The Optimistic Directive

Posted by on May 18, 2012 6 comments
Neal Stephenson talking at the Boulder Book St...

Neal Stephenson talking at the Boulder Book Store at his signing of Anathem. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Noted writer Neal Stephenson has argued that contemporary science fiction is too focused on nihilism and apocalyptic scenarios. The current crop of such works, such as the Walking Dead,  are compared rather unfavorably to the hopeful view of the future that was supposed to be common theme in the mid twentieth century.

One obvious question is why this should be regarded as a problem. Stephenson, however, seems to see the current situation as rather problematic because he worries that the current crop science fiction lacks the optimism about the future needed to inspire scientists, engineers and others. To be more specific, if science fiction stories predict an apocalyptic world, then the readers will not be inspired to do things such as inventing space ships or solving the fossil fuel problem.

In support of his view, Stephenson points to an incident in which the president of Arizona State University and co-founder of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes  Michael Crow told him that science fiction writers have been “slacking off” and are thus (at least partially) responsible for the (allegedly) slow pace of innovation.  To address this problem, Stephenson created the Hieroglyph project which aims at getting science fiction writers to create inspirational works infused with optimism. The first work is supposed to be an anthology slated for a 2014 publication. As Stephenson puts it, “we have one rule: no hackers, no hyperspace and no holocaust.” Thus, there seem to be three main goals. First, to avoid “hacking”, which is just using old solutions as opposed to trying to create something new. Second, to provide optimistic inspiration (hence no holocaust). Third, to avoid any “impossible” or “magical” solutions to problems, presumably so that the inspiration will be focused on what is possible. As might be imagined, Stephenson raises some interesting matters for philosophical consideration.

One obvious point of concern is that dystopian science fiction is nothing new. A rather early work in this genre is Mary Shelley’s 1826 The Last Man.  In this book, humanity is beset by a terrible plague and the work ends in 2100 with one apparent survivor, the last man.  A somewhat later work is H.G. Well’s 1895 vision of the far future in the Time Machine. In this classic work, humanity is divided into the cannibalistic Morlocks and their beautiful (but ignorant) food, the Eloi. Jack London even wrote within the dystopian genre, producing a political  dystopia in his 1908  The Iron Heel (1908). Rather interestingly, London’s 1912 The Scarlet Plague is about a world wide pandemic which echoes the The Last Man. H.P. Lovecraft also presents a rather dystopian world during the early twentieth century-one in which humanity is supposed to ultimately be destroyed by Nyarlathotep. There are, of course, all the classic dystopian works such as 1984, Brave New World, and a Clockwork Orange.

Given that dystopian science fiction is a well established genre in science fiction, it seems somewhat odd to blame the alleged slowdown of innovation on the dystopian and nihilist science fiction of today. After all, if this sort of science fiction retards technological innovation due to its pessimism, then it would seem to follow that past dystopian science fiction should have been slowing down innovation all along. At the very least, it would seem to follow that it does not present a special problem now, given that it has been around so long.

One obvious counter is to claim that while dystopian science fiction has been around for a long time, it is only recently that it has come to dominate the fictional universe. To use an analogy, while there has been junk food for quite some time, it is only fairly recently that it has come to dominate the foodscape. Thus, just as obesity is now a serious problem in the United States, the retardation of inspiration is now a serious problem in science fiction.

As a science fiction fan (and a very, very minor writer), I am somewhat inclined to agree with this. In my own case, I find myself loading my Kindle with science fiction from the early to mid twentieth century and ignoring the new novels. In part, this is pure thrift-I can, for example, get H. Beam Piper’s works for free. However, part of it is because the new stuff seems to lack something possessed by the good old stuff. While I have thought about this for some time, I am beginning to suspect that my experience seems to match Stephenson’s: the new stuff generally seems to lack a certain thread of optimism that ran through the good old stuff-even the old dystopian stuff.

For example, consider Fritz Leiber’s 1960 story, “The Night of the Long Knives.” On the face of it, this story is dystopic and nihilist: the world has been devastated by a nuclear war, the survivors have divided into warring states, and the main characters are murderers. However, the story is oddly optimistic: some surviving scientists have created technological marvels and at the end the main characters struggle to free themselves of their need to murder. As another example, consider Asimov’s Foundation stories. While humanity builds a vast galactic empire, it falls into the long night and civilization all but dies.  The capital of the empire, Trantor, goes from being a metal encased super world, to a wrecked planet whose inhabitants subsist by selling the remains of the great civilization for scrap. However, there is still the Foundation (or, rather, two) that restores civilization and the original trilogy is thus ultimately optimistic. This is not to say that all the dystopian stories have optimistic aspects. In fact some of them are (or at least seem) unrelenting in their pessimism. There is, I think, nothing wrong with this. After all, not all good tales must have happy endings.

If, as a matter of empirical fact, the dystopian and the nihilistic dominates the current field of science fiction, then Stephenson could have a case. But, of course, making such a case requires drawing a connection between science fiction and technological innovation. Fortunately, this seems easy enough to do.

Many technological innovations can be traced back directly to science fiction stories and science fiction has been explicitly credited with inspiring many engineers and scientists. To use the obvious example, Star Trek has proven to be a major inspiration for technology as well as inspiring scientists, engineers and astronauts. A specific example is Well’s 1903 story “The Land Ironclads” in which he presents the tank. Naturally, there are also the contributions of Jules Verne. One could, in fact, fill a book (or more) with all the innovations that first appeared in science fiction (for good or for ill). In light of this, it would seem completely reasonable to accept a connection between science fiction and innovation. However, there is the question of whether or not the dystopian and nihilistic works would lack inspirational power.

On one hand, such works could provide ideas which would inspire later innovation. For example, a dystopian work could still include descriptions of interesting technologies or innovations that latter engineers of scientists might duplicate. There is also the possibility that such works could provide an inspiration in a negative way. That is, by portraying a horrific future a write could inspire people to try to avoid that possible future. To use the obvious example, the stories about nuclear war could plausibly be taken as motivating people to want to avoid such a way. Likewise, stories about pandemics could motivate people to develop the means to prevent them in ways that tales of a disease free future could perhaps not. After all, we can often be rather inspired by the threat of something awful. To use an analogy, a leader might inspire people by bringing to their attention the terrible consequences of failure.

On the other hand, works that lack optimism of the sort specified by Stephenson could very well fail to inspire, despite including interesting technology or providing a plausible threat. To use an obvious analogy, if a leader tries to inspire people by sharing an anecdote of failure (“and then everyone died a pointless death”), then this will hardly be motivational. That is, the bad can be inspiration, provided that there is a strong element of the possibility of the good. Works that lack this would, not surprisingly fail to inspire. One final point I will consider is whether science fiction writers have any obligation to write inspirational stories.

As might be imagined, it is easy enough to argue that writers are not obligated to create such optimistic novels. After all, it could be contended, writers should have the freedom to create works as they see fit and it is up to the writer whether or not they wish to present optimistic or nihilistic tales. Oscar Wilde, for example, would no doubt argue that writers should not be constrained by any such imposition.  This view is, of course, consistent with writers electing to produce optimistic tales and even working within the limits imposed by Stephenson in the 2014 book project. After all, if it is acceptable for writers to limit themselves to time travel stories for a time travel anthology, it seems equally acceptable for writers to limit themselves to the sort of stories required by Stephenson.

It is, of course, also easy to argue that writers should contribute to beneficial innovation. After all, being a writer does not seem to grant a person a moral exemption such that his or her actions no longer have moral consequences (including the consequences of the author’s writings). If a utilitarian approach to ethics is taken, then a fairly solid case could be made that authors should write such inspirational works. After all, if writing such works increases the likelihood of good consequences (such as developing clean energy or a means of replacing diseased or damaged organs), then it would seem that authors should write such books. After all, a failure to do so would result in a worse world.  Kant, given his view of the moral badness of letting one’s useful talent’s rust, would no doubt favor the writing of such positive fiction. This is not, of course, to say that writers should be compelled to write such works and the usual arguments for artistic liberty would have their normal weight here. Plato, of course, would be against the liberty of creating harmful works, but he might favor science fiction that yielded good results (after all, he did endorse the noble lie).

To close, writers should (obviously) be free to craft nihilistic dystopian hellscapes. But it would be nice to have a bit more optimism.

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The Story of Philosophy

Posted by on May 15, 2012 19 comments

Diogenes by Jules Bastien-Lepage

It would, of course, be vulgar to mention the fact that the book Jeremy Stangroom and I recently wrote, The Story of Philosophy: A History of Western Thought, has just landed on the shelves.   So I’ll keep that to myself, and also refrain from mentioning that there’s a review by a fundamentally decent human being here.

But what I do want to consider is a question that arose quite often while writing it:  how much bearing should the lives of philosophers have on our interpretations of them?  In recounting the history of philosophy, you bump into a number of stories about philosophers.  It’s said that Thales fell into a ditch while stargazing.  Diogenes did some fairly revolting stuff in public.  Aquinas paced back and forth between scribes, dictating the lines of separate philosophical treatises to them at the same time.  Kant held carefully organized house parties, with time allocated to political discussion and the telling of amusing anecdotes.  Schopenhauer pushed a woman down a flight of stairs. Suicide runs in Wittgenstein’s family.

Take a second to get a feel for what you think about the value of biography when it comes to understanding philosophy.  I’ve got a view to push on you, but it won’t be interesting unless you’ve got a ideas of your own.

I used to think that whether or not biography matters depends on whether the philosopher in question waded into value theory.  Frege was an anti-Semite, but what bearing could that have on his work on logic?  Aristotle owned people, and maybe that matters when it comes to thinking through his ethics.

Ray Monk changed my mind on this, or at least made me think the question of the value of biography is more subtle than I thought.  In tpm 56, he considers a distinction, owed to James Conant, between two kinds of views on philosophical biography.  Reductivism is the view that if we learn enough about a philosopher’s life, we’ll know exactly why she wrote what she wrote, and finally achieve a real understanding of her work.  Compartmentalism is the view that biography is irrelevant to understanding philosophy.  I’d guess that most philosophers are compartmentalists – perhaps holding that the truth or falsity of a claim is independent of the person who makes it. Monk argues that both views are wrong, in a way, and so is the question that gives rise to them.  We shouldn’t wonder about the value of knowing a life in general.  Instead we should value biography that describes a life and work in an integrated, interleaving narrative.  ‘Catching the tone’, as he puts it, getting to know a philosopher better, can help us along in particular instances.  Not always, not never, but now and then, and in a certain, nuanced way.

His example is Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics.  Monk says that Dummett and Wright attribute to Wittgenstein full-blown theories of mathematics, but in doing this,

‘they were trying to force his work into a tradition that he himself loathed and thereby flying in the face of the spirit of Wittgenstein’s work.  I thought, that, if one understood what sort of person Wittgenstein was – what motivated him, what repelled him, what kinds of thing he treasured, to what he aspired, etc. – then one would stand a better chance of reading his work in the right way, just as when we know someone well we are more likely to interpret correctly the tone in which they speak, more likely to tell, for example, when they are being sarcastic.’

Monk goes on to consider the famous last sentence of the Tractatus: ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’.  If you’re of a certain frame of mind, you might take that as a solid bash at transcendental nonsense – and logical positivists did take it that way.  But you might also take it as being silent about something, reverential silence, affirming the existence of something transcendental.  Monk asks, ‘But how is one to tell the difference between a person who is being silent about something and another who is simply being silent?’  You’ve got to take the time to get to get know Wittgenstein.  So too, maybe I now think, with the other greats.

So which is it?  Are you a compartmentalist?  A reductivist?  Or is Monk right, and a grip on biography really is needed to help us, sometimes, catch a philosopher’s tone?

I have the horrible feeling that my reading list just got longer.  Maybe we’ve got some biography to read alongside philosophy, if we really want to get a handle on what philosophers think.

Sins of the Past

Posted by on May 14, 2012 34 comments

 

 

The Washington Post recently published a story about an incident that took place during Mitt Romney’s

Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts,...

Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, 2008 US presidential candidate. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

years as a high school student. According to the story, Mitt Romney took offense at the long hair of fellow student John Lauber. Lauber was apparently often teased for being a nonconformist and was apparently suspected of being a homosexual. After commenting on Lauber’s hair, Romney took action a few days later. He and some friends tackled Lauber and pinned him down. Romney then cut Lauber’s hair. Apparently no disciplinary action was taken against Romney.

Naturally, some folks pointed out that the story was published close to the time President Obama expressed his support for same-sex marriage and they speculated that the Post might have acted for political reasons. That is, the goal was to contrast Romney’s attack on Lauber with Obama’s enlightened stance on same-sex marriage. While such speculation is certainly interesting, my main focus will not be on whether or not the charge against the Post is true or even on the ethics of timing stories for political advantage. Rather, I will focus on the matter of the sins of one’s past.

Intuitively, under normal circumstances a person is morally accountable for his actions. There are, of course, clear and obvious exceptions to this. In the case of teenage Romney, he seems to be fully accountable for what he did-after all, he does not seem to have been coerced or compelled into this action nor does it seem to involve a situation in which his responsibility would be significantly mitigated. As such, it would be unreasonable to claim that Romney was not morally accountable for his actions.

However, it is fair and reasonable to counter this view with the obvious: Romney did this when he was a teenage male. Research on the teenage brain has confirmed what most people already knew: teenagers have poor impulse control and they think rather differently than adults. Stereotypically, young males are supposed to be even more prone to bad behavior. Thinking back on my own teen years, the research nicely matches my own experiences.  I can recall numerous instances in which either I or other people did rather stupid things. In some cases I was the perpetrator (like the time I whacked a friend in the head with a wooden flail and drew a lot of blood) and sometimes I was the victim (like the time I had my shorts ripped off and was forced to run back to the school wearing just a jock and my shoes). For those readers who are beyond their teen years, I suspect that the same is true.

While it is tempting to excuse Romney on the basis of his brain being immature, this does not seem to be enough of a basis to completely excuse his behavior. After all, having a teenage brain does not preclude a person from making sound moral judgments. It does, however, mean that teenagers are not as good at it as adults and hence should be held somewhat less accountable than adults. John Stewart Mill noted the difference between children and adults in his writing on liberty in regards to the ability to make decisions (which impacted the degree of liberty they should be allowed). From a moral standpoint (and also a legal one) it seems rather important to consider the extent to which an immature brain actually limits judgment and impulse control. After all, it is to this degree that children would be morally (and legally) excused in their actions. This difference is, of course, already recognized in the law: in general, children are not tried as adults and in the United States, there are juvenile courts just for kids.

As might be imagined, it is not currently known exactly how much impact the immaturity of the brain has on judgments and behavior. However, it does seem sufficient for my purposes to say that teenage Romney’s immature brain probably had some impact on his decision to attack Lauber, just as it did in my decision to whack my friend with a flail. However, it seems reasonable to claim that teenage Romney should not be held as accountable as an adult would be in similar circumstances. Likewise for the teenage flail wielding LaBossiere. I will admit that I am unsure of the degree to which accountability should be reduced, but it does seem quite sensible to hold children less accountable than adults and this should clearly extend to Romney (and me).

In addition to the question of the accountability of the moment (that is, how accountable a person is for the action at the time of the action), there is also the question of what the sins of the past reveal about the person of the present. In the case of Mitt Romney, the clear concern is what this incident from his teenage years tells the people of the United States about his fitness to be president. While Romney’s case is rather extreme, similar questions can be asked of each person. For example, what does the flail incident reveal about my fitness to be a professor of philosophy?

When assessing past incidents such as these in regards to current character, another important point of concern is the seriousness of the action. For example, the fact that I got into a couple minor scuffles in school does not show that I am a person of bad character now. As another example, if someone committed unprovoked murder as a teenager, then this would indicate that they could very likely be an evil person today.

In Romney’s case, the incident is somewhat serious. After all, he was involved in what would be considered assault and battery if an adult had done it. Likewise for the time I whacked my friend with the fail (or the time my shorts were stolen). As such, Romney’s incident and my own seem to be matter worth considering when assessing current character. While it rather oversimplifies things, it does make sense to say that we are what we did. That is, that the person I am now is the result of what I did in the past. Because of this, my past actions (and anyone else’s) would thus be relevant to assessing who I am now.

But, of course, there is also the obvious fact that a person is more than just a mere sum of past actions. These actions impact the person and what a person does can, in fact, result in a change so that they would no longer do what they once did. That is, people can change for better (or worse). As such, it would not do to simply look at a specific incident and take it to define the person of today. Rather, it must be taken in context of the person’s life. How a person responds to the past action also seems rather relevant to determining the person’s current character.

In my own case, and the case of my friends, we generally managed to become decent adults. While I whacked my friend with a flail, I grew up to be a rather calm professor of philosophy. My friends turned out rather well, too.  Naturally, I remember the flail incident (and others) very well and I feel rather bad about what I did. This is one reason why I became the calm philosophy professor I am today who has little inclination to strike people with a flail. As such, the flail incident does not show that I am currently a person of bad character.

In the case of Romney, there is currently no evidence that he is now prone to attacking people and cutting their hair. That is, he does not seem to be a bully. What is, however, somewhat worrisome is that he initially denied remembering the incident in question.

On the one hand, a case could be made that Romney honestly did not remember. After all, people forget things. No doubt there are some rotten things that I did as a kid that I have forgotten that other people (such as my parents or sister) remember quite well. Perhaps Romney honestly did not remember. Naturally, some folks might see this as a sign of bad character in that the attack on another person did not make enough of an impression to remain in his mind. After all, I vividly remember hitting my friend with the flail. Of course, I am younger than Romney, so perhaps my memory has yet to fade.

On the other hand, a stock tactic for politicians is to claim they do not remember an incident in which they (allegedly) did wrong. This always strikes me as an odd tactic, especially when there is adequate evidence for the incident and the incident is such that someone should remember it (barring mental deterioration). A claim to not remember a misdeed certainly says something about a person’s current character. Admitting to the misdeed, showing remorse and an improvement in character is, I would contend, says something far better about a person. Unless, of course, it is just a clever move to look good. Perhaps Romney deserves at least some credit-after all, he did not engage in an insincere theater of contrition act.

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Secularism, priorities, Islam, and Waleed Aly

Posted by on May 13, 2012 30 comments

What follows here after some introductory paragraphs repeats almost verbatim a post that I published over on my personal blog back in 2007. Now, my thinking has moved on a little bit since then, and you will see a slightly different formulation and emphasis in Freedom of Religion and the Secular State: I am less enthusiastic, for example, about the word “religionist” than I once was, and I would no longer be so quick to dismiss the word “Islamophobia” as merely stupid (I discuss the issue of “Islamophobia” in the book). But what I have to say in the 2007 post, responding to some views of Australian moderate/liberal (I guess) Muslim author Waleed Aly, still strikes me as about right and as fairly clear. Aly questions why we should want a separation of church (or mosque) and state, and is sceptical that there is any basis for such a principle in modern democracies. Should we agree with him?

In developing his views, Aly uses arguments that should, I think, cause us concern. But reflection on this also raises more general questions about the priorities and motivations of secularists. In researching Freedom of Religion and the Secular State, I was struck by how many supporters of a church/state separation do not share my suspicion of using state power to enforce religious morality. For me, this is a priority – indeed, a higher priority than some other concerns that perhaps are clearer examples of church/state entanglement but are less oppressive (I have in mind, for example, the established churches of Europe). For some of us, at least, the greatest fear in contemporary circumstances is not that we will be required to put up with or take part in religious ceremonies and the like; rather, it is that politicians who are able to command electoral support will bring their religions’ doctrines, particularly those doctrines relating to canons of conduct, to the table of ordinary politics, and attempt to impose them on an unwilling minority.

These issues are always important, and my return to them is provoked by, among other things, the appointment of a new Executive Director at the Secular Coalition for America – a person whose priorities might be rather different from mine, judged by her interviews so far. So permit me to return to this via my reflections on Aly’s sceptical rejection of a separation between religious doctrine and government…

In People Like Us, Waleed Aly spends a whole chapter attacking the idea of a separation of Church and State, and defending Islam from the charge that it is incompatible with secularism. He argues that the separation of Church and State makes no sense from a Muslim perspective, because Islam (or at least Sunni Islam) has no established hierarchy that could be called its “church” and no official doctrine that it could impose through the powers of the state. He is scathing about secularists in a way that I find disquieting.

He describes an occasion when he spoke on a panel and was subsequently asked by a number of audience members who pressed him on his attitude to the separation of Church and State. He found the whole idea confusing, thinking it sufficient that if a politician brings specifically religious moral attitudes that are out of touch with the mainstream, then he or she will be electorally punished. In other words, democracy is the cure for any untoward imposition of religious doctrine and morality through state power.

Of course, audience members found this unreassuring, and it’s no wonder that a number of them kept pursuing the issue (evidently with mounting frustration at his seeming obtuseness). Later, Aly spoke to one of his interlocutors but evidently still gave her no real reassurance.

What is surprising is that Aly never mentions Locke or Mill in his discussion of all this, and never discusses the principles on which a liberal state – such as Australia – stands. He imagines that the phrase “separation of Church and State” is all about struggles between kings and popes – issues that are of no interest to anyone in the contemporary context. He genuinely seems to have no understanding of what is really at stake in this discussion.

The question is not about kings and popes (though it is certainly relevant to the temporal ambitions of the current pope). It is about how religionists of any stripe can reassure the rest of us that they will not use the coercive power of the state to impose their contentious (and, let’s face it, usually miserable) moral doctrines, should they come to command an electoral majority. We are concerned about the tyranny of the majority, not about the attempts of a minority to bring others into line … for which political hubris the remedy would, indeed, be an electoral one.

Of course, it does not matter whether or not what is being imposed comes from a literal “church”. The fear is that politicians who are able, somehow, to command an electoral majority will bring their religions’ doctrines to the table and attempt to impose their doctrines on an unwilling minority. This is something that we have good reason to fear. Islam, of course, is a minority religion in Australia, but it may well become more popular in the future and meanwhile there could easily be cases of Muslims entering into alliances over particular issues with other religionists. Aly’s interlocutors obviously wanted to be reassured about all that, and Aly failed to say anything helpful.

Unfortunately, the impression has been created by many Muslim leaders that Islam seeks to control all aspects of individuals’ lives and does not shrink from using secular power to achieve its aim. We are all well aware of extreme examples in recent history, such as Afghanistan under the benighted Taliban regime. Until that fear is laid to rest, it is quite rational for the rest of us to fear Islam’s political ambitions – which is one reason why the word “Islamophobia” is so stupid. A phobia is an irrational fear, but secular Westerners actually have perfectly rational reasons to be at least wary of Islam, as Aly himself fully appreciates and acknowledges.

It’s true, of course, that religionists – Muslims; Christians; Hindus; fire worshippers; devotees of Thor, Aphrodite, Baal, or Quetzalcoatl; or whatever – often feel that their religious identity is something “given” rather than chosen, and somehow essential to them. It is not possible for them simply to leave it behind like checked-in luggage when they enter the public sphere.

Fine. That’s understandable, but it raises the bleak possibility that they will use the public sphere as a means by which to impose religious doctrines, or specifically religious morality. Some may even see nothing wrong with this – and those are the people whom we have every cause to fear. If the Quetzalcoatlists or the Thorians take this stance, then they stand outside of the Enlightenment compromise … and just as they can give no guarantee of tolerating the rest of us if they come to wield the coercive power of the state, they have no claim to toleration by us. If that is their attitude, they are outside the Lockean circle, beyond the pale of liberal tolerance.

However, it’s way, way, premature to conclude that Islam falls into such a category. As I’ve written in earlier posts, Locke thought that atheism and Roman Catholicism were beyond the pale, but this has turned out not to be true – atheists can be peaceful and honest citizens as much as anyone, and while the current Catholic leadership appears less and less interested in the Lockean concept as it is understood today, and more and more inclined to impose its views by force of law where it can, Catholics have also made good citizens. The expansion of the circle of liberal tolerance to include a wide range of religious and non-religious worldviews has been a great success story in Western history. There is every reason to think that almost any religious sect can come to value the political benefits of voluntarily joining the circle.

So what should Waleed Aly have said?

Well, he could have said something like this:

“I cannot guarantee that I’ll come to the political table setting aside my identity as a Muslim. But I can guarantee you this much: from within my understanding of Islam, I accept the political values of individual liberty and religious tolerance. I do not make the Christian distinction between Church and State, but I realise that what you are really concerned about is whether I understand that I am living in a liberal society and whether I accept the distinction between sin and crime. Yes, I do understand and accept those things. From within my own view of the world, I can see the necessity for tolerance of all views that advocate reciprocal tolerance. I also accept the political need for something like John Stuart Mill’s harm principle (we can discuss the details of the ‘something like’, but I am not using weasel words). I can say unequivocally that it would not be my intention to prohibit behaviour merely on the ground that it is theologically wrong in my understanding of Islam. I will look for clear secular harm before I invoke the might of the state in an attempt to restrict liberty. I will not invoke the superiority of a way of life that is favoured by Islam, and I will respect the right of others to pursue their own conceptions of the good, however foreign to Islam’s values. Nothing in my understanding of Islam prevents me acting in accordance with those liberal political values, knowing that I live in a liberal country.”

I have hopes that Aly could give that undertaking – or something very like it – sincerely. Elsewhere in his book, he shows that he does value religious tolerance and does understand the distinction between the theological notion of sin and the secular political notion of crime. Many liberal Muslims, perhaps most, could probably give such an undertaking – perhaps with more sincerity than some Christians.

That is what we need from religionists when they enter the public sphere. When Aly was grilled by the audience at his panel session, that is all he need have said.

It would be reassurance enough.

For Better or Worse Reasoning

Posted by on May 12, 2012 3 comments

My tenth Kindle book is out, For Better or Worse Reasoning: A Philosophical Look at Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage.

It is the usual 99 cents in the US and the equivalent in dead parrot jokes in the UK. It is also available on all the Amazons(aside from the river and the women), but I am too lazy to copy-paste them all in.

As a special bonus for readers of this blog, you can get it for free from May 14 to May 18, 2012 (US dates).

This concise work is aimed at presenting a logical assessment of the stock arguments against same-sex marriage. While my position is in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage, I have made every effort to present a fair and rational assessment of the stock arguments against it.

The work itself is divided into distinct sections. The first section provides some background material regarding arguments. The second section focuses on the common fallacious arguments used to argue against same-sex marriage. The third section examines standard moral arguments against same-sex marriage and this is followed by a brief look at the procreation argument. The work closes, appropriately enough, with a few modest proposals regarding marriage.

Contents

  • Arguments
  • “Argument” Defined
  • Varieties
  • General Assessment of Arguments
  • Fallacies
  • Stock Fallacious Arguments against Same-sex Marriage
  • Appeal to Tradition
  • Appeal to Belief
  • Appeal to Common Practice
  • Slippery Slope
  • Weak Analogy
  • Non-Fallacious Arguments
  • Intuitions & Definitions
  • Appeal to Intuition
  • Argument by Definition
  • The Religious Arguments
  • The Moral Arguments
  • Homosexuals are Immoral Argument
  • The Unnatural Argument/The Natural Argument
  • Appeal to Consequences
  • The Sanctity Argument
  • The Procreation Argument
  • Marriage: A Few Modest Proposals
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Amending Marriage

Posted by on May 9, 2012 35 comments

 

Same Sex Marriage

Same Sex Marriage (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

While some States in the United States have passed laws allowing same-sex marriage, other states have passed laws to ban it. Some states have even taken an extra step by amending the state constitutions to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. On May 8th, 2012 North Carolina voters went to the polls to decide whether or not their state constitution would be amended to “defend” marriage. While this matter is interesting from a legal perspective, my main interest is from a philosophical perspective, mainly regarding the quality of the arguments in favor of such restrictions on marriage as well as their ethics.

As I have done in other essays on the subject of same-sex marriage, I will quickly run through the stock fallacious arguments given for such laws. The first stock argument is that marriage between a single man and woman is a matter of tradition. This is, obviously enough, a fallacious appeal to tradition. The mere fact that something is a tradition hardly shows that it is right or correct. To use the usual counterexample, slavery was (and is in some places) a well-established tradition, yet this hardly serves to justify it.

A second fallacious argument is that marriage between a man and a women is what most people do, thus it is correct. In other words, it is a common practice and thus is right. Obviously enough, this is merely a fallacious appeal to common practice. There are, obviously enough, many bad practices that are quite common (like lying), but their being common does not make them good.

A third common fallacious argument is that most people believe that marriage should be between a man and woman. Even if it is assumed that this is true, this would still seem to be a fallacious appeal to belief. After all, the mere fact that most people believe something (like the earth being believed to be the center of the solar system) does not prove that it is true.

Now that the easy to dismiss fallacious arguments are out of the way,  I can look at some of the other arguments that have been presented in support of such laws.

One stock argument is essentially an appeal to religion, specifically Christianity (at least the versions that forbid polygamy). The argument typically goes that since God married Adam to Eve, this defines marriage in the biblical sense. Those with clever wits often put it more rhetorically by saying that it was “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Since marriage is defined by the Christian faith as between one man and one woman, that is what the law should be. As might be imagined, there are many problems with this.

One obvious legal problem is that to the degree the proponents of such laws claim that it is based on a specific faith, they are in danger of violating the first amendment of the United State constitution, namely the bit that “congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” While I am not a constitutional lawyer, I would suspect that a plausible case could be made that creating a law explicitly based on a religion does involve the establishment of a religion. In addition to the obvious legal problems, there is also the moral concern regarding the imposition of a specific faith’s values upon the population as a whole. This would seem to be a clear and direct violate of religious liberty and thus would seem to be morally unacceptable.

A second obvious problem is that basing the law on a religious view would seem to require that this view be established as correct. After all, if it is claimed that marriage is such that it can only between a man and a woman because of what God wants, then it needs to be established that God exists and that this is what God, in fact, wants. Otherwise, the law would have no established foundation and would be as sensible as basing a law on a myth or fictional tale. Naturally, if it can be shown that marriage is between one man and one woman as a matter of metaphysical necessity, then that would nicely establish the foundation of the law. In fact, it would show that no such law would really be needed since no one else could, in fact, be married. To use analogy, we do not need laws that ban people from driving their cars faster than the speed of light-they simply cannot do this because of the nature of reality.

There are, of course, non-religious arguments for these laws. A rather common argument is that the laws are needed to protect the sanctity of marriage. The idea seems to be that allowing same-sex marriage would be harmful to marriage (and presumably the married) and thus, on the principle of preventing harm, same-sex marriage should be outlawed by a constitutional amendment.

One obvious point of concern is whether or not allowing same sex-marriage harms marriage and heterosexual couples. While, of course, it might upset them that people are doing something they do not like (getting married), that is obviously not sufficient justification. What would be needed would be objective evidence that same sex-marriage would do enough harm to marriage and married couples to warrant forbidding same sex-marriage. The evidence for this seems to be, obviously enough, sorely lacking and the burden of proof rests on those who would make an imposition on the liberty of others to show that such an imposition is warranted.

Intuitively, same-sex marriage would not harm marriage or married couples. After all, it is difficult to imagine what sort of damage would be inflicted. Would married couples love each other less? Would there be more cases of domestic violence or adultery? Would married parents be suddenly more inclined to abuse their children? None of this seems even remotely likely.

But, suppose it is assumed that marriage must be protected. If this is taken seriously, then it would certainly seem to follow that it would need to be legally protected from whatever might damage its sanctity. To use an analogy, laws to protect people from murder are not just limited to, for example, making it illegal to murder someone with aluminum baseball bat. Rather, it is the murdering that matters. The same should apply to marriage: if marriage must be protected by making it between one man and one woman, then surely it must also be protected against whatever would damage its sanctity. As such, it would seem equally reasonable to ban marriages involving any sort of person whose actions or nature might do damage to the sanctity of a marriage.

Intuitively, allowing immoral people to marry would seem to damage its sanctity. As such, people would need to establish their moral goodness before marriage and presumably any straying from the path of virtue (such as by having an affair or otherwise failing in their vows) would result in the marriage being suspended or even nullified. Naturally enough, people who intend to get married in the hopes of financial gain, from lust, or for any reason that would sully the sanctity of marriage would need to be prevented from getting married. Given all these dire threats to the sanctity of marriage, it would seem that if the matter is serious enough to warrant a constitutional amendment it would also warrant the creation of a full government agency to regulate and protect the sanctity of marriage. After all, if the defenders of the sanctity of marriage were content to merely prevent same-sex marriage, one might suspect that they were acting from mere prejudice against same sex couples rather than by a sincere desire to protect marriage. While this might seem as big government violating liberty, those supporting such laws will surely see that there is little difference between same-sex couples that they cannot marry because marriage must be protected and telling anyone who would violate the sanctity of marriage that they cannot marry. As such, more general restrictions on who can get married (such as people who are not morally good or who are not marrying purely from love) would seem no more (or less) unjust that preventing same sex marriage.

Naturally, being a person with a social conscience and a professional ethicist, I would be willing to accept the position of Marriage Czar and head up the Sanctity Defense Agency to ensure that marriage remains eternally pure and unsullied. No doubt I would have to spend most of my time dissolving existing pseudo-marriages, but I am sure people will thank me for this in the end.

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Facebook, Privacy & Employers

Posted by on May 7, 2012 8 comments
Česky: Logo Facebooku English: Facebook logo E...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There has been a minor controversy regarding employers requiring (or “requesting”) job candidates and employees to hand over access to their Facebook accounts. Those favoring this argue that employers need to know certain things about job candidates and employees and hence this is justified. Those opposed to it tend to argue that this violates privacy rights.

On the one hand, it can be argued that employers should be allowed such access. After all, Facebook accounts can provide a wealth of information about employees and candidates that would be very useful to the employer and this usefulness could be taken as justifying the intrusion. For example, a company could learn a great deal about a candidate whose posts show that he is a racist. As another example, a company could learn important information about an employee who posts photos of herself wasting time at work and stealing office supplies.

In cases in which the job involves matters of security (such as law enforcement), then having such access would seem to be even more reasonable. After all, a prison hiring guards would certainly want to know whether a candidate had photos of himself flashing gang signs.

On the other hand, there seem to be some rather good reasons against granting such access to employers. The most obvious is that the mere fact that the information would be useful to the employers does not entail that they have a right to access it. After all, access to candidates’ and employees’ personal conversations, journals, diaries, real-world photo albums, personal phone records, home, friends and so on would be very useful to employers. However, it would seem absurd to say, for example, that my university has a right to go through my house looking for information that might be useful to it. As such, it would seem that the employer’s need to know is not overriding. Naturally, there can be legitimate exceptions, such as during legal action. If I were, for example, stealing computers from my university, then the police would certainly have a right to search my house for the stolen goods-once they got a warrant, of course.

It might be objected that Facebook is not the same as these things. After all, it is online and it is intended to be a social network. As such, it is acceptable for employers to have access to these accounts. In reply, being online and being a social network does not entail a right to access. After all, personal email is online, but this hardly gives my employer the right to read my personal email.  The fact that Facebook includes personal messaging makes this a rather exact analogy. In regards to the social network access, Facebook explicitly allows users to control access-just as people can control access in the actual world. My employer does not have the right to listen in when I am running with friends or to send an agent to observe my gaming. As such,  they should not have these rights in regards to Facebook. In short, given that employers are not entitled to access to such information avenues in the real world it would follow that they are not entitled to that information merely because it is on Facebook. There is simply no relevant difference between the two and the burden of proof rests on those who would claim otherwise.

It might be countered that people do have a choice whether or not to hand over access. After all, they could refuse and not get the job or refuse and be fired. However, this is rather obviously not much of a choice. After all, a candidate or employer who is asked to trade sexual favors for a job has the choice to refuse. However, it would be absurd to say that this entails that employers can thus request sexual favors. Likewise, employers would not seem to have the right to require candidates and employees to hand over access to their Facebook accounts.

It might be countered that people who have nothing to hid have nothing to worry about. This is, of course, a fundamentally flawed reply. The mere fact that I have nothing to hide does not entail in any way that my employee should thus have the right to have access to my information. After all, I am in pretty good shape, so I have nothing to hide under my clothes. This does not entail that my employer gets to see me showering. I also have nothing to hide in my email or my house, but this hardly entails that my employer should be able to just read through my emails or wander about in my house at will.

A somewhat interesting point worth considering is that employers screened candidates and kept an eye on employees long before Facebook existed. While Facebook does provide one-stop privacy violation shopping, it would seem that the methods used before Facebook should suffice. There is also the matter of people who do not have Facebook accounts. Should they be required to get accounts so that their employers can check them?

As a final point, the state usually has to go through a legal process to get into private information (although the war on terror has changed this). As such, it might seem rather odd that employers can act with greater power than the state. Interestingly, in the United States employers often seem to have more power over peoples’ lives than the state-and this is often endorsed by the same folks who claim to be for liberty. However, we should be just as much on guard against impositions against liberty by employers as by the state.

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Secular Coalition for America announces new Executive Director

Posted by on May 5, 2012 3 comments

The Secular Coalition for American has announced the appointment of a new Executive Director to replace Sean Faircloth (who has taken up a position with the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science). She will be Edwina Rogers, who now has an interview on the SCA’s site.

Rogers is a lawyer and lobbyist who appears to have deep skills and experience in the management of national lobby organisations, as shown by her apparently successful leadership of the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative: the SCA states on its site that:

She has a proven track record of managing coalitions and implementing nation-wide strategies. In her most recent roll [sic] as Executive Director of the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative, she organized a coalition that included major employers, consumer groups, labor unions and health care providers. In this position she also planned and implemented a successful 50-state strategy.

That sounds good to me. On the face of it, we are talking about a person with high level skills in management, policy development and implementation, coordinating with allied organisations, and all that is involved in acting as the Executive Director of a national lobby group. Rogers appears to be a polished and capable professional, well suited to her new role. (You’ll find all sorts of people proposed in comment threads in the blogosphere, but I doubt that many of them possess this mix of skills and experience.)

Her appointment is already proving controversial because she has a background in policy and legal work for the Republican Party, Republican administrators, and individual Republican politicians. That does not seem to be what she has mainly done in her career – though the bio on SCA’s site (which you can download as a pdf) is a bit confusing. He main experience seems to be economic and general policy work, particularly in relation to the public health issues. Still, her past associations will doubtless taint her in some people’s eyes, and not only because they may raise a question about where her heart really lies.

As far as I’m concerned, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. If, at this stage of her life and career, Ms Rogers wishes to put her (apparently) undoubted legal, political, managerial, and lobbying skills in the service of secularism, then good for her. We’ll see what her priorities are and how effective she is.

To be frank, she does seem to be putting a rather pollyanna-ish view of the Republican Party in her public statements so far – claiming that most in the party do not have sympathy for its theocratic tendencies in recent decades. That sounds implausible, but, really, what do we expect her to say? She’s a lobbyist: she’s not there to alienate the people she is going to be lobbying. I would expect (and recommend) that someone in her position would say such optimistic things, whether it’s their sincere personal view or not.

The bottom line for me is: Let’s give her a chance. I wish her and her new employer well – now to watch how it all works out.

Church & State: Defining “Religious Employee”

Posted by on May 4, 2012 4 comments

 

Steeple of St. James Catholic Church in Chicag...

Steeple of St. James Catholic Church in Chicago, USA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

In my previous post I discussed the moral acceptability of the ministerial exception. I now turn to the matter of the legitimate extent of this exception. This discussion assumes, solely for the sake of the argument, that the exception is morally acceptable and the main concern is defining what counts as a “religious employee.” This matter is important because the ministerial exception in United States law allows for religious employers to fire religious employees and not be subject to the usual anti-discrimination laws. To be clear, in this context being religious does not mean simply having faith. Rather, a religious employer is one that is defined by a religious function, such as a church. A religious employee is one that is, presumably, hired to perform a job that has religious components. A clear example of this would be being a priest or minister.

The specific case that motivated my discussion of the issue is that of Emily Herx, who claims that she was fired because of her using in vitro fertilization. Her former employer, the Catholic Church, claims that they have the right to fire employees who violate the religious doctrines of the Catholic Church. Herx’s attorney has contended that the church  violated the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In order to legitimately use the ministerial exception rule, the person who is fired must be a religious employee (in the sense defined above) and s/he must be fired for violating the religious doctrines of the religious employer (as defined above). In this specific case, it is clear that Herx violated church doctrine of her employer, which is clearly a religious institution. The Catholic Church officially opposes IVF on numerous grounds, but most especially on the fact that it can result in the destruction of “extra” fertilized embryos. Whether or not someone violates doctrine is general a straightforward factual matter, although there can be exceptions (after all doctrines can be vague, ambiguous and otherwise problematic). As noted above, it is being assumed that religious institutions have the moral right to fire religious employees based on matters of doctrine. Whether or not this is actually the case was discussed previously.

The main point of concern is, of course, what counts as being a religious employee. There is also the specific concern of whether or not Herx should be considered a religious employee.

To begin with the easy and obvious cases, people who are employed in jobs that serve clear and obvious religious roles and functions within the religious parts of the religious  institution itself would be religious employees. To use an obvious example, the pope, bishops, priests, ministers, monks, rabbis, and so on would all be religious employees. In such cases, religion is central to the jobs and defines the primary responsibilities and roles of said jobs. People occupying these jobs would thus be paradigm cases of religious employees. Given the centrality and importance of these roles, it would thus seem reasonable to expect that those occupying them would be following the religious doctrines. So, for example, if a priest was engaged in sexual relations with young men and thus violating church doctrine, it would be morally reasonable for the Catholic Church to fire him.

As might be imagined, things begin to get a bit fuzzy when one moves away from these paradigm cases. For example, an organist who is paid to play the organ in a church for services is involved in the religious rituals to the degree that s/he provides the organ music. However, it is not clear that s/he would be a religious employee. After all, the role of playing an organ does not seem to be inherently religious nor does it seem to specifically require a religious person. After all, music played by an atheist cannot be discerned by that played by a theist (or even a computer playing the organ).  As another example, consider a janitor who cleans a church. While s/he is cleaning a church, it would be somewhat odd to consider the janitor a religious employee. After all, cleaning the church is  not a religious function nor does it seem to require  a specific faith. To use an analogy, the person who cleans the professors’ offices at a university is not performing an academic function nor does this task seem to require holding an academic degree in the fields corresponding to the departments of the offices the janitor is cleaning. The same would also seem to hold true for the majority of employees who perform non-religious tasks such as accounting, maintenance and so on.

Religious institutions are not just limited to explicitly religious edifices such as churches. After all, religious institutions also include schools, hospitals and so on under their auspices. In these cases, the lack of religious roles seems clearly evident. For example, a doctor at a hospital owned by the Catholic Church is a doctor and her job requires medical rather than theological skills. It would thus be odd to say that a doctor would be a religious employee. Likewise for the nurses, ambulance drivers, janitors and so on.

It might be contended that religious affiliated schools, such as the school were Herx taught, provide a special context in which teachers are religious employees. However, the obvious counter is that they would be religious employees only to the degree that their core job functions are religious in nature. As such, someone teaching church doctrine (and not merely religion classes) could be seen as a religious employee. However, those teaching all other subjects (such as math or English) would seem to not have religion as part of their core job function and hence would not be religious employees. Going back to my janitor analogy, a janitor who works at a university would not thus be an academic employee with academic duties. Likewise, a teacher who just teaches math at a religious school would have math duties but not religious duties (as a math teacher).

There is also the fact that in the United States religiously affiliated schools and institutions routinely hire people not of their faith to fill various jobs. For example, a Catholic hospital might have a Methodist doctor, a Jewish nurse, an Episcopalian lawyer and perhaps even an atheist accountant. As such it would seem somewhat odd to say that these employees are religious employees whose job functions are religious in nature merely because they work for a hospital affiliated with the Catholic Church.

It could be objected that employees of religious institutions are involved with the religion and thus are religious employees. For example, it could be argued that teachers at Catholic schools (even if they are not Catholic) have among their duties the teaching of Catholic doctrine and conveying Catholic values. As such, they are religious employees even if their actual  job is to teach mathematics or English literature. Naturally, if the teaching duties specify a religious function that is relevant to the job, then this could be reasonable grounds for considering the employee a religious employee. However, most such jobs would seem to have no direct religious role and hence the employees would not be religious employees.  For example, requiring a calculus teacher to teach Catholic doctrine in calculus class would be rather odd.

It could be countered that religious institutions are such that every employee is a religious employee. To use an analogy, every employee of the state is thus a state employee. As such, religious institutions can fire people with impunity as long as they can justify it by an appeal to religious doctrine.

While this might be appealing to some, that view seems unjustifiably broad. After all, the intent of the ministerial exception is to allow exception for specific religious jobs on the basis of religious liberty. To take every employee as a religious employee is to simply grant religious institutions a free pass to ignore anti-discrimination laws in a way that is unwarranted. After all, this would be using a rule intended to grant a limited exception for religious liberty to allow the violation of rights and liberties broadly on no better basis than the employee was not conforming to the doctrines of the church. While, as noted above, this would be reasonable for priests it seems unwarranted in the case of janitors, doctors, math teachers and so on.

From both a legal and  a moral standpoint it seems rather critical for there to be a clear and reasonable definition of “religious employee.” Without such a definition, it is all to easy to violate the rights of employees under the guise of protecting religious liberty.

 

 

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Philosophical Provocations Vol. 1

Posted by on May 3, 2012 3 comments

In a shameless attempt to get money so I can buy luxuries like food, I’ve assembled, edited and organized my finest posts into Philosophical Provocations Volume 1 (A Fistful of Provocations). Naturally, you can read all the originals here, for free-once again showing that philosophers are not always very good at this capitalism thing.

The United States Kindle version is my usual book price of 99 cents and the UK version is the equivalent in fish & chips.

Of course, your money is probably  much better spent on Jeremy Stangroom’s and James Garvey’s The Story of Philosophy: A History of Western Thought . 

 

 

 

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