What should we learn from Hugo Tale-Yax, the homeless man in Queens who lay dying on the street while no one stopped to help?

This seems to be the feel-bad-about-humanity story of the moment:

Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax’s last act may have been helping a woman who was having an argument with another man last Sunday morning in Queens. But his last hour or so was spent as a curiosity for people passing him on the street as he lay face down in blood after being stabbed several times.

Mr. Tale-Yax, 31, was pronounced dead by medical workers who responded to a 911 call around 7:20 a.m. on April 18. The police confirmed the authenticity of surveillance video on The New York Post’s Web site that shows dozens of people walking by Mr. Tale-Yax, who was homeless, lying on the sidewalk at 144th Street and 88th Road in Jamaica. After more than an hour, the video shows one man shake Mr. Tale-Yax before turning him over to reveal the wounds.

This Metafilter thread about the story shows a wide range of different reactions. The standard response is that this is like the famous incident with Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed (also in Queens), and slowly died in public as many people failed to help. (I'd be remiss if I didn't note that this account has been seriously called into question.)

This supposedly shows the "bystander effect": people don't help someone in distress if there are many other people around. (Incidentally, this is at odds with the conventional wisdom that seemingly altruistic behavior is actually done out of a self-interested desire to appear benevolent: people are apparently more likely to be good Samaritans if there's no one watching.)

A related reaction is that the Tale-Yax incident is even worse than the Genovese incident:

For the first time in history, most of these people could have called 911 using an object in their pocket. Most people fundamentally suck. You've just got to try to be different.

Another reaction is: we shouldn't castigate the passers-by, because they probably had no idea what was going on. Tale-Yax probably just looked like an ordinary homeless person. Yes, he was lying in a pool of his own blood, but his body may have been covering up the blood. A Metafilter commenter elaborates on this:

I'm sorry, but when you are walking early in the morning and see a homeless man face-down on the sidewalk (a not-infrequent occurrence), you assume they are passed out drunk, because 90% of the time they are. You don't stop to see if they're okay, because that can turn into a dangerous situation if they awaken still intoxicated. I say this as a social worker who genuinely cares for the plight of the homeless and understands that the majority of the time their circumstances are caused by mental illness that they didn't have the resources to treat. But, I'm also a person who cares for her personal safety and lives in NYC and would likely have walked on by too, not assuming the worst.

It's also worth considering this commenter's experience:

I'm a woman, and I've been threatened by homeless dudes in various states of inebriation/mental confusion a few times in NYC. Just for walking too close/sharing a subway car. It's as terrifying as you expect, and pretty much removed my willingness to go up to homeless strangers and help them unasked.

But my favorite reaction is this one from another Metafilter commenter:

I guess the way to reconcile this is to say: the problem isn't that people walked on by without calling for help, and from this we can conclude that people suck; the problem is that it is so common and unremarkable to see human beings so totally destitute and outcast that they are, for all appearances, lying dead in the street, that when one of them actually is dead, because he has recently been murdered, nobody can tell the difference.

The liberal, conservative way to teach children morals

"Two views of moral education," set forth by Eric Schitzgebel in his blog about philosophy and psychology called The Splintered Mind:

(1.) The "liberal", inward-out model: Moral education should stress moral reflection, with rules and punishment playing a secondary role. ...

(2.) The "conservative", outward-in model: Moral education should stress rules and punishment, with moral reflection playing a secondary role. You can't understand and apply the rules, of course, without some sort of reflection on them, but reflection should be in the context of received norms....

Now, academically affiliated researchers on moral development almost universally prefer the first model to the second.... The common idea is that children (and the morally undeveloped in general) improve morally when they are encouraged to think for themselves and given space to discover their own reactions and values....

But he has an idea for how to blend the two together:

Suppose Sally hits Hank and a liberally-minded teacher comes up and asks her how it made her feel to hurt Hank. What child, realistically, would say, "Well, I know he didn't deserve it, but it just felt good pounding him to a pulp!"? The reality is that the child is being asked to reflect in a situation where she knows that the teacher will approve of one answer and condemn another. This isn't free reflection; and the answer the child gives may not reflect her real feelings and values. Instead, it seems, it is a kind of imposition -- and one perhaps all the more effective if the child mistakes the resulting judgment for one that is genuinely her own.

Therefore, maybe, a liberal-seeming style of moral education is effective not because we have in us all an inclination toward the good that only needs encouragement to flower, but rather because reflection in teacher-child, parent-child, and similar social contexts is really an insidious form of imposition -- and thus, perhaps, the conservative's best secret tool.

As an adult, it can be hard to put yourself back in the child's shoes, since your childhood was so long ago. But anyone who's been to a law school where they use the Socratic method has a more recent memory of what he's talking about.

NOTE: With this post, I've created a new tag, and also applied it to a few old posts: "observed morality."

David Brooks on moral reasoning vs. moral instincts

David Brooks's latest column claims that we're undergoing a revolution in how we think about morality. The whole column is well worth reading, though I have a lot of disagreements with it.

Here's a basic outline of his argument:

1. Philosophers have traditionally assumed that "moral thinking is mostly a matter of reason and deliberation: Think through moral problems. Find a just principle. Apply it."

2. But "[t]oday, many psychologists, cognitive scientists and even philosophers embrace a different view of morality. In this view, moral thinking is more like aesthetics. As we look around the world, we are constantly evaluating what we see. . . . Moral judgments . . . are rapid intuitive decisions and involve the emotion-processing parts of the brain. Most of us make snap moral judgments about what feels fair or not, or what feels good or not. We start doing this when we are babies, before we have language. And even as adults, we often can’t explain to ourselves why something feels wrong."

3. "The question then becomes: What shapes moral emotions in the first place? The answer has long been evolution, but in recent years there’s an increasing appreciation that evolution isn’t just about competition. It’s also about cooperation within groups. Like bees, humans have long lived or died based on their ability to divide labor, help each other and stand together in the face of common threats. Many of our moral emotions and intuitions reflect that history. We don’t just care about our individual rights, or even the rights of other individuals. We also care about loyalty, respect, traditions, religions."

4. Brooks (who's normally referred to as a conservative) says this new understanding represents "an epochal change. It challenges all sorts of traditions. It challenges the bookish way philosophy is conceived by most people. It challenges the Talmudic tradition, with its hyper-rational scrutiny of texts. It challenges the new atheists, who see themselves involved in a war of reason against faith and who have an unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason and in the purity of their own reasoning." (In a clever twist ending, Brooks explains how it should even "challenge the very scientists who study morality.")


Here's my response (these numbers do not correspond to the above numbers):

1. The column seems derivative of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink ("rapid intuitive decisions ... snap moral judgments"), and shares one of its main drawbacks. As Gladwell himself concedes, it's problematic to hinge everything on gut feelings. If those, and not deliberative reasoning, are the best guide to truth, then how can you confidently say that racism, sexism, or homophobia are immoral? After all, many people's instincts are bigoted.

Brooks seems to recognize this when he says:

There are times, often the most important moments in our lives, when in fact we do use reason to override moral intuitions.

So he's saying that our emotions and instincts have moral validity except when they don't. That's limitedly helpful.


2. Brooks lists about 10 or 20 different values and, following the fashion among present-day intellectuals, announces with a flourish that they're all rooted in evolution. There's reason -- but also emotions! There's competition -- but also cooperation! Individuals -- community! And to make sure you remember that Brooks is a conservative, he lists "loyalty, respect, traditions, religions."

Well, if you list enough different facets of human behavior and attribute all of them to "evolution," it's almost a foregone conclusion that you can find moral goodness somewhere in evolution.

But Brooks isn't just taking nature as he finds it. Even assuming he's correct in everything he describes as evolutionary, there are also lots of evil behavior that are easy to explain in evolutionary terms (a few examples spring to mind: theft, rape, murder, war). One way or another, he has to sift through the good and bad in order to isolate what he considers good.

How can he do that if he doesn't have some preconception of what's good?

For instance, he says:

The evolutionary approach ... leads many scientists to neglect the concept of individual responsibility and makes it hard for them to appreciate that most people struggle toward goodness, not as a means, but as an end in itself.

Now, in that sentence, he's clearly viewing morality as much more than just a bundle of "aesthetic" reactions. He has a set of fundamental concepts ("individual responsibility," "goodness . . . as an end in itself"), and he's using them to analyze what kind of behavior counts as morally good.

Isn't there a term for that approach? Isn't it called "moral philosophy"? Or "moral reasoning"?

As much as he might like to draw a clear line between his view of morality vs. what "philosophers" do by using "reason," he himself is doing philosophy and relying on reason.


3. His premise that "psychologists" and "cognitive scientists" have corrected our previous view of morality is highly suspect. Even if you have perfect empirical information about how people form moral views, that doesn't necessarily tell you whether the views are right or wrong. But it's hard for me to say much more about this without seeing the specific studies he's thinking of.

[UPDATE: Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings makes the same point and goes into much greater depth than I've done here. Sample: "the research Brooks cites does not show what he seems to think it does, since the question how we make moral judgments on the fly is not, and does not answer, questions about the role of reasoning in morality."]


4. Brooks predictably caricatures the "new atheists" without engaging with any of their actual arguments. As with his general attack on moral philosophy, this critique is painted with such a broad brush that the result is analogous to one of those huge paintings that's just a solid color. We're told they rely too much on "reason" -- but where exactly has their reasoning gone wrong? It's hard to imagine that Brooks has actually read Hitchens's God Is Not Great, which explains how atheists can have the "feelings of awe [and] transcendence" that Brooks describes, or Sam Harris's The End of Faith, which embraces spirituality and acknowledges that a world filled with nothing but "reason" would be a cold and barren place.


UPDATE: More critiques of Brooks's column by John Schwenkler (The American Scene), Will Wilkinson, and PZ Meyers (Pharyngula). Meyers says:

I strongly urge that Mr Brooks try using his cerebral cortex in addition to his brain stem and hypothalamus when writing — that's another of those areas where emotional prejudices need to be supplemented with reason and knowledge.

And here's a cartoon about it! (Via Language Log.)

IN THE COMMENTS: My dad and I try to figure out what was really going on with Brooks's column.

"Is food the new sex?"

Nope.

A moral philosopher reacts to finding out she might enter a vegetative state.

British philosopher Soran Reader is outraged that she doesn't have a legal right to be killed if that happens.

She says:

Last month I was told I had a brain tumour.... As this [article] went to press, I was on my way to have a biopsy.... It carries a real risk of serious complications. I might die. I might suffer brain damage. I might lose large parts of my capacities to think, express myself and remember. ...

In all that mind-blowing horror, though, the possibility that really threatens to break me is that I may be unable to remember my children. ... I am certain that I do not want to live on if that happens.

I am terrified by the spectre of loss of self. But I am out of my mind with anger that my own country does not allow me to protect myself and my family from this horror safely. I am anguished at the thought that my children, on top of their grief at the loss of their mother, may have to cope with me as someone else, someone lost in the world or in a vegetative state. ...

My diagnosis has woken me from my mindless moral slumber on this topic, allowed me to feel the absolute outrage and moved me to start making the arguments.

It is completely wrong that UK law does not enable me to protect myself or my children from the loss of my self by arranging to be killed if the surgery goes wrong. ...

The law must be changed so that people facing fatal or self-destroying conditions do not also have to endure this agony of not being able to protect their selves and their loved ones. ...

I may not be in a position to press further for changes in the law after [the surgery], but I hope this article will persuade others to get this tiny little cornerstone of civilisation set right before too many others have had to bear this.

(Via Uncommon Priors.)

IN THE COMMENTS: Complications.

Anti-vegetarian argument #1: "Aren't you morally condemning most people?"

Megan McArdle says she's morally compelled to be a vegan, but she's uncomfortable with the implication that she's morally condemning people who aren't vegans.

How do vegans or vegetarians resolve this dilemma (if it is a dilemma)?

On the one hand, she says:

Like most vegetarians, I suspect that my angriest critics are those who, like me, feel that eating meat is wrong--and therefore want me to do it too, so that they don't have to think about their own choices. Well, apologies, but I think that I have a moral obligation to be a vegan.

But on the other hand:

Obviously, having decided that it's morally wrong to eat animal products, I can't exactly say that I think it's perfectly okay for other people to do so. On the other hand, I recognize that the universe is a complicated place, and my moral judgements are imperfect.

Or maybe a better way to say it is that there are moral judgements, and then there are moral judgements. I wish more people would stop eating meat, but I also think it is possible to be a perfectly good, moral human being and still eat meat, in a way that I don't think it is possible to be a good moral human being and still rape twelve-year olds. I have judged the behavior and found it wanting, but I do not judge, in any way, the people who indulge in it. I think there's something wrong with eating meat, but I don't think there's anything wrong with meat-eaters.

(By the way, she says she wouldn't raise her kids vegan, because she doesn't think that's healthy. But she would consider raising them vegetarian. And she obviously thinks it's healthy for an adult to be a vegan.)

I admire her attempt to resolve this issue through some kind of middle way. And she seems close to the right answer with her distinction between "the behavior" and "the people who indulge in it." But that still strikes me as too facile, because it begs the question: "Well ... why not judge the people who indulge in it?"

I think McArdle is making two key mistakes:

1. Even though she's trying to point out a grey area, it's just not enough of a grey area! I can't imagine that meat-eaters will be thrilled to learn that they aren't as bad as child rapists. She's still implying that she draws a big dividing line of moral judgment, with herself on the good side of the line, and meat-eaters on the other side. Now, she does explicitly contradict this. But I don't see her resolving the contradiction -- it just hangs there.

2. She's focusing on the negative. The whole theme of her post is moral condemnation: should we judge such-and-such people as immoral, or not?

Here's what I propose instead:

1. Don't compare one group of people vs. another group; compare how someone stands if they take one path vs. how that same person stands if they take another path.

And this is key: remember that there are millions of moral decisions any given person faces.

Whether to eat meat is a moral decision. You don't get to just walk away from it -- unless it's truly impossible for you to live a healthy vegetarian lifestyle, which is doubtful. But it's just one of many. There are lots of personal decisions that might matter more. There are social or political movements you might be involved with. And on and on and on. The world is complicated, and there are too many moral issues out there to divide people into good vs. bad based on one issue.

All I know is that I'm a better person than I would have been if I'd been eating meat for the past 17 years. But this in no way implies that I'm a better person than any particular other person who eats meat. After all, they might have their own cause that's dear to their heart that I haven't been active in doing much about.

I mean, if you have a friend who contributes a lot of time and money to fighting malaria, would you even think of saying, "Hey, you can't think it's a good thing for you to be doing that, because I've barely lifted a finger to do anything about malaria, and it would be highly presumptuous of you to think that you're better than me!"?

Of course not. You would just say, "Well, that's great. Good for you." In other words, you would stay POSITIVE! And that would be the end of it. No one's condemning anyone. And that leads to my second point...

2. Being a vegetarian/vegan is contributing to a good cause.

We need to put aside any notions of "Meat is murder!" (Whether such extreme views are nearly as common among vegetarians as they're often portrayed is another question.) The fact is, in our society, eating meat is the default, the baseline, the path of least resistance.

If you're utterly unconvinced by the arguments for being a vegetarian, then fine -- there's nothing more to the analysis. For you, that "baseline" is all there is.

If, on the other hand, you're (at least somewhat) convinced, then it's up to you to judge for yourself what's worth doing to go above that default baseline.

Maybe you'll be a vegetarian (like me) or a vegan (like McArdle). Or you might be a "flexitarian" instead. (Michael Pollan, the author of the popular book In Defense of Food, has endorsed this idea. See item "6" under page 11 in this article.)

Given how strong the message is in American society that eating inordinate quantities of meat is the norm, I consider any effort at cutting down on meat consumption -- even if it's not totally eliminated from your diet -- to be a contribution to a good cause.

It just so happens that I've "cut down" by 100% (just for meat -- there are plenty of other areas where I'm far from pure). If I could (somehow) convince two people each to cut down by 50%, I'd consider that to be exactly equivalent to convincing one person to do what I've done. I don't care about any given person's moral purity; I care only about the actual consequences for the world as a whole.

But now here's the meta point: who cares what I think? Who cares what Megan McArdle thinks? We're just random bloggers. We don't have any authority over how you live your life. So even if we're judging you, why does this matter?

Maybe you're thinking, "Well, you two specifically don't matter a whole lot, but you represent what most vegetarians do, and that certainly matters, doesn't it?" Well, no, I don't think it does. If I don't have any authority over you, then neither does the aggregate of all vegetarians in the world.

You might also be surprised by how little they're even thinking about you at all. Meat-eaters sometimes seem to forget that vegetarians live in the real world, where 90-something % of people eat meat on a regular basis. It's just not remarkable in the slightest to see someone eating meat. Based on everything I've ever experienced in real life, the image of vegetarians who are easily shocked or offended at meat, or who go around condemning people they see eating meat, is a myth.

But let's suppose, just for the sake of argument, that they are condemning you.

Well, they haven't really perceived you. I don't have the information I would need to judge you even if I wanted to. You're the only one who's seen how you've lived throughout your whole life. So the only person who can fairly judge your moral character is you.