Against stupid philosophy.

Normally, I'd just link to this post at Prosblogion and discuss, but here I actually want to paste the whole thing in.

The marginal cases argument (MCA) is designed to undermine our confidence that the possession of a particular property R is necessary for direct moral standing. The argument asks us to answer this question:

(1) Are you more certain that having property R is necessary for direct moral standing or that human being H (where H is a non-R) has direct moral standing?

The property involved is typically rationality or language-use or self-consciousness or awareness of the future, etc. For any such property R that we select as necessary for direct moral standing, there is some non-human, sentient being that possesses R to a greater degree than some human does. We are embarrassed into admitting that favoring humans over non-humans on the basis of R displays our bias for human beings. But MCA does not go far enough in eliminating bias.

Suppose you had to decide whether R is necessary for direct moral standing under the following conditions:

(2) You do not know where on the developmental scale you stand with respect to any property R proposed as necessary to direct moral standing.

For all you know, you are an early term fetus—that is, for all you know, this is the current stage in your development. But you might be at the stage of a newborn or a normal adult human being or an aged adult. You simply have no idea. Now take any property R—any property that you might not possess at all or might possess to some greater degree. Here’s the question we want to ask:

(3) Are you certain enough that R is necessary to direct moral standing that you are prepared to bet your entire adult life on it?

For my part, there is no property R that I’m so sure is necessary for direct moral standing that I’d be willing to bet my entire adult life on it. But that’s true for everyone. So when we insist that we know that some property R is necessary for direct moral standing, we are really expressing a bias arising from our knowledge that we are normal adults already. It’s not a bias for humans over other species, it is a bias for humans at a certain stage of development over those at lesser stages. You’re not a specieist, but you are a developmentalist.

Now, there isn't really anything all that wrong with this argument. My real beef, though, is with this style of writing/reasoning, which I see painted all over philosophy blogs.

As an interlude, I would like to point out that I have almost no background whatsoever in contemporary philosophy. My philosophical background drops off rather precipitously at the turn of the century (19th/20th), and then disappears completely after Heidegger. So I for all I know, the style of writing/reasoning which I am about to complain about is absolutely the norm. That effects my judgment exactly not at all.

First of all, let's talk a little bit about acronyms for things that don't need acronyms. "MCA", what the fuck is MCA you ask? Marginal case argument? You mean examining the validity of an assertion by looking to the extremes of applicable cases to see how it holds up? Yes, this is absolutely a valuable thing to do when checking a conclusion. However it is also a highly subjective, slippery form of argument, requiring a great deal of interpretation on the part of the writer. Calling it MCA makes it seems like an analytic tool which need only be applied, like a slide-rule or level. It's not, get over it.

Further in to the philosopher's fantasy of analytic precision, is the reduction of a range of concepts to a letter, R (and additionally, he throws H out there for no apparent reason and then never uses it again). Here, as near as I can tell, R stands in for every quality that anyone has ever argued was necessary to moral standing (standing? is that just to avoid the more messy "moral reasoning", presumably so, but it's a weird word choice to me somehow). By way of examples, he helpfully mentions "rationality or language-use or self-consciousness or awareness of the future".

Now, I appreciate what he is trying to do here. He seems to be advocating a bit of epistemological humility by noting that we can not imagine a range of perception more or less developed than our own. If we can accept this bit of humility, all beliefs, including belief in our knowledge of moralality, should be couched in the language of doubt. If this is point he is trying to make, than the particular contents of "R" are legitimately un-important.

Now, that said, the examples that he uses for "R" are all very different, very fundemental ideas. Epistemological humility aside, any argument about what is necessary for moral judgment really ought to treat all of these ideas seperately. When you lump them together under R you enable yourself to argue against a straw man conception of the "idea of R" rather than it's particulars, some of which are more compelling than others. Arguing that we do not have certain knowledge about R, is a lot easier than arguing that a concept of self-hood isn't necessary for morality, no?

Then we have the laziness of requiring absolute "bet your life" certainty on a subject in order to prove a point. We never approach anything like that level of certainty in anything, why even say that? Further, bet my life against what? Would I bet my life against a billion dollars that a concept of self-hood was necessary for moral judgment? Yeah, I probably would. I'm not 100% certain of this, but even taking my native skepticism in to account, I am still pretty sure, yeah.

Finally, there is this ass-hat ridiculous paragraph:

For all you know, you are an early term fetus—that is, for all you know, this is the current stage in your development. But you might be at the stage of a newborn or a normal adult human being or an aged adult. You simply have no idea. Now take any property R—any property that you might not possess at all or might possess to some greater degree. Here’s the question we want to ask:

What? That is all.

In which I agree with Jim Manzi....

I initially became aware of Jim Manzi in a fairly extended argument/series of posts in which he argued forcefully and reasonably against cap and trade, and if I recall correctly, climate change legislation on the whole. Since then I have read with a fair degree off admiration a number of lengthy posts he has written on various subjects. Having said that, I disagree with almost everything he has ever written. So, I wanted to highlight what he wrote today at The Daily Dish, because I find almost nothing at all in it with which to disagree.

The only part of the post where I think he is on shakey ground is when he starts talking about possible "goals" of evolution. Even there though, he doesn't say anything that I think is wrong, in fact a "goal" is reasonably inferred if we accept god as a first cause. It's just that talk of goals, direction, and ends explicating evolution almost invariably gets people side-tracked. That said, this is a good, simple explanation of both an aspect of evolutionary process, and of the divide between theological issues and science.

The magical straight line of U.S. GDP growth...

This is really absolutely my new favorite graph. One of the primary columns of the conservative movement of the last forty or so years has been the supposedly deadening effect that high tax rates have on gdp growth. This graph really puts a stake in all of that. I'm no expert on the history of tax law, but I do know that things have changed massively in the period of time that this graph represents. Yet, this is essentially a straight line. Yes, there is one huge bump, but that is obviously not related to tax policy, and it looks as though there is a slight overall increase in the growth rate over time, but that's more attributable to America's stability and standing in the world improving.

I would pay a good statistician in beer to superimpose on this graph changes in tax rates over time, as well as the Gini coefficient (or some more relavent indicator economic equality). I suspect that we would find that tax rates have next to nothing to do with gdp growth, and everything to do with income equality.

Teddy Kennedy

I found myself weirdly affected yesterday by the death of Ted Kennedy. I am not really a sentimental person, and am too young to have a strong affinity for the Kennedy's in general (though I grew up a stone's throw from the birthplace of Pres. Kennedy). However, with the health care debate raging on in an abject clusterfuck of meaningless rhetoric, I was saddened at the loss of someone who not only cared, but would have spoke on the actual purpose of this health care bill. Providing health care for the poor. Simple as that folks. Ensuring that people who can not afford medical care get cared for anyway.

That, ultimately is what liberalism is supposed to be about, right? A society where no one is allowed to starve, freeze, or die of illness because they didn't have the good fortune to be, well, born a Kennedy? I understand conservatives who say that it's not that simple, that it's not easy, and that you can cause more problems then you solve through careless action, but can't we all agree that that should be the goal? I do worry that in our era of media and money politics the idea of a just society has been discarded in favor of bottom line utilitarianism, and so it saddens me that one of it's bearers has passed.

Infinite Jest...

I was listening this morning to a oldish Bloggingheads.tv episode between the Conors, Clarke and Friedersdorf. There's some interesting stuff in there, particularly Clarke's argument about eliminating summer vacation, which I'm not a 100% sure what I think of, though Friedersdorf's response was uncharacteristicly irrelevent.

Really though, the bit that I want to comment on came right at the beginning where Conor Clarke was talking about his issue with David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. His complaint, essentially, was that he is not a fan of books that try to be overly difficult and disorienting at the expense of being readable and enjoyable, and I don't think that that's wrong. However, I do think that he kin da' misses the point.

The main character in the book (or at least the character which I think the gist of the book is organized around), Hal Incandenza, is introduced in the beginning of the book as, at least to my interpretation, as having lost his mind in a fairly peculiar way. Throughout the book we see him slowly slipping, for various reasons, in to increasingly obsessive, monomaniacal, recursive thinking. Simply put, I think that it is Hal's insanity that the narrative is really meant to mimic and convey to the reader not just in words, but by actually approximating that insanity in them. In that sense, the thing that Conor finds somewhat grating is a key element of the book. Now, that's not to say that you can't find it grating as well, but I think it's worthwhile to understand that there is a reason why the book is written as insanely as it is.

What's that? Link to myself on someone else's blog?

This has my inner geek fanboy all excited...

Yeah, not so much with the frequency...

Ok, so I'm going to take another crack at this... Starting with a response to a something I read this morning.

1. At PEA Soup this morning I found a rather bizarre argument, apparently found in a book by one Dan Benatar, which suggested that it would be better to never have existed at all. It is as follows:

(1) The presence of pain is bad.
(2) The presence of pleasure is good.
So far, pleasure and pain are symmetrical in their goodness and badness. But they are not symmetrical with respect to their absence. More specifically:
(3) The absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone, but
(4) The absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody (an actual somebody) who is deprived by its absence.

The idea here being that there is an asymmetry between the two states, existence and non-existence, whereby non-existence contains some good (absence of pain) and no bad, whereas existence contains both good (pleasure) and bad (pain).

Now, it is entirely likely that the book being referenced here is substantially more nuanced than the argument being presented here. That said, this line of reasoning is so bad that I think it's worth dismantling whatever its significance. Let's start from the beginning: the presence of pleasure is good, the presence of pain is bad. How good? How bad? How much pleasure is there? How much pain? Is some pleasure qualitatively more intensely good than other pleasure? Likewise with pain? And I could easily go on in this basic line. In another direction, I'm tempted to ask why it is that we're so certain that pleasure is good and pain is bad in absolute terms. I know that from the apparently hedonistic viewpoint of this line of reasoning this is the same as to ask why we're so sure that good is good, and bad is bad, but nevertheless... At any rate, to blanket this by saying that there is a symmetry between good and bad in existence is maddeningly simple-minded.

Really though, I've buried that lead a bit here, because far and away the craziest bit is what goes completely unmentioned and unchallenged in the post I linked to above. Why the hell is the absence of pain good, even if no one experiences it, while the absence of pleasure is not bad? This is, basically, the crux of the entire argument and I can think of no sufficient explanation. It seems to substantially devalue pleasure.

I think it might be instructive to monetize this question. Let's say that the possession of money is, for the sake of this hypothetical, good. Further, the absence of money, and the obligation to pay someone money (debt) is bad. Certainly, it is the case that the absence of debt is good, we can agree on that. However, I think we can also agree that the absence of money, even paired with the absence of debt, is decidedly bad. The resulting neutral state (non-existence, for those not quite following the analogy) is therefore both good (absence of debt) and bad (absence of money) in equal measure. If you disagree, just try it some time, being broke, even in the absence of debt is decidedly bad.

Anyway, goofy argument, probably not worth that many words, but it's rare that I see something quite so retarded taken seriously, so there you go.

In which I give conservatives more credit than they deserve...

Reading through the various internet based opinion peddlers this morning, I've come across a number of your typical righty voices claiming that lefties are being hypocritical in their enthusiasm for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. They seem to be asking why, if diversity is so important on the highest court, lefties were so vociferously opposed to Justice Thomas, and Estrada, back when they were nominees.

I don't particularly feel the need to point out why this is flawed reasoning. I'm more interested in how revealing this misunderstanding is. Presumably some of the voices who put forward this argument do so in bad faith. That is, they understand full well that there is no logical inconsistency in opposing Estrada in spite of his background, and supporting Sotomayor in part because of her background. However, I'm under the impression that at least some of the people putting forward this argument actually believe that diversity is a primary consideration in liberal thinking. The complaint of hypocrisy makes sense from the perspective of someone who believes that liberals are primarily concerned with ethnic diversity such that it should trump all other considerations.

This is reflected too in some of the rhetoric surrounding the 2008 election. There were a good number of folks on the right, and probably some in the middle who actually did vote for Obama, who thought that the "identity politics" was the reason to vote for him. They believe that his policies, his temperment, his political skills were all secondary to his skin color. Weirdly, race is way more important to the right, than it's been to the left for quite some time (though, actually, when I write that sentence, it becomes all too comprehensible).

I'm not going to go in to it too deeply for the moment, because it is a huge subject, but I think that this is something Republicans need to start to think about in a serious way. I don't buy the claim that Democrats have moved past racism, and racial politics, but it's clear that Republicans are swimming in it, and it is killing them.

I will close with at least one observation that is non-obvious. I just saw a post at Ambinder's on how the GOP thinks it would be a a bad idea to oppose Sotomayor's nomination, for all the stupidest possible reasons. It occurs to me that this is actually exactly wrong. I think that, politically, the best thing a Republican like Sen. Sessions (ok, maybe Sessions is a bad example) can do is loudly, but intelligently oppose her nomination (without filibustering, that would be unwise). Look through her record, and oppose her because of decisions that she has made that you disagree with based on actual conservative principles. Ultimately, this is the only way for Republicans to regain credibility. No one is going to be fooled if Republicans simply throw up their hands, but if they question her on the merits of her record that would help. Maybe not right away, but in the long run Republicans could make a lot of headway by simply ignoring race altogether.

So, this'll be my first post. It's tempting to introduce myself, or explain why it is that I'm writing a blog, or somesuch nonsense. The reality though is that it's wholly unremarkable. I expect, all in all, that this blog will be fairly unremarkable. That is, it will, if I do my job exceedingly well, seem like a sickly version of some of the blogs you can find in "My Daily Reading".

I'd love to do some of the policy thinking that goes in to the great Matt Yglesias' blog, but I haven't got anything like the chops for that. I'd like to write with something of the moral force that is wielded by Hilzoy (righteous ethicist version), or Ta-Nehisi Coates (self-effacing, humble, saintly version), but I'm just not that good of a person. I don't have the expertise of Tyler Cowen, or the journalistic fervor of Emptywheel. However, I am a pretty bright cat, and I wouldn't be writing publicly if I didn't think that every now and again I could hit one out of the park.

Let me give you an idea of roughly what you can expect to find on here. It's a little hard to know in advance what topics will end up being focused on here, but in rough order of expected frequency: politics/current events, sports, fiction, and video games. At first, I'll probably just be writing one mid-length post per day, and probably about one longer essay-ish thing per week. As time goes on, if I take a liking to it, and I have one or two people reading, I might ramp things up, but time will tell.