Philosophy & Sundry Other Things

Benedict, Homosexuality and Equality Laws: What He's NOT Saying

2010-02-02T07:47:00.007-05:00

Let me start with a couple of caveats that I'd like any readers to keep in mind. I do not think homosexual relationships are immoral; on the contrary: for years I've been a strong advocate of gay rights and have given money and time to the cause. I also think that the Roman Catholic's teachings on sexuality are flawed from top to bottom. But Benedict VI has objected to proposed laws in Britain that would ban discrimination against homosexual people. If we want to argue with he is saying, we need to be clear about what he isn't saying.

Consider a hypothetical case. Mary is in charge of hiring a new staff member for a Roman Catholic organization in a small town. There are two candidates and because it's a small town, Mary knows both of them personally. One, Alex, is heterosexual. The other, Robin, is homosexual by orientation but believes homosexual relations are wrong and leads a chaste life. Mary knows both of these things. Alex could do the job competently. But Robin, as it turns out, is clearly better qualified. Should Mary reject Robin for the position on the grounds that the Church is opposed to homosexuality?

What would the Pope say? Based on what the Church actually teaches (teachings that then-Cardinal Ratzinger had a large role in articulating) I'd expect him to say this: it would be wrong for Mary to reject Robin simply because Robin is homosexual. Repeat that: if Benedict were to speak consistently with Church teaching, he would say that this sort of discrimination would be wrong.

Now add a third candidate, Kerry. Kerry is homosexual and has a same-sex partner. Kerry also disagrees with Church teaching on homosexuality. However, Kerry is even better qualified than Robin. What would Benedict say about this case?

My understanding: he'd draw a line here. Neither Robin's nor Kerry's orientation is the issue. The issues are: how do they act on that orientation, and what are their views on the Church's teaching? Benedict's view, as I understand it, is that the law shouldn't compel the Church to erase that line.

Is this what the law would do? I don't know. I haven't studied the legislation and I'm not a lawyer. But if it would, I'd find that troubling. The trouble doesn't come from sympathy with the Church's teaching on sexuality; I'm utterly unsympathetic to that. The trouble is that, in general, if an organization is in the business of advocating certain views, it ought to be able to take that into account when it decides who to hire. Suppose an organization takes defending view X as part of its mission. If a job candidate publicly rejects view X or openly behaves in ways that X wouldn't allow, then in general, the organization ought to be able to take that into account.

Of course, there's a good deal else that's troubling in this case. My own view is that what the Church teaches about homosexuality is not just mistaken but has done a good deal of harm. Laws that forbid discrimination against homosexuals are a public recognition of the wrongness of the way gay people have so often been treated. The idea of granting exemptions is more than a little uncomfortable.

One way of doing rough justice might be to say that organizations who want to discriminate in this way should get no public funds. The Church, of course, gets no direct public funding. However, in the USA (can't speak about the UK) some Church organizations that provide social services do. One solution is to say: either don't discriminate or don't take public funds. On balance, that's the solution I incline towards, but it comes at a cost: some of these organizations provide valuable services that might not be easily replaced. That said, whatever the right solution, my purpose here was more limited: it was to be clear about what Benedict and the Church are not saying. Without that, there's no chance of a productive discussion.

Climate change and conspiracy thinking

2009-11-27T10:41:00.008-05:00

Not sure what this is worth, but it struck me.

The gulf between people who believe in climate change and those who don't is so wide that at first it seemed to me that the two sides must be reasoning according to different rules. But on reflection, that's not quite it.

People who believe that climate change is real reason something like this: scientists have observed many phenomena that are well-explained if we assume climate change is real, but would be too much of a coincidence otherwise. And so it's reasonable to believe in climate change; it's the best explanation.

Climate change skeptics reason something like this: we have observed many reports of alleged phenomena that supposedly point to climate change. These reports would be well-explained if we assume that a cabal of anti-capitalist scientists has conspired to lie, cherry-pick data and generally misrepresent things, but would be too much of a coincidence otherwise.

That's a bit simple, but you get the idea. The form of the reasoning isn't so different, but people who think climate change is real trust that overall, climate scientists aren't cooking the books; people who don't believe in climate change focus on the reports themselves rather than what they report, and see evidence of an intellectual conspiracy.

Of course, for the climate skeptic's reasoning to work, climate change must be much less antecedently probable than the existence of a massive, powerful, cross-national, cross-linguistic, cross-disciplinary cabal.

I'd guess there's a broader difference: people who take science seriously are likely to be suspicious of conspiracy theories for a simple reason: massive conspiracies call for a lot of moving parts. People being what they are, it's way too easy for sand to get in the gears.

It's Magic

2009-11-11T08:24:00.009-05:00

Andy Cullison has an interesting blog post that sketches an analysis of the concept of magic. He offers various reasons why the exercise might be worthwhile, not least that the notion of magic shows up in some discussions of causation and influence. I spent some time a few years back (don't ask...) looking through the some of the literature, primary and secondary, on magic as understood by people who believe(d) in it. I also think it's interesting to look at the notion of magic, though for somewhat different reasons than Andy offers. And so a few thoughts.

Andy suggests thinking of magic as a property of events. That probably works for the recent philosophy literature that he has in mind; there the idea of "magic" is used in a schematic, casual sort of way there. It works less well for "real" magic -- that is, for what people who took magic seriously had in mind.

One reason is that "magic" applied to many things -- spells, potions, rituals, substances, symbols... and at least for folk magic, what links the various cases is as much a matter of family resemblances as anything else. Whether "the folk" would have thought that a love potion and a curse brought about their results by way of a common property is unlikely, I would guess. The efficacy of a curse might have something to do with demonic involvement. Whether that would be so for a wart charm or a "magical" cure is more doubtful.

That said, we can point to recurring themes in magic. Perhaps most important, things that worked straightforwardly, reliably and without any sense of the obscure or mysterious wouldn't have counted as magic. Though they don't just mean the same thing, there's a reason why "magic" and "occult" are associated. "Occult" properties are hidden and inaccessible. Whatever made magical things work was often thought of as "occult" in that way and for the theoreticians of magic, "occult" served as a technical term.

We can add to the list: magic often depended on sympathies and antipathies. Harming someone by harming their image is an example of (particularly unsympathetic) sympathetic magic. A good deal of magic had an element of action-at-a-distance about it. Magic was suspect because at least some of it was thought to be demonic, but some theoreticians of magic would protest that this wasn't always so. Some important forms of magic were closely tied to astrological ideas. Spell-casting embodies the idea that the will as such can influence the world.

I mentioned "theoreticians" of magic because such there were. And to get a feel for how complex the notion of magic really is, we might ask: is magic, supposing there is any, supernatural?

It may come as a surprise that the answer isn't simply yes. Consider, for example, Giambattista della Porta's 1558 tome Natural Magic. Even a casual look makes clear that there was no simple distinction between what we might think of as magic and what we might think of as science. Another example: William Gilbert's famous treatise on magnetism. Some parts seem like observational science. But Gilbert understood what we would think of as the earth's magnetic field as a manifestation of the Soul of the World. Supernatural? If your view of the world is broadly Neo-Platonic, then the "natural/supernatural" distinction gets blurry.

Platonic and Neo-Platonic ideas had an unmistakable influence on Renaissance magical thinkers such as Ficino and Agrippa, and this reminds us of something: the rich notion of magic that these thinkers worked with gets its sense within a cosmological picture that most of us have abandoned. We simply don't think of "nature" the way they did. Here's a lovely quote from Plotinus:

This One-All, therefore, is a sympathetic total and stands as one living being; the far is near; it happens as in one animal with its separate parts: talon, horn, finger, and any other member are not continuous and yet are effectively near; intermediate parts feel nothing, but at a distant point the local experience is known. Correspondent things not side by side but separated by others placed between, the sharing of experience by dint of like condition- this is enough to ensure that the action of any distant member be transmitted to its distant fellow. Where all is a living thing summing to a unity there is nothing so remote in point of place as not to be near by virtue of a nature which makes of the one living being a sympathetic organism.

The Cosmos is a sympathetic totality; Ficino and Agrippa would have enthusiastically agreed. If you think about nature that way, the idea of magic itself will seem much more "natural."

There's another part of the magical world-view that's in the same neighborhood: the world isn't just a place with mechanical links; it's a place knit together with links of meaning. Renaissance magical thinkers -- hardly the first to do so -- made a good deal of the idea of "correspondences" -- links among parts of the world that we might think of as bad metaphors, but that they saw as magical resources. Ficino's Three Books of Life are chock-a-block with charming and benign examples of ordinary substances -- honey and gold, for example, that are filled with the astral virtues of the Solar temperament. The magic of sigils and signs was a more threatening case of similar connections.

There's volumes more that could be said, and I'm no scholar. What intrigues me about the concept of magic (as I hope even this brief discussion suggests) is partly how rich and complex it is. But perhaps even more interesting is how elusive and all but inaccessible the idea is if we think of the world as we've grown accustomed to thinking.

Needless to say, this is no complaint against science. It's just a reminder that when non-magical thinking moderns invoke the term "magic," what they have in mind is the dried husk of a notion that's mostly lost but still enchanting.

How Should Sleeping Beauty Bet?

2009-11-07T08:04:00.004-05:00

I don't get out much philosophically these days: too many administrative stray cats to herd. But I do know that there's a puzzle called "Sleeping Beauty" that epistemologists have taken an interest in, and last night I ran across a brief account. (It was in this piece by Roy Sorenson in the estimable online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.) Epistemic paradoxes are sometimes about the odd contours of ignorance, and on this one my ignorance extends to knowing nothing about the literature on the puzzle beyond the brief bit in Sorenson's essay. And so I treat it merely as an amuse-esprit. Trained epistemologists are free to point out where I've gone wrong.

Here's the puzzle. Sleeping Beauty is an ideal reasoner. It's Sunday night and she knows this: a fair coin will be flipped, though she won't see the result. If it lands Heads, she'll be given a sleeping potion, awakened on Monday and asked for the probability that the coin came up heads. If it lands Tails, she'll be given the potion, awakened on Monday, asked for the probability that the coin came up Heads, and then given another potion which will put her back to sleep and make her forget what happened on Monday. Then on Tuesday she'll be awakened again and asked the same question: what's the probability that the coin came up heads?

How should she answer? Give it a think and then I'll tell you what I'd say.

My thought is that we get the best answer if we start with a nearby question and if we think about things really concretely. And so suppose 1,000 different Sleeping Beauties play the game. There will be about 500 Beauties whose coin comes up heads and about 500 whose coin came up Tails. Also, there will be 1,500 "Wake and guess" events. About 500 of them will be Mondays, following a Heads, about 500 will be Mondays following a Tails, and the remaining 500-odd will be Tuesdays following a Tails. Now suppose each Beauty, on waking, was asked not for the probability that her coin came up Heads, but just asked straight-out whether her coin came up Heads. And suppose that all the Beauties give the same answer each time: No. Then 1,000 of these Beautiful guesses will have been right.

That fact should fix the ideal probability assignment. Since any given Beauty is an ideal reasoner, she can figure this out. And since the story we've told is the sum total of what she knows about her situation, she has no reason to add any fidgets to the reasoning. She would bet against Heads at 2:1 odds. Her subjective probability for Tails will be 2/3 and so her credence for Heads will be 1/3.

Perhaps there's some controversy about this among epistemologists. If so, I await enlightenment. Meantime, think of it as a nifty little probability puzzle. Whether it tells us much about knowledge I leave to the experts.

A Nifty Bar Bet

2009-10-24T11:18:00.006-04:00

These days in foundations of quantum theory, there's a lot of interest in so-called "pseudo-telepathic games." Quantum systems can be correlated in ways that don't make much sense classically, and the correlations have some apparently spooky consequences. We can describe guessing games that pit teams with quantum resources against teams who only have classical resources. The quantum teams are virtually certain to do better than the classical teams. It appears that the members of the quantum teams are somehow able to communicate telepathically, even though there actually isn't any way to use the quantum resources to send messages -- hence the name pseudo-telepathy.

The quantum games are fuel for another post. What I want to do here is describe a purely classical game that has something of the feel of a quantum pseudo-telepathic game, but where there's a surprising and pretty strategy for doing much better by classical means than you'd expect. The game isn't my invention (I think it's due to Sandu Popescu, but I need to check that) but it's very nifty.

Suppose you and your friend are given a challenge. Each of you will flip a fair coin 20 times. But you're separated and you aren't allowed to communicate. Each of you records each flip, and each time you flip, you try to predict what your friend got. For example: on flip #7, you get Heads. You predict that your friend got Tails. Your friend, meanwhile, records her flip #7 and makes her own prediction about you. The two of you succeed on a round if each of you predicts the other's outcome correctly.

How often would you expect to succeed? Suppose that neither you nor your friend is telepathic. Each time you flip, you guess what happened to your friend's coin. On each flip, your chance of guessing correctly is 1/2, as is your friend's. Since neither your coin nor your guess has any influence on her, the chance that you're both right is 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4. Put another way, there are four equally likely guesses about the pair of results, but only one of them can be right.

Suppose that you and your friend are paired against another team. The winner of the contest is the team with the largest number of successful rounds. You play 100 rounds. Your team succeeds on about 25. The other team succeeds about 50 times.

Are they cheating? Are they telepathic? No need for any of that. There's a simple strategy that's guaranteed to give them twice as many successes in the long run. Here's a break in the page to let you see if you can figure out how.

Call the other team members Alice and Bob. On each round, Alice predicts that Bob got what she got; Bob does exactly the same thing. This raises the chance of success on each round from 1/4 to 1/2. How so?

Think about the cases where you and your friend each flip Heads. If you're guessing randomly, then among those cases, we expect to see each of the following predictions equally often:

You predict H, she predicts H
You predict H, she predicts T
You predict T, she predicts H
You predict T, she predicts T.

If both of you got Heads, then only one out of four of these joint guesses is correct. The same story goes for the other cases: you get Heads, she gets Tails, and so on.

Now consider Alice and Bob. There are four possible outcomes for their actual flip, and in each case, the actual outcome fixes the prediction:

Outcome Prediction
Alice: H, Bob: H ------Alice: "Bob got H", Bob: "Alice got H"
Alice: H, Bob: T ------Alice: "Bob got H", Bob: "Alice got T"
Alice: T, Bob: H ------Alice: "Bob got T", Bob: "Alice got H"
Alice: T, Bob: T ------Alice: "Bob got T", Bob: "Alice got T"

The cases in bold are the ones where Alice and Bob are both right. As you can see, it happens half the time. The strategy is guaranteed to be right every time Alice and Bob get the same outcome, and guaranteed to be wrong every time they get different outcomes. But "same outcome" and "different outcomes" are equally likely.

That's the trick. There's a strategy, but no cheating. It's surprising, and yet it's straightforward.

Those with only moderate curiosity can stop there. But for the more phwonkish (philosophically wonkish), we can say a bit more.

First, you can easily see that another strategy works just as well: guess that your partner got the opposite of what you got. You're guaranteed to be right when the results are opposite, and guaranteed to be wrong otherwise. If you were trying to avoid suspicion in a bar, you might have a pre-arranged deal for mixing the two strategies: go "same" on even-numbered rounds and "different" on the rest, for example. If you're playing enough rounds, you can even mix things up with a few random guesses. To make it simple, suppose that you go "same" on odd-numbered rounds and guess randomly on the rest. In 100 rounds, you'd expect to succeed on about 25 out of the fifty where you used the "guess the same" strategy and on about 12 to 13 of the other rounds. You'd still expect to succeed on about 37 rounds, while your opponents, unless they're smart, are likely to succeed on only 25. More relaxed strategies like this are harder to spot, and will still make it very likely that you'll outscore your opponents.

It's also interesting that there's a nearby game that you can guarantee not to lose (though you might draw.) Suppose that you "succeed" on a round when you and your partner are both wrong. Then if your opponents play randomly, they'll "succeed" 3/4 of the time. But suppose you always predict that your partner got what you get, and she always predicts that you don't get what she gets. If you actually both get heads. you'll predict her result correctly, but she'll get yours wrong. If you get head and she gets tails, you'll get her result wrong even though she gets yours right. And so on. You'll never both be right.

Finally, the idea here can be generalized. Suppose that you and your partner are each rolling a fair die. Then if you guess randomly, you'll both make a correct prediction only 1 time in 36. But if you each predict that your partner got what you got, then you'll be right every time the results really are the same. That will happen, on average, 1 time out of 6. Playing against a team of random guessers, you would have a big advantage over a large number of rounds.

Whether it would be smart to walk into a bar and look for suckers is another matter, of course. What's intriguing is that our combinatoric and probabilistic intuitions aren't really very good. Even very simple situations can provide us with delightful surprises.

Proposition 8

2009-05-26T17:30:00.003-04:00

A little earlier today, the California Supreme Court decided that Proposition 8 stands. Proposition 8 was the voter's response to an earlier decision by the Court that the California Constitution requires same-sex marriage as a matter of equal protection. Proposition 8 aimed to change the Constitution, thereby nullifying the Court's decision. A narrow (52%) majority voted in favor of Proposition 8. The question before the court was whether its earlier decision was subject to this sort of nullification, and the Court held that it was.

I'll start with the law, if only to set the issue aside. I am not a lawyer. I am in no position to say that as a matter of law, the court decided wrongly. The vote was 6-1, which suggests that whatever the private views of the Court members may be on the matter of gay marriage, it seemed clear to them that California law does, indeed, allow the earlier Constitutional decision to be set aside by a simple majority vote. I'm in no position to second-guess the Court about that.

It's worth adding, nonetheless, that the idea of a Constitution that can be amended by a simple majority is already a misbegotten one. Constitutional law is not straightforwardly democratic, and that's one of its virtues. The whole idea of a constitution is to set certain principles beyond the reach of day-to-day political pressure. That's how the US Constitution works, and it's also how most state constitutions work. Not so in California, land of participatory democracy gone wild.

But leave all that aside. The real problem here is that Proposition 8 is on its merits an awful proposition -- however you look at it.

Some people have religious objections to same-sex marriage. I think those objections are bad religion, and on another occasion, I'd be prepared to argue that at length. But that matters not. Civil marriage is not a religious institution. I hope we can all agree: no religious denomination should be required to perform same-sex marriages. What marriage means, understood religiously, is not a question for the law. But what civil marriage means, understood as a secular institution, is not a matter for sectarian settlement.

That leaves three sorts of objections: empirical ones (that somehow same-sex marriage will undermine an important civil institution), symbolic objections and moral complaints.

The empirical objection has no plausible support. On the contrary, it's hard to see how promoting legally-sanctioned stable unions between same-sex partners could hurt "traditional" marriage, and equally hard to see how it could be a bad thing. The idea that it will somehow weaken "traditional" marriages is hard to fathom. The idea that it might strengthen the idea of commitment across the board, on the other hand, is pretty plausible.

Still, no one can force anyone to approve of same-sex relationships, and some people may say the that label "marriage" carries a symbolic meaning -- a special stamp of social approval. Some of these people might say: we can't tell you how to live your life. But we can withhold our symbolic approval.

The symbolism issue isn't silly. On the contrary, gay people themselves rightly see it as important. And it's true: the body politic does have the right to decide what to put its stamp of approval on. Thinking something ought to be allowed is one thing; thinking it ought to be honored is quite another. And so we come, at last, to the nub of the issue. For in fact, the symbolic and moral issues aren't simply distinct. If someone thinks that same-sex unions are wrong , it would be strange to expect them to think they ought to be treated as honorable.

So are same-sex relationships wrong? I'd suggest that the answer is so clearly no that once you see it, it's not even thinkable to say yes. In this sense, it's rather like slavery. Slavery is wrong. Not so long ago, many people thought otherwise. But once you come to see that slavery is wrong, there's no going back.

I use the word "see" advisedly, because what happens for many people is a bit like a Gestalt switch. After you manage to fasten on the right features, things just look different. You may think that people "choose to be gay." But there's simply no good reason to believe that. You may think that homosexual relationships are inherently unhealthy, or that gay people are somehow disturbed. But time spent around ordinary gay people and around loving gay couples makes that idea melt away. It simply doesn't stand up to what you see before your own eyes when you really pay attention. On the contrary, what people find is that the gay/straight distinction matters less and less as they get to know people more and more. And anyone who doubts that same-sex relationships can be every bit as loving, as affirming, as sustaining as "traditional" relationships simply hasn't gotten around enough. Once you open your eyes, the evidence is as plain as the evidence that people of African descent are as fully and richly human as everyone else, or that women are the equals of men in every sense that matters.

The good news is that only a bare majority of Californians don't get it. The landscape has shifted dramatically in the past 30 years. People who say that Proposition 8 is simply bucking the tide of history are right. One can only hope that the tide move fast.

Finally, a more personal note. After I post this, we'll be going to the funeral parlor to bring whatever poor comfort we can to Stanley, whose partner Jimmy died a few days ago of a cruel respiratory illness. Jimmy and Stanley were married in all but name and as marriages go, it was a very good one. Stanley has lost the love of his life and his life partner of twenty years. Who cares that they were both men? Who who knew them couldn't grieve with Stanley that his funny, smart and gentle Jimmy is gone? And who couldn't taste the bitterness in the fact that this loving partnership was treated by the law as a nullity? Let it soon not be so for the others who wait.

Liberals and Latter-Day Conservatives

2009-02-15T09:25:00.006-05:00

Following up on the idea of having a sane opposition...

I really don't think conservatism is crazy by nature. On the contrary, traditional conservatism embodies a kind of modesty and intellectual restraint that's easy to admire. Contemporary American conservatism seems to be another matter.

Liberals aren't opposed to tax cuts. But they're also not opposed to tax increases. It depends on what we're trying to do in what circumstances. The question of just what sort of tax scheme is the best way for achieving our goals depends on the facts, and there's no good reason to think the answer is always the same. Conservatives these days seem to think, as a friend of mine put it, that tax cuts really can cure wooden legs, but that once your wooden leg is cured, you'll need another tax cut.

Liberals don't believe that people shouldn't be able to get rich. There are, after all, some very rich liberals. But liberals don't think that "economic liberty" is the only social value. For conservatives, "economic liberty" is a rallying cry.

Of course, conservatives don't think that economic liberty is the only value either. But non-libertarian conservatives tend to think the state should weigh in on matters that go to the core of how people think about themselves. There's a more empirical and more conservative side to liberalism: we can sometimes find out -- as we have with homosexuality -- that our traditional prejudices were just that, and ought to be abandoned.

Liberals believe in private property, and they think there's something to the idea that when we pay taxes, the state is taking "our" money. But liberals also take seriously the idea that "property" is a complicated collection of rights, and that property rights don't mean much outside the legal framework that defines their limits, facilitates trading them, and allows for the well-functioning operation of commerce.

Perhaps the biggest difference is also the most "philosophical." Conservatives believe in small government. Liberals don't. That's different from saying liberals think government is best when it's biggest. But liberals believe that government can make people's lives better, and that it's perfectly appropriate for government to do just that. The idea of turning government into something that can be drowned in a bathtub, to use Grover Norquist's phrase, strikes liberals as puerile and perverse.

Sometimes this will mean that the wealthiest won't be as wealthy as they might otherwise have been. Sometimes it may mean that people who are merely comfortable rather than genuinely wealthy end up with less in their pockets than they might have. It depends on what we end up getting out of the bargain. Most liberals would say, for example, that if we could provide meaningful health-care security for that sort of trade-off, it would be worth it. Conservatives are a lot less willing to agree.

The larger point is this: liberalism is essentially a kind of pluralism. It's not just that liberals believe in a "pluralistic society." Liberals are pluralists about political values. Yes: economic liberty is good. So is economic security. Yes: recognizing the wisdom of local communities to solve their own problems is good. So is recognizing that some problems call for large-scale coordinated efforts. Yes: stable, thriving communities matter. So does recognizing that we shouldn't be too quick to judge a priori what thriving looks like.

This might suggest that liberalism is just common sense. That would be an over-reach. Traditional conservatism draws heavily on what rightly might be called common sense. There's room for reasoned disagreement between common-sense liberals and common-sense conservatives. However, what's come to be called "movement conservatism" is a different sort of beast. It's a beast on the lookout for bogeymen, obsessed with a single economic recipe, supremely convinced of the unerring wisdom of free markets, but oddly interested in people's non-economic inclinations.

I've heard it claimed that there's no coherent liberal philosophy. If "Philosophy" is spelled with a big "P," that's as it should be. Political wisdom is a dappled thing, slogan-shy and adaptive in the best sense. In any case, if the alternative is what passes for conservatism in the United States these days, the less "philosophy" the better.

Look Northward, O Republican

2009-02-14T11:02:00.003-05:00

To listen to Republicans these days, you'd think that the beginning of the Obama administration was the advent of Armageddon. Taxes! Government spending! Regulations! The return of the Welfare State! Lions and tigers and bears, oh my, and pieces of falling sky.

For anyone who lives in the real world, as opposed to the alternate universe that Republicans seem to inhabit these days, all this is pretty weird. But one way to get a handle on the weirdness is to look north.

To Canada, I mean. That's where I grew up. It's where I was educated, and where my family still lives. I've got lots of friends there too. Canada has national health care. It has higher taxes than the US. It has more regulation than we do. It has a more extensive social safety net. But...

Various surveys (sorry I can't lay hands on the link to the latest one I heard the other day) make clear that Canadians are still happier with their health care system than Americans are. (Yes: sometimes you have to wait. But at least you know you have insurance. And if what's wrong with you is serious, you'll get bumped to the head of the queue.) It costs less, and delivers better results. The Canadian banking system is one of the healthiest in the world. The country is basically debt-free and its pension system is in good shape. (See http://tinyurl.com/afr74l for a summary.)

Though I haven't done a poll, my strong impression is that very few Canadians would trade their system for the one in this country. But Canada is unmistakably, undeniably farther to the left than the US.

So what's the point? Not that Canada is paradise; that would be silly. But a bit of sober and sensible reflection on our neighboring state ought to be a corrective to Republican hyperventalation. Even if Obama gets everything he wants, the US will still be to the right of Canada. And it doesn't follow that we'll be better off.

I'm a moderate at heart. It's a prime principle with me that reasonable people can differ. There are conservative ideas (especially of the Burkean sort) that I take seriously. But when every single Republican in the House votes against the stimulus bill, and when the tiny handful of Senate Republicans willing to vote for it predicate their willingness on taking things out of it that probably should have stayed in, it's hard to put that thought into practice. As near as I can tell, Republican opposition is pretty much a matter of pure Pitgoatery. And that's a shame. Having a sane opposition party would be a good thing. Too bad we don't.

Fox "News"

2009-01-28T07:25:00.002-05:00

On Monday, the TV in my hotel room came on mysteriously. (Some earlier guest had programmed it to function as an alarm clock.) Fox News was on, and the cheerful bubbleheads with too many teeth offered the results of a recent poll. Seems that most Americans think the financial crisis is the result of debt. Most also think that private sector spending is the way out. And fully half think that the country is drifting away from capitalism and toward socialism.

So what's the message? Start with debt. We can agree that it's a problem. But how did we get into the debt mess? A big part of the answer is that lenders were doing crazy things that any sane system of regulation would have stopped them from doing. I'm guessing Fox would rather not have you think very hard about that. (I heard recently that there's a new slogan going around the American Banker's Association: innovate, don't regulate. Hmm... didn't "innovation" have a lot to do with the mess we've ended up in?)

On to private sector spending. If most people think this is the solution, then most people simply don't understand what's going on. We're in a liquidity crisis. Credit has dried up; banks aren't lending. Businesses aren't in a position to do the kind of spending it would take to turn things around. And there's no reason to think that consumers are either. The point about government stimulus is that in situations like the one we're in, the government is the only place the money can come from. But I don't think Fox wants you to think about that either.

And then there's the socialism thing. There's a small semblance of truth here: at least in the short run, government will end up owning more stuff that's usually part of the private sector. Call it socialism if you like. But if the alternative is a prolonged recession, then worrying about the label seems pretty pointless -- unless you're Fox. Because they get to take advantage of all the bad associations of the word "socialism" without having to talk about the real issues.

Someone might say: Fox was just reporting. They were just telling us what people thought. But that overlooks the question of why they asked what they did at all, and why they thought it was worth reporting in the first place.

Netflix, Blockbuster, apples, oranges

2008-12-30T19:35:00.004-05:00

So the question was: which is better for the environment? Renting movies from your local video store, or using Netflix. You can read all about it here.

The answer seems to be Netflix. But this bit of the story makes you wonder:

"Still, it turns out that transportation accounts for only a small amount of the energy it takes to make and deliver a DVD. In fact, if the Journal of Industrial Ecology study is right, 30 minutes spent reordering your queue—in a well-lit, climate-controlled room with the computer running—will use far more energy than the actual Netflix delivery and about as much energy as it would take to drive your hybrid to a store a half-mile away."

Uh, and what if you sat in the same room in the same light with your computer off? For that matter, what if you sat in that well-lit room with the computer and lights off? Do you turn your heat off when you're not reordering your queue? Do you turn your computer off when you're not reordering your queue?

But then, there is this: would you really get in your car to drive a lousy half-mile?

Don't answer that.

Visible failure, goodness and government

2008-12-30T16:21:00.003-05:00

Paul Krugman just posted a short entry on his blog about Bush and Katrina. It's at http://tinyurl.com/6ulsml. Seems there's an article in Vanity Fair that quotes Bush aides who say that Katrina did Bush in. I'll read it carefully later; just taking a quick break right now. But Krugman has a rather interesting take. Katrina may or may not have been the nail in the political coffin for Bush. But Krugman compares two photos, each taken in Air Foce One: the first of Bush looking down on NYC after 9/11 and the second of Bush looking down on a different city: New Orleans after Katrina. Krugman points out: the first photo worked PR wonders. The second didn't. Why the difference? According to Krugman, it's because with Katrina, there was no hiding what had happened. It's not that Bush was hiding something about 9/11; it's that after 9/11, the White House put up smoke screen after smoke screen on any number of fronts, and by the time Katrin hit, it was clear: the White House was an empty shell run by a hollow man.

I'm not naive enough to think that Obama will be the cure for all that ails the country. And in any case, that's a terrible burden to saddle someone with. But I can't think about the last eight years without feeling a little dazed. George Bush was just as vapid as many of us feared. He surrounded himself with people caught up in big bad ideas drove a good many lifelong Republicans to fits.

Manupulation, lies and deceit are a big part of the sad story. Breathtaking stabs at the arrogation of power -- all that mightily disturbing. But the big sin, in my view, was contempt for government. It's a sin that goes back a long way. Ronald Reagan's joke about the dread of hearing someone say "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" comes to mind. So does Grover Norquist's quip about starving government until its so small that it can be drowned in a bathtub. But those were just the tag lines. The anti-government idea ran deep.

Good government matters. There are things that governments can do that the market can do only badly or not at all. The idea that we just need to free the pent-up forces of the market and all will be well stands exposed as the nonsense it always was. Of course we need well-functioning markets. But they need to work against the backdrop of a well-functioning government. Why should this ever have seemed like a crazy thought?

So it's swings and roundabouts. At least for the next few years, government will be back big time. I'm hopeful that Obama's pragmatic instincts will prevent that from meaning "with a vengeance." But the idea that for a while we might have people in charge who believe that there is such a thing as good government is a big relief.

Pastor Warren

2008-12-19T07:07:00.006-05:00

I can understand the dismay that many Obama supporters felt when they heard that pastor Rick Warren will be giving the invocation at the inauguration. Warren supported California's Proposition 8, and gay voters are especially likely to that find offensive given that Warren has compared same-sex marriage to incest and polygamy.

They're not the only ones offended by that kind of talk. In a few years, opposition to same-sex marriage will seem like opposition to racial intermarriage. No serious person these days thinks that it's immoral for people of different races to marry. No serious person thinks it's a "threat to the institution of marriage." No serious person thinks that real love is bound by racial barriers. Within a few decades, that will be the story for same-sex marriage. Mr. Warren is, as they say, on the wrong side of history. And he is certainly on the wrong side of the argument.

That said, everyone should take a deep breath. It's not as though asking Warren to give the invocation amounts to an affirmation of every view he holds. And Rick Warren really is a new kind of Evangelical -- new, at least, relative to the way things have been for the last twenty or so years. On some issues that liberals care about deeply, he and Obama are on the same side.

And there's another thing. During the election, Obama reached across major disagreements with some real success. In particular, he courted Catholics, asking them to look to what they agree on and gently reminding everyone that perfect agreement is hard to find. For many Catholics, disagreement over abortion is hardly just incidental. But Obama won the Catholic vote, increasing the margin by four points over the previous presidential election.

Here's the point: if Obama is going to ask for the support of people who have deep disagreements with him, he'd be foolish and thoughtless if he wasn't prepared to pay them some serious attention. That includes being ready to make symbolic gestures of the sort he made when he invited Rick Warren to give the invocation. Yes: voters like me find some of Warren's views offensive. But we need to keep in mind that the feeling is mutual: Evangelicals and Catholics who were willing to support Obama are just as offended by some of the views that Obama himself holds.

Obama claimed to be a different kind of politician. Reaching across divides was supposed to be part of the package. If you voted for him, that's a big part of what was on offer, and for some of us, a big part of his appeal. I couldn't disagree more with Rick Warren about same-sex marriage. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to admire about him. And if it automatically disqualifies him from playing this sort of ceremonial role, then we're simply turning back to the same old path. Part of what Obama's choice signals is something that we do well not to forget: it's possible to talk with, work with and respect people with whom you have profound disagreements. And if it isn't, then God help us all.

2008-12-04T18:11:00.003-05:00

Erwin Schrödinger's
Evil Twin's Nasty Haiku
Written as a Tweet

Quantum Mechanics;
Let's go kill that bloody cat!
In some world, at least...

The Godless and the Body Politic

2008-11-14T12:48:00.007-05:00

I'll have to admit that I was pleased to see Elisabeth Dole lose to Kay Hagan in North Carolina. It's not because I had anything in particular against Dole beforehand. But the "Godless Americans" ad did it for me. You can see it here if you haven't already. Most people know the story: Kay Hagan is a Sunday School teacher and Presbyterian Elder. The fundraiser was sponsored by two people who are also affiliated with an atheist group, but the group had no part in setting up the fundraiser, and the voice at the end of the ad isn't Hagan's.

But I'll confess that I feel a little guilty listing all those facts. I feel guilty because they make it seem as though it matters whether Hagan is an atheist. It doesn't.

A 2007 Gallup poll spelled bad news for atheist candidates. Over half of those polled said that they wouldn't vote for an atheist. Though the poll didn't ask why, the sort of reason one often hears is that atheists have no reason to be moral. Psychologist Paul Bloom notes in a recent article on Slate.com that while superficial look at research on Americans might seem to bear that out, a less parochial look around the world paints a rather different picture. All that is mist for the social scientist's grill. Philosophers have another issue

There's an old saw -- something that Dostoevsky never quite said -- that if God doesn't exist then everything is permitted. Whatever Dostoevsky may have had in mind, this is often taken to mean that unless there's a divine Judge to mete out punishment and reward, no one has any deep motive to be moral. But there's a confusion here. Someone who behaves well only because they're afraid of damnation isn't acting from moral motives in the first place. They're simply trying to save their immortal skin. People who worry that atheists will feel free to run amok have a surprisingly cynical view of human nature. They apparently think that without the fear of hellfire, no one would be able to find good reason to be good. But not only is the view cynical; it's silly.

Most people, most of the time, behave well not because they're afraid they'll be damned if they don't but because it just seems to be the right thing to do. Most people find something common-sensical in the thought that you don't treat other people in ways that you wouldn't want to be treated. Most people are at least tolerably well able to think their way into other people's shoes and summon up a modicum of sympathy. Not everyone, of course, and no one all the time. But among the world's bad guys are a good many who either did what they did in spite of religious belief or, more disturbingly, convinced themselves they were doing God's will.

This isn't to deny that religion has inspired its share of noble and selfless acts. And trying to tally religious atrocities against their godless counterparts is a recipe for cooked books. But the idea that atheists start off at a moral disadvantage is not only a lot of hooey. It's hooey that atheists have every right to find offensive.

Lest the reader think that this is all self-serving self-pity, I'd add that I don't think of myself as an atheist. I actually do belong to a mainline religious body (the Episcopal Church). I joined as an adult, and I'm quite comfortable with that affiliation, even though I'm not an orthodox believer. But I'll have to confess that I find worries about people's confessional attitudes simply to be a fetish.

When Colin Powell endorsed Obama, he addressed the question of whether Obama is a Muslim. The most important point he made wasn't to say no. It was to ask why in the world it should matter. The same point applies here. I don't care whether my legislator or senator or governor or President is a religious believer. I care that he or she be decent, be thoughtful, and be up to the job. If someone meets those qualifications, then I'll listen to what they have to say. And if what they have to say seems right to me, I'll vote for them regardless of whether or how they pray.

Still Life

2008-11-12T15:29:00.003-05:00

Three Windows

2008-11-08T09:17:00.000-05:00

Proposition 8: something we can all agree on

2008-11-05T15:43:00.000-05:00

Proposition 8 passed in California. Same-sex marriage, briefly legal since a court decision in May, will be no more.

No, I'm not saying that we will all agree about gay marriage, but...

I find two things disturbing here. One is what Californians actually voted for. I'm in favor of same-sex marriage. But set that aside; it's a topic for a whole 'nother post. There's something else here that ought to disturb people who disagree with me about marriage: in the State of California, the constitution can be amended by a bare majority.

If you believe in the idea of a constitution at all, that's bad. Constitutions provide the framework for ordinary law-making. A constitution that can be changed by a bare majority won't have the stability we want from a constitution. That's why amending the US Constitution isn't easy: we don't want the basic framework of our laws to shift with the political winds. Putting it the other way around, if you think that all law -- including the framework principles -- should be easily changed, then you should think that Constitutions are a bad idea in the first place. (You might also think that a lot of other things that ensure stability in the legal system are bad.)

So disagree with me if you will on the issue. Some other time, I'll say more about marriage itself. But amending a constitution by a bare majority? Bad news, left, right and center.

The "S" Word

2008-10-31T06:58:00.000-04:00

Humans are a funny lot. Here I am writing a blog entry trying to persuade people not to be taken in by some of John McCain's bad arguments. This blog entry will be read by handfuls, possibly even tens of people, most of whom already don't buy what McCain is saying. But I do it anyway.

Which is surely no sillier than the business about Obama being some sort of a socialist.

I remember when I moved down here from Canada in 1979. I was bewildered by the force that the words "socialized medicine" had in keeping people from even considering sensible attempts to widen health care coverage. The "S" word clearly still has a charge for some people, which is why McCain keeps using it. But let's review.

Obama's tax plan would give modest tax cuts to most people. Since Republicans have long been in favor of tax cuts, and Republicans aren't socialists, that can't make Obama a socialist. But Obama's tax cuts are targeted at the vast majority of people who make less than $200,000 a year. Is it socialist to offer modest tax relief to these folks? And if it is, then what's so virtuous about directing all the tax cuts to people who make lots of money, which is exactly what McCain proposes? How does the word "socialist" help sort this out?

Obama's plan includes an earned income credit for people at the low end. Some of these people will get money back even though they don't owe any federal tax at all. Is that where the socialism comes in?

Gee. It's not as though these people aren't paying any taxes at all. They're paying social security and medicare tax on every dollar they earn. They're also paying sales tax on most of the things they buy. The only way to lower their effective overall tax rates is by tax credits. And these folks aren't likely to save that extra bit of cash. That money will end up back in the economy, going to businesses owned by the people whose taxes John McCain wants to lower. We could argue about what policies are most likely to help the economy most, but the idea that the difference between McCain and Obama is the difference between socialism and red-blooded capitalism ought to be a real head-scratcher.

Except that for some people it isn't. That's why McCain keeps saying it. Even though McCain's health care plan includes tax credits. Even though, for that matter, his running mate raised taxes on oil companies in Alaska to increase the cash payments that every single Alaskan gets from the government.

And on that tax credit McCain has in mind for health care. This is one of those cases where fear of "socialism" really gets in the way of policy. For a market solution to work, younger, healthier people have to be in the insurance pool. That's the only hope for controlling rates. But giving a check to healthy 20- and 30-somethings isn't likely to get them to by health insurance. It's more likely that they'll pocket the money and spend it on something else. So government cash will go out the door, and the health care system won't get any better.

Socialism is a loaded word. It doesn't have anything to do with the real issues. But it might get a bunch of people to vote for what they don't really want because they think they should be scared of the alternative.

On the margins

2008-10-27T16:13:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Lizzie for her very good comments and questions. Some bits worth stressing. Lizzie wrote:

So everyone's taxed at X rate for the first M thousand dollars, and everyone's taxed at Y rate for the next N thousand dollars, you're saying? (And if you only have M thousand dollars, don't worry, you won't be asked to pay additional taxes on money you don't actually have?)

Exactly. If the new rate applied to every dollar, then it would make perfect sense to say that you were being punished for making more. But it doesn't work that way, as a cursory look at the tax tables makes clear.

I have a feeling that there's an awful lot of confusion about this. I have a feeling that it's one of the reasons why McCain has gotten whatever mileage he's gotten out of Joe the Plumber. It's why people sometimes worry that they'll be worse off by making more money and moving into a higher tax bracket. They think that all their earnings will be taxed at the new rate. But that's just plain wrong.

Lizzie also wrote:

Btw, I think it's good to note here that Obama is apparently only planning to return tax rates to what they were during the Clinton years.

Yup. The economy did well under Clinton, but marginal tax rates were higher than they have been under Bush. No one thinks that marginal rates don't matter. But the idea that we'd kill the entrepreneurial spirit by bumping the top rate up a bit from where it is now doesn't square well with history.

Finally, Lizzie wrote this:

Finally... well, I hesitate to say this, b/c I know it doesn't sound good, but... There's one sense in which all money that you make you wouldn't have made w/o the gov't, and so you're hardly being punished when the gov't says they're going to keep some portion of it... You didn't pay for the roads your trucks take to deliver your product, and you didn't pay for the development of internet technology you use in sales and advertising, and you didn't pay for the creation of utilities systems that allowed your office buildings to have lights and running water, and you didn't pay for your employees to learn to read, etc. The government, in contrast, had a had in all of that. And all those things the gov't did helped YOU, financially, a lot more than they helped someone who doesn't own trucks or office buildings or hire other people's labor.

Don't apologize! This is absolutely right and the only reason it doesn't sound good is that even though it's true, it's abstract enough that people find it hard to hang onto. The orderly possession and exchange of property, wages, labor and so on doesn't exist in a vacuum. Modern capitalism simply couldn't exist outside the modern state, and as you point out, big-time capitalists are big-time beneficiaries of government. Nothing wrong with that; society also benefits from big-time capitalism (at least when it doesn't run amok.) When things are working well, there's a symbiotic relationship among government, capitalism and society. The intellectual disease of folks on the hard left is to forget that capitalism really does bring benefits. Without capitalism, we couldn't even be having this conversation in this medium. But the more common mistake these days is on the right -- forgetting that government and taxes have a genuine, positive contribution to make to the whole enterprise.

Do the math

2008-10-24T14:58:00.000-04:00

I am neither an economist nor a tax expert, but I can write on the back of an envelope. What follows contains a simple (really) calculation about small businesses and marginal tax rates. But before we get to the arithmetic, I recommend this piece on factcheck.org to get a feel for some of the worst of the foolishness about this issue.

The McCain campaign has been trying to convince us that Obama's tax plan will be bad for small business, making it hard for business owners to add employees. I repeat: I am neither an economist nor a tax expert. Reasonable people can disagree about the consequences of various policies. But...

Suppose a small business makes a profit (profit, not gross revenue) of $500,000. Roughly, what will the difference be under McCain's plan and under Obama's. Obama would tax the highest part of this business's profits at a higher rate that McCain. Translated: on the second quarter million of that half a million profit, Obama would collect more taxes. How much more? Near as I can tell, if we use a 5% figure, we're safe; the actual plan seems to be for something less.

If Obama had his way, this very profitable small business (a half a million in PROFIT is pretty darn good) would pay an extra $12,500 in taxes beyond what McCain's plan would -- 5% of that quarter of a million beyond the point where Obama's higher rate kicks in. But suppose it's 6% -- suppose it's $15,000. That's a chunk of change for you or me, but it's certainly not enough to hire an extra employee.

Of course, the business could hire someone part time. But now go back to the rationale for Obama's plan. Middle and lower income folks are more likely to spend extra money -- more likely to put it back into the economy. They'll buy more goods and services if they have more left over after taxes. Some of that money would go directly to the small businesses who've been asked to pay a higher marginal rate. And so, the story would go, what those businesses get in return for the higher tax rate is higher profits. They might even end up better off.

Of course, some of the money that lower-earning taxpayers spend will go to big businesses. But if demand for their goods and services goes up, then they'll spend more to hire the services of the small businesses that provide, e.g., cleaning or printing services for them. This, in turn, will be good for the bottom lines of those small businesses.

The picture, in other words, is partly a matter of trickle-up rather than trickle-down. Getting more money into the pockets of middle-income people may well stimulate the economy as a whole, and the rising tide will lift even the big boats.

Is this economic story true? I repeat once again: I am neither a tax expert nor an economist; I don't know. What I do know is that the McCain campaign's line depends not just on hiding the ball (see the little calculation above to remind yourself what's really at issue for our $500,000 net profit business) but also depends on its own particular set of economic assumptions. And those assumptions are no more obviously right than Obama's.

Being rich, spreading wealth

2008-10-20T11:18:00.001-04:00

I suppose I should take seriously the possibility that too much obsessing about Joe the Plumber might make a person go blind. But my excuse is that what follows isn't really about Joe; it's about what McCain is really saying by using Joe as his poster boy.

I keep thinking about the sneer on McCain's lips when he delivered the line "Congratulations, Joe. You're rich!"

Hmmm... If Joe works hard and earns a quarter of a million a year, I dont' mind at all. But what McCain was up to, whether he even sees it himself, was something like this: most plumbers don't make anywhere near $250,000 a year. As Paul Krugman points out in the Times today, the figure in Ohio is more like $48,000. That's the sort of person who comes to mind when we think about plumbers. And so when McCain sneers "Congratulations, Joe, you're rich!" what he's hoping is that we'll have the typical plumber fixed in our minds as we try to think about a highly aytpical case. If the real Joe's income is anywhere near a typical plumber's, then he certainly isn't rich. But if the real Joe really makes $250,000 a year, then whether we call him rich or not, he is very comfortable. He makes five times what the average Ohio plumber makes.

It was actually a clever rhetorical trick: rely on the power of the stereotype to run interference when we try to imagine a highly unusual case. The sneer only works so long as the stereotype holds sway.

And then there was that other line: "America didn’t become the greatest nation on earth by spreading the wealth, We became the greatest nation by creating new wealth."

Sorry. It's true that creating new wealth was crucial. But as the country struggled to rise out of the Great Depression, the New Deal programs of Franklin Roosevelt were part of what kept the nation great. Some kinds of wealth spreading -- a progressive tax scheme, Medicare, Head Start, PELL grants and the like really are part of what distinguishes America from some countries that we don't want to be like. Of course we should value hard work, and of course it should be rewarded. But of course we should also want to be the kind of society that doesn't grind people down. Creating a decent society doesn't come for free. If part of the price is a bump in the marginal tax rates of very high earners, why should anyone sneer?

Abortion and the Church: A Note on a Quote

2008-10-19T14:19:00.000-04:00

In a long opinion piece in Newsweek, Catholic theologian George Weigel offers the following:

...the Catholic Church's teaching on the intrinsic evil of abortion involves a first principle of justice that can be known by reason, that's one of the building blocks of a just society, and that ought never be compromised—which is why, for example, Catholic legislators were morally obliged to oppose legal segregation (another practice once upheld by a Supreme Court decision that denied human beings the full protection of the laws). Questions of war and peace, social-welfare policy, environmental policy and economic policy, on the other hand, are matters of prudential judgment on which people who affirm the same principles of Catholic social doctrine can reasonably differ. The pro-life, pro-Obama Catholics are thus putting the full weigh of their moral argument on contingent prudential judgments that, by definition, cannot bear that weight.

The syllogism Weigel wants you to conjure up would run something like this:

First principles of justice ought never be compromised.
Opposition to abortion follows from a first principle of justice.
Therefore, opposition to abortion ought never be compromised.

But there's a difficulty, and it's a big one: the second premise is not just obvious. Look carefully at Weigel's actual words: "the Catholic Church's teaching on the intrinsic evil of abortion involves a first principle of justice." The tricky term is "involves." Though we'd need to be careful to get the statement just right, let's agree that something like this is true and can be known by reason: it's always wrong to deliberately take an innocent person's life . Many Catholics -- and many other people -- believe that abortion violates this principle. But many others who accept the principle itself don't think abortion falls under it. They might agree that if it did, abortion would simply be wrong. What they don't accept is that a fetus -- especially very early in pregnancy -- is the sort of being that falls under the rule. It's not a question of whether the fetus is innocent. After all, the lamb that gave its life for my dinner was just as innocent as the fetus. Perhaps it's wrong to kill the lamb. There are serious arguments for just that conclusion, and though I'm not yet persuaded, I don't think the arguments are silly. If lambs are entitled to the same sort of moral consideration as you or I, then it's as unjust to kill them as it would be to kill an innocent toddler. In the case of lambs, the "if" is a very big one. And in the case of the fetus, especially early in pregnancy, the "if" still isn't small.

Therein lies the problem. Many people -- I'll confess I'm one -- can't really make sense of the idea that using the morning after pill is the moral equivalent of murder. My own guess is that many Catholics find the equivalence puzzling. But in the Church's view, the newly fertilized ovum has the same standing as you or I.

And now the problem is clear. Let's grant: we can know by reason that it would be utterly wrong and unjust to kill a toddler. But to get his conclusion, Weigel needs something a lot stronger: that reason settles the question in the case of the newly-fertilized ovum, and settles it on the side of equating the ovum with the toddler. He must say the same of embryos that are a bit past the newly-fertilized stage but still far from being babies. I can respect those who see things as he does, but with respect, I would point out that the thesis is open to reasonable doubt.

The case of killing animals is really worth keeping in mind. Some advocates of animal rights make cases that are both passionate and reasoned for a very strong conclusion: it's deeply wrong to kill other animals. My guess is that Weigel doesn't have fully adequate answers to all of their arguments; I know I don't. But my guess is that Weigel would think laws banning meat-eating would be bad laws that people would reasonably object to having imposed on them. The problems here are too knotty for laws, and humility counsels not being too quick to impose one's own dubitable convictions on others.

This is why Joe Biden got it more or less right, in spite of Weigel's talk about his " ill-advised... ventures into theology." One might well accept it as a matter of faith and private conscience that abortion is always as wrong as murder. But one might also understand that a decent, thoughtful and even faithful person looking at the same evidence might come to a different conclusion. If so, one might take a step further: on matters this murky, it's possible in good conscience to think that lawyers, politicians and voters should tread carefully

A final note: the point I've been making is smaller than it may seem. It certainly isn't intended as a defense of abortion on demand at all stages of pregnancy. But the arguments of Weigel and many other Catholic thinkers overshoot their mark. What reason alone can know here is far less than their conclusion require.

Say Joe, It Ain't So!

2008-10-17T12:54:00.000-04:00

Something doesn't add up in the story of Joe. According to John McCain, Joe wants to buy a plumbing business, but Obama's tax plan would get in the way. How so?

Suppose Obama's tax hike applies. That means the business makes over a quarter of a million a year in net profit, after all the expenses are paid: salaries, rent, maintainance, supplies... We take all that out before we even get around to figuring how much tax the business owes. After that, if there's more than $250,000 left over in profits, the owner would pay a few percent more in taxes on the part of the profit over a quarter million. How would that keep Joe or anyone else from being able to afford the business? How would it lead to even one less job?

Does John McCain understand this? If he doesn't, then he really was telling the truth when he said that he doesn't know much about the economy. But if he does, then let's just say that this whole business isn't based on honest accounting.

About Joe...

2008-10-16T10:58:00.000-04:00

Joe Wurzelbacher, the Ohio plumber who cornered Obama during a campaign stop, got a lot of attention in the final presidential debate. His complaint: he wants to buy a plumbing business that makes around $250,000 a year. So he asked Obama if that wouldn't mean higher taxes for him. That would be wrong, Joe thinks. So does John McCain. Taxing people like Joe might keep him from owning a business that would provide jobs to other people.

Joe may end up being the face of the last three weeks of the campaign, and there are certainly issues worth arguing about behind the question he asked. But as usual, these things aren't simple. Would Joe's taxes go up? That depends. Is the $250,000 gross receipts? Or net profits after all expenses and salaries are paid? (See this ABC blog for some related questions.) That makes a difference. If what Joe has in mind are gross receipts, then his net profit will keep him nicely under the threshold.

But let's suppose he meant net profit. What's the issue now? Everyone agrees: it would be nice if no one had to pay taxes. But everyone also agrees: we need schools, bridges, disaster relief, highways, an army and any number of other public goods. Although hard-core libertarians think that the government shouldn't be in charge of any of this except the army, most voters, including most conservatives, don't agree. So we need taxes. And that brings us to the big question:

Given that we have to have taxes, what should the rates be? Who should pay how much?

One answer is that we should all pay the same rate. And as it turns out, Joe thinks something more or less like that. Here's Joe in his own words:

It's not right for someone to decide you made too much---that you've done too good and now we're going to take some of it back.

In fact, Joe is against any sort of progressive tax scheme. He thinks it's unfair.

Now maybe at the end of the day, Joe is right. I don't think so, but what matters isn't my opinion. What matters is that there is a heck of a lot to argue about here. To do what everyone in the mainstream -- liberal and conservative -- thinks government needs to do will take a large chunk of money. And so we can ask: what flat tax rate would do the trick? Once we've figured that out, we'll need to ask another question: what would that do to most people's situation?

The likely answer: most lower and middle class people would pay more taxes than they do now, while people making lots of money would pay less. Is that fair? Maybe, but it's not so clear once you frame the question carefully. After all, people who work hard but make low incomes have to spend more of their money on necessities. People with high incomes, even if they're in higher tax brackets, spend a smaller fraction of what they make on getting by. And the more they make, the truer that is. Surely we can at least raise the question of what fairness calls for here.

So... Are progressive tax schemes unfair? People are bound to differ, but my guess is that most people would opt for a progressive tax structure, even if they aren't in the bottom bracket. In that case, it's just built in: some people will pay more on their top dollar than others do. Unless we have what we might call "continuous bracketing," which I'd guess would be a nightmare to administer, there will be cutoffs. And someone -- Joe or someone else -- will end up on one of the cusps. But if a progressive tax code is the fairest way to go, then that's pretty much inevitable.

There's room to argue about what the brackets should be. There's room to argue that when it comes to small businesses, $250,000 in net profits is too low a point to put the cutoff. I'm willing to listen to folks who've run the numbers and have arguments to make. But though I wish him well, I'm not willing just to take Joe's word for it.

About that debate...

2008-10-04T09:00:00.000-04:00

Pat Buchanan is a happy camper. . "There are conservatives and Republicans across America who are ... breathing a sigh of relief,” he said after the Biden/Palin vice-presidential debate.

Kathleen Parker, who had argued a few days before that Palin should drop off the ticket, gave her as a good a review as you could expect her to give. And even David Broder (not exactly a Republican stalwart) awarded her high marks and wondered why McCain doesn't use her more.

What weird alternate universe do these people live in? What bad drugs did someone slip into David Broder's Bran Flakes when he wrote this:

But [Biden] was no better than Palin. She appeared cool as a cucumber, comfortable with her talking points and unrattled by anything that was thrown at her.

That's better? Did Broder pay any attention to any of the words that actually came from her honey-dripping lips?

Let's do a bit of scoring. On the merits, McCain an Obama talked their way to a draw. But it was a draw between two serious candidates. They've actually thought about the issues. They actually know things. They weren't just working from mental cue cards.

And then there was the Biden-Palin debate. Biden was crisp, to the point, on top of the facts and in command of the larger landscape. Palin was a winking, shucksing "g"-dropping prop. Her grasp of the issues isn't much thicker than any of the lustrous hairs in her now-trademark coif. If you actually listened to the words these people spoke and thought that Palin is ready to step in as president, I don't know what you think presidents do.

Kathleen Parker admitted that even if Palin managed to keep to her talking points, we can still ask: "Does that mean she's ready to lead the free world should circumstances warrant?"

"That question remains," Parker writes. "Right next to same question about Barack Obama."

Please. Let's agree that someone could have doubts about whether Obama is really ready. But what's the scale? If you think Obama might not be ready, then by any remotely sane measure Sarah Palin certainly isn't ready. Not. No way.

And by the way... if that's elitism, then elitism is just another name for common sense.

Axioms for Voters

2008-09-22T08:05:00.000-04:00

So here it is: an eminently practical axiom for anyone suffering through the election season:

If Candidate A says X about Candidate B, do not simply believe X.

Coming up with this wasn't hard; its wisdom has been amply demonstrated in the presidential campaign. I've written about lies from the McCain camp, but as Ruth Marcus (among various others) points out, Obama has managed to close the mendacity gap. Given the way Obama sold himself, what his campaign has been up to lately counts as a full match for the whoppers about the Bridge to Nowhere, &ct.

Some of us react to this sort of bald-faced balderdash by losing our enthusiasm for our favored candidate. That's probably not a bad thing: actual enthusiasm for anyone who's willing to do what it takes to run a successful presidential campaign is probably misplaced. Better to hold your nose, make your best calculation about how the candidate is likely to act if elected, and decide which choice offers the least evil; vote with your aching head, not your breaking heart. But the trouble is that too many people will simply believe what their own candidate says about the other scoundrel. True: they'll discount the junk the other side is pumping out, but typically from political tribalism rather than intellectual virtue.

And so here's a Second Practical Axiom:

Read what's on nonpartisan sites like http://www.factcheck.org or http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/ before you settle your mind.

Factcheck is my favorite. It does what its name says: checks to see whether what candidates, politicians, administration officials and the like are actually telling the truth when they say things. Politicians have a vested interest in getting you to believe what they say, whether it's true or not. Sites like Factcheck have a vested interest in getting it right. One sign: they regularly publish corrections when they've made mistakes.

And while we're at it, a third Axiom:

Don't believe everything you think about your candidate's virtues and the other side's vices.

That's a variation on my favorite bumper sticker, which simply says: Don't Believe Everything You Think. Remember: all of us are inclined to be uncritical about what suits our preconceptions and to be eager to believe overly-quick dismissals of views we already don't like. Your best friend in thinking about things is the imaginary skeptic on your shoulder

So I propose a new political elite: the elite of people who try to follow something like the three axioms above. The best thing about this particular elite is that it's egalitarian: anyone can join, no matter which party they belong to, no matter how much or little they earn, no matter how many or few degrees they have, and no matter what color their collar. And you don't even need to write a check to sign up.

Addicted to Lies

2008-09-12T15:59:00.000-04:00

Early on in this endless election cycle, one of the thoughts I had is that it wouldn't be so bad if McCain won, because at least he's an honorable man. Perhaps he will win, and perhaps it won't be so bad. But I've been scratching my head a lot lately about the "honorable man" business.

Politicians are not noted for being a truth-telling crowd. But some are better and some are worse. For years I had thought of McCain as a reasonably straight shooter. Lately, however, his campaign has been trafficking in outright whoppers.

Sarah Palin's line about the Bridge to Nowhere is by now a well-documented lie. But long after that became clear to everybody who was paying any attention, the campaign kept trotting it out.

It would be one thing if McCain said "Obama claims he'll lower your taxes, but his record shows that he's a tax-and-spend liberal. Don't believe him." That might be fair or it might not. But that's not what McCain's campaign did. They keep saying that Obama's plan is to raise taxes on the middle class. Whatever Obama will actually do, McCain knows full well that the proposal Obama has floated calls for large tax cuts for the middle class. The record is clear, and the point has been made many times, not least by factcheck.org. But the McCain campaign just kept on saying it.

And speaking of Factcheck.org... There have been a lot of viral emails about Sarah Palin, and some of them say things that are not only nasty but just plain false. Factcheck did its usual good job of debunking. But the McCain campaign picked up the Factcheck piece and twisted it into an ad that made Obama into the source of all those false claims. Factcheck.org was not impressed. Look here for the story from Factcheck itself.

And then there's the BS about Obama and sex education. This is one of those tricky political lies. McCain's campaign says: Obama is for comprehensive sex education, starting in kindergarten. And it's true that the word "comprehensive" did show up in the bill that Obama backed. But it referred to a whole program running from kindergarten through 12th grade, and the focus at the kindergarten level was to help young children realize when adults are molesting them and to tell their parents about it. It's too much to believe that McCain's people really didn't know what this was all about.

Perhaps that one is in the category of political business as usual. But the lipstick on a pig affair ought to make McCain squirm. Obama wasn't talking about Sarah Palin. It feels silly to have to say that. Nothing in his words, nothing in the context, gives any reason at all to think that he was making a personal comment about Sarah Palin. McCain really ought to have climbed down on this one. But for a great head-shaking moment, have a look at this bit from The View on ABC.

John McCain did get one thing right in that exchange: Obama is a man who chooses his words carefully. In fact, that's one of the reasons I plan to vote for him. He's a thoughtful man, not afraid of subtlety. Subtlety, unfortunately, doesn't always make for good politics. But in any case, McCain can't have it both ways: if he agrees that Obama chooses his words carefully, then any sensible rendering of the "lipstick" remark won't make the McCain campaign's charge stick -- no more than the same charge would stick against McCain when he used the same words himself not all that long ago.

I want to believe that John McCain is a fundamentally decent man. I still haven't given up on that notion. But that makes it all the more distressing to watch him give in to a decidedly less than decent addiction to lies. When he was smeared by Bush's operatives, a good many of us were appalled. I think that at least some of us thought it might inoculate him against going along with the same tactics in his own campaign. But John McCain seems to want to be president very badly. When or lose, it would be a shame if a good man found himself having to look back with shame on the crowning effort of his political career.

For God's Sake!

2008-09-10T10:01:00.000-04:00

I don't have any trouble finding reasons not to vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin, but here's a bad one: Sarah Palin is convinced that the war in Iraq is God's will.

Is that what Palin thinks? The evidence is a prayer she offered, but that seems to get misquoted in a small but crucial way in most of the versions I've seen. Here's the crucial line as the opposition hears it:

Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God

This makes it sound like a direct claim: our leaders are sending the troops on a mission from God. But here's what she actually said, quoted more fully:

Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending them out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's will.

Oddly enough, I pasted this quote (which matches the version I've heard on the radio and seen on youtube) from a piece by David Knowles, who thinks she's saying that the war is God's will. (You can read the Knowles piece here.) But read what she actually said: pray that the leaders are doing God's will; pray that there is a plan and that it's God's plan. Her prayer simply doesn't say what people keep saying it says. Although it's more specific, it's not so very different from prayers you can hear in many a liberal church any Sunday: that our leaders should be guided by God. That's very different from saying that we know what God wants and that our leaders are definitely doing it.

It's also been pointed out that Palin had some thoughts on the matter of God's interest in the pipeline:

I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get the gas line built, so pray for that.

This strikes me as a little silly (I don't know what would make someone believe they knew what God thinks about pipelines), but it hardly seems worth getting worried about.

More generally: I dare say that there's a good deal in Sarah Palin's religious outlook that I'd find myself uncomfortable with. Some of it might matter politically and some of it might not. But let's not make stuff up. She didn't say that the war is God's will, and anyone who actually pays attention to what she did say can figure out for themselves.

Does she believe that the war is God's will? Who knows? Believers believe all kinds of things. Liberals are appalled by some of the things religious conservatives believe, and conservatives are equally appalled by some of what their liberal religious kin think. Sometimes these sorts of worries rise to the level of legitimate political issue, though background views about what God wants aren't really so different from more general views about what's good, right and true. More or less everyone has views on those sorts of things. Let's argue about the ideas themselves. Can you imagine what the campaign would be like if people did that a little more often?

Four Letter Word

2008-09-04T10:17:00.000-04:00

I recall my reaction when I listened to the roll-out of Sarah Palin the day after the Democratic Convention. I particularly remember this bit:

I told Congress "Thanks, but no thanks" on that Bridge to Nowhere. "If our state wanted a bridge," I said," We'd build it ourselves."

That was impressive. For better or worse, the famous earmark to build a bridge connecting the town of Ketchikan on Gravina Island to the mainland became the poster image of rank Congressional pork. That made Palin's claim seem like a big deal: here was the governor of the very state that would have gotten the benefit telling Congress to keep its money. I was impressed by the thing itself, and also by the way it helped John McCain reclaim his reformist, maverick mantle.

The only trouble is that nothing like this is true. For a concise account of the whole mess, go to NPR's Morning Edition for September 4. The condensed version runs like this: the money stayed in Alaska. All $233 million of it.

Now one might say: it was Congress that said the money had to be used for something else. But here's a link to the statement from the Governor's office when the tide turned. If that sounds to you like some crusading reformer telling Congress to quit wasting their money when the noble, independent Alaskans can do things themselves, then you and I understand the English language very differently.

There's more. Seems that there was a $38 million earmark to build an approach road to the vanishing bridge. That road is being built.

And of course, there's even more. A while back, the Governor spoke at the Alaska Professional Design Council forum, and she had nothing but praise for Congressman Don Young. Here are some things she said. You can hear them in her own voice at the NPR link above.

The Congressional Delegation, God Bless 'em, they do great job for us. The strength of our delegation there in DC is the envy of all other states...

And on Congressman Young in particular:

Alaska did so well under the very basic provisions of the transportation act that he wrote just a couple of years ago. We had a nice bump there. We're very fortunate to have received the largesse that Don Young was able to put together for Alaska.

The NPR story also points out that Alaska receives about $500 per capita in earmarks, which is 10 times the national average. Whether that's as it should be is, of course, open to argument. But we can add: while Palin was mayor of Wasilla, that municipality did even better: it got about $1,000 per capita in earmarks.

What would any reasonable person take away from the bold statement Sarah Palin made when John McCain introduced her? That she was every bit as opposed to earmarks as John McCain ever claimed to be, and that she had, so to speak, put her money where her mouth was by turning down a particularly egregious one.

As Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein put it, Palin's claim "did not reflect reality."

Indeed. It was a deeply misleading statement, but one that could help to decide an election. Palin may be many things, but stupid is not one of them. She certainly knew how her words would be understood; she certainly knew what message people would carry away from what she said. She knew what anyone who listened to her but didn't know the back story would take her words to say.

Sarah Palin doesn't seem to be someone who shys away from strong language. And so perhaps she might see it as a backhand compliment that her words have provided the perfect four-letter label. Sarah Palin, quite simply, is a liar.

Model reasoning about climate change?

2008-09-01T18:49:00.000-04:00

The NYTimes reprinted an Op-Ed piece that Sarah Palin published there in January of this year. (Here's a link.) The message was that though polar bears are worth protecting, they shouldn't be placed in the endangered species list because they aren't actually endangered. Not knowing the science, I won't pretend to say whether Gov. Palin was right or wrong, though it's interesting that the recommendation to list the polar bear as endangered came from an administration not known for being alarmist about environmental issues. But there was one line in the piece that caught my attention: "The possible listing of a healthy species like the polar bear would be based on uncertain modeling of possible effects. This is simply not justified."

One word in this passage stands out for me: modeling. I finally began to notice (late to the party, I suspect) that this word comes up a lot when people want to call climate research into question. For another example, have a look at this passage from Charles Krauthammer:

Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems -- from ocean currents to cloud formation -- that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.

Scientists who read this must have scratched their heads. Modeling is central to what science does. And virtually all models of anything complex depend on probabilities. And yes: if the assumptions fed into the model are too far off, the model is in trouble. But scientists understand this perfectly well. A simple example may help make things clearer. Start with the case of flipping 100 fair coins. There's no predicting what will happen on any individual flip. However, it's 95% certain that the number of heads will be between 40 and 60. And its 98% certain that the number will be between 30% and 70%. A large-scale pattern emerges from the individually chancy events. But there's more: good models are robust: they don't depend on getting the individual assumptions exactly right. We assumed that the coins being flipped were fair. Suppose the coins aren't all fair: suppose that some are biased toward heads, some toward tails. If we know something about the distribution of these biases, we can still say precise things about the overall tendency, and if the distribution is "normal" (a bell-curve), then the overall prediction will be much the same. The large-scale pattern that emerges doesn't depend on getting each of the details right,

Real modeling, of course, is more complex. The coin-flip example merely illustrates the point that even if we're very uncertain about individual events, a good model may help us see overall patterns that are highly likely to emerge.

Krauthammer, we noticed, tells us that there's too much uncertainty, and that as a result, the models are "entirely speculative." Two points, however.

First, saying this doesn't make it so. My point isn't that Krauthammer is wrong; it's that he's in no position at all to know that he's right, particularly since his description of modeling suggests that he doesn't understand it very well, and last time I checked, he wasn't an expert on climate science.

Second, and more important, whether or not Krauthammer is guilty of treating all modeling as mere speculation, it's not unusual to hear remarks of that sort when someone wants to challenge climate science. But the fact is that modeling is a standard tool of science, without which we wouldn't know where to look for oil, wouldn't know how to figure out the geology of the planets we spend large sums sending probes to explore, wouldn't know how to think about epidemics, or complex biological processes, or any number of other topics that we have to think about if we're going to make policy.

In fact, what we seem to have here is a variation on the "lies, damned lies and statistics" theme. People who don't understand probability view statistical reasoning with suspicion. But to give up probabilistic reasoning would be to give up most of the benefits of the science we all routinely rely on. Say it again: the fact that probabilistic reasoning rests on probabilities does not mean that it can't produce secure conclusions. It simply is not a criticism of climate science that it uses models. If we decide to scrap models in figuring out how to plan for contingencies, we might as well throw up our hands.

Is the conclusion that global warming is a fact? If it were, it would be a huge non sequitur; nothing said here mentions any of the evidence. My own view that there's no serious doubt, but you can disagree with that if you like. The moral here is to be very suspicious of climate change skeptics who mutter darkly about models. Those are people who are bound to stay in the dark not just about the climate, but a good deal more as well.

Sarahly?

2008-08-30T16:12:00.001-04:00

I'm used to the idea that folks of different political persuasions live in different worlds. But some of the reaction to the Sarah Palin pick makes me wonder if we don't need so stronger metaphysical metaphor. The announcement was only yesterday, and it remains to be seen just how many disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters Sarah Palin will draw. But it's a bit of a mystery that the number is larger than zero.

I voted for Barack Obama in the primary, but not with any great conviction that he was clearly superior to Hillary Clinton. I believed then what I believe now: both were strong, impressive candidates. I certainly wasn't voting against Senator Clinton; it was a matter of a tentative calculation that overall, Barack Obama was more electable. That calculation had nothing to do with Hillary Clinton's gender. It had much more to do with the baggage that both Clintons carry and the visceral negative reactions the Clinton name provokes in many people. Perhaps those calculations were wrong; they were, as I said, tentative.

But if the reports are to be believed, it seems that there are Clinton supporters who are now ready to vote for a McCain-Palin ticket. This puzzles me. Let's concede that Sarah Palin is smart and talented. So are lots of politicians who wouldn't be on anyone's short list for vice-president. Hillary Clinton, however, is in a whole different class.

If that's not clear, imagine that the Republicans had nominated Sarah Palin for president and the Democrats had nominated Hillary Clinton. What Clinton supporters could possibly have any reason to dither about who deserved their vote?

The answer, of course, is: only the ones who never supported what Hillary stood for in the first place. Far as I know, there aren't any major policy issues that Clinton and Palin agree about. Why would a Clinton supporter who cares about what happens after the election have any doubts at all?

A few days ago, I heard a disappointed Clinton supporter marvel that after Senator Clinton had conceded, John McCain met with a group of Clinton voters and asked for their support. She was bitter that the DNC hadn't done anything comparable. I'm not sure what she thinks the DNC ought to have done, but I'm even less sure what's supposed to be uplifting in the picture of John McCain playing carpetbagger. Did this woman really think that McCain was trying to be gracious?

Here's a thought I find hard to resist: McCain is desperate (the horse race polls look very different than the electoral college calculations) and trying to court Clinton supporters was a big part of his reason for picking Palin. But Clinton partisans who actually cared about her qualifications and her views ought to be insulted -- mad as hell, in fact -- by the message that a vote for Sarah Palin is a good substitute for a vote for Hillary Clinton. At least, that's how it seems to me, and after all, it was Obama who actually got my vote.

Dumb Politics

2008-08-08T08:59:00.000-04:00

A depressing juxtaposition in today's papers: I started the morning with Paul Krugman's "Know-Nothing Politics" in the NYTimes. The short version is this: anyone who actually knows anything knows that offshore drilling won't have any effect on gas prices for years, and even when the effects kicked in, they would be very small. But Republicans have found an issue. According to one poll, 51% of Americans think that offshore drilling would help bring gas prices down within a year. And so we can expect to hear the drumbeat for drilling all the way to the election, even though it's brute force blather that wouldn't have much of an effect on the real problem. Krugman's conclusion: Republicans are no dumber than Democrats, but Republicans will be more than happy to peddle crude "solutions" that gain political points, whether the solutions are smart or not.

Then to the Washington Post and to Charles Krauthammer's piece "No Will to Drill." The subtitle is "Democrats resist logic -- and politics." Krauthammer claims to be a pragmatist. He agrees that we can't drill our way out of our energy problems, but we can't get out by any one way. Americans, he says, are two to one in favor of offshore drilling, "thus unlocking vast energy resources shut down for the past 27 years."

Hmmm... The best that can be said on Krauthammer's side is that the size and accessibility of those "vast resources" is a matter of dispute, and that the tradeoffs we need to make if we're going to drill aren't as simple as Krauthammer seems to assume. Of course we should attack the energy problem on multiple fronts. No Democrat I know of says anything different. But is this Krauthammers point? That we should go ahead and drill because it can't hurt and might help? Sounds good but it's not so simple. Drilling could hurt plenty, in plenty of ways, not least by taking resources away from better ideas. Krauthammer is right about one thing, however: the Democrats are going to take a political beating on this one.

So should we not drill? Not my point. It's not obvious that we should, but to come up with an answer that I could defend, I'd have to know a lot more than I do. I'm pretty sure I know this much, though: the majority of Americans who say we should drill don't know any more about it than I do.

Meanwhile, just how dumb was Obama's comment? Here's a link to a piece in Time that suggests it wasn't dumb at all. Using numbers that aren't at all wild-eyed, Michael Grunwald claims that Obama is actually right: we get more mileage out of inflating our tires and taking good care of our cars than we would out of drilling offshore. And when we add some other straightforward conservation measures, the energysavings -- "negawatts" and "negabarrels" add up quickly.

All the more reason to suspect that Krugman is right about something else: the politics of brute force bandwagon thinking has the wind at its back. Does Barack Obama's energy policy really amount to nothing more getting us to inflate our tires properly? The fact that it's even necessary to say "Of course not" is depressing. But will that remark, perfectly sensible in context and a lot truer than it seems, be milked for every drop of political fuel that can be gotten from it? Only the dumb money says no.

Sending "Free Will" on Holiday

2008-08-03T23:03:00.000-04:00

The phrase "free will" has a remarkable hold on the imagination. I've come to wonder if it isn't time to give it a holiday.

Any philosopher knows that the questions "Do we have free will?" and "Is determinism true?" need to be kept separate. All the possible combinations have been argued for: we're free, even though the universe is deterministic; we're free but determinism is false; we aren't free, perhaps because the universe is deterministic; we aren't free and the universe's joints are loose. But even though philosophers are familiar with that dialectic, other folks aren't and have a hard time getting a grip on it. The idea that asking about free will is the same as asking if the world is deterministic is persistent in something like the way that questions about mental life seem to be all but inextricable from beliefs about "souls" for many people.

To this we can add another persistent assumption: that free choices have to be consciously made. This lies behind some common interpretations of recent work in neuroscience. It seems that we begin to act on our decisions -- at least some of them -- before we're conscious of what we've decided. A simple example would be deciding when to push a button. The evidence suggests that we initiate the motion before the decision registers in consciousness. This is often seen as providing some sort of evidence against free will.

Suppose we set the phrase "free will" aside. Instead, think about what we might call a "well-functioning agent." Think of someone who's a good model of the sort of agent/decision-maker you'd like to be—someone who pays attention to relevant facts, who doesn't ignore consequences, but who's flexible, adaptable and able to be spontaneous when the occasion fits. This is the sort of person John Martin Fischer calls "reasons-responsive," and who has a variety of other traits we think well-rounded deciders ought to have. Does anyone really think there are no such people? And why would abstruse discoveries about fundamental, highly abstract physical laws persuade us otherwise? If you think you either are or have a good shot at becoming a well-functioning agent, do you really care if you have "free will" in some slippery metaphysical sense? If so, why? Better yet, what exactly is this extra issue?

As for the neuroscience, forget for the moment about inconsequential "decisions" about when to push a button and think of something you care about. Suppose it turns out that when we make even those kinds of decisions, the action that goes with them starts a fraction of a second before we're consciously aware of what we decided. Would that mean there aren't any well-functioning agents? It's hard to see why. If paying attention, gathering evidence, listening to others, imagining consequences and the like all make a difference to the eventual outcome, then why should we care if all this gels below consciousness? Is it at all likely that discoveries in neuroscience will show that deliberation, planning, imagination, etc. don't make a difference to what we decide? And suppose that we're capable of reconsidering if the evidence and occasion call for it? The neuroscience about the point where consciousness enters the picture is fascinating, but what does it really have to do with whatever we really cared about when we decided to think about free will? And once we get clear on what we really care about, how much does the phrase "free will" really add?

Away in a manger? Democrats and the politics of protest votes

2008-07-30T14:18:00.000-04:00

A couple of days ago, I saw a link to a site called "I Own My Vote" (iownmyvote.com), assembled by unhappy supporters of Hilary Clinton. The site wasn't recommending that Senator Cinton's supporters stay home, but there seemed to be a conditional recommendation to that effect. Visitors to the website can sign a pledge that makes five demands on the DNC. Two aren't likely to garner any objection: include policies that Senator Clinton has championed in the platform, and denounce racial, gender and other sorts of discrimination. The other three are more problematic:

Seat 100% of the Florida and Michigan delegations
Reform the primary and caucus systems to reflect the "one person/one vote" principle, and
Place Senator Clinton's name in nomination and conduct a roll call vote

The thought seems to be that if the DNC doesn't agree to these demands, Senator Clinton's supporters should either stay home or else vote for John McCain.

This puzzles me. For one thing, it's not likely that Senator Clinton herself would approve. Just this morning I and several hundred thousand of my closest friends got an email from her urging us in strong terms to do all we can to elect Barack Obama. Senator Clinton may have some legitimate gripes about the primary process. But given her differences with Senator McCain on any number of issues, and given the considerable similarity between her views and Senator Obama's, she would have to have mighty strong objections for it to make any sense to want her supporters to cast protest votes against the Democratic candidate. For my own part, I can't see that the objections could be nearly strong enough.

As we've been reminded countless times, her campaign agreed to the decision to exclude Florida and Michigan lo those many months ago. And while there might be a case for saying that the Florida delegation should be seated (the Democrats couldn't make the Republican legislature change the calendar even if they had wanted to), Michigan is another story. The one-person one vote business is at least partly a red herring, and the reasons aren't news. One person/one-vote is too broad to tell us what to do when states go against their party's own rules. In any case, there's nothing sacred about one person/one vote to begin with. Yes: it's easy to list despicable examples of disenfranchising people -- women, minorities, people who can't afford poll taxes -- but American democracy even at its best has never been one person/one vote all the way down, and has never counted all votes equally. Presidential elections are decided ultimately by the Electoral College, and as we all know, the outcome can differ from the popular vote. A vote for Senator in Montana counts for a lot more than a vote for Senator in California. Maybe presidential elections should be decided by simple majority vote, but there are interesting non-nasty arguments on the other side. Maybe we shouldn't have a Senate where each state, large or small, gets the same number of Senators. But there are reasons to the contrary that someone could be persuaded by without being a moral moron. For that matter, maybe every piece of legislation should be decided by direct democracy, but I 'd strongly consider emigrating to Antarctica if that happened. And when it comes to how political parties pick their candidates, it's really a long way from obvious that it should just be by popular vote. Someone could think that "party elders" have a special role to play without being a racist, sexist, elitist or anything else mean or miserable.

As for a roll call vote at the convention, I'm having a hard time understanding what good it would do. If Senator Clinton lost (my guess about the outcome), it seems at least as likely that it would just stir up more bad feelings as that it would help to get a Democrat in the White House. And if she were to win, then given the way things have developed, I'd expect a level of chaos that would make Will Roger's crack about not belonging to an organized political party seem way too mild.

Truth in advertising: I voted for Obama in the primary. But it wasn't a vote against Senator Clinton, and if she had ended up the winner, I could have lived with that very easily. She's a remarkably capable and talented individual. There's not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that she's up to the job. But I think the same of Senator Obama, and I had to pick.

Politics is messy business, and it can't just be a matter of principle. The trouble is familiar: there are too many plausible but conflicting principles. People can reasonably decide not to be Democrats, and Democrats can reasonably disagree about various issues while still being more like one another on the whole than they are like Republicans. There are no perfect candidates, no perfect processes, and no perfect rules. I'm one of those people who started out thinking rather well of McCain, but found that the more he said, the more I had to disagree with. Some of those disagreements are pretty profound. Given that Senator Clinton is to the left of Senator Obama on many issues, I find it bewildering that people who were enthusiastic about her could think that their values are best served by casting a protest vote for Senator McCain. Being a dog in a manger may make you feel better for a while, but if it works against a lot of things you really care about, it's better to lick your wounds and move on.

Metaphysics and the Value of Life: Part I

2008-07-23T08:20:00.001-04:00

The abortion debate is hard because people differ deeply over basic questions of value. Some abortion opponents see the embryo as absolutely and infinitely valuable from the beginning. Proponents of a more permissive point of view aren't likely to agree and may even find some versions of the conservative view bewildering. However, all sides ought to be able to agree on this: the value of the embryo -- however great or small that value may be -- can't be a brute fact. Let me explain.

Suppose your neighbor has a rather ordinary-looking rock on display in his living room. He tells you proudly that this is the most important, most valuable physical object in the world. You make a few polite inquiries: what's it made of? Nothing special; certainly not anything rare or precious. What is it's history? Once again, nothing special. Your neighbor just found it one day in in his garden. When you ask what makes the rock so valuable, the owner tells you, deadly seriously, that it's just a fact about this rock: it just is valuable beyond all price.

To say the least, you'd be sure your neighbor was deeply confused. Many rocks are more or less worthless. If this one is especially valuable, something has to make it so: what it's made of, the beauty of its shape, something about who has owned it or its role in some significant event -- something other than just raw superadded value.

If the embryo has the sort of extraordinary value that many people think it has, we can also ask why. And it's not as thought there are no facts to point to. The embryo has the same genetic code that you and I have, though whether that counts on its own is actually pretty obscure. More promisingly, it has the potential to develop into a full-fledged human being with the same capacities as any other full-fledged human being. We could add a good deal more, and all these points are inconsiderable. It's not unintelligible that some people should see the embryo as having an extraordinary value -- something that abortion liberals would do well to keep in mind. But it's also not unintelligible that someone confronted with the vast differences between an early embryo and the person across the room from them should find it hard to make sense of the idea that embryos and eight-year-olds, for example, are really in the same moral category. This, in turn, is something that abortion conservatives need to recognize.

Some anti-abortion advocates say that in days to come, we will see the history of abortion as the history of something as monstrous as the Holocaust. This leaves pro-choice partisans bewildered. Even conceding that embryos aren't just one bit of biological detritus among others, one needn't be confused or morally blind to think that embryos and eight-year-olds are morally very different sorts of things. But some on the pro-choice side treat the right to an abortion as virtually exceptionless, no matter at what stage of the pregnancy and no matter for what reasons. (Various reactions from the left to Barack Obama's call for a weighty interpretation of the health exception to bans on late-term abortions make this clear.) Abortion opponents are equally bewildered. How, they ask, could late-term abortion simply be a matter left to individual choice when there's so little apparent difference between this case and infanticide?

None of this solves anything. But it may still get us somewhere. First, bald assertions of value or the lack thereof won't do, whichever side they come from. Second, each side should be able to see why the other is utterly unconvinced by the positions at the left and right extremes. It's not puzzling that someone should be baffled by a view that treats a 2 mm conceptus with the mere beginnings of a neural tube as the moral equivalent of a conscious, thinking being with plans, purposes and ongoing concerns. But it's also not puzzling that someone would be deeply distressed at the thought that a 7-month fetus isn't entitled to a great deal of legal protection. People at the extremes have taken on a big burden of proof.

Of course, all of this sidesteps one important bit of metaphysics: the relationship between religious claims and the abortion issue. We'll take that up in another post.

Abortion, Moral Obligation, Religious Obligation

2008-07-20T15:18:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I met a young couple who were in Washington for the summer, working as interns working for a pro-life organization. At some point in the dinnertime conversation election politics came up, and the young woman maintained that as a Catholic, she had a moral obligation not to support candidates who support abortion rights.

This seems to me to be a mistake.

The issue isn't who's right about the abortion question. Reasonable people can differ about that. But partly for that reason, the idea that as a Catholic, she had a moral obligation to guide her political behavior according to Church teaching is disturbing. Although there are individual Catholics who disagree with it, the Catholic Church's position on abortion is clear and consistent. The thought that someone might find the Church's analysis persuasive and see it as a basis for political action doesn't trouble me. What troubles me is the thought that whether or not someone had thought through what the Church has to say, he or she would see it as a reason for political action.

I have a suggestion about how the ideal citizen would think about her vote: she would vote as though her ballot was the one that tipped the scales; the one that decided which way the overall vote would go. If we follow that standard, and if what's at stake is something that would have real and significant consequences for real people, that imposes a considerable duty of care. In particular, it imposes a duty not just to take someone else's opinion on a consequential moral question -- even if that someone (or those somebodies) happen to be the ones who speak for one's religious tradition.

No one should take offense at the suggestion that the Catholic Church has been wrong before in matters of consequence. After all, this would hardly make the Church unique. But we can go a little further. There are weighty reasons to think that the Church is wrong even now about important things. Most Catholics don't accept Church teaching on birth control, and it would be a mistake to put this down to intellectual or spiritual sloth. What the Church has to say about birth control rests on premises that many thoughtful religious people, including many thoughtful Catholics, don't find convincing. The same goes for what the Church has to say about homosexuality. The point isn't that doubts about official teaching on these issues undermines what the Church says about abortion. The point is simply that since it's possible in good conscience for Catholics to have reservations about Church moral teachings on some issues, it would take argument to show that abortion couldn't be an exception. And it would take even more argument to show that the moral duty of a good Catholic is to vote with the Church's urging, private doubts notwithstanding.

I said it before and I'll say it again: the point isn't that the Church is wrong about abortion. The point, rather, is that the issues here aren't simple, even though both sides often try to present them as though they were. When I teach the topic of abortion to philosophy students, I always begin with an admonition: whichever side of this question you're on, if you think it's simple, you need to think again. Whenever we're confronted with an issue of that sort, I'd suggest that our duty is not to turn the settling of our duties over to others. Our duty is to think things through.

Mark Souder and Second Amendment Silliness

2008-07-18T14:55:00.001-04:00

In most parts of the country, most people probably didn't pay much attention to this item. Indiana congressman Mark Souder has taken it upon himself to protect citizens of the District of Columbia from City Council's desire to allow handgun possession only with restrictions. The city wants to require registration, wants to ban certain kinds of weapons, and wants to require that guns kept in the home must be disabled except when there's a reasonable fear that they're needed for self-defense. "Their intent is basically to try to get around the court ruling," says Souder, and so his proposed emergency legislation would strike all of DC's gun restrictions.

As it happens, the Supreme Court opinion grants that there's no unfettered right to own guns. Just what the constitutionally acceptable limits might be is something that will get hammered out in court cases over the years. So why the need for an act of congress?

Souder offers a bizarre and, frankly, offensive justification. According to him, the proposed new DC gun laws deprive people of their civil rights. The regulations proposed by the Council "would be like certain so-called Jim Crow laws in the South," says Souder. "If you try to deprive people of their civil rights, and there is no other way to do it, then legislation is necessary." (You can hear the sound bite here .) I rather suspect that the majority black citizenry of Washington doesn't see sins against the "right" to have a loaded, unlocked, unregistered 30-round firearm in one's home as being in the same category as the old Jim Crow laws.

In any case, one wonders: perhaps the Council's proposals will pass constitutional muster; perhaps they won't. It's a certainty that they'll be challenged and that the courts will weigh in to settle the matter of just how far this "civil right" extends. The idea that legislation is "necessary" at this point doesn't have much to be said for it. But speaking of civil rights -- Souder clearly has no problem at all following in the fine old tradition of substituting Congress's judgment for the judgment of DC's own elected representatives, even though the citizens of the District don't have voting right in Congress, and even though Congress couldn't get away with anything similar if it were South Bend in the cross-hairs.