Ciceronian Review

Canned

David Brooks' column in the NYT today elicited some nostalgia during the morning espressos.  The column is a thumbnail history of economics as a science or discipline.  The early years of struggle to found a science, phase two investigation of the mathematics of the rational agent in a market, and so on to the new 'behaviorist economics' and the future of economics as art.  Nostalgia because so much of the development he sketched as new, at the edge, etc., isn't.  All the problems of rational agents and the import of psychology and sociology on economics was the subject of extensive discussion and exploration back in the long dead days of 1980's, at least in graduate philosophy programs addressing political theory.  (And, by the by, Tversky is not an economist - his work is psychology.)  From which one might draw inferences about the superiority, etc., but I wouldn't.  I think the interesting aspect is that the work done in the philosophy departments never filtered out, or did so only decades later.  Another aspect of the silo effect is the paucity of attention paid in philosophy departments to either the Milgram experiments or the Stanford prison experiment.  One would think those studies tremendously important for moral psychology and for virtue theories.  Mostly, however, that work was ignored.  (John Dorris' Lack of Character, after all has only been out about 5 years.)  A lot of ideal theory, not so labeled, and no much consideration of how people live -- duty under despotism, that is what we need more of.

Watch the Pulpit?

I've been reading Freedom From Religion, and recently spent a little time talking with the author about the book.  The basic version of the book is argument for the conclusion that it is appropriate for police agencies to monitor speech in religious contexts where there is reason to think the religious speech may incite crime.  In other words, urging murder and mayhem is subject to surveillance whether or not in a house of worship.  The book is selling well, and the reviews suggest that it is highly controversial.  It is nicely written and a relatively smooth and fact read, but I missed the highly controversial part.  I am not much of a fan of state surveillance of speech to start with, but I still don't see why the suggestions are particularly troubling.  Limiting the discussion to the United States, I learned that there is some hesitancy on the part of the FBI and other agencies to involve themselves in monitoring speech in houses of worship.  This surprises me.  As I recall the trials connected with the Sanctuary movement in the 1980's the FBI and others had no qualms about infiltrating religious organizations or attending (undercover) meetings in religious houses.  (Sanctuary was about aiding refugees from the wars in Central America.)  Or, following the invasion of Iraq, the FBI seemed to have no qualms about infiltrating and monitoring Quaker anti-war groups, meeting in houses of worship.  I suppose there has been some great change in the climate, or is it just a facade?  Setting aside the historical issues, I don't see why religious speech should be treated with more care than political speech.  What sort of argument is there for such a difference in treatment?  Is there something special about what happens in a house of worship?  The Supreme Court suggested not in the Smith case, in which a worshiper was fired for full participation (eating peyote).  Is it some sort of slippery slope theory -- if the police start monitoring some church talk, then soon enough there will be pressure forcing the police to watch the folks in the christian churches?  If someone is talking about killing other people, whether because apostates or because they provide abortions, that is just the sort of talk that deserves monitoring. 

Guns and Belief

I read a little paper by Leiter on whether religious freedom is based on tolerance or respect.  In the course of things, more as an aside I think, he talks briefly about beliefs being based on reasons and evidence, not caused by threats.  (There is a serious emendation shortly after that focuses on advertising and related propaganda).  It is a common enough statement, but I do not think it is right.  I think threats are a good way to bring about changes in beliefs -- whether guns of otherwise, most people seem to go with the views of the guys with guns when they have guns.  One of the things we can discern from the essays coming the now oldish Red Guard participants is the degree to which an atmosphere of violence alters beliefs.  I do not mean feigned belief to stay out of trouble, but just ordinary belief.  I would like to think that my beliefs all run down to reason and evidence, but that is not true.  Not just that none of us ever could, but that there is much that is just the result of habit, common talk, etc.  We all want to be heroes when that challenge comes, but not so many are obviously, and that means, in part, that people change what they believe because it is safer to do so.  That is not what Leiter was interested in -- he was interested in whether we should take a stance of respect for religion or a stance of tolerance.  Hard to quarrel with the conclusion that is tolerance, at least if reason and evidence count.

No Good Letter

The continuing fights over California Proposition 8 have moved to the California Supreme Court.  Along with the briefing, we now get letter campaigns.  There are campaigns to get people to write to the California Supreme Court, urging it to strike or uphold the Proposition.  As a tool to motivate and involve, I think the campaigns have a point.  Rally and rile the troops, keep money flowing, and so on.  As a practical strategy, i.e., a strategy to affect the outcome of the Court's decision, it seems a very poor idea.  Poor in several senses.  First of all, it will not affect the decision-making.  The Court knows enough to ensure that all the various letters go elsewhere, are read by no one, at least not while the case is pending.  I find it hard to think of a reason why the letters would ever be read by anyone.  I would send them all right to the shredder.  Second, it is a bad idea because it is entirely inconsistent with what judging and law is about.  California had one election, run properly.  Why hold a second election, done in a completely unreliable way?  Third, it is still a bad idea.  Here in Zion, people do write to judges.  In fact, recently had the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee write to a judge about a matter pending before the judge; on behalf of the Senator's friend.  Not much difference here.  Fourth, these kinds of campaigns do nothing for politics or for judicial integrity.  So, there you have it.  Sanctimony for the day.  Well, something has to keep us warm in Zion.

Stump Thinking

I wonder what Hamas' plan is.  The fight with Israel is not one Hamas can win, not even by stalemate.  Its rockets are too inaccurate and small and infrequent to constitute a military danger.  They harass civilians, but cause very little injury or death (12 deaths in a year is not all that serious).  The rocket attacks are not going to drive Israelis out of the area near the border, and do nothing at all of military value.  So the point must lie elsewhere.  One might think that it is symbolic resistance.  As symbol, the attacks also seem ineffective.  Compare to IRA or ETA or ANC attacks.  In part, Hamas lacks the symbolic impact because it is not in Israel, and, I think, maybe because it is using rockets.  (I am not cure about the last -- there is something else that is ineffective as symbolic about what Hamas has been up to.)  The attacks seem designed, or at least better designed, to push Israel into attacking Gaza.  And that seems a foolish aim ultimately.  There is gain to Hamas when Israel attacks.  I don't see reason to think Gazans would be much different than others when it comes to being under attack.  During the attack, people rally round the flag.  (We don't expect Israelis to give up and run from the borders because of Hamas rocket attacks -- isn't the psychology pretty much the same?)  And with high levels of destruction of the infrastructure attributable to the invaders, it seems unlikely that post-war there will be a serious shift away from Hamas.  Anyway, it is unlikely that anyone in opposition would be in a position to do very much.  Weapons would be even more concentrated with Hamas, those who could exit likely would have (and they are the ones most likely I think to be the opposition).  At least, over the foreseeable short future, then, Hamas gets to consolidate rule, but over an increasingly impoverished place.  Maybe there are ideological rewards.  It is a religious movement and they frequently are driven by completely idiotic ideas.  What is clear is that the rocket attacks don't move Gaza closer to a state, and do not move anyone closer to either two state or one state solutions.  They don't make Palestine any more likely.  Seems like a diversion.  And completely without justification.  So immoral, even setting aside the culpability from using indiscriminate weapons aimed at nothing in particular.  Fails as guerrilla war or liberation.  

Good For Me

I recently read a short article in Good Magazine about education that was a nice example of this theory.  (Good is an odd magazine.  The subscription price goes to charity (you get to choose among a reasonably large list).  It is mix of trendy graphics and culture stuff with pieces on various ways of doing good in the world.  Heavily supported by advertising.  Nothing long in the magazine -- closer to Newsweek or Time than Atlantic.  Interviews with folks succeeding in altering the world, and so on.)  The article was not long, but the full page essay came to this:  Denmark spends much more of its budget on education than does the US.  (The comparison numbers are a little murky - not clear if the author was comparing total government expenditures on both sides, or national against national or what.  Does not matter much here, however.)  Author's child has learning disability.  The child is out of the public schools and into private education, at $40,000 a year in tuition.  The state should pay that tuition.  And educational support for learning disabled children of the poor does not really work.  It is for the middle and upper classes.  Oh yes, and as to author's kid, the state should pay for his private education.   

Which struck me as not quite an argument for the good.  Perhaps an argument for give me.  Reminded me of the law professor at my school who was quite strong in supporting gay rights, and had been since his daughter came out of the closet.  Or, for a more current example, Ian Ayres' deep commitment to making sure his sister has every chance to be happy.  She will be happy when she gets to marry her girlfriend.  So right and good, but here neither a matter of will or consequence.  More like right and good for me and mine.  Curious argument structure.  Why is it that I should pay even more to subsidize somebody else's family?  Why should I care about whether Ayres' sister is happy or sad?  Why her, or Good author's kid, rather than my dog?  Is there some theory about how my relations deserve greater care than anyone else, or is the family connection just advertising swamping the argument? 

Maybe Hume is right.

Clever thinking at the magazine -- the website is www.good.is

By way of further digression, it does illuminate how the No of Prop. 8 campaign should be running -- put forward people talking about their families. 

Just So

van Inwagen's discussion of the problems of evil does not end as well as it began, but still worth having read.  I think the heart of the argument against atheism is at 85-87.  There are interesting preliminaries, discussed in earlier posts, and some following material raises a question or two, but the real argument stops after about 90.  The central part of the argument is all about free will -- the (on the surface) very odd views about omniscience and omnipotence come about in the discussion of free will.  (God knows everything but does not know what choice an agent with free will will make, or, as van Inwagen prefers it, does not have a belief about what that agent will do.  That solution strikes me as no help and even weirder - what does the step from knowledge to belief possibly do, and how could God have beliefs which are not knowledge if God is omniscient?  Does the free agent, in every sense a lesser bing, then actually create part of the universe?  How could that be, and how could it be that God does not know already what the choice will be as God is not time-bound?  Anyway...)

Here is the center of the free will argument, as I see it, from van Inwagen:
For all we know, it could be that God guided evolution on the planet up to a point a few hundred thousand years ago when He elevated some small group of primates and miraculously gave them rationality, i.e., language, abstract thought, disinterested love, and free will.  And God took these fellows into a union with Him, the folk living in perfect harmony with one another, and had preternatural powers -- to tame beasts with a look, avoid injury ot themselves, avoid disease and natural disasters, etc.  So no evil in the world.  Nevertheless, somehow, they chose to end this arrangement and separated from God.  And so evil in the world.

This is possible for all we know, he says.  Really?  If it is, then, for all we know there used to be fairies and magicians, as the fossil record does not preclude such things.  Dragons too, if a bit on the rare side.  For all we know, which is ultimately the standard van Inwagen is using, turns out a very low hurdle.  It seems to mean that the story is not completely and directly barred by the evidence at hand.  Which would mean here that we had something like a fossil record accounting for the development of language and abstract thought, etc.  So, you get the story. 

I had hoped for better.  Better is to be found, I suspect. 

On the other hand (two being so convenient), the book is clearly written, moves along well, and the arguments are transparent. 

More Will Without Charge

Back to Problem of Evil.  So, in answer to the global point that the world has plenty of evil in it, van Inwagen tells us that free will is an answer and explanation.  Evil comes into the world through free will, or the choices made under free will.  The good of free will is a great good, so we are told.  I suppose it might be.  Van Inwagen does not explain how free will is a great good, he just says it is.  One would think that if free will is a great good and great enough to offset or overweigh some or all evil in the world, there would be some explanation of how free will is so good, and an explanation of some sort explaining how it is that free will being good outweighs evil of any kind.  (I am not sure that the sides need be commensurate, but still there has to be something to say about the balancing.)  The question is how could free will outweigh evil, either in the sense that it overbalances evil, as it were, or in the sense that it looks a might close to consequentialism of a sort. 

If free will is a good that outweighs evil, what is the measure, what is the balancing?  It is not at all obvious that it possible to say anything useful or intelligent on this point.  What is it about free will that is so good?  Which is to ask what is the good there at all.  I suppose one might wave at Kant (or the like).  He thought a good will was the only unconditional good - a view that is both creepy and wrong.  (Look, what sense is there to a good will standing alone?  What is the sense of talking about will, unembodied, having any kind of value?  There just is not any way in which a person could will good without willing something in particular in the particulars of the world, and that, sad to say, is not at all what Kant had in mind.  Of course, as he was a solipsist, there isn't any world for him anyway and the whole ethics is in a pail.  Digressing.) 

On the other side, doesn't the argument make God into a consequentialist?  Otherwise, what is the point of the great good of free will, and the necessity of imbuing some with it?  If free will is to do work in the argument, then it must not be in the mystery cloud but a set of concepts we little ant fellows can grasp and make use of.  Which ties the two sides together -- how does it balance and what is it that is being balanced. 

For myself I do not really understand what van Inwagen has in mind with the talk of free will.  I do not see how it gets into the causal chains without getting into the causal chains, which he tells us it does not.  Maybe I should get his book on free will -- I doubt very much it will solve these problems for me, but maybe I will have a better sense of what he is trying to do.   

Next, return to the standard of success in this work for the theist. 

Power and Good

I have started on van Inwagen's The Problem of Evil.  Lecture 2 (the book is based on his Gifford Lectures) is about the meaning of God.  van Inwagen is interested in the traditional Abrahamic God of Jews, Christians and Muslims.  Two of the properties of this God are omnipotence and good.  What omnipotence means is pretty hard sorting, which is not going to be done in this book.  God can do anything possible means such stuff as he can lie, which seems an odd ting to say.  I am fine with that decision, as it is certainly a book in itself trying to describe and sort the notions of possibility necessary to make sense of the claim.  God is also good, that is, morally perfect.  That is also weird.  It is weird because it seems to mean that God does and can do only good.  But certainly the world is not under that description.  Van Inwagen tells us that

Suppose, for example, that a human being inflicts pain on others--without consulting them--to produce what is, in his judgment, a greater good.  Many of us would regard this as morally wrong, even if the person happens ot be right about the longterm consequences of the pain he inflicts.  Let us suppose that judgment is correct.  My point is that it does not follow from the correctness of this judgment that it would be wrong of God to inflict pain on human beings -- or angels or beasts-- to produce some greater good.

Is it that the wrongness depends on some property of the actor?  That is very odd thing for a theist of his sort to say I think.  It cannot be that A is good because done by God.  That makes the property of moral perfection vacuous.  Moral assessment must be tied to something about the conduct or the effects.  Why then would it matter who did the act?  Surely it is not like some institutional authorization (that leads to A is good because God did it or says so, which cannot be, at least not in this context).  So it looks like it is a claim to the effect that there is (at least) one morality or good for folk like us and a different morality or good for other things.  God is under a different set of rules, so to speak.  That won't work either.  There is no sense to the claim that God is morally perfect but we have no idea what morality he is perfect in.  If it is not the morality we work under, then the property of moral perfection is useless.  It really is like saying God is not subject to morality.  I suppose van Inwagen is saying that there is no formal entailment from the claim that state of affairs or conduct A is immoral for human beings to A is immoral with respect to God.  Maybe.  Why is that any help?  If the entailment conditions are tight, one can get the same result by changing the person involved, and there is no God part at all.  If the entailment is weak enough to do some work in this world, it seems to be a commitment to the view that morality is different for different kinds of things.  That is a view that would seem to be very difficult to square up with theological context.

So it is a fun book so far.

Embargo Again

An arms embargo has been announced against Zimbabwe, and yesterday the German government asked Zimbabwe’s supplier of paper for money to stop shipments.  Monetary sanctions against leading members of government have been announced by the United States, and the United States is urging UN action against Zimbabwe.  (On Africa, Bush policies have been reasonable on the whole, even laudable.)  Zimbabwe is one of a class of problems – an example of a class of problems – in politics.  Mugabe and his government are illegitimate, their rule disastrous for the country on almost every scale.  (There are weird stand-outs – literacy seems to have continued to rise.)  Pretty much wrecked the place, and it was once for a while an alluring place.  But the problem:  what to do?  How to bring about a better and reasonable state of affairs there?  I think the embargo on arms is good thing.  Certainly doing what is possible to limit the force available to the state will be for the better, at least marginally.  (Maybe only marginally – consider Myanmar.)  It is also quite clear that arms embargo alone will not lead to any change in government.  Even with no change, absent large scale intervention (a la Angola or Nicaragua), there will be neither change nor an effective insurgency.  And I very much doubt n insurgency would be to the good.  Such wars are almost always long and extremely bloody and destructive.  So something else – other and additional embargoes or sanctions.  The place where it gets hard to commit to a course as likely to have positive effect. 

 

Large scale economic sanctions do not seem to have an impressive record.  Seem to have because I am just going on recollection and not any recent research.  Maybe they do work.  But some examples.  Iraq, before the invasion, was long under UN sanctions.  Did not seem to move the state at all, nor have sanctions been much noticed as altering the policies of Iran.  There are other similar examples.  But what changed in South Africa?  Was it all internal?  Isolation seems not to have moved Cuba, and engagement does seem to have some correlation with change in Russia and China.  I wonder how much, though, and how it worked (if it did).