Occasional Tales

The animal-loving professor. Professor Purple is so engrossed in writing a paper for the Philosophical Society that he forgets he has an ethics class to teach. But as he hurries to the lecture theatre, he sees that a dog has fallen into the lake and is unable to get out. Professor Purple wades in and rescues the dog, but by the time he gets to the class, he’s rather late and the students aren’t pleased. Professor Purple explains what happened and sets the event as an ethics problem. The students think that he did the right thing by saving the dog. But the next week, the same thing happens. This time about half of the students think that he should’ve left the stupid creature to its own devices. The week after, and the dog’s back in the lake and Professor Purple refers the matter to one of the university porters. When he gets to class, he tells his students his new policy. Rescuing the dog every week is outweighed by the professor’s need to get to class on time. As he explains, this is u...

Thomas did it. Thomas has graduated from virtue yesterday to vice today, having been caught stealing sweets from a jar on the teacher’s desk. These are meant to be a reward for pupils who have done good work.[ 1 ] Mr Bollard wonders what’d happen if everyone helped themselves. Thomas argues (clumsily) that if anyone is hungry, tired and normally responsible, and [because] there are lots of sweeties, then it’d be all right for everyone to help themselves. Mr Bollard is about to clout the little bugger with a blackboard duster, but wonders whether he has a point. Mrs Cook the dinner lady says that what Thomas did was wrong because the sweet didn’t belong to him and he was naughty because he stole it. But Thomas is undaunted and enlists Anarchists. He wants to know why his action was wrong, not just to be told it was wrong. Mr Bollard is a bit dim, methinks, unless he understands something about Thomas’s original argument that I don’t. For a start, sweets don’t satisfy anyone’s hunger, al...

But then again, philosophers don’t tend to be zoologists. Today’s dilemma takes us into the world of higher primates. Two chimpanzees are taught to communicate with each other and do so at a basic level. One day, Samuel disappears because he’s being used in an experiment which involves dicing up his brain. (Gordon Ramsey’s Chimp Chow Special!) Albert goes on hunger strike, and their trainer, Felicity, take the whole matter to court. Albert uses sign language to present his case, but the defence counsel argues that It’s inappropriate to ascribe human emotions and understanding to animals. The use of Samuel in some experiment benefits people. Albert, a chimpanzee, is asking for human rights, which would mean that animals would have rights over and above humans. I’d agree with the defence counsel. The evidence is against Albert because chimps don’t communicate in the same way humans do unless humans have taught them. It appears they have the potential for sophisticated communication, but...

Diues et Lazarus. Lazarus the Begger sits outside a rich man’s gate hoping for a few alms, but even although the dogs lick the beggar’s sores, the rich man doesn’t spare Lazarus a shekel. The rich man dies and finds himself the Hell. He sees Lazarus with Abraham and asks the latter to send the former with a drop of water on the tip of his finger to cool his tongue. But Abraham reminds the rich man that he knew the good things in life while Lazarus only knew the bad and now they’re getting their just desserts. Such a punishment seems fitting, but just as the rich man is being tormented for his treatment of Lazarus, will Abraham be punished for his treatment of the rich man? Speaking of beggars, they were out in force in town today, but I wasn’t about to dispense any largesse to them. I work on the principle of fair distribution. If I give to one, why am I not giving to all? None of them seem to have any greater merit than any of the others. I have no control over how these people use th...

But what about reality? The Biblical story of the good Samaritan is well known enough. He was the only person who went to the aid of another even although people of an allegedly moral disposition (i.e., priests) passed by. But that’s really just a prelude to the main story about a car which has apparently broken down in a remote spot. Other drivers have passed by, but should the modern Samaritan help or keep going? I think most of us would say that he should stop and help. And for his trouble he was shot and his car was stolen. But the story, though a little OTT, illustrates one problem with being a Good Samaritan: it might backfire. I’ve read more than one story about people in China stepping into help others only to find that they end up being sued as if they’re responsible for the original injuries. In the days when I used to travel by bus, I’d occasionally catch people who were standing when the driver would, quite often, brake sharply and send everyone tumbling. But other people w...

You’ll grow out of it. Today it’s the tale of Abraham and Isaac. God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, but only stops him in the nick of time and supplies a sheep instead. I’m sure Isaac was only psychologically scarred for a few decades. Anyway, because God told Abraham to do it, I’m sure it was all right. That’s why insane axe murderers just need to say that God made them to it, because then it’s all right. “But God intervened before Abraham sacrificed Isaac,” said the judge suspecting some sort of sophistry. “Very true, m’lud,” said the accused gravely, “but since you aren’t God, how can you predict God’s will?” “That observation I cannot gainsay. But fortunately, God’s telling me to sentence you to life.” “Bugger.” Such situations reveal just how nonsensical religions are because if God is the source of morality, but directs people do behave unethically, then they have the ultimate sanction to do evil. (The action is unethical, but the consequence is beneficial.) In reality, though...

Job. Just the man for the job. Another tale of Biblical ethics today, this time the Man of Patience – Job. Job is a decent sort of chap, but one day God and the Devil decide to make a wager. (At this point I have to wonder how God and the Devil happened to meet at all and why such a meeting would apparently be so amicable. See The Book of Job for further details.) The Devil bets that Job is only good because things are easy for him. But if things became difficult, he’d lose his faith and turn evil. § Obs. 1 The first part is rather like one of the questions in our recent speaking exams about an easy life being a good life. The second part is that old chestnut that morality comes from religion and that in the absence of religion, people lack morality. I think it was Dostoevsky who claimed that without God anything is permissible, which is clearly not true. Gods or no gods, clearly much which we would consider impermissible still happens anyway. Morality, which is inconstant in many res...

A return on your investment. Dilemma 45 is a Biblical tale about a merchant who gives each of his servants some money according to their merits. When he got back, the servants he’d rewarded most richly had doubled the money. The one he’d awarded the least amount to returned it and was cast into outer darkness. I was going to dismiss this as an irrelevant Biblical parable. The discussion at the back of the book says that this story has been used as an excuse to make money. Profitliness [sic] is next to godliness. But I realised that I can actually apply the parable to myself. I dispense the coins of knowledge and get no return on most of them because my little darlings are already in the outer darkness. Let them stay there, although I’d rather not be pouring coins into a bottomless well as I do. So where are the ethics? If my pupils do the work, and listen to what I’m telling them, they’ll benefit. Thus the right thing for them to do is to listen to me. And pigs will fly the day that ha...

“We have to keep our employees in work.” Today’s business dilemma is about German companies and their behaviour during WWII. While no company should be condemned if a government calls on its services in times of war, the way it goes about its business shouldn’t be less ethical than it would be in peacetime. If the government wants to sully its hands, that’s the government’s business. But I.G. Farben sullied its hands as part of the war effort and its directors were tried at Nüremberg after the war. The discussion at the back of the book is also about the ethics of business in general, which is not a subject I’d consider in this case. Basically, business is about making money – minimal outlay for maximum profits – and ethics be damned. The German companies in question had already been engaged in some commercially questionable practices, although such decisions would have appeared to be pragmatic. It reminds me that when Sunday trading came in, M&S refused to join the party, but I’m ...

For the budget-conscious in today’s economically troubled times, several dilemmas for the price of one. Dilemma 40 Sandra, who works in the typing pool, is slacking off. Jackie tries to get Bob to go with her to see Mustafa about it, but Bob thinks that because they can handle the work, there’s no need. This implies that the company could sack Sandra if Jackie and Bob can cope with the work, but this may be a short-term view since the volume may vary at different times of the year (which suggests that they could hire a temp when needed). There’s no suggestion in the scenario that anyone allocates the typing to be done, which implies that the work is done by the first person who’s free to do it. Really, Jackie should bring Sandra’s poor work ethic to the company’s attention. But then Jackie finds out that Sandra’s filching company software. Since that’s theft, then an ethical employee would report the case to management. Also, Jackie is spurred on by Sandra’s indolence, although I’m sur...

Think of the spotty Herberts. Today’s censorship dilemma is about tales of actual villains. Politicians, being hysterical reactionaries who believe that the picture of crime in the media causes crime in reality, want Maurice the Censor to become Maurice the Censorious. They even have a little 19th century evidence which backs this up and the opinion of the Chief Constable of Birkenhead in 1936, who thought that depictions of criminal activities shouldn’t be allowed because of the deleterious effects it might have on young people. Surely censorship is good for everyone, especially the young. I got onto the matter of censorship and youth in yesterday’s entry. My inclination is to suspect that claims about censorship being necessary to save young people from their own stupidity is often based on a comparatively small number of incidents where a link between books or film or television and crime can be demonstrated, which results in the generalisation that because some were affected, all s...

Isn’t going to make this medicine go down. Dilemma 31. Back in 2006, an American company, Parexcel, began testing an arthritis treatment called TGN1412 on volunteers who were paid £2,000 for a few days of their time. The information which volunteers got was pictures of video games, pool tables and signed cheques. The effects of the drug aren’t described until the back of the book, but although they’d been tested on animals and other primates without, apparently, any adverse effects, that was no guarantee that the drug wouldn’t have a detrimental effect on humans. In fact, TGN1412 had some really unpleasant side effects. It seemed to be considered that this should be perfectly acceptable if the testing was somehow going to be for the public good, which it was: no one else was going to be taking the drug. If TGN1412 had been used to treat arthritis without being tested on human subjects first, then things could’ve been much worse. In spite of the unfortunate effects which the drug actual...

Who tends to get overheated. I thought it was about time I updated the old laptop. I don’t really use the machine any longer except when there’s something on it which I don’t have on the new one, and normally I don’t go online from it. Anyway, since I’m here, it’s time for another ethical dilemma. The question is, “Would it be unethical of me to throw the more annoying pupils in my classes out of the window to confirm that there really is gravity because any means by which we reconfirm some evident truth is acceptable?” [Due to certain typographical errors, the ethical dilemma outlined above superficially seems to be of a rather different nature to the ethical dilemma actually under discussion. This has now been corrected. –ed.] The 29th dilemma is another about babies in Diktatia. Like the previous dilemma, there are still designer babies, but the basic job of combining eggs and sperm is done in the lab before the embryo is implanted. Other businesses offer surrogate mothers to bear t...

Well, that’s what they used to be made of. Today’s ethical dilemma is about designing babies to order. The insidious government of Diktatia is having babies screened to eliminate certain genetic defects and add certain desirable genetic traits, while allowing parents to choose whether their children might have a few kinks. The Vicar of Diktatiaville thinks that God’s job is to pick and choose babies, not the government’s. My position would be somewhere in between, I suppose. Where the quality of a child’s life might be seriously affected by some unfortunately accident of genetics, then genetic manipulation is for the good of the child. But picking and choosing characteristics should generally otherwise be left to the chance union of egg and sperm (which the vicar would think is the God part; we must permit him to be wrong because unless he chooses to be persuaded, we’d be no better than proselytisers ourselves). There might be a few exceptions where the editing of the genetic code migh...

More ethical dilemmas. Because the school wanted a topic for English Corner during the culture week, I was reminded of the ethical dilemmas book which I was working through until I got a little bored with it. I was thinking that some dilemma might be a good topic of conversation, but I then thought better of it. But I’m now minded to resume my examination of these problems. Today, the matter of eugenics. Socrates quizzed his friend Glaucon about how he bred his hunting dogs and birds; who used only the best ones at the right age. Glaucon agreed that if he let them breed as they pleased, the quality of the animals would deteriorate. Socrates then wonders about the same principles being applied to humans with the best being allowed to breed as often as they like, and the inferior being prevented from doing so. I can imagine Socrates, who lived in a very xenophobic society, rather liking the whole idea of eugenics. When I did Greek at university, we read an adapted version of a prosecutio...

It was in the phial marked "Secret Deadly Formula". There's a crackdown on Death STUMP and the usual suspects get rounded up. Lina invents some super deadly virus as a kind of nuclear deterrent, but her assistant (Igor?) pours the stuff down the drain. ( I thought it was old mayonnaise , he said apologetically. He was probably right, but I think it was yoghurt-based, since hippie tree-huggers like yoghurt, the most vile-tasting dairy product known to humanity and an apt base for some sort of 100%-lethal biological weapon.) But whose fault is this mess? Ultimately, it's Lina's fault. Firstly, it's obvious that Igor is some cheap factory second that she bought from Lackeys 'R' Us. Secondly, she should've labelled the phials and she should've at least ensured that Igor (one GCSE in Media Studies) could recognise what the label said. Thirdly, she should've locked the phials away in a secure cabinet where Igor couldn't get his hands on them....

It seemed like a good idea at the time. STUMP's leader, Mad Dog, notes, as I did yesterday, that e-Ville Corporation is faking it. The reforms are a con. It's time to get radical. That splits STUMP, and Lina, who still likes it hard and violent, becomes part of Death STUMP. Lina ends up making small bombs for STUMP which are used as incendiary devices. The bombs cause varying amounts of damage, but one seriously endangers the lives of the director of e-Ville and his family (resulting, I should think, in the wholesale dismissal of his security providers who let a bunch of bomb-wielding hippy tree-huggers get past them) and the fire that resulted from another, led to the death of a fireman. Lina isn't so bothered about the former, but she is about the latter. Nonetheless, they're saving lots of people in the Third World, so it's a small price to pay. Besides, can Lina be held responsible for the unintentional death of the fireman? Well, yes. I suppose that it might be...

If it works on a telly… e-Ville Corporation (yes, we're back to unreality) has climbed down on a few things such as stir-fired baby koalas and whole, roasted panda chunks, but it seems to be window undressing [sic!] more than anything else. To Lina it seems that mindless violence has achieved something, and it's time to kick some more skanky corporate arse. Lawrence, all sandals, memories of being a fluffy-headed Egyptian princess, and tripitaka (well, he saw the word once when he was glancing through the Dummies Guide to Buddhism ), decides that enough's enough. Is STUMP's new policy a success? e-Ville Corporation's response to STUMP really seems to be a matter of changing their image rather than altering their substance. STUMP, on the other hand, seems to be losing the moral high ground by resorting to force to achieve its ends. Or, perhaps more accurately, STUMP seems to be joining e-Ville Corporation. Well, the saying is If you can't beat 'em, join ...

The social problems of the Australian Aborigines. I thought I'd turn my attention to an ethical dilemma from the real-world. It's been reported in The Guardian ( Aboriginal abuse plan denounced as racist ) that the Australian government is trying to do something about alcoholism and child abuse in Aboriginal communities. The proposal is to ban alcohol and porn. The Australian PM, John Howard, is being accused of using this as a political opportunity since such measures are being taken ahead of a general election. The viability of the scheme has also been called into question. From what I've read in the past, the lives of Aborigines are pretty dreadful. I know that they have a low tolerance for alcohol. I didn't know about the child abuse part until I read the article from The Guardian. Regardless of the political circumstances, isn't it better that some effort should be made to alleviate the lot of Aborigines than that they should be left to pass their lives in such...

Or, you do it your way. STUMP organises another protest against e-Ville Corporation, but this time it's a more traditional affair with wanton vandalism and an accidental death. Lawrence, who's obviously a sandal-wearing vegetarian who's totally into Buddhism (well, he has pictures of Richard Gere on the wall at home and is pretty certain he's the reincarnation of an Egyptian princess), is against all this violence since the result is that STUMP has lost the moral high ground in the fight against e-Ville Corporation. Lina, on the other hand, who likes it hard and rough, disagrees, and they break up. It's the old question about being nice and reasonable, or unnice and unreasonable to achieve your aims. Most people would say that violence and vandalism is a little much, but it may be the only language the boardroom understands, unless you can muster some economic clout against it. In other words, you could try to get the shareholders to do the dirty work for you.