Bystanders to Oppressions

I attended several interesting talks at the Central APA. This time, I tried to select more politically-oriented sessions, despite my lack of knowledge in that area. Subsequently, I was exposed to a lot of interesting issues I probably would never have thought about otherwise. One symposium that particularly got me thinking was “Responsibility for Resisting Oppression”, with Bernard Boxill, Thomas Hill, Jean Harvey, and Sarah Buss. One topic that came up was the responsibilities of “bystanders” to resisting oppressions, compared to that of the oppressed themselves.

That got me thinking: Who is a bystander? For example, are we bystanders to the Chinese government’s oppression of Tibetans? Suppose that information about this oppression were nearly impossible to get, then are we nevertheless bystanders? This hypothetical has implications for assessing our responsibilities as bystanders in everyday situations. There are many instances of systematic injustice in workplace or private homes. We might then ask: Are we bystanders to those, and if so, what are our responsibilities? Reflecting on these scenarios rather naively suggests an epistemic condition on answering the question ‘who is a bystander’: we are bystanders when we can easily obtain knowledge of the oppression.

Infallible Predictor Newcomb: An Argument

I’m working up a paper on Newcomb and am seeking feedback on an argument for one-boxing in the infallible predictor version.

The case:

You are brought into a room with two boxes sitting on a table. One box is opaque; you are informed that it contains either $1,000,000 or nothing. The other box is transparent and contains $1,000. You are invited to either take only the opaque box (i.e. “one-box”) or take both boxes (“two-box”). Any money that you collect is yours to keep.

However, prior to making your choice, you receive the following information: Before you entered the room, an infallible predictor made a complete assessment of your psychology. If she predicted that you’d one-box, she put a million dollars in the opaque box. If she predicted that you’d two-box, she put nothing in it.

If you’re greedy and you believe everything you’ve been told (e.g. that the predictor is infallible), what is the rational choice?

The argument:

1. The predictor made a true prediction.
2. If the predictor made a true prediction, then [(you will two-box iff you'll receive exactly $1,000) and (you will one-box iff you'll receive exactly $1,000,000)].
3. You will two-box iff you’ll receive exactly $1,000.
4. You will one-box iff you’ll receive exactly $1,000,000.
5. Either you’ll two-box or you’ll one-box.
6. Either you’ll receive exactly $1,000 or you’ll receive exactly $1,000,000.
7. $1,000,000 is more money than $1,000.
8. If [(you'll receive either exactly $1,000 or exactly $1,000,000) and ($1,000,000 is more money than $1,000)], then you prefer to receive exactly $1,000,000.
9. You prefer to receive exactly $1,000,000.
10. If [(you prefer to receive exactly $1,000,000) and (you will one-box iff you'll receive exactly $1,000,000)], then you ought to one-box.
11. You ought to one-box.

Thoughts? Rejectable premises?
(I don’t deny that there is also a very compelling argument for two-boxing in this case.)

Later addition (1/6/08):

Equivocation in Feinberg’s “Infinite Regress” Argument Against Psychological Egoism

What may not be evident from the title of this post is that I’m fairly sure that there is an equivocation in Feinberg’s “infinite regress” argument against psychological egoism. This appears in Section C of his article “Psychological Egoism” in the popular anthology Reason and Responsibility (12th ed., ed. Feinberg & Shafer-Landau).

Set-up
Feinberg makes a point to distinguish the following:

(Mere) Desire Fulfillment (DF): DF is simply the “coming into existence of that which is desired” (479). For instance, a desire for the obtainment of some object x is fulfilled when and only when x is obtained. (With DF, there need not be the requirement that the bearer of a given desire experience its fulfillment. Death-bed wishes can be fulfilled.)

Pleasure₂ (P2), or Satisfaction: This is the type of positive feeling/s that one tends to experience upon getting what s/he desired (and, of course, being aware that the desire was fulfilled). That is, P2 is the pleasure that often results from and in virtue of DF.