One Good Turn

Sunday, December 08, 2002

 

Civility
Institutions exist fundamentally as shared entities. In other words, if they are not shared, they fail to exist. A dollar bill is just paper if no one values it but me. A marriage may be sustained by the disproportionate work of one of the spouses but, to be a marriage, both must acknowledge the marriage for it to exist. (It may continue to exist as a legal entity, but not in truth.) Even my property, which I so naturally identify with myself, is mine only if others accept it as so. I may be able to defend it against the incursions of others, but once I have to defend it from everyone, it loses its status as property.

The demands we make upon one another stem mainly from the institutions that we share. Perhaps certain demands stem from our shared nature or shared relation to the divine, but most stem from particular bonds that have been created and that have their particular history. I may owe something to all people, but I owe particular things to my wife, my daughter, my parents, my employer, etc.

If an institution is no longer shared, it no longer exists, so the demands associated with it fail to exist as well. This point may seem obvious, but people do make demands of others seemingly even after the bond between them is gone. This is rational only in cases where there are multiple bonds such that the loss of one bond still leaves another in place. For example, a woman might demand that her ex-husband continue to help support their children. This demand finds its ground, however, not in the marriage (which no longer exists) but in their connection as citizens of the same state. When the state recognizes a marriage, it creates certain obligations that continue after the marriage is over. One could even say then that, in this example, the woman is not really the one legitimately making a demand at all, although it is unlikely that the state would pursue the father if the mother wasn't interested.

Civility, it seems to me, is not a demand that stems from nature or the divine. It dates back to a non-PC time when people naturally distinguished the civilized from the barbarians. It isn't my intention to explain the difference between the civilized and the uncivilized here, but I think the distinction can be made.

To what extent do we owe civility to others? The most straightforward obligation would be to others that share our particular civilized order. To a lesser extent, it would seem, we owe civility to those who live in other civilized orders. We share something with them, and what we share is the product of our mutual efforts (which would distinguish it from what we share as animals or children of the divine), but there is an important sense in which our efforts are not toward the same thing. As an American, I work toward the sustenance of the American order. An Australian likewise will work towards the sustenance of the Australian order. Insofar as both are civilized nations (I'll let John Ray defend the Australian half of the equation), and civilized orders find strength in bonding together against the uncivilized, it would seem that civility can be demanded beyond national boundaries.

A complication here is that one of the distinctive features of civilization is how it treats strangers. The ancient guest-host relationship is itself a development of civility. A stranger was somebody to be protected, even to the detriment of one's own. In the Biblical story of Lot, for example, Lot offers up his daughters to the angry mob in order to protect the strangers that have entered his home. Of course, a guest who violated his end of the guest-host relationship could claim no protection at all. The Trojan War supposedly was fought over such a violation.

We might say then that part of civility is the presumption of civility in others until proven otherwise. But what about those who have proven otherwise? Do we owe civility to them? The Trojan War example would suggest not, but many people believe that civility is a virtue of character that one should exercise regardless of the actions of others. To be uncivil to the uncivilized seems like "stooping to their level".

From what I have argued already, I don't see how these last two statements can be defended. If you do not share in a civilized order, how can it be rational to act like you do? It seems as rational as a boss giving orders to a former employee. Yes, you are "stooping to their level," but that is what you have to do when the ceiling has been lowered.

It may make sense, in situations of strength, for the civilized to treat the uncivilized as equals. The hope, I suppose, is that by doing so the uncivilized will pick up on the difference and attempt to conduct themselves better in the future. I know that I have found myself in situations where there was a demand on manners that exceeded my normal behavior. These situations are frustrating, and a little embarrassing, but generally I have been made better by such encounters.

This extension of civility is not, however, an obligation. Furthermore, it doesn't make much sense if you put yourself at significant risk in doing so.

It is a mistake to let others use your good will against you.

Eddie 1:44 AM

Friday, December 06, 2002

 

Medical Residency, Pt. 2
I've had some good responses to my earlier post concerning limits on the hours that medical residents work per week and per shift. (Look at the comments section for some of them; others were e-mailed to me.) Let me emphasize again that I do not really understand the value of having residents work so much per week, other than the obvious economic advantage of paying fewer people. My concern was simply that the two articles I found that covered this story at length failed to provide substantial evidence that change was necessary. I thought it odd that long-standing policy would be changed on such an anecdotal basis.

If you are inclined to believe in conspiracies, you might believe that this is because the medical establishment really could document the harm done but prefers not to in order to avoid litigation. In this case, it might be easier to let changes work their way through without a whole lot of fanfare.

Another possibility is that something important is being overlooked here. Jim Ryan, in the comments to my earlier post, suggest that this could be seen as a kind of hazing. This sounds plausible to me; doctors do seem to have an us vs. the world mentality that is probably hard to avoid when you are making decisions (taken largely as a matter of trust) that greatly affect the life of others. It might be natural therefore for there to be certain rites of passage that reinforce this group solidarity.

I wonder, however, if there might be more to it than that. Could these absurd hours not also serve an important gatekeeper function? About three years ago, my father-in-law had a terrible accident with a table saw. He was driven down to Atlanta where a surgeon began operating on him in the late evening and operated for eleven straight hours to save three fingers. Amazingly, my father-in-law kept some use of all of these fingers. This strikes me as a heroic effort, but it might not be an unusual event in the life of a surgeon. Wouldn't it take an unusual combination of knowledge, skill, and stamina to perform these duties on a regular basis? Is it not possible that a harsh medical residency would be instrumental in separating the wheat from the chaff? (I definitely include myself in the chaff here.) I truly don't know. But I also am made nervous by those who think they know but can't (or won't) provide the evidence to convince me of the fact.

Eddie 2:39 PM

 

Precedent
Every action has its consequences, which can be divided into the short-term and the long-term. To some extent, the long-term is just the extension of the short-term: one event follows another ad infinitum. The long-term consequences, however, are not just quantitatively different from the short-term. They are qualitatively different as well.

Consider the situation in Iraq. Those (like myself) who favor military action against Iraq believe that much short-term good will come from ousting Hussein, as well as much long-term good, insofar as good things now often lead to good things later. The problem, however, is that it is impossible to have this action just be this action. This action will stand as an exemplar of U.S. foreign policy in general. In other words, every nation will try to draw larger implications of this particular action. Thus the defender of military action in this instance cannot simply defend this instance; he must be willing to defend the general policy that this instance implies.

Thus we find ourselves in a peculiar situation with the inspections of Iraq and the document the Iraqis are supposed to produce concerning what weapons of mass destruction they currently have. I think it is safe to say that the majority of people following this event believe that Bush wants the "peace" process to fail. Why then did he get himself into it at all? Primarily, it seems, to placate some would-be allies (like the British) or those whom we don't want to become problems in this or other situations (like the rest of Europe). The Europeans and others fear the precedent of a United States that has adopted a policy of preemption. Whatever the situation in Iraq, it is undesirable in their eyes to let the genie out of the bottle.

Frankly, I hope the "peace" process in this instance fails as well, because I believe the peace it will bring will be an illusion that we will pay for more dearly later. Does this make Bush's diplomatic maneuvers cynical (or my support of them)? I don't think so. If we recognize that Bush's diplomacy is directed toward the issue of precedent, his sincerity isn't so important. What is important is the question of whether the U.S. can help construct a situation so that what is good in this particular instance can be folded into a larger policy that is acceptable to the parts of the international community that are important to us. This is legalism, insofar as this particular instance may be far more important to us than the doctrine that follows from it, but it is a justified legalism.

I believe that we do this kind of thing all of the time. We determine what is right and then look for the reasons. If we can't find them, we should reconsider our initial determination. And if we don't want to live with those reasons being applied more broadly, perhaps we should reconsider as well. Nonetheless, we begin with a sense of what is called for in the moment, and then figure the rest. (This is one reason for judges and juries: to not let justice in the particular be man-handled by the universal law.)

But I hate legalism, so what gives?

Perhaps we can distinguish two kinds of legalism. One, as I described above, acts for the sake of the particular but then insincerely formulates a principle to provide cover for that act. This isn't ideal, but I think it is defensible, for reasons given already. Another kind of legalism, however, acts for the sake of the principle but only insincerely in the particular act, such as your co-worker who begrudgingly gives you a Christmas gift because he feels obligated. This second kind of legalism bothers me a lot more than the first.

Eddie 12:21 AM

Tuesday, December 03, 2002

 

Medical Residency
The physician's motto, "first, do no harm", would seem to be good advice to those who seek to reform the health care system itself. Recent changes in medical residency make me wonder if legislators think the same way.

As Siddhartha Mukherjee writes in a recent article for the New Republic, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education has recently reformed medical residency programs (basically to preempt Congress) by limiting the number of hours a resident can work in a week. The argument is straight-forward: the quality of care declines as residents work their way through shifts that strain the mind's ability to function. Since residents work mainly in hospitals that serve the poor, the poor suffer the decline in quality disproportionately.

Mukherjee makes the argument that the changes made by the ACGME are a needed step in improving the system of residency, but that what is most needed is a change in the culture of residency itself. According to him, the current culture is based on a rugged individualism inspired by the founder of modern medical training, William Halsted. Halsted designed a residency to test the commitment of doctors and to develop a strong sense of responsibility in doctors for their patients. While the design may have fit the times, when medical training was fairly haphazard, it is something of an anachronism today. Given the complexity of modern medicine, having a single doctor treat a patient from beginning to end pushes the doctor beyond what can be reasonably accomplished. What is needed then, according to Mukherjee, is a new ethos that emphasizes a team approach to patient care.

Given my conservative temperament, I admire Mukherjee's argument for its attention to the actual functioning of the institution of residency and the history how it came to function as it does. I also appreciate his cautious conclusions and his willingness to include evidence that doesn't support his case.

Nonetheless, I think that Mukherjee's argument is less than compelling. By tying the institution to the personality of just one man, he makes it seem as if the character of the institution is simply an historical fluke. But isn't it a little odd to think that a system that has been in place for over a 100 years is still just a reflection of its founder?

I must admit that I don't understand how anyone can function well working over 100 hours a week with shifts that sometimes exceed 35 hours. But I also wouldn't presume to change an institution simply because it didn't make sense to me, an outsider to that institution. It is notable that Mukherjee has no data to support his claim that patient care suffers from these practices. Scott Turner's article in the George Street Journal makes this lack of data evident:

The issue would be clearer if scientific evidence showed that long hours made for bad medicine, said [Judith] Owens[, MD]. There simply isn’t enough clinical evidence to tie physician fatigue to medical errors, she said.

However, common sense suggests that a 100-hour workweek, including a regular 36-hour tour of duty, may be unsafe for patients, Owens said...

Why would an institution grounded in scientific research act on such a flimsy basis? Why is it not possible to gather the kind of data needed to answer this question?

I should say too that from my very limited internet research it looks like many people endorse this decision and that some residency programs had already instituted similar changes. Furthermore, the changes are not in themselves terribly radical; mainly they seem to require more residents, which means more funding and ultimately increasing the pool of doctors, which might be a good thing in itself. Still, this strikes me as the consequence of a relatively small group of people with "bright ideas" rather than the consequence of an intense deliberation within the medical community itself.

Eddie 9:24 PM

Monday, December 02, 2002

 

Humility
For years it has made me uneasy to see athletes make religious gestures on the playing field. Some football players will say a small prayer after they reach the end zone, and some baseball players will point up to the sky after hitting a home run. Nor is it uncommon to hear athletes give God credit for their success in post-game interviews.

My unease stems from the judgment that such displays lack humility, and are therefore the opposite of what they intend. In the Christian tradition, we find Jesus critical of those who pray loudly on the street corners. He calls instead for a more private piety with the famous metaphor of not letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing. My knowledge of Jewish and Muslim religious life is less well informed, but both traditions seem to espouse a similar sense of modesty.

These displays also lack humility because they claim God's intervention in a way that is clearly to the detriment of someone else (the other team). Since I doubt that God generally cares who wins a sporting event, it seems to trivialize the divine. Even in more serious matters of human competition, such as war, I think most people would hesitate before claiming that God favors one side over another. Certainly Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike believe that God is ultimately on their side (with some ambiguity of what the "their" is), but that doesn't mean He grants you victory in every endeavor.

If the athlete's actions don't fit the usual practices of today's monotheisms, however, they do fit within the religious sensibility of the ancient Greeks. Most contemporary readers of Homer find it remarkable how much the Greek gods intervene in the lives of the heroes. To our eyes, the heroes are puppets on a string, playing out a story to the amusement of the Olympians. Within the epics, however, the relationship of the heroes to the gods comes across quite differently. The heroes are heroes because they are favored by the gods. Far from mitigating their accomplishments, this favoritism gives the accomplishments their full splendor. At the same time, the heroes are generally very careful to give due credit to their divine patrons, recognizing that the withdrawal of these favors is an ever-present possibility.

Humility, then, in the ancient Greek context, humbles man in relation to the gods, but raises a man in relation to other men. Insofar as we receive gifts from the gods, we are set apart from the mundane, and thus we praise them for elevating us, even if just temporarily.

I believe that these Greek religious beliefs speak to a real experience of being placed beyond the norm, and I would guess that the top athletes have this very experience. Training is important in athletics, but training only establishes a baseline of expectation. The best transcend their training, usually through a blend of superior physical ability and superior game awareness. Wouldn't it be natural then to experience these superior abilities as gifts? In calling them gifts, there is humility, but there is also an awareness that these gifts elevate the great above the merely competent.

So, I don't know where I stand ultimately. I am still bothered by the religious display, because it seems to me like poor sportsmanship, but my view of sportsmanship is itself likely a product of the more common view of humility. I have little problem with the attitude itself, but for some reason I would like them to keep it to themselves.

Note: I got the idea for this post from a recent discussion with friends about how Dylan has managed to have such creative longevity. I said that I thought it was because of the humility he developed, and I didn't fully understand what I meant in saying that, yet it seems true. By humility, I didn't mean that he became more humble in relation to other artists. (I don't know if he did or didn't.) I just meant to convey that, over time, he seemed to locate himself within the American musical tradition, rather than on the vanguard of it, as many wanted to place him. By giving himself over to this larger tradition, he was able to take it up in its many different aspects and bring it forth in a way distinctively his own.

Another note: My wife once heard a wonderful interview with Robert Duvall about his film "The Apostle," which he wrote, directed, produced, financed, and starred in. The interviewer asked Duvall if it hurt him not having other people in the creative process to help him shape his vision. He immediately said "no", thought about it a second and said "no" again, and then thought about it a little more and said, somewhat emphatically, "no" a third time. In a sense, this wasn't a very humble remark. At the same time, Duvall clearly was beholden to something that he wanted to bring into being; he didn't need others because the film was already given to him. In this sense, he was as honestly humble as I can imagine.

Eddie 3:39 AM

Saturday, November 30, 2002

 

Market Experience
In a comment to one of Jim Ryan's posts, I raised the question of how the marketplace of ideas would handle the idea of the marketplace. That is to say, if people are given the freedom to choose, will they choose freedom? I suggested that people generally prefer to be ripped off by the law than by car salesmen.

Not too long after making that comment, I ran across this article lamenting the difficulty of finding reliable and economical builders in the London area. (From Lucy Kellaway's description, I don't think things are as bad in my area.)

Kellaway appears to believe in markets generally, hence her question about why there seems to be a market failure in this instance. I think many people, however, fear these kinds of experiences. This fear leads people to do things that I consider irrational like spend a lot of time in malls and eat at Red Lobster. Quality or not, you know what you are going to get. And people enjoy being anonymous shoppers, which big business makes possible. It's ok if I pay too much for poor products, as long as no one is looking! The idea of negotiating with the car salesman, however, and just knowing that he is robbing you blind, is too much.

I have long been a believer in markets, but my appreciation for them grew when my wife and I were overseeing the renovation of our house. We had a friend who works regularly with contractors helping us with it all, so we were not standing on the outside of the business looking in. Instead, I got to see contractors doing business with each other. When you see knowledgeable people working out business arrangements, a lot of the negative image of markets dissipates.

For example, the fear of being deceived is much less in these professional situations. Not only does the mutual knowledge decrease the opportunities for dishonesty, but there is also a recognition that future business is at stake. Why risk years of business for a short-term profit? In fact, I'm not sure if I've ever been in a context where people were so honest, and I'm including the university and the church! Nor is there a great deal of the much-dreaded shoddy craftsmanship, for the same reason.

In the political debate over what should be provided through the market and what should be provided through the government, the defense of the market must always contend with the concern that greedy people will hurt us. Unfortunately, this ends up being a self-fulfilling prophesy. The real answer to the problem is to be a knowledgeable consumer and deal with people you know. The direction people move, however, is toward big business and government, which distance the consumer from the ultimate decision makers, ensuring products and service that are less than what they could be. And if everyone gets identical products and services, we won't be able to tell good from bad at all!

Eddie 7:05 PM

Friday, November 29, 2002

 

A Liberal Art
How are the liberal arts related to liberty? I see two ways. First, the liberal arts concern the pursuits that begin once the necessities of life have been secured. They are pursuits that are worthy in themselves, and include philosophy, music, literature, art, and so forth. Historically, these were accomplishments available only to those with significant leisure, i.e. the free citizen. The liberal arts have therefore always had an elitist ring, and American democracy with its egalitarian instincts has been uneasy with them. Americans are no strangers to pleasure, but they are not usually interested in cultivating their pleasures.

Second, the liberal arts help us to understand the political and economic underpinnings of liberty itself. Those who are free have the burden of politics upon themselves, so they must be knowledgeable in matters once reserved for royalty. They must be informed about practical matters of the world as well as theoretical matters of constitutional government. Furthermore, they must be able to conduct civil discussion, since decisions of the state will require the support of at least a bare majority of legislators.

The liberal arts as I've described them would apply to the ancient Athenians as much as to ourselves, and maybe more, since the Athenians were not the egalitarians we are. There is a liberal art, however, that I believe is distinctly important in the contemporary world: the ability of the amateur to come to terms with the conclusions of the expert.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the division of labor among thinkers had already happened, but it was still possible for a well-educated person to be conversant with every major discovery in every field of knowledge. By the end of the 19th century, this was no longer possible, although it was still possible for someone within a field of study to be conversant with all of the major discoveries within that field. Today, even this isn't true.

We are thus all amateurs, even the experts. Politics, however, requires that we try to grasp things as a whole and make decisions accordingly. But how can amateurs trust and integrate conclusions that are based on research that is beyond them?

One response is simply to trust the experts in their fields and accept their advice uncritically. I find this response to be intolerably dangerous. To trust the experts we would have to know who the experts are. If having the credentials of an expert would give one such authority in advising the electorate, it seems inevitable that political movements would seek to take advantage. Even if there developed competing schools of expertise, such that one school of thought did not simply hold sway, the amateurs could not easily determine which school was the more reasonable. The end result would be a thorough politicization of science, which hurts science as much as it hurts politics. (I'm speaking of this politicization hypothetically, but, of course, it has happened, to some extent, already).

A better response would therefore require that amateurs be able to make meaningful, even if non-expert, judgments about the expertise of others. Is this possible?

I think that it is. To begin, most people already have a healthy skepticism concerning the scientific news that they read about in newspapers. Journalism prefers the cutting-edge, which is the theoretical ground most likely to be revised or even rejected by later research, while ignoring the more important body of research that substantiates older theoretical insights. Consequently, it is a valuable skill for people to learn to distinguish the one from the other.

Next, there are also basic skills that can help amateurs find perspective when looking at the results of scientific research. It is not necessary for amateurs to be able to detect problems in scientific research, but it is important to be able to understand somewhat the problems detected by other experts. An educated electorate thus should understand basic experimental design and statistical analysis.

Finally, it is necessary for us amateurs to find people who can reliably communicate (and analyze) the research of the experts. These people have enough expertise to distinguish the likely from the unlikely, even if their work is more in journalism than in research itself. Journals that can be found at a good newsstand serve this role, as do many internet sites (including blogs). What is needed then is for people to become aware of these sources and educated enough to take advantage of them.

As a university professor, I am struck by how little we cultivate these skills. We will need them.

Eddie 10:24 PM

Thursday, November 28, 2002

 

Are Moral Claims Simply Preferences?
John Jay Ray posted earlier this week in response to my argument that we can discern what ought to be from a careful attention to what is. He agrees generally, but disagrees that moral claims are absolute or objective. Instead, moral claims are simply advisory and are based on personal preference. Jim Ryan, in a different post, echoes the point that moral claims are subjectively based.

To say that moral claims are grounded in preference is to claim that preferences are themselves primitive, that is, irreducible to anything else. Can we not, however, ask why we prefer one thing to another?

One type of explanation for preference is historical (genetic). Much of what we desire is valuable to us simply as a consequence of our past. Years ago, for example, I ate some guacamole that had gone bad. It was terrible and to this day I have no great love for the stuff. Insofar as our preferences stem from accidents of history like this, then preference is clearly rooted in the subjective. (Of course, I've never made my disliking of guacamole into a moral claim!)

I do not believe, however, that all of our preferences are rooted in the subjective, if subjective means our own peculiar likes and dislikes. Take, for example, the value of liberty, which John Jay Ray claims is only a preference. In estimating the value of liberty, it seems possible to locate grounds that apply to all people. Liberty is important because it allows us to shape our lives so that we can develop our particular talents and to find our own satisfactions. To value liberty is to believe that individuals accomplish more when guided by their own intelligence. This belief is not itself a preference; it is an empirical judgment.

To think that liberty is preferable to its alternatives is no more subjective than thinking that adulthood is an improvement over adolescence. This is, in fact, what the free world makes possible: a world of adults, taking responsibility for their own existence. (It falls far short, of course, and we seem daily determined to alleviate ourselves of responsibility.)

Our preferences then stem from two sources: historical accident, i.e., what is peculiar to our own past, and objective judgment, which speaks to our species in general. Of course, it is notoriously difficult to communicate objective judgments, and it is easy to mistake historical accident for eternal truth. But even Mill, the egalitarian, knew that all preferences and judgments are not equal. The one who has experienced all the goods of life is the one who is in a position to judge the value of each one. As Hegel puts it, no great man is a great man to his valet, but this is because the valet is a valet, not because the great man isn't great. Or, to return to my earlier example, we wouldn't trust an adolescent's ability to judge the value of adulthood.

Eddie 9:29 AM

Monday, November 25, 2002

 

Authority
Jim Ryan raises a number of questions in a recent post, including the question of whether it is appropriate for the state to encourage certain cultural authorities and not others. For example (my example, not his), some claim that it is good to post the Ten Commandments in courthouses and other public buildings to remind us of how our law is rooted in Judeo-Christian precepts.

A related question that I have been thinking about is how we recognize authority among other people. This is a central issue now with regards to Iraq. Should we really consider Hussein to be an Iraqi authority? How should we take the recent election of Hussein, or the existence of the Iraqi parliament?

It is a tricky question in part because it seems as if we are taking into our own hands the defining of another people. At the same time, we do help define those people by our selection of what political boundaries we will respect and who we respond to as the representatives of those political areas. While it would be wrong for us to make those decisions arbitrarily or simply in our own interests, a morally neutral way of making that decision doesn't exist. Some claims to authority must be recognized as more legitimate than others.

Historically, democracies often choose to support a faction within a society and not those who actually wield power. The ancient Athenians, for example, would undermine regimes by encouraging democratic factions within those regimes to turn against their own political order. Then the Athenians would bring their own military to bear and the opposing oligarchies would be forced to fight an internal enemy and an external enemy at the same time. Reagan's support for various "freedom fighters" in Central America fits this pattern as well. This kind of action makes a lot of people uneasy, even those who back the policy. If the groups we support are marginal members of a society, it seems that our only accomplishment is to increase the number of people who consider us the enemy.

One way to define legitimacy is to determine if a government satisfies certain minimum standards of treatment of its people. From this perspective, only the just have true authority.

The problem with this approach is that it fails to account for the reality that not everyone wants to live by our standards. If a people do not identify with our basic notions of a good political order (freedom of speech, association, equality, etc.), a refusal to recognize its leadership is tantamount to refusing to engage the people at all. I believe authority should therefore be defined not by absolutes but more subjectively in terms of what people identify with. From this perspective, authority must be separated from what we consider justice.

I believe that, for the most part, people do not identify with the authoritarian governments that rule over them. There is much evidence, for example, that the people of Iraq have no great love for Hussein. The Afghans face an uncertain future, but there seems to be widespread relief that the Taliban have been driven out of power. And in Iran, recent demonstrations give hope that regime change will happen spontaneously in the near future. (See Michael Ledeen's article about this at National Review Online.) In practice, then, our ideals about what gives our own government authority may serve as a reliable guide in considering the authority of other lands. It would be too much, however, to believe that this could serve as anything more than a rule of thumb.

Arafat, for example, seems to me to enjoy a great deal of support in the Palestinian territories, as unfortunate as that may be. I think that Israel and the U.S. would be perfectly right to refuse to negotiate with Arafat (and I wish sometimes that they would), but I don't think they could refuse on the grounds that he doesn't represent the man on the street. Likewise, the Chinese government is oppressive, but I don't get the sense that there is a revolution just waiting to emerge. These are harder cases for us because we can't pinpoint the enemy, but must confront an entire culture.

Eddie 2:49 PM

 

Debt
I was reading Aristophanes' comedy The Clouds tonight and was struck by how much debt (and its evasion) is central to the story. The primary debt of the play is legal, i.e., based on a contractual dealing, but there is also a question of moral debt (a son's debt to his father) at the end. How do we think of these two kinds of debt in relation to each other?

Imagine that you owed someone money, but you were forgiven the debt. Would you not now have a moral debt in place of the legal one? A test of character: which debt do you consider the greater? I can imagine a plot from a Jane Austen novel where a man is put in a bind because his legal debt has been transferred into a moral debt, and now he must concoct events so that he is properly relieved of both.

When people protest the IMF, arguing for a relaxation of the debt of some third world country, do they believe that a moral debt has been created instead? I doubt it.

I'll believe in such a thing as international law when I am convinced there is such a thing as international common decency.

Eddie 1:17 AM

Saturday, November 23, 2002

 

Cosmopolitans and Provincials
When we are younger, we take the way that is given to us as the only way there is. We then learn there are other ways, but our natural instinct is to view these other ways as evil. They are unthinkable, and the unthinkable can't be good.

Many people never move beyond this stage of development. They are provincials, assuming that what is familiar to them is the truth universally.

Education in a free society is a cosmopolitan effort. It exposes us to different ways (both across the world and across time) so as to weaken that natural instinct towards our own. Presumably a weakening of instinct will encourage a development of reason so that we can honestly, without prejudice, decide what our world should be. I use the word "honestly" here to convey the idea that our decision must be based on what William James called "live" options; if our feelings weigh heavily toward only one option, there is something suspect about our decision.

Progressives are truly cosmopolitans in that they consider their place of origins to be accidental to their being. Literally, the world is their city (polis). They may well work through the particular power structures of their own nation, but their intent is always beyond that. From this point of view, to be a conservative is to be provincial.

This view is mistaken. There is a fundamental difference between conservatives and provincials. A provincial does not believe that his way is the way simply because it is his. This would be a form of relativism ("you have your way and I have mine") and most provincials are not relativists unless forced into it as an act of self-preservation. The provincial believes his way is the way because every other way is unthinkable. The conservative, on the other hand, can think what the provincial considers unthinkable, and he does not believe that something is true because it is his. What the conservative believes is that the true can best be discovered by a serious investigation into what is one's own.

The provincial makes the familiar universal. The conservative makes the universal familiar, i.e., finds the universal through the familiar. The provincial and conservative will thus resemble each other, and will often find common cause, but the difference is not trivial. Given that the conservative seeks universal truths, he could just as well be said to resemble the progressive.

Why seek the universal through the familiar? Because the good that comes from weakening our instincts does not justify their elimination. The instincts I'm speaking of here are not simply animal instincts (our first nature). They are the instincts developed from those animal instincts by our early education, and constitute our second nature. They attach us powerfully to the world and give us strong (though not infallible) indications of what is right and wrong.

One can learn abstract principles from seeing other ways of doing things, but you can only feel the principles that you live. Feeling is not understanding; however, I would not trust any truth that I could not feel as well.

As a philosophy teacher, I am asked sometimes by a student why the college doesn't teach any Eastern philosophy. My answer is that we could not do it well. If my students study Western philosophy (the tradition of their own culture) for four years, they just might get a glimpse of what it contains. I don't know what wisdom can be found in Eastern philosophy, but, out of respect, I would assume it would take at least as much time, if not more, for us to adequately digest. And I'm not even sure you could really study it in this country at all.

Eddie 2:12 PM

Friday, November 22, 2002

 

Canadian Independence
This is completely unrelated to my recent posts, but I was amused at this story that I found via Drudge. According to the story,

Defence Minister John McCallum bluntly told George W. Bush yesterday to stop lecturing Canada about increased defence spending after the U.S. president urged the federal government and the NATO allies to boost their military budgets to confront new international threats from terrorism and rogue states.

Why has Bush been pressuring Canada in particular? Again, according to the story,

The Bush administration, particularly through Paul Cellucci, its ambassador to Canada, has been calling on Canada to increase defence spending and to purchase new heavy-lift aircraft so it does not have to rely on the U.S. to transport Canadian troops.

How dare the Bush administration strong arm the Canadians in this way!

Eddie 10:22 AM

Thursday, November 21, 2002

 

Cultural Evolution
I'm sure someone has thought about this before, but a question has occurred to me as I think about the significance of evolution in the human sphere. Evolutionary theory would predict that the forces of adaptation are strongest where survival is most in question. That is, a species that had a fairly secure existence would not be as compelled to pick up advantageous characteristics as would a species on the brink of extinction. Isn't it peculiar then that human culture seems to have evolved slowly in its early stages, when human beings were more at the mercy of nature, and then gain speed as the mastery of nature becomes more complete? If our survival is so little in question anymore, what is pushing culture to evolve so quickly?

Eddie 10:48 PM

 

Comments Problem
I am having trouble getting my comments to come up, so maybe others are as well. If you wanted to leave a comment but couldn't, please hold the thought and leave it later or e-mail it to me. Thanks.

Eddie 12:14 AM

Wednesday, November 20, 2002

 

Grounding Morality in the Material?
Derk responds to yesterday's post, challenging my argument that "since the fundamental concepts of modern science (mass, velocity, etc.) have no particular moral significance, it appears that the moral domain would need to find its justifications from somewhere else." He responds:

It is not clear to me why the moral domain can’t find its justification right here, in this world. Hydrogen is not wet. Oxygen is not wet. Yet when they are combined in the right combination, wetness emerges. Viewed in isolation, atoms, mass, and velocity may be amoral, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that morality is not a product of their combined effects.

Let me note that the larger point of the post was exactly that we do find the justification for the moral domain in this world, as opposed to the abstract principles of revealed religion or a priori ethics. The sentence he quotes was my attempt to understand why some modern philosophers have looked beyond this world for moral guidance.

Nonetheless, although I believe we should develop our moral confidence from an investigation of worldly matters, I do not think that natural science (including evolutionary theory) will be able to provide much help, for exactly the reason given in the sentence Derk quotes. In saying this, I am not denying that we are material beings. I am denying that the language of natural science has the conceptual power to adequately account for the human domain.

Let us take, for example, the ongoing project of mapping the human brain. I have no problem accepting that science can find a correspondence between certain mental functions and the activity of certain parts of the brain. Nor would I dismiss the possibility that the absence or malfunction of those parts would disable or diminish those functions. In saying this, I accept the proposition that thought has material conditions. Furthermore, a physical knowledge of the brain may well enable us to manipulate our mental functions. Perhaps we can eliminate depression or develop better memories.

What I am denying is that this project of mapping the brain will ever be able to explain to us the significance of these mental functions. To perform this mapping, we must approach the phenomena from two sides. First, we must identify a particular mental function within the framework of our ordinary conceptions. Second, we look for particular activity in the brain that corresponds to that function. The terms of the first side are fundamentally different from the terms of the second side; we can show a correspondence, but there is not enough common ground for the observations of the second side to explain our experience on the first side.

All cells have atoms, so there will always be some aspect of the cell's nature that atomic theory can explain. A cell is more, however, than just a collection of atoms, so it doesn't follow that the language used in comprehending atomic activity will suffice for the comprehension of cellular activity. A biologist friend of mine calls these "emergent properties". At each level in the hierarchy of life, new terms are needed to account for qualitatively distinct activity.

To go back to Derk's example, it may be true that hydrogen and oxygen combine to form something that is fundamentally different from the two of them individually. If so, we should not suppose that the language that is adequate to them individually will also be adequate to them in concert.

Eddie 6:07 PM

 

Explanation Through Origins
Of course, Derk isn't really attempting to account for morality at an atomic level, and I don't think anyone else is either, even if they hold out for its eventual possibility. The real interest here is in the use of evolutionary theory to account for morality. This effort is more plausible because the concept of the human is much closer to the concept of the animal in the hierarchy of life than it is to the concept of the atomic. Indeed, a great deal of our existence can be explained by recourse to the terms we use to explain animal behavior generally. The prominence of eating, sleeping, and mating in the human world can be explained largely in terms of their animal basis.

The question, however, is whether all of morality can be explained by reference to the survival of the species.

It does stand to reason, of course, that any traits which encourage survival will be the traits of the creatures that survive. Love, for example, may well originate as a way of strengthening communal bonds, which presumably confers some kind of advantage in the struggle for existence. But this does not explain what love is for us, unless you can defend the thought that all of our activity has as its conscious aim the survival of the species. I don't know how this claim can be defended. Surely human beings have goods other than just making it from day to day.

This issue interests me in part because I think conservatism, as an approach to politics, does push us to understand things by their origins. The conservative, however, seeks to understand the origins of human practices in their own terms. Why does constitutional government emerge? What desires did it satisfy, and does it still satisfy them today? Put in this form, the study of origins can explain quite a bit. Since we take our way of life for granted, we often fail to understand the satisfaction it brings. A study of origins helps us to see the world before that way of life emerged.

Evolutionary theory, applied to the human world, has too much of that "gotcha" aspect to give much of an explanation. Some people take a special delight in showing that seemingly noble traits, such as dignity and self-control, have their true meaning in something more common. In this case, I believe that the explanation of where something came from is not adequate as an explanation of what something is. Many philosophers call this the genetic fallacy. Generally speaking, I don't agree that genetic explanations are fallacious explanations, but I do here. We should only reduce one set of terms to another if we can do so without loss of meaning.

Eddie 6:06 PM

Monday, November 18, 2002

 

Is and Ought
I was looking at The Adarwinist Reader, "a secular clearinghouse for darwinian skeptics and non-believers" according to its author, and ran across the following statement of interest to me:

Ought cannot be derived from is. Too Bad. It’s the darwinist’s only option.

Jim (the author) is responding to those who look to the theory of evolution to make sense of our social and political world. (For more context, go here.) Insofar as people follow a simple-minded evolutionary equation, i.e., something exists = it must have survival value = it must be good, I agree with his criticism. In general, however, I find these claims to be suspect.

To begin, it isn't clear at all to me that the Darwinist's only option is to derive ought from is. If there is a way to derive the ought independently from the is (which I will challenge below), I don't see why the Darwinist should be excluded. Kant, who upholds this distinction, separates actions done from duty, i.e. what one ought to do, from actions done from desire, i.e., from nature. It is perfectly conceivable that evolution has "programmed" us with certain instincts yet believe that our moral being is independent from that nature. That doing the right thing might sometimes conflict with our natural urges (shaped by evolution) would even explain why being moral can be so difficult. I believe, in fact, that this is Robert Wright's position.

But why should we believe to begin with that the ought cannot be derived from the is? In ancient philosophy, Plato can be read as making this distinction insofar as he claims that our knowledge of the "forms" comes from some process of recollection, not sense-experience. For example, we cannot derive our concept of the circle from circular things in the world, because no circular thing in the world is perfectly circular. Thus our idea of the circle must come from somewhere else. If our concept of what ought to be is a concept of moral perfection, the same reasoning would apply. Virtue then is simply a gift of the gods, as Socrates concludes in the Meno.

In modern philosophy, I think the radical distinction stems from the idea that what is, i.e., the world of our experience, is best explained by modern science. Since the fundamental concepts of modern science (mass, velocity, etc.) have no particular moral significance, it appears that the moral domain would need to find its justifications from somewhere else. Bacon appeals to revealed religion while Kant argues that reason can make moral claims a priori of experience; in either case, science can do its business without trespassing significantly into ethics and politics.

These reasons for radically separating the is and the ought are still with us, even if the various solutions for grounding moral claims have fallen out of favor. At the root of this conviction perhaps is a sense of our freedom to remake our world. In fact, if the ought is any ideal worth its name, it seems that it should be leading our construction of what is, not vice versa. Morality must stand out in front of the corrupt world we find ourselves in.

In response to this radical division, I would initially point out again the difficulty in finding an alternative place to locate the ethical. Revealed religion seems too arbitrary (whose religion? which revelation?), and a priori moral absolutes either come off as a philosopher's self-absorbed fantasy or they seem to smuggle in their experiences while no one is looking. Furthermore, it is hard not to be struck by the tyrannical nature of each approach. There is the world we live in and then these moral pronouncements from somewhere else.

Conservatism presupposes the ability to discern the ought from the is. As has been said here and many places elsewhere, conservatism is not simply the desire to hold onto the past for the past's sake. It is a mindfulness of the past in order to identify one's strengths and adapt those strengths to present circumstances. But what is history other than a record of what "is"? How do we understand the possibilities of human flourishing without examining the actual attempts of human beings to flourish?

To be sure, one cannot discern the ought simply by abstracting from what is, because what is never fully displays what ought to be. This is Socrates' argument and it seems right to me. Can we not infer, however, what an organism intends from what it does, even if it fails somewhat to satisfy its intentions? Doctors have knowledge of the health of the body, even though they have never seen a perfectly healthy human. This knowledge is a knowledge of what is good for the body, of what the body ought to be like. Likewise, the human spirit has its own indications of health and corruption.

I have said that conservatism discerns the ought from the is. I did not say that it derives it. Derivation is a concept that finds its home in mathematics and formal logic. It suggests a step-by-step path of reasoning that begins from certain principles and leads to certain conclusions. Conservatism, as I understand it, distrusts this demand for certainty, and rests instead on uncertain signs: pleasure and pain, peace of mind and anxiety, order and dissolution, among others. The good may not show itself perfectly, but it shows itself nonetheless.

Eddie 4:43 PM

Sunday, November 17, 2002

 

Entitlement and Responsibility
In my post below I spoke of two seemingly conflicted emotions that I experienced in my recent trip to the emergency room. One emotion was the anxiety building into anger that I felt while initially waiting for medical attention for my daughter. The other emotion was the deep sense of gratitude I felt at having these facilities available to me in the first place.

The first emotion sprang, I believe, from a sense of entitlement. Although intellectually I knew better, I felt that my daughter should not be waiting so long to be evaluated. The "should" here is instructive; it indicates that I felt a moral obligation on the part of others to take care of my daughter. It speaks also to my helplessness in the situation. If her condition had deteriorated, I doubt I could have done very much. So I felt entitled to demand from others what I could not provide myself.

This sense of entitlement was not altogether irrational. If the hospital receives government funds, then I have contributed, and I was a paying customer as well (mainly through insurance). Nonetheless, a sense of entitlement can be irrational insofar as it encourages you to make yourself the center of the universe. Thankfully I was able intellectually to see the bigger picture, and I trusted, more or less, the institution of the hospital itself. My sense of entitlement was conditioned also by my gratitude that these people, with their immense training, were here with the cutting-edge technology of American medicine.

To see the world through entitlement is dangerous. It is a strange form of empowerment: I cannot help myself, so I demand that you help me. Of course, a person unwilling to make this demand at all could very easily find himself neglected. Had I waited much longer, I know that I would have gone back to the front desk to make contact again. (The squeaky wheel gets the grease.) At the same time, it seems necessary that this sense of entitlement be conditioned by the virtues I've already mentioned: perspective, trust, and gratitude.

To act from entitlement is to act from a responsibility toward oneself in a situation where one cannot be fully self-sufficient. I am struck then by the situation the next day where I was discouraged from taking responsibility to make sure that my daughter was receiving the proper medication. I don't believe this is healthy.

When we think about our institutions, it is necessary to think not only of what they do and why they do it, but also to think about the human character needed to sustain them and the character they actually encourage. Whatever our technical skills and technological resources, we must have certain political skills and spiritual resources to participate in our institutions without letting them become our masters.

Eddie 5:28 AM

Saturday, November 16, 2002

 

A Recent Experience
Thursday night I took my little girl to the emergency room. It turned out to not be much of an emergency -- she has bronchitis and had a brief spell where she was laboring to breathe. My medical knowledge is fairly limited, and I got a little scared, so I decided not to take any chances. There were a number of noteworthy experiences throughout the evening.

When I decided to take her to the emergency room, I got her dressed to leave the house and went next door to get a neighbor to drive us to the hospital. My wife was at a school board meeting and we only have one vehicle operating right now. Thankfully, my neighbor was home and the hospital was close by. Checking in, I was surprised to find out that the hospital already had all my daughter's information, including insurance. This was her first trip to the emergency room, but she has been at the hospital facilities for other procedures; it is nice to see that their systems share information.

After checking in, we sat in a waiting room for about 25 minutes before being seen. Those were somewhat long and anxious minutes, and I probably would have become angry if it had been much longer. I say this to point out how irrational we can be in these moments. My daughter was still having some trouble breathing, but probably not as much, and she certainly wasn't getting worse. Furthermore, if she were to get worse, we were pretty much sitting in an ideal location for it. Nonetheless, because I didn't really know what was going on with her, my patience and understanding were fairly low. How easily we take for granted what we have.

After that wait, a nurse took her vitals and wrote down the reason for our trip. We then went to a pediatric waiting room, where we waited for about an hour before being seen by the doctor. (They did take an x-ray and a urine sample in the interim.) Since my daughter's breathing had improved on its own a great deal by that point, I was mainly bored. It was interesting that there were a couple of other mothers in the waiting room with their children, and these cases looked even less like emergencies than ours did. I don't know for sure, but I assume I was witnessing one of the way health care works for the uninsured. Anyhow, we met with the doctor, he checked her over a little more, and then prescribed some medication. Altogether, the trip took around two hours -- probably not too bad for an emergency room visit that wasn't much of an emergency.

My only real frustration happened the next day. The emergency room doctor told us he was prescribing a z-pack (sp?), which is some kind of intensive dosage that ends after three days or so. When I had the prescription filled, however, I got a bottle that said take twice daily for 10 days. Also, the prescription was dated 10-12-02 when it should have been 10-14-02. Needless to say, I wanted to confirm that I had the right prescription. That turned out to be a problem. At first, the hospital people couldn't confirm anything because they didn't have her records available at the time. They said they would call back when they did, which they didn't do. When I called back later in the afternoon, I got someone else who was very impatient with me. Even though I had two excellent reasons to be concerned about the prescription, she tried to just pressure me into using the medication I had received from the pharmacy. Finally, she pulled the doctor's notes and told me (I hope it is true) that the doctor had written down z-pack and then crossed it out in his notes. Why he didn't inform us is beyond me. Anyway, I checked the medication on the internet and it looks like the right kind, so I am not very concerned about that. And I wasn't even all that upset at the possibility that I might have been given the wrong prescription. That could have been serious, but mistakes happen and I consider it partially up to me to check these things out. What pissed me off was the woman's attempt to intimidate me into accepting what had been given to me. Don't they want their patients to be conscientious about their treatment? Don't they want mistakes made to be discovered before it is too late?

Anyhow, these are some thoughts as I look into the question of health care in the U.S. On the one hand, thank God for what we have. On the other hand, does the system encourage initiative from its patients? If not, what does that tell us about the health care industry in general?

Eddie 8:10 PM

 

New Horizons
As I said in an earlier post, I have been looking for a subject that the left considers important and that they believe conservatives don't take seriously enough, basically so that I don't just read those I'm already inclined to agree with. I've decided to start looking into the question of health care in the US. If anyone knows any particularly good sites on this, spread the word. And remember that I want to take the left's position as seriously as possible, so sites that intelligently establish that position are particularly welcome.

It is safe to say that my belief in markets and distrust of government bureaucracy makes the thought of "socialized medicine" (scarequotes indicate here that I know the term is pejorative!) send chills up my spine. At the same time, I think that a defender of markets need not reflexively be an opponent of a social safety net or governmentally established quality controls. The market, like any other social institution, is founded on trust (epistemically weighty trust, as Jim puts it). As we have seen over the past year or so, when people lose their trust in the market (Enron, tech-bubble bursting, etc....), they sit on their money and the market loses some of its vitality. Yet another ironic case where conservatives should fight a conservative kind of impulse -- the impulse to hole up and ride the financial storm out! Anyhow, if markets require trust, it behooves believers in the market to support measures that build that trust. Social safety nets and governmentally established quality controls do just that, insofar as they give people a sense that they can take some risks without sacrificing their future. This belief may even be irrational -- Social Security comes to mind -- but if measures like these build trust in the general public, they should be taken seriously. Perhaps conservatives should make it a point to educate people to the irrationality of some of these measures, but ultimately perception wins the day here. Laissez-faire economics may make sense in a world where everyone is as smart as Milton Friedman, but we have to work with what we have.

Eddie 12:44 AM

Friday, November 15, 2002

 

Science & Political Temperament
Derk writes on whether the left (progressivism) is more or less sympathetic to modern science than conservatives in a comment to my last post as well as at his website Mind Floss. As he points out, the post-modern element of the left would seem to be inconsistent with the clarity of natural science.

I think he is right, but I would point out first of all that post-modernism is a late wrinkle in the history of the left. To my understanding, the progressive movement in America shared with the world-wide Marxist movement a belief in the power of science to make sense of the human domain. Political science (and related fields like sociology and anthropology) came on the scene. Even today, there is still an echo of the left's sense of intellectual superiority, a sense that reached its zenith probably in the Kennedy administration. That sense of intellectual superiority comes from an earlier era when the left was certain that science was on its side. I believe this is why the evolution/creation debate still has punch; the left enjoys the idea of the backwards traditionalist while the right is reluctant to visibly distance itself from conservative Christians (even if many on the right don't take creationism very seriously).

Post-modernism doesn't handle natural science very well, as can be seen by the laughable attempts at dividing up the scientific community the way the political domain is divided up, e.g. feminist science, etc.... There is an interesting sociology of science, but it doesn't necessarily eviscerate a traditional notion of truth. But post-modernism is akin to modern science insofar as it shares a love of the experimental. As far as I can tell, post-modernism is motivated by a desire to undermine what others take to be real, not for the sake of nihilism, but because the post-moderns maintain hope that a less oppressive order will emerge in the aftermath. That is to say, I don't think, in their heart of hearts, that most post-moderns think truth is simply a function of power. If they did, they would be more like Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic, who understood that the identification of knowledge and power leads to quite a different conclusion than "let's tolerate each other." (I think the image of wolves and sheep is a more apt.) The post-moderns screw themselves by not being able to give an account ultimately of what it would mean for a social order to be less oppressive, but I think that's because they are not thinking that far into the future. Like all utopians, hope displaces understanding.

I agree then with Derk that the contemporary left has developed an uneasy relationship with science. This can be seen with the Greens especially: doomsday science is all good, and everything else is the propaganda of the corporate world. But the left finds its origins in the same distrust of tradition that animates early modern science's rejection of the natural philosophy of Aristotle and the Church. And even if the post-modern left is frustrated by its inability to turn natural science into its own kind of relativism, the experimental spirit is alive in both.

As for conservatism, I have a harder time sorting things out. On the one hand, the conservatives of the early modern period were clearly against the development of experimental science. Under the older Aristotelian/church model, we stood at the center of the universe like actors in a great amphitheater. The natural order reflected the moral order. In calling the natural order into question, Galileo called the moral order into question as well. On the other hand, our culture is heavily shaped by classical liberalism, and our strength stems in large part from our investment in the sciences. Any American calling himself a conservative who is against scientific progress is trying to conserve something that pre-exists America itself. (In a similar manner, conservatives of other cultures are right to be wary of the modern marketplace; it will rip those traditional cultures to shreds. But an American conservative will rightly see those markets as a source of our strength.) The experimental spirit is not fundamental to the conservative temperament, yet our experience with its power should lead us to affirm it. What ends up happening, I believe, is that conservatives hope to bring the fruits of experimentation slowly into the culture, giving the culture time to absorb and make proper use of the new. (The idea of the 50 states as independent political laboratories is an expression of this thought.)

Eddie 2:23 PM

Thursday, November 14, 2002

 

Conservative Temperament, pt. 3
I wanted to respond to one more passage from Jim Ryan's account of the meaning of conservatism. Jim writes:

I would also argue that conservatism is a logical truth. It is never rational to change one's values, as long as one prefers the values, they are consistent with the relevant facts, and they are consistent with each other. Value is simply preference, and it is never rational to do what you do not, all things considered, prefer. The good is the rationally desireable, Hobbes and Hume would have said. But the "reason" part is merely slave to the desires. Rationalism, on the other hand, holds that value is independent of preference. Look at the link between rationalism and progressivism/radicalism: Plato was a rationalist and utopian radical. I submit that Kant is the hero of the 20th C. progressive left. He's Rawls's inspiration. The idea of rationalism is that there is a highly intelligent elite who know what's best even though the rest of us would not prefer it. But as long as you define "prefer" as "coherently and with full information to desire," then rationalism may be seen to be the lunacy that it is: that there can be something desireable that is not desireable.

There are stark options: conservatism v. progressivism. Conservatism is the moderate choice (as I've argued below), and the only one that makes sense. It is therefore a logical truth (a truth the denial of which is literally nonsense).

Insofar as conservatism is a logical truth, then I submit that everyone is a conservative. Someone who acts upon the belief that everything he needed to know he learned in kindergarten is a conservative by this standard. Furthermore, there are plenty of people who have learned that their tradition is the product of hate, prejudice, and the subjugation of others, with the conclusion that it cannot be trustworthy. If a person's experience doesn't contradict this "learning" (in the academy, for example, it is quite easy to have this view rewarded and reinforced), then someone who rejects his tradition would be a conservative by these standards as well.


There is a difference between conservatism and progressivism that does not rest, I believe, on the difference between tautology and contradiction. It comes down to a matter of trust: do you trust your upbringing, your instincts, your culture, or do you not?


Modern science begins not with a trust in sense perception (as is commonly advertised), but with a distrust. Francis Bacon opens The New Organon with a statement of this distrust:

Now that the errors which have hitherto prevailed, and which will prevail for ever, should (if the mind be left to go its own way) either by the natural force of the understanding or by help of the aids and instruments of logic, one by one, correct themselves, was not a thing to be hoped for, because the primary notions of things which the mind readily and passively imbibes, stores up, and accumulates (and it is from them that all the rest flow) are false, confused, and overhastily abstracted from the facts; nor are the secondary and subseqent notions less arbitrary and inconstant; whence it follows that the entire fabric of human reason which we employ in the inquisition of nature is badly put together and built up, and like some magnificent structure without any foundation. ...There was but one course left, therefore -- to try the whole thing anew upon a better plan, and to commence a total reconstruction of sciences, arts, and all human knowledge, raised upon the proper foundations.

To put it more briefly, it is human nature to see what it wants to see and hear what it wants to hear. To see nature as it really is (and not just as we want it to be), according to Bacon, we must learn to forget our preconceptions and focus on what is most certain in the phenomena. The experiment itself, with its controlled environment and its selective prodding of nature, is a way of overcoming our habitual thoughts about the world.

Modernity is the extension of this distrust into every area of life. Given the power of modern science, and even the less-heralded but impressive results of modern historical research, it is not hard to see why many might pin their hopes on a progressive approach to the truth. For these people, the past never quite lives up to its billing; what is needed is an experimental approach to life and politics akin to the approach of science.

To look for a powerful response to modern skepticism, one can go back to Plato. (No, I don't think he is a rationalist or a radical utopian.) The Socratic approach presupposes that the truth is within us, just waiting to be brought forth by proper questioning. This approach requires a trust in our culture and upbringing. It is ultimately the approach I think is needed for understanding the human domain, because it pushes us to remember why we made the world the way we did. (The study of nature, on the other hand, might benefit from the distrust already mentioned.) Thus I consider Platonic philosophy a true representative of the conservative temperament in philosophy.

In conclusion, I don't think that progressivism is logically contradictory or even terribly unreasonable. And some cultures may be so dysfunctional, so inadequate to the human spirit, that progressivism is the rational response. I just don't think this is true of us.

Eddie 12:43 PM

 

Conservative Temperament, pt. 2
I also want to respond to some of Jim Ryan's comments on religion and conservatism. (Look to my post below for context.)

First:

Conservatives think God is reasonable and won't advise us to do things that don't make sense. But if you are prepared to protect something that obviously doesn't matter "because it's holy," then you might just be a reactionary. In fact, if you vote Republican and think that morality stays what it is whether there is a God or not, you're a conservative. If you think God is the basis of morality, then you're definitely a reactionary.

How odd to define conservatism in such a way as to exclude those who believe that God is the basis of morality. Isn't this one of those traditional beliefs we should have at least some trust in, or does it not hold up against the evidence? Actually, I agree with the point that it is a mistake to hold onto religious dogma that doesn't fit our experience, but I would expect us to be a little circumspect about using our personal existence as proof of the failure of longstanding articles of faith. As I tried to show in my last post, conservatism is not a philosophy in itself, so it cannot be the basis of morality. What then is so peculiar about thinking that morality stems from the Creator? Saying that "God is reasonable" makes it sound like God is a lot like us but just smarter.

Next:

...Iannone’s contention that we can’t “have morality without a lively belief in God and transcendent truth, something higher than man to which man is bound...” is wrong. God is irrelevant to moral reasoning. In fact, even if he commanded us to live some other way than the way we coherently and informedly prefer, his command would be irrelevant.

In response to Carol Iannone's claim that:

Without a belief in the transcendent and its embodiment in custom and tradition, such guides as consensus, common sense, and even nature and reason will prove an insufficient basis of social order, being...prone to the ‘unlimited desires’ that...must be held in check.

Given my claim in my last post that conservatism is at its best when it understands its tradition (and doesn't just trust in it), I think Jim and I would agree that revelation is not enough. Insofar as Carol Iannone is arguing for that -- I'm not sure but the second half of the quotation suggests it -- I would take issue with her. But the quotation begins with a notion of "the transcendent and its embodiment in custom and tradition," which suggests something else. Custom and tradition are human makings, but human beings are not their own makers (ultimately), so all human makings must be judged in terms of something that is not itself made. Even if we call that something "nature," which I'm not unhappy to do, it is important to realize that we don't come to terms with our nature in the wild or by looking at other members of the animal kingdom. We find our nature through culture's cultivation of it. That our nature must be brought forth from within us may not justify a traditional belief in God, but it does make sense of the idea that the truth is transcendent. Culture, i.e., custom and tradition, must be judged by something other than itself, and yet the only one capable of bringing that judgment is the one brought forth by that very culture in the first place. If we are fortunate (or, if you prefer, by God's grace), we can, from our cultivated being, see what it is that culture intended in the first place. The intent stands beyond any particular cultural manifestation, but only someone so cultivated could have any sense of that intent at all. I'm happy to call that a transcendent truth.


Revelation is not enough, because we must understand what we are told for it to be wisdom for us. Revelation embodied in custom and tradition, however, ceases to simply be revelation. For custom and tradition to take it up, it must infuse social practice and our collective cultural identity. In doing so, the truth of the revelation will show itself. Certain aspects will be conveniently forgotten (or interpreted away), like Jesus' command to sell our belongings. The living commandments, however, will likely survive in the life of the people themselves.


Conservatives are wary of the tyranny of abstract principles, and so might have reason to be skeptical of those who claim to have visions and what not. It is perfectly reasonable, however, to think that morality stems from the Creation, i.e. nature, but that we cannot reach our highest calling simply by looking at the Creation itself. We must pay attention instead to what human beings are being pushed to become. Surely the tradition of the church is one place to look for that.

Eddie 2:10 AM

Wednesday, November 13, 2002

 

The Conservative Temperament
Through several twisting back roads (Instapundit -> Letter from Gotham -> The Spleenville Journal -> some Spleenville Journal comments -> Philosoblog, to be exact) I found an interesting discussion from Jim Ryan on the meaning of conservatism. Since it fits well with some thoughts I developed in relation to the Wellstone memorial, I thought I would take a look at some of the points that he makes. (Note: Not a Fisking! Not a Fisking!)


In a post entitled Conservatism, Jim writes:

Being conservative means accepting traditional values on trust; until you come across enough evidence to reject one of these values, you will not. But if you cling to traditional values, come what may, no matter what the evidence against them, then you might just be a reactionary.

I like Jim's point that a conservative is not universally against change. I seem to remember that Edmund Burke thought that the French regime could stand some reforming, but that such change should be based on elements within the French tradition itself (instead of the abstract principles of liberty, equality, and the brotherhood of man). I even like the thought of distinguishing the conservative from the reactionary, but I would state it somewhat differently. To my mind, a reactionary is someone who believes he can (or should) live identically to his ancestors, not realizing that it is impossible to truly imitate the spirit of those who were not imitators themselves.


It is not clear to me, however, what it would mean to accept a value (traditional or otherwise) on trust. How would you evaluate whether the value holds up to the evidence? Let's take, for example, the value of freedom of association. I suppose the relevant evidence would be the good and bad things that come from having this value. But if we try to judge in this way, where are we getting our notion of good and bad from? Wouldn't this be part of our conservative package? As I see it, the problem is that, under this formulation, it looks like we need some fundamental standards grounded independently of the tradition in order to judge the tradition.


While I do believe that conservatives have an inherent trust in their tradition, and begin from that trust, they should not be satisfied with simply being trusting. I am reminded of the story (probably fictional) of the woman who always cut the sides off a turkey before cooking it. When asked why, she didn't really have an answer except to say that that was how she learned it from her mother. When she later asked her mother, she found out that it was because the mother cooked in a small oven and had to get the turkey to fit. The woman acted from trust, but not from understanding. Rather than being imitators of the past, we should strive to make the wisdom of the past our own. When we understand why our traditions have taken shape as they have, we become equal to our ancestors, and not simply beholden to them.


To say that we can understand our traditions is to say then that understanding is not fundamentally traditional. Thus I would claim that conservatism is more of a temperament than a philosophy. A conservative looks to tradition as a trustworthy place to find truth, believing that we can only safely venture upon new ground if we can maintain what makes us strong. As Jim indicates elsewhere, those strengths may very well differ from one tradition to another. An American conservative will likely not emphasize the same truths as a Chinese conservative.

Eddie 5:29 PM

Tuesday, November 12, 2002

 

Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places

Like the great majority of people, I tend to go read the people I already expect to agree with. (How lucky I am when I find out otherwise! It is much easier to be corrected by someone you feel akin to.) I intend, however, to push myself to pursue perspectives that might rub me the wrong way. To do that, I want to find a topic that the political left considers pressing and see what I can learn from it. I will be looking over the next day or so, and I would appreciate it if anyone stumbling across this blog has a suggestion. (The comments section sometimes loads slowly, so I thank you for your patience.)

Eddie 7:26 PM

 

Common Decency (continued)

There were a number of important objections to the Wellstone memorial. One objection was that it was simply inappropriate to use a funeral service as an oppurtunity to push a political agenda. Others rightfully pointed out that people use funeral services for all sorts of agendas. I've been to a number of funerals that were mainly evangelical in nature. I am actually more comfortable with the latter since it deals with our universal, non-partisan fear of death, but I know that some are deeply irritated by such things, so I won't presume to judge on this point.

What bothered me was that it was a public service where a number of Republicans (and other non-Democrats like Governor Ventura) had come to pay their respects. However sincere or insincere their presence might have been, it is one of the highmarks of civilization when people put aside their political differences to recognize a common humanity. We take it for granted that people will show this kind of propriety, which speaks to how ingrained it is in us. But like all things we take for granted, it is easy to miss the profound significance of this cultural achievement. It has not always been the case nor is it the case everywhere now that political opponents uphold limits to their antagonisms. Reading Homer's Iliad, it is striking how routine it is for the warriors to defile the bodies of their slain enemies, and how much they fear the same thing happening to them. I am in awe that our ancestors found a way beyond this.

If the memorial service had been private, or if there were clear warnings about what shape it would take, I would not have had a significant objection, even if I personally think that it trivializes our confrontation with death to use that confrontation as an opportunity to push something more mundane. (The failure to grasp the significance of a moment is not all that uncommon -- I am reminded of Dershowitz being called to give his learned opinion about Clinton's impeachment proceedings and his deciding to talk about something else.) As it was, the non-Democrats were trapped into being a part of something they could not affirm or being forced to leave. It was a terrible breach of civility. It was ungracious and demeaned the presence of those who did not intend to participate in a political rally. (This probably includes many of the Democrats who were there as well, who may have supported the political agenda but did not come to the service simply because of that support.)

I do think that conservatives make these mistakes less often (because of their respect for tradition), but Republicans are certainly not blameless. As much as I despised Clinton's demeaning of the Presidential Office, I cannot ignore the Republicans' contribution to that demeaning as well. I believe Clinton's sexual conduct was legally relevant to the charge of perjury that faced him, but I also believe that Henry Hyde and others made a serious mistake in publishing all of the lurid details. (Did we really need to know about the cigar?) Not only did the Republicans play to the sensationalist element of the story, but they encouraged the Democrats to overlook (at least publically) what was so despicable about Clinton himself. There was blame enough to go around.

We need desparately to reacquaint ourselves with our cultural accomplishments. The things we take for granted (like the peaceful transfer of political power that happened last week) are the things our ancestors lived and died to bring into being. These accomplishments frame our political disputes, which makes them inherently political, but we would do well to understand these boundaries before messing with them. We are not a constitutional republic simply because of the Constitution, or even primarily because of it. We are a constitutional republic because of the republican (note the lowercase "r"!) constitution of our character. If we pay attention to our history and other places on this globe, I think we will find reasons to be impressed with what we have inherited.

Eddie 7:13 PM

 

Common Decency
Andrew Sullivan has an interesting post concerning poll data showing how the Wellstone memorial/rally probably cost Mondale the election. The blog world has beaten this like a dead horse, but I do think it raises important questions about the limits of politics. For people to be intelligible to one another, even in disagreement, there must be common ground. We would do well to think about what that common ground is.

Eddie 8:46 AM

 

A Test

Which has more integrity: the life you live or the life you think you ought to live?

Eddie 1:41 AM

Monday, November 11, 2002

 

To pick up from last night's post, I am curious if it is possible for us to fail ourselves as a nation by choosing a course of action that goes against our character. To my mind, Thucydides suggests that the Athenians did that when they withdrew Alcibiades from the invasion of Sicily. The remaining general, Nicias, was a noble man but was not willing to take the risks that this bold venture called for.

Alcibiades bothers us because of his naked ambition, his desire to achieve glory by leading a great nation to glorious victory. We have an aversion to empire building and justify our foreign policy ventures in terms of self-defense or the assistance of those too weak to help themselves.

If we are honest with ourselves, however, our imperial desires are not that far off from that of Alcibiades. Should we be ashamed to want the Chinese Communist system to fail in such a way that meaningful reform is necessary? Don't we want the Arab world to come to terms with what, in our eyes, is a deeply dysfunctional culture? We wage a cultural war on these regimes daily, but hesitate to wage war militarily.

This hesitation has its virtues. For change to be real, it usually has to come from within. Better to lead by example than to make progress look unappealing by forcing it upon others. Furthermore, we imagine that the international scene will be more stable if there is a general policy of non-interference at work.

The bottom line, however, is that we want change to happen, and we have good reasons for wanting it, and we have the power to help that change along. We choose our tactics to fit the world as we find it, but we should not be confused about our purposes. Toleration ceases to be a virtue when it becomes an excuse to not engage others. It is through engagement that the human spirit improves. (Note: It is somewhat ironic that the Europeans blame us for being ignorant of the world and yet for being imperialists too. Pick your poison!) There is no knowledge without confrontation.

Eddie 4:09 PM

 

My original 15 minutes of fame came from a post on Thucydides, so I thought I would make that the topic of my first serious blog post as well. (Actually, I got almost 48 hours of semi-fame since the Volokhs don't post on the weekend!) Anyhow, I have been reading Thucydides with my Great Books class so the book has been on my mind again.

After 12 years of war, Athens and Sparta finally arrived at a truce. Not all of the allies accepted this truce, but for the most part there was peace. Athens considers then the possibility of launching an invasion of Sicily, which was no small feat at the time. Two generals speak on the matter: Nicias and Alcibiades. Nicias, instrumental in securing the truce with Sparta, was both the elder and more conservative of the two generals. He argued against the expedition on the grounds that it would spread Athens too thin, especially since Sparta might be more than happy to end the truce if the circumstances were favorable. Alcibiades, a young spirited general who always lived beyond himself, argued for the expedition on the grounds that a quick strike would bring the cities of Sicily to their knees. (I'm abbreviating the argument here.) Thucydides indicates, through Nicias' speech and through his description of Alcibiades, that Alcibiades was mainly interested in making a name for himself.

As it turns out, the expedition is a complete failure. Alcibiades is recalled early in the battle to face a trial set up by his political enemies. (A man like him would have quite a few!) Nicias hesitates in a number of key moments and ends up losing the whole force (and his own life). Thucydides writes movingly about how no one deserved such a fate less than Nicias. Also, Alcibiades decides to not return to Athens, going instead to the Spartans, whom he encourages to engage in war against Athens.

One might expect from all of this that Thucydides would blame the whole mess on Alcibiades. Instead, Thucydides indicates in a number of places that the reason the invasion of Sicily failed is because the Athenians removed their support of Alcibiades. There is also the suggestion that, in failing to support Alcibiades, they failed to live up to their own character. The reckless Alcibiades is presented as an image of Athens itself.

All of this brings me to the question I want to consider: what is the character of American democracy and is it possible for us to fail it? Thucydides does not appear to be a great fan of democracy (even though he was Athenian as well), but he seems to think that democracies succeed when they remain true to themselves. In this case, remaining true means living beyond themselves, always wanting more than what they have. Many would characterize the United States the same way. The question is: do we hurt ourselves by trying to deny our nature? (I'm tired; I'll write more on this tomorrow.)

Eddie 12:28 AM

Sunday, November 10, 2002

 

Comments added!

Eddie 11:48 PM

 

Success!

Eddie 8:56 PM

 

Trying again....

Eddie 8:55 PM

 

Testing... I'm trying to see if I successfully changed my name at the end of the post.

Eddie 8:32 PM