Is Vlad glad?

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Kevin Drum asks:

I just have to wonder: is it really a good idea for George Bush to repeatedly refer to the president of Russia as 'Vladimir' on primetime TV? Doesn't that seem just a wee bit more intimate than the American public might be comfortable with?

Well, it beats "Pootie-Poot."

My own Private Bushism

¶ This post was moved here from Political Arguments.

GWB, two minutes ago, at the press conference:

Our job is to find those who would harm the American people and get them out of harm's way. [see below]

WTF?

UPDATE: Wonkette also noticed, and reports the quote more accurately... But I posted it first!



UPDATE: Will's comment has prompted me to spell out the quote in the bubble: "It's in our country's interests to find those who would do harm to us and get them out of harm's way."

Thou shalt not quote

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Will Baude blatantly disregards an author's request not to have her Internet-posted article cited or quoted "without permission." The problem, Will alleges, is that people who ask readers to refrain from quoting their work shouldn't post it on the net for all to see, and especially for bloggers—antinomian mavens that they are—to take the prohibition as an invitation to post and quote at will.

I won't consider universalizability of the maxims involved in restricting permission to cite or in flouting such restrictions. My concern is the cultural analysis of "do not quote" clauses in the context of the academic profession.

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I have, on more than one occasion, asked readers of a text that I've posted online to request my permission before citing it. In some cases this is because the work is highly tentative and unfinished and I expect to change my mind about some of the statements I make. In other cases it is because the piece is not up to what I think are the more rigorous standards of scholarly publication, although it may be suitable for an introductory lecture. Similarly, some things I've posted are not especially original, and merely summarize the most relevant literature about a subject; in those cases I would rather the reader consult the principal works. In many of these cases someone has asked me for permission to cite the piece. Often I've given it (and sometimes I've provided an updated version of the paper or an indication of where I forsee that I might change my mind); sometimes I haven't, and I've directed the person to more authoritative texts. When approapriate, I've made a point of stating that the opinion I express in the relevant work is not final, and I ask that it not be represented as such.

Most respectable academics, I suspect, will honor a "do not quote" clause if only because quoting unfinished material without permission could potentially expose them as irresponsible and inconsiderate scholars, especially if the author of the original piece objects to the way that her ideas are represented. To quote unfinished work, especially in order to refute it, is little different from making a strawman argument; it's just not good scholarship.

Another concern is that, by and large, the Internet doesn't yet provide the kind of 'filters' that signal quality in other forms of scholarship. To post a text to the Web is not a significant scholarly act; there is no peer review, no editor worried about protecting the reputation of a journal, no reliable means of cross referencing a debate. Bloggers believe that they are part of a self-regulating community and indeed technologies like Technorati, comments and Trackback go a long way towards keeping people honest. But these mechanisms are far from perfect and lack many of the elements present in scholarly publication. Technorati is not peer-reviewd.

We may cite or quote anything we want in a blog, but twenty of our posts will not matter as much to Scholarship as a footnote in Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs, or Political Theory. The request not to be cited or quoted comes out of a professional culture that depends on gatekeepers like these.

I, for one, am fine with that. If I want to know what's going on in my field, it is far more efficient to walk into the second floor of the library and peruse the latest issues of five, ten, or even fifteen of the top journals, than to google "John Rawls" and pluralism and wade through 23,500 results.

As long as on-line postings in general—and blogger references to those posts in particular—are not taken seriously by The Profession, a disregard for "do not quote" clauses will be innocuous. No harm (to one's academic career or intellectual reputation), no foul. But if blogging ever becomes scholarly 'respectable', then I suspect that either academic bloggers will begin to acknowledge these clauses or that scholars will stop posting their work on the net, or move it behind firewalls. Informal scholarly exchanges will suffer for it.

Big trouble in little Pharma

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

I can't help but think that Ruy Teixeira John Belisarius is being a little facetious, but this part of the argument against "right of conscience" exceptions for pharmacists is a winner.

This is not an abstract issue. There are tens of thousands of retail sales workers who have lost husbands, wives and parents to lung cancer and who are deeply and sincerely disturbed and saddened every single day of their working lives by the moral implications of selling a product whose destructive long-term effects they know all too well. They feel serious moral guilt about selling cigarettes, but do it simply because it is part of their job.

But seriously, in a country with wide-ranging choice of occupation this talk of "right of conscience" is a bit ridiculous. Sure, if you go to a Walgreen's in Chicago and the pharmacist refuses to fill out a prescription for birth control pills, you just walk a block over to Osco and get it there. But what your pharmacist is not only refusing to fill out your prescription, but won't refer you to another drugstore, as "Pharmacists for Life" refuse to do? Or if he won't even give the prescription back to you so you can have it filled elsewhere? To hold on to a patient's presciption is not freedom of conscience—it is theft and should be punished accordingly.

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These aren't isolated cases or spontaneous discoveries of sanctimonious faith. Far from it. The Alan Guttmacher Institute explains that the "conscience clause" movement is part of a larger strategy.

Three news stories from one month this year alone illustrate the pattern: In May, an ambulance worker in suburban Chicago sued a company that had purportedly fired her for refusing to transport a patient suffering severe abdominal pain to a clinic for an abortion. Later that month, an Illinois county settled a lawsuit brought by an employee denied a promotion purportedly because she refused to translate into Spanish information for family planning clients on abortion options. Also that month, a Wisconsin pharmacist faced a disciplinary hearing for refusing to even transfer a woman's prescription for oral contraceptives to another pharmacy.

Perhaps there is a balance to be struck if you live in a large metropolitan area and other pharmacies are readily available. If so, we can tailor the law so that the only pharmacies affected are those that are sole-providers for a suitably large area. And what the hell, maybe we can grandfather current pharmacists under a "right of conscience" clause. Maybe no one told them that dispensing medicine was part of their job.

But make sure to explain to the pharmacy students now in school that today's the day to change their career track if they can't stomach the responsibilities of their chosen profession. As Dahlia Lithwick put it, "[i]f you don't believe an FDA-approved drug should be legal, work at the Dairy Queen. But if a pharmacist doesn't have to dispense birth control, or an EMT can refuse to drive someone to an abortion clinic, or a nurse can refuse a rape victim emergency contraception, none of us can really trust in the professionals around us at those moments when we need them the most."

Quakers don't demand to be allowed in the military, but only if they're not required to fight. They ask to be relieved of military service altogether. So you're good in chemistry and like to wear a lab coats? There's plenty of research jobs in labs across the nation. But if you want a license to dispense medicine, dispense medicine you should do. If you want to choose what medicines are allowed behind the counter, get a seat on the FDA board. Or run for office. It's a free country, you know.

Torture as an institution

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Via Lawrence Solum, Jeremy Waldron explains—with characteristic clarity—what's wrong with the "ticking bomb" argument for the justification of torture.

[Prof. Debra] Livingston: Let's assume a nuclear device is set to go off in an American city. Are we justified in using torture on 20 suspected terrorists to find out where it is before it kills thousands of people?

Waldron: It's a bad and corrupt question, but I said I would answer it and I will. The answer that law and morality and religion requires that in no circumstances is torture to be used. The law is unambiguous, it's a total prohibition. And for some of us, our morality dictates the same. We would take responsibility for the consequences of the bomb's explosion, for the consequences of our morality.

The question is corrupt for a number of reasons. It is designed to bring the opponent of torture down to the level of the defenders of torture for a single case. The question is corrupt factually; it supposes that torture is capable of getting accurate information. The war on terror is a war of information and intelligence. To think primarily in terms of TV scenarios of massively important pieces of information that we know are there is not realistic. The nature of the relationship between torturer and victim means that the victim will tell the torturer what the torturer thinks he wants to know.

Also, the question assumes that somehow we have the people who are trained to torture, yet who will do it only in this one case. There will be a cadre of torturers sitting around looking for work. There will be a culture of torture developed, changing the politics, training and discipline of the CIA and FBI. Everything we know about torture from the 20th century is that it grows out of control. We unleash everything depraved and sadistic in human affairs. We need to think about the trauma to the legal system, of having it be known that we have concocted room for torture. Everything that's had its reference on respect for human dignity begins to totter and crumble under this response of torture.

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To extend Waldron's argument, framing the question of torture in terms of individual actions corrupts the issue because it decontextualizes the category of action called "torture". There is no way of defining torture—in the sense in which the term is used in the debate over Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib prisoners—outside a complex structure of moral, political, and legal institutions. The subject of our condemnation or defense ought not be, then, the individual who tortures or the particular instance of torture but the practice of torture itself and the institutions in which the practice occurs.

I think that an analogy can explain the distinction. I argued before that the principles that govern justice between generations as a matter of social justice are not the same that govern intergenerational transfers between individuals. Thus, some famous objections to intergenerational justice (such as the "non-identity" problem) make little sense when institutions, not individuals, are taken as the subjects of justice. What defines our duties towards future persons is no that we (individually) had a role in producing a particular individual in the future, but rather that we (generically) occupy the position of present persons with respect to whoever will occupy the position of future persons. The relationship between our positions, not between the particular individuals who occupy those positions, is what defines their respective duties. As Rawls famously put it,

The principles of justice for institutions must not be confused with the principles which apply to individuals and their actions in particular circumstances. These two kinds of principles apply to different subjects and must be discussed separately.

Likewise, the practice of torture is not socially problematic, in the first instance, because of what the person with the scourge does to the one tied to the whipping post, but because of the context of rules that defines, authorizes and gives meaning to the practice. The cruelty of the act may be condemned at an individual level, but is is not politically problematic. The justification of the individual act, in the absence of the category of torture, is remitted to the criminal code or—absent that—to the realm of morality. But if there is such a category, the torturer can refer to the rules of the practice to justify his actions; to argue against the particular act of torture, in that case, is to argue against the practice as it stands.

The justification can no longer be individual, but institutional. The proponent of torture, as Waldron suggests, must then explain the way in which this institution will be set up, who will administer it, and what its relationship will be to the rest of the legal system, both in terms of the positive law and of its underlying ethical norms. This, I presume, is more than what the current proponents of torture are willing to bear.


UPDATE: Via Brian Leiter, the American Constitution Society has the video of the Waldron and Yoo debate.

Philosophers in film

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

I finally got around to watching Closer last night. One of the main characters, Anna (Julia Roberts), is a photographer whose portraits of "strangers" appear throughout the film.

But who are these strangers? They are mostly prominent twentieth-century philosophers, photographed by Steve Pyke for his 1995 book entitled, unsurprisingly, Philosophers (also available from Amazon).

The most prominent portrait, which graces the invitation to Anna's show and is the focal point of the exhibition, is of G.E.M. Anscombe and Peter Geach. A portrait of Philippa Foot stands to the side. Unfortunately the shots are not available on Pyke's website, but those of Isaiah Berlin, C.L.R. James, Iris Murdoch, Jean Baudrillard, Noam Chomsky, and A.J. Ayer are.

Alas, Pyke's portrait of a certain figure, which I have hanging in my study, is also absent.

Alles Gute, Immanuel!

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Today is the birthday of Immanuel Kant.

I think I'll go out tonight (but not too far) and stare at the starry sky above me.

UPDATE: Alas, the sky was overcast tonight. I hope that doesn't mean that I'll never achieve a Good Will. I saw a good movie, nonetheless, although it wasn't as Kantian as some others.

Habemus Papam

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Ready the bonfires and the rack! The Grand Inquisitor is Pope.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope today, taking the name Benedict XVI, after the tolling of bells rang out over St. Peter's square and white smoke drifted from a Sistine Chapel chimney signaling that the cardinals meeting for a second day had chosen a new leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Holy Book Block

From a comment at Holbo & Warring, a most unusual use of LEGO bricks: The Brick Testament. I found the admonisment against falling asleep in lecture especially eloquent.


"And as Paul went on and on, a young man called Eutychus who was sitting on the window-sill grew drowsy..."


"...and was overcome by sleep, and fell to the ground three floors below."

And the LEGO Moses and Holy Trinity are just the thing to go with my Jesus Action Figure and Pope-on-a-Rope soap.

Pedagogy and demagogy

Cross posted on Political Arguments.

David Velleman unveils what hinges on his office door.

On one or two occasions in the past, I have posted political items on my door. But then I realized that students who visit my office hours should not be subjected to political messages as a price of consulting me. I also decided that I didn't want my political beliefs to be part of my pedagogical persona. The less my students know about me, the more they'll focus on what I'm trying to teach them. Or so I can hope. In any case, I no longer post anything with overtly political content.

But here I am, posting my political views on the Internet for all to see. And when students learn that one of their professors is a blogger, they log on to have a look. Some of the views that I have expressed on the blog are already known to my students. For example, I don't try to conceal my views on abortion when I teach bioethics, though I do bend over backwards to ensure that students don't feel obliged to agree with me. But most of the views that I've expressed here have to do with topics that I don't ordinarily teach. So students who read the blog will know far more about my opinions than they could glean from any of my lectures.

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I've mentioned before, with reference to Max Weber and Stanley Fish (sub req'd for the latter), that using one's academic position to preach to one's students is to confuse pedagogy with demagogy. The academic ethos requires an openness of mind and generosity of spirit that are, in principles, not present in philosophical, political or religious confession. Students should approaching a professor with the confidence that they are both engaged in a collaborative intellectual enterprise, not a catechism or a competition for ideological supremacy. The professor should also serve as a model of scholarly virtue. That means stressing that academic virtues respond to the internal values of academic practice, not to external values of, again, philosophical, political or religious practice.

But I don't see why a professor who maintains his or her office open, in both a physical and symbolic sense, to all arguments and reasons would feel constrained from blogging from a partisan or sectarian perspective. Quite the contrary. The values of academic life are internal to that practice; inasmuch as they shouldn't be dominated—I wax Walzerian—by the values of other practices, they need not consume the whole of a worthy life. Students know that their professors have views, or so they should—that is, the professors should have views and the students should know it. But the very act of separating one's academic from one's partisan activity attests at once to the difference and the value of both. And hopefully, if the blogging is informed by the author's intellectual pursuits, it also offers pupils an example of integration and balance.

So by all means let us (present and future) scholars blog, and hope that our students will read what we post. That they don't hear us echoing our ramblings in the classroom or the office should speak volumes about the values of our profession.

The wagers of sin

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Now, I'm not a bettin' man, but if I was, I'd be keepin' an eye out for that ol' Card'nal Ratzquemada (or is it Torquematzinger). He's been creepin' up the charts since they started a-chartin' em, and now he's cleared the top.

¶ I don't think there's anything wrong with bookmaking the Papal election, as long as no actual indulgences are traded. But to do it on a sports-betting site? There's gotta be something sinful there.

Khaaaaaaaan!

Via Egotastic (although I have no idea of how I got there). This is too funny. And all too true.

Some celebrities think they've got this whole image thing figured out, they can have fun with it, and they can make it their bitch. Sure, we like John Malkovich, and, sure, we thought it was cool and funny when he starred in Being John Malkovich. But for William Shatner, every day is Being William Shatner. Some celebrities get it, but Shatner so thoroughly gets it that "it" no longer exists. He's consumed "it." He's crawled up inside celebrity and made it explode, the way that Neo finally crawls into Agent Smith and makes him explode.

I'm only sorry that they missed his appearance as "The Barker" in Riel. But that's probably due to my hereditary francocanadophilia. (More on Louis Riel here, by the way...)

UPDATE: I've retraced my steps. Phoebe is ultimately to blame.

¶ To be fair, Gawker and Defamer are the proximate causes, but the pilcrow press is a comparative negligence jurisdiction.

A propos

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has just published an entry on Prophecy; the author is Scott Davison, from Morehead State University. It seems apropriate to the times, and also brings back memories of Hobbes (what doesn't).

Seeing therefore miracles now cease, we have no sign left, whereby to acknowledge the pretended revelations or inspirations of any private man; nor obligation to give ear to any doctrine, farther than it is conformable to the Holy Scriptures, which since the time of our Saviour, supply the place, and sufficiently recompense the want of all other prophecy; and from which, by wise and learned interpretation, and careful ratiocination, all rules and precepts necessary to the knowledge of our duty both to God and man, without enthusiasm or supernatural inspiration, may easily be deduced. And this Scripture is it, out of which I am to take the principles of my discourse, concerning the rights of those that are the supreme governors on earth, of Christian commonwealths; and of the duty of Christian subjects towards their sovereigns. And to that end, I shall speak in the next chapter, of the books, writers, scope and authority of the Bible.

Leviathan, Ch. XXXII ¶9

A snapshot of the electorate

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

So who are these people, these Princes of the Church, who will soon be electing the new Pope? Since the helpful lineup at Catholic-Pages.com is down, I've had to use my smidgen of Italian to decipher the Vatican statistics. Let's look at the numbers:

There are 183 cardinals (in addition to one named in pectore, whose name was not disclosed by JPII) of whom 117 can vote in the conclave. The remaining 66 are over 80 years old and thus ineligible to vote. All but three of the electors were created cardinal by JPII; the remanining three (William Wakefield Baum of the US, Jaime Sin of the Philipines, and the Grand Inquisitor himself, Joseph Ratzinger of Germany) we created by Paul VI. It's been said that JPII created cardinals in his image, that he appointed men of like mind who took a conservative stand on theological issues. Now, conservatism in Church politics is measured not by the American Right-Left dichotomy but mainly by reference to the Second Vatican Council: the more you accept the ecumenical and liberalizing efforts of Vatican II, the more of a liberal you are; the more you want to contain or roll back these reforms, the more conservative.

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The electors come from 52 countries. The largest delegation, as expected, is the Italian, with 20 cardinals under 80; they're followed by the Americans, with 11, and Spain and Germany, with 6 each. Latin America as a whole has 21; Africa and Asia have 11 each, and Australia and New Zealand have one apiece. The question, then, is who will get the Americans' votes, since all US cardinals are presumably aout of the running. The problems of the Latin American Church are different from those of the European and the Asian and African Churches. Latin Americans are concerned with the rise of Pentecostalism among the traditionally Catholic population, while Europeans face a more secular threat to their numbers; a more charismatic Church, with an aggressive populist platform, could stem the Pentecostal tide, but there's little short of a disaster of bubonic-plague proportions that could stop the secularization of Europe. The Asian and African Churches are growing fast, and their principal concern is not Protestantism or secularism, but Islam. Will the Church decide to hold the fort, launch a new offensive, or stage a strategic retreat to the homeland?

All but twenty of the electors are secular priests—that is, they do not belong to a religious order, like the Jesuits, Franciscans, or Benedictines. Of these twenty, four are Franciscans, three Jesuits, and three Salesians; only one (Schönborn, from Austria) is a Dominican. This may or may not be relevant, because of the "Opus Dei" factor. The Opus, which was founded in 1928 by a reactionary Spaniard and served effectively as the national church of the Francisco Franco dictatorship, is a very conservative, secretive, conspiratorial entity. It's organizational structure is different from that of any other order; it is a "personal prelature" of the Church. JPII has showered them with favors, not the least of which was the elevation to sainthood of Josémaría Escriv´, their founder, in one of the quickest canonizations in the history of the modern Church. The Opus has provoked a firce reaction, and has even been labeled a dangerous cult by some, such as the Opus Dei Awareness Network (ODAN). Opposition to—or retrenchment of—the influence of the Opus may play a role in the election.

The Jesuits have not fared too well under JPII, or rather, they haven't fared as well as they'd hoped (althought they are still the largest order in the Church, and one of the richest and most influential). They were the darlings of the Church in previous years: the best educated, most world-savvy, most efficient force under Papal control. Their General Superior was dubbed the "Black Pope" becsue of his vestments and perceived influence. But they are officially and fiercely independent of episcopal control, and produce consistently eloquent and provocative theological, social, and political commentary which doesn't always sit well with JPII and Cardinal Ratzinger. They were also among the chief advocates of Vatican II, and were thus maligned by JPII in favor of the Opus. I can assure you that the Jesuits have neither forgotten nor forgiven the slight.

¶ In the interest of full disclosure, I am an alumn of a Jesuit high-school, and remain especially fond of the Society. Even after my break with Catholicism (back in 1989) I can honestly say that I don't believe in God... but I believe in the Society. It is a sentiment that many of my fellow alumni share.

The last demographic criterion is the Curia/diocese split. Most of the cardinals, from what I've seen, are also archbishops, and may thus have an interest in being given latitude in the administration of their affairs. The reaction to JPII's reign may not be in the direction of liberalization of doctrine, but rather in the direction of decentralization. JPII had what some have called an "Imperial Papacy," which gathered many administrative and theological functions in the Roman Curia. Some bishops, especially in the US, may desire a freer hand. Decentralization may also allow the Church to adop differenr stances regarding the problems faced in different part of the world. More political latitude may be desired by the Latin American cardinals (whose stance on social justice is undermined by the Vatican's suppression of liberation theology) or by the American cardinals (who need to tread a slippery path between their more liberal—and dwindling—urban faithful and their more traditional immigrant congregations. Interestingly enough, the Roman Curia may be better poised to loosen the reins of the Vatican's authority. Wojtyla, after all, was an archbishop and a foreigner. Federalism—or its Catholic equivalent—may be the decisive factor in the papal election. Would that it were so here!

For those looking for more detailed looks at the "candidates," the National Catholic Reporter is a good source. Their links on the coming conclave are interesting and critical. If you read Italian, go to La Repubblica, which seems to have better coverage than Corriere della Sera. But the Corriere does have a handy list of cardinals, with birthdate, country and current office.

Holy MP3, Batman!

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Via Marginal Revolution, two free lectures from The Teaching Company—purveyors of pretty good college courses on CD and DVD—on the mechanics and history of papal elections. Available both as streaming files and MP3s.

Karol Wojtyla, 1920-2005

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Pope John Paul II died in the Vatican today.

VATICAN CITY, April 2 - Pope John Paul II died today, finally succumbing to years of illness endured painfully and publicly, ending an extraordinary, if sometimes polarizing, 26-year reign that remade the papacy.

He died in his chambers here at the Vatican, just after 9.37 p.m. here, the Vatican said. His health had deteriorated over the last few weeks, and in the last few days his decline was precipitous. He had been near death since Thursday, when his already weak system suffered a series of serious blows, including heart and circulatory collapse. On Friday morning, the Vatican announced he was in "very grave" condition, and that night it said his condition had become even worse, with his breathing shallow and kidneys failing.

I will be posting updates on the coming conclave and election.