Today’s the Day

 

Pinker’s Dignified Stupidity?

Steven Pinker has a new article up in The New Republic savaging a new report by the President’s Council on Bioethics on Human Dignity. The report is here.

As background, Pinker notes the influence of this editorial by Ruth Macklin at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx (great place btw, I used to live very close it) where Macklin argues that the concept of dignity is either too vague to be useful or is simply no different than legal notions of autonomy.

If the latter of course, then Pinker’s real aim (which is clear from the essay) to argue for a John Stuart Mill-esque utilitarian ethics hitched with a libertarian legal outlook, then Macklin’s thesis that dignity is no different than autonomy wraps up the debate.

The recent Bioethics Report on Dignity is for Pinker (and I haven’t seen any commentary disagreeing with this particular point of the argument) a response to Macklin.

There are a lot of responses that could be made.  Like Yuval Levin on the paranoid style of Pinker’s attack or its apocalyptic discourse from Douthat.

But I’d like to take a different tact. But what none of these criticisms point out is that Pinker by dint of his philosophical (and by extension political) pov has no choice but to argue for an ethic of utilitarianism.  The reason, following Ken Wilber’s AQAL integral outlook, is as follows.  Pinker argues against the reality of consciousness.  He is a materialist.  He is the author of a book entitled The Stuff of Thought–clearly expressing his primary metaphor of thought as material object.  As opposed to a book entitled something like The Quality of Thought.  Or the Depth of Thought.  Or the Meaning of Thought.

In Wilber’s terminology this is the reduction of the rich Kosmos (left and right hand quadrants) into the flat cosmos (right-hand only quadrants).  When reducing all thought/consciousness (codeword:  dignity) to material, biological reality, then the only ethic is only of increasing pleasure/comfort and decreasing pain/discomfort.  Link that up with Pinker as one in a long line of Anglo-American individualist scientist-philosophers like Hume, Mill, Darwin, Dawkins, and voila you have his view.  His attack particularly focuses as a result on Catholics because of the communitarian-social emphasis (LL as opposed to UL/UR Pinker).

Given that he has destroyed the possibility of making evaluations of depth, then Pinker like any other materialist is still doing the best he reasonably can ethically.  It ends him up transparently shilling for the myths of liberal Enlightenment modernity:  progress, reason, achievement, freedom.  Not that those are bad, just hardly the end all be all he needs them to be to fulfill his thesis.  Not that there aren’t other pieces of evidence for the destruction of modernity, “rational” social organizational ethos, and the like.  [See Postmodernity among many others for any number of these criticisms].

This fundamental monkey wrench in his machine comes out in the following quotation:

Almost every essayist concedes that the concept [dignity] remains slippery and ambiguous. In fact, it spawns outright contradictions at every turn. We read that slavery and degradation are morally wrong because they take someone’s dignity away. But we also read that nothing you can do to a person, including enslaving or degrading him, can take his dignity away.

Actually a moment’s reflection would reveal I think it really isn’t that hard to see how both of those seemingly contradictory things can both be true.  If I had a slave and beat the hell out of him and branded his body like the cattle he would be, then I would have destroyed the dignity of his physical body.  I would have damaged his dignity on an emotional and psychological level because of the abuse.  The status of slave would leave him “undignified” in social ranking.  And yet, again following a notion of Consciousness (which is Ultimately Free even beyond relative political freedom of the kind Pinker and I support), he would be dignified and is dignified inherently, intrinsically in his core.  As a being of consciousness. He would still have a choice how to act (obviously within the confines of slavery) that could be construed as dignified or undignified in the face of cruel slavery, with a great degree of sympathy no doubt to be maintained for the possibility of “undignified” activity as not unrelated to the indignities perpetrated upon his person.

That latter point is important to point out because the Ultimately Free from the perspective of Consciousness (or in more theological terms as child of God) can be either a support, a la abolitionists, to argue for the emancipation of slaves AND a la Southern Christian segregationists that they will get their reward in the after life so we don’t have to bother hurting them in this one.

But if dignity is nothing other autonomy and capacity to reason (as Pinker argues) which would obviously preclude torture or medical experimentation upon someone who chooses in full use of faculties to not have some procedure bio-ethically or otherwise, done to them.  But obviously what about those who do not have such a voice?  Anti-abortion advocates would of course point out the voiceless as including fetuses.  On the other end of the life spectrum, the possibility of euthanasia contrary the will of someone who no longer has faculties of reason and autonomy but whose being would still arguably have dignity and worth.

Those are legitimate questions to be raised and not so easily dismissed as the evil right-wing Christians who hate science and take delight in death.

I will repeat my criticism of (so-called) pro-life elements to show how fair and balanced I am.  Everyone ethically is choosing life and death.  The relevant questions are what kinds of life and death, to what degree, how are they imposed, and how do we reason with one another and keep tabs on our actions in a way that is not mandated by the social-moral police or whatever.  Pinker (just as those he opposes, at least their more radical shrilly elements) wants to imagine himself as pro-life and the enemy as pro-death.  Everyone is combinations of both.

 

Master Electoral-Political Plan for Obama?

He comes out and names Jim Webb as his VP and Bill Richardson as Sec of State simultaneously. Thereby putting both Virginia and the West (Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada) into play, the very states he needs to win the election. [Alternatively he names Gov. Sebelius as VP but again with Richardson in toe].  Wes Clark as National Security Adviser.

Right now with his fire focused on the Bush-McCain foreign policy mess this could be interesting.

Obama is quickly learning that this of all years the Democrats should be running on the failure of Republicans, including McCain, on national security, terrorism, Iraq, Iran, Middle East. Do not cede that ground. Because McCain given FP (so-called) expertise space would then pivot, as we have seen him do in the last week, to issues like global warming, cutting wasteful spending, being bipartisan and looking like a reasonable moderate.

This way Obama forces McCain into the corner of his arch-hardline League of Democracies, Stay in Iraq until we Achieve Victory, Bomb Iran to kingdom Come, and Democrats are evil socialists who will bring in judges who like the gays and Marxist-Leninist health care. i.e. It will make McCain look more and more like a wacked out right winger, neutralizing McCain’s only way to achieve victory (war hero, appear moderate thinking conservative/Republican), whose for honesty in government).

Thoughts on the VP-Sec State combo? There are strong reasons for Richardson as VP to be sure. As Secretary of State though it fits perfectly with Obama’s message of tough diplomacy–Richardson dealt with Kim Jong in N. Korea.

For all this talk about how Obama was Adlai Stevenson too weak to go after somebody, it’s always been my thought that that was a factor of it being an intra-Democratic Party thing and Clinton is a woman. But against McCain both of those are off, and while Obama will never love the fight as much as say Clinton, when he gets pissed (as if he is now compliments the President), he looks both sane-rational and torqued up (appropriately).

This is his moment to paint McCain for the General and set the parameters of the debate. Bonus: It’s killing talk of this Unity Ticket nonsense.

Update I: Memo to John McCain, the President of Iran who did in fact call Israel “a stinking corpse” and wants its annihilation is not who Obama (or his Secretary of State) would be meeting with in a hypothetical diplomatic encounter with Iran. Anytime you would like to stop using that false line of attack, it would be appreciated. Looks like someone else needs to know better.

 

The General Election Starts Now

This whole Bush line of attack at the Knesset is nothing but political gold (and political stupidity on Bush’s part to boot) for Obama.

It also reminds us that—Hillary who? Clinton’s got nothing really to stand on vis a vis Iran given that her position is in fact Bush’s.

Now word that McCain used to be for talks with Hamas before he was against him. Correction here.  Correction to the correction, Rubin argues the original quotation was correct.  I’m confused where Crowley got his quotation.  I report you decide (I’m confused however on this one).

Though it is arguable that Hamas did recognize the ceasefire agreed to by Fatah prior to their election, so that they at that point had warranted some talks. But even in this correction it still doesn’t change that his position is the same as Obama’s and that he has to argue that because some dude from Hamas said some nice things about Obama clearly ever one should draw the inference that Obama is weak and terrorists know they can take him and American by extension somehow. Just dumb stuff.

Obama (and I think he was wrong on this one so weirdly I’m with the first John McCain on this one) was never for talks with Hamas, so McCain is now the appeaser or at least flip flopper on this one.

At every stage McCain has had the chance to break with Bush. 2004 he joins with Kerry and he’d be the Vice President now, 2006 vis a vis the surge, 2008 with the election. And McCain yoking his wagon to Bush will yet again cost him the Presidency. Part tragedy (for McCain personally) part comedy.

McCain needs the election to be about the future and for sure not about the war. Although to be fair, his speech on the future lacked a little, what’s the word, specifics. (And check the video on that website, who the hell does their marketing? It’s unintentionally teh awesome.)

Though no word from the campaign (I have no inside sources) but perhaps McCain’s 2013 Policy Agenda and his vision of how it will be implemented comes from this Fount of Wisdom:

 

The Day Before

Tomorrow I get married.  I’m in good spirits, excited and calm about it.  But to get me into a normal routine today, I have a quiet day before some more madness tomorrow after the craziness of this last week—so some Friday blogging is on the docket I think.

Thanks to all those who sent well wishes for the nuptials.  I’m not leaving on my honeymoon until Thursday of next week (the 22nd).  And double bonus, my second round of chloroquine went off yesterday without a hitch.  I drank a whole lotta beer yesterday so maybe that was the key ingredient

 

haidt & soft core materialism

As an addendum to yesterday’s post re: David Brooks’ column about what I called (tongue in cheek) soft-core materialism, this from Jonathan Haidt (an author Brooks mentions) in Edge.

Haidt compares morality through the study of developmental psychology–i.e. Lawerence Kohlberg and Carol Gilligan–and what he sees as the new scientific approach to the question.

Haidt (my emphasis):

So in the 1990s I was thinking about the role of emotion in moral judgment, I was reading Damasio, De Waal, and Bargh, and I was getting very excited by the synergy and consilience across disciplines. I wrote a review article called “The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail,” which was published in 2001, a month after Josh Greene’s enormously influential Science article. Greene used fMRI to show that emotional responses in the brain, not abstract principles of philosophy, explain why people think various forms of the “trolley problem” (in which you have to choose between killing one person or letting five die) are morally different.

The Rational Tail is Kohlberg and Gilligan.  The Dog who does the real wagging here is emotion honed through evolution is the real driver of our choices/views about morality and then we create abstract philosophical and psychological theories to retroactively justify these emotion-based decisions.

But returning to the part I italicized and highlighted, particularly this line “emotional responses in the brain.”  Since when is emotion located in the brain?  What we know is that emotions have brain pattern correlations so that when you experience an emotion there is a signature brain pattern that corresponds to that emotion.

Correlations being the key word.  Who said a correlation is a cause?  Perhaps it is just as easily an effect.  Or something (as I believe) which co-arises.

So the point about Kohlberg and Gilligan (& Crew) might still have validity–i.e. its retroactive–but it hasn’t moved from emotion-in-the-brain versus abstract philosophy-in-the-mind.  It’s abstract philosophy in the mind with its own brain correlations compared to emotional response having both a consciousness and material (brain pattern) signature.  The consciousness of the emotion may in fact be prior to linguistic formulation or mental construction.

But even in that later case, the developmental psychological tradition is part of another experiential moment of the same basic moral continuum–it might not be telling us about the “cause” of the initial response but it is telling us about the way in which the human constructs meaning. Both of which would then be part of a seamless unfolding of the whole moral response.

Something that like, a more integral moral study, would I think find consilience (in Haidt’s terminology) with something like Blink from Malcolm Gladwell. The moral evolutionary emotion-based response mechanism being something of his blink unconsciousness (which is not the Freudian repressed unconscious).  But as Gladwell points out–something Haidt and Marc Hauser underemphasize imo–is that both this unconscious intelligence and conscious rational (”abstract philosophical” reasoning) are necessities in our world.  If for no other reason that evolution has selected for both in our species.

 

Foreign Policy and US Prez Race

Even after tonight’s late touchdown in a 3 score down game by Camp Clinton, and as the Democratic nomination race moves inexorably to its obvious conclusion (Obama as the nominee), just a moment to say why I supported Obama.

Above all it was foreign policy concerns which are paramount in my mind as to the Presidency even more so now that I am an American Abroad. [I think domestic policy should be handled by the Congress].

Hillary Clinton has in the course of the campaign clearly signaled that she accepts the basic parameters of George Bush’s Middle East Policy (minus the surge in Iraq): her vote for the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, her comments about “obliterating” Iran, her crazed interpretation of the reality of Lebanon (with Hezbollah as some Iranian and Syrian plant), and her notion of extending American nuclear shield deterrence to Arab Sunni autocrats is all Bushian. i.e. The idea of an axis of so-called “moderates” Arab regimes against the evil Iranian-Syrian axle of evil. She is a war hawk in essence.

John McCain is sadly not McSame. That title more properly belongs to Clinton. McCain is worse than Bush. An uber-Hawk plus. Bush plus. He not only wants to double, triple, quadruple down in Iraq, he has publicly stated he will start a war with Iran during his administration, and not only that wants to start some “stuff” with Russia and China. He is the neoconservative wet dream. He is calling for the end of the entire post WWII Liberal International Order, which Bush has severely damaged but not totally destroyed. McCain would leave the US even further isolated, in debt, and reduced in its position, relying on military answers to non-military problems. His views are a menacing threat to world security in the 21st century. He is the most pro-military and pro-militaristic ethos of any US President since TR and would like his hero, embroil the US in more foreign imperial (mis)adventures. Even Bush gave up on democracy after the election debacles in Palestine, Iraq, and Lebanon, but McCain has only seen the need for more democracy.

Obama is the only candidate who has I think correctly realized that the US can not continue an occupation of the Arab heartland and the fault line of the Sunni/Shia divide and not only that but having allowed Shia to come to power keep Iran out of the bargain. Iran is the one brokering the truces between the Iraqi government and Sadr. Both in Basra and Baghdad.

His primary insight is that the US was attacked by al-Qaeda and therefore al-Qaeda represents the real threat to America and the West. I know this seems like it should be a fairly obvious notion but sadly post 9/11 in US policy circles, it has not been (and is not in the Clinton camp, much less the McCain camp).

HIs notion of a “Dignity” Promotion could become excessively idealistic no doubt, but also could be quite shrewd as a middle way between the pugnacious nationalism of Clinton (Jacksonian FP) and the insanely utopian Wilsonianism of McCain. The promotion of democracy agenda could likely end up only isolating and defeating the liberal democrats in many parts of the world–see the failure of liberals in the Middle East post-Iraq, see also the Iranian liberals not taking aid from the US for rightly feared being seen as fifth column for US. Dignity promotion could allow for a means of US aid predicated around the build up of civil society and more importantly basic requirements (food scarcity, energy prices skyrocketing) helping build resilience in communities around the world. That would need to be piggybacked on less of the anti-foreign trade/free trade talk however.

I find his being a community organizer cum politician an interesting thing, but I’m not into all the hype. I find it intriguing to watch him chart a post-Vietnam, post-Iraq liberal patriotism. Nevertheless, the guy is a politician. He’s a better political organizer than the other two to be sure; I think he also is a smarter guy and has a better sense of the lay of the land and where things need to go. It would icing on the cake to end the Boomer reign and have an election finally not decided by the concerns of the 60s/70s. I would love to see the Nixon Southern Whisper Strategy finally defeated and once and for all sent to the grave. He’s already beat it once in the Democratic Primary, now he will face a rougher version of it in the General. But the key piece is foreign policy.

Update I:  But as I’ve said before he can only go so far, particularly in relation to Israel-Palestine.  Very good article on this subject here Jonathan Steele in The Guardian.

 

neural buddhism?

There is a lot I could say on David Brooks’ op-ed this morning and Matthew’s response to it.  But I don’t have all the time in the world, so I’ll be fairly short and focus only on specific points.

To Brooks:  If hard-core materialism (as he claims) and its tip of the spear New Atheism is not going to be the main combatant to traditional religious faith, then the alternative he lays out is soft-core materialism (as it were, wink wink). i.e. It’s still materialism.  It’s a sexier, subtler version thereof I suppose, but the same basic critique remains:  is Consciousness fundamentally real (by whatever definition of real we agree upon)?

Also, Brooks has linked up a number of things which are not necessarily related (e.g. Haidt and Newberg neither of whom so far as I know are Buddhists, neural or otherwise).  And the term neural Buddhism, like the Holy Roman Empire, is arguably neither Buddhist nor neural.  I understand what he’s getting at and it’s an op-ed column and he’s no consciousness science-religion philosopher or religious studies scholar, but that term is more obscuring than clarifying imo.

In response to Matthew:

Contrasting the The Bible as Literature and Neural Buddhism (so-called) is comparing apples and iPods.   The proper comparisons are between the contemplative paths in Buddhism and Christianity one of the one hand–from both the inside (say mystics themselves in dialog) and the “outside” if you like as in Newberg–and The Bible as Literature and the Buddhist Canon as Literature on the other.

e.g. The stories within the Buddhist tradition like The Buddha’s birth from his mother’s side, his father sheltering the princely boy by hiding him from disease and death and his eventual encounters with those realities, and the stories of his temptations (as compared to Jesus’).

One interesting overlap between these two cross-religious categories (literature and mysticism) is in both traditions the contemplatives read the traditional stories of their religion and argue that the stories contain hidden mystical meanings not apparent to the common everyday reading/reader.

e.g. As regarding The Buddha born from his mother’s side and Jesus’ Virgin Birth both (according to this reading) are understood as Divine Beings who have entered Time and Space–represented by the respective mothers’ wombs–in an alternate fashion than the commonplace (i.e. sinful/unenlightened) manner symbolizing a union (and therefore salvation) of the Transcendent and the Immanent.

But that reading is not available–and the actual experience from which it arises–through Big Church, Bible as Literature (only), Brain Neural Mystical Studies, or Neo-Darwinian evolutionary psychology applied to religion and morality.

 

Ya Think?

Noam Scheiber in TNR:

Is it just me, or is Hillary now effectively spending Barack Obama’s money to continue running against him, albeit more gingerly than before…I don’t know what choice Obama has, since he clearly wants to keep Hillary happy and unite the party. Still, there’s something perverse about Hillary running up debt he’s going to help pay off in order to kinda make the case against him.

 

Hezbollah-Sadr Updates

Hopefully both of these will hold.

From CNN:

BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) — Hezbollah militants will leave Beirut’s streets in response to the Lebanese army’s assuming security in the city, an opposition spokesman said Saturday, but “civil disobedience” will continue.

Not exactly clear what civil disobedience means (could be bad). Hezbollah clearly showed it could take over the capital but not hold it–it’s base is in the South and the Army moved towards cutting off their supply lines. But hopefully all out war will be averted.

–

Sadr City

CNN again:

The Iraqi government and Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement have agreed to a cease-fire to end weeks of fighting in Baghdad’s Sadr City district, spokesmen for both sides said Saturday.

Not entirely clear it will hold. Some elements of the Mahdi Army may not stand down, other militias in the neighborhood are non-Sadrist. The ISF (i.e. Badr Corps) gets to search the city of heavy weapons and make arrests. Not sure if this is another move on Sadr’s part to point out/hand over unruly elements in his group. Aid and evacuations of the wounded and the re-opening of East Baghdad will then occur according to the agreement.

No doubt right-wing American blogs will call this another victory for the Maliki government and they will proclaim the death of Moqtada al Sadr (for only about the twentieth time at this point). All I know is that each of those previous obituaries were, Mark Twain-esque, in their prematureness. He is by far the shrewdest politician in Iraq and has the strongest cred on the street (just like Nasrallah in Lebanon).

It could be just like the Hezbollah situation. They showed they can take down the army in a fight, but they don’t want to bring an all out Shia (Iraq) or country wide (Lebanon) civil war.

Update I: Your WTH moment on this one courtesy Senator Clinton:

I am very concerned about the current situation in Lebanon. Hezbollah-allied militias, using weapons supplied by Iran and Syria, have seized control of West Beirut and are demanding that Prime Minister Fouad Siniora resign and hand over power to a military government. This is both an illegal challenge to a democratically-elected government and an issue of regional stability with international consequences.

The United States must actively support the sovereignty of the Lebanese government and the independence of Lebanon.

The United States needs to engage in vigorous diplomacy with its regional allies to support the Lebanese government. Outside parties, such as Iran and Syria, must immediately stop their interference in Lebanon and allow the election of the President to proceed.

Notice how this whole description (Bush-like) acts as if Hezbollah is some foreign transplant force. Memo to the Senator, they’re Lebanese. The reason Siniora is President has to do with the complications of the Peace Deal signed in the wake of the ending of the Civil War appropriating roles based on ethnic makeup, which in the years since has shifted towards the Shia, who are underrepresented (now) in the scheme. So one could argue I suppose that the system is undemocratic (small d). The President of Lebanon has no power or influence in the South of Lebanon and its not because of Syria or Iran. Those weapons for all we know could have been bought on the black market. And if they are supplied, we were supplying and training the Sunni militias that lost. We just keep backing Sunni militias that are not strong in a fight (e.g. Fatah and now these Lebanese dudes).

The code words are sovereignty, independence, and regional allies–all of which clearly translate into Sunnis.

These groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Mahdi Army are not simply going to go away by the US saying they are pawns of Iran-Syria and by working with Sunni Arab dictators. I guess we’ve learned that Clinton’s plans to both obliterate Iran and extend nuclear deterrence shields to Arab autocrats includes the Sunni Lebanese. If McCain is Bush’s Third Term, foreign policy wise so is Clinton.