Blog Contributions
Are we Morally Responsible for Our Behaviour In Our Dreams?
By Luca Dodd
If you still have the patience to scroll through the AI infested pits of Facebook, then you will have undoubtedly been treated to at least some videos of the ‘nonce sting’ genre. Organised groups set up an account on social media or on a dating app posing an underaged girl and attempt to arrange a meet up with a paedophile. Upon meeting, there is a quick conversation before the paedophile is arrested. Despite some concerns about the morality of bringing a paedophile into an area which could have a lot of children in it, these sting groups are almost universally supported, while the fact that the paedophiles are arrested also shows that their work is regarded as the actual catching of criminals even if the crimes are somewhat “victimless.”
I do not intend to rehash the deontology versus consequentialism debate, nor do I intend to pick a side in said debate. However, it is simply fact that deontology is an accepted position for many, and that this is reflected in our legal system whereby crimes prefaced with “conspiracy to” and “attempted” are still crimes which are punishable irrespective of the number of victims, if any.
Imagine if these Facebook vigilantes had the technology of the overly complex world of Christopher Nolan’s ‘Inception.’ People whom the nonce stingers suspected as being paedophiles were sent to sleep connected to the stingers’ dreams, (the morality of this act can be ignored for now) and the stingers entrapped the potential paedo using their usual MO. If the individual attempts to act in an untoward way in this dream, are they doing anything morally wrong? It certainly seems to be the case that a deontologist must be committed to saying they are. In the absence of consequences, which do not affect deontological moral theories, there seems to be no moral difference between the entrapment in real life and one in dream. If there was some way of proving the in-dream paedophilic behaviour in the real world or perhaps a way of involving police in the stings, then anyone who believes that real world sting arrests are justified must believe in-dream ones are too.
For some, this could prove deontology as being an absurdity, others may simply shrug their shoulders and say that immoral acts in dreams are equally as immoral as those in the real world. Either way, what these cases prove to be is an interesting insight into the different curveballs that can be thrown into the world of ethics. The world of AI is sure to throw many more into the works, so it is essential that philosophers and ethicist develop a moral worldview which can encompass technological advancements before it’s too late.
The Minimal Nation State: A Theory of the Contemporary Right WIng
By Rob Anderson
The role of the state has always been an important and unsettled debate in political philosophy. While, apart from anarchists, left-wing politics is mostly in support of a high degree of state intervention, particularly in the economy, the right-wing relationship to state action is more complicated. Both libertarians who claim that most state action is unjust and call for total deregulation of the market, and fascists who believe in the doctrine “all with the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state,” are regarded as right wing.
What complicates things further is the link between the state and nationality. Almost all countries in existence are nation states, meaning that the states in existence get their justification from a national community which predates it. Countries which do not have this centripetal nationality often break down into states which are congruent with national identities- see Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. This umbilical link between national identity and the existence of the state is often not present in the abstract thought of minimal state theorists such as Nozick and Locke, but the seeming anthropological truism of the importance of nationality to state action is hard to ignore. It seems to be the case that, if minimal state theorists considered this, they would regard the preservation of national identity as important as having a strong army or police force.
The following is a standard form argument from the perspective of someone who believes in a minimal state.
(1) The state is necessary.
(2) If the state is necessary, one of the functions of the state is to ensure the continued existence of the state.
(3) The continued existence of the state requires a coherent and congruent nationality.
(C) It is the function of the state to ensure the continued existence of a coherent and congruent nationality.
More succinctly :
(1) The state is necessary.
(2) Nationality is a necessary precursor to the state.
(C) Nationality is necessary.
This could mean that, if American nationality was based around baseball, then it would be one of the functions of the minimal state in the US to ensure that baseball pitches are healthy and to perhaps ensure adequate baseball education in schools. In the UK things such as only promoting the native languages of these islands, comprehensive education of our literature and history, and a preservation of old buildings and ancient artefacts would count as justified state action. Of course, as nationality precedes the state, the preservation of a nationality may occur without state intervention. However, there may be extraordinary times whereby only the state can help preserve certain aspects of nationality- and in these times even the most minimal state ought to act.
For characters such as Rupert Lowe, who claims the “state is bad and the individual is good” and who soliloquises about Austrian economics on podcasts, migrants pose a threat to the continued existence of a national identity. This means that, to people like himself, the state is justified in being tough on migration. The same can perhaps be said with the economics of MAGA, which is itself a very evocative of nationalism through its name alone. Despite claiming to want to “drain the swamp” and of course commissioning DOGE, Trump has also been increasing the reach of the state with his tariff programme. If it is the case that having a manufacturing base or having a level of economic self-sufficiency is key to a nationality, in the US or in general, then Trump would perhaps be justified in this, and his views consistent. Ultimately, just like how minimal states may be justified in raising taxes for defence in times of war, minimal states may be justified in using other extraordinary actions when there is a perceived threat to the nationality.
This is not a description of what seems to be motivating the actors of the modern right, nor is it a prescription of what ought to motivate their actions. What this argument attempts to do is to help elucidate what it could be that connects the seemingly contradictory beliefs of the modern right wing. What this theory also seems to potentially do is open the door for other discussions on the relationship between the state and the nation. If the most minimal state requires a sense of national community to be justified, then do more left wing and socialist states require an even stronger base of nationality to justify their state action? As socialism seems to imply a social bond, and collectivism seems to presuppose the existence of a collective, it makes sense that this could be the case.
The Metaphysics of the Matador: Proportionality in Causation
By Jonathan Duffin
When discussing the value of a casual claim, proportionality ought to be a consideration. While certain claims may have undeniable truth value, they may still be too vague, specific, or misleading as to what the essence of the cause is.
Both “the matador’s cape caused the bull to charge” and “the matador’s crimson cape caused the bull to charge” are potentially true statements, however they seem to mislead regarding the precise cause of the bull’s charge. The former statement implies that a cape of any colour would cause the bull to charge, while the latter implies that only a crimson cape would cause the bull to charge. As it is the “redness” of the cape (or the crimson cape) which made the bull charge, then the proportional truth claim is that “the red cape caused the bull to charge.”
What this does not seem to consider, however, is that there are certainly scenarios whereby it is not unintuitive to make non proportional casual claims. The phrase “Bowen’s 90th minute left footed strike caused West Ham to win the game” does not seem to be a jarring or unintuitive statement and is perfectly reasonable and commonplace phrase in football commentary. Since any West Ham player, in any minute, with either foot, scoring would have won the game, this statement is not proportional. This leads us to question what specifically makes some non-proportional causal claims acceptable but others not. Perhaps it is something to do with something tacit such as the way people understand specific words or simply the fact that, across the world, people usually have a much stronger understanding of football than the art of bullfighting and the science behind it. It could also be the case that the phrase contains a proportional casual claim, but information about the timing, the player, and the foot used are simply examples of extraneous information.
It certainly seems to be the case that comparing different examples leads one to different conclusions regarding the importance of proportionality, and that the difference in importance of proportionality relates to how universally understood concepts are. This is evident in the context of food. If one were to say that “the bread made him full up,” it would be an implicit premise for most people that any food in large quantities would have filled the person up. If we take a vaguer claim such as “the raw meat made the woman ill,” it becomes clear that more specific information has utility. Hypochondriacs or vegetarians who know little about the subject may infer from this that any raw meat would make the woman ill, while chefs or doctors with more knowledge may regard this statement as vague to the point of it being rendered meaningless.
In summation, it is difficult to precisely understand which causal scenarios demand a proportional explanation, but a non-proportional explanation can be misleading or cumbersome in certain scenarios. Like many philosophical issues, the metaphysics of causation cannot be separated from the language we use to discuss these issues.