In the Beginning was the Blog

Martha Nussbaum

Here’s a fun game. You have to come up with a short list of principles on which you would base a society. Then you must pretend to die and at the role of a dice you are reincarnated as someone in the society you imagined. You could be the poorest of the lowest class or the richest most well bred person. You could be sick or healthy, smart or stupid etc… The game progresses as the other players use your principles to decide how your life will look.

This game comes from Margaret Drabble’s novel, The Witch of Exmoor and is called ‘the veil of ignorance’. The game was used on a recent episode of the Philosopher’s Zone to introduce a discussion on Justice and Society with Martha Nussbaum who has written a book about it.

From the Philosopher’s Zone Transcript:

...it’s not enough to compare the opportunities that the people have in one society with what they have in another. We also want to say that a minimally decent society will give to all of its citizens, a certain threshold level of ten central capabilities. And then I go on to spell them out in a very general form, and I think of them as a kind of set of constitutional entitlements that whether there’s a written constitution or not, we could understand to be fundamental to the idea of minimal social justice in society. (Martha Nussbaum)

I thought about this discussion in terms of our own Australian society and how we always have people saying “those jobless people can get a job anytime, they just need to go back to school” but don’t account for other factors in these people’s lives that prevent them from doing so even if it’s just inertia. Nussbaum’s approach is not just about what people can theoretically do but what they can realistically access from society.

She talks about how in government we seem to focus on getting good and fair procedures or laws made and don’t think enough about the actual outcomes:

Well I want to say that the Rawlsean approach just says Well let’s figure out what a good-looking pasta machine would be, and let’s just define good pasta is whatever it is that comes out from that good-looking machine, and of course in real life you never do that, you design the machine in order to get the result that you independently think is a good pasta.

Just thought I’d throw these notes up so I can keep them in mind.

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Relativism vs Inclusivism

What’s the best way to get along with people who believe different things from you? I have my truth and you have yours? Is this a healthy tolerant approach or just lazy?

There was an interesting conversation on The Religion Report the other day about this very issue and they coined it in terms of relativism versus inclusivism. See the transcript and scroll down to about two thirds where David Rutledge is talking to Kath Engebretson:

David Rutledge:You also talk about relativism, and this is a related malaise for you, is this idea that whatever works for you is OK, you know, this is my truth, that’s your truth; you can’t judge other faiths by your own standards. Now are you saying that this mindset doesn’t promote good interfaith education, where from another perspective it might look as though that mindset is actually very tolerant and open, and inclusive. Why is relativism such a bad thing in interfaith education

Why’s this a problem? Because relativism is about ending the conversation. It’s the same as saying: let’s not talk about it. Or let’s agree not to be friends. It puts a blanket over the differences and tries to pretend they are not there: that can only end in problems down the line. It also means that we can’t critically engage with another faith. An important aspect of any human relationship is that we learn about ourselves and can be challenged to change. A better approach says Engebretson is called inclusivism and was written about by two theologians: Hans Kung and Karl Rahner.

Inclusivism I think means that I can still share in the goodness and truth of your religion, but coming from a committed stance in my own, and knowing what it is that attracts me and keeps me in my own religion, with an openness to learn how I can grow, through engagement with people in other traditions. So it’s a very far cry from relativism.

But this quickly leads to a less appealing discussion, the idea of the “Anonymous Christian” which is the idea that people in other faiths are saved by Christ, they just don’t know it. Engebretson is uncomfortable with that idea and so am I because it is almost going full circle back to the original problem of relativism. I think the problem is that interfaith communication is always going to have tension, it is never at peace but inclusivism means we can acknowledge the tension and still converse peacefully.

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The Wreck of Western Culture

Reading The Wreck of Western Culture by John Carroll

In the Preface, Carroll gives an overview of the humanist era as he will portray it in the book. He posits that the conflict between Luther and Erasmus is emblematic of the humanist era. The core of the struggle was humanism’s failure to find a spiritual core. While humanism advanced intellectually, building a technologically advanced society, spiritually and culturally it died.

Carroll paints a bleak picture of society:

Is it surprising that we are run down? We are desperate, yet don’t care much any more. We are timid, yet we cannot be shocked. We are inert underneath our busyness. We are destitute in our plenty. We are homeless in our own homes. (Carroll, The Wreck of Western Culture, 1)

I guess there are times when I feel like that but really is it true of western society? It’s hard to make a comparison to any other age where perhaps humanity was well resourced, caring, confident and innocent. Perhaps we felt a sense of progress in our busyness and felt rich even though we existed humbly? Did we feel secure in our homes?

We can all see ways in which society fails us: especially as we head into a recession. Whether it be social isolation and mental health issues, apathy over human rights violations, bad workplace conditions and a lack of ownership of our work, excessive debt or suburban violence. But that is a narrow view and I can also think of all of the opposites: We are relatively rich and have good public services, government health care and a welfare system. We have excellent educational facilities and good literacy. Mostly our children are not forced to work and don’t have to fight wars and we are often happy to be together as families even if we don’t have everything we could desire.

But I think Carroll’s point is that we don’t have a spiritual framework that helps us deal with death or that gives us strength when things turn ugly. What he means is that our lives are fragile and it doesn’t take much to bring some of us down. I guess he will suggest that a spiritual framework aka religion at least provides a spiritual foundation on which we can stand and face death, relationship breakdowns and other hardships.

Carroll states that the reason for looking back on humanism is to help us get over it and move on. He sees his book as a kind of requiem for humanism so that we can remember its triumphs, acknowledge its failures but most of all resolve to be done with it.

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Can Computers Have Knowledge?

I just handed in my final essay for philosophy looking at something close to my geek heart. I decided to approach the topic of artificial intelligence (a deprecated term now but still has meaning in the public mind at least) from an epistemological angle. Epistemology? That is the study of knowledge: what is it and how do we get it?

I can’t give you the whole paper until the results are in but I thought I’d run through some of the interesting stuff I came across during the research here. Having read through some of the introductory and historical stuff, I found that at least a couple of paper referencing a guy named Searle who wrote about a thing called the Chinese Room.

To understand the Chinese Room, you have to go back a bit into sci-fi land and the excitement that was being generated as the first large scale integration of electronics and general purpose computers was getting momentum. At that stage, scientists who were brought up on fantastic novels about robots and machines building the future started to think that maybe we had arrived. Research into AI was getting some promising results where computers were able to make decisions and even diagnose blood diseases. It was thought at the time that if we could sort out all the rules of decision making and thought that our own brains work with and then program them into a computer, we might find ourselves talking to Baum’s Tin Woodsman (Wizard of Oz).

Hence the Chinese Room argument in which Searle sought to argue that the kind of AI envisioned at that time (1980) could never really think the way we do. The argument is based on the Turing test which goes back to early AI research in the 50s. In the Turing test, typed messages are exchanged between two rooms. The human in one room must guess is the typist in the other room is a computer or human by typing messages and examining the responses. If the person cannot tell the computer from a human, then we can say the computer is intelligent.

In the Chinese Room experiment, a giant phrase book is generated in chinese with millions of responses to various Chinese phrases. I guess Chinese is chosen because it is meaningless to most English speakers. On one side is a native Chinese speaker. On the other side, there is either the computer with all the rules programmed in or a human with the rule book. Searle’s argument is that just as the human doesn’t learn Chinese in this experiment, so the computer doesn’t think or know Chinese.

So that’s the Chinese Room in a nutshell and next time I’ll talk about how we might move beyond this kind of “propositional” thinking because let’s face it. A world without Skynet would be a bit boring.

Some links of interest:
The cybernetic imagination in science fiction / Patricia S. Warrick. looks at the history of AI and robots in science fiction.

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She blinded me with science

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Three Classical Approaches to Ethics Applied to Sarah Connor

In my other blog I noted that I have developed an untimely obsession with anything that isn’t study related but I think I can use evil for good and apply philosophy to my interests in other things, namely the new season on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Last week’s readings were on Ethics looking at three styles: Kantian, Utilitarian and Aristotelian. Meanwhile in the Sarah Connor Chronicles, there is an ethical debate between characters called Sarah and Reece over whether it’s ok to kill innocent people if their actions are known to lead to the development of skynet, the evil computer network that takes over the world (we know this because we have time travellers coming back and warning us).

So first off the bat is Kant. Kant’s “categorical imperative” boils down to what if everybody behaved this way? and less so Would I want someone else to do this to me? which is the golden rule stated differently. Kant believed that we could use this idea to identify the basic universal moral rules of all existence (i.e. not just for humans but for all sentient beings). So does Kant think it’s cool to kill one or two people in order to prevent mass future killings? No Kant would be opposed to it because if everybody went around killing people because of some future thing that might be stopped from their living then we would have to kill everyone. Surely everyone will have an ancestor eventually (in the long term) who is somehow involved in many deaths. So killing for whatever reason is just wrong in Kants book. What about self defence? Well if it’s wrong to kill, then it’s wrong to kill, it’s a universal fundamental moral law of the cosmos. End of story. Which is why Kantian ethics aren’t really that popular. However, in a way, Sarah is taking a deontological (rules based) approach when she argues that it’s not ok to kill innocent people.

Utilitarians on the other hand say that you must aim to obtain the greatest good for the maximum number of people with the least expense to the fewest number of people. i.e. It would be ok to kill someone in order to prevent a future catastrophe unless there is some way to do it which is better than killing them, e.g. maiming them or maybe locking them up or just talking them out of it. You could argue that Sarah’s conflict with Reece boils down to Sarah wanting to explore other options where as Reece is less ethical because he only considers the “greater good for the greatest number of people” side of the equation and disregards the part about minimising harm.

Meanwhile Aristotle has some ideas about a thing called virtue ethics. His idea was that things that are good in themselves are also good to others, e.g. a healthy eye sees well for it’s owner. He argues that if we develop virtues in ourselves, we will be able to make more moral decisions in any circumstance. Aristotle develops this further by identifying virtues as being means which lie between extremes. For example, courage is the middle ground between cowardice and rashness. A virtuous person learns to judge which virtues come into play and by how much in a given situation to make a good moral decision. In our TV show, Sarah is seen to be brave, caring, intelligent and resourceful. Reece is more cowardly and suspicious but he is also intelligent and loyal. These virtues combine to affect the way these characters behave morally. Sarah’s concern for minimising innocent suffering comes from her caring nature. Reeces disregard for others comes from his bitterness and suspicion of others.

All three of these methods seem to have value when making moral decisions and thinking about morality and you can see how they can help you get your head around ethical problems.

References

Kant, “The Categorical Imperitive” in Ethics ed Singer.
Smart, J.J., “Desert Island Promises” in Ethics ed Singer.
Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics: Virtue as the Mean” in Aristotle: Selected Works.

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Monty Python’s Philosophy Song

Some thinking music while I write some philosophy assessment.

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Love and Other Catastrophes

This week’s Philosopher’s Zone was a bit different: they featured a recording from the Melbourne Writers Festival of Jeanette Kennett discussing the topic of Love in Philosophy. Her opening anecdote was quite funny and the whole talk is worth your time:

...I discovered [the following] a few months ago from a philosopher who shall remain un-named, and I quote: ‘If X loves Y, then X wants to benefit and be with Y, and he has these wants, or at least some of them, because he believes that Y has some determinate characteristics, V, in virtue of which he thinks it worthwhile to benefit and be with Y. And he regards satisfaction of these wants as an end and not as a means to some other end.’

Well, be still my beating heart. One can only imagine Y’s deep delight at a lover’s declaration couched in such terms.

I liked how she progressed through various approaches to love starting with the rather shallow idea of it being attributes based (i.e. I love her blonde hair) and moving towards ideas of it being about a unique relationship (we have shared experiences and a unique understanding of one another), looking at the idea that relationships form our identity and finally discussing the pure irrationality of love and the idea of love as the simple recognition of another self unto themselves. I suppose my critique would be that Kennett moves from talking romantic love to something else at some stage and perhaps I missed that transition.

My reflections were that love takes many forms in many contexts and moves between all of the understandings presented by Kennett. For example, I think romances often start in the shallow excitement of sexuality and desire and only move to a deeper place as over time these two people might encounter each other in other aspects of their being.

In the context of my previous post on feminism I think feminists such as de Beauvoir and Firestone may have underestimated the role of love in sexuality for both men and women. For example, de Beauvoir felt that the outlook for independent women was bleak yet she didn’t see that men are capable of love and in that role might be able to respond to new ways of relating. Is there much feminist writing that looks at how men respond to feminism and their role in social change? (I’ve only had feminist readings from the early nineties so I’m a bit behind in this area)

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The Philosophy of Sexuality

Some rather shallow notes on our set philosophy reading from week 6: Gatens, Moira. “Sexual Difference or Sexual Equality”.

Gender has been ignored in philosophy until very recently. Gatens discusses how some influential philosophy can be reapplied with gender in mind to show that women’s femininity is socially constructed.

In philosophy of politics:

Hobbes’ Leviathan presents the idea that the state is a giant monster made of of social institutions. The only place for women is under the umbrella of “those accepting by word and deed and conquered by war”. Women can’t participate in Hobbes’ polity, they are purely ruled by it.

Hume thinks women must “insinuate” their way into society by being associated with men. Hume shows how a voice is denied to anyone who is different from the dominant voice, i.e. women and people of other ethnicities. (Hume has also been used when talking about how any outsider must learn to speak in the dominant paradigm which may not be their own, for example Australian Aboriginals were required to speak in terms of “Land Rights” even though it’s an alien concept to their culture, likewise, women are required to speak with a man’s voice / language if they are able to take part in political discourse)

Labour, property and contracts

Engels states that when houses used to be communistic, womens work was public but since monogamous families have come about, it has become private. He glosses over the fact that labour conceived as property was the cause of men leaving the home. At the time of the industrial revolution, women’s bodies were considered incapable of producing goods.

Rousseau sees women as providing the backdrop / foundation to society. They are part of nature (Or part of the furniture) so don’t participate in the economy.

Marx is silent on gender but marxism has had a major impact on feminism since there are many parallels. Marxist feminists talk about the absence of wage relation in women’s work. i.e. that work undertaken by women in the home doesn’t have an economic value or isn’t part of the economy when it should be.

Sexuality, subjectivity and reproduction

In general, Men can be seen as split into natural man and social man. This is the idea that there is the physical man’s nature and body (including sexuality) as well as the intellectual and social man’s aspect. But women are typically not developed this way in traditional thinking, they are seen as neutral (i.e. their sexuality is not separated from any other aspects of their being). It seems that women just naturally attend to “natural needs” because they are the ones who give birth.

Mill advocates a strong public / private divide based on a “social contract” suggesting that women benefit by having a protected space. He forgets that relegating women to private space makes them invisible which means they are vulnerable to private dangers (i.e. rape, incest and domestic violence). Mill fails to acknowledge that women’s positions are not brought about by contract but by social construction in which women don’t have a choice.

de Beauvoir and Firestone say that contraception allows women to enter the workforce: Who will do the housework now? Maybe home labour will be contracted which would bring it into a relationship with the public sphere. (This was written in 1991, since then we’ve found that women just continue to do both)

What is women’s sexuality without reproduction? Women’s sexuality is defined in society by their reproductive role, so it seems like so much feminism is obsessed with women’s liberated sexuality once reproduction is taken out of the equation. This ignores other dimensions of women’s beings. What of male – female relations and marriage for the non-reproductive female? de Beauvoir makes the assertion that the relationship must be based on a shared project.

Gatens thesis is that feminism is often reduced to a choice between artificial equality (ie. contraception) or acceptance of the natural differences between genders. She argues that this choice is artificial and that we need to challenge the social constructions of femininity.

References

Gatens, Moira. “Sexual Difference or Sexual Equality” in Feminism and Philosophy: Perspectives on Difference and Equality, Cambridge: Polity Press & Indiana University Press, 1991. [Google Scholar Search]

Moira Gatens bio at U Syd website.

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How to Get Rich and Powerful the Jesus Way

If you thought TV evangelists were scary, you aint seen nothin’. This week’s Religion Report Elite Fundamentism – The Fellowship’s gospel of Capitalist Power is an interview with Jeff Sharlet the author of a book that looks at a fundamentalist group that has huge influence in American politics and industry known as “The Family”.

The interview introduces the Family as a network of Christian fundamentalists who interpret the Gospel as a message of free market capitalism and salvation through power. Jeff talks about the way they recruit powerful people, their strong aversion to democracy, their links with dictatorship and neo-naziism, their use of the office of the President of the United States and their involvement internationally including their negative influence on the AIDS program in Uganda (by lobbying for Uganda’s AIDS program to stop promoting condoms).

From the show transcript (talking about Doug Coe, the leader of the Family):

Woman: Who is Doug Coe? Here he is on videotapes obtained exclusively by NBC News, with his account of atrocities under Chairman Mao.

Doug Coe: I’ve seen pictures of the young men in the Red Guard, they would bring in this young man’s mother, he would take an axe and cut her head off. They have to put the purposes of the Red Guard ahead of their father, mother, brother, sister, and their own life. That was a covenant, a pledge. That’s what Jesus said.

Woman: In his preaching he repeatedly urges a personal commitment to Jesus Christ, a commitment Coe compares to the blind devotion Hitler demanded.

The interview really must be heard for it’s jaw dropping, blood boiling effect.

To me this story illustrates the folly of religious groups and individuals who place the Bible at the authoritative central place and assume that the Bible can be a reliable guide to faith without any regard for what we now understand about textual criticism. Many Christians reject modern critical theory because they see it undermines the authority of the Bible, but what this theory is also saying is that we can’t read the Bible and assume that there is one definitive meaning that we will all share. The Family illustrates this perfectly because they read the Bible and see a completely different message even from other fundamentalists.

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