Rational Philosophy

For some reason that I couldn’t quite put my finger on right away, I found Cafferty’s comment today (Judge makes a disgraceful decision) on a judge’s efforts to slow or halt a program that would require employers to fire workers with faulty social security status (illegal immigrants) distasteful. I think it was his sentiment rather than his logic that offended me, his presumption that enforcement of national law supercedes human decency and compassion, whatever the circumstance.

In another story — “Bush vetoes expansion of kids’ health insurance program” — Rep. Todd Akin, R-Missouri, supporting Bush’s veto, complains: “we’re going to provide health care to the children of illegal immigrants.”

In one section of LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do to Survive I examine the origin of the impulses that lead us toward a conservative or liberal way of thinking. It’s a spectrum of course, but the impulse toward conservative thinking seems to derive from a focus on the importance of the self (one’s right to govern one’s self, the live and let live mentality) versus the liberal impulse to value people generally and to not consider one’s own needs over and above the needs of others. I’m dramatically over-simplifying, but I hope you’ll see the point.

If we feel that national law should be put ahead of human decency, our perspective will tend toward a hard line on immigration. If we feel that the rights of human beings are more important than national concerns, then we’ll be concerned about the effects of a hard line approach on illegal immigrants. A conservative will tend to feel that we shouldn’t make exceptions when deportation of just some members of a family will break up that family. A liberal will wonder why the law must be so unfeeling.

Again, as I discuss in the book, once we have sought out the origin for these perspectives, we can consider whether either perspective is more right or better than the other. To cut to the chase, I conclude and show logically that the more liberal perspective is more enlightened and bodes better for the survival of the human species. I’m sure that a conservative would disagree, but I am also sure that he or she would be hard-pressed to defend such a position rationally and logically. Are we not all part of the human race, wherever we happen to be born?

 

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I toyed with the idea of posting this piece under the title “Global Warming.” But I expect that it will be far from my last post related to global warming, so I ended up with a more specific subject.

The New York Times Science Section today reports on the retreat of sea ice. The link I’ve posted takes you to an interactive page with a sobering depiction of just how rapid and unprecedented the retreat has been. In 2006, for the first time since records began in 1979, Arctic sea ice coverage has shrunk so much that areas consistently iced over year-in year-out for those 28 years of measurement are now sea.

Thankfully, even though some myopic politicians and public figures still choose to ignore and even take steps to suppress or downplay the evidence of global warming, the balance of the collective consciousness seems to have tipped. We are now beginning to act. Everything these days, it seems, is a shade of green.

Ironically, and with curious appropriateness, the signs that we’ve reached a tipping point (even though maybe we’ve reached it too late) are showing themselves through the lens of consumerism. When I ride the subway in New York City, I see ConEdison ads focused on energy-saving (for an energy company to be agree or be forced into this position is wonderfully telling). And today Walmart stores, following through on a strategy committed to earlier in the years, touts the sale of 100 million energy efficient light bulbs.

Here are a couple of statistics to round out the picture: The energy contained in the sunlight that falls on the earth in one day equals the energy consumed by human beings in one year. And the energy consumed by the US is half the total energy consumed by human beings in one year.

To borrow a phrase from that esteemed philosopher Donald Rumsfeld: “It’s the things that we don’t know that we don’t know that most concern us.”

With the advent of the industrial revolution and in the decades that followed, the effects of fossil fuel consumption seemed local rather than global. We knew that burning wood and coal and oil produced smoke and smog and dirt, and consumed limited natural resources, but very little attention was paid to whether there would be long lasting adverse consequences, such as global warming. Those who tried to stem the tide of modernization or industrialization were simply swept away.

Human beings are natural innovators. Our ability to manipulate concepts means that we have the ability to reframe problems and challenges. But that skill is usually aimed at removing the immediate obstacle, without giving too much attention to future problems or challenges. We are not so far removed from the unindustrialized man felling a tree to cross a stream — the immediate goal is to cross the stream.

And, unfortunately, since society doesn’t do so well with applying reasoned analysis, even when there is hard scientific evidence that tells us we’re on a dangerous path, we tend to ignore it if we can’t see the signs for ourselves. If parts of the United States were underwater now, you can bet we would have paid attention to global warming much sooner.

The same conceptual problems exist with the use of nuclear energy. There really is no good solution to rid us of radioactive waste. What kinds of problems are we creating for ourselves there? And even looking beyond the immediate problems of global warming, how will we sustain the worlds energy needs without turning away from the use of fossil fuels?

If society is to act more rationally, it needs to create systems whereby planning and forethought can become part of our governing process, and separated from ideology and politics. Logically, it makes no sense that a political administration appointed for a term of four years should be determining policy that affects our future ten fifty or one hundred years from now. Such policy should logically be determined differently, with the much more significant involvement of the scientific community.

 

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In an article today on the growing importance of DNA information in the criminal justice system, the New York Times reports: “All but eight states now give inmates varying degrees of access to DNA evidence that might not have been available at the time of their convictions.”

And in a NYTimes story on Saturday; Texas is moving ahead with execution by lethal injection (next up, a Honduran, Mr. Chi,) despite the Supreme Court’s last minute intervention the previous day to prevent a similar execution (since the drug administered may result in pain that could be considered cruel and unusual): “A lawyer here who represents Hondurans in the United States, Terence O’Rourke, has said Mr. Chi’s execution would violate international law.”

What struck me about these events, apart from the importance of the events themselves, was the philosophical basis for deciding matters of importance to society at the local, state, federal or even international level. I wondered why a prisoner in one state detention system should be denied access to DNA test results if, as a society, we were to conclude that access to such test results was reasonable and good. And why when we have international laws about some things, as a matter of simple humanity, we wouldn’t have international laws about others.

I realize that there are practical matters to consider (not least of which the difficulty of arriving at decisions and implementing on a large scale), and I realize that the constitution and legal system of the United States deliberately leaves many matters to be determined and decided by the local and state legislature, but from a philosophical perspective, such an arrangement troubles me. And it troubles me further that there seems to be such a fierce defense of the right for local and state legislatures to reach their own determinations. Surely if something of such importance as DNA access is appropriate in one jurisdiction it is appropriate in another?

I grew up in England where such things are determined far more homogeneously. The laws of the land don’t vary from place to place in England for matters of great importance (although there are by-laws for matters of limited importance). Which perhaps explains to some extent why it strikes me so oddly that something as important as a convicted person’s right to access DNA information can be withheld in some parts of the country and not in others.

To approach this philosophically: Ideally, a society creates rules and laws that serve its collective and individual interests. We can think of society at various levels — a small social group, an organization or community, a town or city, a state, a country, and the world. Sometimes the rules and laws of a particular group logically apply only to that group (the requirements for membership of a club, for instance). And sometimes the rules and laws of a particular group naturally intersect with a larger or different group — local, state, and federal laws for instance.

One can say that logically the rules and laws within the jurisdiction of a group should be appropriate to the universality of that which is being determined.

For instance, to take a simple example, laws about how close I can build my house to another house have a great deal to do with the particular geography and density of population of the place I live. The zoning laws of New York City probably don’t make sense in Billings Montana. The same could be said about noise ordinances, or any number of concerns that would naturally vary in their importance and interpretation from one place to another.

But the same does not seem to logically apply to the example of access to DNA evidence. Logically, if access to DNA evidence can mean the difference between incarceration and exoneration of the innocent, such right to access should be determined nationally not locally. Innocence or guilt does not vary from state to state.

Likewise, I would think that as a species we could find general agreement between countries on what is cruel or inhuman. (Sad to say that the current United States administration has not set good precedent on applying such logic.)

This is a theme and pattern that comes up again and again. Accepted processes and procedures, whether legal or otherwise, very often come about by custom and by the sway of particular events and people. Over time they become accepted. We don’t challenge their logical foundation.  Rarely do we take a set of problems and concerns and seek to understand them logically, rationally, from their founding principles. Logical interpretation won’t always provide the best solution or the only solution, but it is a perspective that should always be considered.

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