I have been hitting a string of cropper and semi-cropper books in touted new philosophy books recently. (Sorry, Little Bobby Sapolsky and determinist fanbois, "Determined" is not a philosophy book, being Not.Even.Wrong, based on a category mistake and more.)
The latest? "Catastrophe Ethics." As usual, what follows is an expanded version of my Goodreads review.
Catastrophe Ethics: How to Choose Well in a World of Tough Choices by Travis Rieder
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This book became fairly disappointing fairly early, contra the hopes I had from the title. In fact, reading backward, in a sense, at the end of the book, I realized the title itself was highly problematic. Even more is it problematic with the expanded review. Let’s start there.
One BIG problem? Nuclear weaponry is never discussed. Given the nuttery of US-Chinese saber-rattling, even to a new US nuclear strategic plan:
(T)he Biden administration has approved a highly classified nuclear strategic plan—the Nuclear Employment Guidance—that seeks to prepare the United States for possible coordinated nuclear challenges from Russia, China, and North Korea
failure to discuss this issue is ridiculous. Even atomic energy gets only mention in passing under climate change. And, the dirtiness of cobalt mining for batteries is discussed later; that of uranium mining is not. Beyond nuclear issues, looking at the weapons side, militarism in general is not discussed, other than a passing reference to threats to Ukrainian power plants by Russia. (Dimona, and the possibility of an Iranian missile hitting it, are not. And, I wonder if further political mindset is behind that. See below.)
Nor, even though we are emerging from a global pandemic and the author is a bioethicist, are pandemic catastrophe ethics discussed in detail. Drug addiction problems are touched on, scatteringly, throughout the book; the war on drugs and related issues are not. I just thought of this at the last chapter of the book, but realized that itself would probably knock it down a star.
And, that relates directly to the book’s title. And, since this is a book of matters philosophical, we’re going to get into linguistic philosophy. What IS a “catastrophe” to Rieder? We’re never given a clear definition, let alone a justification that one would expect to accompany such a definition. Another “missing example”? He talks about consumption behind climate change but never thinks about possibly including current capitalism in general as a catastrophe. Related? The ethics of the developing world wanting to live like the developed world and how that might affect climate change aren't discussed.
Now, Rieder might argue back that the book isn't intended to be comprehensive. If so, theoretically, he still owes an explainer on why he chose the particular catastrophes he did as illustrative. And, in actuality, we never get that.
His "puzzle," in his details, might be parsed and teased out differently if he used different, or more, disasters to background it.
Chapter 2? The big problem is scientific. Most scientists who are honest climate scientists and not neoliberals say that the degree of temperature change by 2100 will be at least 3C if not more. (Michael Mann is in Rieder’s bibliography but James Hansen is NOT. I have written about this in various ways, including some of the recent study in general and about Hansen vs Mann (and Katharine Hayhoe).) Indeed, per that first link, there's a good chance we hit 4C, and a non-negligible chance we hit 5C, by 2100. And, while I may be gone, if that's the case, there's good chance that Rieder himself, not his child, experiences 3C, and an outside chance of 3.5C, before he passes away.
Second problem is this is the first, but by no means the last place where he takes individual actions out of collective context. The “joyguzzler” inspires others; the philosophical argument that it’s not problematic becomes weaponized. And, minor harm is not the same as zero harm. And, here, as in chapter 9, there’s a self-conflict over not discussing virtue ethics more here, let alone going beyond the West in a search for philosophical ethics. He finally gets to this, on virtue ethics, in Chapter 11, but that then means we have poor writing and editing; this isn’t a murder mystery where head-faking is not only acceptable but encouraged. It’s logical argumentation. There’s another problem behind that, even more the case in Chapter 12 than in Chapter 11.
Chapter 3’s thoughts on public health did not follow from Chapter 2 on climate change or Chapter 3 on meat. The three have different ethical angles. There is no public health equivalent of “big polluter them” nor an equivalent of big ag’s stranded/marginal costs on factory farming.
Chapter 4 gets us on the beam of good philosophizing. For a chapter.
Chapter 5 is hit and miss. Rieder kind of pulls punches on the second horn of the Euthyphro dilemma, the horn of ethics existing outside of god. So, by not philosophizing about how that, in and of itself, is as wrong as the first horn, the larger picture is a bit short, because the left hand is Kantianism, to put that in more modern terms — command theory without the divine. He also misstates why the post-Peloponnesian War Athens put Socrates on trial. In blunt modern terms, Socrates was a traitor.
Chapter 6 nails “the myth of tolerance.”
Chapter 7: Contra Rosalind Hursthouse, with Rieder missing this? Her definition of virtue ethics by identifying virtuous people is circular. Otherwise, he comes down correctly that trolley problems are as much ethical trick as ethical reality. (And, this is why the r/philosophy subreddit is nutters.)
Chapter 8. Problems with Singer? First is the assumption that happiness is the maximum good, or even, in more stark presentations of Singer, the only good. Second, what is happiness? And, is the hedonistic calculus for measuring that calibrated to the moment? A short term after the moment? A longer term after the moment? I mean, if momentary, then Huxley’s Fordist government passing out soma is the height of good ethics. Doesn’t delve into the “nowhen” issue that parallels the “nowhere,” as in utilitarians cannot have a view from either nowhere or nowhen.
Part III
Chapter 9 His attempt to differentiate between “statistical harm” and “actual harm” seems cavilling. We use insurance actuarial tables to talk about harms all the time and nobody bifurcates them this way. To make this VERY personal given Rieder’s past, insurance actuarial tables will talk about the “statistical harms” caused by driving a motor vehicle while stoned on opioids. To go beyond that to physics? Statistical mechanics is exactly that. Doesn’t make it any less real. And, perhaps with protesting, we as a society accept actuarial norms — until, to riff back to climate change, “we” get bent out of shape when we’re in rural California or the Florida coast and our homeowner’s insurance skyrockets, if it gets renewed at all. Next, he seems to ignore virtue ethics on this issue, looking only at consequentialist and deontological stances. This seems a HUGE fail, and, unlike friend Massimo Pigliucci, I’m not in general a touter of virtue ethics. It’s weirder yet because his farmer friends in Chapter 11 are walking, talking virtue ethicists. Also, Walter Kaufmann, or thoughts similar to “Without Guilt and Justice,” are missing on other angles of individual vs collective justice. See here for a few thoughts on that book.
Chapter 10: Sex is not gender. So says me. So said the late Frans de Waal. So says biologist and philosopher Massimo Pigliucci. Outside of evolutionary biologists, so say some political leftists. This is also, in this case, a linguistic philosophy issue. As a public policy issue, that doesn't mean that both transsexual and transgender persons don't have certain civil rights. Whether they are 100 percent the same in 100 percent of issues? Possibly not.
On duty, obligation and intimacy, his riff on Maggie Little misses another point. We seemingly evolved biologically to be in maximum group sizes of 150. In the modern world, which is “controlling” on my “sphere of intimacy” — biological or cultural evolution? And, his use of Little misses that ensoulment personhood will simply reject this framing a priori. That’s not to say it’s wrong. It is to say that it relies on presuppositions that some would say are not in evidence. Third, claiming Little’s POV on abortion is “complex” medically or ethically is a reach, and it’s also PR, trying to “sell” this precisely because of alleged complexity, as I see it.
Next: No, “reasons” are not a small-granular unit of moral measurement. They MAY be, when purely moral, and later you seem to go back to that, but? You just admitted that reasons often have no moral attachment. There may be plenty of aesthetic good to getting fresh coffee; there is ZERO moral good unless I have some weird disease requiring coffee ingestion.
I agree with him on rejecting duty and obligation on many cases, at least within INDIVIDUALIST ethics. That, too, as well as rejecting Rawlsian liberal versions of political ethics, is something I learned from Kaufmann’s “Without Guilt and Justice.” See more below.
And, by this point, I realized I was sorry I recommended this book to Massimo Pigliucci and that, while it might not fall below three stars, it was quite unlikely to rise above it.
Chapter 11: Uses a farming husband and wife, neo-traditionalist farmers, as a “hook” for turning us back to virtue ethics and an intro to the next part. Not bad, but not failing to talk about the hook in advance is bad non-fiction writing. Also, re the purity ethic in Chapter 12? Are there issues with neo-traditionalist farming that he doesn’t discuss? As in, it’s an “out”? As in, the modern world couldn’t exist with only neo-traditionalist farms? As in, where do all of their customers get their money to pay its higher prices? To put it more bluntly, does this, like planting trees as alleged carbon offsets, act as a sort of environmental penance that doesn’t really do anything? Also, given conversation earlier in this book, would he protest, even raise his hackles, at such thought?
PART IV — finally, after bad editing in Chapter 2 and failing to put a “hook” in either it or Chapter 8 to point forward to Chapter 11.
Chapter 12: Problems with the purity ethic and its similarity to utilitarianism are good. But, there’s a larger problem that Rieder misses, and that’s a problem with **Western** philosophy. Confucianism, for example, has no problem talking about things that would be best called, in the taxonomy of Western ethics, “corporate duty” and “corporate obligation.” Virtue ethics to battle climate change just doesn’t get there. It doesn’t get there on other things. By not looking beyond the Western tradition, in essence, Reider is hamstrung. Also, by looking at duty and obligation as an on/off switch, rather than in terms of degrees, he's further hamstrung.
I have long thought that the three schools of ethics in Western philosophy fall short. And, this book sharpened that belief, in part because all three schools, while they talk about how an individual's actions affect others, still ultimately are about individualist ethics and nothing more. Virtue ethics is a good example. Aristotle focused on individual flourishing; Master Kung, on that of societal groups.
Let us not forget that the Western world did NOT “invent” philosophy. India’s Charvaka skeptics, for example, existed by or before the Greek pre-Socratics. The Ajnana started about the same time. Beyond the scope of my original review, I realize that, as I get older, this comes more and more forward in my mind. Unfortunately, even a decent-sized public library, while it might have books on the evolution of Hinduism and Buddhism, and maybe even Jainism, won't have books about Indian philosophy. The closest it will get is talking about Philostratus talking about Apollonius of Tyana visiting the "naked philosophers" of India.
Chapter 13: I think it’s too harsh to call Schopenhauer a cynic for his “antinatalist” views. Ditto on David Benatar, whom I’ve also read. Also, to riff on Schopenhauer and Benatar, there’s the question of whether one should stop with one child, whether one’s own progeny or adopted, or go on to a second once that bridge has been crossed, on the grounds that only children may be less happy. Or other things. At least Rieder eventually somewhat softens his view. The only good argument against antinatalism is a selfishly utilitarian one of that it minimizes the happiness of the currently living, especially in developed countries where social safety nets for senior citizens depend in part on youth paying in.
Chapter 14: Racism is horrible. It’s arguably not a catastrophe. See top of this review for more on that issue. And, per books like “Conspirituality,” there are plenty of people who can be environmentalist but racist. Look at the German Völkish movement for 20-30 years before Hitler. Given my note at top about actual or potential catastrophes with ethical issues that Rieder doesn’t discuss, this chapter was a cropper. I’m also NOT a fan of Kendi, among listed authors of Rieder.
Beyond that, as a good non-liberal leftist, talking about racism without talking about classism falls short. Related to that, beyond Western philosophy? The book in general is presented from a Western perspective. The exploitation of Congo over its cobalt is mentioned, but plenty of "developing" nations are exploited for plenty of resources not related to climate change. There's also, again, the issue of the ethics of developed nations saying, "do as we say, not as we did in the past," but offering insufficient help on that.
There’s other things not mentioned on the “participatory” issue. On political action, I assume Rieter is a good Democrat by some of his angles. I’ll venture that he even thinks third-party voters like me waste our votes on climate change. Or nuclear tensions in particular and militarism in general. He might concede this is personal purity ethics but would probably still reject it as good social participation.
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