A repugnant conclusion

Dilemmas are not only playthings for philosophers. Many can be found back in real life, like the moral dilemma I presented last week. Actually I wanted to describe here one that looks a bit like the moral dilemma last week and which has been developed by Derek Parfit: The “repugnant conclusion”. It is also known ad the “mere addition paradox”. However, it’s too complicated for a blog of thousand words, but it’s easy to find on the Internet. Therefore, I have developed a simple variant of my own, with the help of Stijn Bruers’s Morele Illusies (pp. 129 ff.; see Sources last week). Its relevance is in the field of population ethics, especially what to do (if anything) if a population grows.

Say a country (or a continent or the earth or what you like) has a population of 100 inhabitants. You can multiply this 100 with thousand, or one hundred thousand or a billion in order to make the example more realistic, but in a blog 100 is easier to handle. A further assumption is that each inhabitant of this country has a welfare level of 100 on a scale from 0-120. So their welfare is very high. As most populations in the world, also the population of this country gradually grows and after an x number of years it has doubled. But, as everybody should know these days, the resources of the earth are not inexhaustible and also the resources of this country aren’t. Despite efforts to keep the welfare in this country stable, the statistics show that the 100 people of the old generation or their oldest heirs succeed to keep their welfare at the level of 100 per person, but the youngsters succeed to get only a level of 80 each, although they work very hard. The government thinks that this is unfair, and decides to redistribute the welfare, so that each inhabitant will have a level of 90. It’s not unlikely that you think that the situation after the redistribution is better than the original situation, for 90 is still very high and moreover the total welfare of the country has increased from 10,000 to 18,000 unities. Anyway, the 200 people of this country are satisfied with the new situation and the population of the country stays growing. And so it happens that after a y number of years the population of this country has doubled again. The “old people” still have a welfare of 90, but for the youngsters it is 70. So the government decides again to redistribute the welfare with the result that then everybody has a welfare of 80. But in the meantime the total welfare of the country has risen to 32,000! And since 80 is still quite high and certainly more than worth to live, it seems that altogether everybody is better off. Or don’t you think so? Anyway, the 400 people of this country are satisfied with the new situation and the population stays growing. And doubling. And growing. And doubling .... If it goes on in the same way as just described, after the seventh doubling the country will have a population of 128,000 with a level of welfare of 30 per person after the welfare redistribution and a total welfare of 384,000.

Of course, at a certain moment the welfare per person will level off and/or maybe the population will stop growing, but then this country will have a very big population and the level of welfare will be as low as about 1. This per capita welfare is still positive, indeed, and the total welfare will be bigger than ever before in the country’s history. If we look back on each step in the population growth and compare this situation with the preceding step, each time we can judge that the country is better off. Anyway, we thought that the second situation was better than the situation we started with (a still very high level of welfare per person and a higher total level). And altogether the third situation was also still very good, if not better, than the second situation. Etc. But if we compare the situation we got at the end with the situation we started with, is this final situation then still good? If not, where should we stop then and why just there? Isn’t it so that the series of apparent improvements in the long run leads to a miserable situation, certainly in view of the situation we started with? A step forward is not always an improvement. It can place you in a moral dilemma, for example when resources are depleting.

P.S. Maybe you might want to reread my blog “Global warming and the Prisoner’s Dilemma” now:

http://philosophybytheway.blogspot.com/2018/10/global-warming-and-prisonners-dilemma.html

Moral dilemmas in life

There are many moral dilemmas in life. Almost each day we have to resolve some but most of them have become routine, and we don’t see them any longer. Other moral dilemmas give us sleepless nights. Happily they are rare.

Some moral dilemmas ask “only” for the right decisions. I put the word only in quotation marks, for often there is no right solution. The trolley problem, which I have discussed in several blogs, is a philosophical example. Other dilemmas costs us money, when we want to resolve them, and just that may be the problem. Here is such a case. I had to think of it when I read a newspaper article this morning.

First the philosophical description: John is suffering from a serious illness, although he will not die of it. Maybe he can become 100 years old! But since he is 20 now, it can mean yet 80 years of severe pain and awful treatments. Say that his suffering is 100 on a scale from 0-100. Happily there is a medicine that relieves his disease a bit, but there is one problem: It will make that another person – say his brother – will also suffer for the rest of his life, say on level 90. Moreover, John’s suffering will only diminish to this same level 90. Will we do this? Probably not.

Then a clever researcher develops a new medicine. It will cure John, but it is very, very expensive. The insurance doesn’t want to pay it and John cannot pay it. Happily the country is governed by the Radical Leftist Environment Party, which succeeded to make the people of this country the happiest in the world. It wants to keep it so, and since already the whole state budget is spent on happiness and health, it wants to introduce an extra tax. There is one problem: The level of suffering of every inhabitant of the country is 0 on the scale just mentioned (with the exception of John, of course) and it will raise to 1 because of this “John’s Recovery Tax”. But nobody will notice the rise, and the parliament agrees to the new tax. Although the Stand Alone Liberals vote against the bill on principle, in their hearts they think that it was the right decision. And so John gets his medicine and his level of suffering goes down to the general level of 1 (for he had to pay his share in the new tax as well).

That’s what I was thinking about after I had read the newspaper article this morning. It was about a boy who suffers from a metabolic disease that is so rare that the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t want to invest money in the development of a new medicine. Also his insurance company and the state don’t want to do it. So the boy and his parents stand alone and can only hope that they can gather enough money by crowdfunding for further research that may help the boy. Nevertheless, the problem could easily be solved by the state by spending a little part of the public health budget or of the research stimulation fund on developing a medicine. For it is better that many (the taxpayers) suffer a very little bit (and nobody will notice it) than that one suffers a lot.

But alas, my story doesn’t end here. Soon after the John’s Recovery Tax Bill had passed the parliament, there were general elections. Since many people thought now that they could become even happier yet by standing alone, the Stand Alone Liberals were the big winners and could form the new government. One month later it became known that Ann was ill of a different disease, which also would bring a life-long suffering to her, although she, too, could become 100 years old with her disease. Etc. But who would notice it if the national level of sufferance would raise to 2? Nobody. So the Radical Leftist Environment Party, now in opposition, put forward an “Ann’s Recovery Tax Act”. However, the Stand Alone Liberals rejected the bill, not only with the argument that it is better to stand alone, but also because, as they argued, there are 6,000 rare diseases. Maybe they can all be cured, but if the government would have to pay it, things will go out of hand and in the end everybody will noticeably suffer: Each new case would bring the national level of sufferance one point higher. So the government did nothing and Ann had to stand alone and from then on everybody with a rare illness. Only John was lucky, for the new government respected the decision of the old parliament to support him. The Radical Leftist Environment Party realized that 6,000 rare diseases is quite a lot, indeed, and it proposed to create an aid fund for a minimum support for every patient, on condition that the national level of sufferance would not surpass 5, but the government rejected this proposal, too.

So the problem is this: How much suffering is acceptable for a population that wouldn’t suffer if it would ignore the suffering of the unhappy few? You cannot bear the burden of whole world but this doesn’t imply that you don’t need to do nothing when others suffer, certainly not if you don’t notice that you bear a burden. What someone can bear and wants to bear is his or her responsibility, but this should not mean that everybody must stand alone and care only about the own problems and solutions (as seems to be the policy in some countries). Merry Christmas!

Sources

I wrote most of this blog without consulting any literature, but it leans heavily on what I remembered from Derek Parfit’s work (google for him!) and from Stijn Bruers, Morele Illusies. Antwerpen, Houtekiet 2017 (any Dutch reader of this blog should read this book!). See also Larry Temkin.

A chip in my brain

Do we need to scan the brain of the other
in order to know his or her thoughts ?

It is possible to play the piano with your thoughts. We have seen it in my blog last week. However, research how your thoughts can steer your body via a brain implant is yet in an experimental stage, and we saw last week, for instance, that the pianist with ALS still had to be connected by a wire with a computer. But sooner or later also this problem will be solved, and then people with ALS will be able to do what every healthy person can do.

Research like this is not exceptional and it is done everywhere in the world. Not so long ago investigators of the Utrecht University in the Netherlands succeeded to let a woman with ALS express her thoughts on a computer screen, about in the same way as the pianist with ALS succeeded to play.

What happens here is that thoughts are downloaded to an implant and then converted that way that an apparatus external to the body proper is brought into operation. We can use this method in order to help disabled people. One step more is helping healthy people to function better. This is what Elon Musk – the founder of SpaceX and Tesla – had in his mind when he founded Neuralink Corp. The brain, so Musk, functions efficiently and fast, but once we want to put our thoughts into text and motion we slow down, and move at a snail’s pace. How much time it takes to write a short app on your smartphone, for instance! That can be done better. Simply download thoughts and transfer them to a machine or appliance. It will work so much faster! And why should we put a chip in the brain in order to read thoughts? A brain scanner will do as well. Okay, the present fMRI scanners that are often used for reading the brain are big and clumsy instruments but in future this problem will certainly be solved. Moreover, there are also other methods to measure brain activity and maybe thoughts. Anyway, Musk thinks that within five years it will be possible to tap thoughts from the brain in an efficient and useful way.

However, if we can download thoughts and use them, why couldn’t it be possible then to upload thoughts as well? This is also an idea Elon Musk is playing with, and not only Musk, for the field of artificial intelligence and its relation to the functioning of the human brain is a rapidly developing field of science. And once we can upload thoughts to the brain, the possibilities are endless. Many psychological illnesses but also physical illnesses that have their origins in the brain – and also ALS is such a disease – can perhaps be cured (or partly). Or we can communicate more efficiently with computers and smartphones. One step further is that we can communicate in a more efficient way with other people, when thoughts can be directly transferred from person to person. But will it all be positive? Esther Keymolen, technology philosopher at Leiden University, says in an interview with the Dutch daily De Volkskrant: “With this kind of technology, in fact you get a business undertaking in your head. Now already it is difficult to find out what technology companies do with your data and how they connect them.” Musk wants to prevent that artificial intelligence will control us instead of the other way round. But this development can also make that the artificial intelligent entity we are connected with sends things into our brains. “If that happens, you can ask: Who are we then?”

Indeed, who are you, if private firms send information into your brain? If a technology firm acts in good faith and sincerely wants to improve your life, you can say, it’s okay. But even then, your personality doesn’t depend any longer on what you make of it, but on what others make of it. If in good faith a company changes your characteristics, your memory, etc., maybe that’s what you want. However, then what makes you the person who you are has become in the hands of others (for can you really know what they upload to your brain, if already now you don’t know what they do with your data?). But what if the technology company that you deal with acts in bad faith? So if it doesn’t want the best for you but only for itself, anyhow? When this happens the company makes you according to its own design; not to yours. Then it is so that what makes you the person who you are has become in the hands of another. Then you are no longer you, but you are the other.

Yet one step further is that it is not a private company that manipulates you out of self-interest, but it is the state that does in order to control you and maybe all citizens by means of the new technology of artificial intelligence. Then it happens that Big Brother is not only watching you but that Big Brother is literally within you.

Sources

De Volkskrant, dated 15 Nov. 2016, 22 and 29 March 2017; 22 Nov. 2018.

The extended body thesis (2)

P.S. to my blog last week: An interesting TED talk on the extended mind and on the extended body (thanks to David Chalmers who draw my attention to this TED talk by him). 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksasPjrYFTg

The extended body thesis

In one of my blogs I sustain the so-called “extended mind thesis”, developed by Andy Clark and David Chalmers. It says that the mind is not only in the head, but that a part of the mind is also outside the brain in the agent’s world. For instance, you have stored a mailing list in your computer and you know in which file it is, so you don’t need to keep the addresses in your mind. Or we write memos or tie knots in handkerchiefs in order not to forget things that are important for us. But how about the body? Do we have also body parts outside our body proper in an analogous manner?

I had to think of this, when I read a newspaper article about a woman who couldn’t play the piano any longer, because she suffered from ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a brain disease that leads to progressive muscular atrophy and so to paralysis). She got a kind of implant in the part of her brain that steers the hands. As a result she could play again, for instance, Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”.

It’s a well-known phenomenon that an instrument can feel as if it is a part of the body; or almost. If I want to push a pin in a pin cushion, I just push it with my finger and nothing goes wrong. However, if I want to hammer a nail in a piece of wood, sometimes, or maybe often, I miss the nail and hit my thumb. This will not happen to an experienced carpenter. Each hit is as it should be. It is as if the carpenter’s hammer is an extension of his arm. As if the hammer is a part of his arm. Even more, I think, it was the same so for the woman in my case, before she got ALS, since she was an experienced pianist. In those days, the piano had become an extension of her hands, if not of her body. When she was playing, she and her piano were one. And let us hope that once she has become used to the implant in her head and has learned how to use it, she’ll regain her fluency in playing the piano. Then she and her piano will again be one.

But how about the implant in her brain? In the end it is a piece of hardware, a kind of chip put by a surgeon in her brain. Is it just as if a surgeon has put a metal rod in your arm, when you have broken it and that she will later remove again? No, I think. The metal rod is not more than a temporarily support of your arm. You don’t move your arm with the help of this rod but with the help of your muscles. The only function of this rod to fix the broken bone in your arm, so that it will heal well. The rod has nothing to do with how your body functions. It’s a bit like a chair you sit down on when you are tired. Sitting down on a chair helps your body recover, but the chair as such doesn’t recover your body. It’s simply a support. That’s why the metal rod can be removed, after the broken bone in your arm has healed.

How different it is with the implant in the pianist’s brain. If the implant would be removed or would break down, she can no longer play the piano. Even more, she operates the implant in her brain: When she thinks of moving her hand and fingers in the way she does when playing the piano, the implant stimulates the hand and fingers in the right way, so that she can play the melody she wants to play, like Beethoven’s “Ode of Joy”. Moreover, she doesn’t feel the implant in her brain, just like a healthy pianist doesn’t feel the neurons in his brain firing when she plays the “Ode of Joy”. Of course, at present technically the system is still imperfect: The implant is yet connected with a computer through a wire. But who doubts that also this problem will be solved in future? When playing the piano this pianist is not only one with her piano but also one with the implant in her brain.

The upshot is that an external object – such as an implant in your brain, but as I want to add, also a piano or a hammer –  can become a part of your body. Then your body is not only in your body proper (the “flesh” it is made of). At least also the instruments you know to use can become a part of it. The transition between what still belongs to your body proper and what doesn’t belong to it or what does not yet belong to it can be rather vague, indeed. However, I think that my analysis shows that we don’t have only an extended mind but that we have also an extended body. There is not only an extended mind thesis but also an extended body thesis.

Detach yourself !

Montaigne's backroom in his castle where he
could retire and where he wrote his essays.

There has been a time that I wrote very short blogs or that a blog even consisted of a simple quote with hardly any comment or even no comment at all. Not all blogs were so then, but many were. And sometimes I think, why not write them this way again? Why spend thousand words on what can be said with hundred or less or with a good quotation? Why comment on what is obvious? And when I looked for a subject for this week’s blog, I came across this passage in Montaigne’s Essays and thought that just this was a passage that speaks for itself and that doesn’t need any additional comment:

“Wives, children, and goods must be had, and especially health, by him that can get it; but we are not so to set our hearts upon them that our happiness must have its dependence upon them; we must reserve a backshop, wholly our own and entirely free, wherein to settle our true liberty, our principal solitude and retreat. And in this we must for the most part entertain ourselves with ourselves, and so privately that no exotic knowledge or communication be admitted there; there to laugh and to talk, as if without wife, children, goods, train, or attendance, to the end that when it shall so fall out that we must lose any or all of these, it may be no new thing to be without them. We have a mind pliable in itself, that will be company; that has wherewithal to attack and to defend, to receive and to give.”

(Montaigne, “Of Solitude”, Essays, Book I-38 (or 39 in other editions), quoted from https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html)

“Detach yourself!”, is what Montaigne says here. It is good to have people around you and there is nothing against having possessions and even being rich, but know how to detach yourself from them when necessary and keep always a place for yourself. Have a backroom where you can retire. To be attached to what is dear to you is okay, but there are limits to it, and you must keep a space for yourself. In the end this free space is your mind. And we can say that you must not only know to keep distance from the persons and material things around you – at the right time – but also from the immaterial things, like oppressive thoughts or self-imposed rules, such as how to compose these blogs. But, oops! Again I cannot keep myself from commenting on this quotation. Hadn’t I said that it speaks for itself? So detach yourself from me and take have your own thoughts.