Deep thoughts for a weekend

Philosophy Now | Kant By Default

Here's a summary by the author of what his book is about:

The central question is whether morality can be understood apart from the outcomes we expect to ensue from our actions. ... The consequentialist says that whatever results, intended or not, decides the morality of what you did. This is why, for example, theft is morally wrong: the relative net results of theft are usually negative, that is, worse than not stealing. The nonconsequentialist demurs: theft could be wrong even if the relative net results were positive. And why is this? In other words, if not consequences, then what does make something right or wrong? The answer depends on which kind of nonconsequentialist one asks. A Divine Command Theorist would claim that God’s commandments make something right or wrong. A Kantian, such as myself, would claim that the criterion of morality, or ‘categorical imperative’, is whether anyone (including an animal) is treated merely as a means: if they are, then the action is wrong, and otherwise not. But whether it’s God or the categorical imperative that is calling the shots, the actual outcomes don’t affect the moral quality of the action. Thus, if following God’s commandment or avoiding treating someone merely as means led to a catastrophe, it would still be the right thing to do, according to these views.

He then says:

Laid out in that abstract fashion, one or the other of the opposing positions may strike the reader as compelling. I think that both are compelling for all of us, but at different times and to different degrees.

This is too deep for Saturday morning thoughts, but the switching between the two different views makes some sense, I think, even from a Catholic perspective which has to be (at the meta level) nonconsequentialist.

For example, sexual infidelity may be clearly immoral, but if you decide to have the affair anyway, surely the consequentialist argument that it is better to limit the possible negative consequences by using a condom makes sense.

The problem is, the Pope doesn't want anyone to sin, so he doesn't want to talk about preferable ways to sin. But really, I can't see the sense in not being a consequentialist as to the consequences of sin.

Looking forward to the day you can refuel the car at home

Producing hydrogen from urine

Interesting...

Israel sends subs through Suez Canal | Israel | Jerusalem Post

IDF sources said the decision to allow navy vessels to sail through the canal was made recently and was a definite "change of policy" within the service. In 2005, then OC Navy Adm. David Ben-Bashat decided to stop sending Israeli ships through the canal due to growing threats in the area.

However, the Dolphin-class submarine sailed through last month to get from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. Israeli officials said it passed through the canal above water, and that it was not done covertly.

That's the second biggest robot rat I've ever seen

Robot rescue "rat" feels its way through rubble - video

I like robots, I like rats, so put them together and I'm bound to be impressed. Well, more or less. (Needs more cuteness.)

Australian ex-pats killed

It's the tragic, and largely unknown, story of hundreds of Australians living in Nevada, of all places, being senselessly slaughtered in a raid in 2003.

Mind you, it appears many of them were being fed cow manure, probably completely without their knowledge, so maybe it was a blessing in disguise.

Reading recommendation

I have my doubts that Andrew Bolt goes off looking for rebuttal of climate skeptics' statements, but if he did, he should visit this one at Real Climate regarding Roger Pielke Snr's recent claims, to which AB was happy to link.

The truth about Al Franken

I get the feeling that the Weekly World News does not get the attention it deserves. People just get sick of too many poorly photoshopped "alien meets President" photos, I guess, and read The Onion for parody now instead.

But some of the writing still seems to me to be pretty funny, such as this piece (even if it does have a distinctly Colbert ring about it):

In a private ceremony involving robes and jasmine scented aromatherapy candles, Franken was sworn in as a Democrat with his right hand placed on the original hand-written Communist Manifesto, and standing atop a Bible. While waving olive branches, the assembled Democrats watched as Nancy Pelosi branded him with the words “Peace at Any Cost.”

Now Al Franken will have all the perks of the upper echelons of the Democratic Party. He will have access to the Democrat Library, which includes all the war plans of Jimmy Carter and the actual Kenyan birth certificate of Barack Obama. He also received a Democrat Decoder Ring, which also gives him a 20% discount at Pottery Barn.

As a Senator, Franken will now be instrumental to the Democratic Party. His presence grants them a filibuster-proof “Super-Majority.” Franken’s win in the Minnesota Courts places the Democrats even closer to pushing through strong reforms they’ve been looking forward, to like European-style Socialism, sex education in kindergarten and mandatory gay marriage.

When asked for comment, Franken said, “I’m glad that my presence will help turn America into what it needs to be: Europe.”

On a more serious note, the Christian Science Monitor points this out:

It's better for Democrats than 59. But a Senate supermajority didn't much help the last president to have one: Jimmy Carter.

Novel way to avoid Jehovah's Witnesses

Frogs found living in elephant dung

Convenient for the man, that is...

Gulfnews: Controversial marriage proves convenient option

In a misyar marriage, the wife willingly waives the rights to live with her husband in a house provided by him and to get alimony when they are divorced.

This marriage complies with the basic pillars of marriage in Sharia, said Mahmoud Ashour, a Muslim cleric at Al Azhar....

Historically, misyar was adopted as an option for men who travelled extensively.

Part of the problem

I know nothing about anthropologist Peter Sutton, who appeared on The 7.30 Report tonight discussing indigenous community problems. It was hard to avoid the impression that he has at least a little bit of guilt about the role he and his like-minded baby boomers played in encouraging remote area aborigines to not assimilate (oh, sorry, we don't say "assimilate" now, we say "modernise") which has led to the disastrous situations they find themselves in today. Here's a key section:

KERRY O'BRIEN: How have you changed your views in 40 years? How dramatically have you changed your views in 40 years?

PETER SUTTON: Quite dramatically because I was of that generation of people living in remote communities who aided and promoted and took part in things like decentralisation back to outstations in the bush, who promoted cultural traditionalism and supported it where they saw it, took on interest in it, recorded it, filmed it or whatever. And there was a sort of an army of baby boomers, really, who spread out across the outback from the late '60s onwards who I think played a fairly significant role, among other people of course, and I was one of those, that cadre of people who were involved in that. For us, culture was absolutely central, cultural preservation and preservation of knowledge of the bush and of places was absolutely central.

Now, I really think we have to start with three-year-old children, what's essential for them. If it works for them, that's the way to go. If it doesn't work for them, no matter how much it might be about keeping some cultural practice going, the practice needs to be questioned and people need to work out whether they're going to drop it or not.

By the way, do anthropologists like him only feel "safe" to espouse views which common sense conservatives have held for years when there is not a conservative government in power? (The reason being that they don't want to face the criticism of their mates that they are siding with something like the Howard government?) Just a theory...

Only works if everyone owns a mobile phone

Germany's Green Idea: Streetlights on Demand - TIME

Every night at 11 p.m. the village of Dörentrup in central Germany is thrown into total darkness. For the past few years, the village's cash-strapped local council has been switching off all the streetlights in the village each evening until 6 a.m. the following morning. In most places, a nightly blackout would provoke outrage as residents find themselves fumbling and stumbling their way home through the dark. But in Dörentrup, they have seen the light, with a new scheme that allows residents to turn on streetlights on demand — anytime, anywhere — using just their cell phones.

Sort of a neat energy saving idea, except my dislike of mobile phones means I don't like schemes that only work if you have one.

Helps explain vampires' longevity...

Biological 'Fountain Of Youth' Found In New World Bat Caves

More than you needed to know

Pedophiles, Hebephiles, and Ephebophiles, Oh My: Erotic Age Orientation: Scientific American

Well, Michael Jackson would presumably not be pleased to see that his death has led to a detailed discussion of pedophilia in Scientific American.

The column is by Jesse Bering, who is gay and tends to spend a lot of time writing on issues of sexuality, always with a gay sympathetic viewpoint, of course.

I for one did not know there were so many possible names for sexual interest in those of certain ages:

If Jackson did fall outside the norm in his “erotic age orientation”—and we may never know if he did—he was almost certainly what’s called a hebephile, a newly proposed diagnostic classification in which people display a sexual preference for children at the cusp of puberty, between the ages of, roughly, 11 to 14 years of age. Pedophiles, in contrast, show a sexual preference for clearly prepubescent children. There are also ephebophiles (from ephebos, meaning “one arrived at puberty” in Greek), who are mostly attracted to 15- to 16-year-olds; teleiophiles (from teleios, meaning, “full grown” in Greek), who prefer those 17 years of age or older); and even the very rare gerontophile (from gerontos, meaning “old man” in Greek), someone whose sexual preference is for the elderly. So although child sex offenders are often lumped into the single classification of pedophilia, biologically speaking it’s a rather complicated affair. Some have even proposed an additional subcategory of pedophilia, “infantophilia,” to distinguish those individuals most intensely attracted to children below six years of age.

The column is of interest, as it notes there is currently controversy in the psychiatric profession as to whether hebephilia should be counted as a medical disorder.

In that context it talks about one of those studies where the male subjects' sexual response to certain stimuli is tested by "phallometric testing":

Because this technique measures penile blood volume changes, it’s seen as being a fairly objective index of sexual arousal to what’s being shown on the screen—which, for those attracted to children and young adolescents, the participant might verbally deny being attracted to.

I don't know: this type of study has always sounded to me like it could have a very large "false positive" rate. At least for younger men, there's going to be some instances during the test of "increased blood volume changes" which are not necessarily related to the particular stimulus.

Anyway, according to the research:

...it’s possible to distinguish empirically between a “true pedophile” and a hebephile using this technique, in terms of the age ranges for which men exhibited their strongest arousal. They also conclude that, based on the findings from this study, hebephilia “is relatively common compared with other forms of erotic interest in children.”

Bering makes the point that it probably makes evolutionary sense that older men should have some attraction to pubescent teenage girls. Yet, he does admit that the reason some older gay men are attracted to teenage boys is harder to fathom.

Anyhow, some comments following the article think that Bering is setting up excuses for those with an interest in sex with youngsters. I don't think he necessarily is, even when he points out that it seems that society will forgive the artistic type for their sexual activities with youth more readily than they will if the guy is an unkempt lower class loser with the same interests.

All interesting reading, in any event.

UPDATE: readers wishing to conduct their own phallometric test are recommended to visit here.

Not convinced

Technology Review: Carbon Trading on the Cheap

This article about the inadequacies in the US carbon trading scheme (yet to pass the Senate) probably doesn't make any new points that haven't been canvassed elsewhere, but it's not a bad summary.

I remain somewhat puzzled as to why so many economists think it's a great idea when the system in its trial European version showed so many problems.

Yet everyone from John Quiggin, Harry Clarke and even Monbiot (sorry, no time to provide the links yet) have come out saying it's a good thing overall. Monbiot's attitude is perhaps the oddest, as he spends the first half of the article completely rubbishing its ineffectiveness.

Still, the attitude seems to be "it's better to have at least the bones of a system in place, it can always be improved in the future". In other words, they think it is good to have the gesture, even if everyone knows it won't make a real difference. But what is the evidence that such improvements will ever be politically "do-able".

I am not convinced at all. As the Technology Review article says:

Surveys of business leaders suggest that they will not seriously reconsider the way they use energy until the price of carbon exceeds 30 euros per ton. The late Dennis Anderson, a professor of energy and environmental studies at London's Imperial College, concluded in 2007 that significant change will come only when carbon prices "move to the upper end" of a range that he put at 40 to 80 euros per ton. Anderson estimated that the 40-euro threshold would have to be met to make onshore wind farms and nuclear power a better investment than natural-gas or coal-fired power plants, while prices would have to approach 80 euros to make carbon capture and storage worthwhile. Even higher prices would be needed to make solar and offshore wind economical.

Economists at the International Energy Agency have recently calculated that holding global warming to a reasonable level would require an annual investment of $1.1 trillion per year. And it would require a $200 per ton price on carbon, said the IEA, to drive the necessary innovation.

And the current price:

Global recession is now undermining the second phase of the trading system, which started last year. The European Union set the cap for the 2008-2012 period at 6.5 percent lower than the cap for the trial period. Trading volumes initially exploded, according to Point Carbon. But the rally proved short-lived. The EUA price slid to an average of just 11 euros in the first quarter of 2009, as manufacturing slowed in the face of the recession.

The faltering trading scheme may be doing real harm.

11 euros is about $15 US dollars.

I know the ability of the market to determine the price depending on economic circumstances is sold as a benefit. But it's a funny kind of market if you have to keep fiddling with how it works to get it to realistically reflect the price that is really needed to drive investment in new power production.

As I said, not convinced...

Newly revealed hazard

In an Online Opinion article today, which is mainly a complaint about Catholic attitudes towards the Gardasil vaccine, this interesting bit of information appears:

Research presented this month at the American Society of Clinical Oncology has confirmed that HPV-16 does not only cause cervical cancer. It also causes throat cancer in both men and women. This means that Gardasil may play an important role in preventing cancer in male populations.

Researchers led by Farshid Dayyani at the MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston, Texas, found that people who tested positive to HPV-16 were 58 times more likely to have throat cancer compared to those who had no history of having the virus.

Research has also shown that the virus is transmitted through fellatio and cunnilingus, and that both men and women who have performed oral sex on five or more partners (of either sex) are at a significantly higher risk of developing throat cancer. So much so, that they are considered to be at more risk than those who smoke or drink heavily.

I'm surprised I haven't read this elsewhere. I need to use Google alerts more, although it would be slightly embarrassing to set one up for the terms needed to catch this story.