In essence, Matthew Beard is arguing here for some moral absolutes - that there are some topics, for example post-birth abortion (infanticide) which simply categorically wrong.

Discussing such ideas or beliefs should not be eliminated, but accepting nihilistic positions is not so easily supported.

This comes from The Conversation.

Free your mind – but are there ideas we shouldn’t contemplate?

You’re a free thinker – congratulations – but does that mean you can, and should, approach everything with an open mind? Let me try to convince you you shouldn’t. I do not want to argue with him: he shows…

Matthew Beard - Research Associate, Centre for Faith, Ethics and Society at University of Notre Dame Australia
14 September 2014


Philosophy begins, as Aristotle remarked, with curiosity and wonder. kozumel 

You’re a free thinker – congratulations – but does that mean you can, and should, approach everything with an open mind? Let me try to convince you you shouldn’t.

I do not want to argue with him: he shows a corrupt mind.

So remarked Elizabeth Anscombe (1919-2001), a giant of 20th century moral philosophy. She was referring to the kind of person who is open to being convinced of something that is intrinsically unjust, such as a court judicially punishing an innocent man.

This seems to be the antithesis of what a moral philosopher ought to do. Her judgement seems to display a dogmatic close-mindedness to the free thinking that philosophy typifies, and an intolerant disposition toward different ideas. To dismiss the reflective, well-considered thinking of another person – even if it leads to uncomfortable conclusions – is the stuff of ideology, not philosophy.

Or so it seems.

Philosophy is, as any undergraduate student has been told, a love of wisdom and a quest for truth. Philosophers are good at recognising the complexity of truth, and accepting that there is merit in a wide range of different positions. They are also good at explaining why common assumptions are oftentimes problematic, and are therefore masters of qualifying terms:

I agree, but; Yes, insofar as; I think that’s true, on the condition that …

Philosophy begins, as Aristotle remarked, with curiosity and wonder.

Socrates, the pedagogical role model of Western philosophy, saw himself as a gadfly whose constant questioning of unreflective beliefs stung the vacuous horse of the Athenian political system.

Immanuel Kant similarly described the work of David Hume as having awakened him from his “dogmatic slumber”. Once awakened, a mind is hungry for and open to a close and authentic engagement with the truth – this hunger, like the taste for Pringles, is hard to stop once it has begun.

Is everything open to questioning? Are certain things so patently unethical that even being open to believing in them if one hears a persuasive enough argument is demonstrative of a deficient character?


Riccardo Romano
Everyone believes, to borrow an example from Quentin Tarantino’s revenge film, Kill Bill, that sexually abusing a person who had fallen into a coma from which she is not expected to wake is wrong.

What, however, are we to think of the person who argues that “at the moment I think that those practices are immoral, but I’m open to being convinced otherwise"? Is this a virtuous commitment to truth – or a cold and de-personalised detachment from morality?

Reasonable disagreement on complex issues such as commercial surrogacy, the extent of the right to privacy, or same-sex marriage isn’t demonstrative of anything other than the importance of the goods at stake and the wonderful capacity of human beings to form their own opinion.

In such cases tolerance, open-mindedness and respectful debate are virtues of utmost importance. But as Patrick Stokes has argued already in this series, just because we haven’t settled every moral question doesn’t mean that truth is completely subjective. Just because people disagree on some matters doesn’t mean that they do, or even should, disagree on all of them.

One of the mistakes people often make about moral philosophy is that once one becomes a philosopher, one must discover the truth on by themselves. Melbourne philosopher Raimond Gaita describes the consensus view of the true philosopher as being so strongly committed to truth that he or she should “follow the argument wherever it leads”.

Gaita is rightly critical of this position but nevertheless the belief prevails: to shirk hard truths is not becoming of a philosopher. It betrays truth, cowing to popular opinion and a deference to assumption that undermines the very practice of philosophy.

Except that philosophy is itself a moral activity.

Philosophy isn’t (primarily) a profession, nor is it a tool of argument. Philosophy is a way of living and being in the world, and the philosopher is, like every other person, shaping him or herself through reflection, questioning, and analysis.

Should I ever allow myself to become a person who believes that the rape of a comatose person, or any other person, is justified, or – to cite a recent controversy – that “after-birth abortion” (also known as infanticide) might be a justifiable practice?

Of this thinking, Gaita remarks that, “were my commitment to philosophy to tempt to me such nihilism, I would give up philosophy, fearful of what I was becoming.”

I think Gaita is right, but it is important here to distinguish between discussion of a belief and the belief itself. In a Western society, no discussion should be taboo.

The Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FODI) faced a host of criticism for arranging a talk entitled “Honour Killings are Morally Justified”. I think it would be wrong to host such a talk with the hope or belief that people might be persuaded of its truth – but I don’t think hosting a talk on honour killings, with the intention of understanding how the practice is justified by some, of hearing why it takes place, could ever be condemned as immoral.

As I argued at the time, FODI organisers were wrong to title the talk as they did, but they weren’t wrong to want such a talk to occur.

We can discuss which beliefs are ones which it is simply wrong to be open to persuasion regarding; in some ways, that might be a matter of private determination, but we ought to agree that such things exist.

Indeed, any truth, once we recognise it to be true, ought to be clung to. “Test everything. Hold fast to that which is good.” wrote St Paul to the Thessalonians. Be willing to listen, but recognise that what one is willing to be convinced of, or what one is willing to be persuaded from, is itself a moral choice.

“No man wishes to possess the whole world,” Aristotle wrote, “if he must first become somebody else.”

Part of what defines a person, a society, and humanity, must be what we refuse, absolutely, to allow ourselves to become – not only as actors, but as thinkers too.

This is part of a series on public morality in 21st century Australia. We’ll be publishing regular articles on morality on The Conversation in the coming weeks.

Jacques Derrida On Religion

These two videos are really just audio, but the lectures are interesting for anyone who enjoys postmodern philosophy. Jacques Derrida was nearly a rock star as far as philosophers are concerned, which is rare in our day. Zizek has achieved nearly as much fame in recent years, but his is more to do with his outrageous behavior and commentaries (which is part of his philosophy) than Derrida's, which was due more to his ideas, especially as concerns justice.

In order to make sense of Derrida's position on religion - or anything else - it helps to understand his use of the word deconstruction and what the method means as he uses it. This is from a Wikipedia entry on Deconstruction, and there is more from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Religion below the videos.

From Différance to Deconstruction

Derrida approaches all texts as constructed around elemental oppositions which all speech has to articulate if it intends to make any sense whatsoever. This is so because identity is viewed in non-essentialist terms as a construct, and because constructs only produce meaning through the interplay of differences inside a "system of distinct signs". This approach to text, in a broad sense,^[1][2] emerges from semiology advanced by Ferdinand de Saussure.

Saussure is considered one of the fathers of structuralism when he explained that terms get their meaning in reciprocal determination with other terms inside language

In language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system. The idea or phonic substance that a sign contains is of less importance than the other signs that surround it. [...] A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas; but the pairing of a certain number of acoustical signs with as many cuts made from the mass thought engenders a system of values.^[3]

Saussure explicitly suggested that linguistics was only a branch of a more general semiology, of a science of signs in general, being human codes only one among others. Nevertheless, in the end, as Derrida pointed out, he made of linguistics "the regulatory model", and "for essential, and essentially metaphysical, reasons had to privilege speech, and everything that links the sign to phone".^[4] Derrida will prefer to follow the more "fruitful paths (formalization)" of a general semiotics without falling in what he considered "a hierarchizing teleology" privileging linguistics, and speak of 'mark' rather than of language, not as something restricted to mankind, but as prelinguistic, as the pure possibility of language, working every where there is a relation to something else.

Derrida then sees these differences, as elemental oppositions (0-1), working in all "languages", all "systems of distinct signs", all "codes", where terms don't have an"absolute" meaning, but can only get it from reciprocal determination with the other terms (1-0). This structural difference is the first component that Derrida will take into account when articulating the meaning of différance, a mark he felt the need to create and will become a fundamental tool in his life long work: deconstruction.^[5]:

1) Différance is the systematic play of differences, of the traces of differences, of the spacing by means of which elements are related to each other. This spacing is the simultaneously active and passive (the a of différance indicates this indecision as concerns activity and passivity, that which cannot be governed by or distributed between the terms of these opposition) production of the intervals without which the "full" terms would not signify, would not function.

But structural difference will not be considered without him already destabilizing from the start its static, synchronic, taxonomic, ahistoric motifs, remembering that all structure already refers to the generative movement in the play of differences^[6]

The other main component of différance is deferring, that takes into account the fact that meaning is not only a question of synchrony with all the other terms inside a structure, but also of diachrony, with everything that was said and will be said, in History, difference as structure and deffering as genesis.^[7]:

2) "the a of différance also recalls that spacing is temporization, the detour and postponement by means of which intuition, perception, consummation - in a word, the relationship to the present, the reference to a present reality, to a being - are always deferred. Deferred by virtue of the very principle of difference which holds that an element functions and signifies, takes on or conveys meaning, only by referring to another past or future element in an economy of traces. This economic aspect of différance, which brings into play a certain not conscious calculation in a field of forces, is inseparable from the more narrowly semiotic aspect of différance.

This confirms the subject as not present to itself and constituted on becoming space, in temporizing and also, as Saussure said, that "language [which consists only of differences] is not a function of the speaking subject."^[8] Questioned this myth of the presence of meaning in itself ("objective") and/or for itself ("subjective") Derrida will start a long deconstruction of all texts where conceptual oppositions are put to work in the actual construction of meaning and values based on the subordination of the movement of "differance"^[7]:

At the point at which the concept of differance, and the chain attached to it, intervenes, all the conceptual oppositions of metaphysics (signifier/signified; sensible/intelligible; writing/speech; passivity/activity; etc.)- to the extent that they ultimately refer to the presence of something present (for example, in the form of the identity of the subject who is present for all his operations, present beneath every accident or event, self-present in its "living speech," in its enunciations, in the present objects and acts of its language, etc.)- become non pertinent. They all amount, at one moment or another, to a subordination of the movement of differance in favor of the presence of a value or a meaning supposedly antecedent to differance, more original than it, exceeding and governing it in the last analysis. This is still the presence of what we called above the "transcendental signified."

But, as Derrida also points out, these relations with other terms don’t express only meaning but also values. The way elemental oppositions are put to work in all texts it's not only a theoretical operation but also a practical option. The first task of deconstruction, starting with philosophy and afterwards revealing it operating in literary texts, juridical texts, etc, would be to overturn these oppositions^[9]:

On the one hand, we must traverse a phase of overturning. To do justice to this necessity is to recognize that in a classical philosophical opposition we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of a vis-a-vis, but rather with a violent hierarchy. One of the two terms governs the other (axiologically, logically, etc.), or has the upper hand.

To deconstruct the opposition, first of all, is to overturn the hierarchy at a given moment. To overlook this phase of overturning is to forget the conflictual and subordinating structure of opposition.

It’s not that the final task of deconstruction is to surpass all oppositions, because they are structurally necessary to produce sense. They simply cannot be suspended once and for all. But this doesn’t mean that they don’t need to be analyzed and criticized in all its manifestations, showing the way these oppositions, both logical and axiological, are at work in all discourse for it to be able to produce meaning and values.^[10]

And it’s not enough to deconstruction to expose the way oppositions work and how meaning and values are produced in speech of all kinds and stop there in a nihilistic or cynic position regarding all meaning, "thereby preventing any means of intervening in the field effectively".^[11]
To be effective, deconstruction needs to create new concepts, not to synthesize the terms in opposition, but to mark their difference and eternal interplay^[12]:

That being said - and on the other hand - to remain in this phase is still to operate on the terrain of and from within the deconstructed system. By means of this double, and precisely stratified, dislodged and dislodging, writing, we must also mark the interval between inversion, which brings low what was high, and the irruptive emergence of a new concept that no longer be, and never could be, included in the previous regime. If this interval, this biface or biphase, can be inscribed only in a bifurcated writing then it can only be marked in what I would call a grouped textual field: in the last analysis it is impossible to point it out, for a unilinear text, or a punctual position, an operation signed by a single author, are all by definition incapable of practicing this interval.

This explains why Derrida always proposes new terms in his deconstruction, not as a free play but as a pure necessity of analysis, to better mark the intervals:

Henceforth, in order better to mark this interval it has been necessary to analyze, to set to work, within the text of the history of philosophy, as well as within the so-called literary text (for example, Mallarme), certain marks, shall we say (I mentioned certain ones just now, there are many others), that by analogy (I underline) I have called undecidables, that is, unities of simulacrum, "false" verbal properties (nominal or semantic) that can no longer be included within philosophical (binary) opposition: but which., however, inhabit philosophical oppositions, resisting and organizing it, without ever constituting a third term, without ever leaving room for a solution in the form of speculative dialectics

Some examples of these new terms created by Derrida clearly exemplify the deconstruction procedure^[12]:

• (the pharmkon is neither remedy nor poison, neither good nor evil, neither the inside nor the outside, neither speech nor writing; 
• the supplement is neither a plus nor a minus, neither an outside nor the complement of an inside, neither accident nor essence, etc.; 
• the hymen is neither confusion nor distinction, neither identity nor difference, neither consummation nor virginity, neither the veil nor unveiled, neither inside nor the outside, etc.; 
• the gram is neither a signifier nor a signified, neither a sign nor a thing, neither presence nor an absence, neither a position nor a negation, etc.;
  spacing is neither space nor time; 
• the incision is neither the incised integrity of a beginning, or of a simple cutting into, nor simple secondary.

Nevertheless, perhaps Derrida's most famous mark was, from the start, differance, created to deconstruct the opposition between speech and writing and open the way to the rest of his approach:

and this holds first of all for a new concept of writing, that simultaneously provokes the overturning of the hierarchy speech/writing, and the entire system attached to it, and releases the dissonance of a writing within speech, thereby disorganizing the entire inherited order and invading the entire field

OK, then, so here is the introduction to the videos.


Jacques Derrida on Religion

Jacques Derrida was one of the most well known twentieth century philosophers. He was also one of the most prolific. Distancing himself from the various philosophical movements and traditions that preceded him on the French intellectual scene (phenomenology, existentialism, and structuralism), he developed a strategy called "deconstruction" in the mid 1960s. Although not purely negative, deconstruction is primarily concerned with something tantamount to a critique of the Western philosophical tradition. Deconstruction is generally presented via an analysis of specific texts. It seeks to expose, and then to subvert, the various binary oppositions that undergird our dominant ways of thinking—presence/absence, speech/writing, and so forth. (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Part One:




Part Two:




From the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Derrida:

Deconstruction

As we said at the beginning, “deconstruction” is the most famous of Derrida's terms. He seems to have appropriated the term from Heidegger's use of “destruction” in Being and Time. But we can get a general sense of what Derrida means with deconstruction by recalling Descartes's First Meditation. There Descartes says that for a long time he has been making mistakes. The criticism of his former beliefs both mistaken and valid aims towards uncovering a “firm and permanent foundation.” The image of a foundation implies that the collection of his former beliefs resembles a building. In the First Meditation then, Descartes is in effect taking down this old building, “de-constructing” it. We have also seen how much Derrida is indebted to traditional transcendental philosophy which really starts here with Descartes' search for a “firm and permanent foundation.” But with Derrida, we know now, the foundation is not a unified self but a divisible limit between myself and myself as an other (auto-affection as hetero-affection: “origin-heterogeneous”).

Derrida has provided many definitions of deconstruction. But three definitions are classical. The first is early, being found in the 1971 interview “Positions” and in the 1972 Preface to Dissemination: deconstruction consists in “two phases” (Positions, pp. 41-42, Dissemination, pp.4-6). At this stage of his career Derrida famously (or infamously) speaks of “metaphysics” as if the Western philosophical tradition was monolithic and homogeneous. At times he also speaks of “Platonism,” as Nietzsche did. Simply, deconstruction is a criticism of Platonism, which is defined by the belief that existence is structured in terms of oppositions (separate substances or forms) and that the oppositions are hierarchical, with one side of the opposition being more valuable than the other. The first phase of deconstruction attacks this belief by reversing the Platonistic hierarchies: the hierarchies between the invisible or intelligible and the visible or sensible; between essence and appearance; between the soul and body; between living memory and rote memory; between mnēmē and hypomnēsis; between voice and writing; between finally good and evil. In order to clarify deconstruction's “two phases,” let us restrict ourselves to one specific opposition, the opposition between appearance and essence. Nietzsche had also criticized this opposition but it is clearly central to phenomenological thinking as well. So, in Platonism, essence is more valuable than appearance. In deconstruction however, we reverse this, making appearance more valuable than essence. How? Here we could resort to empiricist arguments (in Hume for example) that show that all knowledge of what we call essence depends on the experience of what appears. But then, this argumentation would imply that essence and appearance are not related to one another as separate oppositional poles. The argumentation in other words would show us that essence can be reduced down to a variation of appearances (involving the roles of memory and anticipation). The reduction is a reduction to what we can call “immanence,” which carries the sense of “within” or “in.” So, we would say that what we used to call essence is found in appearance, essence is mixed into appearance. Now, we can back track a bit in the history of Western metaphysics. On the basis of the reversal of the essence-appearance hierarchy and on the basis of the reduction to immanence, we can see that something like a decision (a perhaps impossible decision) must have been made at the beginning of the metaphysical tradition, a decision that instituted the hierarchy of essence-appearance and separated essence from appearance. This decision is what really defines Platonism or “metaphysics.” After this retrospection, we can turn now to a second step in the reversal-reduction of Platonism, which is the second “phase” of deconstruction. The previously inferior term must be re-inscribed as the “origin” or “resource” of the opposition and hierarchy itself. How would this re-inscription or redefinition of appearance work? Here we would have to return to the idea that every appearance or every experience is temporal. In the experience of the present, there is always a small difference between the moment of now-ness and the past and the future. (It is perhaps possible that Hume had already discovered this small difference when, in the Treatise, he speaks of the idea of relation.) In any case, this infinitesimal difference is not only a difference that is non-dualistic, but also it is a difference that is, as Derrida would say, “undecidable.” Although the minuscule difference is virtually unnoticeable in everyday common experience, when we in fact notice it, we cannot decide if we are experiencing the past or the present, if we are experiencing the present or the future. Insofar as the difference is undecidable, it destabilizes the original decision that instituted the hierarchy. After the redefinition of the previously inferior term, Derrida usually changes the term's orthography, for example, writing “différence” with an “a” as “différance” in order to indicate the change in its status. Différance (which is found in appearances when we recognize their temporal nature) then refers to the undecidable resource into which “metaphysics” “cut” in order to makes its decision. In “Positions,” Derrida calls names like “différance” “old names” or “paleonyms,” and there he also provides a list of these “old terms”: “pharmakon”; “supplement”; “hymen”; “gram”; “spacing”; and “incision” (Positions, p. 43). These names are old because, like the word “appearance” or the word “difference,” they have been used for centuries in the history of Western philosophy to refer to the inferior position in hierarchies. But now, they are being used to refer to the resource that has never had a name in “metaphysics”; they are being used to refer to the resource that is indeed “older” than the metaphysical decision.

This first definition of deconstruction as two phases gives way to the refinement we find in the “Force of Law” (which dates from 1989-1990). This second definition is less metaphysical and more political. In “Force of Law,” Derrida says that deconstruction is practiced in two styles (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, p. 21). These “two styles” do not correspond to the “two phases” in the earlier definition of deconstruction. On the one hand, there is the genealogical style of deconstruction, which recalls the history of a concept or theme. Earlier in his career, in Of Grammatology, Derrida had laid out, for example, the history of the concept of writing. But now what is at issue is the history of justice. On the other hand, there is the more formalistic or structural style of deconstruction, which examines a-historical paradoxes or aporias. In “Force of Law,” Derrida lays out three aporias, although they all seem to be variants of one, an aporia concerning the unstable relation between law (the French term is “droit,” which also means “right”) and justice.

Derrida calls the first aporia, “the epoche of the rule” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, pp. 22-23). Our most common axiom in ethical or political thought is that to be just or unjust and to exercise justice, one must be free and responsible for one's actions and decisions. Here Derrida in effect is asking: what is freedom. On the one hand, freedom consists in following a rule; but in the case of justice, we would say that a judgment that simply followed the law was only right, not just. For a decision to be just, not only must a judge follow a rule but also he or she must “re-institute” it, in a new judgment. Thus a decision aiming at justice (a free decision) is both regulated and unregulated. The law must be conserved and also destroyed or suspended, suspension being the meaning of the word “epoche.” Each case is other, each decision is different and requires an absolutely unique interpretation which no existing coded rule can or ought to guarantee. If a judge programmatically follows a code, he or she is a “calculating machine.” Strict calculation or arbitrariness, one or the other is unjust, but they are both involved; thus, in the present, we cannot say that a judgment, a decision is just, purely just. For Derrida, the “re-institution” of the law in a unique decision is a kind of violence since it does not conform perfectly to the instituted codes; the law is always, according to Derrida, founded in violence. The violent re-institution of the law means that justice is impossible. Derrida calls the second aporia “the ghost of the undecidable (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, pp. 24-26). A decision begins with the initiative to read, to interpret, and even to calculate. But to make such a decision, one must first of all experience what Derrida calls “undecidability.” One must experience that the case, being unique and singular, does not fit the established codes and therefore a decision about it seems to be impossible. The undecidable, for Derrida, is not mere oscillation between two significations. It is the experience of what, though foreign to the calculable and the rule, is still obligated. We are obligated – this is a kind of duty—to give oneself up to the impossible decision, while taking account of rules and law. As Derrida says, “A decision that did not go through the ordeal of the undecidable would not be a free decision, it would only be the programmable application or unfolding of a calculable process” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, p. 24). And once the ordeal is past (“if this ever happens,” as Derrida says), then the decision has again followed or given itself a rule and is no longer presently just. Justice therefore is always to come in the future, it is never present. There is apparently no moment during which a decision could be called presently and fully just. Either it has not a followed a rule, hence it is unjust; or it has followed a rule, which has no foundation, which makes it again unjust; or if it did follow a rule, it was calculated and again unjust since it did not respect the singularity of the case. This relentless injustice is why the ordeal of the undecidable is never past. It keeps coming back like a “phantom,” which “deconstructs from the inside every assurance of presence, and thus every criteriology that would assure us of the justice of the decision” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, pp. 24-25). Even though justice is impossible and therefore always to come in or from the future, justice is not, for Derrida, a Kantian ideal, which brings us to the third aporia. The third is called “the urgency that obstructs the horizon of knowledge” (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, pp. 26-28). Derrida stresses the Greek etymology of the word “horizon”: “As its Greek name suggests, a horizon is both the opening and limit that defines an infinite progress or a period of waiting.” Justice, however, even though it is un-presentable, does not wait. A just decision is always required immediately. It cannot furnish itself with unlimited knowledge. The moment of decision itself remains a finite moment of urgency and precipitation. The instant of decision is then the moment of madness, acting in the night of non-knowledge and non-rule. Once again we have a moment of irruptive violence. This urgency is why justice has no horizon of expectation (either regulative or messianic). Justice remains an event yet to come. Perhaps one must always say “can-be” (the French word for “perhaps” is “peut-être,” which literally means “can be”) for justice. This ability for justice aims however towards what is impossible.

Even later in Derrida's career he will formalize, beyond these aporias, the nature of deconstruction. The third definition of deconstruction can be found in an essay from 2000 called “Et Cetera.” Here Derrida in fact presents the principle that defines deconstruction:

Each time that I say ‘deconstruction and X (regardless of the concept or the theme),’ this is the prelude to a very singular division that turns this X into, or rather makes appear in this X, an impossibility that becomes its proper and sole possibility, with the result that between the X as possible and the ‘same’ X as impossible, there is nothing but a relation of homonymy, a relation for which we have to provide an account…. For example, here referring myself to demonstrations I have already attempted …, gift, hospitality, death itself (and therefore so many other things) can be possible only as impossible, as the im-possible, that is, unconditionally (Deconstructions: a User's Guide, p. 300, my emphasis).

Even though the word “deconstruction” has been bandied about, we can see now the kind of thinking in which deconstruction engages. It is a kind of thinking that never finds itself at the end. Justice – this is undeniable – is impossible (perhaps justice is the “impossible”) and therefore it is necessary to make justice possible in countless ways.

The Dalai Lama - Compassion Without Borders: Science, Peace, Ethics

Here are two videos from The Dalai Lama's visit to the University of San Diego in April of 2012 - this was part of his tour on Compassion Without Borders: Science, Peace, Ethics.


His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama at the University of San Diego

During his visit to San Diego, His Holiness spoke at the University of San Diego on "Cultivating Peace and Justice" as part of the Joan B. Kroc Distinguished Lecture Series. Over 4,700 students, faculty and community members people were in attendance to hear him speak at the Jenny Craig Pavilion on April 18, 2012. The event was sponsored by the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice. His Holiness was also presented with the University of San Diego's Medal of Peace.

Cultivating Peace and Justice

This is the extended version of His Holiness the Dalai Lama's talk at the University of San Diego, as part of the Compassion Without Borders tour of April, 2012.

TEDxSwarthmore - What Makes a Good Society?

The topic of TEDxSwarthmore was the making of a good society. There were a lot of cool talks, of which I have selected the ones I found most interesting, including one by psychologist Barry Schwartz, whose work explores the social and psychological effects of free-market economic institutions on moral, social, and civic concerns. You can see all of the talks by clicking the link in the first sentence.


TEDxSwarthmore - What makes a good society?

TEDxSwarthmore hopes to challenge and inspire our audience to think big and become leaders of social change in their communities. Our theme "What makes a good society?" is a question that many in the Swarthmore community frequently tackle.

We hope that you will attend TEDxSwarthmore and mark March 31, 2012 on your calendars.

To find out more, go to:
www.TEDxSwarthmore.com

Please follow us on:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/tedxswat
Twitter: www.twitter.com/tedxswarthmore

Amy Cheng Vollmer - The Role of Science and Science Literacy

A "good society" benefits from having specialists. Among those specialists who lend their creative skills to society are scientists. Others are often surprised to hear that the scientific enterprise is a creative one; this is partly due to lack of clear and compassionate communication between scientists and nonscientists. While people do not deny that their lives benefit from many aspects of technology, few understand or appreciate that the foundation for the technology is scientific discovery. I will share ideas about building a scientifically literate society in which there is open communication based on mutual respect and trust.

Professor of Biology Amy Cheng Vollmer, an authority on microbiology and biotechnology, focuses her research on bacterial stress response, particularly in prokaryotes such as E. coli. She also is the president of the Waksman Foundation for Microbiology.

Mary Jean Chan - A Tapestry of Narratives: Conversations through Poetry

Watching the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie's TED talk, "The Danger of a Single Story," was a powerful reminder for Chan that ideas about what constitutes a "good" society can only emerge from the tapestry of narratives that we weave every day of our lives. Chan loves poet Adrienne Rich's quote "If from time to time ... / I long ... / for return to the concrete and everlasting world / what in fact I keep choosing / are these words, these whispers, conversations / from which time after time the truth breaks moist and green." Genuine discourse and dialogue may seem like very simple things, albeit often yielding more questions than answers, but Chan believes them to be crucial pieces in furthering our daily attempt at building a better society.

A political science honors major and English literature minor from Hong Kong, Mary Jean Chan ('12) is passionate about heterodox economics, the intersection between politics and poetry, and other forms of literary expression. She was selected through the TEDxSwarthmore Student Challenge to join the speaker lineup as a student representative of Swarthmore College.

Barry Schwartz - Why Justice Isn't Enough

Whatever else a good society should be, it should be a just society. But what does it mean to say that a society is just? For most people, a just society is one in which people deserve what they get and people get what they deserve. Whereas it may be possible to achieve the first of these goals, it is not possible to achieve the second. This is true when it comes to admission to selective colleges, and it is true when it comes to any form of material success. Lots of people do not get what they deserve. Aside from merit, success depends on luck. If we appreciate the importance of luck in our own lives, we may be more favorably disposed to helping people who deserve success just as much as we do but haven't been as lucky.

Frequent TED and TEDx speaker Barry Schwartz is Dorwin P. Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action. His work explores the social and psychological effects of free-market economic institutions on moral, social, and civic concerns. In the book Practical Wisdom (2011), which Schwartz co-wrote with Kenneth Sharpe, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Political Science, the authors argue that without such wisdom, neither detailed rules nor clever incentives will be enough to solve the problems we face.

Corinna Lathan - Innovation, Empathy, and the Future of Human-Machine Interaction

The interaction between humans and technology has changed drastically in the last 20 years. This relationship shapes our society in positive and negative ways, and the next 20 years promises to bring about even more profound changes.

Perhaps you remember the "Borg Collective" from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The Borg used neural interfaces to connect every member of their society to each other and their leader. What if instead of a dictatorial society, the Borg had used their neural interconnections to create an advanced egalitarian society?

They didn't. But maybe we can.

As founder and CEO of AnthroTronix Inc., Corinna Lathan's ('88) work with children with disabilities has been featured in Forbes, Time, and The New Yorker and has led to her being named one of MIT Technology Review's "Top 100 World Innovators" and Fast Company's "Most Creative People in Business." Lathan also is the founder of Keys to Empowering Youth, an engineering mentoring program for young girls.

Donna Jo Napoli - What Children (and Everyone Else) Need to Read

Children's books often are banned because people feel that the vulnerability of childhood gives them the right and responsibility to protect children. They see books that touch on certain topics as dangerous. Although the motivations of these adults are understandable, Napoli argues that the top 12 reasons why books are banned are actually reasons why books should be read. She will discuss the unprotected child and the protected child and what these books do for each.

Professor of Linguistics Donna Jo Napoli's teaching areas include syntax, morphology, and the structure of American Sign Language. She also is a prolific and award-winning author of books for children and young adults, including Mama Miti (2010) and A Treasury of Greek Mythology (2011).

Mark Kuperberg -The Case for Big Government: The Case Americans Don't Want to Hear

Although America was founded on the principle of limited government, it was established when all existing governments were tyrannical to a large degree. It is time for us to rise above the circumstances of our birth. Today, our society faces many problems, including:

1) Rising economic inequality
2) Increased competition from large emerging economies in a globalized trading system
3) Pollution and climate change. All will require bigger government for their solutions.

Professor of Economics Mark Kuperberg, who joined Swarthmore's faculty in 1977, teaches popular courses on macroeconomics. His main areas of interest also include public finance and law and economics.

Rebecca Chopp - Moral Imagination, Liberal Arts, and the Good Society

Moral imagination is the ability to renew the world, to create new horizons, to set aright wrongs, and to imagine new possibilities. But in our increasingly consumer-driven culture, moral imagination is not a consumer good. Nor is it something you can master through rote learning. Rather, knowledge, virtue, art, and science combine to create the moral imagination of a community. Where do you find these ingredients in one place? In our liberal arts colleges and universities—the boldest incubators of moral imagination in the United States.

Since joining Swarthmore's community as president in 2009, Rebecca Chopp has focused her work on the College's role in cultivating a global intellectual community that will nurture innovative and ethical leaders in a variety of fields and endeavors.

Paul Starr - The American Struggle over Health Care Reform

Starr explores how the United States became so stubbornly different in health care and why we've been fighting over it for a century.

Paul Starr (P, '13) is a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University and co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect. He received the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction and the Bancroft Prize in American History for The Social Transformation of American Medicine (1982). His most recent book is Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Care Reform (2011). He is the father of Abigail Starr '13.

Bookforum - Philosophy as the great naivete

From Bookforum's Omnivore, another cool collection of philosophy links.

Philosophy as the great naivete

Feb 6 2012  

9:00AM

• Arto Tukiainen (Helsinki): On Wittgenstein's Claim That Ethical Value Judgments are Nonsense. 
• From the inaugural issue of the Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, James Pearson (Pittsburgh): Distinguishing WV Quine and Donald Davidson. 
• From Theoretical and Applied Ethics, a special issue on the moral philosophy of Bernard Williams. 
• From TNR, Philip Kitcher reviews On What Matters by Derek Parfit. 
• From 3:AM, indie rock virtues: An interview with Josh Knobe, co-author of Experimental Philosophy Manifesto; philosophy as the great naivete: An interview with Jason Stanley, author of Know How; and the splintered skeptic: An interview with Eric Schwitzgebel, a mad dog crazyist philosopher at the UC-Riverside. 
• Complaints that philosophy is irrelevant have persisted over time, but there are reasons it should not be be confined to the "ivory tower." 
• Is killing wrong? Josh Rothman wonders. 
• Ready for a "morality pill": Would it be ethical to produce, or take, a drug that makes us more likely to help others? 
• Citizen philosophers: Carlos Fraenkel on teaching justice in Brazil.

Robin L. West - The Anti-Empathic Turn

This is an excellent article looking at the shift away from empathy in the reading and enacting of the law. Bad news, in my opinion, and I think the author is making that same point. The article is open access, so you may download the whole PDF - this is just the abstract.

The Anti-Empathic Turn

Robin L. West Georgetown University Law Center

NOMOS, Forthcoming 
Georgetown Public Law Research Paper No. 11-97 
Abstract:      
Justice, according to a broad consensus of our greatest twentieth century judges, requires a particular kind of moral judgment, and that moral judgment requires, among much else, empathy - the ability to understand not just the situation but also the perspective of litigants on warring sides of a lawsuit.

Excellent judging requires empathic excellence. Empathic understanding is, in some measure, an acquired skill as well as, in part, a natural ability. Some people do it well; some, not so well. Again, this has long been understood, and has been long argued, particularly, although not exclusively, by some of our most admired judges and justices.

Somehow, however, this idea, viewed as so utterly mainstream for much of the last century’s worth of writing about judging, has, in the first decade of the twenty first century, become positively toxic, at least in the context of confirmation battles to the Supreme Court. What was once regarded as non-problematically central to good judging is now regarded as antithetical to it. No one challenged this claimed antipathy between empathy and judicial excellence. How did that happen?

The anti-empathy turn currently being expressed or implicitly endorsed by very high ranking judges and justices in our understanding of judicial ideals, I will argue, is part of a larger shift in our paradigm of what good judging should be. That paradigm shift, I believe, is most clearly revealed, not in the Supreme Court confirmation battles that spill over on the front pages of newspapers, but in the pages of law review articles and in the law school classroom. Its consequence, I will argue, is sharply felt, not only or even primarily in the Supreme Court’s handling of the major social and constitutional issues of our time (which are better explained by political ideology), but rather, in scholarly treatment of the common law of contract and tort - areas of law that have for a couple of centuries now formed the core of our understanding of the judicial craft. The anti-empathic turn, I want to argue, is a part of a “paradigm shift” - with apologies for the cliché - in our ideals of good judging, and it's the perhaps unintended consequences of that paradigm shift that I want to explore.

In the first section, I contrast the traditional and more contemporary approach to the unconscionability doctrine, using the iconic case Williams v. Walker-Thomas Furniture Company, and its scholarly treatment, as emblematic. In the second, I briefly explain how, in my view, this shift in the scholarly treatment of Williams v. Walker-Thomas (and related policing doctrines more generally) is reflective of and in some ways masks a larger shift in our guiding paradigm of adjudication - a shift away from a paradigm of moral judging to scientific judging. In the third and concluding section, I will offer some suggestions as to why this new paradigm has taken such a hold on our legal imaginations, and will briefly criticize it, both specifically with respect to the unconscionability doctrine, and more generally. I will urge a return to a more classical understanding - one which rested quite explicitly on the centrality not only of precedent (Blackstone, common law rules and so on) but also of moral passions and moral emotions to the work of judging, of which empathy and sympathy both are sizeable parts. Mostly, though, in this essay I just want to put in the record, so to speak, a piece of evidence for the claim that we have seemingly turned our back on a vision of moral judging that once embraced what Adam Smith dubbed the “moral sentiments” as essential to the work of judgment.

Citation:
West, Robin L. (2011, July 13). , The Anti-Empathic Turn. NOMOS, Forthcoming; Georgetown Public Law Research Paper No. 11-97. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1885079

Jeffrey Toobin - Will Clarence and Virginia Thomas Kill Obama's Health Care Plan?

Jeffrey Toobin has an interesting article in the New Yorker about the conflict of interest in Clarence Thomas sitting on the court when it (inevitably) hears the challenges to Obama's health care reform - his wife, Virginia, spent much of 2010 on a coast-to-coast campaign against the Obama Administration (and its health care reform legislation).

As she said in an introductory video on her Web site, “If you believe in limited government, individual liberty, free enterprise, national security, and personal responsibility, and have felt these principles are under attack from Washington, then you’ve come to the right place.” In a later interview, she said, “I’ve never seen, in my thirty years in Washington, an agenda that’s so far left. It’s a radical, leftist agenda that grabs a lot of power to Washington so that Washington élites can pick the winners and losers.” In his own speeches, Justice Thomas expresses himself in terms similar to those of his wife. Answering questions recently in Florida, he said, “The government has to be limited. We have separations of powers, and some of the other enumerated powers that prevent the government from becoming our ruler. I don’t know if that’s happened already.”

Thomas would seem to be highly compromised in this situation, and it is very unlikely that he can offer an impartial decision based on the merits of the case - but he refuses to recuse himself, despite a call from nearly a hundred members of Congress that he do so.

Toobin outlines the personal and political partnership between Clarence and Ginni (her nickname) Thomas. Many of us see this as an assault on the supposed impartiality of the Court (which is a myth at best - look at Justice Roberts tenure as Chief Justice and you'll see the conservative agenda his case selection and rulings reveal).

Read the whole article. 

Is America a "Socially Just" Nation?

My first answer would be NO - we deny equal rights to one minority group (GLBT) based on archaic religious values, while other minority groups are overtly given equal rights (as though they are ours [white folks] to give) but are covertly discriminated against in jobs, education, and even housing, and 51% of the population (women) earn less than men simply because they are women.

We have some work to do to become a socially just culture/nation.

Here are few definitions of social justice - do you think these are valid, and if so, is America living up to these values? More importantly, does our mental health system manifest these values?

Smith (2003) defines a socially just world as having access to:

Adequate food, sleep, wages, education, safety, opportunity, institutional support, health care, child care, and loving relationships. “Adequate” means enough to allow [participation]in the world . . . without starving, or feeling economically trapped or uncompensated, continually exploited, terrorized, devalued, battered, chonically exhausted, or virtually enslaved (and for some reason, still, actually enslaved). (p. 167).

Bell (1997) states that the goal of social justice is:

Full and equal participation of all groups in a society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs. Social justice includes a vision of society in which the distribution of resources is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure. (p. 3)

Given these broad descriptions, we propose a working definition of social justice counseling/therapy:

Social justice counseling/therapy is an active philosophy and approach aimed at producing conditions that allow for equal access and opportunity; reducing or eliminating disparities in education, health care, employment, and other areas that lower the quality of life for affected populations; encouraging mental health professionals to consider micro, meso, and macro levels in the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of client and client systems; and broadening the role of the helping professional to include not only counselor/therapist but advocate, consultant, psychoeducator, change agent, community worker, etc. (Sue & Sue, 2008, 292-293)

I like these definitions. The problem we see in training therapists, as Sue & Sue point out, is that we do not place any real value on reaching out to those groups that do not receive equal and fair treatment in our society.

Becoming culturally competent requires not only changes at an individual practice level, but also changes associated with how we define our helping role. Unfortunately, an overwhelming majority of mental health practitioners desire to enter direct clinical service, especially counseling and psychotherapy (Shullman, Celeste, & Strickland, 2006). The mental health profession has implicitly or explicitly glamorized and defined the clinician as one who conducts his or her trade—working with individuals—in an office environment. While the development of individual intervention skills has been the main focus in many graduate training programs, little emphasis is given to other roles, activities, or settings (Toporek & McNally, 2006). Thus, not only might therapists be lacking in systemsintervention knowledge and skills, but they may also become unaccustomed to, and uncomfortable about, leaving their offices. Yet work with racial/ethnic minority groups and immigrant populations suggests that out-of-office sites/activities (client homes, churches, volunteer organizations, etc.) and alternative helping roles (ombudsman, advocates, consultants, organizational change agents, facilitators of indigenous healing systems, etc.) may prove more therapeutic and effective (Atkinson et al., 1993; Warren & Constantine, 2007). Social justice counseling with marginalized groups in our society is most enhanced when mental health professionals (1) can understand how individual and systemic worldviews shape clinical practice and (2) when they are equipped with organizational and systemic knowledge, expertise, and skills.

The authors offer a nice model for understanding worldviews, but this is where a more complex model (such as Clare Graves, via Beck & Cowan's Spiral Dynamics, or Jean Gebser) might be very useful. Even more useful might be the newer work in cultural psychology (see The Cultural Psychology of Self: Place, Morality and Art in Human Worlds).

Counseling the Culturally Diverse (2008), by Sue & Sue, is one of the best textbooks we have had so far. Highly recommended.

Tags: Psychology, society, justice, compassion, Counseling the Culturally Diverse, social justice, David Sue, Derald Wing Sue

Proof that McCain=Bush

Strange, I thought free speech was one of those rights guaranteed by that pesky little Constitution thingy. Watch the video below. The event was "open to the public."

From AlterNet:

A 61-year-old librarian was ejected from an ostensibly public McCain campaign event at the Denver Center of Performing Arts in Denver, CO on June 7 because she was brandishing a deadly memetic weapon: a hand-lettered sign that read "McCain=Bush."

Carol Kreck was standing outside the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, on city property. Ms. Kreck objected that she was standing on city property. She was lead away by a police office and ticketed for trespassing.

Carol Kreck, QED.

As ThinkProgress notes: "McCain has apparently taken a page from the Bush playbook. In 2005, the White House had three activists expelled from a Denver public forum with President Bush because it was the administration’s policy “to exclude potentially disruptive guests from Bush’s appearances nationwide.”"

Tags: Proof, McCain=Bush, John McCain, Politics, culture, justice, AlterNet, Secret Service, free speech, dissent, peaceful protest, memetic weapons

Satire: Supreme Court Rules That Death Penalty Is 'Totally Badass' [NSFW]

The Onion News Network reports on a recent Supreme Court decision. Language warning.


Supreme Court Rules That Death Penalty Is 'Totally Badass'

Tags: The Onion, Satire, Supreme Court, Ruling, Death Penalty, Totally Badass, humor, justice, law

Justice Antonin Scalia in Conversation with Charlie Rose

I disagree with Justice Scalia on almost every point and in almost every case. But I find him thoughtful, well-spoken, and extremely erudite. If we are going to have conservative, originalist justices on the court, we want them to be as intelligent as Scalia.

He was a featured for the full hour Friday night on Charlie Rose. A very interesting discussion.

Tags: Justice Antonin Scalia, Conversation, Charlie Rose, culture, law, justice, Constitution, originalism, Supreme Court