Philosophy On The Mesa

I heard an interesting analysis on Danish public radio the other day about the political impact of soccer. So, in fond recollection of our interesting baseball debate (archived), I thought I’d share some of those ideas with you. An author and soccer expert, Joakim Jakobsen, was interviewed about a recent book, in which he speculates that soccer has accomplished what the United Nations and the European Union have failed to achieve: creating a universal form of communication. According to the author, soccer comprises both analytical and emotional thinking, and everyone can relate to the analysis aspect as well as the emotional highs and lows. So here is my first problem with that analysis: I grew up with soccer being played all around me, but I don’t understand much about the game, and I really don’t feel any emotional pull (not like baseball, which I have learned to love). So, I guess I’m on the outside there, not even looking in. For another thing, the author presents a phenomenon that is typical outside of the U.S., so if soccer is destined to be the universal language of communication, it is still in our future, not in our present.

The next interesting idea expressed on the show was that the universality of the soccer “language” has a tilt toward nationalism: prominent as well as smaller or emerging nations find a new identity once their teams start doing well, internationally—case in point, Turkey in the current European Cup games. Sometimes this takes the shape of aggression, and sometimes it is channeled into more congenial forms, but either way I see it as a nice little paradox of universality vs. group spirit. Interestingly, the analysts who are praising soccer as a unifying global force have to concede that a certain kind of radical nationalism may be a side product of it—a side product that, more often than not, erupts in violence among the fans, with occasional fatalities.

So what say you? Are you soccer fans? Is soccer to you really a language that transcends borders? Do you feel emotionally connected to humanity when watching/playing soccer, in a way that doesn’t happen when you engage in golf, baseball, or basketball? Or is your sense of group identity enhanced, at the cost of global connectivity?  

An interesting case happening in Denmark: a religious organization (Faderhuset, the Father House, a Christian organization) has been reported as having encouraged its members to use physical violence and other harsh methods as the preferred form of discipline toward their children, based on selected quotes from the Bible. Cases are being investgated involving severe corporal punishment of small children. This in itself will make most of us cringe, but here comes the interesting moral issue: According to Danish law, corporal punishment of children is illegal (I haven’t checked what constitutes corporal punishment, but it sounds as if it is a very sweeping rule: no hitting, of any kind). But freedom of speech is also a very firmly established principle, as everyone knows who followed the “drawings” debacle. So what the legal system can do now is prosecute the individual parents for child abuse/neglect, but not the Fatherhus organization as such, because their “advice” to their members comes under freedom of speech and freedom of religion. So this becomes a question of moral responsibility rather than a legal issue: Should an organization that exercizes strong psychological influence on its members be held accountable for encouraging illegal activity, or should it be up to individuals whether they want to follow the “advice”? A question that reaches way beyond this particular case, and relates to cases of Internet websites advocating violence against certain people and groups.

Earlier in the week 14-year old Heather D’Aoust, Scripps Ranch (north of San Diego), grabbed a claw hammer, attacked her mother, and succeeding in bludgeoning her so severely that she died the next day. If you go back a few days to a previous article, you’ll find that neighbors described the mother as devoted to her daughter, and that the daughter was a shy girl. Her father argued in court Thursday that his daughter is sick and needs help. However, the court decided to try her as an adult, with the possible sentence of 30 years in prison. The legal part of this story is a web of rules about charging juveniles as adults, and about criminal adults who are deemed to be mentally incompetent, but apparently there is some doubt about what might happen to a juvenile charged as an adult who is found to be mentally incompetent. In the article (link above) we hear from her father and her lawyer why she should be considered a child with a mental issue, but we hear very little about why the court made their decision, other than it was “closely examined,” and that 48 juveniles have been charged as adults by the court since 2001. The greater picture is that we have seen an increase over the last 15-20 years in the tendency to charge older children who commit serious crimes as adults, under the assumption that at that age they know “right from wrong,” and they should be held accountable (a deontological argument), and in addition, they are a danger to society (a utilitarian argument). Coincidentally, I read in a European newspaper that one of the large political parties is proposing a lowering of the age where kids can be charged as adults to 12-14, so as not to give young violent gang members a free pass. But I doubt that they intend to cast the net so wide that it covers family disputes with tragic endings.

So there really are two issues here: The general tendency of charging juveniles as adults, and Heather’s specific situation. Throw into the mix that some people suspect there is a political motive (“tough on crime”) behind the court’s decision. I’d hurry to say that what we, as readers, can glean from this can only be generalities, since we don’t know everything the court knows about Heather and the family dynamics (and whatever is irrelevant to the court is none of our business, anyway), and we may not know more until the preliminary hearing, supposedly in September.

Be that as it may, I’m interested in the principles involved: Should a juvenile be considered an adult by the sheer force of principle, due to the severity of her crime? Or should it be her underlying mindset that determines her court status? Her action shows a clear intent to harm—but is it the intent of a child, or an adult? Which leads to the general question what purpose punishment is supposed to serve; Heather’s father and her lawyer seem to think the main purpose is to rehabilitate her, but most people these days view punishment as a matter of (1) deterrence, (2) protection of the public, or (3) a simple matter of retribution. On the personal level, this is a tragic family situation. On the social level, it looks as if  it may become a case study that allows us to examine some of our basic assumptions about justice.

A 13-year old girl thinks she is having an online relationship with an attractive boy, Josh, on MySpace; after several weeks he breaks off the relationship, suggesting that the world would be better off without her. Within an hour she has hanged herself in the closet. This is, of course, a tragedy. We all remember how vulnerable we were at 13, and some young souls are just more fragile than others. It is a rare case when the law steps in and accuses the person who ended the relationship with wrongdoing, but this is what has happened in the case of Megan Meier in Missouri, now getting national media attention. Because there are some twists to the story: For one thing, there is no “Josh”; that was a false identity created by an adult neighbor, Lori Drew, her daughter who used to be a friend of Megan’s, and an 18-tear old computer-savvy woman, reportedly so that they could find out what Megan was saying about the daughter who used to be her friend. And now the mother has been charged, in a Los Angeles court, with the federal crime of “cyber-bullying,” despite the fact that Missouri had decided not to prosecute. Why Los Angeles? Because that’s where MySpace is being managed, and she is charged with the crime of establishing a fraudulent identity on MySpace, used to cause emotional distress. Drew is looking at a maximum of 20 years behind bars, and now Missouri is approving a bill against cyber-harassment. We’ll probably see more legislation along those lines. This is one of those examples where legislation is struggling to catch up with technology, but as for the moral aspect of the story, that is interesting in itself: Do we need to develop a new set of moral standards for the Internet, or can we make do with the ones we already have, for communication as well as for self-protection? Many of you have avatars on a variety of websites, and it is generally considered a fun option, or even a safe way to communicate without exposing oneself to cyberstalking, not as a means of cyberstalking. It usually doesn’t involve creating a complete fraudulent identity for the purpose of stalking, or harassing, or misleading others for nefarious purposes. Lori Drew knew that she was playing with a vulnerable person’s mind, out of spite. Maybe she thought she was protecting her daughter—but even in the real world, self-defense can’t dramatically exceed the level of perceived threat. Increasingly, cyber communities don’t allow false identities. So what say you: Is it always morally wrong to create false web identities? Does it depend on the intention, or is it somehow wrong in itself?

The Internet is full of Albert Einstein today: A Jan.3, 1954 letter from Einstein to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, being sold in London on Thursday by Bloomsbury Auctions, states that

 “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.”

What happened to famous Einstein quotes such as “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind,” (1941) and “God does not play dice with the universe” (1926)? As far as the last one goes, that was never meant to be a comment on God, according to Einstein scholars. Einstein was worried about the scientific implications of his own theory of quantum mechanics. Besides, there are two versions of it. Here’s the original: Raffiniert ist der Herrgott, aber boshaft ist er nicht (1921). Loosely translated as “God is subtle, but he isn’t malicious.” Later, Einstein claimed that God doesn’t throw dice. And “Science without religion is lame”? For one thing, there’s a little translation problem: “Wissenscaft ist lahm” doesn’t mean that “science is lame,” but that “science is paralyzed.” And the meaning itself? According to some, it is evidence of Einstein’s feeling of cosmic spirituality and admiration for the structure of the universe. But this is nothing new—Einstein didn’t want to declare himself an atheist or a pantheist, but it was common knowledge that he didn’t believe in a personal god.

So why does this matter? If anything, it is a testimony to our preoccupation with classifications, sound bites, and neat explanations. But of course today’s debate about whether Einstein was religious or not  is also symptomatic of what many perceive as a cultural divide between two world views, one with and one without religion. Everybody would love to claim Einstein as one of “theirs”—theists as well as atheists. And he has been perceived as a bridge between these two views, with his awe of the universe. But for the sake of our own conviction, one way or another, will it make us feel better if we can pin him down on one idea once and for all? Will that validate our own conviction?

Our esteemed colleague and my good friend Professor Larry Hinman  from University of San Diego was interviewed in the San Diego U-T yesterday about the arrest of former drug dealer, now Carmel Valley wife-of-executive Marie Walsh. Walsh, then Susan Marie LeFevre,  ran away from a Michigan prison and a 10-20 year sentence for selling heroin in 1974, and vanished into thin air. Now it turns out that for 32 years she’s been living a decent and productive life on the right side of the law. So what does this mean? Should she have to go back and serve the rest of her time, plus the added charges for being a fugitive, or should her obviously rehabilitated 32 years make a difference?

USD’s Hinman said it’s easy for people to feel so much empathy for LeFevre.

“It sounds like she’s led a good life, maybe even an exemplary life since then, and we feel that should count for something,” he said. “And she was young when she committed these crimes . . . and what she did is not the same thing as shooting someone or stabbing someone.

“On some level, we want to believe our judgments are accurate because we can all imagine her as one of our neighbors. And if this is true, what does that say about our judgments about our neighbors? Could we be mistaken about them, too?”

I’ll bet Hinman said a lot more, which SDUT didn’t print—such as how well this case illustrates the fundamental difference between a consequentialist and a deontological world view: If you are a utilitarian/consequentialist, you will of course want her time behind bars minimized, maybe to a few years of probation, or perhaps simply reduced to “time served” (which was one year), because no good consequences will come of dragging her back to prison, away from her family and her community, since she is no threat to anybody, and she has so thoroughly redeemed herself. On the other hand, the deontologists among us will point out that (1) she committed a crime and was sentenced for it, and all the good behavior in the world isn’t going to nullify that, so her punishment should fit her crime; and (2) she has not been rehabilitated inasmuch as she has lied about her past to everybody, which shows fundamental disrespect for other people (treating them as merely a means to an end); and (3) we can’t universalize letting her off the hook—especially since others caught after escaping, who aren’t living in nice neighborhoods with wealthy spouses, will indeed be held accountable.  Not that our opinion will have any great impact—she is headed back to Michigan to serve at least 6 ½ years, maybe with an additional 5 ½ years, according to the SDUT, and nobody is asking us.  But it makes for a good philosophical discussion of justice, redemption and clemency—and it fuels the ongoing discussion about the relevance of rational vs. emotional arguments…

On April 22, 2007, Dwight Furrow launched this blog, and within our first year we have had over 12,200 hits, over 100 posts, and close to 450 comments. Not exactly a WordPress superblog like CNN Political Ticker, Lolcats, Loldogs, or Gretawire (which all serve significantly different purposes than ours), but still a decent Internet presence. So congratulations to us, thank you to Dwight who made it happen, to our frequent and occasional contributors, to our frequent and occasional guests commenting on the posts, and to all of you who visit us daily or from time to time!

I’m often asked by my students what they’ll be able to do with philosophy as a major. The latest answer, according to the New York Times and The Guardian, is, anything you want! Philosophy has emerged as the latest fad major, not for the first time, but this time around it actually appears as if there is some solid reasoning going on, not just in the minds of philosophy students, but in the minds of employers. According to The Guardian,

“Figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency show philosophy graduates, once derided as unemployable layabouts, are in growing demand from employers. The number of all graduates in full-time and part-time work six months after graduation has risen by 9% between 2002-03 and 2005-06; for philosophy graduates it has gone up by 13%.

It is in the fields of finance, property development, health, social work and the nebulous category of “business” that those versed in Plato and Kant are most sought after. In “business”, property development, renting and research, 76% more philosophy graduates were employed in 2005-06 than in 2002-03. In health and social work, 9% more….

…Fiona Czerniawska, director of the Management Consultancies Association’s think tank, says: “A philosophy degree has trained the individual’s brain and given them the ability to provide management-consulting firms with the sort of skills that they require and clients demand. These skills can include the ability to be very analytical, provide clear and innovative thinking, and question assumptions.”"

 This is, of course, what we philosophy instructors have been saying for years, but we’ve generally considered it a nice bonus added to the major benefit of actually enjoying doing philosophy. And according to the New York Times, it is a lot of fun—and it is also useful (hmmmmm):

“Jenna Schaal-O’Connor, a 20-year-old sophomore who is majoring in cognitive science and linguistics, said philosophy had other perks. She said she found many male philosophy majors interesting and sensitive. “That whole deep existential torment,” she said. “It’s good for getting girlfriends.””