How bad ideas get started: The “Apex Fallacy,” the “Frontman Fallacy,” and the murderer Marc Lepine
Would MRAs still be into the Apex Fallacy if boards of directors looked like this?
So some Men’s Rightsers are up in arms because the powers that be at Wikipedia just deleted a page devoted to a phony “logical fallacy” invented by a friend of Paul Elam. According to the now-deleted Wikipedia page, “the apex fallacy refers to judging groups primarily by the success or failure at those at the top rungs (the apex, such as the 1%) of society, rather than collective success of a group.”
In other words, it’s a convenient way for MRAs to hand-wave away any evidence that men, collectively, have more power than women. Mention that men hold the overwhelming majority of powerful positions in the worlds of politics and business, and, I don’t know, podiatry, and MRAs will shout “apex fallacy” and do a little victory dance. Rich and powerful dudes don’t count, because of poor and powerless dudes!
On the Wikipedia discussion page devoted to the question of deleting the apex fallacy entry, one Wikipedia editor – who voted “strong delete” – noted that
This is men’s rights activist astroturfing. The guy above [in the discussion] isn’t posting examples of its usage because they’re all on websites showcasing brutal misogyny and hateful ignorance, like A Voice for Men.
He’s got a point. When I did a Google search for the term, my top ten results (which may be different than your top ten results, because that’s how Google works) included posts on The Spearhead; The Men’s Rights subreddit; Genderratic (TyphonBlue’s blog); Emma the Emo’s Emo Musings; and a tweet from the little-followed Twitter account of someone calling himself Astrokid MHRA. In other words, five of the ten results were MRA sites, several of them with explicit links to A Voice for Men. (That “MHRA” is a dead giveaway.)
The top result, meanwhile, linked to a post on the blog of the delightful Stonerwithaboner, who doesn’t consider himself an MRA, as far as I know. But he’s still kind of a shit, and he did recently confess to being (as I suspected) the person who was going around posting comments on manosphere sites as David H. F*cktrelle, Male Feminist Extraordinaire ™.
So, in other words , I think it’s fair to say that the term “apex fallacy” has not yet achieved academic or philosophical respectability just yet.
The deleted Wikipedia page attributes the term “apex fallacy” to Helen Smith, a psychologist who is a longtime friend to A Voice for Men, and dates it to an interview Smith gave to the odious Bernard Chapin in 2008.
But the idea seems to be a simple reworking of a bad idea that’s been floating around in Men’s Rights circles for a lot longer than that.
Back in the 1990s, New Zealand Men’s Rights Activist Peter Zohrab came up with what he called the “Frontman Fallacy,” a notion he spread via the alt.mens-rights newsgroup on Usenet and elsewhere; the term has been widely adopted in Men’s Rights circles since then. As Zohrab defined the term,
the Frontman Fallacy is the mistaken belief that people (men, specifically) who are in positions of authority in democratic systems use their power mainly to benefit the categories of people (the category of “men”, in particular) that they belong to themselves.
So, in other words, if you mention that men hold the overwhelming majority of powerful positions in the worlds of politics, business, and podiatry, MRAs will shout out “frontman fallacy” and do a little victory dance. Rich and powerful dudes don’t count, because of poor and powerless dudes!
Like the extremely similar “apex fallacy,” this idea is rather too silly and facile to count as a real fallacy, but it has proven quite popular with MRAs. Looking through the google search results for “frontman fallacy,” I see links to a wide assortment of MRA sites using the term, including AVFM, Genderratic, Stand Your Ground, Backlash.com, Toysoldier, Mensactivism.org, Pro-Male Anti-Feminist Tech, Fathersmanifesto.net, Mensaid.com, and some others. Like “apex fallacy” it hasn’t made much progress outside the Men’s Rights movement.
What’s interesting about this to me is that this is not the only bad idea that Peter Zohrab has ever had.
Indeed, Zohrab had some extremely bad ideas about Marc Lepine, the woman-hating antifeminist who murdered 14 women at the École Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989.
While Zohrab, to my knowledge, never explicitly justified Lepine’s killings, he described the massacre in one notorious internet posting as an “Extremist Protest Against Media Censorship.” Of Lepine himself, he wrote
I bet you don’t know he wasn’t a misogynist – because you have been conned by the media (as usual). In fact, he was a Men’s Rights activist (albeit an extremist one), and one of the things he was protesting about was media censorship.
Zohrab went on to say that it was clear from Lepine’s writings – or at least writing alleged to have been written by him — that
he [was] against Feminists — not against women — he clearly states that he is protesting against various issues which are aspects of Feminist sexism.
Indeed, Zohrab seems not only sympathetic towards Lepine’s “cause” but seems to feel that he was being unfairly misrepresented:
The write-ups on Marc Lepine concentrate on character-assassination. They take things out of context, in the same way that fathers are slandered in the divorce/family court, in order to deprive them of custody or access. …
Marc Lepine was not only not sexist, as the media stated – he was actually fighting sexism!
Lots of MRAs love talking about the “frontman fallacy” or the new and improved “apex fallacy.” They don’t seem much interested in talking about Zohrab himself.
Like it or not, MRAs, this man is one of the leading figures in the emergence of the Men’s Rights movement online, and in the intellectual history of the movement, such as it is.
If I were a bit more paranoid, I might wonder if the emergence of the “apex fallacy” was some sort of an attempt as a rebranding, an attempt to push the “frontman fallacy” and its creator, the old, odd duck Peter Zohrab, with his embarrassingly sympathetic feelings toward a mass murderer of women, down that famous memory hole.
P.S. Don’t read the comments to that MensActivism.org posting, unless you want to get really depressed.
Posted on April 29, 2013, in a voice for men, antifeminism, dozens of upvotes, drama kings, entitled babies, frontman fallacy, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, MRA, playing the victim, reddit, sympathy for murderers, terrorism and tagged antifeminism, marc lepine, men's rights, misogyny, MRA, wikipedia. Bookmark the permalink. 1,090 Comments.
Yup. I sure to what to listen to the voices of people who think I’m a “she-male,” “tranny,” etc. If I don’t consider their opinions then it follows that I don’t really care about my own kind!
Also, speaking of what you said, I love to bring up this quote:
Douglas Adams – “All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.”
Well, there is this
Granted, it’s not exactly a mammoth…
Oh and Fibinachi — best of luck to your friend, hope it turns out to be hilarious once ze heals.
@katz, Yeah, it was kind of overwhelming. Maybe what I should do is take nominations, and then the top __ posters can make it into a poll?
@Argenti, I know things are really hectic for you right now, so no worries. My bossy* sister has been overscheduling my time too, but if it works out it works out.
*I say with affection, but she really IS bossy.
Nominations could be good. Or you could maybe narrow it down to one poster by each contributor, or something. I dunno. Shirts would be awesome, but I also like having it be a flat, unjudged showcase. (Going off topic, but sometimes it feels like even in totally casual amateur settings, art just gets judged and rated and ranked too much and not just plain enjoyed.)
Cloudiah — lol, my brother referred to his trip to Cali as “getting dragged to see everything” so I know what you mean :)
And for anyone who’s curious — http://manboobz.com/2012/07/22/far-from-ok-cupid/comment-page-5/#comment-179580 — the pronouns ze/zir (etc) “marginalizes you unnecessary”. He got all huffy about how I can have my ze (like I should feel guilty for making him concede that I can pick my own pronouns!) and gave a pseudo-apology later. But yeah, should he ever claim to not be transphobic, there it is.
Oh and Joe? It’s trans* woman, not transwoman. Aaliyah’s a woman who’s trans*, not some extra gender called transwoman (and you and your “no new pronouns!” should’ve known that!). How’s “Joe’s a mixed-race-man” work? No? There you go then.
Also, anyone who complains about ties can shove it, bought myself a lovely silk white one earlier…and need to iron my black dress shirt…
“How’s “Joe’s a mixed-race-man” work?”
He does part of a long-distance race then decides it was really a sprint?
Nighty, night everyone, leave you with this :)
(Although, as I said, totally okay with the hipsters. I’m just saying, they should have no human rights and be forced to shave.)
(Yeah, and those fedoras should definitely be illegal) (and vinyl, well not for me, only for them) (and Irony is something they should never be allowed to reference.) (I had a very bad experience with a hipster once.) (Hipsters are totally planning on taking over the world.) (No, really!) (Have you seen the Matrix?) (There’s this pill, it’s a metaphor…) (Really man, swallow the pill!) (We’re doomed!) (It’s Hipstergeddon!) (Nah, not really, hipsters are my friend, I was just being ironic.) (…oh…nooooooooooooo!) ;)
Kitteh — ok, I totally get how you got that from what I said, but seeing how I was trying to illustrate that having characteristics of yourself treated as the core of your being is uncomfortable and demeaning…maybe not joke about it? Otoh, he is a long jump winner with his ability to get from here to there in a single bound.
Ophelia — g’night, the parathesises will appreciate the break :-P
Just to piss Joe off, I made a post about gender-neutral pronouns. ;-)
@katz, I also am so fond of ALL of the posters that I didn’t want to rank them. 0_o And also, t-shirts would be cool.
@Argenti, I’ll email you even if it is just to say “My sister won’t allow me any free time, rescue MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEe.” :D
See what happened there? The hipster overlords were watching in their den of hip and totally nuked my video, damn you hipsters…..DAAAAMMMMNNN YOOOUUUU!!!!
*shakes fist heavenward*
cloudiah/Argenti: Give me enough lead time and I can come up for apizza.
Sorry, Argenti, I was thinking more of the way the extra hyphens stuff things up in that sentence. And how Joe would quit halfway through on some excuse. Mea culpa.
Ophelia – “(Yeah, and those fedoras should definitely be illegal)” – Oy, watch it, you, someone not far from here wears fedoras! :D
Joe made a right mess of arguing (cough) about pronouns in that thread, didn’t he? A massive case of Not Getting It. I mean, how does he go from saying one’s biological sex (even if it were purely the binary he assumes it is) is nobody’s business, to saying there’s no need for a pronoun other than the he/him/his or she/her/hers choices? How does one keep it private when the words automatically label one? It doesn’t make sense even in his short paragraph.
:smh:
Aaliyah: I have a very different view of pure Kantian ethics, however.
How do you resolve the Kantian problems of “intention” (it must be pure, no thought other than “this is right action”, or the thing done is no longer a truly moral action), and his “solution” of the ax murderer problem?
Kant aimed to construct a morality consisting of moral principles that are binding in that defying them would be contrary to reason.
I agree that is what he aimed at. I don’t think (as he explained it) he succeeded. If lying to the ax murderer who wants to kill your mother is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.
(don’t worry about my religious views, those are personal; and I can talk about Ethics with a complete divorce of them. If I can defend slavery as the justifiable resolution of two evils, I can do anything [in questions of pure argument. Execution is a different beastie).
BTW, if beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy, Madeira means he wants us to be delirious.
For those what care, I’ve been posting tipsily from about here.
@Fibinachi
Wading through the boring shit FirstJoe has been posting was worth it to get to the tropical island of your wonderful post. (Is that metaphor too much?) Your posts are always great to read though.
Pecunium — you driving up if we can schedule it? Because picking me up would be awesome, otherwise we’re doing lunch with my mother (she was fine about lunch with Rogan/LBT though, from my view anyways, so I don’t think it’d be a problem, but the less people trying to park downtown, the better!)
And you linked to this thread btw, that booze must be good!
Cloudiah — I shall endeavor to stage a rescue if needed and possible :)
And if you both want, I’ll email you both and we can take this to email. I do have both your addy’s after all
Also, awesome. (Ironically the under the sea musical in Kingdom Hearts II gives me way more trouble than the end boss in the first game…let’s not talk about the end boss in the second one…or Maleficent)
Kitteh — yeah he did, NWO never managed to piss me off as much as he did that night. And yeah, my hyphens convulted it I guess. I typed it without them but it made no sense >.<
On second thought, picking me up would probably mean meeting my father, he’d behave if I introduced you just as a veteran I know from online, but I know your thoughts on meeting him. Maybe not such a good idea.
It’s been a few years since I read any Kantian moral philosophy and even longer since I read any Kant, but I don’t recall Kant’s schema being convincingly binding. I mean, even if one grants that Kant persuasively links moral conduct to reason given a certain metaphysics, all you’ve done is shift the standard from “you can’t act in such-and-such a way or you’ll be a bad person” to “you can’t act in such-and-such a way on pain of irrationality.” The latter is only more binding than the former if the agent in question bothers to care about acting rationally.
But then I’m a philosophy major who slowly became disillusioned with every major moral theory, so I might just be bitter.
Argenti, sure, email us all. I’ll try to pin my sister down, since she said there would be one day I’m on my own the week of the 6th… But it might be the 6th, in which case I will be mostly on Long Island with a friend until the ferry takes me away.
I am so damn excited to get away for a while. Though in other ways this is a terrible time, with one friend starting chemo and another in a rehab center recovering from cancer/chemo.
Did I say FUCK CANCER yet today? FUCK CANCER.
I don’t think you did, so FUCK CANCER. And I’ll email you both once Pecunium confirms that’s okay with him.
In any case, I’m going to bed. Tomorrow should be fun, my mother wants to go shoe shopping (this never happens, like, ever, I expect chaos)
I look at the ax murderer problem within the framework of the mere-means principle, just as I do with every other moral situation (although sometimes I like to add in virtue ethics to the mix because it leads to a much more informed moral perspective).
By that principle, I do, in fact, have a duty to not lie because lying involves treating someone as a mere means to an end.
By the same principle, however, I have a duty to not let my mother die. Normally this would be an imperfect duty that would be ignored in favor of following the perfect duty of not lying. However, if the direct consequence of me telling the truth is her death, then I am surely responsible. Not letting her die, therfore, is also a perfect duty, as I also have the perfect duty to not kill anyone.
In turn, this implies that the ax murderer problem has no prescriptive answer. If I lie, I’ll treat the ax murderer unjustly, but if I tell the truth and so cause my mother’s death, I’ll treat my mother unjustly. Since neither action is more morally reprehensible than the other, it follows that I have no choice other than the choice to violate one duty or another. So if I lie to the ax murderer, my action is worthy of neither praise nor blame. It was simply something I did as someone deprived of autonomy as I had no other choices available. And since ought implies can according to Kantianism, I am obligated to do neither. Clearly I’m unable to choose freely, so I’m not morally culpable for doing either action. Within the Kantian framework, it is absurdto suggest that I am wrong for lying to the ax murderer because I was deprived of agency in that situation. It is also absurd suggest that I am wrong for letting my mother die by telling the truth because I did not intend to kill her and I was, again, deprived of agency in that situation.
What I have said so far is how many neo-Kantians would look at the ax-murderer problem. The best way to summarize that position is that lying to the ax murderer is a morally neutral act in that it deserves neither praise nor blame. It’s simply an unfortunate situation you’re in in which you don’t have any meaningful agency. Either action is acceptable.
Personally, though, I would lie simply because I would feel horrible if I let my mother die. I also combine a virtue ethics perspective with the mere-means principle, so I would see lying to the murderer as morally right in a way because letting her die would hardly be a virtuous thing for me to do. I like ethical pluralism.
And if it were possible, I would instead avoid lying by saying something like “I know where she is, but I’m not going to tell you.” At that point, if the ax murderer decided to try to get rid of me in order to move on and kill my mother, self-defense would be acceptable. And it would give me a chance to save her without lying.
And besides, I have to actually be sure that he will kill her if he finds out about her location through me. If that isn’t the case, then lying won’t help anyway. There’s also no guarantee that the ax murderer would even believe my lie.
Cloudiah, here you go. Because glitter text is powerful.
cloudiah/Argenti: It would either be the train, or the motorcycle. Picking you up would be doable, but sort of tricky (I have a spare helmet, and a jacket, and these days even pants; i’ll wager), but if it’s short notice (which it seems to be), it might have to be train.
Long Island, however, it pretty close. The LIRR is easy.
Here’s my Kantian defense of abortion, since we’re on the topic of ethics.
I forgot to add that that entry shows another way in which Kant’s moral theory can be used in ways that make it less rigid and conservative.
Lol, well, that might be awkward, but I have riden on the back of a motorcycle before (not in years, but somethings really don’t change). Might have to pick you up if you take the train though, I really wouldn’t want to try getting a city bus from the station)
But yeah, we’re talking like, next week basically. Because I forgot.
Aaliyah: Kant, when pressed on this (and so we can assume this is Pure Kantian Ethics) said anything other than saying, “she is upstairs” was wrong. He elaborated that, should she hear the ax murderer at the door, and flee; thus being found when you lied; and so killed, then you would be at fault. But that, should you tell the truth, and the ax-murdered push past you, climb the stairs and kill her, there would be no blame attached to you.
Resolving this is why there are neo-Kantians.
My alpha vibrator is shaped like a mighty dolphin, the domliest doms of the sea. We had a *terrific* evening.
You would be at fault for what someone else did based on what a third person said? Yeah see, this is my issue with Kant in a nutshell. Example! Well known in these parts: my father is an asshole. Altogether probable thing: when my mother and I leave in the morning, he’ll have some sort of hissy fit. So, hypothetical here…
Me: “so, shoe shopping last?”
Her: “I was thinking pedicure first” (don’t knock it until you’ve had one, whirlpool foot baths!)
Overhearing this, the inevitable “we can’t afford that!”
So, who’ve fault is it if he does something more morally wrong than being an asshole? Yes I realize there are no axes or murders, but in what world is his behavior not his responsibility?
Translation to ax murder, if she goes out the window, that’s her action, you can’t control her so how are you morally responsible?
And while I’m half musing while half asleep, what’s the moral status of slamming the door in his face (the ax murderer, not my father)?
Indeed. I think Kant got a lot of things wrong with the application of his moral theory. Aside from his answer to the axe-murderer problem, he was also quite misogynistic because he argued that women are inferior moral agents because they lack reason. He also argued that there is no duty to treat animals as ends in themselves (thus leading most people to call Kantianism anthropocentric). But in reality, the mere-means principle can actually provide a very cogent defense of animal rights.(http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~korsgaar/CMK.Animal.Rights.pdf)
Speaking of Korsgaard, she also has an interesting paper that deals with the ax-murderer problem (under a different name, though). Link: http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/rarneson/Courses/KorsgaardTheRighttoLie.pdf
I think that’s entirely acceptable. I certainly can’t see how it would violate the mere-means principle.
Shaking my head reading all this about Kant again, and this is why I wouldn’t do philosophy even if I had the chance. I haven’t the patience for these *cough* absolutes and mental games about things that in real life would mean saying to someone “hey, lying to a murderer is just as bad as letting you be murdered!”
You know what it reminds me of? The people (usually men) who come here or to other feminist sites wanting to play intellectual games or play devil’s advocate about things like rape or domestic violence – things that hurt far more women than men, real-life horrors and traumas. I just want to ask Kant* what fucking world he lives in where telling a lie has any sort of moral equivalency with letting someone be murdered.
*Yes I know he crossed over long since, and I really hope he’s left all that BS behind. Philosophers’ Corner of Shame, five hundred metres on your left.
I should make it clear that I don’t actually believe that lying and letting someone die are just as bad in every single sense. I’m talking strictly in terms of principles, and in practice I would definitely lie for the sake of saving someone’s life if I had to. Not only because of personal preferences, but also because it’s far more virtuous, in my opinion, to tell a lie in such a circumstance.
Sometimes I think that virtue ethics itself is far superior to all normative ethical theories. I just wish it could be justified on solid grounds.
I just wanted to clarify my views there because I, too, hate it when I hear shit like “Being falsely accused is as bad as being sexually assaulted” from anti-feminists. Or “Taxation is theft.” Or “Religious is worse than rape.”
I should clarify too – I didn’t for a minute think you’d embrace any of those ideas, Aaliyah. You made it clear you were talking about the sort of thing Kantians (Kant fanboys?) would talk about, not your own beliefs. Though even if you hadn’t said it straight out, I wouldn’t have thought those were your beliefs: your concern for justice is very clear. :)
Now I’m wishing Kate Beaton had a comic about Kant, but I think the only philosophers she’s done are Kierkergaard and Nietzsche!
Oh, I thought “morning height referred to the fact that you were taller after spending a fair amount of time lying down than you were after spending a fair amount of time standing up. I guess I missed that troll.
Regarding Morality:
I would lie to the Axe Murder because lying to people is a lot of fun. I can’t recommend it enough.
“Where’s your mother?”
-“Well, first she obtained your consent and now she’s in your ass, pegging you with all her might.” At this point I would pretend to high-five someone behind the axe murderer.
I had totally forgot it was Joe in that thread about pronouns. The First Joe: great supporter of trans* people, given that a) they conform to his extremely narrow view of what a trans* person is and b) they let him police their language use (and god knows what else). Truly, a hero for our times.
It’s kinda like how Joe, when criticizing the use of what he had erroneously identified as a whorephobic slur on the second page of this thread, could not resist suggesting that anybody else taking issue with it would do so only because it isn’t “politically correct.”
It’s kinda like how, when Joe repeatedly evokes homophobic violence in order to attack Muslims, it does not make me feel at all supported as a queer woman.
It’s kinda like how Joe is an untrustworthy snake.
I leave to get stuff done, and a thread that was troll-ful with the Inconvenient Truth and PEMmy gets a Joesplosion?
Ugh, these guys.
@Kitteh:
Kant actually makes a lot more sense when you think about what he was trying to get at in these terms:
Is lying bad because there are consequences, or does lying itself do something bad to you?
I.e., he’s trying to untangle the idea of sin and the idea of ethics. Because a lot of what we think about morality is tangled up in the idea of sin. And the axe murderer out to get your mother is right there at the heart of it.
Do the consequences of your words matter, or do the content of your words matter?
Welp, we’re post-modern. We can actually sit back and say ‘why not evaluate both?’ Kant was all ‘hey, if you lie, you’re a liar, and thus have no moral standing left!’
Because sin, duh.
Sometimes it does make me want to tear my hair out, in a completely utilitarian way.
But these days I interrogate deities for any hint of megalomania; friendliness is only a sign that they want you to sign away your soul willingly, it doesn’t mean they’re any nicer than Cthulu! Your soul is a tasty, delicious treat–never trust those who’ve tasted souls before!
(that last paragraph makes loads and loads of sense to me. If it doesn’t make sense to you, there are some lovely well-written books I mostly enjoyed you might like to try)
PS: my view of Kant may be colored by my utterly Utilitarian leanings. For-seriously, it is unlike any other 101-level philosophy class bullshit I’ve ever played with. You’re allowed to say things like “well, what would be the immediate consequences of this decision? On me? On other people? On society as a whole? What would be the long-term consequences?” Throwing in questions like that is totally and utterly game-changing to the whole idea of philosophy.
I mean, for certain values of the word “philosophy.” Not all philosophy is the kind of 101-level bullshitting that seemed like the most important thing in the world when I was 18.
So, I’m still reading the Joe-splosion. And Shiraz sez:
….somebody made a poo joke about this, right? Somebody? (I’ll keep catching up and find out, and if not I’ll go ahead and be That Guy)
Kitteh’s: Kant argued that the error was that, by lying (to anyone, about anything) you were denying their agency; converting them to means, not treating them as ends.
It’s a fundamental problem in any analysis of ethics. Utilitarianism is (in this regard) worse. Because utilitarianism requires that lots of people be treated as means to others’ ends; since making more people happy is good. Under strict utilitarianism (Yes, I’m looking at you Matt Yglesias) the collapse of the clothing factory in Bangladesh is trivial, not a crime at all, because more people are made happy by cheap shirts than suffered in the collapse. To change the enforcement of regulations would be to diminish their happiness, and so is immoral.
Strict utilitarianism makes Kant look great. It’s the refuge of many Libertarians. What it reifies is even less plausible than Kant’s reifications (the rational actor).
Kant is a slave to duty, the Utilitarian is slave to power.
Kant on women is problematic; in that he was a creature of his age, but also ahead of his time. Kant invented the concept of objectification.
Hey Aaliyah, fellow Kantian and Korsgaard-fan here. Wrote my entire dissertation on a Kantian/neo-Kantian idea of the connection between freedom and morality, that I originally came across in Korsgaard…
I think Kant got a lot of particulars wrong when applying his ethics to concrete cases. I think he was wrong in claiming that duties derived from the categorical imperative always give you consistent guidance; I think it’s clear that duties can clash. I don’t think having duties and being the object of duties are two sides of the same coin as Kant though, and I think Korsgaard has convincingly argued that they come apart and that we therefore owe duties TO other animals although they do not have duties to us. There’s also no clear rule in Kant’s writings for how specific you ought to make your maxims (the concrete examples Kant gives of maxims are sometimes fairly specific, like “when in financial trouble, borrow money with a false promise”, sometimes he talks about “lying” as if it’s ONE thing). An action could come out as right or wrong depending on how detailed a description you make of it. AND finally I don’t think the attempt to infer a set of moral rules from mere rational agency is watertight.
What I think he does get right is
– He gets things in the right order. First there are agents, agents with rational thinking, who gotta decide what to do. Because we have to so decide, we need some kind of principles to act on. Since rationality is a social phenomenon, we need universalisable principles. Thus, morality. Kantian duties do involve producing certain consequences (you can’t really act at all unless you try to produce something) – for instance, he says it’s a duty to help others, and then you try to produce the consequence of the person getting helped, and actually,
Kantian duty ethics and rule utilitarianism actually aren’t that different (you could check out Derek Parfit’s latest for a lengthy argument to that effect) in what they tell people that they ought to do. I think the major difference is that utilitarians get the cart before the horse; they think that first there are values, things that just are valuable, be it happiness or preference-satisfaction or a whole list of abstract presumably intrinsically valuable things; from this follows that the more there is of this stuff in the world, the better; and from this follows that we agents ought to try to produce this stuff, and thus we have morality. I don’t think that’s how morality WORKS. Morality starts with agents that need to decide what to do, not with some abstract intrinsically valuable stuff that’s just there.
– I do think that duties can clash and sometimes you have to break a weaker duty to comply with a stronger one (in this I agree with Ross rather than Kant), BUT I think that the utility calculations of act utilitarianism is bogus. Act utilitarianism allows that one person is put through terrible suffering in order to increase the utility (happiness, preferences or however you define utility) of a large amount of people just a little bit. If the victim is made to suffer in a way that gives him 100 negative utility points, and a thousand sadistic spectators of his suffering gets just 1 positive utility point each, and if the alternative was doing nothing, you ought to make this person suffer. Sure, one can argue (fairly plausibly) that this isn’t gonna happen in real life; still, I think the example shows that utility calculations can’t be the heart of morality.
– Overall, I think respecting others is more basic than making people happy, although they usually coincide.
Regarding the fact that Kant had prejudices against women, for instance, it’s the same with most historical philosophers. And usually (in the case of Kant, that’s definitely so) you can easily shave the prejudices off from the philosophical core without losing anything.
This is why I love this place. Pecunium and Dvärghundspossen just simu-posted long, involved critiques of Kant detailing what they think he got right and they think he got wrong… and just offhand, it looks like both are fairly comprehensive, such that there’s lots of overlap.
I love this place.
And, to be fair to Kant, he was completely opposed to colonialism despite being a racist who thought POC:s were inferior to whites, because he didn’t think the fact that someone is less intelligent or a little less rational than you are give you the right to take over their country. He also thought it proper if women freely decided that there husbands made most of the decisions in the household since husbands are better suited for this task, but the husband can’t just force the wife to comply with him, since once again, even if someone is inferior to you in intelligence or rationality you must treat them with respect.
So yes, he really had prejudices, but he was also pretty consistent when it came to the importance of treating others with respect.
Thanks, Howard. Yeah, funny how we posted simultaneously. :-)
Kitteh’s: As to why things like Kant matter in philosophy, I’ll quote Ruth Macklin, “The advantage of having a theory, as philosophers have argued at length, is that it enables particular judgments to
be systematic and well grounded, instead of ad hoc.”
Kant really suffers from having been 1: German, 2: a bit abstuse, and 3: of an age which we don’t really understand (the moreso for having been in the Germanies).
He is being translated, at least twice, just to get to English (once from his time, and once from German). That he is also speaking in the language of philosophy just adds another layer of difficulty.
Dvärghundspossen: Have you read Kant and the Utilitarians (Tore Nordenstam, Ethical Perspectives, 2001)?
Howard, I think you’d like it.
Yeesssss, this! Because I’ve found that when somebody says they’re Utilitarian it either means they’re a thoughtful person who is trying to work out the long-term effects of actions on society… (Ozy, who used to post here, took that stance) and the Glibertarians who handwave it all with ‘greater good,’ ‘happiness for more,’ and garbage like that.
Also, the SMBC comic about the happiness monster… let me see if I can find that.
Sorry, “Utility Monster“.
Pecunium, I’ll see if I can get that through my library.
Howard… the link is to a PDF.
@Pecunium: Nordenstams critique of the idea that Kant and rule utilitarianism aren’t that different after all seems to be
a) that Kant, unlike utilitarians, doesn’t begin with a concept of what’s good (which I pointed out above; I think Kant get things in the right order by starting with an agent who gotta decide what to do, rather than with some idea of what’s good in itself). This is an important difference on the theoretical level, but doesn’t necessarily matter much when asking which concrete actions are right or wrong.
Overall, Kant does moral philosophy in a very different way from a utilitarian, in that I agree. I agree that the similarities between a utilitarian and a Kantian are firstly on an extremely abstract and vague level (moral rules are universal) but I also think there are similarities if we move down to a very concrete level and ask what’s right in a particular situation, on versions of utilitarianism and Kantianism respectively that are sophisticated enough to be plausible (although Nordenstam might think “diluted enough to be uninteresting”, perhaps). In the middle level, so to speak, I agree that there are really big differences.
b) Kant thought rightness was determined by what actions one can consistently will (and he thought reasons or maxims are by their nature universal, which I think there’s some truth in – when people want to make an exception of themselves they pretty much always come up with some reason why they or their circumstances are different from others in some purportedly morally relevant way). HOWEVER, I agree with all those critics who think that Kant couldn’t get as much substantial morality as we need to determine what’s right in various situations from this pretty meagre rightness requirement, and here I might be in disagreement with Nordenstam. Even if you agree that it’s inconsistent to hold that it’s right to lie to get money when in financial trouble, Kant almost agrees himself that it’s not EXACTLY inconsistent to follow the maxim of only caring for oneself and never helping others, and yet he wants to claim that this is immoral. So he says that nobody can seriously will a state of affairs where everyone follows that maxim, since the agent zirself might get in trouble one day, and would presumably want help then. In praxis, although that’s not what he sets out to do, he slides towards taking consequences into account in a more utilitarian fashion now and then.
I think Ted Honderich was right when he claimed that the really dividing difference between on the one hand all kinds of consequentualism, on the other hand all kinds of deontology, and on the third hand (three hands?) all kinds of virtue ethics, is this: What the respective moral school take as the most basic layer of morality, and what they consider to be merely derived from this basic layer. Every moral system say something about what you ought to try to produce, what kind of principles you ought to use when deciding what to do, and what kind of person you ought to be, but they differ in what they consider as more basic than the rest.
@Howard, that was a great comic. Actually, a utilitarian professor at my department argued that this scenario isn’t a problem for utilitarianism after all. Felix is pretty far from any real human being. If there were a Felix in real life, perhaps we’d regard someone as different from us as close to divine, and it wouldn’t seem strange that we ought to sacrifice everything for his sake.
I stand unconvinced.
Yeah, the actual fix to the utility monster problem is to slightly reword your goal to “ideal happiness levels for as many people as possible.”
Plus, doesn’t more money make you happier, so a few billionaires make up for poor people? Nooooope. The utility of money for happiness can be measured, and any raise over 75,000$ a year is marginal and can be discounted.
What does 75,000$ a year actually mean? I crunched those numbers, and for most people that means A) enough money to meet immediate physical needs, B) enough money to have health insurance so you don’t worry about the immediate future, C) enough money to plan for retirement.
So realistically we would worry about providing that to everybody before we got to making Felix happy.
But Felix is funny as all getout because he is the epitome of the sloppily-worded-philosophy-loophole.
Ah, it is a link to a PDF! I saw the title, though “book,” and went no further. Intellectual incuriosity, thou shalt be the end of me yet!
This is a problem I have with the principle of utility as well. But to be fair, John Stuart Mill’s political philosophy, which rests on utilitarianism, is a pretty good defense of rights and liberty. I seriously doubt Mill would condone what happened in Bangladesh.
My biggest problem with utilitarianism is its grounds for justification. Mill’s justification for utilitarianism strikes me as extremely shaky and specious. I fail to see how arguing that the only thing desirable is happiness is enough to make the demands of utilitarianism binding.
My alpha vibrator is shaped like a mighty dolphin, the domliest doms of the sea. We had a *terrific* evening.
Dolphins are perverts!
…deep discussion of philoso-whaa? ;D
Says the man who refused to accept statistics from the fucking CDC, because he won’t read anything “written by a feminist”.
I love how you think you’re the one with any credibility here.
Or that credibility even matters here, on this site that specifically says it’s about mocking stuff…
I’ll admit to favoring utilitarian approaches (and rule utilitarianism, specifically), though it’s been decades since I’ve done any formal reading on the subject. I don’t think the Felix issue really undermines that position, because in general, it ignores variables in ‘personal happiness’–that is, Felix’s happiness being so ridiculously easy to trigger wouldn’t be factored into any decision.
It also addresses situations like in the first panel, since living under a rule system where you have no assurance your spouse is not cheating on you is going to create a general level of anxiety about relationship security that isn’t going to be adequately countered by a comparatively small number of cheaters.
In addition, I think there’s a school of utilitarianism–and if there’s not, there bloody well should be–where unhappiness (or, more precisely, misery) inflicted is weighted differently than happiness derived. That would deal well with most of the cases involving sweatshops (which inflict a great deal of misery on a small handful of people in order to provide an almost negligible level of happiness on a hoard of people).
Exactly! In most Christian-influenced worldviews your own personal state of morality is such a highly rendered important thing–even once you’ve decoupled from the original reason for that–that I think folks who are still trying to get at the whole moral or virtue ethics, getting that state of self to perfection really need to grapple with WHY that’s more basic than the effect you have on the world.
Actually getting down and wrestling with the why is something I didn’t even touch till I was over 30. Part of that was because I had a religious answer before then, so it was easy to gloss over. After that I actually had to consider it, and that was harder.
A belated thank you to Aaliyah for the glittery FUCK CANCER, which I shared with friend who said it made her LOL in a way that amused her physical therapist. :D
Just repeating this with my Greebo icon. Carry on.
Holy crap, this thread took a left turn while I was catching up. Sorry for re-engaging Joe.
I admit, most conversation about moral systems are out of my depths because I haven’t gotten any system yet except “be decent to people”, but since someone linked to SMBC earlier, this might be relevent.
/hope this is on the right thread.
lol, I’m glad you folks liked it!
@Howard: Lots of virtue ethicists, and this starts with Aristotle, argue that morality is inherently a pretty fuzzy subject. Looking for the perfect principle that you can just apply to any situation and get a strict answer to the question “what ought I to do?”, such as a utilitarian principle or Kant’s categorical imperative, pretends that morality is simpler than it actually is. All you can hope is really to develop a good way of THINKING about moral matters, and try to train yourself into getting better and better at making moral judgements; but at the end of the day, you’re stuck with trying to make as good a judgement as you can in every new situation you find yourself in, with no simple principle to apply.
That’s why being a good person is most basic according to most virtue ethicists – because there are no simple rules. At the end of the day, you can’t say any more in favour of some moral rules (which, according to this view, has to be rules-of-thumb and no more than that) than that they are rules carefully reflecting, empathic and so on people are willing to endorse, and you can’t say any more in favour of certain consequences than that some consequences are such that carefully reflecting, empathic and so on people will consider them good.
I’m somewhat sympathetic to this view, actually.