Mark D. White

Writer, editor, teacher

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about

I’m a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the College of Staten Island/CUNY, where I teach courses in philosophy, economics, and law, and the author/editor/co-editor of several books.

  • Superman discovers the need for moral judgment

    Superman 707 I haven't had much time to read comics the last couple weeks, so I caught up on a few today, including Superman #707, which continues the "Grounded"… well, "storyline" doesn't seem like the right term… "theme," maybe. Whatever. He's walking. (If he wanted to connect with the common man and woman, he'd realize that most of us really want to fly, and he's just rubbing it in our faces by walking instead. Hmph.)

    At least Hal and Ollie drove a pick-up truck… and didn't wear their costumes while they were driving across the country… just sayin'…

    Oh, yeah, my point… the issue contains an excellent illustration of moral conflict, and the importance of moral judgment in making all but the simplest of ethical decision.

    SPOILERS to follow the jump…

    (more…)

  • “Unnecessary” nutrients?

    Mark D. White

    An article from The New York Times reports on changes in the food industry's labelling standards with respect to calories, salt, fat, ands sugar, which presumably are intended not only to provide better information to consumers but also to encourage food manufacturers to lessen such aspects of its products (as Wal-Mart agreed to do not long ago). The article explains that an earlier report from the Institute of Medicine urged the food industry not to include positive ingredients–such as calcium, vitamins, and the like–because it might "encourage manufacturers to fortify foods unnecessarily with vitamins or other ingredients."

    Since when is fortifying foods with healthy ingredients "unnecessary"? Unnecessary to what? So reducing fat and salt is necessary, but adding vitamins and minerals isn't? And who is going to say what ingredients and additives are "necessary"? (Sit down, Mayor Bloomberg.)

  • Ronald Dworkin on the Good Life

    Hedgehogs Mark D. White

    In the latest New York Review of Books (Feb. 10, 2011), Ronald Dworkin asks "What Is a Good Life?", offering an answer drawn from his book, Justice for Hedgehogs. From the article:

    We have a responsibility to live well, and the importance of living well accounts for the value of having a critically good life. These are no doubt controversial ethical judgments. I also make controversial ethical judgments in any view I take about which lives are good or well-lived. In my own view, someone who leads a boring, conventional life without close friendships or challenges or achievements, marking time to his grave, has not had a good life, even if he thinks he has and even if he has thoroughly enjoyed the life he has had. If you agree, we cannot explain why he should regret this simply by calling attention to pleasures missed: there may have been no pleasures missed, and in any case there is nothing to miss now. We must suppose that he has failed at something: failed in his responsibilities for living.

  • The End of Cost-Benefit Analysis?

    Mark D. White

    Today, the editors of The Wall Street Journal commented on the fine print of President Obama's recent executive order requiring all regulatory agencies to submit their rules to cost-benefit analysis in an effort to streamline government and reduce regulatory burden on business. They note that the order requires that agencies include in their cost-benfit calculations "values that are difficult or impossible to quantify, including equity, human dignity, fairness, and distributive impacts," which robs cost-benefit analysis of any epistemic value it might have had. They conclude by saying, "this sounds more like the end of cost-benefit analysis than the beginning."

    We can only hope. As heterodox economists of every stripe, from social economists to public choice/political economists, have long noted, cost-benefit analysis is fraught with vagueness and ripe for political manipulation. More specifically, by its nature it cannot incorporate values and principles that cannot be quantified, as the language in the executive order states. The administration is to be lauded to some extent for realizing that policy and regulation design must take into account their ethical impacts, but proposing to do this within the context of cost-benefit analysis is self-defeating at best, and a cynical facade at worst.

    I do not deny that cost-benefit analysis has its place, even within a system of allocation which is based primarily on principles like dignity and justice. (See my chapter from my fothcoming edited volume, Retributivism: Essays on Theory and Policy, for an example in the context of criminal justice.) But it should never be presumed to work with any precision nor provide any conclusive results, and rather should provide merely one piece of information–the rough balance of quantifiable benefits and costs–which should always be included alongside other factors, such as impact on dignity, equality, and so forth.

  • Now this is how you play Monopoly…

    Mark D. White

    I have to admit, malicious and hurtful stereotypes aside, this is funny…

    Sallyforth2011-01-21

  • Debating the Insanity Defense

    Mark D. White

    In the most recent "Room for Debate" feature in The New York Times, five scholars involved in law, psychiatry, and criminal justice discuss the current state of the insanity defense in light of the Tucson shootings. A nice range of viewpoints is presented, from Alan Dershowitz's argument that the insanity defense has been marginalized, politicized, and abused, to James Q. Whitman's lament that, compared to the Europeans, the American legal system is much less sympathetic towards claims of insanity due to a stronger emphasis of individual responsibility and (therefore) retribution, to David I. Bruck's plea for keeping the insanity defense based on individual responsibility and culpability.

    Perhaps my favorite two contributions to this debate were from William T. Carpenter, Jr. and Kent Scheidegger, who both question the role of medical and psychological science in informing juries decisions regarding insanity and its relationship to guilt. This brought to mind my favorite piece of scholarship on the insanity defense, on which I focus in my senior seminar on crime and punishment: Christopher Slobogin's "An End to Insanity: Recasting the Role of Mental Disability in Criminal Cases" (Virginia Law Review, 86/6, Sept. 2000, 1199-1247). Slobogin, one of the leading experts on mental disability and the law (see his books here), argues that the insanity defense as a specific defense should be eliminated, and instead evidence of mental defect or impairment should be used to support general defenses such as mistaken belief or absence of mens rea. Since it is not insanity per se, but only how a defendant's mental state influenced his or her actions, that impacts on responsibility, it more properly enters the determination of responsibility through one of the other standard defenses, not as an independent defense detached from more traditional ones (and therefore inviting more controversy).

    For example, lets's say Bob mistakenly believed, because of mental illness, that the police officer he shot was his romantic rival trying to kill him. Here, Bob's mental illness is relevant to his act because it influenced the mistaken belief that led to the act, not simply because he suffers from mental illness. It is in this sense that Slobogin argues that the insanity defense is "overbroad" (1202); insanity is not always relevant to a defendant's actions, so it should be invoked only when it contributes to one of the standard excuses that bar culpability, not as a sort of blanket excuse which invites the type of abuse Dershowitz discusses.

    Furthermore, along the lines of Bruck's comment, Slobogin's argument for eliminating the insanity defense (but not the impact of mental illness in criminal trials) is based on culpability and retributivism, because he wants to ensure that people are convicted of a crime if and only if they are truly responsible for it. And rather than weakening consideration of mental illness in criminal cases, his proposal would likely make it more likely to be considered because the "spectre" of the insanity defense and its purported unfairness would no longer loom over the criminal justice system and obscure its true purpose.

  • DC’s new rating system–look out, it’s mischief!

    I realize that criticizing any entertainment ratings system is like shooting fish in a barrel, but I can't resist…

    From Dan Didio and Jim Lee's post at The Source:

    E – EVERYONE

    Appropriate for readers of all ages. May contain cartoon violence and/or some comic mischief.

    T – TEEN

    Appropriate for readers age 12 and older. May contain mild violence, language and/or suggestive themes.

    T+ – TEEN PLUS

    Appropriate for readers age 16 and older. May contain moderate violence, mild profanity, graphic imagery and/or suggestive themes.

    M – MATURE

    Appropriate for readers age 18 and older. May contain intense violence, extensive profanity, nudity, sexual themes and other content suitable only for older readers.

    OK…

    1. First off,"may contain… comic mischief"–really? Granted, they maintain that this is appropriate for "everyone," but in what world does "comic mischief" even merit mention? Will there be an asterisk if Damian puts a whoopie cushion on Alfred's chair? (This reminds me of one of my kids' animated films, the ratings for which warn of "adventure peril"–whew, that was close, for I'll have no peril in my house, nosiree…)

    2. Only teens–a term which now includes 12-year-olds, in DC's own version of grade inflation–can handle "mild violence, language and/or suggestive themes." No language in the "everyone" books, I suppose, just the hilarity of watching the Justice League play charades (one word, starts with j… "justice!"). And heaven forbid the themes in comics suggest anything, which seems such a waste of the newfound creative tool of language. But never fear, young ones, for only four years later, you get to be Teens Plus, when you get access to…  more suggestive themes. (Not "more suggestive" themes, just more of them. Sucks to be you.)

    3. My word, two years presumably count for a lot–go from 16 to 18 and you're rewarded with "intense violence, extensive profanity, nudity, sexual themes and other content suitable only for older readers." Hot snot, it's All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder time! (Of course, it won't be long before you find out that "T&A" really stands for "themes and allusion"–it's the Revenge of the English Lit Teachers!)

    4. And, of course, the irony of rating something like The Rise of Arsenal "mature" is just too delicious for mustard…

  • Lying to Get Student Discounts

    Mark D. White

    Thanks to Annie Lowrey, I found this recent New York Times article, "Getting a Student Rate When You're Not a Student," which advises youngish people, typically former students, on how to take advantage of the discounts that retailers and other merchants give to current students. The discussion of the ethics of this practice is predictably underwhelming:

    To be sure, there are clear ethical and dishonesty issues with asking for a student discount when you’re not a student. But Mr. Dachis [who has a blog promoting this practice] argued that many students don’t actually need these discounts until after graduation.

    “College students aren’t necessarily stricken with poverty or will be more so after finishing their education,” he wrote. Student discounts, he went on, “might actually be better applied after a student has graduated.”

    While I personally have never lied about being a student, I can see how an argument could be made that graduates should be able to get that discount if they are still paying off student loans — in other words, dealing with the consequences of being a student.

    "Might actually," "should be able to"–but aren't under the terms of the deals offered by such businesses. Of course, ex-students are more than welcome to propose these arguments to discounters and request that their offer be expanded, but I suspect they rarely do–much easier to rationalize your unethical, dishonest behavior.

  • Considering Organ Donation Euthanasia

    Mark D. White

    An upcoming article in Bioethics (apparently open access for the time being) asks the question…

    SHOULD WE ALLOW ORGAN DONATION EUTHANASIA? ALTERNATIVES FOR MAXIMIZING THE NUMBER AND QUALITY OF ORGANS FOR TRANSPLANTATION

    Dominic Wilkinson and Julian Savulescu

    ABSTRACT

    There are not enough solid organs available to meet the needs of patients with organ failure. Thousands of patients every year die on the waiting lists for transplantation. Yet there is one currently available, underutilized, potential source of organs. Many patients die in intensive care following withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment whose organs could be used to save the lives of others. At present the majority of these organs go to waste.

    In this paper we consider and evaluate a range of ways to improve the number and quality of organs available from this group of patients. Changes to consent arrangements (for example conscription of organs after death) or changes to organ donation practice could dramatically increase the numbers of organs available, though they would conflict with currently accepted norms governing transplantation.

    We argue that one alternative, Organ Donation Euthanasia, would be a rational improvement over current practice regarding withdrawal of life support. It would give individuals the greatest chance of being able to help others with their organs after death. It would increase patient autonomy. It would reduce the chance of suffering during the dying process. We argue that patients should be given the choice of whether and how they would like to donate their organs in the event of withdrawal of life support in intensive care.

    Continuing current transplantation practice comes at the cost of death and prolonged organ failure. We should seriously consider all of the alternatives.

  • Superhero Ethics Class!!!

    This is from Newsarama's preview of Avengers Academy #8 (written by Christos Gage and pencilled by Mike McKone), in which Tigra and Hank Pym are discussing what they do after they catch criminals:

     Avengersacademy8

    Please, Mr. Gage, please let me teach that class!