Ethical Philosophy

One common way of thinking about ethical decisions is to pit sentiments against convictions. Emotions against ideas. McCoy against Spock. Say it how you will.

I want to quit smoking. I am convinced that I ought to quit smoking. Ah, but there is this craving. I am tempted, and fall, give in to my urge, grab a cigarette, etc. This is the language we use in speaking about many of the experiences of our moral life.

Kant said that the only thing good in the world is a good will -- a will to do one's duty. Whatever it is, it is a matter of will, not of sentiment. Not only does sentiment tend to steer us wrong, like those cigarette cravings, but even when (for Kant) when sentiment steers us right, it represents the wrong reason for doing the right thing.

This standing-up-to-temptation idea of the moral life, though, obviously isn't the only way. On January 27, 1986, engineers and managers from NASA on the one hand and from contractor Morton Thiokol on the other met to discuss a simple question: whether the launch of the Challenger the next day should be cancelled due to the low temperatures and given the concern of some of the Morton Thiokol engineers that O-ring difficulties had been connected with low temperatures.

The decision made that day cost seven lives on the morrow.

I suspect the conversation in that room could be described in the failure to-resist-temptation paradigm. But I suspect that any attempt to see it in those terms would be a wild misreading.

In Vino Veritas

I knew the wikileaks kerfuffle reminded me of something from the distant past, but it has taken me weeks to loosen up the right memories.

Back in the 1970s, when the first generation of Star Trek was a memory and the next generation still just a project, there was a series of recordings of pseudo-episodes. I listened to three of them at one point on an LP.

The one audio Star Trek that sticks in my mind was called "In Vino Veritas." It involved a diplomatic conference among three powers each claiming the same planet: the Federation, the Klingons, and the Romulans. Because of a truth serum that a trouble maker has slipped into their wine, they start saying things that are grossly inconsistent with their diplomatic positions, and the conference breaks down.

The troublemaker went by the unlikely alias of Jack Spratt. (Why would you adopt "Jack Spratt" as a name if you were trying to blend into a conference as an inconspicuous "Federation" delegate???) Were they serving fat at the conference, in between toasts of wine, and he wanted an excuse not to partake, so "Jack Spratt" seemed logical?