Respect for Religious Belief and Epistemological Relativism

Brian Leiter drafted an article arguing that religious belief is not the sort of stuff that deserves serious respect, as by a "legal regime" (read: First Amendment jurisprudence). In advancing this argument, Leiter bravely offered a definition of religious belief marking out two characteristics which, supposedly, distinguish religious beliefs from other sorts of beliefs: first, religious beliefs make categorical demands on action, and, second and most importantly for present purposes, religious believing is dogmatic in the sense of being immune from ordinary (and proper) rational critique.

In response, Jeffrey Lipshaw offers a critique of Leiter's definition, and attempts to argue against the sensibility of blaming (or not respecting) religious belief for being dogmatic. He takes aim at Leiter's commitment to a principle like the following:

"All beliefs must [should] be revisable in light of evidence and reasons."

(Let's call this the Principle of Doxastic Revisability.) In Leiter's telling, this is the Principle on which religious believing specially fails, and for which religious believing can therefore be blamed. Lipshaw asks and answers: "Is it Leiter's position that [the Principle of Doxastic Revisability] could be revised in light of evidence and reasons? I think not." Lipshaw goes on: "Any exercise in conceptual thinking requires some foundational belief that is both categorical and insulated, for all practical purposes, from evidence and reasons."

With this, Lipshaw means to question something like the Principle of Doxastic Revisability. Put in its strongest form, I think the key move involves making (or trading on) a denial like this:

It is not possible that all beliefs could be held revisable in light of evidence and reasons (because, supposedly, there must be some wholly arbitrary starting point from which to launch the revisionary work of evidence or reasons).

If so, then a fortiori, there can be no basis for criticizing a set of beliefs (like religious beliefs) for failing to be revisable; hence (to make a long story short), shame on Leiter.

On Lipshaw's account, there is, at the end of the day, merely different coherent systems of thought in which, for each system, some arbitrary points will be fixed and beyond revision. But then, again, blame becomes impossible, and the failure to respect becomes unprincipled:

"If we have neither divine voices nor random chance as our practice, but instead a coherent set of concepts in religion or philosophy that cashes out in choosing among conflicting demands for action, why is it any less worthy of respect that one coherent set comes from religion and the other from science or common sense?"

Now, to explain why I think Lipshaw wrong and confused:

Lipshaw is wrong to suppose that "[a]ny exercise in conceptual thinking requires some foundational belief that is both categorical and insulated, for all practical purposes, from evidence and reasons." This "requirement" of insulated foundational belief may be true for any particular "exercise in conceptual thinking," but what reason do we have to think it is true in all cases? It is true, of course, that if we are puzzling over something, our puzzling, if it is to be productive at all, will need to take some things as a given. But such "givens" need only be given then, in that particular instance of reasoning or evidence-giving. At other times, those "given" things can certainly themselves be questioned. It is only for the sake of convenience (and our own practical limitations) that we do not try to resolve all problems all at the same time. And so, yes!- even Leiter's Principle of Doxastic Revisability may be subject to itself. If, for example, Lipshaw could articulate a real reason why the Principle of Doxastic Revisability is not possible, then Leiter would be bound to respond to such reasons in some appropriate way-- either by abandoning or revising his Principle. And moreover, if Leiter dogmatically stuck to such a principle in the face of a strong reason to abandon it, he would surely deserve some measure of blame or loss of reputation. We may all have 'fixed' points from which we reason in some sense, but that does not mean that we all have 'fixed' commitments in the crucial sense of being dedicated to holding those commitments come any (perhaps unknown) reason or evidence.

In other words, Lipshaw hasn't given a reason that the Principle of Doxastic Revisability is false or impossibile. And if it is possible, and if it is true, then it seems like a perfectly fine ground from which Leiter may blame (or fail to respect) dogmatic religious belief.

I think this is enough for the main point, but I am also slightly bothered by Lipshaw's apparent thought that everyone has some crucial element of arbitrariness in his or her beliefs (of the kind that makes every coherent web of belief the equal of every other coherent web).

Undoubtedly, it is true that we all have starting points when reasoning or offering evidence about something, and true also that, for most of us, many of these starting points will remain perpetually unexamined. But do these facts necessarily make those starting points "arbitrary"? In the sense that most of us lack any conscious awareness of the justification vel non of those starting points, yes. But this merely psychological sense of "arbitrary" is uninteresting; what Lipshaw really needs to support a claim that we are all in the same unprincipled boat is something stronger, a sense of 'arbitrary' that means something is not justified, legitimate, or principled at all. And, in this sense of 'arbitrary,' I don't see any reason to think that we are all of us most of the time 'arbitrary' in reasoning or in offering evidence. Lipshaw certainly hasn't offered such a reason.

An illustration: suppose it is the case that the Principle of Non-Contradiction (PNC) is a legitimate, justified, true principle. In what that legitimacy consists, we will not say here; only that it is a legitimate and true principle. Then, in using PNC as a "starting point" or ground in reasoning about something, it does not impugn our reasoning at all to say that our use of PNC is arbitrary in the psychological sense. The reasoning still stands--whether it is consciously appreciated so to stand or not--as legitimate (to some crucial extent, assuming we haven't misapplied PNC). There is no theoretical need here for talk of coherency or webs of belief, no need for epistemological relativism ("each coherent web of belief is the equal of every other"), no need for a pernicious rejection of any idea of legitimacy in thought--which is what epistemological relativism amounts to at the end of the day.

Sandel v. Singer

After my last post recommending Michael Sandel's online course in moral philosophy, I clicked around some YouTube links and found a debate between Sandel and Peter Singer. If you are used to watching Peter Singer eat his opponents alive, then this will strike you as something different. I don't mean to imply that Singer doesn't often have good answers to Sandel's push-back against Singer's underlying preference-utilitarianism, or that the tone of the debate isn't respectful, but Singer does get pressed, and he does not always have satisfying answers.

For example, in taking preference-satisfaction to be the thing which makes an act morally right, Singer resists the notion that preferences should themselves sometimes be morally appraised. Rejecting this, Sandel offers various examples of cases where we object to certain kinds of preferences as the things they are in themselves (and where we take those judgments, in turn, to be appropriate). Sandel suggests that in cases where people derive pleasure from the suffering of other sentient creatures (as in cockfighting, bear-baiting, or feeding Christians to the lions), or in the case of racist preferences, we are inclined to condemn these preferences for reasons having nothing to do with consequences. On Sandel's view (which I share), a preference for intense pointless suffering is intrinsically morally objectionable; it is objectionable simply in view of the sort of preference it is, and the cultural consequences of such a preference need not be teased out in order to be appropriately confident in its objectionability. In general, the mistreatment of a minority group does not become morally justified where the minority is small enough, the pro-mistreatment preference of the larger majority strong enough, and there are no other bad cultural effects to account for.

On this point, at about 58 minutes in, there is this exchange (rush transcribed by yours truly):

Michael Sandel: What about character, virtue, attitudes, dispositions as an independent moral concern?

Peter Singer: I mean I share your idea that there’s something that we find disquieting about the fact that people are taking pleasure in cruelty, but I don’t know how to examine that intuition in such a way that proves that it's an independent value, and not simply something that I have and that I hope other people have because of [reasons having do with the pain to the animal and the larger bad social effects of keeping people around with those sorts of preferences]. We have evolved in circumstances . . . and our culture has developed in circumstances where these consequences have followed. So it wouldn’t be surprising if we have this sense that something is intrinsically wrong, and yet that sense is not reliable if we reflect more carefully on what the values are that we really want to hold.


In fact, I think Singer's claim -- that considerations of character, virtue, attitudes, et al., do not implicate values which we would reflectively endorse -- is simply false. What makes these values pressing is precisely that, on reflection, we can't get away from these, or, at the very least, from some concern other than preference-satisfaction. In this vein, it's a positive embarrassment to Singer's utilitarianism that, for some hypothetical counter-examples, it seems that he must find mistreatment of others to be morally obligatory.

This isn't to deny the truth of the other, anthropological, bit of Singer's reply. No doubt there is a true naturalistic story that can be told about the origin of our moral intuitions vis-a-vis character, dispositions, and the rest, and probably that story has to do with the experience of certain consequences. And Singer might also be right that we (presently) lack a satisfying philosophical account or justification of these intuitions.

But these points alone aren't enough for Singer's conclusion; they aren't enough to deny any place for moral reasons of the kind having to do with character, dispositions, virtue, et al. The existence of a psychological or anthropological account of my judgments (moral or otherwise) doesn't provide any information at all as to their lack of being principled in some deeper way, and the absence of a satisfying philosophical account for these intuitions might mean only that we don't have enough people on the problem. (Research dollars for philosophy needed?) In the meantime, the essential question is one of self-trust: all things being equal, is it proper to trust one's own judgments? Must the truth of the judgments be 'proved' first, or shown to be the result of some reliable cognitive process, as Singer suggests, or is there instead properly a presumption in favor of self-trust even without such proofs or demonstrations? If there is a presumption in favor of self-trust (under an 'all-thing-being-equal' condition, no doubt), then it seems to me that that's all we need in order to recommend some respect and place for the values revealed by our judgments in particular situations, even where such moral content does not fit easily within a theoretical framework.

Free Course in Moral Philosophy

For a very good, free, introductory course in moral philosophy, check out Michael Sandel's professionally videotaped course from his Harvard undergraduate class, Justice. Sandel is clearly a gifted teacher, and particularly good in drawing out moral principles and reasons from particular judgments of hard cases, which then get questioned in turn.

Good stuff!

Song of the Week

Every Friday, I'll post an original musical composition. Lacking pride in authorship (obviously, in some cases), please critique freely. Here is this week's contribution:





Download here.

This was an early composition experimenting with layered keyboard effects. I also half had the idea of producing something to mimic the New Age feel of Enya. In the end, the composition turned out to be too repetitive, but it might have a few good ideas.

The ethics of sentence reduction for the mere fact of a guilty plea

Suppose a defendant pleads guilty to a crime, and that the judge has some discretion in sentencing. Should the judge impose a lighter sentence on the defendant than would otherwise have been imposed solely for the reason that the defendant, by pleading guilty, has saved the state considerable resources by sparing it from trial? Conversely, should a defendant who insists upon going to trial where conviction is likely have a relatively heavier sentence imposed solely for the reason that the defendant, by insisting on a trial, has cost the state considerable resources in a trial?

It is clear to me that many stakeholders in the criminal justice system (prosecutors, police officers) would affirmatively answer both of the above questions.

This, to me, seems wrong in a deep way. All things being equal, of course, we prefer to expend less of the state's resources rather than more. The problem here, however, is that all things are not equal; in particular, defendants have a procedural right to a trial. Why should a defendant be penalized for exercising that procedural right? Why should the state's cost of trial fall on him particularly, in the form of a higher sentence?

It doesn't seem any good answer to say, "Because the defendant has the power to avoid the trial by pleading guilty, and where the defendant recognizes the probability of his conviction anyway, it's just wasteful for him to make the state endure the cost of a trial." If blame follows directly from causal ability to avoid a trial in this way, then the state is also propertly blameworthy for "causing" the trial, insofar as it could have avoided the trial simply by not arresting and charging the defendant.

Moreover, this sort of sentencing factor has nothing to do with the just deserts of the defendant for the crime he committed, as that crime. And, surely nobody deserves punishment merely for having cost the state resources in virtue of exercising a right: we don't punish social security recipients, welfare recipients, those who call 911 for a legitimate reason, or licensed users of state roads for having cost the state money.

This leads me to think that sentencing a defendant more harshly merely because that defendant caused the state to go to trial is simply unjust and inconsistent with our own deeper principles. It's punitiveness without an appropriate object, engendered perhaps by a dislike for whatever bad thing the defendant has in fact done, and a failure to separate that bad thing, whatever it is, from the legitimate exercise of a right which nevertheless has a social cost.

Science News Letter to the Editor

My undergraduate professor and thesis adviser, Hank Kreuzman, had a letter published in Science News. The letter, written with Wooster geology professor Mark Wilson, complained of an editorial whose view was apparently that, for the most part, philosophers do nothing but screw up science and get in the way. It was the sort of editorial bound to raise some hackles, and I think the response of Krezuman and Wilson is appropriate.

The original author, Tom Siegfried, offers a petulant response which makes me feel bad for him. The response betrays an unfortunate sort of philosophical education-- the kind that made no serious attempt to wrestle with or charitably interpret difficult philosophers, instead reducing those philosophers to mere punching bags. If, for example, you find Kant or Comte difficult, the appropriate response is not to assume that these guys were commited to implausible or grand claims without reason, but to work at it, to find the charitable interpretation. In a way, I think Siegfried was cheated, and I feel bad for him.

Incidentally, at some future point, I'll post about Kant's philosophy...

The ACLU and the Pace Schools

A faithful blog-reader asks for my opinion of the kerfuffle between the ACLU and the schools in Pace, Florida. Basically, the ACLU is suing the Pace schools for violating the First Amendment rights of students. The accusation is that teachers and administrators have been leading student prayer.

As it happens, I have a forthcoming article on First Amendment law. In that article, I argue for the inclusion of religious content in school curriculum. (I'll blog about that some other time.) But, here, the story is different.

As I explained to my inquirer:

I don't know much about the Pace case. My understanding of the law is basically that -- prayer led by or encouraged by school officials is not allowed (and I think that's an appropriate rule); private prayer in private time away from students, or some form of non-officially sanctioned student-led prayer, or prayer in non-official school groups (i.e., -- groups use school property but have no association or sanction with the school) is or can be fine. The Supreme Court's worry is to avoid pressuring students who do not share the religious beliefs of the teachers into acting as if they do share those beliefs.

In the case of Lee v. Weisman, the Court held that a prayer by a clergyman at a graduation ceremony was inappropriate because of the "subtle coercive pressure" which bore on some students. The idea was that there was pressure for students to conform, and to act as if they were praying with the clergyman (or at least respecting the prayer). I think this was the right decision. If everyone else stands up, bows their heads, and says "amen" and you remain seated, you will be looked upon judgmentally by the rest of the group. (All groups dislike non-conformers.) Knowing that this will happen, there is pressure to pretend to be praying, or at least to pretend to be respectfully and attentively listening. This pressure will be there even if it is against your conscience to pray or appear as if you cooperating with the ritual. What makes the pressure objectionable is that it is state-sanctioned pressure to conform to a particular religious ritual which may be against your conscience (or somebody's conscience). And, fortunately, such pressure brought to bear by the official organ of the state is deemed to be an unconstitutional establishment of religion.

Of course, you might think that if a person really objects to the prayer, the only thing to do is for the objector not to cooperate. They can resist, and remain seated, and damn the dirty looks. But the question is, why should they have to have that sort of internal fortitude? Why should the state be allowed to put children in that position?

Of course, there are lots of fundamentalist Christians (particularly) who feel differently and complain that school prayer isn't allowed in schools. Frankly, I greatly suspect hypocrisy in many of these cases. I wonder what fundamentalist Christians would do if an Imam was invited to give the call to prayer in schools, before leading the class in the recitation of Allah's praises? In that case, I suspect that many complaining Christians would be happy for Lee v. Weisman. Of course this is just a suspicion, and an admittedly uncharitable one. However, there is some evidence that when the shoe is one the other foot--when, say, these (same?) Christians are faced with an expression of approval for atheism--the reaction has not always been one of uniform live-and-let-live mildness.

Finally, in the Pace case, some school leaders were threatened with jail after they led a prayer. Just for the record, they didn't face the threat of jail because they led prayer as such. They faced the threat of jail because they allegedly violated the order of the judge in the case, which is contempt of court. That issue has nothing to do with persecuting some poor administrator for their religious zeal, and is all about basic respect for the law. Either you recognize the authority judges have to decide cases and issue injunctions, rightly or wrongly, or you don't. If you disobey the court, you takes your chances. Them's is the rules. (And-- probably good rules -- you wouldn't want to live in a society where compliance with the law was, in general, purely optional, at least if the society and its laws were basically decent.)

A Story About the Federal Mail Fraud Statutes

Suppose Congress was worried about the kind of frauds, cheats, and swindles who operate through the mail (say, chain letters, or pryamid schemes). To combat the problem, Congress might enact a law which says something like this:

Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud ... for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice or attempting so to do, places in any post office any matter or thing whatever ... shall be fined ... or imprisoned ... or both. (18 U.S.C. 1341)

(The mailing requirement is just a jurisdictional hook, easily satisifed and posing few limits. And this mailing requirement is later expanded to include wire and telephone communications.)

Moreover, because "defraud" has a clear meaning as a term of art in the courts, this drafting will probably suffice to serve Congress's goals, without any need to provide special statutory definitions. Everyone knows what a fraud is: basically, a fraud is just a harm to the property interest of a particular person caused by an intentional deceit or material misrepresentation. Simple stuff.

But as time goes on, ambitious prosecutors burning with zeal for the weal push to expand the meaning of "scheme or artifice to defraud." Maybe the harm doesn't actually have to be property harm, and maybe there is no need to show that any particular person was the intended object of harm, and maybe what it means to "misrepresent" something can be cashed out in terms of violating duties prescribed at common law or statute. (So that, if I am an employee who fails to give my employer the duty of loyalty I owe him (by not following the employee handbook?), then maybe I have made an actionable fraudulent misrepresentation, even if the employer is not harmed.)

The Supreme Court pushes back and slaps down this sort of reaching as beyond the statute's meaning in a case called McNally. Reacting hastily to support prosecutors, a tough-on-crime Congress enacts the following addition to the section of the law containing the mail fraud statute:

For the purposes of this chapter, the term “scheme or artifice to defraud” includes a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.

And that, boys and girls, is about how we got the honest service mail fraud statute on the books. (It's also the entirety of the honest services provision.)

The problem with this new-and-improved statute is that, while prosecutors are now sure that all of their pre-McNally theories constitute the criminal code, no two Circuit Courts seem to agree on the elements of this new "honest services" mail fraud. The upshot is mass confusion. What is the "intangible right to honest services"? This is not a term of art, except to the extent that prosecutors used that phrase as a way to persuade courts under the old mail fraud statute. It's certainly not a concept with a pedigree like the old-fashioned "defraud" at the time the original statute was enacted. Is the concept of harm to particular people now out the window? The idea of property harm? Do state employees (like former Gov. Rod Blagoevich) have a duty under the honest services to comport themselves in a particular way toward the electorate as a whole? Just what is this duty and where does it arise from?

Two main criticisms of the honest services statute are that it fails to give citizens notice of what crosses the line and exposes them to a federal indictment, and it also fails to give real guidance to confused courts who are expected to apply the law. Frankly, I think these are fair criticisms. As a result, the state of the mail fraud statutes mostly just depresses me, even if it gets to be used against assh*les like Blagoevich who, despite their assh*lery, might not have actually managed to cleanly violate another, clearer law (like bribery). (Not that bribery law can't also be critically discussed.)

Fortunately!-- I didn't embark on this post merely to depress you-- the Supreme Court may be about to do something in clearing up the mail fraud mess. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal of (Lord) Conrad Black, convicted under the "honest services" theory. And the defense has come out swinging, with a strong and well-written brief. (And, frankly, I think even a non-legal person will be able to follow it.) Perhaps the best line is this:

No one who is not a federal prosecutor believes that a deprivation of “honest services,” by itself, adequately and clearly describes an offense with the specificity required by the Constitution.

Ouch!

So-- here's hoping for some clarity from the Supreme Court, or, better yet, here's hoping that the Supreme Court throws out this hopelessly vague and ambiguous statute and forces Congress to draft something which actually draws a clear and understandable line between criminal and non-criminal conduct. Unfortunately, this throwing-out would have bad effects in some cases -- some white collar deviants convicted under 1346 will likely be let out of prison. But there is a deeper value at stake, the value of procedural justice, and the requirement of Due Process that citizens should, in principle at least, be able to clearly identify the elements of any crime which, if committed, could cost them a decade or two in prison.

The Cosby show and black success in America

The other day, I listened to an interesting radio discussion and interview on the cultural impact of the Cosby Show. Cosby, of course, might not naturally seem to be good stuff for the making of a notable cultural artifact. The show was nothing if not tame, and its sense of activism (if any) was muted. (Compare, say, anything Norman Lear.) But Cosby was apparently the first successful television series depicting an upper-middle-class black family that didn't address that blackness or upper-middle-class-ness. These premises were given, and unexplored. Cosby is notable, then, for assuming that the phenomenon of black American success does not require special interrogation or engender special problems. The show instead explored the small, everyday problems of the Huxtables qua family, full stop, and not qua successful black family.

Taking up this point, Cosby has engendered some criticism from those who apparently think that black success is far more problematic than the show let on. Teresa Wiltz, the interviewee in the above radio discussion, tells of attending an upper-crusty cocktail party at which an educated black attendee opined that Cosby was worse for its supposed unreality: black success couldn't "really" accord with the Cosby depiction. Annoyingly, Wiltz and her interviewer failed to explore this, instead merely laughing at the "irony" of a successful black person criticizing the Huxtables for being unreal. Perhaps there is irony there, but there is surely something deeper worth digging out, even if the deeper thing is uncomfortable. I think the cocktail critic may have been implicitly trading on an assumption, not altogther pleasant, something like this: black success is a puzzle, and something other than black success (black failure? perpetual struggle?) is the norm, the "reality," the thing that should be most readily identified with blackness.

I think this may be what the cocktail critic meant in part because I don't know how better to make sense of the claim, as a negative evaluation, that Cosby was not "real" in its depiction of black success. The critic might have meant merely to express the view that Cosby should have done more to acknowledge a past struggle against racial oppression, and if so, fair enough. But this is just to suggest that the show should be more historically conscious, and it isn't the sort of criticism that aims at the Huxtables for being the sort of family they are. If there is actual unreality in the sort of black success depicted on Cosby, it isn't merely because Cosby didn't talk enough about history. The claim of unreality seems best understood as a criticism about the essential, unquestioned premise of the Huxtables--successful, black.

I suspect that Bill Cosby in fact did have a larger social goal, and I suspect that that goal was to flip the very assumption of the cocktail critic, or at least to showcase the possibility. Rather than black success being thought remarkable and special, why shouldn't it be thought of (if noticed at all) as unremarkable and not special? Rather than internalizing a norm of non-success--such that a certain kind of black success lacks "reality" (even when it is apparently a sort of success which some real families have known), why not internalize a norm of success? From this vantage point, if there is to be a puzzle or problem which needs attention, it is failure, not success.

All told, I think this is the better view. And notice that it doesn't entail denying a real and serious history of oppression, nor does it restrict room for honest acknowledgment of ongoing struggle for true racial equality. More than that, it shapes the view of institutions and people who manage still to oppress in one way or another: now those institutions and people who deny racial equality are denying reality in favor of something unreal. It is for them that the attitude of incredulous "unreality" might be productively directed.

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