“The Ethicist”

Another Ethics Quizworthy Query To “The Ethicist”: The Dying Man’s Secret

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

My mind’s made up on this one, and I disagree with “The Ethicist’s” answer, but I have a strong bias, and I want to see what EA readers think. “Name Withheld,” who for some reasons sends The Ethicist (Kwame Anthony Appiah) a lot of questions, asked in part,

I am 76 and have lived a full and interesting life. My doctor recently gave me the news that the cancer I was treated for last year has returned and metastasized. I have started a course of immunotherapy treatments that, hopefully, should keep the cancer at bay for roughly the next two years.

I have not told my wife, my son or any of my friends about this. I don’t want to have to endure two years of pity. I would rather enjoy life with everyone as I have always done — and then break the news only when the time comes….Am I wrong to keep this from the people I love?

The Ethicist replies that he is wrong. “By depriving your loved ones of the facts, you deprive them of the chance to face the future together with you,” he concludes. “Because your diagnosis affects their lives as well, I hope you’ll let them come to terms with this important truth.”

Your Ethics Alarms Labor Day Weekend Ethics Quiz is…

Is “The Ethicist” right?

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My Answer To “Name Withheld’s” Question To “The Ethicist”: “Tell Sis To Shut The Hell Up!” Yours?

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

An inquirer to “The Ethicist,” Kwame Anthony Appiah, asked this week:

“A year ago, I was told I had a form of ovarian cancer and was given two to three years to live — five years, if I’m in the top quartile of patients. I nursed my husband through metastatic lung cancer for 15 months. It was horrific; I am hoping that God takes me early. My sister, whom I love very much, is part of a fundamentalist Christian church and is one of their top “prayer warriors.” As such, she calls me nearly every day and launches into long prayers asking God to send my cancer to the “foot of the cross.” She implores me to pray with her and says that if I just believe that God will cure me, he will.I grew up Catholic and have fallen away from the church. I believe God is bigger than what we can understand as human beings. I am a data-driven health care practitioner: I believe that everybody has to die of something, and this happens to be my fate. I’ve told her as tactfully as I can that her praying for me and expecting me to pray with her for my cure is upsetting to me. It makes me feel that if there is a God, he must really hate me; otherwise, he would have cured me. (She says that he wants to use me as a “messenger” to others and that it’s the Devil, not God, who gave this disease to me.)…

“What do I say to my sister without belittling her beliefs? I’ve told her that if she wants to pray for me, I would rather she do it on her own time and not ask me to participate. But she is persistent, thinking that she’s going to “save my soul” and my body at the same time. She disputes every reason that I give her and insists that what she is doing is helpful. But it’s not helpful; it sends me into a terrible depression.”

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“No Questions Asked” Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Kwame Anthony Appiah, the long-running most recent occupant of the NYT’s “Ethicist” throne, received what I initially thought was one of the dumbest inquiries ever last week. After thinking about it, I decided that it was a good ethics quiz after all.

A man’s son had his mountain bike stolen, and the father issued a notice that there would be a $500 reward for its return, “No questions asked.” The tale continued,

“To my surprise, I got a response from someone, and we set a time to meet. Then I became worried that I was being set up to be robbed. So I called my son. Next thing I knew there were six hulking 20-somethings tagging along with me in my minivan. At the agreed-upon meeting spot, the guy appeared with my bike in hand. …while I’m looking the bike over, they said, in no uncertain terms, that it was not necessary for me to pay for the bike. The guy looked scared, and I wanted things to end safely, so I peeled off half the stack. “How about $250?” The guy took the money and ran off.” 

The inquirer asked the Ethicist whether he did the right thing, since it was obvious to all present that the guy was the thief. Should the father have instead paid the whole promised amount, or nothing at all?

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A.I. Ethics Updates

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

1. Apparently Alexa and its ilk are causing heartburn among legal scholars. How should conversations over-heard by virtual assistants be treated when they are offered as evidence in court? Among the analogies that are being run up the metaphorical flagpole is a comparison with …parrots, as an eavesdropper who can accurately repeats information it overheard but was not expected to disclose. Courts have refused to admit testimony by parrots. In one case, a parrot named Max repeatedly cried out, “Richard, no, no, no!” after the murder of his owner. The defense attorney in the case wanted to have this evidence admitted the accused murder’s name was Gary. The attorney argued, unsuccessfully, that the “testimony” was not hearsay, but rather like a recording device. Despite expert testimony that that breed of parrot had the ability to accurately repeat statements, the evidence was excluded.
In another case, Bud the Parrot, began incessantly repeating, “Don’t fucking
shoot!” after one of his owners shot the other.

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Signature Significance And The Julie Principle Confront “The Ethicist”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Kwame Anthony Appiah, “The Ethicist” of the New York Times Magazine, doesn’t read Ethics Alarms so he isn’t conversant in two core EA concepts: signature significance, the fact that a single example of conduct can be enough to make a definitive judgment about an individual’s unethical nature, and The Julie Principle, which holds that once you recognize an individual’s flaws, you can accept them and continue the relationship, or use them to decide the individual is too flawed to tolerate, but it is pointless to keep complaining about them.A question from a disillusioned wife this week raised both, and “The Ethicist” acquitted himself well without directly acknowledging either.

“Theresa” revealed that her husband had tossed a banana peel out the passenger’s side window while she was driving on a highway. She protested, emphasizing her objection to littering and his setting a bad example for their 13-year-old in the back seat. He rationalized that the banana peel would “biodegrade”,“ and as if that wasn’t lame enough, defaulted to “I’m an adult, so I’ll do as I want.” After the incident, “Theresa” showed him an article about the dangers of throwing garbage on the street, plus a copy of the Massachusetts law declaring his conduct illegal. Her husband responded with, “Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?”

“He refuses to acknowledge that he made a mistake or change his behavior,” “The Ethicist’s” inquirer wrote, adding that the deadlock on the issue is making her question her marriage.

At the outset, I have to agree that the episode might make me question the character of someone I had just met—not merely question it, in fact, but perhaps make a confident diagnosis: this guy is an asshole, and the sequence is signature significance. The only feature of the story that possibly rescues it from being signature significance is that it can be broken down into components:

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Exhibit A On Why “They/Them” Preferred Pronouns Must Be Mocked And Rejected Rather Than Respected

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

Here is a really weird question posed to “The Ethicist,” offered not for the issue raised (which is not exactly a tough one) but for the manner in which it is presented. The bolding is mine:

When my father died, my family took photos of his body before he was cremated. The photos were of him at home, peaceful in bed; my mother wanted to tenderly remember him both in life and in his death. My partner at the time uploaded these photos to their computer, storing these and other images in their cloud server as we archived memories from the trip home to say goodbye to my father.

One evening later that year, my then-partner pulled up the photos and did a slide show of our trip for their family. When my partner got to the images of my father’s dead body, they went through every image instead of skipping over them. It was immensely painful, compounded by the fact that my father is a Black man and these images were being shown to an affluent white family. The race and class dynamics here were staggering — it felt as if this white family was viewing these images as entertainment. This was among the incidents that triggered my ending the relationship; my ex didn’t quite understand why this was inappropriate or painful.

As we were breaking up, I asked that they erase the images from their drive. Since that time, they’ve made a million excuses as to why they can’t erase the images — the drive is in storage, they’ve moved, etc. It’s now been nearly six years. Still, I am deeply disturbed by the lack of control I have over these images. Currently my ex lives in the U.K., and I live in the U.S. What is the correct course of action here? Do I let it go? Seek legal action? My great fear is that these images will circulate into the future without my or my family’s consent. — Name Withheld

Language is supposed to communicate, not be distorted to satisfy narcissistic eccentricities and grandstanding. Who or what “moved,” the ex-, her family, or the photos? The account is absurdly ambiguous, although if you pause long enough along the way and think hard, you probably can figure it out—except that human communication is not supposed to be like Rubik’s Cube.

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“The Ethicist” On Allowing Your Kids To Associate With The Children Of Crooks [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

One of the downsides of only getting the digital version of the New York Times (because I no longer could justify sending such an unethical and nation-damaging publication almost a hundred bucks a month) is that I don’t keep up with “The Ethicist,” aka Kwame Anthony Appiah, as well as I did when the Times Magazine was always available in our bathroom. A recent catch-up session revealed a lot of interesting topics posed by “The Ethicist’s” readers, as well as some that shouldn’t require an ethicist to figure out ( “Is It OK to Let My Relatives Think Their Dead Sister Is Still Alive?”).

At the end of January, a mother asked whether she should have let her children go to a sleepover at a new classmate’s home after she discovered that the parents  “are now infamous for their unscrupulous and callous illegal business dealings that ultimately led to a multimillion-dollar settlement with our city government.” The mother was concerned about punishing the couple’s children for their parents’ misdeeds. “Should we let the children hang out?” she asks. “How much do we share with our own child, who is old enough to understand why their behavior is unacceptable?”

As usual the ethics teacher goes into great detail examining all pros and cons, writing things like, “Your duties to your own child do take precedence over your concerns for the children of others. In the philosophical literature on “partiality” — the special concern we have toward those with whom we have special relationships — some have argued that it’s morally permissible to give your own children priority. In my view, it isn’t merely permissible; it’s morally obligatory. What you owe to your child is not the same as what you owe to just any child.” Continue reading →

“The Ethicist” Had A Long Answer To This Question. I Have A Short One…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Kwame Anthony Appiah, the New York Time’s advice column ethicist who really is an ethicist, was atsked with this query from “Name Withheld”:

I am a Black woman and I signed up as a mentor for a law-student-mentoring program at my alma mater. I made a request for a Black mentee, but I was paired with a white woman. Now I’m second-guessing participating in the program. Black attorneys make up less than 5 percent of all attorneys and continue to face horrific experiences in law school and in the legal community.

This is whom I envisioned myself supporting when I registered for the program as a recent graduate. I imagined deep conversations about law professors and law-firm culture, and sharing how I’ve learned to navigate them as a Black woman. Not only will these conversations not apply to my mentee the same way, but I can’t help wondering if assisting them will ultimately contribute to my own oppression.

There are so many factors in her favor that I don’t really want to help give her even more of a leg up in my free time. On the other hand, I don’t have anything against her, and law school is universally scary during the first year. Should I be thinking about this differently? Is it wrong to bow out?

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“The Ethicist” On When Revealing Someone Else’s Secret Is An Ethical Obligation

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The latest installment of the Times Magazine advice column “The Ethicist” includes Prof. Appiah’s responses to two inquiries involving people, as they used to say, “sticking their noses into other people’s business” and revealing secret that could have a devastating emotional and practical impact on the party being enlightened. This issue comes up in the column frequently, and it has been discussed in Ethics Alarms as well, often under the categories “the duty to warn,” “the duty to fix the problem,” and most of all, “The Golden Rule.” Oddly, the latter provides the easiest and clearest route to both of the answers Appiah provides in the column, and yet he doesn’t mention it or allude to it anywhere.

I find that strange.

The first inquiry involves a man who discovered that his older brother was adopted but still doesn’t know it. His elderly parents, “not long for this world,” still adamantly refuse to tell him. “Do I have any obligation to tell my brother what I have learned about his life so he can learn more?,” asks “Name Withheld.”

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Why Aren’t People Ashamed To Ask A Question Like This?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

invasion-of-the-body-snatchers-1978--470-75

Kwame Anthony Appiah, aka. “The Ethicist,” received this question three weeks ago. He answered correctly and excessively nicely, as I would expect him to, but my concern is with the question and the questioner. “E.K.” asked,

“My husband and I employ a local dog walker….She is an excellent dog walker: reliable, responsible and kind. A friend told me that throughout the fall and after the presidential election, she frequently posted rants on Facebook about liberals and immigrants, pro-Trump messages and falsehoods about how the election was stolen. We are disgusted by the postings and now wonder if we should use her again. On the one hand, we respect people’s right to their opinions and appreciate the good service she provided. On the other, we do not want our money to go to someone who supports viewpoints that we believe are hurtful and detrimental to our democracy.“

This is why I’m not an advice columnist, I guess. Here is how I would have answered that question:

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