Open Thread

I know of at least one reader who's having trouble getting Blogger to publish their comments. I think it's just an isolated incident, but if anyone else is having the same problem, feel free to email me your comment and I can post it on your behalf (subject to the possible delays noted below).

P.S. This time tomorrow I'll be flying over the Pacific. I don't know how long it'll take me to settle in and start posting again, but in case of delays, here's an open thread for commenters to contribute their own content. So: what's been puzzling you lately?

Revived Discussions

Here are some old threads that have seen recent discussion (feel free to jump in!):

Aiding Infidelity
Multiversal Ethics
Is longevity good for you?
On Jealousy
The Problem with Non-Philosophers
Progress in Philosophy
Accommodating Unreason
Moral Goals vs. Side-Constraints
The Examined Life
Investing in Rational Capital
On your blog, anything goes?
Vigilantism and Civic Respect

P.S. You're also welcome to leave a comment here reminding me if you have an old question or objection somewhere that you would like me to address. (You can also ask new questions, for that matter.) I can't promise to spend any great amount of time on it, but I'll try to at least state my position on the issue, if not argue for it.

Philosophers' Carnival #52

Welcome to the 52nd edition of the Philosophers' Carnival! If you have no idea what this is, follow the previous link. Otherwise, follow the subsequent ones...

Moral and Political Philosophy

Parableman Jeremy Pierce discusses Judicial Confirmation Philosophy, rejecting two extreme views about the role of the Senate in questioning and confirming judicial nominees:

On this mediating view, nominees should not be expected to comment on individual cases, but they should be expected to be able to present a judicial philosophy... it's fair game to say whether a certain decision was wrongly or rightly decided and what would have been better reasoning if any. It's fair game to comment on what considerations might go into overturning a particular precedent without indicating (as a promise) what one will do, allowing for all manner of alternative considerations to weigh a decision in a different direction. I could say why I think a certain case was wrongly decided while remaining open about whether I'd overturn it. I can also say that I think there's a reason for overturning it while remaining open about other reasons not to overturn it that I may not even have considered. As long as it's kept at that level, you would get some discussion of more substantive issues than what has happened recently. Yet it wouldn't be the politicized mess that we have been getting either.

Peter Thurley writes on the distinction between positive and negative rights:

[T]he enforcement and guaranteeing of a negative right is itself a positive action. If we have the negative right to life, a right that prohibits others from killing us, how can that right be secured without an appeal to a police force, a criminal justice system, lawyers, guards and the appropriate funding from taxes to support such a system?

Granted, it's an empirical question how rights might best be secured, but that won't deter James Wilson at the Philosophy and Bioethics blog, who asks, 'What can political philosophers learn from bioethicists?' His answer: "how to go about applying abstract normative theories to the real world." Whether trying to predict consequences or apply general principles, the task may prove more difficult than expected.

Jean Kazez looks at really good people, and the role of emotions - from compassion to anger - in moral motivation.

As an Editor's Pick, allow me to highlight Chris' informative post at Mixing Memory on recent research into Folk Meta-Ethics:

There's a really interesting paper by Geoffrey Goodwin and John Darley in press at the journal Cognition on the subject of lay meta-ethics, and ethical objectivism specifically. That is, the paper explores the question, "How do lay individuals think about the objectivity of their ethical beliefs?" (from the abstract). The paper contains a ton of data, and I couldn't possibly do it justice in a blog post, but unfortunately, there's no free version online... So you'll have to do with my incomplete discussion of it.

Philosophy of Mind and Biology

Benoit Hardy-Vallée discusses Decision-making and the economy of nature:

[A] biological decision-maker is any agent who can control its behavior. More precisely, in order to have a genuine control over its behavior, an agent must possess control mechanisms, that is, internal structures that process sensory information and motor commands... I would like to suggest here that, contrarily to common wisdom, decision-making is not specifically human, but rather a behavioral control scheme typically found in animals endowed with sensory, motor and control apparatuses, and more specifically brainy animals (craniates, arthropods and cephalopods).

Kate Devitt goes even further, offering an empirically-informed introduction to the remarkable topic of bacterial cognition:

Even though bacteria may not be aware, they certainly have complex behaviour and decision-making worth examining. Bacteria perceive, remember, problem-solve, learn and communicate. Understanding how they make group and individual decisions may contribute importantly to our understanding of cognition across many species including humans.

The Uncredible Hallq discusses Peripheral vision and the limits of introspection, drawing out the implications of the fact that we overestimate the level of detail represented towards the periphery of our visual field.

Bryan Norwood at Movement of Existence presents Arguments for the Necessity of Phenomenology - the view that "approaches our understanding of the world as a result of experienced phenomenon."

Tanasije Gjorgoski asks A Question About Epiphenomenalism (or two):

[It] seems that epiphenomenalist can’t after all accept causal theory of reference, as that would mean that by ‘conscious experience’ she is referring to something physical. So, what kind of grounding of reference does epiphenomenalist buy? Can zombies refer to conscious experience at all?

Language and Epistemology

Richard Brown distinguishes Two Kinds of Semantics:

One might take the semantic task to be that of giving the meaning of and truth-conditions for thoughts... [or] of giving the meaning of sentences independently of their being used to express any thought. This way of thinking about semantics has it as simply a part of grammar. To illustrate, if I say ‘Saul Kripke likes tea’ talking about my dog and you say it talking about Saul Kripke we both use the same sentence, though we refer to different objects.

Aidan McGlynn discusses whether know-how is Gettier-susceptible, and how this question impacts on debates about the relation between knowledge-how and knowledge-that.

Meanwhile, at The Space of Reasons, Avery Archer assesses Naturalising Epistemology: Quine vs. Crumley (Part 2):

Crumley claims that nature may favour belief-forming mechanism that form false beliefs. However, Crumley seems to be overstating the case...

The Primate Diaries argues that neuroscience undermines religious experience:

It's not too much of a stretch to link such phantom limbs with a feeling for God. What's more likely? That an invisible world exists that controls our destiny (but that people around the globe interpret in vastly different ways) or that all humans have similar neural networks that, under certain circumstances, engender a feeling of the divine? A great deal of work has been done in just this area...

Enigman, on the other hand, presents An Argument for Agnosticism - suggesting that the mysteries of theism and atheism balance out.

Meta-philosophy

At The Ends of Thought, Roman Altshuler discusses Philosophical Approaches and their Consistency with the History. His primary concern is to elucidate how both the analytic and continental traditions can be seen as continuing what went before -- be it by offering clear arguments for specific positions, or pressing a broader "cast of thought" or philosophical system.

Finally, Michele Loi has a very interesting post on the partiality of truth and philosophical methodology. He proposes an 'Hegelian' view according to which philosophical progress is best made by synthesizing the various "partial truths" found in existing philosophical traditions. If you have an opposing view, see if you can convince him of its (whole or partial) truth.


That's it for this edition of the Philosophers' Carnival. Many thanks to all who contributed a submission (well, except for the self-help writers who seem to have been misled by the proximity of the 'philosophy' section in their local bookstore)! Only a minority made the final cut -- but the carnival will return in three weeks, this time at the Florida Student Philosophy Blog. You can submit a post here.

If you would like to host a future edition yourself, check out the guidelines here. (There are spaces available in 2008 -- consult the list of 'future hosts'.)

Well, we can't have that now, can we?

Dr. Ben Barres, a neurobiologist at Stanford, said in reference to Dr. Bailey’s thesis in the book, “Bailey seems to make a living by claiming that the things people hold most deeply true are not true.”

- Criticism of a Gender Theory, and a Scientist Under Siege (HT: Macht)

Because we all know that "the things people hold most deeply true" must never be questioned.

New Atheism as a Positive View

Ophelia Benson rebuts some silly complaints from Michael Shermer, including the bizarre suggestion that New Atheism is a mere "anti-movement", and ought to "champion science and reason." (!?)

This reminds me of the odd arguments from Macht and Chris that New Atheists are "contradicting themselves" by arguing for a positive worldview/culture/values that they allegedly deny is a worldview/etc. But again, most New Atheists are quite self-conscious promoters of what they see as Enlightenment culture, values of rational inquiry, and so forth. So it's very odd to see people suggesting the opposite.

Now, it's very obvious that New Atheism is a positive view, so I don't think Shermer has any excuse whatsoever. But for the others - denying that New Atheists believe theirs is a positive view - I think their confusion arises from misinterpreting the rhetoric of normality. New Atheists like to suggest that "atheism is the default view", for example. Chris interpreted this as a descriptive claim, refuted by the cultural contingency of Enlightenment values. But of course that isn't what's meant at all. It's a normative claim -- basically an affirmation of Occam's Razor -- not the sort of thing that can be refuted by mere anthropology.

Similarly, Macht wrote:

A major theme of the new atheists is that as various cultures modernize, they inevitably get rid of out-dated traditions and religions. "Modernization" is like a chicken nugget factory, where whole chickens go in and all that comes out is the crisp, juicy nuggets - free of all the feathers, beaks, bones and innards (mostly). It doesn't matter what kind of chicken goes in - an old one, a young one, a fat one, a chicken with two heads, perhaps even a rat or two. What matters is that there is this factory and it can take in a wide variety of chicken and chicken-like things and strip them of all the unnecessary and hard to swallow parts.

But this conflates two claims:
(1) that reason is universal, i.e. all inquirers will ultimately converge as they become more rational ("modern"); and
(2) that this process is wholly negative, involving only subtraction.

New Atheists advance claim #1. But nobody believes the absurd #2. Rationality is not achieved via lobotomy. When we talk about "getting rid of irrationality", we do not mean this as a purely negative process. Part of what it is to dispel an illusion - in the fullest sense - is to develop your awareness of what's real. To overcome a bias, you replace it with a balanced perspective. Etc. So although New Atheists sometimes talk about their rational ideals as a kind of "baseline", they do not mean that it is our actual starting point, requiring no positive effort. Of course not. They mean it is a normative baseline, or basic standard, such that once we overcome all our mistakes we will be rationally compelled to end up there. The truth is sitting there waiting for us, there for the taking. That's not to say that we can just sit tight and have it fall into our lap.

In short: the chicken factory adds some crucial spices that would otherwise be missing. And that's precisely what we like about it.

Gender as Cultural Specialization

Wow. I highly recommend Roy Baumeister's fascinating article, Is There Anything Good About Men? (Thanks, Luke, for the NYT link.) It has a relatively balanced and apolitical tone, but I wouldn't be surprised if it comes to be seen as the definitive rebuttal to ideological feminism:

[T]his is not about the “battle of the sexes,” and in fact I think one unfortunate legacy of feminism has been the idea that men and women are basically enemies. I shall suggest, instead, that most often men and women have been partners, supporting each other rather than exploiting or manipulating each other.

A stock data point for inferring "patriarchal oppression" is that men are disproportionately successful. The stock response, of course, is that men are also disproportionately failures. For basic evolutionary reasons (namely, greater variance in male reproductive potential), the Y chromosome is a gambler. Nothing new here, though Baumeister provides a droll summary:

[T]he pattern with mental retardation is the same as with genius, namely that as you go from mild to medium to extreme, the preponderance of males gets bigger. All those retarded boys are not the handiwork of patriarchy. Men are not conspiring together to make each other’s sons mentally retarded.

One important point he doesn't address is the empirical evidence of actual gender bias: identical papers are judged to be less brilliant if the author appears to be female. Orchestras using blind auditions (and hence judging solely on sound quality) hire more women than they otherwise would. And so on. But here's the key: this looks like anti-female bias because we're only looking at the top end. To know for sure, we'd also need to test judgments for bias at the bottom end. And I expect that what we'd find is exactly the opposite: terrible performers are judged to be even more useless if they are men. Judgments of women are biased towards the mean; judgments of men tend to be more polarized. There is no straightforward sense in which this makes men as a whole "privileged". They are both winners and losers; it's a trade-off, as Baumeister emphasizes throughout his article. (That's not to say that we shouldn't try to counteract the bias. I think we should - in both directions. But it's misleading to paint it as simple "patriarchal oppression.")

An interesting issue he does address is sex differences in social motivation as a key explanatory factor:

Women specialize in the narrow sphere of intimate relationships... Meanwhile the men favored the larger networks of shallower relationships. These are less satisfying and nurturing and so forth, but they do form a more fertile basis for the emergence of culture.

Note that all those things I listed — literature, art, science, etc — are optional. Women were doing what was vital for the survival of the species. Without intimate care and nurturance, children won’t survive, and the group will die out. Women contributed the necessities of life. Men’s contributions were more optional, luxuries perhaps. But culture is a powerful engine of making life better. Across many generations, culture can create large amounts of wealth, knowledge, and power. Culture did this — but mainly in the men’s sphere.

Thus, the reason for the emergence of gender inequality may have little to do with men pushing women down in some dubious patriarchal conspiracy. Rather, it came from the fact that wealth, knowledge, and power were created in the men’s sphere. This is what pushed the men’s sphere ahead. Not oppression.

The really interesting part of the article is how it extends the traditional evolutionary argument from biology to culture: "The group systems that used their men and women most effectively would enable their groups to outperform their rivals and enemies." A society exploits its individual members, but not necessarily all in the same way. Gender is thus seen as a kind of cultural specialization, a way to assign members to different tasks. Building on the biological dispositions, a culture gambles with its males. They do the most dangerous work, and are treated as most expendable. Again, this reveals how myopic it is to view gender through the lens of 'patriarchy', as Baumeister notes:

Any man who reads the newspapers will encounter the phrase “even women and children” a couple times a month, usually about being killed. The literal meaning of this phrase is that men’s lives have less value than other people’s lives. The idea is usually “It’s bad if people are killed, but it’s especially bad if women and children are killed.” And I think most men know that in an emergency, if there are women and children present, he will be expected to lay down his life without argument or complaint so that the others can survive. On the Titanic, the richest men had a lower survival rate (34%) than the poorest women (46%) (though that’s not how it looked in the movie). That in itself is remarkable. The rich, powerful, and successful men, the movers and shakers, supposedly the ones that the culture is all set up to favor — in a pinch, their lives were valued less than those of women with hardly any money or power or status. The too-few seats in the lifeboats went to the women who weren’t even ladies, instead of to those patriarchs.

Baumeister's central methodological advance is to explain the social construction of gender in terms of how it benefits the culture, rather than just how it benefits the men. He concludes:

What seems to have worked best for cultures is to play off the men against each other, competing for respect and other rewards that end up distributed very unequally. Men have to prove themselves by producing things the society values. They have to prevail over rivals and enemies in cultural competitions, which is probably why they aren’t as lovable as women.

The essence of how culture uses men depends on a basic social insecurity. This insecurity is in fact social, existential, and biological. Built into the male role is the danger of not being good enough to be accepted and respected and even the danger of not being able to do well enough to create offspring.

The basic social insecurity of manhood is stressful for the men, and it is hardly surprising that so many men crack up or do evil or heroic things or die younger than women. But that insecurity is useful and productive for the culture, the system.

Again, I’m not saying it’s right, or fair, or proper. But it has worked. The cultures that have succeeded have used this formula, and that is one reason that they have succeeded instead of their rivals.

Enough with the sociology. Supposing that those are the facts, how are we to evaluate them? Should we endorse the way that cultural evolution has shaped our gender norms, or try to overcome them? I lean towards the latter, but we will only succeed in this if we first recognize that there are two sides to every gender difference.

We recently discussed how women are able to use their sexuality to get attention, which is tied to the disadvantage of sexual harrassment. For another example, Infinite Injury discusses how the norms against female assertiveness are tied to norms which shield women from criticism. Thus he notes, "you can’t possibly hope to have combative conduct by women parsed the same way as combative conduct by men if men are supposed to pull their punches with women." Gender norms are double-edged, and do not simply advantage one gender to the detriment of the other. Once this fact is appreciated, we can ask the normative question: should we seek to rebalance in both directions, or neither?

Change of Address

You should be redirected automatically, but if you want to update your bookmarks: this blog's address is now www.philosophyetc.net

Let me know if there are any technical hiccups I need to fix. (Google Sitesearch might take a couple of days to index the new domain.)

Is Nerdiness Good for Society?

So suggests Robin Hanson:

If, as it seems to me, nerd social handicaps reduce nerd abilities to connive far more than their abilities to cooperate, then people should try too hard to avoid being exploited nerds, relative to a social optimum. If so, we have too few nerds, and all else equal we should want to subsidize nerds, to get more of them.

Sounds good to me...

Eight Random Personal Facts

Jean Kazez says I'm supposed to list eight random facts about myself, and then tag eight random people to repeat the process. Here goes:

1) I feel inappropriately proud of having only vacuumed my dorm room once last year.

2) I rarely get sick, except on Good Friday. (Sympathy pains?)

3) I was kind of hoping to avoid this meme, but - like many things, I find - it's not so bad once you start.

4) I have four brothers. (Mum gets a lot of sympathy.)

5) We got what we thought was a female cat, but it turned out to be male too. We decided "Murphy" was a fitting name. I'm gonna miss that furball.

6) I played the oboe for a while in high school. It was a short while.

7) I'm beginning to think that eight facts is a bit much to ask, really.

8) My first computer was an Apple IIe, with no hard drive. I would amuse my 8-year-old friends by running the program:

10 PRINT "Enter name 1";: INPUT name1$
20 PRINT "Enter name 2";: INPUT name2$
30 RANDOMIZE TIMER
40 x = INT(RND(1)*100) + 1
50 PRINT name1$;" loves ";name2$;" ";x;"%"
60 END

We were easily amused.

I'll tag: Jared, Isa, Chris, Blar, Clark, Brian, Macht, and Kyle.
(But feel free to disregard if you wish.)

Upcoming Carnival

I'll be hosting the next Philosophers' Carnival here, on Monday August 27.

The carnival homepage is currently out of action (damn Blogger), but the BlogCarnival page is still up -- including, most importantly, the submissions form! Send in your favourite recent post - on any philosophical topic - preferably by Friday.

Deleted Comment

Peter at On Philosophy wrote:

Accepting that philosophy is about the world also eliminates the idea that philosophy is to uncover the correct definitions for words like “justice”. The question “what is justice?” has no right answer outside of the context of a philosophical theory... Justice can be defined however we wish in the context of a philosophical theory; the theory is not judged by how well it defines justice by how well it describes the world. Of course it is preferable to define justice in a way that fits with our intuitive usage for the sake of clarity, but it isn’t necessary. And this saves us from the impossible task of trying to find the “right” definitions.

I commented:

Well, certainly the question what is 'justice'? is uninteresting. 'Justice' is a word. There, that was easy. But the question what is justice? remains of interest. (Sure, you could stipulate that 'justice' is henceforth to mean zebra. But that wouldn't make the ethical question any more black and white.)

See Is Normativity Just Semantics? (The short answer is: no.)

His response? Deletion.

I guess I won't be commenting there again any time soon.

Scientism

Many otherwise-intelligent people have an unfortunate tendency to dismiss entire realms of inquiry out of hand. Perhaps the most common example of this is the failure to appreciate the possibility of a priori or non-scientific rational inquiry, i.e. philosophy. The prevalence of ignorant scientism in this thread (bashing Nick Bostrom's simulation argument) is remarkable -- though sadly not atypical.

One commenter suggests that an untestable hypothesis must consequently be classified as either 'myth' or 'garbage'. (He did not tell us how to test this very suggestion. I can only assume he was storytelling.) Another calls Bostrom's argument "pseudoscience gibberish". Yet another chimes in:

This is very much like saying the earth might really be only 3000 years old and $DEVIL just made it seem like its much older to fool everyone.

IOW, it is all hocus pocus claptrap what ifs and doesn’t belong in any science discussion.

The blogger (Peter Woit) himself writes:

I don’t see what the problem is with “lumping Bostrom’s ideas in with religion”. They’re not science and have similar characteristics: grandiose speculation about the nature of the universe which some people enjoy discussing for one reason or another, but that is inherently untestable, and completely divorced from the actual very interesting things that we have learned about the universe through the scientific method.

Really, if people can't tell the difference between a reasoned philosophical argument and random "hocus pocus" or religious proposals... well, let's just say it's further evidence of the urgent need for philosophical education in schools!

If you think that Bostrom's argument is flawed, then by all means put on your philosopher's hat and expose its errors. But this requires actually engaging with the argument. To dismiss it just because it didn't involve any labwork is the worst kind of scientism.

I should add a disclaimer. Sometimes people attack "scientism" when their real target is epistemic standards in general. (See the comments here, for example.) Not me. I'm all in favour of having rationally justified beliefs. What I'm attacking here is the lazy assumption that science is the only source of rational justification. This assumption is simply false (and indeed self-defeating). This should be too obvious for words, but apparently it needs to be said: rigorous philosophical argumentation can also provide rational support for a conclusion.

Hat-tip: Robin Hanson (who offers some incisive criticism of his own).

See also: Explaining Beliefs. (It's the same core issue, really: dogmatic dismissal is no replacement for reasoned inquiry. You can't tell whether a question is answerable until you try.)

Framing Altruism

Benoit Hardy-Vallée notes that adding the sentence “Note that your opponent relies on you” increases altruistic behaviour in the Dictator Game. He concludes:

What is surprising is not that subjects are sensible to certain moral-social cues, but that such a simple cue (7 words) is sufficient. The more we know about each other, the less selfish we are.

This particular experiment doesn't really seem to have anything to do with increased knowledge, though. It's more a matter of framing: we reduce selfishness by cuing the 'responsibility' schema, so that giving is seen in a more positive light. I expect just two words would in fact suffice: "Stinginess test". Or, in the opposite direction, "Dupe test" -- I bet that title would reduce altruism dramatically.

Stephen Law on Faith Schools

[Quote] If you believe that such authority-based religious education is acceptable, then let me leave you with a question. Suppose authoritarian political schools started opening up around the country. A conservative school opens in Sydney, followed by a communist school in Melbourne. These schools select on the basis of parents’ political beliefs. Portraits of political leaders beam serenely down from classroom walls. Each day begins with the collective singing of a political anthem. Pupils are expected to defer, more or less unquestioningly, to their school’s political authority and its revered political texts. Rarely are children exposed to alternative political points of view, except, perhaps, in a caricatured form, so they can be sweepingly dismissed.

What would be the public’s reaction to such schools? Outrage. These schools would be accused of stunting children - of forcing their minds into politically pre-approved moulds.

My question is: if such authoritarian political schools are utterly beyond the pale, why are so many of us prepared to tolerate their religious equivalents?

Explaining Beliefs

Why do we believe the things we do? Fans of evolutionary psychology might be tempted to construct an evolutionary story about how such-and-such a belief might have proven beneficial to our ancestors on the African savannah. (Freudians and others might construct other stories.) But this is usually the wrong level to focus on. Evolution has equipped us with reliable general faculties of sense and reason. This means that the specific conclusions we reach are better explained by what's justified than by what's adaptive. In other words, if a belief is justified then no further explanation is necessary. It is only blatantly unreasonable beliefs that call out for special explanation -- perhaps in terms of evolved biases, developed disorders, social pressures, or the like.

This is important because people often treat evolution (and causal explanations in general) as an argument for moral skepticism: whatever caused our beliefs, it presumably isn't the abstract moral facts themselves!* But such arguments are question-begging, for they presuppose the skeptical view that our moral beliefs aren't justified.** Indeed, I think there's an important sense in which our philosophical beliefs are caused by the facts: we are responsive to considerations of rational coherence, which is precisely what the truth itself consists in.

* = It's also suspicious that only moral philosophy is singled out here. Logic is no less abstract, after all. Not to mention the belief in skepticism itself.

** = It works better as an argument against Platonism, though.

Here's the vital point: if philosophical truth just is what's maximally reasonable, then the skeptic needs to show that no moral views are more reasonable than their competition (for this would suffice to explain our knowing them). But of course merely pointing to Darwin does no such thing.

Seduction

Is seduction immoral? One reason for thinking it ethically problematic is that it seems to be essentially manipulative: the seducer seeks to entice the target into acting against their better judgment. They are thus treated as a mere means, which disrespects their autonomy/agency. (The problem generalizes to any form of non-rational persuasion, whereby one attempts to shape others' ends or get them to do what they normally wouldn't.)

On the other hand, there is Mary Coughlan singing, "I want to be seduced..." If the experience is fun or gratifying, it may be an instance of merely 'local' irrationality that can fit unproblematically within one's larger life plan. And then it's not really disrespectful at all: the seducer is acting in line with the ultimate ends of their target. So we're left with the somewhat trite conclusion that whether it's okay to treat someone a certain way simply depends on whether they want to be so treated. Hmph.

So here's a more interesting question: what should one do if the other's desires are unknown? What should the default assumption be? (Asking is not always a neutral option -- cf. "would you like a surprise birthday party?") I suppose as long as you recognize that the other person's ends matter - even if you're not yet entirely sure what they are - then you probably can't go too far wrong. But I'd be curious to hear what others make of the whole issue.

Impermanent Relationships

Over at Right Reason, Alexander Pruss asks:

Is there value (both instrumental and non-instrumental, but especially non-instrumental) in romantic relationships that terminate without having led to marriage or some other form of commitment for life? For instance, some people think such relationships provide opportunities for many goods, while others see such relationships as failures: who is right? Can there be a value (instrumental or non-instrumental?) in having romantic relationships one does not expect to lead to marriage or some other form of commitment for life?

Are these serious questions? I guess someone might consider a past relationship to have "failed" in the sense that it didn't yield everything they might have hoped for, i.e. they are disappointed by how things turned out. But it would seem crazy to think that all impermanent relationships must be unsatisfactory on balance, let alone that they have no value whatsoever. As I wrote last year:

I think it’s a deeply pernicious cultural framework that leads one to only value a romantic partner insofar as they might eventually become one’s future spouse. (Though rarely recognized as such, it’s dehumanizing in much the same way that “using” someone for sex is. Both involve a failure to recognize the intrinsic value of knowing the other person, and hence devalue the relationship.)

What sorts of considerations might lead one to conclude otherwise?

Words of Wisdom

Eliezer Yudkowsky:

Rationality is not for winning debates, it is for deciding which side to join. If you've already decided which side to argue for, the work of rationality is done within you, whether well or poorly.

Julian Sanchez, on being 'exactly good enough to suck':

All of us, whenever we try anything at which we're not naturally gifted, are condemned to pass through this unfortunate phase. We're no longer just goofing about, subject to the comfortably lax criteria of the cheerfully hopeless—what a marvelous finger painting for a five year old! But neither are we yet (much optimism lurks in that "yet") proficient enough to be any damn good... If we want to improve past a certain point, we're forced to accept that getting better will, at least initially, make us worse.

Timothy Burke:

I just do the things I love and ask my daughter if she wants to do them with me... I don’t tell her it’s a duty for her to do it because she’s a girl and she’s fighting hegemonic narratives about gender. I do it because I still like to do it, and so it’s my culture and my life and I share it...

The problem with the commandment: no. “That scene is bad: do not watch it.” “That image is bad: feel bad about it.” “That character is bad: do not like him or her”. It puts a kid in an impossible position: but I like fairies! I like pink! I like war toys! I like video games! I like television! even though Mom and Dad say I must not. Desire doesn’t just become mysterious suddenly at 18, it always is. Being the censor puts us in an impossible position, because we have to playact at virtues we don’t feel in any deep way ourselves. “Why, yes, that image was quite bad, my darling! Let’s, uh, watch the movie again so that we can reacquaint ourselves with its offensiveness.” ... Maybe we change culture best by viewing and doing and being what we desire and love best, and less by trying to perform the role of an ideal and virtuous self.

Update: and Peter Levine on 'optimistic' vs. 'resentful' populism:

There is a powerful, optimistic kind of populism that says: We can make wealth, and everyone can be better off, but we need to make sure that everyone is included in productive work. This is much better than the kind of populism that presumes there is a fixed quantity of goods, of which the powerful have taken more than their fair share...

The Bad Society

One might think that morality is a matter of promoting the good of one's society, understood as an entity in its own right. (I think that Peter may believe something along these lines.) An immediate problem is that we might reasonably doubt whether there really exists any such entity, or whether we can sensibly talk of it having a 'good', or welfare interests. But even if we can ascribe a societal telos -- longevity and power, say -- there's the more fundamental problem that the society might be objectively bad, and so not worth helping at all.

Imagine a dystopia of ruthless efficiency, where individuals are brainwashed from birth and tightly controlled by faceless institutions. Members eat dull, nutritious food; work productively on uninspired projects that increase the power of society's institutions (though never, of course, its private citizens); and reproduce in sufficient numbers to further support this 'purpose'. The society is little more than a virus, propagating itself to no higher end; still, we may suppose that this miserable situation is perfectly sustainable. So there seem no formal grounds to deny that the continued exploitation of the people could in fact be good for the State ("society").

Suppose, by some fluke, you manage to overcome your brainwashing. Are you morally obligated to continue to serve this society? On the contrary, it seems far more plausible that you're obligated to destroy the miserable institutions and start a whole new society in its place -- one that will be better for its inhabitants.

I conclude, then, that people are not universally obliged to serve "their society", i.e. the institutional order they actually happen to find themselves in. At most, we are obligated to serve our collective, which is simply us - a plurality of persons - and not some impersonal entity that exists over and above us. (Perhaps this is all that was meant by 'society' all along?) But even then, it wouldn't do for us to exploit some other group of innocent people, even if it would be to our society's advantage. So we need to expand the collective to all beings with moral status. We might call this the 'universal society', but it's no longer clear that the label is doing any real work.

Deliberation and Restorative Justice

In their article, 'Restorative justice: deliberative democracy in action?' [previously available here], John Parkinson and Declan Roche argue that "restorative justice vividly illustrates the potential of deliberative processes, showing that ordinary citizens are capable of deliberation and negotiation even when they are angry and hurt, scared and nervous."

One might wonder to what extent it really demonstrates public-minded deliberation as opposed to just self-interested bargaining. The authors elaborate:

The various parties to the dispute offer their proposals as to what needs to happen to restore the situation and must defend those proposals with reasons, meaning that outcomes are supposed to be the result of agreement, not imposition. Even though the agreements reached may be supported for very different reasons... still the parties create a collective decision through public reason rather than simply voting on pre-deliberative preferences. In the highly charged context of criminal justice, such a vote would be highly unlikely to settle even on a common understanding of the values and issues at stake let alone an acceptable agreement about the way to make amends. As already alluded to, empirical evidence available so far indicates very high levels of agreement, compliance and subsequent satisfaction with those agreements where both victims and offenders are present.

It's an interesting question what lessons can be transferred from the criminal justice system to our broader political institutions (or vice versa). I recently mentioned the idea of Citizens Juries, for example. How plausible do you find the general claim that what works in the one setting will work in the other? (My initial reaction is that the analogy seems weak; but something may be used merely as a source of ideas without depending on any such analogical argument.)

Facebook

At my brother's insistence (he wants to beat me at geography games), I've finally signed up for this "Facebook" thing that's taking over the interweb. It even sports a "David Lewis Appreciation Society". Any other Facebook recommendations?

Political Reality

Some policy proposals are dismissed not because they are flawed, but simply because it is perceived that they could not be implemented in the current "political climate"; though recognized to be objectively good, they are denounced for ignoring "political reality". This objection is strangely circular, for - ex hypothesi - there are no real grounds for anyone to object to the policy. The only objection is this one itself. And so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. No-one takes the proposal seriously, merely because they expect others to be similarly dismissive. That's "political reality": two mirrors set to reflect each other, regardless of the world beyond.

YouTube Feminism

This is an important discussion (hat-tip):

They point out that hateful, sex-obsessed trolls may intimidate women (and others) out of participating in the online public sphere -- which effectively amounts to cultural disenfranchisement. This is a really serious issue, so it's good to see it highlighted.

I found one section a bit jarring, though. The Resident claims that the trolls sound like guys who won't "get laid", and Emergency Cheese adds that they might need to try "a different tactic" -- all of which just seems to reinforce the lamentable assumption that the measure of a man is how many women he can trick into sleeping with him. Maybe they were just being pragmatic, and tapping in to the trolls' existing sex-obsession may be one way to get them to behave less hatefully. But still, as long as we're talking about disturbing cultural trends, I think the sex-obsession itself is another problem.

Direct Democracy

Over at Kiwiblog they're discussing the claim that direct democracy would lead to crazy and bigoted policies. I think that New Zealanders would probably not be such a bad mob as most, but in any case direct democracy should not be conflated with mob rule. As I explain in this old post, the democratic question is merely about who should wield power, not how much power they should get, nor to what end they ought to use it. Citizen participation may take place within constitutional constraints, and with an eye to what's objectively good.

I'm suspicious of typical 'direct democracy' proposals (e.g. binding referenda and ballot initiatives), however. Raw public opinion is not much of a guide to anything worth knowing. But I trust that ordinary people are capable of making valuable - reasoned - contributions in the right context, e.g. a "Citizen's Jury" where a small group (randomly selected from the population) come together to learn and deliberate about an issue. Perhaps this is "representative" democracy in the sense that the decision is being made by a few people rather than the whole population. But it is "direct" and participatory in the sense that it is ordinary citizens who are the decision-makers.

Achiever's Guilt

There's a nice quote from Marianne Williamson:

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Last year, an undergraduate friend of mine received an scholarship to Princeton University. Oddly, he seemed almost embarrassed by it. (In fact, it was a mutual friend who informed me of his success.) I was bemused by his reaction at the time, but now find echoes of it in myself. (Sometimes, when talking to a random person who asks where in America I'm going, I answer with an evasive 'New Jersey'. Silly, eh?)

On reflection, I think this kind of misguided modesty is not a good thing. In the case of my friend, I was happy for him and wanted to share this. But you can't celebrate with someone who refuses to acknowledge that something good has happened! So that's unfortunate. And I've been a little slow to internalize this lesson in my own case, I think.

Rather than pointlessly beating myself down, I should probably just relax and let myself feel grateful for my good fortune. So, on that note, a couple of photos of the beautiful campus from my March visit:


Just three weeks till I move in! Quite exciting, really... I imagine the Graduate College will be full of students - from all sorts of disciplines - who are intelligent and academically motivated. And dammit, that's a good thing!

Hilzoy on Repentant Warmongers

'I don't mean this to be some sort of "I was right" triumphalism. What interests me is not so much who was right and who was wrong, but this particular version of being wrong -- a version that involves not just error, but errors like "I didn't realize until it was too late that I had to take reality into account", or: "I didn't fully appreciate the fact that making nice speeches isn't all there is to being President." And I'm also interested in why people seem willing to confess these kinds of profound error without any sense of intellectual shame, and why they continue to be given platforms in public life. Because until we find some way to ensure that we hear the opinions of people who know these sorts of things in advance, rather than having to learn them after hundreds of thousands of people have died, we are in deep, deep trouble.'

Read the whole thing.

Whose Future?

Via Bioethics International, an article with a rather misleading tagline: "Screening to weed out embryos that harbor abnormalities can help parents protect their children's futures."

This makes it sound as though one and the same child has been protected from genetic defects. But of course that's not it at all. Rather, the happy future is lived out by a different child than the one who would have lived without the screening. The damaged potential child is not healed, but replaced. This is arguably still an improvement, but the difference is worth noting.

I guess there is a reading of "their children" where it means something general like "whatever children they end up having", rather than referring to any particular individuals. But it is not the most natural reading. The woman quoted in the main article seems to have a clearer conception: "I truly believe that God gave us this technology to be able to protect our next generation." It's the collective generation that is benefited here, not any individual children.

Also of interest are three quick ethical objections mentioned in the article:

[1] Some disability advocates say the screening is a form of discrimination and implies that a life with a disability or illness is not worth living.

Indiscriminate judgment is not necessarily a virtue, especially for parents. Anyway, I think to choose a healthy embryo merely implies that disability or illness is a (pro tanto) bad thing -- worse than good health, not necessarily worse than nothing at all. That should be uncontroversial. You know, like why we don't deliberately cripple newborn babies. We recognize that they're better off without it.

[2] Groups against abortion are opposed to the procedure because it involves the destruction of embryos.

Isn't the destruction part of the usual IVF process, rather than the screening per se?

[3] Other critics fear that embryo screening is a form of eugenics (selective breeding) and a steppingstone to choosing only those babies who will grow up athletic, beautiful and smart.

I'm not sure what's so bad about choosing to have athletic, beautiful and smart children.

Philosophers we've never read

Times Online reviews Pierre Bayard’s How to discuss books that one hasn’t read. Quite funny:

He tells us, in his “Prologue”, that he was born into a family who read little, that he himself has almost no appetite for reading and that, anyway, he cannot find the time for it. As a (fifty-two-year-old) professor of French literature... he often finds himself obliged to comment on books he hasn’t looked at. And yet “non-reading” is a taboo subject in the circles in which he moves. He lists three constraints that we all feel as readers: “The first of these constraints could be called the obligation to read. We live in a society... in which reading still remains the object of a form of sacralization”, particularly where certain “canonical texts” are concerned: it is practically forbidden not to have read these. The second constraint “could be called the obligation to read a book in its entirety. If non-reading is frowned on, speed-reading and skimming are viewed in as poor a light”. For example, “it would be almost unthinkable for professors of literature to admit – what is after all true for most of them – that they have merely skimmed Proust’s work”. Can this really be the case? If so, it’s a dismaying thought – presumably Bayard has had some explaining to do to his colleagues since his book was published in France earlier this year. The third constraint, and the one which most of us would take as given, is the need to have read a book in order to be able to talk about it: according to Bayard, it is perfectly possible to have a fruitful discussion about a book one hasn’t read, even with someone who hasn’t read it either. These constraints lead to a lack of openness in our dealings with each other, Bayard claims, and generate unnecessary feelings of guilt.

It's true though: how many young philosophers have actually read Gettier's famous article? It's so well-known, you don't need to. (I kind of feel the same way about the history of philosophy. I've never done any officially, or even unofficially, but you can pick up a lot just through osmosis.) Of course, you need to read a work in all its minutiae to engage with it on a scholarly level. But for general purposes, this may not always be necessary. Most fun philosophical discussion isn't had in journals, after all!

So: any other examples of philosophers or works that you're happy to discuss despite never having read them?

Bodies as Carry-on Luggage

We're charged for extra luggage, because there are limits to how much weight an airplane can safely carry. But, of course, one of the things that passengers lug onto planes is themselves. An underweight person with extra luggage may well contribute less total burden than an overweight person without. Doesn't it seem strange to charge the less burdensome passenger, in such a case?

It would seem more sensible for airlines to calculate the total per-passenger weight allotment, and charge those who exceed it. (It makes no difference to the airplane whether what's weighing it down is in a suitcase or a suit and tie.) In the present system, we effectively have thin passengers subsidizing the overweight. Is there any good reason for this?

The Ideological Bait and Switch

Julian Sanchez makes an interesting point:

Now, far be it from me to dispute any movement's decisions about how to define its terms. But these rather strong criteria [for who qualifies as a real feminist] strike me as incompatible with the expressions of frustration we sometimes hear about people's reluctance to self-apply the label "feminist." The criteria in those cases seem rather looser: "Don't you support gender equality? Don't you think people doing equivalent work should be paid the same? Aren't you opposed to rigid gender roles and double-standards? Well, then you're a feminist!" If that's the standard, then I am a feminist, and so are the vast majority of people I know. If the standard is the wholesale acceptance, in practice as well as theory, of the ideology held by the modal Feministe commenter, I suppose I'm not and probably don't aspire to be. But by that standard, neither are most women I know.

The problem generalizes: any movement or ideology will face conflicting pressures towards both inclusion and exclusion. On the one hand, a "big tent" is required to attract people to your tribe. But on the other hand, you also want to persuade these people to adopt your more specific (and controversial) views. It's easy enough to apply social pressure once they've signed up, as nobody wants to lose their tribal identity. What better way to manipulate people into agreeing with you? Force a choice between "The Patriarchy is oppressing women everywhere!" and "Bah, then you oppose gender equality!", and hope no-one notices the false dilemma.

I guess that's a reason to be suspicious of labels in general. Their equivocation is avoided if we tackle the issues directly. It hardly matters what we call our resulting view. But there's a sense in which such definitional squabbles may be more substantive than they seem. Most charitably, arguments about the "true meaning" of an ideological label may be interpreted as questioning what is the most coherent and compelling version of that ideology, i.e. what position the diverse adherents would eventually converge upon, given ideal epistemic conditions. Importantly, such claims then stand in need of real argumentative support, rather than mere definitional stipulation.

Having said that, if stipulation is called for, I would recommend going with a narrower position for sake of enabling debate. There's no point taking a stand when nobody disagrees with you in the first place!

Darwinian Blinkers

Oh dear. Via Robin Hanson, a "moral puzzle":

Consider two men, A and B. Man A steals food because he’s starving to death, while Man B commits a rape because no woman will agree to have sex with him.

From a Darwinian perspective, the two cases seem exactly analogous. In both we have a man on the brink of genetic oblivion, who commandeers something that isn’t his in order to give his genes a chance of survival. And yet the two men strike just about everyone — including me — as inhabiting completely different moral universes. The first man earns only our pity. We ask: what was wrong with the society this poor fellow inhabited, such that he had no choice but to steal? The second man earns our withering contempt.

Befuddled by his genes-eye view, Scott asks: "can any of you pinpoint the difference between the two cases, that underlies our diametrically opposite moral intuitions?" Of the 80-odd responses, only two or three struck on the answer (though no-one listened): try looking at it from a human perspective.

Many noted the obvious point that rape generally inflicts far greater harm than stealing a loaf of bread. But this is an inessential point, as Robin notes: "it might help to imagine a society where the person who lost the food was also in some, though less, danger of starving. But even then food and sex seem to be treated differently."

A related reason is that - consequences aside - they're actually very different kinds of acts. It's misleading to describe both merely as an instance of "commandeer[ing] something that isn’t his", because very different kinds of 'ownership' are being violated. Our intuitions reflect the fact that material property rights are - in a sense - "socially constructed", and if not done right they may fail to yield genuine (reasonable) obligations. In any case, there's no question that the actual distribution of material wealth in the world is historically contingent. A person's self-ownership, by contrast, is a more essential matter. Rape is not just "theft of a body", but a deeply personal violation.

But the central mistake, I'd suggest, is to think that there's any relevant similarity between the motivations for either act. A person does not really act "in order to give his genes a chance of survival." This simply illustrates the all-too-common confusion of biological and psychological teleology. What matters for moral assessment are the real psychological motives of people, not the metaphorical "motives" we attribute to their genes.

From a person's perspective, then, the "analogy" is a non-starter. The starving man needs to eat in order to survive -- a likely precondition for realizing any of his other values. The vital importance of this is beyond question. The second man's "need" for sex is hardly comparable. (It's perfectly possible for the celibate to still lead worthwhile lives.) So, only one of them has a genuine need that could reasonably justify imposing such burdens on others.

It's worth emphasizing that genetic 'goals' don't really have any moral significance, as ethics is instead concerned with the welfare of persons (psychological beings). I'm amazed by how easily evolutionary psychology can lead otherwise intelligent people to lose sight of this basic fact.

But, this particular pseudo-puzzle aside, I do think Robin is right to note that "our concern about inequality is not very general": we focus almost entirely on material inequality, even though non-financial factors arguably have a greater impact on welfare once our basic needs have been met. Should we also be concerned about the distribution of popularity, status, attractiveness, charisma, etc.? How about discrimination due to eccentricity, social awkwardness, or simple introversion? (There's no denying it's an extrovert's world!) It's harder to imagine how to address these matters, I suppose...

Values and Factual Beliefs

Bryan Caplan asks: "How would the world change if everyone shared your factual beliefs?" He adds: "In the hypothetical, values remain unchanged."

However, one of my factual beliefs is that our values are responsive to reason, so that others would ultimately share my values if only they thought a bit more carefully about it. (Or vice versa, in cases where I am the mistaken one. But naturally I don't believe that this is so in any particular case!) Part of sharing all my factual beliefs is to believe that you would - on further reflection - share my values.

But there's something incoherent about believing something that you think you would reject on further reflection. The latter meta-belief implies that your original belief is unjustified. And as soon as you appreciate that fact, you can no longer hold the belief. (To believe something is to judge that it's true; you can't do that if you've just judged that it's probably false, or at least that you have no grounds for thinking it true.)

So, anyone who shared all my factual beliefs would be rationally compelled to also share my normative beliefs (values)!

Comprehensive Philosophy Blogroll

Chris Hallquist writes:

I've decided to embark on a project of creating a comprehensive blogroll of philosophy blogs. Once I work out the bugs, anyone will be able to add one of three versions to their blog: full, 25 most recent, and scrolling. I've got the code for the full version posted already: [link]

Could you announce this so that people can 1) send in their links and 2) add it if they so choose?

Dying in Vain

Gravel seems to be the only presidential candidate willing to admit the obvious truth that it's possible for American soldiers to die in vain: "There's only one thing worse than a soldier dying in vain; it's more soldiers dying in vain." Obama, disappointingly, parrots the silly dogma demanded of him by the American public: "I never think that troops... who do their mission for their country, are dying in vain."

What does that mean, exactly? The nationalist dogma seems to imply that it's always worthwhile for your soldiers to die. But why would anyone want their politicians to believe that? Gravel's position seems to show deeper support for the troops, as he recognizes the moral duty of a commander in chief to not throw their lives away. The other politicians, by contrast, all piously profess that it's impossible to throw away the lives of soldiers; whatever the commander tells them to do is ipso facto glorious and worthwhile. (Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.) They thus trivialize the moral burden of leadership. It's easy to see why a failed leader might want to do this; but why in the world would the broader public fall for it -- and all in the name of "supporting the troops", no less!?

The problem seems to stem from the sort of insecure patriotism that's so unwilling to admit mistakes that it forsakes any opportunity for genuine improvement. (Such self-idolizing "patriots" are arguably the biggest obstacle to true American greatness.)

It may also be an unfortunate encroachment of non-cognitive discourse. That is, the public don't care about the literal truth of whether troops are dying in vain. It's just a tribal signal. Bad, anti-American people claim that the troops are dying in vain. So, whether it's true or not, public figures must deny the claim merely to distance themselves from the bad tribe. (Cf. their public professions of religious "faith". Only evil communists are atheists, after all!)

Now, to create a society where politics was rational and truth-oriented... that would be worth dying for.

Brand Value

Advertising makes us want stuff. What's the normative significance of this fact? The most obvious thought is to see it as a bad thing: marketing manipulates our preferences, effectively brainwashing us into wanting things that don't necessarily cohere with our most deeply-held values. On the other hand, it might be argued that advertising "creates value" by increasing the satisfaction we get from advertised products. (Cf. The Visible Hand -- apparently food tastes better if it comes in a McDonalds wrapper!)

Marketing aims to shape the cultural meaning of a brand. If someone wants to associate themselves with a particular lifestyle, buying an appropriately advertised label may be an easy way for them to send the desired signal. Advertised consumer goods thus serve people who want to brand themselves, perhaps to affirm their cultural identity or to gain status. Does this make advertising worthwhile after all? (I've always thought that marketers were scum... should I revise my opinion?)

This ties in with important debates over intellectual property and "trademark dilution". See Boing Boing:

It used to be that trademarks were intended to protect "consumers" (that's us) from being tricked into buying goods under false pretenses. If it said "Coca-Cola" on the can, there had better be Coke inside, and not Pepsi or Crazy-Bob's-Discount-House-of-Soda brand. When a competitor of Coke's shipped a bottle of stuff that was misleadingly packaged or labelled, Coke's authority to sue its competition derived from its need to protect us, not its bottom line. It didn't get to sue because it owned Coca-Cola, but because it was acting as a proxy for its customers, who were being decieved by con-artists who mislabelled their goods...

But as time went by, trademarks stopped being about us and started being the embodiment of brands (which, as Surowiecki points out, are on the wane and were probably never as important as we thought to begin with).

This meant that trademarks weren't just things that helped the public know what they were buying -- they are a kind of pseudo-property. Pseudo-property that could be defended on the basis that it "belongs" to a company, who need to be protected from having the value of their marks "diluted" or "tarnished."

So now you have Visa going after eVisa.com -- a company that helps you get travel visas -- and Air Canada going after shareholders who used the Air Canada logo on communications about problems with Air Canada management. Disney's one of the worst, of course, going after daycares that paint Mickey on the walls -- even though there's not an instant's danger that anyone will mistake a nonprofit daycare center for a Disney operation and be misled into patronizing it. Most recently, of course, some of Nintendo's lawyers got a wild hair up their ass because someone mentioned some game titles on a profile-page on a porn/community site and freaked out because the association might damage their brand.

All these new and exciting uses of trademarks -- shutting up critics, blocking new entrants into the market, and controlling the speech of private individuals -- are justified by the importance of brands.

If branding is just a way for companies to manipulate consumers and rip us off, then such heavy-handed legal "protection" is simply evil. But if brands create real (cultural) value for consumers, then there's some trade-off here, and so a real debate to be had.

Actually, even granting this value, I think the pro-marketing argument fails. It shows the value of imbued significance or cultural meaning -- but there's no reason to think that this meaning is best shaped by advertisers. A far more attractive alternative would be for such meanings to emerge from the distributed contributions of cultural citizens, as per my old post: 'Democratizing Culture'. We don't need advertisers to impose cultural meanings from On High. So, my low opinion of them remains...

Philosophers' Carnival News

The 51st Philosophers' Carnival is now up at Enigmania.

We seem to have finally exhausted the pool of new hosts, so the next carnival edition will once again be held right here at Philosophy, et cetera. (Submit your entry here!) Any other past hosts who are keen to go again should simply send me an email, and I'll put you down for the next available spot -- currently late October. New volunteers are of course also welcome at any time. (See also the hosting guidelines.)

Also, those who are less inclined towards analytic philosophy may be interested to learn of Nathan Everson's new Postmodern Philosophy Carnival. Jared of Sportive Thoughts has also put together a Deleuze Carnival.

Pick your candidate

Here's a fun quiz (HT: Parableman). My results:

Kucinich 38
Gravel 35
Richardson 27
Clinton 26
Edwards 26
Dodd 24
Obama 23
Biden 22
Paul 8
McCain 6
Giuliani -8
Thompson -14
Cox -14
Brownback -22
Huckabee -25
Tancredo -33
Hunter -34
Romney -36

Aside from civil liberties, most of the quizzed issues weren't ones that I really care about all that much. (All things considered, I would rank Obama much higher, and Clinton perhaps slightly lower. I don't know much about the minor candidates though.)