Perishing publishing

The history of publishing is an important one, because the printed word has always held an important political place in society. After all, why else would dictatorial regimes have controlled and tracked the distribution of paper and typewriters in their day, or monitor blogs and Twitter now? Publication (literally, "making something public;" that sense gets lost as we use the word over and over again) has always played a central role in reflecting the state of public discourse but it also plays an important role in setting the terms of that discourse and structuring people's ideas moving forward.

As publishing technology has developed, we can see a double trend in the public discourse. First, we see that as publishing becomes more accessible and affordable, more voices are able to enter into the public discourse. The drivers of the Reformation could ever have suggested that individuals read the Bible and figure it out for themselves had each copy still been laboriously made by hand: the printing press was instrumental in that possibility. Second, we see a trend where, amid the growing number of voices and perspectives within the public sphere, the coherence of that discourse degrades. That's not terribly surprising, and not just an accidental connection either: as the number of people at any party grows, the likelihood that the whole party is talking about the same thing decreases (unless that thing is Rob Ford's inanity).

Looking at the present state of publishing technology, we see that anyone with even the most marginal technological savvy, the most basic of hardware, and the most intermittent of internet connections can broadcast their thoughts and emotions to the world with ease. The price of this is that public discourse is a cacophony of SHOUTING VOICES COMING FROM PEOPLE WITH CAPS LOCK PROBLEMS AND WE OFTEN HAVE VERY LITTLE OF SUBSTANCE TO SAY. Not only is there a lack of agreement about which topics are important enough to warrant discussion, but we also don't have any agreed upon rules of decorum that guide these discussions. One man's shameful fallacy is another's proud arrow protruding from the side of a slain enemy.

Again, touching back on the political power of the printed word, we've found ourselves in a paradoxical situation. Once upon a time, the people powerful enough to control the publishing industries of their day could control the public discourse. Voices, especially those in great need, were not heard; power structures were perpetuated, and the rich stayed rich. The opening up of the publishing world should have saved us from this fate, but it hasn't. Whereas the printed word could once serve as a rallying point for dissidents, there are so many venues and voices now that any semblance of rallying is impossible. How can we organize opposition to the party line if we can't reach fellow dissidents through the din? (The answer to that rhetorical question, by the way, is "quite infrequently".)

Suggesting topics that are "worthy" of public attention would be extremely difficult. The whole idea that having one person or group dictate the terms of discussion will allow for a comprehensive treatment of problems is wrong-headed. We all have our blind spots, and sadly what lies in those blind spots is sometimes the very thing that oppresses those around us. That's why it's so important to let a multiplicity of voices be heard.

But leaving the topics or content of public discourse aside for a moment, let's turn our attention to its form. It seems that anything goes, out there on the internet. It's the Wild West of argumentative strategies, and trolls lurk under every bridge and behind every status. Some have suggested that we need to step up our critical thinking game, especially in schools, to bring some semblance of order back to this shambles. But the rules of critical thinking are not God's gift to humankind: they're rules of discourse that have a very real history and a real connection to imperfect mankind (and that was meant to be gendered: if we're going to keep women out of intellectual history, it's surely unfair to saddle them equally with its faults). The rules of critical thinking are agreed upon conventions, but they aren't agreed upon by everyone. They aren't even known to everyone. And that's where the problem lies in suggesting a rigid return to yonder days of critical yore: these rules are known well by some, tenuously by others, and not at all by others still. This gradient of familiarity and facility with the rules once again allows a problematic power structure back into the discourse, where those in the know can marginalize the voices of the uninitiated. (I imagine that any other set of rules would suffer from the same intrinsic flaw.)

So do we need no rules at all? That doesn't get us anywhere because these rules are supposed to guide rational discourse. Lawlessness here (as we presently see) has arational, if not irrational, consequences. But if we can't go back to doggedly applying the rules and we can't go forward without them, then what do we do? I suggest that it's about attitude. These rules are meant to provide a medium for us, by which we can come to an understanding with one another, so that our ideas can copulate and make beautiful babies. If we took up the rules of critical thinking in that spirit, not as the weapons by which to smite our enemy and establish our rightful truth-y-ness, but rather as the tools to enrich both of our notions of what's what, I think that we would employ them very differently. Rather than starting out assuming that each of us is right, and need only convince others of our obvious enlightenment, perhaps we should dive off the block assuming that we're both wrong, but that we're more likely to approach the truth through discussion than through alienation.

Here's my practical suggestion: learn the rules of critical thinking, and learn them thoroughly. But apply them judiciously in order to maximize understanding rather than using them to shut down dialogue. And speaking of using things judiciously: remember that every bit of noise that each of us makes on the internet contributes to the background noise in which we lose discussions of freedom and equality. Does that next cat video really need another re-share? I suppose I ought to take a dose of my own medicine and end this post, post haste.

A Romantic co-operation of sciences and humanities

In an article from last winter, Peter Calamai tackles the very pressing contemporary problem of the relationship between science and society. Specifically, he claims that getting the public to reason on the basis of our cutting-edge science faces challenges on a number of fronts. First off, the general public has only a relatively tenuous grasp on the main tool of the sciences themselves: mathematics. Our problems with numeracy, as a nation (though there is no comparative data to show whether this national problem is particularly acute in Canada or rather whether we're part of a global mathematical deficiency), stand between us and the scientific results that might help us in our lot as decision-makers.

Beyond this general weakness in mathematics, Calamai also mentions a general misunderstanding of the scientific process itself. Specifically cited as a culprit here, or at least an accomplice, is the way that scientists are portrayed in the media as very confident in their conclusions. Of course, to portray science more humbly, as the house of uncertainty that it really is, must be carried out carefully. Scientists are not simply bumbling about in the dark: there is always a degree of uncertainty, but along with that goes that very important correlate that evaluating confidence in conclusions is an immense part of the scientific enterprise itself. In short, while portraying scientists as forever unsure of outcomes would open up an easy target for skeptics, portraying them as very sure of the probabilities of outcomes would have quite a different effect. It's a bit of a trade off, of course: is it better to be someone certain about probabilities, or probable about certainties? The jury's out. But either way, it seems that the media's misrepresentation of scientists as always sure of a definite outcome does real scientists a disservice, because they (and present science) do not live up to that image.

So the general public is not only deficient in the language of science, but also in what kinds of results we can expect from scientific predictions. And whether to attack this problem in society through better schooling early in life, or through other public education later in life, is an open-ended problem. For what it's worth, I think that neither of those options alone is a viable solution. Humanistic scholars speak of a lifestyle of critical engagement; to assume that scientific education at one or another point in life is sufficient I think sells short the analogous point that science is not just a practice, it's a way of looking at the world, and one that needs to be fostered throughout one's life if one is going to use it effectively.

But are things so dire as all that? Are we really in such a bad way? Calamai cites Frank Graves, who says that while we might hope for scientific literacy to be better in Canada than it presently is, we shouldn't neglect the fact that we're trending upwards in scientific literacy. The public of course lags behind the cutting edge (and even specialists lag behind that cutting edge in other specialties, by the way), but we're still gaining ground, and that's a sign of improvement.

However, Graves also discusses the fact that the anti-science crowd (that's to say, the anti-vaccine movement, Young Earth Creationists, and the like) is gaining traction in the general public. This is anathema to science establishing itself as the thoroughbred in our decision-making stable. Graves points out that the reason these anti-science movements manage to win people over is that they appeal more directly to their practical concerns (and often their fears, which psychology teaches us is an easy and reliable motivator). They understand the target audience better, and therefore market their product more effectively, whether that product is in fact better or not. Graves very sagely points out that what we need here is not just a clearer restatement of scientific theories or predictions; what we need is a clearer connection to people's preexisting interests.

Malcolm Butler worries that the long-term outcome of this trend towards anti-science is that we risk "having the development of public policy drive not by fact but by hysteria." I believe that the root of the problem we face lies lies in the very opposition that Butler sets up here. If Graves is right that we need to better connect to people's values in order to reach them, and if anything beyond science (including those values) is treated as hysteria, with all of the dismissive judgment that a word like "hysteria" entails, then the scientific community has already foreclosed the possibility of reaching out. Simply put, a scientist is unlikely to connect with someone's values if they dismiss those values as hysteria. Scientists don't like having their ideas being dismissed by the broader public; it should come as no shock whatsoever that the inverse is also true.

Of course, not all scientists are dismissive in this way, but given that the generalization is already prevalent, scientists will need to work even harder to overcome it. But what work is that, exactly? Well, if you want to connect your theories to someone else's values, then you'll have to learn about those values. Scientists need a better understanding of their target audience if they wish to market they product more effectively, and that understanding requires a better grasp of humanistic inquiry, which seeks to understand the human animal in its cultural domain.

And to all those scientists who may have just read that last sentence about the importance of humanistic inquiry, and subsequently rolled their eyes, consider the relationship between scientists and politicians. Calamai himself notes somewhat disparagingly that the ears of politicians only perk up when the scientists start speaking their language, giving them insights into how to better disguise their politically motivated decisions as "science-based". Scientists disparage having their work taken up for purely instrumental reasons; I would press them to be consistent in applying that rule, and realize that for scientists to engage in humanistic inquiry for purely instrumental reasons, to be better equipped to convince people to use science in making decisions, is equally unacceptable. If scientists worry that the full benefit of their message gets lost on politicians because of merely instrumental interest, then they should recognize that the need for humanistic inquiry requires a full-blooded commitment on their part as well, lest something important be lost.

So what's the bottom line, here? What's the take-home message? The Canadian fluency in the language and process of scientific discovery is weak, which leads our citizenry to misuse an essential tool in decision-making. If we want to do a better job selling the importance of that tool, then we need to address people on their own terms and do a better job of connecting science to their own values. To do so, I argue that there needs to be a stronger bridge between the sciences and the humanities, one that exists not for the sole and instrumental purpose of convincing more people to be scientific in coming to decisions. This bridge, by the way, is not one-way, as ideas need to travel back and forth across it without being dismissed out of hand.

There are definitely institutional barriers to this discussion, and further barriers to making that discussion part of the public discourse. I won't address those here, but would love to hear some of your ideas in the comments section, for further discussion.

My body's nobody's body but mine (but perhaps also my unborn child's)

The abortion debate in Canada is making headlines again. Maisonneuve magazine, a great (and surprisingly anglo, given the name) publication out of Montreal, published a piece in their last issue about the recent surge in pro-life support in the Great North. Some bits of that article are extremely helpful, I think, in exploring a more nuanced understanding of the terms of this debate. So let me recap the article with a bit of running commentary.

There's a vocal group (I'll go out on a limb and say a vocal minority) of Canadians who are making waves about illegalising abortion, and some Conservative backbenchers take them very seriously. Though the Conservatives presently have a majority government (a fact that I never tire of lamenting), these backbenchers aren't being given the leash needed to make a serious issue of abortion in Parliament, so the legality of abortion hasn't taken the national spotlight. But given the current power of the party, and the intensifying crescendo from the pro-life campaigns outside of political circles, abortion is an issue that we can less and less easily ignore in Canada.

Doctor Morgentaler was of course the pioneering figure/principal villain in the original move to decriminalize abortions up north. Since then, the government has remained pretty silent about the whole affair, though while there are not laws that strictly regulate abortion, the nation's physicians have set themselves some pretty strict guidelines. Pro-lifers make a lot of hay about the deregulated nature of abortions, sometimes claiming that Canada's abortion laws are as lax as those of North Korea (and does anyone here know very much about North Korean abortion laws anyway?), but that seems out of place because of the physicians' own guidelines. Self-regulation seems fine when it actually works.

The financial crisis of 2008 didn't show us that leaving sectors legally deregulated is asking for trouble; it showed us that banks in particular can't be trusted to regulate themselves. Banks need legal watchdogs, but Canadian doctors seem to be doing pretty well regulating themselves, so the issue of legal deregulation seems a non-starter. Apparently 72% of Canadians want "some protection for the unborn", but having that protection meted out by doctors rather than politicians seems a preferable option. (And this seems to be completely in line with Conservative ideology: Harpers's party ran on a platform of paring down big government and letting industries monitor and regulate themselves, as they've been doing by cutting back the environmental monitoring that the government uses to keep economic ambitions in check. Maybe that's why Harper doesn't want to reopen the issue: abortion is the poster-child issue for self-regulating industry.)

The pro-life movement, however, has been anything but silent. They've got protests and marches and demonstrations and conferences and conventions. And they've got religious affiliations, as the movement is strongly tied to Christian ideals. Their "crisis pregnancy centres", which are basically their response to the abortion clinic, have strong Christian overtones, including formally recognizing the divine nature of Christian scripture. Jenn Giroux, one of the spokespeople for the movement, decries the "desecration of motherhood" since the invention of the birth control pill, and urges young women to give their best years to having children.

And this is where the real problems lie. The pro-life movement, espousing fundamental Christian values, opposes itself not only to abortions, but also to birth control, despite the fact that birth control is one of the most effective and safest ways to reduce the number of abortions. The pro-life group runs an ad campaign that a foetus is a baby, not a choice. But therein lies some troubling ambiguity. One might conceivably oppose abortion, that is, get on board with the idea that once you're pregnant you shouldn't have the choice to terminate the pregnancy. But that need not entail that one oppose birth control. Pro-lifers lump together the decision to conceive with the decision to carry that conception to term, but we need not lump the two together. And when we separate those issues, and give people the option to make decisions about getting pregnant, they tend to choose less often to get abortions.

(Simlarly, the founder of MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, ended up leaving the organization because they started to oppose drinking wholesale, instead of drunk driving specifically. That story may be apocryphal, though.)

What actually drives a woman to get an abortion? Fear? Desperation? Those in the pro-life campaign who paint it as a frivolous decision that one makes on a whim, if there are any such people, are deluding themselves. My anticipation is that women worry about what will happen to them if they have the child, about whether they will have the support necessary to raise a child and have a life of their own (which I take to be an integral part of raising a happy and healthy kid). Women want to flourish, and they want a situation where their offspring can flourish too. And if their situation is desperate enough, can we really blame them for believing that it might be best for everyone involved if the child were never born? Worries about support from their partner, from their family, from their community, or from their economy are all serious issues for women to consider in regards to having children, and it makes sense to reflect seriously on these issues when planning to begin/expand a family.

If we all agree on that point (and I know that some won't), then we get the ball rolling in terms of taking safe sex seriously. But if condoms and other methods of birth control are unavailable or socially unacceptable in one's circles (as the pro-lifers advocate), then unplanned pregnancy will be an issue that needs addressing. How can we justify jacking up the odds of unplanned pregnancy while at the same time banning abortions? Of course, total sexual abstinence is the best method of birth control, but only if by "best" we mean most reliable. Abstinence stems an important process of sexual self-discovery, one that is playing more and more of a prominent role in our society as the media grows more sexualized and one's identity is increasingly determined by one's sexuality (by which I don't mean sexual orientation), now more in the spotlight than ever before.

There are four interwoven issues here: sexual discovery, safe sex, abortions, and the risks of unplanned parenthood. The pro-lifers take safe sex and abortions off the table immediately, making sexual discovery come with the very real risk of unplanned parenthood. If the pro-lifers really want to stop abortions, they have to provide an environment where women, their children, and their partners can all flourish. We need greater social support for mothers and a greater push for gender equality in the workplace, specifically as it pertains to the issue of parenthood. What we don't need is any more finger-wagging from a group of religious folks telling us that the modern world is full of sin and corruption, and should consequently be abandoned. Even if sin and corruption are rampant, abandoning the modern world just isn't an option for most people. People need the support to live a healthy lifestyle where an unplanned pregnancy isn't likely to doom a woman and her child to the cycle of poverty, or where having a child doesn't keep women and their children trapped in abusive relationships. Cause real people live that situation every day, and I'm not sure that it's so clearly preferable to abortion as the pro-lifers make it out to be.

What the pro-lifers are advocating is not just putting an end to abortion. It's a whole cluster of values: women being nurturing mothers, starting families younger, generally putting their own goals aside (when those don't align with motherhood), etc. That lifestyle may be suitable for some, and to those I say that you should pursue your goals as fervently and passionately as any of us pursue what is important to us. But it isn't anyone's place to push that life on an unwilling woman. And that's exactly what pro-lifers seem to be doing through their attempts to illegalise abortion, suppress birth control, and misinform women about their own health issues, thereby making informed decision-making more difficult. It's not just about abortion.

The Nature of Philopolis, pt. 4

The first three installments, which can be found here, here, and here, have generated lots of interesting comments and discussion, so I'm very excited to see what responses I get to the this fourth and final installment in which I draw my conclusions. Really looking forward to discussing some feedback.

            So what is Philopolis offering that’s unique? For now, we differ from both Chautauqua and TED in our outlook on the creation of knowledge, in that we strongly endorse a participatory model rather than a cloistered-production-and-dissemination model. Philopolis has the in-person feel of Chautauqua, which is unfortunately campy and niche at the moment. However, given that we don’t pass this off as a wholesome summer camp, but rather as a festival, we move in a much more urban circle than the rural Chautuaquans. Hopefully that makes us less camp.

            At the opposite extreme, TED dominates the massive online dissemination model, whereas Philopolis has basically no online presence. What little online presence we have basically serves entirely to draw people to the in-person festivals, which are the real bread and butter of our organization. However, if we were to drastically expand our online presence, what would it look like? TED has videos of talks, but that’s appropriate for the dissemination model of education in a way that doesn’t seem to suit the participatory model. An online community of Philopolis would be more of a discussion board (or set of discussion boards) than a set of videos. Discussion boards, of course, exist all over the internet. What Philopolis would hopefully “lack” is the near-instant recourse to the ad hitlerum fallacy that we find in any online thread. Is that even possible? Or does one need face-to-face interaction to resist calling one’s interlocutor a Nazi at the drop of a hat?

            Another potential obstacle is that online interaction often takes place in short bursts. There is a parallel in teaching here: pedagogical researchers, of whom I’m often deeply distrustful, tell me that students have a very short attention span and that we therefore should be switching activities every 20 minutes. First off, this endorses the tacit assumption that even if their attention span really is that short, that they cannot (or should not) be expected to work at lengthening their attention span. And I don’t believe that either of those things is true. Second, short spans of attention seem to me incompatible with philosophical reflection as it’s currently practiced. That’s not to say that philosophical reflection shouldn’t change either, but my point is that there is an impasse between currently short attention spans and the current model of philosophical reflection that requires sustained time and effort. I don’t think that we should give in entirely to either of those: we shouldn’t resign ourselves to short attention spans, nor should we preclude the possibility of philosophical reflection evolving in a fruitful fashion that does not require quite as lengthy an engagement as it currently does.

            So Philopolis faces the following challenges: first, embrace the urban feel of the festival, which differentiates us from the campiness of Chautauqua camp. Second, embrace the participatory model of knowledge and education that distances us from both Chautauqua and TED. Third, negotiate the current impasse between short attention spans and the time-consuming cognitive demands of present philosophical practice. Fourth, negotiate the enormous gap between the universal but “thin” sense of community that comes with present forms of online interaction, and the “thick” sense of community that comes with in-person interaction, as well as the serial bursts vs. sustained attention that goes with that dichotomy.

            This is the state of the Philopolis union so far as I can see it at this point. My hope is not that this conception goes unchallenged: I welcome revisions to my questions and challenges as much as I welcome answers to them. Also, it’s kind of nice to think that some of these issues are those that are defining of our time: the relationship between communication, community and education (and democracy), and how that relationship is affected by the introduction of new online technologies, which in turn replace modes of communication that have been the bedrock of our culture for decades (and in some cases centuries). Are online and real life opposed, or can they play complementary roles? Can philosophical reflection evolve into bite-sized chunks, or is it essential that it be a sustained activity? Is a hybrid of theory and practice a reasonable goal to set for oneself as a community?

The Nature of Philopolis, pt. 3

Here are the links to the first and to the second installments.

            But there is one great technological innovation that is currently gutting radio and television, and forcing us to rethink the whole way that we engage with other people: the internet. (It’s interesting to think that only a few years ago, that word was a proper noun and therefore required an upper-case letter: “the Internet”. How banal it has become.) The internet has interactive power unlike any technological development this species has ever seen, and the world has never been smaller as a result.

            With information on-demand on the internet, has someone stepped in to fill the intellectual void once occupied by Chautauqua? Yes: TED, the conference on “Technology, Entertainment, and Design.” They hold two annual, in-the-flesh conferences, but their main source of popularity are the ubiquitous TED Talks (videos of the 18-minute presentations) that are available free online, 24/7. TED has effectively taken the online, public intellectual scene by storm, and holds it with a strong grip. But once again, like Chautauqua, TED is not really interactive: they are talks, someone presents his or her ideas, and the audience listens. The audience is not actually involved in the creation of knowledge; they are receptors rather than participants. TED is immensely successful in getting the general public into contact with academic knowledge, but TED and Philopolis differ on the philosophical position of the relationship between a community, the academics who are part of that community, and how knowledge is produced.

            Also, TED’s historical roots are in the Sciences, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, STEM, areas; Philopolis is firmly rooted in philosophy. Both have since expanded beyond those original boundaries, but Philopolis still seems to hold a strong contact with philosophy by pitching it as a “philosophy + X” type of event. We can therefore explore anything, but philosophy will be part of the discussion as the overarching point of assembly.

            TED and Chautauqua have this in common: they both aim to disseminate knowledge broadly and accessibly within the broader community. Chautauqua occupies a niche, and it’s a campy market (literally as well as figuratively). The ubiquity of radio and television, and later the internet, have made Chautauqua a niche because what it offers is the richness of learning in person, in a setting that is completely dominated by the spirit of learning and populated by those who share that spirit. (It’s what a university would be if grades weren’t an issue, and they weren’t driven so hard by employment concerns, research quotas, and a dated model of scholarship.)

            TED one-ups Chautauqua by improving on their dissemination model. Everything is free and available online. What is sacrificed, though, is the sense of community, as one only feels distantly related to others through TED talks. There’s something neat about the feeling that people all over the world are watching the same video as you are. But there is an appreciable difference between that feeling and the feeling of actually sitting together in the same time and place and watching this together. 

Here is the fourth installment of the series.

The Nature of Philopolis, pt. 2

Last week, I posted part one of my Philopolis discussion. Here is part two.

            Historically first in line is Chautauqua. Before my friend Bruce told me about this event, I had never heard of it (though obviously it’s a real thing because my spell-check doesn’t scream at it with red, squiggly lines). Luckily, PBS does documentaries on all kinds of things that I’ve never heard of, so I was able to gather some background intel. Chautauqua was founded in the late 19^th century in the US as a place to instruct Sunday School teachers. It was founded on the idea that an educated public is key to the health of democracy, and the idea that churches had an important role to play in this. In order for the church to fulfill this role, the Sunday School teachers needed to be educated enough to educate their flocks, and Chautauqua aimed at just this kind of learning. It was really Bildung in the old German sense: not just an education, but a formation, an acculturation.

            Chautauqua ran on the idea of learning as a lifelong pursuit, and offered exposure to the fine arts, discussion of current events, ideas in the arts and sciences, and in religion, as well as incorporating a recreation component. It was basically a summer camp where people could get away without feeling guilty that they were wasting their time because they were learning while they were there. The original facility was installed on the edge of Chautauqua lake in the state of New York, but its immense popularity eventually lead to correspondence courses, installations popping up all over North America, as well as the inauguration of a traveling circuit, like a circus of intellectuals and artists.

            What drove Chautauqua? It responded mostly to three needs: the need for a place to take a “vacation” without the guilt of a vacation; the need for information and intellectual exposure in the United States, particularly in the rural areas where access to such things was greatly restricted. Interestingly, this movement showed that “infotainment” need not be totally vicious. To pass off entertainment as information, as we see in the sensationalist news media today, is deadly to our democratic engagement. But to pass off information as entertainment is just the reverse: what a virtuous idea! And what a biting criticism of our education system that we scoff at the very possibility of learning as entertaining and enjoyable.

            So what killed the movement, then, if it was so big? The pressures of the Great Depression didn’t help anything, as the network had greater and greater trouble supporting itself financially and had to pare back its offerings, but the deathblow was struck by the introduction of radio (and television) into the mass market. The greatest need that pushed Chautauqua was the relative scarcity of access to information in rural areas, where universities and libraries were difficult to access. But radio broadcast changed all of that by providing access to information through a much cheaper distribution medium. Moving people around from town to town is costly, especially relative to the cost of moving some electrons. By the end of the Second World War, Chautauqua was passé, and only the original installation in New York state is left as a commemorative to the movement. (It still offers a whole summer worth of activities, and actually has a whole town that it runs somewhat like a summer camp.)

            Radio, television and movies made the dissemination of information and entertainment (as an outlet for one’s leisure time) much easier to access. Are these not still around? Do these not still work against the possibility of offering something like Chautauqua? Make no mistake, there are definite parallels to the festival of philosophy, and we need to be aware of the forces that would undercut our relevance and our ability to grow. Radio and television definitely make market penetration more difficult, but we can offer something that they can’t: interactivity. Radio and television disseminate; they are not participatory. That’s where Philopolis has the upper hand in this battle.

Here is the third part.

What does a Smart Conservative look like?

You know, I think I might finally be starting to understand where the Conservatives are coming from. I've been looking to understand the "nuanced" version of their policies for a while, and thus far have gotten nowhere, but hopefully this is a first step in the right direction. (Also, I don't spend much time in Alberta, or around many Conservatives, so the sample size that I've seen is quite small; it's not that I believe there to be no Smart Conservatives, but I do believe that there are only few in proximity to me.) They believe that the government is a bunch of bunglers, isolated in their policy tower as the academics are isolated in towers of ivory. Consequently, politicians don't know a thing about actually running anything, resulting in wasted money, ineffective policies, etc.

The Conservative response is to hand over control to the corporations, assuming that they'll do a decent job at running it themselves if the bunglers just stop gumming up the works.

Is that a good strategy to take? It can be: look at the way immigration in the US is run in large part by its economy, where immigration status is tied quite strongly to employment and businesses themselves are responsible for a great deal of the process. In this instance, the US immigration system has shown that there can be some success allowing companies to be heavily involved in running something that we Canadians typically take to be a gov't matter. (US immigration has some definite problems, but it also has a track record of some success, and at a modicum of stability; the program is far from an utter failure, though it's also far from perfect.)

The problem that the Conservative government is failing to recognize is that not everything can work this way. It's in the shared, short & long term interests of governments and businesses that the incoming immigrants be employed: governments don't have an economically sagging immigrant population to prop up through social services, and companies have lots of control over who's allowed in, meaning that they get the pick of the litter. Long term, immigrants don't become a perpetual weight on the social services, and capable people are probably more likely to have capable children (teaching them good habits, sending them to good schools, providing safe environments in which to grow up, etc).

But while it's in the interests of the government, both short & long term, to protect the environment, it's only in the long term interests of companies to protect the environment from which they draw natural resources. Their short term interests are radically opposed to this, because it requires postponing profits. Sadly, long-term viability is not in vogue in the business world nowadays (was it ever?) and so leaving the governance of the environment in business hands is just asking for a catastrophe. Furthermore, there an non-economic interests in the environment, which corporations could only have an instrumental interest in protecting (in order to protect their own image, say).

This is where the Conservative idea goes wrong: they believe that the solution to political ineptitude should be solved by deregulation and governance by economic corporations, but overlook the fact that political mandates are far broader than economic interests (including that which can fall under the heading of "instrumental to economy"), and that short term interests will win out over long term interests in the economic sphere. (Also, anyone who was a sentient being in 2008 knows that the ineptitude and greed of big business can lead to catastrophes all on their own, without the help of bungling politicians standing in their way.)

Maybe what we need instead is to have our bungling politicians, if indeed that's what they are, to collaborate more closely with people involved in economy, environment, health care, etc. But any such collaboration is totally impossible in the political climate that Harper's Conservatives have brought about.

The Nature of Philopolis, pt. 1

Over the last few weeks, I've been thinking about the Philopolis festival, and wondering what it really is. These thoughts come up every time we need to create a new call for activities, but this time in particular I was sparked by a discussion with Ajay Heble, who asked me what Philopolis does that's unique. "It's the only festival of philosophy; there are no others." That was my response, but in giving it, I realized that I didn't really know what a "festival of philosophy" really is, or what it should be. That sparked these reflections, and so after much soul-searching, reflection, conversation and investigation, I've written up a piece that discusses how Philopolis fits into the intellectual and cultural landscape around it. The piece is quite long, so I've broken it up into four section. Here is the first:

            Philopolis is an event that’s been extremely recalcitrant to definition since its inception. It picked up where La Nuit de la Philosophie left off, meaning that it was basically an attempt to bring ideas from academic philosophy back into contact with the general public. That means taking these (sometimes hyper-)technical ideas and presenting them in a language accessible to the broader community, and bringing them into contact with issues that matter to that community as well. We need to find in common a language and a set of concerns. Philosophy simply cannot continue to be a jargonistic, self-referential and entirely insular investigation, as it has been in academia for far too long. (For those who think that it always was, I suggest reading Plato’s dialogues in which he documents the very concrete and accessible examinations carried out by Socrates. I’m sure there are more contemporary examples as well…)

            Why should academic philosophers concern themselves with problems outside of their professional domain? First off, because philosophy has the power to do so. Its Socratic beginnings show that philosophy can be eminently relevant. Second, because (at least here in Canada) academics are publicly funded. In taking public support, academics tacitly agree to be the researchers of the people. To turn our backs on the people, then, and to research things that do not even concern, much less interest, the broader society is to fail in our duty as public researchers. Simply put, we must offer a return on the public investment. Third, the principles of democracy rely on an educated and critical public, and philosophy play an important role in the development of critical skills.

            Fourth, the adequacy of philosophical ideas rests on being in contact with material outside its own confines. One need think only of how bad some philosophy of science has been as a result of being totally divorced from any scientific practice. Philosophy often has impact on real-life problems, as opposed to those found only in internal academic dialogues, and so the adequacy of those ideas is jeopardized by the utter segregation from those problems. Reflection does not take place in a vacuum. Even Descartes, who famously withdrew to the solipsistic confines of his chamber to write his Meditations, could not withdraw from language and the sense of self that are the marks of communal existence. He may have isolated himself physically for a short time, but his isolation was limited in important ways. Notice that the first thing he does after wiping the slate clean through hyperbolic doubt is to engage God in his writing. Way to isolate.

            Philopolis is a festival of philosophy, where ideas are publicly displayed, discussed and developed in the name of promoting reflection in the broader community, but also in the name of improving philosophical research by putting it back in touch with the real world. So this is the beginning of a definition, but it’s still pretty preliminary. Let’s have a look around at some events like Philopolis and see if we can use a comparison/contrast to help us define our event.


Here is the second part of the series.

A Run for Cindy

This past weekend, I ran a 5k memorial run down in Buffalo for Cindy Frank, the mother of a good friend and former roommate. In these circles we stick together and support our own, but I honestly hate running. There's nothing to distract you from the burning lungs, and the tight back and thighs. You try to find a good balance between the rhythm of your breathing and the rhythm of your steps, trying to keep your body going and push through the air that holds you back and the gravity that pulls you down.

This run was for Cindy, to remember and honour her life and especially the heroic struggle that she put up against cancer in those final months. She too had to push through physical pain and the emotional drain, the persistent call to just let go and throw in the towel. Just as she had to push through pain and the erosive powers that has on will power, so too were we all fighting against our bodies, willing them to do something that they don't do happily or easily.

And Cindy had to go it alone.  Of course, she was surrounded by loving and supporting people, most of all her family, but none of them were running that race with her. They could only cheer from the sidelines as inevitably Cindy had to face her physical downfall and her human mortality on her own. That is a race we each must run alone. And so despite the fact that there were many of us running, unlike most of our group I decided that I would run alone too, just as Cindy had. And her positive attitude, the smile that she always had on her face for every visitor, regardless of how much effort she was putting just into living, was an important inspiration for me as I pushed through the twists and turns of West Seneca.

Twists and turns were abundant on that cold, April day, when the wind lashed at our faces and drained the warmth from our bodies, the skies right on the brink, threatening to pour at any moment. Throughout the majority of the course, one could never see too much further ahead. It was impossible to see the finish line, and beyond the next turn was always mystery. This is the experience of running a course that you don't know, and a distance with which you're totally unfamiliar. You don't know what's coming up. You know that eventually it will end, but you have no idea how much further you have to go. There were volunteers along the way, cheering us on and directing us through, making sure that we stayed on course. But I refused to ask them how much further, when it would be over. "Would Cindy have had that luxury?" I asked myself, "Could anyone have told her how much further? Could she have known how much or how little time she had left to fight?" I refused to ask, no matter how much I wanted to know. And we all want to know how much further we have to go. It's so much easier to keep pushing on when the end is in sight. But some things in life just refuse to cooperate, refuse to let us know how much further we have to push before we can catch our breath, and then move on again.

The twists and turns of the course finally gave way to the final stretch, one long sight line. And at the end of it: the cross, sitting high up above the trees and the houses, perched atop the steeple of the church (and school) to which Cindy devoted her life, her energy, and her vitality. "How fitting," I thought to myself, "that it only all becomes clear to us at the end; and in the final stretch we see where it all must come to an end." We can run that final stretch to the church, with the cross soaring high up in the air guiding us through those last moments.

My pace slackened, my footsteps grew heavy, but the oxygen was coursing back into my muscles as I gathered myself for one final push, a sprint to the finish line beyond which I could finally collapse and draw restful breath. And what a reception at the finish line, a crowd of smiling, clapping, cheering faces encouraging us all to finally reach the other side and find peace in the open and waiting arms of our loved ones. Just like Cindy's final push.

This inaugural memorial run was a huge success, and of course an emotionally charged morning. 350 runners came out to in memory of Cindy, and to be supported through their run by the memory of her, and I hope that this will set the stage for a strong annual turnout for the event. For we can run that race over and over again, but death is only once. No warmups, no practice laps, no looking ahead past the next turn. Just one push to the finish line, and we all must go it alone. I honestly hate running.

Measuring up "Yet Another Science Show"

Two good friends of mine, Orad Reshef and Jesse Corbeil, have just started putting together a series of podcasts about science, which I think is a great initiative. I put a lot of effort into making philosophy accessible, but philosophy is far from the only discipline that needs a good dose of accessibility, so I'm very glad to see new efforts in that direction. (LFD fans will of course recognize the names and voices of the hosts, and keep your ears open during their theme song!) Anyway, it's nice not only because the show is good, clean, stimulating entertainment, but also because it wanders into my philosophical territory, which allows me to give some response, so it's a nice way to get back to work with some old friends while enriching both their endeavour to popularize science and mine to popularize philosophy. Good stuff all around.

So, without any further ado, let's talk about their first episode, which you can listen to here. The first episode of their show, which is called Yet Another Science Show, is entitled "The Metre and Friends," and it's all about the sordid and wonderful history of measurement. We often think of measurement as something very objective: you take a ruler, put it up to the object you want to measure, and the ruler tells you how long/wide/deep the object is. Objects just have length; we play no role in it; any subjective element is removed when it comes to measurement; measurement just gives you the clean, cold, hard, objective facts of the universe. Most scientific realists (and that probably means you too, casual reader: even if you don't know what scientific realism is, you probably believe in it anyway) believe that reality is defined by what you can measure. If you can measure it, it's real; if you can't, it ain't. Interestingly, Einstein believed no such thing: "“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts," said the great physicist of the early 20th century. So if measurement plays such an important role in determining what's real (and neither Einstein nor I believes that), then we'd better be damned sure that measurement itself is sitting on a rock-solid foundation of objectivity.

Orad and Jesse do a wonderful job of tracing the history of measurement, and the fact that each unit of measure relies on others. In the early days when one foot was actually the measure of a human foot, our units of measure were very anthropocentric, relying heavily on our bodies and our practical concerns. Over time, we've moved away from those concerns towards a completely systematic definition of our units of measure: rather than defining the metre by a platinum-iridium bar in Paris, we now define it relative to the second and the speed of light. Actually, the speed of light defines both our measurements of space and of time. The two are interdefined, that's what the move to relativity a century ago was all about. And light is a good measuring rod because it's invariant across lots and lots of circumstances. In other words, no matter where and when you are, light is going to act in pretty much the same way all the time, so it's a good standard for measurement. However, the constancy of light across frames of reference is not something that we've demonstrated; it's one of the postulates of our science.

In other words, this whole systematic arrangement is a house of cards. Each piece relies on the other pieces or on our decisions to accept something as axiomatic. Once you've used the speed of light to define the length of a metre or the duration of a second, how could you ever discover that the speed of light wasn't what you thought it was? Suppose that you use your best clock and your best metre stick and you find out that the value of the speed of light wasn't what you thought it was. What then? Well, the problem is that you used light to define space and time, and therefore you'd be forced to say that the metre stick or the clock must be wrong. The speed of light is the metre stick of your metre stick, or so we've decided to believe as a first postulate of physics.

So how is our science not arbitrary? History. We didn't just select the number 299 792 458 m/s as the speed of light. Rather, we used to have a definition of a metre (remember the platinum-iridium bar in Paris) and a definition of time. Using those old definitions, we figured out the speed of light. In those days, the speed of light was an empirical matter, something you could get right or wrong. But not anymore: now that we've used the speed of light to define metres and seconds, if you claimed that the speed of light were different than it is, you wouldn't be making a claim about how fast light moves. Actually, you'd be giving a re-definition of the metre and the second. (Be wary about doing that sort of thing, because remember that all of our other units of measure are also connected to space and time, metres and seconds, so you'd be redefining our measures for everything. That can be a time-consuming task to sort out.) So the non-arbitrarity comes from the fact that we're never just choosing a whole system at a time. We're always operating in some moment or another in history, where things already have a definition, and all we ever need to consider at a given moment is the possibility of redefining one corner of our set of measures, knowing that this will have minor effects on the others that will then need to be worked out. We never need to build Noah's Arc the first time; we're just constantly patching the hull on the high seas.

Science is always historically situated, and our measures and the revisions thereof are constantly building on the history of science. But all of these measures are interdependent rather than objective: they're not picking out the real structure underlying the world. It's not like the speed of light, measured in metres/second, is a fact out there in the world that we can get right or wrong. Light moves at a certain speed, but (at least at the moment) we use that speed to define the metre and the second, to stipulate what they mean. We choose bases for measurement that are invariant across lots of different contexts so that we don't have one metre and a different metre on Mars. Such a situation wouldn't be very helpful (though few outside the science community would really notice a difference in the day-to-day world, except that their cell phones wouldn't work).

What measurement gives us is not a way of minimising the subjective element of experience: what it gives us is a set of instructions for making something an object. The measured length of an object is not an objective fact out there in the world, independent of us, because measurement itself is a human construct, a very powerful and systematically complex one that allows us to cut the world up into objects with lengths in metres. But if we'd decided to define the metre differently, if we'd decided to "force" the speed of light to be 300 000 000 m/s for instance, then our definition would be different, as would the lengths of all objects. If you want a good example of how much we use our interrelated sets of definitions to "cut up" the world into usable chunks, you need listen no further than the comment at the 28th minute of "The Metre and Friends," when Jes says that he thinks in inches. That's exactly what these definitions do for us: they give us a framework with which to grasp the world.

But clearly science advanced importantly when we started defining the metre by the speed of light rather than the bar in Paris (we also passed through an intermediate stage of defining it by the wavelength of a certain colour of light). So if these tools are what we use to cut up the world, and they are "just" definitions that we stipulate, how could we be progressing? How could we be moving away from the anthropomorphic definitions of these terms and toward something "objective"? Recall the big leap forward (not a quantum leap, cause quanta are actually ridiculously small) we made when we started to interdefine space and time. What we did there was not to strip away the subjective elements of our measures: what we actually did was to increase the systematic interdependence of those measures. We used to define metres one way and seconds another, and used those definitions to measure the speed of light. Then we started to use the speed of light to define metres and seconds with respect to one another. Metres and seconds were not independent phenomena any longer. They spring from a common source now.

Anyway, I've tried to give an argument here that measurement is not objective; rather, it's objectivizing. We never "discovered" what the metre was by walking through the world and looking at stuff. Rather, we stipulated a definition of a metre and that allowed us to interact with objects in a radically new fashion, a fashion that is improved drastically when those measures start to be defined more and more with respect to one another rather than based on objects we encounter in our day-to-day practical lives. Progress in measurement does not remove subjectivity: it actually provides the conditions of us as subjects to create a world for ourselves that has a particular structure.

Anyway, that's all I've got to say on the topic for now. Hopefully this will inspire not only some interesting feedback, but will also inspire you to start following their show. They've just released their second episode, "Black Holes Don't Suck," so give that a listen too!

A life of philosophy of life

In an article that is by now almost three years old, James Ladyman (Dept. of Philosophy, University of Bristol) defends specialization in philosophy and attempts to refute the claim that philosophy needs to be accessible. He's quite clear in his points, which is appreciated, and stands in stark contrast with far too many writings on this subject. (But hey, they're not paying us enough to be clear, at least not the ones around the mean of that lovely bell curve.)

First off, Ladyman has in mind here professional philosophers, that is to say, people who earn their living doing philosophy in an academic department. Second, he has in mind a particular kind of philosophy, specifically that which has an "overlap between a subfield of philosophy and another specialised subject matter, where that may be the history of philosophy itself. This is the kind of philosophy that I am most sure is worthwhile."

He then argues that, just as it is unreasonable to expect of physics or of mathematics that they abstain from any technical jargon, and to insist that they be totally accessible to the layman, so too is it unreasonable to make such a request of philosophy. After all, if physics is complex and requires specialization in order to be investigated, it seems appropriate that the philosophy of physics would be complex and require specialization as well. If the philosophy of physics aspires to say anything meaningful or helpful about physics, then its practitioners must specialize to the point of understanding the subject matter of their philosophy. "It is absurd for philosophical inquiry into nature to be conducted in complete ignorance of science. Hence, some philosophers must specialise in some parts of logic, mathematics and science, and bring their knowledge to philosophical debates with their colleagues. ... It would be folly to suggest that philosophical debates about philosophical logic – as well as ancient questions concerning essence, existence, identity, individuality, properties and so on – should be conducted among experts in an idiom that is accessible to the layperson."

Without engaging with the technical language of science, it would be impossible for philosophers to interact with scientists, therefore making it impossible to meaningfully engage with that science. To abstain from engaging in that language would mean to abstain from analyzing the science from which it arises: "There would be something badly wrong if work in the philosophy of physics were as accessible to a linguist as to a physicist, or if work in the philosophy of language were as accessible to a physicist as to a linguist."

Ladyman then goes on to set up a dichotomy between, on the one hand, these highly-specialized fields, where large advances are hard-won, and achieved through a small army of researchers each working on their highly specialized slice of the pie; and, on the other hand, those who popularize philosophy in countless books, for which there is a thriving market and an ample supply. "There are many excellent people who mediate between academia in general and the rest of the population. I am baffled as to why people are calling for all academics to do these things. The case of philosophy is in this respect no different from that of pure mathematics or microbiology. The idea that every scientist should be a part-time science journalist and public speaker is absurd."

Ladyman goes on to make some rather biting remarks about using jargon as an excuse: if philosophy is so difficult and obscure, it can't be all that important, and this belief justifies not putting in the effort necessary to learn the language and get up to speed on the ongoing debates. For what it's worth, I think that there's a grain of truth here: people really do dismiss philosophy quite quickly, and are always ready with just such a rejoinder when one (often a philosophical one) presses them to learn more.

Finally, Ladyman claims that because our knowledge has advanced so far that only through specialization and the work of experts can hitherto-unanswered philosophical questions be addressed, knowing that these questions will be minute, but add up to a more impressive totality when all taken together. "This may not amount to advancing our understanding of the meaning of life, but it is in keeping with Socrates’ conception of the philosopher as gadfly, asking awkward questions and exposing epistemic hubris. Our knowledge of the world has grown immeasurably since ancient times, and philosophers would be failing in their role if they did not specialise sufficiently to know enough to be able to point out exactly where lie the limits of our understanding."

As many of you know, my belief is that accessibility is an important virtue in philosophy, and so I'd like to take this opportunity to respond to Ladyman. First off, he begins with the assumption that philosophy must always be a philosophy of something, where he basically believes that that "something" will be another highly specialized academic discipline. However, what about a philosophy of everyday life? Surely there are problems that one encounters outside of specialized research that have philosophical bearing, and for which a philosopher's insights would be very valuable. During the last few decades, when this sort of Lebensphilosophie has been out of vogue (in North America) and outside the realm of accessibility (basically everywhere), everyday life has changed a lot. There are new problems that need philosophical treatment, and so it is a non-starter to claim that philosophy has already solved those problems and that the only live issues are now at the fringes of our knowledge. We encounter the fringes of our knowledge every day in the practical world; one need not go to science to find such limits. If philosophy of physics is supposed to be meaningful to the physicist, then presumably the philosophy of everyday life should be meaningful to those who live it!

That is not to say, of course, that there are not interesting and important problems to be found in the philosophy of specialized sciences. The discovery(?) of the Higgs boson at the hadron collider in Switzerland raises enormous questions about the fundaments of reality, and what it is for stuff to be stuff. Ladyman's argument about such research basically claims that because we don't reprimand mathematicians or physicists for using jargon, we shouldn't reprimand philosophers either. He assumes that jargon in math and physics is acceptable. That's not necessarily the case. What's being discussed here is whether jargon should be accepted, and whether it is accepted from math or physics (or philosophy) doesn't determine what ought to be the case (that's an instance of the naturalist fallacy). If jargon is not acceptable in physics or math, then it isn't in philosophy either. If it is acceptable in physics and math, we might still not accept it from all philosophy, because not all philosophy will treat specialized subjects of this nature, as I argued above.

What I've tried to argue here is that there is important work to be done in the philosophy of everyday life, and that professional philosophers are not doing enough to address that (in a way that is accessible and meaningful to the people that it concerns). But Ladyman has claimed that there are plenty of authors who popularize philosophy, "excellent people" who mediate between academic philosophy and those outside of academia. Certainly there is a healthy market for such books, and there is an adequate quantity of them to satisfy the demand, but is there an adequate quality? As a philosopher myself, and one who currently resides in the Ivory Tower, I have had many students arrive at my office with one or another of these books, and I've seen what they have to offer. (I've even read a few of them myself.) They really aren't very good, and in  my estimation that's because the academic realm doesn't give any recognition to those who successfully popularize the field. Consequently, "excellent people" by and large do not venture into these realms (with the notable exception of Alain de Botton, who's actually English once you get past the name).

It is certainly tough to recognize the great thinkers of one's own time, to separate the wheat from the chaff without the benefit of historical retrospect. But it's not very difficult to see that many people who publish these popular philosophy books are on the fringe of academia: they are not hailed even as potentially great thinkers. I hate to say it, because I have friends who have published these kinds of books, but they aren't the up-and-comers who will one day make a splash on the academic scene, and even if they do (and of course I hope for such things for/from my friends) it will be in spite of more than because of these popular texts. When was the last time that a big-wig from Oxford or Cambridge decided that they would take a nice sabbatical to write a book about the changes in the philosophical landscape brought about by the advent of Facebook, and write it in a way that Facebook users could understand, relate to, and reflect upon? The people that academia hails as its brightest lights just don't deign to illuminate such things.

Ladyman is right. Studying the philosophy of physics or math requires engaging with those fields, and that means engaging with their jargon (whether those fields ought to fall back into jargon or not). But there is an appreciably large and important segment of philosophy, namely, the philosophy of life, that should not be inaccessible in that way. Real people have real benefits to gain from real good philosophy of life. That sector of our field doesn't get enough attention; and when it does get a little, it's not the intellectual heavyweights who are weighing in. One contributing reason for the problem is that academia simply doesn't recognize such work as philosophically worthwhile, and therefore doesn't prioritize it.

What, and with which, and to whom, part 2

Also, In this post last week, I treated the first five arguments from this article, which seeks to rebut some claims made by proponents of gay marriage. This week, I'll tackle arguments 6–10.

#6: Proponents of same-sex marriage point out that if reproduction is really the kernel of marriage, then same-sex couples shouldn't be the only ones excluded. Why are infertile couples allowed to marry? Or couples well beyond the years of baby-making? To these questions, Vogt replies that, in the case of young couples who are infertile, it would simply be too expensive and invasive to test them all for fertility before allowing their marriage, not to mention the fact that fertility tests are not always so reliable. Fertility, in fact, is just not so simple an issue as "yes" or "no," as many couples these days learn only once they start trying to have kids. As for elderly couples, "these marriages are so rare that it's simply not worth the effort to restrict them."

Vogt's point about the drawbacks of fertility tests before marriage is well taken. However, there's a lot more going on here. Why does child-rearing not figure more prominently in the process of getting a marriage license, or in the ceremony? Doing fertility tests may be expensive and invasive, but one could easily make it a mandatory question in the paperwork: "As far as you are aware, are you fertile?" They aren't asked whether they're fertile; they aren't asked whether they even want children; they aren't asked whether they're getting married for the purpose of having children, which is apparently the only reason that's supposed to matter. If the author were right that having children is the kernel of marriage, then we wouldn't have people getting married without any intention to have any. And that includes the elderly.

(Also, getting back to our dear elderly, the fact that Vogt is happy just to dismiss the problem because it's small suggests that he's not very concerned about applying rules consistently here. Whether he means it or not, his remark that I quoted above just comes off as him trying to shoe-horn marriages of the elderly into line with his position, despite a glaring difficulty there.)

And besides, same-sex couples can have children. I mentioned advancing reproductive technology in my last post, as well as the fact of adoption.

#7. And, claim proponents of same-sex marriage, gay parents are just as able to rear children as heterosexual couples. But Vogt disagrees. He cites the meta-analysis of Loren Marks (LSU), according to which studies showing the equivalence of homo- vs. heterosexual couples is not very well supported by the data. Vogt goes on to cite the Regnerus study, on the basis of which same-sex parents were claimed to be inferior to heterosexual parents. The Regnerus study has been the subject of massive criticism from within the academic community, and even Regnerus himself admitted that it couldn't possibly conclude anything about the quality of homosexual parenting. So Vogt shows the other side didn't do their homework on the data, and then goes about appealing to data that's just as shoddy.

However, I think that his discussion really misses the point of the adoption question. The question is not about whether we should take children from happy heterosexual families and have them bunk in with the mean old homos down the street. The real question is whether homosexual parents would be good adoption candidates for children who are either in broken homes or in foster homes. All the research suggests that stability on the home front is a massively important factor in raising happy, well-adjusted kids. Allowing same-sex couples to marry can both increased the stability of their relationship, and act as a sign of that stability when applying to adopt children. We already allow same-sex couples to adopt, and if we're so concerned about children, then we should allow these same-sex couples to adopt for the benefit of the children they raise! A stable household is better for kids than one that isn't stable, regardless of the gender of the parents, and allowing same-sex marriage is a good way to promote greater stability as well as to increase the accuracy of identifying stable couples as candidates to adopt.

 #8. Opponents of same-sex marriage are often called bigots and/or homophobes, and Vogt rightly points out that this isn't the case. Certainly homophobia and bigotry are likely to lead to opposition to same-sex marriage. However, that is not sufficient evidence to conclude that all who oppose it are homophobes or bigots. (That would be to affirm the consequent, which is a logical fallacy.) Calling people bigots and homophobes is a great way to bring any constructive discussion to an end, so there are good reasons not to do it. Furthermore, it's probably not true that all people who oppose gay marriage are bigots: the fact that Vogt is engaging in rational debate shows that's true. I don't agree that he's on the right side of the debate, and I press people who oppose gay marriage to either provide a more solid foundation to their position or to give it up; but the fact that there is sensible, rational debate on this issue, rather than just name-calling, is of crucial importance, and for that I applaud Vogt (and people like him on both sides of the fence) for doing what they do. Simple vilification and dismissal get us nowhere, and many proponents of same-sex marriage are guilty of doing that.

#9. Proponents also draw parallels between the civil rights movement and the gay rights movement. Specifically, they see a parallel between the opposition that once existed (and sadly probably still does in some places) toward inter-racial marriage and the opposition that currently exists toward gay marriage. Vogt's argument, that child-rearing is the purpose of marriage, avoids this problem. Because inter-racial marriages can be fertile while same-sex marriages can't (or so he claims), he has a principled reason for accepting inter-racial marriage while denying same-sex marriage. I have offered counter-arguments to that, and still hope to get some responses that cut ice on those issues.

However, the proponents who trace this parallel are not completely off the mark either: it has been said of both inter-racial and same-sex marriage that "that just ain't nat'ral!" While Vogt may avoid this problem because of the basis of his claims about the basis of marriage, be they right or wrong, there are certainly a number of positions against gay marriage that don't avoid this charge, and so the proponents have a point in bringing it up. However, some of the people who hold such positions might just be willing to bite the bullet on this one, and claim that, indeed, inter-racial marriage ought not to be accepted either. ... I don't even know what to say to those people other than to stare at them, mouth agape.

#10. Some proponents of same-sex marriage point to easing of attitudes on the subject here and there, and say that the tide is turning: gay marriage will soon be acceptable. Therefore, we should be on the right side of history and jump on the bandwagon. Vogt rightly points out that these tremors in the U.S. are not earthquakes: the changes have been here and there, and it's a stretch to conclude on that basis that the tide is definitively turning.

What he neglects to take into consideration, and this is a criticism that I find myself leveling against Americans far too often, is the rest of the world. The U.S. has taken a position of insulation for decades (except when their economic interests are at stake, apparently), and they forget that the rest of the world actually also has discussions about what's acceptable and what isn't (among other discussions). Looking outside their own borders more often might not be such a bad thing, on the issue of gay marriage as for so many other issues. It's important in this particular debate because the turning of the tide on this issue would not simply be an American phenomenon. The world is smaller than ever, and isolation along national borders is progressively more difficult every day.

Looking to the international scene, then, it seems that the small signs of a turn in the U.S. are relatively small fries compared to much of what's happening elsewhere in the world. Same-sex marriage is not nearly as controversial in some countries where it is legal and basically acceptable. (Note also that said countries have not yet been struck down by the will of God.) By contrast, there are also countries where it's a non-issue because it is completely unaccepted.

Vogt does bring up a very important point here, though: it's notoriously difficult to anticipate the turns of historical tide. The evidence of such a turn is usually the turn itself, and is only really discernible in retrospect. The evidence we have right now is not sufficient. The jury is still out on whether history will look back on this as the turning point, or just a blip on the radar.

Two things that he doesn't mention are that (1) we are not completely the slaves of fated history. What decisions we make now, as individuals, actually has a bearing on how people in the future will look back on us, and on what views they will hold. It's not yet a settled issue whether same-sex marriage will be accepted in the future. The other point, and this is far more important and I wish that Vogt had brought it up, is that (2) the tide of history doesn't always turn in the direction that it ought. Just because lots of people believe something, or think that it's right, does not make it so. Our history books are replete with hard-learned lessons to this effect. If you think that masses always get it right, just look at how many people believed the Nazi propaganda in the 1930's and '40's. (I had to mention the Nazis: after all, what online discussion of values, cultural change and (in)tolerance would be complete without bringing them up?)

The Bubble

Here's an interesting problem coming down the pike for academics in the arts. Students in Quebec protested a hike in fees, and the Parti Quebecois got elected on a platform that included cancelling the hike, which they did. However, in a summit on education, the PQ immediately announced that they were going to cut higher education budgets (retroactively, no less), which led to massive public outcry. In any case, the cuts got handed down, and so now the universities are left trying to bridge the gap. McGill University decided to bridge the gap by cancelling 100 classes in their Faculty of Arts. (The article unfortunately doesn't mention what, if anything, has been slashed on the science side of the world. I would be shocked if there weren't even minor cutbacks made to at least appear to be distributing the burden evenly.)

How are these 100 arts classes going to be cut? The proposed solution is to move to larger class sizes by cutting the smaller classes (which also typically tend to be higher-level). So these high-level, small-enrolment classes, taught by tenured faculty, will be offered either less frequently, or no longer offered at all. Those faculty members will instead be asked to teach more of the higher-enrolment, lower-level classes, which are currently taught mostly by sessional instructors. And because tenured faculty are so expensive, the university will ease the burden on their time by increasing the number of teaching assistants, with the added benefit that these teaching assistantships are probably the single most important source of funding for the university's graduate students. End of the day: bigger classes, taught by tenured faculty (who presumably are better teachers, but that's far from a given); but with more mediation between professor and student, with that mediation taking place via greater TA support; fewer high-level courses for majors; fewer sessional positions; and the capacity to fund more graduate students.

Here's The Bubble. With more funding available through TAships, the university will be able to take on more graduate students. However, the growth in holding capacity for graduate students is not an indication of a stronger and healthier market for the arts; rather, it's a particular manifestation of humanity's latest sickness. In fact, the number of viable teaching positions is decreasing, and a greater proportion of the work is being shifted onto TA's (knowing that essentially the majority of that money comes right back in tuition anyway) so that the same number of students can be accommodated with using fewer expensive faculty. Here's the rub: we'll be training more doctoral and master's students, but cutting away the academic job market into which they hope to move.

The value of an undergrad degree, especially in the arts, has been the victim of rampant inflation in the last few decades, as more and more people get them. Unfortunately, the increase in quantity has also been accompanied by a decrease in quality. So the B.A. is currently worth, at least in economic terms, a shade less than the paper on which it's printed. A B.A. gets you a job in nothing, despite the immense importance to citizenship that critical reflection and cultural exposure bring. It seems that the MA and the PhD are heading in the same direction, a fact that greatly saddens me and makes me wary of the direction in which our society is headed.

Where do we go from here? It seems to me that we need to rethink the interface between humanistic studies (at all levels), and the economic world into which graduates will mostly emerge, with fewer and fewer of us able to hide behind the shield of academic employment. And that requires looking more closely at the humanities: what exactly are the skills that we learn; how can we shed some light on their importance to the market? And how can we make it clear that the value of being a critical and reflective citizen can't be treated as an economic sector heading toward market failure?

What, and with which, and to whom, part 1

This week, I'm going to tackle the first half of an article that a friend of mine posted to Facebook quite some time ago. The article recaps ten arguments against gay marriage, and my intention is to deal with the first five in this installment, and then come back to the next five some time soon (i.e.: next week, if all goes according to plan). So, here goes.

#1: The first argument is that though marriage has evolved through time, all over the world it has been recognized as a union between one man and one woman for the purpose of raising children, which is the fundamental essence of marriage. The author claims that though it could change again, that is no reason to assume that it should.

The structure of this argument is as follows: marriage has been one way forever; therefore, it ought to remain that way. This is a fallacious argument. Nothing says that things ought to remain the way that they always have been. Adopting the same argument structure, I could conclude that there ought to be massive wealth disparities forever because there always have been up to now. So there's clearly a problem with this argument structure.

Secondly, there is a problem with the claim that marriage all over the world has recognized the fundamental essence of one man and one woman for the purpose of raising children. There are polygamous societies, which clearly don't fit that mold. There are also societies where children are raised by the community rather than by the immediate family alone (and in fact, our own society might learn a thing or two from that). Clearly, there are societies in which marriage has not been between one man and one woman, and where child rearing and marriage come apart.

It is false to claim that marriage has universally embraced this essence. And even if that were the case, that fact alone would not justify the claim that it ought not to change.

#2: Those supporting gay marriage claim that to exclude homosexual relationships from the recognition of marriage is unfair, that it treats people unequally. In response, the author argues that equality means treating similar things in a similar fashion, not treating different things equally. Any unmarried man is allowed to marry any unmarried woman, so we all have equal rights! Why are same-sex couples different? Because they cannot produce children, nor can they "ensure a child’s basic right to be raised by his mother and father" (which I'm not sure is a basic right, as the author presumes but does not justify). The author then concludes with the point that there are many benefits that come with marriage, and to allow homosexual couples access to these benefits would be an unfair favoring of homosexual over heterosexual relationships. That last point is entirely unclear to me, and the author doesn't do nearly enough to justify his claim. If two people are married and upon the death of one, the other receives the remaining pension, what does it matter whether the two are of the same or of different genders? How would it be an unfair advantage to leave that parameter unspecified?

The author's point here again relies on accepting the definition of "one man and one woman for the purpose of child rearing" as the essence of marriage, which he failed to support in his first point. Even if that is a big part of marriage, it certainly is far from its only feature. Love figures prominently in marriage, one would hope, as does the social stability of having a partner on whom one can rely, a confidant, etc. These are all important features of marriage (and if you want to know why so many of those fail these days, perhaps its because a man and a woman making a baby isn't all there is to marriage, as this author tries to convince us), and they can be just as easily true of homosexual as of heterosexual relationships. (Here is an interesting article on the benefits of a strong marital bond; recognize that these benefits seem equally applicable to gay as to straight marriage.)

As for raising children, adoption is certainly a reality in our world, so there's no reason that a homosexual relationship couldn't involve children. The author makes some toss-away claim about the fundamental right to be raised by one's own parents, but that's nowhere written in stone, and in many cases children are raised by aunts and uncles, grandparents, close friends, etc. Do we refuse marriage in those instances? Furthermore, as technology advances, the possibility of making a child that is the biological offspring of two same-sex parents becomes more and more of a reality, sidestepping the issue of raising "someone else's child."

#3: The author then moves on to address the claim that anyone may marry whomever he or she loves. In fact, the author claims, the government doesn't support marriage for the sake of love, but rather for the sake of children, and once again, because homosexual couples cannot raise children (which I again must press the author to consider more closely), the government should not sanction such marriages.

What the author again overlooks is that firmly entrenched within our society is the notion of a long-term, romantic, sexual relationship with a single partner. That notion also embraces the raising of a family, but the child-rearing aspect is not the only salient feature! Much of our sense of self and sense of worth is based on our relationships, and to have one's (arguably) most important relationship not be deemed worthy of public/official recognition is extremely damaging.

Furthermore, the social benefits of a romantic partnership, as in the pension example I mentioned above, are certainly values that the government has an interest in endorsing. Social services these days are strongly overburdened because children are no longer looking after their aging parents as they once did. Imagine how much worse the situation would get if aging spouses didn't look after one another. Part of looking after one another means sharing social benefits such as insurance and pensions, which are often linked to marriage. The government therefore has an interest in supporting as many such successful partnerships as they can find!

#4: Some same-sex marriage advocates say that whether they are allowed to marry or not is irrelevant to heterosexual couples, to which the author replies that to expand the definition of marriage would weaken the institution itself. Marriage is already about as diluted as American beer, so any further weakening would just break the darn thing, as people wouldn't take it seriously anymore.

Secondly, the author draws on an example from Toronto where a couple's desires for their child's education were overruled in the name of an education about tolerance. Thirdly, he believes that it threatens religious freedom.

The second and third issues are ones that I gather probably pull more weight with Americans than they will up north. Canadians don't get scared as easily by the prospect of having their children learn things that they don't agree with. Learning doesn't mean accepting, as many a parent probably already knows, and therefore to have tolerance included in the curriculum doesn't necessarily bring about tolerance. (Too bad, I know.) Furthermore, the religious freedom issue is not a hot-button topic up here the way it is for them southern folk. We certainly take it seriously, but when discussing the legal, not religious, definition of marriage, I think that most Canadians don't take it to be an assault on Christian values.

The first point, about the broadened definition weakening the institution, is actually one that deserves further inspection. It's true that opening up membership to an exclusive club can make it lose its cachet. But how much would the scope be widened, and what would be the principle according to which some are allowed and others not? I'll explore this issue more in #5.

#5: The author claims that if we break from the "one man one woman, for the purpose of making babies" definition, then we lose traction on where to draw the line. It's a slippery slope argument, which the author claims is not merely hypothetical: in some places where same-sex marriage is allowed, polygamous groups have sued for recognition as well. "When sexual love replaces children as the primary purpose of marriage, restricting it to just two people no longer makes sense." (First off, I'd like to point out the little jab at "sexual love," which presumably is being derided by comparison to "real" love. My spidey sense just tingles at that one.)

Once again, the author is begging the question. He assumes that polygamous relationships are not acceptable without offering any proof. According to his definition of marriage, of course it's not. But it's specifically that definition that's at issue here! It appeals to people's gut reaction against polygamy to motivate the fear of the slippery slope. One could just as easily flip the argument on its head and ask what, if anything, is wrong with polygamy. The point here is not to begin with assumptions about which marriages are acceptable and which aren't, and on that basis to formulate rules to justify one's position. Rather, one is supposed to be inspecting one's notions of marriage itself, and that includes inspecting our intuitions: what do we think about polygamy? And are those intuitions justified? Perhaps the proper response here is not to say that allowing same-sex marriage would also allow polygamy, and that's not acceptable. Perhaps the proper response is to say that we should also be examining our intuitions, trying to figure out why it is that up to now, most of us have taken it for granted that polygamy is wrong.

If we are open to reflect on that issue (and I'm not saying here that we must or even necessarily should allow polygamy), then we realise that the author is just trying to scare us out of considering the issue of same-sex marriage. What we should be doing is reflecting on the basis of marriage, not being scared out of doing so. Getting back to point #4, the issue of diluting marriage cannot be properly assessed until we find a new equilibrium point: what would the new basis of marriage be? Until that question is answered, the issue of how much marriage is diluted by its redefinition cannot be addressed. The scope of marriage can be widened by just weakening the rules, and there dilution might become a reasonable concern. But the scope can also be widened by adopting a different set of rules, one that valorises parts of marriage that we've already discussed here (e.g.: social stability) and that need not entail a weakening of the institution.





Anyway, that's all for me for this week. Until next time. Looking forward to some nice, heated debate on these cold winter days... though there are no such things in southern Ontario, apparently.

PS: The title is a reference to an amazing limerick about a whore from Khartoum. Totally worth checking out.