Duties of justice

Academic in “talking bollocks” shock… hold the front page!

There are days, nay, whole weeks and months, when I am ashamed of my profession, then something comes along like this, and the shame dissolves in despairing laughter.

But also suppose, unbeknownst to Rawls, that the host of this dinner party would be employing slave labour to work in the kitchen
Beknownst to Quong via how and what? The universal human rights camera? The benignly neutral Central Moral and Ethical Processor? The Committee to Find Out Important Things? How is it we know about those slaves int he kitchen? Who told us? What’s their agenda?
The real dilemma is fielding this stuff as it comes at you, knowing it’s being selected and thrown by unseen agencies, sometimes good guys sometimes not, and that even though you’re responding morally and ethically to the best of your ability, you’re really only being knee-jerked around.
All the status quo ante slavers have to do is get hold of the means of information distribution, and they’ll be able to run you like a windup toy.
Darfur! Kosovo! Tibet!

The first issue is the sort of activities, the costs of opting out. Participation in the markets we are in or paying one’s taxes are hardly in the same league as “achieving something we very much desire to achieve,” as presented in the argument. We might have a duty to refrain from some pleasures if they are obtained from the abuse of others. This is just a first, superficial crack at the issue, but it would be nice to clarify what is the question.

What Robert the Red said is, I think correct.

The universal human rights camera?

Heh.

We are each under a duty of justice not to participate in, or benefit from, projects or activities that involve violations of other people’s rights.

It seems to me that this makes not finding out about the effects of X activity or benefit a sin against justice also. Having failed Omniscience 101 it’s best to incarcerate me right now before I buy the fatal rights-violating penny-candy.

Also, please round up all those hurricane-causing butterflies.

FWIW, I am browing in opera.

Browning?

I happen to agree with the ‘jerky caucus’ that relying on philosophers for affirmative ethical guidance is somewhat foolish. I recall that Bernard Williams once scorned the idea that hospitals, for example, should hire professional ethicists to help tell staff what to do in case of moral crisis.

But I also think that the standard of reliable affirmative advice is a poor one to invoke, whether you’re a philosopher or a potential advisee. What philosophers do best is help themselves and others get clarity about the world, for example in this case about the ethical choices they have to make.

That involves pointing out when someone’s reasoning is muddled, which is what Chris is attempting to do (I think, though I can’t speak for Chris). If he’s successful, doing so contributes to the conditions under which a reader could him- or herself make a better choice under the circumstances–by highlighting an assumption that he thinks is pernicious and would lead to worse choices.

Well, r.bubba, one of the things we’re having such a time with right now is the massive resistance to Finding Out Uncomfortable Things. This has begun to assume a metaphysical aspect, it’s so big. Coupling Finding Out with an enforced and artificial helplessness-to-do-anything-about-it has made the beneficiaries of Things As They Are Including Inertia and Momentum relatively comfy in their vile demesnes.
All that gray, and so very little light.

Sorry, the last sentence should be “It might also be true that the project of eating food is one I very much desire to achieve, but the cost of the non-satisfaction of this desire wouldn’t be what leads to the justifiability of participation.” It’s late!

Avoiding people who tell you things you don’t want to know because the things they tell you make it impossible to pride yourself on your superior conscience while maintaining your comfort levels by doing nothing about the things they tell you, that would be a contributing to injustice kind of thing.
And I’m not saying always to find out. I’m saying shying away from it is a mass epidemic, intentionally foisted on an unsuspecting public. To keep them comfortable and ignorant.
Without that sense of active conscience in its constituents, the social order collapses.
Denying both foisters and the comfy their little hearts’ desires.

I used to work in a part of the government that was involved with international human rights and I still get emails from the Foreign Office and the British UN delegation, and they are pissed off with the crazy initiatives they keep getting hit with.

Their point is, basically, that regimes like the Chinese can occasionally be prevailed upon to moderate their behaviour – typically, to release or not execute political prisoners – just by international pressure.

Their beef is that other parts of the government or private organisations continually barrage the Chinese government with a load of demands they will never, ever meet. Both the FCO and UN delegation point out repeatedly that China is not a construct of the mind, but an actual country run by petty bureaucrats who get pissed off when former colonial powers like Britain try to boss them about.

As for the Olympics, well, it’s a matter of personal morality. For all of this happy horseshit about moral imperatives, what matters is influence, and I doubt whether a British boycott will enhance our influence on the Chinese.

You might call it realism – all I know is, some shit works and some shit doesn’t. Standing on a chair to lecture the Chinese definitely doesn’t, so unless anyone has any good China divestment and/or invasion plans, I suggest we strap on a smile and bash on.

Chris:

I think that (2) leaves open the possibility of such a restriction. Suppose I said the following:

(A) We are each under a duty of justice to keep our promises. I assume this premise is uncontroversial.

(B) The duty described in (2) is very stringent, and it cannot be ignored on the grounds that doing so would prevent us from achieving something we very much desire to achieve, even if this means we will never get to achieve the thing in question.

I think that both (A) and (B) are consistent with the further claim that the duty referred to in (A) is a defeasible duty, which can be trumped by other concerns in certain circumstances, such as a conflicting moral duty not to cause harm to others, or a certain degree of concern for my own well-being (suppose I’d promised you I’d jump off a cliff), but not by the particular interest I have in pursuing my projects. So the argument would be that my interest in pursuing my projects is in itself insufficient to trump the duty not to participate. This would be so both for projects we very much desire to pursue, and also, as you note, for those we only somewhat desire to pursue. The point would be that the duty in (A) is defeasible, but not by our desire to pursue projects, however strong. I should stress that I’m neither necessarily supporting this claim, nor saying that that’s what Jon intended. But I think it’s a coherent reading.

Your second question about when one can and cannot participate is, of course, horribly difficult. I think one can find cases at different ends of the spectrum. The food case, as you say, is at one end. Something like coffee consumption might well be at the other. Suppose it was the case that the only coffee I could buy was coffee whose production had involved rights violations. Given that I don’t *have* to drink coffee, I do actually think that in such a case I shouldn’t buy it at all. I suppose a real world example of such a good might be cocaine – I do think that the wrongs caused by the cocaine trade are sufficient to hold all those in, say, the UK under a duty not to buy cocaine. So we have literal necessity – live or die stuff – at one end of the spectrum, and inessential, luxury goods at the other. And a desperately difficult question relating to moral demandingness in between. I can see how one could argue that participation in a given activity is inessential in terms of whether I live or die, but that it is just too demanding to expect me not to participate, as doing so would reduce me below some threshold level of well-being (while still keeping me alive). One could then start arguing about whether my participation in such circumstances was justifiable, or merely excusable, etc – there are clearly analogous debates in the self-defence literature, in discussions of moral duties in a context of general non-compliance, and so on.

The duty in 2 and the duty in A are different. In 2 you don’t do something even if you want it and A you do something even if you don’t want it.

In other words it’s easier to do nothing than something and the conflicts arising from A duties are unlikely for 2 duties as for 2 you could remain on your couch agonizing instead of causing agony.

“It seems arguable that involvement in just about any major institution or in economic activity is going to violate this prohibition.”

So what?

Why is it supposed to be easy and non-revolutionary? All Quong said is that it is the right thing to do and you have a duty to do it. “Oh my God, but that means I won’t be able to drink coffee!” isn’t much of a counter-argument. Of course it is going get in the way of your life – Thoreau went to jail for it – and that’s way almost everyone doesn’t do it and is a moral failure. But I’m not sure you can disclaim responsibility just because you can’t bear the thought of it being too burdensome and/or getting in the way of your latte drinking.

“And what about the past? Most residents of countries with a history of imperialism or colonialism certainly benefit from past projects or activities that involve rights violations..”

There’s an interesting way tense is being used here. Quong says projects that “involve” rights violations – as in the present tense – the implication is you shouldn’t aid current ongoing violations through your participations. I’m not sure anyone is bothered about past events which you didn’t and can’t have participated in and which are beyond your control.

Let’s allow for the sake of argument that premises (1-3) establish that there is a prima facie duty on individual athletes for them not to participate in the Olympics (which may be defeated by more weighty moral concerns).

(4) states that in certain cases (which are not specified) the state may force its citizens to fulfil such a duty.

When one person is under a stringent duty of justice to do or forebear from doing X, it can [emphasis added] be permissible for some other person to demand that they do or forebear from doing X, and even use some measure of coercion to enforce this demand.

But from this we directly infer that “there would be nothing wrong with national Olympic committees imposing top-down boycotts on their athletes, indeed I think they ought to do this”!

I’m afraid I can’t see how this follows…

It seems that if Quong’s argument were valid it would also provide a justification for the boycotts of Israel that were discussed recently.

Briefly: the Israeli occupation of Palestine involves human rights violations (1). Therefore Israeli academics under a ‘stringent duty of justice’ not to ‘participate in, or benefit from’ the occupation (2). It follows that if they continue to ‘participate in, or benefit from’ it–for example, by accepting research grants from the Israeli government or serving in the Israeli armed forces–then others are licensed to act coercively against them (4), perhaps in the form of a boycott.

I wonder what Geras thinks…

A few points:

The Olympics are supposed to be a celebration of humanity at its best, holding them in countries with a dismal human rights record makes a travesty out of that idea.

There is no necessity whatsoever to hold the Olympics in such countries, there are plenty of alternatives.

Apart from the generally dismal human rights situation in China, its support for other human rights violators and its disregard for the right to self-determination of the Tibetan people, there are also major and well documented human rights violations directly tied to China’s preparations for the Olympics.

The Olympics are one of the biggest PR benefits a country can enjoy and China will benefit massively from its enhanced status in the world. The idea that the Olympics will somehow put the spotlight on China’s human rights violations and that they will reconsider their policies because of it is ludicrous.

In brief, then, this kind of argument, unless run by someone who spends the bulk of his free time propagandising for the criminal activities of his home state, is itself morally repellent.

I honestly don’t know why anyone should take the egregious fucko Geras seriously. I certainly do not and never have done. Frankly, I see no reason why some kind of homo academicus solidarity should get him any points at all; the TYR position is summed up as “welcome to the Northern Union”.

Chris,

Thanks for the thoughtful post on my letter to Norm. I won’t respond to all the comments here, but I would like to thank Dan Butt for his interpretation of my argument – an interpretation that I fully agree with. I did not intend to claim (nor did I claim) that the duty was so stringent it could not be defeated by any conflicting considerations. My claim was only that the duty was stringent enough that it could not be defeated by considerations of the sort: ‘but this is a really important goal or desire of mine’ where goal/desire was (I think) obviously not meant to include things like basic needs for survival or a minimally decent life(hence my exception for athletes who needed to go to the Games to escape their own dire circumstances). I thus don’t think my argument has the implication that we act wrongly in all the examples Chris cites. I think, though I would need to do an awful lot more thinking about this, that whether or not we should participate in any given activity will depend on: (a) the severity of the rights violation involved, (b) the strength of conflicting considerations, and possibly (c) our proximity to the violation in the causal chain. I don’t disagree that all these variables are complicated, and I wasn’t trying to provide a fully-fleshed out account (that would be way beyond the scope of a letter to a friend). The Games in China just seems to me to be a case where the duty not to participate for most athletes (and corporate sponsors, and media, etc…) is not plausibly outweighed by conflicting considerations.

Thanks for helping clear things up Dan!

I am not sure I trust all the moral superiority we are obliged to aspire to. In my experience, the more black-and-white one tries to make things, the more one is removed from a diverse and empathic view of the individual, which encourages judgementalism and superiority. And in feeling superior and Right, not only is one inclined to keep their own righteousness buoyant at the expense of others, but their blindspots spread to cover their own failings and a willingness to engage with all those grey areas. The grey areas are where the real stuff is, because one man’s left is another’s right, depending on the angle. I am going for: it is in compromises, understanding and sensible discourse that real and permanant changes are made and learnt, surely? I think #21 is an example that implies this.

And you can’t make any progress if you still hold onto those Good and Evil imperatives: I don’t believe in Good and Evil, as there are only people who do things based upon complex and confused combinations of intent, experience, intelligence, strengths and flaws, activism and apathy, emotion and politics, their current context, etc etc. I feel all of this is meant to the first thing you learn once entering and enduring adulthood, but experience of others (hell, experience of forums and message boards alone) tells me otherwise: imperatives seem to be reinforced quite aggressively both politically and personally, apparently as a means of denying that we really are quite unknowable and chaotic and, to an arguable degree, helpless. It’s not that I don’t believe in Right and Wrong, but that I feel overlaying these with Good and Evil stamps are a means of not fullfilling a duty to empathy.

I am probably scooting around my own apparent lack of moral superiority with some all-pervading nihilism, but: I feel duties to empathy and understanding are stronger motivations to do good than any current moral constructs or trends.

“We are each under a duty of justice not to participate in, or(/and) benefit from, projects or activities that involve violations of other people’s rights.”

If we are all guilty by proxy, then no one is blameless. I thought this was obvious, and this apparent duty may or may not be uncontroversial, but it’s relationship to the real world, in practice, strikes me as far more problematic in both achieving and its consequences.

It is perfectly possible to grow your own food. Farmers do it all the time.

We are each under a duty of justice not to.. benefit from… activities that involve violations of other people’s rights.

This sounds plausible until to you think through its implications? Really?

Well, Kant’s ethics are pretty impractical too, but they certainly had a bit of an impact and can’t be dismissed out of hand.

Individuals making a fuss about the sourcing of products is generally a good thing in that it tends to force at least high-profile brands such as Apple or Nike to take some action. The Olympics is also a brand that generates a huge profit and it is perfectly alright to put pressure on it, especially considering the high-mindedness of its profile and its nature as a non-essential luxury brand.

Harping on about the inherent hypocrisy of consumers who are living in a globalized market is just another excuse for doing nothing at all. Nobody can avoid using Chinese products, they’re simply too ubiquitous, but that doesn’t mean we should resign ourselves to passivity and it certainly doesn’t mean we should gloss over Chinese human rights abuses, some of them specifically committed in preparation for the Olympics, or grant them the big PR coup they are after.

How about this argument?

1) Queeging is wrong and should be punished by any means necessary.
2) What do I mean by queeging? Well, one example would be murdering someone. That’s the most serious form of queeging, obviously, but there are other less extreme forms. Clearly some things don’t count, like befriending homeless puppies, and there’s a whole spectrum of cases in between the two. I’m not going to say any more than that. You didn’t expect me to give you a fully fleshed out account, did you?
3) China is queeging. (I assume this is uncontroversial. If you don’t agree, then you probably don’t understand what I meant by ‘queeging’.)
4) It follows from 1-3 that there would be nothing wrong in the US attacking China–to stop the queeging–indeed, I think they ought to do this…

No, but it would be *so* much fun if it did…

Jon – no-one is asking you to give a ‘fully fleshed out account’ of your views. They are just asking you to give us some kind of clue as the conditions in which you think the duties and rights referred to in your post apply. Merely gesturing at one or two extreme and uncontroversial examples and then asserting without explanation that they also apply in China’s case doesn’t cut it as a serious argument, not by a long way.

The Olympics provides, I think, a certain credibility

This is part of what bugs me about the Olympics. It’s a corrupt machine. I think it’s a fun party and it’s good to see athletes do their thing despite their own rampant corruption, but we should be past seeing it as a symbol of nobility.

… altho as Novakant said, Kant’s ethics had a powerful effect on many people (including me!) So maybe the problem isn’t with moral philosophy as such, but just that the instance at hand is really bad.

55: True, but this is about perception.

As Dobler said, “I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.”

Why not just boil it down to “no duty”? As with rights we can babble all we want but there’s nothing there until someone enforces such rights. Complexity isn’t really the issue.

to be applied to athletes who are strictly and legally kept from being paid professionals

???

So how about we turn this around for a change and one of the detractors lays out the argument that we have no duty to evaluate our actions as citizens and consumers if the consequences are sufficiently complex and disconnected from our acts and only concern poor sods in far away countries.

Okay, how about we do? Or at least the best I can do. Firstly, some evaluation has to be done in order to determine if consequences are simple or complex, and connected or disconnected to our acts. So I can’t argue that “we have no duty to evaluate our actions if the consequences are sufficiently complex and disconnected”. But assuming that we have done enough evaluation to decide that a consequence is sufficiently complex and/or disconnected from our acts, then said consequences should be ignored.

Firstly, if a consequence is totally disconnected from our acts then by definition it is not a consequence. Therefore it can be ignored in anyone’s analysis. Taking events that may follow but are rather disconnected from our acts, then an argument can be made that such consequences should be ignored. For example, imagine you know that a local child is showing a lot of dangerous signs of aggression, such as torturing small animals. You see said child drowning, and it is safe for you to rescue them. Should you decide not to do so on the basis that the child may grow up to be a serial killer and kill two or more people? I say no – that consequence is too disconnected from your act. A lot of things could happen to stop any serial killing from happening.

Secondly, if a consequence is too complex to calcuate, it basically has to be ignored. For example, when I vote in the next NZ national elections, on whatever basis I cast my vote, it will not include a calculation of how I expect the eventually-elected Government to respond to a major terorist attack on NZ soil. I find that too difficult to calculate, as it depends on the interplay of personalities within the Government of the day, and it’s not like NZ politicians have much experience with terrorist attacks in NZ so I can’t draw on their past peformance. So I ignore it. To take a more chaotic example, it may be that that butterfly flapping its wings at the bottom of your garden is causing a massive storm two years down the track, but there’s no way you can figure that out, so don’t worry about it.

This is the basic argument against strict utilitarianism. We need not even worry our heads about people in far away countries to make this argument, there are plenty of cases close to home where consequences are sufficiently complex and/or disconnected to make the argument that we have no duty to evaluate them.

But the wages they’re earning aren’t enough to live on, not even for a single worker with no social life whose economic needs have been stripped down to the barest of bare minimums.

Tragically this happened in China in the 1950s under Communism. About 30 to 40 million people died of hunger. Without anyone holding any Olympic games there. We have learnt that mass famine is the expectable misfortune of being at the bottom of a Communist government’s totem pole.

Isn’t the whole idea to vote for someone who will respond in a superior way to those incalculable eventualities? Isn’t that what we want in an elected official, someone to handle the weird and unexpected when it eventually comes?

“If a govt turned around and started lecturing you all on your ‘duty’ to do this or that, the screaming would bring the roof down.” – Dave

But lecturing about the ‘duties’ of citizenship seems to be very much part of the UK government’s response to the perceived failure of multiculturalism. There’s not enough grumbling, I don’t think, let alone screaming the roof down.

What if it’s not too difficult to calculate and it’s the only issue you care about? Is it then your duty to vote the way?

I think that if, when it came to voting, I only cared about how the NZ government would respond to a major terrorist attack on NZ soil, Chris Bertram would present a line of arguments that I should care about more than that.

Of course if something isn’t too difficult to calculate then the argument is different. For example, Sri Lankan citizens have a lot more evidence about how their politicians cope with major terrorist attacks on Sri Lankan soil, so as far as I know the argument that they should take such considerations into account is far stronger than it is for NZ citizens.

Isn’t the whole idea to vote for someone who will respond in a superior way to those incalculable eventualities? Isn’t that what we want in an elected official, someone to handle the weird and unexpected when it eventually comes?

Well yes, that is at least part of the idea of voting. Where I have the problem with is working out who to vote for on that basis. I have a history of failures at predicting the decisions of the NZ Cabinet even when dealing with the normal and thoroughly expected issues. And “major terrorist attack on NZ soil” is something I would expect to provoke a different response in NZ politicians compared to most weird and unexpected events I can think of, but I have no idea how to work out which NZ political party would cope the best with that particular weird and unexpected event.

If you buy an Ipod or a new pair of trainers, you know, or should know, that it is being produced by mainly young, uneducated women from rural areas working 10-16 hour days for $50 a month, who mostly live in company owned dormitories behind barbed wire with up to a 100 people to a room, for which they have to pay rent, which combined with the other money they spend at the company store, eats up around 50% of their already meager wages.

Novakant, suppose you were able to ask one of these young women if she would prefer that you purchase the Ipod or shoes, or that you not. What do you think she would say?

If you buy an Ipod or a new pair of trainers, you know, or should know, that it is being produced by mainly young, uneducated women from rural areas working 10-16 hour days for $50 a month, who mostly live in company owned dormitories behind barbed wire with up to a 100 people to a room, for which they have to pay rent, which combined with the other money they spend at the company store, eats up around 50% of their already meager wages.

Ah, so if I refrain from buying IPods or a new pair of trainers, those young women will acquire PhDs, and flash marketing jobs in which they earn $100,000 a year in air-conditioned offices and will start living in houses where they have so much space they need a piece of string to find their way back to the door?

I’ve never understood this argument. Some people have crappy lives because they had the bad luck to be born into poor countries. How are they meant to have less crappy lives if I don’t buy the goods their factories produce? If buying goods from factories creates crappiness, why aren’t North Korea or Cuba struggling to prevent floods of refugees entering their territories? Why was China so poor and the lives of uneducated rural women so terrible before it opened up to the West?

To the extent I can make a judgment about the outcomes of me not buying Ipods and trainers, it’s that those rural Chinese women will have crappier lives if demand for their labour goes down, so anything that increases demand for their labour is good.

If you tune into the Olympics this summer, you know, or should know, that this event will be a huge PR coup for a police state that displays a blatant disregard for freedom of speech, religion, assembly, movement, rule of law, independent judiciary and that has specifically violated a number of human rights in preparation for this event. Furthermore, western sponsors and media partners will also make a huge profit from this event.

Actually I probably won’t tune into the Olympics. I didn’t tune into the Athens Olympics, I didn’t tune into the Sydney Olympics. I don’t like watching sports.

I personally have my doubt about “massive PR coup” too. According to this logic, everyone should be falling over in admiration for the USA, as it has hosted several Olympic games. Instead anti-Americanism seems quite strong still.

And I don’t know why you relate me knowing, or should knowing, to me tuning into the Olympics. How does the matter of pressing a few buttons on my remote control create any knowledge in me about the PR impact of the Olympics? If I don’t ever tune into the Beijing Olympics, am I therefore released from any obligation to think about the PR impact? Surely, to the extent that I have an obligation as a citizen to support human rights in China, that obligation is independent of whether I happen to watch the Olympics or not?

I do wonder why you focus so exclusively on what I do or don’t do. Why talk about women working in terrible conditions to create iPods or trainers that I may buy, and not mention women working in terrible conditions to, say, mine coal for the Chinese market? Why do you imply that if I don’t tune into the Beijing Olympics it’s okay for me to be ignorant of it?

Wow, this is a duty it would be almost completely (or just plain totally?) impossible for anyone who lives in the rich world to come remotely near fulfilling. Is there any way to verify whether the food, clothes, or consumer goods one is purchasing have been manufactured using sweatshops and/or slave labor? In terms of ordinary consumer products, taking this principle at all seriously would come near requiring one to buy only those consumer goods that have been certified “fair trade”, except the ones Quong thinks are required for a “minimally decent life”.

And we could add the ways in which our taxes contribute to the sustaining of our own governments which regularly breach human rights in various ways (think Belmarsh, Guantanamo).

Quong (and Geras) could also add the fact that part of their pay is presumably derived from Manchester University’s stock portfolio, over a million pounds of which is invested in arms companies.

It seems fair to say that since Manchester University co-operates as a provider of capital in the manufacture of advanced weapons which facilitate the large-scale violation of human rights, it is involved in human rights violations in Quong’s sense.

Will Quong, in accordance with the ‘stringent duty of justice’ he must feel he is under not to ‘participate in, or benefit from’ Manchester University’s involvement in these human rights violations be refusing to do so, presumably by quitting his job? Will he ensure that Norman Geras does the same, by coercive means if necessary?