The 152nd meeting of the Creighton Club

The 152nd meeting of the Creighton Club yesterday was quite a smorgasbord: there were presentations on metaphysics, epistemology, ethical theory, and applied ethics by grad students, junior faculty presentations, senior faculty, men and women (well, woman).

My colleague Joshua Spencer spoke on properties of "parts" of extended simples, Neil Feit of SUNY Fredonia spoke on the property theory of the attitudes, the charming Ishani Maitra spoke on an interesting new proposal (developed with Daniel Nolan) on testimony, David Hershenov of SUNY Buffalo spoke on harm to the deceased, and keynote speaker Jeff McMahan spoke on the moral equality of combatants.

One interesting "theme", and I don't know what if anything to make of this, was that of death and non-being. Neil Feit's talk on the property theory of the attitudes focused on selfless desires, in particular, the desire that one not exist or the preference for a world in which one does not exist but others are better off. This can be a very rational desire: if one of my kids needed an organ I couldn't live without I would long to die to give it to them. But there is a puzzle about the content of such a desire and whether it is possibly satisfied.

Neil seemed to think that the desire was such as to be possibly satisfied, but that certain theories prevented this because the subject doesn't exist in world in which the satisfaction conditions obtain. It doesn't seem to me that it is a desire which can possibly be satisfied and the possibility of the conditions obtaining is just a separate matter. The subject expresses just expresses a higher assignment of intrinsic value to one set of worlds rather than another. Desires aim at some good and the selfless preference expresses an axiology of classes of worlds.

Similarly, David Hershenov replied on behalf of the old Epicurean line that we shouldn't fear death because "where I am, death is not, and where death is, I am not." He and Ben Bradley sparred (in a very friendly way) over whether we could assign well-being to non-existent individuals. David thought that even assigning zero well-being was "incoherent" since the subject doesn't exist. This seems wrong to me because zero is a very special number. The statement that there the number of unicorns is 0 does not entail the existence of any unicorns.

Suppose I design a which counts as follows: if S is a state of A's well-being, add 1. When its done counting it returns a value of 0. None of this assumes the existence of A. There's no untoward ontological commitment here, any more than a return of 0 on a count of unicorns.

Jeff surveyed a series of arguments for the legitimacy of lethal force against non-combatants. I recurring puzzle was how often it is accepted that normal principles of morality just vanish in the context of war. In non-war contexts, if I go to exercise prior restraint against a threatening individual my actions do not grant that person the *right* to still try to kill me, but in war there is often an assumption that by going to war I sort submit to being a target. This is but one of many cases where normal principles of morality--especially regarding "collateral damage"--seem to be suspended in war, even by those treating the morality of war.