

There are many opinions and theories. They can be

grouped into:

a. Those who see an inverse relation between the
two: the more satisfied the self interests of the

individuals comprising a society – the worse off

that society will end up. What is meant by “better

off” is a different issue but at least the

commonsense, intuitive, meaning is clear and begs

no explanation. Many religions and strands of

moral absolutism espouse this view.

b. Those who believe that the more satisfied the self-
interests of the individuals comprising a society –

the better off this society will end up. These are

the “hidden hand” theories. Individuals, which

strive merely to maximize their utility, their

happiness, their returns (profits) – find themselves

inadvertently engaged in a colossal endeavour to

better their society.

This is mostly achieved through the dual mechanisms

of market and price. Adam Smith is an example (and

other schools of the dismal science).

c. Those who believe that a delicate balance must
exist between the two types of self-interest: the

private and the public. While most individuals will

be unable to obtain the full satisfaction of their

self-interest – it is still conceivable that they will

attain most of it. On the other hand, society must

not fully tread on individuals’ rights to self-

fulfilment, wealth accumulation and the pursuit of

happiness. So, it must accept less than maximum

satisfaction of its self-interest. The optimal mix

exists and is, probably, of the minimax type. This

is not a zero sum game and society and the

individuals comprising it can maximize their worst

outcomes.

The French have a saying: “Good bookkeeping – makes

for a good friendship”. Self-interest, altruism and the

interest of society at large are not necessarily

incompatible.

The Distributive Justice of the Market

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

Also published by United Press International (UPI)

Also Read

The Principal-Agent Conundrum

The Green-Eyed Capitalist

The Misconception of Scarcity

The public outcry against executive pay and compensation

followed disclosures of insider trading, double dealing,

and outright fraud. But even honest and productive

entrepreneurs often earn more money in one year than

Albert Einstein did in his entire life. This strikes many –

especially academics – as unfair. Surely Einstein’s

contributions to human knowledge and welfare far exceed

anything ever accomplished by sundry businessmen?

Fortunately, this discrepancy is cause for constructive

jealousy, emulation, and imitation. It can, however, lead

to an orgy of destructive and self-ruinous envy.

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Entrepreneurs recombine natural and human resources in

novel ways. They do so to respond to forecasts of future

needs, or to observations of failures and shortcomings of

current products or services. Entrepreneurs are

professional – though usually intuitive – futurologists. This

is a valuable service and it is financed by systematic risk

takers, such as venture capitalists. Surely they all deserve

compensation for their efforts and the hazards they

assume?

Exclusive ownership is the most ancient type of such

remuneration. First movers, entrepreneurs, risk takers,

owners of the wealth they generated, exploiters of

resources – are allowed to exclude others from owning or

exploiting the same things. Mineral concessions, patents,

ownership. What moral right to exclude others is gained

from being the first?

Nozick advanced Locke’s Proviso. An exclusive

ownership of property is just only if “enough and as good

is left in common for others”. If it does not worsen other

people’s lot, exclusivity is morally permissible. It can be

argued, though, that all modes of exclusive ownership

aggravate other people’s situation. As far as everyone, bar

the entrepreneur, are concerned, exclusivity also prevents

a more advantageous distribution of income and wealth.

Exclusive ownership reflects real-life irreversibility. A

first mover has the advantage of excess information and of

irreversibly invested work, time, and effort. Economic

enterprise is subject to information asymmetry: we know

nothing about the future and everything about the past.

This asymmetry is known as “investment risk”. Society

compensates the entrepreneur with one type of asymmetry

– exclusive ownership – for assuming another, the

investment risk.

One way of looking at it is that all others are worse off by

the amount of profits and rents accruing to owner-

entrepreneurs. Profits and rents reflect an intrinsic

inefficiency. Another is to recall that ownership is the

result of adding value to the world. It is only reasonable to

expect it to yield to the entrepreneur at least this value

added now and in the future.

In a “Theory of Justice” (published 1971, p. 302), John

Rawls described an ideal society thus:

“(1) Each person is to have an equal right to the most

extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible

with a similar system of liberty for all. (2) Social and

economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are

both: (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged,

consistent with the just savings principle, and (b) attached

to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair

equality of opportunity. ”

It all harks back to scarcity of resources – land, money,

raw materials, manpower, creative brains. Those who can

afford to do so, hoard resources to offset anxiety

regarding future uncertainty. Others wallow in paucity.

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The distribution of means is thus skewed. “Distributive

justice” deals with the just allocation of scarce resources.

Yet, even the basic terminology is somewhat fuzzy. What

constitutes a resource? what is meant by allocation? Who

should allocate resources – Adam Smith’s “invisible

hand”, the government, the consumer, or business? Should

it reflect differences in power, in intelligence, in

knowledge, or in heredity? Should resource allocation be

subject to a principle of entitlement? Is it reasonable to

demand that it be just – or merely efficient? Are justice

and efficiency antonyms?

Justice is concerned with equal access to opportunities.

Equal access does not guarantee equal outcomes,

invariably determined by idiosyncrasies and differences

between people. Access leveraged by the application of

natural or acquired capacities – translates into accrued

wealth. Disparities in these capacities lead to

discrepancies in accrued wealth.

The doctrine of equal access is founded on the

equivalence of Men. That all men are created equal and

deserve the same respect and, therefore, equal treatment is

not self evident. European aristocracy well into this

century would have probably found this notion abhorrent.

Jose Ortega Y Gasset, writing in the 1930’s, preached that

access to educational and economic opportunities should

be premised on one’s lineage, up bringing, wealth, and

social responsibilities.

A succession of societies and cultures discriminated

against the ignorant, criminals, atheists, females,

homosexuals, members of ethnic, religious, or racial

groups, the old, the immigrant, and the poor. Communism

– ostensibly a strict egalitarian idea – foundered because it

failed to reconcile strict equality with economic and

psychological realities within an impatient timetable.

Philosophers tried to specify a “bundle” or “package” of

goods, services, and intangibles (like information, or

skills, or knowledge). Justice – though not necessarily

happiness – is when everyone possesses an identical

bundle. Happiness – though not necessarily justice – is

when each one of us possesses a “bundle” which reflects

his or her preferences, priorities, and predilections. None

of us will be too happy with a standardized bundle,

selected by a committee of philosophers – or bureaucrats,

as was the case under communism.

The market allows for the exchange of goods and services

between holders of identical bundles. If I seek books, but

detest oranges – I can swap them with someone in return

for his books. That way both of us are rendered better off

than under the strict egalitarian version.

Still, there is no guarantee that I will find my exact match

– a person who is interested in swapping his books for my

oranges. Illiquid, small, or imperfect markets thus inhibit

the scope of these exchanges. Additionally, exchange

participants have to agree on an index: how many books

for how many oranges? This is the price of oranges in

terms of books.

Money – the obvious “index” – does not solve this

problem, merely simplifies it and facilitates exchanges. It

does not eliminate the necessity to negotiate an “exchange

rate”. It does not prevent market failures. In other words:

money is not an index. It is merely a medium of exchange

and a store of value. The index – as expressed in terms of

money – is the underlying agreement regarding the values

of resources in terms of other resources (i.e., their relative

values).

The market – and the price mechanism – increase

happiness and welfare by allowing people to alter the

composition of their bundles. The invisible hand is just

and benevolent. But money is imperfect. The

aforementioned Rawles demonstrated (1971), that we

need to combine money with other measures in order to

place a value on intangibles.

The prevailing market theories postulate that everyone has

the same resources at some initial point (the “starting

gate”). It is up to them to deploy these endowments and,

thus, to ravage or increase their wealth. While the initial

distribution is equal – the end distribution depends on how

wisely – or imprudently – the initial distribution was used.

Egalitarian thinkers proposed to equate everyone’s income

in each time frame (e.g., annually). But identical incomes

do not automatically yield the same accrued wealth. The

latter depends on how the income is used – saved,

invested, or squandered. Relative disparities of wealth are

bound to emerge, regardless of the nature of income

distribution.

Some say that excess wealth should be confiscated and

redistributed. Progressive taxation and the welfare

state

aim to secure this outcome. Redistributive mechanisms

reset the “wealth clock” periodically (at the end of every

month, or fiscal year). In many countries, the law dictates

which portion of one’s income must be saved and, by

implication, how much can be consumed. This conflicts

with basic rights like the freedom to make economic

choices.

The legalized expropriation of income (i.e., taxes) is

morally dubious. Anti-tax movements have sprung all

over the world and their philosophy permeates the

ideology of political parties in many countries, not least

the USA. Taxes are punitive: they penalize enterprise,

success, entrepreneurship, foresight, and risk assumption.

Welfare, on the other hand, rewards dependence and

parasitism.

According to Rawles’ Difference Principle, all tenets of

justice are either redistributive or retributive. This ignores

non-economic activities and human inherent variance.

Moreover, conflict and inequality are the engines of

growth and innovation – which mostly benefit the least

advantaged in the long run. Experience shows that

unmitigated equality results in atrophy, corruption and

stagnation. Thermodynamics teaches us that life and

motion are engendered by an irregular distribution of

energy. Entropy – an even distribution of energy – equals

death and stasis.

What about the disadvantaged and challenged – the

mentally retarded, the mentally insane, the paralyzed, the

chronically ill? For that matter, what about the less

talented, less skilled, less daring? Dworkin (1981)

proposed a compensation scheme. He suggested a model

of fair distribution in which every person is given the

same purchasing power and uses it to bid, in a fair

auction, for resources that best fit that person’s life plan,

goals and preferences.

Having thus acquired these resources, we are then

permitted to use them as we see fit. Obviously, we end up

with disparate economic results. But we cannot complain –

we were given the same purchasing power and the

freedom to bid for a bundle of our choice.

Dworkin assumes that prior to the hypothetical auction,

people are unaware of their own natural endowments but

are willing and able to insure against being naturally

disadvantaged. Their payments create an insurance pool to

compensate the less fortunate for their misfortune.

This, of course, is highly unrealistic. We are usually very

much aware of natural endowments and liabilities – both

ours and others’. Therefore, the demand for such insurance

is not universal, nor uniform. Some of us badly need and

want it – others not at all. It is morally acceptable to let

willing buyers and sellers to trade in such coverage (e.g.,

by offering charity or alms) – but may be immoral to make

it compulsory.

Most of the modern welfare programs are involuntary

Dworkin schemes. Worse yet, they often measure

differences in natural endowments arbitrarily, compensate

for lack of acquired skills, and discriminate between types

of endowments in accordance with cultural biases and

fads.

Libertarians limit themselves to ensuring a level playing

field of just exchanges, where just actions always result in

just outcomes. Justice is not dependent on a particular

distribution pattern, whether as a starting point, or as an

outcome. Robert Nozick “Entitlement Theory” proposed

in 1974 is based on this approach.

That the market is wiser than any of its participants is a

pillar of the philosophy of capitalism. In its pure form, the

theory claims that markets yield patterns of merited

distribution – i.e., reward and punish justly. Capitalism

generate just deserts. Market failures – for instance, in the

provision of public goods – should be tackled by

governments. But a just distribution of income and wealth

does not constitute a market failure and, therefore, should

not be tampered with.

The Agent-Principal Conundrum

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

Also published by United Press International (UPI

In the catechism of capitalism, shares represent the part-

ownership of an economic enterprise, usually a firm. The

value of shares is determined by the replacement value of

the assets of the firm, including intangibles such as

goodwill. The price of the share is determined by

transactions among arm’s length buyers and sellers in an

efficient and liquid market. The price reflects expectations

regarding the future value of the firm and the stock’s

future stream of income – i.e., dividends.

Alas, none of these oft-recited dogmas bears any

resemblance to reality. Shares rarely represent ownership.

The float – the number of shares available to the public – is

frequently marginal. Shareholders meet once a year to

vent and disperse. Boards of directors are appointed by

management – as are auditors. Shareholders are not

represented in any decision making process – small or big.

The dismal truth is that shares reify the expectation to find

future buyers at a higher price and thus incur capital gains.

In the Ponzi scheme known as the stock exchange, this

expectation is proportional to liquidity – new suckers – and

volatility. Thus, the price of any given stock reflects

merely the consensus as to how easy it would be to

offload one’s holdings and at what price.

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Another myth has to do with the role of managers. They

are supposed to generate higher returns to shareholders by

increasing the value of the firm’s assets and, therefore, of

the firm. If they fail to do so, goes the moral tale, they are

booted out mercilessly. This is one manifestation of the

“Principal-Agent Problem”. It is defined thus by the

Oxford Dictionary of Economics:

“The problem of how a person A can motivate person B to

act for A’s benefit rather than following (his) self-

interest.”

The obvious answer is that A can never motivate B not to

follow B’s self-interest – never mind what the incentives

are. That economists pretend otherwise – in “optimal

contracting theory” – just serves to demonstrate how

divorced economics is from human psychology and, thus,

from reality.

Managers will always rob blind the companies they run.

They will always manipulate boards to collude in their

shenanigans. They will always bribe auditors to bend the

rules. In other words, they will always act in their self-

interest. In their defense, they can say that the damage

from such actions to each shareholder is minuscule while

the benefits to the manager are enormous. In other words,

this is the rational, self-interested, thing to do.

But why do shareholders cooperate with such corporate

brigandage? In an important Chicago Law Review article

whose preprint was posted to the Web a few weeks ago –

titled “Managerial Power and Rent Extraction in the

Design of Executive Compensation” – the authors

demonstrate how the typical stock option granted to

managers as part of their remuneration rewards mediocrity

rather than encourages excellence.

But everything falls into place if we realize that

shareholders and managers are allied against the firm – not

pitted against each other. The paramount interest of both

shareholders and managers is to increase the value of the

stock – regardless of the true value of the firm. Both are

concerned with the performance of the share – rather than

the performance of the firm. Both are preoccupied with

boosting the share’s price – rather than the company’s

business.

Hence the inflationary executive pay packets.

Shareholders hire stock manipulators – euphemistically

known as “managers” – to generate expectations regarding

the future prices of their shares. These snake oil salesmen

and snake charmers – the corporate executives – are

allowed by shareholders to loot the company providing

they generate consistent capital gains to their masters by

provoking persistent interest and excitement around the

business. Shareholders, in other words, do not behave as

owners of the firm – they behave as free-riders.

The Principal-Agent Problem arises in other social

interactions and is equally misunderstood there. Consider

taxpayers and their government. Contrary to conservative

lore, the former want the government to tax them

providing they share in the spoils.

They tolerate corruption in high places, cronyism,

nepotism, inaptitude and worse – on condition that the

government and the legislature redistribute the wealth

they confiscate. Such redistribution often comes in the

form of pork barrel projects and benefits to the middle-

class.

This is why the tax burden and the government’s share of

GDP have been soaring inexorably with the consent of the

citizenry. People adore government spending precisely

because it is inefficient and distorts the proper allocation

of economic resources. The vast majority of people are

rent-seekers. Witness the mass demonstrations that erupt

whenever governments try to slash expenditures,

privatize, and eliminate their gaping deficits. This is one

reason the IMF with its austerity measures is universally

unpopular.

Employers and employees, producers and consumers –

these are all instances of the Principal-Agent Problem.

Economists would do well to discard their models and go

back to basics. They could start by asking:

Why do shareholders acquiesce with executive

malfeasance as long as share prices are rising?

Why do citizens protest against a smaller government –

even though it means lower taxes?

Could it mean that the interests of shareholders and

managers are identical? Does it imply that people prefer

tax-and-spend governments and pork barrel politics to the

Thatcherite alternative?

Nothing happens by accident or by coercion. Shareholders

aided and abetted the current crop of corporate executives

enthusiastically. They knew well what was happening.

They may not have been aware of the exact nature and

extent of the rot – but they witnessed approvingly the

public relations antics, insider trading, stock option

resetting , unwinding, and unloading, share price

manipulation, opaque transactions, and outlandish pay

packages. Investors remained mum throughout the

corruption of corporate America. It is time for the

hangover.

Legalizing Crime
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
Also Read:

Narcissists, Ethnic or Religious Affiliation, and

Terrorists

The state has a monopoly on behavior usually deemed

criminal. It murders, kidnaps, and locks up people.

Sovereignty has come to be identified with the unbridled –

and exclusive – exercise of violence. The emergence of

modern international law has narrowed the field of

permissible conduct. A sovereign can no longer commit

genocide or ethnic cleansing with impunity, for instance.

Many acts – such as the waging of aggressive war, the

mistreatment of minorities, the suppression of the freedom

of association – hitherto sovereign privilege, have

thankfully been criminalized. Many politicians, hitherto

immune to international prosecution, are no longer so.

Consider Yugoslavia’s Milosevic and Chile’s Pinochet.

But, the irony is that a similar trend of criminalization –

within national legal systems – allows governments to

oppress their citizenry to an extent previously unknown.

Hitherto civil torts, permissible acts, and common

behavior patterns are routinely criminalized by legislators

and regulators. Precious few are decriminalized.

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Consider, for instance, the criminalization in the

Economic Espionage Act (1996) of the misappropriation

of trade secrets and the criminalization of the violation of

copyrights in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

(2000) – both in the USA. These used to be civil torts.

They still are in many countries. Drug use, common

behavior in England only 50 years ago – is now criminal.

The list goes on.

Criminal laws pertaining to property have malignantly

proliferated and pervaded every economic and private

interaction. The result is a bewildering multitude of laws,

regulations statutes, and acts.

The average Babylonian could have memorizes and

assimilated the Hammurabic code 37 centuries ago – it

was short, simple, and intuitively just.

English criminal law – partly applicable in many of its

former colonies, such as India, Pakistan, Canada, and

Australia – is a mishmash of overlapping and

contradictory statutes – some of these hundreds of years

old – and court decisions, collectively known as “case

law”.

Despite the publishing of a Model Penal Code in 1962 by

the American Law Institute, the criminal provisions of

various states within the USA often conflict. The typical

American can’t hope to get acquainted with even a

negligible fraction of his country’s fiendishly complex and

hopelessly brobdignagian criminal code. Such inevitable

ignorance breeds criminal behavior – sometimes

inadvertently – and transforms many upright citizens into

delinquents.

In the land of the free – the USA – close to 2 million adults

are behind bars and another 4.5 million are on probation,

most of them on drug charges. The costs of

criminalization – both financial and social – are mind

boggling. According to “The Economist”, America’s

prison system cost it $54 billion a year – disregarding the

price tag of law enforcement, the judiciary, lost product,

and

rehabilitation.

What constitutes a crime? A clear and consistent

definition has yet to transpire.

There are five types of criminal behavior: crimes against

oneself, or “victimless crimes” (such as suicide, abortion,

and the consumption of drugs), crimes against others

(such as murder or mugging), crimes among consenting

adults (such as incest, and in certain countries,

homosexuality and euthanasia), crimes against collectives

(such as treason, genocide, or ethnic cleansing), and

crimes against the international community and world

order (such as executing prisoners of war). The last two

categories often overlap.

The Encyclopedia Britannica provides this definition of a

crime:

“The intentional commission of an act usually deemed

socially harmful or dangerous and specifically defined,

prohibited, and punishable under the criminal law.”

But who decides what is socially harmful? What about

acts committed unintentionally (known as “strict liability

offenses” in the parlance)? How can we establish intention

– “mens rea”, or the “guilty mind” – beyond a reasonable

doubt?

A much tighter definition would be: “The commission of

an act punishable under the criminal law.” A crime is

what the law – state law, kinship law, religious law, or any

other widely accepted law – says is a crime. Legal systems

and texts often conflict.

Murderous blood feuds are legitimate according to the

15th century “Qanoon”, still applicable in large parts of

Albania. Killing one’s infant daughters and old relatives is

socially condoned – though illegal – in India, China,

Alaska, and parts of Africa. Genocide may have been

legally sanctioned in Germany and Rwanda – but is

strictly forbidden under international law.

Laws being the outcomes of compromises and power

plays, there is only a tenuous connection between justice

and morality. Some “crimes” are categorical imperatives.

Helping the Jews in Nazi Germany was a criminal act –

yet a highly moral one.

The ethical nature of some crimes depends on

circumstances, timing, and cultural context. Murder is a

vile deed – but assassinating Saddam Hussein may be

morally commendable. Killing an embryo is a crime in

some countries – but not so killing a fetus. A “status

offense” is not a criminal act if committed by an adult.

Mutilating the body of a live baby is heinous – but this is

the essence of Jewish circumcision. In some societies,

criminal guilt is collective. All Americans are held

blameworthy by the Arab street for the choices and

actions of their leaders. All Jews are accomplices in the

“crimes” of the “Zionists”.

In all societies, crime is a growth industry. Millions of

professionals – judges, police officers, criminologists,

psychologists, journalists, publishers, prosecutors,

lawyers, social workers, probation officers, wardens,

sociologists, non-governmental-organizations, weapons

manufacturers, laboratory technicians, graphologists, and

private detectives – derive their livelihood, parasitically,

from crime. They often perpetuate models of punishment

and retribution that lead to recidivism rather than to to the

reintegration of criminals in society and their

rehabilitation.

Organized in vocal interest groups and lobbies, they harp

on the insecurities and phobias of the alienated urbanites.

They consume ever growing budgets and rejoice with

every new behavior criminalized by exasperated

lawmakers. In the majority of countries, the justice system

is a dismal failure and law enforcement agencies are part

of the problem, not its solution.

The sad truth is that many types of crime are considered

by people to be normative and common behaviors and,

thus, go unreported. Victim surveys and self-report studies

conducted by criminologists reveal that most crimes go

unreported. The protracted fad of criminalization has

rendered criminal many perfectly acceptable and recurring

behaviors and acts. Homosexuality, abortion, gambling,

prostitution, pornography, and suicide have all been

criminal offenses at one time or another.

But the quintessential example of over-criminalization is

drug abuse.

There is scant medical evidence that soft drugs such as

cannabis or MDMA (“Ecstasy”) – and even cocaine – have

an irreversible effect on brain chemistry or functioning.

Last month an almighty row erupted in Britain when Jon

Cole, an addiction researcher at Liverpool University,

claimed, to quote “The Economist” quoting the

“Psychologist”, that:

“Experimental evidence suggesting a link between

Ecstasy use and problems such as nerve damage and brain

impairment is flawed … using this ill-substantiated cause-

and-effect to tell the ‘chemical generation’ that they are

brain damaged when they are not creates public health

problems of its own.”

Moreover, it is commonly accepted that alcohol abuse and

nicotine abuse can be at least as harmful as the abuse of

marijuana, for instance. Yet, though somewhat curbed,

alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking are legal. In

contrast, users of cocaine – only a century ago

recommended by doctors as tranquilizer – face life in jail

in many countries, death in others. Almost everywhere pot

smokers are confronted with prison terms.

The “war on drugs” – one of the most expensive and

protracted in history – has failed abysmally. Drugs are

more abundant and cheaper than ever. The social costs

have been staggering: the emergence of violent crime

where none existed before, the destabilization of drug-

producing countries, the collusion of drug traffickers with

terrorists, and the death of millions – law enforcement

agents, criminals, and users.

Few doubt that legalizing most drugs would have a

beneficial effect. Crime empires would crumble

overnight, users would be assured of the quality of the

products they consume, and the addicted few would not

be incarcerated or stigmatized – but rather treated and

rehabilitated.

That soft, largely harmless, drugs continue to be illicit is

the outcome of compounded political and economic

pressures by lobby and interest groups of manufacturers

of legal drugs, law enforcement agencies, the judicial

system, and the aforementioned long list of those who

benefit from the status quo.

Only a popular movement can lead to the

decriminalization of the more innocuous drugs. But such a

crusade should be part of a larger campaign to reverse the

overall tide of criminalization. Many “crimes” should

revert to their erstwhile status as civil torts. Others should

be wiped off the statute books altogether. Hundreds of

thousands should be pardoned and allowed to reintegrate

in society, unencumbered by a past of transgressions

against an inane and inflationary penal code.

This, admittedly, will reduce the leverage the state has

today against its citizens and its ability to intrude on their

lives, preferences, privacy, and leisure. Bureaucrats and

politicians may find this abhorrent. Freedom loving

people should rejoice.

The Insanity of the Defense

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
Also Read

On Disease

Althusser, Competing Interpellations and the Third Text

The Use and Abuse of Differential Diagnoses

The Myth of Mental Illness

“You can know the name of a bird in all the languages

of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know

absolutely nothing whatever about the bird… So let’s

look at the bird and see what it’s doing – that’s what

counts. I learned very early the difference between

knowing the name of something and knowing

something.”

Richard Feynman, Physicist and 1965 Nobel Prize

laureate (1918-1988)

“You have all I dare say heard of the animal spirits and

how they are transfused from father to son etcetera

etcetera – well you may take my word that nine parts in

ten of a man’s sense or his nonsense, his successes and

miscarriages in this world depend on their motions and

activities, and the different tracks and trains you put

them into, so that when they are once set a-going,

whether right or wrong, away they go cluttering like hey-

go-mad.”

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http://samvak.tripod.com/disease.html

http://samvak.tripod.com/althusser.html

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http://samvak.tripod.com/mentalillness.html

Lawrence Sterne (1713-1758), “The Life and Opinions of

Tristram Shandy, Gentleman” (1759)

I. The Insanity Defense

II. The Concept of Mental Disease – An Overview

III. Personality Disorders

IV. The Biochemistry and Genetics of Mental Health

V. The Variance of Mental Disease

VI. Mental Disorders and the Social Order

VII. Mental Ailment as a Useful Metaphor

I. The Insanity Defense

“It is an ill thing to knock against a deaf-mute, an

imbecile, or a minor. He that wounds them is culpable,

but if they wound him they are not culpable.” (Mishna,

Babylonian Talmud)

If mental illness is culture-dependent and mostly serves as

an organizing social principle – what should we make of

the insanity defense (NGRI- Not Guilty by Reason of

Insanity)?

A person is held not responsible for his criminal actions if

s/he cannot tell right from wrong (“lacks substantial

capacity either to appreciate the criminality

(wrongfulness) of his conduct” – diminished capacity), did

not intend to act the way he did (absent “mens rea”)

and/or could not control his behavior (“irresistible

impulse”). These handicaps are often associated with

“mental disease or defect” or “mental retardation”.

Mental health professionals prefer to talk about an

impairment of a “person’s perception or understanding of

reality”. They hold a “guilty but mentally ill” verdict to be

contradiction in terms. All “mentally-ill” people operate

within a (usually coherent) worldview, with consistent

internal logic, and rules of right and wrong (ethics). Yet,

these rarely conform to the way most people perceive the

world. The mentally-ill, therefore, cannot be guilty

because s/he has a tenuous grasp on reality.

Yet, experience teaches us that a criminal maybe mentally

ill even as s/he maintains a perfect reality test and thus is

held criminally responsible (Jeffrey Dahmer comes to

mind). The “perception and understanding of reality”, in

other words, can and does co-exist even with the severest

forms of mental illness.

This makes it even more difficult to comprehend what is

meant by “mental disease”. If some mentally ill maintain a

grasp on reality, know right from wrong, can anticipate

the outcomes of their actions, are not subject to irresistible

impulses (the official position of the American Psychiatric

Association) – in what way do they differ from us,

“normal” folks?

http://www.psych.org/public_info/insanity.cfm

This is why the insanity defense often sits ill with mental

health pathologies deemed socially “acceptable” and

“normal” – such as religion or love.

Consider the following case:

A mother bashes the skulls of her three sons. Two of them

die. She claims to have acted on instructions she had

received from God. She is found not guilty by reason of

insanity. The jury determined that she “did not know right

from wrong during the killings.”

But why exactly was she judged insane?

Her belief in the existence of God – a being with

inordinate and inhuman attributes – may be irrational.

But it does not constitute insanity in the strictest sense

because it conforms to social and cultural creeds and

codes of conduct in her milieu. Billions of people

faithfully subscribe to the same ideas, adhere to the same

transcendental rules, observe the same mystical rituals,

and claim to go through the same experiences. This shared

psychosis is so widespread that it can no longer be

deemed pathological, statistically speaking.

She claimed that God has spoken to her.

As do numerous other people. Behavior that is considered

psychotic (paranoid-schizophrenic) in other contexts is

lauded and admired in religious circles. Hearing voices

and seeing visions – auditory and visual delusions – are

considered rank manifestations of righteousness and

sanctity.

http://samvak.tripod.com/lovepathology.html

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=716&e=3&u=/ap/20040404/ap_on_re_us/children_slain

Perhaps it was the content of her hallucinations that

proved her insane?

She claimed that God had instructed her to kill her boys.

Surely, God would not ordain such evil?

Alas, the Old and New Testaments both contain examples

of God’s appetite for human sacrifice. Abraham was

ordered by God to sacrifice Isaac, his beloved son (though

this savage command was rescinded at the last moment).

Jesus, the son of God himself, was crucified to atone for

the sins of humanity.

A divine injunction to slay one’s offspring would sit well

with the Holy Scriptures and the Apocrypha as well as

with millennia-old Judeo-Christian traditions of

martyrdom and sacrifice.

Her actions were wrong and incommensurate with both

human and divine (or natural) laws.

Yes, but they were perfectly in accord with a literal

interpretation of certain divinely-inspired texts, millennial

scriptures, apocalyptic thought systems, and

fundamentalist religious ideologies (such as the ones

espousing the imminence of “rapture”). Unless one

declares these doctrines and writings insane, her actions

are not.

We are forced to the conclusion that the murderous

mother is perfectly sane. Her frame of reference is

different to ours. Hence, her definitions of right and

wrong are idiosyncratic. To her, killing her babies was the

right thing to do and in conformity with valued teachings

and her own epiphany. Her grasp of reality – the

immediate and later consequences of her actions – was

never impaired.

It would seem that sanity and insanity are relative terms,

dependent on frames of cultural and social reference, and

statistically defined. There isn’t – and, in principle, can

never emerge – an “objective”, medical, scientific test to

determine mental health or disease unequivocally.

II. The Concept of Mental Disease – An Overview

Someone is considered mentally “ill” if:

1. His conduct rigidly and consistently deviates from
the typical, average behaviour of all other people

in his culture and society that fit his profile

(whether this conventional behaviour is moral or

rational is immaterial), or

2. His judgment and grasp of objective, physical
reality is impaired, and

3. His conduct is not a matter of choice but is innate
and irresistible, and

4. His behavior causes him or others discomfort, and
is

5. Dysfunctional, self-defeating, and self-destructive
even by his own yardsticks.

Descriptive criteria aside, what is the essence of mental

disorders? Are they merely physiological disorders of the

brain, or, more precisely of its chemistry? If so, can they

be cured by restoring the balance of substances and

secretions in that mysterious organ? And, once

equilibrium is reinstated – is the illness “gone” or is it still

lurking there, “under wraps”, waiting to erupt? Are

psychiatric problems inherited, rooted in faulty genes

(though amplified by environmental factors) – or brought

on by abusive or wrong nurturance?

These questions are the domain of the “medical” school of

mental health.

Others cling to the spiritual view of the human psyche.

They believe that mental ailments amount to the

metaphysical discomposure of an unknown medium – the

soul. Theirs is a holistic approach, taking in the patient in

his or her entirety, as well as his milieu.

The members of the functional school regard mental

health disorders as perturbations in the proper, statistically

“normal”, behaviours and manifestations of “healthy”

individuals, or as dysfunctions. The “sick” individual – ill

at ease with himself (ego-dystonic) or making others

unhappy (deviant) – is “mended” when rendered

functional again by the prevailing standards of his social

and cultural frame of reference.

In a way, the three schools are akin to the trio of blind

men who render disparate descriptions of the very same

elephant. Still, they share not only their subject matter –

but, to a counter intuitively large degree, a faulty

methodology.

As the renowned anti-psychiatrist, Thomas Szasz, of the

State University of New York, notes in his article “The

Lying Truths of Psychiatry”, mental health scholars,

regardless of academic predilection, infer the etiology of

mental disorders from the success or failure of treatment

modalities.

This form of “reverse engineering” of scientific models is

not unknown in other fields of science, nor is it

unacceptable if the experiments meet the criteria of the

scientific method. The theory must be all-inclusive

(anamnetic), consistent, falsifiable, logically compatible,

monovalent, and parsimonious. Psychological “theories” –

even the “medical” ones (the role of serotonin and

dopamine in mood disorders, for instance) – are usually

none of these things.

The outcome is a bewildering array of ever-shifting

mental health “diagnoses” expressly centred around

Western civilisation and its standards (example: the

ethical objection to suicide). Neurosis, a historically

fundamental “condition” vanished after 1980.

Homosexuality, according to the American Psychiatric

Association, was a pathology prior to 1973. Seven years

later, narcissism was declared a “personality disorder”,

almost seven decades after it was first described by Freud.

III. Personality Disorders

Indeed, personality disorders are an excellent example of

the kaleidoscopic landscape of “objective” psychiatry.

The classification of Axis II personality disorders –

deeply ingrained, maladaptive, lifelong behavior patterns

– in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, fourth edition,

text revision [American Psychiatric Association. DSM-

IV-TR, Washington, 2000] – or the DSM-IV-TR for short

– has come under sustained and serious criticism from its

inception in 1952, in the first edition of the DSM.

The DSM IV-TR adopts a categorical approach,

postulating that personality disorders are “qualitatively

distinct clinical syndromes” (p. 689). This is widely

doubted. Even the distinction made between “normal” and

“disordered” personalities is increasingly being rejected.

The “diagnostic thresholds” between normal and

abnormal are either absent or weakly supported.

The polythetic form of the DSM’s Diagnostic Criteria –

only a subset of the criteria is adequate grounds for a

diagnosis – generates unacceptable diagnostic

heterogeneity. In other words, people diagnosed with the

same personality disorder may share only one criterion or

none.

The DSM fails to clarify the exact relationship between

Axis II and Axis I disorders and the way chronic

childhood and developmental problems interact with

personality

disorders.

The differential diagnoses are vague and the personality

disorders are insufficiently demarcated. The result is

excessive co-morbidity (multiple Axis II diagnoses).

The DSM contains little discussion of what

distinguishes normal character (personality), personality

traits, or personality style (Millon) – from personality

disorders.

A dearth of documented clinical experience regarding

both the disorders themselves and the utility of various

treatment modalities.

Numerous personality disorders are “not otherwise

specified” – a catchall, basket “category”.

Cultural bias is evident in certain disorders (such as the

Antisocial and the Schizotypal).

The emergence of dimensional alternatives to the

categorical approach is acknowledged in the DSM-IV-TR

itself:

“An alternative to the categorical approach is the

dimensional perspective that Personality Disorders

represent maladaptive variants of personality traits that

merge imperceptibly into normality and into one

another” (p.689)

The following issues – long neglected in the DSM – are

likely to be tackled in future editions as well as in current

research. But their omission from official discourse

hitherto is both startling and telling:

The longitudinal course of the disorder(s) and their

temporal stability from early childhood onwards;

The genetic and biological underpinnings of

personality disorder(s);

The development of personality psychopathology

during childhood and its emergence in

adolescence;

The interactions between physical health and

disease and personality disorders;

The effectiveness of various treatments – talk

therapies as well as psychopharmacology.

IV. The Biochemistry and Genetics of Mental Health

Certain mental health afflictions are either correlated with

a statistically abnormal biochemical activity in the brain –

or are ameliorated with medication. Yet the two facts are

not ineludibly facets of the same underlying phenomenon.

In other words, that a given medicine reduces or abolishes

certain symptoms does not necessarily mean they were

caused by the processes or substances affected by the

drug administered. Causation is only one of many possible

connections and chains of events.

To designate a pattern of behaviour as a mental health

disorder is a value judgment, or at best a statistical

observation. Such designation is effected regardless of the

facts of brain science. Moreover, correlation is not

causation. Deviant brain or body biochemistry (once

called “polluted animal spirits”) do exist – but are they

truly the roots of mental perversion? Nor is it clear which

triggers what: do the aberrant neurochemistry or

biochemistry cause mental illness – or the other way

around?

That psychoactive medication alters behaviour and mood

is indisputable. So do illicit and legal drugs, certain foods,

and all interpersonal interactions. That the changes

brought about by prescription are desirable – is debatable

and involves tautological thinking. If a certain pattern of

behaviour is described as (socially) “dysfunctional” or

(psychologically) “sick” – clearly, every change would be

welcomed as “healing” and every agent of transformation

would be called a “cure”.

The same applies to the alleged heredity of mental illness.

Single genes or gene complexes are frequently

“associated” with mental health diagnoses, personality

traits, or behaviour patterns. But too little is known to

establish irrefutable sequences of causes-and-effects.

Even less is proven about the interaction of nature and

nurture, genotype and phenotype, the plasticity of the

brain and the psychological impact of trauma, abuse,

upbringing, role models, peers, and other environmental

elements.

Nor is the distinction between psychotropic substances

and talk therapy that clear-cut. Words and the interaction

with the therapist also affect the brain, its processes and

chemistry – albeit more slowly and, perhaps, more

profoundly and irreversibly. Medicines – as David Kaiser

reminds us in “Against Biologic Psychiatry” (Psychiatric

Times, Volume XIII, Issue 12, December 1996) – treat

symptoms, not the underlying processes that yield them.

V. The Variance of Mental Disease

If mental illnesses are bodily and empirical, they should

be invariant both temporally and spatially, across cultures

and societies. This, to some degree, is, indeed, the case.

Psychological diseases are not context dependent – but the

pathologizing of certain behaviours is. Suicide, substance

abuse, narcissism, eating disorders, antisocial ways,

schizotypal symptoms, depression, even psychosis are

considered sick by some cultures – and utterly normative

or advantageous in others.

This was to be expected. The human mind and its

dysfunctions are alike around the world. But values differ

from time to time and from one place to another. Hence,

disagreements about the propriety and desirability of

human actions and inaction are bound to arise in a

symptom-based diagnostic system.

As long as the pseudo-medical definitions of mental

health disorders continue to rely exclusively on signs and

symptoms – i.e., mostly on observed or reported

behaviours – they remain vulnerable to such discord and

devoid of much-sought universality and rigor.

VI. Mental Disorders and the Social Order

The mentally sick receive the same treatment as carriers

of AIDS or SARS or the Ebola virus or smallpox. They

are sometimes quarantined against their will and coerced

into involuntary treatment by medication, psychosurgery,

or electroconvulsive therapy. This is done in the name of

the greater good, largely as a preventive policy.

Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, it is impossible to

ignore the enormous interests vested in psychiatry and

psychopharmacology. The multibillion dollar industries

involving drug companies, hospitals, managed healthcare,

private clinics, academic departments, and law

enforcement agencies rely, for their continued and

exponential growth, on the propagation of the concept of

“mental illness” and its corollaries: treatment and

research.

VII. Mental Ailment as a Useful Metaphor

Abstract concepts form the core of all branches of human

knowledge. No one has ever seen a quark, or untangled a

chemical bond, or surfed an electromagnetic wave, or

visited the unconscious. These are useful metaphors,

theoretical entities with explanatory or descriptive power.

“Mental health disorders” are no different. They are

shorthand for capturing the unsettling quiddity of “the

Other”. Useful as taxonomies, they are also tools of social

coercion and conformity, as Michel Foucault and Louis

Althusser observed. Relegating both the dangerous and

the idiosyncratic to the collective fringes is a vital

technique of social engineering.

The aim is progress through social cohesion and the

regulation of innovation and creative destruction.

Psychiatry, therefore, is reifies society’s preference of

evolution to revolution, or, worse still, to mayhem. As is

often the case with human endeavour, it is a noble cause,

unscrupulously and dogmatically pursued.

http://samvak.tripod.com/althusser.html

AC/DC – a Deliberation Regarding the Impeachment

of the President of the United States of America

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

Review the Responses of US Senators

In the hallways of the Smithsonian, two moralists are

debating the impeachment of the President of the United

States of America, Mr. William Jefferson Clinton. One is

clearly Anti-Clinton (AC) the other, a Democrat (DC), is

not so much for him as he is for the rational and pragmatic

application of moral principles.

AC (expectedly): “The President should be impeached”.

DC (no less expectedly): “But, surely, even you are not

trying to imply that he has committed high crimes and

misdemeanours, as the Constitution demands as grounds

for the impeachment of a sitting President!”

AC: “But I do. Perjury is such a high crime because it

undermines the very fabric of trust between fellow

citizens and between the citizen and the system of justice,

the courts.”

http://samvak.tripod.com/cv.html

http://samvak.tripod.com/senator.html

DC: “A person is innocent until proven guilty. No sound

proof of perjurious conduct on behalf of the President has

been provided as yet. Perjurious statements have to be

deliberate and material. Even if the President deliberately

lied under oath – his lies were not material to a case,

which was later dismissed on the grounds of a lack of

legal merit. Legal hairsplitting and jousting are an

integral part of the defence in most court cases, civil and

criminal. It is a legitimate – and legal – component of any

legal battle, especially one involving interpretations,

ambiguous terminology and the substantiation of

intentions. The President should not be denied the

procedural and substantive rights available to all the

other citizens of his country. Nor should he be subjected

to a pre-judgment of his presumed guilt.”

AC: “This, precisely, is why an impeachment trial by the

Senate is called for. It is only there that the President can

credibly and rigorously establish his innocence. All I am

saying is that IF the President is found by the Senate to

have committed perjury – he should be impeached.

Wherever legal hairsplitting and jousting is permissible as

a legal tactic – it should and will be made available to the

President. As to the pre-judgment by the Press – I agree

with you, there is no place for it but, then, in this the

President has been treated no differently than others. The

pertinent fact is that perjury is a high misdemeanour, in

the least, that is, an impeachable offence.”

DC: “It was clearly not the intention of the Fathers of our

Constitution to include perjury in the list of impeachable

offences. Treason is more like it. Moreover, to say that the

President will receive a fair trial from the hands of his

peers in the Senate – is to lie. The Senate and its

committees is a political body, heavily tilted, currently,

against the President. No justice can be had where politics

rears its ugly head. Bias and prejudice will rule this mock

trial.”

AC: “Man is a political animal, said the Greek

philosophers of antiquity. Where can you find an

assembly of people free of politics? What is this discourse

that we are having if not a political one? Is not the

Supreme Court of the land a politically appointed entity?

The Senate is no better and no worse, it is but a mirror, a

reflection of the combined will of the people. Moreover,

in pursuing the procedures of impeachment – the Senate

will have proved its non-political mettle in this case. The

nation, in all opinion polls, wants this matter dropped. If it

is not – it is a proof of foresight and civil courage, of

leadership and refusal to succumb to passing fads.”

DC: “And what about my first argument – that perjury,

even once proven, was not considered by the authors of

the Constitution to have been an impeachable offence?”

AC: “The rules of the land – even the Constitution – are

nothing but an agreement between those who subscribe to

it and for as long as they do. It is a social contract, a pact.

Men – even the authors of the Constitution – being mortal,

relegated the right to amend it and to interpret it to future

generations. The Constitution is a vessel, each generation

fills it as it sees fit. It is up to us to say what current

meaning this document harbours. We are not to be

constrained by the original intentions of the authors.

These intentions are meaningless as circumstances

change. It is what we read into the Constitution that forms

its specific contents. With changing mores and values and

with the passage of events – each generation generates its

own version of this otherwise immortal set of principles.”

DC: “I find it hard to accept that there is no limit to this

creative deconstruction. Surely it is limited by common

sense, confined to logic, subordinate to universal human

principles. One can stretch the meanings of words only

thus far. It takes a lot of legal hairsplitting to bring perjury

– not proven yet – under one roof with

treason.”

AC: “Let us ignore the legal issues and leave them to their

professionals. Let us talk about what really bothers us all,

including you, I hope and trust. This President has lied.

He may have lied under oath, but he definitely lied on

television and in the spacious rooms of the White House.

He lied to his family, to his aides, to the nation, to

Congress…”

DC: “For what purpose do you enumerate them?”

AC: “Because it is one thing to lie to your family and

another thing to lie to Congress. A lie told to the nation, is

of a different magnitude altogether. To lie to your closest

aides and soi dissant confidantes – again is a separate

matter…”

DC: “So you agree that there are lies and there are lies?

That lying is not a monolithic offence? That some lies

are worse than others, some are permissible, some even

ethically mandatory?”

AC: “No, I do not. To lie is to do a morally objectionable

thing, no matter what the circumstances. It is better to shut

up. Why didn’t the President invoke the Fifth

Amendment, the right not to incriminate himself by his

own lips?”

DC: “Because as much information is contained in

abstaining to do something as in doing it and because if he

did so, he would have provoked riotous rumours.

Rumours are always worse than the truth. Rumours are

always worse than the most defiled lie. It is better to lie

than to provoke rumours.”

AC: “Unless your lies are so clearly lies that you provoke

rumours regarding what is true, thus inflicting a double

blow upon the public peace that you were mandated to

and undertook to preserve…”

DC: “Again, you make distinctions between types of lies

– this time, by their efficacy. I am not sure this is

progress. Let me give you examples of the three cases:

where one would do morally well to tell the truth, where

one would achieve morally commendable outcomes only

by lying and the case where lying is as morally

permissible as telling the truth. Imagine a young sick

adult. Her life is at peril but can be saved if she were to

agree to consume a certain medicine. This medicament,

however, will render her sterile. Surely, she must be told

the truth. It should be entirely her decision how to

continue his life: in person or through her progeny. Now,

imagine that this young woman, having suffered greatly

already, informed her doctor that should she learn that her

condition is terminal and that she needs to consume

medicines with grave side effects in order to prolong it or

even to save it altogether – she is determined to take her

life and has already procured the means to do so. Surely, it

is mandatory to lie to this young woman in order to save

her life. Imagine now the third situation: that she also

made a statement that having a child is her only,

predominant, all pervasive, wish in life. Faced with two

conflicting statements, some may choose to reveal the

truth to her – others, to withhold it, and with the same

amount of moral justification.”

AC: “And what are we to learn from this?”

DC: “That the moral life is a chain of dilemmas, almost

none of which is solvable. The President may have lied in

order to preserve his family, to protect his only child, to

shield his aides from embarrassing legal scrutiny, even to

protect his nation from what he perceived to have been the

destructive zeal of the special prosecutor. Some of his lies

should be considered at least common, if not morally

permissible.”

AC: “This is a slippery slope. There is no end to this

moral relativism. It is a tautology. You say that in some

cases there are morally permissible reasons to lie. When I

ask you how come – you say to me that people lie only

when they have good reasons to lie. But this the crux of

your mistake: good reasons are not always sufficient,

morally permissible, or even necessary reasons. Put more

plainly: no one lies without a reason. Does the fact that a

liar has a reason to lie – absolve him?”

DC: “Depends what is the reason. This is what I tried to

establish in my little sad example above. To lie about a

sexual liaison – even under oath – may be morally

permissible if the intention is to shield other meaningful

individuals from harm, or in order to buttress the

conditions, which will allow one to fulfil one’s side of a

contract. The President has a contract with the American

people, sealed in two elections. He has to perform. It is his

duty no less than he has a duty to tell the truth. Conflict

arises only when two equally powerful principles clash.

The very fact that there is a controversy in the public

demonstrates the moral ambiguity of this situation.

The dysfunction of the American presidency has already

cost trillions of dollars in a collapsing global economy.

Who knows how many people died and will die in the

pursuit of the high principle of vincit omnia veritas (the

truth always prevails)? If I could prove to you that one

person – just one person – committed suicide as a result of

the financial turmoil engendered by the Clinton affair,

would you still stick to your lofty ideals?”

AC: “You inadvertently, I am sure, broached the heart of

this matter. The President is in breach of his contracts.

Not one contract – but many. As all of us do – he has a

contract with other fellow beings, he is a signatory to a

Social Treaty. One of the articles of this treaty calls to

respect the Law by not lying under oath. Another calls for

striving to maintain a generally truthful conduct towards

the other signatories. The President has a contract with

his wife, which he clearly violated, by committing

adultery. Professing to be a believing man, he is also in

breach of his contract with his God as set forth in the

Holy Scriptures. But the President has another, very

powerful and highly specific contract with the American

people. It is this contract that has been violated savagely

and expressly by the President.”

DC: “The American people does not seem to think so, but,

prey, continue…”

AC: “Before I do, allow me just to repeat. To me, there is

no moral difference between one lie and another. All lies

are loathsome and lead, in the long run, to hell whatever

the good intentions, which paved the way there. As far as

I am concerned, President Clinton is a condemned man on

these grounds only. But the lies one chooses and the

victims he chooses to expose to his misbehaviour – reflect

his personality, his inner world, what type of human

being he is. It is the only allowance I make. All lies are

prohibited as all murders are. But there are murders most

foul and there are lies most abominable and obnoxious.

What are we to learn about the President from his choice

of arms and adversaries? That he is a paranoid, a

narcissist, lacks empathy, immature, unable to postpone

his satisfactions, to plan ahead, to foresee the outcomes of

his actions. He has a sense of special, unwarranted

entitlement, he judges his environment and the world, at

large, erroneously. In short: he is dangerously wrong for

the job that he has acquired through deception.”

DC: “Through elections…”

AC: “Nay, through deception brought about by elections.

He lied to the American people about who he is and what

he stands for. He did not frankly expose or discuss his

weaknesses and limitations. He sold his voters on an

invented, imaginary image, the product of spin-doctors

and opinion polls, which had no common denominator

with reality. This is gross deception.”

DC: “But now that the American people know everything

– they still prefer him over others, approve of his

performance and applaud his professional

achievements…”

AC: “This is the power of incumbency. It was the same

with Nixon until one month before his resignation. Or, do

you sanction his actions as well?”

DC: “Frankly, I will compare President Clinton to

President Andrew Johnson rather than to President

Nixon. The shattering discovery about Nixon was that he

was an uncommon criminal. The shattering discovery

about Clinton is that he is human. Congress chastises him

not for having done what he did – in this he has many

illustrious precedents. No, he is accused of being

indiscreet, of failing to hide the truth, to evade the facts.

He is reproached for his lack of efficiency at

concealment. He is criticized, therefore, both for being

evasive and for not being sufficiently protective of his

secrets. It is hard to win such a case, I tell you. It is also

hypocritical in the extreme.”

AC: “Do you agree that the President of the United States

is party to a contract with the American People?”

DC: “Absolutely.”

AC: “Would you say that he is enjoined by this contract to

uphold the dignity of his office?’

DC:”I think that most people would agree to this.”

AC: “And do you agree with me that fornicating in the

White House would tend to diminish rather than uphold

this dignity – and, therefore, constitute a violation of this

contract? That it shows utter disregard and disrespect to

the institutions of this country and to their standing?”

DC: “I assume that you mean to say fornication in

general, not only in the White House. To answer you, I

must analyse this complex issue into its components.

First, I assume that you agree with me that sex between

consenting adults is almost always legally allowed and,

depending on the circumstances and the culture, it is,

usually, morally acceptable. The President’s relationship

with Miss Lewinsky did not involve sexual harassment or

coercion and, therefore, was sex between consenting

adults. Legally, there could be nothing against it. The

problem, therefore, is cast in moral terms. Would you care

to define it?”

AC: “The President has engaged in sexual acts – some

highly unusual -with a woman much younger than he,

in a building belonging to the American public and put

at his disposal solely for the performance of his duties.

Moreover, his acts constituted adultery, which is a

morally reprehensible act. He acted secretly and tried to

conceal the facts using expressly illegal and immoral

means – namely by lying.”

DC: “I took the pains of noting down everything you said.

You said that the President has engaged in sexual acts and

there can be no dispute between us that this does not

constitute a problem. You said that some of them were

highly unusual. This is a value judgement, so dependent

on period and culture, that it is rendered meaningless by

its derivative nature. What to one is repulsive is to the

other a delightful stimulus. Of course, this applies only to

consenting adults and when life itself is not jeopardized.

Then you mentioned the age disparity between the

President and his liaison. This is sheer bigotry. I am

inclined to think that this statement is motivated more by

envy than by moral judgement…”

AC: “I beg to differ! His advantages in both position and

age do raise the spectre of exploitation, even of abuse! He

took advantage of her, capitalized on her lack of

experience and innocence, used her as a sex slave, an

object, there just to fulfil his desires and realize his

fantasies.”

DC: “Then there is no meaning to the word consent, nor

to the legal age of consent. The line must be drawn

somewhere. The President did not make explicit promises

and then did not own up to them. Expectations and

anticipation can develop in total vacuum, in a manner

unsubstantiated, not supported by any observable

behaviour. It is an open question who was using who in

this lurid tale – at least, who was hoping to use who. The

President, naturally, had much more to offer to Miss

Lewinsky than she could conceivably have offered to him.

Qui bono is a useful guide in reality as well as in mystery

books.”

AC: “This is again the same Presidential pattern of deceit,

half truths and plain lies. The President may not have

promised anything explicitly – but he sure did implicitly,

otherwise why would Miss Lewinsky have availed herself

sexually? Even if we adopt your more benevolent version

of events and assume that Miss Lewinsky approached this

avowed and professional womanizer with the intention of

taking advantage of him – clearly, a deal must have been

struck. ”

DC: “Yes, but we don’t know its nature and its

parameters. It is therefore useless to talk about this empty,

hypothetical entity. You also said that he committed these

acts of lust in a building belonging to the American public

and put at his disposal solely for the performance of his

duties. This is half-true, of course. This is also the home

of the President, his castle. He has to endure a lot in order

to occupy this mansion and the separation between private

and public life is only on paper. Presidents have no private

lives but only public ones. Why should we reproach them

for mixing the public with the private? This is a double

standard: when it suits our predatory instincts, our

hypocrisy and our search for a scapegoat – we disallow

the private life of a President. When these same low

drives can be satisfied by making this distinction – we

trumpet it. We must make up our minds: either Presidents

are not allowed to have private lives and then they should

be perfectly allowed to engage in all manner of normally

private behaviour in public and on public property (and

even at the public’s expense). Or the distinction is relevant

– in which case we should adopt the “European model”

and not pry into the lives of our Presidents, not expose

them, and not demand their public flagellation for very

private sins.”

AC: “This is a gross misrepresentation of the process that

led to the current sorry state of affairs. The President got

himself embroiled in numerous other legal difficulties

long before the Monika Lewinsky story erupted. The

special prosecutor was appointed to investigate

Whitewater and other matters long before the President’s

sexual shenanigans hit the courts. The President lied under

oath in connection with a private, civil lawsuit brought

against him by Paula Jones. It is all the President’s doing.

Decapitating the messenger – the special prosecutor – is

an old and defunct Roman habit.”

DC: “Then you proceeded to accuse the President of

adultery. Technically, there can be no disagreement. The

President’s actions – however sexual acts are defined –

constitute unequivocal adultery. But the legal and

operational definitions of adultery are divorced from the

emotional and moral discourse of the same phenomenon.

We must not forget that you stated that the adulterous acts

committed by the President have adversely affected the

dignity of his office and this is what seems to have

bothered you…”

AC: “Absolutely misrepresented. I do have a problem

with adultery in general and I wholeheartedly disagree

with it…”

DC: “I apologize. So, let us accord these two rather

different questions – the separate treatment that they

deserve. First, surely you agree with me that there can be

no dignity where there is no truth, for you said so

yourself. A marital relationship that fails abysmally to

provide the parties with sexual or emotional gratification

and is maintained in the teeth of such failure – is a lie. It is

a lie because it gives observers false information

regarding the state of things. What is better – to continue a

marriage of appearances and mutual hell – or to find

emotional and sexual fulfilment elsewhere? When the

pursuit of happiness is coupled with the refusal to pretend,

to pose, in other words, to lie, isn’t this commendable?

President Clinton admitted to marital problems and there

seems to be an incompatibility, which reaches to the roots

of this bond between himself and his wife.

Sometimes marriages start as one thing – passion, perhaps

or self delusion – and end up as another: mutual

acceptance, a warm habit, companionship. Many

marriages withstand marital infidelity precisely because

they are not conventional, or ideal marriages. By forgoing

sex, a partnership is sometimes strengthened and a true,

disinterested friendship is formed. I say that by insisting

on being true to himself, by refusing to accept social

norms of hypocrisy, conventions of make-belief and

camouflage, by exposing the lacunas in his marriage, by,

thus, redefining it and by pursuing his own sexual and

emotional happiness – the President has acted honestly.

He did not compromise the dignity of his office.”

AC: “Dysfunctional partnerships should be dissolved.

The President should have divorced prior to indulging his

sexual appetite. Sexual exclusivity is an integral –

possibly the most important – section of the marriage

contract. The President ignored his vows, dishonoured his

word, breached his contract with the First Lady.”

DC: “People stay together only if they feel that the

foundation upon which they based their relationship is

still sound. Mr. Clinton and Mrs. Clinton redefined their

marriage to exclude sexual exclusivity, an impossibility

under the circumstances. But they did not exclude

companionship and friendship. It is here that the President

may have sinned, in lying to his best friend, his wife.

Adultery is committed only when a party strays out of the

confines of the marital contract. I postulate that the

President was well within his agreement with Mrs.

Clinton when he sought sexual gratification elsewhere.”

AC: “Adultery is a sin not only against the partner. The

marriage contract is signed by three parties: the man, the

woman and God between them. The President sinned

against God. This cannot be ameliorated by any human

approval or permission. Whether his wife accepted him as

he is and disregarded his actions – is irrelevant. And if

you are agnostic or an atheist, still you can replace the

word ‗God’ by the words „Social Order’. President

Clinton’s behaviour undermines the foundations of our

social order. The family is the basic functional unit and its

proper functioning is guaranteed by the security of sexual

and emotional exclusivity. To be adulterous is to rebel

against civilization. It is an act of high social and moral

treason.”

DC: “While I may share your nostalgia – I am compelled

to inform you that even nostalgia is not what it used to be.

There is no such thing as ‗The Family’. There are a few

competing models, some of them involving only a single

person and his or her offspring. There is nothing to

undermine. The social order is in such a flux that it is

impossible to follow, let alone define or capture. Adultery

is common. This could be a sign of the times – or the

victory of honesty and openness over pretension and

hypocrisy. No one can cast a stone at President Clinton in

this day and age.”

AC: “But that’s precisely it! The President is not a mirror,

a reflection of the popular will. Our President is a leader

with awesome powers. These powers were given to him to

enable him to set example, to bear a standard – to be a

standard. I do demand of my President to be morally

superior to me – and this is no hypocrisy. This is a job

description. To lead, a leader needs to inspire shame and

guilt through his model. People must look up to him, wish

they were like him, hope, dream, aspire and conspire to be

like him. A true leader provokes inner tumult,

psychological conflicts, strong emotions – because he

demands the impossible through the instance of his

personality. A true leader moves people to sacrifice

because he is worthy of their sacrifice, because he

deserves it. He definitely does not set an example of moral

disintegration, recklessness, short-sightedness and

immaturity. The President is given unique power, status

and privileges – only because he has been recognized as a

unique and powerful and privileged individual. Whether

such recognition has been warranted or not is what

determines the quality of the presidency.”

DC: “Not being a leader, or having been misjudged by the

voters to be one – do not constitute impeachable offences.

I reject your view of the presidency. It is too fascist for

me, it echoes with the despicable Fuhrerprinzip. A leader

is no different from the people that elected him. A leader

has strong convictions shared by the majority of his

compatriots. A leader also has the energy to implement

the solutions that he proposes and the willingness to

sacrifice certain aspects of his life (like his privacy) to do

so. If a leader is a symbol of his people – then he must, in

many ways, be like them.

He cannot be as alien as you make him out to be. But

then, if he is alien by virtue of being superior or by virtue

of being possessed of superhuman qualities – how can we,

mere mortals, judge him? This is the logical fallacy in

your argument: if the President is a symbol, then he must

be very much similar to us and we should not subject him

to a judgement more severe than the one meted to

ourselves. If the President is omnipotent, omniscient,

omnipresent, or otherwise, superhuman – then he is above

our ability to judge. And if the President is a standard

against whom we should calibrate our lives and actions –

then he must reflect the mores of his times, the

kaleidoscopic nature of the society that bred him, the flux

of norms, conventions, paradigms and doctrines which

formed the society which chose him. A standard too

remote, too alien, too detached – will not do. People will

ignore it and revert to other behavioural benchmarks and

normative yardsticks. The President should, therefore, be

allowed to be “normal”, he should be forgiven. After all

forgiveness is as prominent a value as being truthful.

AC: “This allowance, alas, cannot be made. Even if I

were to accept your thesis about ‗The President as a

regular Human Being’ – still his circumstances are not

regular. The decisions that he faces – and very frequently

– affect the lives of billions. The conflicting pressures that

he is under, the gigantic amounts of information that he

must digest, the enormity of the tasks facing him and the

strains and stresses that are surely the results of these – all

call for a special human alloy. If cracks are found in this

alloy in room temperature – it raises doubts regarding its

ability to withstand harsher conditions. If the President

lies concerning a personal matter, no matter how

significant – who will guarantee veracity rather than

prevarication in matters more significant to us?

If he is afraid of a court of law – how is he likely to

command our armies in a time of war? If he is evasive in

his answers to the Grand Jury – how can we rely on his

resolve and determination when confronting world leaders

and when faced with extreme situations? If he loses his

temper over petty matters – who will guarantee his

coolheadedness when it is really required? If criminal in

small, household matters – why not in the international

arena?”

DC: “Because this continuum is false. There is little

correlation between reactive patterns in the personal

realms – and their far relatives in the public domain.

Implication by generalization is a logical fallacy. The

most adulterous, querulous, and otherwise despicable

people have been superb, far sighted statesmen. The most

generous, benevolent, easygoing ones have become

veritable political catastrophes. The public realm is not

the personal realm writ large. It is true that the leader’s

personality interacts with his circumstances to yield policy

choices. But the relevance of his sexual predilections in

this context is dubious indeed. It is true that his morals

and general conformity to a certain value system will

influence his actions and inactions – influence, but not

determine them. It is true that his beliefs, experience,

personality, character and temperament will colour the

way he does things – but rarely what he does and rarely

more than colour. Paradoxically, in times of crisis, there is

a tendency to overlook the moral vices of a leader (or, for

that matter, his moral virtues). If a proof was needed that

moral and personal conduct are less relevant to proper

leadership – this is it. When it really matters, we ignore

these luxuries of righteousness and get on with the

business of selecting a leader.

Not a symbol, not a standard bearer, not a superman.

Simply a human being – with all the flaws and

weaknesses of one – who can chart the water and navigate

to safety flying in the face of adverse circumstances.”

AC: “Like everything else in life, electing a leader is a

process of compromise, a negotiation between the ideal

and the real. I just happen to believe that a good leader is

the one who is closer to the ideal. You believe that one

has to be realistic, not to dream, not to expect. To me, this

is mental death. My criticism is a cry of the pain of

disillusionment. But if I have to choose between deluding

myself again and standing firmly on a corrupt and

degenerate ground – I prefer, and always will, the levity of

dreams.”

The Rights of Animals

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

―Animal rights‖ is a catchphrase akin to ―human rights‖.

It involves, however, a few pitfalls. First, animals exist

only as a concept. Otherwise, they are cuddly cats, curly

dogs, cute monkeys. A rat and a puppy are both animals

but our emotional reaction to them is so different that we

cannot really lump them together. Moreover: what rights

are we talking about? The right to life? The right to be

free of pain? The right to food? Except the right to free

speech – all other rights could be applied to animals.

Law professor Steven Wise, argues in his book, “Drawing

the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights”, for the

extension to animals of legal rights accorded to infants.

Many animal species exhibit awareness, cognizance and

communication skills typical of human toddlers and of

humans with arrested development. Yet, the latter enjoy

rights denied the former.

According to Wise, there are four categories of practical

autonomy – a legal standard for granting “personhood”

and the rights it entails. Practical autonomy involves the

ability to be desirous, to intend to fulfill and pursue one’s

desires, a sense of self-awareness, and self-sufficiency.

Most animals, says Wise, qualify. This may be going too

far. It is easier to justify the moral rights of animals than

their legal rights.

http://samvak.tripod.com/cv.html

But when we say “animals”, what we really mean is non-

human organisms. This is such a wide definition that it

easily pertains to extraterrestrial aliens. Will we witness

an Alien Rights movement soon? Unlikely. Thus, we are

forced to narrow our field of enquiry to non-human

organisms reminiscent of humans, the ones that provoke

in us empathy.

Even this is way too fuzzy. Many people love snakes, for

instance, and deeply empathize with them. Could we

accept the assertion (avidly propounded by these people)

that snakes ought to have rights – or should we consider

only organisms with extremities and the ability to feel

pain?

Historically, philosophers like Kant (and Descartes,

Malebranche, and Aquinas) rejected the idea of animal

rights. They regarded animals as the organic equivalents

of machines, driven by coarse instincts, unable to

experience pain (though their behavior sometimes

deceives us into erroneously believing that they do).

Thus, any ethical obligation that we have towards animals

is a derivative of our primary obligation towards our

fellow humans (the only ones possessed of moral

significance). These are called the theories of indirect

moral obligations. Thus, it is wrong to torture animals

only because it desensitizes us to human suffering and

makes us more prone to using violence on humans.

Malebranche augmented this line of thinking by “proving”

that animals cannot suffer pain because they are not

descended from Adam. Pain and suffering, as we all

know, are the exclusive outcomes of Adam’s sins.

Kant and Malebranche may have been wrong. Animals

may be able to suffer and agonize. But how can we tell

whether another Being is truly suffering pain or not?

Through empathy. We postulate that – since that Being

resembles us – it must have the same experiences and,

therefore, it deserves our pity.

Yet, the principle of resemblance has many drawbacks.

One, it leads to moral relativism.

Consider this maxim from the Jewish Talmud: “Do not do

unto thy friend that which you hate”. An analysis of this

sentence renders it less altruistic than it appears. We are

encouraged to refrain from doing only those things that

WE find hateful. This is the quiddity of moral relativism.

The saying implies that it is the individual who is the

source of moral authority. Each and every one of us is

allowed to spin his own moral system, independent of

others. The Talmudic dictum establishes a privileged

moral club (very similar to later day social

contractarianism) comprised of oneself and one’s

friend(s). One is encouraged not to visit evil upon one’s

friends, all others seemingly excluded. Even the broadest

interpretation of the word “friend” could only read:

“someone like you” and substantially excludes strangers.

Two, similarity is a structural, not an essential, trait.

Empathy as a differentiating principle is structural: if X

looks like me and behaves like me – then he is privileged.

Moreover, similarity is not necessarily identity. Monkeys,

dogs and dolphins are very much like us, both structurally

and behaviorally. Even according to Wise, it is quantity

(the degree of observed resemblance), not quality

(identity, essence), that is used in determining whether an

animal is worthy of holding rights, whether is it a morally

significant person. The degree of figurative and functional

likenesses decide whether one deserves to live, pain-free

and happy.

The quantitative test includes the ability to communicate

(manipulate vocal-verbal-written symbols within

structured symbol systems). Yet, we ignore the fact that

using the same symbols does not guarantee that we attach

to them the same cognitive interpretations and the same

emotional resonance (‘private languages”). The same

words, or symbols, often have different meanings.

Meaning is dependent upon historical, cultural, and

personal contexts. There is no telling whether two people

mean the same things when they say “red”, or “sad”, or

“I”, or “love”. That another organism looks like us,

behaves like us and communicates like us is no guarantee

that it is – in its essence – like us. This is the subject of the

famous Turing Test: there is no effective way to

distinguish a machine from a human when we rely

exclusively on symbol manipulation.

Consider pain once more.

http://samvak.tripod.com/turing.html

To say that something does not experience pain cannot be

rigorously defended. Pain is a subjective experience.

There is no way to prove or to disprove that someone is or

is not in pain. Here, we can rely only on the subject’s

reports. Moreover, even if we were to have an

analgometer (pain gauge), there would have been no way

to show that the phenomenon that activates the meter is

one and the same for all subjects, SUBJECTIVELY, i.e.,

that it is experienced in the same way by all the subjects

examined.

Even more basic questions regarding pain are impossible

to answer: What is the connection between the piercing

needle and the pain REPORTED and between these two

and electrochemical patterns of activity in the brain? A

correlation between these three phenomena can be

established – but not their identity or the existence of a

causative process. We cannot prove that the waves in the

subject’s brain when he reports pain – ARE that pain. Nor

can we show that they CAUSED the pain, or that the pain

caused them.

It is also not clear whether our moral percepts are

conditioned on the objective existence of pain, on the

reported existence of pain, on the purported existence of

pain (whether experienced or not, whether reported or

not), or on some independent laws.

If it were painless, would it be moral to torture someone?

Is the very act of sticking needles into someone immoral –

or is it immoral because of the pain it causes, or supposed

to inflict? Are all three components (needle sticking, a

sensation of pain, brain activity) morally equivalent? If so,

is it as immoral to merely generate the same patterns of

brain activity, without inducing any sensation of pain and

without sticking needles in the subject?

If these three phenomena are not morally equivalent –

why aren’t they? They are, after all, different facets of the

very same pain – shouldn’t we condemn all of them

equally? Or should one aspect of pain (the subject’s report

of pain) be accorded a privileged treatment and status?

Yet, the subject’s report is the weakest proof of pain! It

cannot be verified. And if we cling to this descriptive-

behavioral-phenomenological definition of pain than

animals qualify as well. They also exhibit all the

behaviors normally ascribed to humans in pain and they

report feeling pain (though they do tend to use a more

limited and non-verbal vocabulary).

Pain is, therefore, a value judgment and the reaction to it

is culturally dependent. In some cases, pain is perceived

as positive and is sought. In the Aztec cultures, being

chosen to be sacrificed to the Gods was a high honor.

How would we judge animal rights in such historical and

cultural contexts? Are there any “universal” values or does

it all really depend on interpretation?

If we, humans, cannot separate the objective from the

subjective and the cultural – what gives us the right or

ability to decide for other organisms? We have no way of

knowing whether pigs suffer pain.

We cannot decide right and wrong, good and evil for

those with whom we can communicate, let alone for

organisms with which we fail to do even this.

Is it GENERALLY immoral to kill, to torture, to pain?

The answer seems obvious and it automatically applies to

animals. Is it generally immoral to destroy? Yes, it is and

this answer applies to the inanimate as well. There are

exceptions: it is permissible to kill and to inflict pain in

order to prevent a (quantitatively or qualitatively) greater

evil, to protect life, and when no reasonable and feasible

alternative is available.

The chain of food in nature is morally neutral and so are

death and disease. Any act which is intended to sustain

life of a higher order (and a higher order in life) – is

morally positive or, at least neutral. Nature decreed so.

Animals do it to other animals – though, admittedly, they

optimize their consumption and avoid waste and

unnecessary pain. Waste and pain are morally wrong. This

is not a question of hierarchy of more or less important

Beings (an outcome of the fallacy of

anthropomorphesizing Nature).

The distinction between what is (essentially) US – and

what just looks and behaves like us (but is NOT us) is

false, superfluous and superficial. Sociobiology is already

blurring these lines. Quantum Mechanics has taught us

that we can say nothing about what the world really IS. If

things look the same and behave the same, we better

assume that they are the same.

http://samvak.tripod.com/life.html

The attempt to claim that moral responsibility is reserved

to the human species is self defeating. If it is so, then we

definitely have a moral obligation towards the weaker and

meeker. If it isn’t, what right do we have to decide who

shall live and who shall die (in pain)?

The increasingly shaky “fact” that species do not

interbreed “proves” that species are distinct, say some.

But who can deny that we share most of our genetic

material with the fly and the mouse? We are not as

dissimilar as we wish we were. And ever-escalating

cruelty towards other species will not establish our genetic

supremacy – merely our moral inferiority.

Just War or a Just War?
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

In an age of terrorism, guerilla and total warfare the

medieval doctrine of Just War needs to be re-defined.

Moreover, issues of legitimacy, efficacy and morality

should not be confused. Legitimacy is conferred by

institutions. Not all morally justified wars are, therefore,

automatically legitimate. Frequently the efficient

execution of a battle plan involves immoral or even illegal

acts.

As international law evolves beyond the ancient percepts

of sovereignty, it should incorporate new thinking about

pre-emptive strikes, human rights violations as casus belli

and the role and standing of international organizations,

insurgents and liberation movements.

Yet, inevitably, what constitutes “justice” depends heavily

on the cultural and societal contexts, narratives, mores,

and values of the disputants. Thus, one cannot answer the

deceivingly simple question: “Is this war a just war?” –

without first asking: “According to whom? In which

context? By which criteria? Based on what values? In

which period in history and where?”

Being members of Western Civilization, whether by

choice or by default, our understanding of what

constitutes a just war is crucially founded on our shifting

perceptions of the West.

http://samvak.tripod.com/cv.html

Imagine a village of 220 inhabitants. It has one heavily

armed police constable flanked by two lightly equipped

assistants. The hamlet is beset by a bunch of ruffians who

molest their own families and, at times, violently lash out

at their neighbors. These delinquents mock the authorities

and ignore their decisions and decrees.

Yet, the village council – the source of legitimacy – refuses

to authorize the constable to apprehend the villains and

dispose of them, by force of arms if need be. The elders

see no imminent or present danger to their charges and are

afraid of potential escalation whose evil outcomes could

far outweigh anything the felons can achieve.

Incensed by this laxity, the constable – backed only by

some of the inhabitants – breaks into the home of one of

the more egregious thugs and expels or kills him. He

claims to have acted preemptively and in self-defense, as

the criminal, long in defiance of the law, was planning to

attack its representatives.

Was the constable right in acting the way he did?

On the one hand, he may have saved lives and prevented a

conflagration whose consequences no one could predict.

On the other hand, by ignoring the edicts of the village

council and the expressed will of many of the denizens, he

has placed himself above the law, as its absolute

interpreter and enforcer.

What is the greater danger? Turning a blind eye to the

exploits of outlaws and outcasts, thus rendering them ever

more daring and insolent – or acting unilaterally to counter

such pariahs, thus undermining the communal legal

foundation and, possibly, leading to a chaotic situation of

“might is right”? In other words, when ethics and

expedience conflict with legality – which should

prevail?

Enter the medieval doctrine of “Just War” (justum bellum,

or, more precisely jus ad bellum), propounded by Saint

Augustine of Hippo (fifth century AD), Saint Thomas

Aquinas (1225-1274) in his “Summa Theologicae”,

Francisco de Vitoria (1548-1617), Francisco Suarez

(1548-1617), Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) in his influential

tome “Jure Belli ac Pacis” (“On Rights of War and

Peace”, 1625), Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1704), Christian

Wolff (1679-1754), and Emerich de Vattel (1714-1767).

Modern thinkers include Michael Walzer in “Just and

Unjust Wars” (1977), Barrie Paskins and Michael Dockrill

in “The Ethics of War” (1979), Richard Norman in

“Ethics, Killing, and War” (1995), Thomas Nagel in “War

and Massacre”, and Elizabeth Anscombe in “War and

Murder”.

According to the Catholic Church’s rendition of this

theory, set forth by Bishop Wilton D. Gregory of the

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in his

Letter to President Bush on Iraq, dated September 13,

2002, going to war is justified if these conditions are met:

“The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or

community of nations [is] lasting, grave, and certain; all

other means of putting an end to it must have been

shown to be impractical or ineffective; there must be

serious prospects of success; the use of arms must not

produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be

eliminated.”

A just war is, therefore, a last resort, all other peaceful

conflict resolution options having been exhausted.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy sums up the

doctrine thus:

“The principles of the justice of war are commonly held to

be:

(1) Having just cause (especially and, according to the

United Nations Charter, exclusively, self-defense)

(2) Being (formally) declared by a proper authority

(3) Possessing a right intention

(4) Having a reasonable chance of success

(5) The end being proportional to the means used.”

Yet, the evolution of warfare – the invention of nuclear

weapons, the propagation of total war, the ubiquity of

guerrilla and national liberation movements, the

emergence of global, border-hopping terrorist

organizations, of totalitarian regimes, and rogue or failed

states – requires these principles to be modified by adding

these tenets:

(6) That the declaring authority is a lawfully and

democratically elected government

(7) That the declaration of war reflects the popular will

(Extension of 3) The right intention is to act in just cause.

(Extension of 4) … or a reasonable chance of avoiding an

annihilating defeat

(Extension of 5) That the outcomes of war are preferable

to the outcomes of the preservation of peace.

Still, the doctrine of just war, conceived in Europe in eras

past, is fraying at the edges. Rights and corresponding

duties are ill-defined or mismatched. What is legal is not

always moral and what is legitimate is not invariably

legal. Political realism and quasi-religious idealism sit

uncomfortably within the same conceptual framework.

Norms are vague and debatable while customary law is

only partially subsumed in the tradition (i.e., in treaties,

conventions and other instruments, as well in the actual

conduct of states).

The most contentious issue is, of course, what constitutes

“just cause”. Self-defense, in its narrowest sense (reaction

to direct and overwhelming armed aggression), is a

justified casus belli. But what about the use of force to

(deontologically, consequentially, or ethically):

(1) Prevent or ameliorate a slow-motion or permanent

humanitarian crisis

(2) Preempt a clear and present danger of aggression

(“anticipatory or preemptive self-defense” against what

Grotius called “immediate danger”)

(3) Secure a safe environment for urgent and

indispensable humanitarian relief operations

(4) Restore democracy in the attacked state (“regime

change”)

(5) Restore public order in the attacked state

(6) Prevent human rights violations or crimes against

humanity or violations of international law by the attacked

state

(7) Keep the peace (“peacekeeping operations”) and

enforce compliance with international or bilateral treaties

between the aggressor and the attacked state or the

attacked state and a third party

(8) Suppress armed infiltration, indirect aggression, or

civil strife aided and abetted by the attacked state

(9) Honor one’s obligations to frameworks and treaties of

collective self-defense

(10) Protect one’s citizens or the citizens of a third party

inside the attacked state

(11) Protect one’s property or assets owned by a third

party inside the attacked state

(12) Respond to an invitation by the authorities of the

attacked state – and with their expressed consent – to

militarily intervene within the territory of the attacked

state

(13) React to offenses against the nation’s honor or its

economy

Unless these issues are resolved and codified, the entire

edifice of international law – and, more specifically, the

law of war – is in danger of crumbling. The contemporary

multilateral regime proved inadequate and unable to

effectively tackle genocide (Rwanda, Bosnia), terror (in

Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East), weapons of

mass destruction (Iraq, India, Israel, Pakistan, North

Korea), and tyranny (in dozens of members of the United

Nations).

This feebleness inevitably led to the resurgence of “might

is right” unilateralism, as practiced, for instance, by the

United States in places as diverse as Grenada and Iraq.

This pernicious and ominous phenomenon is coupled with

contempt towards and suspicion of international

organizations, treaties, institutions, undertakings, and the

prevailing consensual order.

In a unipolar world, reliant on a single superpower for its

security, the abrogation of the rules of the game could

lead to chaotic and lethal anarchy with a multitude of

“rebellions” against the emergent American Empire.

International law – the formalism of “natural law” – is only

one of many competing universalist and missionary value

systems. Militant Islam is another. The West must adopt

the former to counter the latter.

Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

“I believe that when man evolves a civilization higher

than the mechanized but still primitive one he has now,

the eating of human flesh will be sanctioned. For then

man will have thrown off all of his superstitions and

irrational taboos.”

(Diego Rivera)

“One calls ‘barbarism’ whatever he is not accustomed

to.”

(Montaigne, On Cannibalism)

“Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto

you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink

his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh,

and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise

him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and

my blood is drink indeed.”

(New Testament, John 6:53-55)

Cannibalism (more precisely, anthropophagy) is an age-

old tradition that, judging by a constant stream of

flabbergasted news reports, is far from extinct. Much-

debated indications exist that our Neanderthal, Proto-

Neolithic, and Neolithic (Stone Age) predecessors were

cannibals. Similarly contested claims were made with

regards to the 12th century advanced Anasazi culture in

the southwestern United States and the Minoans in Crete

(today’s Greece).

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The Britannica Encyclopedia (2005 edition) recounts how

the “Binderwurs of central India ate their sick and aged

in the belief that the act was pleasing to their goddess,

Kali.” Cannibalism may also have been common among

followers of the Shaktism cults in India.

Other sources attribute cannibalism to the 16th century

Imbangala in today’s Angola and Congo, the Fang in

Cameroon, the Mangbetu in Central Africa, the Ache in

Paraguay, the Tonkawa in today’s Texas, the Calusa in

current day Florida, the Caddo and Iroquois confederacies

of Indians in North America, the Cree in Canada, the

Witoto, natives of Colombia and Peru, the Carib in the

Lesser Antilles (whose distorted name – Canib – gave rise

to the word “cannibalism”), to Maori tribes in today’s New

Zealand, and to various peoples in Sumatra (like the

Batak).

The Wikipedia numbers among the practitioners of

cannibalism the ancient Chinese, the Korowai tribe of

southeastern Papua, the Fore tribe in New Guinea (and

many other tribes in Melanesia), the Aztecs, the people of

Yucatan, the Purchas from Popayan, Colombia, the

denizens of the Marquesas Islands of Polynesia, and the

natives of the captaincy of Sergipe in Brazil.

From Congo and Central Africa to Germany and from

Mexico to New Zealand, cannibalism is enjoying a

morbid revival of interest, if not of practice. A veritable

torrent of sensational tomes and movies adds to our

ambivalent fascination with man-eaters.

Cannibalism is not a monolithic affair. It can be divided

thus:

I. Non-consensual consumption of human flesh post-

mortem

For example, when the corpses of prisoners of war are

devoured by their captors. This used to be a common

exercise among island tribes (e.g., in Fiji, the Andaman

and Cook islands) and is still the case in godforsaken

battle zones such as Congo (formerly Zaire), or among the

defeated Japanese soldiers in World War II.

Similarly, human organs and fetuses as well as mummies

are still being gobbled up – mainly in Africa and Asia – for

remedial and medicinal purposes and in order to enhance

one’s libido and vigor.

On numerous occasions the organs of dead companions,

colleagues, family, or neighbors were reluctantly ingested

by isolated survivors of horrid accidents (the Uruguay

rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes, the boat

people fleeing Asia), denizens of besieged cities (e.g.,

during the siege of Leningrad), members of exploratory

expeditions gone astray (the Donner Party in Sierra

Nevada, California and John Franklin’s Polar expedition),

famine-stricken populations (Ukraine in the 1930s, China

in the 1960s), and the like.

Finally, in various pre-nation-state and tribal societies,

members of the family were encouraged to eat specific

parts of their dead relatives as a sign of respect or in order

to partake of the deceased’s wisdom, courage, or other

positive traits (endocannibalism).

II. Non-consensual consumption of human flesh from a

live source

For example, when prisoners of war are butchered for the

express purpose of being eaten by their victorious

enemies.

A notorious and rare representative of this category of

cannibalism is the punitive ritual of being eaten alive. The

kings of the tribes of the Cook Islands were thought to

embody the gods. They punished dissent by dissecting

their screaming and conscious adversaries and consuming

their flesh piecemeal, eyeballs first.

The Sawney Bean family in Scotland, during the reign of

King James I, survived for decades on the remains (and

personal belongings) of victims of their murderous sprees.

Real-life serial killers, like Jeffrey Dahmer, Albert Fish,

Sascha Spesiwtsew, Fritz Haarmann, Issei Sagawa, and

Ed Gein, lured, abducted, and massacred countless people

and then consumed their flesh and preserved the inedible

parts as trophies. These lurid deeds inspired a slew of

books and films, most notably The Silence of the Lambs

with Hannibal (Lecter) the Cannibal as its protagonist.

III. Consensual consumption of human flesh from live

and dead human bodies

Armin Meiwes, the “Master Butcher (Der

Metzgermeister)”, arranged over the Internet to meet

Bernd Jurgen Brandes on March 2001. Meiwes amputated

the penis of his guest and they both ate it. He then

proceeded to kill Brandes (with the latter’s consent

recorded on video), and snack on what remained of him.

Sexual cannibalism is a paraphilia and an extreme – and

thankfully, rare – form of fetishism.

http://samvak.tripod.com/serialkillers.html

http://samvak.tripod.com/factoidg.html

The Aztecs willingly volunteered to serve as human

sacrifices (and to be tucked into afterwards). They firmly

believed that they were offerings, chosen by the gods

themselves, thus being rendered immortal.

Dutiful sons and daughters in China made their amputated

organs and sliced tissues (mainly the liver) available to

their sick parents (practices known as Ko Ku and Ko

Kan). Such donation were considered remedial. Princess

Miao Chuang who surrendered her severed hands to her

ailing father was henceforth deified.

Non-consensual cannibalism is murder, pure and simple.

The attendant act of cannibalism, though aesthetically and

ethically reprehensible, cannot aggravate this supreme

assault on all that we hold sacred.

But consensual cannibalism is a lot trickier. Modern

medicine, for instance, has blurred the already thin line

between right and wrong.

What is the ethical difference between consensual, post-

mortem, organ harvesting and consensual, post-mortem

cannibalism?

Why is stem cell harvesting (from aborted fetuses)

morally superior to consensual post-mortem cannibalism?

When members of a plane-wrecked rugby team, stranded

on an inaccessible, snow-piled, mountain range resort to

eating each other in order to survive, we turn a blind eye

to their repeated acts of cannibalism – but we condemn the

very same deed in the harshest terms if it takes place

between two consenting, and even eager adults in

Germany. Surely, we don’t treat murder, pedophilia, and

incest the same way!

As the Auxiliary Bishop of Montevideo said after the

crash:

“… Eating someone who has died in order to survive is

incorporating their substance, and it is quite possible to

compare this with a graft. Flesh survives when

assimilated by someone in extreme need, just as it does

when an eye or heart of a dead man is grafted onto a

living man…”

(Read, P.P. 1974. Alive. Avon, New York)

Complex ethical issues are involved in the apparently

straightforward practice of consensual cannibalism.

Consensual, in vivo, cannibalism (a-la Messrs. Meiwes

and Brandes) resembles suicide. The cannibal is merely

the instrument of voluntary self-destruction. Why would

we treat it different to the way we treat any other form of

suicide pact?

Consensual cannibalism is not the equivalent of drug

abuse because it has no social costs. Unlike junkies, the

cannibal and his meal are unlikely to harm others. What

gives society the right to intervene, therefore?

If we own our bodies and, thus, have the right to smoke,

drink, have an abortion, commit suicide, and will our

organs to science after we die – why don’t we possess the

inalienable right to will our delectable tissues to a

discerning cannibal post-mortem (or to victims of famine

in Africa)?

When does our right to dispose of our organs in any way

we see fit crystallize? Is it when we die? Or after we are

dead? If so, what is the meaning and legal validity of a

living will? And why can’t we make a living will and

bequeath our cadaverous selves to the nearest cannibal?

Do dead people have rights and can they claim and invoke

them while they are still alive? Is the live person the same

as his dead body, does he “own” it, does the state have

any rights in it? Does the corpse stll retain its previous

occupant’s “personhood”? Are cadavers still human, in

any sense of the word?

We find all three culinary variants abhorrent. Yet, this

instinctive repulsion is a curious matter. The onerous

demands of survival should have encouraged cannibalism

rather than make it a taboo. Human flesh is protein-rich.

Most societies, past and present (with the exception of the

industrialized West), need to make efficient use of rare

protein-intensive resources.

If cannibalism enhances the chances of survival – why is it

universally prohibited? For many a reason.

I. The Sanctity of Life

Historically, cannibalism preceded, followed, or

precipitated an act of murder or extreme deprivation (such

as torture). It habitually clashed with the principle of the

sanctity of life. Once allowed, even under the strictest

guidelines, cannibalism tended to debase and devalue

human life and foster homicide, propelling its

practitioners down a slippery ethical slope towards

bloodlust and orgiastic massacres.

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http://samvak.tripod.com/human.html

http://samvak.tripod.com/torturepsychology.html

http://samvak.tripod.com/life.html

II. The Afterlife

Moreover, in life, the human body and form are

considered by most religions (and philosophers) to be the

abode of the soul, the divine spark that animates us all.

The post-mortem integrity of this shrine is widely thought

to guarantee a faster, unhindered access to the afterlife, to

immortality, and eventual reincarnation (or karmic cycle

in eastern religions).

For this reason, to this very day, orthodox Jews refuse to

subject their relatives to a post-mortem autopsy and organ

harvesting. Fijians and Cook Islanders used to consume

their enemies’ carcasses in order to prevent their souls

from joining hostile ancestors in heaven.

III. Chastening Reminders

Cannibalism is a chilling reminder of our humble origins

in the animal kingdom. To the cannibal, we are no better

and no more than cattle or sheep. Cannibalism confronts

us with the irreversibility of our death and its finality.

Surely, we cannot survive our demise with our cadaver

mutilated and gutted and our skeletal bones scattered,

gnawed, and chewed on?

IV. Medical Reasons

Infrequently, cannibalism results in prion diseases of the

nervous system, such as kuru. The same paternalism that

gave rise to the banning of drug abuse, the outlawing of

suicide, and the Prohibition of alcoholic drinks in the

1920s – seeks to shelter us from the pernicious medical

outcomes of cannibalism and to protect others who might

become our victims.

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http://samvak.tripod.com/factoidpq.html

http://samvak.tripod.com/suicide.html

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V. The Fear of Being Objectified

Being treated as an object (being objectified) is the most

torturous form of abuse. People go to great lengths to seek

empathy and to be perceived by others as three

dimensional entities with emotions, needs, priorities,

wishes, and preferences.

The cannibal reduces others by treating them as so much

meat. Many cannibal serial killers transformed the organs

of their victims into trophies. The Cook Islanders sought

to humiliate their enemies by eating, digesting, and then

defecating them – having absorbed their mana (prowess,

life force) in the process.

VI. The Argument from Nature

Cannibalism is often castigated as “unnatural”. Animals,

goes the myth, don’t prey on their own kind.

Alas, like so many other romantic lores, this is untrue.

Most species – including our closest relatives, the

chimpanzees – do cannibalize. Cannibalism in nature is

widespread and serves diverse purposes such as

population control (chickens, salamanders, toads), food

and protein security in conditions of scarcity

(hippopotamuses, scorpions, certain types of dinosaurs),

threat avoidance (rabbits, mice, rats, and hamsters), and

the propagation of genetic material through exclusive

mating (Red-back spider and many mantids).

Moreover, humans are a part of nature. Our deeds and

misdeeds are natural by definition. Seeking to tame nature

is a natural act. Seeking to establish hierarchies and

subdue or relinquish our enemies are natural propensities.

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http://samvak.tripod.com/empathy.html

http://samvak.tripod.com/serialkillers.html

By avoiding cannibalism we seek to transcend nature.

Refraining from cannibalism is the unnatural act.

VIII. The Argument from Progress

It is a circular syllogism involving a tautology and goes

like this:

Cannibalism is barbaric. Cannibals are, therefore,

barbarians. Progress entails the abolition of this practice.

The premises – both explicit and implicit – are axiomatic

and, therefore, shaky. What makes cannibalism barbarian?

And why is progress a desirable outcome? There is a

prescriptive fallacy involved, as well:

Because we do not eat the bodies of dead people – we

ought not to eat them.

VIII. Arguments from Religious Ethics

The major monotheistic religions are curiously mute when

it comes to cannibalism. Human sacrifice is denounced

numerous times in the Old Testament – but man-eating

goes virtually unmentioned. The Eucharist in Christianity

– when the believers consume the actual body and blood

of Jesus – is an act of undisguised cannibalism:

“That the consequence of Transubstantiation, as a

conversion of the total substance, is the transition of the

entire substance of the bread and wine into the Body and

Blood of Christ, is the express doctrine of the Church

….”

(Catholic Encyclopedia)

“CANON lI.-If any one saith, that, in the sacred and

holy sacrament of the Eucharist, the substance of the

bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and

blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denieth that

wonderful and singular conversion of the whole

substance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole

substance of the wine into the Blood-the species Only of

the bread and wine remaining-which conversion indeed

the Catholic Church most aptly calls

Transubstantiation; let him be anathema.

CANON VIII.-lf any one saith, that Christ, given in the

Eucharist, is eaten spiritually only, and not also

sacramentally and really; let him be anathema.”

(The Council of Trent, The Thirteenth Session – The

canons and decrees of the sacred and oecumenical

Council of Trent, Ed. and trans. J. Waterworth

(London: Dolman, 1848), 75-91.)

Still, most systems of morality and ethics impute to Man a

privileged position in the scheme of things (having been

created in the “image of God”). Men and women are

supposed to transcend their animal roots and inhibit their

baser instincts (an idea incorporated into Freud’s tripartite

model of the human psyche). The anthropocentric

chauvinistic view is that it is permissible to kill all other

animals in order to consume their flesh. Man, in this

respect, is sui generis.

Yet, it is impossible to rigorously derive a prohibition to

eat human flesh from any known moral system. As

Richard Routley-Silvan observes in his essay “In Defence

of Cannibalism”, that something is innately repugnant

does not make it morally prohibited. Moreover, that we

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find cannibalism nauseating is probably the outcome of

upbringing and conditioning rather than anything innate.

Euthanasia and the Right to Die
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

I. Definitions of Types of Euthanasia

Euthanasia is often erroneously described as “mercy

killing”. Most forms of euthanasia are, indeed, motivated

by (some say: misplaced) mercy. Not so others. In Greek,

“eu” means both “well” and “easy” and “Thanatos” is

death.

Euthanasia is the intentional premature termination of

another person’s life either by direct intervention (active

euthanasia) or by withholding life-prolonging measures

and resources (passive euthanasia), either at the express

or implied request of that person (voluntary euthanasia),

or in the absence of such approval (non-voluntary

euthanasia). Involuntary euthanasia – where the

individual wishes to go on living – is an euphemism for

murder.

To my mind, passive euthanasia is immoral. The abrupt

withdrawal of medical treatment, feeding, and hydration

results in a slow and (potentially) torturous death. It took

Terri Schiavo 13 days to die, when her tubes were

withdrawn in the last two weeks of March 2005. It is

morally wrong to subject even animals to such gratuitous

suffering. Moreover, passive euthanasia allows us to

evade personal responsibility for the patient’s death. In

active euthanasia, the relationship between the act (of

administering a lethal medication, for instance) and its

consequences is direct and unambiguous.

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As the philosopher John Finnis notes, to qualify as

euthanasia, the termination of life has to be the main and

intended aim of the act or omission that lead to it. If the

loss of life is incidental (a side effect), the agent is still

morally responsible but to describe his actions and

omissions as euthanasia would be misleading.

Volntariness (accepting the foreseen but unintended

consequences of one’s actions and omissions) should be

distinguished from intention.

Still, this sophistry obscures the main issue:

If the sanctity of life is a supreme and overriding value

(“basic good”), it ought to surely preclude and proscribe

all acts and omissions which may shorten it, even when

the shortening of life is a mere deleterious side effect.

But this is not the case. The sanctity and value of life

compete with a host of other equally potent moral

demands. Even the most devout pro-life ethicist accepts

that certain medical decisions – for instance, to administer

strong analgesics – inevitably truncate the patient’s life.

Yet, this is considered moral because the resulting

euthanasia is not the main intention of the pain-relieving

doctor.

Moreover, the apparent dilemma between the two values

(reduce suffering or preserve life) is non-existent.

There are four possible situations. Imagine a patient

writhing with insufferable pain.

1. The patient’s life is not at risk if she is not medicated

with painkillers (she risks dying if she is medicated)

2. The patient’s life is not at risk either way, medicated or

not

3. The patient’s life is at risk either way, medicated or not

4. The patient’s life is at risk if she is not medicated with

painkillers

In all four cases, the decisions our doctor has to make are

ethically clear cut. He should administer pain-alleviating

drugs, except when the patient risks dying (in 1 above).

The (possible) shortening of the patient’s life (which is

guesswork, at best) is immaterial.

II. Who is or Should Be Subject to Euthanasia? The

Problem of Dualism vs. Reductionism

With the exception of radical animal rights activists, most

philosophers and laymen consider people – human beings

– to be entitled to “special treatment”, to be in possession

of unique rights (and commensurate obligations), and to

be capable of feats unparalleled in other species.

Thus, opponents of euthanasia universally oppose the

killing of “persons”. As the (pro-euthanasia) philosopher

John Harris puts it:

” … concern for their welfare, respect for their wishes,

respect for the intrinsic value of their lives and respect

for their interests.”

Ronald Dworkin emphasizes the investments – made by

nature, the person involved, and others – which euthanasia

wastes. But he also draws attention to the person’s “critical

interests” – the interests whose satisfaction makes life

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better to live. The manner of one’s own death may be such

a critical interest. Hence, one should have the right to

choose how one dies because the “right kind” of death

(e.g., painless, quick, dignified) reflects on one’s entire

life, affirms and improves it.

But who is a person? What makes us human? Many

things, most of which are irrelevant to our discussion.

Broadly speaking, though, there are two schools of

thought:

(i) That we are rendered human by the very event of our

conception (egg meets sperm), or, at the latest, our birth;

(ii) That we are considered human only when we act and

think as conscious humans do.

The proponents of the first case (i) claim that merely

possessing a human body (or the potential to come to

possess such a body) is enough to qualify us as “persons”.

There is no distinction between mind and abode – thought,

feelings, and actions are merely manifestations of one

underlying unity. The fact that some of these

manifestations have yet to materialize (in the case of an

embryo) or are mere potentials (in the case of a comatose

patient) does not detract from our essential,

incontrovertible, and indivisible humanity. We may be

immature or damaged persons – but we are persons all the

same (and always will be persons).

Though considered “religious” and “spiritual”, this notion

is actually a form of reductionism. The mind, “soul”, and

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“spirit” are mere expressions of one unity, grounded in

our “hardware” – in our bodies.

Those who argue the second case (ii) postulate that it is

possible to have a human body which does not host a

person. People in Persistent Vegetative States, for instance

– or fetuses, for that matter – are human but also non-

persons. This is because they do not yet – or are unable to

– exercise their faculties. Personhood is complexity. When

the latter ceases, so does the former. Personhood is

acquired and is an extensive parameter, a total, defining

state of being. One is either awake or asleep, either dead

or alive, either in a state of personhood or not

The latter approach involves fine distinctions between

potential, capacity, and skill. A human body (or fertilized

egg) have the potential to think, write poetry, feel pain,

and value life. At the right phase of somatic development,

this potential becomes capacity and, once it is

competently exercised – it is a skill.

Embryos and comatose people may have the potential to

do and think – but, in the absence of capacities and skills,

they are not full-fledged persons. Indeed, in all important

respects, they are already dead.

Taken to its logical conclusion, this definition of a person

also excludes newborn infants, the severely retarded, the

hopelessly quadriplegic, and the catatonic. “Who is a

person” becomes a matter of culturally-bound and

medically-informed judgment which may be influenced

by both ignorance and fashion and, thus, be arbitrary and

immoral.

Imagine a computer infected by a computer virus which

cannot be quarantined, deleted, or fixed. The virus

disables the host and renders it “dead”. Is it still a

computer? If someone broke into my house and stole it,

can I file an insurance claim? If a colleague destroys it,

can I sue her for the damages? The answer is yes. A

computer is a computer for as long as it exists physically

and a cure is bound to be found even against the most

trenchant virus.

The definition of personhood must rely on objective,

determinate and determinable criteria. The anti-euthanasia

camp relies on bodily existence as one such criterion. The

pro-euthanasia faction has yet to reciprocate.

III. Euthanasia and Suicide

Self-sacrifice, avoidable martyrdom, engaging in life
risking activities, refusal to prolong one’s life through
medical treatment, euthanasia, overdosing, and self-
destruction that is the result of coercion – are all closely
related to suicide. They all involve a deliberately self-

inflicted death.

But while suicide is chiefly intended to terminate a life –
the other acts are aimed at perpetuating, strengthening,

and defending values or other people. Many – not only

religious people – are appalled by the choice implied in

suicide – of death over life. They feel that it demeans life

and abnegates its meaning.

Life’s meaning – the outcome of active selection by the

individual – is either external (such as “God’s plan”) or

internal, the outcome of an arbitrary frame of reference,

such as having a career goal. Our life is rendered

meaningful only by integrating into an eternal thing,

process, design, or being. Suicide makes life trivial

because the act is not natural – not part of the eternal

framework, the undying process, the timeless cycle of

birth and death. Suicide is a break with eternity.

Henry Sidgwick said that only conscious (i.e., intelligent)

beings can appreciate values and meanings. So, life is

significant to conscious, intelligent, though finite, beings –

because it is a part of some eternal goal, plan, process,

thing, design, or being. Suicide flies in the face of

Sidgwick’s dictum. It is a statement by an intelligent and

conscious being about the meaninglessness of life.

If suicide is a statement, than society, in this case, is
against the freedom of expression. In the case of suicide,
free speech dissonantly clashes with the sanctity of a
meaningful life. To rid itself of the anxiety brought on by
this conflict, society cast suicide as a depraved or even

criminal act and its perpetrators are much castigated.

The suicide violates not only the social contract but, many

will add, covenants with God or nature. St. Thomas

Aquinas wrote in the “Summa Theologiae” that – since

organisms strive to survive – suicide is an unnatural act.

Moreover, it adversely affects the community and violates

the property rights of God, the imputed owner of one’s

spirit. Christianity regards the immortal soul as a gift and,

in Jewish writings, it is a deposit. Suicide amounts to the

abuse or misuse of God’s possessions, temporarily lodged

in a corporeal mansion.

This paternalism was propagated, centuries later, by Sir

William Blackstone, the codifier of British Law. Suicide –

being self-murder – is a grave felony, which the state has a

right to prevent and to punish for. In certain countries this

still is the case. In Israel, for instance, a soldier is

considered to be “military property” and an attempted

suicide is severely punished as “the corruption of an army

chattel”.

Paternalism, a malignant mutation of benevolence, is
about objectifying people and treating them as
possessions. Even fully-informed and consenting adults
are not granted full, unmitigated autonomy, freedom, and
privacy. This tends to breed “victimless crimes”. The
“culprits” – gamblers, homosexuals, communists, suicides,
drug addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes – are “protected from
themselves” by an intrusive nanny state.

The possession of a right by a person imposes on others a

corresponding obligation not to act to frustrate its

exercise. Suicide is often the choice of a mentally and

legally competent adult. Life is such a basic and deep set

phenomenon that even the incompetents – the mentally

retarded or mentally insane or minors – can fully gauge its

significance and make “informed” decisions, in my view.

The paternalists claim counterfactually that no competent
adult “in his right mind” will ever decide to commit
suicide. They cite the cases of suicides who survived and
felt very happy that they have – as a compelling reason to
intervene. But we all make irreversible decisions for
which, sometimes, we are sorry. It gives no one the right

to interfere.

Paternalism is a slippery slope. Should the state be
allowed to prevent the birth of a genetically defective

child or forbid his parents to marry in the first place?

Should unhealthy adults be forced to abstain from

smoking, or steer clear from alcohol? Should they be

coerced to exercise?

Suicide is subject to a double moral standard. People are
permitted – nay, encouraged – to sacrifice their life only in
certain, socially sanctioned, ways. To die on the
battlefield or in defense of one’s religion is commendable.
This hypocrisy reveals how power structures – the state,
institutional religion, political parties, national movements
– aim to monopolize the lives of citizens and adherents to
do with as they see fit. Suicide threatens this monopoly.
Hence the taboo.

Does one have a right to take one’s life?

The answer is: it depends. Certain cultures and societies
encourage suicide. Both Japanese kamikaze and Jewish
martyrs were extolled for their suicidal actions. Certain
professions are knowingly life-threatening – soldiers,
firemen, policemen. Certain industries – like the
manufacture of armaments, cigarettes, and alcohol – boost

overall mortality rates.

In general, suicide is commended when it serves social
ends, enhances the cohesion of the group, upholds its
values, multiplies its wealth, or defends it from external
and internal threats. Social structures and human
collectives – empires, countries, firms, bands, institutions –
often commit suicide. This is considered to be a healthy
process.

More about suicide, the meaning of life, and related

considerations – HERE.

Back to our central dilemma:

http://samvak.tripod.com/suicide.html

Is it morally justified to commit suicide in order to avoid

certain, forthcoming, unavoidable, and unrelenting torture,

pain, or coma?

Is it morally justified to ask others to help you to commit

suicide (for instance, if you are incapacitated)?

Imagine a society that venerates life-with-dignity by

making euthanasia mandatory – would it then and there be

morally justified to refuse to commit suicide or to help in

it?

IV. Euthanasia and Murder

Imagine killing someone before we have ascertained her

preferences as to the manner of her death and whether she

wants to die at all. This constitutes murder even if, after

the fact, we can prove conclusively that the victim wanted

to die.

Is murder, therefore, merely the act of taking life,

regardless of circumstances – or is it the nature of the

interpersonal interaction that counts? If the latter, the

victim’s will counts – if the former, it is irrelevant.

V. Euthanasia, the Value of Life, and the Right to Life

Few philosophers, legislators, and laymen support non-

voluntary or involuntary euthanasia. These types of

“mercy” killing are associated with the most heinous

crimes against humanity committed by the Nazi regime on

both its own people and other nations. They are and were

also an integral part of every program of active eugenics.

http://samvak.tripod.com/eugenics.html

The arguments against killing someone who hasn’t

expressed a wish to die (let alone someone who has

expressed a desire to go on living) revolve around the

right to life. People are assumed to value their life, cherish

it, and protect it. Euthanasia – especially the non-voluntary

forms – amounts to depriving someone (as well as their

nearest and dearest) of something they value.

The right to life – at least as far as human beings are

concerned – is a rarely questioned fundamental moral

principle. In Western cultures, it is assumed to be

inalienable and indivisible (i.e., monolithic). Yet, it is

neither. Even if we accept the axiomatic – and therefore

arbitrary – source of this right, we are still faced with

intractable dilemmas. All said, the right to life may be

nothing more than a cultural construct, dependent on

social mores, historical contexts, and exegetic systems.

same Janus-like ethical coin.

This duality confuses people. They often erroneously
identify rights with their attendant duties or obligations,
with the morally decent, or even with the morally
permissible. One’s rights inform other people how they
MUST behave towards one – not how they SHOULD or
OUGHT to act morally. Moral behavior is not dependent

on the existence of a right. Obligations are.

To complicate matters further, many apparently simple
and straightforward rights are amalgams of more basic

moral or legal principles. To treat such rights as unities is

to mistreat them.

Take the right to life. It is a compendium of no less than
eight distinct rights: the right to be brought to life, the
right to be born, the right to have one’s life maintained,
the right not to be killed, the right to have one’s life
saved, the right to save one’s life (wrongly reduced to the

right to self-defence), the right to terminate one’s life, and

the right to have one’s life terminated.
None of these rights is self-evident, or unambiguous, or
universal, or immutable, or automatically applicable. It is
safe to say, therefore, that these rights are not primary as

hitherto believed – but derivative.

Go HERE to learn more about the Right to Life.

Of the eight strands comprising the right to life, we are

concerned with a mere two.

The Right to Have One’s Life Maintained
This leads to a more general quandary. To what extent can
one use other people’s bodies, their property, their time,
their resources and to deprive them of pleasure, comfort,
material possessions, income, or any other thing – in order

to maintain one’s life?

Even if it were possible in reality, it is indefensible to
maintain that I have a right to sustain, improve, or prolong
my life at another’s expense. I cannot demand – though I
can morally expect – even a trivial and minimal sacrifice
from another in order to prolong my life. I have no right to
do so.

http://samvak.tripod.com/life.html

Of course, the existence of an implicit, let alone explicit,
contract between myself and another party would change
the picture. The right to demand sacrifices commensurate
with the provisions of the contract would then crystallize
and create corresponding duties and obligations.
No embryo has a right to sustain its life, maintain, or
prolong it at its mother’s expense. This is true regardless

of how insignificant the sacrifice required of her is.

Yet, by knowingly and intentionally conceiving the
embryo, the mother can be said to have signed a contract
with it. The contract causes the right of the embryo to
demand such sacrifices from his mother to crystallize. It
also creates corresponding duties and obligations of the
mother towards her embryo.
We often find ourselves in a situation where we do not
have a given right against other individuals – but we do
possess this very same right against society. Society owes

us what no constituent-individual does.

Thus, we all have a right to sustain our lives, maintain,
prolong, or even improve them at society’s expense – no
matter how major and significant the resources required.
Public hospitals, state pension schemes, and police forces
may be needed in order to fulfill society’s obligations to
prolong, maintain, and improve our lives – but fulfill them

it must.

Still, each one of us can sign a contract with society –
implicitly or explicitly – and abrogate this right. One can
volunteer to join the army. Such an act constitutes a
contract in which the individual assumes the duty or
obligation to give up his or her life.

The Right not to be Killed
It is commonly agreed that every person has the right not
to be killed unjustly. Admittedly, what is just and what is
unjust is determined by an ethical calculus or a social
contract – both constantly in flux.
Still, even if we assume an Archimedean immutable point
of moral reference – does A’s right not to be killed mean
that third parties are to refrain from enforcing the rights of
other people against A? What if the only way to right
wrongs committed by A against others – was to kill A?
The moral obligation to right wrongs is about restoring the

rights of the wronged.

If the continued existence of A is predicated on the
repeated and continuous violation of the rights of others –
and these other people object to it – then A must be killed
if that is the only way to right the wrong and re-assert the
rights of A’s victims.
The Right to have One’s Life Saved
There is no such right because there is no moral obligation
or duty to save a life. That people believe otherwise
demonstrates the muddle between the morally
commendable, desirable, and decent (“ought”, “should”)
and the morally obligatory, the result of other people’s
rights (“must”). In some countries, the obligation to save a
life is codified in the law of the land. But legal rights and
obligations do not always correspond to moral rights and

obligations, or give rise to them.

VI. Euthanasia and Personal Autonomy

The right to have one’s life terminated at will (euthanasia),
is subject to social, ethical, and legal strictures. In some
countries – such as the Netherlands – it is legal (and
socially acceptable) to have one’s life terminated with the
help of third parties given a sufficient deterioration in the
quality of life and given the imminence of death. One has
to be of sound mind and will one’s death knowingly,

intentionally, repeatedly, and forcefully.

Should we have a right to die (given hopeless medical

circumstances)? When our wish to end it all conflicts with

society’s (admittedly, paternalistic) judgment of what is

right and what is good for us and for others – what should

prevail?

One the one hand, as Patrick Henry put it, “give me

liberty or give me death”. A life without personal

autonomy and without the freedom to make unpopular

and non-conformist decisions is, arguably, not worth

living at all!

As Dworkin states:

“Making someone die in a way that others approve, but

he believes a horrifying contradiction of his life, is a

devastating, odious form of tyranny”.

Still, even the victim’s express wishes may prove to be

transient and circumstantial (due to depression,

misinformation, or clouded judgment). Can we regard

them as immutable and invariable? Moreover, what if the

circumstances prove everyone – the victim included –

wrong? What if a cure to the victim’s disease is found ten

minutes after the euthanasia?

VII. Euthanasia and Society

It is commonly accepted that where two equally potent

values clash, society steps in as an arbiter. The right to

material welfare (food, shelter, basic possessions) often

conflicts with the right to own private property and to

benefit from it. Society strikes a fine balance by, on the

one hand, taking from the rich and giving to the poor

(through redistributive taxation) and, on the other hand,

prohibiting and punishing theft and looting.

Euthanasia involves a few such finely-balanced values:

the sanctity of life vs. personal autonomy, the welfare of

the many vs. the welfare of the individual, the relief of

pain vs. the prolongation and preservation of life.

Why can’t society step in as arbiter in these cases as well?

Moreover, what if a person is rendered incapable of

expressing his preferences with regards to the manner and

timing of his death – should society step in (through the

agency of his family or through the courts or legislature)

and make the decision for him?

In a variety of legal situations, parents, court-appointed

guardians, custodians, and conservators act for, on behalf

of, and in lieu of underage children, the physically and

mentally challenged and the disabled. Why not here?

We must distinguish between four situations:

1. The patient foresaw the circumstances and provided an

advance directive, asking explicitly for his life to be

terminated when certain conditions are met.

2. The patient did not provide an advanced directive but

expressed his preference clearly before he was

incapacitated. The risk here is that self-interested family

members may lie.

3. The patient did not provide an advance directive and

did not express his preference aloud – but the decision to

terminate his life is commensurate with both his character

and with other decisions he made.

4. There is no indication, however indirect, that the patient

wishes or would have wished to die had he been capable

of expression but the patient is no longer a “person” and,

therefore, has no interests to respect, observe, and protect.

Moreover, the patient is a burden to himself, to his nearest

and dearest, and to society at large. Euthanasia is the right,

just, and most efficient thing to do.

Society can legalize euthanasia in the first case and,

subject to rigorous fact checking, in the second and third

cases. To prevent economically-motivated murder

disguised as euthanasia, non-voluntary and involuntary

euthanasia (as set in the forth case above) should be

banned outright.

VIII. Slippery Slope Arguments

Issues in the Calculus of Rights – The Hierarchy of

Rights
The right to life supersedes – in Western moral and legal
systems – all other rights. It overrules the right to one’s
body, to comfort, to the avoidance of pain, or to
ownership of property. Given such lack of equivocation,

the amount of dilemmas and controversies surrounding
the right to life is, therefore, surprising.
When there is a clash between equally potent rights – for
instance, the conflicting rights to life of two people – we
can decide among them randomly (by flipping a coin, or
casting dice). Alternatively, we can add and subtract

rights in a somewhat macabre arithmetic.

Thus, if the continued life of an embryo or a fetus
threatens the mother’s life – that is, assuming,
controversially, that both of them have an equal right to
life – we can decide to kill the fetus. By adding to the
mother’s right to life her right to her own body we

outweigh the fetus’ right to life.

The Difference between Killing and Letting Die
Counterintuitively, there is a moral gulf between killing
(taking a life) and letting die (not saving a life). The right
not to be killed is undisputed. There is no right to have
one’s own life saved. Where there is a right – and only
where there is one – there is an obligation. Thus, while
there is an obligation not to kill – there is no obligation to
save a life.

Anti-euthanasia ethicists fear that allowing one kind of

euthanasia – even under the strictest and explicit

conditions – will open the floodgates. The value of life

will be depreciated and made subordinate to

considerations of economic efficacy and personal

convenience. Murders, disguised as acts of euthanasia,

will proliferate and none of us will be safe once we reach

old age or become disabled.

Years of legally-sanctioned euthanasia in the Netherlands,

parts of Australia, and a state or two in the United States

tend to fly in the face of such fears. Doctors did not regard

these shifts in public opinion and legislative climate as a

blanket license to kill their charges. Family members

proved to be far less bloodthirsty and avaricious than

feared.

As long as non-voluntary and involuntary types of

euthanasia are treated as felonies, it seems safe to allow

patients to exercise their personal autonomy and grant

them the right to die. Legalizing the institution of

“advance directive” will go a long way towards regulating

the field – as would a new code of medical ethics that will

recognize and embrace reality: doctors, patients, and

family members collude in their millions to commit

numerous acts and omissions of euthanasia every day. It is

their way of restoring dignity to the shattered lives and

bodies of loved ones.

T H E A U T H O R

SHMUEL (SAM) VAKNIN

Curriculum Vitae

Click on blue text to access relevant web sites – thank you.

Born in 1961 in Qiryat-Yam, Israel.

Served in the Israeli Defence Force (1979-1982) in

training and education units.

Education

Graduated a few semesters in the Technion – Israel

Institute of Technology, Haifa.

Ph.D. in Philosophy (major: Philosophy of Physics) –

Pacific Western University, California, USA.

My doctoral thesis and other books are available through

the Library of Congress.

Graduate of numerous courses in Finance Theory and

International Trading.

Certified E-Commerce Concepts Analyst by Brainbench.

Certified in Psychological Counselling Techniques by

Brainbench.

http://philosophos.tripod.com/loc.html

http://www.brainbench.com/xml/bb/transcript/public/viewtranscript.xml?pid=781937

http://www.brainbench.com/xml/bb/business/aboutbrainbench.xml

http://www.brainbench.com/xml/bb/transcript/public/transcript_testdetails.xml?back=1&pid=781937&testid=6149637

http://www.brainbench.com/xml/bb/business/aboutbrainbench.xml

Certified Financial Analyst by Brainbench.

Full proficiency in Hebrew and in English.

Business Experience

1980 to 1983

Founder and co-owner of a chain of computerised

information kiosks in Tel-Aviv, Israel.

1982 to 1985

Senior positions with the Nessim D. Gaon Group of

Companies in Geneva, Paris and New-York (NOGA and

APROFIM SA):

– Chief Analyst of Edible Commodities in the Group’s

Headquarters in Switzerland

– Manager of the Research and Analysis Division

– Manager of the Data Processing Division

– Project Manager of the Nigerian Computerised Census

– Vice President in charge of RND and Advanced

Technologies

– Vice President in charge of Sovereign Debt Financing

1985 to 1986

Represented Canadian Venture Capital Funds in Israel.

1986 to 1987

General Manager of IPE Ltd. in London. The firm

financed international multi-lateral countertrade and

leasing transactions.

http://www.brainbench.com/xml/bb/transcript/public/viewtranscript.xml?pid=781937

http://www.brainbench.com/xml/bb/business/aboutbrainbench.xml

1988 to

1990

Co-founder and Director of “Mikbats-Tesuah”, a portfolio

management firm based in Tel-Aviv.

Activities included large-scale portfolio management,

underwriting, forex trading and general financial advisory

services.

1990 to Present

Freelance consultant to many of Israel’s Blue-Chip firms,

mainly on issues related to the capital markets in Israel,

Canada, the UK and the USA.

Consultant to foreign RND ventures and to Governments

on macro-economic

matters.

President of the Israel chapter of the Professors World

Peace Academy (PWPA) and (briefly) Israel

representative of the “Washington Times”.

1993 to 1994

Co-owner and Director of many business enterprises:

– The Omega and Energy Air-Conditioning Concern

– AVP Financial Consultants

– Handiman Legal Services

Total annual turnover of the group: 10 million USD.

Co-owner, Director and Finance Manager of COSTI Ltd.

– Israel’s largest computerised information vendor and

developer. Raised funds through a series of private

placements locally in the USA, Canada and London.

1993 to 1996

Publisher and Editor of a Capital Markets Newsletter

distributed by subscription only to dozens of subscribers

countrywide.

In a legal precedent in 1995 – studied in business schools

and law faculties across Israel – was tried for his role in

an attempted takeover of Israel’s Agriculture Bank.

Was interned in the State School of Prison Wardens.

Managed the Central School Library, wrote, published

and lectured on various occasions.

Managed the Internet and International News Department

of an Israeli mass media group, “Ha-Tikshoret and

Namer”.

Assistant in the Law Faculty in Tel-Aviv University (to

Prof. S.G. Shoham).

1996 to 1999

Financial consultant to leading businesses in Macedonia,

Russia and the Czech Republic. Collaborated with the

Agency of Transformation of Business with Social

Capital.

Economic commentator in “Nova Makedonija”,

“Dnevnik”, “Makedonija Denes”, “Izvestia”, “Argumenti i

Fakti”, “The Middle East Times”, “The New Presence”,

“Central Europe Review”, and other periodicals, and in

the economic programs on various channels of

Macedonian Television.

Нова Македонија – Првиот македонски дневен весник

http://www.dnevnik.com.mk/

http://www.pritomnost.cz/index.php?fulltext=vaknin

http://www.ce-review.org/authorarchives/vaknin_archive/vaknin_main.html

Chief Lecturer in courses organised by the Agency of

Transformation, by the Macedonian Stock Exchange, and

by the Ministry of Trade.

1999 to 2002

Economic Advisor to the Government of the Republic of

Macedonia and to the Ministry of Finance.

2001 to 2003

Senior Business Correspondent for United Press

International (UPI).

Web and Journalistic Activities

Author of extensive Web sites in:

– Psychology (“Malignant Self Love”) – An Open

Directory Cool Site,

– Philosophy (“Philosophical Musings”),

– Economics and Geopolitics (“World in Conflict and

Transition”).

Owner of the Narcissistic Abuse Announcement and

Study List and the Narcissism Revisited mailing list (more

than 4900 members).

Owner of the Economies in Conflict and Transition Study

List and the Link and Factoid Study List.

http://samvak.tripod.com/briefs.html

http://samvak.tripod.com/

http://dmoz.org/Health/Mental_Health/Disorders/Personality/Narcissistic

http://philosophos.tripod.com/

http://ceeandbalkan.tripod.com/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conflictransition/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linknfactoid/

Editor of mental health disorders and Central and Eastern

Europe categories in various Web directories (Open

Directory, Search Europe, Mentalhelp.net).

Editor of the Narcissistic Personality Disorder, the Verbal

and Emotional Abuse, and the Spousal (Domestic) Abuse

and Violence topics on Suite 101 and Bellaonline.

Columnist and commentator in “The New Presence”,

United Press International (UPI), InternetContent,

eBookWeb, PopMatters, Global Politician, and “Central

Europe Review”.

Publications and Awards

“Managing Investment Portfolios in States of

Uncertainty”, Limon Publishers, Tel-Aviv, 1988

“The Gambling Industry”, Limon Publishers, Tel-Aviv,

1990

“Requesting My Loved One – Short Stories”, Yedioth

Aharonot, Tel-Aviv, 1997

“The Suffering of Being Kafka” (electronic book of

Hebrew and English Short Fiction), Prague and Skopje,

1998-2004

“The Macedonian Economy at a Crossroads – On the Way

to a Healthier Economy” (dialogues with Nikola

Gruevski), Skopje, 1998

“The Exporters’ Pocketbook”, Ministry of Trade, Republic

of Macedonia, Skopje, 1999

http://dmoz.org/Health/Mental_Health/Disorders/

http://www.searcheurope.com/

http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php/type/doc/id/419

http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/npd

http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/verbal_emotional_abuse

http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/18046

http://www.bellaonline.com/archive/MentalHealth

http://samvak.tripod.com/briefs.html

http://www.popmatters.com/columns/archive.shtml

http://www.globalpolitician.com/search.asp?keyword=Vaknin

http://www.ce-review.org/authorarchives/vaknin_archive/vaknin_main.html

http://www.yediothsfarim.co.il/catalog1.asp?bID=3621609

http://samvak.tripod.com/sipurim.html

http://samvak.tripod.com/cvng.html

http://samvak.tripod.com/exporter.html

“Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited”, Narcissus

Publications, Prague and Skopje, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2004

The Narcissism Series (e-books regarding relationships

with abusive narcissists), Skopje, 1999-2004

“After the Rain – How the West Lost the East”, Narcissus

Publications in association with Central Europe

Review/CEENMI, Prague and Skopje, 2000

Winner of numerous awards, among them Israel’s Council

of Culture and Art Prize for Maiden Prose (1997), The

Rotary Club Award for Social Studies (1976), and the

Bilateral Relations Studies Award of the American

Embassy in Israel (1978).

Hundreds of professional articles in all fields of finances

and the economy, and numerous articles dealing with

geopolitical and political economic issues published in

both print and Web periodicals in many countries.

Many appearances in the electronic media on subjects in

philosophy and the sciences, and concerning economic

matters.

Contact Details:

palma@unet.com.mk

vaknin@link.com.mk

http://samvak.tripod.com/thebook.html

http://samvak.tripod.com/after.html

http://www.ce-review.org/authorarchives/vaknin_archive/aftertherain.html

http://www.yediothsfarim.co.il/catalog1.asp?bID=3621609

mailto:palma@unet.com.mk

mailto:vaknin@link.com.mk

My Web Sites:

Economy / Politics:

http://ceeandbalkan.tripod.com/

Psychology:

http://samvak.tripod.com/index.html

Philosophy:

http://philosophos.tripod.com/

Poetry:

http://samvak.tripod.com/contents.html

Return

http://ceeandbalkan.tripod.com/

http://samvak.tripod.com/index.html

http://samvak.tripod.com/contents.html

After the Rain
How the West

Lost the East

The Book

This is a series of articles written and published in 1996-2000 in Macedonia, in Russia,

in Egypt and in the Czech Republic.

How the West lost the East. The economics, the politics, the geopolitics, the

conspiracies, the corruption, the old and the new, the plough and the internet – it is all

here, in colourful and provocative prose.

From “The Mind of Darkness”:

“‘The Balkans’ – I say – ‘is the unconscious of the world’. People stop to digest this

metaphor and then they nod enthusiastically. It is here that the repressed memories of

history, its traumas and fears and images reside. It is here that the psychodynamics of

humanity – the tectonic clash between Rome and Byzantium, West and East, Judeo-

Christianity and Islam – is still easily discernible. We are seated at a New Year’s dining

table, loaded with a roasted pig and exotic salads. I, the Jew, only half foreign to this

cradle of Slavonics. Four Serbs, five Macedonians. It is in the Balkans that all ethnic

distinctions fail and it is here that they prevail anachronistically and atavistically.

Contradiction and change the only two fixtures of this tormented region. The women of

the Balkan – buried under provocative mask-like make up, retro hairstyles and too

narrow dresses. The men, clad in sepia colours, old fashioned suits and turn of the

century moustaches. In the background there is the crying game that is Balkanian

music: liturgy and folk and elegy combined. The smells are heavy with muskular

perfumes. It is like time travel. It is like revisiting one’s childhood.”

The Author

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love –

Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain – How the West

Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe

Review and eBookWeb , a United Press International

(UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of

mental health and Central East Europe categories in The

Open Directory and Suite101 .

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the

Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam’s Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

mailto:palma@unet.com.mk

http://samvak.tripod.com/thebook.html

http://samvak.tripod.com/after.html

http://www.ce-review.org/authorarchives/vaknin_archive/vaknin_main.html

http://www.ebookweb.org/

http://www.upi.com/results.cfm?Keywords=&Byline=Vaknin&DeskCode=All&IPTCCode=All&PubDateFromMonth=1&PubDateFromDay=01&PubDateFromYear=2001

http://dmoz.org/

http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/npd

http://samvak.tripod.com/

Héctor E. López-Sierra, Ph.D.

Associate Professo

Humanistic Studies Facult

Metropolitan Campus

Inter American University of Puerto Ric

Unit 1:

Studying ethics in contemporary life

and basic concepts of ethics from a

scientific point of view

Introduction

• Ethics is the discipline relating to right and wrong, moral
duty and obligation, moral principles and values, and to
moral character.

• To many people ethics and morality are synonymous terms,
both meaning customs in their original Greek and Latin
respectively.

• However, the Greek term “ethics” also implies character,
whereas “mores” refers to social customs. Morals have
probably been discussed as long as there has been
language.

• Although Socrates and Plato discussed moral questions at
length, it was Aristotle who first made a systematic study of
moral principles, and he called that ethics.

Introduction

• Therefore, it’s vital to make a distinction between
the terms and use “ethics” to refer to a universal or
philosophical system of moral principles and
values, while leaving “morality” to refer to the
relative standards or values of any social group or
person.

• Of course much overlapping can occur. An
individual’s or culture’s morality may often have
universal standards, but in many cases they may
not be universally applied in a philosophical way.

On what basis do we make moral

decisions?

• ―Do what the Bible tells you‖–

Divine Command Theories

• ―Follow your conscience‖–The Ethics of Conscienc

• ―Watch out for #1‖–

Ethical Egois

• ―Do the right thing‖–

The Ethics of

Duty

• ―Don’t dis’ me‖–

The Ethics of Respec

• ―…all Men are created …with certain unalienable

Rights‖–The Ethics of

Rights

• ―Make the world a better place‖–

Utilitarianism

• ―Daddy, that’s not fair‖–

The Ethics of

Justice

• ―Be a good person‖–Virtue Ethics

Divine Command Theories

• Being good is equivalent to

doing whatever the Bible–or

the Qur’an or some other

sacred text or source of

revelation–tells you to do.

• ―What is right‖ equals ―What

God tells me to do.‖

The Ethics of Our Inner Voice

• Conscience tells us what is right or

wron

• Often has a religious source

• May be founded in a notion of human

nature

• Is often negative in character, telling

us what is not right

Ethical Egoism

• Says the only person to look

out for is yourself

• Well known for her novel,

especially Atlas Shrugged

The Ethics of Duty

• Begins with the conviction
that ethics is about doing
what is right, about doing
your duty.

• Duty may be determined by:

– Reason

• Kant: Do what any
rational agent should
do

– Professional role

• A physician’s duty to
care for the sick

– Social role

• A parent’s duty to care
for his or her children

The Ethics of Respect

• Human interactions should be governed

by rules of respect

• What counts as respect can vary from

one culture to another

– Examples:

• spitting in the sand

• showing the soles of one’s shoes–Richardson

• What is it that merits respect?

Utilitarianism

• Seeks to reduce suffering and
increase pleasure or
happiness

• Demands a high degree of
self-sacrifice—we must
consider the consequences
for everyone.

• Utilitarians claim the purpose
of morality is to make the
world a better place.

The Ethics of Justice

• Begins early in the family
with fairness to all family
members

• What is fair for one
should be fair for al

• Treating people equally
may not mean treating
them the same

Virtue Ethics

• Concern for character has

flourished in the West since the

time of Plato and Aristotle.

• Their early dialogues explored

such virtues as courage and piety.

Strength of character (habit)

• Involving both feeling and action

• Seeks the mean between excess

and deficiency relative to us

• Promotes human flourishing

• Integral to the Jesuit tradition

– The Spiritual Exercises

Virtue Ethics

• Seeks to develop individual

character

• Assumes good persons will

make good decisions

• Provides a way of integrating

all the theories

Classroom Application

r
e

m
e
l
y

e
r
y

g
e

t
l

o
t

a
l
l

Religious Commands

Conscience

Selfishness

Duty

Respect

Rights

Consequences for Everyone

Justice

Personal Virtues

How important are each of the following in your life?

Your Initial Moral Orientation

Modern Ethics

Bibliography

1. Bauman, Zygmunt. Postmodern Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.

2. Bentham, Jeremy. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, in A
Bentham Reader. Ed. Mary Peter Mack. New York: Pegasus, 1969, 78-144.

3. Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 198l.

4. Dewey, John. Theory of the Moral Life. New York: Holt, 1960.

5. Glendon, Mary Ann. Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. New
York: Free Press, 199l.

6. Hinman, Lawrence. Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach to Moral Theory. New York:
Harcourt Brace, 1998.

7. McIntyre, Alasdair. Three Versions of Moral Inquiry. Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame, 1990.

8. Midgley, Mary. Can’t We Make Moral Judgments? New York: St. Martin’s, 1991.

9. Mitchell, Basil. Morality: Secular and Religious. New York: Oxford, 1980.

10. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy and Genealogy of Morals. Garden City:
Doubleday, 1956.

11. Rawls, John. Justice as Fairness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.

12. Smith, Thomas. Revaluing Ethics: Aristotle=s Dialectical Pedagogy. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2000.

13. Susman, Warren. A Personality and the Making of Twentieth-Century Culture, in
Culture as History. New York: Pantheon, 1984, 271-285

14. Toulmin, Stephen. Return to Reason. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Ethics’ Alternative Approaches

Bibliography

1. Badiou, Alain. Ethics. New York: Verso, 2001.

2. Baier, Annette. Moral Prejudices. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985.

3. Blackburn, Simon. Being Good: Introduction to Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

4. Dalai Lama. Ethics for a New Millennium. New York: Riverhead, 2001.

5. Furbank, P.N. Behalf. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.

6. Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982.

7. Hallie, Philip. Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1978.

8. Hyde, Lewis. The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. New York: Random House, 1983.

9. Katz, Michael and others, eds. Justice and Caring: The Search for Common Grond in Education.
New York: Teachers College Press, 1999.

10. Keizer, Garret. Help. San Francisco: Harper, 2004.

11. Kitagaro, Nishida. A Study of the Good. Tokyo, Bureau of Japanese Government, 1960.

12. MacIntyre, Alasdair. The Dependent Animal. Chicago: Open Court, 2000.

13. Margalit, Avishai. The Decent Society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996.

14. Sandel, Michael. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1982.

15. Selznick, Philip. The Communitarian Persuasion. Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center, 2002.

Professional Ethics

Bibliography

1. Appleman, David and Lawton, Sarah. Ethics and the Professionals. New York: Holt, Reinhart and
Winston, 1990.

2. Apter, Terri. Working Women Don’t Have Wives: Professional Success in the l990s. New York: St.
Martin’s, 1993.

3. Bayles, Michael. Professional Ethics. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1981.

4. Gardner, Howard and others. Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet. New York: Basic
Books, 2002.

5. Gorlin, Rena. Codes of Professional Responsibility. Washington: Bureau of National Affairs, 1986.

6. Illich, Ivan. Disabling Professions. Boston: Marion Boyans, 1987.

7. Jarausch, Konrad. The Unfree Professions: German Lawyers,Teachers, Engineers 1900-1950. New
York: Oxford University, 1990.

8. Lebacqz, Karen. Professional Ethics. New York: Abigdon, 1985.

9. Linowitz, Sol. The Betrayed Profession. New York: Scribner’s, 1994.

10. Mount, Eric. Professional Ethics in Context. Louisville: Westminster/Knox, 1990.

11. Reeck, Darrel. Ethics for the Professions. Minneapolis:Augsburg, 1983.

12. Schmidt, Jeff. Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering
that Shapes their Lives. Lanham: Littlefield and Rowan, 2000.

13. Sullivan, William. Work and Integrity: The Crisis and Promise of Professionalism in America. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005.

14. Windt, Peter et al. Ethical Issues in the Professions.New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1989.

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