Completed essay

Brandon Gragnani
Bob Boyd
Symbolic Logic
5 December 2016
The Paradoxicality of Morality
	“What I am now saying is false.” (Sainsbury 1). A difficult paradox; an old riddle of thought presented by Sainsbury in the introduction of Paradoxes. Sainsbury goes on to explain how if the speaker is being truthful then their words are false, but if they are lying, then the sentence becomes true. When most people hear the word, paradox, they jump to these riddles in a hope to tease their brain and solve the unsolvable, but paradoxes go beyond that. Every day people face moral paradoxes, deciding one thing versus another, hoping to make the “right” choice.

	Sainsbury claims a paradox is a “working definition...an apparently unacceptable conclusion derived by apparently acceptable means from apparently acceptable premises.” A paradox is not just a word, but an idea; rooted in all kinds of situations. People are faced with decisions of right and wrong all the time, and though they do not always make the right choice, a choice must always be made.

	The chapter on moral paradoxes begins with a proposal of crime reduction: to reduce, or completely negate, the crime of carjacking by imposing capital punishment. Sainsbury states “The penalty is so severe that it is 100 percent effective as a deterrent: car-jacking…never occurs, and so is never punished” (22) as a proposed moral paradox. There are two sides to this idea. The good side, that the crime of carjacking has been completely removed so no one is killed for carjacking. On the other hand, it promotes an unfair and unjust society; condemning people to death for one crime is an extreme and “injustice” (22). Therefore, this begins a paradox, as someone cannot agree that it is a good idea to rid the world of carjackers, but at the same time think the punishment in unfair.

	Capital punishment has been a big debate in the United States, and for that matter the world, for quite some time. Centuries ago punishment for the most insignificant of things was quite severe, and even though we have evolved to a more just society, people still wonder whether death is inhumane. Just this year in California there were two separate propositions on the death penalty, and it can be assumed that there will be more. Proposition 62 was a simple yes/no vote; yes, to repeal the death penalty, and no to keep it. If passed, Prop 62 “…would have repealed the state death penalty and replaced the maximum punishment for murder with life in prison without possibility of parole.” Another moral paradox. If the vote passed there are two sides; the good: people can be proud an outdated and potentially inhumane form of punishment is now removed, the bad: there will be an increased strain on prisons, taxes and state spending, and could potentially result in more felonies. However, if the vote failed there are, again, two sides; the good: People will be more unwilling to commit crimes if they knew they were going to face a more severe punishment and prison sizes will be reduced, the bad: the system can be considered unjust and in certain cases, people may be wrongly executed (just one example).

	Similarly, Proposition 66 was on the same ballot. Its goal was to “Change the death penalty procedures to speed up the appeals process by putting trial courts in charge of initial petitions challenging death penalty convictions, establishing a time frame for death penalty review…” Instead of repealing the death penalty, Prop 66 hoped to make it easier to appeal the death penalty quickly, instead of it taking years and many trials.  Just like with Prop 62, this has a good side and a bad side for either vote.  If voted yes and the proposition passed; the good: as before, the death penalty staying would result in less overcrowded prisons and potentially less crime, the bad: on a moral level, potentially more criminals that should be charged with the death penalty may not be and will just face life in prison. But if the vote were to fail; the good: some people may say that is better that criminals cannot get out of the death penalty as easily, the bad: prisons will continue to be crowded with death row inmates and potentially unjustly accused people. Neither view can exist at the same time, as having contradicting thoughts on one matter is not right. Funnily enough, Proposition 62 and Proposition 66 are also a paradox of sorts. If 62 passed then 66 could not exist, and if 66 passed but then 62 passed, it could logically not exist either—however the propositions were set in that if both passed, the one with more yes votes will automatically take over.

	In the next section of the chapter Sainsbury brings in the paradoxes of the goodness of misfortune; cases in which people faced hardships throughout their lives but could overcome and become successful against all odds. He introduces two hypothetical people:
“Abigail is born with physical defects. In the course of taking swimming exercises to overcome these, exercises she performs with quite unusual determination, she turns into a champion swimmer. Abraham is born into a poor family, but his early difficulties make him unusually ambitious, and after many years of hardship he succeeds in building up a chain of businesses, and securing wealth and comfort for himself and his family.” (27-28)

Both of these individuals suffered many hardships, even from the starts of their lives, but were successful in overcoming the odds. The moral sides of this paradox come into play once the good and the bad are stated. The bad: it’s an awful situation that these people had to grow up and live with such poor situations and most people would hope that no one else would have to go through the same misfortunes. The good: because the two were faced with such awful situations, they were presented opportunities that other people were not; because life was so hard they pushed even harder to become successful.  However, some would say that this doesn’t quite make this a paradox. The misfortunes have good and bad aspects at the same time, which some would believe that leads it to become a paradox, but it is true that many things can have a good and bad side. Misfortunes, for this example, are perfectly capable of having a good side and a bad side without contradicting each other; if this were to be considered a paradox, it would only mildly be.

	Sainsbury examines another case of misfortune involving a man breaking his leg, but he ends up meeting his wife, the doctor, because of breaking it. This prompts a new way of analyzing these paradoxes of misfortune by weighing the good versus the bad.  For the example of breaking his leg and meeting the love of his life, most people would agree that the good outweighs the bad hugely; some would even “gladly and with a clear conscience have wished him to have broken his leg, if this was the only way to get the couple together.” (Sainsbury 29). But when the bad outweighs the good, people will be hesitant about accepting whether they would wish it upon someone. Abraham, for example, probably went through his entire early life, at least eighteen years, enduring hardships people wouldn’t wish upon their worst enemies just to become mildly successful. Therefore, some would argue in the case of Abraham that the bad outweighs the good, appealing to Sainsbury’s opinion of “…if the bad weighs very heavily, even though outweighed, we find it hard to be enthusiastic about the total package of good and bad.” (29).

	With all this information, it is still unsure whether this would be defined as a paradox, so Sainsbury writes the principle of a misfortune, “M: A misfortune is a non-accidental cause of predominantly bad effects.” (30).  Based off this definition of a misfortune the early lives of Abagail, the swimmer, and Abraham, the business owner, cannot be misfortunes because they are non-accidental; however, on a purely moral level it is obvious that they experienced misfortunes by our definition of the word. Alternatively, the man breaking his leg was only accidentally caused him to meet his wife to be. This is the basis of the functioning paradox, the early lives of Abigail and Abraham were misfortunes, bad lives no one want to experience, and at the same time not misfortunes because of the definition M, as stated above. Obviously, this definition of a misfortune is debatable, and is not the most soundproof for providing a paradox, but Sainsbury makes some agreeable points, and ends the section with a philosophical statement “If that is how things are with misfortune, then M delivers the wrong verdict: it requires not merely that a misfortune should have bad upshots, but that these should outweigh the good ones.” (31)

	In the third section of the chapter, Sainsbury writes about the prospect of “not being sorry” (31), another type of moral paradox that is quite close to what was discussed previously. He begins by quoting Saul Smilansky, author of 10 Moral Paradoxes, in his personal experience of not being sorry:
“Before you were born your parents gave birth to a seemingly normal daughter, except that she was born with a severe defect in her heart, which led to her death after only a few weeks...You were born afterwards. In time, you learned that, had your sister survived, your even having been conceived would have been precluded.” (Smilansky 2007, p. 59)

	To summarize Smilansky and Sainsbury’s explanation, the moral paradox is defined as follows: in the sense of being sorry and how people are raised as a society, people are obligated to feel sorry that, in this case, their previous sibling had died; however, because of Smilansky’s statement it is acceptable to not be sorry, as if the sister had not died he would never have been born.
Sainsbury expands upon this by creating two terms for the moral paradox, “transfer: … would take one to the conclusion that it is permissible to be glad that your sister died. [And the] exclusion principle, to the effect that if it is permissible to be glad that your sister died, it is permissible not to be sorry.” (31-32).  Buts as before these definitions are open-ended and debatable in how valid they are. Sainsbury uses a logic formula to show how these two work together, and in the end shows that even though the idea of transfer can be a paradox, it is not necessarily the strongest, nor most “plausible” (32).

This brings together a full circle of the three moral paradoxes that were discussed; capital punishment for carjacking, the good and bad of Abraham and Abigail, and not being sorry about what society tells us to be sorry for.  These paradoxes are similar in what Sainsbury calls “causal entanglement” (33). Every one of the moral paradoxes are entangled in the sense that the good and bad sides cannot exist without the other, better said as they cannot be separated. “We cannot have the Crime Reduction without the threat of excessive penalty, or the success later in life without the bad childhood circumstances, or the birth of the son without the death of the daughter.” (33).  He reveals his analysis of these three moral paradoxes to show that to properly respond to them, they can be separated through judgement instead of facts. This then leads to a proposition of redefining what it means to explain “‘what happened’” (33), so that the judgement can tell the difference between the good and bad of what happened. But, as Sainsbury states, if these “threads” have the debate of good against bad, how is it possible to judge them? This leads back to the second section of the moral paradoxes, weighing the good versus the bad; in these cases, where is the line drawn that the good is better than the bad. This then creates a paradox of judgement, being swayed by the choices of a previous decision from the conflict of feelings.

These are just a few examples of the countless moral paradoxes that exist throughout the world every day. Some people are lucky enough to not have to suffer through hardships like Abigail and Abraham, or on the other side, lucky enough to break their leg and meet the love of their life.  Few will ever find the need to steal a car and even fewer will die because of it.  Some people must face the moral dilemma or whether to feel sorry for a lost sibling, just so they could be born. Moral paradoxes are a key part of everyone’s lives, even you, reader.