Monthly Archives: November 2008

Arthur Jensen

Outside the sphere of psychometrics and differential psychology, my attitude toward [Stephen Jay] Gould was largely positive. I admired and supported his battle against creationist efforts to demote Darwinian thinking in high school biology courses and textbooks. When it comes to human variation in psychological or behavioral traits, however, Gould himself seemed to be a creationist rather than an evolutionist. I regard differential psychology as a branch of human biology, and I would have hoped that Gould did also. Too bad he never wrote an autobiography, which might have explained the origins of his antipathy toward psychometrics, the g factor, and their relevance to advancing the scientific study of human differences. That would have been most interesting.

Arthur Jensen, in Frank Miele, Intelligence, Race, and Genetics: Conversations with Arthur R. Jensen, Boulder, Colorado, 2002, p. 156

Bertrand Russell

The man of science, whatever his hopes may be, must lay them aside while he studies nature; and the philosopher, if he is to achieve truth, must do the same. Ethical considerations can only legitimately appear when the truth has been ascertained: they can and should appear as determining our feeling towards the truth, and our manner of ordering our lives in view of the truth, but not as themselves dictating what the truth is to be.

Bertrand Russell, ‘Mysticism and Logic’, in John G. Slater (ed.), The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, London, 1986, vol. 8, p. 33

Yew-Kwang Ng

[T]he real per capita income of the world now is about 7-8 times that of a century ago. If we proceed along an environmentally responsible path of growth, our great grandchildren in a century will have a real per capita income 5-6 times higher than our level now. Is it worth the risk of environmental disaster to disregard environmental protection now to try to grow a little faster? If this faster growth could be sustained, our great grandchildren would enjoy a real per capita income 7-8 times (instead of 5-6 times) higher than our level now. However, they may live in an environmentally horrible world or may well not have a chance to be born at all! The correct choice is obvious.

Yew-Kwang Ng, ‘Happiness Studies: Ways to Improve Comparability and Some Public Policy Implications’, The Economic Record, vol. 84, no. 265 (June, 2008), pp. 261-262

Peter Singer

[John Rawls] nowhere suggests that wealthy nations ought to try to assist poor nations to meet the basic needs of their citizens, except in so far as this is part of a much broader project of helping those peoples to attain liberal or decent institutions. The probability that, in the real world in which we live, tens of millions will starve or die from easily preventable illnesses before such institutions are attained, is not something to which Rawls directs his attention.

Peter Singer, ‘Outsiders: Our Obligations to those beyond Our Borders’, in Deen K. Chatterjee (ed.), The Ethics of Assistance: Morality and the Distant Needy, Cambridge, 2004, p. 26

Arthur Jensen

I have only contempt for people who let their politics or religion influence their science. And I rather dread the approval of people who agree with me only for political reasons. People sometimes ask me how I have withstood the opposition and vilification and demonstrations over the years. That hasn’t worried me half as much as the thought that there may be people out there who agree with some of my findings and views for entirely the wrong reasons[.]

Arthur Jensen, in Frank Miele, Intelligence, Race, and Genetics: Conversations with Arthur R. Jensen, Boulder, Colorado, 2002, p. 35

Alastair Norcross

[T]o the extent that we view morality as not simply a human creation, a device whose sole purpose is to ensure cooperation among humans, and thereby promote human flourishing, we have powerful reasons to reject the view that the interests of animals are less significant than the like interests of humans. Such a rejection will render much animal experimentation morally unacceptable. This is not a conclusion that will be eagerly embraced by the scientific community. It is, however, the conclusion best supported by a careful examination of the relevant moral reasons.

Alastair Norcross, ‘Animal Experimentation’, in Bonnie Steinbock (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Bioethics, Oxford, 2007, p. 666

Julian Savulescu

The critical question for utilitarians is not ‘Is this natural or is this appropriate for humans?’ but rather ‘Will this make people’s lives go better?’ […] Objectors to utilitarianism often refer scathingly to the ‘utilitarian calculus’. However utilitarians are in one sense humane: they care ultimate about people’s well-being and not about feelings, or intuitions or attachment to symbols. Utilitarianism is a theory that shows concern for people through concern for their well-being.

Julian Savulescu, ‘Bioethics: Utilitarianism’, in Encyclopedia of Life Sciences, 2006, p. 7

Jeremy Bentham

Under the Gentoo and Mahometan religions, the interests of the rest of the animal creation seem to have met with some attention. Why have they not, universally, with as much as those of human creatures, allowance made for the difference in point of sensibility? Because the laws that are have been the work of mutual fear; a sentiment which the less rational animals have not had the same means as man has of turning to account. Why ought they not? No reason can be given. If the being eaten were all, there is very good reason why we should be suffered to eat such of them as we like to eat: we are the better for it, and they are never the worse. They have none of those long-protracted anticipations of future misery which we have. The death they suffer in our ands commonly is, and always may be, a speedier, and by that means a less painful one, than that which would await them in the inevitable course of nature. If the being killed were all, there is very good reason why we should be suffered to kill such as molest us; we should be the worse for their living, and they are never the worse for being dead. But is there any reason why we should be suffered to torment them? Not any that I can see. Are there any why we should not be suffered to torment them? Yes, several. See B. I. tit (Cruelty to animals.) The day has been, I grieve to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing, as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholen from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog, is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversible animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? Nor, Can they talk? But, Can they suffer?

Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, London, 1789, chap. 17, sect. 4, n. 1

C. L. Ten

Pascal […] argued that the ‘sickness’ of religious disbelief can be cured if a man acted as if he believed in God. In the end he can work his way into genuine belief. (Whether genuine belief generated in this way will win him a place in Heaven, as Pascal thought, is more debatable, and I am inclined to think that a good God would, when confronted with such a man in the afterlife, tell him bluntly, ‘Go to Hell.’)

C. L. Ten, Mill on Liberty, Oxford, 1980, p. 129

David Lewis

If you think it would serve utility to ‘withdraw tolerance’ from such-and-such dangerous opinions, you’d better think through all the consequences. Your effort might be an ineffective gesture; in which case, whatever you might accomplish, you will not do away with the danger. Or it might be not so ineffective. To the extent that you succeed in withdrawing toleration from your enemy, to that extent you deprive him of his incentive to tolerate you. If toleration is withdrawn in all directions, are you sure the opinions that enhance utility will be better off? When we no longer renounce the argumentum ad baculum, are you sure it will be you that carries the biggest stick?

David Lewis, ‘Mill and Milquetoast’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 67, no. 2 (June, 1989), p. 171

Alan Ryan

The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill was first published in 1970. Reading it fifteen years later arouses the mixed feelings usual in such circumstances—the conviction that the author was formerly altogether cleverer, more imaginative and more enthusiastic than he has become alternates with embarrassment at his ignorance, disorder and clumsiness.

Alan Ryan, The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, 2nd ed., London, 1987, p. ix

John Stuart Mill

Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their practical judgment, which is always allowed to it in theory; for while every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility, or admit the supposition that any opinion, of which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of the error to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable. Absolute princes, or others who are accustomed to unlimited deference, usually feel this complete confidence in their own opinions on nearly all subjects. People more happily situated, who sometimes hear their opinions disputed, and are not wholly unused to be set right when they are wrong, place the same unbounded reliance only on such of their opinions as are shared by all who surround them, or to whom they habitually defer: for in proportion to a man’s want of confidence in his own solitary judgment, does he usually repose, with implicit trust, on the infallibility of “the world” in general. And the world, to each individual means the part of it with which he comes in contact: his party, his sect, his church, his class of society: the man may be called, by comparison, almost liberal and large-minded to whom it means anything so comprehensive as his own country or his own age. Nor is his faith in this collective authority at all shaken by his being aware that other ages, countries, sects, churches, classes, and parties have thought, and even now think, the exact reverse. He devolves upon his own world the responsibility of being in the right against the dissentient worlds of other people: and it never troubles him that mere accident has decided which of these numerous worlds is the object of his reliance, and that the same causes which make him a Churchman in London, would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Pekin. Yet it is as evident in itself, as any amount of argument can make it, that ages are no more infallible than individuals: every age having held many opinions which subsequent ages have deemed not only false but absurd: and it is as certain that many opinions, now general, will be rejected by future ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected by the present.

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1988, vol. 18, pp. 229-230

Thomas Kelly

That I find it unsettling that many people I know and respect disagree with me about the epistemic significance of disagreement is perhaps unsurprising. There are, after all, psychological studies that suggest that we are highly disposed to being greatly influenced by the views of others, and I have no reason to think that I am exceptional with respect to this particular issue. It is, of course, a different question whether the fact that many others disagree with my thesis provides a good reason for me to doubt that thesis. And my answer to this question, as might be expected, is ‘No’: because I accept the general thesis that known disagreement is not a good reason for skepticism, I do not, in particular, regard the fact that people disagree with me about this general thesis as a reason for being skeptical of it. Although I tend to find it somewhat unsettling that many disagree with my view, I am inclined to regard this psychological tendency as one that I would lack if I were more rational than I in fact am. In contrast to my psychological ambivalence, my considered, reflective judgment is that the fact that many people disagree with me about the thesis that disagreement is not a good reason for skepticism is not itself a good reason to be skeptical of the thesis that disagreement is not a good reason for skepticism.

Thomas Kelly, ‘The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement’, Oxford Studies in Epistemology, vol. 1 (2006), pp. 192-193

Richard Feynman

You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won’t believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!

Richard Feynman, quoted by David L. Goodstein and Gerry Neugebauer, ‘Special Preface’, in Six Easy Pieaces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher, Reading, Massachusetts, 1995, p. xxi

John Stuart Mill

Aim at something great; aim at things which are difficult; and there is no great thing which is not difficult. Do not pare down your undertaking to what you can hope to see successful in the next few years, or in the years of your own life. Fear not the reproach of Quixotism and impracticability, or to be pointed at as the knight-errants of an idea. After you have well weighed what you undertake, if you see your way clearly, and are convinced that you are right, go forward, even though you […] do it at the risk of being torn to pieces by the very men through whose changed hearts your purpose will one day be accomplished. Fight on with all your strength against whatever odds, and with however small a band of supporters. If you are right, the time will come when that small band will swell into a multitude: you will at least lay the foundations of something memorable, and you may […]—though you ought not to need or expect so great a reward—be spared to see that work completed which, when you began it, you only hoped it might be given to you to help forward a few stages on its way.

John Stuart Mill, ‘William Lloyd Garrison’, in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1988, vol. 28, p. 202

Ben Goldacre

I can very happily view posh cosmetics—and other forms of quackery—as a special, self-administered, voluntary tax on people who don’t understand science properly. […] But it’s not entirely morally neutral. Firstly, the manufacturers of these products sell shortcuts to smokers and the obese; they sell the idea that a healthy body can be attained by using expensive potions, rather than simple old-fashioned exercise and eating your greens. This is a recurring theme throughout the world of bad science.

More than that, these adverts sell a dubious world view. They sell the idea that science is not about the delicate relationship between evidence and theory. They suggest, instead, with all the might of their international advertising budgets, their Microcellular Complexes, their Neutrillium XY, their Tenseur Peptidique Végétal and the rest, that science is about impenetrable nonsense involving equations, molecules, science diagrams, sweeping didactic statements from authority figures in white coats, and that this science-sounding stuff might just as well be made up, concocted, confabulated out of thin air, in order to make money. They sell the idea that science is incomprehensible, with all their might, and they sell this idea mainly to attractive young women, who are disappointingly underrepresented in the sciences.

Ben Goldacre, Bad Science, London, 2008, pp. 26-27

James Fitzjames Stephen

If the word ‘liberty’ has any definite sense attached to it, and if it is consistently used in this sense, it is almost impossible to make any true general assertion whatever about it, and quite impossible to regard it either as a good thing or a bad one. If, on the other hand, the word is used merely in a general popular way without attaching any distinct signification to it, it is easy to make almost any general assertion you please about it; but these assertions will be incapable of either proof or disproof as they will have no definite meaning. Thus the word is either a misleading appeal to passion, or else it embodies or rather hints at an exceedingly complicated assertion, the truth of which can be proved only by elaborate historical investigations.

James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, London, 1873, p. 184

C. L. Ten

In some real-life situations, the results of a truly neutral utilitarian calculation may be very indecisive as between liberal and illiberal solutions, with everything depending on the intensity of feelings and the way the numbers swing. No one, who is concerned with the freedom of minorities in the face of a hostile and prejudiced majority, can be happy with this situation. The fact that many utilitarians are convinced that the calculation will easily support a policy of toleration is a tribute to their latent liberalism rather than to their professed utilitarianism[.]

C. L. Ten, Mill on Liberty, Oxford, 1980, pp. 53-54