Online civility, the democratic process and why sometimes calling a moron a "moron" is just the right thing to do

I've always maintained that civility in deliberation is overrated and may even be detrimental to reasoned deliberation and thus the democratic process. There is a recent study which by some accounts purports to show otherwise. I really like studies like this and I think X-phi philosophers ought to be carrying out studies like this. However, the study does not actually show what it explicitly claims to, viz, that the lack of "civility" (i.e., name calling or other rude, boorish behavior in online comments of a science related article) erodes reasoned, democratic deliberation. In fact, I will argue that the spread of this study's message and especially how it has been framed in the mass media might erode such a process.

The study used a sample of 1,183 people. They read an article about nanotechnology. A control group read a version of the article with comments that were uncivil and included insults such as "If you don't believe that nanotechnology is harmful, you're an idiot!" Others read the same article with comments that did not include rude, insulting and otherwise uncivil comments. The study's authors claim that the rude and uncivil comments made readers of the comments more "polarized," that is, made them "double down" in their views.

A quick terminological note: The media has reported this study as about online trolling (see here, here, here and here, e.g.). However, online trolling as it is commonly defined, isn't simply about using such rude and uncivil language. It is about gaining attention through insincere posts purporting to express some viewpoint but in fact, is meant to instigate an emotional reaction. You can use uncivil language without trolling. To the study's author's credit, they did not use the term "trolling." Science journalists, being what they are, reporting on this story are the one's guilty of such sloppy use of language.

Anyway, back to the substantive portion of the study. The study concluded with:

Online communication and discussion of new topics such as emerging technologies has the potential to enrich public deliberation. Nevertheless, this study’s findings show that online incivility may impede this democratic goal.

This is to stretch their findings to an area that is not supported by their own data. What they actually found was that readers of those comments had stronger views than they did before after reading uncivil comments. That "polarization" (in the context of this study, polarization of subjective risk associated with nanotech) in itself does not show that it is bad for deliberation never mind the democratic process. There is nothing wrong with having strong opinions on some topic. In fact, having them, all else being equal, is a sign of a strong democracy. So they reasoned from the fact that readers' opinions were made stronger to the non sequitur that this may "impede" the "democratic goal."

Instead, what does impede the democratic goal is not strong opinions per se but intractability, i.e., stubborn, persistent opinions despite the presentation of overwhelming counter evidence. Now it may be the case that having strong opinions will make one less likely to change one's opinions in light of such counter evidence but that wasn't what was studied in this study. Furthermore, there are decided counter examples. Scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians and some layman for example have very strong opinions yet to do science, philosophy, mathematics and many things competently means changing one's opinion's in accord with the evidence. So there are people out there who though have strong opinions are far more likely than most to update their views in so far as the evidence warrants it. So it's not at least contradictory that you can both have a strong view yet not be resistant to rational updating of belief. This is obviously not to say all scientists, philosophers, etc are this way. Many stubbornly hold on to outdated views but they are in general far better at conforming their views to the evidence than most.

But even assuming that most people will become more obstinate when their opinions are strengthened in just such a way (unlike scientists, et al), it doesn't follow that this is generally detrimental to public deliberation in all incidents. In fact, it may even be harmful in many cases not to be uncivil.

Why is this? Take the example that there is an issue, say, global warming. There are global warming denialists and those who affirm the existence of anthropocentric global warming. If both sides have strong but obstinate opinions, it is far better for both truth and the world than the alternative that only the denialists have strong opinions. This is because the denialists are wrong and furthermore wrong about something that gravely affect our and our children's well-being. Incendiary language may be the motivating factor to strengthen the views of both sides so that there is more balance. When those who do know better don't have as strong as an opinion as those who don't know better, this creates an imbalance that harms deliberation for those who don't know better will be more obstinate (again, assuming that it will make them obstinate to view change) and may dominate a discussion.

Now where the findings are relevant in the ways the authors suggest is when there is no definitive evidence on some controversial topic (such as nanotech perhaps). Notice that the example I used above of global warming is rather black and white when it comes to the evidence. There is overwhelming evidence for not only anthrocentric global warming that this very well will lead to disastrous consequences (in fact, it already has for large parts of the world) and little evidence contrary. But in some cases, we don't know too much either way. For example, in many unsettled scientific, philosophical, political, issues there are tentative evidence for many different but conflicting views. It would be prudent as the study suggest to be civil in discussions about the veracity of these issues so as to prevent intractability of viewpoints. That much is clearly true. But in much of public discourse, one side is clearly right and the other is clearly wrong. Evolution is true. The earth is not 5,000-6,000 years old. Iraq does not have WMD. Vaccines do not cause autism. Smoking is dangerous to your health. Etc, etc. So in cases where a person's view is so strongly at odds with reality, it may be good for others engaged in deliberation to call a spade a spade; polarization may be what is called for especially when the obstinate, irrational side is overconfident while the side of reason is acting like a (to put it in mildly PC terms) wussy but in less definitive matters and among more reasonable people, it may be far more prudent to remain open minded, skeptical etc and to facilitate this kind of atmosphere, it may, as the study suggests, mean refraining from uncivil behavior.

Furthermore, the study did not study if "uncivil" behavior made the interlocutors more likely to change/update their views in light of new evidence. That would have been far more interesting because it is directly related to reasoned deliberation, the kind of deliberation necessary for a healthy democracy. Instead, the study focused on non participants of the discussion (3rd party "lurkers"). Being called out a fool may or may not make one more tractable to rational debate. Here's what I suspect. I think being insulted online will not make one more or less likely to change one's viewpoint if only one person does the name calling but if there are more than two people doing the name calling at the interlocutor, he or she will be far more likely than not to change their viewpoints. Sometimes it takes a little community effort to get ignorant and intractable people to be more reasonable. Just listening or being more open minded often requires a little peer push which may involve a little incivility to be truly effective. This suspicion is subject of course to empirical evidence and I hope it will be tested someday (maybe it already has but I don't know where the study(ies) is to be found).

I worry that the spread of this message may even have a net detrimental effect on reasoned deliberation. Here's my reasoning. Who likely reads articles about this study? It is more likely that those who are interested in this study are the more educated and a little more reasonable than the average person who tend to have opinions that tend to be stronger than the available evidence warrants. But if those who are more reasonable are made to think that this kind of behavior is detrimental, they are the ones that will curb their future behavior by being more "civil" online while those who are not so reasonable (likely less educated and those not likely to read these kinds of articles) will remain their obstinate and uncivil selves. This creates in imbalance that doesn't seem very beneficial to reasoned deliberation. Sadly, it seems that some the study has already influenced some actions detrimental to public discourse. For example on the respected Popular Science online magazine's comments section, the comment function has been shut off (looks like permanently) and the moderator's reasoning is partly based on the results of this study. It is sad to see that you'd throw the baby out with the bath water. Despite the fact that many comments are low quality, there are sometimes informative posts and they are worth having despite the bad apples. Bad apples often do not spoil the whole bunch. You deal with poor quality comments by doing your job as a moderator, not by complete censorship.

Syrian intervention? (Hell no)

My post on another blog about the ethical considerations of possible Syrian military intervention below.

It looks like the US might go to war or at least militarily intervene with Syria (also see here). I am usually against military interventions and I believe that the situation in Syria does not so far warrant justification for intervention. I will talk both about wars and other kinds of mass state sponsored killings (aerial bombings, drone strikes, etc) as military intervention (for the sake of brevity) but I think the same principles apply in both cases. Most military interventions of humanitarian a nature has been unjust in hindsight and from this history alone we ought to be cautious of any proposal for future wars. I usually tend to think in terms of the five criteria I will lay down below for justification in foreign military intervention on behalf of humanitarian reasons. I think the principles are common sense and conjunctive (meaning that all five must be satisfied to justify foreign military intervention). I also believe that there might be additional principles that warrant inclusion as further conjuncts or disjuncts and will modify my 5 accordingly if they are presented to me convincingly. I might simply have not thought about this issue as hard as I could have or haven’t been exposed to the issue to know of alternative thinking. Here are my five 1. Consent. What I mean by consent is that some degree of agreement or endorsement ought to be secured from the population in which we are going to war on behalf for the intervention (in this case, the Syrian population) and that a majority of the population ought to consent to reasonably fair and neutrally worded opinion surveys. Some reservations and qualifications: First several surveys might have to be taken (with different wording or across different times and sample places) to insure more stable results. But consent on behalf of those we claim to fight for seems like a no-brainer. Two: what a “majority” means ought to be left for debate in some public space but I think it’s reasonable that it should be a “large” majority, perhaps more than 80%. This ought to be stable over all samples so as to reduce the chance of regional and temporal volatility. A military intervention probably impacts the whole country in profound ways so care and rigor in the ways I have just outlines seems reasonable to me in surveying public opinion. Granted it is often hard to ascertain public opinion through polls due to the political situation in many countries (the Assad regime might not want foreigners meddling with polls) but secret polls are often effective and have been used by international community such as the UN. Finally, this should be informed consent. Meaning that the questions on the surveys ought to reflect reality and the grim possibilities of war. Just because a population may want to overthrow their regime doesn’t mean that they will accept just anyone and anyway to do it. Syrians may agree, for example, that Assad must forcibly go by overwhelming majority but they may not agree that the US or its allies should be the ones doing the over-throwing. They may also fear and reject allowing foreign military or non military help of rebels to overthrow their government for (reasonable) fear that the rebels are Islamic militants, for example. The survey must also make it know that wars of intervention often turn out really bad (especially for the civilians due to collateral damage or the subsequent military occupation to insure stability during the post-war rebuilding process). The common people often become worse off as a result (take a look at Iraq as just one example of a case where the population almost universally agree in poll after poll that after the US led invasion that they are substantially worse than they were under Saddam Hussein). We don’t know what the Syrian people think at this moment. Worse still, no attempt has even been seriously made to ascertain their opinions as far as I know about foreign US led military intervention. 2. Proportionality. This along with 1 is commonly used by just war theorists to evaluate the justness of any humanitarian war proposal. This is the cure-not-being-worse-than-the-disease criteria. There must be reasonable guarantees that the war will not result in even worse humanitarian crisis than it aims to solve. Wars rarely solve humanitarian problems. We know this from history. The ones that do solve humanitarian problems are of massive proportions (such as Nazi extermination camps and Japanese imperial aggression in Asia). Is the Syrian crisis approaching this level of humanitarian crisis? I’m not aware of any studies that accurately show that it is. 100,000 people have died in Syria from the crisis according to UN’s numbers but we don’t know who is primarily responsible (Assad’s regime, his supporters, or the rebels). I suspect that all have roughly equal roles in the crisis but I’m not sure and I don’t know of any accurate and certain information that currently exists that decisively shows that the Assad regime is mostly responsible. Keep in mind that according to some of the most reliable data we have on the Iraq casualties, about 1.5 million people (mostly civilians) have died because of the latest Iraq war and countless survivors are injured. The infrastructure destroyed and the whole country in deep fear of fundamentalist and fractional terror. There are now far more birth defects in Iraq from the radioactive munitions used by the US than Hiroshima after the nuke. As we see from this and many other examples, war can snowball out of control into internecine violence even when they are waged on behalf of humanitarian reasons (or at least ostensible ones). What guarantees have been offered by military powers that Syria will not become another Iraq? What proof is there that the many rebel factions will be better safeguards for human rights and democracy than the Assad regime? How reasonable are these claims? 3. Legitimacy. With this and the two further criteria below, I suspect that they are a bit more controversial than the first two. But I think international law is important and its thus important that wars conducted must surpass some kind of legitimizing hurdle such as UN agreement. The international committee and its opinion matters in international affairs such as foreign wars. Unilateral declarations of wars are problematic partially because they don’t seek the consultation of the rest of the world in a democratizing and process and respects the rule of law. 4. Exhaustion. Diplomacy and other overtly non violent means must be exhausted before violent military actions taken. Sanctions may also be an option on this list. 5. Accuracy. The reasons given by the invading/attacking power must be accurate. Why have this criterion? The reason is basically the same as why you’d want the Constitution to protect you from unlawful searches. If the police thinks you have child porn on your computer but it doesn’t have any evidence, they don’t have the right to search your house even if the search yields, say, some drug paraphernalia. Ex post facto justifications are illegitimate for a reason: to discourage the authorities from indiscriminate searches by the authorities. In the case of Syria, the prevailing narrative by those wanting to attack is that Assad is the primary perpetrator of the human rights abuses in his country. If it is shown that this is not true (even if other factors may justify an attack is subsequently found). Those are the five criteria I think are reasonable. Furthermore, because killing is a serious business and modern military interventions which often involves killing on a massive scale and with significant civilian casualty are thus a fortiori serious and standards of proof must also reflect that seriousness. A relatively high standard of proof for each of these criteria ought to be satisfied; mild and merely plausible evidence ought not suffice. In criminal cases, the standard of proof is “proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” Perhaps such a standard or higher ought to be considered for military intervention. There will be some who think that the five criteria I have set out are too stringent making the chances of just wars of humanitarian nature unnecessarily restrained/conservative and increasing the chances of gross humanitarian crisis. They may have more lax criteria or standards of proof for example. But the onus is on them to show what their criteria are. If they have none they are basically holding that war ought to be subject to the whims of those in power. There will be some who accept some but not all of the criteria I have set out but still believe that intervention is advisable. In that case, the onus is on them to show that the criteria they accept have been met. I believe that not only has all of the criteria I set out above not been met (satisfying conjunctivity requirement) but that none have been met to even a minimally sufficient degree of proof and thus even if you only accept some but not all, the justification for military intervention will be unjust. Many of the western media claims are incredibly suspect such as the claims that Assad used chemical weapons on civilians. Not only is there little evidence of this but the evidence presented seems to implicate the rebels as the culprits who use them. For example, Assad refused entry to UN inspectors for months and only three days after granting them unlimited access to inspect weapons (what appears to be) a chemical attack occurred only 15 minutes drives outside of the UN inspection team. The US seems adamant not to investigate further stating that further investigation would be useless (one senior White House official stating that the evidence would be “corrupted” by Assad’s shelling of the sites) that and making clear that they have already reached a decisive conclusion (Cameron’s UK government also seemed to be just as headstrong about intervention, irrespective of pending UN findings). See the quote at the end in this article from Cameron).

A Critique of Brzezinski

I posted this on another blog.

Brzezinski: Dangerously Wrong

Zbigniew Brzezinski is a well known political scientist and the media often gives him opportunities to voice opinions on foreign policy. How deserving is this accorded credibility? Well, though I have not read much from him, from the looks of this article he wrote in foreignpolicy it would appear that his competence as a expert on international affairs is grossly inadequate and, moreover, because that incompetence is combined with influence, it makes him very dangerous too. 

So I will only criticize that article. It is about the dangers of a declining US and the rise of China. (Anyone who is more familiar with his writing and views, please disabuse me of my ignorance if I am shown to misunderstand him.) 

My criticisms are two fold: First a hermeneutic critique and then a theoretical one. On the one hand, he seems to have made severely deficient errors in interpreting and applying the ideas in the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes. The theoretical critique relies on findings in modern social science. 

In Brzezinski’s article, he argues that the decline of the US and the rise of China posses a great threat to the security of the world. He gives almost no explicit support for this pessimistic view except for a brief reference to an ominous “Hobbessian world,” an allusion to the thoughts of the 17^th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. 

While a sudden, massive crisis of the American system — for instance, another financial crisis — would produce a fast-moving chain reaction leading to global political and economic disorder, a steady drift by America into increasingly pervasive decay or endlessly widening warfare with Islam would be unlikely to produce, even by 2025, an effective global successor. No single power will be ready by then to exercise the role that the world, upon the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, expected the United States to play: the leader of a new, globally cooperative world order. More probable would be a protracted phase of rather inconclusive realignments of both global and regional power, with no grand winners and many more losers, in a setting of international uncertainty and even of potentially fatal risks to global well-being. Rather than a world where dreams of democracy flourish, a Hobbesian world of enhanced national security based on varying fusions of authoritarianism, nationalism, and religion could ensue.Perhaps we can reconstruct the argument he has in mind from this suggestion. 

Brzezinski may be construing states as similar to what Hobbes viewed people. Hobbes thought, famously and overly pessimistically, that life was “nasty, brutish and short” in a state of nature for human beings. The only way to establish civil society was for everyone to give up much of the freedoms they have in that state of nature (such as the freedom to kill and rob one another) and to submit to an all powerful sovereign (usually a king) who will use force and coercion to enforce cooperation among all for the benefit of all. This sovereign has many powers including life and death over his subjects. Why would anyone submit to this? Because there are clear benefits to living in a civilized society. One gives up certain freedoms from the state of nature in order to achieve some peace-of-mind and more opportunities for cooperative relationships and hence mutual benefit. This is why Hobbessian political philosophy is often termed a kind of “social contract theory” (if I have misunderstood Hobbes, I hope Allen, who likely has studied him more extensively than I, will correct me). 

In order for Hobbes to get his argument off the ground, he had to rely on several criteria and premises. 1. that everyone in a state of nature is roughly equal in strength, intelligence, cunning, etc. and mostly care about themselves and thus there will be a perpetual state of “war of all against all.” 2. An absolute sovereign needs to be all powerful. 3. He or she has the implicit or explicit consent of all governed and 4. He or she is disinterested between his subjects and applies the rule of law fairly to insure the benefit of all. 

Brzezinski seems to suggest that the US is analogous to such an absolute sovereign and the other states of the world are analogous to people in Hobbes’s world. He also assumes that without an absolute sovereign the world would devolve into something analogous to people in the state of nature, a state of war of all against all. How accurate is this? 

Hobbes’s argument requires that all premises set out above are true (it’s complicated why his argument requires all these premises). Not only do states not satisfy all of Hobbes’ premises for his argument which is aimed at individual people and an absolute sovereign, they seem to satisfy none so there is a glaring disanalogy between states and people. Some non-absolute sovereign states are far more powerful than others and thus is not analogous to Hobbes’s first premise. China, for example, can obliterate the tiny state of San Marino quite literally in seconds by pressing one button. 

The US does not behave in the way an absolute sovereign behaves in a Hobbesian world. It constantly undermines international law and is itself a partisan actor. It is not impartial but unquestioningly biased for its own interests and those of its allies. Its unilateral military actions are not meant to enforce international law but constantly undermines it and it does so for its own interests to the detriment of everyone else. Besides that, other states likely would not consent to absolute rule by the US even if the US does have absolute power over everyone which, of course, is certainly untrue. There are already some world powers that are close in military might to that of the US and under the right circumstances may defeat it in a war (US wars in Vietnam, Korea and Afghanistan are just a few examples). 

So there appears to be few similarities between people and states and between an absolute Hobbessian sovereign and the US in the scheme of a Hobbesian framework. Brzezinski’s analogy breaks down on those two fronts. 

But his folly does not end there. He assumes that without an absolute Hobbessian sovereign there cannot or is unlikely to evolve peaceful cooperation in a multipolar world with many roughly equally powerful states without an absolute sovereign. For the sake of argument, assume that Brzezinski is right that the US is currently such an absolute sovereign. Is he then also correct that as China matches the US in power there cannot evolve peaceful cooperation between states and that international affairs will likely devolve into a “state of nature” where all is against all because the optimal strategy would be not cooperating? 

That is pure rubbish. 

First of all, why did Hobbes think that in a state of nature people will devolve into such a state of war of all against all? Some modern philosophers have argued that Hobbes was thinking of a scenario similar to a one-off prisoner’s dilemma game. In this game, it is always rational not to cooperate with another player for defecting is the optimal choice (it strictly dominates in the jargon).

	Cooperate	Defect
Cooperate	3, 3	0, 5
Defect	5, 0	1, 1

Thus one can argue that players ought to devolve into a Hobbessian State of Nature in situations that are modeled by this game and when there is no absolute sovereign to coerce or enforce rules to cooperate. 

But one-off prisoner dilemma games often do not model situations in the real world. Rather relevant situations in the real world are more accurately modeled by iterated prisoner dilemma games (with memory). Here many games are repeated one after another with indefinite (or unknown) number of games. That seems far more like reality because we don’t only play only a single “game” with other players (other people or other states for that matter) in the world and just “go home” afterword. Rather we are stuck with each other for good or bad, doomed to either cooperate or defect in many repeated situations. Moreover, we remember how each behaved in previous games and update our future decision accordingly to take into account that information. 

So lets say that in the future, there is relative decline of the US and that is balanced by an ascending China such that there is now a bipolar world with two roughly equally powerful superpowers and thus no one “absolute sovereign” (I’m abstracting from the more likely scenario that it will likely turn into a multipolar world with more than two equally powerful superpowers). Does that mean it is rational for both countries to not cooperate (to defect) such as in one-off prisoner’s dilemma games? No. 

The optimal strategy for iterated prisoner’s dilemma games is the famous tit-for-tat strategy. In this game, cooperation can spontaneously evolve and it is completely rational to cooperate. The best strategy is to cooperate at first then play tit-for-tat with random (or actually pseudo-random) forgiveness if the other player keeps defecting. The basic strategy is that one ought to always cooperate unless provoked (this is called a “nice” strategy) and once in a while forgiving non cooperative behavior by cooperating which stops “death spirals” that is, repeated, alternating revenge tactics. Such a strategy is optimal and do not require an absolute sovereign to enforce cooperation. 

The success of the tit for tat strategy, which is largely cooperative despite that its name emphasizes an adversarial nature, took many by surprise. In successive competitions various teams produced complex strategies which attempted to “cheat” in a variety of cunning ways, but tit for tat eventually prevailed in every competition. 

This result may give insight into how groups of animals (and particularly human societies) have come to live in largely (or entirely) cooperative societies, rather than the individualistic “red in tooth and claw” way that might be expected from individuals engaged in a Hobbesian state of nature. 

The more cooperative players are to begin with the quicker and more beneficial the strategy will work to the benefit of all players. However, as many game theorists are also quick to point out, trust is asymmetric: it is far easier to break than to build back up once it is broken. Distrust or broken trust also has multiplier effects and is contagious. Rather than consent to be ruled by an absolute sovereign, in situations modeled by iterated prisoner’s dilemma, it is most rational to instead build trust from the beginning. The US has consistently undermined trust in international affairs by its capricious unilateral actions, military, political and economic. But the faster people start building trust and cooperating, the more beneficial this strategy will be for everyone. Even the iterated prisoner’s dilemmas underscores the actual situation in the world for these games assume that all players are only interested in themselves. In the real world, interests often overlap and, moreover, there exists some instances of empathy, altruism, friendship and alliances across nations (some sense of cosmopolitanism and the brotherhood of mankind). 

We can excuse Hobbes’s ignorance for he lived 300 years before the development of modern game theory. Brzezinski cannot rely on such an excuse. His argument seems to be dependent on the assumption that states in the world takes on a Hobbessian structure with the US as absolute sovereign and furthermore the world needs such a structure to maintain peaceful cooperation. Not only is he wrong, and furthermore, wrong, but he is dangerously wrong. He has likely misunderstood and misapplied Hobbes’s ideas which is itself deeply flawed. By arguing that the world needs an absolute sovereign and, hence, presumably promoting international support for continued American hegemony instead of embracing and promoting a multipolar world with rational and trustworthy actors, Brzezinski may be undermining the possibility of peaceful global cooperation.

Refilling the Liberal vacuum

Another post on my political blog:

In a previous post I talked about the Liberal tradition (that is, the explicit and formal human rights framework, not to be confused with how people often use the term to refer to a political or economic “left” or being “progressive”) as being a byproduct of religious, political and other kinds of oppression in the west. I also talked about the importance of instituting rule of law and rights protection for China in the coming years in the comments section.
However, I always have had serious reservations about the Liberal model on philosophical grounds.

Focusing on rights may actually hamper ethical or moral development in society because it focuses on bare minimum ethical standards of conduct and behavior. It detracts attention and energy from more positive accounts of ethics such as those from virtue cultivation and community-building. There’s some debate whether a Liberal framework can handle more nuanced and more positive accounts of ethics. I happen to doubt that it can. Confucius mention 2500 years ago that even in societies with well established laws, people can still find ways to treat each other like shit and make life hell for each other. That is because even in such a society, people may still not be virtuous and find ways around the law to behave despicably.

I think that the serious development of the rights framework ought only be a temporary in China so that bare minimum standards are set in place for now and into the near future so that basic rights are protected and society will have something to fall back on for protecting people’s rights. But I also think that as China gets richer, as people get more educated, China ought to progress into a more Confucian model which focuses not on what we owe each other in the form of bare minimum duty and other rights but on our virtue and on the quality of our relationships. This is a much more nuanced and robust form of ethical development but it has the drawbacks that it is more difficult to develop requiring extensive education and good, solid, development of welfare for the whole population. As Confucius mentioned, societies become immoral when two major events occur: when either the education system collapse or when the country does not have enough to feed, clothe, or build infrastructure for the whole population.

Now, I believe also that we may never get totally away from having some legal protection for individuals in society from abuses of their rights no matter how we cultivate virtue in the population because there will always be some bad apples making the whole society worse off and law may be the only way to protect people from abuses from these intractable individuals.
But it seems to be a good goal to try and build something more ethically solid. How would we build such a society that moves away from focusing on rights and starts focusing on individual virtue cultivation?

I would start with a secular moral education. I believe that students should start learning philosophy such as ethics and critical thinking as early as possible (maybe as soon as they are in the 4th or 6th grade). I think Confucius would agree to this.

Second, Confucius said that ritual is another important aspect of moral cultivation of virtue and community ties. But what rituals ought we employ to further this end in a secular 21st century China? (Note: Confucius said that rituals can be wholly secular). I think this is a crucial question that Chinese people should look to themselves and their own history for answers.

It struck me that another useful application of experimental philosophy may be to see if rituals can improve moral conduct.

The nature of democracy

At the political blog I write for, I made a long post about the nature of democracy and what that means for China. The comments section has an interesting dialogue with me and another commenter and writer for the blog. 

Here's the blog:

Rethinking Democracy

This blog will essentially be a second part to the important discussions Allen and raventhorn started about democracy. I will present a philosophical discussion so that we may better think from a different and deeper perspective about this notion than everyday people may be used to by looking at its fundamental structure.

Philosophers has always spoken of the strengths and weaknesses of democracy. Arguments for its strength go back to Aristotle or maybe even before. These include the the idea that

1. Democracies rely on the knowledge base of the many to make decisions and because collective knowledge for a large population will always be larger than any individual in it, democracies can make more informed and accurate decisions.

1. There is also the argument that a government’s primary role is to benefit its people and the people themselves are the best experts at knowing what are in their best interests.

1. Some philosophical arguments suggests that only a democracy is a legitimate kind of government for it has the consent of the people thereby gaining right to rule over them.

I will talk more about benefits as well as potential hazards of democracy below but first a definitional point.

Many people in the west and probably in China as well take for granted what democracy is. They have a view and think it is unproblematic and go from there in arguing the benefits or ills of this kind of government. However, the very notion of democracy is itself problematic. I think once we think more carefully on what democracy means, we will have new appreciation of not only the nuanced philosophical depth of the idea but also have a better appreciation of how modern China is run. The upshot is that China is far more democratic than many people think and that the US and many self-proclaimed western nations are far less so.

I will call the basic intuitive common conception of democracy the “naive view.” This view, as I take it, sees democracy simply as a form of government with formal institutions of voting. The system of voting is to either elect officials who make all the policies and rules thereby ruling the country or it is a system of “direct” governance where the votes are for the policies and rules themselves. The votes work by what is called “simple majoritarianism.” That is, when a majority (absolute or plural) percentage of votes are for some measure, the measure gets passed.

That is obviously not how the US government works (unless in a few select states with a few select “referendums”) nor is it for other major “democracies.” These democracies work like the former system of rule by elected officials.

But a system of voting is neither necessary nor sufficient for a democracy. That is because the fundamental idea of democracy has to do with collective decision making. Democracy on this philosophical foundational idea seeks to make more explicit just what it means for a collection (two or more) people to decide on something.

I know what it is like, from self-reflection, what it is for me to decide in favor of some action. By analogy, I know what it is like for someone else to decide in favor of some action. But the problem is, what does iteven mean for a collection of people to decide?

Simple majoritarianism is one solution. The people vote and whatever is the majority choice is the decision for the group. So the majority’s choice simply is made the group’s decision.
However, there are severe difficulties with this conception because it sometimes do not capture well what we would consider the decisions of the group even when the majority chooses it.

Why simple majoritarianist voting is not sufficient for democracy

This is most consistently seen in society where effective propaganda or implicit or explicit threats  propagated by a small group of powerful individuals influences public behavior. Often small groups can coerce or influence the masses using threat of force or other threats. In that case, even though the majority votes in some way, it may not be their choice because it is really the choice of a select powerful few who had used coercive tactics to sway the vote. Often many, self-proclaimed “democracies” in very corrupt and poor countries resemble this scenario.

A small group may also wield disproportionate power by influencing the masses and manipulating their choices using less heavy-handed means. Consider effective propaganda. In this case, propaganda, that is, false information, misleading information and effective concealment of relevant alternative information is used in place of coercion to influence the vote. People think they are voting for their and their fellow citizen’s best interests but in reality, they are voting for the interests of a small minority of powerful individuals who control the media. They have been misled in doing so. In this case, the majority may think they are voting for some measure but is it really their decision if the rationale they use to make their decisions are based on lies fed to them by a small minority? I think you can make a good case that it is not really their decision at all but the decision of that small group (does this hypothetical “democracy” sound familiar?).

So it would seem that voting either directly or indirectly for a representative is not sufficient for a true democracy. But I now argue, it may not even be necessary.

Why simple majoritarianist voting is not even necessary for a democracy

Consider a society where the rulers are a small minority of the population. They are perhaps philosopher kings, or maybe gods or maybe even very advanced computers. They are benevolent dictators, let’s say. And imagine that this group of enlightened beings often surveys the population for their opinions and needs and makes a sincere effort at investigating their welfare.

They then institute what that population most desire and what satisfies their welfare. Policies and rules are designed by those individuals in power not so as to benefit themselves specifically but to benefit the society as a whole. Their decisions are made with the welfare of everyone in mind. Sounds far-fetched? Well, in most dictatorships, this is not how things go so people have some right to incredulity. Most dictators are not benevolent, of course, but some may be.

Now the question is, how democratic is the society I just described that did involve elite decision makers who are benevolent? Remember that the basic intuitive notion of democracy is collective decision making. So if the minority of elite rulers make their decisions based on the needs, wishes and welfare of the masses and the masses agree with the major decisions of the elites, why are not those decisions as much a decision by the masses as it is by the elites? In this case, there is no formal vote but the decisions reflect the needs, wishes and welfare of the masses (does this sound familiar?).

Some people may object and say that despite the fact that the decisions reflect the views or choices of the public and responds to their welfare in this scenario, because it is the ultimate decision of the elite few and not the public, it is not the collective that is making the decision and ergo not a democracy.

But one only needs to reflect that in a representative democracy, the kind we have in almost all known democratic governments in the world today, it is the elite few that makes the decisions and not the public as well. So whatever kind of objection that is, it also must be applied to representative democracies as well but few are willing to bite the bullet and say that representative democracies are not really democracies based on the same reasoning.
I, however, think that so long as the people informatively endorse or consent to the decisions of the elites without being swayed by propaganda and the decisions from the elites are an extension of the people’s own interests and out their demands, it doesn’t matter to the democracy whether those elites are elected or gain power through some other means (meritocratic selection processes, etc).

I’ve given arguments that seems to show that voting and simple majoritarianism is not necessary nor sufficient for a democracy. But what is then a democracy?

Throughout the last 50 years and especially the last 30, many political philosophers have focused on a conception of democracy that seems to model itself on the scientific process. Science, as we are all taught from a young age, is a community-based method to gain knowledge. It works by hypothesis formation, empirical theory testing, and most relevantly, building off the knowledge of previous science and discussing findings in a public scientific forum. That way, evidence becomes objective. There is no such thing as private evidence. What is evidence for me ought to be replicable for you. Scientists do their jobs essentially by giving each other reasons. Controversies are resolved this way. Hence also why there is so much consensus on core issues in science.

In other words, the scientific community comes to have consensus through rational discourse. Hence, science is often called a discursive discipline.

Philosophers have seen this as a model for how democratic society ought ideally to work as well. Granted most people will never be scientists or mathematicians or philosophers. They simply do not have the ability or desire but it is an ideal to which to build the conceptual foundations of democracy because many philosophers realized that it is through this method that society as a whole can best avoid being coerced by propaganda from a few powerful interests groups, for example, or not doing what is in society’s best interests because of biases and misinformation. It is also through this method that we have our best chances at arriving at consensus for what to do as a society.

A society that best institutes practices most conducive to rational discourse and collective decision making is a more democratic society. Thus this makes democracy a multifaceted affair, a property of the whole society rather than some one (formal) element such as voting. It is dependent on many things such as the quality and availability of good education, how well the society protects freedom of expression and information availability, how well the actual decision-makers respond to the discourse in favor of the choices of the public, etc.

There may be many ways to institute such a conception of democracy. There is no one “right way” because this kind of democracy is so multifaceted; there are many ways to skin a discursive democratic cat. The responsibility to institute such a society is up to all the people in it applying the heuristics of critical thinking, creative problem solving, mediation and so forth.
But now we may also see some problems with this conception of a discursive democracy. First objection may be: This conception of democracy aligns itself with a method that is common among scientists. But the problems scientists deal with are often much simpler and more conducive to being resolved wholly or mostly and thus consensus better easily achieved. Society’s problems are often much more complex and difficult to resolve conclusively. Thus consensus is often very difficult if not impossible to achieve.

This much is true. But political philosophers see discursive democracy as an ideal, a point at the limit. They may argue that this conception which focuses on rational discourse is the best method we have at resolving the difficult issues that face us. Human rationality, in all its finiteness and frailty, is still better than none at all. We should also be aware that often issues in society seem intractable not because the issues are intractable but because the people discussing them are intractable. That is, they are simply not reasonable, not conducive to rational debate and evidence.

There are general ways that may make a discursive democracy more functionally efficient. One is mediation. When consensus cannot be reached, a society may engage in collective brain storming to find a middle point in which there is some degree of consensus, a modus vivendi, until a more agreeable solution is found. A unanimous agreement will never be reached in any large society but it is through the process of coming ever more closer to complete consensus in larger and larger representative group that a discursive democracy is to be understood. In that way also, it mimics the scientific ideal.

Furthermore, in a discursive democracy, we may only wish to focus on an “overlapping consensus.” That is, some have argued that in our society, we focus too much on where everyone disagrees. This causes tensions. But we do not notice all the views we have in common. Society may best be ruled if we focus on the aspects we can agree on (the overlap). Differences are “put off until a wiser generation” to resolve in the words of Deng Xiaoping when he spoke of how territorial disputes between China and its neighbors are to be resolved.
These differences are put off but then applied the same discursive methods again at some later time to be collectively discussed and reasoned. Repeat cycle if necessary. Some of the most pressing issues, of course, will require quick and decisive action and thus the cycle of discourse must be ended with a vote or some other decision procedure.

This is also a conception of democracy that is optimistic about human potential. It also sees that with education and a nurturing society, human beings are capable of achieving much more.
The second major problem I see with the discursive model is the fact that it may, in the words of the philosopher Francois Lyotard, “privilege the articulate” (as opposed to the truly wise). I take this problem to be the most serious and I do not have fast and easy answers to how it, if at all, it may be resolved or at least made less problematic other than perhaps instituting better education systems that makes better communicators and people better at critical thinking (so that they may distinguish the wise discourse from the merely persuasive and articulate).
A discursive democracy also requires a certain kind of society. One that has a highly developed education system that inculcates especially critical thinking skills and reasonableness across its population. Additionally, the culture of that society would need to be highly conducive to debate, mediation and dialogue, a culture that is tractable and reasonable and is sensible to taking responsibility for the actions and aims of themselves and their society. But such as society is rare and may only come after significant economic and cultural development.
Other deficiencies of democracies widely known also apply to this model. Democracies can often be slower than other forms of government in coming to decisive action. Again, there are ways to make this less problematic but it still remains a serious problem.

What this means for China’s future

China’s development politically and culturally seems to suggest that it is a candidate for this kind of democracy or some version of it. In fact, China may already be on its way as some of the most exciting democratic experiments in the world employing discursive procedures are now employed at both ends of society: namely at the local village, township, county levels through town-hall style meetings and elections as well as the CCP’s politburo.
I will relay a story I have heard by a western journalist telling of a Chinese village’s democratic experiment that illustrates almost perfectly how discursive democracy may work.

He told of a village that gave citizens cameras and video recorders. Whenever there was an election, if the roads the local politicians promised to fix were not fixed, if the lights in town were still broken, if there were any evidence of corruption documented, the citizens would show the tape to the town hall where the election was conducted and where the candidate is selling his or her qualifications to win their votes. The officials would be humiliated in front of his family and friends if such evidence were exposed in front of everyone.

Even his supporters may lose face as well if they had publicly supported such a candidate or is the candidates kin or friend. In such a way, in this town, there are almost always good roads, competent financial management, low corruption and solid infrastructure development. That is because politicians will go out of their way not to lose face because they know they will eventually be held accountable by the citizens.

Citizens know they will be required to take active responsibility for discussing, showing evidence and reasoning about how worthy a candidate is for election or reelection. Citizens also know they will be held responsible for their own votes so they had better make informed decisions. In this way, everyone is holding everyone else responsible. These kinds of villages will likely pop up more frequently across China’s rural and maybe even metropolitan areas in the near future.

At the other end of society is the powerful politburo. This is the body that determines how China is to be run in its major economic, social and political policies. It has 24 members. There is surprising equality in the politburo with the president (Hu) and premier (Wen) having roughly equal standing among the rest. They are all elected by other communist officials based on merit.
Any top government official is expected to go to the country’s top college designed specifically to train future leaders. The classes are described as training them for the open, rational discussion and creative problem solving they will encounter when they are elected to power.

Decisions are made not based on simple majoritarian vote but through building of consensus (see here for an interesting first-hand account of how this discursive process works in the politburo). Stubborn issues that are divisive are put off until a better solution that all can agree on is found. Only those issues that are within the overlapping consensus are agreed to be finalized as decisions for the country unless there is a pressing need to institute some decision quickly. In that case a decision is made by vote but the issue is considered “open” and may be revised later when there is more room for discussion. The Central Committee (300-400 members) is also run by this essentially democratic/discursive/consensus-building method.
I see the CCP as continuing to enlarge this political philosophy or something like it for other aspects of the Chinese political structure in the near future.

Conclusion

I hope to have show that there are both good and bad properties of democracies and more specifically, a certain conception of democracy. Ultimately what determines how well it functions is the more nuanced aspects of the society. Its education, culture, economic development as well as its formal legal and political institutions make it a democracy. The weighing of the potential for good vs bad is up to the citizens to decide if they are worth it in the end (I happen to think that this form of democracy is). But in so deciding, they are engaging in a kind of public democratic discourse.

There is no fast and easy conception of democracy. Democracy is not a simple byproduct of voting booths but a complex property of the society as a whole. There are many criteria that determines how democratic a society is on a spectrum. Dichotomous thinking pitting a naïve conception vs the political Other is not only harmful for the development of democracy elsewhere but for our own development along democratic lines. China is instituting many measures that may well be democratic on a very fundamental level. That sort of democratic expansion from two opposite ends of society is in the direction towards the middle, bridging the gap.

No society is ever totally democratic. But there is legitimate movement towards that direction in China.

The future is bright for a truly vibrant and responsible society where more and more Chinese citizens have more power, say and accountability in their lives. Through better education and due to its particular culture that emphasis tolerance for plurality and Confucian rational dialogue without dogmatism I believe that China can institute a truly democratic society based on sound philosophical principles (democracy with Chinese characteristics) and not mere superficial democratic packaging. It will develop according to its own pace and according to its own route. China does not need to be lectured about democracy by a country that is ruled not by “The People” but by soulless entities: multigazillion dollar corporations and bought politicians who are looking out only for the top .1%.

Addendum: Allen asked at the end of his blog if it could be fruitful to employ “scientific” methods in democratic theory or practice such as game theory. Such methods have already been applied by political philosophers to illuminate formal collective decision problems such as Condorcet problems and Arrow’s impossibility theorem. See the work of Christian List and Philip Pettit (both advocates of the discursive democratic model) for example.

Porn

Michael Rea's paper got me thinking about porn (not the content but the subject). As the old joke goes, porn is undefinable but you know it when you see it. If so then Rea tries to define the impossible. His attempt at a definition of porn is on the 3rd page. It basically defines an instance of porn as a token of some communicative material (pictorial, print, audio, etc) which will be reasonably expected to be used to sexually arouse or gratify members of some population to which it is targeted. Some provisos are that the intended audience can not expect it to be private communication (such as when a wife sends nude pics of herself to her husband) and that the material be used to that end for its communicative content.

I think there is a very damning counter example to this definition. Consider if some large population of porn subscribers were to read up on their sex negative feminist literature and as a result have a change of mind about porn. Now they see it as oppressive of women and denounce it and refuse to tend to their porn. Now it intended audience no longer seek to arouse and gratify themselves but that doesn't mean that the materials stop being porn. In fact, they may burn such material because it is porn. Rea may reply that once the audience changes their state of mind, they are no longer the intended audience of the porn producers. But that seems false. It seems that it is far more natural to say that their intended audience has had a change of mind about their products. The intended audience is still around, just not interested in the way they had been. It doesn't make sense to say that the intended audience dropped out of existence just because they had a change of mind. In fact, the porn producers may try to "win back" that audience through suasion and so forth. That would still make them a targeted audience.

When is "enough is enough"?

I think we can all agree that we will never build a perfectly just society. Someone or group will always be at some level, disadvantaged unjustly even if the laws are all perfectly as good as they can be, social inequalities will remain potentially in the form of human imperfections. Humans will always be imperfect when it comes to the sense and practice of justice. Implicit attitudes, even barely perceptible "at the surface" can have big effects on the structure of society as Thomas Schelling and all his influenced subsequent work in the social sciences has shown. Institutions of injustice such as segregation can be de facto established, perpetuated and enforced and surprisingly hard to stop and rectify simply stemming from implicit attitudes that people have (without formal institutions supporting them) and may not even realize they have.

My question is, since there will always be some one or group that may be disadvantaged and the degree of harm done to this person or group may be specific to them in virtue of their basic constitutions such as sensitivity to injustices, when is it acceptable to demand drastic changes to society or even civil disobedience? If it is always acceptable then there will always be the possibility that some group may be permitted to disrupt society even drastically and there will be perpetual civil unrest. This question is obviously related to my previous posts on the relativity of harm and the seemingly impossibility of establishing just political or even social systems. I wish I could find a way to make more clear what I mean by these sets of ideas.

More pessimistic ethics and political philosophy

In an earlier post I gave some examples of when a hopeless situation in which internecine violence may likely result from seemingly innocuous situations (at least concerning the violation of rights and duties) such as mere intentions or avaricious use and abuse of the public commons. The realization of these situations seem to be a moral no man's land where morality fails to guide us and the situations may be seen as situations where all sides are permitted to destroy each other. There are no moral facts of the matter as to who is in the right and wrong etc.

But the examples I used was where there was an original sin, that is, either forming a credible intention to enslave others or the avaricious use and abuse of public commons. But the point may be generalized to include other kinds that have no original sin such as policies and institutions (either formal or informal) that are formed with good intentions and that have good reasons for their existence. Because all such public policies and institutions are imperfect, there are bound to be those who fall through the cracks and are unfairly hurt by even the best intentioned and reasonable policies.

Take the legal system itself. No matter how well intentioned and well constructed any legal system is, due to inherent epistemic and pragmatic limitations in any system, some will likely be unfairly treated (such as receive unfair sentences or even falsely convicted, etc). Some of those unfairly getting the shit end of the stick will be harmed worse than others.

From a contractarian perspective, in some sense these people may be seen as treated fairly if they would agree to the scheme of things in an original position; that is, they may voluntarily agree to the policies and institutions in place (and hence their results) because the benefits of such a system outweigh the small probability that they will be unfairly treated. When in fact they have been unfairly treated by the system, they have no right to complain if the system was operating as it was meant because they had tacitly agreed to the conception from that original position and must accept their fate if all means to vindicate them within the system has been exhausted even if they were still unfairly treated in the end.

However the damage done to someone who has been unfairly treated is relative and cannot be appreciated from an original position because the original position is by its nature blind to that plurality in perspective. I really don't know how to fix this fundamental problem with any political system.

Original sin and why it's all hopeless

Imagine a nation of people, call it Eveville. They are a powerful nation with powerful military and are a notoriously cruel people who enjoy torturing their enemies and those under their subjugation. Now this nation is adjacent to another far more peaceful nation, called it Switzerland. Despite the fact that one is aggressive and the other is peaceful these two nations get on well and have forged close economic, cultural, political and social ties (this is made less unlikely by the fact that both countries may share the same religion, culture, language etc).

Eveville wants to invade, subjugate and enslave some small nation in another part of the world which we will call Utopia. However Eveville's evil intentions are found out by Utopians before it takes place. Utopians clearly have a right to protect themselves against such an attack and subsequent gross violation of their rights even if it resorts to deadly force. The freedom lost from slavery is worth dying and killing for I think most will agree. However the people of Utopia are peace-loving and lack the means and weaponry to adequately defend themselves in case of such an attack.

Through some black market dealings, the Utopians were able to attain a nuclear missile. But Unfortunately the only nuke they could get was a cheap one and thus not accurate and it has a .5 chance of exploding in Switzerland.

Let's also say that the Utopians have tried all possible means to 1. resolve the issue diplomatically, 2. tried all means at getting international support to solve the crisis and to shield them, 3. use of threats, 4. tried all means to obtain either less deadly but equally effective weapons or more accurate weapons. All these attempts have failed and they are left with the last resort: either launch the bomb, their only means of defense that will no doubt kill hundreds of thousands of Evevillians if hitting its target, or become slaves to them. Let's also say that if they launch the missile, the aggressive war waged by Eveville is guaranteed to end with a defeat for them. Let's also imagine that the Utopians have only a small window of opportunity to launch because Eveville has nuclear ability and is about to take out the only means of defense available to Utopians through a strike on their only nuclear stockpile but that Utopians have preemptive justification through credible threat from Eveville that they will invade and can now strike at Eveville.

Switzerland obvious does not want to be nuked and if Utopians launch, there's a 50% chance they will be the one's who get fucked. Switzerland is a neutral country and though against Eveville's intentions to enslave others, do not wish to try and force them to stop their practices of enslaving others because that will put them at deadly a conflict with their neighbors.

Since the Swiss are not involved in the threat to Utopians, and are (indirectly) threated by them despite the fact that Utopians do not mean to, it would seem that the Swiss have a right to defend themselves against being potentially attacked by a nuke. They may even be permitted to use deadly force against the Utopians to prevent them from defending themselves against the Evevillians by using the only means which happens to also seriously risks the lives of others.

So now we have a situation, and a tragic one indeed if there ever was one, in which two peaceful nations may, in some weird sense, be permitted to attack each other and commit massive atrocities against each other through no fault of either countries (rather it all stems from the fault of the Evevillians). Knowing that the Swiss may try and prevent them from defending themselves through force, the Utopians may now justly attack the Swiss in turn and vice versa.

Moreover, since the Swiss and the Evevillians are close allies, are the Evevillians now justified in attacking Utopia on the reason that they are protecting their allies from harm? Notice that the original sin in which this vortex of spiraling potential violence spiraled out of is not an actual violation of rights but simply an intention (to enslave and subjugate a people).

I have exaggerated the details obviously but I think many real world situations not only in international law of peoples but also more generalized in common everyday moral situations are analogous to this. That is, from an original sin, we have magnifier effects that affects everyone. As the old Jewish saying goes, when you save a man, you save the whole human race but this seems to be the converse, when you harm a man, you harm the whole human race (or at least many others not apparently associated with that man).

I think there are many real examples of instances where no apparent rights were initially violated or even things obviously wrong committed but that some actions responsible by some peoples created situations in which it was inevitable two groups of people would come to commit massive atrocities against each other and furthermore, it is not clear if any principle of justice will be capable of having a say in the matter.

Consider the ethnic conflicts in Darfur during the early part of the 21st century. Most scholars of the region consider that these ethnic conflicts occurred because the people in the region experienced the worst drought in their recorded history. Moreover, the reason for that drought is mostly agreed to be global warming caused by the carbon emissions mostly from wealthy nations. Due to this drought, many people had significantly reduced agricultural productivity and many groups that relied on raising livestock had to encroach on the land of other groups to maintain their livestock and feed their own people.

Many of the wealthiest nations that have contributed the most to global warming also were the ones that denied these groups assistance when they asked for it before it all came to violent conflict. They argued that they were not obligated to give and offer assistance (which they weren't at least under current international law). This example is slightly different than the one involving Utopians but there is an underlying thread. 1, that often violence spirals out of control and 2. that what makes them spiral in the first place, an original sin, may not actually be a outright obvious rights violation; it may merely be the credible threat of or even less obvious, the gluttonous use and abuse of a public commons (natural resources in the Darfur case) e.g. But the underlying theme is similar; that sometimes hopeless situations where massive atrocities are committed by groups against each other and there is no moral fact of the matter as to who is in the right and who is in the wrong among certain groups and how to begin to solve such a problem. It's just a sad situation for all.

Hate speech

Hate speech is Constitutionally protected. Many proponents of a liberal democracy see no wrong in banning hate speech because they think that hate speech violates the rights of others and thus violates some sort of harm principle. In a liberal democracy, the idea is that one can say, think and do anything one wants so long as it doesn't harm others (especially violates some of their rights) but it has been argued that hate speech violates this principle of liberalism. Some have argued that the harm principle itself is anti-liberal at its core and so one may not appeal to it within a liberal framework to justify the banning of certain kinds of speech. However, there seems to me to be another reason or reasons to ban hate speech within a liberal framework.

Think of the most common restrictions on speech in a liberal democracy: commonly cited examples include yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater and defamatory speech. One might be able to assign rights to whole groups of people (as international and domestic law sometimes do). One of these laws may be analogous to anti-defamation laws protecting individuals against libel or slander. One way to look at hate speech is that it is defamation against whole groups. Thus if we can justify anti-defamation laws in a liberal society, we can justify anti-hate speech laws if hate speech is analogous to defamation. The most obvious retort is that they are not analogous.

Some hate speech clearly are similar to defamation such e.g., spreading the lie that Jews are involved in a global conspiracy to kill all "Aryans." That is a claim, a false assertive claim about a group of people made to defame that group and comes at considerable costs to that group and thus may be liable to analogous legal repercussions. But consider a racial slur, "nigger." Referring to someone black using this term is not, on the surface, making an assertive claim about her or her racial group and thus a fortiori, not making a false defamatory claim. So on the traditional interpretation of racial slurs, "That nigger, John was fired" would mean the same as "John was fired" or "That black man named, 'John' was fired."

But is that really the case? Some philosophers of language such as David Kaplan and Christopher Hom claim that certain nouns including racial slurs do have assertoric content. Hom's paper "The Semantics of Racial Epithets" is a classic work on this topic. For racial slurs such as "nigger," Hom argues that it is translatable to a conjunction of sentences (or propositions or whatever it is that have semantic content) that makes pejorative claims about a group or a person belonging to the group. The longer and more institutions of hate associated with that slur, the more semantically "explosive" or harmful it is because it make more implicit assertions that are packed into the slur. When used, the slur becomes "unpacked" and explodes all the (defamatory) assertions associated with that group within some society in which there is a history of institutionally associating negative stereotypes with some group to the slur.

My review of Killing in War

By Jeff McMahan here.

Just war theory

I've been reading some just war theory lately. Many theorists both legal and moral/philosophical explicitly use a self-defense analogy in their reasoning. However, the invasion and occupation of a country by a foreign power for the sake of occupation (and not for some morally justifiable ends such as humanitarian intervention or preventive self-defense) is universally deemed immoral and perpetrating countries are liable to be attacked by the defending country. However, self-defense is usually defined as justifiable only if one's life or "serious bodily injury" reasonably is expected to result from an action of those liable to deadly self-defense measures. The states of Texas, Florida, and I also believe Arizona and Louisiana aside, no state justifies killing as "self-defense" only to protect one's property. Why doesn't this apply to just war theory? Why isn't a war unjust when it is waged for the only goal of occupation unlawful and immoral like the domestic morality and law (except for those states mentioned above) considers when someone kills a burglar when he posed no reasonable immediate threat to the defender's life or was a serious threat to bodily injury? Some people may say that usually, occupations do not bode well for the occupied state with many deaths of civilians coming from continued occupation but this need not be necessarily the case. Some states have no murderous intent in occupying a sovereign state and their intent may be deemed credible by the available evidence. If Norway wanted to invade the US and the reason given is that Norwegians simply wanted to give Americans a better quality of life under Norwegian sovereignty, what justifiable means do we have to defend against such an invasion with deadly force if it is shown that they are reasonably sincere in their intent? Even if Norway wanted some of our resources or land, what ground would we have to kill them in defending that material possession of ours?

Now I believe that it is just (certainly permissible and perhaps justifiable) to wage war on an aggressive occupier or potential occupier to defend one's own country from being unjustly occupied even if that occupation may bring a better life for its current citizens. The rights of the people and the state itself against unjust invasion and occupation justify the use of deadly force even if the occupation does not bring with it any deaths of the citizens if they choose not to resist. But I don't see how the self-defense analogy will provide the moral grounds. The morality of war may be sui generis, or at least very unusual, in this regard.

My review of Confucianism and Human Rights

This is an anthology with leading comparative philosophers including my teacher Chung-Ying Cheng.

My review of The Problem of Punishment

Here

genocide once more

I had a post earlier on the philosophical relevance of the concept of genocide a while back. But it occurred to me that the main reason why I gather genocide is so bad is because it is not only a crime against each individual in a victimized population but it is a crime against the group as such. Thus it would seem to be worse than mere democides or mass murder on a comparable scale because these other kinds of mass killings etc may be seen as nothing over and above the crimes perpetrated against each member of the group added together. Because there is the further crime against a group as well as each individual within it, genocide is a crime over and above the other kinds of -cides. Perhaps this shows that most people's intuitions on the badness of genocide shows that (or at least compels them to admit so) a group of people (which is a collection of individuals and hence an abstract object unlike a person which presumably is a concrete object) as such has certain rights. But what kind of rights do groups have other than those protecting them from genocide and how are they related to individuals' rights within groups?

Definition of Genocide

What does 'genocide' mean? The legal definition (according to the jurist and legal scholar Raphael Lemkin) is

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.

and includes

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

There are several conceptual difficulties in this interesting and ethically and politically important concept. Thus philosophers (political, language, social, and ethical philosophers) should be interested in this topic but there doesn't seem to be much.

Take forcible sterilizations of a group or the forced transferring and adoptions of a group to another. What happens if these sterilizations are not at all effective? Then is this an incidence of "attempted genocide"?

What about political "genocide"? Was the systematic extermination of the Kulaks during Stalin reign or the mass persecution of "counter revolutionaries" during the Cultural Revolution genocide?

What about the deliberate and systematic "destruction" of a group through cultural assimilation? The group's identity is lost but the group continues to exist qua some other identity.

I think racism is a fundamental aspect of what makes genocide evil and thus political/cultural "genocide," unless the political/cultural affiliation of a victimized group is also inextricably conflated with an ethno-racial identity in the eyes of the perpetrators and that this group is targeted because of their affiliation with that group qua ethno-racial group, it is not real genocide. The hallmark genocide of the 20th century is the Holocaust. It is a prototype for genocide. Jews were killed not because of their religion but because of their ethno-racial classification in the eyes of the Nazis. You can change your religion but your ethno-racial classification is due to your "essence" and is passed down through "blood" from generation to generation. So the intent (mens rea) has to be of a racist nature as depicted within the viewpoint of the perpetrators of genocide. Race and racialist thinking has to be part of the intent in a true genocide.

Additionally, genocide must be "systematic". But what does this mean? What if a non political body such as the entertainment industry suddenly decided to conspire against a minority group and portray individuals within that group as evil which then influences individuals in society to form mobs and lynch members of that minority group on a massive scale? Is that systematic enough? Does the "deliberate and systematic" nature of committing genocide have to be originating within a governmental body? What about racist grassroots organizations composed of nothing but ordinary citizens that happen to gain power and influence? What about a society that's a participatory democracy that has a referendum about whether or not to genocide one of its minority groups and then decides to do so?

There's lots of gray and ambiguity here.