Determinate Negation

Now That's News

2010-04-07T17:13:00.002-04:00

Pulled from the comments section at TPM:

CNN: "Let's see what people on Twitter are saying, '2bIggyBallzer says: liberal elitests and their education will bring socialzed welfare to undermine republic of united sttts.'"

And UgizmeLuvz says, 'Obama just wants wuts bestz for cuntry plz be resptible.'"

We will be right back after 7 more minutes of commercials and bring you more thoughts from around the globe on Twitter.

...And were back, it appears Sarah Palin has a new comment on her twitter account.

CNN senior Twitter Correspondent: "Sarah Palin has sent this tweet to us: 'like Pandora, and Zeus, who traveled through the woods, in the war against British, Obama is no Maverick, GodblessUSA, and save Constitution.'"

CNN senior Twitter Correspondent: Back to you...

We now go to our panel to discuss for 11 minutes the Sarah Palin tweet, and the possibility of Tiger Woods winning the Masters, will you watch the masters on your new iPad?

CNN Senior Panel Discussion Person: "Sarah Palin has apparently thrown down a challenge to President Obama's foreign policy, think she has a chance to win in 2012?"

CNN Viewer: Walks to cabinet pulls out bottle of scotch, and a hand gun, places gun up to temple, and contemplates...

Individual Mandate Penalties

2010-03-29T16:12:00.003-04:00

This post by economist Austin Frakt seems to refute the claim that the individual mandate penalties of the new healthcare bill are too low and will encourage many to game the system.

It's a question I had been wondering about, and this answered it. So there you have it.

Bipartisanship

2010-03-29T16:04:00.002-04:00

I have to break my silence to share my delight in this apriori argument from John Holbo:

Suppose you have a two-party system.

One of these parties enjoys/enforces total party discipline, the other, not: members of the latter party side with their own, or cross the aisle, on individual issues/votes, as conscience or self-interest dictate. Let’s call the completely disciplined party the Partisan Party. The completely undisciplined, the Bipartisan Party (to reflect its principled commitment to always keeping the door open to the higher value of bipartisanship!)

Over time, both parties will push positive proposals/ legislation. Quite obviously, the Bipartisan Party will be at a tactical disadvantage, due to its lax discipline. Less obviously, it will have an ongoing optics problem. All the proposals of the Partisan Party will be bipartisan. That is, a few members of the other party will, predictably, peel off and cross the aisle to stands with the Partisans. None of the proposals of the Bipartisan Party, on the other hand, will ever be bipartisan. No Partisan will ever support a Bipartisan measure. In fact, all proposals of the Bipartisan party will face bipartisan opposition – as a few Bipartisans trudge across the aisle (there are always a few!) to stand with the Partisans. Result: the Partisan party, thanks to its unremitting opposition to bipartisanship, will be able to present itself as the party of bipartisanship, and be able to critique the Bipartisan Party, with considerable force and conviction, as the hypocritically hyperpartisan party of pure partisanship.

Brilliant! I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out whether and how this applies to the world we live in.

When Did I Last Post Something?

2009-05-19T09:18:00.000-04:00

Now where did that last year go?

Sex, Lies, and Videotape (Without the Sex)

2008-05-19T13:16:00.000-04:00

I don't know if videos like this will really reach the people who need to see them, but I'll do what I can to pass them along. This one shows a number of clips of John McCain, exposing his missteps and contradictions.

Oh, Millsaps, Woe Unto You

2007-10-29T13:08:00.000-04:00

n

I think the lesson here is to keep throwing laterals on such last-second plays. Why let yourself get tackled? The worst that can happen is a fumble that the defense recovers, which amounts to the same as getting tackled. In fact, since laterals are allowed to hit the ground, it looks like throwing the "bounce-pass" actually took the defense off-guard just long enough to scamper past them.

Flat Tax II

2007-10-09T18:03:00.000-04:00

This post is the promised (and long-awaited) follow-up to the post called "Flat Tax" that I made a while ago (July 5, 2007, to be exact). This one could be entitled, "We Already Have a Flat Tax (More or Less)." (For this post, I'm indebted to Kevin Drum who collected the data here that I've been meaning to find to make the argument. Actually a lot of it came from this NY Times source page and this article, too.)

Here is exhibit A:

This graph (more information here) shows that our income taxes combined with payroll taxes produce rates that are moderately progressive until you reach the top two tiers, which comprise the highest 5000 earners or so. Then the rate becomes regressive.

Here is exhibit B:

This one combines all of the taxes we pay into one composite rate: income and payroll taxes, plus sales taxes, property taxes, and excise taxes. Notice that the final rates are pretty flat--18%, 14%, 16%, 18%, and 19% per quintile. The wealthiest pay one percent more of their income in taxes compared to the poorest.

Those who argue for a "flat tax" really mean that they want a flat rate for income tax (and no estate taxes). The effect of such a policy would be to make the full picture of all the taxes a regressive rate. The wealthy would end up paying a much smaller percentage in taxes as compared those of low or middle incomes.

Furthermore, it would bankrupt our government so that we would have to make major cuts in either (a) defense, (b) Medicare and Medicaid, or (c) Social Security. Finally, the evidence suggests that such cuts will not be made, and so such attempts in the past have only led to skyrocketing national debt, i.e., increases in the national debt as a share of the GDP (see graph below for evidence of this).

Does the Death Penalty Deter?

2007-09-19T11:38:00.000-04:00

I am thinking about this question because the death penalty is a topic of discussion on the campus where I teach. Generally, the programs designed to facilitate the discussion have been thoughtful and measured. However, a colleague of mine has posted some statistics on his door that purport to show the effectiveness of the death penalty as a deterrence. As is often the case with this colleague, he adopts a stance dogmatically, misuses or misinterprets the evidence, and arrogantly refuses to debate the issue openly preferring instead to make snarky remarks. I may respond by posting some data of my own on my door as a sort of snarky equipollence argument (i.e., equally weighted counterargument). However, the real work has already been done by people who know how to analyze the data. See this article in the Stanford Law Review for a detailed analysis, showing that the data is at best inconclusive and may even show the opposite.

In the meantime, check out these graphs.

This one shows that the homicide rates in states without a death penalty tracked those with a death penalty. Thus, the trends in homicide do not correlate to death penalty laws. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that the rates are lower in the states without the death penalty.

This one shows a decrease in homicides after the moratorium on capital punishment began. In fact, the bar graph shows even fewer homicides than one would expect given the national trend at that point.

None of this is conclusive by itself. However, the full study does conclusively show that the other major studies are flawed when they claim that the data supports the thesis that the death penalty is a deterrence. So stick that in your pipe, colleague!

U.S. Americans Should Help The Iraq

2007-08-28T14:29:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I get a little bit bummed about living in a backwater state like South Carolina, but then I lift my spirits by taking pride in one of our finest ambassadors: Miss South Carolina.

In case you got lost, here's a guide through that thought-route (via The Morning Toast):

UPDATE: Pretty good response here from Miss West Carolina.

Victor Borge

2007-08-21T09:22:00.000-04:00

I can't resist posting this.

Existentialism: Common Characterizations and Criticisms

2007-08-20T15:39:00.000-04:00

The following represent some initial thoughts about existentialism for an upcoming course on the subject (with some help from John Macquarrie's Existentialism).

1. Existentialism is irrationalist in its tendency. If true, this charge would disqualify existentialism as a philosophy. Since philosophy must be guided by reason, the “lover of wisdom” cannot affirm a vision clouded by passion and prejudice. Of course, the philosopher cannot feign neutrality in all things because human existence requires involvement in human affairs. However, even if the philosopher feels the call of irrational sentiment as she/he becomes involved in the world, we still expect the philosopher to be critical, analytical, free from partisan bias, and devoted to truth for truth’s sake. Insofar as we demand these qualities, we also expect some capacity for detachment or “rising above” the flux of passion and prejudice.

Of course, Kierkegaard does valorize passionate participation in life and love. His “knight of faith” promotes a way of life inimical to the philosopher’s detached reason, but it does so only insofar as that life of reason is posed as the antidote to excess passion. In other words, Kierkegaard does not oppose reason so much as the narrow form of reason that fails to understand the fullness of human experience and thus fails to accept the limits of reason. Once reason is properly understood, Kierkegaard assumes that it can coexist peacefully with the passions; in other words, it is reasonable to admit that reason has its limits and that some aspects of life involve making commitments or decisions that are not and cannot be the result of discursive reasoning.

Existentialism loses its philosophical character when it becomes an outright attack on logic or an exaltation of the absurd. However, as an admission of the complexity and even mystery in human existence, existentialism does not degrade reason or logic as much as it notes its limit in the many layers of life.

2. Existentialism is a form of amoralism, if not immoralism. If authenticity becomes the highest calling, then what limits can we summon to restrain our actions? If existentialism stresses moral freedom, what norms can we advert to in order to guide this freedom? To consider the case of moral freedom, existentialist philosophy usually calls for a heightened sense of responsibility. To be sure, the responsibility is not grounded on any sort of legalistic system of norms, but it nevertheless provides the basis for a check on the “raw power” of freedom. As for authenticity, there is a real concern here. Existentialist ethics would need to derive some sort of norms from the structure of existence in order to differentiate “good” forms of authenticity from “bad” ones.

3. Existentialism promotes an excessive degree of individualism and, relatedly, subjectivism. It is true that existentialism typically opposes forms of judgment and responsibility that amount to submerging oneself in the collective conscience (the “they,” as Heidegger puts it). Furthermore, even the most rational philosopher must admit the pure objectivity and detachment are fictions or delusions. To some extent, individualism and subjectivism in existentialist philosophy are forms of protest against distorted forms of being-with-others.

However, Kierkegaard explicitly ranks fellowship lower than the “single individual.” Furthermore, Kierkegaard frequently draws on autobiographical elements in his “philosophical” accounts, thereby exemplifying his valorization of subjectivism. However, Marcel and Buber advocate a theory of intersubjectivity. Still, one might wonder whether their approach, focused as it is on relations among individuals, can fully capture the complexity and abstraction of the contemporary world in which many relations concern impersonal groups—nations, corporations, races, etc. The political role of existentialism may be simply criticizing all dehumanizing forms of collectivism. But we need some collective forms of behavior.

4. Existentialism is too narrowly humanistic in its outlook. The problem is that existentialists make man the “measure of all things” and thus see everything, including nature, in anthropomorphic terms. Even if Heidegger claims to focus on Being rather than human existence alone, he surely does not show much appreciation for natural science or animal life. In spite of Heidegger’s efforts to “let the world be,” his man-centered philosophy runs the risk of causing us to ignore and neglect our ecological situation.

5. Existentialism is pessimistic and even morbid. The existentialists seem only able to see the worst side of things: the dangers of technology, the insurmountable power of democracy, the exploitation of modern social systems. Sometimes this tendency leads to a nostalgia for “simpler” times and even creates a cult of the primitive. However, the whole picture is much more mixed. To a large extent, all the existentialists held their views as a counterbalance to some form of superficial optimism prevalent in their day.

Operation Bamboozlement

2007-08-15T10:14:00.000-04:00

Here we go again (from the LATimes):

Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report's data.

It's Just Like a Mini-Mall

2007-07-21T08:35:00.000-04:00

Matthew Yglesias recently commented on the potential for smaller businesses to compete with larger ones by using YouTube. His point reminded me of this gem from the annals of local advertising on YouTube:

(Thanks to Ben Stone for the tip.)

A Christian Nation?

2007-07-19T20:55:00.000-04:00

A couple of years ago, I wrote about the relation of government and religion, but I didn't have as much support for my claims as I might have liked. In particular I could have better supported this paragraph:

The point is that government and religion need to be separate. Why? Because the framers of the constitution feared tyranny. If those who have the power of the sword can also invoke God's will as justification for the use of the sword, then there will be no way to prevent tyranny. We would in effect have a king chosen by divine right. All of this had happened again and again in Europe, and the framers were afraid it could happen here too if they did not prevent it. So they made sure that the government which has the power of the sword was not permitted to invoke religious authority as justification for its decisions.

In reading Al Gore's The Assault on Reason, I came across some passages by those framers that might do the trick:

1. Thomas Jefferson: "Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because if there be one, He must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."

2. Thomas Jefferson redux: A political leader with religious sanctioning "has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection of his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them."

3. John Adams: "The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or Mohammedan Nation."

Bottled Water

2007-07-19T14:11:00.000-04:00

I just heard a report about this on NPR the other day (via CK). I still can hardly believe that Dasani and Aquafina are really just tap water.

The water at our house is tasting especially good now that it's coming our of the new faucet I just installed in our kitchen (after a couple of hours' worth of sweating and cursing).

Speaking of Austria...

2007-07-19T13:39:00.000-04:00

To follow up on my Austrian slideshow below, I thought I'd pass along a few more pictures. These come from Hallstatt, a lakeside town in the Salzkammergut below one of the largest glaciers in Austria (the Dachstein) where scientists have found evidence of salt-mining as long as 7000 years ago. Since the town is built into the side of a mountain (of salt and limestone) and is bounded by a lake, there isn't enough room in the cemetery to bury all of the dead.

So they exhume the graves of those interred for at least 15 to 20 years and then preserve their skulls and femurs in a crypt.

They paint the family name as well as some design on each skull to identify it.

By the way, despite the creepy skull chapel, Hallstatt is perhaps the cutest town on earth.

Sound of Music

2007-07-19T12:37:00.000-04:00

After returning from Austria in June, we watched The Sound of Music again. (The three-year-old really likes it, so we've actually watched it again and again and again.) Anyway, I noticed something this time. At the end of the movie when they leave Salzburg by hiking over to the mountains to get to Switzerland so that Captain von Trapp (a good Austrian) will not be drafted by the bad German Navy, I realized exactly where they are hiking. Mind you, the fact that Salzburg is more than 100 miles from Switzerland doesn't bother me. Chalk it up to artistic license and all (just like Maria running down from the Untersberg to the convent for vespers, doing in a matter of minutes what it would take an Olympic athlete at least two hours to accomplish). Here's the Hoher Göll (2523 meters) where the movie ends. They are hiking along the edge of the mountain at the right side (see the picture below).

You may be able to just see a small structure on the ridge at the right. That's called the Kehlsteinhaus, a.k.a. the Eagle's Nest. It just strikes me as an odd choice for the movie to end having the von Trapp family hiking up to the Alpine hideout of Adolf Hitler even if very few people would have known that.

By the way, here's a picture of the Untersberg where Maria sings "The hills are alive with the sound of music..." (taken from the Eagle's Nest).

Good News for Bush

2007-07-19T11:28:00.000-04:00

According to this poll of likely voters in Wisconsin by the GOP consulting firm Strategic Vision, President Bush has a 19% approval rating. The good news for him, obviously, is that he must be poised to rebound sort of like a snake coiling before it strikes. Watch out Wisconsin Democrats!

Quote of the Day

2007-07-18T19:33:00.000-04:00

From Business Week:
Maria Bartiromo: Would you consider a position in business or on Wall Street?
Condoleezza Rice: I don't know what I'll do long-term. I'm a terrible long-term planner.

Spirit Warriors

2007-07-18T14:03:00.000-04:00

Having just seen the harrowing documentary Jesus Camp, I am still struck by the ease with which Pentecostals (and other so-called evangelicals) metaphorize their religious actions with images of warfare. In the documentary, we see how kids are trained to be Christian soldiers in God's army. Of course, some of this rhetoric comes from the Bible, though not so much the New Testament. Now it's possible to reinforce these lessons with action figures made by One2believe, a toy company contracted by Wal-Mart to sell its biblical-themed toys all over the country. Here's an example:

That's Samson Spirit Warrior. Many of the action figures come with supplementary biblical passages. I wonder if they'll include the part when Samson got really mad:

So Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took some torches; and he turned the foxes tail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails. When he had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burned up the shocks and the standing grain, as well as the vineyards and olive groves. (Judges 15:4-5)

Or maybe there will just be a button to push so that we can hear him sing in victory:

With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps,
With the jawbone of a donkey I have slain a thousand men. (Judges 15: 16)

That's some good biblical ass-kicking, I mean, spirit-triumphing.

Oh, and by the way to the good Christian soldiers at One2believe, regarding Goliath Spirit Warrior, Goliath was, like, a bad guy, not really a "spirit warrior" even by your own definition.

Abstaining from Abstinence-Only

2007-07-18T11:13:00.000-04:00

The latest federal report on abstinence-only sex education, Impacts for Title V. Section 510, Abstinence Education Programs: Final Report, shows that these programs are a failure. They simply do not work.

Furthermore, here's what critics are saying as a result:

“After 10 years and $1.5 billion in public funds these failed abstinence-only-until-marriage programs will go down as an ideological boondoggle of historic proportions,” said James Wagoner, President of Advocates for Youth.

“The tragedy is not simply the waste of taxpayer dollars, it is the damage done to the young people who have been on the receiving end of distorted, inaccurate information about condoms and birth control. We have been promoting ignorance in the era of AIDS, and that’s not just bad public health policy, its bad ethics.”

Anthrax

2007-07-18T10:27:00.000-04:00

Atrios has a small bone to pick with David Corn's otherwise very good refutation and send-up of Bill Kristol's rather bizarre claim that Bush's presidency "will probably be a successful one." Corn makes the obvious case for why we should not trust Kristol (his predictions have been woefully off the mark in the past) and why Bush's presidency has been largely a disaster (Iraq--need I say more, Afghanistan--neglected, Osama bin Laden--still out there, terrorism--a growing not shrinking problem, Katrina--an American city practically destroyed, the Justice Department--relentlessly politicized and corrupted, the economy--stagnant even declining median wages, health care--skyrocketing costs, etc.).

Atrios, however, wishes to remind Corn and us that it is not true to say that there hasn't been another terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11 because we would be omitting the anthrax scare that swept the nation just afterwards (and the sniper in D.C., I might add). Indeed, the anthrax issue was frightening, but I'm not sure it really falls in the category of "after 9/11." I mean, it was literally afterwards, but I think it's fair to say that it really fell during the period of 9/11, so to speak, before the transition to anti-terrorism had really begun in our government (before the Department of Homeland Security). Not that I defend Bush in the other areas, but here's one where I think Atrios is exaggerating the importance of this chronology. It's basically true that we have not had another major attack on American soil since 9/11.

Having said that, Corn is correct to note, as Michael Abramowitz does in the Washington Post, that the latest National Intelligence Estimate is further bad news for Bush on terrorism. When we learn that al-Qaeda has a new sanctuary, new recruiting base, and new training ground that did not exist prior to our invasion of Iraq and that the organization is stronger than it was when we had it on the run in Afghanistan, we see that that the Iraq war has been a failure in the most fundamental sense--even on the terms of its own mission as described by our White House. It's good to see that the press has finally wrested itself free from its previous stance that any news regarding terrorism is "good for Bush and the Republicans." The maddening thing about such a stance was that any story seemed to feed it: successes in the War on Terror showed how great President Bush is, while failures or set-backs just showed how much we need his "strong" leadership. The worm has turned.

The "F" Word

2007-07-18T10:03:00.000-04:00

There's a word that dare not be printed in our press or spoken in our media. It begins with F, and it's something the Republican party in Congress has been doing non-stop since January. Of course, there was a time not too long ago that this word littered the pages of our newspapers and rolled off the tongues of our pundits with ease, a time when it described the dastardly actions of a Democratic minority in Congress. Now that the tables have turned, however, we no longer hear a peep about it. To be sure, it's hard to discuss what's going on in Congress without using some expression tantamount to the "f" word, and so Reuters rummaged around in their word box of obfuscating synonyms to find the expression "procedural roadblock." I guess it's just more of that liberal bias in the media, right?

Literary Snoot

2007-07-17T16:19:00.000-04:00

Instead of bellyaching about the "repetitive plots, the static characters, the pedestrian prose, the wit-free tone, the derivative themes," why don't you take your own advice, Mr. Charles? You've got the forum of a Washington Post article after all.

As I look back on my dozen years of teaching English, I wish I'd spent less time dragging my students through the classics and more time showing them how to strike out on their own and track down new books they might enjoy. Without some sense of where to look and how to look, is it any wonder that most people who want to read fiction glom onto a few bestsellers that everybody's talking about?

I know the Harry Potter books aren't masterpieces by any means, but they could be like "gateway" drugs into the more intoxicating stuff. Remember, complaining is not equivalent to critique or protest. Sheesh.

Six Education

2007-07-17T16:04:00.001-04:00

A good save by John Moe here.

Schools of Edumacation

2007-07-17T13:50:00.000-04:00

Philosoraptor writes what many of us in college teaching think but rarely say:

A better solution would be to eliminate schools of education and force teachers to actually specialize in a major. Currently you can't even teach primary or secondary school in most states unless you have an education degree. But education majors (the major program itself, not the individual students) are--as virtually anyone at a university outside the ed school will tell you--a joke.

As it stands now, go to virtually any university in the country. Look at the grades broken down by major. You'll find that education majors have one of the highest GPAs. Ed schools like to say that this is because they get the best students in the university, or because the screening process for their majors is so rigorous. But it isn't true. Ed majors are among the weakest in any university. If you doubt this, go check out LSAT and GRE scores broken down by major. Ed majors are always near the very bottom of the list. Weak students plus a weak, frivolous program plus astronomically high grades...well, these things are not going to generate top-notch teachers.

His recommendation is to eliminate the education major and all schools of education, instead making our future teachers choose a "real" major. In my anonymous and untenured way, I second that and I know many others who would too. In any case, I've never quite understood why people who obviously struggled through school for years would want to repeat the experience for the rest of their lives.

None of the Above

2007-07-17T11:44:00.000-04:00

According to the latest AP/Ipsos poll, the leading candidate among Republican voters in the Republican primary is not a candidate at all. The lead vote-getter (25%) is "undecided or would prefer another candidate not in the current field." Indeed. (Down the field we find that Rudy Giuliani leads the GOP side with 21%, followed by Fred Thompson at 19%, John McCain at 15%, and Mitt Romney at 11%.)

Kelenna Azubuike

2007-07-17T11:21:00.000-04:00

For you non-UK basketball fans out there, you can ignore this post. However, for those who remember him and followed his game during the Kentucky years and then the NBA D-League through last season's role in the playoffs with the Golden State Warriors, you'll be happy to hear that he has finally been given a two-year contract with the Warriors, a much deserved reward for a great but under-appreciated player. What's more, with the personnel changes taking place there (Richardson gone, Matt Barnes and Mickael Pietrus possibly leaving), Kelenna should get plenty of minutes. UK fans still remember his crushing dunks.

Filibuster Old-Style

2007-07-16T14:46:00.000-04:00

This is a good move by Harry Reid. It's time the Republicans in Congress be exposed for their obstruction, and no better time than on the pending war legislation.

Atheism Resource

2007-07-16T14:00:00.000-04:00

This is fairly old news at this point, but I just bumped into it today. Apparently, my post on government and religion from April 13, 2005 made an appearance on About.com in the Atheism category on April 25, 2005. How 'bout that. I suppose in our political climate, anyone defending the separation of church and state is really just providing a further resource for atheism. (At least this blog is G-rated!)

Update: It happened again! (This time my post on Marx feeds the atheistic beast of the apocalypse.)

Wall Street Journal "Laugher"

2007-07-16T10:42:00.000-04:00

In case you missed it last week, the Wall Street Journal editorial page (Kevin Hassett in particular), known for its Fox News-like balance and fairness, made one more of its typical pleas for tax cuts by appealing to the so-called Laffer curve, which postulates that increasing tax rates reach a cusp at which point, paradoxically, revenues actually decline with higher rates. The paradox is resolved, claimed Arthur Laffer, by noting that this optimum point maximizes tax revenues because higher tax rates actually impede the growth of the economy thereby canceling out any further gains that higher rates might have provided. Here's the idea in graphical form:

Now the Wall Street Journal, in its journalistic wisdom, attempted to demonstrate the truth of this theory with the 2004 data of tax rates/revenues from various nations. Here is the scatter graph displaying their results and the curve they have added to interpret the data. Notice how the curve seems similar to the Laffer curve.

Of course, you may also notice that the curve doesn't actually resemble the data points. Even a high school statistics student would know that this is D- work in plotting the scatter graph, and that's just by eyeballing it without actually running the regression. It's pretty obvious to the untrained eye that we have here what you'd expect: a positive correlation (perhaps not high correlation, but moderate).

That is, as the tax rates increase, the government takes in more revenue. Of course, there is the outlier, Norway, but let's ignore it for now (more on it in a moment). As such, here is economist Mark Thoma's proper plotting of the scatter graph.

So it looks like the Wall Street Journal was just desperate to make their case for more tax cuts and sacrificed their intellectual integrity to do so. This is shocking, I know. However, it turns out to be even worse. Not only did they overemphasize an outlier to skew their case, they also manipulated the data in order to make Norway such an outlier in the first place. See Brad DeLong for the details:

One more point, with respect to "omitting Norway": Personally I see no need to omit Norway. I do see a need to plot the Norway point on the graph correctly. The revenues plotted on the vertical scale include oil excise taxes levied on corporations. The tax rates plotted on the horizontal scale do not--hence the Norway "tax rate" of 28% rather than the correct 52%. Move Norway out to its proper position--with the same tax concept on both axes--and everything is fine.

Sheesh.

National Health Care and Free Market Principles

2007-07-11T12:45:00.000-04:00

One comment we are hearing from the right-wing these days regarding national health care plans is roughly what Rudy Giuliani said the other night in one of the debates: "Free market principles are the only things that reduce costs and improve quality." Not only does this point fail to account for the fact that U.S. spends far more on health care than any other country, i.e., those other countries that do not rely on free market principles for their programs, and yet it ranks 37th in quality of care (according to the World Health Organization). New research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shows just how much more we are paying for our sub-par health care:

The study authors reviewed health care spending data on 30 countries from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for the year 2002. U.S. citizens spent $5,267 per capita on health care. The country with the next highest per capita expenditure, Switzerland, spent $3,446 per capita. The median OECD country spent $2,193 per capita.

Having noted this fact, let's consider a few further costs associated with our system that even our Milton Friedman fans should appreciate. (I'm indebted to Kevin Drum and Matthew Yglesias for much of the following.)

The main point is to note how restrictive our system is for economic freedom and mobility. In our system, people dare not risk changing jobs for fear of losing coverage or being denied coverage for a pre-existing condition (it is common for group health plans to limit or deny coverage for pre-existing conditions during an initial period). The same goes for returning to school for a year to improve one's job skills or leaving to start a new business. The risks often outweigh the potential benefits for the individual and, moreover, for the economy as a whole. (Better workers and innovative businesses add economic value to the marketplace.) Individuals miss good opportunities because of these health-related concerns and thereby so does business world.

Speaking of small businesses, they are having a hard time competing in the marketplace because decent health care plans are often prohibitively expensive to attract the best employees. Even large businesses are finding it difficult to keep up with rapidly rising health care rates. The auto industry in the U.S., for one, continues to struggle in no small measure because of the health-care constraint on their budgets as compared to their counterparts in other countries with national health care for their workers.

From the corporate level down to the individual level, we have a system that creates anxiety--about corporate bankruptcy from a payroll bloated with insurance premiums or individual bankruptcy from a catastrophic illness that an HMO refuses to cover. As a result, this anxiety impedes economic investment and labor market flexibility. In spite of what Rudy Giuliani might say, national health care serves our economic interests precisely because it is (or ought to be) a free market principle, or, to put it in the language of transcendental philosophy, national health care is a condition for the possibility of a free market economy.

Simone de Beauvoir

2007-07-10T10:16:00.000-04:00

Until I started preparing to teach a course on existentialism this fall, I hadn't read Simone de Beauvoir for a number of years--not since my college days of intellectual immaturity back in the late 1980s (which, if you do the subtraction, is almost 20 million years ago). So reading her again now was like reading something entirely new, and I must say that it has been a delight. Following the ungainly prose of Heidegger and Sartre (with its "unhiddenness" and "being-the-basis-of-a-nullity" substantializations), her writing is a literary glass of cool water on a choking, hot day. I'm reading her essay "Woman's Situation and Character" from The Second Sex.
Here are some passages capturing both some of her key ideas and her bracing style.

Many of the faults for which women are reproached--mediocrity, laziness, frivolity, servility--simply express the fact that their horizon is closed. It is said that woman is sensual, she wallows in immanence; but she has first been shut up in it. The harem slave feels no morbid passion for rose preserves and perfumed baths; she has to kill time.

Her frivolity has the same cause as her "sordid materialism"; she considers little things important for lack of any access to great things, and, furthermore, the futilities that fill her days are often of the most serious practical concern to her.

The truth is that when a woman is engaged in an enterprise worthy of a human being, she is quite able to show herself as active, efficient, taciturn--and as ascetic--as a man.

And finally, if woman is earthly, commonplace, basely utilitarian, it is because she is compelled to devote her existence to cooking and washing diapers--no way to acquire a sense of grandeur! It is her duty to assure the monotonous repetition of life in all its mindless factuality.

Her life is not directed toward ends: she is absorbed in producing or caring for things that are never more than means, such as food, clothing, and shelter. These things are inessential intermediaries between animal life and free existence.

Woman is shut up in a kitchen or in a boudoir, and astonishment is expressed that her horizon is limited. Her wings are clipped, and it is found deplorable that she cannot fly.

Even when things are quiet, she feels anxious; lying half asleep at night her rest is disturbed by the nightmare shapes that reality assumes; and thus for woman condemned to passivity, the inscrutable future is haunted by phantoms of war, revolution, famine, poverty; being unable to act, she worries. [She] flounders in confusion and darkness; she gets used to it because she does nothing; in her imagination all possibilities have equal reality: the train may be derailed, the operation may go wrong, the business may fail. What she is endeavoring to exorcize in her gloomy ruminations is the specter of her own powerlessness.

Her anxiety is the expression of her distrust of the world as given; if it seems threatening, ready to collapse, this is because she is unhappy in it. For most of the time she is not resigned to being resigned; she knows very well that she suffers as she does against her will: she is a woman without having been consulted in the matter.

A free individual blames only himself for his failures, he assumes responsibility for them; but everything happens to women through the agency of others, and therefore these others are responsible for her woes. Her mad despair spurns all remedies.... She knows that her trouble goes deeper than is indicated by the pretexts she advances for it, and she is aware that it will take more than some expedient to deliver her from it. [...] She has been promised compensations, she has been assured that if she would place her fortune in man's hands, it would be returned a hundredfold--and she feels she has been swindled. She puts the whole masculine universe under indictment. Resentment is the reverse side of dependence: when one gives all, one never receives enough in return.

Whenever tears are insufficient to express her revolt, she will make scenes of incoherent violence as to abash a man still more. In some circles a husband may strike his wife actual blows; in others he declines to use violence precisely because he is the stronger and his fist is an effective weapon. But a woman, like a child, indulges in symbolic outbursts: she can throw herself on a man, beating and scratching, but it is only a gesture. Yet above all she is engaged in expressing, through the pantomime of the nervous crisis, the insubordination she is unable to carry out in actuality.

There are many aspects of feminine behavior that should be interpreted as forms of protest. We have seen that a woman often deceives her husband through defiance and not for pleasure; and she may be purposely careless and extravagant because he is methodical and economical. Misogynists who accuse woman of always being late think she lacks a sense of punctuality; but as we have seen, the fact is that she can adjust herself very well to the demands of time. When she is late, she has deliberately planned to be. Some coquettish women think they stimulate the man's desire in this way and make their presence the more highly appreciated; but in making the man wait a few minutes, the woman is above all protesting against that long wait: her life.

Women have no grasp on the world of men because their experience does not teach them to use logic and technique; inversely, masculine apparatus loses its power at the frontiers of the feminine realm. There is a whole region of human experience which the male deliberately chooses to ignore because he fails to think it: this experience woman lives. The engineer, so precise when he is laying out his diagrams, behaves at home like a minor god: a word, and behold, his meal is served, his shirts starched, his children quieted; procreation is an act as swift as the wave of Moses' wand; he sees nothing astounding in these miracles. The concept of a miracle is different from the idea of magic: it presents, in the midst of a world of rational causation, the radical discontinuity of an event without cause, against which the weapons of thought are shattered; whereas magical phenomena are unified by hidden forces the continuity of which can be accepted--without being understood--by a docile mind. The newborn child is miraculous to the paternal minor god, magical for the mother who has experienced its coming to term within her womb. The experience of the man is intelligible but interrupted by blanks; that of the woman is, within its own limits, mysterious and obscure but complete. This obscurity makes her weighty; in his relations with here, the male seems light: he has the lightness of dictators, generals, judges, bureaucrats, codes of law, and abstract principles.

Woman does not entertain the positive belief that the truth is something other than men claim; she recognizes, rather, that there is not any fixed truth. It is not only the changing nature of life that makes her suspicious of the principle of constant identity, nor is it the magic phenomena with which she is surrounded that destroy the notion of causality. It is at the heart of the masculine world itself, it is in herself as belonging to this world that she comes upon the ambiguity of all principle, of all value, of everything that exists. She knows that masculine morality, as it concerns her, is a vast hoax. Man pompously thunders forth his code of virtue and honor; but in secret he invites her to disobey it, and he even counts on this disobedience; without it, all that splendid façade behind which he takes cover would collapse.

He lauds chaste and faithful wives, but he asks his neighbor's wife to commit adultery. We have seen how hypocritically men decree that abortion is criminal, when each year in France a million women are put by men in a position to need abortion; often enough the husband or lover demands this solution; often, too, they assume tacitly that it will be adopted if necessary. They count openly on the woman's willingness to make herself guilty of a crime: her "immorality" is necessary to the harmony of the moral society respected by men.

The most flagrant example of this duplicity is the male's attitude toward prostitution, for it is his demand that creates the supply.

Woman plays the part of those secret agents who are left to the firing squad if they get caught, and are loaded with rewards if they succeed; it is for her to shoulder all man's immorality: not the prostitute only, but all women who serve as sewer to the shining, wholesome edifice where respectable people have their abode.

Woman has been assigned the role of parasite--and every parasite is an exploiter.

Man even demands play-acting: he wants her to be the Other; but all existents remain subjects, try as they will to deny themselves. Man wants woman to be object: she makes herself object; at the very moment when she does that, she is exercising a free activity. Therein is her original treason; the most docile, the most passive, is still a conscious being; and sometimes the fact that in giving herself to him she looks at him and judges him is enough to make him feel duped; she is supposed to be only something offered, no more than prey. He also demands, however, that this "thing" give herself over to him of her own free will: in bed he asks her to feel pleasure; in the home she must sincerely recognize his superiority and his merits. She is, then, to feign independence at the moment of obedience, although at other moments she actively plays the comedy of being passive.

There is a justification, a supreme compensation, which society is ever wont to bestow upon woman: that is, religion. [...] Woman is asked in the name of God not so much to accept her inferiority as to believe that, thanks to Him, she is the equal of the lordly male; even the temptation to revolt is suppressed by the claim that the injustice is overcome. Woman is no longer denied transcendence, since she is to consecrate her immanence to God; the worth of souls is to be weighed only in heaven and not according to their accomplishments on earth. [...] That is why the little girl and the adolescent are much more fervent devotees than their brothers; the eye of God, which transcends the boy's transcendence, humiliates him: under this mighty guardianship he will remain a child forever; it is a more radical castration than that threatened by his father's existence. But the "eternal child," if female, finds her salvation in this eye that transforms her into a sister of the angels.

Although subordinated to the law of men by the will of God Himself, woman none the less finds in Him a mighty refuge from them. [...] The passivity enforced upon woman is sanctified. Telling her beads by the fire, she knows she is nearer heaven than is her husband gadding about at political meetings. There is no need to do anything to save her soul, it is enough to live in obedience. The synthesis of life and spirit is accomplished: a mother not only engenders the flesh, she produces a soul for God; and this is a greater work than penetrating the futile secrets of the atom. With the heavenly Father's connivance, woman can boldly lay claim to the glory of her femininity in defiance of man.

The fact is that woman makes religion a pretext for satisfying her own desires. Is she frigid, masochistic, sadistic? She finds holiness in renouncing the flesh, in playing the martyr, in crushing every living impulse around her. [...] For her part, the woman of easy virtue easily arranges things with God: the assurance of obtaining absolution for her sins tomorrow often helps the pious woman conquer her scruples today. Whether she has chosen asceticism or sensuality, pride or humility, the concern she feels for her salvation leads her to yield to that pleasure which she prefers to all others: namely, being occupied with herself.

It is evident that woman's "character"--her convictions, her values, her wisdom, her morality, her tastes, her behavior--are to be explained by her situation. The fact that transcendence is denied her keeps her as a rule from attaining the loftiest human attitudes: heroism, revolt, disinterestedness, imagination, creation; but even among the males they are none too common.

The office universe which, among other things, Kafka has described, this universe of formalities, of absurd gestures, of purposeless behavior, is essentially masculine. Woman gets her teeth more deeply into reality; for when the office worker has drawn up his figures, or translated boxes of sardines into money, he has nothing in his hands but abstractions. The baby fed and in his cradle, clean linen, the roast, constitute more tangible assets; yet just because, in the concrete pursuit of these aims, she feels their contingence--and accordingly her own--it often happens that woman does not identify herself with them, and she still has something left of herself.

From the depths of her solitude, her isolation, woman gains her sense of the personal bearing of her life. The past, death, the passage of time--of these she has a more intimate experience than does man; she feels deep interest in the adventures of her heart, of her flesh, of her mind, because she knows that this is all she has on earth. And more, from the fact that she is passive, she experiences more passionately, more movingly, the reality in which she is submerged than does the individual absorbed in an ambition or a profession.

But simply from the fact that liberty in woman is still abstract and empty, she can exercise it only in revolt, which is the only road open to those who have no opportunity of doing anything constructive. [...] Resignedness is only abdication and flight, there is no other way out for woman than for her liberation.

This liberation must be collective, and it requires first of all that the economic evolution of woman's condition be accomplished. There have been, however, and there are many women trying to achieve individual salvation by solitary effort. They are attempting to justify their existence in the midst of their immanence--that is, to realize transcendence in immanence. It is this ultimate effort--sometimes ridiculous, often pathetic--of imprisoned woman to transform her prison into a heaven of glory, her servitude into sovereign liberty, that we shall observe in the narcissist, in the woman in love, in the mystic.

Executive Branch Favorability

2007-07-10T10:04:00.000-04:00

Assuming Vice President Cheney still belongs to the executive branch of government, he is challenging a record for that branch set by Dan Quayle. While Quayle reached an all-time low of 63% disapproval, Cheney has match President Bush's 59% disapproval in a recent NYTimes/CBS poll. Worse still, Cheney dipped to 13% approval overall, with only 31% of Republicans still drinking the Kool-Aid at this point.

Presidential Favorability

2007-07-05T13:43:00.000-04:00

Rasmussen Reports has posted a new chart of presidential ratings for all of the American presidents. Each president has a score for favorable and unfavorable. The poll then breaks those two categories into the following four: very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable, very unfavorable.

No big surprises there, but I did notice one interesting comparison.

The two worst unfavorable scores:

Richard Nixon--60%
George W. Bush--59%

Not only is President Bush vying for the most unfavorable, he actually surpasses President Nixon in the "very unfavorable" category:

Richard Nixon:
somewhat unfavorable--35%; very unfavorable--25%
George W. Bush:
somewhat unfavorable--19%; very unfavorable--40%

That 40% is by far the worst in history.

Flat Tax

2007-07-05T09:50:00.000-04:00

This post may be the first in a series dedicated to debunking the myth that a flat tax is a good idea. (I say "may be" because I'm not sure how dedicated I really am to this project.) I know this has been done thoroughly elsewhere, but I'd just like to try to explain it to myself in a way that people like me, i.e., people who are willing to think and yet know very little about economics, can understand.

Before I get to that topic, let me make two interrelated observations.

1. The tax code has become less progressive over the past 30 years. [The definition of a "progressive tax" as defined by Greg Mankiw, author of a standard economics textbook and former chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, is as follows: "one for which high-income taxpayers pay a larger fraction of their income than do low-income taxpayers."] For the specific data regarding this trend, see Piketty, Thomas and Emmanuel Saez. "Income Inequality In The United States, 1913-1998," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2003, v118 (1,Feb), 1-39. As Duncan Black summarizes here,

In 1979, the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers earned 2.01 percent of total U.S. income; in 1999, they earned 6.63 percent. This group's share of total income more than tripled, while its share of federal taxes paid only increased by a little more than double. Similarly, in 1979, the richest 5 percent of taxpayers earned 20.83 percent of all income; in 1999, they earned 30.91 percent. This group's share of total earnings increased by about 50 percent, while its share of federal taxes rose only about 21 percent.

2. The following chart (via Mark Thoma) shows the percentage of national debt as a share of our Gross Domestic Product. (See the Whitehouse website here to verify the data.) Notice the red part of the line.

Conclusion: The administrations that implement the least progressive tax policy (Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II) produce increases in national debt as a percentage of our GDP. Since a flat tax is the absolute endpoint in abolishing a progressive tax policy, it stands to reason that we could expect an even larger percentage of our GDP dedicated to servicing national debt if we had a flat tax.

What this means: If we opt for a flat tax, we will likely increase our national debt as a percentage of the GDP. If that happens, we will be forced to spend more of our public funds on interest accrued from that debt. Thus, we will have to make major cuts in the other three major areas of federal spending: defense, social security, or health care. (Any other area would be a drop in the bucket by comparison.) Since we are unlikely to make major cuts in these areas, a flat tax will simply be a tax shift to future generations when taxes will inevitably have to be raised.

A Blog for All Ages

2007-07-01T13:58:00.000-04:00

I just found out that my blog is G-rated by checking with Mingle2. So for those protective parents out there who might be worrying about what little Jr. is reading, you can rest assured that this blog is safe. (Go ahead, Jr., toke up. It can't kill you, right?)

Gore Business

2007-06-27T11:40:00.000-04:00

I just read this article in some business/technology magazine called Fast Company. It describes Al Gore's business success since leaving office. In addition to Current TV (an interesting topic in itself), I thought his investment firm sounded intriguing. Here's the gist of it:

Rather than rely on short-term earnings projections, they thought long-term investment potential--and good management--could be better gauged by looking at factors such as whether a company was preparing for a carbon-neutral future. Environmental stewardship, though, is just part of how Generation defines sustainability. "We think about how businesses attract and retain employees, governance, branding; how they operate in the community; and how all of that drives their business strategy," Blood explains. "We have a belief that explicit recognition of environmental, social, governance, economic, and ethical factors affect business." Generation's research team, led by Colin le Duc, has both environmental economists and traditional buy-side equity analysts, who have learned to ask a wider range of questions of the companies they cover. The firm plans to build a long-term portfolio of only 30 to 50 companies. Blood claims that returns so far have exceeded expectations, although he won't divulge specifics. (See "An Inconvenient Portfolio" for some of the firm's holdings.)

Sibling Rivalry

2007-06-22T12:32:00.000-04:00

Here's an interesting article about older siblings having higher I.Q.'s than their younger counterparts, and the outcome is "due to family dynamics, not to biological factors like prenatal environment." To my older brother, I say, "You stole my 3 points!" I mean, I know I shouldn't have sniffed all that glue while you were designing model airplanes, but still.

Benzin in Deutschland

2007-06-22T09:53:00.000-04:00

Kevin Drum writes about the minimal impact of a gasoline tax, at least one that is politically feasible. A price increase of 10% would only amount to about a 1% reduction in gasoline consumption. Having just rented a car in Munich and driven around Bavaria and Austria for 12 days, I thought I'd do a little calculation from euros/liter to dollars/gallon to see how their prices compare. In Germany, they're paying $6.82 per gallon. For some reason, it's typically more like $5.98 in Austria. (I should admit that this price gets you octane 91, the lowest they sell--you can only get octane 95 otherwise.) So how about an increase of 127%? What would that do for us? I know I was happy to be driving a car with a sewing-machine for an engine.

Maddie Art

2007-01-31T09:02:00.000-05:00

Photos of Maddie have captured the attention of the art world.

(Fun with www.dumpr.net.)

Good Government

2006-12-05T10:20:00.000-05:00

Now I'm not one of these "good government" types who thinks we should spend all our time trying to catch and punish every government official who is guilty of any minor infraction whatsoever. That can quickly become counterproductive by preoccupying us with extraneous issues while the most significant problems remain unaddressed. However, the list of scandalized administration officials from the past six years is getting ridiculously long, and the Democratic 110th Congress hasn't even begun its investigations yet.

OK, I'll Do It

2006-11-30T13:45:00.000-05:00

I'm participating in an experiment by putting this link here. Check it out if you're curious.

How Do You Work This Thing?

2006-07-27T12:25:00.000-04:00

Potty training involves a number of unanticipated behaviors, some more benign and less messy than others.

Am Strand

2006-07-27T12:16:00.000-04:00

The tradition continued this summer...

The Little Professor

2006-07-27T12:08:00.000-04:00

You probably have to be a reader of The Chronicle of Higher Education to appreciate this. After working on a lengthy proposal for our administration regarding an employment arrangement for my wife and me, we have nearly overdosed on CoHE articles.

Eastern Kingsnake

2006-06-01T13:59:00.000-04:00

How many times in canine history has a dog been bitten directly on the nose by a snake? Our dog is certainly trying hard to increase the average. Today she discovered an Eastern Kingsnake in the pine needles under our euonymous bushes in the back yard. Here's a picture of one (not my own--I didn't get the camera in time.) Note to grandparents: it is not venomous. Note from wife: I am not a professional snake-identifier and thus could be wrong about this. Note from me: Wife was too scared to get proper view of the specimen and thus has no right to be criticizing husband's quite reliable form of judgment in this matter.

Mortgage Discrimination Part 2

2006-06-01T12:48:00.000-04:00

There is more evidence of discrimination in setting mortgage lending rates. See here for the the Charlotte Observer report from September 2005. See here for the latest:

African-Americans and Latinos enter into high-priced, subprime mortgages more often than white borrowers with identical credit qualifications, according to a study by the Center for Responsible Lending.

The report, released Wednesday, examined 50,000 subprime loans using data collected under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and supplemented with the Loan Performance Subprime Asset-Backed Securities Database. The two sources were used to isolate borrowers' race and ethnicity from all other risk factors, the report's author said.

"For many types of loans, borrowers of color in our database were more than 30% more likely to receive a higher-rate loan than white borrowers, even after accounting for differences in risk," according to the report.

...According to the study, African-American borrowers were more likely to receive higher-rate home purchase and refinance loans than white borrowers with similar qualifications. Those with prepayment penalties on their subprime home loans were 6% to 34% more likely to receive a higher-rate loan than white borrowers.

Latino borrowers purchasing homes were 29% to 142% more likely to receive a higher-rate loan than non-Latino, white borrowers with similar qualifications, the study concluded.

Bocian and others say the findings disprove the lending industry's explanation for why minorities get more high-cost subprime mortgages, and they assert less-sophisticated borrowers are being steered to less-favorable loans.

Rabbit Penises?

2006-05-31T22:26:00.000-04:00

I am now addicted to the show with zefrank.

Another Reason to Fear Global Warming

2006-05-31T22:18:00.000-04:00

Oh, crap. According to this article,

Another reason to worry about global warming: more and itchier poison ivy. The noxious vine grows faster and bigger as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rise, researchers report Monday.
And a CO2-driven vine also produces more of its rash-causing chemical, urushiol, conclude experiments conducted in a forest at Duke University where scientists increased carbon-dioxide levels to those expected in 2050.

Poison ivy is a wicked, sinful plant.

Media Bias

2006-05-27T09:56:00.000-04:00

This article by Jamison Foser about the media's bias against progressives is worth reading.

Time to Buy a Shredder

2006-03-19T11:49:00.000-05:00

I need to buy a shredder. See here for yet another reason. (Long story short: a torn-up credit card application--like the one in my trash can every *&$% day--can be used by an identity thief.)

Beach Spring '06

2006-03-19T11:37:00.000-05:00

The latest in the series. (See here for the history.)

DeLay and the Valkyrie

2006-03-09T08:56:00.000-05:00

Republicans can't dissociate themselves fast enough from convicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Meanwhile, Abramoff has threatened to start naming names pretty soon, and this week he released the first part of his politically damaging, if not incriminating, story to Vanity Fair. Mostly, he just describes his close relationships with various key figures in the the Republican party, beginning with the President and working down to people like Rep. Tom DeLay, Ken Mehlman, Sen. Conrad Burns, and Newt Gingrich. One of the greatest fears these guys have is an embarrassing picture of themselves with Abramoff. In Gingrich's case, Abramoff says, "I have more pictures of [Newt] than I have of my wife." (As Kevin Drum puts it, "Ouch. I wouldn't want to be Newt or Abramoff's wife.") About DeLay, the article states the following:

Abramoff has "admired Tom DeLay and his family from the first meeting with him," he tells Margolick. "We would sit and talk about the Bible. We would sit and talk about opera. We would sit and talk about golf," Abramoff recalls. "I mean, we talked about philosophy and politics."

Now, of course, many of these implicated politicos are accusing Abramoff of fabricating these relationships. A spokesman for Sen. Burns, for example, calls Abramoff "a pathological liar who has no credibility and belongs in jail." It is likely that this is mostly bluster, but the part about Tom DeLay makes me wonder a bit. I can imagine them talking about golf and maybe ... maybe the Bible, but opera? If this is true, I'm betting it was a conversation connecting Wagner to Deuteronomy 20 ("But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded"). I bet the "bugman" likes the part about killing "anything that breathes."

Keeping Track of Today's GOP

2006-03-07T21:30:00.000-05:00

Having trouble keeping up with all of the scandals in Congress these days? Try TPM Muckraker (a subsidiary of Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo).

And want to know what the schedule is for the various trial dates, court appearances, and sentencing hearings? See TPM's Grand Ole Docket.

Socrates and Athenian Anxiety (Part V)

2006-01-20T12:53:00.000-05:00

Taking stock of where we have been so far (here, here, here, and here), we have seen that we should take seriously Socrates’ confession not to know the truth and his deference to the daimon in matters of ethics rather than dismissing these claims as dissimulating irony. Furthermore, we have seen that his pragma of skeptical questioning potentially threatens everything we stand for and do. This threat, moreover, may be a threat to traditional religion and to tradition more generally, but it issues from within religion in such way that the modern distinction between cognitivism and noncognitivism does not apply. In particular, Socrates threatens to transform traditional codes of conduct by reformulating concepts such as “harm,” shedding some Homeric layers of meaning while retaining vestiges of them. Thus, Socrates’ pragma, his life’s work, appears to be dangerous to the Athenian way of life, and consequently their fear of him led to his trial, sentencing, and execution.

Our final question, then, is the following: Were the Athenian fears of Socrates justified? An adequate response to this question would involve the well-established distinction between fear and anxiety. Fear always relates to a particular object, whereas anxiety is perpetually indeterminate and free-floating. Insofar as Socrates becomes the object of the Athenian fears, we can ask whether his words and deeds merit his identification with this objective fear. For some scholars such as Vlastos,[1] Socrates’ moralistic conception of the gods reflects the erosion of traditional religious belief initiated by the “nature-philosophers” of Ionia and pursued further by the Eleatics (beginning as much as 150 years before with Xenophanes’ critique of polytheism and theological anthropomorphism). Continuing this line of thought, Socrates effects an “ethical transformation” of religious understanding, which is “tantamount to the destruction of the old gods.”[2] Thus, the Athenian fear (a “manifesto of orthodoxy,” as J. B. Bury[3] describes it) was justified. However, when Socrates asks Euthyphro incredulously whether he really believes the gods quarrel and are in enmity (i.e., whether they act immorally), Euthyphro replies affirmatively but reports that whenever he speaks “about matters of religion . . . they [the Athenian Assembly] laugh at me as if I were a madman” (Euthyphro 3c1-3). Since the tides already seemed to be turning against traditional religion among the general populace, other scholars such as Brickhouse and Smith[4] argue that Socrates was not identified as the object of Athenian fears on account of his moral transformation of the gods because Socrates was simply not so revolutionary in this respect. Thus, the assertion that the Athenians identified Socrates as the object of their fears because of his unorthodox religious beliefs seems historically inaccurate since such apparently heterodox beliefs were in fact fairly ordinary. The Athenian fears, then, must have been more complicated and ambivalent, and they therefore require further explanation.

Complicated and ambivalent fears are fears whose particular object cannot fully determine their scope and power. In such cases, the fears are mere signs of a much greater anxiety, which in this case involves the interplay of orthodoxy and heterodoxy. Despite W. H. Auden’s proclamation that the twentieth century inaugurated the age of anxiety, 5^th century B.C.E. Athens seems to have experienced its own form of this epidemic. Shortly after the highly romanticized portrayal of Athens in Pericles’ Funeral Speech, Athens struggled with the interplay of conflicting value systems (roughly, as A. W. Adkins[5] reports, competitive versus cooperative), and this conflict reflects the ever-present anxieties arising from the relations of identity and difference, individualism and participation, dynamics and form, freedom and destiny. Adkins’s analysis of the term nomoi[6] illustrates these anxieties insofar as its meaning spans “custom” and “law”: in the case of custom, the term relates to the need for participation within a tradition whose idealized form depicts a permanent destiny for the state; in the case of law, the term invokes a drive towards individual identity through the dynamic creation of norms as expressions of human freedom. In the aftermath of Pericles, the Athenians cannot simply repeat the past without compromising their future, nor can they simply press forward without forfeiting the past. When the notion of nomoi is thoroughly ambiguous, the question of justification according to the customs/laws has no unambiguous solution. Similarly, when the object of fear dissolves into the amorphous flow of anxiety, the evolution of a fear becomes the reification of anxiety in a sign. The question of justification, then, entails the recovery of the object that the sign represents, but if the content of a sign is precisely not an object then no object can be recovered. Thus, the fear cannot be so justified. In other words, Socrates becomes the objectified scapegoat of a collective anxiety, his condemnation functions as a free-floating sign with no objective referent, and thus its justification cannot be assessed.

[1]. Vlastos, Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher, chapter 6.

[2]. Ibid., p. 166.

[3]. J. B. Bury, “Socrates Not Unjustly Condemned,” The Socratic Problem, ed. M. Montuori (Amsterdam: Gieben, 1992), p. 222-3.

[4]. Plato’s Socrates, pp. 181-3.

[5]. A. W. Adkins, Moral Values and Political Behaviour in Ancient Greece: From Homer to the End of the Fifth Century (New York: Norton and Company, Inc., 1972).

[6]. Ibid., pp. 105-6.

Socrates' Equivocation (Part IV)

2006-01-20T12:46:00.000-05:00

If (as I have been arguing here, here, and here) cognitivism and noncognitivism are not appropriate distinctions to make within the context of 5^th century Athens, then, arguments to the contrary notwithstanding, Socrates does not represent a complete shift in ethics from an authoritarian religious basis to an autonomous form of thought based on an individual’s reason. To be sure, there is some truth in that description, but the whole truth is more complicated. In this section, I would like to explore one way of accounting for the threatening shift that Socrates does represent without resorting to anachronistic terms like cognitivism.

In this vein, there are two aporiai arising from Socrates’ ethical position that I would like to consider briefly. First, Socrates claims, on the one hand, that “the bad harm those who are always nearest them” (Apology 25d8-10), while, on the other, he contends that Meletus and Anytus, who are morally reprehensible, cannot do him any harm because “it is not allowed by the law of God for a better man to be harmed by a worse man” (30c8-d1). Unless Socrates intends to equivocate on the sense of harm in these passages, an aporia ensues and requires further explanation. Secondly, Socrates’ rejection of retaliation (e.g., Crito 49c-d), if taken as a universal principle for settling disputes, seems to stand in stark contrast to the typically Homeric code of ethics, which Socrates himself invokes when proudly recollecting his own military feats. In this case, his actions seem prima facie to contradict his stated beliefs, and this leads us to the second aporia. In the first case, the aporia seems to be internal to the concept of harm and thus to involve a logical contradiction. In the second case, the aporia arises because his actions appear to be at odds with his principle for action and therefore seem to involve a performative contradiction. I propose to solve these aporiai by asserting that Socrates’ ethical position stands out from its contemporary context as radically different insofar as many fundamental ethical concepts (e.g., harm) take on new meanings in his thought, but his position, nevertheless, retains vestiges of the Homeric code and fails to universalize its principles completely.

In the first case, Socrates uses the concept “harm” in the traditional sense when claiming that the evil person tends to harm those in close proximity, but he shifts the concept of harm to a radically different moral sense when asserting the principle that the worse man can never harm the better man (N.B., the terms “worse” and “better” have shifted in equivalent ways as well). When Socrates speaks of the traditional sort of harm, he means any sort of non-moral activity that may diminish one’s happiness (e.g., physical harm, loss of wealth or honor, etc.). He accepts this definition for the sake of the elenchus because his opponent, Meletus, would likely subscribe to such a belief and could be refuted through its use. Later, however, when he speaks of his own beliefs, no longer in the elenchus, he explains that “harm” has a moral sense which by far outweighs its non-moral meaning. In this case, harm refers to any activity that diminishes one’s virtue and adversely affects one’s soul. Let’s call this “moral harm.” In his radically new moral principle, Socrates contends that no non-moral harm can do moral harm to a person. In this way, Socrates avoids logical contradiction by intentionally employing an equivocation of the term “harm” (non-moral versus moral) in order to establish a radically new ethical code.[1]

As for Socrates’ apparent performative contradiction, the crucial factor involved in this aporia is the moral scope of his ethical position. To his credit, Socrates initiates a shift toward universal moral norms by rejecting the culturally circumscribed norms of the Homeric moral code, but his cosmopolitanism does not extend to all social inferiors such as women, aliens, and slaves.[2] In the Homeric code, moral obligation is never universal but always specific, i.e., based on social status and contingent circumstance. Socrates indeed extends moral obligation to any ξενος, but only in the sense of guests rather than all foreigners. Thus, the apparent performative contradiction is resolved by the fact that Socrates’ ethical position does not have a truly universal moral scope though it is considerably wider than its Homeric predecessor. History must wait for many centuries before the truly deontological principles of Immanuel Kant are to arrive (though perhaps the relativism of Protagoras or the agapic message of Jesus—spread to the ends of the earth, as Luke writes—makes an earlier approximation of moral universalism).

[1]. This ethical view, however does not entail the Identity Thesis, as Vlastos calls it, which simply equates virtue and happiness (or, more precisely, asserts that virtue is the only constituent of happiness). Indeed, Vlastos persuasively offers a “multicomponent model of happiness” whereby Socrates can prefer to avoid non-moral harm while denying its adverse effects on the soul. For example, in the Gorgias, Polus asks if Socrates would wish to suffer injustice rather than do it, and Socrates replies: “For my part I would wish neither. But if I were forced to choose between suffering injustice and doing , I would choose to suffer it” (Gorg. 469b12-c2). (See Vlastos, Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher, p. 227.) With this multicomponent model of happiness in mind, Vlastos’s position can be reconciled with that of Brickhouse and Smith which asserts that virtue for Socrates is not necessary for happiness because virtue is viewed as only one of many constituents of happiness. Their positions differ, however, with respect to the sufficiency thesis which Brickhouse and Smith also deny, thereby denying that virtue is constitutive of happiness at all, but that is another story. (See Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, pp. 103-36, esp. p. 118.) In any case, the notion of harm has entered the moral realm through Socrates’ ethical inquiry and can no longer simply apply to matters unrelated to the well-being (eudaimonia) of one’s soul.

[2]. Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher, p. 179.

Is Socrates an Ethical Cognitivist? (Part III)

2006-01-17T07:57:00.000-05:00

In the previous two posts regarding Socrates, the depiction of him may strike some readers of the Platonic dialogues as out of step with the central thrust of this extraordinary philosopher. Surely, some readers would argue, Socrates only threatens beliefs and even ways of life insofar as he possesses a rational method for arriving at universal and necessary ethical truth. The truth is indeed threatening to those who are attached to falsehoods, but it is also a source of hope since Socrates promises direct access to it.

My question for this post is the following: Is Socrates an ethical cognitivist? Does he provide a method for achieving this direct access to moral truth? The question admits of differing responses depending at least on the following: (i) who one takes the literary figure “Socrates” to be, and (ii) the status of Socrates’ daimon. Vlastos argues that Socrates does not intend to deceive through his use of irony (eironeia), but that this literary figure employs the trope of irony to serve his maieutic goal. Thus, Vlastos contends that Socrates avoids literal language because of the nature of learning: “if you are to come to the truth,” Vlastos writes, “it must be by yourself for yourself.”[1] Then, we may ask, to what degree of irony does Socrates invoke his daimon? The nature of this divine voice within him has to be explained in order to decide our question, because his “serious” submission to this voice seems to present a prima facie reason to deny that Socrates is an ethical cognitivist. That is, if he is truly heeding the instruction of this heteronomous authority, then Socrates does not come to ethical truth by himself or solely for himself. I assert that Vlastos’s interpretation of Socrates’ irony and the view of Socrates as a religious devotee whose fate as a tragic hero verges on sainthood suggest two things: (i) that Socrates truthfully reports the proscriptions of his daimon, and thus (ii) that his reliance on this voice in ethical matters reflects a noncognitivist ethical position.

First of all, the literary figure of “Socrates” can be understood in many ways, but from among the literary options for assessing the status of this character allow me to select the tragic view of Socrates.[2] In this view, Plato, as a tragedian superior to all other tragedians, develops the literary figure of Socrates as a tragic hero whose plight is to suffer the slings and arrows of a populace which fails to honor or understand his religious mission. Here, I disagree with Kenneth Seeskin[3] who contrasts Socrates to Oedipus by saying: “Oedipus suffered greatly…. Whatever else Socrates does in the dialogues, he does not suffer.” True, Socrates sleeps like a baby in his prison cell while his friend Crito frets anxiously, but that scene occurs near the conclusion of Socrates’ long and arduous journey in service of Apollo, at the end of which he might have said, “My feet are tired, but my soul is rested.” Seeskin, however, does recognize the heroic nature of Socrates’ tragic demise, and he correctly notes the religious aspect of Socrates’ dedication to the pursuit of philosophy. Socrates could well be viewed in this light as the patron saint of the religious practice called “moral philosophy.”

Given this hagiographic image of Socrates, the next point to examine is the specific role of his daimon in the dialogues. Does Socrates really mean he hears a divine voice which holds him in check when he is on the verge of transgression? Through Vlastos’s interpretation of Socratic irony and Seeskin’s hagiographic depiction of the philosophizing zealot, it is not difficult to accept the possibility that Socrates truthfully describes his mental states when he refers to this divine voice. Once we have granted this possibility, Socrates’ ethical cognitivism (as many philosophers view it) deserves critical scrutiny, because he relies, at least in part, on ethical assertions whose validity cannot be argued for or against. The daimon functions as a sheer existential decision or emotivist intuition, and Socrates’ insistent disavowal of moral knowledge denies him any metaphysical system within which such assertions could be rationally described and justified. Thus, this interpretation of Socrates renders him an ethical noncognitivist.

Some qualification, however, deserves mention. First, the daimon only proscribes, never prescribes. Thus, a positive principle of moral action, e.g., the virtue of benevolence, could be developed in conjunction with the noncognitivist element. Secondly, the relation of faith and reason differed significantly in the ancient world from the modern view such that the very notion of cognitivism in that context would not have precluded religious revelation. Indeed, epistemology at that time was grounded on the twin pillars of sense-perception and religious inspiration, which together comprised the totality of reason. Perhaps, then, our initial question about cognitivism is simply anachronistic.

[1]. Gregory Vlastos, Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 44.

[2]. I follow Alister Cameron on this view. See his Plato’s Affair with Tragedy (Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati, 1978).

[3]. Kenneth Seeskin, Dialogue and Discovery: A Study in Socratic Method (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), pp. 73-95.

What Exactly Do You Do, Socrates? (Part II)

2006-01-16T11:08:00.000-05:00

If Socrates is not a clever charlatan, then indeed, Socrates, we do ask (as he rhetorically puts it in his own defense), “'All', O Sokrates, to son ti esti pragma?” (Apology, 20c4-5) Who is Socrates, and what does he do? We ask this question over and over again, so much so that plausible justifications can be given for vastly different views. It seems that a hermeneutical dilemma occurs in which the reader inevitably becomes implicated in the reading. The meaning “behind” the text does not appear without a layering of meaning “in front of” the text. Certainly, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche allow their own views to radiate through the surface of their readings of Socrates but not in ways that are obviously inappropriate—assuming of course that one has abandoned the hope of ever retrieving the “real” Socrates. Such a hope must be abandoned, as with all hopes based on confusion. So our question must not simply be about the “pragma” of Socrates, but the pragma of Socrates of for us.

Sarah Kofman suggests that the variance among readings of Socrates depends on numerous prior exegetical and eisegetical choices, the presupposition of which reflects a desire (if unconscious) to guard the reader’s certitudes from the destructive sweep of this “atopical and atypical monster,” as Kofman puts it.[1] For example, one must choose which source to privilege among the three possibilities: Plato, Xenophon, or Aristophanes. One must also decide whether or not to read Socrates as ironic: if so, tragic or comic; if not, optimistic or pessimistic. Likewise, Socrates’ ignorance must be evaluated as feigned or real, which will affect the way one conceives his maieutics. And what of his daimon and its voice? It could speak for the Absolute Subjectivity of Geist, or it could be the dying gasps of a degenerate instinct as rationality gradually comes to prevail through the elenchus. How should we treat Socrates’ place in history? In turning philosophy away from quasi-scientific investigations of nature toward human affairs and the care of the soul, does Socrates mark a decisive beginning, a turning point, or a failure and an ending? What of his political views? Is he, as Karl Popper suggests, a lover of freedom, a democrat and a humanitarian, who was betrayed by Plato’s depiction of him as a totalitarian? Or conceivably he was truly anti-democratic, and thus his condemnation of Athens includes its constitution as well as its citizens. Perhaps, like W. K. C. Guthrie, we would prefer to carve out a view somewhere in the middle.[2] At the end of Kofman’s account of these twisted readings of Socrates, she poses the following question: “If the problem of Socrates has caused so much ink to flow, in the final analysis, is it not because behind the ‘case’ of this atopical and atypical monster, each interpreter is trying as he can to ‘settle’ his own ‘case,’ to carry out his reading in such a way that all of his own certitudes will not collapse with Socrates, that his own equilibrium and that of his ‘system’—even if there is nothing obviously systematic about it—will not be too seriously threatened?”[3]

Yes. Readings of Socrates always reflect a defense mechanism of one sort or another in order to shield the reader from the threat of Socrates’ skeptical scrutiny. So let me conclude this point by confessing my “case” for a moment. As Brickhouse and Smith[4] contend, Socrates’ “pragma” involves destructive, constructive, and hortative elements, but it is the destructive moment that is the most enticing and yet most threatening. Let me explain. I agree with Gregory Vlastos that Socrates’ “royal art” which aims at the perfection of the soul is intended (contra Xenophon) to be a universal calling for all rational individuals who care to examine themselves.[5] (I am not sure, however, whether Vlastos’s notion of Socrates as “searcher”[6] can fully account for his constructive side or his “suffering” on behalf of the Athenians, but that is another story involving a further reading that cannot delay us here.) I also agree with Brickhouse and Smith that the elenchus is not a craft but has universal applicability. This universality has two senses: the elenchus can be used by anyone, and it can be applied to any belief. Furthermore, Brickhouse and Smith make an important point in asserting that Socrates examines more than the consistency of a set of propositions or a set of beliefs, but rather a way of life. What then is so enticing and threatening about Socrates’ destructive moment of skepticism? It promises to change anyone’s life including my own, but my frail, neurotic “system” may collapse in the process.

[1]. Sarah Kofman, Socrates: Fictions of a Philosopher, tr. Catherine Porter (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).

[2]. “These two polar opposites may serve to indicate the twisting and turning to which the evidence can be subjected.” W. K. C. Guthrie, Socrates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 95.

[3]. Kofman, pp. 247-8.

[4]. Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, Plato’s Socrates (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 3-29.

[5]. Gregory Vlastos, Socratic Studies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 102-3.

[6]. See Gregory Vlastos, “The Paradox of Socrates” in Studies in Greek Philosophy, ed. Daniel W. Graham (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).

Maddie and Modern Art

2006-01-09T16:54:00.000-05:00

Is Socrates Lying? (Part I)

2006-01-09T16:51:00.000-05:00

Let’s take the advice of Proclus and the subsequent recommendation of Myles Burnyeat[1] and consider the first words of the Apology of Socrates in order to meditate on their significance for the whole dialogue. I wager that this exercise will dispel many of the uncharitable interpretations of Socrates’ speech by those who find reason from the prooimion to cast aspersions upon him. In the first sentence, we find the words ouk oida (“I do not know”), and this mild disclaimer at the outset will turn out to be the linchpin of Socrates’ whole argument, indeed of his whole life’s work.

Critics frequently charge Socrates with irony, by which they mean eironeia, i.e., dissimulation, false pretence, or plain lying. This charge seems obvious to James Redfield presumably because of the apparent flagrancy of Socrates’ lies. Thus, Redfield writes, “When [Socrates] says he is not ‘powerful’ (deinos), he is, of course, lying; this is one of the most powerful and skillfully organized and orchestrated speeches ever composed."[2] R. E. Allen makes the same point by calling attention to the vast disparity between Socrates’ professed inability to speak eloquently and his actual display of rhetorical mastery.

Now there is no doubt about Socrates’ skill in speaking. His brilliance depends on his deft ability to respond to unforeseen positions held by his interlocutors and to transform those opinions gradually through his elenchtic method. Arguing by elenchus requires scrupulous attention to the statements of the other and precise rejoinders in crisp language. Naturally, Socrates is a skillful speaker. But is he a clever (deinos) speaker? In this prooimion, Socrates is at pains to distinguish himself and his philosophical identity from the sophists and their reputation for rhetorical cleverness. As C. Reeve[3] rightly points out, Socrates frequently denounces “clever speakers” and attempts to differentiate himself from this group, but he never denies being a good, skillful, and even masterful speaker. He can do so without contradiction or dissimulation because, as Brickhouse and Smith[4] note, he is invoking a special sense of “clever” which refers specifically to the sophists who were well known for “making the weaker argument seem stronger.” Socrates is not that sort of clever speaker for the simple reason that he tells the truth—or, at least, he reports his mental states truthfully.

One must distinguish truth from truthfulness. Socrates may possess true belief through divine dispensation, but he denies having any knowledge of the truth. That is, he denies having any moral knowledge which he has derived solely from human reason. Presumably, he possesses knowledge of ordinary facts, but this is not his concern when speaking of truth. It is moral knowledge that matters, and he denies any possession of it. Thus, he can only speak in good faith or bad. Like the “clever” sophists, he can feign to know when he does not and speak cleverly when he should not, or he can openly admit that he does not know. The task of the jury, and ours as well, is to decide whether Socrates speaks truthfully.

Thus, the key to the defense is to prove that Socrates speaks truthfully, so that his honesty will differentiate his words from the clever speech of the sophists who feign to know. How then can we be certain that Socrates speaks truthfully? What evidence can we rely on to guarantee that he is sincerely reporting his mental contents? The first words give us the clue. The rest of the Apology explains the point. Socrates begins his entire defense by confessing, “I do not know.” This confession becomes not only the centerpiece of his case in court but in fact, as we learn from his devotion to Apollo, the guiding principle of his entire life. If we can judge truthfulness only by the correspondence of one’s words with one’s actions, then we must decide whether Socrates did in fact live the life of one who neither knows nor bears the pretence of knowing. The entire defense rests on its ability to convince the jury (and us, the reading jury) that Socrates did live such a life. If he succeeds in this endeavor, then we cannot judge him to be lying when he distinguishes himself from all those “clever” charlatans who feign knowledge.

[1]. Myles Burnyeat, “First Words,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, 1997, v. 43: 1-20.

[2]. See the Note on the Translation in James Redfield’s Plato’s Apology of Socrates, p. 35.

[3]. C. Reeve, Socrates in the Apology: An Essay on Plato’s Apology of Socrates (Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing Company, 1989), pp. 5-6.

[4]. Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, Socrates on Trial (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 54.

Happy New Year!

2006-01-09T16:36:00.000-05:00

The tradition continues:

Summer 2004 in Florida (days before hurricane Charley):

Summer 2005 in Florida (days before hurricane Dennis):

And now Christmas 2005 (no hurricanes looming):

Protest in the State of Exception (Reprise)

2005-12-21T10:23:00.000-05:00

We are hearing much about the president's arrogation of authority as a so-called "wartime" commander-in-chief to overrule FISA law in order to permit domestic spying by the NSA. (See this Kevin Drum post for more on the self-proclaimed status of "wartime" president.) These revelations are nothing new, but they seem to have garnered more attention than other such events. This has prompted a reprise of a piece I wrote last May:

***

In a Washington Post op-ed of January 12, 2005, Harold Meyerson summarized the likely legacy of George W. Bush’s presidency: he will be known as the “president of fabricated crises.” Meyerson explains, “To attain goals that he had set for himself before he took office -- the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the privatization of Social Security -- he concocted crises where there were none.”

From the false pretenses for war and the techniques of extraordinary rendition employed to deny legal status and humane treatment to wartime detainees to the hype of an imminent crisis in the Social Security Trust Fund and the triumph of ideology over scientific fact—what is common to all these cases is the notion of the exception. No matter what the norms and the facts of our situation may be, it is always possible to arrogate the authority to declare a suspension of those norms and to simply deny the facts. That is, it is always possible to fabricate a crisis and declare a state of exception.

Near the end of Walter Benjamin’s life when many of his worst fears seemed to be on the verge of realization, he issued the following admonition: “The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a concept of history that accords with this fact.” [Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, translated by Harry Zohn (New York: Schoken Books, 1968), p. 257.] In the work of Giorgio Agamben from the past fifteen years or so, it is clear that Agamben has heard this call and is attempting to think through its implications for our time. His projected four-volume series Homo Sacer (i.e., “sacred man”) represents his most concerted effort on this subject and builds on some of his prior meditations from the early 1990s published in Means without End: Notes on Politics.

In those early writings, Agamben issues a stern warning of his own: “the spectacular-democratic world organization that is emerging actually runs the risk of being the worst tyranny that ever materialized in the history of humanity, against which resistance and dissent will be practically more and more difficult.” [Giorgio Agamben, Means without End: Notes on Politics (hereafter ME), translated by Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Casarino (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), pp. 86-7.] This claim, though quite extreme, may seem less so in light of the reports regarding the August 2002 memo from White House legal counsel which “suggested that the president's commander-in-chief authorities meant that those acting at his direction would be immune from prosecution for torture. That memo drew on a January 2002 memo that suggested … that the president could suspend the application of international protections for detainees.”

In Jane Mayer’s New Yorker article “Outsourcing Torture,” she interviews John Yoo regarding his advisory role to the president on U.S. torture policy. She writes:

Yoo . . . argued that the Constitution granted the President plenary powers to override the U.N. Convention Against Torture when he is acting in the nation’s defense…. As Yoo saw it, Congress doesn’t have the power to “tie the President’s hands in regard to torture as an interrogation technique.” He continued, “It’s the core of the Commander-in-Chief function. They can’t prevent the President from ordering torture.”

When it is a "core" function of the Commander-in-Chief to abuse his powers, the state of exception has become the rule. Furthermore, even if this process is established by “fabricated crises” which purport to warrant emergency measures of various sorts, when the exercise of power has found ways to escape its own legitimation, this situation constitutes a real crisis in the legitimacy of the state-form itself.

Although the risk of tyranny has notable markers in recent history and is especially obvious in contemporary American politics, Agamben’s work as a whole offers a more extensive account—dare I say, a grand récit—of the pervasiveness of this nihilistic condition. For Agamben, this condition is named the state of exception, and it is not only becoming the rule as a “technique of government” but, as he writes in State of Exception, “it also lets its own nature as the constitutive paradigm of the juridical order come to light.” [Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (hereafter SE), translated by Kevin Attell (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2005), pp. 6-7.] A great deal of Agamben’s work deals with this problem of the constitutive paradigm of the juridical order and in particular with Carl Schmitt’s provocative account of sovereignty in his Political Theology. I will now spend some time trying to make that constitutive paradigm come to light.

Following Schmitt, Agamben agrees that the sovereign is the one who decides the exception. In the words, the sovereign is the one who gets to decide when the rules can be suspended. However, Agamben follows Schmitt even further in this logic of sovereignty. Having said this much about sovereignty, two possibilities emerge: either there was no sovereign before that decision to suspend the rules, or there was a sovereign before the decision. Schmitt argues that the first case would require a sovereignless norm, a norm that would have to be applicable to chaos. He finds this nonsensical. Thus, the truth must lie in the second option—that the sovereign preexists the decision to suspend the rules and also decides the norm itself. In other words, the sovereign establishes the condition of normality within which norms can be applied. Thus, the concept of sovereignty entails constituent power. In practice this constituent power is exerted every time a state of crisis prompts a government to absorb within its constitution the sovereign plenipotentiary powers that have been deemed necessary to deal with the emergency at hand. Agamben offers numerous examples of this phenomenon from ancient Rome to the Weimar Constitution to the emergency powers assumed by U.S. Presidents Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, and Bush. When a crisis lasts long enough, it tends to become the norm—a fact which has not escaped the notice of crisis theologians in the neo-orthodox tradition.

Agamben schematizes this process in Hobbesian terms. The transition from the state of nature to a state of law is instituted by the constituent power of the sovereign, and this sovereign power maintains its authority by retaining the right to suspend the state of law and thereby initiate a state of exception. This process leading from nature to law to exception, however, is too simple. By “state of nature,” we are to understand this anomic condition as one of absolute exposure to violence. Thus, it is from this unlimited danger of anomie that the nomos protects us, but a latent threat always resides in the state of law because of the permanent possibility of its own suspension in a time of crisis—whether real or fabricated. (See ME, pp. 5-6.) Thus, the threat of a state of exception is a threat of a return to a peculiar kind of state of nature—one that exists as a legal void within the juridical order and in fact founds the legitimacy of the political constitution.

This is a key point for Agamben—that there can be anomie structured within nomos such that each is constitutive of the other. As he puts it State of Exception,

There are not first life as a natural biological given and anomie as the state of nature, and then their implication in law through the state of exception. On the contrary, the very possibility of distinguishing life and law, anomie and nomos, coincides with their articulation in the biopolitical machine. (SE, p. 87.)

Agamben argues further in Homo Sacer that as the exception becomes the rule in political life, “the realm of bare life—which [in classical Aristotelian political theory] is . . . situated at the margins of the political order—gradually begins to coincide with the political realm, and exclusion and inclusion, outside and inside, bios and zoē, right and fact, enter into a zone of irreducible indistinction.” [Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (hereafter HS), translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 9.] Once we have entered this zone of indistinction, we become caught in the biopolitical machine.

Agamben writes extensively on the issue of biopolitics, i.e., the relation of biological life and political power. Drawn from his reading of Aristotle's De Anima, the key concept is the distinction between the instinctual animal life of zoē and the politically engaged life of bios. Reading Aristotle against the grain, Agamben recognizes the dependence of bios (political life) on zoē (animal life) not only as its logical precondition but as a necessary exclusion. Political life is constituted and sustained by its exclusion of animal life from the political domain.

To understand what this "exclusion" of bare life consists in, it will be necessary to see the true character of political power: namely, the power over life and death. This power, according to Benjamin whom Agamben follows closely here, is that of pure violence, and hence establishes the links of bare life to violence and violence to law.

A key point about this relation of violence and law requires clarification. There is something sacred which conditions all instances of sovereign power. This condition is exemplified by homo sacer ("sacred man")--a term borrowed from Foucault which Agamben expands to denote any figure, i.e., any body, who has been abandoned before the law.

Agamben argues that modern political theories have omitted this violent ground of all state power. While political theory often posits a contractual origin of state power, Agamben claims that all sovereignty originates from the “ban” or “abandonment,” by which he means the isolation and exclusion of bare life. In other words, politics is always from its origin biopolitics. Whereas in classical politics there were rights (natural, human, logical) at the foundation of political liberty, in Agamben's scheme there is the arbitrary decision of sovereign power. This is the logic of sovereignty; its true character appears from and within the state of exception, the hallmark of which is the power over life and death as was exemplified most fully by the Nazi death camps.

Thus, Agamben writes, “[t]here is no return from the camps to classical politics,” (HS, p. 188.) and furthermore since “[b]are life is a product of the machine” (SE, pp. 87-88.) there is also no return to nature. In other words, there is no easy way out of the bind that we are in, i.e., the pernicious form of nihilism rendered by modern metaphysics and technologism. If moderns like Habermas are calling for the reinstitution of respect for the Aristotelian distinction between the grown and the made in order to prevent the domination and mastery of the latter over the former, such Romantic defenses of the victimization of pure nature or bare life are hopeless. There is no return to that Garden in which there might be a harmonious oikos. Nor is there hope for some new body devised by biotechnology which might resolve the relation between zoē and bios; that is, once life inevitably becomes the “bare” life of the state, there is no return from the inexorable economics of biopolitics.

At this point, I would like to return to the Benjamin passage that got all of this started. After claiming that the state of exception is becoming the rule, he states that “it is our task to bring about the real [wirklich] state of exception, and this will improve our position in the struggle against fascism.” If there is a glimmer of hope in Agamben’s hermeneutic of political life, it is neither a return to nature nor to classical politics but through a “deactivation” of the use of law as when the Apostle Paul claims that “Christ is the end of the law” (Romans 10:4). The Law is not abolished or annulled but “deactivated” (katargein), thus confirmed—as the exception confirms the rule. Thus, Agamben points toward an eschatological condition in which, in accordance with Romans 3:31, we do not overthrow the law but uphold it in this “real state of exception” which can never be fully inscribed within the biopolitical machine.

One final suggestion. Given the Heideggerian diagnosis of the Western metaphysical tradition as based upon the nihilistic desire for mastery—mastery of being itself, of nature, and of the animal, Agamben tends to pose the problem of biopolitics in relation to the call for Heideggerian passivity and openness because anything else would recapitulate the nihilistic state of exception. We must “let the earth be,” experience being as such, recognize our boredom as an opening to our environing world which prevents us from becoming entirely captivated by it, etc. However, there are some obvious counterexamples to this account of sovereignty as deriving from crisis and leading to dictatorship. For example, there can be collective democratic actions which suspend the rules in order to create a state of exception. This is precisely what a labor movement accomplishes through a strike. In Jewish law, the jubilee represents a time when the socially dead are resurrected from debt-slavery. Finally, in terms of biological or bare life, Richard Dawkins and Keith Stanovich have written extensively on the distinct human capacity to “rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators,” i.e., the genes which would otherwise enslave us to biological determinism. All of these points would require further discussion than is possible here. Thus, I end with a question: can our model of eschatology reflect these more active and rebellious moments in human experience without succumbing to the nihilistic logic of sovereignty?

Perspective

2005-12-09T13:49:00.000-05:00

This is cool. (I know you probably have seen this before, but still...)

Religion and Fascism

2005-11-25T13:42:00.000-05:00

I was recently reading an essay entitled "Productive Noncontemporaneity" by Johann Baptist Metz, the Catholic theologian with links to the Frankfurt School, which describes among other things how three social systems respond to religious "noncontemporaneity," i.e., religious thought and practice that stand apart from, and are often critical of, contemporary culture. (In a different context, one might translate "noncontemporaneous" as "prophetic.") The three social systems are 1. bourgeois-liberal society ("liberal" in the Lockean sense of universal natural rights, representative government, individual sovereignty, etc.), 2. Marxist socialism, and 3. fascism. In the first case (bourgeois-liberal society), religion is privatized--the legacy of Schleiermacher. Where Marxist socialism (the second case) has not simply dismissed religion as pernicious alienation, the religious dimension of social life has entered into the dialectical process of a socialist history of liberation. The messianism present in Marx's writings is no doubt involved here. Finally, with fascism we find the following: "time and again it has attempted to politicize and exploit its populist manner of cultural and political resentments often bottled up in a religion owing to its noncontemporaneity, such as its latent animosity toward enlightenment and democracy."

Does the converse of each conditional hold as well? For example, if the society is bourgeois-liberal, then religion will be privatized; does that mean that if religion is privatized, then our society is bourgeois-liberal?

More to the point, if a society is fascist, then the political leaders will politicize and exploit the dominant religion's cultural prejudices especially its latent animosity toward enlightenment and democracy; does that mean that if the political leaders are politicizing and exploiting the dominant religion's cultural prejudices especially its latent animosity toward enlightenment and democracy, then our society is fascist? If so, it would seem that we are living in a fascist society.

Positive Interpretation

2005-11-25T11:30:00.000-05:00

The Medium Lobster at Fafblog offers some hermeneutical leverage for our situation in Iraq:

Indeed, since the war has no clear objectives, its objectives can be adjusted to have already been met at any point. A successful terrorist attack becomes a sign of weakness and desperation in the enemy; an eruption of insurgent violence becomes part of a brilliant flypaper strategy. Consider the following dire sentiment:
If America stays bogged down in Iraq, the country's deterioration into sectarian violence and partition may become inevitable, even as the sustained military commitment leads to the collapse of the U.S. armed forces as we know them.
Grim, yes. But let's take a look at this pig wearing the bright, shiny lip gloss of victory!
If America stays the course in Iraq, the country's advancement into sectarian friskiness and partition may become a success, even as the sustained military commitment leads to a transformation of the military for the twenty-first century.
Ah, that's more like it!

Evolution and Subjectivity (3291 words)

2005-11-12T14:42:00.000-05:00

In contemporary philosophy, we are finding more and more attention being paid to evolution as the principle of explanation. Evolutionary theory is now frequently applied to many branches of philosophy. In philosophy of mind, evolutionary theory is used to explain the development and nature of mental content and consciousness; in ethics, it is used to explain altruism, care, and responsibility; in epistemology, it is used to explain the development of doxastic practices and justificatory schemes; in aesthetics and political philosophy, it is used to explain the development and dissemination of "memes"; and so on. Evolutionary theory, it seems, can be used to explain almost anything. Regardless of the explanandum, the explicans remains evolutionary theory. This trend in philosophy represents the latest chapter of a longer trend of naturalization and disenchantment. Lately, however, there has been a revival of a Post-Kantian idea: inner teleology. Kant’s retrieval of Aristotle’s teleology in the form of “purposiveness without a purpose” became a guiding theme for many post-Kantian philosophers, and now it seems to be resurfacing in the complexity sciences, including in particular Stuart Kauffman’s work on self-organization. Where evolutionary theory once occupied the position of ur-explanatory theory, emergence is now usurping that ultimate explanatory role. In the following, I plan to situate Kauffman's suggestion in the context of Charles S. Peirce's work, then follow up on the Hegelian echoes present in it, and finally offer some concerns about how emergence theory might function in contemporary philosophy of mind.

In Peirce's essay "The Architecture of Theories," he claims there that "the only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature and for the uniformity in general is to suppose them results of evolution." This is an interesting claim--that the laws of nature are the results of evolution. To see laws as the product of evolution is to presuppose that they are not absolute. This allows for the aleatory which is observed in the minute discrepancies involved in any application of the laws to reality. As Peirce claims, there is always a "certain swerving of the facts from any definite formula," and this is not always and only due to the imperfections of our techniques of observation.

The consequence of this view is that the laws of nature cannot be absolute (true in every instance of reality) or deterministic (based on mechanical principles). Peirce's reasons for this are: 1. purely mechanical laws presuppose an extraneous cause beyond the process; 2. law results from evolution, not the other way around; 3. mechanical laws can only explain homogeneity, not heterogeneity; and 4. mechanical laws are reversible, but growth is not.

Let me focus on the third and fourth points for a moment because they are especially relevant to a discussion of Stuart Kauffman.

According to Peirce’s third point, it would be illogical to treat natural laws as absolute and deterministic because doing so would fail to address the heterogeneity of the universe. Only homogeneity can result from exact law, whereas experience shows us an abundance of arbitrary heterogeneity. In Darwinian terms, we need accidental variations with each iteration of the selection process. In another sense, Kolmogorov complexity seems to be involved here: that the complexity of information (in the form of a string) can be--and mostly is, according to Gregory Chaitin--as complex as the program which generated it. That is to say, there is much heterogeneity in the world which cannot be captured by anything simpler than a program of equivalent "heterogeneity" or complexity.

According to the fourth point, the conservation laws amount to the reversibility of mechanical operations; thus, growth would not be explicable by such operations. This connects to one of Peirce’s arguments against strict determinism. According to the determinist, Peirce writes, chance is unintelligible because it demands the acceptance of arbitrary givens without disclosing "to the eye of reason the how or why of things." In response to this charge, Peirce argues that determinism requires no less swallowing of arbitrary givenness in the form of "immutable and ultimate facts" for which no account can be offered. The only difference is that in this case the facts are all given up front at once--a bitter pill that can be swallowed and then forgotten only at the expense of self-delusion. Instead, Peirce suggests we acknowledge the immense amount of change in the universe and recognize the implications of it: "the history of states, of institutions, of language, of ideas . . . paleontology . . . changes in stellar systems. Everywhere the main fact is growth and increasing complexity." Peirce cites Hegel in this connection: “Hegel,” he writes, “discovered that the universe is everywhere permeated with continuous growth (for that, and nothing else, is the ‘Secret of Hegel’).” (I’ll return to the Hegel connection in a moment.) From these facts of change and growth all around us, Peirce infers that "there is probably in nature some agency by which the complexity and diversity of things can be increased; and that consequently the rule of mechanical necessity [determinism] meets in some way with interference." This agency in nature that interferes with strict mechanical necessity can be understood as Kauffman’s addition to Darwinian evolution. The random mutations involved in the process of natural selection are important. As we have seen from Stuart Kauffman’s work, however, such processes require a further agency beyond random mutations to explain the growth and increasing complexity of the universe, and so Kauffman introduces self-organization in order to explain the emergent properties of a complex system.

Kauffman’s explanation of this idea hinges on the notion of the “adjacent possible.” The adjacent possible in a complex system consists of those states which are not members of the actual system but are one reaction step away from the actual. Once a new state has been achieved in the system by realizing one member of the current adjacent possible, a new adjacent possible, accessible from the expanded actual that now includes the additional member, becomes available. Thus, the adjacent possible is indefinitely expandable, but each stage has a definite framework within which new novelties may appear (Stuart Kauffman, Investigations, p. 142).

Kauffman qualifies the difference between the adjacent possible in classical physics and his use of it in describing biospheres. In the former case, e.g., in the case of a jar of atoms, all states in the adjacent possible can be easily described in principle. However, in the case of a biosphere, there is no finite way to pre-describe all the adjacent possible states. “We cannot say ahead of time all the possible constellations of matter, energy, process, and organization that is a kind of ‘basis set’ for a biosphere in the sense that the atomic chart of the elements is a finite basis set for all of chemistry” (131). We could never finitely pre-state the adjacent possible adaptations for any configuration space of a biosphere. As a consequence, Kauffman claims that the task of biology has changed:

Biologists tell stories. If I am right, if the biosphere is getting on with it, muddling along, exapting, creating, and destroying ways of making a living, then there is a central need to tell stories. If we cannot have all the categories that may be of relevance finitely prestated ahead of time, how else should we talk about the emergence in the biosphere or in our history—a piece of the biosphere—of new relevant categories, new functionalities, new ways of making a living? (134)

Thus, stories must take the place of, or at least supplement, the traditional form of scientific explanation, i.e., subsumption under laws of causal necessity.

Kauffman, it seems, is not alone in this view. The neuroscientist and complexity scientist J. A. Scott Kelso implicitly agrees with this point and claims as a result that it is not useful to “talk about the laws of physics as if the workings of our minds and bodies are controlled by well known fundamental laws.” Thus, Kelso contends that with the emergence of new levels complexity, “entirely new properties appear, the understanding of which will require new concepts and methods” (J. A. Scott Kelso, Dynamic Patterns: The Self-Organization of Brain and Behavior, 24). In self-organizing complex systems, Kelso explains that novel content emerges from the “systemic tendency of open, nonequilibrium systems to form patterns,” and he concludes that “intelligent behavior may arise without intelligent agents—a priori programs and reference levels—that act intelligently” (34).

Getting back to Peirce, he uses the term “habit” to capture much of what these contemporary scientists are describing as self-organization. Where Kauffman and Kelso might discuss the “laws of self-organization,” Peirce discusses the “law of habit.” For Peirce, the universe is an evolutionary development in which habits successively emerge. The term "habit" here denotes regularities or patterns not simply in nature but already in conceptual form; thus, it is an idealist term, as I will explain further below. In any case, Peirce claims that everything is part of an ongoing process and can be explained as the outgrowth of an earlier stage. This all happens according to the laws of evolution, but, of course, even these laws are habits which have been forged (or self-organized) within the process. In rejecting deterministic physical laws, Peirce instead opts for the idealist position according to which matter is "effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws." Peirce goes on to argue for objective idealism. Thus, he can write elsewhere, "My philosophy resuscitates Hegel, though in a strange costume" (Peirce, 1.42).

* * *

Before we get carried away with the idealist notion of “effete mind” and begin thinking of a “re-enchanted nature” or start making comparisons to Hegel’s occasional flirtation with the understanding of nature as implicit or “sleeping” spirit, we should consider the following. About Hegel, it should be noted that he also sometimes calls nature “spiritless.” More importantly, spirit or Geistis not simply a product of nature even if it is also not non-natural or immaterial. That point would take some considerable time to unpack. Let me just quote two passages that would get us started. First, Hegel states, “Spirit is usually spoken of as subject, as doing something….” Second, Hegel claims to the contrary that “it is of the very nature of spirit to be this absolute liveliness, this process, to proceed forth from naturality, immediacy, to sublate, to quit its naturality, and to come to itself, and to free itself, it being itself only as it comes to itself as such a product of itself.” There is a lot being said in this passage, and much of it is rather mysterious. Spirit “proceed[s] forth from naturality” and yet is “a product of itself.” Let me try to offer two alternative readings of this claim by turning to John McDowell and then Robert Brandom.

If, as Kauffman suggests, biologists must tell stories now, so too are philosophers of mind offering narratives to explain how spirit or mind can “proceed forth from nature.” Such stories can take evolutionary theory to be sufficient, as is the case with Daniel Dennett, for example. However, for philosophers of the post-Kantian type, the key is to state how the human spirit can eventually free itself from a self-understanding wholly tied to nature. For the philosopher John McDowell, the discussion follows this latter path, but not all the way to the end. Instead of leaving nature behind altogether, McDowell’s analysis of the problem terminates in what he calls second nature. Let me explain. For McDowell (and Peirce as well as Kauffman would agree), the root of the problem is our inveterate conception of intelligibility, understanding, and explanation as tied to subsumption under deterministic causal law. McDowell argues that this conception of nature as the “realm of law” is too restricted. It makes the development of what Wilfrid Sellars calls “the space of reasons” seem, prima facie, impossible. How could the natural beings that we are come to act as purposive and reason-giving agents as we do? According to McDowell, this is really the Kantian problem of finding a way to fit together our receptivity with spontaneity and so see the coordination of sensibility and understanding.

According to McDowell, this starting point of viewing nature as the realm of law forces us to oscillate between two undesirable positions: the first McDowell terms “bald naturalism” and the second he calls “subjectivism” or sometimes “frictionless coherentism.” If our receptivity becomes controlling and the world simply determines what we can say about it, our agency is reduced to differential responsiveness to external stimuli—all subsumed under the realm of law. Then the immediacy of our sensibility can only play a causal role in our claims rather than justifications. To reference Sellars again, the "Myth of the Given" yields mere exculpations rather than reasons. That is the upshot of bald naturalism—“to domesticate conceptual capacities within nature conceived as the realm of law” (John McDowell, Mind and World, 73). On the other hand, if we abandon the notion of “world-directed” normative constraints, we may end up with a coherent conceptual scheme spinning in the void, unanchored by the way the world is—in Hegelian terms, autonomous spirit being “the product of itself.”

McDowell’s solution to this problem is less a solution than it is an “exorcism,” a diagnosis which rids us of an unhealthy conception. If we can cure ourselves of the limited conception of nature as the realm of causal law, we may begin to recognize something like what Peirce was calling the “law of habit.” For McDowell, we must recognize and make use of Aristotle’s notion of “second nature,” i.e., the socialized development of practical wisdom. Instead of needing to appeal to some non-natural property or capacity as the source of conceptual capacities, McDowell offers a “reminder” of the “partially re-enchanted” nature we live in, whereby our sensory contact with the world is “already conceptual.” Thus, we have some overlap of the space of reasons and the realm of nature. By way of our second nature, our responsiveness to the world is always already a responsiveness to reasons. In the language of emergence theory, the emergence of second nature makes possible the emergence of what McDowell calls "objective purport," i.e., meaningful content in thought.

Robert Brandom takes this point further, arguably too far for McDowell. Brandom articulates a semantic theory based on inferential practices which themselves are established by a prior normative pragmatics. His theory turns the direction of supervenience on its head: “the facts about having physical properties are taken to supervene on the facts about seeming to have such properties” (Robert Brandom, Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment, 292). Brandom qualifies the pragmatist’s commitment to this phenomenalist position by noting that semantic content is not exhaustively accounted for by the assertional uses of such “facts about seeming,” but he nevertheless endorses a reorientation of supervenience so that “natural facts” (along with the concomitant treatment of truth as a property of them) do not ground the discussion of them in all discursive practices. This is not simply a reversal of Galileo’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities but a deeper understanding of the social constitution of both types and of that distinction itself. In Hegelian language, the distinction between nature and spirit is itself a geistig distinction; in other words, it is a distinction that spirit makes possible.

Brandom’s pragmatist approach is to treat the discursive practices of a society as primary and to treat semantic theory as the secondary task of making explicit the norms embedded in the discursive practices by drawing out the implicit inferential practices operating in those discursive practices. Thus, Brandom’s approach offers a “deflationary” theory of truth. First and foremost, this theory is deflationary in so far as it denies that there is a property of truth or a relation of reference. It also denies that there is a way to state the “semantic facts” in a formal way independently of the way in which they are deployed in social practices. Such normative features of linguistic practices derive from and are embedded in the proprieties of social practices so that the only way to make them explicit is for them to “precipitate” out of the social practices. Thus, Brandom’s fundamental insight is that “semantics must answer to pragmatics” (83).

Brandom, therefore, argues for the “ontological primacy of the social” (Robert Brandom, “Heidegger’s Categories in Being and Time,” The Monist 66 (1983): 387-409). He follows a post-Kantian trajectory in understanding the peculiar status of the human being not in ontological terms but in deontological terms. Brandom contends that Hegel, similarly, argues for the possibility of meaning as arising from a form of “sociality,” namely, the participation in spirit or Geist. In avoiding the use of ontological terms (traditionally construed) for understanding spirit, Brandom chooses to define Geist in the Kantian idiom of deontic statuses. Thus, Geist is “the emergence of [a] peculiar constellation of conceptually articulated comportments” (Robert B. Brandom, Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism, 33). Thus, like McDowell's account of "second nature," spirit names the dispositions and potentialities which can be actualized only by a process of socialization, but this process goes far beyond anything that might be explicable by reference to natural events and properties even as it involves nothing non-natural or supernatural.

In juxtaposing McDowell and Brandom this way, we see that McDowell’s concern to retain our answerability to the world now shifts to Brandom’s emphasis on answerability to each other. The constraint of the world on our space of reasons shifts to collective self-constraint. For McDowell, this may raise the specter of frictionless coherentism, but Brandom’s social pragmatism avoids the possibility for the bald naturalist to theorize McDowell’s story of the development of second nature as a mere process of training and self-organization so that second nature finally can collapse back into first nature. To be sure, McDowell acknowledges that there needs to be a distinction between a description of what the species does under particular circumstances, the way in which it flourishes and avoids dangers, on the one hand, and, on the other, that which could function as reasons for an individual when facing such circumstances. In other words, the individual needs to be able to disobey the dictates of nature, e.g., the evolutionary process, and so fail to meet the natural tendencies. This is the burden of Kantian self-legislated autonomy. If second-nature becomes an account of merely habituating certain dispositions and potentialities to respond to such situations with what practical wisdom dictates, then we have not yet told a story about spirit “quitting its naturality” or “freeing itself,” much less being “a product of itself.” We only have a story about the development of means-end reasoning. For Hegel (as for Kant), autonomy means that we subject ourselves to laws (or reasons) so that we can thereby "stand behind" them and thereby mean them. Only by telling such a story would we have narrated the arrival of McDowell's "objective purport." While Brandom’s reversal of supervenience goes a long way to achieve this narration, the question for Brandom’s social pragmatist theory is whether the “precipitation” out of social practices also vitiates the Hegelian account of spirit’s freedom.

In any case, both McDowell and Brandom offer emergence accounts of semantic content that avoid, or at least attempt to avoid, the reductionism prevalent in many applications of evolutionary theory to philosophy of mind or ethics. A broader question raised by their story-telling is whether and how the story of the emergenge of second nature or Brandom's conceptually articulated comportments is aided by Stuart Kauffman's notion of self-organization or Peirce's notion of habit. Furthermore, what ought to count as a sufficient explanation now that some story must be told in place of a more traditional scientific account?

Jeeves of the Absolute Idea

2005-11-10T16:00:00.000-05:00

Sometimes when reading secondary works on Hegel, I suspect the author may be describing the "world in front of the text" more than anything else. For example, Michael Forster sees evidence of eliminative materialism in Hegel's Phenomenology! Many such contemporary readings of the opaque author are either brilliantly perspicacious as interpretations or brilliantly creative as fictions. I just ran across Anthony Quinton's description of Schlomo Avineri's work on Hegel which captures the essence of my suspicion.

Avineri is the Jeeves of the Absolute Idea. To Hegelian equivalents of such Woosterisms as "dash it all, a conk on the noggin is a bit of a facer" he responds with something like "I agree, Sir, that a sharp blow on the head is a cause for concern."

Church Intimidation

2005-11-09T11:11:00.000-05:00

The IRS is investigating a prominent liberal Episcopal Church, potentially threatening its tax-exempt status, because of a sermon that questioned the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war. Churches are not permitted to make political endorsements if they wish to remain tax-free. In response to this news, Amy Sullivan sarcastically remarks,

No word on whether the agency is also going after the Baptist church that kicked out members who voted for John Kerry. Or the churches that helped out the Bush/Cheney campaign last year by sending in their membership directories. Or the Catholic priests who told parishioners it would be a sin to vote for Kerry.

French Riots

2005-11-09T11:09:00.000-05:00

This is the best thing I've read about the recent French riots.

Biology and Theology in Life of Pi (2283 words)

2005-11-03T21:18:00.000-05:00

(The following are comments on Yann Martel's Life of Pi, prepared for a panel discussion of the Literary Society at [blank] University where I work.)

The poet Wallace Stevens wrote, “The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.” Yann Martel in Life of Pi attempts to prove this claim or at least make it palatable enough to entertain and entertaining enough to be palatable. In other words, Martel tries to make sure that the readers of his secular, scientific culture do not fail to recognize not only the plausibility of religious belief but also its benefits in coping with suffering, in making sense of life, and, especially, in appreciating the world we live in aesthetically. As such, I would call Martel’s theology an aesthetic theology. Its principal concern is how we see the world, the attitude with which we view it, and the attendant emotional uplift that this “divine consciousness” brings with it.

Martel’s opponent in the book is not the atheist, but rather the agnostic. The difference between the atheist and theist is merely superficial; both share a passion for the world, an openness to experience, and, most of all, an imaginative capacity that enriches life immeasurably. So close is their proximity that the atheist is, therefore, open to the possibility of a deathbed leap of faith. The agnostic, however, refuses to be unreasonable and will only doubt but never affirm and certainly could not passionately love anything. Immobilized by doubt and paralyzed by loveless dispassion, the agnostic never ventures far from the secure boundaries of his sense of self and is, thus, “beholden to dry, yeastless factuality,” as the protagonist Pi puts it. In the end, it is the agnostic’s lack of imagination that leads him to “miss the better story.” The better story, of course, is the one that addresses all the same facts but accompanies them with consciousness of God. As the narrator interrupts the story to tell us, this divine consciousness brings with it “moral exaltation; … elation, joy; ... a moral sense … more important than an intellectual understanding of things; a realization that the founding principle of existence is … love; … a trusting sense of presence and of ultimate purpose.”

To make this consciousness of God vivid and “real” to the reader, whom Martel presumes to be an agnostic living in the disenchanted world of modern science and technology, something sudden and extreme needs to occur—some event that will shatter our ordinary sense of experience, disrupt the reasonable and self-centered calculations of our secure bourgeois Western existence, and launch us beyond the horizons of foreseeable expectations. In other words, something unforeseeable and overwhelming needs to happen. Being forced to live for 227 days on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker qualifies as just that. The theologian Paul Tillich describes this sort of jarring experience as “ontological shock”—an overwhelming recognition of the relative insignificance of most concerns in life as the overriding fact of one’s imminent death sinks in. But there’s more to the image of being stuck in a lifeboat with a tiger than an abstract recognition of one’s own mortality. This is an encounter with what the philosopher Immanuel Kant calls the sublime. The sublime can take two forms: immense size and immense power. The ocean and the tiger provide trauma-inducing quantities of both.

As the protagonist Pi takes stock of his predicament when the ship Tsimtsum sinks in the storm and he hangs on to an oar suspended from the lifeboat’s bow with the tiger in front of him and sharks circling in the water below, he restates the theological theme of the book in saying, “Had I considered my prospects in the light of reason, I surely would have given up and let go of the oar, hoping that I might drown before being eaten.” Faced with this sort of impossible situation, the reasonableness of the agnostic would only lead to despair. Pi clings to life in spite of the seeming impossibility of survival, maintaining hope in the midst of a hopeless situation. Later in the journey, however, Pi notes the paradox of hope and hopelessness: too much hope can actually fold into hopeless despair by raising expectations which result in ongoing disappointment. Thus, Pi says, “You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better.” There is a sort of liberation that comes with hopelessness, that accompanies the realization that Pi makes a few pages later: “I am going to die.” Pi’s recognition of what philosophers call his being-toward-death issues forth in quite practical advice for those who wish, as he did, to survive. Pi states, “I had to stop hoping so much that a ship would rescue me. I should not count on outside help. Survival had to start with me. In my experience, a castaway’s worst mistake is to hope too much and do too little.” Reasonable hope makes no sense in an unreasonable situation. Instead, biology and theology begin to merge as his instincts for survival—rather than religious symbols and rituals--begin to express the religious dimension of his experience.

As the tale of his ordeal of physical survival unfolds and the struggle gradually induces a form of savagery in him, the religious elements of Pi’s civilized life begin to recede into the distant background. At the beginning of the book, Pi dabbles eclectically with various symbol systems producing a concoction of beliefs and practices that could only occur in India, and yet Martel’s French-Canadian background influences this discussion insofar as such cafeteria-style choices of religion could only seem possible in a Western consumer-oriented society. In any case, based on his upbringing as the son of a zookeeper, Pi makes an interesting assessment of religion in the modern secular world (which is really the world of Canada more than India): religion is perceived the same way that zoos are. Both impose artificial limits on the freedom of their inhabitants or adherents, and furthermore these limits are harmful. This view, according to Martel who is speaking through Pi, is mistaken. The problem with the modern view of freedom is that it is finally nothing more than the reign of terror.

This point is first explained with respect to zoos. Zoos are what might appear to us as a source of unending boredom, but to animals they actually provide a comforting environment of steady routine and security. For example, zoos help establish the elaborate social hierarchy among animals which stabilizes the life of an animal. As Pi writes, “Until it knows its [social] rank for certain, the animal lives a life of unbearable anarchy.” By contrast, the supposed freedom of living in the wild forces the animal into a life of “compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured.” For the animal, the freedom of living in the wild comes at the price of living in terror. They don’t call it “the wild” for nothing. For human beings, religion provides the equivalent sort of structure to tame the anarchy and chaos of experience. In the end, zoos and religion are ways of making the residents of the world feel at home. If we miss the better story, we will be homeless.

Back in the story, the naïve young Pi adopts an idiosyncratic blend of religiosity—a mixture of Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism—and he then defends his pluralistic view to some skeptical adults when he disarmingly blurts out, “Bapu Gandhi said, ‘All religions are true.’ I just want to love God.” In some sense, the story of Pi’s adventure on the lifeboat makes the point that the Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida once made about religion. He compared religions to rafts floating on an endless sea. That is, religions are human creations that exist within something much more expansive and mysterious, and we must be careful not to mistake the raft for the ocean. We often take our religious symbols too seriously, mistaking them for the greater reality which they were originally intended to signify. Martel wants us to take stories seriously and recognize their power to transform us, but not too seriously that we miss the reality they are meant to open up for us.

This point becomes clear when Pi is stuck on the lifeboat. He occasionally acknowledges the fact that his earlier religious beliefs and practices have become remote and largely inconsequential. For example, he notes that the few remnants of traditional religion that persist during his ordeal are often curtailed by his weariness, despair, desolation, anger, and his understandable difficulty in continuing to love God. For the most part, the demands of physical hunger crowd out the spiritual yearnings that occupied much of the first part of the book. The journal he tries to keep—until his pens run out of ink—attempts, as he puts it, “to capture a reality that overwhelmed me,” but it turns out to be mostly full of practical stuff such as details about the weather, the pursuit of food and water, the techniques for taming a tiger in close quarters, etc. (It turns out a whistle and a turtle shell are very helpful.)

More importantly, once Pi is thrust into his adventure of physical endurance, the moral and religious boundaries that defined his previous existence gradually disappear. Although he initially experiences moral disgust as he witnesses the hyena literally eat the injured zebra alive, his revulsion at the injustice (which Richard Parker, the tiger, will soon rectify anyway) quickly passes as he observes, “When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.” This guiltless, sixteen-year-old vegetarian quickly learns to kill fish and turtles with a hatchet or even his bare hands. The first killing was difficult. Pi says, “I wept heartily over this poor little deceased soul. It was the first sentient being I had ever killed. I was now a killer. I was now as guilty as Cain. I was … a harmless boy, bookish and religious, and now I had blood on my hands.” But he later notes a simple and brutal fact: “a person can get used to anything, even to killing.” Over time, Pi observes his gradual transformation from the civilized boy who acts according to principles of human dignity to his new form of sheer animal existence. One day while eating, for example, he notes, “I ate like an animal … this noisy, frantic, unchewing wolfing-down of mine was exactly the way Richard Parker ate.” Pi becomes accustomed to killing and even drinking turtle blood, but his progressive loss of human dignity culminates when out of utter desperation he eats a bit of Richard Parker's dung. (It tasted like shit.) Much of what we think of as essential and indispensable about ourselves, when put to the test of living in extremity, turns out to be so much cognitive pith and egotistical conceit.

But I exaggerate. There is a modicum of humanity left in Pi even as the necessities of survival force him to bestiality. For example, he describes one evening at sea when a lightning storm erupted. Richard Parker, acting on well-founded instinct, cowers fearfully beneath the cover of the tarpaulin as the bolts of lightning flash and strike the sea with tremendous power. The splash from one bolt even scalds Pi’s bare skin, but he reports a fearful yet fascinated sense of awe as this transpires. “The effect on me … was something to pull me out of my limited mortal ways and thrust me into a state of exalted wonder.” It is this ability to transcend himself that reveals the religious character of Pi. Pi has what the philosopher Thomas Nagel calls the “ambition for transcendence,” the ability to “reach a conception of the world which does not put us at the center in any way.” To make this point, Pi describes his feeling of transcendence as follows: “For the first time I noticed—as I would notice repeatedly during my ordeal, between one throe of agony and the next—that my suffering was taking place in a grand setting. I saw my suffering for what it was, finite and insignificant…. My suffering did not fit anywhere, I realized. And I could accept this. It was all right.”

This ability to transcend his own finite perspective, if only momentarily, confirms what many philosophers claim to be the essential characteristic of human beings. Contrast this with an animal’s total absorption in experience, its inability to stand back from itself, to detach itself from the onrush of sensations and reactions that fill its experiential field, to reflect on itself. Pi witnesses this distinctive animal capacity in the tiger Richard Parker one day during the flying fish episode. As the fish flew out of the water and bonked hapless Pi on the head, he watched Richard Parker react fluidly to this surprise--gracefully catching and eating the fish as they suddenly hurtled through the air. “Actually, it was not so much the speed that was impressive as the pure animal confidence, the total absorption in the moment. Such a mix of ease and concentration, such a being-in-the-present….” It is funny that we might worry about animals being bored in the zoo. They cannot be bored. Boredom requires a certain detached distraction, a whistling tunelessly at the airport while repeatedly glancing at the departure times and feeling restlessly unable to concentrate on one’s book. This is the negative side of our “ambition for transcendence.” If there is a plus side, it is the way fiction can help us transcend our loveless agnostic tendencies so that we do not miss the better story.

The Great Pumpkin

2005-11-01T21:49:00.000-05:00

Vice President for Torture

2005-11-01T08:54:00.000-05:00

Giorgio Agamben couldn't make this stuff up:

VICE PRESIDENT Cheney is aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans. "Cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of prisoners is banned by an international treaty negotiated by the Reagan administration and ratified by the United States. The State Department annually issues a report criticizing other governments for violating it. Now Mr. Cheney is asking Congress to approve legal language that would allow the CIA to commit such abuses against foreign prisoners it is holding abroad. In other words, this vice president has become an open advocate of torture.

His position is not just some abstract defense of presidential power. The CIA is holding an unknown number of prisoners in secret detention centers abroad. In violation of the Geneva Conventions, it has refused to register those detainees with the International Red Cross or to allow visits by its inspectors. Its prisoners have "disappeared," like the victims of some dictatorships.

...The senators ignored Mr. Cheney's threats, and the amendment, sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), passed this month by a vote of 90 to 9. So now Mr. Cheney is trying to persuade members of a House-Senate conference committee to adopt language that would not just nullify the McCain amendment but would formally adopt cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as a legal instrument of U.S. policy.... As for Mr. Cheney: He will be remembered as the vice president who campaigned for torture.

Philosophical Humor

2005-10-30T13:21:00.000-05:00

Fog-like sensations.

And Republic Dogs.

The Logic of Evolution and the Evolution of Logic

2005-10-28T16:12:00.000-04:00

In philosophy we are finding more and more attention being paid to evolution as the principle of explanation. As I have written here, evolutionary theory is now frequently applied to many branches of philosophy. In philosophy of mind, evolutionary explanations are used to explain the development and nature of mental content and consciousness; in ethics, they are used to explain altruism, care, and responsibility; in epistemology, they are used to explain the development of doxastic practices and justificatory schemes; in aesthetics and political philosophy, they are used to explain the development and dissemination of "memes." Evolutionary theory, it seems, can be used to explain almost anything. Regardless of the explanandum, the explicans remains evolutionary theory.

As I have written about here and here, C. S. Peirce claims that “the only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature and for the uniformity in general is to suppose them results of evolution.” Part of the argument for this thesis relies on his argument against determinism. See here for that point. Given this background, I want to examine two other points to see if there is a connection between them.

The first point is a follow-up to the Peirce argument about evolutionary explanations of natural laws. It is this claim by biologist Stuart Kauffman:

Biologists tell stories. If I am right, if the biosphere is getting on with it, muddling along, exapting, creating, and destroying ways of making a living, then there is a central need to tell stories. If we cannot have all the categories that may be of relevance finitely prestated ahead of time, how else should we talk about the emergence in the biosphere or in our history—a piece of the biosphere—of new relevant categories, new functionalities, new ways of making a living?

The second point is a debate about reading Hegel’s logic in conjunction with his doctrine of historicism. This conjunction contains a tension. On the one hand, there is empirical novelty; on the other, there is logical completion. If Hegel’s historicism admits the ongoing historical development of novel events and norms, then Hegel’s aim for philosophy to achieve completion in some form of comprehensive logic seems impossible. However, Robert Pippin has argued for a kind of open Hegelianism through a revision of the logic, interpreting it to be about a process of constructing categories rather than as establishing the final categories in their completion. This reading of Hegel renders the logic as a sort of “story” which accounts for the evolutionary development of, among other things, the laws of nature. In this sense, Hegel’s logic entails an openness to the world by depending on the developments of history, and it is a “meta-logic” that places general logical constraints on what could be told as part of this story of development. As Pippin writes, “It might be that some Notion could be prompted by a recalcitrant problem in empirical research, even though such a Notion could get to be a Notion, get to be unrevisable and be thought of as constitutive, only be virtue of its ‘dialectical’ integration within our general conceptual scheme” (Hegel's Idealism, p. 259). In other words, the story of life and of the “muddling, exapting, creating, and destroying” biosphere may prompt not simply new empirical facts but also new notions which then come to be necessary and constitutive of those facts.

Scare tactics

2005-10-26T10:28:00.000-04:00

"Iraq Requires More Sacrifice: Bush" is the headline of an Australian newspaper article describing the President's recent call for more sacrifice in dealing with the war in Iraq. The article then notes this bit of specious argument against the war's detractors:

Mr Bush said arguments calling for a US withdrawal from Iraq were refuted by a simple question: whether America and other nations would be more or less safe if Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden were in control there.

Juan Cole finds this scare tactic to be misleading and downright unconscionable:

Now Bush is menacing us with Usamah Bin Laden taking over Iraq. Note that this scenario would have been utterly laughable in 2002. That is, anyone who heard that Bush thought Usamah Bin Ladin could overthrow Saddam and take over Iraq would have just fallen down laughing. Saddam would have had all the al-Qaeda people just taken out and shot. Twice. It was risible. Now, Bush has screwed up things so royally that he can even say this with a straight face. (It still is fairly ridiculous, since 80 percent of Iraqi is Shiites and Kurds who would kill Usamah on sight, and few Iraqi Sunni Arabs would want a fugitive Saudi terrorist as their leader.) It is George W. Bush's fault if this outcome is at all plausible. His policies have reduced Iraq to violent chaos, and he is the one who let Usamah escape at Tora Bora. And then he made the US military lie about it during the presidential campaign!

Quote of the Day

2005-10-26T10:23:00.000-04:00

Amos 5:24: "let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream."

Paul's Tolerance

2005-10-21T15:58:00.000-04:00

Is the apostle Paul preaching intellectual tolerance in Philippians 4:8?

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Tychism

2005-10-20T21:07:00.000-04:00

C. S. Peirce does not deny the lawfulness of nature, but he does dispute the notion that the laws of nature of "iron necessities." They should be seen as statistical regularities or, in his idealist language, habits. Such an interpretation of the facts would allow for chance--hence, his doctrine of tychism; furthermore, it would be compatible with growth and novelty.

But why is determinism mistaken? Peirce takes up three arguments for determinism and refutes each one.

1. Determinism is a postulate of scientific reasoning. Peirce says this does not make it true. "It is as if man should come to borrow money and, when asked for his security, should reply he 'postulated' the loan. To 'postulate' a proposition is no more than to hope it is true."

2. Determinism is known to be true, or at least highly probable, by the observation of nature. Against this point, Peirce argues that the "constants" of nature (e.g., the n in PV = nRT or the gravitational constant G in a = GM/r^2 or even the exponent 2 in the acceleration rate) are only elements of regularity in nature. Perhaps the 2 could be some number 2.000...001. No matter how often they are measured, such observations will never decide whether such regularity is exact and universal. In fact, as regards exactitude, all observation actually offers contrary evidence.

3. Chance is unintelligible because it demands the acceptance of arbitrary givens without disclosing "to the eye of reason the how or why of things." To this Peirce argues that determinism requires no less swallowing of arbitrary givenness in the form of "immutable and ultimate facts" for which no account can be offered. The only difference is that in this case the facts are all given up front at once--a bitter pill that can be swallowed and then forgotten only at the expense of self-delusion. In other words, what is rational about 9.8 m/s^2 rather than 9.800001 m/s^2.000001? Instead, Peirce suggests we acknowledge the immense amount of change in the universe and recognize the implications of it: "the history of states, of institutions, of language, of ideas . . . paleontology . . . changes in stellar systems. Everywhere the main fact is growth and increasing complexity." From these facts of change and growth all around us, Peirce infers that "there is probably in nature some agency by which the complexity and diversity of things can be increased; and that consequently the rule of mechanical necessity [determinism] meets in some way with interference."

It is not that any of this proves "tychism," his doctrine of chance, to be true, but as a metaphysics it avoids the dead end of basing all thought on brute facts which admit of no further explanation. By taking the universe as an evolutionary development in which habits successively emerge, Peirce imposes no automatic dead ends on his metaphysical inquiry. Everything is part of an ongoing process and can be explained as the outgrowth of an earlier stage. This all happens according to the laws of evolution, but, of course, even these laws are habits which have been forged within the process.

Shells Are Very Interesting

2005-10-20T21:05:00.000-04:00

Fafnir's Theodicy of Ignorance

2005-10-18T20:36:00.000-04:00

Fafnir has been channeling Voltaire lately. Here is a bit of Fafblog's interview with God:

GOD: God's policies work in mysterious ways, Fafnir. Maybe what mortal eyes see as a catastrophic failure is, in the greater plan of God, an incredible success!
FafBlog: Ooh, like maybe the increased terrorism will lead to increased explosions which will make us more visible from space which will attract benevolent super-aliens who will finally capture Osama bin Laden!

Important Activity

2005-10-18T15:51:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you gotta get your hands dirty.

Evolution of Law, Part 2

2005-10-18T10:40:00.000-04:00

When we last left off in this discussion of C. S. Peirce's essay "Architecture of Theories" here, we were noting that Peirce claims that "the only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature and for the uniformity in general is to suppose them results of evolution." The consequence of this view is that the laws of nature cannot be absolute (true in every instance of reality) or deterministic (based on mechanical principles). The reasons for this are: 1. purely mechanical laws presuppose an extraneous cause beyond the process; 2. law results from evolution, not the other way around; 3. mechanical laws can only explain homogeneity, not heterogeneity; and 4. mechanical laws are reversible, but growth is not.

Moving on to the next section of the essay, Peirce takes up the notion of "the law of habit" in which he deals with the laws of mental rather than physical phenomena. Whenever we find ourselves applying a rule in order to establish a connection between feelings, we are witnessing the way in which thought is governed by the law of habit. Mental action is par excellence the recognition of patterns among mental states. Peirce then claims that the tendency to generalization is the one primary and fundamental law of mental action, and it is thus the supreme law of habit. This law cannot be deterministic because "it would instantly crystallize thought and prevent all further formation of habit." A mental action can only make a feeling or mental state more likely to arise, but it cannot determine it. It is a stochastic law, i.e., it involves some measure of randomness or chance.

In discussing this point, Peirce issues an apparently odd statement given what he said earlier about physical law:

The law of habit exhibits a striking contrast to all physical laws in the character of its commands. A physical law is absolute. What it requires is an exact relation.

By contrast to this sort of absolute law, "no exact conformity is required by the mental law." How could Peirce be arguing this after just showing that physical laws are not "absolute" or deterministic (i.e., "requiring an exact relation") but products of evolution?

The solution to this question is Peirce's solution to the mind-body problem. He rejects what he calls "neutralism," which sounds like a version of parallelism: the doctrine that physical law and psychical law are independent. He also rejects materialism: the doctrine that psychical law is derivative and physical law alone is primordial. This leaves the third option of idealism: the doctrine that physical law is derivative and psychical law alone is primordial. By opting for idealism, we can reinterpret his claim above about the absolute nature of physical law to be a counterfactual claim: if physical law were primordial, it would be absolute; since it is not, it is not.

His reason for rejecting dualism is standard: two "primordials" with no logical relation. His reason for rejecting materialism is also standard: repugnance at the requirement that a mechanism could feel--"a hypothesis absolutely irreducible to reason." Thus, matter is "effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws."

Peirce concludes the essay with some observations about his notions of First, Second, and Third. To summarize, First is the conception of being or existing independent of anything else. Second is the conception of being relative to something else. Third is the conception of mediation of the first and second. He then lists some examples without explanation:

1. Psychology: First--feeling; Second--sense of reaction; Third--general conception.
2. Biology: First--arbitrary reproduction; Second--heredity; Third--selection.
3. Epistemology: First--chance; Second--law; Third--habit.
4. Metaphysics: First--mind; Second--matter; Third--evolution.

This structure, however it should be construed, provides the architectonic for knowledge.

A Blow to Academic Blogs

2005-10-11T12:10:00.000-04:00

Holy crap! Drezner was denied tenure.

Yankees Lose!

2005-10-11T10:04:00.000-04:00

While reveling in the Schadenfreude of last night's Yankee loss to the Angels, I dug up these statistics to enhance the euphoria. Enjoy.

Playoff team payrolls (league rankings):
1. New York Yankees.....$202,978,809
2. Boston Red Sox.....$126,800,160
5. Los Angeles Angels.....$96,140,560
10. St. Louis Cardinals.....$83,510,604
11. Houston Astros.....$77,453,843
12. Atlanta Braves.....$74,977,433
13. Chicago White Sox.....$74,273,478
15. San Diego Padres.....$70,503,572

Evolution of Law

2005-10-07T12:08:00.000-04:00

I once wrote the following (in a little thing called a dissertation):

How do we explain things? What is an explanation, or what counts as an explanation? When offered an explanation, by what criteria do we decide whether it is satisfactory? Is this satisfaction, if indeed any is provided, merely a matter of the psychology of the person taking up this explanation? Are there different kinds of things which then demand different kinds of explanations? Are there some things (such as “tables when you’re not there” or purposiveness in nature or consciousness itself) that are simply inexplicable or necessarily unintelligible? Does the kind of explicans depend on the kind of explicanda, and if so how is the norm prescribing that relation established? Does the world or nature make this norm binding on us by “telling” us what sort of explanatory terms and rules properly apply to the thing needing explanation? If the answer to this latter question is affirmative, does the proffered explanation then become mere redescription of the explicandum, not giving a satisfying explanation after all? But if the answer is negative (that the world or nature does not constrain the choice and deployment of explanatory terms and rules), does the explanation then become a mere matter of satisfying some arbitrary subjective demands that, though satisfied in the tautological sense of fulfilling what we determine in advance to count as fulfilling, remain upon further reflection hollow and dissatisfying? Does true or satisfying explanation then require the establishment of the basis of explanation, which means establishing the basis of the norms legislating the relations between explicanda and their explicans? Does this basis of true explanation require systematization for it to be a basis?

The answer to the last question is, yes. That is Kant's point about the need for architectonic construction of knowledge. Anything else would be haphazard and dissatisfying. In particular, when we come up with laws to explain the uniformities of nature, it is essential that the laws themselves not be inexplicable and irrational, i.e., without any reason for their special forms. Occam's razor frequently cuts away such irrationalities once they have been superseded by simpler explanations, but all that means is that explanations must have reasons which fit within the architectonic of knowledge.

Now I'm reading C. S. Peirce's essay "The Architecture of Theories," and it has me interested in his claim there that "the only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature and for the uniformity in general is to suppose them results of evolution." This is an interesting claim--that the laws of nature are the results of evolution. This would mean that laws are the product of cumulative selection processes, i.e., repeated cycles of replication involving interaction with an environment such that these processes offer explanations of the adaptations which the laws have accrued over time. See my earlier post for some background.

To see laws as the product of evolution, then, is to presuppose that they are not absolute. This allows for the aleatory which is observed in the minute discrepancies involved in any application of the laws to reality. As Peirce writes, there is always a "certain swerving of the facts from any definite formula," and this is not always and only due to the imperfections of our techniques of observation.

He goes on to claim that it would be illogical to explain evolution upon mechanical principles. First, such a claim presupposes an extraneous cause beyond the process--a first cause, if you will. Instead, we are dealing with organismic growth originating accidentally from an "infinitesimal germ." Apparently, this growth is sui generis.

Second, it would be illogical because it puts the cart before the horse. It is law that results from evolution, not evolution from mechanical law.

Third, it would be illogical because it does not address the heterogeneity of the universe. Only homogeneity can result from exact law, whereas experience shows us an abundance of arbitrary heterogeneity. In Darwinian terms, we need accidental variations with each iteration of the selection process. In another sense, Kolmogorov complexity seems to be involved here: that the complexity of information (in the form of a string) can be--and mostly is, according to Gregory Chaitin--as complex as the program which generated it. That is to say, there is much heterogeneity which cannot be captured by anything simpler than a program of equivalent "heterogeneity" or complexity.

Fourth, the conservation law amounts to the reversibility of mechanical operations; thus, growth would not be explicable by such operations. Much of emergence theory today hinges on the recognition of this point.

Peirce goes on to argue for objective idealism. Thus, he can write elsewhere, "My philosophy resuscitates Hegel, though in a strange costume." I will come back to this point in a later post, because it seems to be crucial for making the point that law evolves.

Critique of Bush's Speech

2005-10-07T10:15:00.000-04:00

President Bush gave a new speech about the war on terror yesterday, and it turned out to be the same set of mumbo-jumbo that he always says. He began with his usual tactic of misinformation: citing September 11 as connected to the war in Iraq. Juan Cole takes him to task for this and many other points of deception and confusion. For example, Cole cites this passage from the speech:

"The influence of Islamic radicalism is also magnified by helpers and enablers. They have been sheltered by authoritarian regimes, allies of convenience like Syria and Iran that share the goal of hurting America and moderate Muslim governments . . ."

And Cole then writes:

This line is the most lunatic thing in Bush's speech. It is outrageous. It is the Big Lie. Syria has a secular Baath Arab nationalist government. The regime killed 10,000 Muslim activists at Hama in 1982. It tortured al-Qaeda members for the United States after September 11. Syria, a small country of only 18 million, has no ability to harm the United States and it most certainly is not in alliance with radical Muslim fundamentalists!

As for Iran, its brand of fundamentalism is Shiite. Al-Qaeda is made up of Sunnis and Wahhabis, who despise Shiites. Iran supports the new, Shiite-dominated government in Iraq. It supported the Jan. 30 elections. It supports the new constitution and the referendum. Iran hated the Taliban and very nearly went to war against them, backing the Northern Alliance instead. The Shiite Iranians hate the radical Salafis like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has called for a war of extermination against the Shiites.

Bush's attempt to conflate the regimes he doesn't like with al-Qaeda makes nonsense of his whole vision.

Read the rest of Cole's critique. It's worth it.

Consciousness: Terra Incognita

2005-10-06T11:23:00.000-04:00

What is consciousness? Let's see what the International Dictionary of Psychology (1989) has to say:

Consciousness: The having of perception, thoughts, and feelings; awareness. The term is impossible to define except in terms that are unintelligible without a grasp of what consciousness means.

Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon: it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written about it.

That is all.

Some Thoughts on Evolutionary Theory in Philosophy

2005-09-30T10:44:00.000-04:00

In the notes below, I am glossing and commenting on a text by Bence Nanay, "The Structure and Significance of Evolutionary Explanations in Philosophy."

Evolutionary theory has become the ur-explanatory theory in many branches of philosophy. In philosophy of mind, evolutionary explanations are used to explain the development and nature of mental content and consciousness; in ethics, they are used to explain altruism, care, and responsibility; in epistemology, they are used to explain the development of doxastic practices and justificatory schemes; in aesthetics and political philosophy, they are used to explain the development and dissemination of "memes." Evolutionary theory, it seems, can be used to explain almost anything. Regardless of the explanandum, the explicans remains evolutionary theory.

What is evolutionary theory, then, apart from its explanandum? That is, what is essential to all of these explanatory patterns independent of the content which they purport to explain? The essence of evolutionary explanation is selection. The selection process can most generally be defined as repeated cycles of replication involving interaction with an environment.

We can distinguish two types of selection processes, and we will need to decide whether each is appropriate for philosophical explananda. The first type is cumulative; the second is non-cumulative. We are familiar with cumulative selection processes from biology where the explanandum is the gene pool of an organism. As organisms with a favorable trait survive and reproduce while those without it do not, the successive replications cumulatively alter the genes in the direction of those with the favorable trait. Thus, the selection process is cumulative by offering adaptation-explanations. (Note: explanation shifts from the individual level at which the adaptation is relevant, to the population-level at which the selection process is operative. For some, this is a flaw in the argument, but it seems clear, protests the contrary notwithstanding, that selection processes can and do offer the best explanation for adaptations in individuals.)

Another way to put the point is that cumulative selection processes explain why an adaptation occurred by showing its purpose. Whether "purpose" is defined as real or a primary quality "in" the adaptation or as a heuristic tool, some notion of purpose is operative in explanations involving cumulative selection. (This is complex point that Banay sidesteps altogether.) The same may not be so easily said of questions like, why is there more oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere than in Mercury's? If selection processes were at work in those cases, it would be non-cumulative because, as far as we can say, there is no evidence of an adaptation involved in that outcome.

Thus, if philosophy aims to employ evolutionary explanations to explain why such things as mental content or altruism came to be and what they are for, it will need to invoke a cumulative (not a non-cumulative) selection process.

Another point to keep in mind is that evolutionary explanations in philosophy should not be reductive. For example, if the evolutionary explanation replaces the philosophical explanandum (e.g., consciousness or doxastic practice) with a non-philosophical explicans (physics or biology), then the explanation will cease to be philosophy and will be unsatisfactory as a philosophical explanation.

Let's consider some examples. First, evolutionary psychology. According to evolutionary psychology, our mental capacities have to be analyzed with reference to the environment in which they evolved. Such a claim is common for explanations of the evolution of eyes and hands, and so it should be relevant for mental capacities as well. For example, the preference for sugar is an adaptation to the environment of the Pleistocene era, and so it would be a mistake to view it as necessarily connected to our present environment. While this mental capacity does figure centrally into philosophical debate, evolutionary psychologists also deal with many capacities that do, e.g., consciousness itself, language, and ethics. One problem with this form of explanation is that the environment in which the adaptation is purported to have occurred cannot be known directly. Instead, it must be stipulated. Thus, evolutionary psychology uses stipulated selection processes as explicans in lieu of known selection processes. (Is the distinction between stipulated and known selection processes as stark as Banay suggests? There is surely more than mere stipulation involved here.)

Next, let's consider Richard Dawkins' meme theory. A "meme," according to Dawkins, is any unit of cultural transmission. Thus, a meme can be anything from a catchy tune or flashy style of dress to the ideas of democracy or God. Some memes survive in memory, while others fade to oblivion. Using an evolutionary model to explain culture and even political philosophy, Dawkins argues that memes function like genes by competing with one another for survival in the minds of the population rather than its gene pool. One difficulty with this analogy of meme and gene is that there is no counterpart to the alleles of genes in meme theory. That is, in sexual reproduction genes compete with their alleles--the rivals for the one chromosomal slot. Memes, however, do not have such a structure with predesignated slots and binary options for filling them. While there are some relations among memes, their selection process is not strictly cumulative. It is true that the fading from collective memory of memes relating to medieval life have cumulative effects on other memes, such as the memes for feudal authority relations (e.g., phrases like "my lord" or the supplicant posture of serfs) or the chivalric code or warfare practices and weapons. In other words, losing touch with some memes may make others likely to lose their sense (place with the linguistic system) and significance (capacity to refer to the world). Still, the point is that this becomes very murky and not at all universal. The notion of competing memes cannot be defined systematically because the relations among memes are not binary or direct. Thus, meme theory is an evolutionary theory that is non-cumulative, and for this reason it fails as explanation of adaptation because it cannot say how these memes came to survive while others did not. Since the competitors of memes are not well-defined, meme theory cannot claim to show what the memes are for such that the selection process would favor them over the competitors.

Next, evolutionary epistemology. According to evolutionary epistemology, all thinking is continuous replication with blind variation and selective retention. Environmental interactions with thoughts will survive amidst the mental flux. The problem with this theory is the term "blind." The variation needs to be blind in the sense that environmental interactions do not have an impact on the next variation of thoughts. Otherwise, the process would have to be understood as directed in which case the evolutionary model would not work. However, the blindness, if granted, prevents the environmental interactions from affecting the next variation. Thus, the selection process is not cumulative. (This is just a bizarre use of evolutionary theory, as far as I can see.)

Finally, teleosemantics employs evolutionary theory to explain the intentionality of thought and language. We come to have content in our thoughts and meaning in our words by way of an evolutionary process. To put it abstractly, "a mental state R of an organism O has content X if the fact that R indicates X has contributed to the survival of the evolutionary ancestors of O." Banay notes the reductionism of this approach. Even if it is cumulative, it reduces the philosophical question of intentional content to an evolutionary history. If we cloned a person, this theory could not explain how the clone (i.e., one without such history) could be said to have mental content. (I don't know if I buy that counterargument, but the point about reductionism is correct.)

The GOP

2005-09-28T21:34:00.000-04:00

From today's Post:

Going into next year's midterm elections, the second most powerful person in the House is under indictment, and the most powerful person in the Senate, Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.), is being investigated by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors. In addition, a special prosecutor is investigating whether top White House officials may have leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to reporters.
On top of that, the White House's top procurement officer, David Safavian, was arrested last week on charges of lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with the federal government. And Abramoff, once one of Washington's top lobbyists, is being investigated for his lobbying activities on behalf of Indian tribes and his role in paying for overseas trips for DeLay. DeLay has said he didn't know Abramoff paid the expenses.

What's that phrase, "power corrupts..."?

DeLay Indicted, Steps Down as Majority Leader

2005-09-28T16:15:00.000-04:00

Some headlines are too good not to reuse, don't you think? See details from CNN here.

Brad DeLong Gets Hot Under the Collar--For Good Reason

2005-09-28T10:39:00.000-04:00

DeLong writes:

I have not yet figured out why so much of our elite press--the Crowleys, the Kakutanis, the Isikoffs, and the Kosovas--is so... what should I call it? Feckless. Corrupt (in the sense of well-rotted). Decadent. Why does William Saletan find it funny that Kerry tries hard to give nuanced, reasonably-complete answers to questions about issues with nuances? Why do Weston Kosova and Michael Isikoff cover the government--rather than, say, cover something like advances in bartending--if they find debates over policy the equivalent of crossing the Gedrosian Desert? Why does Michiko Kakutani think it pointless and boring to wake up early to watch the inauguration of the first democratically-elected president in sixteen years in a country [Nigeria] of 130 million people?

It is a mystery to me.

It is, however, one reason that we are saddled with an incompetent president like George W. Bush. As David Frum writes, it has long been clear to insiders that Bush is not a "diligent manager of the office of the presidency, [or] a close student of public policy, [or] a careful balancer of risks and benefits"--that, in short, George W. Bush is totally unqualified to be president, totally unprepared to make the decisions a president has to make. But by and large the elite press has simply not cared about the necessary qualifications to be a good president, and fears a president who is qualified to be president. For, after all, it strikes them as bizarre and weird for somebody to actually know where Lesotho is.

Housing Discrimination

2005-09-26T09:36:00.000-04:00

According to the Charlotte Observer, a new study of mortgage lending practices shows a country-wide racial bias in the industry, though it is particularly severe in the South:

Blacks who bought homes in communities across America last year were four times as likely as whites to get high interest rates for mortgage loans, according to an Observer analysis of records from 25 of the nation's largest lenders.

Even blacks with incomes above $100,000 a year were charged high rates more often than whites with incomes below $40,000.

President Bush is quoted as saying, "Prejudice and discriminatory practices in housing still exist in America. These practices are wrong." If he really believes that, he'll allow the Section 8 voucher plan for the displaced citizens from Hurricane Katrina instead of moving forward with the idea of building gigantic trailer parks for the evacuees. (There are still people--poor people--living in the trailer parks after Hurricane Charley last year because their original communities decided not to rebuild low-income housing.) The point is that these people could be integrated into existing communities with available housing. Here's a description of Section 8 (via Kevin Drum):

Fortunately, no new federal program is required to match families suddenly needing housing with an existing stock of vacant apartments. The United States government already operates a program that would enable low-income families to pay the rent for these units. The Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program currently serves about two million families throughout the country. It enables participants to occupy privately owned units renting for up to, and somewhat above, the local median rent. Enormous numbers of vacant units could be occupied immediately by families with these housing vouchers.

....To avoid delays in getting assistance to these families, the vouchers should be allocated to housing agencies on a first-come-first-served basis and any low-income family whose previous address was in the most affected areas should be deemed eligible. We should not take the time to determine the condition of the family’s previous unit before granting a voucher.

Bruce Bartlett Says What Other Republicans Won't

2005-09-25T21:31:00.000-04:00

Bruce Bartlett, who served in senior political positions in Ronald Reagan’s White House and George H.W. Bush’s Treasury Department, and as executive director of the Joint Economic Committee, a cosponsor of this hearing, spoke to Senate Democratic Policy Committee recently. Here's an excerpt (via MaxSpeak):

My principal concern, however, is not with today’s deficits—even if they are swollen by Katrina and Rita-related emergency spending. What worries me is the retirement of the baby boom, the first of which turns 62 in 2008. I’m not saying that we are close to driving off a fiscal cliff, but clearly the implications of this event have not impacted on policymakers in any way whatsoever.
I have struggled with a way to illustrate the consequences of an aging population and its effect on the budget. This is the best I have been able to do. Social Security’s unfunded liability comes to 1.2 percent of GDP in perpetuity (1.4 percent without the trust fund)—about what is raised by the corporate income tax—according to that program’s actuaries. The comparable number for Medicare is 7.1 percent of GDP—about what is raised by the individual income tax. And remember that these figures are for the unfunded portion of these programs, so they are over and above payroll taxes.

The chilling conclusion, therefore, is that virtually 100 percent of all federal taxes, on a present value basis, do nothing but pay for Social Security and Medicare. Unless there are plans to abolish the rest of the federal government, large tax increases are inevitable.

...I am often criticized by friends on my side of the aisle for implicitly endorsing tax increases. I do no such thing. I am simply adding two and two and getting four while my friends seem to think there is some way of only getting three.

...I don’t need to remind anyone here that the biggest spending increases in recent years passed Congresses with Republican majorities largely without Democratic votes. Nor do I need to remind anyone here that during the Clinton years we not only went from budget deficits to budget surpluses, but did so to a large extent by cutting spending—something my conservative friends seldom acknowledge.

Here’s the basic accounting. Defense spending fell by 1.4 percent of GDP between 1993 and 2000, and domestic discretionary spending fell from 3.8 percent to 3.3 percent. Even spending on entitlements fell for temporary demographic reasons, from 10.2 percent of GDP to 9.8 percent. Finally, interest on the debt fell, largely because of falling interest rates, from three percent of GDP to 2.3 percent. The result was an overall decline in spending of three percent of GDP, from 21.4 percent to 18.4 percent, the lowest level since 1966, before the Great Society geared up.

On the revenue side, individual income taxes rose by 2.5 percent of GDP, mainly as the result of rising incomes that pushed people up into higher tax brackets and higher capital gains taxes from the booming stock market. Corporate income taxes and payroll taxes added another 0.8 percent, for a total revenue increase of 3.3 percent of GDP. Thus lower spending and higher revenues constituted a fiscal turnaround of 6.3 percent of GDP, which explains how a deficit of 3.9 percent of GDP in 1993 became a budget surplus of 2.4 percent by 2000.

...Contrary to popular belief, I don’t think the American people are a bunch of children who only want hand-outs from the government and will only reward the party that promises them something for nothing. Experience and academic research confirm that they are more likely to support the candidate who treats the public purse with prudence and trust and not as a piggy bank to be routinely broken on a whim. In short, I think there is a political market for the party and the candidate who speaks honestly about the nature of the fiscal crisis that is looming. The payoff may not be immediate and the public trust has to be earned by more than just rhetoric. But if, as I believe, some event will eventually change the political landscape, voters will remember who spoke the truth and who mouthed the platitudes.

It’s dirty work, but someone has to do it. Since my party won’t do it, yours is going to have to. If it’s done right, your party will gain at the expense of mine and you will deserve the benefits and my party will deserve the electorate’s disdain.

Our Leader

2005-09-15T09:38:00.000-04:00

This tickled my funny-bone when I saw it this morning.

Your "Successes" Are Killing Us, Mr. Rumsfeld

2005-09-08T10:29:00.000-04:00

The usually circumspect Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan, is fed up:

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld maintains that the US government can both take care of New Orleans and pursue the "global war on terror."

Uh, Donald, let's look at this situation. First, much of New Orleans is under water. You stole money that should have been spent on its levees for the Iraq War, and you stole state national guards from Louisiana to fight in Iraq. (The state national guards hadn't signed up to fight foreign wars and were surprised when you kidnapped them, sometimes for a whole year at a time.) So you haven't actually done a good job with the effects of Katrina in New Orleans. In fact, the job has been so bad that some wags are saying they can't believe you personally were not in charge of the recovery effort.

Then let's consider the war against al-Qaeda. You may have noticed that Ayman al-Zawahiri issued a videotape late last week. It was bundled with the farewell suicide tape of Muhammad Siddique Khan, the mastermind of the 7/7 bombers in London. It now appears that your inability to capture al-Zawahiri has allowed him to intrigue with Pakistani jihadi groups to recruit British subjects to bomb their own country. Bin Laden and Zawahiri are at large and free men, which is your failure.

Then there is the war in Iraq. I don't need to tell you that that isn't going very well. In fact, what in hell are you doing in the godforsaken Turkmen city of Tal Afar? Is it really a big threat to the United States? Is it likely to be friendly to us if you drop 500 pound bombs on its residential districts?

You left out the fourth war Bush is fighting, on the US poor. The average wage of the average American work fell last quarter, amidst rising corporate profits. Bush cut billions in taxes on the rich, and then gave $300 checks to some poor people, who didn't seem to realize that by taking it they were giving up all sorts of government services and maybe even their social security payments.

So, Donald, maybe it is true that you can save New Orleans, occupy Iraq and fight a global war on terror all at the same time. But you, at least, cannot actually do these things successfully. Which is why you should have resigned a long time ago.

This Makes Me Mad

2005-09-07T10:53:00.000-04:00

Reading Josh Marshall's description of the latest White House efforts to avert responsibility for the crisis in recovery efforts in New Orleans, I went from denial to anger to despair--but mostly just anger. Marshall advises to check out this article from the Salt Lake Tribune

which tells the story of about a thousand firefighters from around the country who volunteered to serve in the Katrina devastation areas. But when they arrived in Atlanta to be shipped out to various disaster zones in the region, they found out that they were going to be used as FEMA community relations specialists. And they were to spend a day in Atlanta getting training on community relations, sexual harassment awareness, et al. This of course while life and death situations were still the order of the day along a whole stretch of the Gulf Coast.
It's an article you've really got a to read to appreciate the full measure of folly and surreality.

But the graf at the end of the piece really puts everything in perspective, and gives some sense what the Bush administration really has in mind when it talks about a crisis. The paper reports that one team finally was sent to the region ...

As specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

You can't make this stuff up.

The Larger Shame

2005-09-06T11:24:00.000-04:00

Nicholas Kristof reminds us of the "larger shame" taking place in our country:

The wretchedness coming across our television screens from Louisiana has illuminated the way children sometimes pay with their lives, even in America, for being born to poor families.

It has also underscored the Bush administration's ongoing reluctance or ineptitude in helping the poorest Americans.

...But Hurricane Katrina also underscores a much larger problem: the growing number of Americans trapped in a never-ending cyclone of poverty.

...The U.S. Census Bureau reported a few days ago that the poverty rate rose again last year, with 1.1 million more Americans living in poverty in 2004 than a year earlier. After declining sharply under Bill Clinton, the number of poor people has now risen 17 percent under Mr. Bush.

...The national infant mortality rate has risen under Mr. Bush for the first time since 1958. The U.S. ranks 43rd in the world in infant mortality, according to the C.I.A.'s World Factbook; if we could reach the level of Singapore, ranked No. 1, we would save 18,900 children's lives each year.

So in some ways the poor children evacuated from New Orleans are the lucky ones because they may now get checkups and vaccinations. But nationally, 29 percent of children had no health insurance at some point in the last 12 months, and many get neither checkups nor vaccinations. The U.S. ranks 84th in the world for measles immunizations and 89th for polio.

...the U.S. - particularly under the Bush administration - has systematically cut people out of the social fabric by redistributing wealth from the most vulnerable Americans to the most affluent.
It's not just that funds may have gone to Iraq rather than to the levees in New Orleans; it's also that money went to tax cuts for the wealthiest rather than vaccinations for children.

Ivan to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov:

Tell me yourself, I challenge you--answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature--that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance--and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth.

FEMA's Decline

2005-09-01T09:04:00.000-04:00

This is disturbing (from Kevin Drum):

FEMA THEN AND NOW....So what does James Lee Witt, former director of FEMA in the 90s, think of his agency's response to Hurricane Katrina?
In the 1990s, in planning for a New Orleans nightmare scenario, the federal government figured it would pre-deploy nearby ships with pumps to remove water from the below-sea-level city and have hospital ships nearby, said James Lee Witt, who was FEMA director under President Clinton.

Federal officials said a hospital ship would leave from Baltimore on Friday.

"These things need to be planned and prepared for; it just doesn't look like it was," said Witt, a former Arkansas disaster chief who won bipartisan praise on Capitol Hill during his tenure.
Read the rest of the story for a blow-by-blow indictment of the weak federal response to Katrina. FEMA just isn't what it used to be.

UPDATE: Here's a story on Bush's mismanagement of FEMA that ran in the Independent Weekly last September:
Among emergency specialists, "mitigation" — the measures taken in advance to minimize the damage caused by natural disasters — is a crucial part of the strategy to save lives and cut recovery costs.
But since 2001, key federal disaster mitigation programs, developed over many years, have been slashed and tossed aside. FEMA's Project Impact, a model mitigation program created by the Clinton administration, has been canceled outright.

....[In 2001], President Bush appointed a close aide, Joe Allbaugh, to be the agency's new director....The White House quickly launched a government-wide effort to privatize public services, including key elements of disaster management. Bush's first budget director, Mitch Daniels, spelled out the philosophy in remarks at an April 2001 conference: "The general idea — that the business of government is not to provide services, but to make sure that they are provided — seems self-evident to me," he said.

In a May 15, 2001, appearance before a Senate appropriations subcommittee, Allbaugh signaled that the new, stripped-down approach would be applied at FEMA as well. "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective state and local risk management," he said. "Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level."
...Read the whole thing to get a sickening sense of the disastrous effect that the Bush administration's glorification of conservative ideology over managerial competence has had on FEMA's workforce, its morale, and its ability to get things done.

This Is Not a Permanent Base

2005-08-29T21:14:00.000-04:00

If you've been wondering what we should do about the apparently permanent military bases which we are constructing in Iraq and which are causing so much unrest among Iraqis, Fafnir has the answer:

Should we keep permanent bases in Iraq or should we leave the area completely? Why not do both! The compromise: keep our permanent bases, but put up great big pieces a cardboard around em with paintings of permanent bases on em. Then paint signs on the paintings of the permanent bases that say "Ceci n'est pas une permanent base." That way when Iraqis wander by they'll just take our militarization of their country as a whimsical statement on the elusive nature of representation.