John Protevi's Blog

Swinburne and his "disability" claim

This piece, entitled "Homophobia and the Limits of Scientific Philosophy" by Martin Pleitz is a fine paper on Swinburne's "disability" claim.

It's relevant, because if Swinburne had stuck to a claim about the immorality of homosexuality, none of this controversy would have happened. My sense of the sociology of the profession is that a great number of philosophers would a) have never heard of it, or b) if they did hear of it they would have shrugged it off as "dog bites man" level stuff, or c) they would have thought that there are resources within Christian moral philosophy to combat the claim, and if pressed, would have expressed solidarity with those using those resources to combat Swinburne's claim. 

But, once it became known that "disability" language was being used, then anger and obscenity were among the reactions. FWIW, I'm in favor of obscenity directed at people using "disability" in the manner in which Swinburne uses it. But if in addition you want a cold dissection of the claim, Pleitz's paper is a good start: 

Some excerpts from Pleitz's paper:

Abstract: To criticize Richard Swinburne’s recent argument for the thesis that homosexuality is a disability that should be prevented and cured, I show that it rests on implausible premises about the concepts of love and of disability, and that the endorsement of its conclusion would lead to grave consequences for homosexuals. I conclude that Swinburne in his argument against homosexuality has moved beyond the limits of scientific philosophy, and into the realm of homophobia.

1 Introduction
Richard Swinburne argues for the thesis that homosexuality is a disability that should be prevented and cured where possible (R 303ff.). The purpose of my talk is to criticize this argument against homosexuality. After giving you an outline of Swinburne’s argument, I will criticize its premises, concentrating on the concepts of love and disability (section 2). In a second step, I will outline some negative consequences for homosexuals living in Western societies that would emerge if the conclusion was widely accepted (section 3). After this discussion of homosexuality, I will change the stance and apply the sociological concept of homophobia to Swinburne’s text (section 4). 

My presentation will be different in character from the other contributions at this conference. At Münstersche Vorlesungen, we usually try to offer internal and mostly constructive criticism to our guest philosopher. My criticism of Swinburne’s arguments will be neither internal nor constructive. I will rely on considerations external to Swinburne’s philosophy, e.g. on different concepts of love and disability and on the sociological concept of homophobia. And my criticism will not be constructive in spirit because I do not intend to help Swinburne improve his argument against homosexuality.

Trust the RSA! Love the RSA!

The ISA instructing us to trust the RSA, to believe its "official accounts," is nothing new (as below). John Drabinski asks us to consider whether there isn't now an additional imperative that the RSA must be loved.

 

Notes on the killing of Micah Johnson and Christopher Dorner

In a number of discussions of the use of the robot-delivered bomb in Dallas to kill Micah Johnson, I've seen some folks say it was justified, because, in addition to the present risk posed by Johnson, "he had already killed 5 people." If this were part of the police calculation and not just online armchairing, then the police are not entitled to use that notion, as that is a fact to be established in a court of law. They are only allowed to assess present risk. The difference between those two sentences is the difference between a society of laws and a police state.

Nothing I'm saying here implies a yea or nay to the question whether the robot bomb was justified. There are specialists in risk assessment and ethical issues of law enforcement use of deadly force whose reports we can read and think about.

But the principle that the police must only consider present risk is what keeps us from condoning extra-judicial killings in which the police are judge, jury, and executioner. And insisting on that principle doesn't require special training; it's the very most basic duty of citizens to insist on it. It's what defines people as "citizens" in fact.

In addition, nothing I'm saying here implies that the USA is in fact "a society of laws," nor that there is a (non-color-marked) "we" who are "citizens." I'm purposely leaving open the possibility that in fact it has only ever been such a police state in a way that constituted whiteness as temporarily exempt from non-citizenship; I'm only making a conceptual distinction.

[UPDATE, following online discussion: 9:45pm, Sun 10 July: I think "reasonable suspicion he had killed 5 people" can be part of assessment of "present risk." I'm just objecting to the flatness of the statement of the armchair folks. (In this particular case, I'm not sure when the police shifted from the multiple sniper to the single shooter hypothesis, but even on the former, "reasonable suspicion the current shooter had been involved in an event with five deaths," can certainly be factored into the assessment of current state of mind of the shooter.}

--

Further, on the question of what to think about the threshold breached by the robot-delivered bomb in the Johnson case, we could consider the case of Christopher Dorner.

There were rumors of drones being used to track Dorner, and others being prepped for killing him, but they ended up using a bulldozer to knock down the walls of the cabin he was in and then using "burners" (flash-bang tear-gas grenades known to cause fires) which burned down the cabin, causing him to kill himself to avoid being burnt alive.

Pull quotes from this LA Times piece:

Samuel Walker, emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska Omaha, was critical of the decision to use the "burner" tear gas canisters. "It's true, he was firing at them. But he was cornered. He was trapped. At that point, there was no rush in the sense that he was barricaded. The standard rules on barricade situations are that you can wait the person out," Walker said. "To use a known incendiary device raises some very serious questions in my mind."

Other law enforcement experts interviewed by The Times, however, said the move was justified. Even though SWAT officers were certain to have known a fire was a strong possibility, the use of the gas was reasonable in the face of the deadly threat Dorner presented, they said. Allowing the standoff to carry on into the night, they emphasized, would have added an unpredictable element to the drama that officials were smart to avoid."

Oil attacks wetlands, birds

A sea of orange, reddish oil from a sunken rig flowed into Coup Abel Pass and Barataria Pass — two routes southwest of Barataria Bay that oil can take into the interior of Louisiana’s marshes — on Sunday.

Located west of Grand Isle, a handful of modified shrimp boats tried to collect the oil with absorbent boom, but the sheer amount of it seemed daunting.

“They waited too long to close the passes,” said Joel Bradberry, member of the Grand Isle Fire Department.

Read the article here

Heartbreaking photo of oil-covered pelican here. If you're not from Louisiana, you don't know the emotional attachment we have to the pelican, the state symbol. They are amazing, beautiful beasts. The picture is terrible. 

BP are criminals, vandals. Shame too on the US government for its cravenly letting BP stay in charge. Boycott BP! Pressure Washington! 

Video presentation on the Terri Schiavo case

Just found out about a video of a presentation of mine on the Terri Schiavo case, done for the English Research Institute at Manchester Metropolitan University in December 2007. You can access the video here.

Please note that I have a new text version of this talk which nuances several key points. You can access a pdf version of that talk by clicking here.