 Rwy'n galw'r cyfrifio i'ch gweithio, maen nhw'n cael ei ffordd i'w ddechrau a gweithio, yn gweithio'r heddiw'r hyffordd o'r hyffordd dechrau. A'r ystafell o'u ddechrau, yn oed, yn hanffling o'r ffordd o'u ddechrau a'r oeddechrau ar y Llyfrgellol Felly. Llyfrgellwch, yn oed i'r cyfrifio i'r ysrwnghwyl, ac yn oed i'r fan hyffordd o'r llyfrgellol. Oeddaeth y cael ei gweld yn fwy o'r hoffi, a dyma'r cyfnodd, rydyn ni'n ddweud i'r cyfnodd a'r amser yn ei wneud yn rhan, ac yn dweud i mi i ddweud i ni ddim yn gweithio. Rydyn ni'n rhan o'r papurau i'r cyfnodd, rydyn ni'n dweud i'n dweud i ddweud i ddweud i gweithio. Rydyn ni'n dweud i ddweud i gweithio i'r cyfnodd. Rydyn ni'n dweud i ddweud i gweithio. Rhyw gydag, mae'n... Professor Stuart Brown bywnaeth yn yn bwysig o'r fly harmgydd yn bro� Therefore warned that it was perfect to be both an academic and a decent human being he was and it was a gentleman. I also heard his phaledictory lecture. The third, present this evening, is the person who got me here in the first place Professor Hugh Miller. Hugh, turned 81 earlier this month, took me on as a struggling graduate student a sefydlu i'r rydyn ni'n bwysig iaith iawn o'r blygu gymhysgol sicrhau eich ddisyniad yn bwysig iawn i'r ymwysig iawn i'r ddweud ac yn mynd i hefyd yn ôl, gallu ddyn nhw gweithio'r hyn ar gyfer a gallu'n deallol i'r g58 ar gyfer, ond, yn ddiweddar rydym wedi oedd maen nhw i'r wrthorffie ac mae'r tyn i'r ddechrau. Ac rwy'n gweithio atoent y sgol newydd yn euthes�au i fyni, yn oed i'r dlu sydd i ddiweddau a ddylgrif Gör, o ffedaith aethau. A'r fyddech chi'n gwneud i'r ffadwyr sy'n gweithio yma sy'n gyfnodd i'w ddwylo elisian o'r fan hyn o ffadwyr i'r byw gyda'n gwneud o fawr. Yn y gallai llwyaf, dyna ddim yn ymwyfodol a chynnyddol i'n gweithio ddod yn ei wneud yn y cynhyrch graffiol, ond yn gwybod i'r ffaith sy'n gweithio'r ffaith sy'n gweithio'r bwysig, rydyn ni'n gweithio'r ddweud. I am, along with my friend and colleague Helen Froe, who is director of the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace, running a project that is attempting to throw light on the vexed question of what should be done about what the United Nations calls cultural property in war zones. This is a three-year project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council that has us working with politicians, heritage professionals, the British Museum, the military of various countries, lawyers and philosophers from a range of backgrounds. We are about nine months in and I have profited enormously from talking to Helen and other members of the group. This lecture would be very different had those conversations not taken place, a fact I gratefully acknowledge. Now international law in the form of various UN conventions places armies under various obligations not to damage cultural property. This raises issues of how important such obligations are, in particular when weighed against other obligations such as killing the enemy, protecting civilians and of course not getting killed oneself. Now views on the importance of cultural property in such circumstances cover the whole spectrum from very important to not at all important. The English diplomat Sir Harold Nicholson thought it was very important. In February 1944 at the height of the battles around Montecassino in the Allied invasion of Italy he wrote in the spectator, I would assuredly be prepared to be shot against a wall if I was certain that by such a sacrifice I could preserve the Giotto frescoes. Nor should I hesitate for an instant were such a decision ever open to me to save St Mark's even if I were aware that by doing so I would bring death to my sons. My attitude would be governed by a principle which is surely incontrovertible. The irreplaceable is more important than the replaceable and the loss of even the most valued human life is ultimately less disastrous than the loss of something which in no circumstances can be created again. His sons were serving in Italy at the time and apparently were just rather amused. This can be contrasted with the following from Th Ferenbach's classic account of the Korean War. To Americans flesh and blood and lives have always been more precious than sticks and stones, however assembled. An American commander faced with taking the louvre from a defending enemy unquestionably would blow it apart or burn it down without hesitation if such would save the life of one of his men. And he would be acting in complete accord with American ideals and ethics in doing so. So Nicholson is of the view that certain items of cultural property should be preserved even at the cost of human life. While Ferenbach at least reports the view that even a single life is worth more than sticks and stones, however assembled. Now discussion as to the fate of cultural property in war zones has gone on for hundreds of years. The most recent international convention was formulated in 1954 in the Hague with two important additional protocols added later, the most recent in 1999. As the past 20 years has seen wars fought in lands rich in cultural heritage, the Hague Convention has risen to the top of political agendas. The UK was rather late to the party only ratifying the convention in December last year. Now the issue is not merely academic. Peter Stone, who holds the position of UNESCO chair of cultural heritage and peace at the University of Newcastle, reports on occasion during NATO's actions against the Gaddafi regime in Libya, where the Libyans placed radar vehicles in the vicinity of the Roman fort of Ras el-Mageb. The vehicles were part of a credible threat to NATO, yet they could not easily be destroyed without damaging the fort. Hence NATO had a choice. Do they destroy the vehicles, accepting the damage to the fort, or do they live with the increased threat to their aircraft? The increased threat, considering the scale of the operation, might well have resulted in people being killed who would not otherwise have been killed. Here is another case. One of the armed groups fighting the Syrian government occupied the great crusaders fortress of Crac de Chevalier so as to launch attacks on government troops. The government faced the choice as to whether to cause the opposing forces to vacate the fortress, by bombing it, or to live with a threat, which once again might well have resulted in Syrian soldiers being killed who would not otherwise have been killed. In short, those who command our armies are obliged to make choices between protecting cultural property and protecting human beings, including themselves. What makes us problematic is that it goes against a view that provides the background to our moral thought. Indeed, because it provides the background, it's seldom bought into the open and scrutinised. The philosopher Charles Taylor has put the view as follows. Quotes, first the demands of justice must be served, then the pursuit of the good life will be in order. In the sphere in particular justice has to do with the permissibility and impermissibility of causing harm to people. Paradigmatically a soldier who is defending their state against unjust aggression is permitted to harm an enemy soldier who constitutes a threat. Non-combatants who are not supporting any aggression are not permitted to be harmed. And between those two poles the branch of philosophy known as Just War Theory operates attempting to work out who is liable to be harmed and in what circumstances they are liable to be harmed. This view holds that issues of justice, that is issues regarding the permissibility or impermissibility of causing harm to people, need to be settled before we can move to issues of whether or not we damage old buildings, assuming that such issues do not belong to justice but to the good life. Now this has some claim to being the orthodox view. For example, the Blue Shield, which is the United Nations sponsored organisation mandated to protect cultural property in times of war, claims that the Hague Convention does not quotes place property above people. And the UNESCO chair mentioned earlier, Peter Stone, in the course of replying to some scurrilous attacks on his character has put on record that he does not suggest, nor has he ever suggested that protection of cultural property is worth the loss of a single life. However, settling the issue of a stark choice between damaging a building or taking a life does nothing to alter the fact that trade-offs between the value of cultural property and the value of human life do need to be made. The law as it currently stands makes such trade-offs inevitable. Commanders not only have to make decisions that balance protection of cultural property against increased threat of harm to their soldiers, but they're also obliged, according to the Hague Convention, to prohibit, prevent and, if necessary, put a stop to any form of theft, pillage or misappropriation of and any acts of vandalism directed against cultural property. Given that wars are fought on limited resources, this obliges commanders to commit some of their troops to protecting cultural property when those troops could be engaged in other activities, including activities such as making themselves or making civilians more secure from harm. These are not the only circumstances where trade-offs will need to be made. The Hague Convention and its protocols establish special protection and enhanced protection for certain items of cultural property. So let's consider enhanced protection. Cultural property that enjoys enhanced protection must not be attacked even if it has, through its use by the enemy, become a military objective. An attack would only be justified if it were the only feasible means of terminating the use of property in that way. Now clearly what is a feasible means is up for discussion. However it is easy to envisage the choices might be between relatively risk-free options such as artillery or high-level bombing and relatively risky options such as precision strikes or even the use of ground forces. So in short being constrained by military necessity rather than military convenience will inevitably result in a higher risk of the loss of life. Furthermore it's also reasonable to have some trade-off that involves risk to others, even risk to non-combatants. For example imagine a commander needs to move some troops. Route A would take them over an ancient site which would inevitably be damaged by the tanks and heavy machinery. Route B takes them down a tarmacked road but through a civilian population. There is a small risk that the troops might be attacked by the enemy while in transit with a consequent risk of collateral damage. Nonetheless the route through the civilian population is still a feasible means and the risks involved small enough to justify taking this route. Once more protecting cultural property is being weighed against the possibility of human harm. Furthermore there are some who have the intuition and perhaps for some appropriate object we might all have the intuition that the preservation of cultural property is worth even the certain loss of life. There are those who have explicitly supported the position outlined by Harold Nicholson despite its rhetorical flourishes. So history gives us many instances of those who put their own lives before that of cultural property which of course is a different matter of putting others lives before cultural property. Now a recent case is that of Khaled Al-Assad who was murdered by ISIS on account of his refusing to reveal the location of valuable artifacts which had been removed from Palmyra for safe keeping. Indeed our day to day behaviour reveals most of us to be closer to Nicholson's position than we like to admit. The orthodox views an ideal which may not even be a desirable ideal. Most of us do not think that the claims of justice are always overriding. Indeed for all but the saintly life would be unlivable if they were always overriding. Thus the question does need to be faced. How does the value of cultural property measure up against human harm or the risk of human harm? Now there is an easy way in a difficult way to answer this question. I shall consider the easy way first. This incorporates the value of cultural property into the sphere of justice. That is our reflections on justice include an attention to the fate of cultural property. While putting the point less obscurely the value of cultural property is at bottom cashed out in terms of its benefits and harms to human beings. Thus the question how does the value of cultural property measure up against the value of human life is badly posed. It's merely one aspect of a myriad of aspects that are part of the value of human life. And here are some examples of how this discussion might go. Now fairly obviously were soldiers to damage or destroy things that are valued by a population. That would do nothing to endear those soldiers to the population. So in short protecting cultural property helps win hearts and minds. An army that has won hearts and minds will find its task a great deal easier and will almost certainly emerge with fewer casualties. Thus even if protecting cultural property temporarily put some combatants in greater danger than they would have been, a policy of protecting cultural property will result in reduced danger in the longer term. Thinking in the longer term also raises issues as to what is in place after the conflict has ended. The destruction of cultural property could have ruinous effects on cultural identity and social cohesion. It could deepen and intensify existing animosities that could make a permanent peace more difficult. There could be effects on the post-conflict economic situation. The loss of key sites in ancient townscape could severely affect potential earnings from tourism. The loss of such earnings could make post-conflict recovery more difficult and even make future conflict more likely. Furthermore, and history gives us many instances of this, the destruction of cultural property is frequently followed by killing people, sometimes even the genocidal killing of people. So stopping the first may well stop the second. It might be that such considerations are sufficient to sort the problem out and are all that needs to be said. However, I don't think it is all that needs to be said. While I'm sure that the value of cultural property does need to be thought about in a broader context, I'm not sure the debate makes much sense unless we think that cultural property has some value in itself. It is not simply one more of those things such as the roads or the water supply which need protecting in order to protect a population. It needs protecting because it matters to people and it matters to people because they take it to be special or valuable. Nicholson values St Mark's, the great 12th century Basilica in Venice, because it is a wonderful thing and it would be a terrible thing were it to be damaged or destroyed. It is St Mark's that concerns him, not any harms further down the line that would follow from the building being damaged. This is the difficult way to answer the question and this finally explains why a background in aesthetics helps with our project. In aesthetics we're used to dealing with values that are not directly at least, values attached to human goods and harms. That is we think about aesthetic values, cultural value and the value of art. But this way to answer the question is difficult because it runs counter to the background thoughts that we have that the demands of justice should be served before we can worry about aspects of the good life. That is Nicholson's view is that St Mark's has a value, the preservation of which justifies causing human harm or even death, where that value does not require that less harm or fewer deaths are caused in the long run. I shall call this the strong view. Now I should just enter a caveat here for the philosophers in the audience. It might look as if the strong view is committed to St Mark's having what some call intrinsic value, where intrinsic value is cashed out as value from the point of view of the universe or value in the sight of God. That is a value that would survive the permanent extinction of sentient life or a value that in a notorious thought experiment by G.E. Moore it would possess even if it were the only thing that existed. One of the more bizarre bits of philosophy. Unfortunately we do not need to postulate such a value in order to take the strong view. The claim that something has a value that cannot be cashed out in terms of benefits and harms to human beings is compatible with the claim that value only comes into the world by the thoughts and actions of human beings. Now the philosophy in this area is complex but having this caveat I will move on. Having made this caveat I will move on. The strong view then holds that we are sometimes right to act not for the sake of justice or more broadly morality but for the sake of something else, in this case preserving cultural property. Now what would we need to show to vindicate this view? Now the strong view holds that we are justified in aiming at a plurality of goods. We should not only aim at making life better for our fellow human beings or perhaps our fellow sentient beings but we should aim at other things as well. Our concern is that we should aim not to damage cultural property, sorry our concern is that we should aim not to damage cultural property but we could add some other candidates. So for example we could aim to preserve pristine nature or we could aim to reduce threats to other species or we could aim to preserve various art forms even if they appeal to very few people. The thought is that there are a variety of values that we could aim at. The problem to which pluralism gives rise is that it does not look as if we can have all these goods at once. The pursuit of one is at least some of the time incompatible with the pursuit of the other and this raises a difficult question. If we are faced with a choice between actions aimed at furthering two incompatible values both of which we have reason to pursue how do we make that choice? Now there seem to be two options. The first is that in any particular choice situation we can place the values on some kind of background scale of value, work out where they stand and aim to further the one that stands highest. However the problem only arises because the goods are apparently incompatible, that is there is no common scale of value. Thus that option seems close to us and the second option is to bite the bullet. We can either pursue this good or we can pursue that good. As we have no way of comparing them we simply have to plump for one or the other, we cannot pursue both. In effect we toss a coin. The American philosopher Ruth Chang has provided an argument which attempts to show that these difficult problems of choice can be satisfactorily resolved. First let me introduce some vocabulary. It wouldn't be a philosophy lecture unless there was some technical vocabulary to introduce. So two terms are incommensurable if they cannot be precisely measured by some common scale of units of value. I shall assume that the value of cultural property and the value of human life or some human lives are incommensurable. However as I shall explain in a moment, incommensibility is not the problem. Rather the problem is incomparability. Two items are incomparable if they cannot be compared. If the value of a piece of cultural property and the value of human life or some human lives are incomparable then there'd be no rational way of deciding between them. Chang's distinctive contribution is to argue that incomparability is never an issue. If she is right then we'd always be able to make rational comparisons between comparing protecting cultural property and causing human harm. Thus we could hold a strong view and not be reduced to deciding by the toss of a coin. Now incommensibility is not the problem because two things can be incommensurable and yet still be comparable. So there's no common scale for the measure of beauty but nonetheless objects can be compared in terms of their beauty. Actually somebody once did come up with a common scale for the measure of beauty and the unit was a milli-hellen. A milli-hellen is the quantum of beauty sufficient to launch one ship. So there's no common scale for the measure of beauty but nonetheless objects can be compared in terms of their beauty. Any reasonable money is more beautiful than even the best metravers and one would always be justified in choosing a money over a metravers in terms of beauty. Now note the qualification in terms of beauty. The instruction compared this object to that object is underspecified until what Chang calls a covering consideration is given in terms of which the comparison can be made. That's the V at the top there. If the covering consideration is beauty then as we have seen the money should be chosen. If the covering consideration is being a suitable present for your worst enemy, the metravers will win every time. Now our problem is not incommensibility but incomparability. If preserving cultural property and preserving human life are genuinely incomparable then there will be no rational way of deciding which to pursue. We will simply have to plump for one or the other. Now as I said Chang thinks that incomparability never arises. Her argument has the form of a dilemma. Either both items fall under a covering consideration or at least one item does not. If both do she has an argument to show that the items are comparable. Oh we need not worry about that here. If at least one item does not she thinks the items are not incomparable they are non-comparable. Now this does not seem to have got us very far. If two items are non-comparable deciding between them would still seem to be a problem. Well Chang agrees. However she thinks this is a harmless matter because as a matter of fact we are never faced with a choice between non-comparables. One can see why she thinks this by considering an example in fact her own example. So compare rotten eggs with a number nine in terms of tastiness. Clearly the number nine does not fall under the covering consideration of tastiness. Thus the two are non-comparable. However, and here is the rub, life would never throw up a situation in which we had to compare rotten eggs with a number nine in terms of tastiness. So here is what Chang says. As a quote from Chang. Non-comparability among alternatives for choices has little philosophical significance. This is because the distinction between formal and substantive failures of comparability tracks the distinction between genuine practical choice situations and gerrymanded or rosettes ones. Practical reason will never ask agents to compare rotten eggs and the number nine with respect to tastiness. There can never be a genuine choice situation in which one must choose between alternatives with respect to some consideration that fails to cover both of them in the context of comparison. Practical reason guarantees that once what matters in a choice is determined the alternatives will be bearers of what matters in the choice between them in that choice situation. Now I think this is a bit too quick. It's in danger of simply defining the problem out of existence. Chang thinks that something could only be a genuine practical choice situation if choosing is viable and that choosing is viable only if there's a covering consideration. However, if we think of genuine practical choice situations simply as situations we might encounter in which we're called to make a choice, it's an open question as to whether or not there will always be a covering consideration. Now Chang claims that situations in which there is not a covering consideration would only ever be a philosopher's thought experiment as he described it, gerrymanded or rosettes. However, as far as I can see, he provides no argument for this. Now certainly we'll never have to choose between rotten eggs and the number nine in terms of tastiness, but we do have to choose between preserving cultural property and not causing human harm. And in such cases it's moot, it's just an open question whether or not there's a helpful covering consideration. Now I say it's moot because I'm not sure that finding a consideration covers both options will help us much as it seems we face a dilemma of our own. So such a consideration will either be broad or narrow. Now a broad consideration will be something like choose between protecting cultural property or causing human harm with respect to what ought to be done. Or choose between protecting cultural property or causing human harm with respect to what is best overall. Now clearly this will not help us because what ought to be done or what is best overall is exactly what is at issue. So if we opt for a narrow consideration, the danger is that we will stack the deck in favour of one of the options over the other. So for example choose between protecting cultural property and causing human harm with respect to human well-being, or favour choosing to avoid human harm, and choose between protecting cultural property and causing human harm with respect to historical significance, or favour protecting cultural property. Now the clearest way to proceed I think is to face the issue directly. In order to choose between protecting cultural property and causing human harm we need to work out two things. First the nature of the value of cultural heritage, and second whether in any particular circumstance it stacks up against the value of preventing human harm. Now whether or not this amounts to coming up with a covering consideration is something I'll put to one side. Now more work has been done on discovering the nature of the value of cultural heritage than has been done on finding whether it stacks up against other values. And furthermore the issue of whether it stacks up reveals I think a certain failure to face facts. A failure that hampers the quality of our thinking about important matters, which in consequence undermine sensible decision making. Now the foundational work on the nature of cultural property, the nature of the value of cultural property was done by the 19th century art historian Allius Regal. He distinguished various sorts of value. Age value, the value an object has in virtue of bearing the marks of its usually significant age. Historical value, the value an object has in virtue of it being able to tell us about the past. And use value, the value an object has in virtue of its contemporary practical function. Now Regal, sorry, the value of knowledge, that's historical value, and the value of practical function, that is use value, are familiar and easy to understand. But what is distinctive about those values in this case is the relation they have to age value. So I'll focus on age value. And there has recently been a spate of work on the nature of age value. Caroline Korsmeyer thinks it's an aesthetic phenomenon, so it's a quote from Caroline Korsmeyer. When the Library of Congress put the original Gettysburg address on display, the line was blocks long, the queue in American. But when they submitted a modern facsimile so accurate that the naked eye of an untrained person could not tell the difference, there was no line. People wanted to see the authentic document, the one that Lincoln touched. So what do we value about the authentic Gettysburg address? What is valuable about real old things, in particular those things that are, as the Americans say, real old? Korsmeyer argues that our encounter with these objects has an aesthetic dimension, in particular through the sense of touch. So quotation from Korsmeyer again. Underlying such encounters is the complex operation of the sense of touch, including the touch that brought the original object into being. The touch of those who lived with it in the past and the touch of those who continue to value its being and who desire its presence. For most such encounters, it's essential that one be physically near the object in question where the possibility of contact is implicit. Even though they themselves cannot touch the Gettysburg address, it is desire to visit the document whose works were inscribed by Lincoln's own fingers. Such behaviour suggests that direct proximal acquaintance with these objects is the event to savour, even though one rarely is permitted literal touch. And the philosopher Eric Matys has a similar view. LP Hartley famously wrote, the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there. As revealing as this metaphor can be, there's a crucial dimension of our relationship to the past that it fails to capture. While we might visit a foreign country, we cannot, at least not in the same way, visit the past, but the past can visit us. The historical properties of objects offer us a genuine connection to the past. Though we cannot go back in time, the objects and places that were present in the past travel forward in time with us. The enthusiast who exclaims, this is where Jefferson sat as he drafted the Declaration of Independence, is not mistaken in her excitement. She values a connection with the past that has an immediacy that is otherwise completely impossible. While she cannot visit 18th century America, the desk already has. So having sorted out the nature of the value of cultural property, we can move to the question as to whether this value stacks up against the value of presenting human harm. Now, the difficulty is that it does not seem to stack up very well. An experience of a connection with the past, whether it has an aesthetic tone or an excited one, might be valuable, but is it that valuable? That is, when we're weighing the preservation of cultural heritage against causing human harm, is this the best we can do in favour of the first? If these are, as they may well be, our best contemporary attempts to explicate the nature of age value, it does not look particularly weighty when compared to human harm. So what should we do in the face of this? We could take the finding at face value and respond as Helen Froe, my co-director on the project does, that the value of protecting cultural property will not outweigh the value of preventing human harm. So barring some exculpatory account in terms of justice, preventing damage to cultural property is not sufficient for causing grave harm to even one human being. Now I do not rule this out, might be the right answer, but I suspect that what we have here is an instance of a more general problem. Morality, as we've seen, thinks of itself as universal and overriding. On the orthodox, or justice first view, it will be impossible to compare a non-moral value with a moral value and that the first will outweigh the second. So philosophers such as Peter Singer and the Effective Altruist movement who think that we should devote more time to helping the global poor are in a strong rhetorical position. They can and do pointed starving children and ask us to defend spending our money on such things as building great art collections or caring about which wine we'll have with a steak. So why I describe this as a problem is that it leaves us stranded when we're confronted with the kinds of hard choices faced by anybody whose life is not simply a struggle for survival. The orthodox view encourages us not to think about much of what we do in fact care about, instead keeping such things in the dark or relegating them to guilty pleasures. When we're faced with choices that involve values such as age value, aesthetic value or even the value of a kind of life that includes drinking expensive wine with dinner, our thinking takes place in a vacuum. And it was perhaps this that caused my fellow aesthetician Richard Volheim to wonder quotes whether there really is such a thing as morality or whether it is a dream or perhaps a nightmare. Nonetheless, as these non-moral values cover much of what we care about, we will be faced with choices between those values and moral values. In the nature of the case, since choices will often be hard choices and would benefit by some rigorous thinking on the matter. So unless we do start to think about these values, what way to accord to them and whether these values stack up against moral values, they will continue to be an unsatisfactory gap between what we think, which includes a commitment to values that are not recognised by the orthodox position, and what we tend to think we think, which is nicely captured by the orthodox position. So in particular, to return to the topic of this lecture, we need to think seriously about the choices that follow from the law surrounding the protection of cultural property. The matter is not simply settled by declaring that human life is more valuable than cultural property. The matter is also not settled by clever philosophical work on incommensibility and incomparability. The matter might be settled by claiming that preventing human harm always outweighs preventing harm to cultural property. However, if we reject that claim, we need to find some way of thinking seriously about balancing various incompatible goods, all of which we are right to care about, and we need to take seriously the idea that moral claims should not be always and everywhere overriding.