"Science cannot explain these things," said the headless BBC hosts

Yesterday, in the car, I was listening to a BBC news program. The host was interviewing a woman who recently published some sort of encyclopedia of the paranormal.

“Uh-oh,” I thought.

The host commenced his interview by noting, chirpily, that, back in 1950, only 10% of Britons believed in ghosts, but, nowadays, a great many more Britons believe in them (I don’t recall the figure, but it was much higher than 10%).

“I’m not surprised,” said the paranormal lady, I think. He or she then noted how common are sightings of ghosts and other paranormal phenomena. Indeed, said the lady, a few years ago, she herself saw her dead grandfather.

“I did not realize it at the time,” she said.

“Oh, how veddy, veddy interesting,” said the host.

This went on for a while, and I didn’t take much notice. But then, the host, referring to paranormal phenomena (or ghosts in particular), said something like, “Science is unable to explain these things, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, it certainly is unable!”

What!? What balderdash!

One of my goals as a teacher is to overcome such sloppy and silly thinking.

To see the problem here, consider this question: What is it exactly that our Brit radio guy was saying science can’t explain?

Is it the many reports of ghost sightings? These are easily explained by science—or, better, by reasonably informed people.

That’s been true for a long time. Two hundred and fifty years ago, the great Scottish philosopher David Hume commented on the reports of paranormal phenomena of his own day:

When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding)

Suppose that Smith reports to us that he saw a headless horseman at the cemetery last night. How are we to explain this? (It is important to be clear what the word “this” refers to.)

There are two possibilities, for either (1) Smith is attempting to deceive us or he has himself been deceived—for instance, by a hallucination or an optical illusion—OR (2) he really did see a headless horseman. –The Deception Explanation (DE) or the Paranormal Explanation (PE).

Hume asks: which is more probable?

Well, let’s see. We have a fair amount of experience with people who have lost their heads. The French are particularly experienced in this regard. As far as we know, not once have any of these headless persons ridden a horse (or done anything else beyond bleed profusely).

On the other hand, our experience provides countless examples of people being deceived—sometimes in surprising ways—or attempting to deceive others. Deception is common and explicable.

So, unless one is a dullard from hell, one will see the necessity of judging DE as better than PE. That is, in the case of Smith’s report, it is much more likely that deception is afoot than that a guy without a head really was riding a horse down at the bone yard last night.

“But wait!” you say. “The radio Brit was not talking about the explanation of reports; rather, he was talking about the explanation of paranormal phenomena—such as ghosts and headless horsemen and such. That is what science cannot explain!”

Now, now, let’s not lose our heads. If one says that what is wanting is an explanation of paranormal phenomena (e.g., ghosts), one implies that there exist paranormal phenomena to explain. That is, in speaking this way, one is assuming that ghosts (etc.) are real, that science is obliged to explain the reality of ghosts, and that science has failed to do so.

Twaddle! Such talk commits a gross fallacy, namely, the fallacy of assuming that which is at issue (the reality of ghosts). As logicians and philosophers quaintly put the matter, such talk “begs the question.”

What’s that? The Oxford English Dictionary provides one meaning for the phrase “begging the question.” It is the one that logicians/philosophers use:

begging of the question: a taking for granted of the thing to be proved.

And so, dear reader, the BBC guy is confused. If he’s saying that science has no explanation of reports of paranormal phenomena, then he’s simply (and obviously) mistaken. If, on the other hand, he’s saying that science has no explanation for ghosts and the like, then he’s committing the egregious fallacy of “begging the question,” that is, he’s assuming that ghosts are real and to be explained when the question at issue is precisely whether ghosts are real and thus something that needs explaining.

I teach (or I try to teach) my students that good thinking is clear and precise thinking. So when people—including BBC radio show hosts—confront us with the old, “How do you explain that?”, we need to be prepared to say, “Yes, a very good question that. But could you please identify the referent of the word ‘that’?”

Why must everything be such a circus?

Appearing on NBC's "The Tonight Show" Thursday, the president told host Jay Leno he'd been practicing at the White House's bowling alley but wasn't happy with his score of 129. Then he remarked: "It was like the Special Olympics or something." —MSNBC

Even when I first encountered the Special Olympics—when I was a teenager in the early 70s—it struck me as misguided and disrespectful. On TV, I'd see intellectually challenged kids running down a track while parents and onlookers cheered. I'd see kids at awards ceremonies receiving ribbons and applause as though they had won something, when, in fact, some of them had come in last. The kids beamed, many of them uncomprehending.

The scene was disturbing to me. Everyone there knows what’s going on, I thought. Everyone except some of these kids. Nobody means to ridicule them of course. Nevertheless, in reality (thought I), this is a game of pretend, and the only people fooled are the kids.

It hasn’t helped that, over the years, the Special Olympics movement seems to have overlapped (in its philosophy) with the uncommonsensical and counter-productive (and largely discredited) “self-esteem” movement. The latter is a good example of how well meaning but gullible and trendoid people can screw things up. Yes, self-esteem is a good thing. But detaching it from virtuous striving is a very bad thing. That's the great and consequential sin of the "self-esteem" crusade.

Harrumph!

That’s one of my beefs with the Special Olympics. It seems designed by people who get the moral cart before the horse, or maybe the moral apple before the orange. To them (it seems), it's all about the highly valuable experience of winning, which, for them, is the same thing as achievement.

I can’t make sense of that. —On the other hand, maybe these games are not really about competition and achievement.

The Special Olympics people do seem to think that they are about competition and achievement. But sometimes they seem of two minds about that. For instance, at their website, they provide a list of values and principles, including this one: “At every awards ceremony, in addition to the traditional medals for first, second and third places, athletes finishing from fourth to last place are presented a suitable place ribbon with appropriate ceremony.”

A charitable read of this is: any kid who shows up and competes has already achieved much. And so he/she deserves recognition.

No doubt, many of these kids did strive to do better in their event. But surely some did not. And some barely understand what the games are about.

If the point of Special Olympics is not really to employ such concepts as “competition,” “achievement” and “honor” but rather to put these kids through a pleasant experience that will somehow benefit them—well, I suppose then I’d rethink my objections. But I have my doubts about that empirical claim. It should be tested, of course.

Or maybe the point is that, apart from what it does for or to the athletes, the Special Olympics causes the public to be more understanding and accepting of these kids. That's a noble goal. But do we have any reason to be confident that the claim is true? What if it is false? What if the Special Olympics causes people's attitudes to get worse?

Competition, of course, is as American as artificially apple-flavored pie. Is it a good thing? I suppose it’s a good thing that we honor those who run the fastest or who remember how to spell the most words.

Well, no. On its face, that seems idiotic to me.

It’s good that we honor achievement, when, that is, what is achieved has some sort of meaning. The ability to spell even esoteric words has no meaning. And the ability to run faster or jump higher than everyone else—well, what can I say?

We like to see people striving for something worthwhile and, through effort and virtue, achieving it. And I suppose that struggling (through work and virtue—as opposed to, say, taking a drug or undergoing a surgery) to run fast or spell unusual words—prima facie meaningless things—can be a kind of preparation for or introduction to more meaningful strivings.

Meaningful competition need not involve impressive abilities. I have always believed that, in a more just and kind world, people would be celebrated, too, because they achieved in a relative sense—i.e., relative to their starting points, which might be dismal. But “achievement” here is a tricky thing. There are some for whom the ability to add 2 + 2 is a stunning achievement. And yet that ability is not intrinsically impressive.

But achieving such abilities can be meaningful. As a parent, one seeks to have one’s child join in society, to do what people do. For some, attaining the ability to add two small numbers together moves them closer to that.

My guess is that the Special Olympics has seemed to be a good idea in part because, via training, it puts intellectually challenged kids/adults in society, or in a part of it. And the spectacle of the games might seem to hold the promise of helping ordinary people to understand and thus to respect these special people.

But the “everybody knows we’re pretending—except for the kids” factor undercuts the latter for me. I have a hard time getting past that.

I can imagine a “Special Olympics” that more clearly focuses on achievement. Parents/teachers would be working hard with kids (and adults) to move them towards the attainment of hard-to-attain abilities. Many of these kids would be impressive in their progress and overcoming.

This would likely occur away from audiences. Some crew of “judges” would discreetly monitor these efforts and identify those people who worked the hardest and most virtuously--who achieved the most overcoming.

Here, a kid who attained the ability to add 2 and 2 might well be deserving of the gold medal. Now, that would be a Special Olympics that I could get behind. It would be a good and dignified thing, no circus, no bizarre spectacle of reason and common sense going totally on holiday.

I don’t think that including the “athletes” in the awards ceremony/event would necessarily be a good idea. Is it obvious that those (surely there will be some) who do not even understand the ceremony would benefit by attending it? I don't see how.

I suspect that Special Olympics medal ceremonies do more for the parents (et al.) than for the kids/adults. Surely, for some of these athletes, the whole experience is simply puzzling, apart from the sense they might have that they are approved of (though not respected) by all of the people around them.

The people behind the Special Olympics are good people. They want the right things and they’re willing to work hard to achieve them. When I read their philosophy and principles, etc., I am mostly admiring, though, as with any large amount of verbiage, their tenets and guidelines exhibit tensions and contradictions.

They have an oath: “Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.” The Special Olympics people explain that these “words were spoken by Roman gladiators as they entered the arena, facing the greatest battle of their lives.”

It is unfortunate that the oath originated with those who were forced to maim and kill others for the sake of appalling entertainments. But I like the reference to virtue (bravery) and overcoming. But when I read about the ribbons and when I watch the games, I don't see an emphasis on virtue and overcoming. I see spectacle and confusion and self-deception.

If the Special Olympics really were to make sense as a way to honor meaningful achievement—and as a way of bringing ordinary people to a better understanding of and respect for the intellectually challenged—I would be fully behind it.

Apparently, there are those within the expert community who have doubts about this optimistic assessment of the Special Olympics. According to J. Thomas Kellow,

professionals in the field of mental retardation have criticized segregated recreation/sports such as Special Olympics on numerous grounds, including negative effects on attitudes toward persons with disabilities, the promotion of handicapism, and continuation of self–fulfilling prophecies about deviant characteristics of persons with disabilities….

I don’t know yet whether these criticisms are valid. But it wouldn’t be the first time that a well meaning activity--one attaining "sacred cow" status--was in fact counter-productive.

My guess: many of us suspect that, though the motives and goals of the Special Olympics are good, there is something wrongheaded (and maybe even wrong) and, yes, ridiculous about it.

I do think that we should love and respect intellectually challenged people (and, of course, not only them). I think we should do more for them and try harder to understand them. But the Special Olympics strikes me as an unfortunate and misfired effort.

And so, among my friends, I might joke about my own mediocrity in some sphere; referring to my abilities, I might joke about my likely victory in the “Special Olympics.”

Does that mean that I am insensitive to the intellectually challenged?

It would surely be a lapse, I think. The joke expresses the perspective of an outsider looking casually and thoughtlessly at something that, though (arguably) in a sense ridiculous, is an attempt by good people to do something about an important problem.


See also the Journal of Disability Policy Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1, 35-42 (2004):
The Case Against the Special Olympics by Keith Storey. (I haven’t actually managed to secure this. I look forward to reading it.)

Seeming ducks

"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken!"

—Oliver Cromwell

I teach philosophy. When I tell this to people—even to my learned colleagues at the college—they seem fuzzy about what I do. (Sometimes, when they tell me what they teach, I have the same problem. Kinesiology? What's that?)

So here’s a glimpse into what kind of thing we philosophers do—or at least what this philosopher does.

For one thing, we talk about logic and reasoning a lot. “Logic,” of course, is a field within philosophy and it is, one might say, the language of (Western) philosophy. In my intro courses, especially for the first few weeks, I talk logic, logic, logic. Just ask my students.

And what I teach them about logic applies to everyday events and news stories. Consider:

From yesterday’s New York Times:

An Outbreak of Autism, or a Statistical Fluke?

Autism is terrifying the community of Somali immigrants in Minneapolis, and some pediatricians and educators have joined parents in raising the alarm. But public health experts say it is hard to tell whether the apparent surge of cases is an actual outbreak, with a cause that can be addressed, or just a statistical fluke.
…
[Comparison with cancer clusters:] It is “extraordinarily difficult” to separate chance clusters from those in which everyone was exposed to the same carcinogen, said Dr. Michael J. Thun, the American Cancer Society’s vice president for epidemiology.

Somali immigrants seem convinced that their community is experiencing a high rate of autism—even a “surge” in autism.

But (asks the logic-minded philosopher), is that even true? Unlike seeming ducks, seeming surges are often actual non-surges. Epidemiologists are now attempting to resolve the cluster/surge question re immigrant Somali kids. (Results will be available soon.) Anecdotal evidence seems mixed: possibly, there are high rates of autism among the Somali population in at least one other country, but not all cities in the U.S. with significant Somali immigrant populations report “surges” as does Minneapolis.

And what if there really are clusters (unusually high numbers) of autism in some immigrant Somali communities? That doesn’t necessarily mean that there is some environmental cause. As statisticians and epidemiologists like to say: correlation does not imply causation. (Here, “imply” is used in the strict logical sense, meaning, “is a sufficient condition for.”)

On the other hand, if (a big “if”) there really is a correlation, one explanation is that there is some cause afoot.

This puzzle will be particularly difficult since we don’t really know what causes autism in the first place. Some of the popular theories one encounters (vaccinations, etc.) are at best controversial or are simply disproved.

Hey, in my philosophy courses, I talk about this stuff (i.e., cum hoc ergo propter hoc, post hoc ergo propter hoc, etc.) all the time. It’s not all that I do, but it is something that I always do, each semester.

So, no, I don’t just talk about Plato's cave, Descartes' dreams, Berkeley's noisy forest, or Bertrand Russell's noisy love life.

—You know, the stereotypically philosophical things.

Tell us what YOU do (or don’t do) in YOUR courses.

(Do tell.)

Even Dick Army says so!

This morning, Rebel Girl asked me if I’d read Stanley Fish’s latest piece in the New York Times.

Nope, I said. I’d somehow missed it.

“It’s about academic freedom,” she said.

Neither of us is a big fan of Fish and his views about academic freedom. For instance, he has flatly argued against instructor “advocacy” in the classroom. Against this, I have argued that there is room for careful instructor advocacy.

This morning, Rebel Girl seemed particularly peeved. Said she: “Fish discusses some professor somewhere who gives A+'s to all of his students.”

I looked at her. She mentioned some of this professor’s other exotic practices and notions. She looked at me.

“What do you call it when someone finds the worst example of a thing in order to represent it and then attack it?,” she asked.

“The straw man fallacy?”

“Yeah, that's it. The straw man fallacy.”*


So today I read Fish’s piece, which is entitled, “The Two Languages of Academic Freedom.” Check it out.

I’m not entirely sure what Fish thinks he’s arguing for—no doubt he favors one of the “languages”—but I hope nobody is getting the idea that Fish's Nutty Professor is a common sort in academia. He's not.

Professor Denis Rancourt of the U of Ottawa has been “dismissed with cause.” Earlier, he had been suspended from teaching and “banned from campus.” He then defied the ban.

Reportedly, Rancourt is an anarchist who views society’s institutions as mechanisms of oppression. Accordingly, schools and universities exist to crank out “obedient workers.” Grading, according to this line (says Fish), is “a tool of coercion in order to make obedient people.”

Hence the A+’s.

Rancourt, says Fish, is an exponent of “‘squatting’ – ‘where one openly takes an existing course and does with it something different.’” Rancourt is supposed to teach physics. Instead, his course encourages “activism.”

Fish (speculatively, I think) attributes to Rancourt the following attitude toward his employers:

I refuse to do what I have contracted to do, but I will do everything in my power to subvert the enterprise you administer. Besides, you’re just dictators, and it is my obligation to undermine you.... And, by the way, I am entitled to do so by the doctrine of academic freedom, which I define as “the ideal under which professors and students are autonomous and design their own development and interactions.”

I suppose Fish is right to view Rancourt as embracing a very broad and extreme sense of academic freedom, one in which it is part of "a global project whose goal is nothing less than the freeing of revolutionary energies, not only in the schools but everywhere.” Fish seems to advocate a “narrower concept” according to which academic freedom is a “doctrine whose scope is defined by the purposes and protocols of the institution and its limited purposes.”

Well, OK. But I’ve never met an academic like Rancourt. Yes, I've met a handful who share some of Rancourt's theories--but I've met none who puts them into practice with A+'s, "squatting," and so on.

I and some of my colleagues here at Irvine Valley College have been ardent advocates of academic freedom, especially in the past dozen or so years. But none of us defines the concept as Rancourt seems to.

Do we believe that much is amiss with society and that, in some sense, society ought to change? Sure. But we also think that we should teach our subjects in the classroom and do that well.

That's what Rebel Girl thinks. That's what I think.

My subject is philosophy. As it happens, this afternoon, I was teaching Plato’s Republic, a work in which the Sophist Thracymachus famously argues that “justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger.”

Thracymachus’ view, as portrayed by Plato, is not unlike Rancourt’s. On some interpretations, Thracymachus is a skeptic who views morality as a sham. We are earnestly taught that morality is meaningful, that virtue is its own reward. In reality, says Thracymachus (maybe), morality is a set of constraints and demands that serve to keep the elite comfortable and powerful. That's all.

Thracymachus seems actually to admire those who are grandly and profitably immoral.

In class, I focused on that idea--about the "elite" and power. I discussed Machiavelli, Marx, and Nietzsche. I explained Chomsky's views regarding the “manufacture” of consent. I asked: Is there any truth to this? Are most of us stupid sheep who are manipulated into cooperating with and furthering strategies and goals that are beyond our comprehension? Are Americans encouraged to concern themselves with the inane—silly entertainments, stupid politics—while the really real stuff is going on in the shadows?


Hmmm. This reminds me of former Congressman Dick Army (R-Texas) and something he said about politics on Hardball a few days ago. Check it out; you'll just love it:



Yeah, I know. Army's a sexist a**hole from hell. But forget that. What about his message?

“Politics is silly. It’s inane…Take what amusement you can from [practitioners of politics], but don’t take them seriously.”

*SEE ALSO:

• The "unrepresentative sample" fallacy
• The "false dilemma" fallacy
• The "black-or-white" fallacy

Chomsky on Charlie Rose:

I recommend starting at about thirty minutes into the interview.

Standing on my neck, smiling

     Have you ever witnessed a politician lying while somehow revealing that he knows that you know that he is lying?

     I recall, years ago, watching one of our trustees (in the South Orange County Community College District) saying something. He was saying something that he knew to be false. I studied him carefully. He had a peculiar look. It was almost a chuckle. He was concentrating on the person to whom he was speaking, not on what he was saying. The attitude of his body and head was askew—he seemed to be maintaining a kind of sidelong glance.

     It seemed to me that he was enjoying himself. That was because he was not merely lying; rather, he was displaying his capacity to lie while getting away with it. He wanted his opponents—that would be me—to know that he was just then doing the sort of thing that caused me to contemn and oppose him. He was standing on my neck as I lay powerless on the ground. He wanted me to know that this is the sort of thing that he does and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

     I marveled at this guy. I thought: he’s nothing like me. For whom, I asked myself, is he a trustee?

* * *

     I don’t get it. Sarah Palin is running around telling bald-faced lies, and her running mate, Senator McCain, who has come close to doing some of the same in recent months, is backing her up.

     In class recently, this issue came up. A student who seemed to be defending Palin immediately suggested that all politicians lie (or perhaps she meant that the current crew of Democratic and Republican Prez/Vice-Prez candidates lie).

     Well, yes, I said, but not all lies are equally egregious. If, for instance, a candidate were to plan to do X, announcing that plan, and then find himself in unexpected circumstances that compel him to not do X, the initial “lie” would not trouble us much.

     That was not a particularly good example. Still, everyone seemed to agree that lies and deceptions and untruths come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and they aren’t all egregious or equally egregious.

     What about Sarah Palin? Since her “coming out” two weeks ago, she has consistently communicated these ideas among others

• That she has championed the elimination of earmarks (a form of pork-barrel politics)
• That she was offered the “bridge to nowhere” but turned it down

     Well, no, she is hardly a champion of the "end earmarks" cause. Both as Mayor of Wasilla and as Governor of Alaska, she pursued earmarks vigorously.

     Not only did she not turn down federal funds for the “bridge to nowhere,” she actively supported the bill that was supposed to provide it. Congress then removed the “bridge” from the bill, which passed, providing Alaska with over $200 million of federal money, which she did not turn down. (Even without the bridge, the bill was "pork.")

     Any way you cut it, some of the key points and impressions that she is communicating to Americans are bold attempts at deception.

     They are lies.

     This was made clear early on by numerous journalists. So has she backed off? That’s what Hillary Clinton did when it became clear that her Bosnian “sniper fire” tale proved to be distinctly erroneous.

     Palin has not backed off. She has simply repeated her lies.

* * *

     Obviously, deception is and has long been a routine element of American politics. But I cannot readily recall a case like this one: the (national) candidate lies boldly; the lies are revealed to be lies; nevertheless, the lies are repeated often and noisily even as respected journalists and news organizations draw attention to their status as lies.

     Some deceptions are defended with implausible but available explanations according to which what is “really meant” by the deceptive claim is actually true. There can be no doubt that Senator McCain’s oft-repeated assertion—made before groups of people who are not rich—that Senator Obama wants to “raise our taxes” is in this category. (In truth, Obama would raise the taxes of wealthy taxpayers who constitute a small percentage of Americans.) McCain can explain, of course, that Obama does indeed want to raise taxes for some Americans. And perhaps he (McCain) is simply failing to notice that the people to whom he is speaking aren’t those whose taxes would be raised by Obama. So he isn’t necessarily lying.

     Sure.

     I suppose people differ with regard to whether we should give McCain any slack here. I’m not inclined to do so. Others may be more charitable.

     Palin’s lies seem to be the unvarnished sort. There is no defense possible for them, unless it’s “well, the other side lies too.”

     Does Senator Obama lie? He does. Like many Democrats, he often says or implies that, according to Senator McCain, the country might have to fight in Iraq for 100 years. Well, no, that isn’t what he said. In context, he was talking about (or easily could have been talking about) an American military presence in Iraq like those in Germany, Japan, and South Korea. (No fighting goes on in those places.)

     Once again, Obama can fall back on an implausible but available explanation: McCain was not terribly clear what sort of “staying” he was talking about, now was he? Maybe he really did mean to say that we might have to fight in Iraq for 100 years! Could be!

     Right.

     So should we give him some slack? Not much, it seems to me.

     Sometimes, the lies seem to be in some sense part of a game in which an opponent’s flubs are punished by constant repetitions of the false interpretations that they make possible. My guess is that Senator Obama is thinking that it serves McCain right, being smacked endlessly about his “100 years” remark. After all, there is no excuse for speaking so inarticulately about so important a matter!

     And does anyone really think that McCain would have us fight in Iraq for 100 years? Surely few are that stupid. So maybe the audience is in on the “game,” and so the lie is not really a lie. Maybe.

     I guess I’m less sympathetic to McCain when he stands before crowds, points at them, and then says that Obama will raise their taxes. Here, I don’t see the game. But maybe I’m missing something. I wouldn’t be surprised. Is it possible that most of the people in those crowds know better but are just going along with this bit of ironic political theater? I guess it’s possible.

* * *

     Let’s get back to this curious new Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. Surely there is virtually no one, aside from the truly clueless, who will not acknowledge that she is a poor choice insofar as experience and knowledge are important virtues for a potential President to possess. But politics can get complicated, and we are in a race between McCain and Obama, and—from the point of view of many conservatives, I think—if McCain needs to choose an unimpressive minor politician like Sarah Palin as his running mate in order to win, then it is worth it, given the alternative, namely, the victory of a Democrat who would impose a left-of-center Democratic administration upon the nation for 4 or even 8 years.

     Does such a judgment make sense, logically or morally? Should conservatives be willing to risk having this shallow neophyte become President (should the old and sickly McCain die) in order to help secure McCain’s victory over Obama?

     Obviously, there are Americans who believe that Sarah Palin is a good choice for VP candidate. Some of them are impressed by her credentials as a “social conservative”—an ardent opponent of abortion, homosexuality, “Darwinism,” and all the rest. So desperate are they to further their “social conservative” agenda that they are willing to overlook her lack of experience and knowledge.

     But what about her stature as the Bold Liar? Surely that is a problem for these self-consciously moral voters!

     Well, again, the stakes may seem to be very high. So much so that, well, if she has to lie to get elected, then so be it. Nobody gets elected without getting their hands dirty.

* * *

     But my guess is that many who support Palin do not possess this kind of sophistication. There is considerable evidence that a large percentage of Americans are appallingly ignorant about issues (and about much else). And many Americans, especially conservative Americans, seem inclined to accept the Republican Party’s cynically-offered conspiracy theory about the “leftist” or “liberal” media. This theory is seldom clearly articulated in the course of the ongoing spectacle of mainstream politics. When such politicians as those we saw at the recent GOP convention appeal to it—always without details or any elaboration—they permit and indeed count on voters’ filling in the blank spaces: that journalists and newspapers flat lie and that, horribly, it is entirely possible that the nasty things that they are saying about our Sarah Palin (and our George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, et al.) aren’t true!

     This cabal theory, of course, is preposterous.

     Please tell me that I’m wrong, but it appears to me that a large proportion of the American public is sufficiently ignorant (and desperate?) that they will embrace this kind of daft conspiracy theory that the GOP leadership plainly wants them to embrace (judging by the speeches and Pavlovian roars of the recent convention).

     And so I suggest to you that, in some sense, among the real issues of our time is the spectacular ignorance and cluelessness of much of the voting public. I think that the real worry about Sarah Palin’s lies is that a great many Americans can deny that she is lying. It does not occur to such people to pick up a newspaper to find out. Indeed, for some of them, the world is the kind of place in which journalists and editors and executives constitute a cabal that secretly does what is necessary to turn mainstream newspapers and TV news programs into a seamless leftist mechanism of thought control.

     Sometimes, the leaders of our mainstream parties seem to be standing on my neck, smiling.

     And I wonder: for whom are they leaders?

Peevish conservative musings about words

When it comes to words and concepts, boy do I hate the trendy. And I love the traditional. This is one way in which I’m a very conservative guy.

Language is a beautiful and powerful thing, and its beauty and power depends on a kind of conservative impulse: recognition that words and their sometimes delicate and complex meanings must be preserved and maintained and appreciated.

Take a word like “awesome.” Having been raised by wolves, I approached adulthood thinking that “awesome” meant “terrific” (and “terrific,” of course, meant “bitchen”).

Evidently, many people were raised by wolves. It’s not just me.

But somewhere along the way, I developed a love of words and history. And, now, I cannot separate the word “awesome” from “awe,” and I cannot think of “awe” without thinking about our linguistic predecessors, centuries ago, struck with fear or reverence by things big or powerful or intricate—in ways that are increasingly lost to us. I sense a link to these people, and all people in between, through this one word.

Or consider the word “creature.” For many, a creature is simply a monster, or perhaps an animal. But I cannot now use this word without thinking of the act of creating and the thing that creates. The word has a depth and history that embraces all that, and so, to me, the word seems rich and wonderful, snaking through time.

Imagine having no sense of such things!

 * * *

Well, it’s 2008, and I’m a teacher, and so I don’t have to imagine it.

Today, I read through some student writing. I had asked the students of my Ethics class to write a brief answer to the question, “What is morality?” Mostly, I just wanted to see how they write and think (it’s early in the semester).

Students expressed some curious ideas about morality. One common theme is the notion that morality is “personal,” not in the sense that it is something a person has, but in the sense that it expresses the individual’s distinctive perspective—perhaps even his whims. To these students, morality is somehow a creature of the individual!

Students tend to show up with trendy junk in their heads, which is understandable, since everyone, and especially young people, live in a world piled high with such junk, obscuring anything old or venerable. Often, they’ve picked up various chunks of pseudo-sophistication (“well, of course, everyone has his own reality”), popular psychology (“he’s in denial and so he can’t see the truth”), and New Age blather (“I’m not very religious, but I’m very spiritual”).

They’re young, and so this stuff can still be scraped out or supplanted without great effort.

Unfortunately, well-educated adults, too, sometimes embrace this groovy junk. For instance, several of my friends insist that “morality” is somehow a personal matter—like a personal “philosophy.” For them, “morality” is not a synonym (more or less) for “ethics.”

“Oh no,” they’ll say. “Morality and ethics are quite distinct!”

What on earth are they talking about?

I am aware that, in the last few decades, a sense of “ethics” as a code of conduct associated with a particular profession has become more familiar. People are now accustomed to speaking of the ethics of the doctor, the lawyer, the teacher, the engineer, and so on. And it makes sense to think of this kind of code as being distinct from morality or ethics in the ordinary sense.

“Morality or ethics in the ordinary sense.” —Is there anyone left who even knows what I’m talking about? (Do remember that I am in California.)

I do hope you all understand that there was a time when people talked about right and wrong, virtue and vice, duty and obligation. People would say that so-and-so is a “good woman” or that she “takes her obligations seriously.”

Some people still say such things!

So, what is the name of that area of life that they are talking about? Evidently, “ethics” is out, since that’s about professional codes, etc. And “morality” is out, since that’s about one’s “personal” code or one’s dating practices.

Trendy (including academic) language and thinking have made people idiots.

Listen, we’ve got words for this. In the English language, that area of life is called “morality,” otherwise known as “ethics.”

* * *

Earlier this evening, I consulted the Oxford English Dictionary. I looked up “morality” and “ethics.”

Let’s start with “ethics.” The OED cites many instances of usage starting in the 17th Century in which “ethics” means a kind of study of “morals,” or it means the “study concerned with the principles of human duty.” (Ethics as a branch of knowledge of right and wrong.) A bit later, the term was also used to refer to “moral principles” and also rules of conduct for “certain associations or departments of human life.” —Aha! That’s that narrower professional sense of ethics, I suppose.

The adjective “ethical” has been used to mean “pertaining to morality” (and also pertaining to the “science of ethics”) since the 17th Century at least.

Now let’s turn to the word “morality.” Very early on, the term was associated with “ethical wisdom.” Also early on, “morality” was used to refer to “moral virtue”—especially “in relation to sexual matters” and “personal qualities” that are good.

This narrower sense of morality appears to have survived.

At the end of the 16th Century, “morality” started to be used to refer to “Conformity of an idea, practice, etc., to moral law; moral goodness or rightness.” This is what I have long taken to be the word’s central meaning. The OED cites contemporary usage of this meaning.

Starting in the 17th Century, “morality” was used to mean “the quality or fact of being morally right or wrong; the goodness or badness of an action.” The OED again cites some contemporary examples of this usage.

Starting in the 18th Century, “morality” could refer to the study of right and wrong conduct, i.e., “ethics.” Sound familiar?


OK, so now hear this. If one takes the long (and the OED) view concerning the meaning of words, then there is little justification for insisting on some sort of clear or systematic difference in the meaning of the words “morality” and “ethics.” These words are largely synonymous. They have been used to refer to “right and wrong conduct,” and they have been used to refer to bodies of knowledge (or areas of study) concerning right and wrong conduct.

Unsurprisingly, they are not exactly the same. “Morality” has at times been used narrowly to refer to moral virtue especially “in relation to sexual matters.” But this is not a dominant meaning.

And “ethics” more than “morality” has been used to refer to a code for a particular profession. But, again, this has not been a dominant meaning, as far as I can tell.

So where do people get this idea that “morality” and “ethics” are quite distinct?

And where do my students get the notion that morality is some sort of personal take or philosophy about conduct?

* * *

Obviously, language has always been a dynamic thing. Words do change over time; they take on new senses and lose older ones. Sometimes new words appear and old words are abandoned.

But I think there was a time, not so long ago, when the educated elite (yes, I’m using that phrase) were routinely brought up to speed concerning those delicate meanings and histories that I talked about earlier. These people could generally be counted on (for instance) to understand that “awesome” has to do with “awe” or that “creatures” are things created.

The conservative within me is pleased to contemplate this inertial mechanism.

But the machine seems to be breaking down now, at least in my world. That lovely inertia of meaning that tied us to our past has eroded away, and now, even among the educated, words are often just words, meaning only what the noisy and colorful knuckleheads of our time mean by them, which is usually a cheap and trashy thing with no provenance and zero wisdom.

In defense of extremism (Part 1)

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

.....—Barry Goldwater, 1964

A couple of days ago, I was watching news coverage of the Republican Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. A reporter offered a minor segment on demonstrators who had been handled roughly by riot gear-equipped local police. The reporter seemed to dismiss the protesters’ views, noting briefly that they were “extremists.”

It was as though he were saying, “they’re just extremists, so we won’t bother explaining their beef with the Republicans.”

Why do we think in this way?

In this country, we seem to use the term “extremist” more or less descriptively: an “extremist” is one who holds a view that is at an extreme on the spectrum of views—with regard to politics, more or less.

I add “with regard to politics” because I do not think that most people would use the term “extremist” to refer to someone who, say, took an “extreme” religious view (such people are dismissed as “cultists”) or someone who, say, took an “extreme” view regarding diet, such as a vegan or “meatarian” (such people are dismissed as eccentrics, not as extremists).

Only some extreme views or activities are labeled “extremist,” then. Someone who seeks to overthrow the government is surely an extremist. A “radical” who destroys banks or sewers is an extremist.

Note that a prolific serial killer or “mad bomber” is not an extremist. Extremists need to have an agenda that is in some sense political or social. Extreme activity is not in itself extremism.

OK, so what do we think about these extremists? Well, clearly, we tend to "think" along these lines:

View (or activity) V is extremist.
Therefore V is beyond the pale.

But such reasoning is plainly defective. Our own (American) history provides ready examples of conduct and thinking that was once widely regarded as “extremist” but that eventually prevailed and is now embraced and insisted upon. Think of abolitionism, women’s suffrage, civil rights, and so on.

So history—our own history—teaches us that what is “extreme” one day can turn out to be “our way of thinking and living” later on. So why do we simply reject extreme views and philosophies?

One might argue that, though the occasional extremist view turns out to be “true” (or whatever we should call it), most extremist views are exactly as absurd as they seem (to many of us) to be, or at least that is the pattern historically.

I’m not sure that’s true, but let’s suppose that it is. What does the alleged factoid tell us? It certainly doesn’t tell us to reject extremist views out of hand. Doesn’t history tell us that we had better be careful not to assume that things that strike us as extreme and outrageous (or ridiculous, etc.) are really so? After all, in making that assumption, we run the risk—OK, the slight risk—of being among the bad guys—like slaveholders, wife beaters, child exploiters, racists, and all the other monsters we absolutely do not want to be.

It is unwise to run a slight but significant risk of catastrophe. Turning out to be like the KKK is surely a moral catastrophe.

The risk is not like the possibility of being hit by lightning. It is the possibility that we are vicious, that we are not trying hard enough, that we are dropping the ball, morally. If we are in error, then we can detect it; after all, we can think about what is right and good, what is wrong and wicked.

We don’t look back at slaveholders and judge them as simply having different values that were somehow wrong values. Rather, we look at them as in some sense having betrayed or failed to live by “our values.” So if an extremist comes along, we can stop and think about what he or she is saying. We should have the humility to recognize that we (who are not extremists) could be in error—we could be incautious or inattentive or stubborn, etc. We should try hard to live up to our values and not assume that that just happens by itself, without effort or thought.

Well, anyway, I can see no justification for simply rejecting extremist views out of hand. We at least need to think about them. Mill was right, I think, when he said that challenges to our thinking are good, for even when the challengers are utterly wrong-headed, by challenging us, they keep us thinking about the meaning and justification of what it is that we think and do. It's never a good idea to be comfortable, morally.

There is a kind of thinking that pops up here and there in our way of thinking according to which the truth is the middle between extremes. But, again, clearly, that is often not true. Anyone can come up with counterexamples.

People sometimes seem to think that it is not possible that either of the “two sides” in a dispute is totally in error. According to this thinking, when there is a dispute, each “side” has at least a piece of the truth, and, if we are wise, we will identify everybody's pieces.

Think of journalists who value “balance.” They drive me nuts.

Clearly, sometimes, one “side” is indeed fundamentally wrong and they are in possession of no piece of the truth. People who insist that the Earth is flat are very silly or disturbed. I’ve read their arguments. They’ve got nothing. Really. Nothing.

Imagine insisting that we must carefully consider their view in order to find that fragment of truth that they bring to the discussion. Consider Holocaust deniers. Is the truth about European history (from 1938 to 1945) some sort of blend of their take on history and the take according to which the Holocaust occurred?

* * * *

For me and some of my friends, both “sides” in the current contest over who should become President are pretty far off the mark. (For us, one side is regarded as much more benighted than the other; nevertheless, both “sides”—both the Democrats and the Republicans—are viewed as hugely mistaken about priorities and such.) We would argue, I think, that, sometimes, the only remotely acceptable view isn’t even on the horizon for most people.

Sometimes, I suggest that “we” should consider urging people to have fewer children. After all, virtually all of the major difficulties that challenge humanity (and the rest of the world!) are related to high human populations. And if we tweak the rate of children-production just a little bit, we actually lower population very rapidly. It wouldn't be hard to reduce the human population vastly in just two or three generations.

Generally, when I make this suggestion, I am regarded as having said something that is so outrageous that it can be rejected out of hand.

Why?

I'm sorry, but I'm onto something here. If we could just get people to see the advantages of smallish families—just as we are trying now to get people to see the value of "green living"—then all sorts of difficulties will be greatly ameliorated. Isn't that obvious?

It is frustrating to have no voice at all in so important a debate.

Another example: prima facie, the jury system, as it now exists, is ridiculous. Why can't voices demanding reform even get a hearing? (I'm not sure this view even qualifies as "extremist." Sometimes, I think that what we tend to reject isn't extremism; rather, it is common sense.)

* * *

I have never understood people's reactions to those who resort to violence in combating abortions. I do not think of (most) abortions as the murder of infants. But if I did think that, then I would be horrified by what goes on in abortion clinics. I would be inclined to use terms like "Holocaust." Why wouldn't I?

And, being intelligent, I would realize that there is virtually no hope that a significant number of my fellow citizens will see the situation as I do—as a Holocaust. I would be placed in a terrible moral predicament, for I would have essentially no prospects of stopping the murders through the political process. I would find myself living in a hellish world of terrible violence. (It is easy for people who care about the pain of animals to feel exactly this way.)

When anti-abortionists bomb clinics, I understand that. I don't agree with them that these clinics are committing murders. But I do understand why they resort to violence. I think we should really listen to these people and at least let them know that we sympathize with their plight, even if we don't agree with their premise.

It must drive them mad, being simply dismissed as extremists. But how can they do nothing?

Poker

“Hey,” Joel [Coen] said, his voice brightening, “didn’t Karl Popper go after Wittgenstein with a poker?”

—From an article in Friday’s New York Times

The violence of philosophy. (Are some values “objective”?)

Philosophy can be about anything, and so it can be about “values.” We step back from the world of nations and civilizations and inevitably puzzle at differences and tensions that continually arise there. And this brings us to the difficult question of whether and how there can be “absolute” or “objective” values.

Now, if there were such things, and if we were confident that we could identify them, then, naturally, we would “wield” them. Often, having values (having a morality) is a matter of trying to make the world better—and this involves attempting to eliminate or lessen “bad things” in the world: pain, suffering, injustice. And, sometimes, especially bad things seem to be happening far from the borders of our own peculiar (i.e., distinctive) society and its way of life.

OK, but what about moral relativism?

Interestingly, two important 20th Century writers, one a leftist (socialist), the other a rightist (conservative), agreed on rejection of moral relativism. Or so says David Lebedoff, author of The Same Man. The book was reviewed in yesterday’s New York Times: Two of a Kind:

…[George] Orwell conjured up the nightmarish dystopia of “1984.” [Evelyn] Waugh’s best-known work, “Brideshead Revisited,” was a reverie about a vanished age of Oxford privilege, titled Catholic families, large country houses and fastidious conscience. Orwell was … a socialist with an affinity for mineworkers and tramps. Waugh was a short, plump, florid social climber and a proud reactionary…. Orwell fought on the loyalist side in the Spanish Civil War. Waugh announced, “If I were a Spaniard I should be fighting for General Franco.” … Orwell thought “good prose is like a window pane,” forceful and direct. Waugh was an elaborate stylist whose prose ranged from the dryly ironical to the richly ornamented and rhetorical. Orwell was solitary and fiercely earnest. Waugh was convivial and brutally funny. And, perhaps most important, Orwell was a secularist whose greatest fear was the emergence of Big Brother in this world. Waugh was a Roman Catholic convert whose greatest hope lay with God in the next.
…
Dissimilar though their causes may have been, Orwell and Waugh were both anchored by “a hatred of moral relativism”; that, Lebedoff claims, is what set the two men apart from their contemporaries. Yet in stressing this similarity, the author elides [omits] a deeper difference. Although Waugh despaired about the future, he saw the Catholic Church as an enduring bulwark against chaos. His moral order was backed by divine authority. Orwell too was a passionate believer in objective truth, including moral truth. But unlike Waugh, Orwell did not attribute transcendent power to the truth; indeed, he feared that it might ultimately prove impotent in history. Hence his terrifying vision in “1984” of a future of totalitarian sadism, of “a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”

…The two men admired each other — up to a point. Orwell thought Waugh was about as good as a novelist could be while holding “untenable” beliefs. “One cannot really be Catholic & grown up,” he wrote. Waugh thought Orwell was as good as a thinker could be while neglecting nine-tenths of reality: the supernatural part. He wrote to Orwell apropos of “1984” that “men who love a crucified God need never think of torture as all-powerful.”….

In class, I often note that those on both ends of the political spectrum do seem to approach the world as moral objectivists—people who suppose that there exists some set of values that apply equally to all of humanity. It is obvious that conservatives do: the more primitive among them often seem to view the beliefs and practices of foreign cultures essentially as 16th Century Europeans (or late 19th Century Americans) did.

Perhaps it is less obvious that leftists/liberals are often entrenched objectivists as well, for surely a willingness to wield “human rights” across cultures assumes that there is some objective standard of conduct and moral belief to which people around the world may appeal!

But I am a philosopher. And so I ask, “OK, what justifies that idea?” I mean, how is this supposed to work exactly? Is it that those nasty cultures that practice female genital mutilation and the like (i.e., violations of human rights) are somehow blind to facts? Do they lack reason? Are the members of such cultures brain-damaged? Did God neglect to send them a Moses?

My guess is that most who read the above review think that they are clear in their minds about the nature of “moral relativism” and its opposite. But I have my doubts.

We need to philosophize a bit.

Just what is a “moral relativist”? Why, it is someone who supposes that morality is “relative.” —Relative to what? The likely answer (coming from most, I suppose): one’s culture.

But the statement is problematic. One can believe that “morality is relative (to culture)” and mean very different things.

One kind of moral relativism is “descriptive” and probably uncontroversial. For instance, in saying that “morality is relative,” one might be saying merely that, as one examines the cultures of the world, one will discover differences, some of them significant. For instance, some cultures (our own perhaps) emphasize the notion that individuals are entitled to be left unmolested by others, while other cultures place no such emphasis on the self and its entitlements. Perhaps they emphasize the health and survival of the community.

(More grossly: you’ve got your headhunters and you’ve got your non-headhunters; you’ve got your patriarchal societies and you’ve got your egalitarian societies; etc.)

Now even a moral absolutist like Pat Buchanan embraces this kind of “moral relativism.” Sure, he says, different cultures have different moralities. Who would deny that? But, he adds, some of those cultures are in the dark, morally speaking. Ours (i.e., our “Judeo-Christian” culture) is not.

So, in one sense, Pat is a relativist. In another, he is an absolutist.

Another kind of moral relativism is the odd idea that “rightness” is whatever one’s culture defines as right. For us, female genital mutilation is wrong, wrong, wrong. But, in some cultures, it is right. It is “wrong for us,” but it is “right for them.”

Now, try to resist the temptation to “beg the question” here.

DIGRESSION: among logicians (and verbal conservatives!), “begging the question” does not mean “raising a question”; rather, it means something else entirely: committing the error of assuming the truth of X in one's argument for the truth of X. Suppose that a theist argues that God exists on the basis of references to God in the Bible. But why should we regard the Bible as reliable? Because (we are now told) the Bible is "divinely inspired." But the idea that the Bible is "divinely inspired" is the idea that God exists and inspires the Bible. That is, the theist is assuming the truth of the very claim that he is supposed to be establishing. He is "begging the question." —END OF DIGRESSION.

Some of you may be thinking: “It is ridiculous to suppose that the practice of female genital mutilation could be anything but wrong, wrong, wrong! Anyone who views the matter otherwise is obviously beyond the pale!”

Well, yes, I sympathize. FGM strikes me as “wrong, wrong, wrong” too. But, really, that’s what is at issue here. Are we entitled to regard such practices as absolutely wrong? On what basis exactly? How does the universal “wrongness” of this practice go exactly? These are very difficult questions to answer (for those who do not beg questions, if you can find such people).

It is clear, I think, that, as members of a culture, we are raised to think and behave in a way such that certain practices will seem right and good to us. And it is clear, too, I think, that those same practices will sometimes be regarded with horror by those who are members of other cultures and who are raised in very different ways. And so, clearly, some practice P will seem absolutely right and good to me while, for people in some other culture or cultures, P will seem absolutely wrong and wicked.

But just what sort of thing is being said when someone asserts that “for us” mutilating girls is wrong but “for them” it is right? And remember: this second kind of relativist doesn’t mean merely that, from our perspective, this practice will seem wrong; from their perspective, it will seem right. The latter idea is perfectly intelligible and likely true.

The sort of relativist we are now examining means something else entirely. They mean there is this thing—rightness (or wrongness)—and it is one thing for us; it is quite another thing for them.

What on earth are they talking about?

Many philosophers, I think, doubt the coherence or meaningfulness of such talk. Me too.

There’s a third kind of relativism that is very different from these first two. Perhaps it should not be called “relativism” at all, although I think we can see why it is sometimes called that. It is the view that, when we step back from the various moralities/cultures of the world, and we seek some standard against which to evaluate them (for correctness or truth or “validity”), we seem unable to locate that standard.

Again, I must warn you against question-begging. You may be inclined to say: “Well, obviously, some moralities are barbaric! They are immoral! They offend reason!”

Again, I sympathize with such remarks. I can think of any number of practices of foreign cultures (and a few home-grown ones too) that strike me in exactly that way. But to reason in this way is, I think, to beg the question. It is to assume the very matter that is at issue. Our question is: on what basis may we regard “values” embraced by some foreign cultures as right or wrong, valid or invalid? To insist now that these girl-mutilators are “plainly wicked” is to assume that we have a basis, that we may start from the "fact" that girl-mutilating is wrong.

If we have a basis for supposing that our assessment of girl-mutilating is correct and the others' assessment is incorrect, then just what is it?

“Why, anyone with reason can see that mutilating these little girls is wrong!”

Well, yes, but, obviously, mature adults of these other cultures do not see things in this way. On what basis exactly are we entitled to judge that these people are irrational (or blind or…)?

That’s the question.

“Why, it is self-evident that mutilating little girls is wrong!”

But it is not self-evident to these people in the other cultures. How come?

“Well, that is because they are backward!”

Well, perhaps so, but could you please explain that to us? On what basis may you judge that anyone who does not share your sense of the “self-evident” is backwards? Please explain to us how you are not simply exhibiting ethnocentrism?

Such questions are not easily answered (again—among those who refuse to beg questions).

I do not think that philosophers—people who make it their business to deal with these matters—are in agreement about the answer to these questions or even that they can be answered. (Don’t kid yourself; these thinkers aren’t missing something obvious about which you can easily enlighten them.) In my view, we need to take seriously the possibility that we just don’t have—not yet at least—a justification for the assessment that the disturbing foreign moralities are somehow mistaken or benighted.

Perhaps I have lost you. I left you in a state of bewilderment and annoyance a few paragraphs back. If so, try this. Suppose that you encounter a group of Chinese people playing mahjong. You are accompanied by your cousin Ralph, who has never encountered the game. He watches the people playing it. At one point, he declares, “That’s a stupid game!”

Let’s suppose that Ralph isn’t joking. He is quite serious. He is used to checkers. In his mind, checkers is a good game. But this mahjong—to him, it’s simply ridiculous.

Naturally, Ralph is a dolt. “Relative to what,” we now ask him, “is mahjong a stupid game?” There is no standard against which to evaluate mahjong against, say, checkers. What would it be? Obviously, Ralph simply assumes that his perspective and his traditions are the standards for the universe. Well, maybe so. But if he’s going to take that view, he’ll have to defend it, and the chances of his being able to do so successfully seem slim.

Matters are different if we look at somebody’s car and judge it to be small. We can measure the size of cars relative to the objective standard of interior cubic square footage and the like. Saying that someone’s car is “small” is not at all like saying that their game is ridiculous.

And so, again, what are the standards against which we can assess some culture’s morality (compared to our own)? Appeals to “self-evidence” are just question-begging. Here as elsewhere, if we allow appeals to "self-evidence," we're going to get nowhere.

I suppose that this third view is sometimes called “relativism” (metaethical relativism) because, in suggesting that there is no basis for distinguishing between “moralities” in terms of their correctness or soundness, it is saying that these moralities are all on a par. None is superior to any other. (Perhaps each is equally ungrounded.) “Relativism”—in some sense—is often seen as the notion that has arisen to challenge or replace the often unreflective idea that “our culture” is the true and correct (or enlightened) one, the superior one, the standard for the universe, provided by God (or reason). Well, this third kind of “relativism,” too, rejects the “superiority” thesis, at least with regard to morality.

But notice what it does not do. It does not endorse the second kind of relativism, which asserts that right and wrong (and not just what is regarded as right and wrong) differs from culture to culture. A person who embraces (perhaps reluctantly) this third relativism might well reject the second kind.

And observe that this third view is not based on the fact (if it is a fact) that different cultures have different moralities (the modest and largely uncontroversial thesis of the first kind of relativism). Nothing much follows from this fact. After all, cultures of the world differ in their views about the physical nature of the Earth. It doesn’t follow that there is no objective standard to judge claims about the nature of the Earth, does it? Nope.

What if the history of the world were different and only one human culture existed on earth? In this imaginary world, there are no different cultures, different moralities. There is one.

But, in that world, it would be possible to imagine different moralities. And we could still ask, “On what basis may we judge one morality—for instance, our own—as more correct or valid than these other, imagined moralities?”

And the same problem would arise.

In the grounding department, we seem to have bupkis.

I know that some of you are still thinking, “well, obviously, any culture that permits or endorses something like female genital mutilation is wrong! It is backward”

And, again, it isn’t as though I don’t fully share your horror at that practice. But my question to you is this: how can you defend that judgment (without appealing to the worthless standard of “self-evidence,” without assuming exactly what you are obliged to establish—that those who view the practice with horror are correct and those who embrace it are mistaken)?

Damn! Boggled again!

I worked in construction one summer when I was 18. I recall encountering various workers working very hard, day after day. They carried, pulled, pushed, hammered, shoveled, etc. They did this for hours on end. I was very impressed. Actually, I was somewhat horrified.

My father was in construction, an electrician. I recall his telling me once that he got lots of exercise on the job, and that seemed right to me, though it also seemed to me that other tradesmen and construction workers worked even harder than the electricians.

But, in general, despite their intense daily exertions, these people didn’t look like they worked out. Most of them were overweight. And they didn’t appear to be healthy.

It was puzzling.

On Saturday, The Guardian’s Ben Goldacre wrote about a recent study that focused on work and exercise (Healthy mind, healthy body). According to Goldacre, two Harvard psychologists focused on 84 hard-working female hotel attendants. The psychologists observed that, while working, the attendants were getting lots of exercise. Nevertheless, 2/3 of the workers reported that they did not exercise regularly and 1/3 reported that they did not exercise at all.

The health of each worker was carefully measured. The psychologists then divided the workers into two groups: “One group got a one hour presentation on what a fabulous amount of exercise they were getting, how they were meeting and clearly exceeding recommendations for an active lifestyle.” It was made clear to them that, whatever they may have thought, in truth, in the course of doing their jobs, they were burning lots of calories and working lots of muscles.

Meanwhile, the other group went about their work unburdened by this happy information.

Four weeks later, the health of each worker was again measured. The workers who had been enlightened about their actual levels of exercise experienced clear improvement in health. The other workers did not.

“It’s an outrage,” jokes Goldacre. Funny guy.

It is possible, of course, that the study was flawed. Maybe the “enlightened” workers subtly changed their work habits, wielding their vacuum cleaners more quickly, scrubbing toilets more forcefully.

Time will tell.

But what if the study was unflawed and the workers’ attitudes really made all the difference? What, then, are we to make of this study? Is it that the workers’ exercise was healthful all right but its benefits were blocked by “negative” attitudes? Or is it that the exercise had nothing to do with these health benefits—it’s “positive attitude” that did the trick?

The literature on the placebo effect is disconcerting. It appears to me that, contrary to popular opinion, it is not clear that the placebo phenomenon ever occurs. I suppose that I hope that it does. But, right now, the matter is clouded.

Still, there are many studies of the kind described above. They unsettle me. I sense that massive folly is afoot. But I don’t know what it is.

I can just imagine people fifty years from now shaking their heads at our time and the appalling spectacle of tens of millions of people taking medicines, undergoing procedures, suffering through taxing regimens—all of them inefficacious. All placebos. Powerful ones.

On the other hand, I can equally imagine the future looking back at this dismal earlier period of gross and absurd oversimplification of the subtle complexities of health and disease. “These clueless bastards,” they’ll say, “were so narrow in their thinking that they resorted to the notion that just thinking you’ll get better sometimes causes you to get better!”

“Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha!”

I’ve been following the science of diet and disease for many years now, though not closely. By two or three years ago, I was strongly under the impression that the relevant authorities were fairly sure which diets were “healthy” and which were "unhealthy." All of the population studies seemed to point to the same culprits: saturated fat, etc.

But then a study came along that questioned all of that. Evidently, it was very impressive in scope and methodology. It was better than the earlier population studies. But it painted a different picture.

People were taking this seriously.

What could this mean? I asked. How can this be?

I hate being boggled.

But I also like it.

Tomorrow!

Well, the semester begins tomorrow morning. That's likely to kick start this here blog into life again. You wait and see.

The heat makes me stupid.

Saw my brother's brats yesterday. They climbed all over me, as per usual, as though I were a carnival or a magic mountain. Wore me out. But it was good.

Tomorrow!

Try to believe that a monkey is a pumpkin

THIS ONE'S ABOUT RISK—TINY RISKS OF HUGE CATASTROPHES. THAT'S US ALL OVER HERE IN CALIFORNIA, WHAT WITH EARTHQUAKES, FIRES, AND TSUNAMIS. HOW ABOUT DISBELIEVING IN GOD?
I visited my parents today. It turns out my mother experienced a minor emergency last night. She had been feeling poorly for weeks but then, late yesterday, she experienced palpitations. My dad drove her to Kaiser. The two of them remained in the emergency room for several hours.

My mom told me that her palpitations were caused by “drug interactions.” I asked her which drugs had interacted. She said, “it was my antibiotics.” I said, well, OK, that’s one drug, but what about the other one or ones?

Eventually (you have no idea), I gleaned from my parents (aka the Costanzas) that mom has been on thyroid medication for decades, and when she started on a course of antibiotics for a dental problem about a month ago, she immediately became ill. Two weeks later, she started another course of antibiotics—for another ailment—and, again, she felt ill, until Friday, when she broke out in a rash. Then came the palpitations last night.

“How do you know it isn’t just the antibiotics?” I asked. My parents stared at me. My parents (aka the Bickersons) then argued for a while about I-know-not-what, but, in the end, they seemed to say that both of these drugs were in mom’s system when she had the palpitations. So there you are.

Naturally, I explained that, no, in fact, there are several possibilities that could explain the palpitations. First, it could indeed be the interaction between the thyroid medicine and the antibiotics. Second, it could be the antibiotics alone. Third, it could be neither the above-mentioned interaction nor the antibiotics; possibly, coincidentally, something else might have caused the palpitations.

“Well,” said dad, “that’s unlikely.” I agreed, but I said that that didn’t mean that the possibility should be ignored. After all, I said, for all we know, there could be something wrong with mom's heart. Even a 1% chance of that is something you need to consider, I said.

(You might wonder why I didn’t just ask them what the emergency room doctor told them. But you’ve got to know my parents to know how unlikely it is that one will find out what the doctor told them by asking them what the doctor told them. Tea leaves or gopher entrails are much better indicators.)

* * * * *

This reminds me of something I wrote a while back about the danger of a tsunami wreaking havoc on the coast of Orange County (So Cal tsunamis?). I had come across a study that had been done, I believe, for the state (Evaluation of Tsunami Risk to Southern California Coastal Cities (pdf)). According to the study, there is a small but significant chance of a tsunami hitting the OC, not only because of earthquakes, but also because of undersea landslides on the Catalina side of the channel, which is very deep. According to the report, there is evidence of historical tsunamis of serious significance along the OC coast. These, said the report's author, are “infrequent.” Nevertheless, “the hazard posed by locally generated tsunami attack [!] is very serious and should be appropriately mitigated.”

The general point here is that a risk might still be worrisome even when it is very unlikely. It is significant if what could occur would be catastrophic.


This seems to be the core idea of “Pascal’s Wager,” one of the most famous arguments “for believing in God.” Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) argued, not that God exists, but that it is rational to believe in God. There’s a difference.

Suppose that I have been falsely accused of blasphemy, and I am now in the clutches of Inquisitors. Suppose, further that the Inquisitors will torture me until both I confess to blasphemy and, further, I believe my confession (let us assume that I know that they will kill me in any event). Clearly, under the circumstances, it is rational for me not only to confess but also to believe in my confession, if I can manage that, for it is better to not be tortured than it is to be tortured. That is, even though the belief that I blasphemed is false, it is nevertheless rational for me to adopt that belief (if, again, I can manage that).

A similar situation is said to arise re belief in God. According to Pascal, I will either believe in God or not.

I BELIEVE IN GOD. We’ll start with my believing in God. In that case, there are two possibilities, for either God exists or He doesn’t. If God does exist, that’s good, for (reportedly) God, who is omnipotent, is pleased by those who believe in Him. But what if God does not exist? In that case, nothing good or bad happens. One simply has a false belief. One already has lots of those. No big deal.

The upshot: one takes no chances, really, in believing in God. There’s no downside of any significance.

I DO NOT BELIEVE IN GOD. Now consider what happens when one doesn't believe in God. It’s totally different. Again, either God exists or He doesn’t. If He doesn’t, then, if I don't believe in Him, then I have a true belief. So what? I've already got lots of those. I don’t get a prize or anything.

But now suppose that God does exist. Surely there is some possibility that that is the case. Who could deny it? But if God does exist and I do not believe that He exists, then things go very badly for me. The word is that, in that case, I'm in for eternal torment.

The upshot: in not believing in God, one takes one hell of a risk. True, given the poverty of the arguments for God’s existence and the tension in the notion that a perfectly good creator has created an evil-drenched world such as ours, God’s existence may well be judged unlikely. But even a 1% chance of eternal torment is a chance that, as a rational being, one must not take. Meanwhile, there really is no downside to believing in God. So, naturally, the only rational thing to do is to believe in God! (I have taken some liberties here. Pascal emphasized the good of eternal reward, not the bad of eternal punishment.)

Once again, the key motivator here isn’t the likelihood of the negative outcome. One might well argue that that outcome (eternal torment) is very unlikely. The key motivator is the magnitude of the catastrophe involved in the negative outcome.

This makes a lot of sense—until you consider:

Isn’t God liable to get ticked off if you show up believing in Him, not because He reveals Himself in His fine and wondrous workmanship and love, but because, well, you believe in insurance? Imagine finally meeting Him and saying, "Oh, great! It was a real leap believing in you, dude—I mean, c'mon!—but like I always say, you gotta consider all contingencies! Ha ha ha!"

Second, if this reasoning works for the Christian God, isn’t it likely to work for other religions’ gods too? If so, does reason then compel us to believe in all of the gods? But do the religions allow you to employ a “cover your bets” strategy? I think not. For one thing, gods tend to be “jealous”—at least that’s the word on the street.

Finally, are beliefs really things you can choose? Go ahead, choose to believe that a monkey is a pumpkin, I dare you!

Can’t do it, eh?

Well, I guess if you had enough time to really mess yourself up, you could probably just manage it.

I do wish theists would be clearer about just what they expect from people with regard to belief. Some theists seem to think that nonbelievers are ipso facto sinners. Occasionally, I call them on this. I say, "OK, just what am I doing wrong? It's not like I don't want to believe in God. I do. (I want justice as much as anyone, and, well, there doesn't seem to be justice in this realm.) But, dude, I've got to have a reason, and it's got to be a decent one. It can't be a leap of faith, 'cause I am a rational being, and I am not going to make some totally daffy move that places me in exactly the same category, rationally speaking, as Shirley MacLaine or Kathryn Kuhlman."

Unfortunately, at this point, I usually start getting the pseudoscience shuffle. That's when I'm told that "if my heart is truly open," if I will just set aside my pride, then God will somehow enter me and do the do. Yeah, so, later, when it doesn't happen, they've got that one covered. I'm a sinner; I'm not worthy.

Reminds me of the physicist who was pretty sure that psychic power is real. He found some kids who were reputed to have psychic ability, so he tested them. But no abilities were revealed.

So naturally, he backed off, started changing his tune. Right?

Wrong. He did the shuffle. He had a "Eureka!" moment. He had discovered, he said, that psychic ability is shy. That is, when you test it, it goes away!

So, again, I want to believe in God, but I am aware of no good reason to believe in Him. What am I supposed to do here? Tell me that! And don't be giving me the shuffle!
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