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28.4.06

Fuzzy Grading

This is probably boring to anyone who came here expecting analysis of major social injustices and environmental problems, but it's also inevitable that academics will eventually discuss pedagogy.

I've recently encountered some discussion about the relative merits of different types of grading scales, particularly on the question of grading scales with lots of places (e.g. 0-100% or letter grades with pluses and minuses) versus those with few places (e.g. letter grades without pluses and minuses, or check plus/check minus).

Insofar as the people involved are willing to discuss the relative merits of grading systems (rather than rejecting the whole idea of grading), they seem to agree that scales with fewer places are better. The rationale is that grading is a highly inexact process -- but having lots of places on the scale presumes an unrealistic ability to discriminate between, say, 85% and 86%-quality work.

In my opinion, the inexactness of grading cuts the other way. If you only have a few scale places to work with, your decisions about borderline cases take on heightened importance, since the difference between the grades on either side of the border is so much larger. How can I be certain that all the papers I gave Bs to are definitely better than all the ones I gave Cs, given the inexactness of grading? But if I have more places on the scale, I can give a B- or a C+ to those borderline students, acknowledging the fuzziness of the categories and the uncertainty inherent in grading.

Stentor Danielson, 23:22, ,

Use "Billabong" In A Sentence

Australia is considering making prospective new citizens take an English test. Last night I heard a proponent of the plan quoted on the TV news saying something to the effect of "the English test is no big deal, because most people in Europe and Asia already speak some English." Way to take a big spotlight and shine it right on your racism, dude.

Stentor Danielson, 20:02, ,

27.4.06

test

Stentor Danielson, 00:49, ,

A Critique of Deep Ecology

I've posted before about my dislike for Deep Ecology. But it's difficult to find an intelligent critique of deep ecology. Most non-Deep Ecologists either ignore it completely, or find it so absurd as to be worthy only of mockery or "well duh" responses rather than argumentation. Some Deep Ecologists do little to help this, as they admit that the Deep Ecology position is one that can only be reached through a religion-like "conversion" (sometimes described as a Kuhnian paradigm shift) rather than through logic, and thus they focus on emotional appeals rather than the careful marshalling of evidence.

As a small attempt at a more intelligent response, I'd like to give some commentary on the eight-point "Deep Ecology Platform" constructed by George Sessions and Arne Naess. Naess has argued -- and other Deep Ecologists have enthusiastically followed -- that these eight points are the only things common to all Deep Ecologists. Anything more, such as theories about the basis of intrinsic value, is only a feature of the particular "ecosophy" of a certain subset of Deep Ecologists. I'm only dealing here with the first four points -- I may come back later to the other four, but I've had this post sitting half-written for many months now, so I can't promise anything.

1) The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: inherent worth; intrinsic value; inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.

Whether I agree with this point depends on whether I approach it as a textualist or as a originalist. As a textualist -- looking only at the words on the page -- I find nothing to disagree with in the literal meaning. I even agree with the implication that there are some nonhuman things that have intrinsic, as opposed to instrumental, value. But as an originalist, I have to recognize that what Naess and Sessions mean by this point is quite different from my own viewpoint. It all turns on the definition of well-being. In my view, well-being is a subjective state, and thus it's only meaningful to talk about the well-being of entities that are subjects -- that are capable of having experiences and forming counterfactual preferences. Not only can an entity such as a mountain or a chair or a flower not have "well-being," I don't even understand how one would go about defining what that well-being would consist in (in later posts I may deal with my objections to attempts by some Deep Ecologists to define the well-being of non-subjects either through a revived Platonic theory of the Forms, or through ascribing to them a non-conscious telos). Based on my own experience and reading of the science on this point, my evaluation of which entities are subjects lies somewhere between Descartes and animism. I would confidently ascribe a morally relevant (but not necessarily equal) degree of subjectivity to most humans, other primates, ceteceans, dogs and cats, and crows. A number of other animals (notably pigs) are potential candidates as well. However, I do not go as far as some Deep Ecologists toward the animist end of the spectrum in ascribing subjectivity to plants, much less to ecosystems or the planet as a whole, because I see no evidence for it (much less any way to determine what the content of their subjectivity is).

2) Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.

I offer no contest to the first clause here as a rule of thumb -- as an empirical matter it has been well established in ecological science. I would, however, raise a note of uneasiness about the way placing it as the second of eight basic points elevates diversity, turning it into the essence and measure of ecological health. Certainly diversity is generally a good thing, but I worry at times about the biodiversity fetishism of certain parts of the environmental movement. For the same reasons described in my response to the first post, I object to considering diversity as a value in itself, despite its clear instrumental value with respect to the well-being of subjects.

3) Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.

The idea of vital needs versus luxuries is an appealing theory that becomes hugely difficult in practice, as those who have tried to follow Maslow have discovered. The idea of "vital needs" also tends to reify and naturalize a list of proper ends for human life. Making a list of vital needs (and certainly operationalizing that list -- eg what do we mean by "food"?) is inevitably a political project aimed at justifying one way of life that obscures its own political nature. This point of the platform does, however, point at the important idea of justifiable tradeoffs. That is, human whims can't trump environmental quality (as too often happens now), but at the same time human needs need not be completely sacrificed for the good of nature. However, we need a more flexible framework for evaluating these tradeoffs, rather than a simple categorization of vital needs versus non-vital needs and wants. Some form of utilitarianism seems to me to provide such a framework. It has the added advantage of making the tradeoffs and values involved explicit, and hence open to contestation.

4) Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.

I generally agree with the practical upshot of this point, which is critical of current human use of nature. However, as a philosophical guideline I'd rather rephrase it. I don't see human interference in nature to be inherently or necessarily detrimental -- indeed, in some cases it's positively good. As currently stated, this point treads dangerously close to the wilderness ideology, which rests on the act-omission distinction (which I find to be generally unimportant) and a separation between humans (who can mess things up) and nature (which works just fine in isolation from humans). Nevertheless, I am far from willing to give carte blanche to human exploitation of nature. I would prefer to state the point as "Present human involvement with the nonhuman world is detrimental ..." -- thus placing the philosophical starting point in the question of how, rather than how much, human activity versus human absence affect nature. Of course, human absence is still one of the tools in our toolbox, and it's a particularly useful one for dealing with the fact that we don't (and in many cases never will) have sufficient knowledge to wisely make large changes in the environment.

Stentor Danielson, 00:44, ,

26.4.06

My Failed Predictions

Here's something that just crossed my mind. To get into Honors World Cultures in 11th grade, I had to write a short paper on what I thought was the next big threat to the US. I wrote mine about the possibility of war with China (based mostly on some stuff I'd read in Newsweek). But three wars later I think I'm going to have to stamp that old essay with a big "wrong," unless China should decide for some reason to form an alliance with Iran.

Stentor Danielson, 06:35, ,

Conspiracy Theories

Rachel S. has an interesting post about cell phones, describing how they undermine family life and enable increased surveilance of, and demands on, people -- especially women. She ends by asking "Am I too much of a conspiracy theorist?" While I'm not sure how much of her post I agree with, I can say that she cannot be legitimately accused of conspiracy theory.

First let's define conspiracy theory: a conspiracy theory is a claim that something (an event, a technology, etc.) was made to happen by the centralized decision of a powerful agent (often one with more power than they let on) in order to maintain that power and use it to serve their interests. So a conspiracy theory needs two parts: a causal link between something and the interests of a powerful agent, and a causal link, based on a centralized decision, running the other direction.

Rachel's post has the first element -- she makes an argument that a thing (cell phones) serves the interests (in controlling women) of a powerful agent (the patriarchy). So the crucial question is what (if anything) the link running the other direction is.

Perhaps there is no second link. The control of women is merely an unintended byproduct of cell phones. Obviously there's no conspiracy theory here, no matter how much the patriarchy may benefit from cell phones.

Moving one step closer, a person may argue for a functional link -- the benefits that accrue to the powerful agent somehow encourage the continuance of the thing without anyone necessarily being aware of it. I can't think of a functional link to propose in the cell phone case -- perhaps keeping tabs on women increases GDP, which increases the income to be spent on cell phones. In any event, even if someone were to think up a plausible functional link, it wouldn't be a conspiracy theory. You can't have a conspiracy if the conspirators don't know about it.

Inching yet closer, one might argue for a conscious but decentralized causal link. In the cell phone case, one could say that controlling women is among the reasons that people, especially men, buy cell phones. This is still not a conspiracy theory, because the men don't coordinate their purchases in order to control women as a whole. The overall control of women is simply an emergent effect of a lot of men individually getting cell phones.

Finally, we come to true conspiracy theory. A real conspiracy theory about cell phones controlling women would posit that some powerful central decisionmaker -- a Secret Grand Council of the Patriarchy, or just the cell phone companies -- deliberately orchestrated the creation and/or spread of the technology with the goal of controlling women. I see no hint of this claim in Rachel's post, so she is clearly not a conspiracy theorist.

Of course, the fact that Rachel is concerned to avoid conspiracy theory suggests one last necessary piece of the puzzle: the claimed link between the powerful agent and the thing must not actually exist. Calling something a conspiracy theory is a tactic for rebutting an argument. So if Rachel were to make the claim in the previous paragraph, she could then still avoid the pejorative "conspiracy theory" if she were able to show some good evidence -- say some internal Nokia memos talking about how their plan to control women was proceeding smoothly -- to support her claim.

Stentor Danielson, 06:06, ,

24.4.06

Moral Relativism: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Conservatives complain a lot about moral relativism. And in fact there are a fair number of liberals who espouse moral relativism as a meta-principle (even though most of them are moral absolutists in practice). But I think a good bit of the blame for the existence of liberal moral relativists can be laid at the feet of the very conservatives who complain about it.

At the present moment, conservatism has mixed success in dominating the actual content of society's moral beliefs. But it has been much more successful in dominating the framework in which we discuss morality. They way it has set up that framework has had the unintended consequence of producing adherence to moral relativism.

Most people would prefer to believe both 1) there are moral absolutes, and 2) thus-and-such is morally right/wrong. Conservatives have been very successful in promoting the idea that there is a logical link between #1 and the conservative version of #2. Their intent is that liberals would then see that continuing to adhere to #1 obliges them to give up their liberal version of #2.

But in practice, people's adherence to their specific moral beliefs (being embedded in their concrete way of life) is stronger than their adherence to abstract principles. So many liberals will protect their adherence to a liberal version of #2 by espousing moral relativism. This move is helped along by the fact that the liberal version of #2 is more permissive (often confused with relativism) than the conservative version. The liberal version is also more abstractly universalistic (dependent on higher-order principles that may work out differently in different contexts) while the conservative is more specifically universalistic (mandating similar specific actions for all people), a distinction which can also be confused with relativism.

The best solution -- which I and many other liberals espouse -- is to reject the connection between #1 and the conservative #2. That is, we believe that (to the best of our knowledge) the liberal #2 is an absolute moral code.

Stentor Danielson, 20:29, ,

23.4.06

Public Humiliation For Your Own Good (Really)

Proposals for reviving "public" punishments, a la the stocks, usually focus on their negative impacts on the criminal. It is said that the shame associated with public punishments will be harder for the punish-ee to bear, and hence they will form a more effective deterrent to future criminals, and force for rehabilitation of the current one, than locking them up out of sight. But I think an argument can be made for public punishments that's based on the welfare of the criminal.

The modern prison system is hugely abusive toward its inmates. Guards often beat prisoners and deprive them of food or medical care -- or stand idly by while prisoners abuse each other. This happens because prisons have no incentive to treat prisoners like human beings. It's not like a hotel, where if you don't like the way you're treated you can go somewhere else. Prisons are paid by the government. The expense and hassle of closely monitoring inmate conditions encourages the government to turn a blind eye. NGOs could, in theory, play a watchdog role -- but their access to prisons is so tenuous that they dare not speak out very loudly. And even if they do, the average non-prisoner doesn't listen -- after all, it doesn't have a direct impact on their life.

Ex-prisoners are also no help. The way the prison system warps people's social networks and skill sets, plus social stigma against ex-convicts, means ex prisoners are unlikely to stay ex for long. And felons are stripped of their rights to vote, depriving them of what little clout them might have had. And non-felons who manage to stay clean are likely to have learned from their time in jail that the system is cruel, cold, and capricious -- hardly a recipe for feeling empowered to work for social change.

Public punishments would have the advantage, then, of putting prisoner treatment out in the open. If a prisoner is mistreated, it's happening on voters' doorsteps. Guards and other inmates can't hide their abuses. And what's more, voters can't hide from the consequences of their preference for unproductively vindictive "tough on crime" policies.

Stentor Danielson, 03:29, ,