Sam Harris on Spirituality.

Much has been said about our human ability to harbor experiences and sensations which make us feel completely removed form the world. People often have these experiences in a variety of contexts; perhaps in their vast admiration of a natural scenery, or in utter awe at the calm and tranquility evinced in some picturesque idyll, or during some epiphany or eureka moment when -after a long period of indefatigable search- we get, as if by divine intervention, that idea or resolution to our formerly persisting quandary. Or sometimes the same sensory perceptions are achieved upon the ingestion of some specific pharmaceuticals. At any rate, nobody I know denies the existence of such experiences, but many of us find some of the believes tagged to them, intellectually suspect.

In the same vein, I think it is importnat to recognize that the vast majority of people, generally adherents of some religious persuasion, have used the term "spiritual"  to identify with the numinous and transcendent feelings that arise during at least two distinct forms of contemplative experiences: meditation and prayer. In his most recent blogpost, Sam Harris reiterates his conviction that
these  experiences, otherworldly though they may feel, in no way serve as evidence of the claims with which they come inextricably attached.
__________

Update

Jerry Coyne, after reading Sam's post, has also weighed in on this rather contested issue. 

On Committed Relationships

During a casual chat with a great friend, the issue of love and commitment surfaced the conversation. Although I tried my best to convey a clear message, it was impossible not to get bogged down in a mass of quandaries. This is my letter of clarification.

The talk we had the other night was initially not my way of baring my soul to you and put the cards on the table, it was simply a conversation in which we could exchange our own musings on the different flavors of personal relationships and the ones we found more tasteful. In passing, however, I ended up admitting that I see intellectual discrepancies in the labeling of committed relationships and the people who integrate these. You nodded in agreement (if not perplexity) to my every word. Either 1) I was astonishingly persuasive, or 2) you and I were on the same page right from the get-go. 3) Or maybe you hated each incendiary idea that came out of my mouth but were too nice to stop me on my tracks and put out the fires I had set. 

I think the following compendium will do some justice to my admissions that night:

Relationships shouldn’t be about keeping to socially constructed labels. If A likes B and B likes A, they should be free to spend time and experiment with each other without having to worry about what people might think of them.

Faithfulness in a committed relationship shouldn’t be the product of A limiting his/herself so as to please B, it should be the result of A finding B so attractive, interesting, and lovely that A's eyes won’t care to avert from B's.  It should be about A finding everything she/he needs in B and therefore deeming it useless to search for anything in X, Y and Z.

I think commitments of the sort in discussion here invite a variety of hypocrisies. If A is in a committed relationship with B, but happens to find C more attractive than B, it is necessary that A lies or at least hides this from B to avoid trouble and to stay in line with the established commitment. Hence we’ll keep the relationship in play but at the cost of B being kept in the dark regarding A’s true feelings and desires.  Or A could simply break the commitment at anytime and leave B only to run into the arms of C, in which case we’d avoid the hypocrisy and insincerity of withholding our true sentiments from our partner but at the expense of losing all intelligible use for a commitment in the first place.

What I propose is simple label-less transparency. This way, if A is with B, B will know for certain that A is not just trying to keep with an established commitment, but that A in fact enjoys being with B.  The moment A finds C overall more appealing than B (not that this will necessarily happen), there will be no need for A to conceal such findings from B. Because the burden of a commitment is not afoot, A will be free to seek the realization of his/her emotional needs in C without having to lie to B. And B will immediately know that A has changed his/her mind and will thus not be wasting his/her time with A.  In other words, if the interests of A and B legitimately converge, i.e., if A and B have in fact true feelings of mutual affection, desire, admiration, respect, etc., then a vowed commitment will add nothing interesting, if at all to said courtship. If the aforementioned emotions are not mutual or simply do not exist period, then even a sworn commitment won’t be of any use.

The essence of a courtship is the affection shared out of one’s own volition. Not the conditional behavior performed in order to stay true to the pressure of a label such as ‘boyfriend’, ‘girlfriend’, and ‘committed relationship’.

You’ll have to excuse my deliberate elision of the word “love”. I happen to believe that such word has been rendered unintelligible by the vernacular use of it as a suitcase term.  If one can “love” one’s mother, one’s girlfriend, one’s cat, eating ice cream, and cooking meatballs, the word “love” then has been successfully diluted to insignificance. 

Sam Harris Vs William Craig

Last night's debate between Sam Harris and William Lane Craig was as droll as it was interesting. The topic was "Are Morals from God", and both being professional philosophers, an exhilarating clash of contentions was expected. 

One of the ingredients that made this debate so entertaining was the fact that Craig's script consisted largely on a conjunction of syllogisms which he imagined demonstrated that moral objectivity is conceivable only if one agrees that God exists. This assumption is generally accepted by most scientists and other debaters given that moral relativism has -in a dispiriting and daunting instance of moral concession to Christian dogma- become the prima facie and default purchase amongst modern liberals. Yet, not in the case of Harris, who cleverly utilized his first turn to speak to present his thesis on moral realism rather than to squander precious time exposing Craig's patent fallacies. Sam's notion of morality consists mainly on the acknowledgment that moral choices would not exist in the absence of conscious beings. In this sense it is  in utter opposition to Plato's view of Ideals or Forms, as Craig rightly points out, but which in no way detracts from the validity of his claim. Morality, says Harris, is entirely dependent on the contents of our experience, i.e., our ability to suffer and our capacity for well-being. We don't have moral obligations towards rocks simply because we recognize that rocks don't have nervous systems capable of experiencing pain. So if one can agree that sentient creatures do suffer and that there are better and worse ways to avoid such suffering, then one can confidently claim that objective morals exist regardless of subjective opinion or cultural contingencies.

To Craig's chagrin, Harris simply does not subscribe to the popular moral relativism that he is so used to disarming and thus finds himself in great pains trying to find loopholes in Harris' proposition. He starts desperately quoting from Sam's book (although not necessarily quotes written by Harris himself but from authors quoted by Harris), and he finally, to everyones bemusement, triumphantly proclaims to have in his possession a 'knock-out argument' against Harris' non-divine moral objectivity. He then wends on grieving Sam's reticence form responding his straw-man attacks and blathers with singular sophistry for a short time longer before ceding to podium back to Harris.

I must confess I was not expecting Harris to come out throwing blows and jabs so straightforwardly. But he did, and it was in fact refreshingly amusing given Sam's graceful ways to deride faith at its most abject. Exposing the overt ludicrousness shamefully displayed in each of the tenets of Christian doctrine is the best thing Harris could do. "Think about Hell", Sam challenged the audience. He let the words hang in the air for a few seconds thus allowing the public a chance to really conjure up an image of this inferno. That's right, the very idea of eternal fire should give people pause when talking about the infinite love and mercy of a living God. It never does, but it should. He then proceeded to point out the absurdity of a serial killer who right before the end of his life comes to repent and accept Jesus as his only savior, hence earning himself a place in paradise, as opposed to the life-long philanthropist who spent a lifetime helping those in need at the expense of herself, but for whom the doors of heaven will be irreversibly closed as a result of her having been born and raised in the wrong culture or at the wrong time. 

Theodicean dilemmas are still alive and pulsing in the veins of theologians, if not their brains. When Craig reassumed his place at the lectern, he conveniently withheld all vindication of the dozens of antinomies between God's commands, the hundreds of contradictions in the Bible, the innumerable horrors and instances of wanton barbarism allowed, if not commanded by Yahweh, etc. Instead, in a most ignominious moment of live-streamed powerlessness, he opted to shirk the problem of evil in front of hundreds of people, who were subsequently recommended rather to read a book about it. 

It is not often that one gets to hear the ontological argument applied, not to prove that God exists, but to prove that God is good. I in fact don't think that this frenetical spout  was anything more than the sound of the publicly abased hubris of an ineffectual popinjay. To Harris' query "How do you know that God is good?" Craig heedlessly retorted: "because anything that is worth worshipping must be good, and since God is worth worshiping, therefore God is good". And because anything that merits our contempt must be made of guacamole and the devil merits our contempt, therefore the devil must be made of guacamole. 

One need not be a brilliant logician to spot the unfounded premises. Yes, the syllogism is valid. If the premises are right the conclusion does derive from them. But in this case both premises are simply asserted as, needless to say, not a shred of evidence exists which bears them out. 

The opprobrium did not cease for Craig as the Q&A followed. His situation became even more pitiable as attendants began to produce a number of uncomfortable questions. With regard to one of Craig's analogies on how humans talked about light and darkness before knowing the actual physical properties of light, a young girl asked something to the effect of the following: before humans understood the physical components and behavior of light they would impute their ignorance to the mysteriousness of their gods. Could the same thing be said about our current quandaries with respect to the nature of morality? One had to be there to really savor the awkward boggle of an intellectually dumbfounded man. Craig purported to not having understood the question which bought him a few more seconds to overhaul and rearrange his wooly racing thoughts.  After the moderator -who, strangely enough, was seated right next to William Craig which afforded him the exact same faculty for understanding the question- rehashed the girl's challenge in a syntax fathomable by Dr. Craig, the latter expediently leveled the charge that his analogy was being misused. This may well have been the case, but such claim notwithstanding, the question was absolutely legitimate. Was Dr. Craig invoking God simply because we still don't have a fine grasp on morality? Whatever the case, Dr. Craig did not even attempt a response, remaining mute about the issue to the disillusion of many. 

Later on a teenage boy wasted his chance to ask a serious question by posturing the roll of a confused kid to whom God had spoken. God reportedly confessed to the kid that "homosexual relations were as good as heterosexual procreative sex". As blatantly histrionic as this was, the kid had a point. After all, doesn't Craig claim that divine revelation is a genuine form of epistemology?

Questions directed at Harris were admittedly facile and uninteresting. The most salient one pertained to skepticism in the face of collectively reported miracles. Sam answered by explaining how "stories of miracles are a dime a dozen". Even to this day there are hundreds of gurus who claim to have divine powers and whose 'miracles' are  believed and reported on a daily basis by millions of gullible followers. These interminable allegations of 'supernatural' events are rightly rejected by everyone who doesn't belong to the rabbles who have sadly succumbed to the blandishments and guile of these con artists. 

On a last minute direct exchange between Harris and Craig, the former affirms that nothing could be more immoral than a God who visits unnecessary suffering on his creation by burning them for eternity (or something like that), to which Craig -perhaps forgetting that Sam was not another relativist-  perfunctorily replies : "But you don't even have a coherent basis for morality! ". And in a signature moment of graciousness Harris can be heard as he quips: "I've just tried to offer you one, I'm sorry.". Act upon which a lovely and gratifying explosion of applause suffused every corner of the auditorium. And on this  cheerful note the debate is drawn to a close.

* Please excuse my poor chronological precision and some inaccurate paraphrases. All parts of the debate are now available here. 

From Sixth Grade to the Shoe Factory

This is a critique on Moffet's article.


This article certainly represents a quintessential instance of the exasperating boggle of being caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Vicente’s predicament is indeed dire, grim and fraught with unfavorable circumstances that he could potentially incur by preserving his new ‘career’ at the shoe factory. However, there is something important to be said about the prospects that await children and their families should they decide to stay in school and continue their education at the expense of their loved ones and their extremely daunting financial straits.

The article gets the ball rolling: “When Vincent Guerrero reported for work at the shoe factory he had to leave his yo-yo with the guard at the door” (Moffett 88). Poignant as this narration is, it is impossible to ignore the pitiable pathetic fallacy it contains. This red herring raises a waiving yellow flag not worth overlooking. Moffett wends describing the precarious and perilous conditions of the workplace and the environment in which Vicente was being foisted to perform. The poor youngster had to “shinny up the press and throw all his 90 pounds backward to yank the stiff steel bar downward”, and of course this “reminded him [this inexperienced little facetious boy] of the playground contraption” (Ibid). I am completely sure that older people, too, are often forced to work in far more dangerous and physically challenging environments. Notwithstanding this shameless piece of casuistry, there are corresponding legal regulations that must be taken into consideration before moving forward. It is true that Mexico jurisprudence prohibits infants under the age of 14 to join the workforce, such regulatory injunction being enacted in order to prevent abuse by parents who send their unwilling kids out onto the streets to make a profit. However in this case, the article does not provide good reasons to believe that Vicente was being compulsorily instituted as a member of factory’s staff. Quite the contrary, it elaborates on how the 12 year old kid acknowledged the benefits of having dropped out of school and becoming one more pillar in his family’s economy incrementing significantly their revenue stream. Granted, a decent case can be made condemning the perils that await laborers working for extended periods of time in such insalubrious conditions, i.e., inhaling the allegedly poisonous effluvium which emanates from toxic glue, especially given the absence of adequate ventilation. The fact that Vicente came down with a respiratory illness presenting symptoms like: cough, burning eyes, nausea, etc., also casts our position in a dimmer light. Nonetheless, I have long been a strong advocate of personal autonomy, and although children at this age cannot be relied upon to make truly informed decisions, the reading makes it clear that “Economic necessity is stronger than theoretical prohibition” (Ibid).

It is apparent from the narrative as well that, given the meager financial freedoms Vincent’s family live in, being employed at the age of twelve by a shoe making company is not so much a matter of heedful decision making as much as it is a matter of finding a way to subsist. If their reality is as red in tooth and claw as it is being portrayed along the touching lines of Moffett’s impeaching article, then scouring the moral landscape for favorable alternatives in this context is, indeed, a fool’s errand.

I shall now proceed through the scant number of alternatives imaginable and the way in which these embody a frivolous disservice to this unprivileged class. One -and perhaps the most conspicuous, alternative path to follow is that of a continued education. The article emphasized the promising intellectual character of the child; doubtless a prosperous mathematician, possibly a future educator or engineer and maybe even a doctor. Nonetheless, the wages therein mentioned are, at the very least, dispiriting. Vicente’s dad is purported to make 180,000 Mexican pesos per week. The twelve year old is said to earn weekly the miserable amount of 100,000 Mexican pesos per week. Despite their joint income (and bearing in mind that two members of his household had been laid off) and after 3 decades of hard work, they are forced to live in the most destitute and marginal habitat, evinced in the article as:

“…a tumbledown brick shell about the size and shape of a baseball dugout. It is home to 25 people, maybe 26”, and it adds that: “Vicente, to get some privacy in the bedroom he shares with 8 other children occasionally rigs a crude tent from the laundry on the clothesline crisscrossing the hut” (Ibid 89).

Talk about human dignity. Their predicament is in no way encouraging. But there is one more salary that surfaced in the article: that of a teacher’s. A teacher reportedly makes the weekly sum of 120,000 Mexican pesos. That is 60 thousand less than dad and 20 thousand more than the kid. If these figures have any credibility, our intellectual and philosophical wherewithal to build a moral argument in favor of Vicente’s furtherance of academic education diminishes neatly to the point of nonexistence. One can only imagine the quality of life borne by a teacher in light of her lower-than-a-laborer’s income. What can we tell the kid in order to incentivize him and encourage him to stay in school and take additional training? How can we foment his academic aspirations, as noble as the might be, if the pursuit of a professional career will only make inroads at the cost of his and his family’s current interests and stability?

And as far as the ethical responsibility that lies in the hands of those who are in a position to hire underage children, I hope I have explicated to some discernible detail the extent to which the consequences in this context would accrue. If the contractor’s choice is 1) to hire or 2) not to hire, when hiring willful children (underage as they might be) whose parents are in the best disposition to comply, entails the betterment of their condition, then to withhold recruitment is not only wrong, but to a degree, even perverse. These children’s horizons are not as ample as most people imagine, and providing their families with work and a fixed income at least gives them the opportunity to survive. Considering that nobody’s interests are being unnecessarily thwarted, and that no viable option promises to ameliorate their situation, I submit that I see no reason in this context to favor further education over willful labor work.

Landon Ross rails against no-fly-zone detractors

Over at The Rational Ape Landon Ross has written a great article: Action in Lybia is Way Overdue. In it, he admonishes from the get-go:

If the U.S. maintains its position miles behind the U.K., France, and even the Arab League, by continually vacillating and expressing “deep concern” at the slaughter of an Arab people fighting to emancipate themselves from the yoke of tyranny, it will be another stain on the history of American foreign policy serving to further drain the U.S. of what moral authority it retains.

I couldn't agree more. But one can already hear the invective voices of moral relativists  and a selected brand of spineless left-wing liberals suffused with indignation  at the very thought of another US intervention. Landon rightly anticipates their reaction and their banal use of a well known fallacy:

To those critics who predictably chime “Iraq War” at the very mention of a no-fly-zone over Libya: advocating one strategic blunder by reminding us of another does neither the U.S. nor the Libyans any good.

The fallacy of False Analogy, albeit an informal fallacy -given that its error lies in the validity of the content and not in the logical structure of the argument- is ultimately applicable in this case. If action X had Z consequences in place Y,  then action X must also have Z consequences in place W. It's really hard to overlook such blatant piece of intellectual sophistry.

Landon, of course, goes on to remind us that:

...the no-fly-zone over Iraq was something of an effective policy, at least after 1993 when Saddam's aggressions toward patrolling aircraft were met with effective reprisals.

So we know that the reasoning behind the analogy is extremely subtle. However, I think that the chief quandary behind whether there is a legitimate justification for our intrusion in foreign soil won't get settled until after the adjudication of and ethical dilemma. Given our current national budget deficit oscillating in the vicinity of the trillions of dollars, and the political uprising that is astir in our own country; do we really have the political and financial wherewithal to afford a worldwide display of kindness and empathy? Because if we do, I'd like to propose another country in need of military intervention. It is a closest neighbor in the south and is being ravaged by an internecine conflict between drug cartels and the national military.  

The Sound the Universe Makes

Janna Levin delivered a most florid talk on cosmic sonic emissions.

We tend think of space as an eerily silent darkness. And in a way that is correct as sound waves cannot propagate in a vacuum, and many of the comments below the video allude precisely to this quandary.  Another points that elicits some inquietude is the fact that light is incapable of escaping black holes given of course the intensity of their gravitational pull. So, how can any sound -whose velocity is much less than that of light- emerge from their collisions?

Levin helpfully elucidates her critics via a comment stating that:

The medium is spacetime. It can ring like a drum -- a three-dimensional drum.

These are not "sound waves" but "gravitational waves". The waves in space itself can be measured, soon we hope, and those waveforms plugged into a stereo to generate actual sound

I'm no expert in the field so I still have my doubts, not necessarily about the veracity of her claims but as to the process behind it. All in all, however, it was a mesmerizing lecture and I recommend it fully.

Harris recoils from Muslim's obscene unctuousness.

Sam Harris has written a brief response on his website expressing his discontent after a Muslim parliamentarian, during last Friday's broadcast of Real Time with Bill Maher, bloviated a most earnestly dishonest apology for Islamic terrorism.

As it is now a trend among educated western Muslims, the tendency to disavow the actual scripted tenets of their faith, has become ever more grating by the day. They conveniently reinterpret the ghoulish verses in the Koran in a way that renders them as little more than a horrific metaphor. Sam Harris designated five pages of his book to exposing some of the most ill-willed and indubitably hostile verses in the Koran, but when confronted with these, (as witnessed by Maher's youtube video on the link shown above) Muslims almost perfunctorily dismiss them as simply a case of isolated quotation taken out of context. One is then anxious to ask:  In which context then, are these overtly cruel and bigoted propositions justifiable?  

I also would like to know if, in this case, Representative and Islamic apologist Keith Ellison's insouciant response to actual Islamic threat is indeed deliberately cynical or simply misinformed. I just wish Bill would have drilled him more with direct quotations from the book. Quotations so conspicuously ghastly that even if Keith decided to evade them by pulling the out-of-context card, the egregious reading had stayed engraved in the minds of listeners.

Russel on who deserves contempt and who is simply helplessly pitiable.

Russel has posted on his blog his thoughts on an analysis brought forth by Aikin and Talisse regarding what constitutes a good reason to feel contempt for someone, or simply empathy and pity.

As it concerns Aikin and Talisse, somebody who has a considerable form of intellectual impairment is automatically exonerated on that very basis. Contempt for the expressions of the mentally disabled is simply absurd. So far I concur. However, they go on to argue that:

To see religious believers as proper objects of contempt, then, is to see them as people who should know better than to believe as they do. It is hence to see them as wrong but, importantly, not stupid..

Notwithstanding a variety of nuanced -and I believe highly discrepant- notions of freewill, what exactly spurs and drives our beliefs and thus our behavior? -We may wonder. Two things: our genes and our environment. So, if this restricted twofold engine of human ability is the sole root that gives rise to beliefs (whether correct, equivocal or flat out delusional) then there really is no room for free will, is there? And so it follows that the mentally handicap and those who had the misfortune of growing up in intense and oppressive ambient religiosity or unreason, stand on the same moral ground. In other words, because neither of them chose what spurred their delusions, neither of the two deserve our contempt.

But then, Russel would perhaps retort that, taken to its logical conclusions, this elaborate semi-syllogistic argument would undermine as a corollary all feelings of admiration. And he would be right. In a way -and as a parenthetical note- this is why we need the illusion of free will.

 On a similar note I find it interesting that no explicit mention of intention surfaced on Russel's review, but for for a small mention of intellectual honesty. Intention, by my lights, merits much more attention and consideration when before we chastise somebody with our expressed contempt/disdain/hate on the basis of their views. I wouldn't feel contempt for anybody who didn't intend to harm me in any way. I might deem them wrong, benighted, misled and hardheaded but never worthy of disgrace.

Sam Harris' condemnation of recent tax cuts.

This is a bit old but I recently found this interesting missive on Sam's official website wherein he offers a critical analysis of the recent republican resolution to cut taxes for the wealthy. It is beautifully written as we would expect from Harris, but it's also sage and persuasive.

The Ethics of Control Studies Regarding HIV Babies by Heber Gurrola

Medical research and the way in which it is normally carried out has, for quite a long time, being the subject of many ethical and moral concerns. Nonetheless, the conclusions so far inferred tend to incline toward decisions that make use of, one the one hand, utilitarian approaches whereby the chief moral preoccupations are related to the number of people benefitted from the outcome, and on the other hand, deontological principles establishing absolute concepts like that of “individual rights”. Given the broadness of this topic, I shall focus primarily on the first ethical issue raised in the article. I will hereby argue that some of the research standards currently being applied domestically are right to vary when research is exported to foreign countries -this, of course, being merely corollary given the difference in population and incidence of disease. I shall also point out that the principle of personal autonomy as well as the use of consequentialist morality should suffice to underpin and dispel the ethical concerns conventionally raised by critics.

According to the article, medical researchers have found a substance that could potentially prevent pregnant women infected with HIV from transmitting the disease to their infants. However, in order for this new medication to be approved by the FDA, researchers must execute a control study consisting of an experimental group (A) and a control group (B). Group A is comprised of a random sample of women living under similar conditions whose purpose is to ingest the new medication – the one hypothesized to be effective. Group B will be formed by the exact same type of constituency, except that, in this case, women will be given placebo pills, i.e., a substance known to be ineffective; this in order to rule out all peripheral factors whose influence could alter the results.  

One of the primary ethical concerns regarding this study is the variation in test standards as they are applied in the States compared to their application in foreign countries. The article mentions one of the putative problems as being that of a reduction in the expenses when research is exported to a developing country. Regulatory controls differ depending on the country, e.g. “Hungary relied on one full time inspector who annually visited only about 30 of some 200 test locations in the country. Even if abuses were found the inspector lacked the power to fine or bar researchers from the test” (Kline 129). Admittedly, this type of excessive lenience invites a variety of acts of negligence on the part of researchers, who, by virtue of this faulty regulatory system, are given free rein to utilize some tactics that a more stringent system would not allow. However, as I shall discuss later, these apparent ethical concerns are simply immaterial or nonexistent once we introduce the principle of personal autonomy into the equation. Another inconformity brought to light in the article has to do with the sheer amount of people who will be administered placeboes and how this figure increases significantly when research is undertaken in a developing country. The thinking goes like this regarding the transmission of disease to infants: “If the medication proves effective, group A will find themselves favored by the experiment, whereas group B,” this casuistry continues,  “having taken merely placeboes, will have irreversibly suffered the consequences of being given an ineffectual pill.” 

Again, personal autonomy comes to the rescue here, not without the help of its loyal sidekick who goes by the name of utilitarianism. Finally, the other issue raised in the article complains about the fact that people in third world countries who are recruited for testing, in many cases, would not even be able to afford the drug should this turn out to be successful. This claim is at best specious and I will explain why. 

Provided that every individual subjected to the tests is fully informed of (a) the risks involved (b) the quality of the treatment (to the extent allowed, obviously, by the standards of a blind control study) and (c) the stipend afforded to participants, I see no reason why anything about this study should be deemed immoral. The principle of personal autonomy suggests that every individual ought to be granted complete independence and the freedom to act according to his/her will, the only caveat is, nearly by definition, that his/her actions should not cause harm to others, which would be an infringement upon the other’s personal liberty. By this light, given that the participants of the study are not being deceived by mercenary researchers, and being fully aware of their right to decline the offer to partake in the test, it would seem patently immoral  not to carry out a study that could potentially save the lives of many. In other words, it must be every participant’s willful decision to be a part of the test, as it otherwise, would be an outrageous transgression into their personal autonomy. Nothing in the text suggests that this is not the case. 

Anther quandary involves the ineluctable consequences awaiting the control group if the medication turns out to be effective. This claim implies that the more people we have in our pool of testers, the more people will find themselves affected for not having been treated with real medication. In this vein, if, say, a researcher’s limited budget gives her the solvency to recruit 4000 participants in the States, but in Sudan she would be able to afford the testing of a wider group of people, say, 10,000 volunteers, making for far more accurate results with a slimmer margin of error, it would be ludicrous to withhold the export of such research. Granted, 10,000 participants in Sudan would entail that the 5,000 of them who belong to group B experience a collective demolition of their hopes thereupon transmitting HIV to their children, whereas group A, having been administered the right stuff will reap the fruits of the successful study. Kant would hasten to interject here and declare that lying is categorically wrong, and therefore placebo pills have no place in a moral society. But the utilitarian thinker would retort that lying in this case is not only meritorious, but morally obligatory. It is precisely control studies of this sort that have given modern medicine its scientific validity.  And it is this specific testing method that spells out the difference between medicine, or for that matter, science in general, and other forms of post hoc ergo propter hoc pseudo-epistemology. Clearly, a successful control study would bring enormous benefits to, not just the people who participate in the test, but to the entire population in need of a medical remedy, which is to say that a greater good would be achieved in light of these findings. Decidedly, another objection in Kant’s pigeonhole of complaints to this consequentialist technique would be that individual rights are being curtailed by the dereliction of treat-people-as-ends-in-themselves imperative.  By administering medically vacuous placeboes to a large number of people who may expect positive results, Kant would say that we are using group B as a means to an end. Nonetheless, Mill would come back with a response alluding to the fact that if (a) the experiment ends up being successful, this research would be credited with saving millions of lives, and if (b) the test turns out to be a failure and the medication doesn’t work, people would still be compensated and no harm that wouldn’t have befallen them anyway would take place.  On a tangential note, another concern that surfaced was that of the affordability of the hypothetically successful medicine to the denizens of this financially limited country. Perhaps the medication, once approved by the FDA, would not meet a sufficiently low cost necessary for it to be purchased by our third world country testers. This sounds outrageous in and of itself. In this respect, it’s also noted that “the company suggested the final drug could be made available at a reduced price for citizens of those countries in which the test took place” (Kline 132). Fair enough! The author adds: “…such an outcome might promise benefits for enough of the population to justify the likely health costs to a few test participants” (Ibid). We understand that the “few test participants” refers to members of group B, but the statement leaves one wondering what the alleged “health costs” to the few really are. 

Lastly, I feel compelled to question the moral status of a possible restriction of exports which have not been approved by the producing country. One, and I think the most salient, of the claims against the export of products previously prohibited in the producing country is that other places may simply have a more permissive criterion for allowing in imports, thereupon giving way to loopholes that the producing country could use to infiltrate its unapproved medication. What is the fallacy here? The fallacy lies in the presumption of scientific hegemony on the part of the producing country, that their narrow standards for approval are somehow more accurate than the looser ones in the importing country. This could not necessarily be the case. Perhaps, in this particular instance, the FDA has over-narrowed its criteria if only to reduce all potential harm, whereas the accepting country, in light of their own research, has devised less strict, nevertheless more accurate and comprehensive, standards for admission. The truth is that we simply don’t know whose standards are more adequately adjusted. Hence, to limit the scope of our sales solely to the producing country is to prejudge and undermine the validity of control regulations brought forth by other countries which deem the product acceptable.

Closing, it is perfectly clear that a number of moral tradeoffs are necessary in order to make headway in the scientific arena. It might be necessary to inflict some degree of harm for the purpose of producing more happiness to more people. Therefore, to the extent that the interests of a people or corporation are not being foisted upon the less privileged, i.e. as long as individual rights are not being stepped on, autonomous individuals, which we all are, should be free to give consent to whatever they will. The moral status of an action is indeed a function of the consequences it entails for those involved. Would the world be a better place if no control studies of the type aforementioned were permitted? I don’t think so. In fact the central question should be: Would the populations among which this scientific testing was conducted be better off without the researchers’ intervention? As demonstrated by the history of scientific research the answer would have to be absolutely not. Should the established state of affairs suddenly change and control studies brought about nothing but detriment to the tested population, only then would it follow that such studies are immoral.  

Loving Despite an Inexorable End in Sight

By Heber Gurrola

He walks into a room and his gaze meets hers.

After a brief exchange of thoughts, innuendoes and enticing hints he decides that it's well worth a second rendezvous upon which a proper and promising rapport will surely be established. Days go by and every re-ecounter exerts a catalytic effect on this newly born relationship. What on first imppression came off as a vain braggadocio on his part, now is starting to ease into her perception as a luring strut. And what at first glance he interpreted as a petulant overweening look in her face, had abrublty metamorphosed into the very sweetener in his cup of tea. Initially it was all about feigning indifference as to arouse his interest, but eventually  uninhibited disclosure became her greatest allure. It was a two-way street. While he veiled his curiosity in fumes of apathy, deep inside he knew  that the cosmos had just presented before his eyes the mere subject of his prayers.  This is it, a series of engaging conversations have made it clear that although mutual discursive dissent will be inevitable, it is perhaps this occasional piquancy, the very combustible which will fuel this two-seater into a joyful journey. However, there is one caveat; the proverbial elephant in the room that tends to be deliberatly overlooked.






She is shackled almost by virtue of her birth to a dogma whose intransigent doctrine alienates those who differ in thought, if not from her social life, certainly from her intimate personal life. She is a gift from the gods in all other senses. She appears to have been meticulously crafted just for him when it comes to anything that matters. He and she stand on similar moral grounds, both possess a relatively comparable academic competence and the two demonstrate an equal zest for lively discussion. Yet the tenets of her faith are like a crimp towards the end of a garden hose, thwarting the harmonious flow of what would otherwise be an enviable ongoing courtship.


As a parenthetical sidenote I submit to you that what's a bit odious about dogma is that it is not amenable to reason and argument. Since it is not grounded or even sustained by the largesse of the intellect, dogma is impervious to logic and pragmatism. Compulsory abidance is enforced upon the youth by their respective progenitors and any efforts to diverge from the tradition even as an adult are generally chastised by way of a sort of social exile and disavowing frowns if not through threats and violence. I shall not digress any further, put in stark terms; dogma sucks.

I found it necessary to sidetrack a little because it is important that we fully comprehend the emphasis afforded to their daunting circumstance. Here is a young couple whose path to personal and professional realization has been carpeted in silk, yet the burden of one's congenital worldview effectively impedes and shatters all positive hope for a future together. In other words, this pair will ineluctably gravitate toward failure, and the worst thing is, they will KNOWINLGY do so. The end is as foreseeable as the lasting Minnesotan winter. Though hiterto they have both enojoyed having lapped up from pristine waters, a rather sour gulp appears ominous in the coming stream, glaring mirthless and approaching in a steady pace. Their only hope is the possibilty of her dereliction in the face of a nagging and intrusive faith.

So I guess the big question is: In the teeth of an imminent and portentous break up, should this couple even bother to embark on a "pointless" venture? And if so, if they set out reaping the fruits of passion and emotional attachment, will this rhapsodic stint outweigh the appalling, unavoidable and predictable ending? And the answer is yes, they should. And to shore up this answer, I have devised an analogous instance of a close-knit attachment that is usually cut short by a predictable passing.

Think of a pet. It could be a charming kitten or the typical ebullient little puppy. Dogs have an average lifespan of 12 years. Hence, by constenting to the adoption of a pet, you have tacitly acquiesced to its intrinsic corrolary i.e. the certainty that he/she will one day die. Furthermore, those who have had the experience of losing a pet know that it is indeed a devastating ordeal in comparison to which, most break ups, simply pale into ingsignificance.

Arguably, most of the pain involved in any loss has to do with the amount of time spent in the company of such loved one, be it a pet or a person. That is why the bereavement that one endures when mourning, say, a mother's departure, is astronomically more profound and poignant than that of the passing of some ordinary aqcuaintance. This is also why the time length of our deppression after a break up goes up in conjunction with the longevity of the relationship. In economics this phenomenon is normally known as "sunk costs". It is the feeling that we have invested time and effort into a business (in this case a relationship), that when it ends our loss figures with repect to such time.

Ergo, I submit that if one has sufficient valor to foray into the aqcuisition of a pet in light of its impending death, then it is only logically consistent to indulgingly succumb to the oenomels of love, sex and attraction, however ephemeral these promise to be.

My First Attempt at Poesy...

I love writing but it has always been prose that has gotten the best of me. This is my first modest and amateurish foray into poetry, and it's also my dicey entrace into this blog. You can imagine the deluge of apprehension coming over me...

An Unexpected Absence in the Ice-Cold Night by Heber Gurrola
-This is partly based on a true story I read. Link provided at the end-.

(My first attempt at poesy)

Little girl gazed mesmerized into the constellation
She was counting stars, which she believed were God's creation
Two hours had passed since an elusive firefly
Had led her astray into the teeth of the ice-cold night.

She sat on the stairway two weeks before
Wearing a little bodice dress, she was only 5 years old
Wielding a magic wand she had cast a spell
So her teeny tea cup would turn into a squirrel

Now she sat spellbound on a protruding rock
In the middle of the desert, fraught with trepidation and shock
The fear of being lost began to carve into her skin
Little girl was all alone, her childlike valor was now wearing thin.

If she yesterday cavorted freely on the snow-covered grass
Tonight she trudged along the desert, all her bliss had come to pass
In fact the temperature kept dropping, two more hours had gone by
When this dainty little princess finally started to cry

Her eyes were heavy and her lips were numb
The wind was freezing, it was eight below
She shed more tears 'til her eyes grew dry
As she wondered shivering, she wondered why

Why she had to follow that glimmering bug
Why she hadn't rather stayed in the safety of her own home
God knew she had asthma, He knew very damn well
That this unintended expedition could mean her departure from life on this earth

On a Sunday prior to this incident she had been assured
That Jesus watched over her from the heaven above
But now it seemed like Lucifer had taken over the world
Oh!  How strangely perfect are the ways of the Lord.

She was told that an angel would bless her, love her, guard her
But an epiphany made her realize that such angel was either fanciful or just absent
She'd vowed to her parents she'd never question their teachings
But she felt double-crossed, or such was now her inkling.

Little girl was now coughing miserably, she could barely feel her body
Frostbite had already claimed her toes, her skin..Oh dear!, where is mommy?
Blood dripped from her ears, her little pink coat was now ruined
What's daddy gonna say? He'll make me go stay in my room!

In a matter of minutes she got quite, still and utterly listless
A portentous silence now surrounded this beautiful princess
She had suffered gratuitously, indeed her agony was useless
If things happen for a reason, honestly, wasn't her predicament fruitless?

She would never count the flowers in her garden or the stars up by God's reign
She would never ever dance by herself under the rain
With the promise that tomorrow she'd feel nothing, no sorrow, no pain
She was informed by a wintry snowflake that her eyes would never open again

The moon loomed bright and high in the sky above
While her little heart strained tirelessly, then came to a stop.
Her tiny body laid supine, petrified in the bedeviled night
Her dolly kept her company, neither one now was alive

But this is at best perplexing, she went to school, did her homework and cleaned her room
She did well in her ballet classes, God knows we made all the right moves
Her parents looked for answers to her baby's disgraceful doom.
Her little brother had  no comment, his blank stare was fixed on the moon

Posthumous fretting and pondering, they're as common as they are futile
A five year old had died ignominiously, the universe had turned hostile
It never occurred to mom and dad that God, too, at times screws up
That even when cajoled onto his palm, we are as vulnerable and fragile as the mundane lot

Or maybe, just maybe.... there is no loving daddy perched upon His throne
Who oversees our actions and can listen to our thoughts
Perhaps this watchful father who sits diaphanous in the firmament aloft
Is just as mythical a figure as Krishna, Vishnu, Apollo and Thor.






*Afterword

I'm completely aware of the limitations in my metric. I'm not a professional poet and I wrote this in five hours so I sometimes found myself jamming too many syllables in one single line, thus detracting from the poignancy and cadence of the verse. In the same vein, the use of modern language and some cacophonpus synalephae throughout the last two stanzas effectively managed to atenuate the emotional coloring of the ending.