[BLANK_AUDIO] Suppose you had a pill, this pill causes you to believe that justice is always to your advantage, personally. Or maybe the pill just gives you the urge to be honest and fair to everyone. Now, we just need to give it a fancy pharmaceutical sounding name like Fairzoplan or Goodtoall, Equalet. Sharitol, that's a good one, take a long lasting Sharitol everyday to keep society regular. Possible side affects include being annoying to those closest to you, death, torture, losing all your property, losing your reputation, being a fool. Ask your philosopher whether Sharitol is right for you. Also available in reduced strength formula, Shareabit. Okay, as your philosopher, I'm telling you, this will only work if everyone takes it. But if everyone does take it, it just might work. But before I write you a prescription for the strong stuff, take two quizzes and call me in the morning. Seriously, suppose there's a pill. To make you, let's say it makes you 10% more virtuous and noble than you are today by your standards, not someone else's. New extra strength Imzolofty. Would you take it? Yes, no, maybe? Maybe it's a more targeted treatment. Another quiz. Suppose the effect of a dose of reduced strength, long lasting Sharabit is merely that, for the next 20 years, you will give 10% more to charity than you otherwise would have. Would you take it? Yes, no, maybe? Okay, we'll make it three quizzes. We'll pile them all up. Suppose you could dose the city's water supply with long-lasting Sharabit. Causing every citizen to be 10% more likely to render assistance to any fellow citizen in need. Would you do it? At the very least, would you stand up and propose it as a public policy measure? Would you vote for it, if someone else proposed it? I'm not asking you to sneak out to the reservoir and dump chemicals in the night. We can do this honestly, with the consent of the governed. A) Yes. B) No. C) Maybe? All answers accepted, of course. But I'm guessing you all said no. Mostly. To be fair, there's something unfair about these quizzes as measures of your attitudes. Many people wouldn't take a pill to make them happy even if they thought it would work, so it's not surprising they won't take one to make them just. It doesn't follow the you don't want to be just or be happy, you just have a sense this is the wrong way to go about it. Maybe you're worried about side effects of a different sort that I mentioned above. Something more along these lines. Warning, side effects of prolonged exposure to sharitall include dystopian nightmares. Fair enough. But there is a point to these pharmaceutical fantasies of mine. First, you do see how this solves the prisoner's dilemma, theoretically. Take the hitting case. We all sort of want to hit each other, let's suppose. But we really don't want to get hit. If we all take a pill that makes us averse to violence, to the sight of blood, say, we will manage to get to the second best option. No one hits anyone instead of the third worst - failure. Everyone hits everyone. Even if some people cheat, we can deal with that. Maybe they pocket the pill instead of swallowing it. The point of the pill isn't to achieve 100% compliance. We've got police in the power of gossip, if it's just a few folks refusing to take their medicine. The point of the pill is to make sure that this Machiavellian mindset doesn't take hold. In each of us as individuals. But the paradox is this. We're fighting moral decay with truth decay. If the truth is that the cynics are right, justice is just a tool, then by tricking ourselves into thinking Socrates is right it is always in my interest to be just. We're making ourselves dumber although better about justice. I'm skating over some complications here but I think if I filled in the details we could get to this, maybe justice is a thing that only works properly if we are all wrong about how it actually works. It's a means to a solid second best for us all, but it's only that, if we all wrongly think it's a first best, for me, that's not a contradiction but it is odd. Then again, there is nothing odd about it. Cheap generic versions of all these drugs exist and we take them all the time. What am I talking about? Do you have trouble getting up in the morning? Well, maybe you should move your alarm clock to the other side of the room, thereby minimizing the chance you will just hit snooze. If you don't want to get fat, eating too many chips, make sure not to have bags of Doritos lying around the house. Ever thought of that? Of course you have. You'd have to be an idiot never to have thought of a few such strategies. But all of this is kind of like those pills, you're doing something to yourself to alter your moods artificially. Do you think small children are morally impressionable? Do you think small children should be taught to share? That's like giving them a dose of Sharabit everyday and it isn't just for kids. Would you take a drug that caused you to believe whatever people tell you? Believal, or Persuadofal. Obviously, not. In general, the thing that's disturbing about the pharmaceutical model is that it involves acquisition of belief or shifts in attitude, without justification You come to believe stuff, feel stuff, for no rational reason. Alien material colonizes you, and changes essential parts of you. Welcome to the human race, kid. That's way we have the word persuasion, as well as the word reason. Maybe you've been worried I've forgotten what my course was called. Not entirely. Then again, there is something extra peculiar about lying to myself, persuading myself about justice in particular. How so? Well, if I move the alarm clock, it's like there are two mes. And the smart me is trying to persuade or trick the lazy me. If I keep the house Dorito-free, it's like there are two mes and the me that wants to be fit and healthy is persuading or tricking the me that only wants to stuff its stupid face. Since I identify with the healthy smart me, I don't really have a problem with any of this. Those other mes, are actually sort of like a them. I am not myself at 7 a.m. I don't mind if that guy gets fooled. This point could do with careful development. But you sort of get it, right? But what about justice? If I induce myself into having rationally groundless beliefs about justice for everyone's good including me. It's a bit unclear which me is benefiting here, who is, who is behind this plot? It's sort of like I am tricking the most noble part of myself on behalf of a baser, more selfish or at least more ordinary part of myself. One part of me is saying, let justice be done, though the heavens fall. And another part of me is sort of sitting on the mental couch, eating mental Doritos, and saying, yeah you just keep thinking that way buddy. It's good for all of us. Even weirder. It's sort of like I created this noble part of myself. Especially for the sake of messing with it's head. Fooling it about the true nature of justice. And I've sort of semi-annihilated or, anesthetized the less noble, more cynical part of myself, just for the sake of benefiting it. Okay. That's weird enough. I'll stop there. Hey. Where's Socrates in all this? We haven't heard from that guy for a while. What's he got to say for himself? And which self is it that's doing the saying? And about which self?
