New Sex Ed Research Is Useless

It would appear that both Liza and I have sex education on the brain, and that’s funny considering that we have not spoken about this at all.  Even so, she just posted about sex ed, and now I’m doing the same.  There is a difference, however.  Her post had, in terms of the empirical research that served for the initial source, a study that suggests that abstinence-only programs do not work so well.  I, however, would like to address the reports concerning the new study that say something very different.

CNN.com is reporting that a new “landmark” study has been released that shows “An abstinence-only education program is more effective than other initiatives at keeping sixth- and seventh-graders from having sex within a two-year period…”  According to the report, the scientists engaged in this research program discovered that those students who received instruction in a program that was abstinence-only were significantly less likely to engage in sexual activity over a two year period.  That is, of those students who received the abstinence-only instruction, only a third engaged in sexual intercourse.  This is contrasted with the more than half of students who engaged in sexual intercourse who received “safer sex” instruction, and more than forty percent who participated in a course that had both abstinence and safer sex instruction as parts of the program.

The researchers were quick to point out that this study should not suggest that safer sex courses should be abandoned, and several organizations have said something similar.  The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy released a statement that said, “"It is unreasonable to expect any single intervention, curriculum or program to solve the teen pregnancy problem.  True and lasting progress requires not only good programs in schools and communities, but also supportive norms and values, informed and active parents, good health services, a positive media culture and more."

I hope those reading this have caught the plain weirdness of this study with the above quote being the clue.  What is strange about this is that the study in question does not address the very thing for which sex education programs were created, namely the need to limit the spread of STDs and unwanted teen pregnancy.  Those issues are not in any way a concern for the researchers here.  Their concern was merely whether or a group of students with the average age of 12 had sex by the time they were 14.  Let’s put aside the issue that this is a single data point that appears to conflict with other good data, though this is certainly very relevant, and let’s focus only on this single concern.  Though there may be some peripheral interest in whether or not pre-teens are engaged in sexual intercourse, such a concern is hardly central to the reasons for having sex ed courses.  As the quotes in the CNN article from those groups engaged in sex education demonstrate, unwanted pregnancies and the spread of STDs, especially AIDS/HIV, are the critical reasons for having these programs, and this is wholly unaddressed by researchers.  As such, it is hard to see that this study is relevant at all to the concerns of those debating how sex ed should be taught.

Now, I can imagine that some might want to argue at this point that those children who are not having intercourse are necessarily less likely to become pregnant or wind up with an STD.  However, those are hardly the only kids with which we are concerned.  We are also worried about the kids that are having intercourse, and we need them to be as likely as possible to act in a way that is most beneficial to public health.  If it turned out that some program produced few children having sex, but that the numbers related to the actual point of sex ed, namely pregnancy and STDs, were higher than the numbers produced by a safer sex program, then the former program would clearly be the failure.  This is because it would have missed the point entirely by focusing on the wrong issue.  As such data, the truly relevant data, is wholly missing from the research in question, the study itself is virtually meaningless for anyone trying to figure out the best way to teach sex ed.  And, to make it worse, this is compounded by the fact that, as Liza pointed out in an earlier post, the bulk of the data heretofore gathered goes against the outcome of this single study.

Here’s the bottom line:  in terms of sex ed, it just does not matter whether or not your kid is having sex.  It is much better that teens be sexually active while being disease and child free than it is that some portion remain virgins while the others have their lives irrevocably damaged by the consequences of unsafe sex practices.  I completely understand that many parents do not want their children engaged in sexual activity, and, were I a parent, I would likely feel the same.  But, again, that is just completely irrelevant to the public concerns that sex ed courses address.  Sex ed programs are there for a reason, and if you’re caught up in keeping intercourse numbers down while disregarding the relevant issues of disease and unwanted teen pregnancy, then you have missed the point entirely, and that is exactly what this study has done.  It has simply missed the point.

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More on Sex Education and Values

I thought I would write a short post about Ross Douthat’s most recent column in the New York Times because he addresses an issue that was recently the subject of one of my posts.  On the subject of sex education, Douthat writes “The evidence suggests that many abstinence-only programs have little impact on teenage sexual behavior, just as their critics long insisted. But most sex education programs of any kind have an ambiguous effect, at best, on whether and how teens have sex.”   In defense of this claim, Douthat mentions a recent book on the history of sex education in America by Kristin Luker and notes the author’s conclusion that it is “surprisingly difficult to show that sex education programs do in fact increase teenagers’ willingness to protect themselves from pregnancy and/or disease.”  Douthat then goes on to make the argument that, because evidence about the effectiveness of all types of sex education is inconclusive, different regions of the United States ought to be able to use federal funding to institute different educational programs to reflect community values.

Douthat’s primary thesis is that the contraception-versus-abstinence debate should be viewed  “more as a battle over community values than as an argument about public policy.”  As my previous posts would suggest, I agree that this is a battle over values, but Douthat’s conclusions about public policy do not follow from this premise.   Douthat suggests that we should keep federal funding for sex education but allow communities to use that funding to reflect their own “sacralist” or “naturalist” values about sex.  This is problematic for two reasons.  First, if Douthat could demonstrate that sex education had no effect, whatever its content, then surely the conclusion is that the federal government should quit doling out money for sex education, period.  The fact that he wants to keep such funding in place belies the reality that such education has some sort of desirable effect.  Second, Douthat’s point that  specific socio-economic, cultural, and family factors exert a greater influence on a teenager’s sexual behavior than one class taught in school sounds good, but the argument itself is really weak.  By analogy, the availability of high-calorie junk food and captivating sedentary distractions clearly exerts more of an effect on childhood obesity than the content of one class that touts the benefits of healthy diet and exercise, but nobody is saying that the evidence about health and nutrition class is so inconclusive that we ought to let communities use federal funding for that kind of health education to “reflect community values”.

Douthat’s conclusion is that the federal government “[shouldn't] try to encourage Berkeley values in Alabama, or vice versa,” and, for this reason, federal funding earmarked for sex education shouldn’t come with any “ideological strings attached.”   This argument is really a variation of the “states rights” position which holds that local governments have a better understanding of the specific needs of their communities and should, therefore, have the authority to make policy decisions that respond to those needs.   It is a mostly reasonable argument that has been used, at various times, to justify everything from slavery and Jim Crow laws to including “alternatives to evolution” in “science” books used in public schools.   It seems that Douthat thinks that “sacralist” and “naturalist” values fall into the benign class of things such as snow removal and libations taxes that should be regulated on a local level for practical reasons.  This is absurd.  It is precisely because sex education is rife with implicit questions about values that the states rights argument is not appropriate here.

The question of whether the the federal government ought to be able to ear-mark funds for a specific purpose which reflects a specific value is really empty.  All laws, regulations, and taxes are justified, at some level, by some value, and, for the most part, the kinds of values that are implicit in policy decisions are uncontroversial.  It is only in those cases in which a controversy arises that the states rights argument gets trotted out, and in those cases it is almost always used by those who are angling to promote an opposing value.  For example, we all know that the same people who want a federal amendment banning gay marriage would happily argue that they have the right to use federal funding ear-marked for sex education to reflect their community’s “sacralist” values of abstinence.

Of course, the hypocrisy of politicians and political activists is not a direct response to Douthat.  He could consistently say that the federal government has no right to impinge upon local laws and policies which reflect community values, regardless of what those values are.  But, this is an absurd position.  If accepted, it entails that the federal government was also unjustified in overruling laws regarding slavery and segregation which were, at the time, a reflection of “community values.”  It would be more reasonable for Douthat to make the case that sex education is like traffic regulation where the value is uncontroversial and is promoted more through its existence than through its specific content*.  Unfortunately, this is a pretty unappealing analogy as virtually everyone agrees that the value of education is derived, in large part, from its content.  So, I’m left to the conclusion that Douthat’s argument just doesn’t work.  He doesn’t say that sex education is not valuable, he can’t say that the content of such classes doesn’t matter, and he shouldn’t say that the federal government has no business taking a position on something that is valuable and does matter.

*For example, it’s not morally important whether we drive on the left or the right side of the road, but it is morally important that we all agree to one or the other.  Thus, the value of traffic laws does not derive from their specific content but from their existence in the first place.

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Latest Fish Follow-up

I wanted to post a quick follow-up to my last entry on Stanley Fish.  (I do this for mostly for my own interest as, judging from the number of hits on that post, people are far less interested in criticisms of a dominant American post-modern intellectual than they are Pat Robertson, bird poop, or asshats.)  There I discussed Fish’s assertion in a recent article in the New York Times that incoherency was not so problematic as normally thought.  What occasioned this article was the publishing of a book by Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Natural Reflections: Human Cognition at the Nexus of Science and Religion (The Terry Lectures Series) .  In my analysis of Fish’s article, I was careful not to direct my criticisms at Smith herself.  This is because I thought it unlikely that she took the position that Fish put on her, mostly because such a position is so untenable.  Now Smith herself has posted a response to the wide criticism she has received in response of Fish’s article.  Unsurprisingly, she does some work to distance herself from the extreme position taken by Fish and attributed to her.  Also unsurprisingly, she does so in such a way as to avoid saying outright that Fish is wrong.  That said, the distinction between her position and Fish’s is evident.  Further, I think there is still plenty of room to criticize her own position.

The first thing of note is that Smith makes it clear that she does not think that incoherency is wholly unproblematic.  She writes, “Contrary to impressions drawn by several readers, I don’t think anyone can blow away such facts or conflicts by declaring (via Whitman or otherwise), ‘So we contradict ourselves. So what?’”  She also does not buy into the idea that science and religion are different “domains” or “contexts” that need not intersect.  She both dismisses the oft held up NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria) of Stephen J. Gould and points out that it is quite common for religious and scientific beliefs that contradict to cause very practical problems in a person’s life.  She writes,

For many people, contradictions between religious teachings and other knowledge — experiential as well as formal — create not only very real conflicts but also considerable anguish. Conflicts of this order can sometimes be resolved by rejecting religious teachings on one or more matters. Significant examples of such matters are homosexuality, the use of contraceptive devices and proper roles for women. Sometimes, however, when such contradictions are fundamental, the personal conflicts they create can be resolved only by abandoning religious doctrine, religious observance or, ultimately, religious identity altogether.

This seems to strike right at the heart of Fish’s assertion that “The conclusions we may have come to in the context of fancy epistemological debates (a context few will ever inhabit) will have no necessary force when we step into, and are asked to operate in, other contexts.”  All the better, then, that he followed that with “This last point is mine, not Smith’s (although I have reason to think she would find it agreeable).”  It would appear that Fish might have been mistaken to think that Smith was as willing to embrace contradiction as he was, and that, of course, was the core of my argument against him.

All that said, Smith does seem to hold a position that I see as very problematic.  She explicitly says that those engaged in epistemic approaches from both the scientific and religious mindset are equally unlikely to yield in the face of argument or evidence.  She writes,

This tendency to belief-persistence is well illustrated in the back-and-forth celebratory descriptions of science and pious invocations of the truth of one or another religion that swell the comments on Fish’s column. Such celebrations and invocations are typically accompanied by long lists of the crimes of religion and the glories of science or (in equally long lists) vice versa. What is notable here is that no position in these seesaw exchanges is ever changed. No one is enlightened; no one is converted.

This is not to say that enlightenment and conversion never occur. But, as scholars of religion from William James on have observed, conversions do not commonly occur as the result of such arguments or such evidence. And, as scholars of science from Thomas Kuhn on have added, that’s not quite the way scientific revolutions occur either.

I’m just going to have to strongly disagree with Smith here while expressing confusion as to how she could come to any such conclusion.  While paradigm shifts themselves might be more complicated, within science it is absolutely the case that arguments and evidence overcome beliefs every day.  That is exactly how science works!  Science is antithetical to positions held on unyielding faith.  Refusing to acquiesce in the face of contrary evidence only ensures that you will quickly become irrelevant in the domain of science.  Moreover, in science there is simply little reason to hold onto any position that is not favored by the evidence.  This is simply because of the nature of science itself.  It is not the case that good scientists constantly work to massage the data to make it fit in their favored hypothesis.  Rather, they attempt to form hypotheses that best fit the data itself.  Science is the practice of discovery, not revelation, and this is exactly where it differs from religion.  There the arrow is reversed, and the conclusion is presumed before the evidence is ever gathered. 

Given that the above is the case, Smith’s assertion that those working from the epistemology of science are as prone to belief-persistence as those working in a religious framework just seems bizarre.  It is obviously wrong-headed.  Were that the case, science would never get done.  As it does get done, as science is constantly changing while religion, though not wholly static, is certainly not best described as dynamic, it clearly cannot be the case that those doing science refuse to alter their beliefs in the face of better arguments and evidence.  As such, one cannot help but think that Smith is guilty of serious error, though at least she does not, like Fish, proclaim that incoherence and contradiction is nothing about which we need concern ourselves.

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The Problem of Spiritual Consolation

The Washington Post has been running a series of essays by religious authorities in response to the recent earthquake in Haiti.  The idea of the series is to examine how people of different faiths explain the age old question of why bad things happen to good people.  I would like to say something about this tragedy as well, but I approach the issue from almost exactly the opposite perspective.   I do not believe that there is any good answer to the question of why terrible things happen, but I do believe that it is insensitive to explain away such calamities with fables or myths.  Moreover, I think that "spiritual consolation" becomes offensive when it implies that suffering could have been prevented through alternative thinking, praying, or other "spiritual" practices.

If you believe that God has a Plan or that there is a "cosmic order" to the universe then you necessarily believe that awful things happen for a reason.  This applies not only to natural disasters but also to diseases, acts of malice, and personal tragedies.  Of course, you may believe that particular events are exacerbated by evil human intent (or corruption) and that those who knowingly do wrong things ought to be punished, but this does not get you out of the deeper metaphysical problem of evil.

Let us start with the idea of God’s Plan.  If it is the case that God is omniscient, then God Knows that some priests are going to rape some alter boys.  It is an unpleasant but entirely necessary part of the gift of free will that God allows such acts to occur, just as it is a part of God’s Plan that every day thousands of people will die in accidents, epidemics, and massacres.  From a philosophical perspective, I do not find this position to be particularly problematic because I can accept that God could be omniscient and omnipotent but that His omnibenevolence is so far from what we imagine (usually some kind of cosmic Santa Claus) that it can contain atrocities and still be, ultimately, Good.   What puzzles me is why anyone would take comfort in believing in a god like that.  Moreover, the idea that praying to a god who already has a set plan will make any difference in the course of future events is both absurd and borderline offensive.  After all, if I accept that the same God that allows earthquakes and child rape occasionally answers prayers, then it looks as though I must accept that people who suffer devastation may, in fact, be responsible for their own suffering.  If prayer works, and some people still suffer and die from things God could have prevented, then they must not have prayed or prayed the right way.

So, to recap, the two religious alternatives appear to be that 1) Your suffering is a part of God’s Plan, and can’t be helped or 2) Your suffering is a part of God’s Plan but can be helped by prayer, so if you continue to suffer even after prayer, then it is your own fault.  In light of this, I can see why the not-religious might seek out some alternative form of consolation.  I expect that the appeal of New-Age self-help programs like "Heal Your Life" and "The Secret" has a lot to do with this.  The idea behind New Age thought seems to be that we can explain away our old suffering in terms of a cosmic order (usually something like Karma, but it varies) that we didn’t understand before, and that we can prevent new suffering by understanding this cosmic order and harnessing  "positive thinking" or "positive energy" in our lives.  On the surface, New Age thought seems appealing because it offers up all the reassurances of religion (ultimate meaning, a purpose-driven life, etc.) without a nasty god who may hold you accountable for all of the bad things you did in your miserable life.  Unfortunately, the "cosmic order" view doesn’t offer any insightful explanation for why bad things happen, and it is even more conducive to a blame-the-victim conclusion than the "God’s Plan" view.

What virtually every New Age system holds in common is the belief that "non-physical" aspects of people such as "positive" or "negative" beliefs, "auras", or "spiritual energy" have an effect upon the physical world such that they determine the health of the body as well as events in a person’s life.  For example, the New Age self-help guru Louise Hay claims that she cured her cancer without drugs or surgery through "an intensive program of affirmations, visualization, nutritional cleansing, and psychotherapy."  In other words, Louise Hay claims that she cured cancer by thinking differently.  Leaving aside the obvious empirical problems with this claim (and the serious philosophical problems, and the fact that she is lying), what is troubling about Louise Hay is that her program implies that those who suffer and die of illnesses such as cancer could have chosen to do otherwise (by thinking differently!)  and that, for this reason, they are ultimately responsible for their fate.   The same implication follows from the principle of the self-help documentary "The Secret" which suggests that economic success is not the result of mere fortune and labor but is instead the result of a mysterious "Law of Attraction" whereby individuals attract fortunate events and interactions through positive thinking.  Thus, people who live in poverty could have done otherwise and those who remain in poverty have failed to take available measures to improve their luck.

I understand that most people who offer up their prayers, thoughts, meditations, and/or "positive energy" to those who suffer do so with honest intentions and good will, but this is no excuse for promoting a position that blames the victim.  The people of Haiti did not make a deal with the Devil nor tip the Karmic scales so as to necessitate an earthquake, and no amount of prayer or positive thought could have changed their circumstances.  Consolations based upon spiritual conjecture are an insult to their injury.

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The Incoherent Stanley Fish

It will come as no surprise to long-time readers of this blog that neither Liza nor I are sympathetic to the musings of Stanley Fish that appear over at the New York Times.  One thing I often ponder is the apparent incoherency of some of his ideas.  Well, now there is an answer to this issue:  Fish thinks that incoherency in thoughts is just fine.  In a recent column, he discusses a new book out by Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Natural Reflections: Human Cognition at the Nexus of Science and Religion.  According to Fish, Smith’s goal in this book is to critique the assumptions underlying the moral and epistemic tensions often seen in the contemporary discussions of science and religion.  The apparent solution to this dilemma is to accept some admitted incompatibility of these different epistemic approaches without concern and move on.  Via Fish, Smith writes, “the sets of beliefs held by each of us are fundamentally incoherent — that is, heterogeneous, fragmentary and, though often viable enough in specific contexts, potentially logically conflicting.”  This statement alone is uncontroversial.  It is, without doubt, the case that all of us likely hold some ideas that are incoherent with others.  But Fish goes much further in his claim in this article.  No, the take-home message here is about more than the assertion of the mere fact that the totality of some individual’s beliefs contains some incoherency.  It is that such incoherency is perfectly fine, that there is no need to work to clear up such issues.  According to Fish, “The conclusions we may have come to in the context of fancy epistemological debates (a context few will ever inhabit) will have no necessary force when we step into, and are asked to operate in, other contexts.”  There can be no mistaking the message here.  The knowledge gained in one context, whatever that is, is irrelevant to other contexts, even if the facts that are taken for granted in one context contradict the facts taken for granted in another.

It would be surprising if most of those reading this were not taken aback by such a bold assertion.  Certainly, it is neither apparent nor intuitive that incoherency is a perfectly acceptable state of affairs.  On the contrary, such is typically taken to be a sign of flawed reasoning.  Fish seems to think that the only people who would be opposed to accepting contradictions in their systems of beliefs are those at the extremes of some ill-defined spectrum.  He writes,

Needless to say, not everyone will be pleased by this argument. Those strong religionists who believe that the overweening claims of science (or scientism) must be denounced daily will not be pleased by an argument that says nothing about redemption, salvation and sin, and gives full marks to science’s achievements. (Smith, a pupil of B.F. Skinner’s, has been a sympathetic and knowledgeable student of science for many years.) And those materialist atheists who see religion as the source of many of the world’s evils and all of its ignorance will not be pleased by an argument that finds an honorable place for religious beliefs and practices.

So, according to Fish, those who will be disturbed by such a counterintuitive position will be “strong religionists” and “materialist atheists,” the implication being that each is a clear extreme, and the tone of Fish’s article suggesting that such positions are in error.  Fish is explicit that he agrees with Smith’s described position, and that these two listed groups will not, thus leaving no room for any doubt as to Fish’s feelings concerning the matter.  What Fish does, then, is set himself up as some kind of moderate between these two “extremes,” the moderate in this case being one who accepts, without worry, incoherency in their beliefs.

I want to suggest that such a position is not moderate at all.  Rather, it is quite extreme in that it asserts something that seems to be obviously wrong, namely that being that incoherency is no vice or fault.  The problem of incoherency is that it leads to contradiction, and, as anyone who has taken an intro class on logic knows, from a contradiction one can derive anything.  Simply put, it is absurd to claim that incoherency, and thus contradictions, are not problematic.  It puts one in the position of saying that both “a” and “not-a” are true.  So, if incoherency is okay, then I can claim that it is simultaneously true that one needs to be coherent and one does not need to be coherent.  This is, as I stated before, just absurd.

A defender of Fish might attempt to point out that what Fish is claiming is not that incoherency is okay, but that apparent incoherency between differing domains is what is unproblematic.  However, as I suggested above, it is completely unclear what constitutes such a “domain.”  Further, however one chooses to delineate between such areas of knowledge, if incoherency is an issue that arises, it is wholly unclear on how such areas could, in fact, be differing domains.  Were they genuinely different, then issues such as incoherency should not arise at all.  Here is an example:  at the highest, most superficial level, let us think of two domains as including automotive repair and floristry.  Here, we can imagine why it is fair to say that such areas of interest are, in fact, contexts that do not overlap.  The problem, however, is that it is not immediately apparent that incoherency between these two domains can even arise.  For example, were some mechanic to suggest the proper timing for some model of some car, it is completely unclear on what that would have to do, how it even could contradict, anything some florist might say about the arrangement of flowers.  As these are differing domains, there is just no clear way for the claims within one area to contradict the claims within the other.   Now, of course, the mechanic might begin to make claims that fall outside the domain of auto repair, and it is then easy to imagine how it might run afoul of something the florist might say.  But, so long as the florist stays within the bounds of floral arrangement, and so long as the mechanic stays within the bounds of auto repair, both at the most superficial level, it does not appear that it is even possible for there to be some incoherency between these domains.

The point of the above is just to say that if some incoherency between ideas arises, then it is not at all clear that the ideas fall within differing domains.  On the contrary, this looks to be great reason to think the opposite, that the ideas belong within the same area of concern.  That leaves Fish’s idea of religion and science merely being different epistemic domains in which any incoherency is perfectly acceptable as looking just weird.  What is the justification for such a claim?  What would such a justification even look like?  Whatever it might be, Fish will have a hard time arguing for it so long as it allows for contradictions to be unproblematic.

In the end, I am just baffled by Fish’s absurd assertion that incoherency is acceptable.  Were this the case, there would be no issue with making the claim that Fish is a philosophical dunce while simultaneously making the claim that Fish makes important epistemic insights.  As it turns out, it is ridiculous to hold both of those to be true at the same time.  In light of that, I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide which is the more legitimate claim.

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Why Reactionary Political Movements Should Scare You

Recently, I had two eye-opening conversations with people who appear to believe genuinely crazy things.   One of the people, a homeless man with two Harvard degrees, told me with conviction that Osama bin Laden is a secret member of the CIA and 9/11 was an inside job.  The other person, a tattoo-covered, minimum-wage-earning bartender, told me that "welfare queens who have babies like cockroaches" are really responsible for the current economic crisis.   The homeless man told me that his "political beliefs" had alienated him from his entire family but that he would never trade in the crippling isolation and depression which accompanied his conspiracy theory to believe the "Nazi-mind-control-myth" that had been perpetrated against the American people.  The other man bragged that he was an entirely self-made man (as evidenced by the fact that he had moved up from dishwasher to bartender after working at the same dive bar for five years) but that socialized medicine (he doesn’t have health care) for "welfare queens" threatened to destroy his way of living.  Given the circumstances of each conversation, I was not in the position to press these men on their contradictions or false assertions, but that didn’t interest me much anyway.  What’s far more interesting to me is the way these men seemed to have invested so much of their personal identities in being members of a persecuted political minority.

What ties these men together is not simply that they are members of political minorities but that they are a part of reactionary movements, and this is really the underlying factor that explains the insanity of their beliefs.  The major difference between a coherent political doctrine and a reactionary movement is that reactionaries don’t worry about how to reconcile competing intuitions about justice.  Usually, they don’t even worry about using a consistent or coherent definition for common political terms because defining terms like "freedom", "justice", "Nazi" or "Fascist" is not what reactionary movements are about.  Reactionaries care about defining the enemy –"Bush-Cheney-CIA-Nazi-mind-control" or "Obamacare-Hitler-take-all-our-guns"– and this makes reactionary positions very appealing to people who want to point to an enemy as the source of all trouble or injustice.  This is dangerous not only because some of the people who are attracted to reactionary positions are already prone to paranoia or delusions but because, almost by definition, a reactionary political position can’t be altered by new evidence or rational arguments.

It is important to distinguish here between reactionaries and radicals.   We can and should question the authority, honesty, and moral intent of political parties and government officials.  Wise people often (perhaps usually) find themselves in a political minority.  However, there is a huge gap between holding an uncommon political opinion -backed up by a rational thesis- and demonizing a constructed enemy.  A person can have a set of political values that are not popular and still hold a coherent position that is flexible enough to allow for new evidence and respond to rational counterarguments.   For example, right-wing libertarianism is a coherent political doctrine which rates the value of individual liberty much higher than the competing value of the common good.  This means that a right-libertarian may have to bite the bullet in arguments about popular social programs and concede that he does not support them because he does not support taxation for the public good, but he maintains a consistent position.  The right-libertarian may also adapt his theory to justify some intrusions on individual liberty (e.g. taxation to fund a military or emergency service programs) by appealing to some higher order position or value (e.g. some level of security is a pre-condition of freedom) which is consistent with his theory.  In contrast, the so called Tea-Bagger or Tea-Partier who has defined his position in reaction to Obama’s proposed health care reform legislation cannot adjust his position in light of new evidence or arguments (e.g. Leading economists agree that a public option would lower overall healthcare costs and improve care in comparison to the current system) because his position isn’t based upon a coherent set of principles but upon the unalterable belief that the policies of the enemy are the cause of injustice, regardless of what those policies are. The same rule applies to the "9/11 Truthers" who move from legitimate arguments that the current U.S. wars are unjustified and the legitimate charge that the government misled the public about intelligence information (it probably did) to the shaky and unverifiable but wholly inflammatory claim that the Bush administration actually planned the murder of thousands of U.S. citizens.

The point at which political dissent is divorced from coherent doctrine and married to fear of an evil and deceptive enemy is the point at which rational citizens should become terrified.  A person who has decided that law-makers are not simply dishonest or corrupt but actually conspiring against him or his people* is not someone who is likely to participate in the kind of political discussion that is the foundation of representative democracy.  If I believe that your bad argument is a sign that you are wrong but your good argument is a sign that you are wrong and trying to trick me, I am not going to be convinced by you either way.  Moreover, I am likely to react badly, even violently, if you continue to assault me with good reasons or evidence because I won’t view the discussion as political discourse but as insidious manipulation by an evil liar.   This is the position that reactionaries hold.

In closing, I would really like to suggest some kind of productive response to reactionary arguments, but for obvious reasons I find it hard to imagine one.  I think the best response is to continue to participate in a rational dialogue with those who will play by the rules (coherent theory, consistent definitions, etc.) and to refuse to glorify or engage those who won’t.

*I feel compelled to add here that there appears to be quite a bit of overlap between the anti-Obama "tea-party movement" and out-and-out racist reactionary groups such as the Conservative Citizens Council.  You can watch an interesting excerpt from a documentary on this connection here.

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Atheists not Accepted as In-Laws

Pew Research has released the results of a new poll centered around the self-assessment of black Americans concerning their place in society here in the US.  While there is much of interest in the object of study here, I would like to highlight something buried in the rest of the analysis.  From the report: 

The survey finds that most Americans also are ready to accept intermarriage in their family if the new spouse is Hispanic or Asian. But there is one new spouse that most Americans would have trouble accepting into their families: someone who does not believe in God. Seven-in-ten people who are affiliated with a religion say they either would not accept such as marriage (27%) or be bothered before coming to accept it (42%).

The percentage of those who say they would not accept such a marriage at all is, to me, more noteworthy than those who would be merely bothered before coming to accept it.  This is, in part, because of the very low percentage of people who reported feeling similarly about different characteristics of potential partners for their children.  As the graphic for the report shows, the highest number for any other characteristic for a potential in-law is a low 6% associated with whites who would not accept a black American as a spouse for their child.  The difference between these numbers is significant. 

One point of interest for me is that differences in belief in God can vary amongst family members themselves.  Within my own family there is a variety of beliefs concerning God ranging from fundamentalist Christianity to something bordering on anti-theism, yet everyone in my family gets along just fine.  This is unsurprising given the shared background and common history of the individuals in question.  With that in mind, then, I find it curious that this is an issue of such importance to so many people.  Certainly, it seems as though the possible differences resulting from the racial distinctions would be more dramatic than one’s views on some god’s existence.  What, then, might the core of the concern be?

One possible answer could be the worry over the immortal soul of one’s children, grandchildren, and even the spouse themselves.  So, if one is a Christian, and one believes that those who have not accepted Christ as their personal Lord and Savior are doomed to suffer for all eternity in the fiery lakes  of Hell, then an argument could be made that refusal to accept an atheist as an in-law revolves around this issue.  Surely, one would not want their child’s soul endangered by the sustained influence of one who is him or herself damned.  And, of course, this could extend to a concern for any offspring resulting from such a union.  It could even be that there is a desire to refrain from forming any attachments to someone that is believed to be damned so as to avoid any anxiety that would come about from this new concern for that person’s welfare (though this would seem strange given the Christian’s mandate to spread the gospel).

If the above is the case, then I can see a possible explanation for the results of the poll.  However, that does not appear to be the reason as it looks like atheists are simply viewed in a poorer light in general by the public at large.  In polls conducted by the Gallup Organization from 1937 to 2007, it appears clear that atheists are and have been at the bottom of the pile in terms of whom the public would trust with public office.  In fact, according to the polls, “An atheist would seem to have the hardest time getting elected president, as a majority of Americans (53%) say they would not vote for a presidential candidate who was an atheist.”  This suggests that the US simply has a negative view in general of atheists, though it is unclear what the source of that prejudice is.

I know all this is true.  I see it day to day.  That doesn’t stop it from being weird.  It just strikes me as odd that this is the thing about which people are concerned.  It’s perplexing.  After all, no one is committing crimes in the name of atheism, atheists, in fact, being under-represented in our nations prisons.  We don’t have any examples of atheists refusing to let theists hold jobs, patronize their businesses, or ride their buses.  There is no data that suggests that atheists are more likely to be responsible for any of the things the public is likely to consider undesirable, and there is data to suggest that atheists are less likely to fall into such categories.  This prejudice against atheists is just all so strange. 

I don’t know.  Maybe if all you godless heathens stopped eating babies your public image would improve.

via Blag Hag

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Ghost Hunters and Other Such Silliness

I’ve noticed that, lately, there are quite a large number of shows on television revolving around the supernatural.  More specifically, these are programs that deal with people who claim to do something like hunt ghosts.  Perhaps the most prominent of these is the obviously titled Ghost Hunters.  I must admit to being perplexed at the existence and popularity of such shows.  I actually tried to sit through a few episodes to get a feel for what all the fuss is about, but I just could not make it through an entire episode.  The events in the program are, to put it mildly, lame.  You never get to see anything like a ghost, nor is there anything even remotely close to evidence for the existence of something at all supernatural ever found.  Rather, what you get is a few people running around in the dark with over-tuned instruments acting like they are scared at the sounds they themselves are making.

There are some obvious things about these programs that strike me as just odd.  For example, if the group examining some supposedly haunted location thinks they’ve genuinely found something, why is it that they pack up when they have enough footage for a single episode?  Why not stick around longer and get something that is more definitive than creaking boards or anomalous readings from a cam with nightvision?  More importantly, why exactly are they scared at all?  They jump and yell when the wind blows, so they are clearly afraid of something, but I have no idea what it is.  These are people whose entire job is to hunt ghosts.  They have been doing it for years, and in all that time no one has been hurt.  Nothing ever attacks the “hunters.”  At some point you would think these guys would wise up and realize that, if there really are ghosts, the entities in question either cannot or will not harm them.  Jumping at every “boo” just makes them look ridiculous.

But, unsurprisingly, I have some more serious questions about they entire endeavor, and these become objections to the entire premise of the “hunt.”  What exactly is the supposed nature of the ghosts?  From what I have picked up, it looks like they are supposed to be non-physical, immaterial entities.  Indeed, that’s the typical notion of a ghost.  So what’s up with all the gadgets?  Those over-tuned devices are built to measure physical stuff.  Cameras measure light.  If ghosts are non-physical, then there is nothing off of which light can bounce to hit the camera, or even our eyes.  If these things are truly non-physical, the entire attempt to see them is just…well, stupid.  The same goes for attempting to record them.  Sound is a wholly physical thing.  It is a wave of pressure oscillation in the atmosphere that is picked up by some measuring device, like our ears or an audio recorder.  If there is nothing physical there to move the air, then there will be no sound to detect by ears or otherwise.  I could go down the list for everything else, from heat to electromagnetic interference.  The simple fact is that all such things are physical, and the idea of something non-physical causing them makes no sense. 

Of course, someone might suggest that ghosts are, in reality, physical.  Ok, great.  But then they do not seem to fit what we generally think of as “ghosts,” and it’s unclear on how they’re related to people that died in the past or anything like that.  I mean, it seems pretty clear that when people die the physical part of them is done.  That’s why people who believe in ghosts, spirits, souls, etc say that such things are non-physical, and thus not harmed by the physical death of the individual.  But then we are right back where we started with none of this equipment that measures physical changes being able, in principle, to detect anything having to do with such stuff.  That makes the whole notion of hunting ghosts with these gadgets just silly.

In the end, I am wholly unable to understand the popularity of such programs.  Every episode appears identical to the last, and each ends with no definitive evidence of anything at all.  One would think that people would get bored of grown men jumping at their own shadows and footfalls, and yet…  I’m just left scratching my head.

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Pat Robertson, Haiti, and the Devil

Yesterday, January 13, on his show The 700 Club, Pat Robertson said that Haiti made a “pact with the Devil,” and that such was the root cause of all the country’s woes, including the recent earthquake. 

The video:

 

That’s right.  Pat Robertson believes that the entire country of Haiti got together, called up Ol’ Scratch, and pledged to do his wicked bidding if only he would help them free themselves from the oppression of the French.  Because, of course, anyone who believed in the Devil and knew who he was would also think that he would be a kinder and gentler master than the French, who are not themselves the Prince of Darkness or the Source of Evil.

I have very little to say about this.  I could rant and rave, but the sheer insanity of this, the wild awfulness of accusing an entire country of people of all being in league with Satan, not as a metaphor, but as real and actual, says more in itself than I ever could.  Anyone who continues to listen to this man, and certainly anyone who gives him money, thereby assisting the maniac, should be wholly dismissed and treated as the idiot they clearly are.  They are a lost cause.  I do not mean this as hyperbole.  I genuinely believe that anyone who can, with a straight face, claim than an entire nation of people would knowingly pledge themselves to Satan, and this is why they have been devastated by a natural disaster, is far beyond any hope of rational thinking.  Further, anyone who could hear such a claim and not recognize the lunacy behind it is also beyond all hope.  Thus, any attempt to convince them of the absurdity of their claim is futile.

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Values Masquerading as Justified Beliefs

My resolution for 2010 is to update this blog at least once per week.  I’m sorry about the lack of posting recently.  I really don’t have a good excuse.

This is the first of (what I hope will be) several posts concerning the relationship between knowledge and morality.   Here, I want to discuss the relationship between values and information in moral action.  Quite often, philosophers approach moral controversies in politics and religion by pointing out internal incoherencies and contradictions within a stated position.  In this blog, Jim and I have both pointed out such incoherencies among the religious, the conspiracy theorists, and the politically dogmatic. Understanding why a position is unjustified or self-refuting is very important.  But, it is also important to understand why people hold unjustified beliefs and why they espouse bad reasons and accept bad evidence.  I think the trick to understanding this second ‘why’ comes in understanding the underlying values that particular positions appear to confirm or support.  In his previous post, Jim argued that we have a moral obligation to believe only those propositions for which we have good reason.  I am hesitant to completely accept this conclusion because, in many cases, belief formation does not appear to be a matter of conscious choice.  That being said, it is obviously true that people willfully ignore information or discount valid arguments it in order to maintain a position that is indefensible.  This is where an examination of values becomes especially relevant in understanding why people hold unjustified positions.  Values are the driving force behind every willful act.  So, insofar as holding a belief can be considered a willful act, the choice to believe will be motivated by some underlying value.

Even if we limit the scope of moral judgment to extra-mental actions, we cannot discount the moral relevance of beliefs.   Intent matters, and we cannot assess a person’s intent without first assessing a person’s beliefs.  For example, the mother who believes the baby’s milk is safe is probably not morally blameworthy if she accidentally feeds her child milk that has been poisoned.  The mother who believes that she has added poison to her baby’s bottle is still guilty of a moral crime, even if the container marked “arsenic” actually contains milk powder.   Moral intent comprises both beliefs about facts and values.  The milk-poisoning mother is morally blameworthy if she holds some value (e.g. ‘my baby is worth less than what I get by killing him’) which we consider morally abhorrent.  It is morally irrelevant whether or not the bottle contained what she thought it contained, provided she had a reasonable expectation that such things wouldn’t be mislabeled.

Sometimes it is difficult to tell whether a person had access to adequate information, or whether a decision was based upon a “reasonable expectation” based upon good data, but most moral controversies do not arise out of debates about the validity of inferences drawn from information. Instead, I think these controversies are really battles between irreconcilable values which are shrouded in “debates” about information that is often quite conclusive. For example, there is a great deal of disagreement about whether a parent is morally justified in denying a teenage child access to contraceptives because the parent believes that providing birth control tacitly condones immoral sexual behavior.    The murky moral issue does not rest upon the efficacy of birth control or abstinence education (despite what religious conservatives may say) because the empirical evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that denying teenagers access to contraceptives or contraceptive information only decreases the likelihood that they will engage in safer sex practices, not the likelihood that they will have sex.   If you don’t happen to value sexual purity for its own sake, it is easy to imagine that this sort of statistical information resolves the moral issue in favor of the teenager.  However, it is entirely coherent for a parent to acknowledge the veracity of the empirical data and still believe that it is a serious moral error to even tacitly condone premarital sex because it is wrong.

Thought experiment:  Imagine for a moment that you are a parent and that you live in a state in which epidemic numbers of teenagers have begun murdering the elderly for fun.    It so happens in this state that members of a particular gang are much less likely to suffer serious repercussions for murder than other teenagers who are not in the gang.  Membership in a particular gang does not decrease the likelihood that your son or daughter will participate in these gruesome acts, but it may decrease the likelihood that they will go to prison.  I am inclined to think that a great many parents would not want their sons or daughters to become a member of the protected gang, even if it meant that they would be more likely to suffer the consequences of murder, because most parents do not want their children to be murderers.  The fact that your child is statistically likely to do something terrible does not take away the terribleness of the act, nor does it excuse you from the responsibility to condemn murder as strongly and convincingly as you can.

I do not mean to suggest or imply that premarital sex is morally analogous to murder.  In fact, I don’t think premarital sex is wrong at all.  But the value of sexual purity is something that some people* take almost as seriously as murder.   The proponents of abstinence-only education who claim to believe that it is an effective way to prevent teen pregnancy demonstrate either embarrassing ignorance or damning dishonesty, but regardless of whether they are fools or liars, it is their values, not their information, which explains why they believe what they believe.  To assume that debates about sex education and contraception can be resolved by appeal to valid empirical research is to radically misunderstand the position of both sides because it is not really a debate about the validity of data at all.  It is a battle over incompatible values.

In fact, outside of philosophy, debates about the justification for beliefs almost always have a subtext of incompatible values.  Those of us who value being internally consistent, well-justified, or knowledgeable often find ourselves puzzled about why a person would hold on to a belief or accept evidence that is indefensible.  We would do well to consider that it may be competing values, not competing arguments, that make such beliefs attractive.  I think an an adequate understanding of such debates requires that we explore the value assumptions implicit in on both sides.  (E.g., "I value predictive success.  You value membership in a group that vows never to change its position.") Those who prefer a world-view-confirming fiction to unappealing truths may never be convinced by good arguments or evidence, but identifying the values that underlie such beliefs still makes the debate more honest.

*I use this example partially because this value is not limited to religious fundamentalists.  I once lived with a 28 year-old graduate student from China who was so concerned about maintaining her sexual purity that she wouldn’t use tampons or walk around in her pajamas in the presence of men.  When I asked her about this, she told me that a man could renege on his marriage to a woman if it was discovered that she was not a virgin on her wedding night.  When I asked what the consequences of this dissolution were she told me that the woman could maybe move back in with her family but that it was preferable that she take her own life to shield her family from shame.

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