Does the welfare state hurt us all?

Free marketers like to tell a story that is prima facie plausible, and suggests that life under a system of the redistribution of wealth is worse for everyone, even the poor, than life under a free-market system. The story goes something like this: The high tax rate needed to appropriate wealth from the people who produce it takes away the incentive to produce more wealth. So, under a distributive system, less wealth is produced overall, and since there's less to go around, the people who would have benefited from the redistributive system are actually worse off.

There are obviously some huge gaps in the reasoning there, and I've some suppressed some very, very important ceteris paribus (`all other things being equal') clauses. Ignore those for the moment. The story revolves around the claim that, under a distributive system, less wealth is produced overall. This is an empirical claim. Is it true? Here are two graphs from the US Department of Commerce that suggest not.

These graphs show the percentage change in the US GDP over the past several decades, including during the rise and fall of the Roosevelt-Johnson redistribution system. GDP is a measure of the size of the economy, and is one rough way of measuring how much wealth the country has. The percentage change in GDP over a given period of time shows how much the economy grew -- how much total wealth increased -- over that period of time. If the free marketer's claim is right, then ceteris paribus, percentage change in GDP should be less under a more radical restributive system (with more regulation, higher marginal tax rates, etc.) and greater under a system closer to the free market ideal.

 

 

And the exact opposite is the case. During the height of the Roosevelt-Johnson system, the US economy actually grew a little bit faster than after Reagan started to dismantle it. The '70s, with the highest marginal tax rates the strictest regulation, actually saw the highest economic growth rates of the past half-century. Since Reagan started lowering tax rates and removing regulation, the economy has seen relatively mild growth.

This isn't a Quick Refutation, since I haven't shown that the crucial ceteris paribus clause is satisfied. And it seems quite likely that it's not -- there have been wars and changes in energy costs and all sorts of things that can make a difference. But this does place a burden on free marketers: if regulation and taxation are supposed to be bad for the economy as a whole, then why did our economy do better when it was more highly regulated and highly taxed?

I think I'm voting for Obama

I'm still wary of his policies. But yesterday, to paraphrase Jon Stewart, Obama spoke about race and class to Americans as though they were adults.

Obama gets a lot of flak for campaigning on a supposedly nebulous rhetoric of meaningless hope and dangerous bipartisanship. I think his speech yesterday should (not will, unfortunately) finally refute that criticism. Obama's hope and unity is much the same as King's was. From `I have a dream':

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

The hope is that, despite our conflicting interests, the emotional tension, and the deep-seated grudges, a real conversation, and the real understanding that comes with it, is still possible. Black and White, rich and poor, native-born and immigrant -- even progressive and conservative -- aren't so different that we can't live together as a community. To say that it's going to be awkward for a while is an understatement. (The dramatisation the Daily Show did last night was fantastic.) But we can, and should, still try.

A Couple Links

Obama's response to all the flak about his former pastor. I think he does a good job of diffusing all the fuss, but then again I'm not one of the people that was so terribly offended in the first place. Link.

Do The Test. I'd just like to point out that I failed. Link.

Quick debunking: Singular `they'

Myth: `They' is always a plural pronoun, never a singular pronoun, and hence it is grammatically incorrect to use it as a gender-neutral singular pronoun. (`The student turned their paper in a day late.')

Example: David Gelernter's recent anti-feminist grammar prescriptivist rant

He-or-she'ing added so much ugly dead weight to the language that even the Establishment couldn't help noticing. So feminist authorities went back to the drawing board. Unsatisfied with having rammed their 80-ton 16-wheeler into the nimble sports-car of English style, they proceeded to shoot the legs out from under grammar--which collapsed in a heap after agreement between subject and pronoun was declared to be optional. "When an Anglican priest mounts the pulpit, they are about to address the congregation." How many of today's high school English teachers would mark this sentence wrong, or even "awkward"? (Show of hands? Not one?) Yet such sentences skreak like fingernails on a blackboard.

Response:

Language Log suggests that `they' is used as a bound variable -- it doesn't pick out any one person or particular group, but instead ranges over some set of people or some set of groups of people. `It' can work analogously, ranging over individual things as a variable rather than a temporary name for some one thing. `He' and `she', by contrast, are not variables. They're temporary names, and have to pick out some one person, with some one gender. (Note that the two examples -- mine and Gelernter's -- can both be read this way.)

Still not happy with what you might be tempted to call a crazy revisionist grammar of `they'? Shakespere used singular they, as did Jane Austen.

Academic nerdiness

As an academic in the humanities, a great deal of my research involves tracking down 20-50 page papers published in professional journals. When I was an undergrad, this was mostly a two-step process: First, EBSCOhost and other such search engines would give you matches based on author and title names; occasionally it would also have an abstract, so you could tell whether or not it was worthwhile. Second, you would stalk through the periodicals section of the library, three-page list of citations in hand, tracking down the library's archive copies of all those journals.

By the time I got to Notre Dame, those two steps had been combined. I rarely have to go track down a physical copy of a journal to read an article -- academic search engines now include links directly to electronic archives, and I can typically read or download a PDF of the desired article within about 30 seconds. In preparing the list for my oral exam, I've had to request a handful of articles that were only published in books, one or two published in articles to which my library did not happen to have a subscription, and only one where I had to go down to the basement to get the physical copy of the journal (because the electronic version was of the wrong article).

So today my research consists largely of downloading 5-12 PDFs, skimming them for relevance, and arranging most of them into various folders and subfolders depending on which project they're relevant to. As a result, I have approximately 300 PDFs in various places on my computer. (Think about that for a second: on the order of a 10,000-page library right on my laptop. Thirty years ago, that would have required a small but very, very strudy trunk to transport. Today it all fits very comfortably in my backpack.)

This creates an archiving problem. Obviously many (most) of the projects I work on are closely related. And it would be nice to be able to be able to easily search through and arrange and re-arrange all those documents on the fly. Which is why I was really, really excited when I discovered links to Papers and iPapers.

And then really, really disappointed when I realised they're only for Macs. I guess this means I need to break down and finally buy my new laptop.

Watchmen Screens

Of course, the release of these photos of the cast of Watchmen has brought out all the angry nerds who are ready to boycot the film because Nightowl isn't fat enough, but I don't think a couple pictures can really tell you all you need to know about a movie. It's amazing enough that this is actually happening at all. Link.

P.S. If you didn't know, Watchmen is teh awesome.

Ultimate Universe No More?!

There have been lots of rumors over the past several months that Mavel Comics would be ending their "Ultimate" line of comics. Launched back in 2000 with Ultimate Spiderman (written by Brian Bendis, who is amazingly still on the title), the purpose of the Ultimate universe was to create books which shed all the weighty continuity of the mainstream Marvel U. as well as some of the more hooky facets of that world that crept up over the years. Sure, radioactive spiders (ok, *genetically modified spiders*!) still grant super spider-based powers but the idea was that the world was a bit more grounded than the 616 universe (that's the mainline universe where most Marvel books occur). In short, it was awesome. Well, Ultimate X-Men had some serious ups and downs, but there was lots of good stuff there. In the last couple years, however, the line appears to have lost some steam and most books are just relying on introducing "Ultimate" versions of old characters. In addition, several things which were signatures of the Ultimate U. have been transplanted back into the 616 (the recent reboot of Amazing Spidey is a lot like Ultimate Spidey, etc.).

Anyway, I think it's much more likely that, as this article says, Marvel is just going to shake things up drastically rather than kill off the line. By all accounts the lines sells very well, it's just stagnating a bit creatively. Hopefully this doesn't mean massive killings for characters, which is just the laziest way to grab people's attention, but I'm intrigued with where they could go. While the Ultimate U. was supposed to be more in tune with the "real" world, maybe they'll reinvision it instead as a world which actually moves forward, as opposed to the 616 which is pretty much trapped in sliding scale of a dozen years or so. Maybe "more real" doesn't have to mean "more like the real world" if it means "things happen, and they matter."

Scary McCain

No specific thoughts right now, but this might be the best screen grab ever. Thanks Ezra.

A nice statement of apatheism

From John Wilkins:

no matter what other beliefs an intelligent person may hold, so long as they accept the importance of science and the need for a secular society, we simply do not care if they also like the taste of ear wax, having sex with trees, or believing in a deity or two.

The seven deadly sins test for institutional corruption

Here's the idea: you pick an institution of choice, and run through the list of the seven deadly sins/cardinal virtues. The ratio of vices to virtues exemplified by the institution is a rough (and tongue-in-cheek) indication of how corrupt the institution is.

For example, let's take the American news media. I'll bold the one in each pair exemplified by the media, and give a little explanation of what the pair means, just in case you haven't seen Se7en lately.

1. Pride or humility
   
   Pride is the desire (or belief) to be better and more important than others. Pride can be exemplified as vanity (pride of appearance or physical beauty), as pride of intellect, or by some other standard of dessert.
   
2. Envy or kindness
   
   Envy isn't a desire for material goods (that's greed, covered below). We don't have a good English term for this vice, I think; the German Schadenfreude is better. Roughly speaking, envy is the desire (satisfied or unsatisfied) for others to suffer.
   
3. Wrath or forgiveness
   
   Wrath is an uncontrolled hatred, anger, or desire for (disproportionate, unjust, or undeserved) revenge. The media don't typically exemplify this vice directly (except when it comes to immigration and powerful women), but do encourage it.
   
4. Sloth or diligence
   
   Sloth is laziness, but also idleness and a lack of zealousness more generally -- being unwilling to pursue and lacking enthusiasm for one's vocation.
   
5. Greed or charity
   
   Greed is the desire for material goods, especially wealth. The object of desire need not be owned by another, and greed need not be accompanied by a lack of concern for justice (although it often is).
   
6. Gluttony or temperance
   
   Gluttony is the wasteful over-consumption of consumable goods, especially food. Gluttony is exemplified both in the act of over-consumption itself, but also in anticipating over-consumption. Like wrath, gluttony is not typically exemplified directly by the news media, but it is certainly encouraged in viewers.
   
7. Lust or chastity
   
   Strictly speaking, lust is any form of love for another creature that is given precedence over love for God. As such, it's more of a `qualitative' vice than the `quantitative' ones of greed and gluttony. But today we tend to think of lust as another `quantitative' vice -- an excessive desire for sex, in particular. I prefer to understand lust as the objectification and commercialisation of love, especially sexual love.
   

Final tally for the American news media: 7-0.

Two election notes

1. It's going to come down to the convention

I've had a feeling this was going to be the case since before Super Tuesday, but now enough states have voted to see just how tight the race is. CNN has a delegate count applet that lets you fiddle with the delegate pledges. I started by giving Clinton 55% of all the delegates in each of the states whose votes have not yet been counted. (Ohio, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Texas haven't been entered into the set of fixed counts yet.) I chose 55% as a healthy and statistically significant (large enough to drown out the noise from sudden minor emergencies, people forgetting to vote, the polling machine craps out, that sort of thing) but still not overwhelming victory.

Clinton ends up with 1,899 pledged delegates; Obama with 1,898. That leaves Clinton the front-runner by a hair, and 126 delegates short of the number required to secure the nomination.

Now swing the 55% victories the other direction. Clinton ends up with 1,800, Obama with 1,997. Again, the front-runner is still short -- although in this case only by 28 delegates.

There have been plenty of victories with larger margins than this, of course. So Pam is simply wrong when she says `the math doesn’t favor any possibility of a Clinton win on the delegate side in the remaining contests'. First, it's far from mathematically impossible for either candidate to win. And, second, while it is unlikely that Clinton will secure a sufficiently large number of overwhelming victories, it's about as unlikely that Obama will secure a sufficiently large number of overwhelming victories.

I'm tempted to say: The primaries in the remaining states will just make the intraparty fighting more acrimonious and drain resources that would be better used squashing McCain like the pandering warmonger he is. Democrats should call off the remaining primaries, just cool off until the convention, and let the superdelegates decide who the nominee will be, since they're going to be doing it anyways.

I'm going to say: The primary in Indiana (exactly two months from today, if I remember correctly) is just going to continue this stalemate. So I don't feel obligated to choose between two slightly-left-of-center candidates whose campaigning has left me pretty disgusted. I'll either vote for Edwards (he's been getting a handful of percentage points in primaries over the past month, so I'm guessing he'll still be on the ballot) or Kucinich (ditto, without the handful of percentage points) or not at all.

2. I wish John Edwards hadn't dropped out

And not just because I genuinely wanted him president. Before Edwards dropped out, the media were (unfairly) focussed on Obama and Clinton, but there was little antagonism between them or their partisans. Clinton (and Edwards) partisans criticised Obama for the gap in his health care plan, Obama (and Edwards) partisans criticised Clinton for not renouncing her vote for the invasion of Iraq, and so on. Occasionally some issues of racism or sexism came up (some reactions to Clinton getting a little misty-eyed right around the New Hampshire primary were, to put it mildly, weird), but things were civil.

Then Edwards dropped out, we had Super Tuesday, and an all-out Democratic civil war errupted. Blogs I normally have the utmost respect for have degenerated, and do little more than repeat the disingenuous (and often racist or sexist) spitballs generated by the campaigns and right-wing lunatics. Rational discussion -- whether over the small but critical policy differences, the quality of campaign strategies, or the significance of racist or sexist comments -- has become virtually impossible.

I don't think Edwards leaving the field caused this to happen. Eight years of Bush has made Democrats jumpy and, quite naturally, they project the qualities of their ideal presidential candidate onto one name or another, even despite evidence to the contrary. (Aside: The NewsHour has been interviewing potential voters from highly contested states once or twice a week since before Super Tuesday. At first I watched these segments with interest. After a few of them, though, I realised that everyone involved was simply repeating the talking points handed down by their campaign, and many of the interviewees demonstrated spectacular factual ignorance. For example, there was one woman in Ohio who supported Obama because, she said, his health care plan covered more people than Clinton's. Another woman in Ohio claimed that, if Obama had been in the Senate five years ago, he would have voted to invade Iraq. I still watch these segments occasionally, but mostly they're just depressing.) The media ... well, are simply insane, and have badly fucked up this phase of the campaign in innumerable ways for over a year. And suggesting that you'll stoop to less-than-honest technical manoeuvres to secure the nomination (Florida and Michigan from the Clinton side; effectively eliminating superdelegates from the Obama side) that prompt accusations of `changing the rules in the middle of the game!' haven't helped.

What Edwards could have done, even if he was consistently getting only 10% or so of the votes in each state, is play mediator. There's no major public figure willing to honestly call out both Obama and Clinton when they or their campaigns pull inappropriate shit. There's no-one who can say `Obama's domestic policies have some serious problems and Clinton's foreign policies have some serious problems' and be taken seriously by everyone. Or that the media's sudden realisation that they've been giving Obama a free pass doesn't mean it's time to suck up to Clinton instead. And, most importantly, Edwards could have told people to calm down. Democrats can do a lot of good things in this country if, and only if, they learn the difference between constructive internal criticism and a circular firing squad.

Quick debunking: The college education gender gap

Myth: Colleges are facing a `man shortage'

Example: Weekly standard, 2006:

At colleges across the country, 58 women will enroll as freshmen for every 42 men. And as the class of 2010 proceeds toward graduation, the male numbers will dwindle. Because more men than women drop out, the ratio after four years will be 60--40, according to projections by the Department of Education.

The problem isn't new-women bachelor's degree--earners first outstripped men in 1982. But the gap, which remained modest for some time, is widening. More and more girls are graduating from high school and following through on their college ambitions, while boys are failing to keep pace and, by some measures, losing ground.

Response:

The percentage of men 25 years and older with a Bachelor's Degree or higher has risen steadily since 1940, and continues to rise. In particular, while only 7.3 percent of men 25 and older in 1950 had at least a Bachelor's degree (that would be around the time all the WW2 vets who went to college under the GI Bill started to graduate), in 2000 26.1 percent of men 25 and older had at least a Bachelor's degree.

For comparison, in 1950, the percentage of women 25 and older with at least a Bachelor's degree was 5.2 percent; in 2000, 22.9 percent.

Education is not a zero-sum game; the statistic is only alarming if you think that, for every woman who has a Bachelor's degree, a man is prevented from having one, or vice-versa. Every decade for the past sixty years, both more men and more women have gone to college than before.

Source: US census, A Half-Century of Learning: Historical Statistics on Educational Attainment in the United States, 1940 to 2000, Table 2 (XLS).

Le tribunal FISA ? Ce ne pas du tout démocratique !

Par Glenn Greenwald:

But for decades, the FISA court -- for obvious reasons -- was considered to be one of the great threats to civil liberties, the very antithesis of how an open, democratic system of government ought to function. The FISA court was long the symbol of how severe are the incursions we've allowed into basic civil liberties and open government.

The FISC is a classicly Kafka-esque court that operates in total secrecy. Only the Government, and nobody else, is permitted to attend, participate, and make arguments. Only the Government is permitted to access or know about the decisions issued by that court. Rather than the judges being assigned randomly and therefore fairly, they are hand-picked by the Chief Justice (who has been a GOP-appointee since FISA was enacted) and are uniformly the types of judges who evince great deference to the Government. As a result, the FISA court has been notorious for decades for mindlessly rubber-stamping every single Government request to eavesdrop on whomever they want.

Mais le désastre démocratique n'est pas seulement avec le tribunal. Il est aussi avec la «fenêtre Overton». Greenwald continue:

Yet now, embracing this secret, one-sided, slavishly pro-government court defines the outermost liberal or "pro-civil-liberty" view permitted in our public discourse. And indeed, as reports of imminent (and entirely predictable) House Democratic capitulation on the FISA bill emerge, the FISA court is now actually deemed by the establishment to be too far to the Left -- too much of a restraint on our increasingly omnipotent surveillance state. Anyone who believes that we should at the very least have those extremely minimal -- really just symbolic -- limitations on our Government's ability to spy on us in secret is now a far Leftist.

C'est formidable, la démocratie américaine, non?

Doing Moller Okin one better: Self-ownership is inconsistent

In the process of writing and reflecting on a recent post, I realised that libertarianism is inconsistent with a reasonable assumption about the existence of unwilling dependency workers. This post is a self-contained presentation of that argument.

Libertarianism, as that is understood by the political philosophers who call themselves libertarians, is based on two principles: self-ownership and non-interference. First, all persons own themselves.

(x)(Person(x) -> Owns(x,x))

Second, if x's claim of ownership of y would interfere with z's self-ownership (for example, x steals z's car), then x does not own y.

(x)(y)((Person(x) ^ (Ez)((Person(z) ^ Owns(x,y)) -> -Owns(z,z))) -> -Owns(x,y))

Call the conjunction of these two the general principle of self-ownership (GPSO).

Suppose Helen is an unwilling dependence worker: she does not want to care for Ben, her adult son with muscular dystrophy. However, without Helen's care, Ben is trapped in bed, and cannot exercise self-ownership. Hence, if Helen owns herself, Ben does not own himself. On the other hand, if Ben does own himself, it is because Helen was somehow forced, against her will, to care for him. So then Helen does not own herself. In either case, the second conjunct of the GPSO then implies that the first conjunct is false. This can be formalised:

(UDW) (Ex)(Ey)(Person(x) ^ Person(y) ^ (Owns(x,x) <-> -Owns(y,y)))
UDW + GPSO |- -GPSO

Strictly speaking, this does not show that the GPSO is inconsistent. But it does show that it is inconsistent with a fairly obvious fact about humanity: without care, often from unwilling dependency workers, dependent individuals cannot exercise the autonomy on which libertarianism rests. Given this fact of dependency, GPSO has to be rejected.

We Are Wizards

Harry Potter Mania, documented. Link.

Thanks PA.

A short argument for political correctness

(1) One is being politically correct if one is deliberately avoiding using language that others find offensive or derogatory unless one has a good reason.
(2) In general, one should deliberately avoid using language that others find offensive or derogatory unless one has a good reason.
(3) Hence, in general, one should be politically correct.

Let's take a look at the good reason clause, since it's actually doing some important work here.

Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor said many things that others found offensive. I don't think they said many things that others found derogatory, but maybe that's just because I haven't listened to enough of them. But, without the good reason clause, one would come to the conclusion, from 2, that Bruce and Pryor did not act as they should have. And I don't think that sounds right.

We could fix this by dropping the offensiveness condition, so being politically correct amounts to only avoiding language that is derogatory. But not everything offensive is derogatory -- a crude comment about your coworker's breasts might be meant as a compliment, but would still be offensive, and would not be politically correct. Similarly, to talk about lynching a black person doesn't seem to be derogatory, but it's still offensive.

So leave the offensiveness condition in, and the good reason clause. Bruce and Pryor had good reason to be offensive, I think -- they were challenging a racist, classist, and sexually repressive social order. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any good reason to use (as opposed to mention) the phrase `nappy-headed hos'. There was no good reason for Imus' use of that phrase, in particular, so we can still say that he did not do what he should have.

One might try to claim that challenging the oppressive social order of political correctness itself is a good reason to use offensive or derogatory language. This seems to be the typical strategy when someone complains semicoherently about political correctness -- that liberals who insist on political correctness are being intolerant, or some such. This claim assumes that it's oppressive to say that one should deliberately avoid using language that others find offensive or derogatory unless one has a good reason. That is, it assumes that 2 is oppressive. If the opposite of `oppressive' is `liberting', then the claim assumes that there's something liberating about offending or derogating people without good reason. This sounds downright bizarre to me; at the very least, it can't be assumed.

Flag Pins

I don't have strong feelings on wearing flag pins. I mean, I don't think it's a particularly bad thing to do, but I also don't think it should be a big deal if someone opted not to. Indeed, I respect Obama for taking a stand on what is a relatively minor issue. What I love even more, however, is hand wringing by a republican Congressman about Obama's pin hating while not wearing a pin himself. Priceless. Link.

K(p) & -K(K(p))

A fascinating short piece in Salon about some neuroscience work on knowing -- from the `aha!' moment when we recognise that an explanation fits the data to the certainty attached to deeply cherished beliefs. What's tricky here is that this self-conscious experience of knowing isn't, the author thinks, a rational or truly conscious process.

In his bestselling "Blink," New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell describes gut feelings as "perfectly rational," as "thinking that moves a little faster and operates a little more mysteriously" than conscious thought. But he's flying in the face of present-day understanding of brain behavior. Gut feelings and intuitions, the Eureka moment and our sense of conviction, represent the conscious experiences of unconsciously derived feelings.

Look at the feeling of knowing in the light of evolution. It explains how we learn. Compare it with the body's various sensory systems. It is through sight and sound that we are in contact with the world around us. Similarly, we have extensive sensory functions for assessing our interior milieu. When our body needs food, we feel hunger. When we are dehydrated and require water, we feel thirsty. If we have sensory systems to connect us with the outside world, and sensory systems to notify us of our internal bodily needs, it seems reasonable that we would also have a sensory system to tell us what our minds are doing.

To be an effective, powerful reward, the feeling of conviction must feel like a conscious and deliberate conclusion. As a result, the brain has developed a constellation of mental sensations that feel like thoughts but aren't. These involuntary and uncontrollable feelings are the mind's sensations; as sensations they are subject to a wide variety of perceptual illusions common to all sensory systems. Understanding this couldn't be more important to our sense of ourselves and the world around us.

Garfield Minus Garfield

Garfield is a really popular punching bag these days. While I feel that most of the people hating on the strip are perhaps outside of its intended age group, I have to admit it doesn't make me chuckle like it did when I was 8. Taking the cat out of the strip, however, is hilarity itself. Link.

Thanks PA.

Formalising Moller Okin

In chapter 4 of Susan Moller Okin's Justice, gender, and the family, she gives a feminist argument against Nozick's Lockean/libertarian/free market account of property. Libertarians have tried to respond to this article, but often seem to fail to understand its structure. Formalising Moller Okin's argument will help us get a grasp on how, exactly, it presents a problem for libertarians.

Libertarians, as a general rule, want to argue from a conception of individual liberty and autonomys as self-ownership to a fairly robust right to property. Let's start with two predicates, Person(x) and Owns(x,y). Person(x) means that x is a person -- as opposed to just a thing, like a hammer or a pizza -- while Owns(x,y) means that x owns y. The full depth of the property right involved is not so important here. But to get a feel of what libertarians want to show, here are two quotations that start to cash out the Owns relation:

`x is A's property' means `A has the right to determine the disposition of x'

Narveson suggests the following set as giving some sort of full ownership: (1) exclusive use, which includes the right to permit or refuse the right [sic; I think this is supposed to be `use'] by others; and (2) transfer in the form of sale, exchange, gift or bequeathal.

What's important is that, if x owns y, then no-one besides x (or another owner of y) can use y (presumably, in any way) without x's consent. We will also need a predicate for the relation of x gives y to z; Gives(x,y,z) will work nicely.

Of course, capitalism isn't just a system of free exchanges. It's also a system in which people make things. As part of the property system, libertarians want to say that, if something is made in the right way (with resources that are either unowned or acquired through fair exchange, and a few other so-called Lockean provisos that aren't important quite yet), then it is owned by the maker. So our last predicate is Makes(x,y), meaning x makes y in the right way.

The ultimate, fundamental principle on which libertarians attempt to ground their justification of private property is a right of maximal liberty:

(L) people have a non-overridable right to such liberties as do not interfere with those of others

This, they claim, can be read as a principle of self-ownership:

(S) one owns oneself

Formalise this as

(SO) (x)(y)(Person(x) -> (Owns(x,y) <-> x=y))

Moller Okin's argument focuses on the purported inference from this to a principle of original acquisition. And so shall we. Narveson states original acquisition in this way:

things acquired in ways that meet the initial (Lockean) conditions are indeed the property of those who acquire them, for precisely the same reasons that we have the general right of liberty, and as a straight implication thereof

Formalise the first clause of this as

(OA) (x)(y) ((Person(x) ^ Makes(x,y) ^ -(Ez)Gives(x,y,z)) -> Owns(x,y))

The final clause of the quotation from Narveson is the claim that SO implies OA. Formally, this is false -- Makes and Owns don't show up in SO, so it can't imply OA. However, presumably there is some set of definitions and/or axioms D that, Narveson thinks, will, when combined with S, imply OA. That is, Narveson's claim is

(1) SO + D |- OA

Moller Okin's argument is an attempt to show that 1 is false. Her counterexample is based on the fact that mothers make their children -- literally. She carefully works through Nozick's version of original acquisition, and describes a scenario in which all of the Lockean provisos have been satisfied: the mother was freely given the sperm, say, and procured all the resources necessary to maintain herself and (this bit varies from version to version) give birth to a healthy infant/raise a healthy child to adulthood according to free exchange and the principles of original acquisition. But then she doesn't give her child away -- either to another person or to himself. Instead, she keeps him as a slave. Hence the subtitle of Moller Okin's chapter: `Matriarchy, slavery, and dystopia'.

Let's formalise this counterexample as follows: there is a person, x, who makes another person, y, in the right way, and does not give y to any z.

(MOC) (Ex)(Ey) Person(x) ^ Person(y) ^ Makes(x,y) ^ -(Ez)Gives(x,y,z)

Moller Okin's criticism is that MOC, with OA, implies the negation of SO.

(2) MOC + OA |- -SO

Hence, either SO is inconsistent, or SO implies the negation of at least one of MOC and OA.

(3) SO is inconsistent
(4) SO |- -(MOC ^ OA)

Cashing out (4) gives two possibilities (which are not exclusive): either SO implies the negation of MOC, or SO implies the negation of OA.

(5) SO |- -MOC
(6) SO |- -OA

Of course, if SO implies the negation of OA, and is consistent, then it can't imply OA. And throwing in D won't help things, either.

(7) SO+D |/- OA

So, to sum up, the libertarian wants to claim that self-ownership implies an account of property that includes original acquisition (1). Moller Okin's counterexample shows that at least one of three things must be true: (a) self-ownership is inconsistent (3); (b) self-ownership implies that mothers do not make their children in the right way (5, roughly); or (c) self-ownership does not imply an account of property that includes original acquisition (7). Clearly option a is a disaster for libertarianism. I don't think b is all that promising, either -- at the very least, a libertarian who chooses to take this route would have to work through Moller Okin's discussion of how mothers make their children in exactly the right way just as carefully as she worked her way through Nozick's account of original acquisition. A libertarian cannot, as Narveson does, simply dismiss Moller Okin's counterexample by asserting that `What parents do is initiate a process that eventuates in human organisms, which grow up' and concluding immediately that `We should ... deny that children are `made' by their parents'.

Note that libertarians also cannot simply dismiss Moller Okin's argument as `absurd' -- again, as Narveson does. Anyone who knows a little about formal validity will agree with the analysis I gave in two paragraphs ago. The only option for a libertarian, then, is c.

Denying 1 might seem like a serious blow to libertarians. But is it? What if libertarians don't want OA, but instead want some more sophisticated principle of original acquisition? Recall that OA, the property right, wasn't the original principle. Rather, S, a basic right of self-determination, was. And Nozick is quite clear that, when property conflicts with self-determination, property must yield. Hence he introduces `side constraints', that limit property rights. These can be nicely incorporated into my formalism. For example, suppose we want to replace OA with a qualified version: so long as the made thing y isn't a person, x owns anything she makes in the right way.

(OA') (x)(y) ((Person(x) ^ -Person(y) ^ Makes(x,y) ^ -(Ez)Gives(x,y,z)) -> Owns(x,y))

This can be generalised: if C(x,y) is a predicate formalising a side constraint (or conjunction thereof, etc.), then let

(OA/C) (x)(y) ((Person(x) ^ -C(x,y) ^ Makes(x,y) ^ -(Ez)Gives(x,y,z)) -> Owns(x,y))

We include the side constraint in the antecedent, and so it blocks an inference to ownership in bad cases. Indeed, it does so in Moller Okin's case: MOC and OA' do not imply the negation of SO.

MOC + OA' |/- -SO

Hence Moller Okin's counterexample does not cause problems with this argument.

But there are, I think, at least three problems with this side constraint strategy. First, Nozick (I'm not sure about Narveson) believes that there's nothing wrong with selling oneself into slavery. That is, a side constraint concerning personhood does not show up in the principle governing free exchange. But why should it show up in the principle governing original acquisition, but not in the principle governing free exchange? That seems ad hoc. But, since the idea that there's nothing wrong with selling oneself into slavery is kind of weird, perhaps this isn't a serious objection.

Second, adding qualifications to OA makes it trickier, in general, to derive from SO. We haven't looked at the set of definitions D that libertarians will use to bridge the formal gap, so perhaps SO does indeed imply OA'. But showing this will require more care than I have seen libertarians giving.

Third, and most importantly, adding side constraints seriously compromises the robust property rights that were supposed to be implied by self-ownership. Consider the following side constraint: there should not be a person z such that x's ownership of y interferes with z's self-determination (self-ownership). This seems to be a good way of capturing the non-interference on which libertarians want to base side constraints. We'll call it C*(x,y), and formalise it as

C*(x,y) =df (Ez)(Person(z) ^ (Owns(x,y) -> -Owns(z,z)))

Now we plug this into OA/C.

(OA*) (x)(y) ((Person(x) ^ -(Ez)(Person(z) ^ (Owns(x,y) -> -Owns(z,z))) ^ Makes(x,y) ^ -(Ez)Gives(x,y,z)) -> Owns(x,y))

Note that OA* does just as nice a job of avoiding Moller Okin's counterexample as OA'. It also applies more generally -- it blocks ownership in any case where this would interfere with the self-determination of anyone, not just the purported `owned thing'.

But what does it mean to interfere with someone's self-determination? Suppose Maria has just baked a loaf of bread, using ingredients and an oven that she procured using free exchanges, and Jorge, just outside the door to her bakery, is starving to death. Without Maria's bread, Jorge will surely die in the near future. It seems clear to me that her ownership of the bread -- in particular, her right to refuse to give it to Jorge -- would interfere with Jorge's self-determination, as he certainly cannot determine the course of his life if he is dead. If this seeming is right, then OA* does not imply that Maria owns the bread. (Note that it does not imply that Jorge owns the bread, either, as he did not make it and has not been given it.)

This thought experiment can be generalised. First, let's formalise. If there is a person x such that x owning (or, more generally, using or having) y is necessary for x's self-determination, then no-one but x can own y.

(N) (x)(y)((Person(x) ^ (-Owns(x,y) -> -Owns(x,x))) -> (z)(z=/=x -> -Owns(z,y)))

Now, N is not implied by OA*. However, with the additional assumption that original acquisition and free trade are the only ways anyone can own anything, which libertarians all seem to endorse, N does follow.

Now consider Jamal, who is homeless. It is a bitterly cold night, and without the use of a small house nominally owned by Tasha, Jamal will surely die. It follows from N that Tasha does not own the house -- indeed, no-one except possibly Jamal owns the house. If Jaime nominally owns a course of treatment of a drug, and Lorenzo will surely die without taking it, then Jaime does not own the course of treatment of the drug.

Services are more difficult, because it does not seem like there is a thing that is owned or transferred in the case of, for example, a teacher teaching a student. It is also difficult to generalise to cases in which a suffering person needs any one of a variety of things. For example, Jorge will surely die if he doesn't get some food in the near future, but he would survive for at least a while if he had Maria's bread, or Michael's pizza, or Dana's apples, and so on. But, with the examples above, it is clear that OA* seriously compromises the libertarian's property rights: she does not own anything which is materially necessary to sustain the life of anyone nearby.

Economics is tricky II

Okay, let's talk about externalities. In a nutshell, an externality is something -- good or bad -- that you don't pay for. For good reason, the examples that always seem to get trotted out are instances of pollution. For example, without the EPA around to correct things, a factory that pollutes a river generally doesn't have to pay to clean up the river. Either the state, and hence the taxpayers, do, or no-one does, and the people living downstream `pay' for the pollution by getting cancer and dying.

The contemporary environmentalist's favourite examples of externalities are `cheap' fossil fuels and `cheap' beef. Both are `cheap' because the cost -- as in, dollars the oil baron/cattle baron pays -- to procure these goods (in the economist's sense, not the ethicist's sense) is much lower than the selling price -- what people will pay to consume them. But, in the quantities which we consume and produce, respectively, both fossil fuels and beef release horrendous quantities of greenhouse gases. Fossil fuels release carbon dioxide, as per Part I, and cows release methane as waste (as well as consuming even more fossil fuels, using up lots and lots of water, and so on).

And yet, because these costs are externalized, it is rational (again, in the economist's sense of maximising one's self-interest) for people who can produce fossil fuels and beef to do so. Which is where carbon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes come in. Since carbon taxes are simpler (cap-and-trade schemes amount to a market on carbon tax thresholds, and that means the analysis is an order of magnitude more complicated), I'll focus on those. From an economic point of view, the idea is quite elegant: if emitters of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gas compounds, eg, methane) are required to pay at least a significant fraction of the externalized costs, they will generally shift production to processes and products that emit that much less carbon dioxide. It's no longer rational for (former) carbon-emitters to emit carbon.

I'd also like to argue that carbon taxes can be justified on libertarian grounds. This seems entirely straightforward to me: for every metric ton of carbon dioxide you release, you do US$12 of harm to everyone else. (IPCC report, summary for policymakers, 24) Rather than collecting these damages individually and retroactive to the damage suffered, it makes far more sense (in terms of avoiding the legal costs of everybody suing everybody else) for the state to collect them proactively, and hence use them as a deterrent.

Finally some sense! Or not

Clearly fashion designers are insane sexists:

As usual with this designer, there were things to admire: a lean clerical silhouette, the severity of a nearly monochrome palette, the way color and its absence were used to mark out the torso in floating zones. But when designers stop conceding to biological function, they move away from the realm of fashion and into that of social engineering.

The feminist imagination boggles at the monstrosity that made a fashion `journalist' for the Times sound like one Twisty Faster. What could be even more egregious than designing shoes that can only be worn by women with eight toes?

Your answer is below the fold.

Men's pants without a fly. I shit you not. Guy Trebay throws a fit because of a pair of pants that subject men to that most horrible of disgraces: having to use the bathroom like a girl.

It is one thing to nudge men toward exploring their girly sides and quite another to suggest they sit to urinate.

Other `humiliating' features of the line, designed by Miucca Prada, include `tutu belts' and `severe high-collar shirts that buttoned up the back'. Evidently, Trebay either (a) believes that all women -- unlike men -- are contortionists, or (b) is such a horrible fashion `journalist' that he doesn't know how to put on an evening dress.

Which leads me to the questions I often pose my female friends when I hear about this sort of spectacular douchebaggery from the fashion industry: Why the hell do you listen to these people? They are clearly misogynists and hate you. When is it ever rational to treat someone who hates you and wants you to suffer as a good source of advice?

Why I'm going to be a philosopher of science

This semester, I entered the orals stage of my Ph.D. programme. Sometime in the next 7-14 months, I will spend 90 minutes locked in a room with five faculty members, who will happily interrogate my understanding of a list of classical and recent works of philosophy. Should I pass, I move on, more or less immediately, to the final (and interminable) thesis-writing stage. Should I fail, I can try again before the end of my fourth year (next May); if I fail at that point, or don't manage to get a second try scheduled before the end of the year, I get kicked out of school.

Despite the immense pressure, what's nice is that I get to choose what's on the list. At least, to an extent. I pick the general area, and about 2/3 of the list is standard for that general area; I get to decide what goes on the remaining 1/3. So, roughly speaking, everything on the list are things I'm interested in. I don't have to read any metaphysics or Plato or Scotus if I don't want to.

But I've had some problems picking the general area. I enjoy both philosophy of math and philosophy of science immensely, and while I don't think that they should be seen as two distinct areas of philosophy, trying to fit them both into a single orals list has proven impossible. On Thursday I met with one of my professors to get some help with figuring out the list. She gave me an ultimatum: Within two weeks, I have to decide whether I will be a philosopher of science who knows a bit about philosophy of math, or a philosopher of math who knows a bit about philosophy of science. She recommended I think about potential thesis projects and look through the major philosophy of math and philosophy of science journals to decide.

While I had some thesis projects in mind, they were hopelessly vague, and this is part of the problem I was having putting together a list. (One thing that's especially great about this particular professor: she never, ever lets me get away with any sort of hand-waving.) So I went and looked through journals and spent an hour writing down rough versions of thesis projects. Most of the projects I came up with were either impossibly difficult or, upon closer inspection, would be incredibly boring to actually work on in detail. The philosophy of math projects that looked both feasible and interesting came in two distinct flavours:

1. The relationship between mathematics and society, especially the relationship between ethico-political values and `good mathematics'.
   
2. The epistemological significance of certain features of the community of mathematicians, such as the underrepresentation of women and racial and ethnic minorities.
   

Philosophers of science are interested in these two things. But -- critically, and counterintuitively -- philosophers of math generally aren't. Philosophers of math, almost uniformly in this country, work on formal logic, the metaphysics of math (do numbers exist?), and foundations. Furthermore, what I discovered in the journals was that, to the extent that someone works on such things, they're published in philosophy of science and history of mathematics journals, and not published in philosophy of math journals. So, to work on one of these projects, I would have to read a lot of philosophy of science literature, and most of the philosophy of math literature would be completely irrelevant.

So I've made my decision. Strictly speaking, I will be a philosopher of science. Like most philosophers of science, I'll have a certain amount of expertise and affection for one science in particular -- mathematics -- and this will be reflected in what I write and teach. But I won't, strictly speaking, be a philosopher of math. My interests and research projects simply aren't the sort of things philosophers of math work on, at least in the English-speaking part of the world.

A horrifying realisation

For those of you who don't know this, I was born in 1980. The earliest distinct memory I have of a major political event was the August Coup that destroyed the Soviet Union. So I became aware of the world outside my school and my house during the first Bush presidency and the first Gulf War, the democratisation (more or much, much less) of the former Warsaw Pact countries, and the end of apartheid in South Africa. It was a time in which the dynamic and rhetoric of the Cold War was replaced by the dynamic and rhetoric of decolonialisation, democratisation, and universal human rights.

So let's say 11 years old is the typical age at which children start to become aware of events happening on the world stage. (If anything, I think I was precocious in this respect. If 12, 13, or older is more accurate, this doesn't cause a problem for my argument.) My students (and my step-sister) were born in 1989-90. This means they were starting to become aware of events happening on the world after 2001 -- a time in which (and sense which) the dynamic and rhetoric was dominated by paranoid, defensive imperialism and the unitary executive.

I'm not sure why I find this so disturbing. There's certainly no direct causal link between the political climate in which one's identity as a citizen is formed and, say, one's political values. Perhaps my worry is this: If these ideas, in some sense, make up the basic conceptual framework with which they analyse politics, then how well can they understand the dangers of totalitarianism?

Economics is tricky I

Some bad news about ethanol:

Researchers led by Timothy Searchinger at Princeton University said their study showed greenhouse-gas emissions will rise with ethanol demand. U.S. farmers will use more land for fuel, forcing poorer countries to cut down rainforests and use other undeveloped land for farms, the study said.

Searchinger's team determined that corn-based ethanol almost doubles greenhouse-gas output over 30 years when considering land-use changes. Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association in Washington, said the study used a flawed model and overestimated how much land will be needed.

The intuitive case for ethanol is based on the fact that the carbon you release in burning it was trapped in the corn just a few months ago.

Let's back up. The oxygen combustion of carbon fuels, no matter how efficient (ie, no matter how little particulate pollution is produced) produces carbon dioxide. Yearly averages of carbon dioxide levels are rising because we burn lots of fossil fuels -- essentially, highly compressed prehistoric swamps. This is carbon that was in the atmosphere millions of years ago, but has been out of the atmosphere since the beginning of human civilization. Hence we say that fossil fuels result in a net emission of carbon dioxide.

The intuitive case for ethanol is based on the fact that, rather releasing carbon that was trapped by plants while our shrewlike ancestors were trying to steal eggs from dinosaur nests, burning ethanol releases carbon that was trapped by corn a few months ago. So, over the scale of a couple years, ethanol results in zero net emissions of carbon dioxide.

However, you can't just magically find some unused tract of land and grow lots and lots of corn for use in producing ethanol. At least, the land that's not currently being used is in environments that are too hostile for corn to grow -- the middle of the Sahara, the tundra, etc. You have to take land that's currently in use -- namely, for growing corn or other crops for food -- and change its use -- to growing corn for ethanol.

This results in an increase in food prices -- nothing's changing the demand for food (if anything, it grows as the global population increases), and the supply's just dropped a few percentage points. And, because of globalisation, an increase in food prices in the US increases food prices in places like rural Brazil.

The people of rural Brazil are, generally speaking, already quite poor. So if food prices go up, there's now a (larger) gap between how much food they can afford to buy (it's not like they've gotten any less poor) and how much food they need to survive. It's a lot easier for them to clear-cut another X number of acres of rainforest and grow enough food to fill that gap than it is for them to scrounge together enough additional money to maintain their level of food consumption. But the X number of acres of rainforest would have absorbed a certain amount of carbon from the atmosphere. This counted against the net emission of carbon from burning all the fossil fuels (and, I might add, raising all the methane-producing cattle we do). Effectively, a mandate to switch a certain amount of US land from food production to ethanol production does actually increase net emissions of carbon.

The question is how big of an increase, and how that compares to the decrease in net emissions from burning ethanol instead of petroleum. And the answer, it appears, is enough to double the emission rate in 30 years.

Part II, on externalities, when I feel like writing it. Link from Paul Krugman.

Pope Benedict: Divine command theorist

From Charles Rice's latest nebulous attack on secular liberalism:

Benedict describes as "presumptuous and false," the idea that "[s]ince there is no God to create justice ... man himself is now called to establish justice." "It is no accident," he said, "that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice .... A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope." No. 42. Justice will be whatever man decrees. Thus Kelsen [some legal positivst] said that Auschwitz and other Nazi exterminations were "valid law." In accord with his "philosophical relativism," he could not reasonably criticize them as unjust.

(Ellipses and brackets in Rice.)

That's right: Plato's Euthyphro caused Auschwitz. The fact that it took a couple millennia just shows that the Catholic Church is the only thing standing between a humanist ethics and genocide.

Frankly, I don't get it. Ratzinger was an academic theologian for 26 years. Presumably at some point during that time he encountered at least a few ethicists and moral philosophers who (a) are not divine command theorists and (b) also not anything-goes moral relativists. Now maybe he doesn't think that their positions are consistent or whatever. That's fine. But he should at least recognise the need for an argument that (a) implies (b). You can't have a reductio ad absurdum without the reductio.

Bonus egregious academic dereliction: Charles Rice, emeritus professor of law, displaying his complete lack of understanding of the difference between logical positivist ethics (which is an anything-goes moral relativism) and legal positivism (which, as I understand things, just distinguishes legality from justice).

The Future Of Video Games

N'Gai Croal has an interesting piece up about the cultural acceptance of video games as an art form. He discusses a blogged wager between two video game designers where one asserts that video games will forever be dismissed as a juvenile media, like comic books. The other designer is a bit more optimistic about the chances of video games. Link 1 and Link 2.

Indy 4 Trailer

Ok, I've said for years now that I wouldn't believe a fourth Indiana Jones movie was happening until I saw it with my own eyes. Well, I'm going to count the newly released trailer as proof enough. I've heard rumors that this movie might be a jumping off point for a revitalized franchise with Shia LeBouf (or however that's spelled) as the new, young Indy. Personally, I'm always interested in some new Jones adventuring, but I wonder whether the new films would have some of the traits that made Harrison Ford's character so appealing. 1) First and foremost Indy is an academic. He may not worry about getting his hands a little dirty/bloody, but he's really a nerd at heart. Would a 20 something Jones just be an action seeking thief or would he be doing it all for the museum like our good Doctor Jones? 2) Indy was always so world weary. Everything that happened seemed to frustrate, annoy, or tire him. Ford really managed to capture the "Oh what now" face and I loved that about the character. Link.

Future Rock Band DLC?

Some intrepid young haX0r took a look-see into a recent Rock Band downloadable content file and found a list of previously unconfirmed songs for the game. The Harmonix response?

"This list of Rock Band DLC that was discovered within the files of a recent DLC pack is unconfirmed and subject to change. Please stay tuned for confirmation of Rock Band DLC closer to their release."

Doesn't sound like a denial to me. There are definitely some songs to get excited about in there, but I'm still waiting for my prog pack. Link.

Vaginas: Kryptonite for bishops

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has been run off-campus by the spectre of The vagina monologues:

A two-day seminar for bishops hosted by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the University will start today at a convent in Mishawaka, instead of Notre Dame, because organizers wanted to avoid connections to the likely presentation of 'The Vagina Monologues' in March.

Now, the play isn't being performed for five or six weeks. Apparently, John D'Arcy believes that the public discussion of vaginas is so soul-corrupting that its vile power can actually work backwards in time and on people who will not in any way participate in that discussion.

Beware the evil time-travelling vaginas!

Two Things

1. In all the hype about McCain basically securing the Republican nomination people are all kinds of worked up about how scary he's going to be in the general. Being prepared for a good fight is never a bad idea, but let's also try not to forget just how much some sectors of the party hate him. His VP candidate is going to have a huge effect on the trajectory of his campaign, and I haven't heard any names mentioned that really make the ticket unstoppable, or even widely appealing.

2. Ezra has been teasing folk about his secret kung pao recipe for months now, but it's finally released. I might or might not sub in some chicken for the tofu (depends on if I'm cooking for the lady friend), but it certainly sounds like a good meal. I'll probably need to head into Chinatown in Philly for ingredients though...

Not just about `choice' or `life'

At the last vegan potluck we had, a month or so ago, my friend Sarah said something about how she didn't like basing abortion rights just on the notion of choice, nor the idea that opposition to abortion is based on the notion of life.

Reproductive Health's Reality Check's factsheet on immigration and reproductive justice gives an excellent summary of reproductive justice, which I think might be a far superior feminist framework for analysing these issues:

Reproductive justice involves more than the right to end a pregnancy. Safeguarding an individual's right to determine her or his own reproductive future is an integral part of an overall agenda to promote social justice. That vision includes the ability of all people, whether American-born or immigrant, to:

1. Become a parent and parent with dignity.
2. Determine whether or when to have children.
3. Have a healthy pregnancy.
4. Have healthy and safe families and relationships.

Note first that this notion incorporates both choice -- in point 2 -- and life -- in 1 and 3 -- subsuming them under the more general notion of justice. Second, in addition, this notion straddles the liberal (that is, individualist)/communitarian divide. There is a recognition of both the irreducible value of the individual's life on her or his own terms and the necessity of living that life as a part of a flourishing community.

For Sure

Yes, it's Super Tuesday (I refuse to call it Tsunami Tuesday both because I find it to be dumb and just a bit offensive), and everyone should be out there voting today. Still, when you find a minute or two to yourself, I have a link for anyone that has trouble understanding rap lyrics but loves graphs. Link.

Thanks Andy.

And Edwards is out, too

NYT: Edwards Drops Out of Race for President

If I could still plausibly claim to be a citizen of the Republic of California, then I would have a serious dilemma on my hands. Clinton's policies are slightly more left-of-center (not to mention concrete) than Obama's, but I'm worried about what twenty-seven years of continuous governments by two families (the Clintons and the Bushes) will do to our democracy. (Think about it: assuming Clinton is elected and re-elected, a large percentage of eligible voters will have never lived under a president who was not named either Clinton or Bush. Already the youngest voters in this year's election were born in 1989 and 1990, after George HW Bush took office, and the oldest twentysomethings can't remember life under Reagan.) On the other hand, Obama's calls for `hope' and `change' are at best meaningless and at worst Democratic pandering to conservatives taken to the highest possible level. (As Glen Greenwald put it, `in almost every significant case, what "bipartisanship" means in Washington is that enough Democrats join with all of the Republicans to endorse and enact into law Republican policies, with which most Democratic voters disagree'.) People are pissed off at Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi for doing precisely what Obama is saying he'll do if elected, and yet Reid's vice is Obama's virtue. This doesn't make any sense.

Really, California Democrats are, IMHO, faced with a choice between two very mediocre candidates. Fortunately, as Indiana does not hold its primary until more than three months (May 6) after Super Tuesday, the nomination will have long since been secured de facto by the time I get to vote.

Allowing people to have children is, apparently, not Pro-Life

A bunch of Catholic MPs in Gordon Brown's government, `linked to the All-Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group', are throwing a fit, insisting that they be allowed a free vote on a bill.

[Transport Secretary] Kelly recently met Geoff Hoon, Labour's chief whip, to ask for voting restrictions to be removed from much, if not all, of the bill. At the moment MPs will only be allowed a free vote on any amendments that are tabled on abortion. Defence Secretary Des Browne is also understood to have concerns. All three [sic] ministers are prominent Catholics. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, leader of Britain's four million Catholics, has condemned the bill as 'profoundly wrong'[.]

What sort of abominations will the bill allow? What grave sacrifice of human life will it make to the dark gods of the selfish feminist gynocracy?

None whatsoever. On the contrary: the bill allows people to become parents, if they so choose. It does not allow any killing of babies, whether actual babies or foetuses. What it does do is `allow children to be born [sic] by IVF without a father's involvement'. `That change would mean they [IVF clinics] were [sic] no longer able to deny treatment to lesbians and single women, with a child's birth mother and her female partner being regarded as legal parents.'

This shows two things. First, Dennis Campbell, health correspondent for the Guardian, needs to brush up on counting, how to use the hypothetical mood, and the difference between pregnancy and birth. Second, `Pro-Life' only means pro-parenthood for the right kind of parents.

Pretty much every conversation I have with a non-academic ends up sounding like this

From Adventures in Ethics and Science.

Dr. Free-Ride is washing the younger of her two offspring before bedtime. Younger Offspring has some unconventional ideas about the relationship between body and mind.

Dr. Free-Ride: Fascinating. Does that mean that your body and mind only feel like 'you' when you can get them to behave a certain way you want them to?

Younger offspring: Uh ...

Dr. Free-Ride: Or when they're acting in a certain unified way rather than acting in different directions?

Younger offspring: Mmm ...

Dr. Free-Ride: What's you theory on this? Can you explain it to me?

Younger offspring: You know, I'm in the water now, and I should get washed soon so there will be time for stories.

Kucinich resigns

AP: Democrat Kucinich quits White House race. Apparently not without good reason:

Kucinich, 61, is facing four challengers in the Democratic congressional primary March 4, and earlier this week he made an urgent appeal on his Web site for funds for his re-election. Rival Joe Cimperman has been critical of Kucinich for focusing too much time outside of his district while campaigning for president.

His decision comes a month after the death of his youngest brother, Perry Kucinich.

Kucinich's run was always symbolic anyways. He might actually do a little bit of good in Congress, so it's fair that he drops out now, saving what money he has to fight off these challengers. And I had no idea about his brother. I can't imagine how Kucinich has done as much as he has over the past month -- demanding a recount of the New Hampshire primary, and suing for access to the debate in Nevada, just for a start -- while grieving the loss of his brother.

Thanks, Dennis, for putting as much time and energy into your presidential campaign as you could.

Since Dodd, my #2, dropped out a while ago, my endorsement goes to Edwards. I'm not comfortable choosing between Clinton and Obama, even over the #2 spot -- basically, neither of their policies platforms is sufficiently progressive for my endorsement.

Noticing class privilege.

Via Adventures in ethics and science, an interesting exercise in class consciousness. As a classroom activity, line the students up, and have them take one step forward for every sentence that is true for them. No discussion until every sentence has been read. As a blog activity, mark the ones that are true for you.

ADULTHOOD [up to and including college]:
If your father went to college
If your father finished college
If your mother went to college (My mom earned an Associate's degree when I was in high school, but never got her Bachelor's. `College' is ambiguous -- does a JC count? I'm going to count it for half -- so starting, but not finishing, college.)
If your mother finished college
If you have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
If you were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
If you had a computer at home
If you had your own computer at home
If you had more than 50 books at home
If you had more than 500 books at home
If were read children's books by a parent
If you ever had lessons of any kind
If you had more than two kinds of lessons
If the people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
If you had a credit card with your name on it
If you have less than $5000 in student loans
If you have no student loans
If you went to a private high school
If you went to summer camp
If you had a private tutor
If you have been to Europe (Studying abroad for a semester in college -- on the cheapest programme you could imagine -- seems to just barely qualify. My brother's never been to Europe, and my mom's only been twice.)
If your family vacations involved staying at hotels (I can recall only two vacations where we stayed in hotels. Every other vacation was either boatcamping or visiting relatives. I don't think two trips count as a sufficiently general trend.)
If all of your clothing has been new and bought at the mall (My mom made a lot of the clothes I wore through about fourth grade, and we occasionally had a few things from Goodwill. I still shop at Goodwill more often than the mall.)
If your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
If there was original art in your house
If you had a phone in your room
If you lived in a single family house
If your parent own their own house or apartment
If you had your own room
If you participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
If you had your own cell phone in High School (They weren't common until my junior year of college. I didn't get a cell phone until I came to Notre Dame a few years ago.)
If you had your own TV in your room in High School
If you opened a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
If you have ever flown anywhere on a commercial airline
If you ever went on a cruise with your family
If your parents took you to museums and art galleries (Mostly natural history museums.)
If you were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family (We heated our house with a wood-burning stove. I never knew the financial cost, but I certainly knew first hand the cost in terms of time and labour -- we got a couple cords every August, and I had to help stack and split it.)

CHILDHOOD:
If your body does not bear long-term signs of malnutrition.
If you had orthodontia.(Only because my mom didn't give us pacifiers, didn't really bottle feed us, and didn't let us suck our thumbs.)
If you saw a doctor for anything other than emergencies or school-mandated shots. (I had routine checkups every year or so up through about 6 years old.)
If you heated your home with clean-burning fuels or had properly vented heating. (Well, wood is cleaner than coal, but it's nowhere near as clean as natural gas. And we couldn't really afford natural gas. I'm not counting this one, since I counted the last heating one.)
If you grew up in a house without vermin. (Rats and cockroaches? No. Ants? Oh yes. Every summer.)
If you had running water.
If you had a basement or foundation under your house.
If you had an indoor toilet.
If your parents and immediate family were outside the criminal justice system. (I'm assuming traffic tickets and a DUI don't count.)
If you yourself remained outside the criminal justice system.
If your parents had a new car. (My dad had to drive a LOT for work, so he would buy a new car ever 4 or 5 years, then sell it and buy a new one when the old one racked up about 250,000 miles. I don't think my mom has ever owned a new car.)
If you never went barefoot so that you could 'save your shoes for school.'
If your parents never argued in front of you about having enough money for food to last out the month.
If you ate hunted and fished meat because it was a recreational activity rather than as the major way to stock a freezer. (Occasionally we'd eat caught fish while out on the boat. No hunted meat.)
If your laundry was done at home in a washer rather than in a lavandaria.
If your hair was cut by a professional barber or hair stylist instead of your parent. (My mom gave me every hair cut I had until I left for college.)

My family, at least until my parents split up when I was in junior high, was pretty much in the middle of the middle class. At least, if you examined us as a unit. What this list brings out was the class divisions within my family.

Let me explain by getting a bit personal. Between the time her parents divorced -- when she was just a few years old -- and her mother married a very wealthy cattle rancher -- when she was in high school -- my mother grew up poor. And she returned to the life of poverty after being effectively disowned by her mother when she was 18, and didn't really achieve a middle-class lifestyle again until my father was done with school and earning a decent income, in her early 30s. My parents divorced when she was in her late 30s or early 40s (I'm too lazy to figure out exactly how old she was at the time), and, while she's had some successful years since then, her income has been extremely variable from year to year (as often happens with home businesses, especially ones that are closely tied into the state of the housing market).

So my mom has spent the vast majority of her life either poor or just barely in the middle class. My dad, on the other hand, came from an upper middle class family, and has never had to really worry about money at any point in his life. He hasn't always been able to afford every luxury he wanted, but he's never been worried about how to put food on the table or heat the house.

The biggest luxury in my dad's life has been his boat. He's had a sailboat since before I was born, and it has always absorbed a huge chunk of his income. So, while my parents were married and our family was right in the middle of the middle class, we sacrificed a lot of luxuries -- cable teevee, central air, two new cars, fancy vacations -- for the sake of the boat. This placed certain additional burdens on my mom: having to prepare most every meal, even when we were on vacation; having to split firewood to keep the house warm during the day; having to clean the house herself, instead of having a cleaner come in once a week while she sewed and spent time with her children; never getting her own new car; and so on. And, because of growing up in poverty, my mom also had a self-reliant attitude towards things like clothes and haircuts, and so happily took on even more work.

In short, in order for my dad to enjoy a hobby reserved for the upper-middle class, my mom took on the burdens of a lower-middle class mother. And yet, this list isn't sensitive to that class division within my family -- although, to be fair, it didn't really affect my class status.

The telos of the Randian humanum

I promise, this will be my last post on Ayn Rand and Objectivism.

As a eudaimonic theory, Rand's ethics is teleological: an action is good if, and only if, it contributes to or is part of a certain good end. This good end is eudaimonia, the good life. But what is this good life? Considering these questions reveals an equivocation in the Randian argument.

To be more specific, I want to look at a piece titled `Nozick and the Randian argument', by Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen. This piece was published in what is apparently a libertarian journal, The Personalist, in 1978. I like this piece better than anything I've actually read by Rand, as the argument is both more systematically worked-out and actually presented in premiss-conclusion form (although it's frequently unclear how their conclusions are supposed to follow from their premisses). I'm going to focus on just the following part of the argument, which is roughly the first half:

1) Life is an ultimate end, an end in itself, for any living thing.
2) To be a living thing and not be a living thing of a particular kind is impossible.
C1) Thus, life as the kind of thing it is is the ultimate value for each living thing.
4) A human being is that kind of living being which can be designated as a rational animal.
C2) Thus, life as a rational animal is the ultimate value for each person.
5) A rational animal is an animal whose mode of consciousness is characterized by ... conceptual awareness.
C3) Thus, conceptual awareness must characterize one who lives as a rational animal, and one only lives as a rational animal in so far as one engages in conceptual activity.
6) The conceptual mode of cognitive contact with reality is man's [sic] only means of determining how to deal with reality so as to sustain his own existence.
7) Actions taken in accord with judgments of how to deal with reality are man's only means of dealing with reality so as to sustain his own existence.
C4) Thus, living as a rational being means, minimally, acting in accordance with conceptual judgments.

Note that I've skipped some bits that weren't relevant to the subject of this post.

Initially, (1), life is understood simply as a matter of continued existence. It must be, because Rand is talking about living things in general here -- and the primary difference, Rand thinks, between living and non-living things is that the existence of the former is precarious. A living thing's existence can be terminated. Hence, she argues, it must act (voluntarily in some cases, involuntarily in others), in order to preserve its existence.

Moving on, in context, (4) is actually a conclusion derived from (5), (6) and (7). For now, ignore (2) and everything that follows from it -- focus just on the argument involving (1) and premisses (4)-(7):

1) Life is an ultimate end, an end in itself, for any living thing.
6) The conceptual mode of cognitive contact with reality is man's [sic] only means of determining [forming judgements of] how to deal with reality so as to sustain his own existence.
7) Actions taken in accord with judgments of how to deal with reality [so as to sustain one's own existence] are man's only means of dealing with reality so as to sustain his own existence.
5) A rational animal is an animal whose mode of consciousness is characterized by ... conceptual awareness.
[C2'] Thus, living as a rational animal is the only means by which a human can achieve her or his ultimate end.
4) [Thus,] A human being is that kind of living being which can be designated [defined] as a rational animal.

The argument to (4) narrows the scope: we're not just thinking about living things in general, but humans in particular. Unlike other living things, humans use rationality to survive. Note that (6) and (7) regard rationality in a purely instrumental way. In both of these premisses, rationality is a means to the end of sustaining one's existence. Rationality is the primary instrument by which humans achieve their ultimate end, viz., life, understood as simple existence. Call this the instrumental attitude towards rationality. Only bare existence is the end in itself, for the instrumental attitude.

(C2') bears some resemblance to (C2). Both speak of the importance of living as a rational animal for a human being. However, while (C2') reflects the instrumental attitude towards rationality of premisses (6) and (7), (C2) asserts that living as a rational animal constitutes the good human life. Call this the ethical attitude towards rationality. On the ethical attitude, humanity's ultimate ends are defined by the exercise of our capacities for rational thought.

Now, (C2) is supposed to depend on (4) and (C1). If I'm right, and (4) is, not a premiss, but a conclusion that depends on (6) and (7), then somehow the Randian argument has moved from the instrumental attitude to the ethical attitude. Maybe (C1) bridges this gap.

C1) Thus, life as the kind of thing it is is the ultimate value for each living thing.

No, clearly this is the ethical attitude. The move from the instrumental attitude must come earlier. Since (1) is ambiguous, the only place this move can be accomplished is at (2).

2) To be a living thing and not be a living thing of a particular kind is impossible.

This is again ambiguous. Here's another statement of (2), from elsewhere in the text:

It is impossible for a living being to be and not be a living being of some kind -- there is no such thing as unspecified life, ie, life existing in some abstract way. Thus, the nature of a living thing -- the kind of thing it is -- determines whether the life of the entity is achieved. (192-3)

The authors then go on to assert (C1). So the second quoted sentence is just a statement of (C1), with the ethical attitude. The first clause of the first sentence is (2), leaving the second clause, after the dash, to explain (2).

There are two problems with this explanation. First, it is built on a gross failure to understand the type/token distinction -- they have confused the general concept of life with all its instances. Compare this assertion with the following:

It is impossible for a human being to be and not be at some specific place -- there is no such thing as unlocated humanity, ie, humanity existing outside of space and time. Thus, the location of a human being -- its particular cultural context -- determines whether the life of the human being is achieved.

This conclusion is a sort of relativism that Rand strongly rejects. Second, the juxtaposition of the two sentences in the quotation shows that the move from the instrumental attitude to the ethical attitude is nothing more than an equivocation. Living being, in the first sentence, means bare life, mere continued existence, not flourishing. This has nothing at all to do with the normative notion of flourishing life in the second sentence. Consider the `unlocated humanity' passage again: the fact that every instance of humanity is located at some specific place in space does not imply that one's particular cultural context determines what it means for one to have a flourishing life.

My students think I want to kill them with pitchforks

I recently got back my student evaluations from last semester. Evidently, some of them thought my grading was a bit harsh.

 

For the record, there was no significant difference between my distribution of grades and those of the other five or so TAs.

Christian =/= theocrat

I got home from school today to see numerous complaints on liberal and progressive blogs about a flyer the Obama campaign is putting out, featuring the phrase COMMITTED CHRISTIAN and quotations from Obama involving faith. There are also lots of comparisons to an ad the Huckabee campaign used a while back. I don't feel like copying and pasting all the various links, so I'll just point to Glenn Greenwald, who seems to have the clearest statement of the criticism.

the brochure seems designed ... to signify to South Carolina's many Christian voters that Obama is one of them and therefore should have their vote for President, much the way that Huckabee sought to court the evangelical vote that was so critical to the GOP Iowa caucus.

Right. Except for not-the-fuck-at-all.

Huckabee's ad, like the rest of his campaign, is meant to appeal to the theocratic sort of evangelical -- that kind of person that thinks the American legal system needs to be torn down and rebuilt according to his interpretation of the Bible. Aiming to destroy the secular and tolerant principles on which our system is based, the theocratic evangelical's political philosophy is profoundly illiberal. To put it a bit crudely, Huckabee is trying to attract the support of the Christian, capitalist-friendly version of the Taliban.

By contrast, the copy of the Obama ad sounds to me like a man who has grounded his desire to fight for social justice in Christianity. Which really shouldn't be objectionable, as such, especially on Martin Luther King Day.

The big difference between Huckabee's base and Obama's base is that the Christian theocrat wants to subvert liberal democracy, replacing it with an illiberal Christianist regime, while the Christian progressive's embrace of liberal democracy is based on her faith. Yes, they're both `Christians', but one's metaphysical beliefs are not the same as one's political philosophy.

Now, maybe you think that Obama really isn't as progressive as, say, MLK, much less Hillary Clinton, and that therefore the progressive Christian should vote for Clinton instead of Obama. But that argument has nothing at all to do with (a) whether Obama is a committed Christian, (b) whether Obama should be campaigning on that committment, or (c) whether doing so makes him somehow `like Huckabee'. Unless Obama's pamphlet is somehow supposed to suggest to voters that he's going to establish the Christian States of America, he's not at all like Huckabee.

And just because I can't get over the irony: We're having this dispute on Martin Luther King Day? Seriously?

Rand's eudaimonism

I've had the `pleasure' of reading a bunch of Ayn Rand this weekend, along a criticism (by Robert Nozick) and response (by two Objectivists) of the foundations of her ethics. The reading has mostly been quite annoying -- the arguments are usually imprecisely stated and blatantly invalid (conclusions that have nothing to do with their premisses), lots of failures to make important distinctions (and lots of space wasted on what seem to be quite unimportant distinctions), and some seeming inconsistencies (of the assert-P-on-page-n, assert-not-P-on-page-n+1 variety) and circularities.

Skip to the end of all that, though, cut away the business about life being the ultimate value and the vague appeals to `metaphysics', and what you have is basically an eudaimonist account -- an ethics based on the notion of a good life.* Rand's eudaimonia (which, for the purposes of this post, I'll treat as synonymous with both `happiness' and `good life') is characterised by individualist rationality - the exercise, by the individual, of her capacities for `conceptual judgement'. The best human life, then, is one in which the individual acts according to (or possibly just in accordance with) the judgements produced by the exercise of her own reason, without either forcible interference from others or herself forcibly interfering with the actions of others.

But is this coherent? Notice the addition of the qualifications in the last sentence of the previous paragraph. Rand doesn't want to allow `parasites' to go around stealing the products of other people's hard work. Everything they have they should acquire by hard work and fair exchange. So eudaimonia, for X, consists not just in

(A) X acting according to X's reasoned judgements,

but also

(B) Y not forcibly interfering with X performing A, for all Y, and
(C) X not forcibly interfering with Y performing A, for all Y.

For A-C to be coherent, it must be the case that

(1) there can never be a X and Y such that X's reasoned judgement is to forcibly interfere with Y performing A.

(1) doesn't seem at all plausible. Suppose, first, that X's considered judgement is to assassinate Y. Certainly this would interfere with Y acting according to his reasoned judgements. In this case, A is incompatible with C, and (1) fails. Second, suppose that Z now gets involved, and, acting on her considered judgement, stops X. This case is even more problematic for Randian eudaimonia than the first, because now Z's forcible interference in X performing A, by preventing X from forcibly interfering with Y performing A, brings about C. That is, one violation of C is necessary for another instance of C. For a third example, identify Z with Y: X is attempting to assassinate Y, based on his considered judgements, but Y is attempting to stop X from assassinate her, based on her considered judgements. The considered judgements of these two individuals have lead to an impasse; it is impossible for either of them to lead a good life. (Compare these three scenarios to the following premiss in the Objectivists' response to Nozick: `In a social context, the initiation of physical force ... by one man against another serves to destroy the precondition for living the life of a rational animal, since acting upon one's judgment becomes impossible.')

How can Rand avoid these dilemmas? She could say that some people simply can't lead a good life -- X and Y are simply doomed. because of their conflicting interests. But Rand actively denies this. In `The ``conflicts'' of men's interests' (in The virtue of selfishness), Rand argues that such conflicts can never exist (though she completely fails to consider these sorts of possibilities, instead worrying about whether to save a drowning stranger and two people who are both competing for the same job).

The only other option I can see is to introduce qualifiers into (A). So eudaimonia, for X, will consist, in part, in X acting according to X's reasoned judgements, except when G. But, for G to function as an additional constraint on X's reasoned judgements, it must be something independent of those judgements. For other eudaimonists, these are community standards, or something similar -- if my reasoned judgements tell me to do something wildly out of line with the standards of my community, then I shouldn't follow through on them. Rand, of course, can't make this move, as it amounts to subordinating the individual to the community.

The only constraint Rand seems to be willing to countenance on an individual's actions is rational human nature. But this is not independent of X's reasoned judgements -- after all, they're the product of her rational human nature -- and hence cannot provide additional constraints on them, just as modus ponens is no additional constraint on an argument that is assumed to be logically valid. In order to solve the dilemmas, then, Rand needs an argument for (1). But this is where we started. Rand's options seem exhausted, and no progress has been made.

* If this is right, then Rand can be added to the list of twentieth-century female ethical thinkers that challenged the prevailing utilitarian and deontological approaches to ethics and political philosophy using an eudaimonist approach. Other thinkers on this list include GEM Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Rosalind Hursthouse, Carol Gilligan, and Martha Nussbaum. Note that, as I understand things, of these six, only Gilligan and Nussbaum would be considered feminists.