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Relaunch of Multiple Realizations

Sad, but true. I started a blog and almost never used it.  I need a place to dump ideas, so I am re-launching this thing.  God help us all.

Hedonistic Utilitarianism and Ignorance: or the case of the molesting Hypnotist

In coversation I once posed the following case to some students of mine. I wasn't sure if it had any real philosophical significance, but I have increasingly come to think that there might be. The issues seem to be: 1) must I know that I have been harmed in order to actually be harmed? 2)Can there be moral value in my ignorance of harm?

Here is the case:

Mr NN is feeling sad, has aches and pains, and is geneally a drain on the sum of global well-being. Dr. HH is a hypnotist, and though no one else knows it also is a habitual molester of patients. Let us stipulate that the molestation leaves no trace except in the memory of HH because HH uses his perfect hypnotic abilities to supress any memory the patient might have. So, in a fit of despair, NN decides to try hypnotism, and visits HH. HH hypnotises NN, molests NN (significantly increasing HH's hapiness) and further leaves NN with severeal hypnotic suggestions: a) that he feels better, b) that hypnotism is working for him, c) that he should recommend that others try hypnotism, too, and d) that he should return soon for more treatment.

HH awakens NN who now feels great, leaves happily thinking hypnotism is great, and who goes on to recommend that other try hypnotism soon. HH is overcome with good feeling from molesting NN, and from the anticpation of NN's return along with the possibility of new clients coming in at NN's recommendation.

The hedonic lay of the land seems to be this: so long as HH gives no indication to his patients taht they have been fondled, and so long as the hypnotism relieves the suffering of NN and friends while successfully supressing their memories, a traditional henonistic utilitarianism will judge a world full of molesting hypnotists superior to a world without them.

Ordinary moral intuitions (and those of most students) seem to be at odds with this result. The information context (which ordinarily would not ordinarily seem to be relevant to moral evaluation) seems to be making the difference here. So, whats up?

APA Eastern Division Meetings: A.K.A. The Meat Market

I am recently back from what was probably the least pleasant APA Eastern meeting I have ever attended. Friends should note that I enjoyed catching up as usual. However, the fact that I spent most of the meeting fending off a stomach bug and conducting job interviews combined for a less than optimal couple of days. On the up side, I was able to catch up with a number of folks I knew from graduate school as it seems we were all hiring. There were at least 9 jobs this year with Memphis grads on the interview team. Not bad given that the program only started cranking out PhDs in 1995. The evening receptions were painful to the agaoraphobes among us--too many people in too small a room. But all is well that ends well--I'll know which when it ends.

Dinner and Derrida, or foody Foucault

How can you NOT read a restaurant review with the teaser tag:

"The non-testicular offal on the plate provided context for the gentle, white rooster's doodles"

And a passage like this:

"I am, after all, an English graduate. But that is the tragedy of it. For by the time I got to university, in 1988, books were no longer in fashion, and no matter how many books I read, the powers that were, the tutors, the examiners, did not want to hear about them.

They wanted to hear about Critical Theory. They wanted to hear about Marxist, Feminist, New Historicist, Cultural Materialist, Psychoanalytic, Structuralist and Post-Structuralist approaches to the critique of literature. But they did not want to hear about literature.

They wanted to hear about Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes, about Foucault, de Man, Althusser, Lacan, and the tools they brought to the reading of books. But they did not want to hear about books."

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