I like this because it dissolves the question quite effectively.
I’m not sure the question should be dissolved, though … what about the sister?
This is why I’m not a consequentialist all the way. We may regard it as obvious that cancer is undesirable, but there really may be some who disagree. There are some who disagree that obesity is undesirable. There are some who disagree that depression is undesirable. Health is one issue where most people (in our society) are particularly unlikely to take account of differences in opinion.
Praise and blame are not just alternate possible ways to treat a disease. Example: I personally think obesity is undesirable. If I know an obese person who’s happy that way, though, I wouldn’t dream of trying to “treat” her, because it’s none of my business. Yet I’m still curious to what extent she’s “blameworthy” or personally responsible. Judging someone’s blameworthiness or praiseworthiness doesn’t necessarily result in trying to improve her behavior; it has to do with what opinion I hold of her.
That’s a libertarian deontologist view, yeah, but it’s close enough to ordinary behavior that I think we should consider whether it’s completely unreasonable.
Praise and blame are not just alternate possible ways to treat a disease.
Eating and survival are fundamental functions of life. Someone whose regulatory systems are so out of whack that they are eating/fasting themselves into an early grave, is probably subject to control dysfunctions which have inbuilt advantage over intellectual or social control.
Also, punishment is the trickiest of all behavioral modification techniques. It is very likely to backfire, which makes perfect sense. If punishment was very effective on a given individual, he/she would be a perfect slave. Being a perfect slave isn’t so great from the perspective of the slave, though it is good for the master. Since human biology doesn’t make it easy for a large population of slaves to be related to a master, it makes perfect sense that we’d evolve defenses against punishment.
For what it’s worth, a member of my band is morbidly obese. He has taken extraordinary measures in terms of effort to lose weight. (Eschewing use of a car in Houston and walking everywhere instead.) His condition is not voluntary.
What do you mean by: his condition is not voluntary? Because he recently made the descision to walk everywhere, yet still remains obese his condition is not voluntary?
Bear in mind that having more fat means that the brain gets starved of (glucose)[http://www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/ObesityBrain2009.pdf] and blood sugar levels have (impacts on the brain generally)[http://ajpregu.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/276/5/R1223]. Some research has indicated that the amount of sugar available to the brain has a relationship with self-control. A moderately obese person may have fat cells that steal so much glucose from their brain that their brain is incapable of mustering the will in order to get them to stop eating poorly. Additionally, the marginal fat person is likely fat because of increased sugar consumption (which has been the main sort of food whose intake has increased since the origins of the obesity epidemic in the 1970s), in particular there has been a great increase in the consumption of fructose: which is capable of raising insulin levels (which signal to the body to start storing energy as fat) while at the same time not activating leptin (which makes you feel full). Thus, people are consuming this substance that may be kicking their bodies into full gear to produce more fat: which leaves them with no energy or will to perform any exercise.
The individuals most affected by the obesity epidemic are the poor and recall that some of the cheapest sources of calories available on the market are foods like fructose and processed meats. While there is a component of volition regardless, if the body works as the evidence suggests: they may have a diet that is pushing them quite hard towards being obese, sedentary, and unable to do anything about it.
Think about it this way, if you constantly wack me over the head you can probably get me to do all sorts of things that I wouldn’t normally do: but it wouldn’t be right to call my behavior in that situation “voluntary”. Fat people may be in a similar situation.
He doesn’t want to be morbidly obese. He wasn’t always this way. He doesn’t want to die early and has tried to mitigate his trajectory into an early grave.
How about someone driving a car, skidding on a patch of oil and colliding with the guard rail? Was the collision voluntary? I don’t think so, even if the driver in question habitually speeds and lets themselves get distracted. Add in a broken speedometer, and the analogy is complete. (And note that you can’t take a human body out of commission like you can refuse an inspection sticker on a car.)
So non-obvious side effects of the descision are non voluntary. Colliding from speeding and obesity from overeating/lack of exercise would be arguable non obvious as well.
I would say however that the metaphor with the car may be more accurate if the driver was repeatedly skidding into mailboxes and other small things (apparently the ground has many oil patches), so that when he later on collided with the guard rail it was a rather obvious end result.
I notice you say “overeating/lack of exercise.” I hope one of those two doesn’t indicate careless reading.
I wouldn’t be so glib about adjusting food intake, unless you’ve done it and kept weight off for some time. Usually, people who have done this know it isn’t trivially easy. It’s far from easy. Simply fasting for a set period of time is much easier by comparison.
The overeating/lack of exercise had to do with causes of morbid obesity in general.
I understand that this person has started to walk as a means of counteracting the lack of exercise, or are you referring to something else I may be misreading?
And yes, I understand that adjusting food intake is non trivial. How am I being glib? And how is that relevant to the metaphor?
Morbid obesity does not just spring up on you, your weight gradually changes and your eating patterns likely get worse. It is not at all like a sudden patch of oil.
It would be accurate to describe the situation in terms of a car driver not putting any maintenance into their car. Eventually the car starts to make strange noises. Later on still, the engine light comes on. As years go by, the car is driving slower and slower. Are we really surprised when the engine stops working altogether?
My point was not that obesity is voluntary, but that it’s worth asking whether or not it’s voluntary. I don’t think you and I disagree, because you made the point that your band friend’s condition isn’t voluntary.
Yvain’s post argues that such questions are not important. I think they may be.
I sort of agree. I didn’t treat this issue because the post was already getting too long.
We have various incentives to want obese people to become thin: paternalistic concern for their health, negative externalities, selfish reasons if we’re their friend or relative and want to continue to enjoy their company without them dying early, aesthetic reasons, the emotional drain of offering them sympathy if we don’t think they deserve it. One of the most important reasons is helping them overcome akrasia—if they want to become thinner, us being seen to condemn obesity might help them.
If they don’t want to become thinner, that incentive goes away. The other incentives might or might not be enough to move us on their own.
(usually, though, these things only become issues at the societal level. I can’t think of the last time I personally was mean to an obese person, despite having ample opportunities. In that context, I think the feelings of particular obese people on the issue becomes less important)
I like this because it dissolves the question quite effectively. I’m not sure the question should be dissolved, though … what about the sister?
This is why I’m not a consequentialist all the way. We may regard it as obvious that cancer is undesirable, but there really may be some who disagree. There are some who disagree that obesity is undesirable. There are some who disagree that depression is undesirable. Health is one issue where most people (in our society) are particularly unlikely to take account of differences in opinion.
Praise and blame are not just alternate possible ways to treat a disease. Example: I personally think obesity is undesirable. If I know an obese person who’s happy that way, though, I wouldn’t dream of trying to “treat” her, because it’s none of my business. Yet I’m still curious to what extent she’s “blameworthy” or personally responsible. Judging someone’s blameworthiness or praiseworthiness doesn’t necessarily result in trying to improve her behavior; it has to do with what opinion I hold of her.
That’s a libertarian deontologist view, yeah, but it’s close enough to ordinary behavior that I think we should consider whether it’s completely unreasonable.
Eating and survival are fundamental functions of life. Someone whose regulatory systems are so out of whack that they are eating/fasting themselves into an early grave, is probably subject to control dysfunctions which have inbuilt advantage over intellectual or social control.
Also, punishment is the trickiest of all behavioral modification techniques. It is very likely to backfire, which makes perfect sense. If punishment was very effective on a given individual, he/she would be a perfect slave. Being a perfect slave isn’t so great from the perspective of the slave, though it is good for the master. Since human biology doesn’t make it easy for a large population of slaves to be related to a master, it makes perfect sense that we’d evolve defenses against punishment.
For what it’s worth, a member of my band is morbidly obese. He has taken extraordinary measures in terms of effort to lose weight. (Eschewing use of a car in Houston and walking everywhere instead.) His condition is not voluntary.
What do you mean by: his condition is not voluntary? Because he recently made the descision to walk everywhere, yet still remains obese his condition is not voluntary?
I am not sure that follows.
Bear in mind that having more fat means that the brain gets starved of (glucose)[http://www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/ObesityBrain2009.pdf] and blood sugar levels have (impacts on the brain generally)[http://ajpregu.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/276/5/R1223]. Some research has indicated that the amount of sugar available to the brain has a relationship with self-control. A moderately obese person may have fat cells that steal so much glucose from their brain that their brain is incapable of mustering the will in order to get them to stop eating poorly. Additionally, the marginal fat person is likely fat because of increased sugar consumption (which has been the main sort of food whose intake has increased since the origins of the obesity epidemic in the 1970s), in particular there has been a great increase in the consumption of fructose: which is capable of raising insulin levels (which signal to the body to start storing energy as fat) while at the same time not activating leptin (which makes you feel full). Thus, people are consuming this substance that may be kicking their bodies into full gear to produce more fat: which leaves them with no energy or will to perform any exercise.
The individuals most affected by the obesity epidemic are the poor and recall that some of the cheapest sources of calories available on the market are foods like fructose and processed meats. While there is a component of volition regardless, if the body works as the evidence suggests: they may have a diet that is pushing them quite hard towards being obese, sedentary, and unable to do anything about it.
Think about it this way, if you constantly wack me over the head you can probably get me to do all sorts of things that I wouldn’t normally do: but it wouldn’t be right to call my behavior in that situation “voluntary”. Fat people may be in a similar situation.
He doesn’t want to be morbidly obese. He wasn’t always this way. He doesn’t want to die early and has tried to mitigate his trajectory into an early grave.
How about someone driving a car, skidding on a patch of oil and colliding with the guard rail? Was the collision voluntary? I don’t think so, even if the driver in question habitually speeds and lets themselves get distracted. Add in a broken speedometer, and the analogy is complete. (And note that you can’t take a human body out of commission like you can refuse an inspection sticker on a car.)
I think I see what you are saying here.
So non-obvious side effects of the descision are non voluntary. Colliding from speeding and obesity from overeating/lack of exercise would be arguable non obvious as well.
I would say however that the metaphor with the car may be more accurate if the driver was repeatedly skidding into mailboxes and other small things (apparently the ground has many oil patches), so that when he later on collided with the guard rail it was a rather obvious end result.
I notice you say “overeating/lack of exercise.” I hope one of those two doesn’t indicate careless reading.
I wouldn’t be so glib about adjusting food intake, unless you’ve done it and kept weight off for some time. Usually, people who have done this know it isn’t trivially easy. It’s far from easy. Simply fasting for a set period of time is much easier by comparison.
The overeating/lack of exercise had to do with causes of morbid obesity in general.
I understand that this person has started to walk as a means of counteracting the lack of exercise, or are you referring to something else I may be misreading?
And yes, I understand that adjusting food intake is non trivial. How am I being glib? And how is that relevant to the metaphor?
Morbid obesity does not just spring up on you, your weight gradually changes and your eating patterns likely get worse. It is not at all like a sudden patch of oil.
It would be accurate to describe the situation in terms of a car driver not putting any maintenance into their car. Eventually the car starts to make strange noises. Later on still, the engine light comes on. As years go by, the car is driving slower and slower. Are we really surprised when the engine stops working altogether?
My point was not that obesity is voluntary, but that it’s worth asking whether or not it’s voluntary. I don’t think you and I disagree, because you made the point that your band friend’s condition isn’t voluntary.
Yvain’s post argues that such questions are not important. I think they may be.
I sort of agree. I didn’t treat this issue because the post was already getting too long.
We have various incentives to want obese people to become thin: paternalistic concern for their health, negative externalities, selfish reasons if we’re their friend or relative and want to continue to enjoy their company without them dying early, aesthetic reasons, the emotional drain of offering them sympathy if we don’t think they deserve it. One of the most important reasons is helping them overcome akrasia—if they want to become thinner, us being seen to condemn obesity might help them.
If they don’t want to become thinner, that incentive goes away. The other incentives might or might not be enough to move us on their own.
(usually, though, these things only become issues at the societal level. I can’t think of the last time I personally was mean to an obese person, despite having ample opportunities. In that context, I think the feelings of particular obese people on the issue becomes less important)