Category: NHSEB Case Analyses

Case 7 of the 2018-2019 NHSEB nationals pool invites us to reflect on pet owners’ responsibilities and on when a shelter dog would be better off left unadopted.

Characters Frankie and Sam have a roughly equal ability (or inability) to care for a pet. While both are dog lovers, neither has much money for veterinary care, the best home, or much time to devote to dog walking or play.

Frankie decides to refrain, while Sam goes ahead and adopts. Frankie’s reasoning is that any dog he might take home would be better off in a shelter where it might be adopted by a better resourced owner or simply euthanized. (Frankie doesn’t explicitly say that a dog would be better off euthanized than living under his care, but that unadopted dogs are often put to sleep is an obvious implication, and therefore must be in play in Frankie’s reasoning.)

Sam’s reasoning is that even though the conditions at his house aren’t ideal (his landlord forbids pets in the house), his dog is better off with him than at the shelter.

Analyzing Frankie vs. Sam’s decision, and the implications for the ethics of pet adoption, could be broken down into two steps. Step 1: determining whether a dog’s interests are morally valuable.

From the Kantian perspective, dogs lack rationality, and therefore are not owed direct moral duties. That is, we needn’t treat dogs as ends in themselves – the standard Kant demands for creatures that do possess rationality, in light of their ability to self-govern, and obey moral rules for their own sake.

However, Kant clarified that this doesn’t mean we’re free to treat non-rational animals any way we please. This is because the way we treat Fido may influence the way we treat one another. A person who leaves a dog tied to a stump in their backyard, denying it affection, nutrition and medical care, may very well come to treat human beings in a similarly callous fashion. Therefore from Kant’s perspective we have indirect duties to be good to non-human animals, because the way we treat our pets shapes the way we treat our neighbors.

From the Utilitarian perspective, our moral obligations to dogs is direct. Given the fact that their nervous system is relevantly similar to our own, it’s reasonable to conclude that dogs feel pleasure and pain in the same way that we do. And since Utilitarianism is all about objectively maximizing net pleasure over pain, the impact of our actions on our pets’ pleasure/pain is just as important as the impact on humans’ pleasure/pain.

Further, I believe it was Tomas Regan who made the “center of a life” argument (in Taking Animals Seriously) that many animals are relevantly similar to us in that they constitute a distinct being living a distinct existence. They possess a distinct consciousness, a past, a future, desires, relationships, emotions – most of the stuff that would seem to make humans’ welfare worthy of moral concern. Therefore if we think the interests and welfare of humans is worthy of moral consideration, we should extend the same to nonhuman animals – both constitute “centers of a life.”

These three brief arguments don’t mean a dog’s interests outweigh or are necessarily equal to humans’. But they do mean your intuition that we can’t treat a dog as if it were a brick can be explained with argumentation.

Step 2: determining whether a dog would be better off in a shelter (and possibly euthanized) or adopted by a loving but under-resourced owner.

Here the answer would seem to turn on just how bad the conditions at the shelter are, whether it’s a “no-kill” shelter, and just how unprepared and unfit the owner in question is.

The case states that Sam feels badly that he can’t bring his dog inside due to his landlord’s restrictions, and that his dog “gets cold and wet sometimes” as a result. An important question is whether Sam lives in Miami or Minnesota, as well as whether his dog is a Chow (thick coat) or a Chihuahua (not so much).

Another is whether Sam’s dog has access to a partially wooded (shaded) acre with plenty of room to run, or to only a 10×10 concrete pad. Sam’s dog would also likely appreciate playmates (squirrels to chase or neighbor dogs to converse with… at 3 a.m.). And dog houses can be conditioned and comfortable, or glorified cages. Simply saying Sam’s dog is in “the backyard” doesn’t give us much insight, but these are the sorts of factors that would impact the dog’s welfare, and in turn the moral permissibility of Sam’s treatment.

Another important consideration is the dog’s age. Much like humans, sometimes ailments will crop up in adolescent years, but dogs usually require the most intensive (and expensive) medical care later in life. If Sam’s dog is between a year and five years old (assuming it’s a breed that usually lives a decade or more) and has shown no signs of disease, the need for vet care in the near future may be low. If it’s pushing fifteen, the vet will likely need to be visited often, and continuous medications for arthritis and other ailments may be necessary in order for the dog to remain relatively pain-free.

Further, if Sam has good reason to think he’ll be in a better position financially to care for his dog when he gets older, the risk he’s taking now that no emergency vet visits will be in order may be a fair gamble. This gamble is more defensible to the extent that shelter life would be miserable (some are nice; others pitiful), and to the extent that Sam has reason to think he’ll have more time for his dog in the near future.

So there ya go. The ethics of adopting a dog on a budget in two quick steps 🙂 There’s more to analyze, but hopefully this will point you in the right direction.

The best of luck to all teams competing at UNC this year, and special encouragement to the teams from Tennessee, DC, LA and Houston (this one was for you and your crew, Deric – enjoy nationals!).

Matt

As your team considers case #15, the temptation to cite the 2^nd Amendment, Supreme Court rulings, various laws and the like will be strong. Resist! Just because something is legal (or illegal) doesn’t make it moral (or immoral). You’re prepping for an ethics bowl, not a trial. So bring arguments grounded in logic, not legal precedent. But how?

While I usually discourage using the language of rights (too coarse, simplistic), I once argued that people enjoy a human right to keep and bear arms based on our basic interest in personal security combined with the state’s inability to guarantee it. People who only read that conference presentation’s title, “A Human Right to Keep and Bear Arms,” likely concluded I was a gun nut. However, those who attended learned that “arms” didn’t necessarily mean firearms, but simply defensive tools.

The argument went something like this: if humans have an interest in personal safety (and we do), and if no degree of police protection short of solitary confinement can guarantee our safety at all times (and it can’t), then so long as some people are prone to violently attack others (and they are), would-be victims will have an interest in reliable defensive tools – if nothing else, as a last resort. However, if self-defense is all we’re after, there’s little reason to think those tools have to be guns.

How about pepper sprays, or some new (even nastier, even more caustic) chemical propellant? Sprays wouldn’t work when it’s windy, or when you’re attacked in the sauna. So how about stun guns – handheld high voltage zapper thingies? Or tasers – the police officer’s go-to nonlethal tool – which shoot wire-bound probes and electrocute with the push of a button. Might these tools prove effective at fending off assailants in many circumstances?

Maybe so, but for better or worse, firearms have proven even more effective (a determined attacker might brush off a stun gun zap, but not a 12-gauge slug), can better handle multiple attackers (a taser can only subdue one assailant at a time, but a pistol can repel a dozen or more in trained hands), and are surely a more compelling deterrent. If there’s a chance I might get shocked if I assault someone, I’ll think twice. But if there’s a chance I might get killed, that’s a far more powerful reason to do something more peaceful.

At the same time, the current availability of firearms hasn’t put a stop to violent crime. In fact, in many cases guns unfortunately facilitate and amplify violent crime.

So an important question is whether guns’ heightened effectiveness at stopping and preventing violent crime outweighs the likelihood guns will be used to commit violent crime. Which leads to questions about how firearms might be regulated in ways that would retain their deterring and defensive benefits, but hinder their potential to cause harm. I’m of course considering rate-of-fire and magazine capacity restrictions. Bump stocks were recently banned because they could be easily used by novices to fire semi-auto rifles almost as quickly as fully-auto rifles (though with a severe drop off in accuracy). And some states have limited magazine capacity because while 10 or fewer shots *might* be needed to repel a home invasion, being able to fire 11 or more shots before reloading might primarily be useful to someone only interested in maximizing random innocent deaths.

This leads to another key question: whom, if anyone, should be allowed to own firearms? Everyone over 18? Over 21? Only current and ex-police? Only current and ex-military? Any citizen who’s passed a basic background check? Only those who’ve completed rigorous safety trainings and mental fitness exams? Even violent felons have a fundamental interest in personal security. But how do we balance a person’s interest in protecting themselves against their propensity for harming others?

Then there are questions of concealed carry, open carry, whether it’s legit for employers to prevent employees from keeping legally owned firearms in their personal vehicles on company property, whether citizens should be allowed to carry in establishments that sell alcohol (independent of whether they’re actually consuming alcohol).

Then there are pistol grips and folding stocks and bayonets. And inter-state transport questions, safe storage questions, and questions of civil and criminal liability. If someone steals my gun and commits a crime with it, should I be held liable? Applied ethicist Hugh LaFollette has argued yes, on grounds that this would give people very good reason to securely store their weapons. Want to really give your team an edge? Check out his argument for yourself here.

Lots of questions, none of which have quick and easy answers. Well, quick and easy answers are available, as a quick Google will show. But this is ethics bowl, where the judges aren’t interested in the NRA’s or the Brady Campaign’s talking points. They’re looking for well-thought-out views that directly address the question posed… which your team won’t know until it’s asked… But your team can (and should) develop a general position on firearms regulations which they can then mold at the bowl.

But whatever general direction your team takes the issue, make sure they appreciate, are taking into account, and are prepared to address contrary views. Single-minded hardheadedness may be rewarded in some circles, but ethics bowl is not one of them.

And if the other team brings up the 2^nd Amendment, or any law, for that matter, use it as an opportunity to highlight your team’s understanding of the distinction between legality and morality. Ethics bowl is primarily concerned with the latter.

P.S. If you and/or your team finds the firearms terminology intimidating, questions welcome (I’m not an expert, but know more about guns than the average ethics professor).

What if social media likes, follows and subscribers didn’t reflect a person or thing’s popularity, but their budget?

As NHSEB case 6 exposes, social media endorsements can easily be bought online. The motive is simple: the more Twitter followers, Facebook likes and YouTube subscribers, the more credible, trustworthy and cool a person, cause, party, or product appears to be. Nothing succeeds like success, and so it’s much easier to add followers when it appears that you already have followers.

However, paid social media endorsements dilute the value of all social media endorsements. We can see this, and why the practice might be unethical, by analyzing it from the perspective of Kant’s Categorical Imperative.

Kant’s CI sounds fancy (and kinda is), but can be simplified into two basic rules:

1. Only do stuff you could rationally endorse everyone else doing in similar circumstances
2. Always treat persons with respect, and never as mere tools

In applying rule #1, also known as Kant’s universalizability test, consider what the result would be if everyone paid people and bots to follow them and like their posts. If everyone did this, then the number of followers, likes or subscribers an account enjoyed would cease to impress.

Having 100k+ YouTube subscribers is only a good indicator that the channel is of high quality (or at least adds value for many people) because we assume the numbers represent actual humans who genuinely endorse and enjoy the videos released there. However, if everyone always paid for YouTube followers, we’d realize a channel’s subscriber count is not an indicator of its quality, and would have to find some other way to decide whether to invest the time to sample its content.

The same would be true for Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram and all social media platforms – followers, likes, subscribers etc. are only impressive because we assume they reflect actual popularity among actual non-paid humans.

Using Kant’s ethics to consider the implications of universalizing the purchase of social media popularity clarifies why doing so would undermine the intent of those who currently do it. When people buy likes, they want to come off as more popular than they actually are. But since they couldn’t endorse everyone doing this (for if everyone did it, they’d get no benefit by doing it themselves), social media influence buying can’t pass Kant’s universalizability test, and is therefore unethical, at least from the perspective of Kantian Ethics. Analyses from other ethical angles may generate a different result.

And by the way, for an ethics video or two, check out my YouTube channel, YouTube.com/MattDeatonPhD. As far as I know, all 338 subscribers are actual unpaid humans 🙂

According to case #12, software sometimes commits some pretty cringeworthy errors, such as Google tagging photos of African-Americans as gorillas (yikes…), or “airport body scanners flagging transgender bodies as threats” (double yikes…), or translation software replacing intentionally gender-neutral terms with gender-specific terms.

One pragmatic reason for programmers to correct and prevent such mistakes is that if customers can’t trust their software, they’ll buy and use software that they can.

But apart from the financial incentive, there’s also a moral obligation to correct such errors to the extent they cause vulnerable groups undeserved, avoidable harm.

Tagging African-Americas as gorillas triggers our moral radar not only because it’s a gross program error, but because African-Americans are sometimes demeaned as sub-human, and the program mistake exposes and deepens that wound. While one person might laugh it off, another might find it devastating.

In the case of the body scanner flagging a transgender person as a threat, I can only imagine the embarrassment this could cause, especially if the machine set off alarms or otherwise caused a scene. Whether we can fully understand why a person would want to modify their bodies in a gender altering way, basic decency suggests tweaks to the scanners and discreet handling of alarms. Hopefully a transgender person being screened in the name of passenger safety could overlook the inconvenience if it’s carried out tactfully, and especially if software improvements are underway.

And in the case of translation software replacing gender-neutral terms with gender-specific terms, if an author has gone to the trouble to gender neutralize their writing, translation software that misses that nuance would seem not only bad (translations are useful only to the extent they precisely convey author intent), but callous to the plight of people who reject gender assignment. Some people’s dignity turns on not being labeled he or she, and respecting that request seems easy and harmless enough. Even easier and more harmless — respecting the intent of authors who go to the trouble to use gender-neutral language.

Ultimately, appreciating the argument above requires some degree of sensitivity to and empathy with the plight of the impacted groups. As a straight, white male, I can only imagine how these errors could ruin a person’s week. But when I do imagine, I see a transgender teenager, or an elderly black man, or any already vulnerable person suffering an unnecessary, avoidable harm. I think about how a person could feel alienated and discounted already, and how these errors could compound their suffering. If the happiness of persons matters, it seems pretty clear programmers should go to the trouble to root out errors like those mentioned in case #12, and to take steps to prevent them in the first place.

Case 8 considers whether scientists should bring back extinct species, which could range from tyrannical T-Rexes to docile dodo birds. The techniques aren’t quite there, but are getting better. Should de-extinction experiments continue, and when a breakthrough inevitably occurs, should there be any limits on whether, in which cases or how de-extinction is used?

Here’s some guest analysis from my 10-year-old son, Justin.

“You should not bring back species from the past. As it states in the passage, ‘Many factors brought about the extinction of a given species, why should we intervene artificially to reverse the procedure?’ If you focused on just bringing them back, then it would cause problems such as throwing off the ecosystem. Also, the bucardo was revived, but only for a few seconds. It then died because of organ failure. So the science isn’t very effective.

I believe that they are just spending many thousands of dollars on trying to bring back extinct species. When you would have to bring back two, and if you were very serious about the bucardo being a thriving species, then you would probably have to set up hundreds of facilities all around of America.

So instead you should save the endangered instead of bringing back the extinct. Comment if you agree or disagree and why.”

Thank you, Justin! It sounds like you’re most concerned about resources being spent on something that may or may not work, which might be better spent saving endangered species before they’re gone.

What are your or your team’s thoughts on this case? To comment, click the article title, scroll down towards the bottom, and submit. Justin appreciates and looks forward to your ideas.

Randy notices 7-year-old Lisa dominating at the chess table. However, it’s quickly apparent that she’s no prodigy, but a hustler – moving pieces when no one is looking, making up rules to her advantage, and as a result winning the adulation of adult spectators unfamiliar with the game. He wonders whether to intervene, and if so, how.

On the one hand, no money is at stake, and Randy doesn’t know anyone at this community picnic. It’s not like Lisa’s his niece or it’s his own children being unfairly beaten. On the other hand, there at least three things wrong with what’s happening.

First the losing kids are probably getting their feelings hurt. Some may be able to brush it off, but others may be in tears. We don’t know from the case details, but to the extent Lisa’s victims are visibly distraught, this would give Randy reason to say something.

Second, the longer Lisa gets away with her trickery, the more likely she’ll develop a deceptive, cheating personality, which may lead her to inflict future harms. Chess cheating today could lead to investment fraud tomorrow… Yet an effective correction could prove a pivotal moment in the development of a legendarily virtuous character – “Lisa the Just,” the philosophers would call her…

And third, not only are the kids being tricked, but so are the spectators. They wouldn’t praise Lisa if they knew she was cheating, and so are being deceived in a way that’s probably amplifying the embarrassment of the losers, as well as reinforcing Lisa’s propensity to deceive in the future.

Something should be done, and since Randy is the only person there besides Lisa who truly understands chess, he’s the guy to do it. But what?

Given that Lisa is only 7, his approach needs to be gentle. Were Lisa 30, Randy could be more direct. A 30-year-old could better handle directness emotionally, and even if they couldn’t, would be more blameworthy for their actions. Our capacities for reflection and moral reasoning aren’t fully developed when we’re young – this is why we have a juvenile criminal justice system with less harsh punishments for offenders under 18. Lisa has some understanding that what she’s doing is wrong. But at 7, she’s less sensitive to the impact of her actions on her peers, doesn’t fully appreciate why deception is wrong, or comprehend how her actions today will mold her character of tomorrow.

So Randy might simply say, “I’m sorry young lady, but a player only has to say ‘check’ when they’re attacking their opponent’s king. Being aware of whether your queen is in danger is each player’s responsibility – no verbal warning required.”

Or, “Wasn’t it the case that this rook was actually on this square? The wind must have slid it over.”

Randy might even use the opportunity to coach. Lisa obviously has the interest and some skill, and would probably prefer to win legitimately if she could.

“Might I suggest castling? Oh, you don’t know how to castle? Here, let me show you – this move helps protect your king, and frees your rook to go on the offensive.”

Whether Lisa is receptive to any of this will likely depend on the reasons driving her behavior. Maybe an older sibling tends to cheat her at the chess table, and she’s simply modeling their behavior. Or maybe the innocent-looking kids she’s beating were bullying her earlier, and she’s simply putting them in their place.

But whatever her motives, and whatever her response, something needs to be done, and the power disparity between Randy and Lisa (plus the fact that he’s a stranger) rule out a heavy-handed approach. Were his attempts to mold her in a more honest direction ineffective, Randy might consider consoling the kids she’s defeating, or offering to coach them.

Amy and Bob plan a family. Bob dies. Amy asks doctors to extract and freeze Bob’s sperm.

Now Amy wants to use Bob’s sperm to conceive. Should she?

Such is the core question of case #15, just in time for Halloween.

One way to help your ethics bowl team think through cases where their moral intuitions are fuzzy is to consider similar cases where their moral intuitions are more clear.

What if rather than Bob’s sperm, Amy wanted one of his kidneys?

Were we considering whether Amy should be allowed to harvest one of Bob’s kidneys, we’d probably ask whether Bob signed an organ donor card, whether he’d ever expressed an interest in giving a kidney to Amy, and whether he’d made any concrete plans to carry out a transplant.

Were the answer to all three questions no, we’d probably deny Amy’s request. Sending Bob’s kidneys to the grave would in many ways a waste (he’s not using it anymore…), but our shared commitment to respecting one another’s bodily integrity usually continues even after death.

Were the answer to the first question yes but the second and third no, we’d either say Bob’s kidneys should go to whomever happened to be at the top of the organ transplant list, or that available organs should go to loved ones before strangers.

But to the extent that Bob had expressed an intent to donate a kidney to Amy in particular, and especially to the extent that he’d scheduled a transplant and taken steps to carry it out, we’d be more inclined to endorse doctors going ahead and transplanting one of his kidneys out of his dead body and into hers, even if he didn’t explicitly say this would be OK.

Your team might see this as reason to immediately approve Amy’s request to use Bob’s sperm to conceive. “They’d made plans to have a family, and even (say, for the sake of argument) bought a five bedroom home to make room for their kids. Just like it would be OK to take the kidney had plans been made and acted on pre-death, it would similarly be OK for Amy to take Bob’s sperm, right?”

However, a kidney has little value outside an organ system, and outside a person. But a sperm cell – a sperm cell can be conjoined with an egg to generate a completely new DNA sequence, which, if healthy and nurtured, will eventually become a full person. This seems a morally relevant difference requiring additional analysis.

What if Amy and Bob conceived only hours before Bob’s death?

Were we considering whether it would be permissible for Amy to carry full term had she been impregnated by Bob shortly before his death, we’d probably worry that she might struggle without Bob by her side, lament the tragedy that their child would never know their biological father, and worry about both Amy’s and the eventual child’s quality of life.

But we wouldn’t argue that Amy should have an abortion simply because Bob died. Bob dying might give Amy reason to consider an abortion, and were she to pursue one, regardless of our overall views on abortion ethics, we might say her actions are understandable, excusable, or even just.

But this is different from making a positive argument that Amy would somehow owe it to Bob to have an abortion. Were Bob to engage in presumably consensual sex before dying, allowing the resulting entity to grow and develop in Amy’s womb wouldn’t seem to violate any direct obligations she might have to respect his wishes. His consent to have sex would seem to imply a consent to also procreate, especially if no contraceptive measures were taken.

What if rather than his wife Amy, a stranger wanted to use Bob’s sperm?

In another illuminating twist, imagine that Sue sees Amy’s quest to conceive using Bob’s sperm on TV, and decides that if the doctors have sperm to spare, she’d like to birth Bob’s baby as well.

We’d say no, and we’d say no because whether, when and with whom we procreate is an intimate decision left to each individual to decide for themselves. We entertain Amy’s interest in conceiving due to her previous relationship with Bob, and Bob’s apparent desire and plans to have a child with her.

But Bob never even met Sue. We wouldn’t endorse Sue taking Bob’s sperm without his consent while he was alive. And we’re not going to endorse it after he’s dead, either. In fact, we’d protect Bob’s post-death sperm even more vehemently than his post-death kidneys.

The Primacy of Consent

Thinking through alternative scenarios like these should help your team realize the importance of consent in this case.

With the first alternative scenario, we concluded that whether Bob’s kidneys could be permissibly transplanted into Amy turned primarily on whether a) he’d signed up for organ donation, and b) whether he’d expressed interest in and made plans to donate a kidney to Amy in particular.

In the second alternative scenario, we concluded that if Amy conceived before Bob’s death, it would be fully permissible for her to birth and raise Bob’s child, even if Bob had never indicated this would be OK. The reason? In that case Bob would have voluntarily donated his sperm via consensual sex.

And in the third alternative scenario, we concluded that Sue, a stranger, had no moral claim to Bob’s sperm. Whether, when and with whom we procreate is a protected decision we allow people to make completely on their own. The reason we’re considering allowing Amy to use Bob’s sperm post-death is that Bob had planned to have kids with her. Without that connection to Bob’s plans and consent, Amy would have no standing.

We now know how to focus our analysis.

• “What can we reasonably say about what Bob’s wishes would have been if he could have foreseen his death?”
• “Would he have wanted to produce children with Amy regardless of whether he would have been around to help raise them?”

To the extent it’s reasonable to conclude Bob would have endorsed Amy using his sperm to procreate without him, doing so would seem permissible. But to the extent that it’s not reasonable to conclude as much, using his sperm would not be permissible.

What About the Family?

The case mentions that Bob’s broader family is uneasy about Amy’s desire to use his sperm post-death. But this just seems a distraction. If they have evidence that Bob wouldn’t want this (a note, recollection of a conversation, something on videotape), that would be relevant. But just because aunts and uncles might be creeped out isn’t reason enough to override whatever we’re able to conclude about what Bob himself would have wanted.

To see this, just ask how important it would have been for Bob to have received his family’s blessing before having kids with Amy had he lived. He’d of course have some obligation to consult with them, and all else equal, having the family on board is better than not. But it’s up to couples to decide whether to procreate on their own.

Bonus Scenario If You Dare!

What if Amy had become pregnant right before Bob died, but accidentally? Say they were in agreement on the desire to eventually have kids, and were in agreement on having sex, but on that day were using various contraceptives?

Contraceptive use is relevant because it suggests at that Bob did not fully consent to conceiving – that he was taking active steps to prevent it, in fact. However, he did consent to an activity he knew could lead to conception… Might the consent to have sex genuinely imply a consent to procreate?

A tough question, with implications for abortion ethics in particular. Were I writing bowl questions, this is exactly the sort I’d ask in a later round!