I was excited to see Inception. People whose opinions on movies I generally respect said it was great. It was one of the best science fiction movies they'd seen. They saw it and wanted to dissect it afterward. They wanted to talk about it. It was full of exciting ideas. It made them think.

If you want to get me excited about a movie, these are the things you should tell me.

So I saw Inception. I enjoyed it. The movie was fun. It was long, but the pacing was good. There was plenty of action, and it wasn't hard to follow. There were some cool visuals. I enjoyed a little mini-game in which I picked out actors who Christopher Nolan clearly wanted to work with again after The Dark Knight.

The moment that the movie ended, though, I started to pick it apart. Inception made for a fine moviegoing experience, but so do many mindless action movies. Inception aspired to be something more than that. In my mind, it failed.

(spoilers ahead)

First off, this was a movie set mostly in dreamscapes. As such, you'd expect to come away with some fantastic imagery. There was a bit, but - overall - the movie presented dreams as remarkably banal. Everything took place within normal, realistic geographic locations. Everything was in a remarkably normal looking city or building or on a beach. There were no houses inside of moving cars. There were no giant monsters or talking animals. No one had a giant head, and everyone was wearing clothes. Christopher Nolan must have some really boring dreams.

That said, let's start with the central conceit of the film: you can go into people's dreams and steal their secrets, but planting the germ of an idea in someone's head is nigh impossible.

Let's start with the first part of that. To steal someone's secrets, you create a safe, a fortess, a prison, or something else that's secure in the dreamscape. The dreamer will automatically populate that safe place with something secret. Somehow, this turns out to be the corporate secrets you are after as opposed to that person's real secrets - that he is closeted, that he thinks himself a failure, that he accidentally killed a puppy when he was eight and has never forgiven himself, etc.

Similarly, why is inception - the planting of a germ of an idea - nigh impossible? You're in someone's dream. You probably created the dreamscape which the person's subconscious accepts as its own. Why don't you put up some billboards or something? Sure, it might be tricky to create strong convictions with any sense of certainty... but impossible (or even nearly so)? The explanation for that was so weak as to be laughable.

What has everyone talking about this movie? They are focusing upon the question raised in it about how to determine whether or not you are dreaming. In the movie, it is left slightly ambiguous whether the entire film has taken place within the main character's dream. (Personally, I was not emotionally invested in him enough to care. Although, if it was all a dream then all the other characters were projections of his subconscious - which makes the movie make even less sense.)

Skepticism about the reality of the world isn't new. It goes back at least as far as Plato's allegory of the cave. For a more modern take on it, look at Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, in which he asked himself how he could know he wasn't dreaming or whether some sort of evil demon-trickster was feeding his mind false impressions of there being a physical world around him. The answer that Descartes found to this dilemma was one that most people find unsatisfactory, and the problem of skepticism continues today.

When I was first introduced to the intractability of the problem of skepticism, I was fascinated. The idea that some of history's smartest people had struggled to prove the world real - and failed - was both terrifying and exhilarating... all the more so because the problem was such a simple and compelling one: How do we know the world is real? Perhaps that is what is going on with Inception. It is making people think about the problem of skepticism who haven't really done so before. That's great, but I can still wish that it did so more cogently. Really, The Matrix - for all its faults - raised the same question in a more coherent manner than Inception.

Justice is blind.

We say this, sometimes, without thinking about what it means. To what is justice blind?

The best response, perhaps, is that justice is blind to who you are. All people receive equal justice under the law. The law treats every individual identically.

Is this true, though? Clearly not.

Historically speaking, different people (such as women and people of color) were, explicitly, treated in differential fashions. Today, we still have different categories of people who receive special treatment under the law such as children, citizens, military personnel, the mentally incompetent, and enemy combatants. Justice isn't blind to any of these things.

Well, you might say, justice is blind to who you are given any of these categories. It will treat any two adult, mentally competent, non-military, citizen, etc. individuals the same, regardless of who they are.

This, too, is false. We can look at statistics and see that the poor are not only convicted at a much higher rate than the rich, but they also receive harsher penalties for the same crimes.

So, in practice, justice isn't blind.

Should it be?

This is a harder question. On the one hand, it would be better if we erased the disparities in conviction rates and severity of punishment between the rich and poor. On the other, it is important for justice to be tempered by both compassion and fairness. Of course, it is easier to be compassionate to those you can relate to - and judges tend not to be stricken by poverty.

I think that virtue theory helps here. Part of the problem is that we aren't only having difficulty defining blindness, but we are also conflating several definitions of justice. Is justice here the justice system? Is it the process that an individual goes through in that system? Is it the verdict of a judge? Is it the morally-correct outcome of a situation? These are all different things.

Regardless of any other conception of justice that might be proffered, it is that actual decisions made by judges that matter. What matters is that our judges act in a virtuous manner. The virtue associated with justice is characterized by a desire to find the truth, a sense of fairness, and a commitment to treating all people equally. Compassion that is expressed equally for all people is fully compatible with this virtue. This is a virtue that we want our judges to have. We don't want them to be blind. We want them to see clearly.

TED (Technology-Entertainment-Design) is a nonprofit dedicated to spreading ideas. It holds annual conferences where speakers are invited to give short presentations. The speakers have ranged from high-profile types like Al Gore (on climate change) and Richard Dawkins (on atheism) to people I've never heard of on an enormous range of topics. There are few philosophers in the list, though Daniel Dennett has given several TED talks and many of the talks are philosophically interesting. The best part? All the presentations are available on-line for free.

If you're interested in checking them out (and you should be), you can look at the TED homepage or check out this spreadsheet with links and short summaries for every TED presentation available (via Boing Boing).

A friend of mine asked (on Facebook) whether ignorance was evil. In my mind, the two are definitely linked.

Theoretically speaking, they are linked because a tendency toward ignorance is a defect of character. It is an intellectual vice. If you lack the intellectual curiosity and skepticism to question things you are told; if you lack the intellectual courage to investigate your beliefs; if you defend your beliefs blindly, without acknowledging their flaws; if you don't care about the actual facts of the situation unless they support you: these are all flaws in your moral character. They are as much vices as are greed and wrathfulness.

Practically speaking, it is fairly easy to see why ignorance and evil are linked:

Willful ignorance is an intentional refusal to learn facts about a situation. Any action that you take with respect to a situation about which you remain willfully ignorant will only turn out well by chance. I liken acting from willful ignorance to closing your eyes and shooting a gun into a room. Maybe there's no one in there, but if you do hit someone, the fact that you couldn't see them is certainly not an excuse. Rather, the fact that you closed your eyes makes you more responsible.

Unintended ignorance is unavoidable in many situations. We can't know everything. Still, consider how many mistakes you have made in your life. How many of those could have been avoided with more knowledge? If you had been a better person, might you not have been able to acquire some of that knowledge and avoided some of those mistakes?

We talk about children as if they are innocent - and in many senses they are - but we also recognize that children can be capable of great cruelty. How much of that cruelty is due to a lack of knowledge?

I know that I've been quiet lately. I hadn't planned on taking a blogging hiatus. I have, however, been busy.

Currently, I'm preparing for an adventure: I'm moving back to the Washington, D.C. area after having spent most of the past decade in Illinois. There are a number of reasons for this. Some are personal. Others are professional. Since I moved away from D.C. in 2001, a good bit of my family has moved to the area.

This move is happening fairly quickly, and it wasn't entirely planned. I'm still in the process of finding a place to live and a job and all that. This is one of the reasons I haven't been posting. As I said, I've been busy.

In bigger news, I also asked Angela to marry me on the Fourth of July. Luckily, she agreed. As a result, I appear to be engaged. Yes, she is coming to D.C. with me. We are actually driving in this weekend in the hopes of finding a place to live.

I realize that all of these changes have patriotic undertones. I find this a bit odd, as nationalism makes me vaguely uncomfortable.

In response to my last post, David asked whether the openness of virtue theory could be seen as a sort of moral relativism, with the unspoken (and unwritten) expectation that this would be a bad thing.

I responded with a call for definitions.

How is virtue theory relative, and is it relative in a way that is problematic? David suggested that moral relativism is opposed to an objective moral standard. This reflects common usage, but it isn't quite right. Moral relativism is the idea that moral facts can be different for different people or in different situations. This is opposed to what I'll call universalism the idea that moral facts are always the same no matter where or when they might be applied. Laws, as codified, are universal. (They are less so when interpreted - whether by law enforcement or the justice system.)

Universalism in ethics isn't the same as moral objectivity. Objectivity speaks to the origin of moral facts. It claims that morality has an objective source. This is opposed to subjectivity: the idea that morality depends on subjective facts - facts about people's emotions or feelings.

Subjectivity and relativism seem similar, but they are not the same. There are a bunch of fine distinctions here. Hopefully an example (adapted from Aristotle) will help clarify this mess:

How much should a person eat in a day?

The universalist would answer with something like the USRDA (or, even better, the Suggested Optimum Daily Allowance.

The relativist would say that it depends upon the health and physical condition of a person, as well as that individual's level of physical activity and the food available. Given an individual case, a relativist should be able to make recommendations as precise as a universalist, but would critique the universalist for making generalizations, noting that (for instance) a 5' 3", 200 lb couch potato should not be eating the same things as a 6' 11" professional basketball player.

Someone who adheres to an objective standard would determine their recommendations based on objective facts such as nutritional and physiological data.

Someone who adheres to a subjective standard would determine their recommendations based on subjective facts such as what people like to eat.

Most of our objections to relativism in ethics is actually an objection to subjectivism. The two are easily confused, but they are fundamentally different. We could be both relativists and subjectivists. With regard to nutrition, this would imply that everyone should eat what they want. Moral relativism+subjectivism gives a similarly unsatisfactory result.

Relativism is, however, fully compatible with an objective standard. This is our preferred combination for nutrition. We'll use a universal rule as a crutch, but we know we should adapt it to our individual circumstances. In ethics, virtue theory is one way to capture a moral system that is both relative and objective. According to virtue theory, a person should be the best person he or she can be. That might look different for different individuals. This doesn't mean that there isn't an objective standard against which they can be judged. It certainly doesn't mean that morality devolves to mere preferences.

What does it mean to be moral? What is morality about?

These seem like questions with obvious answers, but philosophers disagree on the answers. Think about some possibilities:

1. Morality determines whether actions are right or wrong.
2. Morality is more concerned with the intentions behind actions than the actions themselves. As long as you mean well, you are acting morally.
3. We can't look at actions apart from their results. What matters is bringing good into the world. The best intentions don't make something morally good if they don't have good consequences.

When we think about questions relating to morality, it helps to have a framework. If we don't have a basic understanding of the moral questions we are asking, it is easy to get confused. We might end up balancing intentions versus consequences - do they both matter? How much? They are two different things - how can I compare them? Moreover, each of these frameworks presents a different methodology for determining what is moral.

...and there are options other than the three above:

• Virtue theory holds that the basic question of morality isn't "What should I do?" but is, instead, "What sort of person should I be?"
• Egoists are a bit like 3, above, but they focus on good for themselves rather than the world.
• Moral particularism believes (somewhat like virtue theory) that there are no general moral principles - there can always be exceptions and we must address situations individually.
• Divine command theory finds the source of morality in the laws (or attitudes) of a divine being.
• and others

If I were teaching a philosophy class, I'd be careful to be neutral in my evaluation of these theories. I'm not, though. This is my blog, so I'm going to tell you that I'm a virtue theorist.

Why? I have a lot of reasons, but here are a few:

• Instead of focusing on individual situations, virtue theory takes the basic questions of morality to be things like How should I live my life? and What sort of person should I be? These are simple and natural questions that get to the heart of morality. Compare them with Kant's categorical imperative: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
• Most (non-virtue) theories of morality focus on the marginal questions - the really hard cases (Would you kill a baby to save ten people?). These are the sorts of questions that most of us will never face. Why base your moral thinking on something that will never happen?
• Virtue theory is, conversely, about everyday morality. A virtuous person is kind, generous, and just. She has developed habits that let her navigate the moral-relevant landscape of the world.
• Virtue theory looks at what sort of person you are - how you tend to act and react, what concerns you, and how you feel about it. These are all things we think are morally relevant, but most moral theories fail to take them all into account.
• What are actions? This is a trickier question than might be obvious. It might be wrong to shoot someone in the head, but is it wrong to extend your arm and move your finger back and forth? What if you have a gun in your hand? We can describe any action in an infinite number of ways. Some of them might sound morally problematic. Others won't.
• Consequences are even worse. Any action has an infinite number of consequences that can be described in an infinite number of ways.
• I can't help but think that the world would be a better place if people who focused on criticizing others for their moral failings instead concentrated on improving their own habits so that they tended to act morally more often.

The list goes on... and I'm sure that I'll flesh it out in future posts and comments.

One big consequence of virtue theory that a lot of people have problems with is that it doesn't answer many questions that people seem to be concerned with. Some friends of mine got frustrated with me the other night because I refused to give a straight answer when I was asked to provide general moral principles I believed in (we were talking about abortion, which I recommend not doing with friends... particularly if they are pregnant).

I told them that I try to be a good person. I'm not going to claim to adhere to a moral rule. Not only do rules all have exceptions, but people make mistakes (even mostly-good people). Questions like "When - if ever - is abortion morally justified?" aren't answered by virtue theory except insofar as a virtuous doctor would know when it would be appropriate to perform an abortion.

To be honest, I don't think I've ever seen a better answer than that.

Michael Jackson died today.

There is a sense in which I find it strange that I care. I never met him, and I imagine that if I had, I probably would not have liked him personally. Except for a brief period around the time of Thriller, I never went out of my way to listen to his music (though I do appreciate some covers of his work). I harbor an absurd grudge that he and Lisa Marie Presley never had children for the sole fact that it was almost the case that someone could have said, "My father was Michael Jackson and my grandfather was Elvis Presley" - and that would have been a beautifully absurd thing.

On the other hand, that would have also been an incredibly emotionally-scarred child.

Just like his father.

This isn't about Michael Jackson, though. It's about me. I care that he died, and that bothers me. I mean that I want to be callous, but the truth is that thousands of people die every day who have far more in common with me than Michael Jackson ever did. It is rare that I mourn for any of them.

What is the distinction between these people and Michael Jackson? Four possibilities come to mind. The first is self-interest. It might be that I mourn^* because of lost future opportunities. Perhaps my mourning for Michael Jackson is similar to my mourning for a favorite canceled television show. This could certainly be true for some people, but I wasn't really looking forward to anything Michael Jackson might have done in the future.

The second possibility is that I mourn for Michael Jackson because I see him as having had an impact on my life. I suppose he did, as I lived through the eighties. On the other hand, I was also living in New Orleans when David Duke was running for Governor. He certainly influenced my life. While I don't actively wish him dead, I wouldn't mourn him at all if he died.

The third possibility is that I mourn for Michael Jackson because other people - people that I care about - will be saddened by his death. I mourn not for him, but for them. There's something to this, but it ultimately rings false to me. It isn't uncommon for someone important to someone that I care about to die. I know what that feels like. This feels different. I feel bad about his death... not about the repercussions of it.

The last possibility is that I mourn for Michael Jackson simply due to exposure. I know a lot about him... at least in comparison to other people that I don't know personally. His death probably triggered some psychological reaction due to perceived closeness. Our brains aren't designed for having intimate knowledge about people we don't know. I expect we are wired in such a way that, all other things being equal, knowledge implies closeness.

Imagine you heard that "some guy in Maine had a stroke and died." Sad? I guess. Now imagine that you are watching a documentary about the day in the life of a lobsterman. You see him with his wife and children. You see him joking with the guys on his boat. You see him rejoicing at a great day's catch... then you are told that he died of a stroke the next day. Sad? Most definitely. Of course, the two men who died of a stroke could be the same person. What makes the second more worthy of your compassion than the first?

^*To be fair, "mourn" is far to strong a word for my reaction to Michael Jackson's death. I'm not ripping my clothes over it.

In his Slate column, William Saletan notes that pregnant women who are unhappy about their pregnancies tend to refer to use the word fetus to describe what they are carrying while those happy with their pregnancy tend to use the word baby. (I don't believe he has any evidence for this.) He goes on to imply that those who use the word fetus are doing something dangerous, equating them with those who are entirely in denial about their pregnancy. He is called to task for this by Tracy Clark-Flory in Salon's "Broadsheet" column. His first point, though, is worth exploring. The point, taken broadly, is that words have power. They have, for instance, the power to humanize a fetus and dehumanize a baby. While a choice of words isn't the central conflict of the abortion controversy, it is certainly a factor that contributes to its intractability. Agreement on the definition of terms is crucial to communication. It may be that most conflicts of thought are either due to or prolonged by disagreements about definitions. If I say of a pregnant woman that she is carrying a baby, and you believe that babies are defined to exclude (at least) non-viable fetuses (and possibly viable ones), then you are not hearing the same word that I am saying. There's a gap in communication that prevents us from meaningfully communicating about babies.

Philosophy recognizes this sort of problem. Its solution is to insist upon definitions. Yes, I know. Definitions are boring. There's a reason we look askance at people who read the dictionary.

Philosophy isn't alone in its insistence on definitions. Every discipline that depends on logically sound arguments or proofs does the same. Setting clear definitions is important. It is rarely sufficient to simply avoid disputed terms. People on both sides of the abortion issue could avoid using the word baby, but it would be very strange to do so. Moreover, this would require them to use terms like fetus and embryo - which pro-choice advocates, for instance, might consider a concession. (Saletan was right to note that these terms tend to be less humanizing than baby.)

Agreement on a definition, of course, isn't going to solve the conflict. The conflict centers around such things as when human life begins, when it is permissible to kill, and how to balance the rights of people against each other. Agreeing on definitions will help us to focus our attention on these issues - the important issues - instead of focusing upon our a gap in communication.

Definitions aren't just important for basic communication. We also need to be aware of definitional drift in arguments. It is easy to define a term one way and later use the term in ways not encompassed by its agreed-upon definition. People do this all the time. Part of the problem is that words in common use often have very vague definitions. With an established definition you can always look at a word's agreed-upon usage and discern whether it is being used consistently.

Have you ever considered the idiom, "for the sake of argument?" If you were engaged in the abortion debate you might say, "for the sake of this argument, let's always refer to babies by age: at birth, we'll call it a 0 month old baby. At conception, we'll call it a -9 month old baby. Can we agree to that?" You aren't asking the person to use these terms anywhere but in this discussion. You are establishing usage of terms^* for the sake of - for the benefit of - the argument that you are engaged in. The precision that these definitions provide might aid in constructing, understanding, and evaluating arguments.

^*In philosophy, we refer to this as stipulating a definition.

When Angela and I went on our long-weekend road trip (the one with the human bodies), we navigated solely by GPS. This was weird for me. I'm used to, at the very least, mapping out the major routes I plan to take on a trip. We had our destination and we let Ms. Garmin tell us how to get there.

It was strange not having any idea where I was except in reference to where I was going. Upon consideration, though, I don't know if it is meaningfully different than how I normally navigate. Usually, I get directions from Google Maps. Just like the GPS, this provides me on information about what routes to take. The only substantial difference is that Google Maps provides me with the information up-front... and I can print it out.

Of course, with Google Maps, we are somewhat tied down to a set route. With the GPS, we could go and get sidetracked when we saw something interesting, knowing that the GPS would recalculate our route from our new location (and tell us so in a vaguely recriminating tone of voice). We weren't going to get lost.

The most interesting feature, potentially, was the GPS's ability to find nearby attractions in a variety of categories. Unfortunately, this feature isn't as well-implemented as I'd like. You can get addresses and directions to places, but no actual information about them. Still, it is easy to imagine how information from the internet could be used to complement this feature. With a personal profile and appropriate filters, you could set up a software agent that would notify you of nearby locations and events that you might be interested in... no matter where you are. With integration with something like Twitter, you could even pick up on - or create - unplanned spontaneous events involving people you don't know.

The cultural ramifications of this are potentially staggering. Technology has been credited with creating a global culture. It isn't uncommon to have people you consider to be your friends... who you have never met in person and live half-way around the world. It is easy to find people via the Internet who share your interests as long as you ignore geographic boundaries. As we spend more time in technologically-mediated relationships and less time in face to face ones, though, we become isolated from people in our own neighborhoods with whom we may not feel we have much in common.

The trick is to split this down the middle and find people nearby who share your interests. I can see this sort of technology doing just that. Of course, depending upon where you live and how esoteric your interests are, there might not be too many people who meet that description in a general sense... but if your interests are defined on a very immediate level, say, "I just saw this new indie movie and want to go to a bar and talk about it with someone" or "I want to go and work on my cross-stitching at the coffee shop and meet some people" this sort of thing would be perfect.