Virtual Cheating V: Virtual People
In this last in the virtual cheating series, the focus of the discussion is on virtual people. The virtual aspect is easy enough to define—these are entities that exist entirely within the realm of computer memory and do not exist as physical beings in that they lack bodies of the traditional sort. They are, of course, physical beings in the broad sense, existing as data within physical memory systems.
An example of such a virtual being is a non-player character (NPC) in a video game. These coded entities range from enemies that fight the player to characters that engage in the illusion of conversation and interaction. As it now stands, these NPCs are quite simple—although players often have very strong emotional responses and even (one-sided) relationships with them. Bioware, for example, excels at creating NPCs that players get very involved with and their games often feature elaborate relationship and romance systems.
While these simple coded entities are usually designed to look like and imitate the behavior of people, they are obviously not people. They cannot even pass a basic Turning test. They are, at best, the illusion of people. As such, while humans could become emotionally attached to these virtual entities, it would be impossible to cheat with them. Naturally, a human could become angry with how involved their partner is with video games, but that is another matter.
As technology improves, the virtual people will become more and more person-like. As with the robots discussed in the previous essay, if a virtual person were a person, then cheating would be potentially possible. Also as with the discussion of robots, there could be degrees of virtual personhood, thus allowing for degrees of cheating. Since virtual people are essentially robots in the virtual world, the discussion of robots in that essay would apply analogously to the virtual robots of the virtual world. There is, however, one obvious break in the analogy: unlike robots, virtual people lack physical bodies. This leads to the obvious question of whether a human can virtually cheat with a virtual person or if cheating requires a physical sexual component.
While, as discussed in a previous essay, there is a form of virtual sex that involves physical devices that stimulate the sexual organs, this is not “pure” virtual sex. After all, the user is using a VR headset to “look” at the partner, but the stimulation is all done mechanically. Pure virtual sex would require the sci-fi sort of virtual reality of cyberpunk—a person fully “jacked in” to the virtual reality so all the inputs and outputs are essentially directly to and from the brain. The person would have a virtual body in the virtual reality that mediates their interaction with that world, rather than having crude devices stimulating their physical body.
Assuming the technology is good enough, a person could have virtual sex with a virtual person (or another person who is also jacked into the virtual world). On the one hand, this would obviously not be sex in the usual sense—those involved would have no physical contact. This would avoid many of the usual harms of traditional cheating—STDs and pregnancies would not be possible (although sexual malware and virtual babies might be possible). This does, of course, leave open the door for accusations of emotional infidelity.
On the other hand, if the experience is indistinguishable from the experience of physical sex, then it could be argued that the lack of physical contact is irrelevant. At this point, the classic problem of the external world becomes relevant. The gist of this problem is that because I cannot get outside of my experiences to “see” that they are really being caused by external things that seem to be causing them, I can never know if there is really an external world. For all I know, I am dreaming or already in a virtual world. While this is usually seen as the nightmare scenario in epistemology, George Berkeley embraced this view in his idealism—he argued that there is no metaphysical matter and that “to be is to be perceived.” On his view, all that exists are minds and within them are ideas. Crudely put, Berkeley’s reality is virtual and God is the server.
So, if cheating is defined such that it requires physical sexual activity, knowing whether a person is cheating or not would require solving the problem of the external world. And there would be the possibility that there never has been any cheating since there might be no physical world. If sexual activity is defined in terms of the behavior and sensations without references to a need for physical systems, then virtual cheating would be possible—assuming the technology can reach the required level.
While this discussion of virtual cheating is currently purely theoretical, it does provide an interesting way to explore what it is about cheating (if anything) that is wrong. As noted at the start of the series, many of the main concerns about cheating are purely physical concerns about STDs and pregnancy. These concerns are avoided by virtual cheating. What remains are the emotions of those involved and the agreements between them. As a practical matter, the future is likely to see people working out the specifics of their relationships in terms of what sort of virtual and robotic activities are allowed and which are forbidden. While people can simply agree to anything, there is the deeper question of the rational foundation of relationship boundaries. For example, whether it is reasonable to consider interaction with a sexbot cheating or elaborate masturbation. Perhaps Bill Clinton, with his inquiries into the definition of “sex” should be leading the discussion of this matter.
Virtual Cheating IV: Sexbots
While science fiction has long included speculation about robot-human sex and romance, the current technology offers little more than sex dolls. In terms of the physical aspects of sexual activity, the development of more “active” sexbots is an engineering problem—getting the machinery to perform properly and in ways that are safe for the user (or unsafe, if that is what one wants). Regarding cheating, while a suitably advanced sexbot could actively engage in sexual activity with a human, the sexbot would not be a person and hence the standard definition of cheating (as discussed in the previous essays) would not be met. Put another way, sexual activity with such a sexbot would be analogous to the use of any other sex toy (such as a simple “blow up doll” or vibrator). Since a person cannot cheat with an object, such activity would not be cheating. Naturally enough, some people might take issue with their partner sexing it up with a sexbot and forbid such activity. While a person who broke such an agreement about robot sex would be acting wrongly, they would not be cheating. Unless, of course, the sexbot was close enough to being a person for cheating to occur.
While many people would just be interested in sexbots that engage in mechanical sexual functions, there are already efforts to make sexbots like people in terms of their “mental” functions. For example, being able to create the illusion of conversation via programming. As such efforts progress and sexbots act more and more like people, the philosophical question of whether they really are people or not will be a rather important one. While the main moral concerns would be about the ethics of how sexbots are treated, there is also the matter at hand about cheating.
Obviously enough, if a sexbot were a person, then it would be possible to cheat with that sexbot—just as one could cheat with an organic person. The fact that a sexbot might be purely mechanical would not be relevant to the ethics of the cheating, what would matter would be that a person was engaging in sexual activity with another person when their relationship with another person forbids such behavior.
It could be objected that the mechanical nature of the sexbot would matter—that sex requires organic parts of the right sort and thus a human cannot really have sex with a sexbot—no matter how the parts of the robot are shaped.
One counter to this is to use a functional argument. To draw an analogy to the philosophy of mind known as functionalism, it could be argued that the composition of the relevant parts does not matter, what matters is their functional role. A such, a human could have sex with a sexbot that had the right parts.
Another counter is to argue that the composition of the parts does not matter, rather it is the sexual activity with a person that matters. To use an analogy, a human could cheat on another human even if their only sexual contact with the other human involved sex toys. In this case, what matters is that the activity is sexual and involves people, not that objects rather than body parts are used. As such, sex with a sexbot person could be cheating if the human was breaking their commitment.
While knowing whether a sexbot was a person would largely settle the cheating issue, there remains the epistemic problem of other minds. In this case, the problem is determining whether a sexbot has a mind that qualifies them as a person. There can, of course, be varying degrees of confidence in the determination and there could also be degrees of personness. Or, rather, degrees of how person-like a sexbot might be.
Thanks to Descartes and Turing, there is a language test for having a mind—roughly put, if a sexbot can engage in conversation that is indistinguishable from conversation with a human, then it would be reasonable to regard the sexbot as a person. That said, there might be good reasons for having a more extensive testing system for personhood which might include such things as testing for emotions and self-awareness. But, from a practical standpoint, if a sexbot can engage in a level of behavior that would qualify them for person status if they were a human, then it would be just as reasonable to regard the sexbot as a person as it would be to regard an analogous human as a person. To do otherwise would seem to be mere prejudice. As such, a human person could cheat with a sexbot that could pass this test.
Since it will be a long time (if ever) before such a sexbot is constructed, what will be of more immediate concern are sexbots that are person-like. That is, that are not able to meet the standards that would qualify a human as a person, yet have behavior that is sophisticated enough that they seem to be more than mere objects. One might consider an analogy here to animals: they do not qualify as human-level people, but their behavior does qualify them for a moral status above that of objects (at least for most moral philosophers and all decent people). In this case, the question about cheating becomes a question of whether the sexbot is person-like enough to enable cheating to take place.
One approach is to consider the matter from the perspective of the human—if the human engaged in sexual activity with the sexbot regards them as being person-like enough, then the activity can be seen as cheating. An objection to this is that it does not matter what the human thinks about the sexbot, what matters is its actual status. After all, if a human regards a human they are cheating with as a mere object, this does not make it so they are not cheating. Likewise, if a human feels like they are cheating, it does not mean they really are.
This can be countered by arguing that how the human feels does matter. After all, if the human thinks they are cheating and they are engaging in the behavior, they are still acting wrongly. To use an analogy, if a person thinks they are stealing something and take it anyway, they still have acted wrongly even if it turns out that they were not stealing (that the thing they took was actually being given away). The obvious objection to this line of reasoning is that while a person who thinks they are stealing did act wrongly by engaging in what they thought was theft, they did not actually commit a theft. Likewise, a person who thinks they are engaging in cheating, but are not, would be acting wrongly, but not cheating.
Another approach is to consider the matter objectively—the degree of cheating would be proportional to the degree that the sexbot is person-like. On this view, cheating with a person-like sexbot would not be as bad as cheating with a full person. The obvious objection is that one is either cheating or not; there are not degrees of cheating. The obvious counter is to try to appeal to the intuition that there could be degrees of cheating in this manner. To use an analogy, just as there can be degrees of cheating in terms of the sexual activity engaged in, there can also be degrees of cheating in terms of how person-like the sexbot is.
While person-like sexbots are still the stuff of science fiction, I suspect the future will see some interesting divorce cases in which this matter is debated in court.
Virtual Cheating III: “Robust” VR
As noted in previous essays, classic cheating involves sexual activity with a person while one is in a committed relationship that is supposed to exclude such activity. Visual VR can allow interaction with another person, but while such activity might have sexual content (such as nakedness and naughty talk) it would not be sexual activity in the usual sense that requires physical contact. Such behavior, as argued in the previous essay, might constitute a form of emotional infidelity—but not physical infidelity.
One of the iron laws of technology is that any technology that can be used for sex will be used for sex. Virtual reality (VR), in its various forms, is no exception. For the most part, VR is limited to sight and sound. That is, virtual reality is mostly just a virtual visual reality. However, researchers are hard at work developing tactile devices for the erogenous zones, thus allowing people to interact sexually across the internet. This is the start of what could be called “robust” VR. That is, one that involves more than just sight and sound. This sort of technology might make virtual cheating suitably analogous to real cheating.
As would be expected, most of the research has been focused on developing devices for men to use to have “virtual sex.” Going with the standards of traditional cheating, this sort of activity would not count as cheating. This is because the sexual interaction is not with another person, but with devices. The obvious analogy here is to with less-sophisticated sex toys. If, for example, using a vibrator or blow-up-doll by oneself does not count as cheating because the device is not a person, then the same should apply to more complicated devices, such as VR sex suits that can be used with VR sex programs. There is also the question of whether such activity counts as sex. On the one hand, it is some sort of sexual activity. On the other hand, using such a device would not end a person’s tenure as a virgin.
It is certainly worth considering that a user could develop an emotional relationship with their virtual sex partner and thus engage in a form of emotional infidelity. The obvious objection is that this virtual sex partner is certainly not a person and thus cheating would not be possible—after all, one cannot cheat on a person with an object. This can be countered by considering the classic epistemic problem of other minds. Because all one has to go on is external behavior, one never knows if the things that seem to be people really are people—that is, think and feel in the right ways (or at all). Since I do not know if anyone else has a mind as I do, I could have emotional attachments to entities that are not really people at all and never know that this is the case. As such, I could never know if I was cheating in the traditional sense if I had to know that I was interacting with another person. As might be suspected, this sort of epistemic excuse (“baby, I did not know she was a person”) is unlikely to be accepted by anyone (even epistemologists). What would seem to matter is not knowing that the other entity is a person, but having the right (or rather wrong) sort of emotional involvement. So, if a person could have feelings towards the virtual sexual partner that they “interact with”, then this sort of behavior could count as virtual cheating.
There are also devices that allow people to interact sexually across the internet; with each partner having a device that communicates with their partner’s corresponding devices. Put roughly, this is remote control sex. This sort of activity does avoid many of the possible harms of traditional cheating: there is no risk of pregnancy nor risk of STDs (unless one is using rented or borrowed equipment). While these considerations do impact utilitarian calculations, the question remains as to whether this would count as cheating or not.
On the one hand, the argument could be made that this is not direct sexual contact—each person is only directly “engaged” with their device. To use an analogy, imagine that someone has (unknown to you) connected your computer to a “stimulation device” so that every time you use your mouse or keyboard, someone is “stimulated.” In such cases, it would be odd to say that you were having sex with that person. As such, this sort of thing would not be cheating.
On the other hand, there is the matter of intent. In the case of the mouse example, the user has no idea what they are doing and it is that, rather than the remote-control nature of the activity, that matters. In the case of the remote-control interaction, the users are intentionally engaging in the activity and know what they are doing. The fact that is happening via the internet does not matter. The moral status is the same if they were in the same room, using the devices “manually” on each other. As such, while there is not actual physical contact of the bodies, the activity is sexual and controlled by those involved. As such, it would morally count as cheating. There can, of course, be a debate about degrees of cheating—presumably a case could be made that cheating using sex toys is not as bad as cheating using just body parts. I will, however, leave that to others to discuss.
In the next essay I will discuss cheating in the context sex with robots and person-like VR beings.
Virtual Cheating II: Sexting & Virtual Worlds
While there is considerable debate about the right moral theory to apply to the ethics of cheating in a relationship, it is generally agreed that what makes cheating is that a person in a committed relationship is engaging in sexual activity with a person outside of that relationship. As such, cheating involves three main factors. The first is that the cheater is in a relationship that is supposed to exclude cheating. The second is that there is sexual activity. The third is that this activity is with a person outside of the relationship.
These factors would, on the face of it, exclude sexting and “cheating” in virtual environments (such as video games) from the realm of cheating. Or, more precisely, the sexual activity factor would exclude these activities. After all, sexting is just the exchange of texts and in current virtual environments, there is no sexual contact. For example, if two players in World of Warcraft decide they are going to have a “virtual affair”, the most they can do is chat with each other, strip down to their virtual underwear and awkwardly bump their characters together. I will address more “robust” virtual interactions in an essay to follow. As such, these virtual and textual realms preclude the possibility of cheating in the traditional sense: at most, one is bumping ugly code rather than bumping uglies. That said, there does seem to be an intuitive appeal to the claim that such virtual cheating is real cheating in a moral sense. The challenge is making the case for this.
Since the physical infidelity aspect of cheating does not occur in purely virtual cheating of this sort, the obvious alternative is to focus on emotional fidelity. That is, the commitment is not just to sexual exclusivity but also emotional exclusivity of a certain sort. This does require being careful about specifying the boundaries of this exclusivity. To use the obvious analogy, just as sexual exclusivity does not exclude all physical interaction with people outside the relationship, emotional exclusivity does not exclude all emotional interaction with people outside the relationship. Physical cheating, obviously enough, is much easier to define and there are clear boundaries between sexual and non-sexual behavior. To use an easy illustration, hugging a friend is not sexual behavior. Naturally, I do acknowledge the obvious grey areas, but these rarely create significant problems for sorting out cheating. They can, however, creates some practical problems, such as when a person is trying to explain how they were just giving a friendly massage and everyone just happened to be naked.
Emotional cheating is rather more difficult to define, although the obvious avenue is to focus on emotions connected with sex and romance. There is a rather broad area of concern about emotional fidelity; that is the question of what it is appropriate to feel about people outside of one’s committed relationship. Fortunately, the discussion is focused not merely on feeling, but the expression of feelings through sexting and virtual behavior. While I obviously am aware of the problem of other minds (one never knows what another is really thinking or feeling…or if they are thinking or feeling at all), it is reasonable to take the emotions expressed in sexting and virtual behavior at face value. Naturally, it is reasonable to consider that the person’s feelings do not match the behavior—but this is more of an epistemic problem than a moral problem in the context of this discussion. As such, if a person is expressing emotions via sexting and virtual behavior that should be exclusive to their relationship, then they are engaged in virtual cheating. This rests on the reasonable assumption that the expression of romantic and sexual feelings should be limited to the committed, exclusive relationship. The next obvious point of concern is why virtual cheating matters.
Traditional cheating is of concern for the obvious reasons: unplanned pregnancies, STDs, questions of property rights and inheritance, emotional damage, physical damage and so on. While virtual cheating cannot cause STDs or pregnancies, it can cause emotional damage and thus can potentially be morally wrong on utilitarian grounds. If the people in a relationship have agreed to emotional fidelity, such cheating can also be a violation of a person’s rights or the moral rules. There is also the obvious practical concern that virtual cheating can lead to physical cheating. To borrow from Plato’s arguments about the corrupting influence of art, even if someone starts out just “joking around” with sexting and virtual behavior outside of their committed relationship, there is a clear psychological path in which that “kidding around” can lead to real infidelity.
In the next essay I’ll look at the ethics of cheating in more “robust” virtual realities.
Virtual Cheating I: The Wrongness of Cheating
The morality of cheating in a relationship is one of the most popular paper topics in my Ethics course. As might be suspected, the students tend to condemn this sort of cheating and have always focused on the “traditional” form of cheating—that is, people having “naked time” together when one or more of them is in a committed relationship. With the rise of such things as sexting, virtual worlds and sexbots, I’ve tried to encourage the students to write on what can be called “virtual cheating”-if only to give me something slightly new to grade. Since no student has taken on this matter, it falls to me to write about it.
As just noted, traditional cheating involves people having sexual interactions in person when one or more of them is in a (supposedly) committed relationship. Virtual cheating, by its very nature, is not traditional cheating: the people either do not interact sexually in person (they sext or engage in virtual activities in a virtual world, such as a video game) or a person is engaged in sexual behavior with a non-person (such as a sexbot). While most regard traditional cheating as wrong, it is not clear if the alleged wrongness of traditional cheating applies to virtual cheating. Answering this question requires sorting out what, if anything, makes traditional cheating wrong.
One stock approach to arguing that traditional cheating is wrong is to “mix norms” by going from religion to ethics. For example, my students usually point out that the Ten Commandments forbid adultery and then typically just say this makes it wrong. The problem is, obviously enough, that religion is not the same as ethics. What is needed is a way to transition from religion to ethics. One easy way to do this is to use divine command theory. This is the view that what God commands is good because He command it. Likewise, what he forbids is wrong because He forbids it. Assuming this theory, if God forbids adultery, then it is wrong. In regards to virtual cheating, the question would be whether virtual cheating is adequately similar to traditional adultery. This is a matter that will be addressed in a later essay.
Another stock approach is to engage in more norm mixing by going from law to ethics. While there are excellent reasons not to equate legality and morality, the moral theory of legalism (also known as legal positivism) says that what is legal is moral and what is illegal is immoral. Since some places still consider adultery a crime, this would make cheating immoral in such places. Legalism actually provides the easiest way to address the ethics of virtual cheating: one just needs to consult the law and the answer is there.
A third approach, and one my students almost always use, is the utilitarian option. On this view, the morality of an action is determined by its harmful and beneficial consequences. If more negative value is created by the action, it is morally wrong. If there is more positive value, then it is morally good (or at least acceptable). The moral arguments against traditional cheating focus on the usual negative consequences: emotional damage, physical damage, STDs, unwanted pregnancies, and so on. Interestingly, students almost always mention cars being keyed. Moral arguments for cheating focus on the alleged benefits: pleasure, emotional fulfillment, and so on. The utilitarian approach, interestingly enough, would make it easy to bypass the question of whether virtual cheating is cheating or not. This is because what would matter is whether or not the consequences of the actions created more negative or positive value. Whether the actions are cheating or not would be irrelevant. Unless, of course, the cheating aspect was relevant to the consequences.
A fourth approach is to embrace a rule based approach, such as the deontology of Immanuel Kant. On this view, the action itself is wrong or right—it is not a matter of consequences. The religious arguments that are used to try to show that cheating is wrong tend to also be rule based arguments. The rules, in that case, would be those attributed to God. While deontologists can embrace very different rules about who one should embrace, Kant’s categorical imperative and his view that people are ends rather than means would seem to support the view that cheating would be morally wrong. The question about virtual cheating would be whether it is cheating. Alternatively, rules about the activities I am grouping as virtual cheating would settle the matter without addressing whether they really are cheating or not.
A fifth approach is that of virtue theory—the sort of theory endorsed by the likes of Aristotle and Confucius. On this view, a person should strive to be virtuous and the incentive is usually that virtue will make a person happy. Since cheating would seem to violate such virtues as honesty and loyalty, then it would appear to be morally wrong under virtue theory. In the case of virtual cheating, the concern would be with the effect of such behavior on a person’s virtues.
A final approach is a rights based approach. Ethics that are based on rights purport that people have various rights and it is generally wrong to violate them. In the case of cheating, the usual argument is that people engage into a form of contractual ethics by agreeing to a committed relationship. This gives each party various rights and responsibilities. The usual contract is one of exclusive sexual interaction. Since traditional cheating violates this right of exclusivity, it would be wrong. In the case of virtual cheating, it would also be a question of rights—typically based on an explicit or implicit contract. Naturally, contractual ethics can also be cast in the form of rule based ethics—the contract forms the rules.
In the next essay I will move on to the matter of virtual cheating, beginning with considerations of sexting and “cheating” in virtual worlds such as video games.
Free Speech & Feeling Unsafe
A somewhat recent talking point on the right is that “the liberals” are trying to violate the free speech rights of conservatives. On the one hand, this is a hasty generalization: the left counts among its numbers some of the staunchest advocates of free expression who defend the right of conservatives to engage in free expression. On the other hand, there are those on the left who are actively trying to silence conservative voices. That said, is important to distinguish between attempts to silence people and legitimate acts of protest.
To illustrate, the incident involving Charles Murray at Middlebury College illustrates how some people try to unjustly silence those they disagree with. In contrast, the students at Notre Dame who walked out on Vice President Pence’s speech were engaged in a legitimate protest—they expressed their disagreement without harassing or silencing pence. However, the Pence incident had an interesting twist that is well worth considering.
Two of the students who walked out on Pence’s speech explained their motivation: “The walkout was in response to the fact that members of our own community felt unwelcome, uncomfortable, and even unsafe…” I do understand why having Mike Pence speak would make some people feel unwelcome and uncomfortable—after all, Pence makes no secret of his views on various social and moral issues. No doubt some conservative students would feel just as unwelcome and uncomfortable in the presence of a liberal speaker. While I do think speakers should endeavor to make their audience welcome and comfortable, this is not a moral obligation on the part of speakers—especially on college campuses. A key part of education is being pushed outside of one’s comfort zone in terms of such things as values, beliefs and ideology. Students do, of course, have every right to resist being pushed out of this zone; but this is typically their loss when they succeed. The students might have benefited from enduring Pence’s words; but they did have the right to refuse to listen. After all, the right of free expression means that one should not be silenced, not that one can compel others to pay attention.
What is worrisome is the use of the term “unsafe.” When I first heard some vague details about this episode, I initially thought the students were concerned that there might be violence at the event—as has happened elsewhere. That would, of course, be legitimate grounds for concerns about safety. After all, to feel unsafe is to feel that one is at risk for harm. However, after listening to a discussion of the incident on NPR, I realized that the claim was that Pence’s mere presence as a speaker made people feel unsafe. They did not, obviously, think that Pence would attack them physically.
One way to interpret the matter is that people thought they would be harmed in some meaningful way by Pence’s presence and his words. While people can certainly inflict harm with words, it would seem to be an odd use of “unsafe” in the context of the Vice President giving a speech. But perhaps some people are so lacking in resilience that the expression of ideas they do not like or the presence of someone they disagree with can cause harm to them. In this case, they would thus be wise to leave the area before sustaining such harm. To use an analogy, if someone was so sensitive to noise that a speech would cause them pain, they should not attend the speech. They do not, however, have the right to insist that the speech not be made simply because they would experience pain.
A second, and more plausible way, to interpret this is that “unsafe” is referring to a stronger version of being uncomfortable and not a feeling that meaningful danger is imminent. While words mean what they do as a matter of convention, shifting the meaning of words in this manner is problematic for communication. As noted above, I initially thought the students feared a riot, which caused some confusion. Another potential problem is that using “unsafe” in this context makes the expression of ideas that one does not like seem dangerous. While this might be a rhetorical point the students were trying to make to justify walking out, this is a misuse of the language. To be specific, it is hyperbole that serves to distort the matter by conflating merely being uncomfortable with being in danger. Because of these problems, the term “unsafe” should not be used in such contexts. Instead, it should be used for cases in which there is an actual threat to safety and rights. Such as the push by some against free expression by conservatives.
Abstinence, Texas and Teen Pregnancy
While the United States has seen declining rates of teen pregnancy (along with a very slight reduction in self-reported teen sexual activity), Texas has the slowest rate of decline. In a typical year, 35,000 Texan teenagers and women under 20 get pregnant. Texas also leads the nation in repeat teen pregnancies. As would be suspected, researchers wondered why this was the case and investigated. The finding was hardly surprising. While many states have addressed the problem of unplanned teen pregnancies by education and social services support, Texas has elected to take a different approach. Most Texas schools offer either no sex education or abstinence only sex education. While many states offer contraception counselling to teen mothers, Texas generally does not—hence Texas leads the country in repeat teenage pregnancies. Texas also has rather restrictive policies regarding contraception for teenagers, although the evidence clearly shows that access to contraception reduces unplanned pregnancies (and hence also reduces the number of abortions). Despite the solid evidence linking Texas’ approach to its problem with teen pregnancy, the view of many social conservatives is that abstinence only education is the best approach. This is a rather problematic view.
Looked at in the context of the objective data on teen pregnancy, Texas’ abstinence only (or no sex education at all) approach is clearly not the best. If, of course, the best approach is the one that most effectively reduces unplanned teen pregnancies. To use the obvious analogy, it is as if Texas was trying to reduce automobile accidents, injuries and fatalities involving teenagers by offering them either no driver education or driver education that says not to drive or get in cars. Texas is also doing the equivalent of trying to ensure teens who do get in cars do so without access to seat belts, air bags and other safety equipment. The absurdity of this approach should be evident on the face of it. This, of course, assumes that the best approach is defined in terms of reducing unplanned teen pregnancies. However, there are other ways to evaluate approaches to addressing teen pregnancy.
One alternative approach is to select the method that is regarded as morally best, defined in terms of the moral principles used to make this assessment. For some conservatives, premarital sex is morally wrong. On this view, Texas is taking the right approach because unmarried teenagers should be practicing abstinence and enabling them to understand and access birth control would be to contribute to their immoral deeds. To use an analogy, consider murder. Since murder is wrong, schools should teach an abstinence only approach to murder and not enable people easy access to implements of murder (except guns; this is not only America but Texas).
The easy and obvious reply to this approach is to point out that the moral righteousness of those who deny teenagers proper sex education and access to contraceptives comes at the cost of considerable harm to the teenagers and society. Allowing this harm to occur to others simply so one can impose their own values seems to be morally unacceptable on utilitarian grounds. There is also the moral concern about the rights of the teenagers to make their own informed choices about consensual sexual behavior. The imposition of the values of the social conservatives denies them this right and infringes on their freedom. Naturally, those who value abstinence and oppose contraception are free to act on this view themselves—they have every right to not engage in sex or to not use contraception when they do so. They do not, however, have the right to cause harm to others because of their views of sex.
Interestingly, the Texas approach can be seen as the best approach by considering an alternative set of goals. As noted above, if the goal is reducing unwanted teen pregnancies, then the Texas approach is a poor one. However, if there are different goals, then the approach could be regarded as a success. One possible goal is to ensure that the poor and uneducated remain that way. After all, unplanned pregnancies are most likely to occur among the poor and uneducated and they make it harder for people to rise out of poverty and also to achieve educational goals. Maintaining a poor and uneducated population confers some significant benefits to the upper classes and also meshes with some morally repugnant ideological views. Another possible goal is to “keep women in their place” by making it more likely that they will get pregnant as teenagers. This is a variant of the goal of maintaining an underclass; in this case the specific targets are girls and young women.
While a utilitarian case could, perhaps, be made for using these policies to help maintain the underclasses, the harms caused by them do seem to outweigh the advantages gained by the upper classes. As such, policies aimed at maintaining the underclasses would seem morally wrong.
In light of the above discussion, Texas’ approach to teenage pregnancy is either merely ineffective or immoral (or both). As such, the policies in Texas should be replaced by those that have proven effective elsewhere. Or not. Texas being the worst does have the benefit of allowing other states to look down at Texas and this does have a certain appeal.
Adult ADHD & Ethics
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In 2017, the World Health Organization released as six question “test” for adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). While even proponents of the questions warn that people should not self-diagnose with the “test”, there is the obvious question about the effectiveness of such a diagnostic method. After all, as others have noted, almost every adult seems to exhibit the symptoms that the questions ask about. For example, difficulty in concentrating, unwinding and relaxing seem to be the plight of most people. I first learned of a similar sort of diagnostic tool at a mandatory training session on learning disabilities and another faculty member commented on this tool by saying “by those standards, I think we all have ADHD.” Everyone agreed. Because of these concerns, doctors tend to agree that the simple screening test is not sufficient to diagnose adult ADHD. While using an unreliably method of diagnosing adult ADHD would be problematic, there are also important moral concerns about this matter.
Coincidentally enough, many of the doctors who served on the advisory panel for developing the screening method have enjoyed the financial support of the pharmaceutical companies who produce the drugs used to “treat” adult ADHD. Such payments to doctors by pharmaceutical companies is standard practice and drives much of how treatment works in the United States. Doctors who are not influenced by pharmaceutical companies as less inclined to prescribe the brand name products of companies, which is hardly surprising.
It is important to note that the fact that doctors are enriched financial by pharmaceutical companies that profit from ADHD drugs does not prove that the questions are not useful nor does it prove that they are wrong in expanding the number of people on ADHD drugs. After all, the possibility that a person making a claim is biased does not entail that the claim is false and to think otherwise would be an error of logic. That said, if a person is an interested party and stands to gain, then the relevant claims should be considered with due skepticism. As such, the doctors who are pushing the agenda of the pharmaceutical companies that enrich them should be regarded as lacking in credibility to the degree they are likely to be influenced by this enrichment. Which, one would infer, would be significant. As is always the case in such situations, what is needed are more objective sources of information about ADHD. As should not be surprising, those who are not being enriched by the industry are not as enthusiastic about expanding the ADHD drug market. This raises reasonable ethical concerns about whether the industry is profiting at the expense of people who are being pushed to use drugs they do not actually need. Given the general track record of these companies, this sort of unethical behavior does seem to be the case.
Since I am not a medical doctor specializing in ADHD, I lack the expertise to properly assess the matter. However, I can offer some rational consideration of adult ADHD and its treatment with pharmaceuticals. The diagnostic questions focus on such factors as concentration, ability to remain seated, ability to relax, ability to let people finish sentences, ability to not procrastinate, and independence in regards to ordering one’s life. As noted above, these are all things that all humans have difficulty with at one time or another. Of course, even the proponents of medicating people do note that it takes more than the usual problems to make a person a candidate for medication. But, of course, these proponents do have a fairly generous view of who should be medicated.
One reasonable concern is that there are non-pharmaceutical methods of addressing problematic behaviors of this sort. While, as noted above, I am not an ADHD specialist, I do have extensive training in methods of concentration (thanks to running, martial arts and academics). As such, I know that people can be trained to have better focus without the use of profitable chemicals. Since these drugs have side effects and cost money, it would be morally and practically preferable to focus on non-chemical methods of developing positive traits. Aristotle developed just such a method long ago: training in virtue by habituation. But, it can be objected, there are people who cannot or will not use such non-pharmaceutical methods.
This is a reasonable reply. After all, while many medical conditions can be addressed without drugs, there are times when drugs are the only viable options—such as in cases of severe bacterial infections. However, there is still an important concern: are the drugs merely masking the symptoms of an underlying problem?
In the United States, most adults do not get enough sleep and are under considerable stress. This is due, largely, to the economic system that we accept and tolerate. It is well known that lack of sleep and stress cause exactly the sort of woes that are seen as symptoms of adult ADHD. As such, it seems reasonable to think that problematic adult ADHD is largely the result of the American way of life. While the drugs mask the real problems, they do not solve them. In fact, these drugs can be seen as analogous to the soma of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. If this is true, then the treatment of ADHD with drugs is morally problematic in at least two ways. First, it does not really treat the problems—it merely masks them and leaves the real causes in place. Second, drugging people in this manner makes it easier for them to tolerate a political, social and economic system that is destroying them which is morally wrong. In light of the above discussion, the pushing of ADHD drugs on adults is morally wrong.
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