Gender, Race and Philosophy: The Blog A forum for philosophers and other scholars to discuss current work and current affairs with race and gender in mind.
Obesity is an ethical issue, because an increase in weight by some imposes costs on others... [a]
way to achieve the same objective would be to set a standard weight for
passengers and luggage, and then ask people to get on the scales with
their luggage. That would have the advantage of avoiding embarrassment
for those who do not wish to reveal their weight...the point of a surcharge for extra weight is not to punish a sin,
whether it is levied on baggage or on bodies. It is a way of recouping
from you the true cost of flying you to your destination, rather than
imposing it on your fellow passengers.--Peter Singer [HT Feminist Philosophers.]
I'll leave it to others to dissect the use of racialized/gender stereotypes [e.g., "a slight Asian woman" vs "a man who must weigh at least 40 kilos more than she does"] by Singer in the piece. Let's also grant Singer that air travel is not a "human right" (and stipulate that Singer could grant some exceptions). In effect, Singer advocates differential pricing. This is not uncommon: in higher education Stateside we are familiar with tuition discounts ("financial aid") based on, say, need.
Singer ignores need or ability to pay entirely in his analysis. It is unclear why that ought not be included in this "ethical issue." Evidently, "true cost" does not mean subjective utility. Need is not irrelevant to Singer's proposal because Singer talks about "true cost of flying" without calling attention to all the subsidies offered to airlines, airports, and aircraft manufacturers by the general public (Singer uses the vocabulary of "public transport" without irony by the way); these may well involve non-trivial financial transfers from the poor to the middle classes and rich. Given that Singer selectively focuses on body weight (and shapes) when talking about "true cost" of flying, one cannot help but feel that he is selectively using (Euro/US-centric) upper-class moral sentiments to advocate policies that will disproportionally impact others.
I haven't yet been through this in anything like the detail it deserves, but this new website by my colleague Madison Powers, looks like a wonderful site for teachers, activists, cross-disciplinary researchers and just those who care about the future.
This report introduces a very interesting article, "Property Insecurity," by Terra Lawson-Remer (go to pp. 145), on the complex relationship between property-rights and growth. [HT Michel Heijdra.] I hope to give it more attention some other time.
If you have a minute to kill, take a look at the 1/16/12 cartoon in this Tumblr. Is it mocking the laziness and stupidity of cartoonists for grinding out yet another Al-Gore-in-a-snowdrift cartoon about "global warming" [sic]? If so, then does its inclusion show that the Tumblr compiler is too stupid to know he or she is being mocked? Or is its inclusion a nudge-is-as-good-as-a-wink-to-a-blind-horse that the whole series is a mockery?
If someone else plans on doing something unethical, the fact that it will be done anyway does not justify your doing it along with them.
Last Friday, the U.S. State Department issued an environmental review of the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline -- and it puts the U.S. one step closer to approving the project by claiming that the overall environmental impacts of the pipeline would be limited. (With the publication of the report, a 45-day public comment period begins; comments can be addressed to keystonecomments@state.gov).
Now is a good time to recall President Obama's State of the Union address, delivered just a couple of weeks ago:
...for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change. Yes, it's true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it's too late.
It is always impressive when someone is willing to publicly state that they were wrong about a controversial topic. Such things happen rarely, but there have been a number of recent cases. For example, last July Richard Muller declared himself to be a "converted skeptic," saying that he now acknowledges that global warming is real and that humans are almost entirely the cause. Two days ago, another such example emerged when Mark Lynas publicly apologized for having helped to start the anti-GM movement in Europe, thus "demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment."
However laudable such recantations are, they can still be called into question, and indeed, I question the basis for Lynas's, as least as it is presented in the transcript linked to above. He begins by calling the anti-GMO movement "anti-science," a claim that I debunked here and here, at least with respect to the labeling of GMOs. Lynas subsequently states that "one by one [his] cherished beliefs about GM turned out to be little more than green urban myths," and lists six such purported myths. Below, I examine each of these, and show why they are not, in fact, myths.
The U.S. is poised to release genetically modified salmon – the first commercial genetically modified food animal – into the world: onto our tables and into our environment. I can't help but think that, like the other unlabeled genetically modified food that has infiltrated our diets, this amounts to a massive, uncontrolled experiment on U.S. citizens.
Here are some details:
A little over a week ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a draft Environmental Assessment of AquaBounty’s genetically engineered salmon, dubbed
AquAdvantage; they are calling for public comment through February 25, 2013. (So, if you find this as concerning as I do, please use this opportunity to speak up). The FDA's preliminary finding is that an approval of AquaBounty's application would not have a significant impact on the U.S. environment. Oh, and as with other U.S. GMOs, AquAdvantage won't be labeled as a GMO.
Any salmon that one eats could be an AquAdvantage salmon.
This hard-hitting review is getting thumbs up from my fellow analyticals. I agree with a core underlying complaint: "The insulation of French philosophy, often marketed as a thoughtful
dismissal of the ideals that underlie Anglo-American philosophy, is in
fact rooted in nothing loftier than a systematic disregard for
linguistically inaccessible literature." If the reviewer's description of De Fontenay's approach (which apparently is highly critical of features of analytical moral philosophy) is accurate, she deserves a lot of castigation. Even so, I do not recall that we analyticals are widely noted for our linguistic prowess and careful citation of French (and other non-English) authors! When in glass houses...
Okay, on to a more philosophically outrageous aspect of this review:
But to suggest that such awareness of shared pain can substitute for
more principled approaches -- as De Fontenay does -- is to regressively
return animal ethics into an extension of sentimental care for animals.
It is (arguably) the lasting collective achievement of animal ethics
from Singer on to show that the treatment of animals should not be
limited to momentary spurts of compassion for cute and furry animals.
Animal ethics should, rather, offer a conceptually disciplined framework
through which moral restrictions on what may be institutionally done to
members of other species can be evaluated and generated.--Tzachi Zamir
After I said that environmental issues loomed large in the U.S. Presidential campaign, we were treated to almost complete silence on the topic; notably, global climate change (GCC) was not mentioned in any of the four debates. Now, finally, with the tragedy wrought by Sandy, we are hearing about GCC and how the different candidates might handle it.
Even Mayor Bloomberg has gotten into the act, endorsing Obama over Romney in part because he now believes that "Mr. Obama was the better candidate to tackle the global climate change that he believes might have contributed to the violent storm, which took the lives of at least 38 New Yorkers and caused billions of dollars in damage."
Is this the point at which Americans will finally start taking GCC seriously and do something about it?
In Part 1, I discussed the accusation that proponents of Proposition 37 in California are anti-science, pointing out that such claims rest on a highly misleading picture of the genetically modified food industry as involving pure "value-free" science. (See, e.g., here, here, here, here, here, and here. Proposition 37 is a ballot measure that, if it passes, would label GM foods sold in California as GM foods).
Here in Part 2, I take up a second prong of the issue. Even if one acknowledges that the production of genetically modified food is not a value-free endeavor, one still might think that proponents of labeling GMOs are anti-science because they (the proponents) refuse to accept the data that show that GMOs are not harmful to humans. However, there are three problems with this version of the anti-science accusation: 1) it falsely claims that there is nothing new about GMOs, 2) it overlooks the point that there is enough uncertainty about the studies of GMOs on human health to make it reasonable for individuals to want to decide for themselves whether to eat GMOs or not, and 3) it assumes that human health is the only relevant scientifically-based objection to GMOs,
For several years now, I've been telling my students and random passers-by that environmental issues trumped all other political concerns. The degree and likelihood of disaster resulting from the environmental effects of global corporatism simply dwarf all other threats, now or in the past. (Nuclear weapons could have, still could, destroy us all, but the chances of a widespread nuclear war were always very low.) And I take it to be pretty obvious that governments are not going to respond seriously to the crisis. All in, I think there is a very good chance of global collapse within the lifetime of my child. And I don't think I can cruise into retirement not having tried to do anything about that, whatever the chances of success - which I suppose I deem to be low.
On November 6, 2012, Californians will vote to decide if genetically engineered foods, whether raw or processed, should be labelled as such (see details here). If it passes, it would be the first such law in the U.S., even though at least 50 countries worldwide, including all of the European Union, China, Japan, and Russia, already have GMO label laws. The ballot measure, Proposition 37, has generated a lot of heat on both sides.
Although the debate is complex, one meme has caught my eye in particular: those who advocate for "yes on 37" have been termed "anti-science" by members of the "no on 37" camp. Some have even likened pro-labelers (presumed to be anti-GMO, although that is not necessarily the case) to climate change deniers and evolution deniers.
First, let me introduce myself as a new New APPS blogger. I'm a philosopher of biology/science at the University of California, Davis, with strong interests in evolution, ecology, and increasingly, environmental ethics. I hope to blog on a wide range of issues, including but not limited to the above. But let me begin with some thoughts that have been rattling around my brain the last few days, because I would like to get some feedback on them. Ultimately, they are about ethics and environmental ethics.
As you probably know, it's election season in the U.S. And as will happen during election season, even individuals who are very close politically can disagree. Thus, one liberal may say that she is voting for Barack Obama, even though he has been disappointing in some respects and is not really all that liberal. Another liberal will say that he is voting for the person whose values most closely match his own, and that is Jill Stein (the Green Party candidate) not Obama. As it turns out, there are a number of facets to this disagreement about the best person to vote for, including strategies about voting for the lesser of two evils vs drawing a line in the sand now.
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