Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Blogging Hiatus...and Some Reading Recommendations

I'll be on a hiatus from blogging until early in the New Year.  In addition to all the fine blogs linked in the lefthand column, let me also recommend several interesting philosophy-oriented blogs for your reading pleasure over the holidays and hopefully after:

Philosophy of Biology

Garden of Forking Paths (Free Will/Moral Responsibility)

Ethical Werewolf

Ideas of Imperfection

Those are a few I make a point of checking periodically, but there are no doubt many others deserving of your attention; David Chalmers kindly maintains a list of philosophy-related blogs.

Good wishes to all for the New Year.

Student Made Up Story of Being Visited by Federal Agents for Requesting Mao Book

As several commenters to the original thread (now removed) suggested, the story was a fake.  (Thanks to Ruchira Paul, who first sent me the link.)  This, alas, will simply embolden the apologists for all the real fascist initiatives of this Administration, including, of course, the monitoring of libraries.  (On the fascist apologists, Dadahead has apt remarks.)

Friday Poem: "Magdalena"

Magdalena

Bending at the hip
she wipes the toilet seat
Then on her knees
Washes out the bowl
I wonder at her speed
Her gait her stride
The breeding in it
Her knuckling into dirt
Without a word
Her equanimity
whatever task I make

She tells me of Chile
“My country” as she says
And of a family
That works the earth
To whom she sends
A share of what she earns
I’ve come to know
Her vicissitudes
Her dreams her ways
Her pleasure in her boy
Who goes to Fordham Prep
The man who did not
Treat  her right
Whom she left behind
The seven days she spends
Pursuing bread

At Christmas I gesture
Out of obligation
Yet striving to be kind
And give a gift of cash

Then pausing weigh a thought
And reaching to a bookshelf
I bring Neruda forth
And offer it to her

She takes it to her breast
Her smile improves the light
“This is my Christmas” she says

It makes a fool’s heart leap

5/21-7/11/95, 6/l8/96, 1/26/98, 5/12/98

Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

More Reactions to the Dover Decision on Intelligent Design (with special attention to the unfortunate intervention by Professor Alschuler)

This blog has a rather lengthy compendium of links pertaining to yesterday's court decision.  The New York Times, meanwhile, has run a pleasingly direct editorial:

Judge Jones's decision was a striking repudiation of intelligent design, given that Dover's policy was minimally intrusive on classroom teaching. Administrators merely read a brief disclaimer at the beginning of a class asserting that evolution was a theory, not a fact; that there were gaps in the evidence for evolution; and that intelligent design provided an alternative explanation and could be further explored by consulting a book in the school library. Yet even that minimal statement amounted to an endorsement of religion, the judge concluded, because it caused students to doubt the theory of evolution without scientific justification and presented them with a religious alternative masquerading as a scientific theory.

The case was most notable for its searching inquiry into whether intelligent design could be considered science. The answer, after a six-week trial that included hours of expert testimony, was a resounding no.

The judge found that intelligent design violated the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking supernatural causation and by making assertions that cannot be tested or proved wrong. Moreover, intelligent design has not gained acceptance in the scientific community, has not been supported by peer-reviewed research, and has not generated a research and testing program of its own. The core argument for intelligent design - the supposedly irreducible complexity of key biological systems - has clear theological overtones. As long ago as the 13th century, St. Thomas Aquinas argued that because nature is complex, it must have a designer.

The religious thrust behind Dover's policy was unmistakable. The board members who pushed the policy through had repeatedly expressed religious reasons for opposing evolution, though they tried to dissemble during the trial. Judge Jones charged that the two ringleaders lied in depositions to hide the fact that they had raised money at a church to buy copies of an intelligent design textbook for the school library. He also found that board members were strikingly ignorant about intelligent design and that several individuals had lied time and again to hide their religious motivations for backing the concept. Their contention that they had a secular purpose - to improve science education and encourage critical thinking - was declared a sham.

Less pleasing is the intervention by Albert Alschuler, a distinguished criminal law expert at the University of Chicago, whose ill-informed and misleading comments on this decision have already been picked up with glee by the Discovery [sic] Institute shills.  (The first commenter on the Chicago site corrects some of the errors in Professor Alschuler's presentation as well.)  Professor Alschuler writes:

The first amendment makes intelligent design unmentionable in the classroom. 

But that is not what the decision held at all:  it held that it violates the Establishment Clause to include Intelligent Design as part of the science curriculum or to teach it to schoolchildren as though it were in competition with Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. 

While professing to offer no opinion concerning the truth of intelligent design, the court consistently reveals its contempt for this theory. 

But the theory warrants the contempt appropriate to misinformation and deceit, and which the court's opinion detailed:  it has generated no research program or results; it is supported by no evidence; it is creationism for those who have consulted a lawyer and a public relations expert.  (See the summary at 64 of the opinion, which is then amply documented in the subsequent pages.  The court could have put the point about supernatural causation more effectively, but otherwise the claims are sound.)

Most of the Dover opinion says in effect to the proponents of intelligent design, “We know who you are.  You’re Bible-thumpers.”  The opinion begins, “The religious movement known as Fundamentalism began in nineteenth century America as a response to social changes, new religious thought, and Darwinism.  Religiously motivated groups pushed state legislatures to adopt laws prohibiting public schools from teaching evolution, culminating in the Scopes ‘monkey trial’ of 1925.”  When the Fundamentalists (the court often capitalizes the word) found themselves unable to ban Darwinism, they championed “balanced treatment,” then “creation science,” and finally “intelligent design.”  According to the court, the agenda never changed.  Dover is simply Scopes trial redux.  The proponents of intelligent design are guilty by association, and today’s yahoos are merely yesterday’s reincarnated. 

There is no guilt-by-association argument in the court's opinion, and this is a serious misrepresentation of the court's methodical approach in this case, one that can not be rationalized by saying "in effect".  The court did not, in fact, "begin" with a discussion of fundamentalism; that discussion began on page 7 of the opinion in the context of establishing the constitutional standards governing adjudication of the controversy.  To that end, the court, quite correctly, reviews the history of efforts to impose versions of creationism in the public schools and the constitutional standards that evolved in response to legal challenges.  The court's (uncontroversial) interpretation of the "effect" prong of the Lemon test (for Establishment Clause violations) leads it to conclude that to determine whether or not the Dover Board policy "endorses" religion the policy must be considered from the standpoint of an informed, objective observer--an observer who is informed, among other things, about the relevant historical and cultural context in which the policy is adopted.  (See esp. 15-19 of the opinion.)  Because the meaning or "effect" of the Dover Board's actions can only be evaluated against the background of fundamentalist efforts to inject religion into the public school classroom, the court has to attend to that background.  (A technical sidenote:  the court, in fact, distinguished the "endorsement" test from the "effects" test, though noting that "the Lemon effect test largely covers the same ground as the endorsement test."  For reasons of simplicity, I'm just going to refer to the two interchangeably.)

If fundamentalism still means what it meant in the early twentieth century, however -- accepting the Bible as literal truth -- the champions of intelligent design are not fundamentalists.  They uniformly disclaim reliance on the Book and focus only on where the biological evidence leads. 

There is one irrelevant truth here and one falsehood.  It is true, but irrelevant, that the ID proponents are not committed to the literal truth of the Book of Genesis:  that is what they learned won't fly from the last round of successful constitutional challenges in the 1980s.  (As the court demonstrated (p. 33): "The weight of the evidence clearly demonstrates...that the systemic change from 'creation' to 'intelligent design' occurred sometime in 1987, after the Supreme Court's important Edwards decision.  This compelling evidence strongly supports Plantiffs' assertion that ID is creationism re-labeled.") 

It is false, however, that proponents of ID "focus only on where the biological evidence leads," and false for two reasons:  first, no inference to the best explanation of the evidence would support positing an intelligent designer (as the court nicely puts it, "ID is at bottom premised upon a false dichotomy, namely, that to the extent evolutionary theory is discredited, ID is confirmed" [71]); and second, the ID proponents routinely misrepresent the biological evidence, finding inexplicable complexity where there is none; all of this was amply documented at the trial and in the court's opinion (see esp. 76 ff.).  All of this is old news to anyone who has followed these tiresome debates.  All of it, alas, is absent from Professor Alschuler's version.

The court’s response – “well, that’s what they say, but we know what they mean” – is uncivil, an illustration of the dismissive and contemptuous treatment that characterizes much contemporary discourse.  Once we know who you are, we need not listen.  We’ve heard it all already. 

Unfortunately, the only party to this dispute saying "that's what they say, but we know what they mean" is Professor Alschuler, who simply ignores page after page of the court's opinion detailing the expert testimony and the evidence in the record as to the Dover Board's purposes and the scientific standing of ID, and instead says that what the court "really means" is some version of the "guilt-by-association" argument it nowhere makes.

The court offers convincing evidence that some members the Dover school board would  have been delighted to promote their old time religion in the classroom.  These board members apparently accepted intelligent design as a compromise, the nearest they could come to their objective within the law.  Does that make any mention of intelligent design unconstitutional?  It seems odd to characterize the desire to go far as the law allows as an unlawful motive.  People who try to stay within the law although they would prefer something else are good citizens.  The Dover opinion appears to say that the forbidden preference taints whatever the board may do, and if the public can discern the board’s improper desire, any action it takes also has an unconstitutional effect. 

This confusing paragraph seems to conflate the "effect" and "purpose" prongs of Lemon, which are clearly distinguished by the court.  The court argues that the Dover policy had the "effect" of endorsing religion (see esp. 38-42 of the opinion--or the summary at 49-50 [or at 63, for the case of the "effect" on adult members of the commmunity]); that dooms the policy quite independent of anyone's purposes.  The court also argues that, as an independent matter, the Dover Board's policy fails the purpose prong of Lemon (90 ff.), and it reaches that conclusion on the basis of dozens of pages of evidence adduced at trial showing the  clear religious objectives of Board members, as well as their attempts to cover-up those religious objectives.  As the court concluded (132):  "Any asserted secular purposes by the Board are a sham and are merely secondary to a religious objective."  That someone might have had a secular purpose for promoting a policy like Dover's is irrelevant to what purposes state actors actually had in this case.  (Of course, the problem is worse than that:  all the evidence adduced in the context of analyzing the "effect" of the policy suggests that there could be no secular, scientific purpose for adopting the policy.)

Professor Alschuler's intervention into this well-travelled terrain is not as bad, to be sure, as some other law professors who've written foolishly on this subject, but it is perhaps more troublesome because Alschuler is so much more prominent.  Already, as we noted, the Discovery [sic] Institute folks are touting his remarks.  Because the opinion is long, and most will not read it, the potential for unsuspecting readers to take Professor Alschuler's inaccurate presentation of the opinion at face value is real.   Here is hoping he will do better by the court's opinion the next time around!

If fundamentalism still means what it meant in the early twentieth century, however -- accepting the Bible as literal truth -- the champions of intelligent design are not fundamentalists.  They uniformly disclaim reliance on the Book and focus only on where the biological evidence leads. 

The court’s response – “well, that’s what they say, but we know what they mean” – is uncivil, an illustration of the dismissive and contemptuous treatment that characterizes much contemporary discourse.  Once we know who you are, we need not listen.  We’ve heard it all already. 

Unfortunately, the only party to this dispute saying "that's what they say, but we know what they mean" is Professor Alschuler, who simply ignores page after page of the court's opinion detailing the expert testimony and the evidence in the record as to the Dover Board's purposes and the scientific standing of ID, and instead says that what the court "really means" is some version of the "guilt-by-association" argument it nowhere makes.

The court offers convincing evidence that some members the Dover school board would  have been delighted to promote their old time religion in the classroom.  These board members apparently accepted intelligent design as a compromise, the nearest they could come to their objective within the law.  Does that make any mention of intelligent design unconstitutional?  It seems odd to characterize the desire to go far as the law allows as an unlawful motive.  People who try to stay within the law although they would prefer something else are good citizens.  The Dover opinion appears to say that the forbidden preference taints whatever the board may do, and if the public can discern the board’s improper desire, any action it takes also has an unconstitutional effect. 

This confusing paragraph seems to conflate the "effect" and "purpose" prongs of Lemon, which are clearly distinguished by the court.  The court argues that the Dover policy had the "effect" of endorsing religion (see esp. 38-42 of the opinion--or the summary at 49-50 [or at 63, for the case of the "effect" on adult members of the commmunity]); that dooms the policy quite independent of anyone's purposes.  The court also argues that, as an independent matter, the Dover Board's policy fails the purpose prong of Lemon (90 ff.), and it reaches that conclusion on the basis of dozens of pages of evidence adduced at trial showing the  clear religious objectives of Board members, as well as their attempts to cover-up those religious objectives.  As the court concluded (132):  "Any asserted secular purposes by the Board are a sham and are merely secondary to a religious objective."  That someone might have had a secular purpose for promoting a policy like Dover's is irrelevant to what purposes state actors actually had in this case.  (Of course, the problem is worse than that:  all the evidence adduced in the context of analyzing the "effect" of the policy suggests that there could be no secular, scientific purpose for adopting the policy.)

Professor Alschuler's intervention into this well-travelled terrain is not as bad, to be sure, as some other law professors who've written foolishly on this subject, but it is perhaps more troublesome because Alschuler is so much more prominent.  Already, as we noted, the Discovery [sic] Institute folks are touting his remarks.  Because the opinion is long, and most will not read it, the potential for unsuspecting readers to take Professor Alschuler's inaccurate presentation of the opinion at face value is real.   Here is hoping he will do better by the court's opinion the next time around!

Domestic Surveillance in Britain

Chris Bertram (Philosophy, Bristol) offers a useful reminder here.  The intrusiveness of cameras into all public (and some private) spaces here is really very weird.  The only mildly redeeming aspects of the situation are that (1) the judiciary here is quite independent and not bashful about stepping in to protect civil liberties, and (2) there is real political opposition, even within the Labor Party, as we saw in the case of the proposal to detain suspects without charges for 90 days.

Congressman Conyers Calls for Investigation into Grounds for Impeachment

Story here; an excerpt:

As President Bush and his aides scramble to explain new revelations regarding Bush's authorization of spying on the international telephone calls and emails of Americans, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has begun a process that could lead to the censure, and perhaps the impeachment, of the president and vice president.

US Representative John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat who was a critical player in the Watergate and Iran-Contra investigations into presidential wrongdoing, has introduced a package of resolutions that would censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney and create a select committee to investigate the Administration's possible crimes and make recommendations regarding grounds for impeachment.

The Conyers resolutions add a significant new twist to the debate about how to hold the administration to account. Members of Congress have become increasingly aggressive in the criticism of the White House, with US Senator Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, saying Monday, "Americans have been stunned at the recent news of the abuses of power by an overzealous President. It has become apparent that this Administration has engaged in a consistent and unrelenting pattern of abuse against our Country's law-abiding citizens, and against our Constitution." Even Republicans, including Senate Judiciary Committee chair Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, are talking for the first time about mounting potentially serious investigations into abuses of power by the president.

But Conyers is seeking to do much more than schedule a committee hearing, or even launch a formal inquiry. He is proposing that the Congress use all of the powers that are available to it to hold the president and vice president to account - up to and including the power to impeach the holders of the nation's most powerful positions and to remove them from office.

The first of the three resolutions introduced by Conyers, H.Res.635, asks that the Congress establish a select committee to investigate whether members of the administration made moves to invade Iraq before receiving congressional authorization, manipulated pre-war intelligence, encouraged the use of torture in Iraq and elsewhere, and used their positions to retaliate against critics of the war.

The select committee would be asked to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

The second resolution, H.Res.636, asks that the Congress to censure the president "for failing to respond to requests for information concerning allegations that he and others in his Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war in Iraq, misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for the war, countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of persons in Iraq, and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of his Administration, for failing to adequately account for specific misstatements he made regarding the war, and for failing to comply with Executive Order 12958." (Executive Order 12958, issued in 1995 by former President Bill Clinton, seeks to promote openness in government by prescribing a uniform system for classifying, safeguarding, and declassifying national security information.)

A third resolution, H.Res.637, would censure Cheney for a similar set of complaints.

"The people of this country are waking up to the severity of the lies, crimes, and abuses of power committed by this president and his administration," says Jon Bonifaz, a co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, an alliance of more than100 grassroots groups that has detailed Bush administration wrongdoing and encouraged a Congressional response. Bonifaz, an attorney and the author of the book, Warrior King: The Case for Impeaching George Bush (Nation Books), argues that, "Now is the time to return to the rule of law and to hold those who have defied the Constitution accountable for their actions."

There is more information at the new Censure Bush Coalition website.

Gutting on "Analytic" and "Continental" Philosophy

Gary Gutting (Philosophy, Notre Dame) has written a generous and informative review of my Future for Philosophy collection in which, towards the end, he considers the difference between "analytic" and "Continental" philosophy, which we had occasion to discuss a few weeks back (here and here) during the visit of the Stanley brothers.  Gutting writes:

I agree [with Leiter] that there is no fruitful analytic-Continental division in terms of substantive doctrines distinctively characteristic of the two sides. But it seems to me that we can still draw a significant distinction between analytic and Continental philosophy in terms of their conceptions of experience and reason as standards of evaluation. Typically, analytic philosophy reads experience in terms of common-sense intuitions (often along with their developments and transformations in science) and understands reason in terms of formal logic. Continental philosophy, by contrast, typically sees experience as penetrating beyond the veneer of common-sense and science, and regards reason as more a matter of intellectual imagination than deductive rigor. In these terms, Continental philosophy still exists as a significant challenge to the increasing hegemony of analytic thought and, as such, deserved a hearing in this volume.

I wonder what readers think of this way of demarcating approaches in light of the earlier discussions?

Harvard Tenures Siegel, Makes Tenured Offer to Kelly

Susanna Siegel (philosophy of mind and language) has been awarded tenure by Harvard University.  In addition, the University has approved a tenured offer to Sean Kelly (philosophy of mind, phenomenology), who last year was turned down for tenure at Princeton University.  These decisions are striking in two ways.

First, it's clearly time to stop saying that "no one gets tenure at Harvard," which used to be (almost always) the case during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.  In fact, the last four young philosophers to come up for tenure in the Harvard Philosophy Department in the last half-dozen years--Richard Heck (who has since left for Brown), James Pryor (who left for Princeton, and then NYU), Alison Simmons, and now Susanna Siegel--have all received tenure, a rate of tenure far higher than Princeton's, or any other top department's in recent memory.  The era in which Harvard (or Princeton) could expect to appoint the top established senior faculty from elsewhere is clearly over, and Harvard Philosophy, at least, now plainly recognizes the need to promote its best junior faculty.

Second, the tenured offer to Kelly, after the unfavorable decision by Princeton, provides some evidence for my contention that the field of philosophy is increasingly fractured in the U.S.  A generation ago it would have been unimaginable (am I wrong?) that Princeton's tenure reject would receive a tenured offer from Harvard, or vice versa.  (The list of distinguished philosophers turned down for tenure at Princeton and Harvard is, of course, long, but in all the other cases of which I'm aware many years elapsed before the philosophers in question ended up in peer departments.)  That this now happens reflects the fact that views about what work is important and high quality are now more divergent in philosophy than they were a generation ago. 

I should add that I purport only to be reporting sociological facts about the profession.  My personal view is that it's not a bad thing for there to be this kind of "fracturing" of judgments of quality and importance, since they are still within the space of reasonable disagreements, or so it seems to me.  That Harvard, the Department of Quine, should now step forward to commit a tenured line to a young philosopher conversant in phenomenology is as clear an indication one could imagine that times have changed in American philosophy.

Bush Crimes Commission

The indictments are here and the schedule of hearings here.  One suspects the "liberal media" like CNN and New York Times will manage not to cover this.

(Thanks to Eduardo Tenenbaum for the pointer.)

Federal Judge Hands the Pennsylvania Taliban a Stinging Defeat

A federal judge in Pennsylvania has barred the teaching of Intelligent Design creationism in Dover, Pennsylvania, and in terms that will give the conmen at the Discovery [sic] Institute a migraine:

The proper application of [the relevant constitutional tests requiring that government not endorse a particular religion and that its actions have a secular purpose] to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board’s ID Policy  violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it  is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents....

To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court.  Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources. 

To preserve the separation of church and state mandated by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Art. I, § 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to
denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID. We will also issue a declaratory judgment that Plaintiffs’ rights under the Constitutions of the United States and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have been violated by Defendants’ actions.  Defendants’ actions in violation of Plaintiffs’ civil rights as guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the United States and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 subject Defendants to liability with respect to injunctive and declaratory relief, but also for nominal damages and the reasonable value of Plaintiffs’ attorneys’ services
and costs incurred in vindicating Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.

It will be recalled that the pathological liars at the Discovery [sic] Institute wanted the Dover School Board to drop its policy, realizing that it would be a loser in the courts given the clear religious purpose behind the Board's actions, which were amply documented in the record.  What is particularly striking about the portion of the court's opinion I have seen, however, is that it does not rest solely on the imprudent candor of the Dover Board members, but states, unequivocally, that ID is not science (which, of course, it isn't...or, with a nod to Larry Laudan, it's obviously failed [or stilllborn] science, for which there could be no secular purpose in teaching to schoolchildren).

"Libertarians for Fascism"

I borrow the apt headline from Dadahead, who has the details.  Of course, the play libertarians in question are all bloggers.  Actual libertarians take a position worthy of their ideology.

God Exists!

More than 300 arguments proving it...here.  (Thanks to Pete Trosclair for the pointer.)

Philosopher Byrne To Stay at MIT, Turns Down Princeton and USC

Alex Byrne (philosophy of mind, metaphysics) at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology has turned down the tenured offers from Princeton University and the University of Southern California.  That's a good break for the small and excellent MIT department, which recently lost Joshua Cohen (political philosophy) to Stanford.

Friday Poem: "In the Examining Room"

In the Examining Room

The Minister of Health
is down the hall
in a room like this
(except for me)
I swing my legs
from my table perch
as omens rich
with immanence
infiltrate my mind

Voices soak
through wallboard dikes
the problems are not nice
ailing terms
their crowded names
recalcitrant to tact
but no one breaks
the protocol of fact
with passion torn from need

An old woman
smaller than her life
tows slowly by
on walker stilts
her passage past
my doorway lens
a paraphrase of
Zeno’s paradox
her days made brief
by space not time

Obituary calm
from room to room
despair elation
side by side
their vigil played
for Certainty
who’s hard to find
even Death
is dressed in doubt

Some moments more
a word a sign
the crumpled fear
that goes unsaid
this way the living
that the dead

And when I’m done
and sent along
they’ll change
the paper sheet
on which I sat
and that will be
the end of me
the end of that

10/25/94

Copyright 1994 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission

Feeling Uncertain About Your Masculinity? Support the Iraq War, Buy an SUV, and Hate Gays

Ruchira Paul has the details on this recent study out of Cornell University.

Not much new until Monday

I'll be travelling up to Newcastle tomorrow and then on to Edinburgh, so there won't be much on the blog until early next week.  Those posting comments on the Free Will thread, please be patient!  I will check my e-mail periodically, and so will be approving comments while on the road at various intervals.

John Martin Fischer on Free Will and Moral Responsibility: Where the Action Is

This is the first in a series of postings I've commissioned by leading philosophers on "where the action is" in various subfields of the discipline.  (I wrote about Nietzsche studies a couple of weeks ago.)  Hopefully these short essays will be illuminating for both graduate students interested in the particular subfield and philosophers working in other areas who want to keep abreast of developments outside their specialty.

Today, John Martin Fischer at the University of California at Riverside writes about "where the action is" on free will and moral responsibility.

=====================

The topics of free will and moral responsibility continue to be the subjects of lively and active debates in contemporary analytic philosophy.  Not surprisingly, no consensus about results has been reached (cf. the fallen angels in Milton's Paradise Lost), and, like much contemporary philosophy more broadly, there is a fairly wide range of methodologies.  Additionally, some philosophers approach these topics with an emphasis on ethical issues (such as moral responsibility, blameworthiness/praiseworthiness, judgments such as "ought/ought not", "right and wrong," and so forth), whereas others approach the topics from the perspective of metaphysics and/or philosophy of mind. 

There was a tremendous amount of work on the relationship between God's omnisicience and human freedom (and responsibility) about twenty-five years or so ago,  but this discussion has been relatively less lively recently (with certain exceptions).  The doctrine of Molinism has been a hot topic, especially in certain parts of Indiana.  According to Molinism, God can know prior to any providential activity on his part a set of "counterfactuals of freedom"--subjunctive conditionals about what human beings would freely do in various circumstances.  He combines this "middle knowledge" with his "natural knowledge" of the various possible initial situations to derive truths about what human beings would freely do, and he uses this information to guide his creation and providence.   There has been much debate about whether there can be true "counterfactuals of freedom," with Robert Adams leading the charge against this possibility.  The problem is that such conditionals would seem to need "metaphysical grounding," but if causal indeterminism is true, all that would seem to be grounded are "might-conditionals".  (Molina and his followers believe that causal determinism is incompatible with the relevant sort of freedom.)  Alfred Freddoso and Thomas Flint are contemporary exegetes and defenders of Molina.  Whereas there is much of interest in these debates, I believe they are orthogonal to the problem about the relationship between God's foreknowledge and human freedom.  In my view, Molinism provides a picture of how God could know about future actions of humans, and how he could use this knowledge in his providential activity.  But it does not provide an answer to the problem about the relationship between God's foreknowledge and human free action; rather, it simply presupposes some answer to this problem.  Indeed, Molina's favored solution to the latter problem was that of Aquinas, according to which God is outside of time (and thus has omniscience but not foreknowledge), and Flint's solution is Ockhamism.  Some philosophers (for example, Robert Kane in his otherwise excellent introductory book on free will in Oxford University Press's Fundamentals of Philosophy series) seem to think that Molinism is an answer to the problem about omniscience (or foreknowledge) and freedom, but this is a mistake. 

I think it might be interesting to explore whether any contemporary work on the nature of belief (in philosophy or perhaps the cognitive sciences, but probably not neuroscience!) might be employed to seek to make some progress on the traditional problem about the relationship between God's omniscience (foreknowledge) and human freedom.  This is not where the action is, but it is one place where I'd like to see some (more) action.  (For discussion, see the Prosblogion blog.)

There is some intriguing work on the nature of causal determinism.  J. Howard Sobel's book, Puzzles of the Will, has a subtle discussion of the various forms of determinism and how they might be thought to threaten human freedom.  He (in my humble and contentious opinion!) successfully shows that the Consequence Argument (or Basic Argument for Incompatibilism) can be formulated rigorously in various ways, not all of which require a modal principle such as the Principle of Transfer of Powerlessness (the principle that acts like a slingshot that can transmit powerlessness from one thing [the past] to another [the present] via the natural laws).  Some philosophers, notably Peter Van Inwagen and Ted Warfield, maintain that all valid versions of the Consequence Argument rely explicitly or implicitly on such a modal principle; I have been a persistent (they might say pesky!) critic of their view.  Carl Hoefer has a fascinating paper in which he points out that contemporary physics may not sit well with the basic intuitions that go into the Consequence Argument; in Hoefer's view, the intuitions that play a role in this argument (and buttress the Fixity of the Past and Natural Laws) come from common sense (and the A-Series picture of time), whereas physics presupposes the B-Series (without a moving now, as it were, and thus without past, present, and future). 

Recently philosophers have distinguished at least two importantly different ways in which causal determinism might threaten moral responsibility.  One way stems from the Consequence Argument.  If causal determinism rules out the sort of freedom that involves alternative possibilities, and this freedom is required for moral responsibility, then causal determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility.  Some compatibilists deny that the Consequence Argument successfully rules out the sort of freedom that involves genuine alternative possibilities.  Others contend that moral responsibility does not require this sort of freedom.  There are at least two different versions of this latter strategy.  Harry Frankfurt and I (and others) have contended that "Frankfurt-style" examples (first invented by John Locke) show that moral responsibility does not require alternative possibilities.  The debate about the Frankfurt-style examples still rages; a good recent collection is edited by David Widerker and Michael McKenna: Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities: Essays on the Importance of Alternative Possibilities (Ashgate).  David Widerker has been an important and influential critique of the strategy based on the Frankfurt-examples; there are rumors that he has a new paper in the works on Frankfurt-examples that might surprise many.  (Is it too much to hope that Widerker will defect to the side of the good guys?) Another strategy builds on the seminal work by Peter Strawson; there are important recent developments of Strawsonian approaches in Paul Russell's Freedom and Moral Sentiment and R. Jay Wallace's Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments. 

Another way in which causal determinism might threaten moral responsibility is directly and not via threatening to expunge the sort of freedom that involves alternative possibilities.  A whole range of different options are available here.  "Source incompatibilism" is the term typically used to refer to this family of worries; this view has it that if causal determinism is true, then an individual would not be the "source" of his choices and behavior in the way required by moral responsibility.  Important developments of this view are found in Robert Kane's The Significance of Choice and Derk Pereboom's Living Without Free Will.  Although there is still much interest in the Frankfurt-style examples and Strawsonian approaches, the "action" seems to have shifted somewhat in the direction of Source Incompatibilism recently.  (I cannot help noting--please excuse this--that in my 1982 Journal of Philosophy article, "Responsibility and Control," I identified Source Incompatibilism as a significant view with which compatibilists must come to terms; but of course in subsequent years I have sought to do just this, whereas such philosophers as Kane and Pereboom have developed and defended the position with considerable detail and skill.)

Timothy O'Connor's book, Persons and Causes, seeks to develop an agent-causal view.  It is the most sophisticated and comprehensive development of such a view of which I know.  In an interesting and important recent book, Libertarian Accounts of Free Action, Randolph Clarke surprisingly backs off from his former defense of agent-causal libertarianism; there is still hope that he will come all the way over to the compatibilist's side, although he remains unconvinced.

A major problem for any version of libertarianism--event-causal (Van Inwagen, Kane, Ekstrom) or agent-causal (O'Connor) is the problem of arbitrariness or luck.  Much recent work has addressed this set of problems, and Alfred Mele has written a book on this subject forthcoming in early 2006 with Oxford University Press.  I hope he solves the problem, because I believe that moral responsibility should not "hang on a thread"--should not depend on whether the conditionals that link past to present in physics have associated with them 100% probabilities or merely 99.9% probabilities!  Since I believe our most basic views about ourselves as free and responsible should not hang on a thread (at least a thread of this sort), I believe that these views should be resilient with respect to a discovery that causal determinism were true; also, they should be equally resilient with respect to a discovery that causal indeterminism (of certain sorts) were true.  So good luck, Al--no pun intended!

Various important challenges have been raised to our views of ourselves as robustly free and responsible, including Galen Strawson's Freedom and Belief, Saul Smilansky's Freedom and Illusion, and Derk Pereboom's Living Without Free Will.  (One can imagine a whole series of Living Without X books: Living Without Ethics, Living Without Knowledge, Living Without Aesthetics, and so forth…)

There is much intriguing and suggestive work employing somewhat nontraditional methodologies.  Neurophilosophers such as the Churchlands have written recently about freedom and responsibility.  Also, there is a booming industry in "experimental philosophy" which seeks (among other things) to clarify and establish what people actually believe about the range of issues pertaining to freedom and responsibility.  I think that progress in the future on free will and moral responsibility will most likely be made through a broad-minded and eclectic approach whereby one takes insights from both traditional methodologies and also the developing informational sciences, psychology, and neuroscience.  I think it is misguided and not fruitful to brush aside centuries of thought on these ideas as my friend Daniel Dennett does in his intelligent, lively but in my view disappointing book, Freedom Evolves.  Similarly, we need to be open to the insights potentially available through the work of neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers employing these intellectual tools.

I shall end this (too long but also obviously too short) post with my puzzlement over a "splinter" in the work on free will/moral responsibility.  Some theories are called "normative" accounts (Watson, Wolf, Wallace, Benson, et. al.), whereas others are called "metaphysical" (Van Inwagen, Ginet, Fischer and Ravizza, O'Connor, Clarke, et. al.)  It is striking to me that the "normative" group is highly miscellaneous; the specific ways in which they are "normative" are very different, and it would be useful to get a clearer understanding of the distinction.  I doubt that it is as sharp or important as some suppose.  The difference may be as much a matter of "conversational networks" (as Manuel Vargas has pointed out to me) than content.

I should note that much of interest had to be omitted from this discussion--I'm sorry.  I welcome you all to the discussions at "The Garden of Forking Paths."

(Please note that comments may take awhile to appear.)

Philosopher/Soldier's Suicide in Iraq

Interesting, albeit tragic, story here; an excerpt:

One hot, dusty day in June, Col. Ted Westhusing was found dead in a trailer at a military base near the Baghdad airport, a single gunshot wound to the head.

The Army would conclude that he committed suicide with his service pistol. At the time, he was the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq....

Col. Westhusing was no ordinary officer. He was one of the Army's leading scholars of military ethics, a full professor at West Point who volunteered to serve in Iraq to be able to better teach his students. He had a doctorate in philosophy; his dissertation was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor.

So it was only natural that Westhusing acted when he learned of possible corruption by U.S. contractors in Iraq. A few weeks before he died, Westhusing received an anonymous complaint that a private security company he oversaw had cheated the U.S. government and committed human rights violations. Westhusing confronted the contractor and reported the concerns to superiors, who launched an investigation.

In e-mails to his family, Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military....

In his 352-page dissertation, Westhusing discussed the ethics of war, focusing on examples of military honor from Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to the Israeli army. It is a dense, searching and sometimes personal effort to define what, exactly, constitutes virtuous conduct in the context of the modern U.S. military.

"Born to be a warrior, I desire these answers not just for philosophical reasons, but for self-knowledge," he wrote in the opening pages....

In January, Westhusing began work on what the Pentagon considered the most important mission in Iraq: training Iraqi forces to take over security duties from U.S. troops.

Westhusing's task was to oversee a private security company, Virginia-based USIS, which had contracts worth $79 million to train a corps of Iraqi police to conduct special operations.

In March, Gen. David Petraeus, commanding officer of the Iraqi training mission, praised Westhusing's performance, saying he had exceeded "lofty expectations."

"Thanks much, sir, but we can do much better and will," Westhusing wrote back, according to a copy of the Army investigation of his death that was obtained by The Times.

In April, his mood seemed to have darkened. He worried over delays in training one of the police battalions.

Then, in May, Westhusing received an anonymous four-page letter that contained detailed allegations of wrongdoing by USIS.

The writer accused USIS of deliberately shorting the government on the number of trainers to increase its profit margin. More seriously, the writer detailed two incidents in which USIS contractors allegedly had witnessed or participated in the killing of Iraqis.

A USIS contractor accompanied Iraqi police trainees during the assault on Fallouja last November and later boasted about the number of insurgents he had killed, the letter says. Private security contractors are not allowed to conduct offensive operations.

In a second incident, the letter says, a USIS employee saw Iraqi police trainees kill two innocent Iraqi civilians, then covered it up. A USIS manager "did not want it reported because he thought it would put his contract at risk."

Westhusing reported the allegations to his superiors but told one of them, Gen. Joseph Fil, that he believed USIS was complying with the terms of its contract.

U.S. officials investigated and found "no contractual violations," an Army spokesman said. Bill Winter, a USIS spokesman, said the investigation "found these allegations to be unfounded."

However, several U.S. officials said inquiries on USIS were ongoing. One U.S. military official, who, like others, requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said the inquiries had turned up problems, but nothing to support the more serious charges of human rights violations....

The letter shook Westhusing, who felt personally implicated by accusations that he was too friendly with USIS management, according to an e-mail in the report....

The colonel began to complain to colleagues about "his dislike of the contractors," who, he said, "were paid too much money by the government," according to one captain....

Most of the [suicide] letter is a wrenching account of a struggle for honor in a strange land.

"I cannot support a msn [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars. I am sullied," it says. "I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored.

"Death before being dishonored any more."

A psychologist reviewed Westhusing's e-mails and interviewed colleagues. She concluded that the anonymous letter had been the "most difficult and probably most painful stressor."

She said that Westhusing had placed too much pressure on himself to succeed and that he was unusually rigid in his thinking. Westhusing struggled with the idea that monetary values could outweigh moral ones in war. This, she said, was a flaw.

"Despite his intelligence, his ability to grasp the idea that profit is an important goal for people working in the private sector was surprisingly limited," wrote Lt. Col. Lisa Breitenbach. "He could not shift his mind-set from the military notion of completing a mission irrespective of cost, nor could he change his belief that doing the right thing because it was the right thing to do should be the sole motivator for businesses."

(Thanks to Brendan Hogan for the pointer.)

Excerpts from NY Times Interview with Tookie Williams

Here.  Williams was executed earlier today, providing temporary satisfaction to all those with insatiable bloodlust.  A number of his remarks in this interview, two weeks ago, are rather interesting:

On His Years as a Crip:
"I have a despicable background. I was a criminal. I was a co-founder of the Crips. I was a nihilist."

On His Transformation:
"People forget that redemption is tailor-made for the wretched."

On the Case Against Him:
"I always ask the question: Can a black man in America receive justice? I can say to you or anybody else that the answer is absolutely no. There’s a myriad of things that bring me to this conclusion — prosecutorial misconduct, the biased selection of juries, the issues of informants, the exclusion of exculpatory evidence, illegal interrogation of witnesses. It’s commonplace. It’s deeply ingrained in the California criminal justice system."

On His Work With Children:
"They can empathize with me. I pretty much experienced all the madness they’re going through."

On Death Row:
"I’ve never seen a millionaire here."

"The longer I sit in this animalistic cage, the more human I become. I’ve learned not to allow the negative ambience to control me. I’ve risen above all of that, like a phoenix, a black phoenix."

On the Prospect of Execution:
"They have the audacity to ask, 'Do I want a last meal?' Absolutely not. 'Do I want anyone present?' Absolutely not. 'Do I want a preacher?' Absolutely not. I want nothing from this institution."

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

New Ethics Blog by Bowling Green Grad Students

Here.

Rutgers's Hawthorne Accepts Waynflete Chair at Oxford

John Hawthorne (metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language and mind, Leibniz) at Rutgers University at New Brunswick has accepted the offer of the Waynflete Chair in Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford University.  He may still maintain some kind of visiting relationship with Rutgers, though that has not yet been formalized.

This concludes a rather remarkable "recovery" for Oxford which, for a time in the 1990s, often found its Chairs empty or filled only for short periods with faculty near retirement.  Now the Waynflete Chair and the Wykeham Chair in Logic (held by Timothy Williamson) are staffed by philosophers in their 40s; Martin Davies, in his 50s, is returning from the ANU to take up the Wilde Chair in Mental Philosophy; and John Broome, also in his 50s, holds the White's Chair of Moral Philosophy.  The only vacant Chair on the philosophy faculty right now is the Chair in Ancient Philosophy, from which Michael Frede has recently retired. 

London Times: Israel Preparing for Attack on Iran

Story here; an excerpt:

ISRAEL’S armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have revealed.

The order came after Israeli intelligence warned the government that Iran was operating enrichment facilities, believed to be small and concealed in civilian locations.

Iran’s stand-off with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over nuclear inspections and aggressive rhetoric from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who said last week that Israel should be moved to Europe, are causing mounting concern.

The crisis is set to come to a head in early March, when Mohamed El-Baradei, the head of the IAEA, will present his next report on Iran. El-Baradei, who received the Nobel peace prize yesterday, warned that the world was “losing patience” with Iran....

Defence sources in Israel believe the end of March to be the “point of no return” after which Iran will have the technical expertise to enrich uranium in sufficient quantities to build a nuclear warhead in two to four years.

“Israel — and not only Israel — cannot accept a nuclear Iran,” Sharon warned recently. “We have the ability to deal with this and we’re making all the necessary preparations to be ready for such a situation.”

The order to prepare for a possible attack went through the Israeli defence ministry to the chief of staff. Sources inside special forces command confirmed that “G” readiness — the highest stage — for an operation was announced last week....

Cross-border operations and signal intelligence from a base established by the Israelis in northern Iraq are said to have identified a number of Iranian uranium enrichment sites unknown to the the IAEA....

If a military operation is approved, Israel will use air and ground forces against several nuclear targets in the hope of stalling Tehran’s nuclear programme for years, according to Israeli military sources.

It is believed Israel would call on its top special forces brigade, Unit 262 — the equivalent of the SAS — and the F-15I strategic 69 Squadron, which can strike Iran and return to Israel without refuelling.

“If we opt for the military strike,” said a source, “it must be not less than 100% successful. It will resemble the destruction of the Egyptian air force in three hours in June 1967.”

Aharon Zeevi Farkash, the Israeli military intelligence chief, stepped up the pressure on Iran this month when he warned Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, that “if by the end of March the international community is unable to refer the Iranian issue to the United Nations security council, then we can say the international effort has run its course”....

Russia last week signed an estimated $1 billion contract — its largest since 2000 — to sell Iran advanced Tor-M1 systems capable of destroying guided missiles and laser-guided bombs from aircraft.

“Once the Iranians get the Tor-M1, it will make our life much more difficult,” said an Israeli air force source. “The installation of this system can be relatively quick and we can’t waste time on this one.”

The date set for possible Israeli strikes on Iran also coincides with Israel’s general election on March 28, prompting speculation that Sharon may be sabre-rattling for votes.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the frontrunner to lead Likud into the elections, said that if Sharon did not act against Iran, “then when I form the new Israeli government, we’ll do what we did in the past against Saddam’s reactor, which gave us 20 years of tranquillity”.

University of Oregon Fails to Back Professor Threatened with Legal Action Over Her Scholarship

Details here.

And now for a different take on Christmas...

...here.

Oklahoma Minister: "This country is bankrupt"

An excerpt:

I'm tired of people thinking that because I'm a Christian, I must be a supporter of President Bush, or that because I favor civil rights and gay rights I must not be a person of faith. I'm tired of people saying that I can't support the troops but oppose the war -- I heard that when I was your age, when the Vietnam war was raging. We knew that that war was wrong, and you know that this war is wrong -- the only question is how many people are going to die before these make-believe Christians are removed from power?

This country is bankrupt. The war is morally bankrupt. The claim of this administration to be Christian is bankrupt. And the only people who can turn things around are people like you -- young people who are just beginning to wake up to what is happening to them.It's your country to take back. It's your faith to take back. It's your future to take back.

Don't be afraid to speak out. Don't back down when your friends begin to tell you that the cause is righteous and that the flag should be wrapped around the cross, while the rest of us keep our mouths shut. Real Christians take chances for peace. So do real Jews, and real Muslims, and real Hindus, and real Buddhists -- so do all the faith traditions of the world at their heart believe one thing: life is precious. Every human being is precious. Arrogance is the opposite of faith. Greed is the opposite of charity. And believing that one has never made a mistake is the mark of a deluded man, not a man of faith.

(Thanks to Lloyd Reisman for the pointer.)

"Beneficial Retirement" of Senior Philosophers

Moral philosopher Saul Smilansky at Haifa University in Israel writes with the following interesting remarks:

I thought that you might be interested in a topic of concern to our profession, that I've recently raised in a short paper in Ratio called "The Paradox of Beneficial Retirement".

It should be easiest to explain the issue by thinking about philosophical jobs: in every junior jobs search we've had in my department, we have had applicants in double figures. Half aren't very good, and maybe 3-4 will get a job in another research university in Israel (there are just 5 of those!). This means that every few years a number of promising young
philosophers won't find good jobs. And some potentially excellent candidates will not pursue their studies even up to that level, knowing that "few die and none retire".

But at the same time there are in every department philosophers who are not as good, and are closer to retirement.  Were they to leave their jobs earlier, those younger philosophers would be able to get in, to the benefit of the department, the students and the profession. I don't know the American scene very well (my only lengthy presence in the US as an adult was two years ago during a sabbatical at Rutgers, whose graduates should do very well in the job market), but I suspect that - apart from the numbers, of course - the situation is similar.

My argument is an "argument from integrity", suggesting that professionals who are below average (the left side of the bell curve) should consider leaving their profession, since (given certain plausible assumptions) if they leave, they are very likely to be replaced by someone
better than themselves.

Perhaps you will be interested in airing this "dark secret" of our profession.

It has recently been taken up in the economics blog "marginal revolution" (though most of the economists who responded did not get the argument and were uninterested in the philosophical and moral aspects, and many were simply nasty. It's an interesting sociological document.)

The situation in the U.S. isn't always as stark--partly because the awarding of lines isn't always tied to retirements, and partly because a retirement doesn't necessarily guarantee a line (sometimes the "line" is given to another unit).  But I wonder what philosophers think of the issue raised by Professor Smilansky?

Some Realism about Supreme Court Justices

Given the extraordinary public ignorance about what it is judges really do, these points really can't be made often enough.  A litigation partner with one of the nation's leading law firms writes:

I read your recent posts on the Alito nomination. For 30 years now I have litigated business cases.  I also handle a significant number of appeals in both the federal and state systems.  And, not unusually, I have acquaintances and friends who are state and federal trial and appellate judges.   I mention that because I wonder at the sanity of those who think that it is realistically possible in close and controversial cases on issues of public import (and most Supreme Court cases are precisely that or they wouldn't have had cert granted) to ignore your own predilections and beliefs. In fact, it is just such cases that seem to call for a leap of faith or logic at some critical point; the means to accomplish that leap often stems from personal beliefs. It is so obvious to those of us who live in the courtroom that it is hardly worth discussion. No single fact or circumstance is more important than to know the judge who will decide the case.  To take another example, every firm that I know of with a significant Supreme Court practice brings to bear on a Supreme Court brief and argument the views of former clerks to as many current Justices as possible. There is only one reason to do that, and it is not to consider the precedents or even "super precedents." (I apparently missed the law school course on those.)  Roe sadly and inevitably gets all the attention in Supreme Court nominations.  And it may well be that the unique pressure of the nomination process leads even a Justice Alito to be wary of reversing Roe outright and soon.  But it will be for that reason that he does not do so, not because he really believes that a Justice has no ability to bring to bear his or her personal views.  And even if they are disguised in the Roe context, his personal views will surely come out in many other contexts that escape close Senate scrutiny during the hearing process.  (In that regard, the ability of a judge to decide cases without bringing his personal views to bear in the every day criminal or immigration or business case is almost entirely irrelevant to this issue; it is easy to keep a steady hand on the tiller when you don't much care about the destination).

Friday Poem: "I Have Served My Country"

I Have Served My Country

I have served my country daily in the faithfulness of folly
Weighed the hard choices which I was careful not to make
Offering my willing cowardice in the face of public nonsense
Layering abstinence and sarcasm in its wake

Surreptitiously declining to honor rituals of polity
Vagrant on Election Day generally in disregard of fealty
Harboring the conviction that all our rules are rancid
And even at the risk of sadness keeping sour truth at hand

The times that I was harmless although few are thorough
The days I overslept and hardly meddled so many
And many times I cleaned my  plate gaily gladly
Thankful for the luxury of being left alone

Out of complexity of principle I turn my back on beggars
And although somewhat ambivalent sneer aloud at money
Nor have I permitted piety to trespass on my thinking
But have listened to the sermonizers with mind averted

And tolerate dull statesmen those most pernicious poseurs
Dreaming like every condemned man to secretly outlive them
All in all I’ve led a blameless life if life you’d call it
And am ready if they need me to hide where they’ll not find me

9/11-9/13, 9/24, 12/5/98, 5/20, 12/19-20, 12/24-12/26/99

Copyright 1999 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Dershowitz v. Chomsky at Harvard

Amusing account of their recent "debate" here (if you read the account, you'll see why "debate" is in quotes--only one side was actually debating, it appears).  I've opened comments, for anyone else who has a first-person account to offer.

UPDATE:  You can view the debate itself here.

The Kansas Taliban Get Violent

Paul Mirecki is the University of Kansas religion professor who proposed a course on Intelligent Design as "mythology," which is actually about the nicest thing one can say about new-fangled creationism.  This, in itself, generated controversy with the homegrown theocrats, but matters got worse when a derisive e-mail about fundamentalists sent by Mirecki to an atheists and agnostics listserve surfaced.  Professor Mirecki has since been physically attacked by "defenders of the faith," and, as a consequence of the general political outcry about the course and Professor Mireckie's remarks, his course has been cancelled, which tells you everything you need to know about academic freedom at the University of Kansas.  Pharyngula has comments and links here, including the following remarkable statement by a Republican state senator in Kansas:  "We have to set a standard that it’s not culturally acceptable to mock Christianity in America."

Gee, why settle for "not culturally acceptable"?  Why not go for "not legally permissible"?  Or perhaps "punishable by stoning"? 

And that's the state of nascent fascist theocracy in Kansas in 2005.

UPDATE:  This story says Professor Mirecki, not the University, cancelled the class, though one still wonders what pressures may have been brought to bear on the decision.

The "Cut and Run" U.S. Congress

Strong message, as usual, from our fine Congressman in Austin, Lloyd Doggett:

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on the Tax Reconciliation Bill (H.R. 4297). Under this misguided bill the wealthiest top 0.2% of households, those making more than $1,000,000, would be awarded 40% of the tax breaks. Over my opposition, this bill passed the House by a vote of 234 to 197. As noted below in the speech I gave on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, it is our children and grandchildren who will bear a great burden in paying for these giveaways. My speech can be viewed online at www.house.gov/doggett/Taxrecon.wmv

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, "The GOP 'Cut & Run Congress,'" December 8, 2005

When this Administration took over the White House, the United States enjoyed a multi-billion dollar budget surplus. But a Republican-controlled Washington proved unable to "stay the course." Instead, our public surplus has been surrendered - surrendered to special interests, and their corrupt coterie of cronies.

Every time Big Oil, or Halliburton, or some other corporation, shifts its jobs or profits offshore and asks for yet another tax break, this Congress waves the white flag of surrender. The commitment to any fiscal discipline is in full retreat. Now we have huge deficits as far as the eye can see.

At a time of war, Republicans demand no sacrifice from those at the top, no sacrifice from multinational corporations, which have refined creative tax dodging into an art, but they demand those at the bottom of the ladder sacrifice their all. Under this bill, the few individuals making over a million dollars each year are rewarded with an average of over $50,000 in tax breaks- so these few get another fancy foreign car added to their fleet.

But for the many earning up to $40,000 a year, and that is more than half of Americans, this bill provides on average $30- maybe one tank of gas.

Once again, America sees a true Republican Christmas is one where only the silk stockings get stuffed. And when the bill for the lavish Republican Christmas giveaways comes due, who pays? Our children. Most of the cost burden of these tax breaks is shifted to our children and grandchildren in the form of spiraling national debt.

But a part of the $56 billion dollar cost of today's legislation is paid for by cuts to child support enforcement, cuts to assistance to abused and neglected children, cuts to child care, and cuts to student financial assistance. The tax writing body in this chamber has truly become the "Committee of Greedy Ways and Shifty Means." And this will be remembered as the "Cut and Run" Congress: cutting taxes greatly for the few, and running trillion dollar deficits for the rest of us.

Because of stunts like this, the U.S. is now widely, and correctly, viewed not as a democracy but a plutocracy.  (You can also understand why the Houston-area fascist Tom DeLay was so keen to try to redistrict Lloyd Doggett out of office--but it didn't work!)

Pinter's Nobel Lecture

Here; an excerpt:

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading as a last resort all other justifications having failed to justify themselves as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'.

How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London.

Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don't exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. 'We don't do body counts,' said the American general Tommy Franks.

Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. 'A grateful child,' said the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you're making a sincere speech on television.

The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm's way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves.

Here is an extract from a poem by Pablo Neruda, 'I'm Explaining a Few Things':

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate.

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives.

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land.

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!*

Let me make it quite clear that in quoting from Neruda's poem I am in no way comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. I quote Neruda because nowhere in contemporary poetry have I read such a powerful visceral description of the bombing of civilians.

I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.

The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they are there all right.

The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.

Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.

I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man's man.

'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'

...

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us the dignity of man.

Chinese Government Blocking All Typepad Accounts

I received the following e-mail from a Chinese reader:

I am a student of China University of Politics & Law , and a faithful reader of your "Brian Leiter Reports ".  Your research in legal theory & Philosophy ,especially in American Legal Realism & Nietzsche ,was often cited in some Chinese scholars' essays.

But since July ,2005 ,  the Typedpad was blocked by the Chinese Government . I don’t know much about network , I can only check the google ‘s “cached” to know what’s new in your Blog.

I don’t mean to critized our government or our Party ：） , though I feel very upset and inconvenient. There are many readers of “ Leiter Reports” in China . I believe they have the same feeling.

I write this letter to tell you the situation. I will be very happy to get your reply .  At last , I am sorry about my poor English writing , like many Chinese students , i don’t get enough training in our English course :)

(My correspondent's English is a lot better than my Chinese!  When you consider how difficult English is, and how different Chinese is, I am always impressed by the quality of the English from correspondents in China.)

Comments are open; do any tech-savvy readers have ideas?  I know nothing about how "blocking" works and whether the blocks can be evaded.

British Turner Prize Goes to a Philosophically-Minded Artwork

Peter Simons (Philosophy, Leeds) writes with the following interesting item:

Turner Prize - and the winner is ... philosophy!

The announcement that the Turner Prize 2005 has been won by Simon Starling's conceptual installation Shedboatshed (Mobile Architecture No 2) (picture here)  may annoy art traditionalists but must delight philosophers interested in existence and identity through time. It plays out in real life a scenario evoked in a 1980 paper by Michael Burke in "Cohabitation, Stuff, and Intermittent Existence," Mind 89 (1980): 391-405. Burke envisages a table which is dismantled, the wood used to make a chair, this is dismantled and the material used again to make a stool and a birdhouse, then these are dismantled and the wood reassembled to make a table again just like the original. Burke then  upheld two metaphysical propositions: that the table assembled at the end is strictly and numerically identical with the original table, and that this one table did not exist during the time when the chair existed and the stool and birdhouse existed. In other words, contra Locke, existence can have two beginnings, and things may exist intermittently. I think Burke is right (Simons, Parts 197-8).

The English artist Simon Starling did something similar. While cycling along the banks of the Swiss Rhine, he came upon an old boat shed used to house the local kind of boat called a Weidling (below a picture of one).

Starling then (presumably after getting permission - we are talking Switzerland here) dismantled the shed, used the wood to make a 10 m long Weidling, navigated it 10 km downstream to Basle and then reassembled the shed in a museum there.

Purists may baulk at some of Starling's deviations from pure reassembly: he used caulking to seal the boat's joints and some steel brackets, but like an honest artist he left this material in the reassembled shed. Also not all the wood was used: that which was not was loaded into the Weidling as cargo. Here the shades of Messrs Hobbes, Locke and Hume may commence a disputation.

Does the example prove Burke right? Of course not: this is metaphysics, not mathematics or crossword puzzles. But Starling's own description from the Tate Britain's website, and that of all the art critics I have looked at, leave no doubt that they conceive of the final shed as numerically the same as the original one. They are a little less sure in expression about whether the shed made the Rhine trip. And no one dares to think the shed might not have existed while the boat made the river trip. No matter: that's why they're journalists and not academics.

Do you want to win next year's Turner Prize? Then get building. I can even suggest a project:

The Shed of Theseus.

The "Humanitarian" War in Iraq Continues....

Details here:

Hospital personnel are reporting regular raids and interference by the U.S. military as fighting continues in the volatile Al-Anbar province of Iraq.*

The U.S. raids come as the hospitals face increasing lack of vital supplies and equipment.

Two hospitals in Ramadi, about 110 km west of capital Baghdad on the Euphrates river, are being raided regularly by the U.S. military, doctors say.

"The maternity hospital and the general hospital in our city are the two biggest hospitals," the official said. "These have both been raided twice a week by the American forces with the excuse that they are searching for militants. They (the U.S. soldiers) break every door which is closed, play with our records and sometimes even detain some of our staff. The Americans are not adhering to any laws...."

The Fourth Geneva Convention lays down specific provisions on delivery of healthcare services.. "The occupying power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate," Article 55 states.

Article 56 says: "The occupying power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining, with the cooperation of national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics. Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out their duties."

But the U.S. forces continue to target hospitals regardless. Dr. Qasim, who had come from al-Qa'im hospital to the Ramadi General Hospital to obtain medical supplies told IPS that the main hospital in al-Qa'im was targeted by occupation forces Nov. 7.

"On that day 40 percent of our hospital was wrecked and the doctors' residency was completely smashed," he said. "Then on the next day they continued with the other 60 percent of the hospital, including the emergency room and staff residency...."

"Even when we obtained permission from the Americans, we have had four out of 10 ambulance missions attacked. Recently in Khaldiya (near Fallujah) an injured man inside one of them was detained along with two of our doctors." The health official said he had pleaded with American soldiers many times for assistance. "They accused me of aiding terrorists," he said.. "But I told them I have nothing to do with the security situation, and that I deal with injured persons because I have sworn to deal with the injured. We are two million persons living in a disaster now."

A London theater recommendation

In addition to his prolific philosophical output, both professional and popular, and his always pleasurable political and cultural commentary in The Guardian and elsewhere, Anthony Grayling (Philosophy, Birkbeck) also runs OnLine Review London, which posts reviews of a wide array of performing arts here in London.  I was kindly offered the opportunity to see Pirandello's "As You Desire Me" in return for trying my hand at theater review (a first for me).  My review is here.  It really is a very good play.

London (and England) Observations #2

1.  By common consensus, the weather has been unusually good this fall in London--mild temperatures through almost all of October, and even into November, and more clear days than ordinary.  Given that one of the pleasures of London for children are the lovely parks and playgrounds, this has been an especially welcome piece of good luck!

2.  Also wonderful for children (and grown-ups too, of course) are the museums, every one of which we've been to so far (Natural History, Museum of London, Tate Modern, National Gallery, British Museum, Wallace Collection) is well-designed, with activities aimed particularly at engaging children.  That they are all free is especially nice, since the best way to see them with younger children is through multiple shorter visits. 

3.  London vehicular traffic is quite a sight, especially for a pedestrian.  Our perception may be skewed, of course, by the number of times we have to cross Marylebone Road each day, but it is fair to say that, especially for those foreigners always wondering which way to look (not every street has those handy "look left" and "look right" signs painted on the ground), being a pedestrian in London requires serious concentration.  Although, in general, the traffic is reasonably law-abiding (e.g., stopping at red lights), its erratic pace (massive accelerations, quick stops, again and again) and its volume make it, in some ways, more hair-raising than the slightly more lawless traffic in, say, Paris.  I am also impressed by the large number of professional folks who, in the midst of all this, are commuting to work via bicycle:  these people must have nerves of steel!

4.  UCL takes the teaching of jurisprudence quite seriously, requiring it for their undergraduates, and offering a variety of courses for their postgraduates, including the year-long Jurisprudence and Legal Theory course in which I participated.  The unusual feature of this course is that it is taught by many different faculty, each lecturing on a particular area of expertise.  The virtue of that approach is that the students learn the material from someone who is research-active in the topic; the vice, at least for any particular lecturer, is that you don't have as clear a sense of what the students already know as one does in a course taught by a single professor.  I've lectured in this course once previously, and both times have found it an interesting and stimulating experience.  The pleasantness of my time at UCL this fall also owes much to the graciousness and collegiality of Stephen Guest, the Professor of Legal Philosophy, and Ross Harrison, the Quain Professor of Jurisprudence.

5.  One of the major academic advantages of England, and London in particular, is the proximity to an enormous number of research-oriented faculty at other institutions.  In one recent week, I enjoyed the visit of Chris Janaway (Southampton) to our Nietzsche seminar, and the legal philosopher Matthew Kramer (Cambridge) to the UCL School of Public Policy (which functions, in essence, as UCL's Politics faculty).  During the current week, I will have visited Oxford, Reading, and the LSE, as well as had Peter Kail (Oxford) at out Nietzsche seminar. 

But it's not just that speakers can easily come to London for talks.  It's also that many faculty from Oxford either live in London, or live close enough that they regularly come to scholarly events and seminars; it's that in London itself you have four major centers of British philosophy (at UCL, King's, Birkbeck, and the LSE); and that within two hours you can get to major departments at not only Oxford and Cambridge (each only an hour away, or less), but also Bristol, Warwick, Birmingham, Sheffield, Sussex, and others.  It's quite a treat to be in the center of so much philosophical "action."

6.  Having received much good advice from readers about restaurants, I feel I should report back on a few of our experiences:

Passione:  excellent Italian on the busy Charlotte Street, expensive (not off-the-charts) and a pleasant setting.

Orso:  good Italian food (but not Passione!), manic restaurant, with overworked waitstaff.  The food is better than the setting.

Yming:  adequate, but undistinguished Chinese, in Soho.  Moderately priced by London standards, which is good, since its moderate in quality too.

Royal China (Baker St.):  readers praised the dim sum, though we only did takeaway dinners a couple of times.  Some of their dishes (especially the Sezchuan ones, ironically, since this is mainly a Cantonese restaurant) are excellent, many others boring.  Alas, when my wife was made deathly ill by one of the dishes (fully recovered since), we called it quits with this branch.

Tsunami (Clapham):  unfortunate name for this *very* good Japanese restaurant, that is expensive, but not ridiculous. 

Red Fort:  very good Soho Indian, something of a "scene" but an enjoyable experience.

St. John:  the best in English cuisine circa 1757.  The strangest menu you'll ever see, but really quite good (and also VERY expensive).  Certainly when you get that craving for veal tongue, pig intestines, and hare saddle, there is nowhere else to go!  It is rumored that Tim Crane (Philosophy, UCL) eats all his meals here, though I can not vouch for the accuracy of that.

Drummond Street Indian restaurants:  there are, indeed, good, and relatively cheap Indian restaurants just a couple of blocks from UCL's Bentham House.  That was a particularly nice tip from readers, since the pickings are otherwise slim in the area.

7.  Schoolchildren in England, especially from about the age of 10 or 11 on, are under a tremendous amount of academic pressure, mostly related to testing of various kinds.  Although I gather the tests haven't the draconian consequences they used to (when a test taken at age 11 essentially determined whether you would go to university or end up sweeping streets), conversations with colleagues here leads me to think that kids find school more sterssful than is probably healthy.  Have I gotten a distorted perspective?

8.  Living in London is "hard," and not just financially.  One sees it on the face of people on the street, who look harried and tense.  Some of this is a feature of life in any big city, to be sure, though it strikes me as more apprent here than, say, New York.  I wonder whether others have had this impression?

9.  Probably because academics here are part of a civil service bureaucracy, academic life is more clearly organized around three distinct categories:  teaching (of course), "research," and "admin."  "Research" is more distinctly defined here than in the US, since it means, at bottom, having the four necessary publications for the Research Assessment Exercise period.  The biggest difference, though, is the "admin" category, which, by some accountings, occupies almost as much time as research and teaching.    We have touched on the problem before.  When I've talked to Brits who have decamped for the US, excessive "admin" is probably the most frequent factor mentioned for why they wanted to leave.

Hope for labor unions...in Texas?

Striking story here:

Union organizers have obtained what they say is majority support in one of the biggest unionization drives in the South in decades, collecting the signatures of thousands of Houston janitors.

In an era when unions typically face frustration and failure in attracting workers in the private sector, the Service Employees International Union is bringing in 5,000 janitors from several companies at once. With work force experts saying that unions face a slow death unless they can figure out how to organize private-sector workers in big bunches, labor leaders are looking to the Houston campaign as a model.

The service employees, which led a breakaway of four unions from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. last summer, has used several unusual tactics in Houston, among them lining up the support of religious leaders, pension funds and the city's mayor, Bill White, a Democrat. Making the effort even more unusual has been the union's success in a state that has long been hostile to labor.

"It's the largest unionization campaign in the South in years," said Julius Getman, a labor law professor at the University of Texas. "Other unions will say, 'Yes, it can be done here.' "

Mr. Getman predicted that the Houston effort would embolden other unions to take their chances with ambitious drives in the South, although success could prove difficult because many companies will continue to fight unionization efforts, and many workers still shy away from unions....

With its campaign to organize the janitors, the union has focused on two groups it says are pivotal if labor is to grow again: low-wage workers and immigrants. The janitors, nearly all of them immigrants, earn just over $100 a week on average, usually working part time for $5.25 an hour....

The union has trumpeted the Houston effort - which cost more than $1 million - as part of its Justice for Janitors campaign, billed as an antipoverty movement.

Flora Aguilar, a Mexican immigrant who cleans an office tower for $5.25 an hour, volunteered to help the organizing drive as soon as the union gave the janitors questionnaires asking what aspects of their jobs they thought needed improvement.

"The wages are terrible, there are no benefits, there's nothing," Ms. Aguilar said. "I have to stretch myself like a rubber band to make ends meet. I want a union because it will give me a better life."

In recent days, the union has collected cards signed by about three-fifths of the workers at four of Houston's biggest janitorial companies. An agreement signed in August calls for the American Arbitration Association to inspect the cards and certify when the union has received majority support. The janitorial companies have promised to recognize the union once that happens....

In the current campaign, the service employees urged several public-employee pension funds to press building owners and janitorial companies not to mount hard-hitting anti-union campaigns to defeat the organizing drive. To step up the pressure, the union called a strike at one building in Houston and then arranged sympathy strikes by janitors at 75 office buildings in four other states.

Because the union had no office or local in Houston, its giant local of building-service workers in Chicago oversaw the recruitment drive. That local dispatched a top official to Houston to run the campaign and flew in 25 Spanish-speaking janitors for weeks at a time to talk to janitors at their homes and workplaces.

Workers were told of the union's success in New Jersey, where the salaries of 4,500 recently organized janitors had risen to $11.90 an hour from $5.85 an hour three years ago, and where many part-time workers had been converted to full-time status with health benefits.

The union announced its campaign last April, but two years earlier, it sent a community liaison to Houston who helped line up backing from the city's mayor, several congressmen and dozens of clergymen, including the Roman Catholic archbishop, Joseph A. Fiorenza. The archbishop even celebrated a special Mass for janitors in August and spoke at the union's kickoff rally, telling the janitors that God was unhappy that they earned so little and did not have health coverage.

"They work for the same companies that are in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, and their counterparts there are getting much higher salaries," Archbishop Fiorenza said in an interview. "It's just basic justice and fairness that the wages should be increased here."

Office building janitors average $20 an hour in New York City. They make $13.30 in Chicago and Philadelphia, cities with office rents comparable to Houston's and a cost of living about 40 percent higher. Janitors in Houston typically earn $5.25 an hour, 10 cents more than the federal minimum wage....

Ercilia Sandoval, who cleans offices in a prime office tower, says she has not had a raise in eight years and does not have health insurance. A school dentist recently found that her 7-year-old daughter had six cavities, and fillings will cost $750, when her weekly take-home pay is $91.50.

"Everything has gone up except our wages," Ms. Sandoval said. "If we ask for a raise, they say, 'Anyone who doesn't like it here, there's the door....' "

OneSource, one of the nation's largest cleaning companies, said, "OneSource, along with every other major contractor in the Houston area, made a business decision to remain neutral in this process."

The company said it was premature to discuss wage levels while workers were considering whether to join the service employees' union.

Union leaders said the cleaning companies had agreed to remain neutral because of pressures from building owners and pension funds, and because the service employees had threatened to pressure operations elsewhere, as it did with the sympathy strikes in California, Illinois, New York and Connecticut....

"We decided that Houston would be the place to bring to bear everything we've built in the last 15 years," said Stephen Lerner, director of the Justice for Janitors campaign. "That would allow us to organize a whole city at once."

So labor unions for janitors are gaining a foothold in reactionary Texas, while New York University in "liberal" New York is busy busting unions.  Strange days indeed...

Many thanks to Jason & Marcus Stanley...

...for a rich feast of ideas and arguments over the last week.  For those who missed it, you can see their postings by clicking on the link, below, for "Guest Bloggers."  I thought the Stanley brothers made particularly effective use of comments.  Comments sections on most blogs tend to be embarrassing spectacles, but thanks to the high quality of the readership and the judicious editing by the Stanley brothers, I found the comments sections last week extremely informative.  Time permitting, I shall try to make a bit more use of comments myself in the future.

Thanks again to the brothers Stanley, whom I will try to bring back again before too long.

Brian

Back to Work...

Thanks to everyone for tuning in (and please feel free to continue on the various comments threads). There is no time left, unfortunately, for my 'top ten most overrated' list, so you're just going to have to wait until next year (when I will also rank my friends!). I hope we achieved our major accomplishment, which was to occupy in a mildly entertaining and occasionally irritating way some of your time. Now, it's back to my day job (I work for editors of various journals and guides to philosophy, refereeing papers and writing survey articles).

                                                                                    -Jason

Sovereignty

Sovereignty is a useful construct to avoid international conflicts, but is there in any moral sense a "right" to sovereignty?  Do I have a "right" not to have my country ruled by "foreigners"?  I'm asking this because it seems quite obvious that the hostility to foreign rule turned out to be at least as important a factor in Iraq as all the nice individual rights (voting, speech.) that we bestowed on the Iraqis after our invasion (assuming for now that those rights have some reality, and aren't just a way to prop up a puppet government).  It’s also pretty clear that in modern history the quest for national sovereignty or self-rule has had a lot more influence and a lot more popular support than the quest for the right to vote, for free speech, etc.  Yet we hardly ever see a violation of national sovereignty defined as a human rights violation. In fact people seem to see no contradiction at all in occupying or invading a foreign nation in order to guarantee the human rights of their population.

This would seem to imply that sovereignty is not a “right”.  Indeed it’s hard to make sense of sovereignty starting from an individualistic view of rights, as we tend to do since our intellectual life is so soaked in methodological individualism.  The right must in some sense inhere in a “people”, not an individual.  One must define the meaning of “foreigner”, and what counts as the “self” in “self-rule” (were the Iraqi Shi’ites being ruled by foreigners under Saddam)?  Is it possible for there to be a “right” to sovereignty when the sovereign government is violating some rights (say free speech) of the individuals under its control?  But there are a number of rights that can’t be individually defined.  The right to vote can only be defined relative to the legitimacy of an entire system of governance that the voter is participating in.  And it’s worthwhile to think about these issues, I think, because it forces us to think about the meaning of nation and community as conceived by their populations, instead of applying an individualist perspective on rights.

I really have no problem with this issue because I’m a thoroughgoing consequentialist when it comes to rights – I see them as useful rules that pre-commit us to courses of action that usually turn out to be better ex ante, and allowing ex post violations of rights for utilitarian reasons is usually a bad idea because the ability to violate them will be abused by those in power.  So the “right” to sovereignty is a comittment based on the belief that people who share my culture and background will in general rule me more effectively, competently, and respectfully than people who don’t know me well.   But I don't know whether this kind of rule-utilitarianism is the accepted way of looking at it.

Any moral philosophers want to weigh in?

Marcus

Europe vs. America

Jason's last post on Germany made me speculate on some differences between Europe and America.  Now that the Soviet Union is gone, the major contrast between economic models in the advanced world is the U.S. vs. Europe (if I can for simplicity group the varied OECD styles of welfare state into a single alternative model to the U.S.).   Which is the proper contrast to be looking at, the Soviet Union was mostly just an old-style Russian despotism with little relevance to a modern economy (just as pre-Leninist Marxism would have predicted, the attempt to go straight to socialism in an underdeveloped nation and bypass the capitalist phase led nowhere).  The right points to Europe's recent record of slow growth and comparatively high unemployment, while the left emphasizes high middle class quality of life, egalitarian wage outcomes, greater leisure, and in some cases lower crime.  I'm mildly left of center in this debate. But there are lots of interesting arguments on both sides,  and I'm not going to get into them here.

The point I want to make is that while America is *economically* far more unequal than Europe, we are in many ways a much more culturally egalitarian nation than Europe is, especially for non-blacks (still the great majority here).  Indeed, I would argue the two facts are connected.  The economic evidence seems to show through the 19th century white America really was a quite open and egalitarian business culture, with much higher wages and social mobility than Europe.  One can argue that it is this heritage that has allowed business interests to have so much political power here.  The only major period when labor got real traction politically (1930-1970) was due to the Depression.  Europe's history of exploitation and inequality has led to a much more class conscious politics and established redistributive institutions firmly there.

Even though the formal institutions have switched places -- in my opinion the American "working class" is the one getting ripped off at the moment, though to nothing like the degree that took place in 19th century Europe -- cultural traditions don't move so quickly.  It's my impression that America is in numerous subtle ways a more open culture than Europe.  Openness to immigrants is an obvious example, as Jason's previous post mentions.  But I think this is also true in terms of all kinds of hierarchies.  I've had lots of friends tell me about more formal relationships between bosses and workers in Europe, with superiors being less open to criticism than they are here, and less opportunity to criticize traditional ways of doing things.  "Eurosclerosis" might have as much to do with the cultural heritage of less open and more class-bound nations as it does with the contemporary economic institutions the right is so eager to fault for all of Europe's troubles.  Likewise, American hospitability to innovation might have more to do with our traditions as a basically middle-class and egalitarian culture than with the opportunity for lucky CEOs to earn many hundreds of times what their workers do, without paying particularly high taxes on it.

The irony here is of course that American hostility to redistributive institutions, born out of the lesser need for them in our history, might in the long run create self-perpetuating class hierarchies like the ones our ancestors left Europe to escape.  Certainly that was what the Founders thought when they instituted a redistributive tax on large inheritances...the so-called "death tax" the Republicans recently repealed. 

Liberals might favor moving some moderate distance toward the European model in terms of formal economic institutions, but we also favor maintaining or increasing traditional American cultural openness.  Unlike conservatives we deny that that cultural openness is dependent on a completely untrammeled free market; in fact over the long run some forms of redistribution might be necessary to maintain it.

Marcus

Ruminations on "Multiculturalism" in Germany

In today's New York Times Magazine, Peter Schneider has an interesting report on the current state of relations between Germans of Turkish descent and Germans of non-Turkish descent. The issue, as usual, is how much the failures of integration between these two populations are due to the nature of German society, or due to the nature of the traditionally Turkish society in which many of the parents and grandparents of Germans of Turkish descent were raised.

The topic is especially interesting to me. I was raised in one of those German-Jewish households with copies of Goethe's works on the shelves (my father left Berlin in August, 1939, at the age of 7, and came from a distinguished Berlin Jewish family). Since my mother was less nostalgic about her Heimatland (she was born and raised in a Siberian labor camp), the identity that took hold was largely the German-Jewish one. My first year in Germany was as an exchange student at the age of 15 (in 1985-6). I went thinking of myself as an American of German descent, and spent the year in an industrial city right outside of Dortmund, living with a host family and attending the local Gymnasium. I soon realized that I looked a bit different than many of the locals, and in fact the people who looked most like me were the Germans of Turkish descent. For one reason or another, I spent quite a bit of time around some members of that community, and Schneider's article has vividly reminded me of many of my daily experiences.

Two of my acquaintances at the Gymnasium were a brother and sister pair who were Germans of Turkish descent. Since they both were at Gymnasium (rather than Hauptschule or Realschule), they were both very integrated into German society, and must have had rather liberal educated parents. But then the sister went on a date with a German of non-Turkish descent, who was an acquaintance of mine and a friend of the brother. The brother warned the man never to talk to his sister again, and then, when the warning was not heeded, beat him severely (he was quite a good kick-boxer). His sister was extremely upset, but there was nothing she could do. I remember trying to argue with my friend; I just could not grasp the situation. My friend was smart, educated, apparently quite integrated, and bound for the university. But there was no way that his family was going to allow his (equally educated) sister to date a German of non-Turkish descent.

On the other hand, my own expected happy homecoming into German society wasn't necessarily working out as planned. One of the teachers at the Gymnasium told me that Heinrich Heine wasn't really a "German" poet, but rather was a "European" poet. My absurdly well-meaning and wonderful hostfather regularly repeated that "Deutschland ist kein Einwanderungsland" (which is, as Schneider points out, a common theme among Germans of a certain generation). Whenever I told people I was of German descent, they would argue with me -- then upon discovering that I was Jewish, would say "Oh, so you're not German, you're Jewish" (strangely, I never heard anyone say to someone, upon discovering that they were  Christian, "Oh, so you're not German, you're Christian"). Among my German friends, there was a pervasive sense of the strangeness of other cultures, which alternately manifested itself as either irrational disdain or irrational admiration. There was certainly a very vivid sense, among even the best intentioned of my German friends of non-Turkish descent, that (like me) the Germans of Turkish descent were not German (there was also a kind of befuddlement about what it meant to live in a genuinely multicultural society. I remember my hostfather saying that Germans and Jews will not be reconciled until he could shake his fist at a bad Jewish driver who had cut him off in traffic, and yell "You dirty Jew!").
 

I still identify as an American of German descent, and I have a number of strong emotional ties to my father's homeland (and indeed, returned for a year of college). There are a great many things I admire about current German society, from their remarkable acceptance of the sins of their forebearers to their social welfare system. But in the end, I probably couldn't live there. The fact that most Germans would view a blond person from Pennsylvania whose great-grandparents were German as more German than me would be a perpetual annoyance. The fact that most Germans still can't really think of the German Jewish population of the past as genuinely German makes me pessimistic about their ability to eventually accept Germans of Turkish descent as genuinely German. And perhaps the inability to think of Germans of Turkish descent as genuinely German is part of what leads them to accept e.g. the abuses of women in that community of the sort that Schneider describes.

On the other hand, I wonder whether some of the same problems are present in the United States. For example, in certain ultra-orthodox Jewish communities (a group with which I have some personal acquaintance), women can be discouraged from pursuing advanced educations, and married off at relatively early ages. Certainly, there are large pockets of unassimilated groups in the United States, which clearly is an Einwanderungsland. So, while I've engaged in some no doubt irresponsible speculation about specifically German roots of the problems with immigration Schneider describes, I also wonder whether similar problems crop up in countries where those features are utterly lacking.

                                                                        -Jason

Victory in Iraq

I'm waiting with interest to see if the Bush administration can successfully head off public debate over whether we should withdraw from Iraq without ever defining why we're there in the first place.  The White House "strategy for victory" defines victory as the following state:

"Iraq is peaceful, united, stable, and secure, well integrated into the international community, and a full partner in the global war on terrorism."

I wish all that would happen too.  It was very generous of us to invade in order to help Iraq become peaceful, stable, and secure, although it seems to have been a bit counterproductive.  I think the "full partner" thing may be a little outbreak of honesty...is it shorthand for having a puppet government in the heart of the Persian Gulf?  I'm can't see how that would actually help America, but from the Cold War we know U.S. policy elites are fond of such constructs.

The whole thing is more than a little surreal.  Especially the stuff about staying until the Iraqis learn how to fight.  The Iraqis definitely already know how to fight, they seem to do a fine job so long as they're fighting against our troops and not for them. 

Our current situation there is so 20th century...straight out of the post WWII guerilla war playbook for a poor country against a rich one.  France in Algeria and Vietnam, the U.S. in Vietnam, Israel in Lebanon, Russia in Afghanistan, there are essentially no cases of a major power subduing a determined guerilla resistance in a foreign country by force of arms.  In every case the foreign power has tried to arm and prop up a puppet government, and in every case that government has been weak and corrupt despite the obvious military ability of the population.  It tends to be the most corrupt elements who cooperate with the invader.

The X factor in Iraq is the possibility of a closer alliance with the Shi'ite majority.  In Vietnam we were allied with a Catholic ruling group that would never be anything but a disliked minority.  But if we become the de facto allies of the Shi'ites in consolidating their power over the Sunnis, then we may eventually get a determined and motivated army on "our side", at least nominally.  Of course we'll then be participating in a civil war and probably helping the Iranians too, but never mind.

What a mess.  The Syrians and/or the Iranians could probably help if we were willing to offer them a genuine say, they know the culture and territory.  I'm sure they don't want their neighborhood trashed any more than it already has been.  But we don't seem disposed to look in that direction.  Our consistent hostility to Iraq's neighbors is a telling indicator that we are still less interested in seeing a peaceful, stable Iraq than an Iraq that furthers some mysterious geopolitical scheme.  After all this, do we really know what that scheme might be?

Marcus

NYU Graduate Student Strike

Several people have asked that I post something about the graduate student strike currently happening at NYU. As many of you know, things are about to take a turn for the worse, with the administration making some pretty grave threats. I haven't posted about this until now, for three reasons. First, I tend to be pretty uniformly pro-labor. Secondly, I'm nervous about the fact that the Bush administration has been chiefly responsible for the legal rulings that are allowing the NYU administration to do what it is now doing. The first and second fact conspire to make me somewhat suspicious of the NYU administration's position. Third, I haven't followed the details of the situation at NYU, and some people whom I respect a lot agree with the NYU admininstration's position. So I am quite open to the possibility that knowing more about the details of the situation would affect my bias from the outside (e.g. perhaps the union is being unreasonable).

Nevertheless, I'd thought I'd link to the following interview, since in it, the distinguished NYU philosopher Paul Boghossian defends the administration position (and thereby adds himself to the list of people I respect a lot who agree with it). Prof. Boghossian raises the worry that having a union will change the relationship between professor and graduate student. But Michigan and Rutgers both have strong graduate unions, and I don't perceive any difference between my relationship to my graduates at those institutions, and the relationships I had with my graduate students at Cornell (perhaps I always had a managerial relationship with my graduate students? I had better ask Susanna Siegel). Furthermore, the Rutgers philosophy department competes very successfully for graduate students with the departments at NYU and Princeton. No doubt, this has mostly to do with our departmental make-up. But I know of at least one  case of a student who was attracted by the health insurance package available for his family at Rutgers, the generosity of which was due to union bargaining. However, I don't know what the union's demands are, and perhaps they are more unreasonable than (as their representative claims) simply wanting to return to the table with the administration.

                                                   -Jason

UPDATE: I had closed the comments thread on this, since it had seemed to me that every side had said their piece. But I guess I will leave it open, and let Brian make the decision how long to continue with it. Post away.

The "Exile" on 90s politics

Here's some stuff from the latest issue of the Exile (home of the always interesting War Nerd) on the most annoying things about the 1990s.  A few of the comments on politics during that fat, prosperous decade are definitely worth passing along, those guys have a talent for cutting away the BS:

35. Hating the Clintons/Hating the UN

The Sham:What do you do if you live in a period of the greatest prosperity and geopolitical power that your country - and indeed just about any country in history - ever experienced? If you're 150 million of America's 300 million citizens, you hate the President who oversaw this Golden Age. And you hate his wife too. And for good measure, you also hate the UN, precisely because America finally found a way to completely co-opt it by making it believe it was becoming more powerful and multilateral, when in fact it served America's imperial ambitions like no organization on earth. So naturally, this same 150 million-strong demographic hated the UN too, on the Waco-chic theory that the UN was preparing to occupy and control America. The hate was and still is pure undistilled venom, mean in that special Made In America way. There's no point trying come up with a clever, insightful explanation for this hatred. It's just stupidity expressed emotionally. Ten, twenty years from now, when America becomes the England of the 21st Century, people will look back at the 90s and...no wait, they won't. They'll be Americans. And they'll probably still hate the Clintons and the UN. Because that's what mean, petty morons do.

"Just stupidity expressed emotionally"...not a bad summary of some of the stuff comes bubbling up out of the American populist subconscious.  Although this is a touch unfair since if you look at the actual opinion polls Clinton was pretty popular throughout the 90s, despite a concerted attempt to smear him through the legal system.  Much more popular than Bush is now, despite the fact that Bush faces no enemies nearly as powerful as Clinton's.

And here's what I think is a rather accurate assessment of Noam Chomsky...good guy and all, gets things right most of the time, but if he's your leading leftist, you don't have a left:

Sure, Chomsky is the kind of guy you want on your team, the perfect leftie fullback whose books on politics, media and language move the chains, yet are perfectly devoid of surprise. You want to criticize the mainstream media's silence on US imperialism in Latin America on a third and short yardage situation? Chomsky will get you your two yards of criticism and a cloud of dirt. But you can't build a franchise around him. Which is exactly what the Left has done....The best thing about Chomsky is that he raises the blood pressure of anti-Lefties far more than he deserves.

No wise-ass comments from British readers who can't follow the American football metaphors.  Learn the game, it's the greatest spectator sport on earth.

And they toss in a final slam on the one part of the American left that has managed to affect history recently:

Liberals Who Voted For Nader Because There Was No Difference Between Bush and Gore

The Sham:Admit it: you fucked up. Big time. There was a huge difference between Bush and Gore. Voting for Nader was a vote for Bush. You just didn't have the courage to accept the ugly reality of politics in 2000 because as an over-read liberal, you wanted your candidate and your party to be more authentic than the plastic show that made you gag. You were too pampered and vain to lower yourself to vote for Gore, and you're the reason why America is in the shit-hole it's in today.

Marcus

“Scientific” vs. “Humanist” Philosophy

Much of my blogging has been devoted to trying to figure out which distinctions between kinds of philosophical approaches are merely sociological (e.g. reflections of the personal connections and academic credentials of particular philosophers) and which are genuinely substantive. I do think there are rather fundamental distinctions between kinds of philosophers, but (as I’ve been arguing this week) I don’t think they correspond to any kind of “division between departments” or “nexuses” that clearly divide two or three kinds of departments (such nexuses exist, but they are considerably more sociological in character). Nevertheless, I think that Brian Leiter has been on to something by his division of “naturalistic” vs. “humanist” philosophy. I just don’t think that this division explains anything about the sociology of department relations. I just haven’t been able to put my finger on what it is. But this morning, I received an e-mail from the prominent Rutgers graduate Michael Strevens, which was a reply to my grouping Fodor and Stich into a natural kind in the comments thread of a previous posting. Strevens’s comment it seems to me comes as close as I’ve seen to describing an actual natural divide between kinds of philosophers. It does so furthermore by remaining within the space of Rutgers philosophy. I think this suggests that the actual divisions between philosophers (as opposed to the merely sociological ones) do not divide departments into distinct nexuses. Anyway, here is Strevens:

I was bemused to see the names of Fodor and Stich used together to pick out a “Rutgers style” of philosophy. It seems to me that Fodor and Stich are as different as it is possible for two philosophers to be. More precisely: Fodor and Stich lie on opposite sides, indeed opposite extremes, of the most important division in philosophy, which might as much as any be called the humanistic/scientific divide.

Fodor is a humanist insofar as his work on the mind is an attempt to vindicate our self-understanding, our human picture of the mind: it is a law-governed, representation-involving, inference and planning machine in which what is inferred from what depends on the content of the representations involved. That is to put things in modern vocabulary, but the general picture is familiar from way back, and constitutes, in the eyes of many psychologists, the core of a “folk psychology” common to all humankind. Philosophy, in Fodor’s hands, fights on the side of humanity, attempting to justify our ways to the world.

Stich, by contrast, uses the tools of philosophy to undermine our conception of ourselves, to alienate us from our own minds. The aim is to produce discomfort, uncertainty, the sudden dropping away of foundations that had seemed secure. This is genuinely “scientific” philosophy. It fights against humanity, or at least against human culture, which it conceives as an accretion or insulating layer of prejudice, misapprehension, and half-truth. It is an attempt to undercut our ways by appeal to the way the world really is.

For the humanist, philosophy ought never to stray too far from common sense. For the scientist, “common sense philosophy” is about as attractive as “biblical biology”. Humanists may very well perceive scientists as shallow, because scientists distrust and therefore keep their distance from ways of thinking that are central to our conception of ourselves. Scientists may very well perceive humanists as obscure, because until their work is done, humanists must point to aspects of our self-understanding without fully articulating them, or deluded, because without justification or even articulation, they commit themselves to the validity of this self-understanding.

Of course, both camps have equal disdain for technical problem-solvers..."

Strevens’s comment raises a number of important points.

First, the use of logic or technical tools cross-cuts the humanist-scientific divide described by Strevens. Many of the very best a priori metaphysicians, such as Kit Fine, heavily exploit logical and technical tools. But these tools are placed in the service of capturing our intuitions about fundamental metaphysical facts having to do e.g. with modality and essentialism. The appeal to “technical” in the recently much-abused phrase “technical problem solver” distinguishes metaphysicians such as Kit Fine, who makes use of such tools, from metaphysicians such as Sydney Shoemaker and Alvin Plantinga, who generally do not use them. But this is an utterly superficial distinction. In all substantive senses, Fine, Shoemaker, and Plantinga engage in the same project (though with different conclusions). They take many our common sense metaphysical categories at pretty-much face-value, and assume that our intuitions about them are guides to metaphysical reality (though particular intuitions may be explained away by clashes with other plausible a priori principles).

Logic is most often used as a tool to represent points, rather than a point in itself. Some people have great facility with this tool, and others less facility. But use of logic or mathematics does not help make any kind of distinction between kinds of philosophy or philosophers. 

Secondly, appeal to historical sources doesn’t help shed light on humanist vs. scientific distinction. Fodor is clearly a humanist, and Stich is a scientific philosopher, and neither makes central use of historical sources (notwithstanding Fodor’s recent foray into Hume scholarship). Appeal to history of philosophy is a tool to make a philosophical point, a source of evidence, rather than a kind of conclusion.

Strevens’s distinction is reminiscent of the distinction Strawson made between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics in the introduction of Individuals. Revisionary metaphysicians think it is a legitimate option to end up with conclusions that validate very few features of our ordinary conceptual scheme; indeed, such philosophers assign no epistemic significance to facts about our ordinary conceptual scheme. Descriptive metaphysicians take the task of philosophy to vindicate central features of that scheme. Strevens’s distinction between “humanist” and “scientific” philosophy is similar, but not identical. First, there are strongly revisionary metaphysicians who are motivated by considerations other than scientific ones (think of Van Inwagen’s Christian motivations for his ontology). Secondly, there are philosophers of science (think of Tim Maudlin) who undertake in their work to justify central features of our conceptual scheme (but maybe this shows they aren’t scientific philosophers in Strevens’s sense). I do think Strevens’s distinction explains certain departmental proclivities (e.g. Michigan, when Leiter was a graduate student, minus Velleman, was mostly a “scientific” department). But in general, I think each department, and indeed each area of philosophy (even, as I’ve suggested, philosophy of science) contain representatives of both attitudes.
                                                                        -Jason

Yale Offers to Gendler and Szabo

The distinguished philosophers Tamar Szabo-Gendler and Zoltan Gendler-Szabo, at Cornell University, have just received offers from the Department of Philosophy at Yale University (some portion of Tamar's position will be in Cognitive Science). Obviously, recruiting Tamar and Zoltan would be a huge coup for Yale, and losing them would be a heavy blow for Cornell.

I have lots of mixed emotions about this one. The Cornell department has for a century been one of America's great philosophy departments (it was, after all, Wittgenstein's American home). It also has exhibited (in my somewhat biased view) excellent judgment in recent years, hiring a series of outstanding young philosophers (in addition to Tamar and Zoltan, Graff, Fara, Hellie, Weatherson, and Eklund). They should be rewarded for making such intelligent decisions, rather than having their young faculty constantly fleeing the relative isolation of Ithaca. Furthermore, the field has an interest in ensuring that the Cornell department always has a number of energetic philosophers well-acquainted with the most recent literature, because their in-house journal, The Philosophical Review, is one of the most important journals in philosophy (the same consideration applies to Columbia). The Philosophical Review simply has become a much better journal for M&E since Zoltan, Tamar, and Brian became tenured faculty at Cornell (and Zoltan did an outstanding job as chief editor). On the other hand, having Zoltan and Tamar near the New York area would be wonderful for New York area philosophy.

Globalization

One of the most important economic facts to understand right now is what Richard Freeman explains in this excellent piece (pdf file): the world labor supply has effectively tripled over the past twenty years, from about 1 to about 3 billion employed persons in the common global market.   Part of this is due to population growth, but most is because China and the ex-Soviet states were not in the common global market in the mid 1980s; effectively India was not either due to trade barriers.   If these enormous countries had not entered our common economy, there would only be about half as many workers competing for the world's available jobs. 

Freeman emphasizes that this is not simply an increase in low-skilled labor supply.  He estimates that almost 40% of the world college enrolled population is located in China, the ex-Soviet Union, and India.  We've only just begun to feel the impact of that growth, as information technology helps make it possible to outsource more sophisticated tasks. 

This is almost certainly the largest and fastest growth in labor supply in all of human history.  One can view this change as throwing us back into a situation that is *conceptually* (though not practically, things are too different) similar to the situation Marx was theorizing about in the mid 19th century, when the rural population was a huge "reserve army" whose availability helped to blunt wage growth.  Capital owners have a huge pool of underemployed and underpaid labor to draw on, and this increases their power very significantly compared to labor.  So what we are looking at is a huge shift in the relative bargaining power of capital vs. labor.   

This is a very different perspective from looking at globalization as just a win-win increase in economic efficiency due to "free trade", accompanied by a lot of lectures about the wonders of comparative advantage, as economists tend to do.  It emphasizes the effects of economic change on power differentials and distribution instead of the effects on overall wealth creation.  This does not mean that the wealth creation effects aren't there; they most certainly are.  The increase in effective productive resources has massively increased global wealth as well, but it has simultaneously made it harder for workers in advanced countries in particular to access that wealth.  (Although we do get some benefits through drops in prices).

One of the difficulties in thinking about the "right" way to respond to this is that the interests of the world working class are somewhat divided, at least in the short run.  Globalization appears to represent a substantial increase in wages for the "new globalizers" in India and China.  But this increase in many ways comes from the pockets of advanced country workers.    But in the long run, interests are not so divergent.  Workers in all countries would like to see wages for workers in less developed countries (LDCs) increase rapidly and eventually equalize, so that there is no longer such a cheap labor pool for capital owners to draw on.   This will take a while but it need not take an infinite amount of time; if Chinese wages grow by 10% per year they will be at U.S. levels in 21 years, by 7% per year in 30 years. 

So the best long run strategy should emphasize increasing the bargaining power of workers in less developed countries, so that their wages increase rapidly.  The problem is that our most powerful institutional structures all operate at the national level, so it is difficult to bring those kinds of pressures internationally.  Fair trade agreements based on worker rights could be one way.  Of course national institutions probably tend to be dominated by employer interests as well.  But U.S. employers have some collective interest in increasing purchasing power in less developed countries if they can access them as export markets.

Another way to increase wages in less developed countries is by increasing U.S. savings rates to lower the U.S. balance of payments deficit.  Right now, too much of the capital gained by LDC producers from selling to us is being loaned right back to the U.S. to finance our borrowing.  It should be be invested to make the Chinese economy more productive and thus raise wages there.  In effect money that should be going toward growing LDC economies even faster so that they can converge with us is instead being spent on U.S. real estate and military spending.

In the short run though what we should want in advanced countries is a redistribution from capital owners to workers of the benefits of global economic growth.  We should all benefit from the wealth creation made possible by the expanded market without unfairly penalizing workers for a decline in bargaining power that is no fault of their own.  In other words, globalization strengthens the case for progressive taxation and other ways of redistributing money from rich beneficiaries of globalization to those who are victimized by it.  But you wouldn't know this from the neoliberal rhetoric about globalization, which has an ideological emphasis on wealth growth instead of changes in bargaining power.

Marcus