Wildmon complains that people shouldn’t put the “twisted sexual desires” of adults ahead of the welfare of children. If he said twisted sexual taboos instead of desires, then he would be uttering the very condemnation of his little clan of busybodies that they most need to hear.

Read full post, see embedded content, and comment here!
Posted in: Culture, People
Post tags: Gay marriage

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Oh yeah? Well, I had my ideas already about what a good strategy would look like in a perfect world, but there are problems with it. That perfect world approach is supported by the research:

The rather odd element of the Dunning-Kruger effect is that the incompetent don’t become aware of it until they become more competent. The key is education. Extending on their earlier experiments, Dunning and Kruger took half of their volunteers and trained them in how to solve the logic puzzles. It was as though a light went on for the under achievers. For the first time out of all the tests they began to realise that they were below average. Suddenly aware of their incompetence, they readjusted their estimates to something more realistic.

For example, before being trained they had thought that they answered five out of the ten questions correctly, whereas in reality they had barely managed to score a single mark. After being trained their estimates plummeted to a more realistic score of just one out of ten.

Yeah – so far so good.  But there is a catch-22 here. Sure, if you have a real simple problem and have a captive audience, a logic puzzle, and no merry band of anti-logicians doing their best to keep their recruit, it is a simple matter to help a person increase their competence.

In the real world, though, what motivation does a person have to increase their own competence when they are already unshakeably certain that they are fully competent?  What if these confident beliefs are part of a cultural identity that no one wishes to surrender? What if their self-satisfaction is reinforced continuously by their peers?

What do you* do when a D-K-er refuses to be taught how to work the logic puzzle?

Unfortunately, I didn’t see any clues to help answer that.  Feel free to brainstorm in the comments.

* Writing this, I tried to figure out a way to avoid coming off as arrogant.  I couldn’t figure out a way to do it. People who know me know that I’m not immune to a bout of it, but the quick answer is “no, I don’t think I’m the all-knowing one whose job it is to educate the rest of the world.” On the other hand, I do perceive that anyone who does have a little bit of good information has an increasingly difficult job getting it out these days. And it’s not my problem and not my business… but if there is a secret to the game, I’d love to know what it is.

Read full post, see embedded content, and comment here!
Posted in: People, Sci/Tech
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

My first thought goes to the religious angle. John is an Evangelical (and reasonably conservative) Christian. As such, it is worth noting that his attitude toward retribution as justice is – if I read him right (which is often hard for me to do because his communication style is often very… “poetic”, and sometimes I find him hard to pin down) – a negative one. If I do read him right then I would want to keep that in my pocket for later discussions. I would like to show evidence that non-retributivism is not a “secular liberal” viewpoint – and such attitudes and arguments from conservative Christians serve as good evidence for that point.

This is especially important in discussions of doctrines of Hell. Most defenses of traditional notions of Hell rely on the notion that God is Just and that his Justice is a retributive one, though that latter point is normally obscured as much as possible from the defense itself if not from the consciousness of the person presenting it.

As discussed before, one’s theory of what properly constitutes justice should inform one’s view on whether or how retribution can serve the cause of or even be considered as justice. In Hobbins’ case, his objection to retribution doesn’t seem to derive from a theory of justice quite so much as it does from a theory of Scripture, but I’ll take what I can get here. My contention is that upon reflection, no theoretical system of justice that reflective, modern thinkers would find worthy of the name allows for the derivation of an important role for retribution – and certainly none would allow for retribution to be defined as justice.

Hobbins mentions the potential role of retribution in bringing “closure” for family victims of “Capital” crimes in terms suggestive of a Trojan horse. Whether or not that is its intended goal, it is an interesting puzzle. Should we take a family victim’s self-analysis as sufficient reason to consider that retribution has a restorative role in bringing closure? I don’t know – I’m skeptical on this – but more importantly, even if we do acknowledge that role, we are not advocating retribution qua retribution, but rather on the theory that it plays a restitutional role (one that could not possibly apply to arguments on the traditional doctrines of hell, for instance).

I think, whether Hobbins has also considered the question in terms of ethical theories of justice or not, he and I would agree that real justice is essentially preservative, preventative and restorative in nature. In other words, a just effort is one that seeks to preserve what is right, prevent wrong from happening, and to restore the right when a wrong has been done – all while avoiding greater wrongs.

Where I believe we differ a tad is on the political side of the question. I quote:

On the other hand, the fact that redistributive justice – which those same people usually affirm – is a type of retributive justice is almost universally overlooked. You know, progressive taxation, affirmative action, things like that. The feeling seems to be that redistributive justice cannot be a form of retributive justice.

I find this statement extremely revealing of a difference in perspective between advocates and detractors of what Hobbins calls “redistributive” justice.

In fairness to his view, there is a contingent among advocates of progressive taxation or affirmative action that do hold and argue for a retributive role for both – especially for affirmative action, when you consider the “reparations” movement and ’60′s radicalism.

In fairness to the rest of us and myself, it is neither necessary nor particularly common to advocate progressivism with the motive of retribution. In fact, I view progressive taxation exclusively in terms of preservative justice – maintaining a right economic system by avoiding the systematic or institutional transfer of un-earned riches into the hands of the wealthy and out of the reach of the nation that helped produce them and needs them to continue to live and function.

That isn’t to say that none of my political or economic opinions have room for punitive measures against wealthy abusers, or that my temperament doesn’t sometimes allow me retributive feelings against the same. But I don’t feel that wealth is itself an abuse and I am capitalist enough that I salute the industry of those who have achieved it. It is admiration that figures into my view of those wealthy, not retribution. And it is preservation that wholly informs my support for progressivism.

That this conservative sees progressivism as a form of retribution explains why he would take a dim view of progressivism. And it shows that there is a real communication breakdown between the progressive and conservative sides.

In any case – I’m glad to share with Hobbins a skepticism about enthusiasm for retribution. Human nature is such that the desire for it is – as Jesus said of the poor – always going to be with us. Research shows that the desire to punish wrong-doers is a strong psychological pre-disposition in humans, and suggests an evolutionary explanation for why this is so. Experience teaches us that most of us will justify those desires and the expressions of them by looking at them as elements of a worthwhile cause, such as justice.

We won’t rid ourselves of the desire to return ill for ill. But, we can reason better about that desire. We can recognize it as an emotion – even as a legitimate emotion. At the same time, we can recognize that it does not fit a properly understood theory of justice. We can recognize that indulging that emotion, in many cases, can be contrary to justice and contrary to a well-ordered society.

So, if any progressives out there advocate “redistributive” justice (for lack of a better word) out of a visceral desire for retribution as Hobbins perceives, it’s worth taking a second look at your goals and priorities. If advocates of the death penalty have retaliation mixed in amongst your justifications for it, it’s worth revisiting the role emotion plays in your theory of justice. And, if you are defending a traditional notion of Hell on the basis that God is “Just”, it’s worth spending some time figuring out what “justice” is, and whether the quintessentially human desire for revenge is really properly called by that name.

Read full post, see embedded content, and comment here!
Posted in: Justice, People, Philosophy, Religion
Post tags: retribution

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

I suppose one of the reasons I was so attracted to him was that he had a heroic and optimistic view of life that didn’t seem (to me) tarnished by naivety, romanticism, or sentimentalism. In other words, through his eyes life could truly be grand, and I could believe that was true.

So, anyway… I’ve sampled his writing on this blog before, and I’m about to do it again. The idea this time is to hear whether it is still believable. Tell me what you think. From The Poet:

Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold. Their knowledge of the fine arts is some study of rules and particulars, or some limited judgment of color or form, which is exercised for amusement or for show. It is a proof of the shallowness of the doctrine of beauty, as it lies in the minds of our amateurs, that men seem to have lost the perception of the instant dependence of form upon soul. There is no doctrine of forms in our philosophy. We were put into our bodies, as fire is put into a pan, to be carried about; but there is no accurate adjustment between the spirit and the organ, much less is the latter the germination of the former. So in regard to other forms, the intellectual men do not believe in any essential dependence of the material world on thought and volition. Theologians think it a pretty air-castle to talk of the spiritual meaning of a ship or a cloud, of a city or a contract, but they prefer to come again to the solid ground of historical evidence; and even the poets are contented with a civil and conformed manner of living, and to write poems from the fancy, at a safe distance from their own experience. But the highest minds of the world have never ceased to explore the double meaning, or, shall I say, the quadruple, or the centuple, or much more manifold meaning, of every sensuous fact: Orpheus, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Plato, Plutarch, Dante, Swedenborg, and the masters of sculpture, picture, and poetry. For we are not pans and barrows, nor even porters of the fire and torch-bearers, but children of the fire, made of it, and only the same divinity transmuted, and at two or three removes, when we know least about it. And this hidden truth, that the fountains whence all this river of Time, and its creatures, floweth, are intrinsically ideal and beautiful, draws us to the consideration of the nature and functions of the Poet, or the man of Beauty, to the means and materials he uses, and to the general aspect of the art in the present time.

The breadth of the problem is great, for the poet is representative. He stands among partial men for the complete man, and apprises us not of his wealth, but of the common-wealth. The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is. They receive of the soul as he also receives, but they more. Nature enhances her beauty, to the eye of loving men, from their belief that the poet is beholding her shows at the same time. He is isolated among his contemporaries, by truth and by his art, but with this consolation in his pursuits, that they will draw all men sooner or later. For all men live by truth, and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.

Notwithstanding this necessity to be published, adequate expression is rare. I know not how it is that we need an interpreter; but the great majority of men seem to be minors, who have not yet come into possession of their own, or mutes, who cannot report the conversation they have had with nature. There is no man who does not anticipate a supersensual utility in the sun, and stars, earth, and water. These stand and wait to render him a peculiar service. But there is some obstruction, or some excess of phlegm in our constitution, which does not suffer them to yield the due effect. Too feeble fall the impressions of nature on us to make us artists. Every touch should thrill. Every man should be so much an artist, that he could report in conversation what had befallen him. Yet, in our experience, the rays or appulses have sufficient force to arrive at the senses, but not enough to reach the quick, and compel the reproduction of themselves in speech. The poet is the person in whom these powers are in balance, the man without impediment, who sees and handles that which others dream of, traverses the whole scale of experience, and is representative of man, in virtue of being the largest power to receive and to impart.

Frankly, I’m not sure I can still believe.

Read full post, see embedded content, and comment here!
Posted in: Culture, People
Post tags: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh