A review of The Myth of Morality

Here at amazon.

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.

Is there an obligation to resurrect extinct groups?

I'm raising this question as it pertained to group rights. Some groups have been systematically exterminated such as the Aboriginal Tasmanians through the genocidal policies of the Australians. If groups have rights and one of them is not to be exterminated as many human rights advocates claim, do they also have a right to be resurrected, say, through cloning or some other means? One may obtain enough genetic material from dead people to clone them. I'd imagine that once the technology is made reliable and cost effective, maybe the Australian government and other governments that have engaged in successful genocide of an entire group of people may be obligated to resurrect from extinction some members of the whole group. Groups, unlike individual people, can be resurrected from the dead and perpetrators, institutional or individual of their extinction, (or their ancestors) may be obligated to do so at least prima facie. But there might be significant ethical problems with this. If so what are these problems? One obvious concern is how many individuals must be resurrected? One? A few or the antegenocide population?

Useful fictions

Does the evolution of our mind and our sensory faculties make it probable that our most basic intuitions about the world are true? Our basic intuitions that there are regular sized objects such as basketballs, cars, people, etc seem out of the question common sense and obviously true.

You can made an argument that evolution makes it probable that truth has survival and fitness value; that is, those creatures whose faculties track truth are able to better adapt to their environment and thus fitter than creatures whose faculties do not and thus our common intuitions about very basic metaphysical claims are true (metaphysical skepticists and nihilists notwithstanding).

However, it may be the case that evolution has not endowed us with truth tracking faculties but with faculties that give us equally useful intuitions about the world that posit useful fictions. Surely there are many useful fictions and for any truth, there are likely just as many fictions that are pragmatically equally useful but strictly speaking false. So long as there is a kind of functional isomorphism (leave that term loose and undefined for now but the basic meaning I am using should be conveyed). So from a purely probablistic standpoint, since a useful fiction is just as good as truth and useful fictions are more numerous than truth for any one intentional stance, it is far more probable that our basic metaphysical intuitions are false. So long as useful fictions "does the job" of insuring survival, even if they are inaccurate at representing reality, they may be good enough for the evolutionary filter.

Perhaps that is the basic moral we should take from quantum mechanics; that the structure of reality may be so odd that we lack the basic perceptual, conceptual faculties to even think about them in a completely truthful way. Maybe that is the reason physicists and laymen alike have such a hard time making sense of quantum mechanics, the most basic description of physical reality we have. Perhaps due to these innate limitations, we, as humans will never completely accurately have a truth conception of reality. reality is just simply too bizarre for us to grasp.

Will fundamental and common sense metaphysical intuitions go the way of moral intuitions and mathematical intuitions as some philosophical skepticists have claimed for these other domains?

Perhaps we are just digital minds in an analog world (just how metaphorical is this metaphor?).

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.

Confucianism and footbinding

Thought I'd give people a heads-up on an interesting discussion at a Chinese philosophy blog of Paul Goldin's new book on Confucianism. The most interesting thing is the comments section where the discussion is on foot binding.

I've always thought it queer that some people blame the practice of foot binding on Confucianism or sometimes even more idiotically on Confucius himself!

Goldin's comments disabuses this notion quite adeptly. I have never read any Confucian text advocating it. Goldin (one of the world's leading scholars on ancient Chinese philosophy) says he has yet to see any Confucian advocating it and notes how strange it is to hear people attributing the practice to Confucianism (his analogy of the arrival of gingerbread cookies and Christianity brings this out humorously). I believe that only two references of foot binding exists in (neo) Confucian texts (both in Chu Hsi's work). Interestingly, in both cases, the Confucian philosopher denounces the practices quite vehemently.

One of the commentors (Manyul Im who is a comparative philosopher) mentioned that what surprises him is the absence of denunciations by Confucian philosophers towards the practice and he wonders whether this silence can be construed as a kind of endorsement for the practice.

I doubt it. There may be many reasons why there are few (except Chu Hsi's of course) philosophical denunciations of some practice. It may be simply because the practice was not conceived at that time to be a moral or political problem. This may be because of several factors. The overall sexism that exists in Chinese society at that time, the fact that it was women's active choices to bind their daughter's feet, or that it simply wasn't in philosophical fashion to talk about foot binding.

I can imagine philosophers in the future asking why ethicists today don't talk about, denounce and use as examples in thought experiments things like eating animals or plastic surgery. These topics may be of significant moral concern for future people. But a lack of discussion on these topics compared to say, trolley examples, does not necessarily mean philosophers today endorse these practices. Many are probably deeply concerned about them even if they don't use them in their philosophical writing as examples, etc.

But silence may also imply disapproval. This may especially be the case when the practice is so widely practiced as it was during the Ming that many people may have felt it no need to explicitly denounce something that was obviously wrong (to a philosopher anyway).