Moral philosophy: Do Zombies Deserve Moral Consideration?

Ah zombies, I love them. I'm serious, I do, I love zombies. They're so much damn fun. Especially video games with zombies in them. Take Left 4 Dead, the simple premise is that you and three other people need to get from point A to point B and the only thing standing in your way is the festering horde of the undead, oh and you pretty much have unlimited ammunition. I could kill zombies for hours.
But, what if it really happened, what if I wake up tomorrow morning and the little girl down the street tries to rip out my jugular? Am I sure that it's morally acceptable to put a bullet in the brain of a cute little zombie girl?
Just so we're all on the same page, the type of zombie I'll be referring to (because there are many types of zombies out there) will be reanimated humans (either by a virus or by biblical Armageddon), are able to turn others to zombies upon exchange of fluids, and need to feed on living flesh in order to survive.
The first thing to consider is whether or not moral agency is a necessary condition for moral consideration (moral consideration is simply the act of deciding one's actions toward something else is right or wrong). Kant argued that morality only occurs between two parties able to understand the difference between right and wrong (oversimplification, I know). So, for Kant, only moral agents, get moral consideration. But, like with most of the crap (yes, crap) Kant said, I disagree. If we were to take Kant's criteria for moral consideration, then babies, retarded people, and animals deserved no moral consideration. Not only is this hypothetically repugnant, but it goes against our social intuition, we would not violently beat a baby, abuse the mentally challenged, or eat animals... err... I mean our pets, you know like cats and dogs. So, you don't have to have understanding of right and wrong in order to be treated in a morally responsible way.
But that leaves us with another problem, what exactly does qualify a thing to have moral consideration and more importantly... do zombies deserve moral consideration? So, let's determine the relevant qualities of a zombie.

1. They are reanimated human bodies
2. They sustain themselves by consuming flesh
3. They have little recognizable high order cognitive function
4. They are likely to try to kill you

Let's take each one of these relevant qualities and compare them to our collective social moral behavior.

1. Dead bodies, there are certainly no moral regulations regarding those, right? Wrong, there are not just social mores regarding the treatment of dead bodies, but there are laws about them. As social beings, we have a highly advanced set of rituals surrounding the treatment of dead bodies, in fact, some of the most profoundly disturbing images from inhuman actions revolve around the desecration of human bodies, i.e. the holocaust, Jack the Ripper, Jefferey Dahmer, etc. We have a sophisticated moral system in place preventing us from abusing dead bodies, let alone shooting them or smashing their heads.

2. Hmm... they eat flesh. Well, that obviously shows that they are barbaric and repugnant creatures deserving to be put down like the flesh eating monsters they are, certainly no creature with any sort of moral sensitivity whatsoever would even consider murdering another creature and consuming its flesh! The mere thought of a flesh eating, human creature being anywhere near us is enough to make one want to erect a barricade and load the shotguns.

3. From what I can tell, zombies run around and find stuff to eat and then they eat the stuff they find, the end. With the exception of a few movies, Fido and Day of the Dead, zombies are incapable of rational thought. So, are we able to treat things that lack cognitive function in whatever way we want? Well, two words come to mind Teri Shivo. Yes, remember the highly publicized and controversial woman in Florida who was a vegetable and her husband wanted to pull the feeding tube. In the end, he did kill her, but not without an enormous amount of social discourse. There are plenty of examples where we have trouble deciding how to treat living things that lack higher order cognitive functions.

4. Zombies want us dead, plain and simple, but so do lots of things like Islamic fundamentalists and serial killers, in fact there are all sorts of people who want to kill you and me. Does that give us the right to put a shotgun in their face? The answer is not just no, but hell no. One of the hallmarks of our advanced social system is our judicial system, in which those who want to collectively kill us can be handled in a way that's morally good (read: we lock them away, f.y.i. the U.S. is the only developed country that still employs the death penalty.)

So, 1. we don't desecrate dead bodies, 2. we don't kill people that eat flesh (otherwise most you out there would have to go), 3. we don't kill people who don't/can't think, and 4. we don't necessarily kill things that want to kill us.

Taking each quality of zombies on their own, it seems that they do deserves moral consideration according to our social practices. Oh, well...

But, wait, take all those qualities 1-4 and put them together... viola! Separately none of those qualities are sufficient for moral disregard, but if you put them together you have a sufficient condition for moral disregard.

And besides, they're zombies, if you see a zombie you kill it. I don't care if it's your mom, your dad, husband, wife, son, daughter, neighbor, priest, or garbageman. If you see a zombie, THEN YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO!

A Little Bit of Existentialism To Brighten Your Day

We are so heavily invested in words; they consume so much of our selves. Think, for just one moment, of how much time and effort is spent day in and day out in words. When what do we ask of our great authors and poets? The greatest task that our great authors and poets shoulder is the burden of making words disappear, of pulling aside the veil and revealing to us so much more than the mere phonemes present on the page. Our greatest knowledge rests not within our words, not within any paltry collection of syllables and phrases. Our greatest knowledge resides within our bodies, behind the veil of words and thought. Like clothing hides our flesh, words hide our knowledge. Poets and artist throughout our history have glorified the beauty and purity of flesh while religions and institutions have condemned and feared the power of it. We clothe ourselves with words to hide the unbearable beauty of our knowledge, of the sense our bodies have of the world. We feel like how music sounds, a rhythm and flow, ebbing like a current through ourselves. So bright we have to hide it. Our greatest knowledge lies in our greatest self.
So, in a quiet and safe place, divest yourself of your words, just a little. Pull the veil back for just a peek. Like the poet, make the words disappear and flow with wordless, gliding river of your greatest self. Don't think, but live.

Metaphysics- Time Travel: Star Trek vs. Terminator

How many movies/TV shows have time travel as a plot device? LOTS! Some do it better than others and some muck it all up (Lost). Taking the above-mentioned movies shows in account let’s see what makes for good time travel and whether or not any of the compare to what would likely happen in time travel.
Let’s start with the best of the three: Star Trek. (Spoiler Alert for those who haven’t seen the movie yet, though there’s no excuse to have not seen it yet.) In the movie, a black hole is opened by which two star ships are sucked through and sent into the past. These ships alter the course of events creating a “parallel reality” as spoken by one of the characters. After a brief scene where the crew discusses this occurrence, the aspect of time travel isn’t brought up again, which is a good thing. This is the best way to handle time travel in cinema, establish the way time travel works in this particular mythology and move on from there. Dwelling on the nuances of time travel leads only to trouble (Lost).
In Star Trek, traveling back through time and altering events creates a “split” from the “normal” timeline that does not interact with each other.
On to Terminator. We all know the story; the machines in the future send back a terminator to murder the mother of the leader of the human resistance before he is born in an attempt to preemptively end the war. However, the terminator ultimately fails and in their attempt they inadvertently cause the leader of the resistance to be conceived. What’s suggested here is that all the events in the past are determined (can’t be changed), further, that the events in the past already incorporate the intrusion of people from the future.
So, in Terminator, there is only one continuous timeline by which there can be no deviation and that all people and sentient artificial life are confined to this timeline despite being able to jump to different segments of it.
The difference between time travel in each of these movies illustrates well the difference in thought with regards time, free will, and identity. Given these two films we have to two possible theories regarding how time functions: in one scenario (Star Trek) time is like a tree branch, forking off into limitless paths or the other scenario (Terminator) time is unmoveably linear, regardless of jumping to different parts of the linear path, branching is impossible. In the former, time is undetermined, it can be changed, in the latter time is determined.
So, how does this effect free will? Well, taking a very broad definition of free will (the ability to do more than one action in a given time frame) the Star Trek thesis argues that we have a very robust free will, we can freely choose to do one action among many and that these actions affect the flow of future events. In the Terminator thesis we have a very narrow form of free will, that we are only likely able to do one action for every time frame and that decision making and deliberation are likely self-delusions.
As regards identity, the Star Trek thesis suggests that our future identity is non-finite, whereas Terminator suggests that our future identity is finite.
So, now that we’ve lain out what the central differences and their implications are on these two theories of time travel, what does science say about any of these? Well, I’ll use as my primary source, Stephen Hawking. We won’t go into whether or not time travel is feasible, but rather his discussion on what time actually is. Perhaps you remember your high school chemistry class, so when I talk about the second law of thermodynamics you might remember what that is. If you don’t, that’s ok, I’ll remind you: the second law of thermodynamics states that all systems move towards randomness, the technical term for this is entropy. Simply put, entropy is the reason why messes don’t clean themselves, why the Mona Lisa is falling apart, why you’re going to die someday. Literally, the universe is falling apart, nothing lasts, and everything is struggling towards the most random state of existence. This is lucky for us, the most random state for, say… oxygen molecules is to be as dispersed throughout our atmosphere as possible, we’d be in big trouble if all the oxygen in the world decided to hover over Alaska, exclusively.
So, what does randomness have to do with time? Well, Hawking argues that entropy points in one direction, toward randomness, and that time always points with entropy. This makes sense, if you think about it, we get older as time passes, as time passes we get older, getting older is merely the process of our bodies breaking down, undergoing entropy. Hawking argues that if entropy went in reverse, we would likely experience time in reverse, under this view, time doesn’t really exist, what we call “time” is actually just us following along the course of decay.
Where does all of this lead us? If you read my post regarding identity continuity, you may guess which of these theories I endorse. We are not temporally whole beings at any given moment; our temporal identity stretches from our beginning to our end. Think of entropy as gravity and think of yourself as being in a free fall from an airplane, regardless of whether or not you struggle or wag your arms, you’re going to continue going in one direction and you’re eventually going to hit the ground.
I’ll illustrate my conclusion with one of my favorite examples. Let’s say you and I are golfing and I have to make a one foot put. Unfortunately for me, I got cocky and miss the put. Angrily I tell you that I “Could have made that put,” upon which you respond, “No I couldn’t have.” One of us is right and it’s not me. I could put the ball in the exact same spot and sink it 100 times and not have demonstrated that I “Could have made that put.” Why not? Because in order to validate that claim I would have to reverse the flow of entropy and restore the universe to the exact same state it was in when I missed the put. But in so doing, I would have to restore my state of mind to the cocky state of mind from which I missed the shot. I can’t make that shot because I didn’t make that shot.
Time doesn’t branch, the past cannot change because it did not change, and once I, or anyone else, do something, that something is fixed and immobile, such is entropy. Now, I am not going to claim that this sufficiently disproves the doctrine of free will, that I’ll leave for another post (I think I can show that free will doesn’t exist, it’s just going to be really long.)
So, if John Connor has been born, there’s nothing those damn machines can do about it.

Talkback- Economic Philosphy: Why You've Been Right

mister_pfister said...

I think you are overlooking the economic principle of voluntary exchange. In a free market two parties walk away from an exchange better off. There's no exploitation involved here. At no point was violent force used to secure any of those transactions (unless the laborers belonged to a union) and so everyone from the laborer, to the entrepreneur, to the consumer all walked away from their respective transactions better off than they had started.

Free markets are always just because of this simple principle. Marxism, conversely, is utterly unjust because you don't keep the fruits of your labor (in this instance, the wage you are paid by the entrepreneur) but are instead forced to hand them over for redistribution by a governing entity in whatever way THEY see fit, which is almost always in an inefficient way.

And people forget that the entrepreneur is the entity who is shouldering the risk. He is freely exchanging his money for labor in the hopes that what he is producing will earn him a profit. If he pays $90 in labor for that bread but consumers decide they don't want to pay more than $80 for that bread (perhaps because a competitor found a more efficient way to make bread and make his workers more productive and thus produces it at a lower cost), that entrepreneur loses $10 because he already paid for the agreed-to wages and now couldn't sell it for a profit.

The price you are paying of $110 instead of the actual cost of $90 means that the opportunity cost (that is, what you sacrifice to get something) is $20. If you're not a bread maker and lack the stock of capital to efficiently make the bread yourself, I imagine $20 is worth it if you lose more than $20 worth of your productive time trying make something you don't specialize in. Otherwise, you're essentially reverting to a barter system where every man, woman, and child is forced to be not only a blacksmith or a cobbler, but also a tailor, a baker, a farmer, and a lot of other things they probably aren't as good at.

Capitalism is only a paradox to those who don't understand the fundamental principles of economics and instead would prefer to perpetuate class warfare through the manipulation of collective ignorance.

Excellent response! If you'll allow me to summarize your points:

1. Capitalism is just because all three parties: entreprenuer, laborer, and consumer are all "better off" in the end and no violent coercion is used.

2. Marxism is unjust because a large entity (the government or whatnot) forcibly takes wages and/or profits and redistributes them.

3. The entreprenuer deserves his profit on account that he or she is shouldering the risks of free market fluctuations.

4. That the premium the consumer pays is justified as a part of luxury of the division of labor.

Let's get 2. out of the way first. I don't actually advocate Marxist economics. I'll admit that I lack the intimacy necessary to pass judgement on Marxism (have you every seen Das Capital, that book is freaking huge, even by my standards.) But, I do understand his interpretation and answer to the Aristotilian econonmic paradox and that is merely what I'm appealing to. Though, I do have very strong socialist tendencies that extend far beyond the typical socialist charicature that most people have.

As for 1. People's particular feelings about a situation is not a good indicator of whether a situation is just. Assume that my point is true: that captialism is unjust; further assume that most people have no other experience with any other economic system and that their entire lives they've been told that capitalism is just, then it is perfectly plausible that upon entering a capitalistic transaction they'll have positive feelings about it. There are countless, and I mean countless other examples I could muster that demonstrate that peoples feelings about something does not necessarily indicate the justice value of any situation.

As for 4. I alread covered that in the original post, the premium for division of labor is paid by the consumer in the form of the wages paid to the laborer. You're right in that I would rather pay extra for a pair of shoes I didn't have to cobble myself, but this extra ought to cover the wages of the cobbler only, otherwise I'm being ripped off, I'll show why in convering 3., the most important point you bring up.

As for 3. I do not deny that the entreprenuer is shouldering a risk when he invests, in fact, it would be absurd to deny that. The question, then, is whether or not this risk justifies his exacting profit. First of all, we have to understand that value is created only through human labor. For example a mountain full of gold ore is has absolutely no value until people go in and extract it. A pile of grain is worthless unless someone converts it to bread. The list goes on. In effect, objects, by themselves, have no value until we imbue it with value via our labor. So, what labor does the entreprenuer contribute? None, nada, and zip. The entreprenuer does not create value.

But, you may argue that he facilitates the laborer's efforts to create value, henceforth, through logical extention (If A is B and B is C, therefore A is C) then the entreprenuer does create value, right? Further, the entreprenuer does is the only one shouldering the risk, he may loose all his money if the market turns on him, so he deserves his "wage" (read: profit), right?

No and No, that's no to both rhetorical questions. Here's why: both situations orginate from within the free market system. The entreprenuer's involvement in the value making process is a product of the system of the free market. In essence, the involvement of the entreprenuer is NOT NECESSARY, but arbitrary and mandated by the system. Same goes for the "risk". The risk is a product of the free market system and is there, not out of necessity, but arbitrarily. NO SYSTEM CAN JUSTIFY ITSELF FROM WITHIN! The arguement presented in 3. is SELF REFERENTIALLY INCOHERENT, this just means that any system must seek its justifcation from a source other than itself, if you need qualification on this then go to wikipedia and type in "Liar's Paradox" or "Goedel's Incompleteness Theorum", what I'm argueing here has been proven mathematically by Geodel.

Capitalism remains unjust because the appeals to its just nature rely on assumptions from within the system, not from without, which, just so you know, doesn't work. A final example for this point. Let's say I write a manual on how to torture people and in this manual I state that: "All of the above methods of torture are just." Now when I get taken to court for writing this manual on how to torture people, I calmly explain that these torture methods are just because it says so in the manual. Do you see why you can't appeal to something within a system as its justification?

Excellent comment, please keep them coming.

Best regards,
Andrew