Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Clearinghouse for Bushie Wrongdoings (Nadelhoffer)

The People for the American Way has set up this useful site "to establish a single place for the public to acquire and share information about Executive Branch wrongdoings."  The site is based on the same technology as Wikipedia.

When Politicians Unintentionally and Ironically Speak the Truth (Leiter)

Two recent gems from The New York Times:

First, from a story about the alleged President conversing with a woman from Venezuela while visiting Nebraska:

On a visit to the Juan Diego Center here, Bush met Lourdes Secola, who told him she came to the United States 25 years ago Wednesday from Venezuela to get an education and work in dentistry.

''I'm a little worried about your country,'' Bush said after listening to her story. ''I'm worried about it, a little worried about it. I think it'll be OK.''

But, he added: ''It's going to take awhile. Sometimes leaders show up who do a great disservice to the traditions and people of a country.''

Second, from a story on the failure in the U.S. Senate of a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage:

''The Republican leadership is asking us to spend time writing bigotry into the Constitution,'' said Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, which legalized gay marriage in 2003. ''A vote for it is a vote against civil unions, against domestic partnership, against all other efforts for states to treat gays and lesbians fairly under the law.''

In response, [Utah Republican Senator] Hatch fumed: ''Does he really want to suggest that over half of the United States Senate is a crew of bigots?''

Non-Compassionate Ominvorism? (Nadelhoffer)

My point of departure in this post is the recent book by Peter Singer and Jim Mason entitled The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter.   The main goal of the book is to examine the moral implications of our decisions concerning what we eat.  Rather than focusing on meat consumption in general, for present purposes I want to focus exclusively on the moral problems associated with factory farming or confinement agriculture—although I should specify in advance that I will not be explaining these problems in detail here.  For more information, you can look here, here, or here.  My present goal is to suggest that if confinement agriculture is morally problematic, then knowingly eating meat produced by these methods—when doing so is unnecessary—is also morally problematic.  As such, people who contribute to the corporations who are in the confinement agriculture business by eating their products should shoulder the responsibility of providing a moral justification for their eating and purchasing habits as far as meat is concerned.  But I am getting ahead of myself.  First, I need to briefly lay out the problem.

Given (a) the staggering number of animals that were killed last year in this country for food (estimates typically exceed 10 billion animals), (b) the horrific conditions animals are forced to endure in factory farms (e.g., no sunlight, inconceivable crowding, tail cropping, beak cutting, forced feeding, and the like), and (c) the health and environmental problems associated with contemporary meat production (e.g., overuse of hormones and antibiotics as well as polluted waterways and groundwater), confinement agriculture  deserves more attention than it gets these days.  For contrary to the mental images we have of what farms are like—with chickens, pigs, and cows wandering around idyllic green pastures and basking in the sun—modern day confinement agribusiness has reduced animals to nothing more than commodities.  Indeed, industry insiders are perfectly aware of the disconnect between what people believe about how farm animals are treated while they are alive and the actual conditions these animals are forced to endure—a disconnect agricorporations foster by relying on misleading advertising and labeling and by making sure that confinement facilities are not open to the public.  Unfortunately (and not surprisingly), these corporations have the law on their side.

For instance, there is no federal law governing the welfare of farmed animals.  Federal laws only become applicable once the animals are transported to slaughterhouses.  Moreover, most states that have animal welfare laws have built-in exceptions for “common farming practices.”  As a result, farmed animals are literally invisible as far as the law is concerned, and any common farming practice, no matter how cruel and inhumane, is legal.  This state of affairs has effectively enabled major corporations such as Tyson, Smithfield, and ContriGroup, to reduce animals to nothing more than meat producing machines.  As a result, any and all decisions concerning how these animals are to be treated while they are alive are driven entirely by productivity and profitability.  Given the current federal and state statutory schemes, these animals’ psychological well-being need not ever be taken into consideration. 

I will leave it to the reader to further investigate these issues as she sees fit.  For now I am more interested in a group of people that Singer and Mason call “compassionate omnivores”—i.e., people who choose to eat meat but who make sure that the animals whose meat they consume were treated humanely while they were alive.  Given how Singer and Mason define "compassionate omnivore," we should presumably call meat eaters who do not insist the animals whose meat they eat were treated humanely while they were alive, “non-compassionate omnivores.”  My question is the following: Are there any compelling arguments for the permissibility of being a non-compassionate omnivore—especially when being a compassionate omnivore, vegetarian, or vegan is always an option?  Perhaps I simply lack a vivid imagination, but I can not think of any compelling arguments in this regard.  I am interested to hear what kinds of arguments the readers of this blog manage to put forward. 

To prevent people from either misunderstanding or misrepresenting what I am arguing for here, let me spell out very clearly what I am not trying to accomplish or argue for in this post. I am not suggesting that eating meat is intrinsically wrong nor am I suggesting that non-human animals either do or should enjoy the same moral status as human beings (although both of these claims have been put forward in the animal welfare literature).  Moreover, I am not suggesting that it is always morally impermissible for humans to use non-human animals to suit our needs.  What I am suggesting is that certain forms of meat production and meat consumption are at least prima facie morally problematic and hence require a moral justification.  So, the onus is on the non-compassionate omnivores of the world to justify their eating and purchasing habits as far as meat is concerned.  Indeed, this post can be viewed as a challenge to the readers of this blog who engage in the form of meat consumption I have been discussing—and who thereby finance the form of meat production I have suggested is morally problematic—to put forward a moral argument that justifies these habits.  Eating the meat of animals that were treated humanely while they were alive is one thing.  Eating meat that comes from animals that were unnecessarily forced to endure bleak and miserable lives is something else entirely.

I suspect that most non-compassionate omnivores are simply unaware of what happens to the animals whose meat they eat.  Luckily, I have just given the readers of this blog the means of disabusing themselves of any misconceptions they might understandably have about how modern farm animals are often raised.  As a result, ignorance will not suffice as a justification.  Moreover, neither will simply pointing out how delicious meat is.  After all, I have not suggested that people should not eat meat at all. I have only suggested that certain forms of meat eating are morally suspect.  Indeed, if anything, the meat produced by small family farms that treat their animals well and do not pump them full of hormones and antibiotics should taste better than meat produced by confinement agriculture--plus, it's better for you.  This leaves cost as perhaps the main justification for eating factory farmed meat.  But I am skeptical that enough moral mileage can be gotten out of cost alone to justify the practice under consideration.  Would the people in this country really be that worse off if they ate meat a little less often?  The statistics concerning obesity suggest we could all stand to eat a little less of nearly everything (except perhaps fruits and vegetables!).  So, what (if anything) justifies non-compassionate omnivorism?

Comments are open; no anonymous postings.  I should also be clear up front that juvenile and/or abusive comments will not be posted.  If you do not wish to seriously engage the questions and probelms I have raised, I politely ask that you not bother commenting.  Please post only once; comments may take awhile to appear.

UPDATE:  It has been brought to my attention that Roger Scruton has an interesting post over at Right Reason entitled "Eating Our Friends"--where he talks about the "virtuous carnivore."

UPDATE: This article in the new Mother Jones talks about alternatives to industrial agriculture.

UPDATE: This article in the New York Times talks about the rising demand for organic beef.

More Brown Shirts on the Airwaves (Leiter)

Unbelievable...except, sadly, all too believable and familiar:

Academia Semillas del Pueblo is dedicated to providing urban children of immigrant native families an excellent education founded upon their own language, cultural values, and global realities," their official website says (www.dignidad.org).

Besides meeting all requirements for students in LAUSD schools, ASDP provides an ancestral Mexican (indigenous) school environment, based on the Mexika/Aztec concept of kalpulli, which caters to the mostly Mexican/Central American community in El Sereno. Besides English, they also have language classes in Nahuatl (native Mexican), Spanish, and Mandarin. While the majority of the students are Mexican/Central American, the Academia is open to all children of any race, culture, or creed.

Recently, KABC-AM talk radio, which the right-wing has used for years to spout their ugly divisive politics, has targeted ASDP for closure because "they do not instill 'American' values." In particular, Scott McIntyre, a morning talk show host, claims the school is part of the "multiculturalism" push in this country, which has become a particular focus of attack by some US conservative fringe organizations.

Last week, their rabid attacks against ASDP led to death threats against the school and its children (even forcing students to go home)....

This is fascism, pure and simple...

Dept. of Bad Behavior: UCLA Fails to Reimburse Prospective PhD Student in Timely Manner! (Leiter)

Yikes!

Working at a Big Law Firm is No Laughing Matter! (Leiter)

Although it is here.

Politicized Hiring Decisions at Yale? (Leiter)

Old news, of course, but it has an amazing ability to come in fresh versions.  A sensible set of remarks from John Wilson of College Freedom in the comments at InsideHigherEd:

Lobbying of a university not to hire a particular professor is a serious threat to academic freedom. The decision to hire or not hire should be based on merit, not politics. If Yale was influenced by this campaign (and we’d all like to know the truth), then it is a danger to academic freedom. Public (or private) campaigns to pressure universities not to hire someone because of their politics are morally wrong. Juan Cole would be the first professor on David Horowitz’s list to be so treated. Criticism of Juan Cole is perfectly acceptable. However, it should be criticism of his views, not a call for a blacklist.

Listening to the delusional moaning of right-wingers, you wouldn't realize that, as usual in the U.S., the actual victims of political persecution in the universities--folks who lose jobs--are almost all on the left.  (In this case, the damage to the target, Professor Cole, is, happily, minimal, as he remains a professor at a leading research university, and part of one of the top History Departments in the nation.)

ADDENDUM:  Given the byzantine hiring process at Yale, it's perhaps worth noting that politics might not explain the outcome (hence the question mark in the title).  Although it is true the appointment had been approved at the departmental level, it is not uncommon for those decisions to be overturned higher up.  In this case, though, given the volume of the orchestrated attacks by the right-wing on Professor Cole, it seems a plausible assumption that the political attacks were a significant factor in the decision to reverse the departmental recommendations.

One Strike and You're Out Part Two (Nadelhoffer)

The other day I posted something here about the sometimes unnecessarily draconian sentencing guidelines in the country.  Today, I noticed that Hanno Kaiser has an interesting post at the Law and Society Blog concerning Arizona v. Berger--a 2004 child pornography case involving a 52 year old high school teacher with no criminal record who was found to be in the possession of 20 pictures of child pornography, which he had downloaded from the web for free. The trial court sentenced Berger to 200 years in prison--20 consecutive ten-year sentences--without the possibility of pardon or early release.  Kaiser is certainly correct to wonder "whether the government under the Constitution has the power to throw a first-time non-violent offender in prison for the rest of his or her life solely for the possession of certain contraband images." Of course, as Kaiser himself acknowledges, "there are valid reasons to criminally punish child molesters and those who produce, commission, and fund child pornography. But Berger is no such case. Berger is a case about life-long imprisonment for the mere possession of disfavored content. Free societies should not grant their governments the power to destroy someone’s life just for looking at pictures - no matter what those pictures show. It is all the more depressing that the Berger case has hardly made a ripple in the press or the blogosphere."  I figured I would follow Kaiser's lead and contribute my small part to the ripple by pointing everyone in his direction.

American Bar Association to Investigate Bush's Use of "Signing Statements" (Leiter)

It is indicative of how outrageously lawless Bush & his bestiary of madmen are that even the conservative American Bar Association has decided to convene a committee to assess the President's conduct:

The board of governors of the American Bar Association voted unanimously yesterday to investigate whether President Bush has exceeded his constitutional authority in reserving the right to ignore more than 750 laws that have been enacted since he took office.

Meeting in New Orleans, the board of governors for the world's largest association of legal professionals approved the creation of an all-star legal panel with a number of members from both political parties.

They include a former federal appeals court chief judge, a former FBI director, and several prominent scholars -- to evaluate Bush's assertions that he has the power to ignore laws that conflict with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Bush has appended statements to new laws when he signs them, noting which provisions he believes interfere with his powers.

Among the laws Bush has challenged are the ban on torturing detainees, oversight provisions in the USA Patriot Act, and ``whistle-blower" protections for federal employees.

The challenges also have included safeguards against political interference in taxpayer-funded research.

Bush has challenged more laws than all previous presidents combined....

The signing statements task force, which was recruited by [ABA President Michael] Greco, a longtime Boston lawyer who served on former [Republican] Governor William F. Weld's Judicial Nominating Council, includes several Republicans. Among them are Mickey Edwards , a former Oklahoma representative from 1977 to 1993, and Bruce Fein , a Justice Department official under President Reagan....

William Sessions, a retired federal judge who was the director of the FBI under both Reagan and President George H.W. Bush , said he agreed to participate because he believed that the signing statements raise a ``serious problem" for the American constitutional system.

``I think it's very important for the people of the United States to have trust and reliance that the president is not going around the law," Sessions said. ``The importance of it speaks for itself...."

The task force also includes several prominent legal scholars, such as Harold Koh , dean of Yale Law School and a former official in the Reagan and Clinton administrations; Kathleen Sullivan , former dean of Stanford Law School; Charles Ogletree , a Harvard law professor; and Stephen Saltzburg , a professor at George Washington University Law School.

Saltzburg -- who was a Justice Department official under Reagan and the first president Bush, as well as a prosecutor in the Iran-Contra scandal -- said he did not believe that signing statements were unconstitutional.

But, he said, frequent use of them could create bad perceptions about whether the US government obeys the rule of law....

Rounding out the panel are Mark Agrast , a former legislative counsel for Representative William D. Delahunt , Democrat of Quincy, and Thomas Susman, who worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel under both Presidents Johnson and Nixon , and was later counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Susman said he agreed to serve out of intellectual curiosity: ``I think it's a fascinating subject," he said. The task force is chaired by Neal Sonnett , a former federal prosecutor. Earlier this year, Sonnett chaired a similar ABA panel of bipartisan specialists who studied the legality of Bush's warrantless spying program.

The earlier panel unanimously concluded that Bush should obey a law requiring warrants for such surveillance, or he should ask Congress to change the law, rather than simply ignoring it....

The task force will make its recommendation this summer, Greco said, and the 550-member ABA House of Delegates will vote on whether to adopt its findings at a meeting in August.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, promised to hold a hearing on Bush's use of signing statements.

Grad Students and Labor Unions (Nadelhoffer)

Over at Left 2 Right, David Velleman has posted the draft of a letter he co-authored with Paul Boghossian that explains their opposition to the representation of graduate student teaching assistants by labor unions.  Readers of this blog may want to join the frey.

Four Fundamentalisms (Nadelhoffer)

Over at Counterpunch, Robert Jensen diagnoses what he calls the "four fundamentalisms" that are currently driving public opinion in America.  Here is an excerpt:

One way to come to terms with these forces is to understand the United States as a society in the grip of four fundamentalisms. In ascending order of threat, I identify these fundamentalisms as religious, national, economic, and technological. All share some similar characteristics, while each poses a particular threat to sustainable democracy and sustainable life on the planet. Each needs separate analysis and strategies for resistance.

Let's start by defining fundamentalism. The term has a specific meaning in Protestant history (an early 20th century movement to promote "The Fundamentals"), but I want to use it in a more general fashion to describe any intellectual/political/theological position that asserts an absolute certainty in the truth and/or righteousness of a belief system. Such fundamentalism leads to an inclination to want to marginalize, or in some cases eliminate, alternative ways to understand and organize the world. After all, what's the point of engaging in honest dialogue with those who believe in heretical systems that are so clearly wrong or even evil? In this sense, fundamentalism is an extreme form of hubris, a delusional overconfidence not only in one's beliefs but in the ability of humans to know much of anything definitively. In the way I use the term, fundamentalism isn't unique to religious people but is instead a feature of a certain approach to the world, rooted in the mistaking of very limited knowledge for wisdom.

The antidote to fundamentalism is humility, that recognition of just how contingent our knowledge about the world is. We need to adopt what sustainable agriculture researcher Wes Jackson calls "an ignorance-based worldview," an approach to world that acknowledges that what we don't know dwarfs what we do know about a complex world. Acknowledging our basic ignorance does not mean we should revel in stupidity, but rather should spur us to recognize that we have an obligation to act intelligently on the basis not only of what we know but what we don't know. When properly understood, I think such humility is implicit in traditional/indigenous systems and also ­the key lesson to be taken from the Enlightenment and modern science (a contentious claim, perhaps, given the way in which modern science tends to overreach). The Enlightenment insight, however, is not that human reason can know everything, but that we can give up attempts to know everything and be satisfied with knowing what we can know. That is, we can be content in making it up as we go along, cautiously. One of the tragedies of the modern world is that too few have learned that lesson.

Rather that an "ignorance-based worldview," the current Bush administration--with a sea of fundamentalist supporters who approve of the job the Bushies are doing without actually being able to say what it is precisely that they have accomplished (see here)--have apparently opted for an  ignorant view of the world instead.

 

Another Modest Proposal: As Long as We're Persecuting Gays... (Leiter)

...let's get serious about the institution of marriage:

Only virgins or widows can marry and widowed women must marry the eldest brother of her deceased husband. No interfaith marriage. Hell, no romantic marriage.

A Modest Proposal: Boycott American Academics Too! (Leiter)

This NYU professor has the right idea.

Friday Poem: "For Thomas Hardy"

For Thomas Hardy

It’s late in 1995
I think of those who did survive
Who were the killers of my tribe
Disguised now in the everyday
As men and women like the rest
In Bremen or in Bucharest
Those actors whose banality
Took life with gross finality

Everything is inconceivable
Even when explicable
That we live at all
That our planet’s tranquil
Carriage holds us firm
That we never cease to dream
Of kisses warm and light
That some will kill for sport or spite
For gain from fear because they hate
Because it’s what is to be done
Because the snow is black against the sun

Let’s count the killers still alive
Who somewhere rub their eyes tonight
Walk the dog or slice some bread
Or hug a tearful child of their blood
And sleep more soundly than we hoped they would

The heart is ash upon the snow
The flesh is cinder long ago
The innocent become the slave
Has fed the oven and the grave
The deeds that burned are buried deep
Far deeper than those put to sleep
Whom they hounded and derided
Snarled at pounced upon devoured
Herded naked into showers

And at day’s end perhaps a drink
And chatter with some tipsy friend

Then fifty years around the bend
To paw and growl and pretend

9/18/95-6/8/96, 5/7/06, 5/21/06
Copyright 1996, 2006 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Bibliographies Abound (Nadelhoffer)

Patrick O'Donnell recently brought to my attention several  bibliographies that he has compiled.  Two were of particular interest to me--namely, Animal Ethics and Criminal Law/Punishment (see below)--but apparently he has several more if people are interested (e.g., global distributive justice, democratic theory & praxis, nonviolence and conflict resolution, the emotions, and more).  Thanks to Patrick for taking the time and energy to put these helpful lists together.

Download animals_ethics_rights_law_bibliography.pdf

Download criminal_law_punishment_prisons_bibliography.pdf

Celebrity Colonialism (Leiter)

This is so bizarre, that "conspicuous consumption" in Veblen's sense would be the height of good taste by comparison.

The South Will Rise Again? (Nadelhoffer)

Apparently, some prominent Alabama judges--including Justice Tom Parker, who is running for Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court (which is frightening indeed!)--have decided that the divining rod of truth as far as the law is concerned is better used at the local level.  Indeed, according to their own bizarro-world version of checks and balances, state judges have a duty to ignore the decisions of federal judges when these decisions are deemed to be unconstitutional. Details can be found here. 
 

One Strike and You're Out? (Nadelhoffer)

Over at The Progressive, you can find an interesting article by Sasha Abramsky about Weldon Angelos--a 24 year old Utah man who has been sentenced to 55 years in prison for his first conviction for selling drugs (1 1/2 lbs. of marijuana). Here are some of the details of his plight:

Angelos is not a murderer. Nor is he a rapist, an armed robber, or a kidnapper. If he were, chances are he’d be staring down a shorter sentence than the fifty-five years he’s burdened with. No, he is a medium-scale Salt Lake City marijuana dealer who had no prior felony convictions...[I]n 2002, he sold three half-pound bags, worth a few hundred dollars a piece, to an informant who was working for the Metro Gang Unit as a way to avoid a long prison sentence on his own drug and gun charges. Weldon was arrested by local officers working in conjunction with federal agents. The informant said that Angelos had carried a gun on his ankle holster during the transactions, at which point the Feds stepped in for the catch. They charged Angelos with offenses under section 924(c) of the federal code—provisions that triggered mandatory sentences for dealers who carried guns during their drug transactions. Instead of facing a sentence in state court for his marijuana dealing that likely would have ranged from probation to a few years behind bars, now—despite the fact the informant’s words were not backed up by any photographic record proving the drug dealer was indeed armed during the deals—Angelos was facing federal charges that could see him locked away for the rest of his life. The Feds offered Angelos a deal—sixteen years if he would plead guilty on the gun charges, or face upwards of 100 years if he chose to go to trial. Angelos, who to this day continues to deny he was carrying a gun during the drug sales, refused to take the plea. And so the U.S. Attorney’s Office threw the full weight of the law at him, charging him with three 924(c) offenses, each one triggering a mandatory sentence longer than the previous one, each sentence to be served consecutively. After a jury found him guilty of the charges, on November 16, 2004, Angelos, then aged twenty-four, faced his sentencing. Judge Paul Cassell, in handing down fifty-five years, expressed outrage at the sentence the law required him to impose. “The court believes that to sentence Mr. Angelos to prison for the rest of his life is unjust, cruel, and even irrational,” he said. “It is also far in excess of the sentence imposed for such serious crimes as aircraft hijacking, second-degree murder, espionage, kidnapping, aggravated assault, and rape. . . . To correct what appears to be an unjust sentence, the court also calls on the President to commute Mr. Angelos’s sentence to something that is more in accord with just and rational punishment.” When the judge polled the jury, eleven of the twelve stated they thought Angelos should receive five to ten years in prison, rather than more than five decades, but the judge acknowledged that he had no choice in the matter. Robert Lund, assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Utah and the man responsible for prosecuting the case, justifies the sentence. “Weldon Angelos was a member of a really violent street gang, Vario Loco Town, notorious for violent crimes, shootings, murder, serious assault, and drug distribution,” Lund says. The Supreme Court, Lund continues, “has said armed crime is one of the biggest problems facing our country, and drug distribution is a huge problem. Epidemic. So Congress has chosen to impose huge penalties to try to deter this form of conduct. Section 924(c) is the law of the land. My obligation is to accept that when someone commits the crimes to prosecute him, and then let the courts impose the penalty that’s required by law.” It’s easy to agree that drug dealing is bad, and that drug dealing while carrying weaponry is even worse. But it’s a leap from there to mandatory sentencing, and, more specifically, extraordinarily punitive mandatory sentencing. In fact, precisely because mandatory sentences don’t distinguish between someone like Angelos and a seriously violent, predatory offender, they cease to adequately protect the rights of the individual. “At the end of the day,” argues Jerome Mooney, Angelos’s original defense attorney, “shouldn’t all punishment be individualized in some fashion?” In recent years, some state electorates and legislatures have started to back away from the more extreme aspects of the drug wars, in part because the costs of incarceration are so high...The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates the federal prison system had more than 180,000 inmates at the end of 2004. In 1984, 11,854 people were charged with drug offenses in federal court. By 1999, 29,306 were charged. In 1986, the average length of time a person convicted of drug charges in federal court could expect to spend behind bars was two and a half years. By 2003, a year in which fully 37 percent of all charges filed in federal court were for drug crimes, the average length of time such prisoners could expect to serve had skyrocketed to almost seven years. “It seems to me to be basically irrational,” says Erik Luna, a law professor at the University of Utah and co-appellate counsel for Angelos. “But it’s a warfare mentality. When you perceive other individuals you consider to be partners in your warfare lowering the hostilities toward the enemy, it’s a natural response to increase your offensive. The federal system has expanded exponentially, and the punishments have increased almost every year.” In fact, so long are the sentences that prosecutors can threaten defendants with unless they agree to a plea bargain that the vast majority of federal cases now no longer go to trial, says Mary Price, general counsel of the D.C.-based organization Families Against Mandatory Minimums. Guilty or innocent, the risks of losing in trial are now too great for most to take. Angelos’s lawyers are contemplating an appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, urging it to find the sentence cruel and unusual. Twenty U.S. attorneys, five judges, and a former Attorney General have signed on to an amicus brief. But Angelos’s chances aren’t good, since the Supreme Court has already upheld California’s three-strikes law, which has sentenced low-end offenders to life behind bars. “I’ve seen people go to prison for four years for shooting people,” Angelos says, pondering his fate in the chilly prison visiting room. “I know someone getting out after eight years for cold-blooded killing someone. I’ll be seeing murderers, rapists leave, and I’ll still be in here if I don’t win my appeal.

Minimally, Angelos' case gives us reason to not only reconsider current draconian drug laws, but it also casts an ominous cloud over the role than plea bargaining has come to play in the criminal "justice" system--especially at the federal level. 

Lenman on "Moral Naturalism" (Leiter)

Sheffield's James Lenman--who maintains the invaluable on-line bibliography of metaethics--has a new essay in SEP on "Moral Naturalism," which provides an impressive, synoptic discussion of two decades worth of debates about "naturalistic forms of moral realism according to which there are objective moral facts and properties and these moral facts and properties are natural facts and properties."  (SEP essays are, I should add, pretty uniformly of high quality...I generally only flag the new ones that intersect with my own research interests.)

It's Official: the U.S. is No Longer a Democracy (Leiter)

This is a damning and, on the face of it, quite compelling and detailed case in support of the proposition that there was massive electoral fraud in the 2004 Presidential election.   The only mildly redeeming aspect of this saga is that, if it is correct, it means that a majority of voters did, in fact, reject the war criminals who are still in Washington, D.C.  Anyway, this is a case where, to make up your own mind, you will need to literally read the whole thing; no excerpt would do it justice.

UPDATE:  David Velleman reminds me that Left2Right "broke," as it were, part of this story back in January 2005.

Jessica and Benj Will Have to Run the Blog When Jason, Bill and I Are Gone... (Leiter)

...unless, of course, we move to Canada:

Despite complaints about long waits for services, Canadians are healthier than their U.S. neighbors and receive more consistent medical care, according to a report released on Tuesday.

A telephone survey of more than 8,000 people showed that even though Americans spend nearly twice as much per capita for health care, they have more trouble getting care and have more unmet health needs than Canadians do....

"These findings raise serious questions about what we're getting for the $2.1 trillion we're spending on health care this year," said Dr. David Himmelstein, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard.

"We pay almost twice what Canada does for care, more than $6,000 for every American, yet Canadians are healthier, and live two to three years longer," Himmelstein added in a statement.

"Canadians had better access to most types of medical care (with the single exception of pap smears)," Himmelstein and colleagues wrote in the study, published in the American Journal of Public Health.

"Canadians were 7 percent more likely to have a regular doctor and 19 percent less likely to have an unmet health need. U.S. respondents were almost twice as likely to go without a needed medicine due to cost (9.9 percent of U.S. respondents couldn't afford medicine versus 5.1 percent in Canada)," they added.

"After taking into account income, age, sex, race and immigrant status, Canadians were 33 percent more likely to have a regular doctor and 27 percent less likely to have an unmet health need...."

"Most of what we hear about the Canadian health care system is negative; in particular, the long waiting times for medical procedures," Dr. Karen Lasser an instructor of medicine at Harvard who worked on the study, said in a statement.

"But we found that waiting times affect few patients, only 3.5 percent of Canadians versus 0.7 percent of people in the U.S. No one ever talks about the fact that low-income and minority patients fare better in Canada," she added....

Glowing Reviews for Beiser on Hegel, Jolley on Leibniz (Leiter)

I have been delighted to see the very favorable, and well-deserved, reviews for some of the first books in The Routledge Philosophers series I edit.  Here is Martin Donougho (South Carolina) on Frederick Beiser's volume on Hegel:

Frederick Beiser's Hegel ushers in a new series, 'Routledge Philosophers.' The list of contributing authors is a distinguished one, yet nobody will dispute Beiser's claim to belong there. From his first book -- The Fate of Reason -- on the context of Kantian critique, Beiser established a reputation which was only strengthened by a string of publications on Idealist and Romantic "constellations" of thought. The new book follows the series format: brief historical background, key arguments, philosophical legacy, as well as suggestions for further reading and a bibliography (all in an attractive typeface, I'll add). Beiser says that he wants to provide not so much exegesis as a comprehensive overview aimed primarily at the first-time reader. The result is in my judgment little short of a triumph. In 350 pages Beiser manages to suggest much of the sweep and challenge of Hegel's thought, in direct and straightforward prose, yet without shirking the procedural difficulties of Hegel's arguments and positions. Engaged and independent in his assessments, he adopts a manner that is the opposite of a bland encyclopedia entry.

Here is Samuel Levey (Dartmouth) on Nicholas Jolley's volume on Leibniz:

Nicholas Jolley's Leibniz is an excellent volume in the new Routledge Philosophers series. High marks are in order for its clarity, accessibility and acumen, as well as for the pace and style of its prose. One could be forgiven for doubting whether a truly introductory text could be produced on Leibniz's philosophy that covers the terrain of his thought without sacrificing the vibrancy and sharpness so distinctive of his arguments. Jolley's book puts that doubt to rest. For a novice to Leibniz it is a finely crafted introduction, and for more sophisticated readers there will be much to reflect upon as well.

Already published in the series are Nicholas Dent on Rousseau, Jonathan Lear on Freud, E.J. Lowe on Locke, A.P. Martinich on Hobbes, and Julian Young on Schopenhauer.  Coming this year or next are Taylor Carman on Merleau-Ponty, Michael Della Rocca on Spinoza, Samuel Freeman on Rawls, Don Garrett on Hume, Paul Guyer on Kant, Tim Lewens on Darwin, and David Woodruff Smith on Husserl. 

Philosophy and Technology (Nadelhoffer)

Now that the On-line Philosophy Conference (OPC) is starting to wind down, I have been thinking about the relationship between philosophy and technology.  Blogs, internet encyclopedias, PhD program rankings, research databases, as well as on-line texts, papers, journals, and now conferences  place a vast amount of information at our fingertips, thereby speeding up the pace with which philosophy can be done.  Consider, for instance, one of the papers from the OPC that received the most attention--namely, Joshua Knobe and Erica Roedder's "The Concept of Valuing: Experimental Studies" (with commentary by Antti Kauppinen).  At a traditional conference, Knobe and Roedder would only have time to field a handful of questions--and several of those would typically be brief and clarificatory.  And in the event that someone from the audience does have a probing question, the author(s) usually lack sufficient time for formulating an adequate response.  With on-line formats, on the other hand, both the feedback authors receive on their work and the replies they formulate are both more immediate and more well-developed.  In the case of the comment thread for the paper by Knobe and Roedder, 47 comments were posted in what turned out to be a very productive exchange between the authors and their supporters and critics.  I, for one, enjoyed watching the ebb and flow of the dialectic as people tried to work their way through the authors' paper as well as the excellent commentary and authors' reply. 

Given the wide scale accessibility of philosophy on-line these days, when philosophers have what they take to be an interesting new problem or idea, they can fast-track it to the public domain to see whether it will sink or swim.  What may at one time have taken months or even years to determine--namely, whether a particular argument or line of research is worth pursuing--can be settled markedly faster now that the marketplace of ideas is on-line. As someone pointed out to me in an email correspondence, with the internet, "it takes no time at all for the idea to get out there and no time at all for it to be assessed by the rest of the discipline and, in turn, for everyone to see what that assessment is.  There is no place to hide. No way to bluff. No excuses.  This changes everything. Philosophy will prosper but the vaudeville of philosophical conferences and print  journals will every quickly become a thing of the past."  While it is doubtful that traditional conferences and print journals will ever become a thing of the past, I nevertheless agree  that recent technological advancements are certainly going to shape and change how philosophers do business. But how?

I thought it might be nice to see what the readers of this blog think about these issues.  How can philosophers further utilize the benefits of this brave new world of cyber-philosophy--where suddenly more people have access to and interest in philosophy?  In what ways has technology changed the way you teach and conduct research?  Finally,  how can we use the wide variety of on-line formats to further increase public interest in philosophy while at the same time doing a better job of making philosophy relevant to our daily affairs? I am especially interested in hearing from people who teach on-line courses.  What sorts of ideas have you come up with to improve the on-line classroom?

Comments are open; no anonymous postings.  Please post only once; comments may take awhile to appear.

To Impeach or Impale? (Nadelhoffer)

Over at The Progressive, you can find the following rant by Will Durst:

I don’t know about you guys, but I am so sick and tired of these lying, thieving, holier-than-thou, rightwing, cruel, crude, rude, gauche, coarse, crass, cocky, corrupt, dishonest, debauched, degenerate, dissolute, swaggering, lawyer shooting, bullhorn shouting, infra-structure destroying, buck passing, hysterical, criminal, history defying, finger pointing, puppy stomping, roommate appointing, pretzel choking, collateral damaging, aspersion casting, wedding party bombing, clearcutting, torturing, jobs outsourcing, torture out-sourcing, election fixing, women’s rights eradicating, Medicare cutting, uncouth, spiteful, boorish, vengeful, jingoistic, homophobic, xenophobic, xylophonic, racist, sexist, ageist, fascist, cashist, audaciously stupid, brazenly selfish, lethally ignorant, journalist purchasing, genocide ignoring, corporation kissing, poverty inducing, crooked, coercive, autocratic, primitive, uppity, high-handed, domineering, arrogant, inhuman, inhumane, inbred, inept, insipid, incapable, incompetent, ineffectual, insolent, insincere, know-it-all, snotty, pompous, contemptuous, supercilious, gutless, spineless, shameless, avaricious, noxious, poisonous, imperious, merciless, graceless, tactless, brutish, brutal, Karl Roving, backward thinking, persistent vegetative state grandstanding, nuclear option threatening, evolution denying, irony deprived, consciously depraved, conceited, perverted, peremptory invading, thirty-five day vacation taking, bribe soliciting, hellish, smarty pants, loudmouth, bullying, swell headed, ethics eluding, domestic spying, medical marijuana busting, Halliburtoning, narcissistic, undiplomatic, blustering, malevolent, demonizing, Duke Cunninghamming, hectoring, dry drunk, Muslim baiting, hurricane disregarding, oil company hugging, judge packing, science disputing, faith based advocating, armament selling, nonsense spewing, education ravaging, whiny, insane, unscrupulous, lily livered, greedy (exponential factor fifteen), fraudulent, delusional, CIA outing, redistricting, anybody who disagrees with them slandering, fact twisting, ally alienating, betraying, chickenhawk, sell out, quisling, god and flag waving, scare mongering, Cindy Sheehan libeling, smirking, bastardly, voting machine tampering, sociopathic, cowardly, treasonous, Constitution shredding, oppressive, vulgar, antagonistic, trust funding, nontipping, tyrannizing, peace hating, water and air and ground and media polluting (which is pretty much all the polluting you can get), deadly, traitorous, con man, swindling, pernicious, lethal, illegal, haughty, venomous, virulent, mephitic, egotistic, bloodthirsty, yellowbelly, hypocritical, Oedipal, did I say evil, I’m not sure if I said evil, because I want to make sure I say evil . . . EVIL, cretinous, slime buckets in the Bush Administration that I could just spit. Impeachment? Hell no. Impalement. Upon the sharp and righteous sword of the people’s justice.

I suppose that about sums it up.  All the more impressive that no foul language was required!  Perhaps someone would care to post a similar list of the Bush administration's virtues?  I, for one, wouldn't know where to begin--unless, of course, (a) ignorance and uncaring greed are bliss, and (b) bliss is a virtue.

Start-of-the-Month Blog Stats...and a New Guest-Blogger

Over 135,000 visitor sessions last month, off slightly from April, and down 20,000 from the all-time high of March...but school is out in the U.S. and summer travels and jobs and research projects are here.  Happily, 135,000 visitor sessions for May is about the same number of visitors the site got in May 2005, when the law school updates were still here.  And it is more than double the number of visitors in May 2004.  Much of that increase is due to the wonderful, on-going guest bloggers who have joined the site.  And for June, remember, we have another:  Thomas Nadelhoffer.