Rational Philosophy

A Princeton Professor of Philosophy writes this week about a trend toward philosophical experimentation and away from a field of pure thought. He gives an example of the kind of experiment being performed. The philosopher devises two questions and puts them to a group of people, then tallies the results:

Question #1:

A company chairman has to decide whether to adopt a new program that would increase profits and help the environment too. “I don’t care at all about helping the environment,” the chairman says. “I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let’s start the new program.” Did the chairman intend to help the environment?

Question #2:

The chairman must decide on a new program, but the program would harm the environment. The chairman, who still couldn’t care less about the environment, authorizes the program in order to get those profits. As expected, the bottom line goes up, the environment goes down. Did the chairman harm the environment intentionally?

(In one survey, 23 percent of people said that the chairman in the first situation had intentionally helped the environment, 82 percent thought that the chairman in the second situation had intentionally harmed the environment.)

Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah, the author of the piece, supports the perspective that such studies can shed light on philosophical study, but points to the complex and subjective matter of interpreting the results, and the ultimate need for traditional armchair thinking to surface any new philosophical insight.

But, to me at least, this seems to be a matter of one of those divisions in a field where philosophy should fall back to give way to a new field of scientific study. This is not experimental philosophy, it is experimental psychology mixed up with the study of language.

This kind of study doesn’t ask people to analyze the situations objectively, which would give us some meager insight into common objective analysis, it merely asks them to give a subjective response. When Socrates posed questions to his fellow Greeks, he didn’t use their answers to tally up some new philosophical insights, he used them to show how most people didn’t have a clue how to objectively interpret the world around them. Philosophy is neither a matter of statistics nor subjective perspective.

And finally a long overdue and eminently cogent report on the illusory impact of race on intelligence. Richard Nisbett in the NY Times draws together a broad and well-informed knowledge of the various studies on racial differences, both those flawed and those not flawed, to show that the likes of James Watson, and Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (authors of The Bell Curve) are full of crap. That was the conclusion I would have drawn in the absence of such information, but it’s good to see it in print.

I’m puzzled though by why such a keen rebuttal took so long to appear. When Watson made his remarks earlier this year, the general consensus seemed to be that he was either bigoted or off his rocker or both. But people rebuked him with opinion rather than information, which seemed at the time and has seemed since almost a cover up for a concealed bigotry — as if people were thinking to themselves, it’s terrible that he said that, but what if he’s right?

Which makes me think that freedom of speech is a wonderful thing, because it allows people like Watson to say inflammatory things and for people like Richard Nisbett to set matters straight. It’s the advice we give our children in school — if you have something to say, speak up, because you can bet that there are several other kids thinking the same thing but saying nothing.

To satisfy the political machine in the name of their popularity, presidents are called upon to perform many functions, attend many events, make many speeches. President George Bush today recognized Hanukkah and evoked the memory of Daniel Pearl. Would Daniel Pearl have welcomed the honoring?

Bush quoted some of Pearl’s last words, “‘My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish, and I’m Jewish.”’ Then he said, ”These words have become a source of inspiration for Americans of all faiths. They show the courage of a man who refused to bow before terror — and the strength of a spirit that could not be broken.” Bush juxtaposes two ideas in order to connect them: The idea of faith and the idea of refusal to bow to terror. But given Pearl’s journalistic profession and his choice of pursuing it as he did in such dangerous places, would it perhaps not be more compelling to say that Pearl’s was less an inspiration of faith than of truth?

Mike Huckabee, an unexpected front-runner for the GOP candidacy, might be too easy a target, but his disarming lack of remorse in the face of his faults could win him supporters. Huckabee has refused to retract his idea, as it was voiced in 1992, that AIDS patients should be isolated. His justification for not retracting the statement? He believes it was an appropriate degree of caution at the time. He also continues to stand by his statements that homosexuality is aberrant, unnatural and sinful. Sinful because it “misses the mark.” (I doubt that a homosexual would agree!) And unnatural because it doesn’t meet the ideal of one man, one woman in a pro-life marriage under god. His justification for this being the ideal? The perpetuation of civilization.

Clearly not a man of science, Huckabee’s claim that homosexuality is aberrant or unnatural is easily refuted by well-documented studies showing that homosexuality appears in many species. And on the matter of his fear about the end of civilization, there’s ample evidence that civilization has done very nicely thank you over many millions of years, undeterred by Huckabees concept of a God insisting on one man, one woman, pro-life. But we’re still left with his position of authority as a former Baptist minister on the question of sin. As Huckabee says, we’ve all missed the mark, we’ve all sinned. In which case I expect we should wait for Huckabee’s future installments of what constitutes missing the mark so that nobody feels left out…

Back to Bush.

Also today, in the same NY Times piece, we read that, despite his record, Bush marked International Human Rights Day. I wonder whether he suspended torture of American detainees for the day, too, as a sign of his profound respect?

I didn’t post yesterday as I have pneumonia. I’ll try a quick post today because I’m feeling a little better, and because Mitt Romney’s speech on faith has me alarmed.

I highly recommend The NY Times editorial, Crisis of Faith, bravo. Of several pieces I’ve read it is the only one I’ve found that focuses on the distressing fact that Romney chose to make the speech in the first place. The rest seem to take it for granted that this kind of focus on religion is par for the course in a political race in America in 2007.

David Brooks, for instance, laments that Romney succeeded only in blurring the distinctions between faiths until one’s choice of religion may as well be a matter of picking “the one with the prettiest buildings?” I may be wrong, but Brooks seems almost offended that Romney didn’t rank religions by their degree of goodness.

As reported by CNN, Bill Bennett and Roland Martin debated the effectiveness of Romney’s speech; did it succeed in its political objectives. I can see how such inquiry can be of a certain amount of interest or even fascination, but if this is the primary level on which we judge such an event, surely there is a bigger problem.

As the Times editorial points out, Article VI of the Constitution states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” And yet this is exactly what is happening in politics today. Romney succumbed to pressure to take such a test. Other candidates are doing the same thing. The general media implicitly or explictly supports or condones such tests in all manner of ways ranging from allowing an explicitly religious test to be posed as a question in a debate, to focusing political commentary on the content or success of a candidate’s religious posturing rather than questioning why the candidate is posturing.

If you have the stomach for it, you can listen to Romney’s speech or read a transcript via NPR.

Everything that’s wrong about Romney’s speech is contained within it. He equates freedom with religion, for instance, and states that freedom is given by God, the Creator. He refers sarcastically to ‘enlightenment’ in Europe as if it is intrinsically a bad thing. He tries to concretize a definition of America as a religious nation.

The phenomenon of religious sway in America and the stranglehold it has on so many matters of national importance can be tied, I think, to a culture of isolationism and fear. America has yet to accomplish freedom from religion because too many of those with influence, in society and in government, fear the ramifications of such freedom and believe that America is right in clinging to the notion that God somehow looks down with favor on it.

Then is this freedom? Hasn’t religion now become a constraint?

Religion is humankind’s way of trying to conceive of where we came from. Religious faith is humankind’s way of holding on to an idea of where we came from in the face of obstacles to that idea.

Religion began as a natural and imaginative way for people to explain certain things that seemed inexplicable. The earliest religions focused on things such as the heavenly bodies (one could say that worshipping the sun comes closer to revering the source of life than any other religion!) or the spirits of the earth. As our scientific understanding of the world improved the basis for religious understanding receded ever further from the realm of everyday life, into something quite nebulous and remote.

This is the philosophical aspect to the piece: Religion cannot be supported logically or rationally. There are those who would rebutt that neither can atheism or agnosticism. I would beg that there is a difference. If we take as a ground for our awareness of our existence the input of our senses, we can build up a picture of the world as we perceive it from entirely logical and rational principles without ever calling upon the need for a god or creator. I cannot prove that there is no god, but I can demonstrate, logically and rationally, to my own satisfaction that my place in the world and the way the world works (even the way religions function) can be understood without calling upon some divine creator.

I’m alarmed by Romney’s speech because this culture of religion and its clamor will hold America back, and will continue to cause harm in the world in the name of good. As long as America defines itself as a religious nation, it will continue to spawn and support crusades, both here at home and abroad. It will further isolate America from the rest of the world. And it will perpetuate the religious moralizing that prevents politicians from making perfectly sound decisions because they’re afraid to stand up to the zealots in the community.

(Or Reading, Writing and Ramifications…)

“The Fall” by Albert Camus was the first book of literature I read by choice. (Before that I think I’d read mostly books from Ian Flemming’s James Bond series,
Agatha Christie’s detective series, science fiction, and the like). “The Fall” opened up for me a whole new world of reading. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it also opened up a whole new world of thinking.

A new study has shown that the flu is more common in the winter because the virus remains more stable and lives longer in cold dry weather. The debate about why the flu was more common in winter had raged for decades. The researcher’s clue to testing the flu’s communicability under controled conditions (more explicitly, what animal to test on — Guinea Pigs) came from reading a report from 1919 about a flu pandemic in New Mexico. (The author of the report noted in passing that Guinea Pigs at Camp Cody had succumbed to the flu.)

And in a New Orlean’s court case today, where the defendants may be asked to present their genitals for review in order to help prosecute a rape case, Defense attorney Robert Jenkins made the comment “I’ve never seen it before. Even in fiction, you don’t see this kind of stuff.” Which, when you think about things you do see in fictionalized court cases, is a statement as bold as the prosecutor’s request.

My wife, a lover of purchasing books if not always reading them, has set herself the challenge of reading ten books while she’s pregnant. When she asked me if I had any suggestions Camus’ “The Fall” was right up there. It’s a short book and she’s about half way through. Last night she felt so affected by what she was reading that she paused and read out loud a passage in which the narrator recalls a traffic incident in Paris. Stopped at a traffic light behind a stalled moped the narrator, who saw himself as the victim of events, ended up being seen by everyone around him as the villain. I don’t remember enough of the book to summarize its themes and aims, but my wife has been struck by the way that Camus exposes the layers of psychology that enwrap our everyday lives: Why do we try to be nice and good? Do we have an ulterior motive? Is that our only motive? How do we know? What makes up a person, his actions or his thoughts?

Camus, Faulkner, Thomas Bernhard, Robert Graves, Gunter Grass, James Joyce, Proust and so many other great writers wrote fiction that provokes inquiry and thought about the nature of the human condition and, in many ways, the nature of existence. Reading such texts communicates this process. We don’t need to agree with the writer’s perspective, and rarely is the writer’s perspective explicitly declared or even implicitly declared, but it is difficult to read the books of such writers without pausing to reflect. And it is difficult to reflect without acquiring some new insight.

The flu researcher makes his own case for writing down points of interest that may seem incidental at the time (such as Guinea Pigs with flu), but that can open up whole new realms of insight for readers in a dim, distant and indeterminate future. “Sometimes it pays to read the old literature,” says Dr. Palese, who made the discovery.

And the Defense attorney in the New Orleans court, unwittingly I think, points to the value of fiction as a way of expanding the realm of the possible. Fiction has been instrumental in changing what’s acceptable, possible, and conceivable. That the Prosecutor in the case has outdone fiction is a credit to his imagination if not his legal prowess.

All of which makes me want to go and read.

But before I do, I must stop to consider the flip side of this literatic love-fest. Even the best of texts can be misunderstood and misused. And the worst of texts can be downright dangerous in the wrong hands. The intent of the writer and the perspective and persuasion of the reader will determine whether a particular text generates more good than ill.

And what’s considered a dangerous book by one generation may be lauded as a groundbreaking work of innovation and courage by the next. (James Joyce’s Ulysses springs to mind; although it may not be the best example unless the sample group happens to be students of modern literature.)

Can we say then whether the overall value of literature and writing is in general positive, negative or neutral?

(This reminds me of a discussion I had earlier this year with someone who questioned, since truth and scientific understanding is not absolute, whether we can say that science has made progress.)

The question, in practice, is clearly unanswerable. Even if we were to agree on definitions for positive and negative, how would we compile a quantitative inventory of all of the positive and negative influences of things written and read?

Which reminds me that things written, while they should stir and prompt our own thinking, should not replace our own thinking. Whatever dangers exist in things written don’t derive from the writing itself, however inciteful and twisted, but from our being influenced by them without sufficient reflection and questioning. Just because we read Justine doesn’t mean that we’ll become amoral. Although if we swallow de Sade’s words without reflection, we may well come away worse off than when we arrived. But surely that would be our fault, not de Sade’s?
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(24 little hours…)

Kevin Rudd, just sworn in as Australia’s new prime minister, wasted no time in further isolating the United States position on global warming and the Kyoto agreement, reversing in the space of one day twelve years of steadfast opposition to Kyoto by his conservative predecessor John Howard.

Yesterday a National Intelligence Estimate (who coined that marvellous name?) tentatively declared that Iran’s nuclear weapons program (if it had one) was brought to a halt in 2003, immediately creating a new set of political parameters for the election year.  The looming hawk of military action against Iran seemed to have been suddenly caught in a downdraft.

Apart from being good news for the world in general, I’m not yet sure who this favors politically. The Democrats seem to be the winners initially, by being able to point to the administration’s overzealousness. But in the longer run, it may favor the Repulblican candidates since they won’t get drawn in to making unpopular commitments to counter the threat in Iran with force as we did in Iraq.

And the vote that upset Hugo Chavez’s plans for a socialist Venezuela led by himself for an indefinite period of time (the Castro-model) surely shifted Venezuela’s political and social course in ways almost too dramatic to imagine. The referendum was, officially at least, quite close — 49% for, 51% against. If the numbers had come out just a little more in favor, the course toward a socialist dictatorship would have been set.

With such large scale political shifts the world itself becomes a different place from one day to the next. But if we think about our own lives, we too can experience dramatic shifts from one day to the next.

My wife commented recently that the concept that everyone else has a life and experience as rich as one’s own, as important to them as our own life is to us, is a continuously amazing thought. (We were on our way for a sonogram, a check up on the progress of our baby (21 weeks). What more fitting example of a life-changing event? One day you’re not pregnant, the next day you are, and your life will never be the same again.)

Our perception of the world around us, if we choose to think of it like this, creates that world. So, as a thought or impulse becomes action, we change the world. Some actions produce unremarkable results, others have a profound and lasting impact.

There is a connection here between the personal and the public, what matters to us and what matters globally. If Rudd as a person didn’t act to sign on to the Kyoto agreement, the Australia would remain a non-signatory. If Chavez’s opposers in Venezuela didn’t personally go to the polling booths to vote, his referendum wouldn’t have been defeated.

And if the Iranian leadership had acted differently, or if the members of the 16 U.S. intelligence organizations that reviewed the intelligence had assessed it differently, the NIE issued yesterday may have been less optimistic about the past and future impact of international pressure and sanctions on Iran’s nuclear capability. The current administration and a possible future Republican administration may have been headed toward another invasion like the invasion of Iraq, an invasion orchestrated by individuals with the leverage of another NIE, and with the cummulative support of fearful and fight-happy citizens across the country.

The importance of hindsight, of course, is to use it to avoid making the same mistake again. But first one has to acknowledge that one made a mistake. And we all know who that one is…

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News of Hugo Chavez’s narrow referendum defeat brought a decidedly unexpected relief. His proposals, in line with his former policies and stated goals, would have moved the Chavez administration toward a Castro-style dictatorship. But whereas Castro possesses an enduring charm, even if warped and spoiled by time and power, Chavez has all of the charm of a pit bull. At the conclusion of CNN’s story on the referendum result, the reporter offers a fascinating financial footnote: Venezuela’s oil-fueled prosperity, which has helped enrich Chavez’s popularity and solidify his power (the country’s wealth allows him to fund his social programs) accounts for as much as 90% of the country’s export economy. Two guesses as to who buys most of venezuela’s oil… Us. Apparently, the United States is one of the few countries that can refine Venezuela’s low-grade crude and we pick up about a million barrels per day. So, America then, Chavez’s nemesis, has been funding his regime.

A so-called National Intelligence Estimate issued today — a consensus view of “all 16 American spy agencies” (but who’s counting?) — concludes that Iran quite probably stopped its weapons program (if it had one) back in 2003, and that as of the middle of this year had probably not resumed that program (if it ever existed). Although couched in all kinds of provisos and qualifications, perhaps the most striking conclusion of the NIE is the estimate that sanctions and international pressure probably caused Iran to halt its program (if it did and if it had one). Of course, the White House has been quick to point out that this makes the President right again in seeking to maintain and increase pressure on Iran, rather than being wrong to pressage military action, since military action would have been not his error but someone else’s error for issuing a National Intelligence Estimate like the one that got us into the Iraq war. (Not that that was a mistake, but if it had been a mistake it would have been someone else’s mistake, too.) In any case, money seems to have been a key factor in making bringing to a halt the Iranian weapons grade fuel enrichment centrifuges (if they weren’t just nuclear energy centrifuges).

In Malawi two seasons of good crops have helped prevent famine. After the country’s most recent miserable crop failure in 2005, the president of Malawi, Bingu wa Mutharika, decided to ignore the financial strings attached to foreign subsidies and to subsidize himself the use of fertilizer and good seed. The U.S., Britain, and the World Bank have disfavored fertilizer and seed subsidies in countries such as Malawi because… wait for it… “foreign-aid fashions in Washington [and elsewhere] featured a faith in private markets and an antipathy to government intervention.” Let me get this straight, while the U.S. government subsidizes fertilizer purchases for our own farmers it’s been preaching and practising free-market ‘no subsidy’ religious policies overseas that have effectively been starving millions of people in Africa and elsewhere. The shamefulness of such self-righteous arrogance seems reprehenisble.

(There’s also a good op-ed piece about Goldman Sachs along similar lines, but I don’t have space to write about that.)

Money, money, money… But what about principles, what about good sense, what about logic and reason, why does money seem to lurk behind everything like a pesky accountant with an irrevocable pen poised to fall?

Allow me a quick detour into energy and matter. When Einstein equated mass with energy he unlocked a mysterious secret about the universe. The question: What is this stuff that things are made of? Einstein’s answer: Call it what you will, but you may as well call it energy.

A similar, humbler equation exists of course between money and power. Money and power are two ways of thinking about the same thing. You can convert one into the other and vice versa.

(My wife and I, for another instance, were discussing the presidential race and my wife pointed out to me the reason Mike Bloomberg could still run for president having skipped the abrasion of the primaries: He doesn’t need the money.)

Rather than just throw up my hands at this point, I’m struck by the question of what we as observers of the machinations of money and power can we do to make a difference? It seems to me that armed with the awareness that money churns away like a sump pump in the basement of every important political edifice, we’ll always be better able to judge things for what they are if we pop our head down the stairs and take a sniff. “Follow the money,” as Deep Throat apparently said, and we’ll be richer for it.

And if we doubt that paying attention to this will be enough to make a difference, we can be heartened by another discovery of science, famously encapsulated by the thought experiment of Schrodinger’s cat, that observation by itself is enough to change the outcome of a process.