Tony Blair Critiques Democracy as We Know It

Tony Blair criticizes the performance of democratic governments: "The simple right to vote is not enough: Systems need to deliver results for the people."

Blair is not very systematic in his descriptions of the problems facing democracies, and he's vague about solutions, but I agree with him that our democratic governments are performing poorly in a variety of areas. For example, he mentions the difficulties several European countries have had in reforming their finances, and the difficulties many countries have in creating the legal conditions for an effective and innovative health care system.

Here is a list containing restatements of the problems with democracies that Blair identifies in his piece:

1. The drawing of electoral districts often favors candidates who appeal to more partisan and ideological party activists, rather than to the political center (presumably leading to worse policies).
2. The polarization of news outlets has further polarized voters (again, presumably leading to worse policies).
3. Government bureaucracies fight proposed changes which would affect their operation, even if such changes would benefit the nation.
4. Special interests such as teachers' unions and those involved in health care fight reforms which would benefit the nation.
5. The pace of democratic reform is unable to keep up with the pace of technological and social change.
6. Few politicians have real-world experience or expertise outside of politics.
7. The salaries of elected officials are not high enough to attract the best talent.
8. Social media has enhanced the voting public's susceptibility to scandal and passionate, irrational agitation, giving more power to the loudest voices, rather than the most reasonable.

Not all of these criticisms are equally plausible, but Blair is surely correct that democracy does not work as well we often think, say, and hope.

Do Humans Have a "Language Instinct"?

Vyvyan Evans has written a critique of Noam Chomsky's and Steven Pinker's "language instinct" theory of language acquisition. 

The main problem with this essay is that it does not give a sufficiently clear initial definition of the language instinct thesis; it is therefore difficult to assess what the testable implications of the language instinct thesis are, and how those differ from what Evans presents as the agreed upon consensus of linguists:

Our brains really are ‘language-ready’ in the following limited sense: they have the right sort of working memory to process sentence-level syntax, and an unusually large prefrontal cortex that gives us the associative learning capacity to use symbols in the first place. 

Presumably a linguist already knows how this standard view differs from the specific implications of the language instinct view, but it wasn't clearly explained in the essay.

Also, Evans criticizes Chomsky's view about how the capacity for language evolved in humans, without making it clear that this is a separate issue from whether the language instinct theory is correct. Chomsky could be wrong about how the capacity for language evolved, even if he is correct about how this capacity operates.

Nevertheless, the essay is well worth a read by anyone interested in human language acquisition. I wonder whether and how Chomsky or Pinker will respond.

Martha Nussbaum on Cyberstalking and Internet Misogyny

Philosopher Martha Nussbaum has a well-written piece at The Nation on internet misogyny and on her own personal experience with a cyberstalker.

A pair of Pound's proteges

1. Robert Frost, egomaniacal lecher.

2. James Joyce, rescued for Literature by a Poundian missive.

"The Roots of Buddhist Romanticism"

Thanissaro's "The Roots of Buddhist Romanticism" an excellent appraisal of the appropriation of Buddhism by modern Western societies. The only limitation is that Thanissaro does not also discuss the role of Enlightenment thinking in Western interpretations of Buddhism. But most of my job when teaching Buddhism to students, either as a philosophy or as a religion, is in disabusing them of their tendency to interpret Buddhism through the lens of Western Romanticism and its sundry offshoots.

Links

1. Noah Smith explains why neither the New Keynesian model nor Real Business Cycle theory can explain Japan's economic situation.

2. The Zimmerman case as one of overreaction and misinterpretation.

3. The reconsolidation theory of memory: memories are remade when they are recalled.

4. Barriers to increasing quinoa production.

5. U.S. STEM graduate programs depend for their existence on foreign students.

6. Republicans and the farm bill: "it doesn't count as spending as long as it redistributes upwards."

7. Henry James was not anti-immigrant.

8. Peak water (peak agriculture)? And this.

9. The "living rock".

10. Lou Reed reviews Kanye West's "Yeezus". 

11. The problem with clutter.

12. Against multitasking.

13. Scientist Carl Hart on myths about drugs.

14. "I find it hard to talk about what I love. Yet dislike summons an instant legion of words and sets them to work."

Michael Ruse on Final Causes

Philosopher of biology Michael Ruse offers a critique of final causes, partially in response to recent work by philosopher Thomas Nagel.

Ruse's argument is not fully developed here but is compelling (he has argued persuasively and at greater length elsewhere in his published work). However, this piece is misleadingly titled, because from the fact there are no final causes it does not fully that life does not have a purpose. There is more than one sense of the word 'purpose'. Life could have a purpose in the sense of there being a reason to live or a source of meaning for living organisms, even if there is no purpose in the sense of a final cause. (I somehow doubt that Ruse himself chose the title for this piece; it may have been the editor of Aeon Magazine.)

Another minor problem with the piece: Ruse may have incorrectly characterized the relation between Plato and Aristotle's views on final causes. Ruse seems to draw a contrast between Aristotle's First Cause and Plato's demiurge, though the correct comparison is between Aristotle's First Cause and Plato's One (or The Good), both of which serve as the metaphysical ground of all other beings, and which do not function as divine craftsmen or designers in the conventional theistic sense.

Other than that, this is a great introduction to the issue for anyone who is still tempted by belief in final causes.

Thomas Nagel and Natural Teleology

Michael Chorost has written a reappraisal of the furious debate over Thomas Nagel's claims about natural teleology. Chorost purports to offer scientific evidence in support of Nagel's view (which he criticizes Nagel for failing to offer in his own defense):

But highly regarded scientists have made similar arguments. "Life is almost bound to arise, in a molecular form not very different from its form on Earth," wrote Christian de Duve, a Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine, in 1995. Robert Hazen, a mineralogist and biogeologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, struck a similar note in 2007: "With autotrophy, biochemistry is wired into the universe. The self-made cell emerges from geochemistry as inevitably as basalt or granite." Harold J. Morowitz, a biophysicist at George Mason University, argued that evolution has an arrow built into it: "We start with observations, and if the evolving cosmos has an observed direction, rejecting that view is clearly nonempirical. There need not necessarily be a knowable end point, but there may be an arrow."

Chorost seems to conflate the claim that the development of life and complexity is causally determined with the claim that the development of life and complexity is naturally teleological; unfortunately, even if there is evidence for the former, this does not itself constitute evidence for the latter.

Links

1. Photo of Iceland. 

2. Yitang Zhang, an "obsure" mathematician, stuns his peers with a major result about primes. 

3. Japanese barista makes 3D latte art.

4. "Our American Pravda." Claims about the failures of the American media.

5. Thinking big about small talk.

6. The story of one man and his colonoscopy bag. 

7. If you go back far enough, everyone is descended from a king (because everyone has the same ancestors). 

Progressives' Truck with Trek

Matt Yglesias has written a fine essay on the many incarnations of Star Trek, including a celebratory discussion of its implict (or should that be blatantly explicit?) progressive ideology, with a concluding plea for a new series.

I agree with Yglesias' interpretation of Trek ideology, though I do not join in fist-pumping such a utopian statism. Also, I could do without another series. Yet the importance/impact of the franchise is undeniable. 

Paul Bloom, "The Case Against Empathy"

Paul Bloom's critique of empathy. In fact, it should probably be presented as a critique of the sloppy / careless use of empathy, since the criticisms it offers seem to rely upon empathic concern of others to ground their normativity. Also, the innumerate character of empathy is characteristic of human intuitive cognition and affect generally, so it's misleading to frame the innumerate objection as being against empathy specifically; many instances of self-love are no doubt also innumerate in the same problematic way.

Links

1. "I was swallowed by a hippo."

2. The astounding art of Siyu Chen.

3. Newark mayor Corey Booker played Dungeons & Dragons.

4. The fantastic 1970s interiors of Verner Panton.

5. The sublime cluelessness of throwing lavish Great Gatsby parties. "It's like throwing a Lolita-themed children's birthday party."

6. "I hate fun."

7. The decline of state and local public investment.

8. The Open Borders Movement. 

9. "There are more people living inside of this circle than outside of it."

10. "I still love Kierkegaard."

Tyler Cowen on Government and Public Goods

In a New York Times column, libertarian economist Tyler Cowen argues that the government should provide more public goods, including rewards for medical research, patent buyouts, and pandemic preparation.

A public good is a good characterized by non-excludability--once produced, it is difficult or impossible to exclude people from consuming it. In contrast, a private good is characterized by excludability. An example of a private good is Medicare, since the benefits can be limited to particular people. An example of a public good is a public health measure which reduces the risk of infection with a given disease to the members of a given population. Even vaccines, which can be given to particular people, have positive externalities, in that they reduce the risk of infection for others who are not vaccinated, and so they count as public goods.

It may seem surprising that a libertarian is arguing for more government production of public goods, and in a sense that is right given the current culture of 'libertarianism' in America, but in fact the libertarian or classical liberal ideology has included the view that the proper role of the government is to produce public goods and not private goods. The point is not made enough that, even from a libertarian standpoint, governments may fail by not doing enough, as well as failing by doing too much or engaging in activities which should be left to civil society. To my mind, another salient example of insufficient government action is prosecution of financial fraud and "white collar" crime.

Links

1. Gypsy law (.pdf).

2. "The diploma's vanishing value." Community colleges provide a better deal than four-year colleges or universities.

3. The genetics and neuroscience of violence.

4. Profile of philosopher Daniel Dennett. In some ways Dennett is the modern-day version of Charles Sanders Peirce, except that people actually care about what he has to say.

5. Why Iceland. 

Links

1. Zizek on Rand and the financial crisis.

2. Fruit flies do better when fed organic fruit.

3. The market for cupcakes crumbles. 

Jeffrey Sachs' Great Paul Krugman Smackdown

Self-styled "progressive" economist Jeffrey Sachs delivers an energetic smackdown of economist Paul Krugman's over at the Huffington Post. Among Sachs' main points: the CBO's projections GDP growth in the wake of the stimulus have not been met; it matters quite a bit not just how much money the government spends, but what it spends it on; the interest payments on the debt will become uncomfortably large within ten years. Recommended reading for all citizens, not just policy wonks.

'Undue Weight' on Wikipedia

Timothy Messer-Kruse is a professor in the department of ethnic studies at Bowling Green State University. The Chronicle Review recently published a piece of his, in which he recounts his many failed attempts to edit the Wikipedia page related to his area of expertise, the Haymarket Riot of 1886. The main problem: while Messer-Kruse's claims are backed up testimony from the trial available from the Library of Congress and by his own peer-reviewed articles, they conflict with the account given by the majority of published sources, which, according to Messer-Kruse, have been simply repeating the same errors for decades. The problem stems from Wikipedia's 'undue weight' policy, which requires that the content of Wikipedia articles reflect the majority of published works on a given subject (even if the majority happen to be in error):

[A] Wiki-cop scolded me, "I hope you will familiarize yourself with some of Wikipedia's policies, such as verifiability and undue weight. If all historians save one say that the sky was green in 1888, our policies require that we write 'Most historians write that the sky was green, but one says the sky was blue.' ... As individual editors, we're not in the business of weighing claims, just reporting what reliable sources write."

Given Messer-Kruse's experience, it would seem difficult or impossible for a new discovery by a researcher to make its way quickly into Wikipedia; as he puts it:

I guess this gives me a glimmer of hope that someday, perhaps before another century goes by, enough of my fellow scholars will adopt my views that I can change that Wikipedia entry. Until then I will have to continue to shout that the sky was blue.

David Graeber on the Anarchist Roots of Occupy Wall Street

The reader in social anthropology at the University of London has much to say in an essay at AlJazeera about the flaws of American democracy, the differences between anarchism and Marxism, and the nature of consensus-based decision making:

I should be clear here what I mean by "anarchist principles". The easiest way to explain anarchism is to say that it is a political movement that aims to bring about a genuinely free society - that is, one where humans only enter those kinds of relations with one another that would not have to be enforced by the constant threat of violence. History has shown that vast inequalities of wealth, institutions like slavery, debt peonage or wage labour, can only exist if backed up by armies, prisons, and police. Anarchists wish to see human relations that would not have to be backed up by armies, prisons and police. Anarchism envisions a society based on equality and solidarity, which could exist solely on the free consent of participants.

I applaud the Occupy Movement's critique of American state capitalism, in particular the protection afforded politically connected business interests at the taxpayers' expense, and I agree with Graeber about the general superiority of consensus to democratic majoritarianism, but I doubt that society could ever produce order without armies, prisons, and police--or, for that matter, without a judicial system and legal code. However, I also think all of these things can exist without states, or at least without states as we know them (which unduly restrict the entry and exit of citizens). I therefore fully agree with Graeber that we don't need states to create social order, and in fact that states are frequently disruptive of such order (such as through foreign wars and the war on drugs).

David Brooks on House Republicans

Conservative columnist David Brooks wrote a piece yesterday criticizing House Republicans for failing to make a budget deal with House Democrats. I do not stay very informed about contemporary politics, but based on what I have been reading in the news, Brooks' column rings true:

But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard, they will still say no.

The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities. A thousand impartial experts may tell them that a default on the debt would have calamitous effects, far worse than raising tax revenues a bit. But the members of this movement refuse to believe it.

The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency. A nation makes a sacred pledge to pay the money back when it borrows money. But the members of this movement talk blandly of default and are willing to stain their nation’s honor.

Brooks' words are a damning indictment of the anti-tax ideology of the contemporary Republican party. I agree with Republicans that tax rates are too high, but as Brooks points out, there are a lot of other issues on the table, and the tax issue should not be viewed as a trump card or sine qua non of politics. It is unfortunate that the Republicans, who portray themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility, are not proving more effective stewards of the government's finances. I would consider voting for Republicans if they focused on effectively promoting personal freedom and sound economic policies, but they seem excessively focused on promoting militarism, moralizing crusades, and an extreme and economically unsound anti-tax ideology.

Amis on Hitchens

Martin Amis has written a simultaneously urbane and touching tribute to his friend Christopher Hitchens' rhetorical skills over at the Guardian. Amis praises Hitchens for his ability to create witty retorts and one-liners, but adds that Hitchens' rhetorical flourishes are coupled with a depth of insight usually lacking in those gifted with a quick tongue and a sharp wit:

"A melancholy lesson of advancing years is the realisation that you can't make old friends."

"It is only those who hope to transform human beings who end up by burning them, like the waste product of a failed experiment."

"This has always been the central absurdity of 'moral', as opposed to 'political' censorship: If the stuff does indeed have a tendency to deprave and corrupt, why then the most depraved and corrupt person must be the censor who keeps a vigilant eye on it."

While Amis is generous in his praise for his friend, he also doesn't shy away from a few criticisms that seem to hit the mark. Remarkably for a writer with Amis' reputation, he (justly) accuses Hitchens of violations of literary decorum in the latter's insertion of low-brow (if punchy) verbal attacks against his opponents:

Here are some indecorous quotes from the The Quotable Hitchens. "Ronald Reagan is doing to the country what he can no longer do to his wife." On the Chaucerian summoner-pardoner Jerry Falwell: "If you gave Falwell an enema, he'd be buried in a matchbox." On the political entrepreneur George Galloway: "Unkind nature, which could have made a perfectly good butt out of his face, has spoiled the whole effect by taking an asshole and studding it with ill-brushed fangs." The critic DW Harding wrote a famous essay called "Regulated Hatred". It was a study of Jane Austen. We grant that hatred is a stimulant; but it should not become an intoxicant.

As deft verbal attacks, Hitchens' barbs are effective, but they violate Amis' formulation of literary decorum, which demands (inter alia) that a writer match his content with his style. Amis seems correct that, when having a serious argument on topics such as politics or religion, the potty-mouth language and low-brow humour is best left behind (though perhaps to be used later in a different context. . .).

I enjoyed reading Amis' essay, both for the wit and wisdom of Hitchens himself, and for the just criticisms that Amis makes of his friend's literary conduct and character. I was also intrigued by Amis' brief discussion of literary decorum, which brought to mind Cicero's classic discussions of eloquence, and the recurring interest in Cicero as a model for rhetoric and prose by later generations of scholars and thinkers in the West--from the Renaissance at least down to the period of the Enlightenment (when writers such as David Hume were directly inspired by Cicero's Latin prose in crafting their own literary creations using early modern vernaculars). I will close with Amis' statement of the principle of literary decorum, which is far too sloppy to satisfy an analytic philosopher, but succeeds in providing a useful starting point for anyone who cares to think seriously about this matter:

In literature, decorum means the concurrence of style and content – together with a third element, which I can only vaguely express as earning the right weight. It doesn't matter what the style is, and it doesn't matter what the content is; but the two must concur. If the essay is something of a literary art, which it clearly is, then the same law obtains.

Well said!